decoded_text stringlengths 4.18k 47.6k |
|---|
put him on hold for a few seconds to consult with Caterson. “He must be in such a bad state that he’s not thinking clearly,” Caterson says. “Will he give us his address?” Pilon asked again. Eric refused again. “He doesn’t want us to call the police, either.” Caterson and Pilon think it’s best to be frank with Eric about alerting police. But that made him angrier. Pilon banged the receiver down. Eric had hung up again. They wouldn’t hear from him again. “We want to control him and we’re full of shit and fuck you. That’s how it ended.” When police called back at 3 a.m. – they know the family, it has a history of distress calls to 911 – it was to say they couldn’t trace Eric’s call. The team wondered whether they did the right thing. “I don’t know. Will the police get to him in time?” Pilon says.Dan Culloton: Hi, I'm Dan Culloton, associate director of manager research at Morningstar. I'm here at the Morningstar Investment Conference with Chris Davis, manager of the Davis New York Venture Fund and Selected American Fund.
Chris, thanks for being here with us.
Chris Davis: Dan, it's good to be here. Thank you.
Culloton: Chris, according to Morningstar metrics over the last few years, the Selected American and Davis New York Venture funds have spent a lot of time in the growth area of the Morningstar Style Box. Does this mean that you and your team have changed your style?
Davis: It's such a great question, and you know, I feel unequivocally that Morningstar is a force of good in the world, but this is one place where to me, it can be misleading because I think often to investors, they think that growth and value are something different. And of course, a company that grows profitably is more valuable than one that doesn't grow. My father used to say, he never bought a company that he thought was going to be earning less money five years from now than when he bought it. So, growth is a component of value, and in that sense, I'd say well, we are growth investors because we think about growth as a component of value.
On the other hand, we are value investors for two critical reasons. One is that we think that growth is hard. We think one of the mistakes people make is projecting rosy estimates way into the future. And growth is hard because the economy shifts, the competitive environment shifts, technology shifts, or whatever it is. And the second reason is because the valuation discipline is central to what we do.
We always say we need to adapt to changing times and hold to unchanging principles, and how we assess growth as a component of value is one of those unchanging principles. So I think the philosophy, the discipline, and the methodology are all the same, but sometimes where the opportunities are shift.
And I guess, I was getting at the second part of the answer that always our goal is to buy companies that are cheaper than they look. So we adjust the earnings. We adjust the accounting. So companies that have big noncash charges like amortization of intangibles, we'll add that back into earnings. What that means is sometimes a company that looks optically expensive, which might put it in the growth category as a high P/E, when you adjust those earnings to reality, it's is actually a big value stock. So that's the second component.
<TRANSCRIPT>
Culloton: Let's take a specific example, an example that shows up in a portfolio of a noted growth manager who you will be speaking with on a panel later today, Will Danoff, is Activision. Where is the value in that growth stock?
Davis: What's spectacular about Activision is, one, it has one of the most value-driven managements I have ever seen. Of course, Bobby Kotick has shaped it. In fact, I ran into him in Omaha, Nebraska, this year at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting with he attends every year. He is a value creator, a value disciplined sort of CEO. Then you look at their business, and what you realize is every decision they make, they make based on the returns they are going to get for the money that they're spending.
Now there are two different parts of their business, and I think that's what sometimes confuses people. One part is how we think of the old video game hits-driven business. You have the cartridge game that the kids want to play. But the other side are these massive franchises like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, things like this that people line up to play around the world; in Korea, in China, in Japan, all through Asia, not just in the United States and they pay a subscription for that.
Well, as value investors, we love subscription businesses because we can measure the value. We look at renewal rates, we look at customer retention, we look at pricing, and we look at margins. So it's a much easier business to analyze than a hits-driven business of the old days.
Culloton: The fund still has a big financial stake as it has historically, but how is that financial stake changed since, say, 2008, the financial crisis and now?
Davis: Well, that's a good question. Financials often get lumped into this sort of single category, and it's funny, because I used to say to people, if we had a three-stock portfolio and it had three financials in it, and we had a separate portfolio and it had a capital goods company, one financial, and one retailer, you would say automatically, oh, that second portfolio is more diversified. But if the second portfolio had Home Depot, Toll Brothers homebuilders and Countrywide finance, you would realize it's not diversified at all. They are all tied to housing, and very closely.
If we look back at that first portfolio of financial stocks and if one of them is Progressive automobile insurance, one of them is American Express, and one of them is Bank Julius Baer in Switzerland, you'd say, well, there are three very different businesses and they are going to be affected by different macroeconomic events.
One will be based, of course, on consumer spending; one will be about auto accidents, frequency and severity with some weather components and the competitive environment with GEICO and so on. And the third will be about private banking regulations, asset management returns, and so on in Europe. So, it would be a very diversified portfolio.
But in terms of how things changed from 2007 and the financial crisis, I would say the one key part of our discipline has always been about investing in the businesses that have a culture, and Wells Fargo has a culture, American Express has a culture, even J.P. Morgan has a culture, Berkshire Hathaway has a culture, Progressive. They are specialists in what they do and there's a coherence about what they do.
And I think one of the mistakes we made was when the culture changed at AIG. Well, of course, culture changes with management. And I think that as we look back and then look ahead, the recognition of that central importance of culture is really been baked in, seared in by that experience of the crisis.
We avoided a lot of the blow-ups those years; not owning Baer or Lehman or Fannie or Freddie or WaMu or Countrywide. But the mistake we made in AIG was one about culture, and that's right in our wheelhouse as analysts, and so that I would say is something that's been reinforced.
Culloton: One final question. You said earlier in the year that you thought that equities in general was one of the more attractive asset classes even after last year's runup and the runup of the last few years. Do you still feel that's the truth?
Davis: Dan, absolutely. I mean, that's the thing that drives me crazy. I look at high-grade commercial real estate. And what are the cap rates on these things? 3.5%, 4%, 3.2%. You know, those are pretax cash flow yields from owning a portfolio of high-grade commercial real estate, and yet I can own a company like American Express with a 7.5% or 8% aftertax free cash flow yield. So the whole market, even if it's, you pick the number, 15 to 17 times earnings, let's say. So I invert that. Think of the earnings yield as the invert of that.
So, you are starting at a 6% or 7% earnings yield, and then think of the resiliency of the businesses. Because I think one of the things--my grandfather got in the business in 1948, and everybody clinged to bonds, right, because they remembered the Depression, they remembered the crash. And even though the market had come back, right, it was back to sort of a little higher than it was in '29, people said, never again. I am not going back. I am going to cling to the safety of bonds. They then lost money for 30 years. Year after year after year they lost money in bonds because they didn't recognize that starting with those low yields created risk.
So, here are bonds at a 33 times pretax earnings multiple. Here is real estate at a 25 times pretax multiple and here are equities at a 15 to 17 times aftertax multiple. And they have that ability to adapt to be global, to innovate, to reinvent that resiliency, which is what I think ought to draw investors to equities.
Culloton: Thank you very much, Chris.
Davis: Thank you, Dan.“Bernie Sanders’ revolution is happening,” declared Eve Peyser, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, following the victories of 15 of her fellow avowed socialists Nov. 7 – including a former Marine who vaulted into the Virginia House of Delegates.
Branko Marcetic, from his office in New Zealand, wrote in Jacobin, which calls itself a “leading voice of the American Left,” that Election Day “was a good day” because of socialist victories.
Now, 15 victories in all of the elections that were held across America Nov. 7 does not seem like much. But Heather Dockray opined in Mashable that the socialist successes have to be seen in historical context.
“The DSA saw a 75% increase in elected officials last night, as well as something of a spiritual rebrand. It's a percentage that shouldn't be ignored, especially when you consider the group's unexpectedly diverse geographic appeal,” Dockray wrote.
Most of the 15 socialists who won captured local city council and school board seats.
Two DSA members knocked off incumbents to win seats as aldermen in Somerville, Mass. Socialist Seema Singh Perez won a spot on the city council of Knoxville, Tenn.Boston police’s newest addition to its patrol fleet is a surprising one: an ice cream truck.
Mayor Marty Walsh, Police Commissioner William Evans, and Dick Parry, of the Boston Police Foundation, unveiled the new truck Monday with the help of kids from the Tobin Community Center.
The truck is part of a community policing effort called “Operation Hoodsie Cup,” which has handed out over 120,000 free Hoodsie Cups since its inception in 2010, Boston police said in a statement.
The truck was bought by the Boston Police Foundation and HP Hood donated all of the ice cream distributed, police said. It will be featured during Boston police’s National Night Out events August 1 and 2.
Advertisement
“If you had told me 30 years ago that the Boston Police Department would have an ice cream truck as part of its patrol force and my officers would be handing out Hoodsie Cups … I would’ve said you were crazy,” Evans said in a statement. “But, I absolutely love the new truck and everything this program represents. The goodwill it generates between my officers and our city’s young people is undeniable and nothing short of remarkable and my only regret is that I wish we had started doing this 30 years ago.”
Police said Operation Hoodsie Cup has allowed them to connect with thousands of kids in local communities and serves as a symbol of a promise that officers are committed to keeping “young people safe and secure.”This past Friday, Republican Senator Rand Paul was getting off of his riding mower, with his noise-muffling earphones still on, when he was tackled by his neighbor and sustained five broken ribs in the process. This immediately made people wonder, what the hell happened? Initially some speculated that the cause of the dispute might be political; after all Paul's neighbor, Rene Boucher, is a Democrat and Rand Paul is very much not, but Boucher's attorney was quick to try to dispel that idea, saying politics had nothing to do with the attack. I say "try to dispel" as opposed to "dispel," because having now seen the actual cause of the dispute, I'm not so sure you can claim it was totally apolitical.
So, according to interviews conducted by the New York Times, it seems as though the root of the dispute between the two men is landscaping. Yep. Of all the possible causes for these two to dislike each other, it's the oldest neighborly issue in the book: "I don't like the way you take care of your lawn." Now, you might be wondering how that has anything to do with politics? Well, it turns out that Rand Paul is a bit of an asshole about his yard.
Mr. Paul, 54, has long stood out in the well-to-do gated neighborhood south of Bowling Green, Ky., that he calls home. The senator grows pumpkins on his property, composts and has shown little interest for neighborhood regulations. But the spectacle of the incident — one former doctor attacking another in broad daylight — was altogether different. Competing explanations of the origins of the drama cited stray yard clippings, newly planted saplings and unraked leaves.... Asked about long-leveled allegations that Mr. Paul had disregarded neighborhood regulations, Mr. Skaggs, who is also a former leader of the county Republican Party, said that the senator “certainly believes in stronger property rights than exist in America.”
So, let's read between the lines a bit here. Rand Paul is an asshole neighbor. He bought a house in a neighborhood that has certain rules with regard to lawns, and he decided that he doesn't need to follow those rules because of his belief in "property rights" that don't actually exist. This is, at its core, the problem with libertarianism. Libertarians don't want to follow the rules that we as a society have agreed upon, because they feel those rules step on their freedoms. And sometimes they might even be right, but that doesn't mean that they are above those rules and can do whatever they want.
Now, I don't want to excuse the other side of this. One of the problems with Democrats is we've never met government oversight that we didn't like. And there's a good metaphor for Democratic politics in the obnoxious Home Owners Association rules that drive everyone crazy. So it sure seems like this Rene Boucher was also an asshole, who cared way too much about what his neighbor's yard looked like.
I guess my point in all this is, their dispute may not have been about politics, but it was definitely all about politics.Editor’s Note: The following entries are the winners and finalists from our Batman 2.0: The Dynamic Do-Over contest, with prizes provided by Rogues Gallery. We received well over a hundred entries! Our guest reviewers this week are Batman: Club of Heroes artist, J.H. Williams III and Detective Comics artist, Dustin Nguyen. – Dean
GRAND PRIZE WINNER!
Anjin Anhut
Jon: 8. Terrifically fond of the mask on this design, evocatively bat-like in a way that the current costume isn’t, but still expresses the same, er, streamlined bat-ness. I like that it allows enough room for his expressions, particularly the smart-ass grin on display here. Interesting color palette, I’m surprised more folks didn’t touch on a “Batman Beyond” scheme, great replacement of the cape with the batons across the back, adds a lot to the silhouette, and I love the practical look of the outfit. Certainly not the only design that employed Nightwing’s chest-and-arms logo motif, but I like the placement and the actual line, using it across a jacket rather than a skintight outfit.
Joel: 9.5. Having lost my ability to read Dan Didio’s mind since he started lining his hats with tinfoil, I can’t say if this is a design DC would ever go for, but I’m pretty sure this is my favorite out of a very strong collection. This really reads as a second generation Bat—a younger man trying to shoulder a mantle in his own way. I love that it looks so practical without looking mundane, so batty without just repeating Bruce Wayne’s admittedly uber-iconic image, and so Grayson without simply cramming Batman and Nightwing into one costume (there’s an image to set the slash community atwitter). I dropped half a point for the sleeve designs, which strike me as needing some more consideration, but would like to add about twenty points for glow-in-the-dark bat-nostrils. Make it fifty if Anjin has specific ideas as to what the nostrils do.
Vito: 8. This is drastic enough to make me notice. It’s a bit of Nightwing, Red Robin and Batman, and that’s not even getting at the actual costume. It’s functional, it’s stylish…it’s nouveau pulp hero. And say what you will for the mask, I think it’s killer. Part motorcycle helmet, part mask. It fits with Dick Grayson. It’s a great looking set of pieces, but the whole is almost all there. My only minus is that it’s an outfit, not a costume. I still like it a lot.
Chris: 9. I absolutely love the mask on this — it’s shade of the wonderful design that Gene Ha did in Batman: Black & White, but I don’t know if Anjin was inspired with that. The decision to go with a red color scheme is bold, but it definitely steps out of the Bruce Wayne Batman into a whole new Batman. I would have given this a 10 but I had to shave off a point for not liking the glider he has below. But amazing design!
Joel: You don’t like the glider? That’s crazy talk. Love the glider!
Dean: 9.5. This design gets me totally psyched for Batman 2! The color choice is perfect given the red-and-black fixation of Batman R.I.P., as well as a nod to Dick’s background as Robin. The mask is fun, and Dick’s expression is character-perfect. I’m really impressed by the scalloped red batwing shapes following down the arms, and the armor plating looks wicked. Easily one of my favorite entries.
JHW3: 6.5. An interesting idea, very street, but Batman isn’t Batman with out some sort of wing/cape aspect to the design.
Dustin: 5. Agreed, though a nice idea, batman shouldn’t fall with trend and jump on the urbanized apparel. also needs the cloaking element.
FIRST PRIZE WINNER!
Daniel Heard
Vito: 8. This is more like it. It’s clearly Batman, but not Bruce. That’s the kind of bold fashion statement that Dick would make (remember the disco collar?). It also looks functional, which is what Dick, an acrobat, would want and need.
Jon: 9. Love this – elegant, agile, acrobatic, great pose and setting too. Batman as a daring young man on the flying trapeze, fearsome because he’s fearless. The cape is terrific, great lines to it – I also really like the solution to the eyes, rather than giving him Batman’s white eyes, he’s got these supernaturally piercing blue ones. Nice military overtones to the costume gives it an air of authority Nightwing might otherwise lack, picking up for his mentor. Really well done.
Chris: 7. Definitely Dick Grayson. I see this Batman jumping deftly through Gotham more akin to Spider-man than Batman. The idea of changing the batcape to a batponcho is hiliarious to me though. But not bad.
Joel: 6.5. While agreeing with all the above kudos, I can’t quite buy the Bat-poncho. Not only would it get in the way of your basic acrobatic hand-to-hand combat, just think how undignified Batman would look having to scrunch it up every time he needed to access his utility belt.
Vito: I don’t know if it would scrunch up so much. It looks like it’s made to move with him.
Dean: 6. Good drawing, but I don’t care for the cape-poncho. That kinda thing could work for a Robin, but it looks childish on Batman.
JHW3: 9. This has a nice feel to it for sure but I think the poncho/cape thing is a little off. The basic design shape of the poncho aspect would be better if it was much longer like a real cape but kept to the specific design sense that is already here.
Dustin: 8 i dig the flaps
SECOND PRIZE WINNER!
Christian Nauck
Vito: 7. At first glance, I don’t think you would see anything more than military Batman, but looking at how this costume is accessorized, it’s totally Dick. I’d like to see at least one bright color on it though, because, to me, Dick is about being the light in darkness…he’s not one to fully give in to the night.
Jon: 6. It’s a costume that makes sense, it’s protective, evocative of the character, certainly feels like a new Batman, if not Dick Grayson specifically, but it doesn’t excite me. Could serve as a totally functional riot-squad Bat-Costume, but for just about any Batman.
Chris: 7. A military Dark Knight for a modern age? Perhaps. This strikes me as very similar to what John Paul Leon might do on Batman. I really enjoy getting rid of the bland compartmentalized utility belt in favor for recognizable items on the belt. While it does complicate the design when simplicity is key in sequential art, I do think it gives this a more down-to-earth approach to Batman.
Joel: 7. This design seems very sympatico with the Nolanverse Batman. If part of the mandate with a Dick Grayson Batman was to bring the comic’s sensibilities in line with the movies, than this would be a very good way to go. In the established DCverse, however, it looks a little heavy for Grayson.
Dean: 9. I’d play this videogame. All of this seems incredibly practical. I’d like to see more of Dick Grayson’s personality, though.
JHW3: 8. This has got practicality all over, nice touch. However, the look of it isn’t giving us anything new. I want to see the classic elements remixed in a way that feels fresh.
Dustin: 8: very well drawn
INELIGIBLE P:R STAFF ENTRY!
Dean Trippe
Vito: It’s a safe bet that when/if Dick takes over, he wont change the costume much if at all, but Dean’s change is on the logo, and I like that new logo something fierce. It’s a mixture of both, and the color of it is bright and stands out against that maudlin gray. But I would have killed to see Dean take this further.
Jon: An excellent, straightforward take, loving the Thrillkiller palette in the costume. I’m a little confused by the cape, though, is it a two-piece cape-like Batwings, or a scalloped cape with a red interior lining?
Chris: I really enjoy it that Dean dramatically changed the Bat emblem not only in color but in shape. It makes me think — would they change the batsignal too? For a new person stepping into the Bat-mantle, part of me would think they would want to change things up– and changing the logo would do that.
Joel: A beautiful drawing, and many nice features, here: split cape, great utility belt modules, and an oh-so-now chest emblem. This looks like a younger, fresher Bat. But I’m not sure I’m getting a coherent vision that ties all those nice new details together. I’m dead certain that Dean has such a vision in mind—the guy likes to think about Batman—but I’m not quite getting it.
Dean: Thanks guys. I basically wanted to take Batman 2.0 a half step towards Batman Beyond. I made new glove and boot compartments to Dick here, and yeah, that’s a double cape. I imagined him using it as an airfoil rather than forming full batwings out of it. And yeah, the Thrillkiller color scheme came from my love of all things Halloween.
JHW3: I think the best thing about this is the yellow/orange chest emblem. The rest is too similar to things we’ve seen before.
Dustin: nicely drawn though looks a lot like batman now.
RUNNERS UP!
Héctor Barros
Jon: 8. I love the streamlining on this one, and the batwings with a different color on the interior and exterior. Also, a terrific looking mask. There’s something about the cut of the mask which seems to evoke a silent movie character, very lean, elegant and Nineteen-twenties-ish. I think I like this one because it looks, to me, like it could’ve been Batman’s costume since day one, it has a classic urban crimefighter look to it, and still something distinctly iconic.
Vito: 8. But, Jon, it says Nightwing with a Batman cowl. I love the colors, and the streamlining is fantastic, but why not utilize the utility belt more? I’m not sure what the reasons are for having the blue piping on the costume other than to break up the dark colors, but that’s minor. The logo is fantastic and I, too, love the cowl. Make all the fingers blue, and I’m there with you.
Chris: 8. Was Nightwing watching GATCHAMAN when designing this new Batman costume? That’s what I thought when I saw this entry come into the Project: Rooftop headquarters. Initially I was against the blue piping, but it works so well on the head portion of the costume. Great job, Hector.
Joel: 6. I think this is a case of losing the Bat. The chest emblem looks more like a manta ray. Combine that with the general… uh, wetsuitness of the costume, and I just end up in very different territory on this one.
Dean: 4. This one’s just a too complicated for me to enjoy the simplified bits. The chest logo is almost there, but the arm and leg piping seems useless, and the triangles on the feet are distracting. I also think he’s wearing his belt a little too high. I like the double-sided wings, though.
JHW3: 10. This is by far my favorite. It has all of the right elements but remixed with a freshness to it. It’s very smooth and very sleek. I agree with the Gatchaman reference but it really works for me. The designer really stretched things here without losing what makes for a cool Batman. Love the drawing style too.
Dustin: 8. this works great, batman beyond meets nightwing.
Joe Quinones
Jon: 7. Great illustration, great lines and colors, it puts me in mind of the 1960’s Batman TV show. Part of it because the cut of the cape, the bright lining and the size of the bat-belt remind me of Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl costume, and part of it is because this looks like Batman dressed as the Batmobile!
Joel: 6. Campy in the best possible way, this piece has me wanting to read a Joe Quinones comic full of fun superheroes. But, this should be making me want to read a Batman comic, not a Joe Q comic. I think this design in the hands of a lesser artist would suddenly look pretty flat. There’s just an awful lot of piping going on there.
Vito: 8. Not crazy about the cowl, but this is one of the costumes that uses the piping that I’m ok with. It streamlines the costume as a whole, and the color choice is bold. Anyone notice that Joe used Nightwing’s gauntlets in this design? That, to me, makes this work because it’s not Batman with a Nightwing logo or Nightwing with a Bat logo/cowl. It’s a great melding of both.
Chris: 7. This has got a lot of personality, but I can’t see Nightwing or Robin underneath the cowl. I’d like to see Joe go back and work this up some more and it’d be great.
Dean. 9. Dudes, this has so much class. I simply can’t say no to a Bat costume with this much love in it. Joe’s got the 60’s Batmobile and utility belt, Nightwing’s gloves and arm-stripes, and a simple double sided cape. It’s just so clean. Hopeful and simultaneously badass. I’m not totally sold on the old school duo-tone mask, but otherwise, this entry is a home run.
JHW3: 7. Has a nice retro adventure hero aspect to it. It would work best for a story that fits a pulpy period piece. Something about it reminds me of an action figure design I’ve seen though.
Dustin: 6. [No Comments.]
Note: More Runners Up after the jump! – D.T.
Marcos Miller
Jon: 9. Damn, sexy. I love the hardcore look of the belt, and how this design calls back to Nightwing’s first costume back in the New Teen Titans. Still, it brings back enough classic Batman elements to evoke the legacy – bat-fins on the gloves, the mask (nice touch of adding the yellow highlights for the bat’s nose). I like this one a lot because it isn’t timid, it’s a whole other take on the capital-B Batman, it marries the whole identity to Dick Grayson rather than subjugating Dick Grayson under the same old cowl and cape.
Vito: 9. I think the best thing about this costume, other than the reference and reverence for Disco Dick, is the shot of the collar closed. That’s freaky! With the nose being lit like that, this guy could scare you in the dark! If we had those glider wings on the back that a lot of the entries had, I might go perfect. Solid design though.
Chris: 7. This sort of reminds me of Tim Burton doing the redesign.
Joel: 6. If T’Challa is ever looking for a Gotham gig, then he’s got an outfit all ready for him. The belt is great (it looks like something pulled out of the prop department for Dark Knight Returns), but it may be too distinctive for what is an otherwise spare costume. I like the collar-becomes-mask idea. But, generally, I think this could be any of a number of black-clad characters. I need some stronger Bat-iconography.
Dean: 7. I like the way the collar works and the lower-half of the facemask is optional. I’m really missing the cape here. Retractable wings would help a lot.
JHW3: 6. Another nice sleek design. But where is the wing/cape aspect? Should be there.
Dustin: 6 more nightwing than batman
Steve LeCouilliard
Jon: 8. We’ve had a lot of “Nightwing with Batman’s Mask” submissions, but I think this was the first “Batman with Nightwing’s insignia” entries. It’s such a simple rationale underlying the redesign, and Steve’s art here is very appealing. The blue boots on the blue background illustrate one of the problems with the design, though, in that they vanish, and we have a footless Batman, it might’ve worked just as well if he’d blacked them out, like the gloves. Anyway, simplicity has its strengths, I like this design a lot. One of my criteria going in has been to judge the piece on whether it says “Bruce Wayne was Batman in his fashion, Dick Grayson will do it his way.” The boldness of the insignia speaks volumes, I think it carries that sentiment.
Chris: 7. The design itself is solid — the only thing I’d count off for is the claws on the wristbands. At its heart though, it isn’t Dick Grayson underneath.
Vito: 7. I think you’re saying that, Chris, because of the face (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). The steely jaw is a Bruce Timm thing that when we see it, we think Bruce Wayne. But I think the only thing wrong with this entry is the utility belt. Steve could have really won me over with something less…mundane. I do love the insignia and boot colors though. Very bold.
Joel: 7. This is a solid pairing of Batman and Nightwing, but I think the result is pretty much a Batman who is easier to spot in the dark. Just shoot slightly above the electric-blue feet.
Dean: 8. This is the road traveled by a lot of our entrants, but most not nearly as well. I love the illustration. Ditching the gloves but keeping the sweet arm blades was a good call. The blue-but-classic boots keep you totally grounded that this is Batman. I think keeping the yellow belt was a good call, but I’d like to have seen more thought put into the oh-so-important utility belt.
JHW3: 7. Lot’s of energy here. But to be honest, I think the only reason this design works here is because how well it was illustrated. Not so sure the design holds up on it’s own.
Dustin: 6. [No Comments.]
Joel Carroll
Joel: 7.5. Yeah, Joel’s definitely getting bonus points for that Batgirl. His Batman has a lot going for it. It looks like a direction Dick would go in. I’m very intrigued by the gauntlets, which seem to have some very specific thinking behind them. And the disconnected mask speaks well to Dick’s more open approach to both fighting styles and interpersonal communication. But I think there’s too much of the light gray scattered across the costume.
Vito: 8. I agree, Joel. This fits my function over protection philosophy that I believe Dick would have, having been an acrobat. It might be a little too Nightwing though, and I’d love to see some kind of cape or bat wings incorporated into it. I have to say that I’d love to wear this costume though.
Jon: 7. Love Joel’s designs, as always, and this is a great costume, but it still feels very sidekicky to me. Vito’s right, a cape or bat-wings would help – right now, the Batgirl redesign seems like the senior member of the team, Dick’s mass and height notwithstanding …
Chris: 6 for Batman, 9 for Batgirl. Joel should re-submit this Batgirl has a standalone design for Project: Rooftop!
Dean: 7.5. Joel seems to be keeping Dick from fully accepting the mantle of the bat. I love this new Dynamic Duo, but I think Cass’s costume outclasses Dick’s several times over. I think I’d like to see her costume adapted over his frame to make a more bat-like Batman.
JHW3: 7. Like the overall feel to it. But I gotta ask why would Batgirl have a cape aspect and Batman not? This one thing alone bugs me. Batman should always have some sort of wing/cape aspect. He is supposed to a “Bat” man.
Dustin: 6 [No Comments.]
Paul Milligan
Vito: 7. It’s just about there. The cowl looks terribly uncomfortable…it looks like Tony Stark designed it. Love the logo, and the use of piping on the costume. The gloves have sort of talon ends, which is cool, but the Escrima stick holder on his back…that could come back to haunt him in the future.
Chris: 6. A lot of ideas flowing here, but they result in it all not coming in to form that fits together.
Jon: 6. I’m trying not to be inordinately won over by Batman’s dissatisfied grimace, which makes it look like he’s really put out to be crimefighting. It’s endearing, I’d love that take on the character. “The Penguin’s doing what, robbing the Umbrella Museum? Ah, geez … I JUST sat down to dinner.” Outside of the expression, Chris summarized it well; there’s a lot of parts to the design which seem to be the starting points for different motifs, but they don’t synch up completely. The costume seems cobbled together from other pieces … I noticed that if I scroll down enough to cover just the bat ears, that even with the insignia and cape, this doesn’t look like Batman to me. There’s probably three good Batman costumes comingling in here …
Vito: Jon, you might have hit on the one element no one really captured in these designs; a smile. Bruce Wayne, sure, he doesn’t smile. Dick Grayson does, and that would come through in a design of a costume, I think. If you know the guy underneath isn’t grim and moody, the colors might come through and lead to different designs. Do you realize that only six entries have smiles?
Joel: 6. This strikes me more as an alternate Bat, say Batman 2099, or something. I think it’s the cobbled-together look that Jon mentioned, combined with the motocross helmet. I like the integration of the utility-pouched into the costume, although I wonder if they won’t drag Dick’s beltless pants down.
Dean: 8.5. I want to draw this one so bad. I love all the little choices that make Paul’s Batman look protected and thought-out. The only part that doesnt work for me is the pockets. Ditch those, and this is a perfectly sensible batsuit.
JHW3: 6. Anime Batman. Nice seeing the pouch/belt design from the back.
Dustin: 8.5. [No Comments.]
Jemma Salume
Jon: 5. Well, good lord, it’s Nightmare Batman. I love that Jemma took such liberties with the costume, it’s certainly dramatic. Makes me imagine, though, that it’s one of Batman’s enemies |
most celebrated teams.
Victory in the return game away at Druids' The Rock stadium on Friday would secure a little piece of footballing history.
Last defeat
Harrison's side last suffered defeat in July when they were beaten 3-0 by Apoel Nicosia of Cyprus in a Champions League second qualifying round second leg tie.1. I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
2. I prefer animals to humans. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
3. I try to keep up with the current trends and fashions. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
4. I find it difficult to explain to others things that I understand easily, when they don’t understand it the first time. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
5. I dream most nights. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
6. I really enjoy caring for other people. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
7. I try to solve my own problems rather than discussing them with others. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
8. I find it hard to know what to do in a social situation. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
9. I am at my best first thing in the morning. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
10. People often tell me that I went too far in driving my point home in a discussion. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
11. It doesn’t bother me too much if I am late meeting a friend. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
12. Friendships and relationships are just too difficult, so I tend not to bother with them. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
13. I would never break a law, no matter how minor. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
14. I often find it difficult to judge if something is rude or polite. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
15. In a conversation, I tend to focus on my own thoughts rather than on what my listener might be thinking. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
16. I prefer practical jokes to verbal humor. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
17. I live life for today rather than the future. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
18. When I was a child, I enjoyed cutting up worms to see what would happen. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
19. I can pick up quickly if someone says one thing but means another. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
20. I tend to have very strong opinions about morality. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
21. It is hard for me to see why some things upset people so much. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
22. I find it easy to put myself in somebody else’s shoes. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
23. I think that good manners are the most important thing a parent can teach their child. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
24. I like to do things on the spur of the moment. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
25. I am good at predicting how someone will feel. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
26. I am quick to spot when someone in a group is feeling awkward or uncomfortable. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
27. If I say something that someone else is offended by, I think that that’s their problem, not mine. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
28. If anyone asked me if I liked their haircut, I would reply truthfully, even if I didn’t like it. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
29. I can’t always see why someone should have felt offended by a remark. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
30. People often tell me that I am very unpredictable. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
31. I enjoy being the center of attention at any social gathering. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
32. Seeing people cry doesn’t really upset me. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
33. I enjoy having discussions about politics. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
34. I am very blunt, which some people take to be rudeness, even though this is unintentional. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
35. I don’t find social situations confusing. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
36. Other people tell me I am good at understanding how they are feeling and what they are thinking. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
37. When I talk to people, I tend to talk about their experiences rather than my own. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
38. It upsets me to see an animal in pain. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
39. I am able to make decisions without being influenced by people’s feelings. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
40. I can’t relax until I have done everything I had planned to do that day. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
41. I can easily tell if someone else is interested or bored with what I am saying. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
42. I get upset if I see people suffering on news programs. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
43. Friends usually talk to me about their problems as they say that I am very understanding. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
44. I can sense if I am intruding, even if the other person doesn’t tell me. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
45. I often start new hobbies, but quickly become bored with them and move on to something else. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
46. People sometimes tell me that I have gone too far with teasing. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
47. I would be too nervous to go on a big rollercoaster. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
48. Other people often say that I am insensitive, though I don’t always see why. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
49. If I see a stranger in a group, I think that it is up to them to make an effort to join in. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
50. I usually stay emotionally detached when watching a film. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
51. I like to be very organized in day-to-day life and often makes lists of the chores I have to do. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
52. I can tune into how someone else feels rapidly and intuitively. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
53. I don’t like to take risks. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
54. I can easily work out what another person might want to talk about. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
55. I can tell if someone is masking their true emotion. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
56. Before making a decision, I always weigh up the pros and cons. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
57. I don’t consciously work out the rules of social situations. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
58. I am good at predicting what someone will do. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly Disagree
59. I tend to get emotionally involved with a friend’s problems. Strongly Agree Slightly Agree Slightly Disagree Strongly DisagreeRight-wing propaganda has duped millions of Americans into believing that the Framers devised the Second Amendment so individuals could possess personal arsenals to shoot police, soldiers and other government representatives. This false narrative has made sane gun laws hard to enact, as Michael Winship observes.
By Michael Winship
I’ve just flown back from Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired. And brain boggled. After all these years, it was my first visit, and although I’ve been to Reno and Tahoe and even the casinos of Winnemucca, Nevada — “The Crossroads of the West” — nothing prepared me for the splendor, squalor, sleaze and squander of the ultimate American pleasure dome.
“This is where feminism came to die,” my girlfriend Pat sardonically joked as weary, bikinied women danced on bars and we walked through the heat past the umpteenth sidewalk vendor handing out escort fliers and wearing a neon-colored “Las Vegas Girls Direct to You in 20 Minutes” tee-shirt, a piece of apparel so ubiquitous the casino gift shops now sell them as souvenirs.
Then there was the pop-up “Hitched in a Hurry” wedding chapel along the Strip where too-young, too-inebriated couples dressed in shorts and flip-flops were exchanging vows as passers-by watched through the windows. We fought the urge to build pop-up intervention centers a hundred feet on either side.
None of which is to say we didn’t have a good time, although in some ways it was more a replica of enjoyment, like the fake Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Venetian canals and other reproductions that dot the Vegas landscape. This is America through the distorting, funhouse looking glass, whether it’s the 32-ounce, frozen cocktails in adult sippy cups or (I’m not making this up) the Kardashian Khaos boutique in the Mirage Hotel.
And guns. True, we didn’t spot anyone overtly packing heat, except for the occasional law enforcement officer, but the culture certainly was magnified all around us, from the stores with stacks of “American Gun,” the bestseller by Chris Kyle, the ex-Navy SEAL who was shot to death in Texas four months ago, to the multiple billboards advertising machine gun firing ranges and the jeeps in camouflage paint that prowl the boulevards promoting commando-style training in the desert.
The city’s homicide rate for the first quarter of this year is up 50 percent from the same period in 2012. In February, for example, a fatal shooting on the Strip only a couple of blocks from our hotel led to a car crash that also killed a cab driver and his passenger, for a total of three deaths, and just two weeks before we arrived, two died and two were injured in a gun-related, double murder-attempted suicide.
The Vegas police department has above average success arresting the perpetrators 75 percent against the national rate of 65 percent — but oddly, as columnist J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun reports, “In nonlethal shootings, when the victim survives, the criminal is more than 90 percent likely to get away with the crime. In 2012, for instance, there were 313 nonlethal assaults with firearms. Just 20 of the cases led to an arrest.”
A police spokesman told Coolican that homicides are easier to solve because, he said, you have a corpse and a murder scene. But Eugene O’Donnell, a former cop who’s now a criminologist at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York rejected that rationale and asked, “What’s a police department for if not to solve gun violence?”
Obviously, a police department’s for a lot of other things, too, but the question bears consideration. Solving gun violence should be a primary goal of law enforcement but government departments remain hamstringed by budget cuts and hiring freezes, not to mention the relentless big-footing of the NRA, firearms manufacturers and the rest of the gun lobby. Despite continued tragedies and public support for tougher regulation, not only do they continue on a federal level to prevent further regulation, they strong-arm states and municipalities into relaxing the rules or changing them to favor the gun business.
Last week, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell made his state the latest of at least 22 to adopt a “Stand Your Ground” law, allowing the use of deadly force if the owner of a gun feels threatened. He signed the law on the eve of George Zimmerman’s trial for the fatal “Stand Your Ground” shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and chose to hold the signing ceremony — with heavy-handed symbolism — at a shooting range so he could, Alaska Public Media reported, “send a message.”
And the day before we arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada’s Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed a bill authorizing universal background checks for gun purchases in the state. According to the website ThinkProgress, “The bill, passed by Nevada’s Democratically controlled state legislature, would have required a background check prior to all gun sales and would have increased reporting of mental illness data. The National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm called the proposal ‘misguided gun control legislation being forced on law-abiding citizens of Nevada.’”
In fact, an April poll found that 87 percent of Nevada voters favored the background check, but “Sandoval said his decision was in part due to the loud voices of that small minority that does not believe criminal background checks should be required prior to gun purchases. He told a local TV station that he’d received 28,000 calls from opponents, and only about 7,000 from supporters.”
There’s the real power of the NRA and the gun lobby for you. Not just the money they throw at media buys and at officeholders and candidates in fact, last year only three of the 16 U.S. Senate candidates endorsed by the NRA won. No, it’s the sheer stridency and lungpower of their opposition to any perceived threat to gun ownership.
(Add to this the deep and usually unexpressed anxiety that hey, these folks have weapons. As John Oliver recently proclaimed on The Daily Show, “The Second Amendment has won the Bill of Rights. It has defeated all the other amendments, which of course it did when you think about it it’s the only amendment with a #$@&* gun.”)
The success of this fierce outspokenness and the corresponding failure of the majority are known, Alec MacGillis wrote in The New Republic magazine, as “the intensity gap: While plenty of people support stricter gun laws, few advocated for them or voted on the issue unless they had been personally affected by gun violence.”
Andy Kroll in Mother Jones magazine quotes political scientist Jonathan Bernstein: “Action works. ‘Public opinion’ is barely real; most of the time, on most issues, change the wording of the question and you’ll get entirely different answers. At best, ‘public opinion’ as such is passive. And in politics, passive doesn’t get results.”
Kroll also cites a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll that one in five gun owners had “called, written, or emailed a public official; only 1 in 10 people without a gun in the household had done the same. In the same poll, 1 in 5 gun owners said they’d given money to a group involved in the gun control debate; just 4 percent of people without a gun in the home previously gave money.”
In just the six months since the Newtown killings there have been more Americans murdered by guns than the 4,409 United States armed forces killed in the Iraq War. Despites its failure in April, reports are that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may bring a background check bill back to the floor between the Fourth of July and August recesses.
So now is the moment for outrage and action to join hands, to swivel the intensity gap in the other direction, to join with such groups as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign to prevent Gun Violence, Sandy Hook Promise, Americans for Responsible Solutions (Gabby Giffords’ group), Moms Demand Action, Mayors against Illegal Guns and others; to speak out in force, make the phone calls and send the e-mails, to pressure your representatives. Do that, and this time, as they say in Vegas, I wouldn’t bet against you.
Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at the public policy and analysis group Demos and native of Canandaigua, New York, is senior writer of the weekly public television series, Moyers & Company. To comment or for more information, go to www.BillMoyers.com.Most of you would have thought,No big deal right? The reality is its not easy to make yogurt in cold countries or in cold weather naturally.
If you ask me, So you never bought yogurt outside? Sometimes I do, But only when the weather was too cold for fermentation. To me store bought yogurt lacks in freshness and most importantly taste.
This post will teach you a technique or two and a few tips on how to make yogurt at home even in cold weather and or cold countries.
So what it yogurt?
It is a product of bacterial fermentation of milk. Bacteria which makes yogurt is called "yogurt cultures".
So I made yogurt, now what do I do with it?
Dishes using yogurt
Prepare Gravies like yogurt gravy.
Use it in chats like dahi vada,dahi poori.
Use it in raita.
Use it for preparing buttermilk
Prepare lassi with it.
Make Yogurt rice.
Mix it with fruits and make Flavored yogurt.
It is a product of bacterial fermentation of milk. Bacteria which makes yogurt is called "yogurt cultures".So I made yogurt, now what do I do with it?
Ingredients:
3 cups milk.
1 tbsp yogurt or more.
How to make Yogurt -In cold countries?
Boil milk (you can make it very warm in microwave too ).
As soon as you get it out of the stove transfer immediately to bowl or vessel where you are going to make yogurt.
Add 1 tbsp or more yogurt to the hot milk.
Mix it well. Store it in warm place.
Morning your yogurt will be ready. In case it did not ferment....
Store the yogurt vessel near the cooking stove (Where it gets relatively warm).
You will have creamy yogurt my the time you are doing cooking.
How to make yogurt -In warm Countries?
The temperature of milk has to be Luke warm.
Add a tsp of yogurt and mix well.
Yogurt will be ready the next morning.
Store in refrigerator for future use. Some More Tips:
Non -sour yogurt can be eaten when you have a cold.
Butter milk made from non -sour yogurt will not be good.
To make the first batch of yogurt you can use a store brought or may be get some from a friend.
"face book pinterest networkedblogs,my taste.in,Google" Support me by joining MyKitchenodyssey @
Linking this recipe to Fullscoops
Linking this recipe to Fullscoops giveaway Don't forget to tell your friends by sharing...July 31, 2016
Visualizing iTunes Library Data in Excel
iTunes, Apple’s media organizer program, is both panned as bloatware and praised as a one-stop-shop. Regardless, iTunes stores a wealth of metadata locally that make it relatively simple to visualize trends within our often extensive libraries. It is trivial to copy the raw data from iTunes and use it in Excel, even with Apple Music. Simply go to the Songs tab in the iTunes sidebar, press ⌘A, tab over to Excel, and press ⌘V:
Obtaining Data
To select which data iTunes displays, right-click on the column names at the top of the screen and check the proper items. For this exercise, use the following columns in iTunes:
Song Title Song Length Artist Album Genre Plays iCloud Status Date Added Skips Loved Rating
After pasting to Excel, manually add the proper headings to sort the data like so:
Cleaning Data
For the most part, the data is filled out if the library has been maintained. The Filter toggle on the Data tab allows for ordered sorting and excluding data within this dataset. However, to crunch the numbers, some of the data needs to be formatted differently.
Instead of editing the data itself, add columns to the right of the data. This way, when more data is added, the formulas can be preserved and filled down. This also allows for PivotTables to refresh and not have to be resized when more data is added.
The Date Added column from iTunes includes both the date and time the song was added, i.e. 1/31/10, 6:14 PM. However, this is formatted as text and cannot be sorted or grouped. To sort this properly as text, add a new column to the right called Date Corrected. Filling this column with the formula =DATEVALUE(LEFT(I2,FIND(",",I2&”,”)-1)) will find the proper date. The =LEFT portion will look for the comma character in the Date Added column and pull the text to the left of it. The =DATEVALUE portion forces the text it pulls to be formatted as a date.
Finally, in the home tab, select the Date Corrected column and set the format to “Short Date” in the drop-down menu. This will ensure that this data is sortable and groupable by date later.
Time Played
The last two columns will calculate how long an individual song has been played. Since the data includes the song length and the count of plays, it is almost trivial to multiply these together. However, it is a little messy.
Minutes
To calculate the minutes a song has been played, create a new column called Total Time (Minutes) and use the formula =((HOUR(C2)*60+MINUTE(C2))*G2)/60. This formula takes the hour value of the song length and multiplies it by sixty. It then adds the minute value of the song length to the new hour value. It then multiplies this by the number of plays the song as and finally divides the total by 60.
It is important to note that while Excel sees the Song Length column as hours and minutes i.e. HH:MM, it is in fact MM:SS. This is why it gets divided by 60: if we do not divide at the end, we have a count of seconds, not the count of minutes. This formula is a little messy but it gets the job done. Sanity check the result with WolframAlpha:
Hours
The hour calculation is far simpler but it needs to be formatted. Create a new column called Total Time (Hours) and use the formula =N2/1440. This will divide the total time in minutes by 1440, which gives us the decimal time format for hours in Excel.
From there, apply the custom format [h]:mm to the Total Time (Hours) column:
This will show the hours in the standard HH:MM format.
Visualizing Data
Now that the data is all clean and sortable, it can be visualized. Each sheet will have its own separate PivotTable and chart for simplicity’s sake. The Data sheet contains the cleaned data from iTunes.
Creating the PivotTable
The first step to creating all of these charts is to create a PivotTable. Select any cell on the Data sheet and set the range to Data!$B:$O. This way, the PivotTable will include all of the data and that added later since there is no lower bound on the rows. Make sure each PivotTable is placed on its own sheet.
Plays by Genre
This PivotTable will use the Genre, Artist, and Plays columns in this order:
This creates a PivotTable of Genres that can expand to show the underlying Artist:
From here, create a chart. Select any cell in the PivotTable and insert a Clustered Column chart. In the Data Source Selector, set the Y-Values to the Sum of Plays column and the horizontal axis to the Row Labels column.
Apply some styling and voila:
Click here for full resolution.
Time by Genre
This PivotTable will use the Artist, Genre, and both Total Time columns created earlier.
Artist is set as a filter so it is possible to exclude certain artists from the PivotTable. Also, ensure both Total Time columns are summarized as Sum and not Count. Finally, ensure that the `Total Time (Hours) column has the correctly applied number formatting:
The Field Name should be edited for brevity’s sake. Create the chart the same as before: in the Data Source Selector, set the Y-Values to the Sum of Minutes or Sum of Hours column and the horizontal axis to the Row Labels column:
Finally, apply some styling:
Click here for full resolution.
Plays by Artist
This PivotTable will use the Artist and Plays columns in this order:
From here, create the chart. Select any cell in the PivotTable and insert a Clustered Column chart. In the Data Source Selector, set the Y-Values to the Sum of Plays column and the horizontal axis to the Row Labels column. Apply some styling and enjoy the chart:
Click here for full resolution.
Skips by Artist
This PivotTable will use the Artist, Song Title and Skips columns in this order:
Use the Skips filter to remove (blank) because many songs will have 0 skips.
From here, create the chart. Select any cell in the PivotTable and insert a Clustered Column chart. In the Data Source Selector, set the Y-Values to the Sum of Skips column and the horizontal axis to the Row Labels column. Apply some styling and enjoy:
Click here for full resolution.
Songs Added Over Time
This is by far the most complicated visualization in this set. The PivotTable is relatively simple in design. It uses the Date Corrected and Song Title columns in this order:
The Years entry is a result of grouping. To group by month, right click on the dates in the list and select Group and Outline. Ensure the date range is accurate for the data and ⌘-Select Months and Years.
This results in the following PivotTable:
From here we need to calculate the total number of songs that accumulates over the months. To do this, add two columns on top of the PivotTable. The top column will contain the Year we are targeting and the borrow column will contain the month, like so:
This allows us to create a formula that references the arguments required to pull cells using =GETPIVOTDATA. Ordinarily, a single reference to a PivotTable cell will result in something messy like =GETPIVOTDATA("Song Title",$B$4,"Date Corrected",1,"Years",2008). By adding the year and month, we can replace those arguments with relative references. Once the references are relative, they can be flash-filled across rows and columns as necessary.
To calculate the accumulated song count, we leverage these two new rows. Replace the 1 following the “Date Corrected” argument with a reference to the cell containing 1 above the PivotTable. Do the same for the 2008 following the ”Years" argument. The formula should look like this: =GETPIVOTDATA("Song Title",$B$4,"Date Corrected",C3,"Years",C2).
This formula is only used for the first cell. The second cell will read =GETPIVOTDATA("Song Title",$B$4,"Date Corrected",D3,"Years",D2)+C8. The +C8 adds the current month count to the previous sum.
This formula can be filled all the way across the entire PivotTable. It will calculate the accumulated number of songs on the monthly level.
Finally, we can build the chart. We will need two axes to graph the data: one axis for the songs added per month and one for the cumulative songs in the library. Select any cell in the PivotTable and add a Clustered Column chart. In the chart builder, add two Series: Songs Added and Total Songs. Set Songs Added to the PivotTable range called Count of Song Title. Set Total Songs to the range created underneath the PivotTable that calculates the cumulative number of songs.
Once the basic chart has been created, right-click on the bars that represent Total Songs and select Change Chart Type > Line > Line.
Next, double click on the line and go to the third tab on the Format Data Series sidebar on the right. Under Series Options set Plot Series On to Secondary Axis.
Finally, select the chart and use the Add Chart Element button on the Chart Design tab. Add the necessary labels to explain the chart.
Finally, the chart is competed.
Click here for full resolution.
Conclusion
Excel’s PivotTable functionality allows for a deep dive into iTunes metadata. Although complicated at times, the visualizations it creates are quite telling about our music listening habits.
Release
The Excel sheet I used can be downloaded directly or accessed in this Google Sheet.
To use the sheet, structure your iTunes songs tab exactly like this:— Press Release —
The Major Arena Soccer League announced its divisional alignment for the 2014/15 season and continued its offseason transformation with today’s launch of www.maslsoccer.com.
Twenty-three teams will be separated into four divisions., Eastern, Central, Southern, and Pacific.
The Eastern Division will be composed of the Baltimore Blast, Harrisburg Heat, Rochester Lancers, Syracuse Silver Knights, and Detroit Waza Flo. The Central Division lists the Milwaukee Wave, Chicago Mustangs, Tulsa Revolution, St. Louis Ambush, Missouri Comets, and Wichita B-52s.
The Southern Division will feature the Dallas Sidekicks, Monterrey Flash, Hidalgo La Fiera, Brownsville Barracudas, Saltillo Rancho Seco, and Oxford City of Texas (formerly Texas Strikers). The San Diego Sockers, Las Vegas Legends, Ontario Fury, Seattle Impact, Turlock Express, and Sacramento Surge will compete in the Pacific Division.
Every team will face each of its divisional rivals at least one time home and away.
Continuing its partnership with Pointstreak Sports, the new MASL website features improved graphics and easy navigation to the league’s 23 teams.
In addition to the MASL site, Pointstreak hosts sites for the Wichita B-52s, Seattle Impact, Tulsa Revolution, Turlock Express, and Oxford City Texas.
“Anytime you transition to a new brand identity, it is an elaborate and arduous process,” said Commissioner Kevin Milliken of the seven year old league formerly known as the Professional Arena Soccer League. “Pointstreak has been right by our side every step of the way.”The region has been in discussion with all of the new startup airlines, including ultra-low-cost carrier Canada Jetlines. Jetlines announced earlier this week it would fly out of Hamilton when it launches next summer, serving markets in Canada, the United States and Mexico.
"They're aware of the process we're launching," Regier said. "They're certainly interested in our airport."
Waterloo Regional Coun. Tom Galloway said the new policy will give a leg up to new airlines trying to start up "in a very competitive and volatile environment," or any airline that wants to start a new route.
"They see this exclusivity matter as something really attractive to them," Galloway said. "It does give them some stability and certainty."
The evaluation process will favour airlines with proposals for multiple routes, that base aircraft in Breslau, and establish headquarters and other operations or activities in the region.
"We may get some response, we may not," Galloway said.
A number of ultra-low-cost airlines started emerging in the past year, in part due to the Canadian government relaxing foreign ownership restrictions in an effort to encourage the entry of new airlines into the market and create more affordable air options for Canadian travellers. Canada is currently the only country in the G7 that does not have an ultra-low-cost operator.
"They're all jockeying to enter this market and of course the market is ready," Regier said. "It's an opportunity for the Canadian air passenger."
The Breslau airport's primary catchment area, in a 35-kilometre radius, generates about 2.5 million passengers annually, 95 per cent flying through Toronto Pearson, Hamilton, Toronto Billy Bishop, Buffalo, Detroit or London airports.
"We're getting very little of that through our own airport," Regier said.
jweidner@therecord.com, Twitter: @WeidnerRecordFifa has ruled out any prospect of France and the Republic of Ireland replaying their World Cup play-off match, despite the Irish justice minister, Dermot Ahern, this morning joining the Republic of Ireland assistant manager, Liam Brady, in calling for a rematch.
When contacted by the Guardian, a Fifa spokesman flatly denied the chance of a rematch, refering to Law 5 in the official rules of the game, which states that the referee has "full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed", and that "the decisions of the referee regarding facts connected with play are final".
In case there was any question whether this leaves room for doubt, the International FA Board notes that: "Facts connected with play shall include whether a goal is scored or not and the result of the match." The fourth assistant at the match, Martin Ingvarsson refused to be drawn today when questioned about the incident. "We are not allowed to make any comments at all in connection to Fifa games," he said.
Ahern was dismissive of what he perceives as Fifa's lack of leadership and moral courage following the Thierry Henry handball which led to William Gallas's extra-time equaliser. "Millions of people worldwide saw it was a blatant double handball – not to mention a double offside," Ahern said. "We should put the powers that be in the cosy world of Fifa on the spot and demand a replay.
"They probably won't grant it as we are minnows in world football but let's put them on the spot," Ahern added, indicating that despite Fifa's stance there may yet be an official complaint. The minister is thought to have asked the Football Association of Ireland chief executive, John Delaney, and the vice-president, Des Casey, to demand Fifa arrange a replay.
"It's the least we owe the thousands of devastated young fans around the country. Otherwise, if that result remains, it reinforces the view that if you cheat you will win. Thierry Henry has admitted handling the ball, claims he told the ref he handled it," Ahern added.
Brady was also scathing of Fifa. "For the dignity and integrity of football, we will go to France and play again," he said. "[The Fifa president] Sepp Blatter goes on about fair play – let him reflect on what happened last night. Where is football going if a team is cheated out of fair play? Where are we going if this decision stands?"OLYMPIA, Wash. -- A man whose legal name has made headlines in recent years is accused of assaulting a college officer and a deputy, according to CBS affiliate KIRO.
Beezow Doo-doo Zopittybop-bop-bop was arrested on Sunday. Citing court documents, The Olympian reported that the Wisconsin man was seen tearing down fliers at the Evergreen State College and a confrontation ensued with a campus officer.
During the struggle, he allegedly grabbed the officer's gun, but then bit the officer's ring finger several times. He also attempted to stab the officer with a pen, according to the newspaper.
The newspaper also reported that after punches were thrown, Zopittybop-bop-bop allegedly fled on foot. A Thurston County deputy saw the suspect and chased him into a wooded area, where he allegedly threw rocks and a brick at the deputy. Afterwards, another deputy joined the pursuit and used a Taser on the suspect.
Zopittybop-bop-bop was then tackled, handcuffed and arrested, according to the court documents.
In court on Monday, a prosecutor reportedly deferred to the suspect's original name, Jeffrey Drew Wilschke, adding that he was unable to verify the name change.
Zopitty-bop-bop had reportedly legally changed his name in 2011.
The suspect's bail was set at $50,000 with an arraignment set for Feb. 16, according to The Olympian.
This is not the man's first brush with law enforcement. Zopittybop-Bop-Bop was first arrested in 2012 on a concealed weapon charge and drug charges in Wisconsin, with his name gaining national attention.
He was also arrested on drug charges a year later in Iowa.CHENNAI: Two ministers hogged the limelight in the Tamil Nadu assembly on Friday in their efforts to show respect to chief minister Jayalalithaa.Minister for municipal administration S P Velumani put speaker P Dhanapal in a fix as he left the assembly mid-way, after moving one of the three demands listed for the day. The assembly took up demands for three departments which are under Velumani. After the demands for municipal administration and water supply department had been moved, Dhanapal was reading the names of MLAs who have moved cut motions. Soon after this, Dhanapal expected Velumani to move the demands for rural development and panchayati raj but the minister was missing.While other ministers were at a loss looking at each other, the assembly secretary was busy. DMK MLAs were watching the struggle and some back benchers from the opposition even offered to move the demands. But before the situation went out of hand, the minister came running and moved the rest of the demands gasping for breath. Sources said the minister had left the assembly to welcome chief minister Jayalalithaa as she entered the secretariat. It is customary for ministers whose departmental demands are being debated in assembly, to welcome the CM with a bouquet. Dhanapal in a bid to show the assembly that he has managed the situation told the opposition that he was collecting the papers for the next agenda, leaving the opposition smiling.After the CM read out a statement under Rule 110, R Kamaraj (food) and Sellur K Raju(cooperation) |
social justice, and supported by the belief that we can and must struggle for a safer, fairer and more secure world."Among the giants of the so-called "sharing economy", Airbnb is often viewed as the model student to Uber's problem child.
The US$30 billion (NZ$42 billion) valued home-sharing app provider has a much more benign, inoffensive reputation than its trailblazing ride-sharing peer, which has been mired in scandal ever since it burst on to the scene a few years ago.
But with critical regulations over room-sharing in Australia's two biggest states hanging in the balance, resistance to the popular service is building momentum. And, as maneuvering over this regulation intensifies, this opposition is poised to become more visible.
If it follows a similar path to the US, then fireworks are possible.
READ MORE:
* Private room in south Auckland listed on Airbnb, but 'no Māori, no island people' allowed
* Airbnb owners get insurance warning
* Renters made $1568 from Airbnb deal, pinged $1300 for breaching rental agreement
Last month, the New South Wales government issued an options paper that could see, among other things, Airbnb hosts taxed and strata schemes given the ability to completely ban the service from their buildings.
REUTERS The hotel lobby hasn't landed as many blows on Airbnb as taxi drivers have on Uber.
Since Australia has the world's highest penetration rate for Airbnb usage, and Sydney is a top-10 Airbnb city for listings globally, it is an important test case that will be watched around the world.
Meanwhile in Victoria, legislation to curb party houses, which Airbnb supports, has stalled in parliament, in part due to lobbying from community groups who don't think it goes far enough.
One of the key differences between Uber and Airbnb is that the former has had to deal with criticism that its product is destroying a particular type of job (taxi driver), that happens to have powerful vested interests behind it.
HOTELS FIRING BLANKS
But making the case that room-sharing is directly threatening jobs is more complicated. Sections of the hospitality industry (particularly restaurant groups) actually support Airbnb, since guests tend to spend more money on experiences such as eating out.
So while hand-to-hand combat between Uber and the taxi lobby has been in full public view, the hotel lobby hasn't landed as many blows on Airbnb (although it was pretty upset with Qantas, when it struck a partnership deal with the company).
DARRIAN TRAYNOR/FAIRFAX MEDIA Barbara Francis is hitting back at Airbnb in Melbourne.
For the most part, the hotel lobby has preferred to let grassroots community groups take the lead.
In Sydney, one such group is Neighbours not Strangers, led by inner-city resident Trish Burt; in Melbourne, there's We Live Here, led by Barbara Francis.
The battle over how to regulate Airbnb is deeply fascinating
Both of these groups are concerned that homesharing has led to increased instances of unseemly and inappropriate behaviour in residential neighbourhoods, of which, it must be said, there are many examples.
In the US, the hotel lobby has orchestrated sophisticated campaigns against Airbnb.
This has included funding for sting operations against Airbnb hosts, and financial backing for "astro-turf" or faux-grassroots opposition groups to the company.
For example, in 2015, the US Center for Public Integrity found that a nominally community driven group called Neighbors (sic) for Overnight Oversight, which had highlighted instances of poor behaviour by Airbnb hosts, was actually a creation of the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
GRASSROOTS GRUNT
The Australian Hotels Association (AHA) has backed "grassroots" campaigns before, against liquor laws, but that was a long time ago. It did not respond to a request for comment on Airbnb, or any support for community groups opposed to it. Tourism Accommodation Australia president Martin Ferguson also didn't respond to emails.
Burt says Neighbours not Strangers, which has 800 signatories, has links to "other community groups in Australia, the UK, in Europe, and North America that we work with on a daily basis". But it has not received any external funding, or support from the hotel industry.
"Our turnover has been zero, absolutely zero. And all the expenditure has literally come from our own pockets," she says.
Francis, for her part, has previously stated a desire to work with Tourism Accommodation Australia. We Live Here is also working with an external public relations agency.
But Francis says it has not received any support or financial backing from lobbying groups either.
"I can promise you we have not received a cent. We live on donations from grassroots groups," she said. "We have been approached by one or two organisations but we won't do it. We want to remain a grassroots operation, on a shoe string."
So opposition to Airbnb may, quite literally, be NIMBY-ism. But there's nothing to suggest there is anything more sinister going on than that. You could argue the reverse, that it's an example of a genuine community uprising against a powerful company.You can live a long time beside someone, even share a connubial bed, and wake one day to find you hardly recognize the other. It can apparently happen to nations, too. The image of Canada and the United States as societies growing ever more distinct crystallized this past week in a few telling vignettes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is greeted by U.S. President Donald Trump as he arrives at the White House in October. ( Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau twice formally apologized to Canadians failed by past governments. He expressed sorrow and regret and promised compensation to former students of Newfoundland and Labrador residential schools, and followed that with a moving apology in the House of Commons to persecuted sexual minorities. Meanwhile, his appointment of a new Supreme Court justice raised virtually no controversy. In the U.S., by sharp contrast, President Donald Trump on separate occasions offended both American citizens and a crucial ally. He used the name “Pocahontas” as an insult at a ceremony honouring Indigenous veterans and then outraged one of America’s closest allies by retweeting hateful posts about Muslims from an extremist British group.
Article Continued Below
Meanwhile, he exchanged puerile insults with North Korea. Thirty years ago, during the debate on a free trade agreement between the two countries, Canadian opponents of the deal warned darkly that the border would be erased, cherished national institutions would die, and Canadian culture and values would wither should it come to pass. Well, free trade did become reality. But rather than having grown indistinguishable from Americans, Canadians looking south are apt these days to sound like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “Who are those guys?” Probably no one has studied the relationship over recent decades more than Canadian researcher Michael Adams. His latest book comparing Canadian and U.S. political cultures is entitled Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit. He concludes that it’s unlikely.
Evidence suggests that Canadians and their governments have managed to prevent or mitigate “the accumulation of corrosive social forces that finally surfaced angrily in the populist politics of the Trump/Brexit era,” Adams wrote. The federal election of 2015 and Conservative MP Kellie Leitch’s subsequent drubbing in her leadership bid suggested that Canadians are unimpressed “by politicians blowing the sorts of dog whistles that allowed Trump to mobilize so much racial resentment in 2016.”
Article Continued Below
Instead, Canada increasingly defines itself by ethno-cultural diversity, he said, and sees an ever-changing demography as not just a point of pride but “the engine that injects values of openness, tolerance and compromise into every sphere of social life.” Of course, there have been eruptions here of the sort of tribalism and ill will on which Trump trades. Rebel TV. The Parti Québécois’ aborted “Charter of Values.” Leitch’s “Canadian Values Test.” Tempests about hijabs. But, according to Adams, Canadians seem to possess a homing instinct for the middle (even when we stray from it temporarily) and tend to find compromise and buy into progressive values. In fact, almost 60 per cent of Canadians said they preferred elected officials who make compromises with adversaries, he found, whereas only 40 per cent of Americans did. “In one country compromise is a dirty word; in the other, it’s an expectation about the right way to conduct the public’s business.” Perhaps most telling in Adams’ research is the divergence between Canadians and Americans on patriarchy and authoritarianism. Asked in 2016 if the “father must be the master” in a house, 50 per cent of Americans strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement. In Canada, only 23 per cent did. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that in a country where patriarchal values continue to be so dominant, there’s virtually no maternity leave, reproductive rights remain deeply contentious and health care is heavily dependent on employment status,” Adams said. Patriarchy, he noted, also correlates highly with religiousity, parochialism, xenophobia, patriotism, gun ownership and support for the death penalty. To be sure, Canada and the U.S. came to the current day by different roads. Canada did not have the monstrosity of institutionalized slavery on a large scale or the trauma of civil war to work through and it lacks the U.S. gun fetish and penchant for overwrought religiousity. We also seem less prone than Americans to the egregious assault on facts and evidence — only logical in a country determined to reinstate Statistics Canada’s long-form census, the better to arm decision-makers with data. A quarter-century ago, Rodney King — whose beating by police led to the 1992 riots in Los Angeles — famously asked “can we all get along?” After another week of human grace and folly, Canada seems far abler than our nearest neighbour to say Yes. These days, that difference between the countries could hardly be more starkly illustrated than through comparison of the leaders. “Trump is status-obsessed, dominant in voice and manner, bullying and narcissistic,” Adams wrote. “Trudeau offers a metrosexual public persona — trim and handsome, but courteous attentive, upbeat.” It’s not uncommon to hear disheartened Americans wishing that the two countries could trade leaders. Canadians, as is our increasing inclination when it comes to the United States, hold quite a different view.
Read more about:The Phishheads Guide To Denver: 2016
Blank Space Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 31, 2016
One of the fastest growing cities in America, Denver has continued to attracted hundreds of thousands of new residents in the past couple of years. For fans making the annual pilgrimage to Dicks this year, there is plenty new to check out and enjoy about this special city, exactly one mile up from sea level. But first things first…start hydrating. Now. And don’t stop. The last thing any wook wants is to get an unshakeable headache and days-long fatigue right when the dancing begins so if you are planning on making into town this year start hydrating ON YOUR FLIGHT. And go light on the booze ok? Weed is legal here, alcohol is best in small quantities. Nitrous too, wooks.
Just as we did last year, a few notes and thoughts on great places to check in Denver while you are here, from our world class level craft beer, legal cannabis, farm to table and health conscious food culture, hiking, and more.
Probably the best way to organize this list is by neighborhood, cognizant that most fans only have a few hours to visit the city and see the sights while getting ready for the shows. 5 course tasting menus are out, great lunches near plenty of retail, breweries and dispensaries are in. Oh and check out Loopr, a luxury bus/ mobile consumption lounge operating in the city. They are going to Dicks both Friday and Sunday with attractive pricing for heads. $35 scores a roundtrip ticket from a variety of pick up spots with drop offs at the most popular after show parties. Ride to Dicks in style and consume legally, forget taxis, parking fees and waiting lines. Hop on, hop off.
RiNo and Five Points
Consider it the Williamsburg of Denver, this creative enclave was traditionally an industrial neighborhood and home of the African American community in Denver. In fact, Five Points was known as Harlem of the West for its numerous jazz clubs that dotted Welton Street. Here’s how to take advantage of this transformative village with a unique energy all its own.
Stowaway Coffee, Sweet Leaf Dispensary, First Draft, Samana Float Center
Stowaway is a great place to get your morning or early afternoon started. Hayden and Amy run our favorite neighborhood cafe that exudes warmth and light. Excellent coffee and drop dead food options anchor the space with loving service and terrific music rounding out the experience. Cashew milk availability is a plus and there are plenty of gluten free and vegatarian options as well.
The Scram-Ba-Lam features Niman Ranch ham, Jojo’s sriracha mayo, scrambled eggs, arugula and tomato chutney on a brioche bun, while The Colorful Colorado will be your meal of the day: salt + vinegar hash, Niman Ranch ham, pickled radishes, avocado and spicy adobo sauce with poached eggs* — GF. The Japanese Soba Salad is also a lovely and surprisingly light option. 2528 Walnut St Denver CO 80205
Just across the street you’ll find the new Sweet Leaf dispensary alongside Osaka Ramen and Park Burger, both great food options as well. Sweet Leaf just opened this location and its one of their best yet, clean, bright with a friendly helpful staff perfect for recreational customers. $30 eighths and $50 quarters are very decent prices for quality cannabis. And Protip:When it comes to cannabis, trust your senses. Whatever smells best to you, go with that. Worry a bit less about navigating indica, sativa or hybrids. The right weed will make you feel the way you want. Trust us on that.
Walk through the alleys between Walnut and Larimer between 25th and 28th for a look at some of the best street art in the world. And find yourself at First Draft, a pour your own brewery experience with a world class selection.
Very cool technology behind it all, get a card and swipe against any of the 40 drafts on tap. Choose from favorites like Bear Republic and Ballast Point alongside local favorites like Crooked Stave and Comrade Brewing. Excellent food options here too, don’t ignore the menu.
Shopping wise you want to check out MegaFauna a sort of local artisan haven with street, skate and urban inspired clothing, art, and gifts perfect to bring home to anyone not making the trip out. MegaFauna is located at 3102 Blake Street, very close to the a new development called the Backyard on Blake where a number of new endeavors — The Preservery, where food, community and music come together alongside delicious cocktails and local beer — are housed. Judith and Joe is an adorable new boutique with some classic vinyl (michael jackson and talking heads anyone?) alongside a nice selection of apparel for both men and women. You can see the full list of businesses taking over the Backyard on Blake here.
Practice Self Love…
with a Mile High Massage, because the best dancer is a limber dancer. LoDO Massage offers terrific value and a warm and inviting staff and massage environment. They even offer cannabis topical massages — featuring Apothecanna products — so you can get some of that plant medicine onto your skin. Worth every minute. Tip well.
If massage isn’t your thing, take a float at Samana Float Center, a gorgeous new floatation tank business that recently opened. We do new age wellness here in Colorado, take a dip.
Cart and Driver has incredible artisanal pizzas with a great happy hour out of a storage container retail concept just off Larimer. Try every pizza. Seriously and don’t miss the ice cream with Underberg on top.
Saturday night head down to Knew Conscious, an art gallery showcasing some of the best visionary art out there, for their DJ Russo Afterparty. $15 bucks with Meadowlark Kitchen and the best late night burrito truck in town half a block away. The 4:30 club requires a signup.
There’s more to see in RiNo just by walking around. Curtis Park Deli makes incredible sandwiches everyday, fair warning they sell out by 2pm usually. Try their corned beef. Botanico, Denver Kush Club — where our friend Sammy Saltzman has a deal going on, just mention “Electric Sammy” for 25% off. The newly opened SoHi Gallery on Welton is worth a visit to see some exotic glass art.
Our Mutual Friend is a great place to spend an afternoon, their patio absolutely slays, plus the beer is terrific and fairly priced. The Usual Barbershop and A Tiny Print Shop are next door and worth a gander if you need to get your wook beard trimmed up, ask for Bridget or Ben.
Don’t be afraid to walk up to City Park after a little buzz and walk any of the path ways around the park. Good exercise and a warm up for a night full of dancing.
Capitol Hill
The Corner Beet is on Ogden and 14th, just a few blocks from the iconic Ogden Theatre and in the heart of Capitol Hill, one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods, filled with tree-lined streets, neo-classical parks, a worthy Botanic Gardens along with a healthy dose of punks, anarchists and hippies.
The Corner Beet makes the best cold pressed juice in Denver with unique combinations that push juicing to a new frontier. The Galbi has turmeric, carrot, ginger and apple, sometimes with pineapple too, while the Bon Vivant is a more traditional green juice with kale, romaine, cucumber, spinach, ginger and lemon. Nikki Hazamy runs a rag tag group of artists, gypsies and poets that put out delicate, love-filled food that will renew and restore you and your crew. Great salads and toast options as well. The Hill ($8) sports hummus, cucumber, tomato, red onion, sprouts and balsamic glaze while The Super Seed salad offers an overflowing bowl of feta, sunflower seed, pepita, hemp seed, cucumber, carrot, dijon dressing. Go here!
And then check out Hugos on 13th, one of the best local craft beer stores in Denver, and therefore anywhere. City O City has terrific vegan sensitive fare close to the capitol, worth a look and do yourself a favor and walk up to Cheeseman Park.
The Highlands
Uber Bougie neighborhood East of Downtown, the Highlands is one of Denver’s most beautiful areas with several worthwhile mini enclaves each bursting with life. LoHi or the Lower Highlands is one with restaurants like Linger and Root Down capturing the gourmet crowds, while the recently opened Avanti Food and Beverage sports kiosk style food options with a perfect view of downtown.
32nd and Lowell
Sandwiches at Salt and Grinder are a must with Novo Coffee right next door. Check out Sweet Cow Ice Cream for the most creative shakes you’ve ever had. Fire on the Mountain makes immaculate wings, and there’s a Clinic location in the thick of it.
Tennyson
Shopping, Craft Beer, Pizza, A bookstore you can GET DRUNK IN? Yes. Go.
Cannabis
Yes it is plentiful, yes it is great. No you cannot legally smoke it in public so be smart. And pace yourself. Do not let the edibles win, because they will put you down and rob you of a show. Personally I keep my edibles consumptions until after the fun has occurred. If you want the full body high effects during the day, I recommend trying a THC/CBD tincture. Go light. You can always eat more, not less.
A few great dispensaries to know about: The Clinic is known around the country for its Phishy strain names like Fall 97. Great product and concentrates, terrific firm filled with like-minded people. Would give their Live Resin pre-filled pens a try for a look at where the concentrate game is going. Multiple locations including on Colfax, in the Highlands, Capitol Hill and more.
Good Chemistry on Colfax is consistently great and their rosin prices have been dropping. They also have a location in Aurora for any fans staying out by the venue, it’s a quicker cab ride. Purple Haze is a full service head shop with multiple locations in town. Sweet Cow Ice Cream makes amazing fucking ice cream. Go find it. Do a shake.
Green Man Cannabis has consistently top notch flower, Ghost Train Haze is a an incredible strain. So is Leroy. River Rock has stupendous selections of concentrates, not too far away from downtown. Denver Relief on South Broadway is very efficient. Tweet at us Blank Space or Zac Cohen while you are in town and we’ll be sure to help out with additional recommendationsCHENNAI (THE PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER /ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Doctors in India faced one of their biggest challenges when they operated on a patient and removed a live cockroach from her skull.
According to The New Indian Express, a 42-year old woman in Chennai was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday (Feb 1) after she felt "strange" sensations around her nose and eyes.
Before she experienced the symptoms, she recalled that an insect crept into her nostril, making its way inside her head. She tried to blow her nose to free the cockroach but it successfully climbed up her nose.
The results of her nasal endoscopy displayed the menacing cockroach sitting on her skull between her eyes for 12 hours.
"This is the first such case I have seen in my three decades of practice," Dr Shankar of the Stanley Medical College Hospital told the news site.
The woman said that before she approached the doctors for help, she suffered from burning sensations and inexplicable pains.
"I could not explain the feeling but I was sure it was some insect. There was a tingling, crawling sensation. Whenever it moved, it gave me a burning sensation in my eyes," she said.
"I spent the entire night in discomfort, sitting up and waiting for dawn to go to Stanley hospital after getting the reference of a doctor from my employer," she told local news sites.
The Times of India reported that the bug clung to the tissues even if it was vacuumed with a suction apparatus.
"It was alive. And it didn't seem to want to come out," said Shankar. "We had to use a combination of suction and forceps to finally pull it out."
After 45 minutes, the live cockroach finally came out from the abyss.
It was also the first time the doctors from the said hospital removed a "huge" insect from a human head.Andrew Napolitano was a Superior Court judge in New Jersey until, frustrated by the constraints of his salary, he left the bench for more lucrative pastures: talk radio, a syndicated small-claims court TV series (“Power of Attorney”) and, eventually, Fox News, where he rose to become the network’s senior legal analyst.
It was in that basic-cable capacity this week that Mr. Napolitano managed to set off a cascading scandal, which by Friday had sparked a trans-Atlantic tiff between Britain and the United States while plunging President Trump’s close relationship with Fox News into new, murkier territory.
It was new ground for Mr. Napolitano, 66, who prefers being addressed as “The Judge” and once insisted that Fox News install bookshelves and wood-paneling in his newsroom office, the better to resemble a judge’s chambers.
But Mr. Napolitano’s unlikely leap into global politics can be explained by his friendship with Mr. Trump, whom he met with this year to discuss potential Supreme Court nominees. Mr. Napolitano also has a taste for conspiracy theories, which led him to Larry C. Johnson, a former intelligence officer best known for spreading a hoax about Michelle Obama.Back in 2008, I was vacationing with my family, and as I sat on the beach, like any good techie, my mind kept going back to some code I had been working on earlier that day while sitting in my cabin. My wife insisted I leave the laptop at the cabin, and, having only my phone in hand, I imagined there must be a way to get connected to my work. The phone had Internet and a browser, and there was a faint data connection. But there really wasn't any way I could work. So instead I had to put the phone down and enjoyed some time offline.
Fast forward almost seven years, and times have changed. Now I take my tablet with me wherever I go. And with that tablet I can continue doing my work--not just tablet work, but all my work. Today, using my tablet, I was coding in node.js and later in C++ using the Geany IDE running on an Ubuntu 14.04 machine. And this very document I'm typing is made possible with LibreOffice on that same Ubuntu machine. My code files are saved away in a git repository on another machine, and my other documents are stashed in a Dropbox folder that gets synced to all my machines. And yes, dare I admit, about once every couple of months I need to boot up a Windows machine and do something on it.
All of this is happening through an Android tablet. Or two actually -- a Nexus 7 tablet, and an 11-inch Asus Transformer with a keyboard attached. (I do have a regular computer, which I also use for said work.) I carry my tablets in a little pouch not much bigger than the 11-inch tablet and I can get my work done wherever I go. This afternoon I'll be back on my main computer working. Then tonight I'll be sitting at my son's karate class working away on that same work.
What I want to do is show you the configuration I came up with for a new mobile lifestyle. I can work from nearly anywhere, provided there's a data signal. And I have enough backup battery power to last me about 30 or so hours. When putting together this configuration, I had several goals in mind:
(1) Don't rely on a single device or computer to work from, and to be able to work both from my computer at home or any of my tablets or even to be able to borrow somebody else's computer if absolutely necessary. If I lose my tablet, I want to be able to buy a new one and pick right up where I left off.
(2) Don't rely on a single server. Servers and hosts can go down and I don't want to be left stuck.
(3) Be as mobile as possible and able to work from anywhere I want, as long as I have a data signal and eventually a power outlet to plug into to recharge.
(4) Be able to create, save, and edit my writing files (such as this one I'm typing) without having to copy files around manually.
(5) And finally, to hopefully be able to use native apps on the tablets.
These were my goals, but I didn't reach them all. The native apps thing didn't go so well. Also, working on a friend's computer requires the use of a key file, and I'm not particularly comfortable with putting key files on other people's computer, nor am I comfortable typing passwords into other people's computers in case they have key logging software. (I know somebody who keeps such software on his computer to discover passwords wgen friends borrow his computer.)
First I'll give you the short version of the configuration I settled on. Then I'm going to talk about several different options I tried out and why they weren't suitable in my case. But your needs will likely be very different from mine, and some of those other options might work well for you. Also, my final setup isn't perfect by any means, and as such I welcome discussion in the comments about how this might be improved for the benefit of all of us.
Mobile Life: The Short Version
The super-short version of this story is I run VNC software on my Linux servers, and I remote in using VNC.
Now here's how I handle my files.
I ultimately settled on using Dropbox for my non-critical files. These are files where it would not be a serious problem if my Dropbox account gets compromised. Usually this is for my writing work. If somebody broke in, they would find an early draft of this article, for example. Not a huge deal.
For files that require somewhat more security (but still not huge security), I'm using a version control system. Specifically I have a git repository on a hosted Linux server. These are files that I would prefer people not get their hands on, but if they do, it's not the end of the world.
For files that are important (contracts, banking information, and so on), I keep private and are not available in my "mobile life" setting. It's too risky. If I'm out of town on business and somebody at a bank needs a copy of some mortgage papers, I'll call my wife and have her retrieve it, or they'll wait until I get home. I'm not storing that "in the cloud."
Now for the hardware.
I still have my main computer, a quad core machine at home that I work from. It's actually a laptop, but it's plugged into two monitors, an external keyboard and mouse, and I generally treat it as as regular workstation computer. I used to cart it with me everywhere (minus the monitors and keyboard), but it's not the lightest laptop around, and if it were to get stolen, I would have a huge problem on my hands with all that data on it.
I also have a Nexus 7 2013, which runs Android (and I just upgraded to Android 5.) I originally tried using an external keyboard, but the tablet was just too small to stare at for long hours. So I bought a second, bigger, tablet.
The second tablet is an Asus Transfomer TF701T. This is a 10-inch tablet, and I have the keyboard Asus makes specifically for it. I also have a bluetooth mouse, although I can't always use that if I'm just sitting in a chair and not at a table. (But the keyboard has a small trackpad which works fine.)
And now the servers. I'll get to the software shortly.
I have a few hosted Linux servers. I personally like DigitalOcean because they're not very expensive. I have multiple servers running (not just for my personal "mobile" work but my professional work) for under $100 per month. Amazon has come down in price with some of their servers lately, too. One nice thing about Amazon is you can turn off a server and pay only pennies per month to keep it there. DigitalOcean charges you per server whether it's running or not. But with prices at like $10 per month, that's not a huge problem for me.
One of my goals is to not be reliant on a single server. Ideally, if DigitalOcean were to shut down right now, I could be up and running elsewhere in a matter of minutes--at least ideally, anyway. Realiatically it would probably take me a day or so to get back up and running. Presently I have everything backed up onto Amazon's S3, which I'm finding is ideal for storing large files. I don't have images of my drives backed up, as those aren't portable between hosts. Instead, I keep a full backup of my github files. I'll get to that when I go into more detail about the software configuration.
But first, here's the short version of the software.
I already mentioned github and Dropbox. I went through several different cloud storage services before ending up with Dropbox. Previously, Ubuntu One was perfect for me, but it shut down. I tried a few others and then realized Dropbox works great for what I'm doing. It synchronizes my files between my machines without me having to do any work. And if I have two servers running on two different hosts, and I save a file to a folder under ~/Dropbox on my main computer, within seconds that file is saved on my running hosts. If I'm away from home and go into one of my servers and save to ~/Dropbox, that file is saved back to my home laptop. Changes and deletes are similarly propagated. And so far, I've never had any trouble.
But what about editing my files? This took a while to get going. Again, the short answer is I use VNC to log into my servers, where I run LibreOffice. But with the keyboard and mouse, my larger tablet basically turns into a small netbook, and I'm able to work. The VNC client I went with is called Remotix. There are versions for both Android and iOS, and it can easily connect to both a Linux VNC server and a Windows RDP server. It reads the mouse and trackpad just fine. When I'm on my smaller tablet without the keyboard and mouse, I can move the mouse pointer around by dragging my finger on the tablet screen just like I would on a trackpad. I'll have more to say about this and why it was important to me when I talk about the VNC apps in detail in a future article and how I chose the one I did.
I don't only use VNC, though. There are some nice terminal programs for Android that support ssh. The one I went with is called JuiceSSH, but there are a few good ones available.
More issues to address
So that's the short version. Yes, it amounts mostly to VNC, but I'm able to go mobile. There are some issues that aren't perfect, and I'll talk about all that in detail as well. For example, my ssh key files are sitting on my tablets, which I'm not fond of. But they require a passphrase. And the tablets have a very long PIN to unlock them, and no important files are stored on the tablets. If a tablet ever gets stolen, I'll generate a new key, log into my server, and replace the existing key in the.ssh directory with the new one, likely long before anyone cracks both the PIN and the ssh key file passphrase
In the next couple of articles, I'm going to talk about different software options that I tried, and how I came to arrive at the configuration I ended up with. (For example, I wanted to use a native word processor app on the tablet, but I hit some snags there. I do, however, occasionally use a native code editor called DroidEdit, which I'm able to read and write remote files via ssh.)
But some of these software options that I decided against might still be great for you. And then I'll wrap it up with a discussion of exactly how I configured my Linux servers. I learned a lot about configuring SSH on my server, and setting up a simple but nice desktop environment on my servers (I went with LXDE but tried many different ones), and I'll share those details with you as well, including my attemps at tiling window managers through a tablet. And I welcome any of your thoughts on how this process might be improved so we can all make our lives easier and more mobile. Stay tuned!
p.s. Midway through this draft I returned home and finished writing it on my main computer in my home office. Now that it's finished, I will retire to the couch for the evening, but I'll have my Nexus 7 in hand so I can give the article another read-through before submitting it to my editor... all without copying any files around and without having to disconnect my laptop. Call me lazy, but life is good in this new mobile era of technology.
Read part 2: Choosing Software to Work Remotely from Your Linux Dev StationStudio Ghibli and its distributor TOHO officially announced Kaze Tachinu ( The Wind Is Rising ) and Kaguya-hime no Monogatari ( The Tale of Princess Kaguya ), the latest films from studio co-founders and directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, on Thursday. Both are scheduled to open throughout Japan next summer.
In February 2009, Miyazaki launched a two-part manga mini-series called " Kaze Tachinu " that focuses on Jirō Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's famed Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane of World War II. Author Tatsuo Hori also wrote a novel called Kaze Tachinu, and the film's tagline references both real-life figures and paraphrases Hori's book: "Show respect for Jiro Horikoshi and Tatsuo Hori. We must try to live." (Hori himself was reportedly quoting Paul Valéry's "Le cimetière marin" or "The Graveyard By The Sea" poem, which read, " Le vent se lève!... il faut tenter de vivre!" or " The Wind Is Rising!... We must try to live!")
Frequent Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi is composing the music of the film. Miyazaki is not only directing the film, but he conceived the story and wrote the screenplay himself. This will be the first film from Miyazaki since Ponyo about five years ago.
The famous Japanese folktale Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) centers on princess named Kaguya who was discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. Taketori Monogatari has inspired dozens of manga and anime stories, such as Reiko Shimizu's Kaguya Hime and Arina Tanemura's Sakura-Hime Kaden.
Takahata already revealed in 2009 that his next film will be based on the folktale. The tagline on the film's website reads, "A princess's crime and punishment."
Shinichiro Ikebe ( Future Boy Conan, Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha) is composing the film's soundtrack. Takahata conceived the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Riko Sakaguchi. This will be Takahata's first film since My Neighbors the Yamadas about 14 year ago.
TOHO had already registered the domains for the websites for these two films, but it opened the websites on Thursday.
Both films will open on the same day, but separately. The last time that Miyazaki and Takahata had films opening on the same day, or even in the same year, was a quarter of a century ago when Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies were shown back-to-back in Japan in 1988.
Source: Eiga.com via tsk06
Images © 2013 Nibariki, GNDHDDTK
© 2013 Hata Office
Update: More information added.Romance_us Profile Joined March 2006 Seychelles 1797 Posts #41 On December 13 2011 17:24 RevTiberius wrote:
Season 4 has ended for me and I did not manage to get the promotion I was after. Maybe a future season will prove more successful. And maybe a switch to protoss is |
his son who had bought his lie about being addicted to gambling, "all about choices." And this is where "Breaking Bad" misses an amazing opportunity. You learn much more about society when people operate in a world, much like our own, where choices are restricted by larger, external forces. "The Wire," of course, is a full-frontal assault on numerous failing institutions, and in some ways, of the brutal nature of capitalism itself - a system that leaves a permanent urban underclass in the streets of Baltimore with little reasons for hope and almost no prospects for a way out. Here we see that being "bad" or "good" is not simply a matter of "complicated choices," but a complicated world where many are primarily subjects of the world around them. Consider the "Wire's" character archs with the young children, such as Dukie, whose descent into homelessness and drug addiction cannot be explained away by "complicated choices." Likewise, the character of Michael, whose "complicated decision" to join a violent, murderous drug gang is also complicated by much more than his own judgment. "I got a problem I can't bring to no one else," he tells gang leader Marlo Stanfield. He is not totally wrong. His young brother, who lacks a single adult caretaker of any reliability, risks being abused sexually, forcing Michael into a "choice."
A new study put out by the Economic Policy Institute says that reduction in unionization has contributed to 33 percent of the increase in wage inequality over the last 30 years. From EPI:
The union wage premium—the percentage-higher wage earned by those covered by a collective bargaining contract—is 13.6 percent overall (17.3 percent for men and 9.1 percent for women). Unionized workers are 28.2 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance and 53.9 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions. From 1973 to 2011, the share of the workforce represented by unions declined from 26.7 percent to 13.1 percent.... Deunionization can explain about a third of the entire growth of wage inequality among men and around a fifth of the growth among women from 1973 to 2007.
A New York City Union leader who led a kickback scheme that demanded $1.86 million from employers in exchange for weak contract demands has been sentenced to five years in prison. From the New York Daily News:It seems like every week since we first heard of Edward Snowden he delivers an even worse example of the federal government’s unconstitutional collection and abuse of our data. Time and again the Barack Obama administration denies Snowden’s claims - even though time and again he has the documentation.
Snowden’s latest revelation is a program called XKeyscore (XKS). Which allows low-level National Security Agency (NSA) analysts to:
Obtain ongoing “real-time” interception of an individual's internet activity....
XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant....
The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history....
This is just the latest incredible violation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment:
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.
Thousands of government officials are searching the content of our phone calls, Web histories, emails, text messages, instant messages and video chats - without Warrants.
And the government is building an NSA storehouse that is seven times larger than the Pentagon:
“Communications about millions of innocent Americans are being stored for five years in a government database—whether or not there is any reason to search our call records, and I don’t think our Constitution allows that,” says Alex Abdo, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project.
He’s right. This is the epitome of “unreasonable search and seizure.”
We encounter a similar problem with a government-first approach to Cyber Security. The amount of data through which one must look to protect our networks is staggering. If the government takes the lead, it totally bypasses the Fourth Amendment - leaving us open to exponentially more of the kinds of abuses Snowden keeps detailing in National Security.
So we should do with National Security for what we long ago called in Cyber Security - outsource the first line of defense.
The federal government absolutely should not be unilaterally seizing and storing this unfathomable amount of information. Let alone allowing thousands of low-level staffers to search it whenever they alone decide.
The solution? Rather than forcing communications companies to turn over the data - why not pay them to store and search it?
There is no Fourth Amendment violation until the government seizes it - this preempts that. These companies already have it, so the government wouldn’t have to do something to get it like tap directly into servers - as they’re already doing with (at least) nine Internet companies.
Pro-data-grab politicians say the government uses the data and its search capabilities for things like finding American citizens who are interacting with identified international terrorists. The private companies can easily do these searches when asked by the government.
If in their searches they find evidence of Americans connecting with said international terrorists, the companies and the government go to a judge and get a warrant to allow the companies to turn it over.
But it is a certain, proscribed, finite amount of information immediately relevant to a specific case - not five years' worth of every last byte of our phone call and Internet data.
This ends the gi-normous Fourth Amendment problem - with violations now occurring every second of every day - while keeping us at least as safe. If not safer - in whom do you have more confidence of proper execution: the private sector or the federal government?
Now, what else can we do for the nation?Tony and Emmy award winner Neil Patrick Harris will sing the national anthem before ALDS Game 3
Already trailing the Indians 2-0 in the ALDS presented by Doosan, the Yankees will look to the aid of home-field advantage to force a Game 4 at Yankee Stadium (Game 3: 7:30 p.m. ET, FS1).
One important ingredient to firing up the home crowd is a good national anthem performance. The Yankees can check that box already with Tony and Emmy award-winning actor Neil Patrick Harris slated to perform the anthem.
Though he may be best known for playing Barney Stinson in 'How I Met Your Mother,' Harris has won awards for his work in Broadway musical 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' and a guest appearance on 'Glee.' So, the man has pipes.
In addition to his work on the stage and the screen, Harris is also an accomplished magician. The Yankees will hope Harris' musical and magical talents will aid their efforts in Game 3.
Eric Chesterton is writer for Cut4. He particularly enjoys bunts against the shift, stolen bases and celebrating his birthday with mascots at the ballpark.Exclusive: Opiuo unveils the glitchy ‘Botrok’ ahead of forthcoming EP
Oscar Davey-Wraight, better known as the innovative funky and futuristic bass music producer Opiuo, has revealed a new single “Botrok.” The New Zealand-born producer has been making his rounds on the US-circuit opening for the likes of Pretty Lights, GRiZ, and Bassnectar.
Arriving as the first single off his forthcoming EP Syzygy 01, Dancing Astronaut is immensely pleased to exclusively unveil “Botrok.” A vibrant explosive bass anthem, “Botrok” sets the tone for what is sure to be a game-changing album in the world of glitch-hop. Opiuo not only builds on his penchant for deep, bass-infused textures and seismic percussion, but adds his precisely-blended concoction of tight irresistible grooves to deliver a masterful composition chock full of chunky beats, luscious brooding soundscapes, and a hearty serving of scrumptious glitch.
“Botrok” follows the release of Opiuo’s critically-acclaimed studio album, Omniversal, as well as his stunning Oregon Eclipse performance this past August.
Read More:
Meet Opiuo: the man behind New Zealand’s most exciting bass music project
Listen to Oregon Eclipse live sets from CloZee, Bassnectar, Minnesota, and more
Stream Opiuo’s bass-infused remix of GRiZ’s ‘PS GFY’
Categories: MusicRaptors Introduce Two New Uniforms for 2016-17
The Toronto Raptors unveiled two new uniforms for the upcoming 2016-17 season via a video posted by their social media accounts earlier today.
First is a throwback to 70 years ago, an all-blue tribute to the Toronto Huskies, the original pro basketball franchise in both Toronto and Canada. The Huskies played just one season in the then-BAA (modern day NBA) including hosting the first game in league history against the New York Knicks on November 1.
The Raptors, who have no connection officially with the Huskies, previously wore white versions of these throwbacks during the 1996-97 and 2009-10 seasons. This will be the first time the Toronto Raptors ever wear a blue uniform.
The Huskies uniforms will be worn six times throughout the 2016-17, the exact games will be announced at a later date.
Also unveiled is a special Toronto Raptors Chinese New Year themed uniform:
This jersey uses the familiar modern Raptors uniform template but replaces the “RAPTORS” wordmark across the chest with “TORONTO” in simplified Chinese. A nice touch sees the inclusion of a dragon and the Raptors basket-claw logo incorporated into the Chinese characters.
The Toronto metropolitan area is home to over half-a-million Chinese Canadians, making up nearly ten percent of the entire population of the region.
This uniform will be worn for two dates in January and will be scheduled to coincide closely to the Lunar New Year of January 28, 2017.'Fresh Off the Boat' offers a fresh take of Chinese-American families in the US; Constance Wu as Mrs. Huang
Jessica Huang (Constance Wu) explains to her son that Santa Claus is Chinese in "Fresh off the Boat." (Photo : YouTube / ABC Television Network)
"Fresh off the Boat" Season 2 just wrapped up and gained praises for its refreshing take on how families of Chinese-Americans live in the United States. It stars Randall Park and Constance Wu as Mr. and Mrs. Louis and Jessica Huang, who are parents to three Chinese-American siblings.
The ABC comedy series is loosely based on the memoirs of Eddie Huang, a Chinese-American standup comedian, chef and lawyer. It is credited as the first sitcom on television to star an Asian-American family since "All American Girl" on ABC in 1994. It has a potential for increased visibility and is receiving acclaim for the performance of Wu, who tries to balance various race perspectives and portray them on TV, China Christian Daily reported.
Advertisement
"Fresh Off the Boat" receives different reactions as some fans want it to deal with race issues. However, another group opt non-race issues - just the normal ones like cooking or puberty.
For the celebration of Mother's Day in May, Wu's character has been considered among the best mothers on TV. As a typical Chinese wife to husband Louis and mother to Eddie, Emery and Evan, she is devoted to raise her boys to be good Chinese men, grooming them to become lawyers or doctors who will make a good living, ABC reported.
Wu's character wants his three sons to love and honor their parents as well as their heritage. Doing just that in Orlando is not easy but she makes sure her kids know where they come from. When Eddie was assigned to be Mr. Jamaica in a school project, she went to the principal's office and demanded that her son represents China instead.
The doting mother is hands-on when it comes to her children. From dealing with lice on Eddie's head and acting as Santa Claus during Christmas to directing a school play for her boys and ensuring that Evan goes to her friend's birthday party even if uninvited.
Meanwhile, the Taiwanese-American actress Wu will also appear in other upcoming projects like the science fiction anthology series "Dimension 404" on streaming service Hulu. The series also has Lea Michele, Robert Buckley, Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt and Sarah Hyland. Wu plays Jane, a military psychologist who cancels her Christmas vacation with her family to help stop a terrorist attack.
Watch how Mrs. Huang explained Chinese Santa Claus to his son below.From the distant 16th century, Queen Elisabeth I summons the spirit Ariel with the aid of the court's alchemist, the sage Doctor John Dee, to witness the appalling revelation of a dystopian London drowned in filth and plagued with crime. As a result, the Queen horrified with the vivid vision of a broken-down British Empire, asks to travel beyond the veil of time, some 400 years into the future, to see firsthand, that in this futuristic and horrendous new order, the capital is overrun by a corrupt police and that an autonomous vicious gang of punk guerrilla girls led by the new Monarch of Punk, Bod, has declared a multi-levelled open war. Now that Britain is practically a wasteland, where is her Majesty, the righteous Queen Elisabeth II? Written by Nick RiganasIt’s a sunny October day on the outskirts of the west German town of Bottrop. A quiet, two-lane road leads me through farm pasture to a cluster of anonymous, low-lying buildings set among the trees. The highway hums in the distance. Looming above everything else is a green A-frame structure with four great pulley wheels to carry men and equipment into a mine shaft. It’s the only visible sign that, almost three quarters of a mile below, Germany’s last hard coal mine lies beneath this spot.
Bottrop sits in the Ruhr Valley, a dense stretch of towns and suburbs home to 5.5 million people. Some 500,000 miners once worked in the region’s nearly 200 mines, producing as much as 124 million tons of coal every year.
Next year, that era will come to an end when this mine closes. The Ruhr Valley is in the midst of a remarkable transformation. Coal and steel plants have fallen quiet, one by one, over the course of the last half-century. Wind turbines have sprung up among old shaft towers and coking plants as Germany strives to hit its renewable energy goals.
But the path from dirty coal to clean energy isn’t an easy one. Bottrop’s Prosper-Haniel coal mine is a symbol of the challenges and opportunities facing Germany — and coal-producing states everywhere.
Around the world, as governments shift away from the coal that fueled two ages of industrial revolution, more and more mines are falling silent. If there’s an afterlife for retired coal mines, one that could put them to work for the next revolution in energy, it will have to come soon.
The elevator that carries Germany’s last coal miners on their daily commute down the mine shaft travels at about 40 feet a second, nearly 30 miles an hour. “Like a motorcycle in a city,” says Christof Beicke, the public affairs officer for the Ruhr mining consortium, as the door rattles shut. It’s not a comforting analogy.
The brakes release and, for a moment, we bob gently on the end of the mile-and-a-half long cable, like a boat in dock. Then we drop. After an initial flutter in my stomach, the long minutes of the ride are marked only by a strong breeze through the elevator grilles and the loud rush of the shaft going by.
When the elevator finally stops, on the seventh and deepest level of the mine, we file into a high-ceilinged room that looks like a subway platform. One of the men who built this tunnel, Hamazan Atli, leads our small group of visitors through the hall. Standing in the fluorescent light and crisp, engineered breeze, I have the uncanny sense of walking into an environment that humans have designed down to the last detail, like a space station or a submarine.
A monorail train takes us the rest of the way to the coal seam. After about half an hour, we clamber out of the cars and clip our headlamps into the brackets on our hard hats. It is noticeably warmer here. There is a sulfurous smell that grows stronger as we walk down the slight incline toward the deepest point of our day, more than 4,000 feet below the surface, and duck under the first of the hydraulic presses that keep the ceiling from collapsing on us.
Because this seam is only about five feet high, we have to hunch as we move through the tunnel of presses, stepping through deep pools of water that swallow our boots. The coal-cutting machine is stalled today, otherwise it would be chewing its way along the 310-yard-long seam, mouthparts clamped to the coal like a snail to aquarium glass. The coal would be sluiced away on a conveyor belt to the surface, and the hydraulic presses would inch forward, maintaining space for the miners to work.
Instead, the mine is eerily quiet. Two miners, their faces black, squeeze past us. As we sit, sweating and cramped under the hydraulic presses, the bare ceiling above the coal seam gives up an occasional gasp of rock, showering down dust and debris.
Later, in a brightly lit room back on the surface, Beicke from the mining consortium asks me what I thought of the mine. I tell him that it seems like an extreme environment for humans. “Yes,” he nods, “it is like an old world.”
A few days earlier, Beicke and I had trekked to the top of a hill outside the long-shuttered Ewald Mine in Herten, a half-hour drive from Bottrop. We climbed a set of stairs to a platform with a view over the whole region, the fenced-off or leased-out buildings of the old mine sitting below us.
The Ruhr Valley encompasses 53 cities of Germany’s once-formidable industrial heartland, including Essen, Bochum, and Oberhausen. The whole region was once low-lying riverland, but these days large hills rear above the landscape. These are the heaps of rock removed from the mines, tons of slag excavated with the coal and piled up. It’s a stark visual reminder of what’s been emptied out from underneath.
As the mines have closed down, most of these heaps have been covered with grass, and many have been crowned with a statue or other landmark. On one hill outside Essen, there’s a 50-foot steel slab by the sculptor Richard Serra; on another, atop other heaps, wind turbines stand like giant mechanical daisies.
Germany has been hailed as a leader in the global shift to clean energy, putting aside its industrial past for a renewable future faster than most of the industrialized world. The country has spent more than $200 billion on renewable energy subsidies since 2000 (compare that to the United States, which spends an estimated $20 billion to subsidize fossil fuel production every year).
In 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government announced the beginning of a policy of “energiewende” to wean Germany off fossil fuels and nuclear power. Last year, wind, solar, and other renewables supplied nearly 30 percent of the country’s electricity. The goal now is to hit 40 percent in the next 10 years, while slashing carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
That transition has happened alongside attempts to restore the Ruhr Valley’s landscape. For every hill raised above ground level, there is an accompanying depression where the land subsided as coal seams were emptied out. The land here sank as the coal seams closest to the surface were emptied out. Overall, the region has sunk about 80 feet.
Streams that enter the Ruhr Valley are no longer able to flow out the other side, Beicke explains, and now water pools in places it never used to. The mining company is responsible for pumping that water away, as well as pumping groundwater across the region, to keep the water table below the level of the existing mines. Any contaminated water in the old mines must be removed and treated to keep it from polluting the groundwater.
These are just a few of the mining company’s “ewigkeitsaufgaben” — literally, eternity tasks.
“As long as 5 or 6 million people want to live in this area, we will have to do that,” Beicke tells me, of the expensive water management. “Maybe 2,000 years in the future that will change, but until that happens, well.” He shrugs.
The government gives the mining consortium 220 million euros a year in subsidies to deal with all the consequences of coal mining. Unlike in the United States, where aging coal companies often sell off their assets or declare bankruptcy to dodge clean up bills, here the mining company will be pumping and treating water long after it has stopped being a mining company at all.
Despite a national commitment to a broad energy transition, many now think that Germany will fall short of its renewable energy targets, thanks to a number of confounding economic and social factors, including the continued use of a coal alternative called lignite, also known as “brown coal.” Germans have the highest electricity costs in Europe, and the rise of the country’s extreme right-wing party in the last election has been pinned, in part, on those high bills.
If Germany does continue to progress toward its climate goals, much of the new energy is sure to come from wind power. Germany has more wind turbines than any other country in Europe, many of them installed in the last six or seven years. But wind doesn’t blow consistently, so this shift has been a challenge for the electrical grid. Even slight disruptions in the power supply can have wide-ranging consequences.
As more wind turbines are turned on, and more coal plants are retired, this problem will only get bigger, and the challenge of storing all that intermittent energy will be even more important. Here’s where the country’s retired coal mines might prove useful again — as giant batteries for clean energy.
To turn a coal mine into a battery, all you need is gravity.
OK, you also need a lot of money (more about that later), but the basic principle is gravitational. When you lift a heavy object, it stores the power used to lift it as potential energy until it’s released and falls to the ground.
Let’s say the heavy object you’re lifting is water. When you want to store energy, you just have to pump the water uphill, into a reservoir. When you want to use that energy, you let the water flow back down through a series of turbines that turn the gravitational rush into electricity.
This is the basic plan André Niemann and Ulrich Schreiber conceived when they were dreaming up new ways to use old mines. It seemed intuitive to the two professors at the University of Essen-Duisburg: The bigger the distance between your upper and lower reservoirs, the more energy you can store, and what’s deeper than a coal mine?
Schreiber, a geologist, realized it was theoretically possible to fit a pumped storage reservoir into a mine, but it had never been done before. Niemann, a hydraulic engineer, thought the proposal was worth pursuing. He drummed up some research money, then spent a few years conducting feasibility studies, looking for a likely site in the Ruhr Valley and running the numbers on costs and benefits.
After studying the region’s web of fault lines and stratigraphic layers, Niemann’s team settled on the closing Prosper-Haniel mine. Their underground reservoir would be built like a massive highway tunnel, a reinforced concrete ring nine miles around and nearly 100 feet high, with a few feet difference in height from one side of the ring to the other to allow the water to flow, Niemann explains.
At max storage, the turbines could run for four hours, providing 800 megawatt-hours of reserve energy, enough to power 200,000 homes.
The appeal of pumped storage is obvious for Germany. Wind and sun are fickle energy sources — “intermittent” by industry lingo — and energy storage can help smooth out the dramatic spikes. When the wind gusts, you can stash that extra power in a battery. When a cloud moves over the sun, you can pull power back out. It’s simple and, as the grid handles more and more renewable energy, increasingly needed.
The only problem: It’s expensive.
Get Grist in your inbox Always free, always fresh. The DailyThe BeaconThe Weekly Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy
As wind turbine and solar technologies have become cheaper, energy storage costs have stayed high. Pumped hydro, especially, requires a big investment up front. Niemann estimates it would cost between 10,000 and 25,000 euros per meter of tunnel just to build the reservoir, and around 500 million euros for the whole thing. Right now, neither the government nor the energy companies in the Ruhr Valley are willing to make that kind of investment.
“It’s not a business, it’s a bet, to be honest,” Niemann says with a shrug.
In spite of the increasing unlikelihood of the proposal becoming reality, delegations from the United States, China, Poland, France, South Africa, and Slovakia, among others, have visited Niemann and Schreiber in Essen to learn about mine pumped-storage. Virginia’s Dominion Energy has been studying the idea with the support of a Republican state senator, and a group from Virginia Tech paid a visit the week after I did.
Here’s where any attempt to draw comparisons across the Atlantic gets complicated. In the United States, the federal government has been relatively hands-off in helping coal-dependent regions move on from the industries that fueled their way of life. In Germany, by contrast, there’s a broad agreement about the need to shift to renewable sources of energy. And yet, even with all that social, political, and economic foresight, important and necessary innovations remain stalled for lack of investment.
The Ruhr Valley is not Appalachia. And yet the two regions share key similarities that offer some important lessons about the a path to a cleaner, more sustainable future.
Dying industries take more than jobs with them. Towns built around a single industry, like coal mining, develop a shared identity. For many workers and their families, it’s not as simple as picking up and finding a new line of work when the mine closes. Mining is seen as a calling, an inheritance, and people want their way of life back.
That’s how residents of the Ruhr responded when coal jobs started to decline.
“For a long time, people thought the old times would come back, the old days would return,” says Kai van de Loo, an energy and economics expert for a German coal association in Essen. “But they can never come back.”
In the United States, of course, calls to bring back the old days often works wonders as a political sales pitch. Donald Trump campaigned for president on promises to stop the “war on coal” and revive the dying industry, and mining towns across the Rust Belt supported him.
In Pennsylvania’s Mon River Valley, home to a once-thriving underground mining complex bigger than Manhattan, mining continues to exert an oversized influence. Some 8,000 people work in coal in the state, a portion of the 50,000 coal jobs left in the United States. That’s a far cry from the 180,000 people who worked in the industry 30 years ago.
And the legacy of coal mining on the landscape is hard to miss. Bare slag heaps rise above the trees, dwarfing the towns beside them. Maryann Kubacki, supervisor of East Bethlehem in Washington County, says that during rainy spells the township has to shovel the gritty, black runoff from their storm sewers.
But without the federal government leading the way with financial support as it has in Germany, getting these former coal towns on a new track is a daunting task. Veronica Coptis, director of the Center for Coalfield Justice in Pennsylvania, says that organizing people to put pressure on mining companies is a delicate matter. People don’t want to hear that coal is bad, or that its legacy is poisoned. “We want an end to mining,” she says, “but we know it can’t happen abruptly.”
Back in Germany, the mayor of Bottrop, Bernd Tischler, has been thinking about how to kick coal since at least the early 2000s, long before the federal government put an end date on the country’s mining. An urban planner by training, Tischler has a knack for long-range strategy. After he took office in 2009, Tischler thought Bottrop could reinvent itself as a hub of renewable energy and energy efficiency. He devised heating plants that run off methane collected from the coal mine, and made Bottrop the first town in the Ruhr with a planned zone for wind energy.
In 2010, Bottrop won the title of “Innovation City,” a model for what the Ruhr Valley cities could become. Bottrop now gets 40 percent of its energy from renewables, Tischler said, 10 percentage points above the national average.
Describing this transformation, Tischler makes it almost sound easy. I explain that the issue of coal seems to track larger divisions in the United States, and so discussions inevitably turn heated, emotional.
“In Bottrop, the people of course feared for the process of the end of the coal mining,” he said. But Tischler believes mining towns have an advantage that can help them adapt to change: They’re more cohesive. In the mines, people are used to working together and looking out for each other. Distrust is dangerous, even deadly.
The Ruhr cities absorbed waves of Polish, Italian, and Turkish laborers over the years. And they’ve managed to get along well, knitting a strong social fabric, Tischler said. In the past few years, Bottrop, a town of 117,000 people, has resettled thousands of Syrian refugees in new housing.
A strong social fabric isn’t enough to survive the loss of a major industry, of course. Some promising industry — technology and renewables in Bottrop’s case — has to be found to replace it.
“I think the responsibility of the mayors and the politicians is to change the fear into a new vision, a new way,” he says. “You can’t do it against your people; you have to convince your people. You have to work together with institutions and stakeholders that don’t normally work together, [so that] we are sitting in the same boat and we are rowing in the same direction.”
Reporting for this story was supported in part by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation.Thanks for all the feedback so far, everyone. We’re still pretty early in the exploration process, but we did want to go into more detail about our rationale for introducing an in-game store, as well as provide some insight into what you might ultimately see available there.
For players who are already interested in the in-game items we offer, such as Pet Store pets and mounts, the benefits of an in-game store are pretty clear. We think everyone would appreciate the convenience of being able to make such purchases without having to leave the game, and ultimately that’s our long-term goal for the system, though there’s quite a bit of work involved in retrofitting those existing items into the new system.
First, we’ll be testing the in-game store with some new kinds of items we’re looking into introducing (in Asian regions, at the outset) based on player feedback: specifically, an experience buff to assist with the leveling process, as well as an alternate way to acquire Lesser Charms of Good Fortune. We’ve had a lot of requests from players in different regions for convenience-oriented items such as these, and as with other new ideas we’ve introduced as WoW has evolved—including Pet Store pets, mounts, and more—your feedback plays a hugely important part in determining what we add to the game.
Ultimately it’s still too early in the process to make any final determinations about our plans, but in the meantime, we hope you’ll check out the in-game store once it’s implemented on the PTR and let us know what you think.Canada, U.S., Mex. to bid for 2026 World Cup
{eot}
TSN.ca Staff
4/6/2017 1:42:33 PM
Canada, the United States and Mexico are expected to submit a joint bid for the 2026 World Cup, according to CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani.
“Canada, the US and Mexico are aiming for a joint bid, the idea has been around for a while, discussions are continuing and it is a very exciting proposition if it comes to fruition,” Montagliani told the Guardian. “We have had nothing but positive remarks about it and it is a very strong sign of what football can do to bring countries together.”
The international soccer tournament will reach new heights in 2026 with an unprecedented 48 teams competing in 80 games. Montagliani feels the three-country bid will “fit” the larger format.
The bid has to be officially entered between June 2017 and December 2018. FIFA will then evaluate each bid from January 2019 to February 2020. The final decision will be made at the FIFA congress in May 2020.
The U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994 while the event was held in Mexico in 1970 and 1986. Canada has never hosted the men’s World Cup but did host the women’s World Cup in 2015.It wasn’t your typical tech gathering. Financial types in pinstriped suits rubbed shoulders with ponytailed geeks in black T-shirts.We’d all devoted a sunny late-autumn afternoon in Wellington to learning about blockchains and there was barely a seat free. When the conference host asked who felt they could explain what a blockchain actually is, only a smattering of hands went up.That’s a common response, it seems. Over the next few hours, we heard how blockchain technology could revolutionise banking, make governments more transparent and allow internet-enabled devices to communicate with each other more securely and speedily all over the world.As the afternoon wore on, I discovered that the best way to grasp what a blockchain is is through examples of how it can make our lives less complicated.Take the sharemarket for instance. Last month I decided to cut my losses and sell some shares I owned in a struggling tech company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I put a sell order in with my stockbroker and soon had confirmation that the shares had sold. But it took the best part of a week for the proceeds of the sale to enter my bank account.That’s because my broker had to liaise with a clearinghouse in New York, which checked that I really owned the shares, confirmed payment from the buyer and sent the funds to my bank.Along the way, I was charged fees and someone was accruing interest on my money. The financial world is full of these inefficiencies and delays where the ticket is mercilessly clipped along the way.What if you could instead use a totally secure digital system to swap the shares for money almost instantly, jumping through all the regulatory hoops and creating a record of the transaction that can never be altered?That’s what blockchain technology promises. You can see why the financial middlemen are eager to understand how it works – the conference was sponsored by Kiwibank and sharemarket operator NZX.Blockchain is the technology underpinning bitcoin, the digital currency people exchange over the internet and eventually convert into real cash at a bitcoin exchange.Bitcoin has had its ups and downs – literally. The currency’s value fluctuates wildly, and the system has run into trouble with fraud and mismanagement in some exchanges. It’s the favoured currency of drug dealers and hitmen because it is anonymous and hard to trace. Regular banks and government regulators therefore hate it.It also is underpinned by a bizarre but essential system where massive computer power has to be devoted to “mining” bitcoins – undertaking complex mathematical calculations to self-regulate the system. Its carbon footprint is massive.But bitcoin is now a marketplace valued at about US$7 billion and the integrity of the system itself is solid – no one has ever hacked bitcoin.A blockchain is bigger than just a cryptocurrency because it allows all sorts of so-called smart contracts to be developed between untrusted parties. Blockchain ecosystems are springing up all over the place; the best known is Ethereum, which has its own bitcoin currency rival called ether. The Dao, a crowdfunded start-up has raised more than US$150 million in virtual currency to fund Ethereum-based technologies.Financial transactions are one thing. Any situation where you want to keep a ledger, trade value or information securely, and ensure records are tamper-proof can benefit from the blockchain.What will it mean for how we use the internet?People will “still see web pages, they’ll still see apps”, explained blockchain developer Peter Borah, who is letting gamers trade digital assets using tokens or smart contracts. “The blockchain is the thing that makes it work in the background.”But as Mark Pascall, director of web development house 3months, and Ethereum evangelist, explained, it could have the potential to rewire the internet. “Is this Skynet or is it a world where power, control and wealth become more evenly distributed? Who knows?”Follow the Listener onorThe solution-based inorganic process could drive more efficient electronics and solar devices
EUGENE, Ore. — (July 21, 2014) — The yield so far is small, but chemists at the University of Oregon have developed a low-energy, solution-based mineral substitution process to make a precursor to transparent thin films that could find use in electronics and alternative energy devices.
A paper describing the approach is highlighted on the cover of the July 21 issue of the journal Inorganic Chemistry, which draws the most citations of research in the inorganic and nuclear chemistry fields. The paper earlier was chosen by the American Chemical Society journal as an ACS Editor's Choice for its potential scientific and broad public interest when it initially published online.
The process described in the paper represents a new approach to transmetalation, in which individual atoms of one metal complex — a cluster in this case — are individually substituted in water. For this study, Maisha K. Kamunde-Devonish and Milton N. Jackson Jr., doctoral students in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, replaced aluminum atoms with indium atoms.
The goal is to develop inorganic clusters as precursors that result in dense thin films with negligible defects, resulting in new functional materials and thin-film metal oxides. The latter would have wide application in a variety of electronic devices.
"Since the numbers of compounds that fit this bill is small, we are looking at transmetelation as a method for creating new precursors with new combinations of metals that would circumvent barriers to performance," Kamunde-Devonish said.
Components in these devices now use deposition techniques that require a lot of energy in the form of pressure or temperature. Doing so in a more green way — reducing |
with New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio by her side, told world leaders that the time has come for a more globalized and comprehensive effort to combat violent extremism. She said:
“Until now, we have lacked that mechanism. We haven’t had the benefit of sustained or coordinated cooperation among the growing number of cities and municipalities that are confronting this ongoing challenge. Communities have too often been left isolated and alone. But through the Strong Cities Network that we have unveiled today, we are making the first systematic effort in history to bring together cities around the world to share experiences, to pool resources and to forge partnerships in order to build local cohesion and resilience on a global scale. Today we tell every city, every town and every community that has lost the flower of its youth to a sea of hatred – you are not alone. We stand together and we stand with you.”
De Blasio called it a global coalition of cities seeking to combat extremism and terrorism in all of its “many forms,” and he assured the ACLU that the program would not lead to the profiling of Muslims.
So far, about two dozen other cities have signed up including Paris, London, Mumbai, Montreal, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, Tunis, Oslo, Beirut and Palermo, among others.
Pastor Shahram Hadian of the Everette, Washington-based Truth in Love Project, said it’s no coincidence that the project was launched at the United Nations.
“So who are they going to target when they talk about violent extremism?” asked Hadian, a former Muslim who grew up in Iran and now travels nationwide teaching churches and law enforcement about the dangers of Shariah law. “Well, if you look at their track record, it always seems to be that your violent extremists are your Christians, your veterans and your Second Amendment advocates.”
National media blackout
Paul McGuire, a Fox News and History Channel contributor who has authored several books including the new release, “The Babylon Code: Solving the Bible’s Greatest End Times Mystery,” said it’s also interesting how little media coverage was given to Obama’s Strong Cities global policing program.
“There was no national media coverage whatsoever of the Strong Cities Network; it was completely buried,” McGuire said. “So the question is, why? This is massive because it’s such a contradiction to the Constitution, and there was no consultation with Congress, and they did a complete end-run around everything that our Constitution stands for.”
Like Hadian, McGuire sees a sinister motive in the use of the term “violent extremism,” which he said is an attempt to draw a moral equivalency among all religions, even though 99 percent of all religious-based violence in the world today involves Muslims killing non-Muslims.
“That’s code for ‘We’re going to crack down on Christian values and conservative values,’ because they’ve already announced that they’re pro-Islamic,” McGuire said. “Proof that both political parties are involved in this, is the fact that not one single Republican has brought it up. This is a direct intrusion of the U.N. into the sovereign status of the U.S. at every level, and not one single Republican brought it up.”
WND reported in August that the Obama administration is, indeed, targeting conservatives in its campaign against “violent extremism.” The FBI, according to the report, sent out a bulletin to state, local and national law enforcement warning of attacks against Muslims by “militia extremists” even though no proof of such an impending attack existed.
Police and veterans are also under pressure to conform to Obama’s agenda of giving special concern to Muslims and other minorities in the wake of the Ferguson, Missouri, riots.
Hadian said that as racial tensions increase in U.S cities, often stoked by paid outside radicals to whom the government turns a blind eye, it appears Obama is trying to goad the so-called “right wingers” into an attack.
“They tried the race bait, and it hasn’t really happened the way they had planned,” he said. “Perhaps Muslim baiting is now a part of their plan, even though the true narrative is the exact opposite as we’ve seen in Roseburg, Oregon, and in Garland, Texas; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Oklahoma City; Fort Hood, Texas; and the Boston Marathon.”
In each of those attacks, Muslims or Muslim sympathizers were identified as the attackers, with their targets being innocent Christians, civilians or the military.
Even in Charleston, South Carolina, it was black Christians who were targeted, in that case by an anti-Christian young white man, Dylan Roof, with mental health problems.
When a young Muslim couple was killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, last year in an argument over a parking space, the Council for American-Islamic Relations tried to paint the crime as motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry. This theory was debunked by all the evidence collected by police, but CAIR has never retracted its statements.
So CAIR, in bed with federal law enforcement, is looking hard to pin a “hate crime” on a conservative Christian so they will have their poster child for a police-state crack down on free speech along with new gun-control laws, Hadian said.
“That’s CAIR’s modus operandi now, saying not just that you’re an Islamophobe but that you’re inciting violence (against Muslims) whenever you say anything critical of Islam,” Hadian said.
CAIR was exposed as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-financing trial ever conducted on U.S. soil, yet several of its leaders have gone on to fill advisory roles within the Obama administration.
‘Waiting for someone to attack a Muslim’
So the threat to Christians is real, said Hadian, and that’s why it’s important to balance the truth about Islam and its Quranic calls to jihad and Shariah with a call for evangelization and love.
“It’s not about hating Muslims. We want to save them, reach out to them with the truth of the gospel, and we know this is a spiritual battle,” he said. “At the same time, we are becoming targets. It seems like at everyone one of these (mass shooting) events they are going to go out of their way to paint the extremist as some right-wing guy, and it just seems to fall apart every time they try to push that narrative.”
“I have no problem encouraging people to defend their homes and their lives, but we certainly don’t need to go on the offensive because this is what they are looking for,” Hadian said. “They’re waiting for someone to attack a Muslim so they can say, ‘Aha, see, I told you so.'”
‘Eyes in the sky’
Enlisting global “cooperation” against the “violent extremist” should send chills down the spine of every American, said John Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer, founder of the Rutherford Institute and author of “Battlefield America: The War on the American People.”
“As I have been saying for quite a while, we have practically moved into a global government already,” Whitehead told WND.
“You look at the NSA’s Five Eyes Program, and this is spread around the world,” he said. “They’ve created basically an electronic concentration camp, and they’re working with Google to do it. In essence, globalism armed with technology is going to happen and under Obama we’ve moved closer and closer to federalizing the police. The FBI is moving into several local police departments, most recently in Oakland (California). Their main job is to use social media to track people.”
Now, with Strong Cities Network, U.S. cities will be cooperating and “sharing resources” with foreign governments around the world. Local police are already training with FBI, DHS and even the military. Obama’s new program lays the groundwork for them to train with foreign police units under the banner of the U.N.
“With the Strong Cities program we see the goal is to have global police, so it’s going to be very hard to rein in global cops,” Whitehead said. “Cops who were trained locally are going by the wayside, dealing solely with local cops is going to be a thing of the past. It’s sort of in your face, it’s saying the U.N. is going to be a global police force, working in this country one way or the other. New York City, L.A., Chicago are going to lead the way. Americans better get ready for this because what it means is, our Constitution is being replaced, and the constitutional protections we have will be gone.”
Among the first steps taken will involve merging some of the law-enforcement capacities within regions, with U.S. cops cooperating more closely with those of Mexico and Canada, Whitehead said.
“They’re working to fuse them together, so local autonomy, local authority, will be diluted and eventually eliminated,” he said. “They’re already globalizing, technology demands it.
“Google is moving quickly with robotics, driverless cars, and coordinating everything on the web under one umbrella,” he continued. “Amazon was paid $600 million to build an intelligence cloud for the FBI, DHS and CIA.”
Eric Schmidt, the renowned software engineer, is involved in international elitist groups such as the secretive Bilderbergs, Whitehead said, and Hillary Clinton spoke at the last three major events for Google.
“You have John Podesta (Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager). Eric Schmidt. Google, Amazon,” he said. “They want world government. Hillary wants it, Obama wants it. So that is where it is heading.”
McGuire said the U.N. will always pick a “politically correct” situation in which to intervene.
It will not intervene to stop the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East, but it will intervene to protect transgenders, Islam or perceived racial bias by police.
That’s why U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for the protection of civil rights during the Ferguson uprising in August 2014 even as rioters were looting, turning over police cars and burning buildings.
Gun control tops U.N. agenda for law enforcement
“Whatever the U.N. moves into, it’s always a politically correct situation. So when the Michael Brown protests were going on, the U.N. secretary general demanded that police adhered to what he called ‘U.S. and international standards,’ and he’s basically taking authority over local police forces,” McGuire said.
Another critical aspect of the U.N. agenda is universal gun registration and gun control.
“We all know that you have to get rid of the guns to bring in the dictatorship. Hitler did this, the Soviets did it,” McGuire said. “So they know that, and that’s why Hillary Clinton wants to overhaul gun laws and Obama is now talking about using executive actions to enact gun control.”
After finishing the research for his latest book, “The Babylon Code,” which he co-authored with journalist Troy Anderson, McGuire said he came to an unavoidable conclusion.
“I believe we are now reaching a tipping point that is going to happen very soon,” McGuire said. “It could happen overnight and most likely after a crisis event. The U.N. is already in control of a great deal, but we are going to see the U.N. come out of the shadows and openly exercise its authority over the United States. They will still have some kind of illusion of the United States for the masses, but I believe the elites are ready to bring global government out of the closet, and we’re going to see a very radical, aggressive change. They want to do this by 2030, and in Paris they’re going to announce another round of sweeping changes (in November) and then you look at all the trigger points, the Syrian war, the international debt crisis, etcetera.”
Using refugees, mass immigration to build ‘social cohesion?’
While the Strong Cities Network talks a lot on its website about “building social cohesion” in the world’s cities, the policies of the globalists are achieving just the opposite. They are using Islam and Muslim refugees to “break down social cohesion all over the world,” McGuire says, setting the stage for mass unrest. When the predictable violence breaks out, the solution will be police-state crackdowns.
“They’re using refugees in Germany to take over towns and cities. And here in U.S., they’re using refugees to wage war on the social cohesion of our society. So they’re going to slam-dunk the global government, and it will be a terrorist attack or financial crisis that triggers it,” McGuire said.
Author and blogger Pamela Geller also believes that the Strong Cities’ references to “building social cohesion” are a form of Orwellian Doublespeak. The real intent, she says, is to demonize and punish anyone who criticizes the growing Islamization of their community.
The term “social cohesion” is a “euphemism” for keeping peace between non-Muslim and Muslim communities – “mostly by making sure that non-Muslims don’t complain too loudly about, much less work against, rapidly expanding Muslim populations and the Islamization of their communities,” Geller writes.
According to the U.N.’s own data, more than 70 percent of “refugees” arriving in Europe are healthy Islamic men between the ages of 18 and 45.
“That’s an army. The Europeans aren’t stupid,” McGuire said. “They have strategically allowed this in collusion with the pope, who softened the people up with his statements, and so the purpose of this is, you’ve broken down the Euro-centric identity with European Western values.”
By forcibly injecting waves of Islamic migrants into Europe, the stage has been set for riots and violence.
“That will demand a police-state crack down,” McGuire said. “And the other half of the equation is you create Shariah law, and you break apart that non-Islamic consensus so Europe no longer has a European culture and is therefore more likely to assimilate into globalism.
“That synergistically with the Muslim refugees would produce anarchy throughout Europe that would demand an authoritarian police state takeover, and suddenly the U.N. is no longer a set of ‘would you please do this, or please do that’ type recommendations. You’ve created the trigger points and the crisis points. You’ve created on top of it a huge number of people who will always vote socialist. The same potential exists here as in Europe, a crisis and then an authoritarian U.N. government moving in to take control of the mayhem. It’s dark and dirty, and most people do not want to face it, but it’s a real danger.”
If anyone doubts that sinister motives lie behind efforts like the Strong Cities Network, McGuire says all they need do is study the words of the world’s most elite globalists, such as Henry Kissinger.Patrick Gaspard served as the political director for the Service Employees International Union local 1199. W.H. aide failed to disclose payout
President Barack Obama’s political director failed to disclose that he was slated to receive a nearly $40,000 payout from a large labor union while he was working in the White House.
Patrick Gaspard, who served as the political director for the Service Employees International Union local 1199, received $37,071.46 in “carried over leave and vacation” from the union in 2009, but he did not disclose the agreement to receive the payment on his financial disclosure forms filed with the White House.
Story Continued Below
In a section on his financial disclosure where agreements or arrangements for payment by a former employer must be disclosed, Gaspard checked a box indicating that he had nothing to report.
Bill Burton, a White House spokesman, told POLITICO Monday that Gaspard was in the process of correcting his disclosure form to reflect that he did in fact have an agreement for severance.
“We have made the small administrative change to this year's and last year's forms to indicate that part of the final payment to Patrick reflected their typical severance of one week of pay for each of his nine years of service at Local 1199 of SEIU,” Burton wrote POLITICO in an e-mailed statement.
Such financial disclosures are governed by federal law, but Stan Brand, a former House general counsel and ethics expert, said the Justice Department is unlikely to pursue an investigation unless they suspected a “knowing or willful” intent to deceive.
Gaspard’s omission is a potentially embarrassing episode for the Obama administration, which has made a high priority of ethics.
“They’ve made ethics a fetish and they have all kinds of people over there with experience, so I don’t know how they missed this one,” Brand said.
Gaspard spent nine years at 1199 SEIU, a major labor union in New York. Gaspard also worked for Obama’s campaign, and later worked for the transition team, where he earned $11,500, according to the financial disclosure form he filed this year. He was pulling a salary from SEIU until Jan. 16, 2009, shortly before Obama was inaugurated.
Gaspard, who made $172,200 in 2009, has from $35,000 to $80,000 in credit card debt and student loans, according to his financial disclosures.
This SEIU payout was first raised in early June by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the top GOP lawmaker on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He sent a letter to the White House asking for information about the payment. They have yet to respond.This article is outdated. Check out my brand new Angular 4 tutorial on YouTube.
Angular 2 has been getting a lot of momentum lately. The number of tweets and posts have been increasing as Angular team have been preparing the release candidate. So, I’m planing to write a series of hands-on blog posts to help you get started with Angular 2.0. If you have any questions as you read this article, please drop a comment below. I’ll answer every question and update the post if required.
Whether you’re familiar with Angular 1 or not, it doesn’t matter. You just need to have basic familiarity with HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Let’s start by a few beginners’ questions.
Beginners’ questions
If you’re already familiar with Angular 1, feel free to skip this section.
What is Angular?
Angular is one of the leading frameworks for building well-structured, testable and maintainable front-end applications. It’s often (but not necessarily) used in building single page applications (SPAs).
Why do I have to learn Angular?
Angular is not the only framework for building modular, testable and maintainable front-end applications. There are many other frameworks and libraries out there, including but not limited to React, Ember, Backbone, etc. Do you have to learn them all? If you have time and passion, why not! But if you have limited time, you may better invest your time in learning Angular 2.0 and React as these are the leading frameworks in this space.
Angular is developed by Google and has a huge community support. Google trends shows that the demand for Angular developers is increasing constantly.
So, whether you’re an aspiring or an established front-end or full-stack developer, knowing how to build applications with Angular can definitely increase your options when it comes to finding that ideal job.
Is Angular better than “…”?
The problem with this kind of question is that it’s hard to define “better”. Every framework has certain strengths and weaknesses. Religious debates about which framework is “better” than the others are really useless and don’t give you any values.
So, instead of wasting your time researching the best framework out there, spend some time and learn the top 2 – 3 leading frameworks. Then, you can pick the one that works best for you.
Getting the tools
If you don’t have Node on your machine, first, head over to http://nodejs.org and download and install the latest version of Node.
Once you install Node, open up Command Prompt on Windows or Terminal on Mac, and run:
npm install -g typescript
If you are a Mac user, you need to put sudo before npm to run this command with administrative privileges.
This will install TypeScript globally on your machine. TypeScript is a superset of Javascript and is the language we will be using in this tutorial. Why TypeScript? Because it brings many useful features to Javascript that are missing in the current version of Javascript, including classes, interfaces, access modifiers (e.g. public, private), IntelliSense and more importantly compile-time checking. So, we can catch many programming errors during compile time. Angular 2.0 itself has been written with TypeScript.
Just note that browsers don’t understand TypeScript. We use TypeScript compiler to compile or more accurately transpile TypeScript into Javascript. More on this later.
Next, run:
npm install -g typings
Typings is another Node module that we use to reference existing Javascript libraries in TypeScript.
Finally, you need an editor. You can use any editors that support TypeScript, including VSCode, Sublime, Atom, IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio and etc.
Your first Angular 2 app
Download the seed project and extract it somewhere on your machine. Inside this project, you’ll find a few configuration files, an index.html and an app folder, which includes the source files for our application.
Inside the app folder, we have a couple of TypeScript files: boot.ts, which is the main or starting module of our application, and app.component.ts, which is the root component of our application. Every Angular 2 app has at least one component, which we call root component.
tsconfig.json is the configuration file TypeScript compiler uses to determine how to transpile our TypeScript code into Javascript.
typings.json is another configuration file for Typescript. When using external Javascript libraries in TypeScript, we need to import a typescript definition file. A type definition file gives us static type checking and IntelliSense for that Javascript library.
Next to that, we have package.json, which is a standard Node package configuration file, where we define the dependencies of our app.
{ "name": "angular2-quickstart", "version": "1.0.0", "scripts": { "start": "concurrent \"npm run tsc:w\" \"npm run lite\" ", "tsc": "tsc", "tsc:w": "tsc -w", "lite": "lite-server", "typings": "typings", "postinstall": "typings install" }, "license": "ISC", "dependencies": { "angular2": "2.0.0-beta.7", "systemjs": "0.19.22", "es6-promise": "^3.0.2", "es6-shim": "^0.33.3", "reflect-metadata": "0.1.2", "rxjs": "5.0.0-beta.2", "zone.js": "0.5.15" }, "devDependencies": { "concurrently": "^2.0.0", "lite-server": "^2.1.0", "typescript": "^1.7.5" } }
Now, we need to install these dependencies. So, open up Command Prompt on Windows or Terminal on Mac, and go to the folder where you’ve extracted the seed project. Then, run:
npm install
This is going to take several minutes for the first time, so be patient. If you get several errors, that’s most likely due to administrative privileges. So, on Mac, be sure to add sudo before npm.
Once these dependencies are installed, you’ll see a new folder called node_modules. All our application dependencies will be stored there.
Now, have one more look at package.json. Under the scripts section, we can have a few custom node commands:
"scripts": { "start": "concurrent \"npm run tsc:w\" \"npm run lite\" ", "tsc": "tsc", "tsc:w": "tsc -w", "lite": "lite-server", "typings": "typings", "postinstall": "typings install" }
The one we’ll be using a lot is start.
"start": "concurrent \"npm run tsc:w\" \"npm run lite\" ",
It’s a shortcut for concurrently running two commands:
npm run tsc:w: which runs TypeScript compiler in the watch mode. When we save a TypeScript file, TypeScript compiler will automatically detect the changes and transpile our TypeScript code into Javascript. We never have to view or modify these Javascript files. So we code purely in TypeScript.
which runs TypeScript compiler in the watch mode. When we save a TypeScript file, TypeScript compiler will automatically detect the changes and transpile our TypeScript code into Javascript. We never have to view or modify these Javascript files. So we code purely in TypeScript. npm run lite: this will run the lite web server for our Angular app.
Now, back in the terminal and run the following command from the project folder:
npm start
When the lite web server starts, it’ll launch your default browser navigating to http://localhost:3000. This is our first Angular 2.0 app.
What is a component?
A component is one of the most fundamental building blocks in Angular 2 apps. Every app consists of at least one component, which we call the root component. A component can include other components, which we call child components. A real-world app is essentially a tree of components.
But what are these components really? A component is a TypeScript class that encapsulates the template, data and behaviour for a view. So, it’s more accurate to call it a view component. That’s what they’re called in React.
As an example, think of Twitter. If you want to build a similar app in Angular 2, you may model your application components like this:
app navbar sidebar content tweets tweet
Root component
Open up app/app.component.ts. This is the root component of our app:
import {Component} from 'angular2/core'; @Component({ selector:'my-app', template: '<h1>My First Angular 2 App</h1>' }) export class AppComponent { }
As you see, a component is a TypeScript class decorated with @Component decorator. We use decorators (also called annotations) to add metadata to a class. This @Component decorator tells Angular that AppComponent is a component. Note that these decorators are actually functions. So, here, @Component is called and given an object which includes metadata about AppComponent:
@Component({ selector:'my-app', template: '<h1>My First Angular 2 App</h1>' })
This object has two properties: template, which specifies the markup that should be rendered when this component is used, and selector, which tells Angular where in the DOM it should render this component. This is a CSS selector. So, my-app here represents an element with the name my-app.
When Angular sees an element like that in the DOM, it’ll create an instance of AppComponent and render it (according to its template) inside that element. Open up index.html and scroll down a bit. Note the my-app element.
Rendering data
Back in app.component.ts, let’s define a field in this class:
export class AppComponent { title = "Hello World"; }
So, as I explained earlier, a component encapsulates the template, data and the behaviour for a view. We use fields to store data. Now, let’s render the value of this field in the template. Modify the template as follows:
template: 'Hello {{title}}'
We use double curly braces syntax, called interpolation, to render data.
Now, save the file. Since TypeScript compiler is running in the background, it will re-compile our AppComponent. Our lite web server uses a module called BrowserSync, which automatically refreshes the browser when it detects a change in the source files. So, if you switch back to your browser, you should see the new content.
Handling events
Let’s extend our component and add a button. First, replace the single quote character in the template with backtick. That’s the character to the left of number 1 on your keyboard. By using backtick, we can break up our template into multiple lines and make it more readable.
@Component({ selector:'my-app', template: ` <h1>Hello {{title}}</h1> ` })
Now, add a button and a span to the template:
<h1>Hello {{title}}</h1> <span><span> <button>Click me</button>
We want to display a counter on this view. Every time we click the button, the counter will be increased by one. So, first declare a new field in the component:
export class AppComponent { count = 0; title = "Hello World"; }
Then, modify the span and use interpolation to render the value of count:
<span>Clicks: {{count}}<span>
Finally, to handle the click event, we need to bind it to a method in our component. When we click the button, the corresponding method in the component will be called.
Change the button declaration as follows:
<button (click)="increaseCount()">Click me</button>
Note the syntax. This is called event binding. So, we put the event name in parentheses and then set to a method in the component.
Now, let’s create this method:
export class AppComponent { count = 0; title = "Hello World"; increaseCount(){ this.count++; } }
Save the file and switch back to your browser. Click the button a few times and note the counter.
So, in this article, you learned the basics of components in Angular 2.0 apps. A component encapsulates the template, data and behaviour of a view. We used interpolation to render data and event binding to handle events raised from DOM elements.
In the next part, we’ll look at services and dependency injection. If you want to be notified when I publish the next part, subscribe to my blog below.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, please drop a comment below and share it with others.
You can also check out my comprehensive Angular 2 course here.
Related
Tags: angularImage copyright Reuters Image caption North Korean fired four missiles earlier this month, the latest in a series of tests
North Korea says a US missile strike on Syria "proves a million times over" that it was right to strengthen its nuclear programme, state media report.
They cited an unnamed government spokesman saying Friday's strike was an "intolerable act of aggression against a sovereign state".
The strikes followed Wednesday's suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held Syrian town which killed 89.
North Korea has carried out tests to develop a nuclear missile.
The UN has banned it from missile or nuclear tests.
But it has repeatedly broken those sanctions. It has successfully tested nuclear bombs of increasing power and claims to have been able to make warheads small enough to fit on a missile, but some experts have cast doubt on those claims.
On Friday, US missiles struck a Syrian airbase, killing at least six people. It was the first US attack on a Syrian government facility, although the country had previously targeted the Islamic State group in the region.
"The US missile attack against Syria is a clear and intolerable act of aggression against a sovereign state and we strongly condemn it," a government official in North Korea said, as quoted by the KCNA news agency.
"The reality of today shows that we must stand against power with power and it proves a million times over that our decision to strengthen our nuclear deterrence has been the right choice.
"Only military power of our own will protect us from imperialistic aggression.
"We will keep bolstering our self-defensive military might in various ways in order to cope with the ever-intensifying US acts of aggression."Summer Movie Mayhem 2008
Every summer sees the rise of the blockbuster mega-hit movies, which, in more recent years, has meant big-budget sequels and comic book adaptations.
By now, every movie lover has seen the trailers, clips, and posters for most of the summer’s hottest movies, so it’s not so hard to pick out which are the most anticipated films of this summer’s fifty or so offerings. What’s harder is determining which summer movies will live up to the hype.
For our second annual Summer Movie Mayhem feature, here’s a look at the Top 30 highly anticipated movies of this summer, along with some observations as to why they just might disappoint.
Iron Man (May 2) — You probably know the story already: Tony Stark gets captured by terrorists who want him to make them a bomb. Instead, he creates a suit of armor to aid in his escape, and returns to his regular life, except now he’s the super-hero Iron Man. Aided by his friend James Rhodes, and his secretary Virginia “Pepper” Potts, it looks like he’ll be taking on long-time nemesis Obadiah Stane, otherwise known as the Iron Monger.
ANTICIPATION ELEMENT: Have you seen those commercials yet? Everyone looks better than the previous. You’ve got a nice look for the actual suit, the Iron Monger fight looks bad-ass, and then there’s the cast. Of course we know that Robert Downey Jr. was born to play Tony Stark, but Terrance Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges are no slouches. What could go wrong?
POTENTIAL SUCKAGE FACTOR: If Fantastic Four 2 taught us anything, it’s that a trailer does not a movie make. Will the movie be paced well? Will the humor be funny or groan-inducing? Is Jon Favreau ready to direct a movie this big? These are all important questions which we won’t know until we see the movie. It doesn’t appear that the movie can go wrong, but that’s what we though about Superman Returns, and a lot of people hated that movie.
— Henchman21
Speed Racer (May 9) — The cult classic cartoon hits the big screen as a live-action movie. Emile Hirsch stars as the title character Speed, whose goal in life is to win The Crucible, a cross-country car race. When Speed discovers a plot by corporate investors to fix The Crucible, it is up to Speed and his mysterious rival Racer X to stop them.
ANTICIPATION ELEMENT: Long-time fans of the cartoon can rest easy knowing the film is left in capable hands. The adaptation was written and directed by the Wachowski Brothers, the duo responsible for the Matrix trilogy. Fan favorites Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox are also along for the ride, playing Trixie and the always enigmatic, Racer X, respectively. If the film is half as good as the trailer that was released in December, this movie has what it takes to be the summer blockbuster of 2008.
POTENTIAL SUCKAGE FACTOR: Can the Wachowski Brothers deliver big once again? Their last film, V for Vendetta, was only a moderate success and Warner Bros.’ mandate for a “family friendly” adaptation could inhibit the dynamic duo’s creative juices (all their previous films have been geared toward a more adult crowd). Also, for every fan that enjoyed the trailer, there are some that called it cheesy and too reliant on CGI.
— JackBauerStein83
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (May 16) — Picking up one year after the events of the first movie, Prince Caspian finds the Pevensie children returning to a very changed Narnia. The evil King Miraz is trying to keep the rightful ruler, the titular Prince Caspian, from taking the throne. So the kids have to go back and help save Narnia one more time.
ANTICIPATION ELEMENT: It’s good to see that the whole team that made the first movie a success has returned for the sequel, so you know that the movie is going to look nice and have some great action. The child actors have more experience now, which is never a bad thing. Plus, the return of talking Jesus lion, and who can resist that?
POTENTIAL SUCKAGE FACTOR: I’ll admit, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first movie, as I thought it was a bit too much of a kid’s movie for me to really enjoy. I don’t know if this film will keep the same tone or if it’s going to be different this time. To be fair, the books are designed for a younger audience, and the first film was successful in keeping the fun of the books, it just wasn’t for me. And I know a lot of people will still be turned away by the heavy Christian themes of the books.
— Henchman21
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22) — Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), who has quietly resumed his teaching in the 19 years since the events of the last movie, is thrust back into adventure, this time against Spalko (Cate Blanchett) and agents of the Soviet Union, who are both after the crystal skull.
ANTICIPATION ELEMENT: It’s the first Indy movie in almost two decades with (almost) all the original players. Director Steven Spielberg has elected to remain consistent with the previous films by keeping stunts traditional and the CGI to a bare minimum. And it’s the first Indy movie in almost two decades.
POTENTIAL SUCKAGE FACTOR: Co-writer and producer George Lucas saying, “It’s just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up.” He may well have said two words that meant the same thing: Phantom Menace.
— The Rub
Sex and the City (May 30) — Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her oversexed Manhattanite friends make the much anticipated jump to the theaters, after their series went off of HBO in 2004.
ANTICIPATION ELEMENT: While big-screen adaptations of small-screen shows don’t have the best track record, the ones involving the original cast and creators (like Serenity, The X-Files, and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut) actually do.
POTENTIAL SUCKAGE FACTOR: The juvenile thrill of hearing your favorite characters swear and screw is gone here, as Sex and the City aired on HBO. And after the Kristin Davis sex photos, Kim Cattrall being naked in everything, and Cynthia Nixon and Sarah Jessica Parker looking like an ungodly circus act where they can crack glass just by looking at it, I’d actually pay to see them keep their clothes on.
— Dr. Royce Clemens
The Strangers (May 30) — A couple spending the night in an isolated house are terrorized by three strangers wearing masks. As the night progresses, and the strangers’ antics become more violent, and the couple realize that they must find an inner strength they never knew they had if they are to survive.
ANTICIPATION ELEMENT: Debut writer/director Bryan Bertino looks to be tapping into true emotional terror with this shadow-filled, dread-drenched tale inspired by true events. If the trailer is any indication, this is going to be a satisfying white-knuckled ride from start to finish, with a churning tension that will leave the audience breathless. Seeing Liv Tyler scared out of her wits after frightening audiences with her performance in Armageddon is simply the icing on the bloody cake.
POTENTIAL SUCKAGE FACTOR: The success of the film, and how it will be regarding and remembered by fans or naysayers, will all boil down to the ending. This could very well be the horror film of 2008, but if Bertino can’t deliver the goods in the final reel, then all will surely be lost.
— Movies at Midnight
Kungfu Panda (June |
’s going to depart from a truss structure rather than sitting atop of a Falcon 9.”
This test will involve a passenger, although his name remains a secret.
“We’ll do it at the Cape (SLC-40) and we’re going to have a crash test dummy inside in a prototype seat, so we’ll get data from that for the crew seat.
“We’ll have a very flight-like propulsion system per what goes into the abort, including the avionics, which will be identical to the avionics were are planning for the flight vehicle.
“That test will prove if we have enough total impulse, thrust and controllability (to conduct a safe pad abort).”
Providing all goes to plan with the pad abort, the next test, set for January, will utilize a Falcon 9 that will provide a real life test of an in-flight abort.
“The greatest challenge is the in-flight abort test that will occur not quite at Max-Q, but at Max Drag, which is in the transonic region,” added Dr. Reisman.
“We plan to fly a modified Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle and then have Dragon punch out right when we hit that criteria.”
These tests will satisfy the milestones in SpaceX’s agreement with NASA under the CCiCAP contract.
However, by that time, engineers and technicians at the Californian company will hope they’ll be busy working through their CCtCap requirements, another step on the path to removing America’s reliance on the Russian Soyuz for its crew transportation needs.
(Images via SpaceX, Boeing, SNC, NASA and L2).
(Click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/ – to view how you can support NSF and access the best space flight content on the entire internet).David Perdue started his business career with more than a decade as a management consultant. In 1992 he became a VP at Sara Lee Corporation. During the next decade, he worked with Haggar Clothing, and Reebok. He was unable to correct problems at Pillowtex, which he joined in 2002, leaving after nine months with a large buyout. Perdue next worked for Dollar General, where he did achieve a turnaround, and later for the Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd., whose interests in India included textile mills. Before entering politics, Perdue set up a global trading firm in Atlanta, Georgia.
He married Bonnie Dunn. The couple now lives in the resort town of Sea Island. [9] The couple have two sons, David A. Perdue III and Blake Perdue, and three grandchildren. [6] [9] David Perdue, Jr. is the first cousin of former Georgia governor and current United States Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. [10]
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Perdue is "known on Wall Street as a turnaround specialist who helps revive brands and reap rewards for investors." [2]
From 2007 to 2009, Perdue worked as a senior consultant for Indian chemical and textile conglomerate Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd. [15] In April 2011, Perdue started an Atlanta-based global trading firm [2] with Trey Childress, Heidi Green, and former Georgia governor, Sonny Perdue. [16]
After leaving Pillowtex, Perdue became CEO of Dollar General. [14] Prior to his joining the company, it had recently overstated profits by $100 million and paid $162 million to settle shareholder lawsuits. Perdue overhauled the company's inventory line and logistics network, and updated its marketing strategy. After initially closing hundreds of stores, the company doubled its stock price and opened 2,600 new stores before being sold in 2007 to private equity investors. [2]
In 2002, Perdue left Reebok for Pillowtex, a North Carolina textile company. The company had recently emerged from bankruptcy with a heavy debt load and an underfunded pension liability. Perdue was unable to obtain additional funding from the company's investors and later was unsuccessful in finding a buyer for the company. He left the company in 2003 after nine months on the job and $1.7 million in compensation. Pillowtex closed several months later, leaving 7,650 workers out of work nationwide. With more than 4,000 jobs lost statewide, the closing of Pillowtex resulted in the largest single-day job loss in North Carolina history at the time. [13]
In 1998, Perdue joined Reebok as a senior vice president, eventually rising to president and CEO. Perdue is credited with significantly reducing the company's debt and reviving its sneaker line. Perdue negotiated a contract with the National Football League that a former Reebok executive referred to as "revolutionary" for repositioning the company's shoe brand. [2]
Perdue began his career at Kurt Salmon Associates, an international consulting firm, where he worked for twelve years as a management consultant. [11] His first major corporate job was as senior vice president of Asia operations for Sara Lee Corporation, a position he took in 1992. His time at Sara Lee was followed by a stint at Haggar Clothing, where he became senior vice president of operations in 1994. [12]
Perdue's political opponents targeted his business career during the campaign, specifically for outsourcing work offshore. Perdue said he was "proud of" finding lower cost labor for some companies. Critics noted that he had contributed to a total of thousands of jobs lost following the final closure of Pillowtex, while Perdue left the company after nine months with a nearly $2 million buyout. [13] [17] After being elected, Perdue stated that he wanted to bring the perspective of "a working person" to Washington, D.C.
Perdue touted his business experience, and particularly his experience at Dollar General, in running for political office as a Republican candidate. According to Perdue: "We added about 2,200 stores, created almost 20,000 jobs and doubled the value of that company in a very short period of time. Not because of me, but because we listened to our customers and employees.” He received the endorsement of the National Federation of Independent Business. [17]
Perdue supports policies to achieve energy independence, as well as'revitalizing' American manufacturing and increasing exports to 'create quality jobs' and for 'long-term economic growth'. Additionally, he supports actions to'strictly enforce' laws to secure the border; opposes gun control; is a supporter of the State of Israel; opposes Common Core; and opposes same-sex marriage.[19]
In a June 2016 speech to a conference of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Perdue urged the audience to pray for President Obama's "days to be short".[20]
Health care Edit
He supports repealing and replacing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[21] He opposes abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.[22]
Term limits Edit
Perdue has pledged to limit himself to two terms in the Senate (12 years).[23]
Security Edit
In October 2015, Perdue voted in favor of the CISA (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act), despite strong opposition from major companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter.[24] This is consistent with his record of a "Common Defense," as he also supported the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act).[25]
Climate change Edit
Perdue was one of 22 senators to sign a letter[26] to President Donald Trump urging him to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Agreement. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Perdue has received over $180,000 from oil, gas and coal interests since 2012.[27]
Immigration Edit
In 2017, Perdue co-sponsored the RAISE Act, which would implement a points-based system of immigration, similar to that used in Canada and Australia, and would reduce legal immigration by 50% and cap refugee admissions to 50,000 individuals per year.[citation needed] He supports strictly enforcing current immigration laws and preventing illegal entry into the United States.[28]
Trump Edit
Perdue is a close ally of Trump.[29][30] Perdue fought to prevent the Senate from blocking the Chinese telecom firm ZTE from purchasing American components.[31] The Commerce Department had barred ZTE from doing so for seven years after it accused the firm of having deceived US regulators and violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea.[31] In July 2018, Perdue said that he opposed tariffs but that he would support Trump on his tariff increases.[29]
On January 11, 2018, Senator Perdue attended a meeting at the White House where, according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation, President Trump stated that Haiti, El Salvador and African countries were "shithole nations" and that the United States should not take in immigrants from these countries. Senator Perdue stated that he did not recall these statements by the President.[33][34][35] Perdue was criticized by veteran journalist Tom Brokaw who suggested that the senator should get a hearing aid at Costco.[36] Then on Sunday, January 14, 2018, Senator Perdue stated on ABC’s “This Week” that he now remembered that President Trump did not use those words just days after he said he did not recall them.[37]
Apparent Prayer for Obama's Death Edit
In June 2016, at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, Perdue led attendees in a prayer that seemed to be a prayer for Obama's death. He said, "we should pray for Barack Obama. But I think we need to be very specific about how we pray. We should pray like Psalms 109:8 says. It says, 'Let his days be few, and let another have his office.'"[38] Perdue did not quote the rest of Psalm 109[39], which includes the following verses: "8. Let his days be few; and let another take his office./ 9. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow./ 10. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places./ 11. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour./ 12. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children./ 13. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out." Commentators at the time remarked that it was unusual if not unprecedented for a U.S. Senator to publicly pray for the death of a sitting president. In a statement, Perdue’s office clarified, “He in no way wishes harm to our president and everyone in the room understood that,” and accused the media of “pushing a narrative to create controversy.”[40]
Economy Edit
Perdue stated in October 2017 that the national debt was the greatest threat to the security of the United States.[41] In December 2017, Perdue voted in favor of the Republican tax plan called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was estimated to increase the national debt one trillion dollars in ten years by slashing individual and corporate tax rates.[42][43][44][45] Perdue voted in favor of the 2017 budget, which was estimated to add as much as $1.5 trillion to deficits over ten years.[46] Perdue said he voted for the budget, because "the $1.5 trillion is an investment to grow the economy."[46]
He supports a constitutional balanced budget amendment and comprehensive tax reform.[47]
In September 2018, Perdue was among six Republican senators, Jeff Flake, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey, as well as Bernie Sanders, that voted against a $854 billion spending bill, meant to avoid a government shutdown. Said bill included funding for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education.[48]
Foreign policy Edit
In April 2018, Perdue was one of eight Republican senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and acting Secretary of State John Sullivan expressing "deep concern" over a report by the United Nations exposing "North Korean sanctions evasion involving Russia and China" and asserting that the findings "demonstrate an elaborate and alarming military-venture between rogue, tyrannical states to avoid United States and international sanctions and inflict terror and death upon thousands of innocent people" while calling it "imperative that the United States provides a swift and appropriate response to the continued use of chemical weapons used by President Assad and his forces, and works to address the shortcomings in sanctions enforcement."[49]Portsmouth's owner, Sulaiman al-Fahim, will this weekend make a desperate attempt to attract fresh finance to the club after the chief executive, Peter Storrie, admitted "there is no money left".
The move comes after another turbulent day at Portsmouth on which they were forced to admit that their first-team squad and executive board, including Storrie, had not been paid September's wages. The club rely on Fahim to pay those salaries but the owner has not yet delivered the £50m which he last week promised to provide within a month.
At the weekend Fahim will meet representatives of two Saudi-based businessmen, the Faraj brothers, who were the leading members of the consortium fronted by Storrie which tried to buy the club this summer.
"All the money from all the player transfers and the Sky TV money – all of the £35m from January – has gone straight to the Standard Bank," Storrie said yesterday, referring to Portsmouth's need to pay off a sizeable debt with the South African bank. "There is no money left."
"Whatever we spend on a monthly basis comes channelled through from [Fahim]. He has promised to refinance and he has shown me all the documentation but I have no idea about the conditions of the £50m he says will be arriving in a few weeks. We need to refinance, it is as simple as that. As for the players wages for the last month I would imagine it's a blip and they will be paid."
Fahim's proposed meeting with the Faraj brothers, which is understood to be scheduled for Sunday, appears to strengthen Storrie's position given thathe fronted a consortium led by them which came close to taking over Portsmouth in late August before the then owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, sold to Fahim.
Last night Fahim confirmed he was open to new investors and said he felt "sorry" for the club: "I was always open for any investors if they will add value. No matter who they are." But he hinted the Farajs may have only a short-term interest. "I need people who want to stay with me and the club for the long term."
Storrie said he was working tirelessly to keep the club afloat. "We have been very close to administration a few times in the last nine to 10 months but I am not about to give up now," he said. "I've no idea of the timescale about how long this can go on. I don't want to frighten people. I am sure that if the refinancing that has been promised fails for some reason there will be other people ready to step in."
Fahim said the players and three fellow board members – Storrie, Roberto Avondo and the finance director, Tanya Robins – would get their money today. "The club needs time to be on track," he added. "And this is the worst [period]. By the end of October [we] will see the light and we need everybody's support in these few days. And, the players will be paid."
Pressed over whether there was any chance that he would put the club into administration if this was the best option for Portsmouth in the long term, Fahim seemed to rule this out. "I am always there for the club," he said.
Paul Hart, the embattled Portsmouth manager, said yesterday that Robins had spoken to the players to assure them they would be paid "in the next day or so". "We had a meeting this morning and assured them this would be sorted out," he said. "They turned it into a little bit of fun and have been terrific."
Hermann Hreidarsson, the club's Professional Footballers' Association representative, added he was not overly concerned. "We didn't get paid but someone came down from the payment department and reassured us we will get paid tomorrow, so everyone's a winner," the defender said.
Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the PFA, said his organisation had discussed the situation at Portsmouth but chosen not to intervene because of promises that the players would be paid imminently. "But, of course, this is a very serious matter from our point of view and, if the delay in payments are prolonged or repeated, we would consider intervening and taking action on behalf of our members," he said. "That could involve speaking directly to Portsmouth and seeking guarantees that payments are forthcoming."You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/16eKH
— Shortly after the state Senate finished a day filled with rancor and mistrust by rejecting efforts to repeal House Bill 2, the controversial measure dealing with transgender rights, shouts of "shame, shame, shame" rained down from the gallery.
Lawmakers picked up that refrain in post-session interviews, lumping shame on any and all they thought had scuttled the effort to remove North Carolina from an unfavorable national spotlight.
Democrats pinned the blame on Republicans who did not offer a "clean" repeal bill, but rather one with a moratorium on local nondiscrimination ordinances that LGBT advocates found objectionable. Republicans pointed their fingers at the 16 Senate Democrats who ended up voting against a bill they viewed as a political trap, the Charlotte City Council and, most especially, Gov.-elect Roy Cooper.
"Roy Cooper called every one of you and said don't vote for that," Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger vented on the floor after watching the repeal effort fail.
Berger, R-Rockingham, personally sponsored the bill, and it is rare for the state's most powerful legislative leader to watch a measure he backed fail so completely once brought to the floor.
Cooper, for his part, larded criticism on House and Senate Republicans, who he said welshed on a deal to repeal the controversial measure. A "cooling off period" attached to the bill would have effectively left many of the restrictions House Bill 2 places on city and county governments intact through most of 2017.
"It is deeply disappointing to see the breach of trust we had today," Cooper said during a news conference at the PNC Arena.
The argument over who is to blame for the wheels coming off Wednesday's effort will likely rage into the new year, with all sides accusing the others of angling for partisan advantage and refusing to compromise. Cooper, a Democrat, and legislative Republicans already have had a contentious start to their relationship, with lawmakers stripping him of power before he takes office.
Now, rather than coming together over a House Bill 2 rollback, they find themselves sniping at one another over its wreckage.
Nine months of bad blood came rushing in
As Charlotte's City Council contemplated an ordinance in the early weeks of this year to extend protections to the LGBT community, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and state lawmakers warned there would be consequences if it passed. In particular, GOP policymakers declared rules that required businesses and nonprofits allow transgender individuals to use the bathroom of their choice were a bridge too far.
Charlotte passed the ordinance, and lawmakers called themselves back to session and passed the measure that would be tagged "House Bill 2," more formally known as the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. The bill prevents cities and counties from putting such ordinances in place but goes further, delving into multiple areas of discrimination and employment law.
Reaction throughout the year was swift, sustained and fierce. Other states passed bans on travel for public employees to North Carolina, conferences pulled out of the state and sporting events such as the NBA All-Star Game and NCAA Tournament pulled out. In the face of that reaction, multiple efforts to repeal the bill were mounted, but none took hold. Republicans accused Charlotte officials and Cooper of undermining potential deals, while Democrats said GOP offers always came with strings attached.
Wednesday looked like a promising last chance to roll back the measure and start 2017 out from under the cloud that has dogged the General Assembly and political campaigns all year. But even that got off to a rocky start.
On Monday, Charlotte moved to repeal its ordinance as word quickly spread that a repeal deal could be at hand. Shortly after the council's action, Cooper announced he had helped broker a repeal deal that would lead to House Bill 2 being completely scrapped. That appeared to irk Republicans, particularly McCrory, who said Cooper was wrong to claim credit.
"This sudden reversal with little notice after the gubernatorial election sadly proves this entire issue originated by the political left was all about politics and winning the governor’s race at the expense of Charlotte and our entire state," McCrory said.
Despite that petulant start, lawmakers appeared to line up votes needed to roll back the controversial law. That was the case up through late Tuesday afternoon, when questions about what Charlotte actually did arose.
'Worst political stunt I've ever seen'
Once the special session was called, groups representing social conservatives such as the North Carolina Family Policy Council, the Christian Action League and the North Carolina Values Coalition began to pour on pressure, pushing lawmakers to reject the rollback deal.
"We continue to encourage our leaders to never sacrifice the privacy, safety or freedom of young girls by forcing them to use the bathroom, shower or change clothes with grown men just to satisfy the demands of greedy businesses, immoral sports organizations or angry mobs," Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the Values Coalition, said in a statement after the repeal effort failed.
Arguments by proponents of keeping House Bill 2 on the books began to take hold as House Republicans gathered for a closed-door caucus session on Tuesday night at 6 p.m.
That's when news began circulating that the Charlotte City Council had not rolled back its entire ordinance. In particular, two sections unrelated to the bathroom provision had stayed on the books, and the council had attached a Dec. 31 deadline for lawmakers to repeal House Bill 2 or the ordinance would stay in place, albeit superseded by state law.
GOP House members argued over the repeal efforts for hours Tuesday evening, until around midnight. Those privy to the conversations described them as "brutal," "nasty" and, at some particularly tense moments, "close to violence."
When they arrived for Wednesday morning's session, many appeared in no mood to compromise, despite capitulation from the council. By the time the legislature gaveled in, council members had removed the Dec. 31 deadline and rolled back the remaining portions of their ordinance.
"The only extraordinary thing that has happened is the extraordinary hubris of a city council," said Rep. Jeff Collins, R-Nash, objecting that the General Assembly's fifth special session of the year had even been called. "I will be a 'no' on everything that comes forward."
Throughout the day, Republicans in the House and Senate continued tense, closed-door conversations, talking over the repeal bill and how they could structure the effort to win support of their more skeptical colleagues. But throughout the day, repeal opponents leaned heavily on the line that Charlotte's City Council had broken faith and that an unfettered deal was no longer possible.
"When you talk about trust, the City of Charlotte has been as disingenuous as anyone I've ever seen," Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, said.
Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Davie, said he did not believe pleas from Charlotte that there was merely a misunderstanding.
"There's no way this was a technicality," Brock said. "This was the worst political stunt I've ever seen."
Republicans said it was Charlotte's failure to fully repeal its ordinance that started the cascade of failure.
"Charlotte acted Monday morning in absolutely the best faith possible with all the understanding and all the chips on the table about what Charlotte needed to do," said John Autry, a Charlotte City Council member who will serve as a state representative in the next General Assembly. "This morning, it came up that there was something else that should have been done. Charlotte took the initiative and showed leadership to the people of North Carolina that they were willing to do what they needed to do to resolve the issue of HB2."
It was lawmakers, Autry said, that were the problem.
Asked what he would say to liberal critics who said the city got played by Republican lawmakers, Autry said there have been no protections for LGBT individuals since House Bill 2 had passed anyway. Wednesday's legislative session, he said, was a shot at rolling back a bill many saw as problematic.
"Charlotte did everything it could," he said.
'We are not stupid'
By mid-afternoon, House Republicans said that any hope of passing a repeal was quickly dimming. But House Speaker Tim Moore and Berger kept meeting throughout the day, apparently pitching a series of offers and counter-offers designed to wrangle the necessary votes.
What they eventually came up with was a repeal bill that would roll back House Bill 2 but immediately place a moratorium on cities' and counties' ability to pass certain kinds of nondiscrimination protections. The final version of the offer would extend that moratorium until 30 days after lawmakers adjourned in 2017, likely taking the cooling off period well into August, September or October.
"A lot of the conversation we've had in here today demonstrates the need for a cooling off period," Berger said Wednesday night.
Without some sort of limitation, he said, LGBT advocates and others would be able to go out and push Charlotte-like ordinances in other cities and counties throughout the state. That would land North Carolina in exactly the same fix it's in now when lawmakers inevitably responded, he said.
But what Republicans viewed as a safeguard, Democrats said undercut the entire repeal effort.
"It's smoke and mirrors. It's a mirage. It's not real," Sen. Angela Bryant, D-Nash, told her colleagues. "I don't know if you think we're stupid, or the public is stupid," she continued, provoking applause from the Senate gallery that cut off her debate and drew a rebuke from Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.
Senate Democrats said that the repeal deal was essentially an indefinite extension of many of the things most objectionable about House Bill 2. Sen. Dan Blue, D-Wake, said that, with Republicans still in the majority next year, they could easily extend that moratorium through next year or the year after, essentially prolonging many of the features of House Bill 2 at will.
"It would never go away," Blue insisted.
That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also the director of Equality North Carolina, an LGBT advocacy organization.
"We don't have time for the political antics Sen. Berger tried to pull," Sgro said.
As the evening wore on, it became apparent that Berger, too, was having trouble with his own membership. In a last-ditch effort to win both Democratic and Republican support for the repeal bill, he broke it into two parts. One was a pure repeal measure; the other would tack on the moratorium.
Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, spoke out against the tactic.
"It allows the Senate to pass a bill that the majority of the Senate does not want to pass," Hise said.
With many House members looking on, senators voted to split the question but then voted down the repeal portion of the bill, with all 16 Democrats voting "no" along with 16 hard-line Republicans. Without Democratic help, there was no way to pass the measure.
"There is a huge problem of trust between the parties in this building," Berger said after the votes.
'Looked them in the eye'
Roughly 90 minutes after the Senate vote failed, Cooper stepped up to a podium at the PNC Arena.
"This was our best chance. It cannot be our last chance," Cooper said.
Negotiations over the fix started 10 days ago and continued last week even as lawmakers curtailed the incoming governor's power to appoint members of his administration.
"What they've been saying all along is they wanted Charlotte to repeal its ordinance first," Cooper said. "That's what they've said, that's what they've said in public, that is what they said to me. I looked them in the eye. That is what they said."
Cooper said he promised to deliver Charlotte's ordinance repeal and Democratic votes, and Republican lawmakers pledged to deliver enough votes to pass the repeal. Business leaders, LGBT advocates, Charlotte officials and lawmakers of all political stripes were on board, he claimed.
"The deal continued to be that it would be full repeal of House bill 2, and this moratorium thing doesn't fully repeal House Bill 2," he said.
A few liberal advocacy organizations backed up Cooper's version of events Wednesday night.
"Senator Berger and Speaker Moore failed to make good on the 'deal' they brokered with Gov.-elect Cooper to fully repeal HB2," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT organization that has argued for the law's repeal. "Their shameful actions and broken promises subject LGBTQ North Carolinians to state-mandated discrimination."
Throughout the year, Republicans accused Cooper and his fellow Democrats of scuttling repeal efforts and did so again Wednesday night.
"This was at least the third time that pressure from the left sabotaged bipartisan good faith agreements for political purposes," McCrory said.
Democrats, that thinking goes, want the issues surrounding HB2 to run on during special legislative elections tentatively planned for 2017.
On the Senate floor, Berger brandished a sheaf of papers he said showed Charlotte failed to fully repeal its ordinance. It was proof, he said, that neither Charlotte's City Council nor Cooper could be trusted.
"I am sorry folks," Berger said. "I don't trust them, and our folks don't trust them. They've given us no reason to trust them."
While Cooper has denied intervening over previous deals, he had no problem saying that he talked to House and Senate Democrats throughout the day Wednesday.
"I told the Democrats to vote for the deal to fully repeal House Bill 2," he said.
Sen. Mike Woodard, D-Durham, said that he didn't hear one-on-one from Cooper, but was on a conference call with him and other Senate Democrats.
"Our conversation led to a consensus," Woodard said, adding that lawmakers and the governor-elect alike viewed the moratorium language as both a political trap and something that wouldn't have the desired impact of luring business and sporting events back to the state.
Berger and Moore, Cooper insisted, failed to live up to their end of the bargain.
"When it came time for Republican legislative leaders to do their job, they failed," he said.
As he wound up a post-session news conference, Berger was asked if he and Cooper really had a deal.
"I made a commitment to bring it up," he said as he walked away off the Senate floor. He then paused and added, "And I think I honored that commitment."A federal judge rejected the Obama administration’s latest effort to delay release of some of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, issuing an order Wednesday demanding that the State Department start rolling out the emails on a firm schedule every month.
Judge Rudolph Contreras gave the department until the end of January to complete the production of all 30,000 emails, which means the final messages will be released about the same time Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, prepares to face voters.
The State Department had asked that it have 60 days between releases, and didn’t give any targets for how much would be released each time, but Judge Contreras rejected that proposal and set out a firm timeline.
By June 30, the department must release 7 percent of the emails, totaling 2,100 messages; then release 2,400 more by the end of July; 3,000 more in August; 3,600 in September; 4,200 in October; 4,500 in November; 4,800 in December; and the final 5,400 or so in January.
The judge did give the administration an extra two weeks — until Jan. 29 — to finish up. The State Department had said it would need until the middle of the month.
“Defendant shall provide a status report informing the court of the number of pages of emails produced. If, in any given month, the defendant fails to meet the above-referenced production goal, it shall explain in detail in its status report how it intends to catch up with the schedule by adding resources or otherwise,” the judge wrote in the order.
On Wednesday, a department spokesman said they will respect the court’s ruling.
Last week the department released about 300 messages related to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. Those messages constitute just 1 percent of the total Mrs. Clinton had withheld until she was notified last year that she was in violation of open-records laws.
“The department is keenly aware of the intense public interest in the documents and wants to get releasable materials out as soon as possible,” the Obama administration said in a court filing Tuesday.
The administration said it would try to find ways to shift resources to process more emails, as long as that didn’t hinder the department’s other priorities.
But in a previous filing, the department had shown little urgency, saying that while it got the messages from Mrs. Clinton in December, it hadn’t begun scanning them in for processing and release until about two months ago, and completed that process earlier in May.
Now staffers are running the messages by other government agencies to see whether parts of the emails should be kept secret.
Part of one message released last week was deemed classified by the FBI and was redacted from the release, sparking questions over whether the administration was trying to shield embarrassing details or whether Mrs. Clinton had shared sensitive information from her private account.
Mrs. Clinton set up her own server at her home in New York and exclusively used that for email during her four years as secretary, despite federal guidelines saying that official business was to be conducted on government accounts so messages could be stored.
Mrs. Clinton didn’t turn over any of her messages until nearly two years after she left office, and only then when prompted by the State Department.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Who Knows What About Me? A Survey of Behind the Scenes Personal Data Sharing to Third Parties by Mobile Apps Jinyan Zang, Krysta Dummit, James Graves, Paul Lisker, and Latanya Sweeney Interact with data
Abstract
Introduction
Background
Methods
Results
Discussion
References
Appendix
Download
Authors
Citation
Data
Suggestions Sharing of sensitive data by Android apps (left) to domains (right) We tested 110 popular, free Android and iOS apps to look for apps that shared personal, behavioral, and location data with third parties
73% of Android apps shared personal information such as email address with third parties, and 47% of iOS apps shared geo-coordinates and other location data with third parties
93% of Android apps tested connected to a mysterious domain, safemovedm.com, likely due to a background process of the Android phone
We show that a significant proportion of apps share data from user inputs such as personal information or search terms with third parties without Android or iOS requiring a notification to the user
Interact with data Select an app on a platform Adobe Reader on iOS ADP Mobile Solutions on iOS Amazon on Android Amazon on iOS American Well on Android American Well on iOS BE-ON-ROAD on Android Box on Android Bubble Witch 2 on Android Candy Crush on Android Don't Tap White Tile on Android Drugs.com on Android eBay on Android eBay on iOS Emoji Android Keyboard on Android Emoji Keyboard on Android Emoji Keyboard 2 on iOS Epocrates on Android Expedia on Android Facebook Messenger on Android Facebook Messenger on iOS Facebook Pages on Android Facebook on Android Facebook on iOS File Manager on Android Fish Out of Water! on iOS Fitbit on Android Fitbit on iOS Flipagram on iOS Fruit Ninja on iOS GasBuddy on Android Geocaching Intro on iOS Glide on Android GoodRx on Android GoodRx on iOS Google Earth on Android Google Maps on iOS GPS by Telenav on iOS Groupon on Android Groupon on iOS Guess the Emoji on Android Guess the Emoji on iOS Hangouts on iOS INRIX XD on iOS Instagram on Android Instagram on iOS InstaSize on iOS iTriage Health on Android Job Search on Android Job Search - Indeed.com on iOS Job Search - Snagajob on iOS KAYAK on Android Kik on Android Kik on iOS Leafly Marijuana on iOS Local Scope on iOS Lose It! on Android Lose It! on iOS Map My Walk on Android Map My Run on iOS MapFactor on Android MapQuest on Android MapQuest on iOS Monster Legends on Android Moovit on iOS MyFitnessPal on Android MyFitnessPal on iOS Nike+ Running on Android Nike+ Running on iOS Ovia Fertility on iOS Pacer - Pedometer plus on iOS Period Calendar on Android Period Tracker on Android Period Tracker Lite on iOS Phone Tracker on iOS Piano Tiles on iOS Pinterest on Android Pinterest on iOS Points2Shop on Android Priceline on Android RunKeeper on Android RunKeeper on iOS Scout on Android Scout GPS on iOS Skype on Android Skype for iPhone on iOS SmartScan Express on iOS Snagajob on Android Snapchat on Android Snapchat on iOS Tango on Android Tango on iOS Text Free on Android textPlus on Android The Bump Pregnancy on iOS Timehop on Android Timehop on iOS Track Kit Pro on iOS TwoDots on iOS Urgent Care on iOS Viber on Android Viber on iOS Walgreens on Android Walgreens on iOS WebMD on Android WebMD on iOS Wish on Android Wish on iOS Yelp on Android YouTube on iOS
Abstract What types of user data are mobile apps sending to third parties? We chose 110 of the most popular free mobile apps as of June-July 2014 from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, across 9 categories likely to handle potentially sensitive data about users including job information, medical data, and location. For each app, we used a man-in-the-middle proxy to record HTTP and HTTPS traffic that occurred while using the app and looked for transmissions that include personally identifiable information (PII), behavior data such as search terms, and location data, including geo-coordinates. An app that collects these data types may not need to notify the user in current permissions systems. Results summary: We found that the average Android app sends potentially sensitive data to 3.1 third-party domains, and the average iOS app connects to 2.6 third-party domains. Android apps are more likely than iOS apps to share with a third party personally identifying information such as name (73% of Android apps vs. 16% of iOS apps) and email address (73% vs. 16%). For location data, including geo-coordinates, more iOS apps (47%) than Android apps (33%) share that data with a third party. In terms of potentially sensitive behavioral data, we found that 3 out of the 30 Medical and Health & Fitness category apps in the sample share medically |
return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”
In April of 2009, President Obama announced he wanted the Senate to ratify the Inter-American Convention Against The Illicit Manufacturing Of And Trafficking In Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, And Other Related Materials (called by its Spanish acronym of CIFTA for obvious reasons). A close look at the Definitions section of the treaty reveals that it would require a government license for “the manufacture or assembly of firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related materials”. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? I mean we sort of have that now, don’t we? But the devil, as they say, is in the details. Or, in this case, the definitions, because the way they’re written, you could be required to get a government license to reload ammo, add or change out a scope on a rifle, replace a factory trigger with an upgraded one, or even so much as load a weapon. Preposterous you say? Look at how they define “other related materials.” Go ahead, I’ll wait. Back? Okay, when they say “any component, part, or replacement part of a firearm, or an accessory which can be attached to a firearm” you think an anti-gun administration wouldn’t say that applies to magazines and ammo? So – technically – putting rounds in a mag or a mag in a weapon would constitute “assembly” which would require a license. So how much will the license cost? What will the application process be? Will it be “shall-issue” or “may-issue”? How long will it be good for? How much will it cost to renew? All of these details could be used to drastically reduce gun ownership.
The Obama administration reversed a decision to import over 800,000 surplus M-1 rifles and carbines from South Korea. Not only are these weapons of some historical significance, but their arrival on the market would reduce prices on these sorts of weapons, at least in the relatively short term. The rationale (or perhaps rationalization would be a better term) given to the South Korean government for the decision was that the administration “was also worried the weapons could be smuggled to terrorists, gangs or other people with bad intentions.” Well that tells us something interesting. Since all of these rifles would have been sold through FFLs, the Obama administration is saying they believe every firearm sale in the country could put guns in the hands of “terrorists, gangs or other people with bad intentions.” And they call us paranoid.
Under the Obama administration, the CDC did an end-run around the decade-old prohibition on performing research on gun control issues by maintaining they were not researching the gun issue, “rather they deal with the surrounding web of circumstances.” When Republicans in Congress questioned why money was being spent on these sorts of studies, an NIH spokesman replied “Gun-related violence is a public health problem – it diverts considerable health care resources away from other problems and, therefore, is of interest to NIH.” But wait, aren’t you supposed to do the studies before you come to the conclusion that guns have a net negative impact on public health? See, coming to conclusions and then ginning up research to support them is what got Congress to implement the ban in the first place.
Fast & Furious and the whole “90% of illegal weapons in Mexico come from the U.S.” with the subsequent unlawful and unconstitutional long gun sales reporting requirement implemented by the ATF via bureaucratic fiat. And please, don’t even try to say “But Bush did it first!” Under oath, Attorney General Holder stated that he would not equate F&F with Operation Wide Receiver. Among other things, under OWR the ATF informed the Mexicans when, where and in what kind of car guns were crossing the border while under F&F not only were the Mexicans kept in the dark, the ATF liaison officers in Mexico were kept in the dark.
Under the Obama administration the ATF suddenly reversed a forty-two year old ruling, stating that “[t]he temporary assignment of a firearm by an FFL to its unlicensed agents, contractors, volunteers, or any other person who is not an employee of the FFL, even for bona fide business purposes, is a transfer or disposition for purposes of the Gun Control Act” which then requires that the transfer be processed by an FFL, complete with NICS check and a 4473, lengthening the transfer process considerably.
In an op-ed for the Arizona Star, Obama capitalized on the Tucson shooting, calling for more gun control. Except he didn’t call it ‘gun control’, he called it “sound and effective steps that will actually keep those irresponsible, law-breaking few from getting their hands on a gun in the first place”.
Then there was this piece in the Huffington Post in which Obama admitted that he could not achieve gun control through legislation, so “only executive orders or administrative actions — and not an actual bill — are expected to be handed to Congress.” What was it Bill Clinton’s aide said? “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.” Yeah, who needs that whole “work within constitutional limits” stuff anyway, right?
So the next time some ignorant anti says “But Obama hasn’t done anything on gun control... why are you so paranoid?” give them chapter and verse. Not that facts ever make much of an impression on hoplophobes.14 Predictions for 2014
Who knows what 2014 will bring? There are some signs but it’s often the unexpected events that delight and intrigue. Here are some extrapolations and wild guesses for the year ahead.
Chris Froome will win the Tour de France. An obvious one but telling as it’s the fundamental question in the sport and reflects the Tour’s dominance of the calendar. As for Froome, yes… but only if all goes well. A lot can happen between now and July and even during the three weeks. One slip, one injury and it all changes.
Tom Boonen will be back to form for the classics. He seems to alternate between years of success and then bad luck. So after a rotten 2013 he should bounce back. Now 33 his performance can’t get much better but if he can recover his level in 2012 he’ll be ready to face the likes of Fabian Cancellara and Peter Sagan… although he’s got competition in his team from the likes of Zdenek Stybar.
Europcar will struggle in the World Tour. The French team were by far the best in the Pro Conti ranks this year but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to move up. The World Tour means quality and quantity, a much higher level of competition and crucially, a lot more days of racing. The team has the UCI-minimum of 25 riders which means coping with simultaneous races and doing three grand tours is a stretch, all whilst the majority of the team really want to race the Tour de France. There are some good riders but management will have to approach 2014 in a very different way to cope with the change.
Fernando Alonso’s new team might turn out to be an old team. An outsider with a lot of new money – reportedly from Gulf airline Etihad – but so far all the talk is about hiring Chechu Rubiera and Paolo Bettini, two names from the old school. If this keeps up the new team will resemble an old team rather than a fresh approach. We’ll see, will they try anything different like basing all the riders in one place? Or is this going to be a copy of the old model, only this time with petrodollars and consequent wage inflation in the peloton?
Points will matter: UCI points are the sporting version of Bitcoin, soaring and crashing in value. By the end of 2012 UCI points were valuable, so much so that riders were blaming their lack of points for the lack of a contract, in some cases in ignorance of the way the team ranking and “sporting value” system actually works. But this year there were 18 teams applying for 18 places so points didn’t matter. But if one more team wants to apply for a spot in 2015 – Hola Señor Alonso – then the other teams sitting near the relegation zone will have to start playing ranking points chess.
Orica-Greenedge will get a co-sponsor. Orica-“your name here” and the Australian team surely deserves a second sponsor. As wealthy as Gerry Ryan might be there’s value to be had in linking up with this team which is improving and capable of big publicity… and not just from blocked buses.
Chavanel celebrates whilst Gilbert can only look on pic.twitter.com/eMSLHByRe0 — the Inner Ring (@inrng) March 9, 2013
BMC get their act together. You know the story: pots of money but a poor yield. The US-Swiss team has at times resembled a country club where wealthy folk waste time rather than a band of brothers ready to storm a race. But much of this has been about luck and perception, they had so many second and third places in 2013 that only a few lucky breaks are needed to improve; for example just how often does Sylvain Chavanel win bunch sprints… to deny Philippe Gilbert? As turnaround stories go this could be one of the easiest to achieve. People say performance director Allan Peiper is shaking things up and new coach Marco Pinotti should help riders perform better.
MTN-Qhubeka will ride the Giro. That’s 99% certain and much will be made about the first African team – don’t mention Barloworld – and this is notable for the sport and global business as a whole. But this story now seems baked in to the mix. Perhaps the next test will be whether the Giro squad is composed of a majority of African riders or instead relies on the base of Germans in the squad?
Goodbye Katusha? A bit of a wild idea but “the Russian global cycling project” hasn’t worked out too well so why does the team exist? The team’s Russians are often invisible or worse, rumbled for doping, and it’s Joaquim Rodriguez who gives the team so many wins and ranking points. No other team is so dependent on one rider. Team patron Igor Makarov sold his Itera business this year; he has the cash to fund the team personally but are Gazprom and other Russian agencies interested, especially if Rodriguez moves team? Quitting is probably too much but its owners might order a review, although the team has changed managers regularly to shake-up performance.
If 2013 was the “year of the Colombians” then which country will surprise in 2014? Err… Colombia. I’m concerned about Team Colombia, the black-jerseyed team run by Claudio Corti as all their best riders get poached faster than an egg in a changua stall. But there’s still plenty of room for the likes of Rigoberto Uran, Carlos Betancur, Sergio Henao and more to improve. The question is whether they’re hungry to succeed and keep working. Hopefully the answer is yes and expect to see them at the front in one day races too rather than just the Alpine stage races.
Meanwhile the Italians will struggle. Once pro cycling’s top nation but you could probably correlate sales of EPO vials with Italian wins. Now there’s only Lampre-Merida at the top, although Cannondale and Astana retain Italian DNA. But Italian woes are not just restricted to vanishing teams, their races are disappearing as a struggling economy means fewer public subsidies and the calendar is being decimated. Even at the top Giro owner RCS is engulfed in financial scandal. This isn’t something for 2014 alone, it’s a longer trend. The good news is much of this decline is relative, Vincenzo Nibali is at the top of his game and more comforting, the base of the pyramid is strong with a network of clubs, U-23 teams and it remains a land of fine roads. We just need some charismatic riders to spark greater public interest.
Sponsorship will get more innovative and we’re already seeing signs. Some squads change their kit slightly when racing in different countries which represent different markets for sponsors. Now Belkin is offering co-sponsoship on its kit for a race-to-race basis. It makes sense because for all the talk of “globalization”, cycling has a fragmented presence. There’s massive publicity to be gained for a Belgian sponsor backing the team in April and an Italian name joining for May. Just excuse the commentators who might struggle to keep up. But there’s room for much more, for example charging $X to become a premium team supporter and getting team-issue bike, a seat in the team car during a big race.
The UCI’s truth and reconciliation programme won’t be what you expect. Don’t picture a South African-style process of forgiveness, instead the scheme looks set to be framed by the WADA rules and illuminated by the spotlight of media attention which means little room for manoeuvre and fear of participants being plastered over the press for their doping past. See Stuart O’Grady for an example of how the past can come back to ruin a reputation.
What if race-fixing replaced doping as the new new scandal? Doping isn’t going away but it got out of control because the sport thought it was a private matter and part of the job of “being professional”. All this sounds a lot like the continued practice of buying and selling races, whether outright trades of races for cash or hiring rival teams like contract worker for an afternoon shift on the front of the bunch. “Sure it’s unusual but it’s what we do” says the peloton but that’s hard for outsiders to accept. Yes cycling’s special because you conspire with rivals to attack others, to share the work in a breakaway and so on but as much as insiders know this, the law doesn’t. Fixing the outcome of a sporting event is illegal in many countries, indeed the act need not even involve payment, just conspiracy. The hard part is policing this, perhaps the sport will just stop doing this so openly, no longer will riders talk cash payments within range of a TV mic or make the thumb and finger-rubbing baksheesh gesture.
Finally, a bonus prediction says most of these calls will be wrong. That’s the beauty of sport and the folly of forecasting. Look back at 2013 and who would have bet that Marcel Kittel would consistently beat Mark Cavendish in July? That Nairo Quintana would be second in the Tour de France and Chris Horner would win the Vuelta? Who imagined this time last year that Pat McQuaid would be gone? I look forward to being proven wrong.Two Broward County traffic judges dismissed 24,000 pending red-light camera ticket cases Monday, ruling that the program violates Florida law.
Fines from those citations, which came from nearly every city in the county, would have amounted to more than $6.3 million, with each ticket at $264.
"We made the argument that the program was an improper delegation of police power because the videos were being sent out of state for employees of American Traffic Solutions to do the screening," said Ted Hollander, an attorney with Ticket Clinic. He said the firm has challenged the program for more than four years on behalf of clients.
American Traffic Solutions, a vendor based in Arizona, reviewed videos captured by traffic cameras in Broward County before forwarding them to local police for ticketing. State law mandates that only law enforcement can issue violations.
"You can't enforce one law and break another, which is what these cities have been doing for the better part of four years now." Hollander said.
Other cities around South Florida have ended red-light camera programs. Boca Raton stopped its program last month, joining other municipalities like Palm Beach County, Margate, Hallandale Beach and Coral Springs, which have put a stop to red-light camera tickets.
Fort Lauderdale suspended its red light traffic program on March 6, after a Broward traffic court ruled that it violated the statute. The City Commission is expected to discuss the matter at its regular meeting Tuesday night. Mayor Jack Seiler declined to comment on the case, saying he didn't have enough information on the latest ruling.
Hearings are scheduled for cases in Aventura on March 30 and in Boynton Beach on April 1 and in Polk County on May 28th. Hollander said a class-action lawsuit has also been filed in federal court in Miami seeking to recoup fines for clients who have paid tickets since the inception of the program four years ago.
Last month, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach declined an appeal by Hollywood over an October ruling that the city could not delegate ticket writing to American Traffic Solutions. Since that ruling, Hollywood has stopped issuing tickets but it continues to operate 18 red-light cameras. The city is evaluating how to best modify the program to align it with state law, and could revisit any violations captured by the cameras.
"Our city attorney has indicated that changes could be made quickly," said Raelin Storey, spokeswoman for Hollywood.
bballou@tribpub.com, 954-356-4188, Twitter: @briballouThe nation’s colleges and libraries have a message for the Federal Communications Commission: Don’t mess with net neutrality.
Echoing almost a decade of pro-neutrality sentiment in academe, 11 higher-education and library groups released a set of 11 principles on Thursday that promote the notion that all Internet content, regardless of origin, should be treated equally.
The 11 principles—meant to guide the FCC as it considers new open-Internet rules—include recommendations to prohibit the blocking of legal websites, ensure neutrality on public networks, forbid paid prioritization in the transmission of some content over others, and adopt enforceable policies.
Before adopting enforceable policies, though, the FCC will have to find some that stand up in court. In January the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the commission’s existing net-neutrality rules. The FCC responded in May by saying it would propose new rules that could permit telecommunications companies to charge extra for high-speed delivery of content. Net-neutrality advocates worried then that the new rules, if unchanged, could prove detrimental to cybereducation and research collaboration, among other uses of the Internet.
In a news release accompanying the principles, the 11 organizations said the scheme proposed by the FCC would allow Internet-service providers to “give enhanced or favorable transmission to some Internet traffic, block access to certain websites or applications, or otherwise discriminate against certain Internet services for their own commercial reasons, or for any reason at all.” The organizations worry that a paid-prioritization model would shut out many nonprofit institutions.
“Libraries and higher-education institutions that cannot afford to pay extra fees could be relegated to the ‘slow lane’ on the Internet,” they said.
The public-comment period for the most recent FCC proposal runs until July 15. Although the principles laid out on Thursday do not constitute an official filing with the commission, several of the organizations that signed the statement of principles will also submit a more detailed and legally oriented response to the FCC before the comment period expires.
The organizations that signed Thursday’s principles are:After pulling a muscle, Jarvis Johnson couldn’t work anymore. He lost his trucking job and went on federal assistance. After paying $326 to his brother and sister-in-law to rent a room in their home, he had $10 left over each month to pay for everything else. So he filed for CalFresh with Alameda County’s Social Services Agency and waited.
CalFresh is California’s rebranded name for food stamps, vouchers distributed to low-income Americans by the federal government, which can be exchanged for food in many stores. Each county is required to evaluate CalFresh applications for eligibility within 30 days of their submission. If an applicant has less than $100 cash to their name or has little to no income—like Johnson did at the time of his application—then the county is required to take emergency measures. The applicant may qualify for expedited food stamps, which requires the county to issue benefits within three calendar days.
But it took Johnson over eight days for him to receive his CalFresh benefits, according to a lawsuit filed against the county’s social services agency last month. His first application was denied, he said in an interview. So Johnson went back to the agency’s San Pablo Avenue office in Oakland with an advocate from the Homeless Action Center, a legal advocacy group, and filed again. Days passed, but the county didn’t get in touch with him. The lawsuit claims that, by then, Johnson was “in desperate need of food.”
“They’re messing with people’s lives,” Johnson said quietly, in an interview over coffee last month. “It seems like they don’t know the urgency. Or they just don’t care.”
Johnson is now one of three plaintiffs in Lilley, et al. v. County of Alameda, et al., a class action lawsuit that was filed in late September against the agency and its director, Lori Cox. The suit alleges that the agency routinely maintains a backlog of pending CalFresh applications. By failing to process these applications within the timeframe mandated by California law, the suit argues, the county’s social services agency prevents applicants like Johnson from easily accessing food. “As a result,” states the plaintiffs’ complaint, “Alameda County residents are facing undernutrition and hunger, homelessness, and serious health risks.”
“The federal Food Stamps Act has determined that having access to food is critical,” said Lauren Hansen, an attorney for the plaintiffs, in a phone interview. “These deadlines are not up for any debate.”
According to data released by California’s Department of Social Services, between August, 2014, and July, 2015, the county processed 16.5 percent of all approved applications and 25 percent of all denied applications after their 30-day window had elapsed. In July 2015, Lilley claims, 13 percent of all expedited applications were delayed as well.
The county’s backlog of CalFresh applications hit 10,657 in July 2015, the last month in which county data submitted to California’s Department of Social Services (CDSS) was publicly available at the time that Lilley was filed. According to data released by the CDSS in September, Alameda is the worst county in the state at processing food stamps applications within the time period required by law.
At the time Lilley was filed, the suit claims, Johnson’s fellow plaintiff Daniel Mallory had applied for emergency expedited assistance and had been waiting on his application for nearly a month. The third plaintiff, Donald Ray Lilley, had applied for general rather than expedited CalFresh benefits and waited for over 52 days before receiving them. “Without the CalFresh benefits,” the lawsuit claimed, “[he] is not getting enough to eat.” Before receiving food stamps, Hanson said, Lilley subsisted off of ramen noodles and pasta and was rarely able to get fresh produce. His diet gave him acid reflux, which he mitigated by sleeping sitting up. “Before he got food stamps, it had been happening every single night,” Hansen said.
Johnson and the other plaintiffs in Lilley are now receiving CalFresh benefits. Hansen said that their applications weren’t processed until after the class action suit was filed, when their legal counsel directly contacted the county’s attorneys.
Lori Cox, the director of the Alameda County’s Social Services Agency, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Scott Emblidge, the attorney representing the county in the suit. “Our mission is to promote the social and economic well-being of the people who come to us for service,” said Sylvia Soublet, the agency’s public affairs director, in an interview last week. “We work to do the very best job that we can.” She declined to comment on Lilley et al.
In the years following his workplace injury, Johnson says, he lost his house and his marriage “went sour.” Today, his main income is from General Assistance, a monthly cash stipend that the county distributes to residents whose total possessions are worth $1,000 or less. Johnson says he filed for disability and fought for workman’s compensation, and he spends most of his remaining $10 a month shuttling between doctors’ appointments. If his brother and sister-in-law hadn’t offered him food and a place to stay, Johnson says, he’d be frequenting soup kitchens. Their generosity takes a toll on them, he says, both financially and emotionally. “Can you imagine how difficult it is for them to take care of someone grown?” Johnson said. “It’s not like taking care of a kid.” CalFresh benefits would help them all make ends meet.
Johnson describes his CalFresh application experience as something of a bureaucratic purgatory. The first time he applied—without the help of the Homeless Action Center’s advocate—he found some of the forms so confusing that they took him nearly two hours to complete. With the exception of a friendly woman at the front desk, he says, no one at the San Pablo Avenue office particularly tried to help him. “They treat you like you’re some kind of kid,” he said of the staff. “They make you feel inadequate, like you’re really a dummy when it comes to filling out the paperwork and understanding what they’re asking.”
“When you go up there [in person], they tell you in a mean and nasty way that you’re supposed to have an appointment,” he continued. “When you say that you left messages, they’ll tell you that you didn’t leave any. Now how are you supposed to prove that you left a message?”
He wasn’t the only one frustrated with the agency. In the hours that Johnson spent waiting for help in the San Pablo Avenue office, he says he overheard people threaten to beat up their social workers. Then there was the profanity. And the shouting matches. “This is a daily thing,” Johnson said quietly. “You can imagine what we go through all the time. I mean, when you want to get physical with a worker, it’s bad.”
Hansen and Stacie Kinser, one of her colleagues, say that the agency’s red tape most severely affects its most vulnerable clients. “Working with this population, you find that they have multiple intersecting issues,” said Kinser. A significant percentage of Alameda County’s poorest residents also suffer from mental and physical disabilities, she said, and food insecurity can aggravate those health problems. Hansen said that her clients skip meals, which is particularly problematic for those required to take their medications with food. “I have clients that go dumpster diving,” she said. “Those who are diabetic are in a really precarious situation.”
Other low-income CalFresh applicants have dental issues, and Hansen says that due to state cuts in dental care services their only recourse is often to have teeth extracted. “So they can’t eat any food—they need food that they don’t have to chew,” she said. “And that can be really heartbreaking to watch.”
For mentally ill clients, said Kinser, weathering the agency’s paperwork, or the long wait in its waiting rooms, can be even more difficult. “When it’s a life or death issue to get enough to eat,” she said, “add to that level of stress a level of mental disabilities, and it can just exacerbate the problem.”
The suit is currently in evidence discovery, and Alameda County’s attorneys filed their first answer to the class action complaint in late October. It denies all of the plaintiffs’ allegations, including the claim that the county had not issued benefits to Johnson, Lilley and Mallory. The county’s response argues that the plaintiffs do not have sufficient facts to support their case and suggests that the three men are at fault for their situation. “Plaintiffs and the putative class members failed to use reasonable diligence to mitigate the damages allegedly sustained by them,” the document says, in response to the plaintiffs’ allegations that they faced severe hardships following their applications’ delays.
The county also denied that there was a backlog of 10,657 applications in July, and blamed that number on their own faulty computer system. In a motion submitted to the judge last week, attorney Scott Emblidge stated that the “defendants recently learned that its reports submitted to the State contained inaccurate numbers.” According to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, the Social Services Agency’s own handbook states that the county’s data-keeping system is “not programmed correctly to report statistics of late [expedited service] determinations,” a fact that the county’s response does not dispute.
In the data Alameda County submitted for September, 2015, which the county appears to have sent to the state after Lilley was filed, its social services agency states that it instead has a backlog of 3,527 applications. While a considerably lower number, having any backlog would still violate California’s mandated processing timeframe.
Hansen and Kinser say that they don’t know why the agency allegedly takes so long to process some CalFresh applications. States and counties with similar issues have responded by hiring more workers, simplifying application procedures and streamlining databases, said Hansen.
Demand for CalFresh is heavy in Alameda County: 12.5 percent of its residents live below the poverty line, according to the most recent census data, and 1 in 5 residents rely on food bank assistance in some capacity. (The national average is 1 in 7). According to their website, the Social Services Agency’s 2,200 employees provide some form of assistance to 11.3 percent of the county’s population—approximately 173,690 people.
On a state level, California cut $15 billion in funding to health and human services programs in the wake of the recession. As of 2010, the state has the lowest food stamps participation rate in the country, according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s most recent available study. A 2013 study by the California Budget and Policy Center found that 43 percent of eligible Californians are not receiving CalFresh benefits.
For the time being, Johnson says he’s doing better. CalFresh now provides him with $194 a month, most of which he contributes to his brother and sister-in-law’s household. “It takes pressure off them,” he said. “It makes me feel like I’m providing and pulling my own weight, even though it’s not nearly enough.” He now has $20 left over each month to get to his doctors’ appointments. He wants to get back to work and to get his own place.
But he’s still struck by the lack of empathy he said he received when he waited for social services to help him. “I think this is why they judge me,” Johnson said. “They look at me, but they’re not me. They’re not living in this body. They’re not feeling what I’m feeling. They’re not having that thought that you’re not doing the things you used to do to feel whole as a man.”Finnish cinema is a tough racket. Its scope is limited by the country’s minuscule market of 5.4 million inhabitants who speak an unusual language. Even big, mainstream movie productions rely on grants to be feasible. Unlike say, their Swedish colleagues, Finnish filmmakers don’t get a boost from a potential audience of neighbouring countries, who sort of understand the language.
Despite this, there’s a bunch of modern Finnish movies that deliver in terms of being widely understandable art. Many of those reflect very particular, recurring themes of struggles, melancholy and nature.
So, let’s get to the movies.
Rare Exports (2010)
Here’s the thing: Santa Claus is a type of monster, found in Lapland. Based on a previous short film in which wild Santas are captured and sold, Rare Exports gives the genre of X-mas themed comedy horrors a much-needed boost. In the words of the late beloved film critic Roger Ebert: “It’s an idea from “The Thing,” where an alien was found in Antarctica and brought frozen into a hut, where drip … drip … drip … it began to thaw.”
What it says about Finland: Its people are slowly waking up to the full potential of harvesting all natural resources.
Frozen Land (Paha maa, 2005)
Based loosely on Leo Tolstoy’s “The Forged Coupon”, a series of events is triggered by a teacher losing his job and his stray son spending some counterfeit money. Sickness and bad karma spread like wildfire during an alienating, cold winter trip through Helsinki, revolving around alcoholism, violence and deadly mistakes. “Frozen Land” isn’t a particularly uplifting movie to watch, but it remains among the best Finnish drama movies of the past decade.
What it says about Finland: Winter is coming. And it doesn’t bring out the best in people.
The Man Without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, 2002)
If there’s an internationally renowned Finnish avant-garde filmmaker, it’s director Aki Kaurismäki. The Man Without a Past may be his best-known movie, but it operates within a well established low-key style. In the movie, a working class man, newly arrived in Helsinki, loses his memory after a violent mugging. The film follows the protagonist as he reestablishes himself on the outskirts of society among other marginalised characters. Kaurismäki displays a certain kind of longing for simpler times and pulls off a stunningly relaxed pacing and settings that feel sort of ageless.
What it says about Finland: You’ll feel more at home if you learn to appreciate the empty space between conversations.
Iron Sky (2012)
Here’s what you need to know: Iron Sky is a comedy. Plot: Nazis fled to the moon at the end of WWII and they’re making a huge, armed comeback in 2018. Also, a Sarah Palin lookalike is the president of the United States of America. And Udo Kier does a super-creepy bad guy. Boom. Stylistically speaking, Iron Sky isn’t for everyone. It flies, like a Nazi saucer, way past your regular slapstick humour and any Austin Powers sequel straight into camp territory. What makes Iron Sky noteworthy is director Timo Vuorensola’s lifehack approach to film making: Stuck in a small country with a limited market? Turn to the internet for crowdsourced funding and production assistance. That’s simply beautiful engineering.
What it says about Finland: At the Russian border, you’ll lose your mind to anxiety if you don’t poke some occasional fun at geopolitics.
Mother of Mine (Äideistä parhain, 2006)
During WWII, tens of thousands of Finnish children were sent off to neutral Sweden to avoid the horrors of war. Mother of Mine follows the fate of one of them, Eero, as he struggles with feelings of being abandoned by his biological mother as he’s shipped off to Sweden at the age of nine. Matters are complicated further by Eero’s tumultuous relationship with his surrogate mum.
What it says about Finland: It takes over half a century to really open up about war trauma.
Black Ice (Musta jää, 2007)
A middle-aged woman realises her husband is having an affair with a younger woman. She goes to extreme lengths to protect her marriage in this triangle drama of Hitchcockian or even Kubrickesque proportions. As noted in a review by Finland’s biggest daily newspaper, Black Ice might be worth mentioning solely on the merit of being co-produced by a German company without striving for clichéd, exotic depictions of the north. Rather, it shows how universally metropolitan Finnish life can look on the silver screen.
What it says about Finland: Our country may seem like a big magical forest when you approach by plane, but on the ground it’s a big circus of highways, suburban living rooms and bourgeois first world problems.
Join us on Facebook TwitterSINGAPORE - The photographer behind an altered image that won a contest on Nikon's Facebook page has withdrawn his photo from the competition.
Nikon announced this on its Facebook page on Sunday (Jan 31) night after an apology and explanation drew more criticism from detractors.
The photo Look Up was also removed from Nikon's Facebook page.
The Japanese camera maker said it recognised that for the photographic community, the photoshopped image by Mr Chay Yu Wei was "not a reflection of photography".
Nikon said: "We have engaged with the contestant on this, who has offered to withdraw from the competition."
Mr Chay was awarded a prize for his black and white photo showing an aeroplane flying overhead, framed by a ladder. Scores of derisive comments and sarcastic memes were then posted on Nikon's page, with many saying the photo was digitally manipulated.
In an Instagram post late on Saturday (Jan 30), Mr Chay apologised for his "mistake", saying that he added the plane into the picture "just for fun" and that he crossed the line by submitting it for the competition.
"Like one user commented, I was on a photo walk in Chinatown and I chanced upon that set of ladders. I snapped a picture of it, and subsequently felt that a plane at that spot would make for an interesting point of view. Hence, I inserted the plane with PicsArt and uploaded it to Instagram," he wrote. "...This case, that small plane was just for fun and it was not meant to bluff anyone."
Hello everyone, This goes out to everyone who has seen my Chinatown plane post. I'm sorry! This is going to be quite a read so that's the first thing I would like you to read if you don't have time to read below; I would like to apologize for the mistake I have done. I've been quiet so far because I've been trying to contact Nikon and have been waiting for them to contact me back to discuss about this. I understand that what I would say might affect Nikon's brand hence I decided to wait for their advice. However, since more than 24 hours have passed and I have not managed to have discussions with Nikon, I think I shouldn't wait and it's important for me to come out to address this issue. Like one user commented, I was on a photo walk in Chinatown and I chanced upon that set of ladders. I snapped a picture of it, and subsequently felt that a plane at that spot would make for an interesting point of view. Hence, I inserted the plane with PicsArt and uploaded it to Instagram. That's how I use Instagram, sometime it's to showcase the work I'm proud of, sometimes just to have fun. This case, that small plane was just for fun and it was not meant to bluff anyone. I would have done it with photoshop if I really meant to lie about it, but no, it was a playful edit using the PicsArt app and uploaded to Instagram. When my friends commented with some questions, I also answered it jokingly, saying it's the last flight of the day and saying it was my lucky day that I did not wait too long. At that time, of course everyone who read it took it as a joke, before this issue arrived and it is taken seriously. However, I made a mistake by not keeping it to Instagram as a casual social media platform. I crossed the line by submitting the photo for a competition. I meant it as a joke and I'm really sorry to Nikon for disrespecting the competition. It is a mistake and I shouldn't have done that. I also shouldn't have jokingly answered Nikon that I caught the plane in mid-air and should have just clarified that |
corporations when the financial crisis struck in 2008.
In theory, we're all equal at the ballot box, and so popular majorities should be able to force politicians to address their concerns. But the Occupy movement has caught fire because millions of Americans realize that the way Washington works in reality bears no resemblance to the political science textbook explanations.
So how does the 1 percent get away with it?
The political scientist Sheldon Wolin has gone so far as to call the U.S. an example of "inverted totalitarianism"--where corporations dominate the government, voting is the only acceptable political participation, and democracy is "managed" to produce only results that the government and corporations want. To Wolin, the corporate-controlled media play a role in helping to manage democracy, even behind its conceit of being a free press.
It's undeniable that corporations play a major role in government--and always have. Most great American fortunes were made by capitalists who used the power of government to gain advantages over competitors or to profit from public resources. For example, the Gilded Age plutocrats--the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Stewarts, the Goulds--built their railroad-based fortunes on the foundation of $100 million in federal and state grants and 200 million acres of federal land grants. In today's economy, the nuclear power industry and the Internet are both products of the privatization of technologies developed in government laboratories.
Despite the free-market ideologues' rhetoric about "big government" pitted against "big business," the truth is that big business has always found it useful to invest in politicians and their political parties to win government policies that improve their bottom lines.
Thus, during the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis, Congress hauled S&L crook Charles Keating before a hearing and one representative asked if he thought the thousands of dollars he had given to politicians was to buy influence. Keating answered, "I sure hope so."
The two main pro-capitalist parties in U.S. politics have certain tendencies of supporting different industrial sectors: Republicans generally win the support of the oil and gas industry, agribusiness and defense, and Democrats rack up money from Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Wall Street. In fact, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the financial sector accounted for 30 percent of all spending on all sides during the 2008 election cycle.
Still, it would be misleading to conclude the Democrats simply represent one section or coalition of business, while Republicans represent another.
The operation of the two-party system assures that these divisions within American business are ad hoc and don't congeal into permanent ideological camps. Business must learn to operate within the U.S. federal system, which means that industries that may be big Republican donors at the presidential level support, but also contributors to local Democratic political machines.
Secondly, corporations like to increase their bargaining power. They want to get as much as they can from their political involvement, and it helps them to play one party off against the other.
Finally, corporations seeking government favors subscribe to "lesser evilism" as much as voters do. The majority party in Congress is usually assured a majority of campaign contributions as well. Since its leaders will be in positions of authority in Congress, with the power to advance legislation, business will contribute in order to maintain their "access."
What does Corporate America expect for its investment? In total, the 2008 presidential election cost somewhere north of $5 billion. While this seems like a staggering sum--and, indeed, it represents a huge increase in the cost of the presidential election in just four years--it is equivalent to the size of an average "mid-cap" company, as measured by the value of all its stock. In other words, larger than Panera Bread, but smaller than Chipotle Mexican Grill.
In fact, what's most notable is how a relatively small investment in politicians will bring big returns for the "investors."
For what amounts to peanuts, the defense industry won tens of billions in business from the Iraq war, and Wall Street scored trillions from the federal government's bailout. A 2007 study analyzing corporate donations and company stock performance between 1979 and 2004 found that corporations which contributed the most to political candidates had stock prices that beat the overall stock market by an average of 2.5 percentage points annually.
Despite much anti-government rhetoric that emanates from business sectors, the ruling class needs a capitalist state to guarantee its property and its influence against rival capitalist classes.
As long as the regime's political parties remain committed to maintaining that state, big business can abide changes in government. But to assure that governments don't enact policies that work too much to the detriment of business, the capitalists attempt to shape and control the political parties that regularly compete to run the government. This is one way by which the capitalist class mediates conflicting goals and agendas.
Pro-capitalist policy doesn't come from some business cabal, as conspiracy theorists allege. It flows through different private foundations and think tanks, universities, quasi-public agencies and the political parties. All of these recruit professionals from the corporate sector who are groomed to carry corporate policy into government. Just think of the many ways in which billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad have managed to influence government policy on "school reform."
The government--and in particular, the executive branch acting as what Karl Marx called "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"--pursues policies that balance between short-term economic and political needs, and even between sections of capital.
In this sense, the capitalist state is less of a tool in the hands of capitalists as an arena in which capitalist interests are mediated.
The idea that Democrats and Republicans are committed to capitalism and to advancing U.S. interests overseas is hardly news. But the capitalist class takes nothing for granted. It exerts constant pressure on the political parties to assure that its interests are carried out. While there are numerous tentacles that tie the parties to big business, two major areas of corporate influence stand out: candidate selection, and corporate lobbying and policy advice.
Mark Hanna, the first modern political fundraiser and fixer who helped the Republicans sweep to a landslide victory in 1896 over the Democrats and Populists, once said: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."
A modern-day equivalent might be Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before advancing to chief of staff in Barack Obama's White House. He once reportedly told DCCC staffers: "The first third of your campaign is money, money, money. The second third is money, money and press. And the last third is votes, press and money."
Anyone hoping to mount a successful campaign for national office needs millions of dollars. In the 2010 congressional election, the average House candidate spent almost $1.7 million for his or her seat. The average senator spent $3.1 million. The average incumbent senator running for reelection spent over $9 million.
The expense of electioneering means that both major parties look to wealthy individuals and corporations for their funding. And thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision equating campaign spending with free speech, we have the rise of Super PACs--non-profits that can collect millions in corporate cash to spend on campaigns without disclosing their donors.
The system of organized bribery that finances American political parties assures that no one who might challenge this status quo becomes a serious contender. "Any candidate that expects to show up on the PAC lists is well aware of the need to tailor, if not eliminate, any populist leanings," a Democratic congressional aide told investigative journalists Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein. "It's not a formula that opens the door to any but establishment candidates."
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that 40 percent of House freshmen elected in 2010 are millionaires.
Even the fact that Democrats gain the bulk of contributions from labor unions doesn't change the fact that corporate money swamps labor money. In the 2008 election cycle, the Democrats collected more money from just the finance, insurance and real estate industries ($83.7 million) than from all labor and liberal organizations combined ($79.9 million).
Once in office, administrations are subject to constant pressure from big business to adopt pro-corporate policies.
Since the 1930s, the Business Council, an advisory organization composed of chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations, has acted as a sounding board and proponent for pro-business policies within every presidential administration. All U.S. presidents have regularly consulted the Council and other organizations, like the Committee for Economic Development (CED). Democratic and Republican administrations have appointed Council and CED members to government advisory panels and to government administrative positions.
Business sustains these kinds of organizations--along with others like the Conference Board, the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers--to be able to develop class-wide positions on a range if issues. These can then be presented to the government through elected politicians and through executive branch agencies.
Business isn't always successful in getting everything it wants, but it always gets what it can.
When politicians seek to develop policies on any one of a number of topics, they find business think tanks ready to offer advice. One particularly crude example was that of former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley, who represented New Jersey when it played host to 10 of the largest 18 pharmaceutical companies. Bradley's speeches "parrot[ed], sometimes virtually verbatim, background material produced by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry's chief lobbying group," wrote Cockburn and Silverstein.
Likewise, hawkish former Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington state was for years known as the "senator from Boeing" because of his devotion to the interests of his state's largest military contractor. Today, Sen. Charles Schumer is known as Wall Street's gopher in Congress.
The statistics show that business devotes more money and time to lobbying and advocacy than it does to electioneering. This is because the real bonanza for companies takes place behind closed doors, often in the arcane minutiae of legislation and regulations. Here is where companies can get favors for themselves, or--equally as important--rewrite regulations to support their profit-making endeavors, the environment or consumers be damned.
This is where a single line in legislation or regulations can undo or render meaningless any politician's campaign promises. It's also the place where "our side," broadly defined, is completely overmatched. During the 2001 "debate" on the Bush administration's tax cut legislation, Capitol Hill was crawling with lobbyists from every conceivable industry, seeking favorable treatment. At the same time, the AFL-CIO had one lobbyist working quarter-time on this.
Given what we know, is it any surprise that the 12 members of the congressional "super-committee" charged with proposing $1.2 trillion in cuts to the federal deficit have seen increased contributions to their coffers? Or that thousands of lobbyists are organizing members of Congress to pressure the super-committee?
When elections change the congressional majority, there is a parallel changing of the guard in lobbying firms and congressional staffs. So today, there's a former lobbyist for the Securities Industry Association serving as staff director for the House Ways and Means committee--and a former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin running the staff of the House Appropriations Committee.
All of this helps to create what's been called an "iron triangle" of industry, Congress and the executive branch, which remains largely intact regardless of election results. It assures that no matter which party is officially in power, big business' interests will be attended to. This is even more assured today, as a revolving door between lobbying groups and government officials becomes institutionalized.
For industry bosses, this is the beauty of the two-party system. If one party falls out of favor with the voters, there's always the other one--with predictable policies--waiting in the wings.Now this is what we call a nanny state!
You know the phrase "boys will be boys"? We think that, if we're being honest, that statement can be applied to all kids, especially when they're hovering around pre-K age. Kids get into stuff, don't have much in the way of human empathy, and aren't exactly socially programmed yet. Bottom line -- kids get into scrapes. That is the closest thing they have to a career.
But one preschool is trying to keep kid-on-kid violence down to a minimum, and they're trying to do that by outlawing superheroes.
A flyer has made its way online that claims kids' imaginations have reached the point where they are "dangerously overactive, causing injuries." The directors of the school feel this problem stems from kids re-enacting things from their favorite shows and movies, but make a point of specifying "Wrestling, Super Hero play, and Monster games."
Zoom In
Teachers and directors, in this case, are asking parents to "monitor the different media' their children are viewing. Which, well, duh. Parents should probably be aware of what their kids watch on TV.
But what we're not so sure about is whether kids shouldn't be permitted to enjoy comic-book characters. Seems kind of extreme, doesn't it? Yes, there can be a lot of action, but, overwhelmingly, heroes are positive role models for kids. They can often serve as a means to teach right and wrong.
What we're saying is -- isn't this throwing the baby out with the bathwater? What do you think?
(via Comics Beat)In one of my previous articles on the blueprint for creating a championship team, I made a statement that George Karl could arguably be considered the greatest coach in team history. Someone took note of that and made the comment that the title should go to Lenny Wilkens instead. That question had me thinking: who is the greatest head coach in Seattle SuperSonics history?
I wanted to go further than that though. Every fan knows that when discussing the greatest coaches in team history, it boils down to either Wilkens or Karl. I wanted to get an idea of who were some of the other great, and even not-so-great, coaches Seattle has seen. I did a quick Google search looking for a list of the greatest coaches in team history, and I was surprised. No one had ever come up with a list.
People try to rank the greatest players or the greatest teams, but coaches? Not so much. Coaches are people too, you know? A great coach can elevate a team as much as a sixth man off the bench (or maybe even more) can. It had to be done. I was going to rank all 15 men who have roamed the sidelines as coach of the Seattle SuperSonics.
It’s not an easy task. Unlike players, there are not a bunch of stats to help get us started. And even the stats that are out there, wins and losses, are not indicative of the true impact of a coach. Wins don’t make a coach, but rather, how well a team plays together and maximizes its potential. With that in mind, I combed through the team’s history and drew upon that my rankings of the greatest coaches in SuperSonics history.
As there are a lot of coaches and a lot to be said about each one, I'm dividing this assignment into different parts. The first batch of coaches I dub the "forgettables." I'm not ranking them based on their whole coaching career, but just their time in Seattle. The "forgettables" are those the organization probably really wish we had not hired in the first place.
INCOMPLETE: Bucky Buckwalter, Bob Kloppenburg
Rather than try to make something out of nothing, I've just decided to give incompletes to two coaches who were never really meant to be the team's coach, and thus, didn't serve for long enough. Bucky Buckwalter was an assistant coach for the Sonics before being named to the head job on an interim basis after Tom Nissalke was fired midseason during the 1972-73 campaign. While he would later have a successful career in the front office with the Portland Trail Blazers, his time in Seattle was rather unmemorable. The only thing that could be said is that he had a more successful stint than his predecessor, finishing the season 13-24, an improvement over Nissalke's 13-32.
Bob Kloppenburg served as the team's head coach during 1992 for a grand total of four games. A well-respected defensive guru, he simply served as a stop gap between the firing of K.C. Jones and the hiring of George Karl. He finished with a record of 2-2.
13. Bob Hopkins, 1977 (5-17,.227)
A cousin to Bill Russell, Hopkins served as Russell's assistant coach before ascending to the top job. He inherited a team that finished 40-42, which while not great, was still something to work with. He had the talents of future Sonics legends like Gus Williams, Fred Brown, Dennis Johnson, and Jack Sikma at his disposal. Yet, he could only muster a 5-17.
If the team had continued winning at the same rate, it would have won a mere 19 games, a franchise record for futility. Immediately upon his departure, the team won six games in a row under the leadership of Lenny Wilkens. They would go the rest of the way 42-18 and make a trip to the NBA Finals. Undoubtedly Wilkens was a great coach, but for a team to look like the worst team in the league at the beginning of the season and one of the best by the end is not only a credit to Wilkens but a demerit to Hopkins. The difference in winning percentage between Wilkens and Hopkins during the 1977-78 season was.473, a margin equivalent to about 40 games. It doesn't matter how good a coach someone is, it takes a lot to improve a team by 40 games.
In all fairness to Hopkins though, he did make solid contributions to the franchise-just not in the head coaching capacity. He was Slick Watts' head coach in college and persuaded Seattle to give the point guard a look. Hopkins was the man behind the drafting of Jack Sikma, despite the fact the whole organization was against it. As an assistant, he was hard working, loyal, and a man of many roles. And he may have actually been a terrific coach. According to Watts, Hopkins was, "one of the top five coaches in the world." However, judged based on his time with Seattle, he'll go down as the team's worst.
12. Tom Nissalke, 1972-73 (13-32,.289)
To me, the Coach of the Year award doesn't mean much. For example, from 2006-2009, the award winners were Avery Johnson, Sam Mitchell, Byron Scott, and Mike Brown. All four of those men were fired within two years of winning the honor. Winning Coach of the Year is no indicator of future success, and those men, along with Tom Nissalke, are evidence of that.
After Lenny Wilkens stepped down in his dual role as a player-coach to just play in 1972, the Sonics were left without a head coach. To fill the vacancy, they hired Nissalke, who was the reigning ABA Coach of the Year with the Dallas Chaparels. Described by Bob Houbregs, general manager at the time, as having shown, "intensity, knowledge and complete dedication in the game," Nissalke, who was only 37 and just had one year of professional head coaching experience, had the potential to make a big splash in the coaching ranks. It just didn't happen in Seattle.
The Sonics were coming off the best season in franchise history, winning 47 games. They had been steadily making progress, improving their record in each of the team's first five season. If they had been taking a step forward each year, with Nissalke, they took five step backs. At the time of his firing, the Sonics were a mere 13-32, with a winning percentage on par with that of their inaugural season. Assistant Buckwalter would replace him and win the same number of games, except with eight less losses.
The team's decline can't be placed solely on Nissalke. Prior to the start of the season, Wilkens was shipped off to Cleveland, so losing one of the team's best player was a big blow. The major problem though was Nissalke failing to inspire his players. His demanding style, instead of getting the best out of players, rubbed them the wrong way. As Watts would write in his book, Tales from the Seattle SuperSonics hardwood, "When a few SuperSonics found Nissalke too tough for their high-salaried style, they boasted - even to the referees - that they would lose enough to get him fired."
11. Bob Weiss, 2005-06 (13-17,.433)
Like the other two coaches I've mentioned, Weiss didn't even last a full season with the team. 13-17 at the time of his firing, the team wasn't awful and were just two games behind the division lead, but they were definitely underachieving. Coming off a surprising 52-30 season in 2005 that saw the Sonics win the Northwest Division and take the eventual champs San Antonio Spurs to six games, the team was expected to be in the playoffs in 2006. When Nate McMillan left, the team sought continuity, so they went with Weiss.
Though Weiss' previous track record as the head man was unimpressive at 210-282 and with just two playoff wins, it was hard not to like his promotion. He was experienced, knowledgeable, and the players were familiar with him. In addition, Weiss was a very likeable guy due to his humor and laid-back attitude.
Unfortunately, that laid-back attitude didn't allow him to effectively run the squad. The Sonics lacked discipline as Weiss never truly had control of his team. Major contributors to the 2005 season like Vladimir Radmanovic and Luke Ridnour weren't stepping up under Weiss. The team ranked last in the league in Defensive Rating (though in all fairness, they weren't that great before either).
I don't want to be too hard on Weiss though. After starting 17-3 in 2005, the squad finished the season at 35-27 and then lost Antonio Daniels, probably their third best player, to free agency. Perhaps the Sonics weren't supposed to be all that great in 2006 anyways, but still, a little bit more was desired. In his last game as head coach of Seattle, the team lost by 19 to a short-handed Indiana Pacer team, an appropriate ending to a coaching stint marked by disappointment.
10. P.J. Carlesimo, 2007-08, (20-62,.244)
Because I, and any loyal Seattleite, would not merge the Sonics and Thunder franchise together, I am only evaluating Carlesimo based on the sole season he was in Seattle, which was 2007-08. If I did include the Thunder's first season in Oklahoma City, Carlesimo probably ranks below Weiss, but for now, he's above him
It's kind of difficult to judge Carlesimo's coaching job based on that single season. On the one hand, the team was 20-62, which was the worst in team history. On the other hand, he was coaching a team that was in the first year of rebuilding and led by a 19-year-old rookie. At the same time, one could argue that that team had some depth and a good mixture of young potential and veteran players that should have kept it out of the cellar. But then again, there was really no one player capable of carrying the team.
To me, it's all about exceeding expectations. Does the final product fall short or rise above the sum of the parts? Does the team play better than it looks on paper? I took a look at the 2007-2008 NBA season preview on ESPN, and of the ten analysts, only one expected the Sonics to come in last in the West. In contrast, the most common prediction was 11th, with three analysts predicting that. Were the Sonics expected to be bad? Yep. But last place bad? Nope. So Carlesimo's team underachieved with him at the helm, but probably not as much as Weiss' team did.
9. Paul Westphal, 1998-2000 (76-71,.517)
Westphal is the first coach to appear that actually has a winning record coaching the SuperSonics. This just goes to show that it's not all about the wins and losses, as five coaches that I'm going to rank above him have worse winning percentages.
Westphal had a tough task to begin win. He had to replace a George Karl, a beloved coach who led the team to three 60-win seasons in five years, and an NBA Finals appearance. However, if anyone was up to the task, one would have thought it was this guy. He had a rather successful stint with the Phoenix Suns where he led Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson, and company to the 1993 NBA Finals. However, he couldn't bring the magic from the desert up to the Emerald City.
At the end of the 1998 season, Karl's last as coach, the team looked like legitimate threats to the Chicago Bulls threepeat. By the end of the 1999 season, Westphal's first as coach, the team looked ready to head off to summer vacation, not even making the playoffs. The team somewhat rebounded to make it to the postseason in 2000, though they lost in the first round. However, with the acquisition of Patrick Ewing the following offseason to team up with Gary Payton and Vin Baker, the team was thought to be in the upper echelon of the West once more. Instead, they started off 6-9 and Westphal got the boot.
I honestly don't think Westphal is a bad coach, but he just wasn't a good fit for the personnel. Just four games into the 2000-01 season, Westphal offered to resign after postgame shouting by players in the locker room. Later in the season, Payton and Westphal got into a heated exchange during an in-game huddle, leading to Payton being suspended before he apologized. He had lost control of the locker room, and his players seemed to stop listening to him.
Still, as bad as all of this sounds, not all the blame can be placed on Westphal. Though he inherited a successful team, it was an aging team. Also, it was not his fault that Baker couldn't stay in shape and let himself go. Nor was it his fault that Ewing, though serviceable, was a shadow of his old self by the time he got to Seattle. And I think a lot of people would agree that Payton is not exactly the easiest player to get along with. In addition, one thing to take into account is that after Westphal's dismissal the team did not get substantially better. While the success of the Karl era left Seattle fans wanting more, what keeps Westphal from being lower on this list is that he still put up decent squads.
Conclusion
All of the coaches I've mentioned so far have had rather forgettable stints with the Seattle SuperSonics. That's not to say they were bad coaches though. Among them are a Coach of the Year winner and an NBA Finals appearance, for whatever those are worth. These men know basketball and had credentials to be hired as head coach. However, when they came to Seattle, for a variety of reasons, things did not go their way.
At the end of the day, these coaches didn't bring the type of success expected. With Hopkins and Nissalke, nothing went right. Losses were assured just about every game. With the other three, it was all about underachieving. Weiss took a possibly good team and made it below average. Carlesimo took a possibly bad team and made it really bad. Westphal took a possibly really good team and made it just solid. For that, these coaches are the forgettables of Sonics lore.Mumbai: Not too long ago, Sonu Nigam took to Twitter to express his displeasure over the use of loudspeakers at places of worship. And now singer-actress Suchitra Krishnamoorthi has expressed her take on the same.
On Sunday early morning, Suchitra tweeted to tell how religion is imposed on people! She tweeted:
came home at 4.45 am 2 most aggressive/ ear shattering call of azaan. Nothing more lowlife & dumb than such extreme imposed religiousity — Suchitra (@suchitrak) 23 July 2017
The singer received mix reactions. While some supported her, the rest criticised for expressing herself.
For the uninitiated, Nigam, who tweeted about Azaan and loudspeakers, was slammed for writing his views through a series of tweets. A cleric also reportedly issued a Fatwa against him and the singer gave a fitting response by voluntarily tonsuring his head. Subsequently, the singer decided to quit the micro-blogging site for harbouring too much negativity.With less than a week to go until the presidential elections, state officials in New Jersey are moving ahead with an ambitious plan to let voters in that state have their say on Nov. 6.
State election officials will use military trucks and vehicles as makeshift polling stations for the upcoming presidential election, as the state and the rest of the Eastern Seaboard recover from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
ADVERTISEMENT
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno laid out the plan to convert the military vehicles into voting booths on Friday during a press conference in Trenton, according to reports by the New JerseyLocal election officials have also decided to extend the statewide deadline for voters to request mail-in ballots, due to the hurricane's impact on New Jersey voters to get to the polls, according to published reports.The initial deadline for mail-in ballot requests in the state expired on Tuesday, a day after the storm ravaged many areas inside New Jersey and other mid-Atlantic states.Guadagno, who is also New Jersey's secretary of State, had initially planned to consolidate the state's polling stations scattered across the various counties into a small network of mass voting stations.However, several county election officials pressed Gov. Chris Christie to move forward with temporary polling stations, including those located in temporary emergency shelters and now military vehicles belonging to the New Jersey National Guard.Nearly 6,700 Guard and Reserve forces were initially sent into New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Delaware, Connecticut and Maryland late Monday night, as the brunt of the storm hammered the East Coast, according to the Pentagon.That number has swelled to 7,400 as area communities continue to assess the millions in damage left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.As possibility of third world war exists, China needs to be prepared
As the Ukrainian crisis deepens, international observers have become more and more concerned about a direct military clash between the US and Russia. Once an armed rivalry erupts, it is likely to extend to the globe. And it is not impossible that a world war could break out.
The world war is a form of war that the whole world should face up to. During human evolution, the world war has entered its third development phase.
The first phase took place between nomadic societies and farming groups. The second phase was featured by colonial wars, with WWI and WWII as its special representatives.
Currently, the world has entered an era of new forms of global war.
Outer space, the Internet and the sea have become the battlefields of rivalry. Technology is the key, and the number of countries involved is unprecedented.
The rivalry on the outer space and the Internet takes place with the rivalry on the sea as the center stage. During WWII, some major powers attached significant importance to the sea.
Alfred Thayer Mahan, a US military strategist who died in 1914, coined the notion of sea power. He advocated valuing the naval forces, commercial fleet and overseas military base, which served for wars on the land.
But nowadays, we stress the importance of power in the sea. Judging from the contention of the global sea space, the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean have seen the fiercest rivalry. It's likely that there will be a third world war to fight for sea rights.
In an era when a third world war may take place, an important topic for the Chinese military is how to develop its power to maintain its national interests.
This should become the basis for its development, because since the founding of the PRC, the development of its military forces has been centered around maintaining its rights on the land. As the rivalry on the sea grows intense, China's military development should shift from maintaining the country's rights on the land to maintaining its rights on the sea.
Meanwhile, China is standing at the focal point of rivalries. This requires China to develop its military power based on a global war. China is in the heartland of the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.
The development of China's sea power touches the nerves of many countries. China needs to develop its military power to avoid being squeezed to a passive position.
China's overseas interests have spread all over the world. As the US has been shifting its attention to the Asia-Pacific region, especially aiming at China, China's overseas interests have been increasingly threatened by the US.
Without large-scale military power, securing China's overseas interests seems like an empty slogan.
The long-range or overseas combat capabilities of China's sea and air forces are quite limited yet. If we don't view the development of sea and air forces with a farsighted view, we will face various restraints when building up the combat capabilities of sea and air forces or maintaining overseas interests. This will lead to the backwardness of China's sea and air forces.
China should not be pushed into a passive position where it is vulnerable to attacks. We must bear a third world war in mind when developing military forces, especially the sea and air forces.
The author is a professor at the PLA National Defense University.It's been nearly seven months since the troubled launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. November 11th 2014 marks the day that Halo fans everywhere were left out in the cold when the game hobbled out of the gate with serious functionality problems. While a number of other high profile releases shipped with nasty bugs, The Master Chief Collection is perhaps the most infamous of all. This is Halo we're talking about, after all. It's the most important franchise in Microsoft's stable. As good as the campaigns are, it's the series' multiplayer action that has kept fans playing for more than a decade now. Unfortunately, while the single-player modes were generally excellent, The Master Chief Collection was simply not fit for purpose when it came to online multiplayer.
It took a long time for the issues to be resolved, and 343 Industries attempted to smooth things over by offering early adopters a free copy of the Halo 3: ODST remaster as soon it was ready to launch. Six months after that announcement, the promised remaster is finally available for The Master Chief Collection, and with its release comes a new map and another round of changes and improvements.
Knowing how much has changed since launch, we felt it was high time to check back in on the game and see just how far along the collection has come. This leaves us with two real questions, then - firstly, how is ODST on the Xbox One and, secondly, have the release's larger problems been addressed? Diving right in then, there's no better place to start than the moody, jazz filled streets of New Mombasa with Halo 3: ODST.
As with Halo 3 and 4 before it, ODST was ported to the Xbox One by Ruffian games - an experienced British studio that has collaborated with Microsoft Studios on numerous products over the years. As expected, the game is bumped up to a full 1920x1080 resolution running at 60 frames per second, matching the rest of the collection (save for Halo 2 Anniversary). ODST was already an attractive game on Xbox 360 but the low 1152x640 resolution and lack of anti-aliasing resulted in a rather uneven presentation. The visual design really shines on Xbox One and while there is still room to make it better still, this updated version of ODST - with its native full HD resolution and decent anti-aliasing - offers a substantially improved presentation over the original release.
A side-by-side comparison showcasing Halo 3: ODST on Xbox One versus the original Xbox 360 version of the game. Aside from increased fidelity and minor differences in exposure, the two are nearly identical.
What's more, unlike the version of Halo 3 included with the collection, ODST now utilises anisotropic filtering to a limited degree. We pegged it somewhere around 4x AF with some blurry textures still evident at oblique angles, but the results are still a nice step up from the 360 version of ODST, as well as the Xbox One versions of Halo 3 and 4. Overall image quality is perfectly suitable for the game and exactly what we expected.
What hasn't been addressed is the low resolution HUD. As with Ruffian's other ports, ODST retains the original Xbox 360 font and HUD assets resulting in blurry, upscaled text and UI elements. From a normal viewing distance, it's less of an issue, but up close it's pretty ugly next to Halo 2 Anniversary's improved HUD. It's also worth noting that as with the rest of the collection, the Xbox One version of ODST also lacks the original 360 loading screens, which really fit the theme and visual language of the game. It may seem odd to lament the removal of loading screens but there are precious few games out there that can touch the lovely animated design Bungie crafted for its Halo titles.
ODST itself is a rather different game from Halo 3 when it comes to visual design. Focusing more on dramatic lighting and sprawling urban environments, the game rarely presents the type of natural terrain so common in Halo 3 - something which feels a bit chunky and dated in this collection. However, running through the streets of New Mombasa under the cover of a nocturnal thunderstorm remains as evocative and engaging as we remembered. All told, this type of visual design simply works much better here than it did with Halo 3 - LOD pop-in is less evident, structures exhibit a sense of solidarity and style, and lighting is even moodier than before. Only the human faces remain a weak point - just as they did in the original.
The variation in exposure can sometimes result in very different scenes. Here the sky appears completely blown out on Xbox One while the 360 version loses a bit of shadow detail within the character model. Another minor improvement is an increase in depth of field quality on Xbox One which appears to exhibit a slightly shallower effect of a higher resolution. The Xbox One version features an increase in texture filtering quality over the original game. It's not quite as high as we'd like but still an improvement overall. Also note the impact of the higher resolution on distant trees. The bump in resolution greatly improves the clarity of OD |
's sceptre; Thersites doubled over, a warm tear fell from his eye, and a bloody welt formed on his back; he sat down in fear, and in pain gazed helplessly as he wiped away his tear; but the rest of the assembly was distressed and laughed... There must be a figuration of wickedness as self-evident as Thersites-- the ugliest man who came to Troy-- who says what everyone else is thinking".[6]
He is not mentioned elsewhere in the Iliad, but it seems that in the lost Aethiopis, Achilles eventually killed him "for having torn out the eyes of the Amazon Penthesilea that the hero had just killed in combat."[7]
In his Introduction to The Anger of Achilles, Robert Graves speculates that Homer might have made Thersites a ridiculous figure as a way of dissociating himself from him, because his remarks seem entirely justified. This was a way of letting these remarks, along with Odysseus' brutal act of suppression, remain in the record.
In later literature [ edit ]
Thersites is also mentioned in Plato's Gorgias (525e) as an example of a soul that can be cured in the afterlife; and in The Republic he chooses to be reborn as an ape. According to E. R. Dodds, "There he is not so much the typical petty criminal as the typical buffoon; and so Lucian describes him."[8]
Along with many of the major figures of the Trojan War, Thersites was a character in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1602) in which he is described as "a deformed and scurrilous Grecian" and portrayed as a comic servant, in the tradition of the Shakespearian fool, but unusually given to abusive remarks to all he encounters. He begins as Ajax's slave, telling Ajax, "I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece." Thersites soon leaves Ajax and puts himself into the service of Achilles (portrayed by Shakespeare as a kind of bohemian figure), who appreciates his bitter, caustic humor. Shakespeare mentions Thersites again in his later play Cymbeline, when Guiderius says, "Thersites' body is as good as Ajax' / When neither are alive."
Laurence Sterne writes of Thersites in the last volume of his Tristram Shandy chapter 14, declaring him to be the exemplar of abusive satire, as black as the ink it is written with.
In Part Two of Goethe's Faust (1832), Act One, during the Masquerade, Thersites appears briefly and criticizes the goings-on. He says, "When some lofty thing is done / I gird at once my harness on. / Up with what's low, what's high eschew, / Call crooked straight, and straight askew," [9] The Herald, who acts as Master of Revels or Lord of Misrule, strikes Thersites with his mace, at which point he metamorphoses into an egg, from which a bat and an adder are hatched.
As social critic [ edit ]
The role of Thersites as a social critic has been advanced by several philosophers and literary critics, including Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edward Said, Thomas Woods and Kenneth Burke. In the passage below from Language As Symbolic Action,[10] Burke cites Hegel's coinage of the term "Thersitism," and he proceeds to describe a version of it as a process by which an author both privileges protest in a literary work but also disguises or disowns it, so as not to distract from the literary form of the work, which must push on toward other effects than the protest per se:
If an audience is likely to feel that it is being crowded into a position, if there is any likelihood that the requirements of dramatic "efficiency" would lead to the blunt ignoring of a possible protest from at least some significant portion of the onlookers, the author must get this objection stated in the work itself. But the objection should be voiced in a way that the same breath disposes of it.
An example of this stratagem is the role of Thersites in the Iliad. For any Greeks who were likely to resent the stupidity of the Trojan War, the text itself provided a spokesman who voiced their resistance. And he was none other than the abominable Thersites, for whom no "right-minded" member of the Greek audience was likely to feel sympathy. As early as Hegel, however, his standard role was beginning to be questioned. Consider, for instance, these remarks in the introduction to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History:
The Thersites of Homer who abuses the kings is a standing figure for all times. He does not get in every age... the blows that he gets in Homer. But his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh. And the undying worm that gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism may also have its sinister side.
Thersites also appears in the writings of Karl Marx'[11] and those of later Marxist literature in Soviet times much in the spirit of Hegel's construal. Heiner Müller casts Thersites in the role of Shepherd who also shears his sheep reflecting the contradictions broached by Hegel.[12]
... Came the talk in dining, meat and wine, to Thersites The reviled, the windbag, Homer stood in the gathering Using wisely the great quarrel for the greater prey, spoke: See the peoples shepherd who shears his flock and does them in as always does the shepherd, showed the soldiers bloody and empty, the bloody, empty hands of soldiers. Then asked the pupils: What is it with this Thersites, Master? You give him the right words then with your own Words you put him in the wrong...
Notes and references [ edit ]
Notes
^ 𐀵𐀯𐀲, to-si-ta, a word found on the [1][2] The first attestation of this name in Greek could be the Mycenaean Linear B word, a word found on the PY Cn 719 tablet.Sustrans, Cycling UK, British Cycling, Cyclenation, LCC, Bikeplus and the Association of Bikeability Schemes join with Bicycle Association over Vnuk submission to the DfT
Britain's cycling organisations have joined together and backed a e-bike submission that the Bicycle Association has sent to the Department for Transport. Sustrans, Cycling UK, British Cycling, Cyclenation, LCC, Bikeplus and the Association of Bikeability Schemes joined with the Bicycle Association to argue that e-bikes should not be subject to so-called Vnuk ruling.
The EU's Vnuk ruling states that off-road vehicles, such as tractors and racing cars, have to be insured even if they never drive on a public highway. Electric bikes could be included within the scope of the ruling, an outcome opposed by the Bicycle Association and the other cycling organisations.
A DfT consultation on how to implement the Vnuk judgment closed on 13th April.
The Bicycle Association made a 15-page submission to the consultation, stating that e-bikes should be exempt from the Vnuk ruling. As well as having to pay for compulsory third-party insurance e-bike owners could also be made to fit number plates and possibly wear helmets, and other measures which the BA fears would impact on the marketability of e-bikes.
Vnuk is not a bendy-banana–style EU acronym, it is the second-name of an unfortunate Slovenian farm worker who was knocked from a ladder by a reversing tractor. Damijan Vnuk v Zavarovalnica Triglav (c-162/13) was originally heard in Slovenia, but then extended to the rest of the EU after it was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The European court decided that the regulation “applies to the use of vehicles, whether as a means of transport or as machines, in any area, both public and private, in which risks inherent in the use of vehicles may arise, whether those vehicles are moving or not.”
Further, the ECJ stated that: “Insurance obligation in respect of motor vehicles set out in the EU Motor Insurance Directives is now to be interpreted as extending to ‘any use of a vehicle consistent with the normal function of that vehicle’.
The national governments of Europe have the power to exempt certain classes of vehicle, and the BAGB and the other cycling organisations are hoping e-bikes will be so exempted.
The BA argues that e-bikes are not "motor vehicles" as they are not 100 percent mechanically propelled.
The 15-page submission states there would be drawbacks for sustainable transport, especially for older people. Furthermore, the costs, administration and policing of the regulation as it applies to e-bikes would far outweigh the risks of damage to people or property from any accidents.A YEAR after his headline-grabbing speech in Berlin, in which he called for German leadership of Europe, Poland's foreign minister Radosław (Radek) Sikorski has launched another bold initiative. In a speech (pdf) near Oxford, he has blasted British Euroscepticism; a condensed version ($) was published in the Times a few days later. The intervention follows the publication of a report jointly written with the foreign ministers of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, which demanded "more Europe" as a response to the crisis. Recommendations included European oversight over the national budgets, bank-supervisory powers for the European Central Bank, a European Monetary Fund for bail-outs and more powers for the European Parliament. (It was also published in the New York Times as an op-ed)
Mr Sikorski comes from a background of hawkish British Atlanticism. As a refugee from Communist Poland, he was a notable figure in Oxford in the early 1980s, belonging to the Bullingdon Club of hard-drinking aristocrats (other members included Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron). Most people from that milieu are more or less euro-sceptic. But many fear that Britain's position on the sidelines of Europe is becoming unsustainable. Ian Traynor wrote in the Guardian recently:
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
Berlin for months has been demanding to reopen the EU treaties to facilitate a big pooling or surrender of – depending on your point of view – national sovereignty to facilitate a federalised eurozone, with what amounts to a core European government of an expanding 17 countries that would take on prerogatives over tax-and-spend powers. Britain is well out of that. Last week the European commission signed up to the German blueprint, while unveiling problematic EU legislation making the European Central Bank the policeman of the eurozone banking sector. Britain will have no part of that, either. On Tuesday the German foreign ministry extended the federalising economic policy-making to foreign and defence, along with 10 other EU foreign ministries carefully chosen to reflect the non-UK EU mainstream – small countries, big countries, single currency members and those outside the euro, core western states and newer east European countries. The likelihood is that the 11-country consensus will swell into a majority among the EU's 27. Britain also stands apart from this. The 11 include Germany and France, the big ones, plus Italy, Spain and Poland – after Britain the biggest EU countries. In short, Britain's isolation becomes more fixed, while the cross-Channel gap widens to become less than bridgeable. More in sorrow than in anger.
It is in this troubling context that Mr Sikorski (disclosure: a friend of the author of this blog post) made his speech. Poland wants Britain in Europe as a counterweight to the EU's dirigiste, heavy-regulating countries and to balance German weight and Russian proximity. Despite the betrayals of the past (Yalta, Katyń) it cherishes Britain's support for Poland's freedom in recent years. But if Britain marginalises itself, Poland will have to make the best of Europe as it is, and as it is shaping up to be. I was once at dinner with Mr Sikorski and a leading British Tory who chided him over Poland's impending membership of the EU (it was 2001). "Why is Poland of all countries selling out to Brussels?" said the Tory. "Do you think we should rely on Britain, like we did in 1939?" came the crisp response.
Though his Tory friends try not to hear it, Mr Sikorski's message is consistently and unashamedly pro-European. He uses words and sentiments that are rarely heard in Britain now (only the Lib Dems are unabashedly europhile, and even they tend to keep quiet about it). He told his audience at Blenheim Palace. "I believe in the logic and justice of the modern European project. And my country, Poland, will do its utmost to help it succeed."
He pointed out that half of Britain's exports go to the EU, that the much-maligned European Convention on Human Rights is nothing to do with the EU (and also a British creation); that the cost to Britain of EU membership is trivial (£15 per person per year by his calculation, against £1,500-£3,500 in benefits from the single market), that the European Commission's 33,000 staff is tiny by comparison to any national bureaucracy; that EU rules are not "Brussels diktats" but proposed, and agreed, by the member states; that only one-sixteenth of UK primary legislation stems from EU decisions; and, perhaps most importantly, that the EU is a hugely important force in keeping markets open and competitive. He didn't mention its current assault on Gazprom.
He attacked the two options favoured by British Eurosceptics. A negotiated free trade zone would not be a simple replacement for full membership, he warned:
Don’t count on it. Many European states would hold a grudge against a country which, in their view, had selfishly left the EU. While you are an important market for the rest of the EU, accounting for about 11% of the rest of the EU’s trade, your trade with the EU is 50% of your total trade. No prizes for guessing who would have the upper hand in such a negotiation. Any free trade agreement would have a price. In exchange for the privilege of access to the Single Market, Norway and Switzerland make major contributions to the EU’s cohesion funds. They also have to adopt EU standards – without having any say in how they are written. At the moment, Norway’s net contribution to the EU budget is actually higher, per capita, than Britain’s. So think hard: the EU is a market of 500 million people who enjoy the highest average standard of living in the world. According to the IMF and the World Bank, Europe’s GDP is about 2.5 times than that of China and nine times that of India. Do you want to lose your privileged access to that market?
He also attacked the more explicit eurosceptic notion, that Britain would regain its international clout outside the EU. To that he said:
Yes, the UK outside the EU would have more freedom of manoeuvre, in a number of significant respects. But the UK would be less powerful and less free.Certainly Britain would lose its influence in many international forums. By negotiating as one bloc in world trade talks, the European Union gives all of us, the UK included, a powerful and united voice to use when speaking to China and the USA. If you leave, you lose that. Let me quote from the findings of a report prepared in 2011 for Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in the House of Commons, I quote ‘We recognize the fact that the UK's influence on the WTO can only be exercised through its membership of the European Union’. Britain standing alone would suffer not only on multilateral level. Are you sure that you will command the same kind of attention in, say, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos and Bogota? What about Washington? At the moment, your hosts know that you speak on behalf of London and have an influence to shape decisions taken in Brussels on behalf of the whole continent as well. Alone, you won’t be so interesting.
He continued:
The EU is an English-speaking power. The Single Market was a British idea. A British commissioner runs our diplomatic service. You could, if only you wished, lead Europe’s defence policy. But if you refuse, please don’t expect us to help you wreck or paralyze the EU. Do not underestimate our determination not to return to the politics of the 20 century. You were not occupied. Most of us on the continent were. We will do almost anything to prevent that from happening again. It's not difficult to see why. Poland wants to be with Germany and France as partners, leading a strong, democratic European political-economic space. We do not want to be a buffer between Western Europe and a less democratic Eurasian political-economic space dominated by Russia. More importantly, we believe the Eurozone will survive, because it is its members interest for it to survive. The leaders of Europe will step up operational integration at the European level. The new institutional arrangements within the EU will be different. But eventually they’ll be strong. They'll work because Europe’s leaders want them to work. And be careful what you read in your tabloids: No country has benefitted more from the single currency than Germany.
And concluded:
Since I first came to these shores over 30 years ago, Britain has become much more European. You’ve built the Channel-Tunnel, you got used to mixer taps, duvets and double glazing. Even your cooking has improved. Yet, your public opinion and politics is more Eurosceptic than ever. And I think I can guess why: Marxists at those Balliol tutorials [one-on-one teaching sessions at Oxford colleges: Mr Sikorski was at Pembroke Collegue but had tutorials in some subjects at Balliol] taught me the term “false consciousness” which is when the ideological superstructure is out of sync with the economic base. Britain today is living with false consciousness. Your interests are in Europe. It’s high time for your sentiments to follow. Your leaders need to make a more vocal case for your European interests. Britain is famous through the ages for its practical good sense and policies based on reality, not myths. We hope you can return to this tradition soon.
An earlier version of this piece put an x in milieu and an extra l in Bullingdon. Thanks to all the hawk-eyed readers who pointed this out.From Julia Jacobo and Lauren Pearle at ABC News:
The order delineates several categories of undocumented immigrants who are priority for removal from the United States including those who have been “charged with any criminal offense” or those who have “committed acts that constitute as a chargeable offense.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has vacillated several times on the issue, at first indicating that all undocumented immigrants would be sent back” if they’ve done well they’re going out and they’re coming back in legally.” Then he tempered his remarks to focus on undocumented immigrants who committed crimes.
But Trump’s executive order appears to extend beyond this.
“Many aliens who illegally enter the United States and those who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their visas present a significant threat to national security and public safety,” the order states. “This is particularly so for aliens who engage in criminal conduct in the United States.”
Anyone who came to the U.S. illegally — that is without passing through border inspection committed a criminal misdemeanor and could fall into the priority removal category, legal experts tell ABC News.Last week, the Assembly of First Nations put forward a resolution to pressure the federal government and the RCMP for a full new investigation into the allegations. Meanwhile, Furlong is continuing to rehabilitate his image, recently tasked with helping Calgary bid for the 2026 Olympics.
John Furlong’s accusers are asking the federal government to listen to them. But why is Furlong’s voice so much louder?
—
Statement from John Furlong’s counsel:
“We are counsel to Mr. Furlong and write in response to your request for
comment about allegations of abuse made by persons who were interviewed by
Laura Robinson. Mr. Furlong has consistently stated that he is innocent
of the alleged abuse and each allegation that has been subject to
investigation by the RCMP or finding of the courts has been found to be
unsubstantiated. The details of Ms. Robinson’s investigation into Mr.
Furlong and Mr. Furlong’s position in response are canvassed in detail in
Justice Wedge’s Reasons for Judgment, a copy of which is available here:
http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/ bcsc/doc/2015/2015bcsc1690/ 2015bcsc1690.pdf.
We draw your attention in particular to the following finding of the Court
at para. 276:
“The statements of Ms. Abraham, Ms. West and Mr. Morice were the only
three statements obtained by Ms. Robinson that were even minimally tested
in a way that we, as a society, believe our system of justice requires
when a citizen faces such serious and devastating allegations. All three
proved to be unreliable.”
Mr. Furlong has no further comment on this case and requests that to the
extent you are reporting on these allegations that you direct
readers/listeners to Justice Wedge’s Reasons for Judgment.” (Claire
Hunter, Hunter Litigation).
Thanks,
Chris
>Chris Dornan
>High-Performance Public Relations
—
Judge Wedge’s Reasons for Judgement can be found here.
Tricia Lo’s CBC piece, “Canadian Olympic Committee ‘extremely pleased’ Calgary exploring 2026 bid.”
Read Robert Hiltz’s piece, “Assembly of First Nations Votes to Press Government for New John Furlong Investigation.”
Read the affidavits of the accusers.
Read the accusers’ open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau dated November 2015.
Listen to episode, “John Furlong’s Privilege,” with guest William McDowell, posted after Laura Robinson lost her libel suit against John Furlong.
Listen to our first interview with Laura Robinson, posted after Robinson broke the story.
Laura Robinson’s Georgia Straight piece, “John Furlong biography omits secret past in Burns Lake.”Atlanta United today announced the broadcast team for the club’s inaugural 2017 season on FOX Sports South and FOX Sports Southeast. The team will be made up of play-by-play announcers Alan Green and Kevin Egan, color analyst Dan Gargan and studio host and sideline reporter Brittany Arnold.
In-match play-by-play duties will be shared this season between BBC Radio Sport’s lead play-by-play commentator Alan Green and beIN Sports commentator and studio host Kevin Egan. Egan will call Atlanta United’s first five matches televised on FOX Sports South and FOX Sports Southeast beginning with the April 8 match at Toronto F.C., and Green will call the remaining 14 matches of the season.
Former LA Galaxy analyst and 11-year MLS veteran Dan Gargan has been tapped as Atlanta United’s color analyst and beIN Sports on-air host Brittany Arnold will serve as the club’s first broadcast host and sideline reporter.
“We’re thrilled to have such a distinguished and dynamic group of talent for our broadcasts,” said Atlanta United president Darren Eales. “With Alan’s vast experience calling major international tournaments and Kevin’s strong MLS and hosting background, they will lend a unique and qualified point of view to our play-by-play commentary. We are also very excited to welcome Dan to the team providing the perspective of a former MLS player turned analyst, as well as Brittany who brings fantastic energy and presence to the field.”
“The Atlanta United broadcast team has a wealth of knowledge and deep understanding of the game that will undoubtedly connect with the club’s passionate supporters,” said Jeff Genthner, senior vice president and general manager, FOX Sports South and FOX Sports Southeast. “We’re extremely proud of our new partnership with Atlanta United and looking forward to our first telecast on Saturday, April 8.”
Beginning Tuesday, April 4, FOX Sports Southeast and FOX Sports GO will debut the weekly series, Atlanta United: Match Week. Hosted by Arnold, the show will provide unprecedented access to Atlanta United, including comprehensive previews of each week’s upcoming match and exclusive interviews with players and coaches.
The networks’ regular season coverage of 19 games will begin with Atlanta United at Toronto FC on Saturday, April 8, at 7:00 p.m. ET on FOX Sports South and FOX Sports GO. Each telecast will include Atlanta United LIVE!, a 30-minute show before and after every game.
Alan Green – Play-by-Play Announcer
A seasoned international commentator on both radio and TV, Green has been part of the BBC broadcast team for the majority of his career. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland he joined BBC Radio Sport as a regular national play-by-play soccer commentator in 1982.
Green has served as BBC Radio Sport’s lead soccer commentator since 1990 covering more than 115 major finals including seven World Cups, eight European championships as well as numerous Champions League Finals. In addition, Green hosts the BBC World Service program ‘World Football’ and has provided television commentary for ‘BBC Match of the Day’ airing weekends on BBC One.
Following his call of the Champions League final in Cardiff, Wales, Green will join Atlanta United for the club’s June 17 match at home vs. Columbus Crew, and will call the remainder of the club’s regionally televised matches. He will continue his work with BBC Sport, returning to England in late fall.
Kevin Egan – Play-by-Play Announcer
Egan has worked as a TV commentator and studio host for beIN Sports broadcasting nationally on weeknight programming. While at beIN, he has commentated on various international leagues including La Liga and Serie A, as well as U.S. World Cup Qualifiers. Last season, Egan reported live from the sideline of Camp Nou for Barcelona vs Real Madrid, and has interviewed high profile personalities across the game.
Prior to joining beIN Sports, Egan was a commentator and host for the Chicago Fire for three MLS seasons. He is originally from Dublin, Ireland where he worked as a broadcaster for RTE, before moving to Chicago in 2009.
Egan will call the first five regionally broadcast matches for Atlanta United, beginning with the club’s April 8 match at Toronto F.C.
Dan Gargan – Analyst
A former professional player, Gargan was a member of the LA Galaxy broadcast team last season. He joins Atlanta United as the club’s first color analyst for the in-match broadcast airing on FOX Sports South and FOX Sports Southeast.
Gargan spent 12 years as a professional soccer player, including 11 years in MLS. A native of Philadelphia, Penn., Gargan was drafted by the Colorado Rapids with the No. 43 overall pick in the fourth round of the 2005 MLS Supplemental Draft. He spent his first three professional seasons with the Rapids, accumulating 49 league appearances. He returned to MLS in 2010 with Toronto FC after a year with the Puerto Rico Islanders of the USL First Division. While with TFC, Gargan made 43 MLS regular season appearances, scoring one goal and notching four assists. He finished his career with LA Galaxy, retiring after the 2015 season. Overall in MLS, he appeared in 185 games, made 149 starts and won an MLS Cup in 2014.
Brittany Arnold – Studio Host & Sideline Reporter
Arnold has served as an on-air host for beIN Sports on the Express pre-match show, the Xtra post-match wrap up show, and beIN Sports News, providing daily breaking news updates.
During her time at beIN, Arnold covered prestigious international soccer action including the English Premier League and Liga BBVA. A graduate of Loyola University in Chicago with a degree in Journalism, Brittany is bilingual and will cover English and Spanish-language sideline reporting for the club.This Living Wage week has sparked considerable discussion of which employers are (or aren’t) paying the Living Wage and how much the hourly rate has increased by. But we also need to consider the drivers that result in the Living Wage rising, and what we can do about them.
Central here is the cost of essential goods and services. According to JRF’s Minimum Income Standard (which forms the basis for the Living Wage calculation outside of London) the price of what the public think of as a basket of essentials has increased 28 per cent in six years. By way of comparison, the National Minimum Wage has increased by 14 per cent in that time, and average wages by 9 percent. This feeds through into a higher wage requirement to achieve the same standard of living.
Prices rising faster than earnings creates a difficult situation for all working households, but it creates an impossible one for those with the least income, and new research by the IFS published today by JRF casts new light on this problem. Over the last decade the lowest income household have seen their cost of living increase by 50 per cent compared to an increase of 43 per cent among better off households.
If these differences are fed through into the official poverty measures, it implies an additional 300,000 people are in absolute poverty.
These differences in inflation occur because the budgets of low and high income households differ significantly, with low income family budgets dominated by items like food and energy which have seen steep price rises in recent years.
The problem for low income households is further intensified by the poverty premium, whereby the poor pay more for some goods and services. For some groups, such as disabled people, the trap can be especially pernicious if they not only have a low income but also face special additional costs or need higher quantities of particular goods or services – like energy due to spending more time in the home.
While responses like the Living Wage help to ensure working people have enough income to enable them to cover the cost of essentials, alone they are not sufficient. We also need to look at what is driving the cost of essentials and what steps policymakers, regulators and individual businesses can undertake to ensure the market serves low income consumers. If we don’t address this part of the problem we could find ourselves in a vicious cycle whereby the rising cost of essentials for low income families keeps pushing up the Living Wage rate. It is only by taking a comprehensive approach that we will succeed in sustainably reducing poverty in the UK.
Katie Schmuecker is policy and research manager at JRFWarm weather thousands of miles away would seem an unlikely cause of the United Kingdom’s freakishly wet winter or the bone-deep chill experienced this year by the eastern United States. But a warming Arctic can be blamed for both, said Rutgers University atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis at the recent AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
“It’s because the pattern this winter has been basically stuck in once place ever since early December,” Francis said. And the pattern—which has included cold, cold temperatures in the eastern United States, for instance—has been stuck because of the Arctic. Back in 1896, the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius first calculated [pdf] how pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would warm the planet through the greenhouse effect. That warming, he wrote, would be most pronounced in the Arctic regions, a phenomenon known as Arctic (or polar) amplification. And it is now able to be seen above the noise of the world's weather—below is a NASA animation of temperature differences compared to averages, from 1950 through 2013:
The recent amp up of Arctic warming is readily seen by the loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The extent of summer sea ice, in particular, has been on the decline for more than two decades, and the loss of old, thick ice has been especially pronounced (see video below).
“When you’re losing the sea ice, Arctic amplification is certainly here,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Losing that sea ice, he said, will have impacts in the mid-latitudes, particularly on weather patterns.
The Arctic affects the rest of the planet in many ways, but the one that’s most relevant for Francis’ work is called the poleward temperature gradient—that’s the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes, where the continental United States sits. That poleward temperature gradient causes air to start flowing from the North Pole southward, and a spinning Earth forces the air to move from west to east, creating the jet stream.
Frequent fliers will recognize the jet stream as the river of air that can give their airplane a boost when flying from Los Angeles to New York City. Weather fanatics, though, might be more familiar with the air pattern for its ability to move weather systems across the continent. “When you warm the Arctic more rapidly, you’re decreasing the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the areas farther south,” and that’s weakening the poleward temperature gradient, Francis explained. A weaker gradient makes for a weaker jet stream. “As we weaken this difference in temperature between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes, we expect those winds from west to east to get weaker,” Francis said. “When that happens, we also expect to see that flow in the upper-level jet stream to become more wavy.” Francis compared the jet stream to a river. When a river flows down a steep mountainside, it flows quickly and its path is straight. But when the river flows over a flat plain, it’s slower and its path can begin to wander. The jet stream now sometimes meanders like that slow-moving river:
A weaker jet stream is probably more easily deflected off its path when it encounters something like a mountain range or a mass of hot air, Francis said. Those large waves increase the likelihood that a weather system—such as a particularly cold winter or a period without rain—gets blocked. “This means that the weather they create is lasting longer in your location. This leads to the more persistent weather patterns and the tendency of extreme weather of certain types to become more likely,” Francis said. “This is the hypothesis.”
And that’s the big caveat in this work—this is a hypothesis developed within the last few years by Francis and her colleague, Steve Vavrus, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Not everyone is on board,” Francis admitted.SYDNEY FC midfielder Ali Abbas has been recalled to the Iraqi national squad seven years after defecting to Australia.
SOCCEROOS POWER RANKINGS. WHO SITS WHERE IN THE PECKING ORDER?
ROOS INJURY BLOW: ROGIC SET FOR LENGTHY STINT ON THE SIDELINES
Abbas, 28, has been named in an extended squad for November’s Gulf Cup and for friendly matches next month against Yemen (October 10) and Bahrain (October 14), both to be held in Bahrain.
Round 21 Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre Visit Match Centre
“It’s been a long time that I’ve been waiting to play international football for Iraq again,” Abbas told the Sydney FC website.
Ali Abbas has been in sparkling form. Source: News Corp Australia
“Now the time has come, I’m proud to be representing my country of birth and can’t wait to play in the friendly games against Yemen and Bahrain, although I will be disappointed to miss the start of the A-League season in Australia.”
Abbas was a member of the victorious Iraqi national team that won the Asian Cup in 2007.
He fled his war-torn homeland after playing an under-23s international against Australia in Gosford in 2007, and was later granted asylum to stay in the country.
Abbas, who has played for five years in the A-League, is hoping to make the Iraqi squad for January’s Asian Cup to be hosted in Australia.
“It would be great to play in Australia for Iraq and great to play in front of the Sydney FC fans in the Asian Cup, if I’m selected,” he said.
“We won it in 2007 and it would be fantastic to win it again.”
Abbas’s form over the last 12 months has impressed Iraq’s head coach Hakeem Shaker.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that could spark a “nuclear nightmare,” drawing a rebuke from President Barack Obama and exposing a deepening U.S.-Israeli rift.
They delivered dueling messages within hours of each other.
Netanyahu made his case against Obama’s Iran diplomacy in a speech to Congress that aligned himself with the president’s Republican foes. Obama responded in the Oval Office, declaring in a frustrated tone that Netanyahu offered “nothing new.”
In its response, the Iranian government denounced Netanyahu’s 39-minute speech as “boring and repetitive,” the state news agency IRNA said.
In an appearance boycotted by dozens of Obama’s fellow Democrats, Netanyahu said Iran’s leadership was “as radical as ever” and could not be trusted and the deal being worked out by the United States and other world powers would not block Iran’s way to a bomb “but paves its way to a bomb.”
“It will all but guarantee that Iran will get those nuclear weapons, lots of them,” the Israeli leader said. “We’ll face a much more dangerous Iran, a Middle East littered with nuclear bombs and a countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare.”
His speech, a point-by-point critique of Obama’s strategy, drew 26 standing ovations in the Republican-controlled chamber.
Netanyahu both inveighed against the emerging deal and suggested broadening the scope of negotiations to require a change to what he described as Iran’s “aggressive” regional posture - an idea swiftly rejected by the Obama administration as de facto “regime change” in Tehran.
But Netanyahu, who said a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten Israel’s existence, also avoided any call for new sanctions now or for a total rollback of Iranian nuclear technologies - a signal that Israel might be able to resign itself to less.
Obama said the prime minister offered no “viable alternatives” to the current course of negotiations.
Netanyahu’s speech culminated a diplomatic storm triggered by his acceptance in January of a Republican invitation that bypassed the White House. Many Democrats considered it an affront to the president.
Obama refused to meet Netanyahu, saying that doing so just ahead of Israel’s March 17 general election would be seen as interference. The president, who has a history of testy encounters with Netanyahu, said he did not watch the televised speech but read the transcript.
“INSULT”
Underscoring the partisan divide, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called the speech “an insult to the intelligence of the United States” and said she was so “saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran” that she was near tears.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber on Capitol Hill, March 3, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
As many as 60 of the 232 Democratic members of Congress sat out the address. Their absence |
enough to wake him up.
"Huh… What…?" The dazed kid asked, still coming to, to his surroundings.
Dipper reacted fast, pumping his hand down on the boy's chest.
"Come on, breathe!" He shouted. "Seven. Eight." He counted, releasing the grip.
Faking CPR would either prove to be his dumbest move yet, or his greatest feat of thinking on his feet ever.
He grabbed the boy's nose and pinched it shut between his thumb and index-finger. Much to his would-be patient's dismay. By the time he moved in to perform the mouth-to-mouth, Gideon was protesting quite passionately.
Dipper was the wrong twin, after all.
Truth be told, he was most grateful Gideon had gotten his bearings in time. He'd never have lived that moment down. It was one thing to save your sister's mermaid-fling. It was quite another to lock lips with a spewer of hogwash. To put it kindly.
"What in tarnation!?" The white-haired kid protested, angrily slapping away Dipper. "What is wrong with you, boy?!" He continued to shout.
"Gideon!" Dipper feigned his exuberant glee. "You're back! You had us worried there for a second."
"Don't you ever…!" The shocked kid began. "Dipper Pines. If ever the Grimm Reaper comes a callin' for this here youngster again, and the only alternative is your kiss of life, let the angels sing me to my rest, you hear?!"
"Crystal, dude." Dipper replied, making the gesture of excellence. "You feel ready to get out of here? Claude and Mabel are outside already."
"I don't need no help from no-one." The angry kid spoke, obviously still dazed and alerted, admittedly understandably so, by the entire ordeal.
He fumbled with his seat-belt impotently. Grunting and cursing as he did so, failing to unbuckle it.
"Need some help with that?" Pacifica asked, mockingly.
If looks could kill, Pacifica would be pushing daisies by now.
Dipper seized the opportunity of distraction to press the release mechanism on Gideon's buckles. The latch released and with it, for better or for worse, Gideon was once again free to roam Gravity Falls.
"Come on." Dipper said, slinging the boy's arm around his shoulder, carrying him slightly. "It's been a rough ride, but you can lean on me."
"But… I..." Gideon fumbled, clearly wondering if this was the afterlife. What other reason would Dipper Pines have to be so kind?
"What are friends for, am I right?" The Pines-twin added cheerfully, dragging him along.
It couldn't hurt. If there was some wicked scheme brewing in Gideon's head surrounding the memory gun, a display of friendship might either deter him from it. Or on the other hand it gave the impression that Dipper was oblivious to it.
Nevertheless, as he passed her, he locked eyes with the suspicious Pacifica. Without getting caught by the white-haired kid, he aimed two fingers at his eyes first and then at the struggling con-artist.
By the look on her face, he knew she understood.
Keep an eye on this one.
When they reached the altar-room at long last, they found it still lit by the torches hanging about the circular walls. It would've been classified as mysterious and suspicious to find them all still burning as brightly as the night before, rather than burned up and cold. But Wendy had seen too much truly strange things in her short life growing up in Gravity Falls. This barely registered in comparison.
Van Hadeschant seemed impressed though. To say the least. He eyed the room, golden and shimmering in the light of the other torches. She was finally able to once more gain the lead on him, as she walked past his frozen figure.
"You okay, man?" She asked. "Yo. Is there a doctor in the house?" She continued after he failed to respond.
"Ja. Ja." He spoke, shaking his head. He sounded a little irritated.
"Something the matter?"
"Nein. It's just..." He sighed ponderously.
"Just what?"
"I told you vampires crave. Desire. They don't understand why luxury and beauty and high standing are what they are. But they crave it none the less."
"Right?" She asked, pocketing her smartphone.
"This is most undignified." He explained, raising his arms to encompass the room.
"This is not just a tomb..." He said. "This is a tomb." Something in her gaze must've betrayed her confusion. "It's not fancy enough." He explained. "I don't know why the vampire would want something like this to be it's home. It is a mess."
"Does it really matter?" She asked. She gestured for the pile of dust by the man's feet. "Try not to walk in mister thrall over there." She said, before beckoning him over. "Just take a look at this altar. Maybe you can get an idea about how to stop the vampire from this." She added, walking over to the place where she'd found Tambry. The broken mirror still hung over it. The shards still lay atop it, blotting out parts of the weird markings of the stone slab.
"Wendy." The German called.
She turned to face him. Only to find him pulling a silver cross from his bag.
"I told you." He went on. "This is a tomb."
His emphasis on the last word struck home. Slowly, she turned back to the altar. This time seeing it for what it was.
"You mean..." She asked, backing away slightly, as she pointed at the high, stone box.
She was grateful to hear his approaching voice. He pressed the cross in her free hand and she accepted it immediately.
"Ja." The man said.
She could see the wooden stake and mallet in his hands. The shoulder bag dropped to the ground. His torch abandoned at the entrance of the burial chamber, smoldering on the floor. His eyes were fixed on the same grave that held her attention.
"She's in there?" She heard herself ask dimly, hating the confusion in her own voice.
A nod.
The man's gaze flickered to the heavy broken mirror. His thick brow frowned in puzzlement.
"So what now?" She asked.
Van Hadeschant, still holding the stake and mallet, placed his hands on the corners of the heavy slab atop the shrine. "Do not let dwindle your attention. Stay focused." He ordered. "And keep that cross up."
"Right." She said, complying.
He turned his head, looking up at her. "When I open this, you do not lower that cross for anything." He warned. "Not a single thing."
"Right." She nodded.
"It will try to trick us. It will try to make us lower our guard. It may not succeed."
"I said right, alright?" She bit back, reaffirming her grip on both the cross and her ax.
"Okay." He agreed, returning his full attention to the slab.
With some grunting and a lot of effort, it began to move. The scraping sound filled the chamber. And Wendy tried to look past the darkness Van Hadeschant opened. But as he pressed it along, his body hung over the upper part of the vampire. She expected the body to jump up and tear off the man's throat. But it remained silent and still. Perhaps because she was doing such a stellar job with the cross. She liked to think so in any case.
With a final push, formidable and admirable for an old geezer his age, the slab toppled over. It' thud echoed through the depths of the tomb. When he straightened himself, Wendy could finally see more than the exquisite red and dark red, Victorian dress. She could see it's occupant. And it was not a pretty sight.
Honestly, she hadn't known what to expect inside the grave. And perhaps this was not far-fetched at all. But she really hadn't expected to find a rotting, ancient corpse.
"WTF, man?" She said, lowering the cross only slightly.
Van Hadeschant's own arm swung up to correct her error immediately. But still, the corpse had not moved an inch. It's dark brown and black arms were crossed at her waist. The pose she'd been left in was a dignified one. But whatever beauty the maid may have once had, it was long gone now. Dark holes where eyes had been. Dead hair. And she could see all of the woman's teeth. Her skin having rotted and retracted all around the eternal smile. Wendy wouldn't have believed she'd just met a vampire, if it hadn't been for the fangs.
But most telling of all was the stake already piercing it's heart. It plowed straight through fabric, bone and what must have once been skin and tissue. Straight into her chest. The top was blunted from where a hammer must have struck once, repeatedly.
Her eyes fell to the stake still in Van Hadeschant's hand. This made little sense. If the larger one, still protruding from the woman's chest, was supposed to have put her down, what had been all this business before?
"Das kann nicht sein." The doctor breathed.
"Hey…" She said, trying to brake the tension. "It's bigger than yours." She said, pointing at the wooden stake sticking the corpse.
Though she thought it funny, or at least clever, under these circumstances, it did not ignite any laughter. Nor any notable response for that matter.
"So what now?" She asked.
He grumbled. "This might require some creativity."
His hand moved for hers, without as much a glance. When it became clear he was reaching for the cross, her voice shot out. "You told me to hang onto this."
"Don't be daft, girl." He said, grabbing hold of the silver cross and tried to yank it from her grasp.
She didn't let him. His eyes, behind those gold-reflecting glasses, pierced her.
"This is no time to question the chain of command."
"You're different." She accused. "More angry. How do I know this isn't some trick?"
His gaze remained transfixed for a few seconds. Then, he smiled miserably.
"I'm not different, Fraulein." He spoke, his voice a mixture of irritation and shame. "I just have a headache and feel sick to my bones."
"The vampire?" She asked. Perhaps it was exhausting some dark spell or a wicked effect.
The man shook his head. "The hangover." He replied. "It is kicking in."
"Oh." His eyes were red-shot behind that dancing gold, she reflected. "What do you want the cross for?"
"Holding it up will be more dangerous than rummaging through my bag." He answered. "I need you to find a vial called the balm of Lysea. You'll also find an old book in a language I don't expect you to understand. Could you fetch them for me, bitte?"
Her pause and silence was telling.
"You don't trust me?" He asked.
"I don't know you." She answered. "Corduroy's didn't survive by relying on strangers."
"Fine." He answered. She couldn't tell if he was annoyed or amused. It was hard to guess with the grey fox. In any case, he let it go, sighing "Sie folgte mir hier." He spoke louder as he dropped to one knee: "Fine, then just keep that cross up."
With her cross in one hand and the axe in the other, he showed in no way the same concern she had; presenting his for any strike that may come. Her own idle pondering scared herself for a moment. Where such a dark thought had come from, she had no idea. Perhaps this cursed place or it's undead occupant was having an effect after all. Weighing the weapon in her hand, however, she knew she'd never be able to actually do such a thing.
All in all, however, she was most glad when the old gentleman rose back up, a vial in one hand and an old leathery book in the other. He pulled the cork from the small, dim, light-blue glass bottle with his teeth and continued to spit it out unceremoniously. The content was poured over the well-dressed corpse. It's fragrance more than enough to make her nose wrinkle. The bottle discarded with a blind toss.
"You don't happen to smoke, do you?"
"Uh… no." She replied.
He sighed again. Rubbing the cold sweat from his forehead he asked. "Not even the occasional joint?"
She stared at him with some confusion and a lot of hesitation. "… No?" She replied eventually, cautiously and unsure of just what the hell was going on.
"You don't have a lighter then?" He asked. He went on sighing, distracted and seemingly feeling truly sick. "Kinder in diesen Tagen... Das ist eine Arzneimittel."
"No sorry, man."
"Ugh…I hate getting down and back up." He said, sinking down to the bag. He did look like he was about to faint. With the book in one hand he rummaged through the bag until he found a yellow box of matches. He drew out a lone bulb of garlic as well. He needed to support himself on the way up, and was obviously trying to keep the contents of his stomach from coming up themselves. He was swaying just a little and breathing heavily.
Making all manner of disapproving grunts, he opened the vampire's mouth brutishly and shoved the garlic all the way down into the cavern that was it's mouth.
"Ax." He croaked, miserably but effectively.
Though loathe to do it, his voice left no room for disobedience. It was one tired but rich in authority from fighting a losing battle. In his case; sobriety. She handed it over.
He raised it in one hand. And then thought better of his actions.
"You may want to look away." He offered, glancing at her.
But she was a Corduroy. Made from sterner stuff than your average teenager.
"I'm cool as can be."
He merely shrugged. And then, without warning, the ax swung down relentlessly. The corpse had dissolved and rotten enough for it to pass through the neck in one fell swoop. With a discontent groan, he pulled it from the stone underneath and handed it back to her.
At long last, he pulled out a match from the little yellow box. With one strike he lit it and dropped it on the corpse. The body was aflame within a second, burning brighter than any of the torches across the room.
For a few seconds, they stood there, watching the body, dress and stake being consumed by the fire. By then Van Hadeschant had opened the old book. It's pages were withered. Ancient ink on ancient paper. The language one she could not read. Nor understand as he spoke it. As the old man read from the pages, it wasn't until he got to the end that she realized he was, in fact, speaking Latin.
"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen." He concluded, snapping the book shut.
"Overkill much?" She wondered out loud.
He didn't answer, but proceeded to do the first thing she could relate to, standing at the awful sight with that penetrating smell of burning oils and remains. The man turned and retched fiercely, just outside of the grave with the burning remains.
"Maybe you should not drink anymore, man. Doesn't look like you can handle the sauce." She offered.
"You don't really have much respect for your elders, do you?" He croaked, hunched over and leaning on the grave.
He pulled a handkerchief from his inner jacket-pocket and wiped his mouth.
The smell, already bad with the unholy barbeque going on, had only grown worse.
"Why is it that you 'adults' always say respect is earned?" She asked, leaning the handle of the ax on her shoulder. "Yet you seem to think you're entitled to it just by being you. I mean, if I were hungover instead of you, what would you do?"
"As a doctor..." He said, straightening himself. He still looked pretty miserable. "I'd inform you on the dangers of alcohol to your body and mind."
"You don't find that a bit hypocritical there?"
"I'm a do as I say, not as I do kind of doctor, Fraulein. Now let's get out of here and go check on your friend." He said, tossing the handkerchief to the flames. "I could do with some fresh air."
Pacifica plowed through the heavy snowfall, seeing barely a foot in front of her. In the distance, however, the blurry shape of the building mentioned by Claude loomed. She hoped it would provide comfort. The metal plane, danged up from the landing as it was, without a functional motor, would not keep them very warm. Nor could they make a call for transport in the state it was in. Rubbing her arms for warmth she made her way, following in the footprints left behind by her chauffeur. Somewhere behind her Dipper was helping along Gideon down the same path. Not through malignancy but rather through familiarity it never once crossed her mind to lift a hand herself. Besides, she was already preoccupied with her own furious thoughts. Explaining the damage to the plane to her parents would need some work, so it was best to already get started on it. Perhaps she could pay her chauffeur to go to town on the thing with a wrench and blame it on hooligans or the blizzard. The latter would, strictly speaking, not even be a lie. Rather an omission of truth, if she opted not to tell the plane had not been firmly on land when it suddenly hit.
When the building finally came into focus, it resembled a flat-topped, one story prison. It was built sturdyly but with little eye for finesse. The builder obviously had efficiency and productivity in mind, over the welfare of those that would frequent it. It wasn't a surprise, as it was a most familiar building. Her father had never concerned himself about luxury when it came to his employees.
Standing in front of the heavy, red metal door between the gray-bricked building, Claude stood shivering. He was still holding Mabel in his arms, who was either doing worse than Pacifica would've guessed or looking for warmth herself in the tall man's embrace. Knowing Mabel, it could very well be the latter in any weather.
"We should head b-back to the plane." Claude warned, his teeth clacking. "Place is closed and no-one's home." He added.
It was true. The few windows behind the heavy metal bars were shut and as dark as could be. The place had been shut down years ago.
"At least t-there it'll b-be w-warmer." Claude shivered.
"Don't lose your panties to frostbite just yet." She told him dismissively as she walked up to the heavy metal door.
The control panel at it's right was still there. She pulled the code from memory and dialed it in. The door creaked, but it opened none the less. Thank God for back-up generators.
She walked in without hesitation. Her employee was quick enough to follow.
"What is this place?" He asked, out of the wind and into the darkness.
The room they entered was vast and not well lit. She knew there were lights around here somewhere, traversing the walls, she looked for them.
"Property of my parents." She spoke bitterly. "Put down the girl and help me look for the lights." She ordered.
"But she's..." He started, sounding concerned over Mabel.
"She's only interested in your strong arms." Pacifica interrupted him.
She could see him hold her at a distance, examining her, still expecting to find her unconscious. The discomfort and confusion was easy to read on his face when she spoke.
"Heh." She said in a tone of voice that at least had the decency to sound a tad embarrassed. "It's true." The brown-haired girl admitted. Squeezing his biceps she added. "Those are quite some guns you have there, Claude." To say her voice was flirty would've been to say old man McGucket occasionally had a slight senior moment. "Have I ever told you how much I want to see Paris?" She asked, pronouncing the city's name with an admirable accent. "Beaucoup, Claude." She finished in a whisper. "Beaucoup."
He placed her down, wide eyed and fearful, in silence. In true-Mabel-fashion, the girl seemed oblivious to his dismay. Pacifica had to admit though, after the man's betrayal, it was fun to see him in such an uncomfortable position.
"Lights." She reminded him.
He seemed grateful to have something to do.
"Dipper!" Pacifica heard Mabel call her twin as she continued her search.
Apparently the last two of their group had arrived. And they sounded as surprised and captivated as her chauffeur had been.
"What is this place?" Gideon and Dipper asked in unison.
It could only have been timed better if she'd been the one to find the switch. But she'd settle for Claude proving his worth. As the light's flickered on, her companions could see the warehouse for what it was. A large, mostly empty room. Pallets and conveyor-belts were scattered everywhere amidst the complicated and dangerous-looking machinery. Metal and concrete in abundance. Stacks of white sacks and bleak lights present as well. The place looked more depressing inside than out. And that was saying something.
As she twirled around, she raised her arms dramatically, showing them the full extent of one of the Northwest's failures.
"Welcome." She hosted. "To the abandoned Northwest Salt refinery."
"Oh I remember this." Gideon said, breaking free from Dipper as he moved deeper into the room on his short, stubby legs. When he reached on of the 40 pounds bags and eyed the blue logo on top, his suspicions were confirmed. "Yeah…" He said, attempting to hold one of the bags up and failing miserably "The Northwest 'Salt-East Shaker' company." He explained.
"The very one." She admitted, joining the rest of them. "Claude." She ordered as she walked. "There's a thermostat right over there." She pointed at the far-end wall.
"Yo, pump up the heat!" Mabel threw down.
He was off quickly. Though Pacifica suspected it wasn't quite to adorn Mabel's wishes. As her peer waved him off, she leaned in to the Northwest heir and in a whispering tone asked: "Is there a miss Claude?"
Pacifica crossed her arms and felt like she should say something sarcastic. Truth was, however, she'd actually missed this. So instead of going the full mean mile, she snorted amiably. "Mabel..." She countered. "That guy is like two and a half times your age."
"I'm not hearing a no." The wild girl concluded happily.
"He's way too old for you, dingus." Pacifica smiled.
"I'll have you know I've grown up a lot since we last saw each-other face to face, Pacifica Northwest." Mabel replied putting up a mocking performance of being offended.
"That would be more convincing if you didn't have pink cat with heart-shaped sunglasses on your sweater."
"And the words 'Smooth-loving cool cat'." Mabel insisted firmly.
"So this place is your parents'?" Dipper butted in, looking about the giant room. "What happened to it?"
"It got shut down." Pacifice replied. She turned and beckoned them all to follow. "Come along dorks." She said. "There are land-lines in the offices. Maybe we can use them to call someone."
"Why did it get shut down?" Dipper continued.
"Why do you think?" She asked, leading the way. "My father heard about a salt-reservoir deep underground. These grounds were perfect for getting to it, and with a proper processing facility, he could make a fortune. So he bought the land from the original owners for little money. I suspect he... pressured them to sell. At first, the business went well, with little cash flowing in, he managed to draw a lot out. But the quality of the stuff…"
"It wasn't good?" Dipper asked, walking up next to her.
"Oh it was the greatest." Gideon professed. "I thought I'd never get to season my dishes with this stuff anymore."
From the corner of her eye she could see he'd taken two smaller bags of the stuff along with him. The same stuff that had been there, unattended, for years and had less than adequate to start with.
"The taste was fine." She admitted. "It was the true quality of stuff. My parents cut back on inspections, the machinery, health-regulations, the refining process, … Just about anything really. When a mandatory health-inspection came, however, it turned out they'd delved so deep into the reservoir that they'd started to come across a different soil. I don't remember the name, but it was actually slightly poisonous. Nothing major in small amounts, but some people eat fries with their salt, of course."
"Only the finest of American traditions." Mabel nodded knowingly.
"So they got a cease and desist, huh?" The male twin asked.
They'd gotten to a door, metal with a little frame high up. Pacifica pushed it open, revealing a circular room inside. Apart from a small walkway at the edges, the place was one and all water. It was a thick, smooth stone tub; deep and wide enough to host a fairly large pool-party. In the middle of the stone tub stood a pillar. Currently it wasn't moving but in the old days it's one, long arm would go around and around, all day long.
"What's that?" Mabel asked as they edged their way, sticking close to the walls.
"Some unique and cheap way to purify the salt in the water, or something." The blonde answered. The office lay just at the other end of this room. Despite the difficulty, it was a shortcut.
"Anyways..." Pacifica went on. "It wasn't a cease and desist." She explained. "Father realized it would just be cheaper to bribe the inspectors rather than needing to either pump more money into the refinery or give it up all together."
"I guess that means those bags are poisonous, Gideon." Dipper said as he edged along.
The fat little boy didn't seem to care however. "You heard the lady. Only in large amounts." He said. When that got a judgmental stare from the rest of them, he added, in his defense: "What? It's really good!"
"Anyways." Pacifica continued as she crossed the half-way point on the circular room. "Less salt, more poison. Even with the health-inspection turning a blind eye, it couldn't last long."
"Lawsuits?" The junior detective ventured.
She nodded. "We got sued by the dozens. Kidney-problems, hormones out-of-whack, people reportedly hearing colors,..."
"That's awful."
"Oh no." She countered absentmindedly, focusing on not slipping into the giant, deep reservoir. "We had pretty good lawyers, they handled everything."
"That's not why it's awful!" Dipper spoke with righteous indignation. "It's… Nevermind." He sighed.
"Anyways..." She stated, matter-of-factually, as she reached a larger part of the platform near the door they'd been trying to reach. "The place became a recognized safety-hazard and production was breaking even with the lawyer's fees. Dad shut down the plant because of it." She pushed the heavy door open and lead them in. "Of course he should've torn the place down. Elongated stay here is toxic, just ask the workers. But it was cheaper to make that order disappear rather than actually going through with it. So here we are..."
And here they were. The office was not a grand one. But it would serve. Amongst the four groups of four cubicles were plenty of phones adorning the plain desks. Dust and cobwebs hung about the place, along with forgotten calenders sporting cats hanging onto trees and motivational posters only the very gullible or the very self-absorbed would fall prey to.
"Like..." She said, moving to the nearest, simple, metal desk. She reached for the phone. "When I was little I was taught to believe we were helping the town with this place. But we just robbed the natural environment of it's resources, forced the locals out of their land and poisoned everything without having to pay the consequences."
"Only the finest of American traditions." Mabel repeated herself, laying it on thick this time.
"Well… Maybe I'm paying for it now." Pacifica said. The phone, pressed to her ear, was as dead as could be. "It's not working." She complained, hanging it up.
She could feel the irritation well up inside her.
"It's going to be okay." Dipper offered gently, placing his hands in his pockets. "At least we're warm." She couldn't tell if he genuinely wasn't worried, or was simply putting up a convincing act. "We can wait out the blizzard in here, whilst we continue to build up enough poison until we can hear colors." He added, lightheartedly, in his cracking voice.
"Or..." Claude spoke. His unexpected return was enough to give her a fright. Though she tried to compose herself thereafter soon enough. Her chauffeur closed the door they'd come in through as he continued. "We could walk to where I parked the limo. It's not that far off, definitely walking distance. I can have the snow-plow on it in no-time." He added. "We'll be back in town in no-time."
"Walking through that blizzard is insanity." Gideon objected, sounding cross. "And my atire's taken plenty a' poundin' already, might I remind you. If ya'll think I'm going through that one more time, ya'll are more deluded than a tourist at the Mystery Shack."
"What blizzard?" The chauffeur asked, indicating them to listen with his index-finger.
There was nothing to hear. No howling of the wind. No pounding of the snowfall. High up, the greasy, dark windows didn't permit them to look out easily. But Pacifica bet that if she could, she would find that the blizzard had stopped.
"Finally, some good luck." Mabel spoke cheerfully.
Van Hadeschant looked like crap. But still… The clear and fresh air seemed to be agreeing with him, Wendy reflected. He drank it greedily, filling his lungs with them as much as he could. She had to admit, she was glad to be out of that hell-hole too. Entering it twice had been about two times too many.
Despite the storm and snowfall having ceased, it was still freezing out there. Yet the leaning man, back against the stone entrance to the tomb, was sweating like a pig. He seemed feverish and shivered something fierce.
"You going to be okay?" She asked, confronted with his appearance all the more in, relatively, bright daylight.
He smiled with his red face and pointed upward. "No more snowstorm." He said. And added "Sunlight."
He was right. From between the thick, but dispersing, clouds a few lonely columns of sunlight graced the earth below.
And it wasn't that she wasn't grateful.
But… "You going to be okay?" She pressed again.
He waved it off brusquely. She had to admit, she enjoyed the buzzed Van Hadeschant over this one. Perhaps the man did too, and that was like to be the problem of it all. It could have been a manner of bad timing, and his stupor having been a one-off thing. A binge on a night he hadn't expected to work. But in the composed manner he'd handled himself last night, she could read the signs. She'd seen them before. The man had come to a point already in which he needed a drink or two to function properly. He'd spent so much time intoxicated that he'd learned to present himself well when being in that state. She, however, also knew of the phase that would come if such daily abuse continued. And him being a doctor, he probably did too.
Either way, he didn't seem concerned about it now; more focused on the agony he faced at the moment. He pushed himself off the stone wall and, dragging the heavy bag along, walked into the woods.
She followed suit. "I thought you said the real vampire wouldn't go down quite that easily?" She asked, absent-mindedly studying the silver cross still in her hand.
"I assure you…" He said. "No one's ever been more glad to be wrong than me." He slung the bag over his shoulder and added. "Though we should remain vigilant for now."
She concurred, sliding the handle of her ax beneath her belt. She knew she should return it, and she would, but it could wait until they were certain all danger had come and gone.
"You think Tambry is fine now?" She asked.
He pondered that for a second, as they traversed the snow and roots in silence. "Hm." He spoke eventually. "She might still be weak. But I'm hopeful. If the vampire's hold over her is broken, she should make a full recovery." She could tell he was trying to be comforting.
But she remained doubtful as she ploughed through to the town. Wendy would never have denied she could at times be a bit of a slacker. Knowledge of one's self was an honest and useful trait, after all. But, for once, she couldn't help but shake the feeling that all of this had been a bit too easy.
The eternal sensation remained present. Hunger. Her eternal companion. The need to feed fueled her. It was always there; her bedrock. Inescapable. Fated. Destined.
It could never be blotted out. Not a need that great. Not a desire that encompassing. There was no escaping it. There was no denying it. There was no ignoring it. Hunger was her very being.
And yet, something long forgotten had now resurfaced. It could never take that need's place. But for the moment, in it's challenge, it seemed like it could. It was burning with a passion she'd not felt in ages. Anger. Rage. Fury. The names returned with the experience. And for the briefest of moments in her existence, it drove her.
They'd desecrated everything. They respected nothing. They faced something greater than themselves and did not recognize their own puniness?! How dare they? Their existence was futile. Their lives an insult to what truly mattered. Her. All there ever was, was Her.
The memory of indignation was strong. It fed her. It made her strong. For the longest of time she'd longed for no more than to feed on prey. But now it was different. She had adversaries. Enemies. Feeling her fury grow stronger and stronger still, like a raging storm, she knew they'd fall like any other of the lesser beings that had ever crossed her path. But not to feed. No. Simply to destroy. To annihilate. To right the affront they'd committed. To quench this entirely new form of desire.
All she needed would come. And all would be settled. All would be made whole. As long as she held onto that hunger and rage. As long as she kept the memory.1 of 11
Why Not Just Drink It?
Vodka has been enjoyed since at least the early Middle Ages, and is well known as one of the world's most popular spirits. Its versatility in mixing and high alcohol content have made it extremely popular in cocktails, and it is still widely enjoyed 'neat' (straight up) in much of Eastern and Northern Europe. Vodka also has a long history of use as medicine, having been sold by druggists to cure everything from infertility to colic and the plague. While some of those historic promoters were half-cocked, it's true that vodka has a wide range of potential uses beyond serving as a relaxer and social lubricant. Why would you want to do anything else with vodka but drink it? It is widely available, effective and less toxic than many of the chemical alternatives you might use for these tasks.A desperate letter sent by army chief Lord Kitchener to Winston Churchill exactly 100 years ago has shown how unprepared Britain was at the outbreak of the First World War.
The letters written in August 1914, which have been unearthed for the first time, also reveal the'shell crisis' that Britain faced and the tension that existed between the two war leaders at a critical time in the conflict.
In August 1914, Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, the civil and political head of the Royal Navy, and had at his disposal ten million rounds of ammunition.
Lord Kitchener was Secretary of State for War at the outbreak of the First World War and requested ten million rounds of ammunition from Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty
Lord Kitchener was rebuffed by the Churchill and the letters show the tension that existed between the pair
Kitchener was the Secretary of State for War and was head of the British Expeditionary Force that was fighting German troops on the French borders as part of the Battle of the Frontiers.
His face famously appeared on First World War recruitment posters with the slogan 'Lord Kitchener Wants You'.
With the Allied forces pushed back to Antwerp and quickly running out of supplies, Kitchener wrote to Churchill on August 27 - a day after the Battle of Le Cateau, where the BEF suffered 7,812 casualties and were forced to retreat - requesting his help.
In the letter on War Office headed notepaper, he wrote: 'I think you said ten million rounds would be available. It makes me shudder to think of troops without ammunition.
'May I send an officer to the Admiralty to talk to your people about this and take over your contribution to Antwerp?'
But Kitchener was rebuffed by the future prime minister.
In his reply, Churchill wrote: 'No, no, no, no. 10,000,000 rounds is all I have got for the fleet.
'I have already given 500,000 rounds.
'I will see if anything can be scraped up from the ships to enable me to dispense with the 2,000,000 rounds we were counting on from you!'
Churchill (left) at the start of the First World War did not provide Lord Kitchener (right) with spare ammunition
The letters give an insight into the testing relationship that existed |
exchange that has built an economy around itself the way Bitcoin has. The three pillars of bitcoin have strong foundations in decentralization, peer-to-peer applications and open source. With these elements, businesses have taken on a new way of running their services with these specific attributes in mind. Companies like the news publications where I work have seen vast changes with their business models, adding new approaches to running an organization. Concepts like zero-knowledge, decentralized media, holocratic systems, and creative commons have changed the landscape for the better.
These methods work very well with a cryptocurrency business because they align with Bitcoin’s core concepts. Most of the publications I write for are organizations that run in a very holocratic way. Writers, editors and publishers in my line of work collaborate on an international level to cooperatively supply the globe with news. The same goes for any Bitcoin company, as they are not explicitly tied to a region, but rather operate on a global scale. Using a structure that takes away traditional hierarchical methods allows people from all around the world to work together — and it’s based on the incentive for this idea to succeed. That is the core difference between companies working for fiat; Bitcoin services and organizations work for the ultimate success for the digital currency as a whole. In turn, this provides a unique architecture around this industry very much like the self-securing network of mining.
Services that continue centralized operations and continue to manipulate and monopolize economies will not last when confronted by these new technologies. The same goes for companies that operate their businesses by sticking with the traditional foundations of corporatism and hierarchies. Closed data and patented code will never be able to compete in a world that embraces open source technology. Businesses that treat their employees like a tethered top-down system will also never match the inclusion crypto-like businesses offer, which actually incorporate Bitcoin’s attributes. Because the methods these legacy institutions use grow stagnant and give no innovation to society today, they do not improve the economy. They would much rather syphon the economy into the hands of the 1% and corrupt bureaucrats. Bitcoin and crypto-related companies that shine conduct business in an open, decentralized and peer-to-peer way. Anything less typically doesn’t match well with the digital currency environment and its community.
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”― Alan Watts
Businesses that stick with decentralized methods are fine and dandy, until people start mixing the applications of the past and the traditional ways of doing things with Bitcoin’s unique differences. Satoshi created a digital currency that is unlike the systems we are typically familiar with. It is very close to a ghost in the machine that we cannot touch. However, we can learn to play with its shadow to a degree. Centralized business models and legacy concepts will never mix well with Bitcoin because it is imperfect and always will be. Things like permissioned blockchains may work for individual businesses, but in the end nothing will perform like Bitcoin’s ledger. For it’s an imperfect design that creates more trust than its manipulated fiat counterparts. Over the course of its seven years of life, Bitcoin has shown people that decentralized models work, and that they are efficient.
The first time I truly had that moment where Bitcoin clicked was when I was examining Nancy Lynch’s 1989 paper, “A Hundred Impossibility Proofs For Distributed Computing.” The simplicity of Satoshi’s proof-of-work behind the beauty of Bitcoin helps the world understand consensus. A collective decision making process like consensus rules the business environment we all work in. Methods of centralization stagnate day-to-day consensus because it offers no fluid movement to all sections of human action.
Bitcoin acts as an imperfect consensus method; when we apply this system to our daily lives and business models, our economy will flourish. The crypto-industry will operate best when its mixture of investors, political idealists and geeks start working with Bitcoin — not against it. Satoshi’s invention is a striking force of technological LSD, and we don’t understand its capabilities just yet. The blockchain is essentially a ledger of digital events and nothing more. Bitcoin and its surrounding ecosystem is more than that because it has changed the landscape of business models, consensus and assets held within that verifiable record. Those who continue to follow the traditional paths while walking with the digital currency’s technology will most likely fail.
“If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.” ― Satoshi Nakamoto
When we create an industry with the foundations of Bitcoin, our global economies will flourish. Cryptocurrency was meant to change things drastically, and companies who are not open to dancing with its change will not flow well with current demonstrated preferences of today. Society has desired what Bitcoin has to offer, and it will continue to consume its attributes. With a new currency comes a different way of operating as well; let’s embrace it.
What do you think of holocratic business models and zero knowledge operations? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Redmemes
The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of Bitcoin.com.The date's been set for the final court-supervised auction of THQ's remaining properties. Those titles not bought in January's fire sale have been divided into lots, with initial bids due in April 1st. Final bids are required by April 15th, then, pending court approval, THQ expects to sell the remaining vestige of its existence by mid-May. *Sniff*
While the tastiest morsels have already been picked away, there's still some meat clinging to the THQ bone. Darksiders, Homeworld and Red Faction are all looking for a new home. In an ideal world, the Homeworld license will be picked up by someone who'll actually use it, and Red Faction will end up somewhere that recognises the brilliance of Guerrilla over the mediocrity of Armageddon.
Here's the full list:
Lot 1: Red Faction
Red Faction
Red Faction Armageddon
Red Faction 2
Red Faction: Guerrilla
Lot 2: Homeworld
Homeworld
Homeworld 2
Lot 3: MX
MX Alive
MX vs ATV Untamed
MX Superfly featuring Ricky Carmichael
MX vs. ATV Alive Tournament
MX Unleashed
MX vs. ATV Unleashed
MX vs ATV Reflex
MX vs. ATV: On The Edge
Lot 4: Darksiders
Darksiders
Darksiders 2
Lot 5: Other Owned Software
All Star Cheer Squad
Elements of Destruction
All Star Cheer Squad 2
Fantastic Pets
All Star Karate
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Baja: Edge of Control
Full Spectrum Warrior 1
Full Spectrum Warrior 2: Ten Hammers
Battle of the Bands
Beat City
Juiced
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
Big Beach Sports
Big Beach Sports 2
Lock's Quest: Construction Combat
Big Family Games
Neighborhood Games
Crawler
Pax Imperia
de Blob
de Blob 2
Stuntman: Ignition
Summoner
Summoner 2
Deadly Creatures
Deep Six
Terranium
Destroy All Humans!
Destroy All Humans! 2
Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
The Outfit
Titan Quest
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
uDraw
Dood's Big Adventure
World of Zoo
Drawn to Life
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
Lot 6: Licensed Software
Costume Quest
Stacking
Scripps Spelling Bee (Scripps)
Daniel X (SueJack)
Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Osborne House
Deepak Chopra's Leela (Curious Holdings)
Fancy Nancy: Tea Party Time! (Harper Collins)
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Jeopardy
Jeopardy 2
The Biggest Loser
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Truth or Lies
Let's Ride Best of Breed
Vampire Legends: Power of Three (dtp)
Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat
Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet
Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet 2
Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune 2
World of Zoo
Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase
Worms 2
Worms Battle Islands
Worms Open Warfare
Worms: A Space Oddity
Worms: Open Warfare 2 (Team 17)
Nexuiz
Paws & Claws Marine Rescue
Paws & Claws Pampered Pets Resort 3D
PurrPals 2
Rio
You Don't Know Jack (Jellyvision)
Rocket Riot
Screwjumper (Frozen Codebase)
Wow, that's a mixed bag of Other and Licensed properties.
Wishful thinking time! Who would you like to see bidding on the various series?
Thanks, GI.bizSeven months after becoming the first of many American communications companies proven to be collecting data on its customers for the National Security Agency, Verizon has issued its first transparency report.
It’s the first phone company to do so—and it’s a concession. When Edward Snowden first revealed that the NSA got information from major U.S. Internet companies like Facebook and Google, those involved quickly protested having knowingly given up any of their users’ info. But Verizon and AT&T made no such claim, and one Verizon executive dismissed the effort as “grandstanding.”
Verizon, like other major phone companies, is part of the NSA’s metadata collection program, and receives an order from the secretive FISA court every three months for all phone records where at least one number is American. (While that program still exists, it’s in a strange limbo at the moment: President Obama declared Friday that the NSA would no longer directly access that metadata without a court order, though he’s still working out who will store it.)
So what’s in it? Unfortunately, nothing juicy on the NSA. Like most companies, Verizon’s legally barred from sharing how many FISC orders it gets, and it doesn’t give any indication it’ll fight to do so. It also keeps its stats related to how many government requests for data that it gets, rather than specifying how many it honored. It does, however, offer a few insights:
Verizon receives somewhere between 1,000 and 1,999 National Security Letters in 2013. That refers to FBI demands—which come with a legal gag order, but don’t require a warrant—for information that doesn’t fully identify a person.
Unsurprisingly, given its size, it was subpoenaed by courts a total of 164,184 times last year. It estimates 50,000 emergency law enforcement requests for its information.
Perhaps most striking is how often Verizon was instructed to give a government agency direct access to track someone’s phone calls: about 7,800 times. Roughly 1,5000 times, it was instructed to actually give a government agency a wiretap to listen to a person’s phone calls in real time.
Never forget: Your cell phone is a means of tracking where you are. Specifics are vague, but the company says it received roughly 35,000 demands for customers’ location data in 2012.
Verizon honored five governments’ demand to block all its customers in that country from viewing certain websites. Most striking, it took out 37 sites in Belgium and two in Portugal for “online gambling or copyright issues.” It also blocked around 1,200 sites the Colombian government said contained child pornography, 424 sites Greece said featured online gambling, and a number of sites in India, though Indian law prohibits revealing specifics.
So thanks, Snowden. It took more than half a year, but now we have a little more data to fill out how much phone companies share with the government.
Illustration by Fernando Alfonso IIICrude oil, coal and gas are the main resources for world energy supply. The size of fossil fuel reserves and the dilemma that “when non-renewable energy will be diminished” is a fundamental and doubtful question that needs to be answered. This paper presents a new formula for calculating when fossil fuel reserves are likely to be depleted and develops an econometrics model to demonstrate the relationship between fossil fuel reserves and some main variables. The new formula is modified from the Klass model and thus assumes a continuous compound rate and computes fossil fuel reserve depletion times for oil, coal and gas of approximately 35, 107 and 37 years, respectively. This means that coal reserves are available up to 2112, and will be the only fossil fuel remaining after 2042. In the Econometrics model, the main exogenous variables affecting oil, coal and gas reserve trends are their consumption and respective prices between 1980 and 2006. The models for oil and gas reserves unexpectedly show a positive and significant relationship with consumption, while presenting a negative and significant relationship with price. The econometrics model for coal reserves, however, expectedly illustrates a negative and significant relationship with consumption and a positive and significant relationship with price. Consequently, huge reserves of coal and low-level coal prices in comparison to oil and gas make coal one of the main energy substitutions for oil and gas in the future, under the assumption of coal as a clean energy source.Standing in front of the beer cooler in Colorado, the Napa Valley of Beer, can be a little overwhelming. Okay, it can be a lot overwhelming.
There are dozens of styles -- from IPAs, stouts and sours to Belgian saisons bocks and barrel-aged brews -- from a confounding number of breweries. And then there's the packing: six-packs of bottles, four-packs of bottles, six-packs of cans, twelve-packs of cans, 22-ounce bomber bottles, 750 ml bottles and more.
But you've got to start somewhere. So here's a list of seven brand new beers (listed in no particular order) that have just been released for the first time or will be within the next week or so. Try some of them this spring or try them all. You'll be glad you did.An envelope waits when I arrive at the Park Hyatt hotel in Milan. It is very precious. A bellman comes to my room to give it to me by hand. Inside is an invitation the size of a billboard in gold embossed letters:
GUCCI
MONDAY
JANUARY 14 AT 12:30 PM
FALL WINTER 2013-2014
MEN'S COLLECTION
PIAZZA OBERDAN 2/B MILAN
When I look at it, holding it with two hands, of course, because of its weight, I am struck by the incongruity of how I ended up here. It isn't every day that a journalist who majors in writing about the culture of sports in America, with a minor in the cult of high school football as an outgrowth of my 1990 book, Friday Night Lights, gets an invitation like this.
My seat assignment is A3, in the front row. Celebrities get the front row. The fashion editors of Vogue and Women's Wear Daily and The New York Times get the front row. I am a FROW, not that I knew what the term meant before now, but I am fucking FROWING. Fifty-eight-year-old men who live in the nation's capital of fashion dreariness, Philadelphia, where wearing a striped tie with a striped shirt to a cocktail party causes Main Line doyennes to whisper "the horror, the horror" in between the third and fourth martinis and little nibbles on saltines with Velveeta served on silver trays, do not get the FROW.
But I am not here because of my particular journalistic qualifications. I am here as a private client of Gucci, one of five pampered and feted on an all-expenses-paid four-day trip to Milan and Florence. Business class on Alitalia Flight 605 from JFK to Malpensa on January 12. Private pickup to the Park Hyatt Milan, where the concierge has been clearly prepped before our arrival, calling me Mr. Bissinger with better pronunciation and far more enthusiasm than my friends. Gucci employees everywhere, like secret agents without the whole talking-wrist ritual. The fashion show with the presentation of the men's 2013-14 autumn/winter collection. A guests-only presentation at the Gucci showroom with champagne, way too much champagne. A sumptuous dinner with an unrestricted view of the Duomo, which shimmered with golden light in the shadows of the chilly night. A fitting the next day for a made-to-measure suit and shoes and shirt at the Gucci store. On to Florence and the Four Seasons. The Gucci Museo for a private tour of the retailer's legacy and then dinner. Then, on the final day, Gucci Casellina, where I am shown trade secrets that will get me lowered permanently into the Arno if ever revealed. And let's not forget the gifts waiting in each hotel room: chocolates stamped with the iconic interlocking GG insignia, a crocodile credit card holder, a crocodile wallet, and a tie.
There are other clients coveted and important to the retailer, who will also get the royal Gucci treatment. We five got lucky. We are Team Gucci, with representation from Argentina, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We are for the moment Gucci Olympians who have spent Olympian sums and will presumably spend Olympian sums during the week.
I believe I qualify.
God, do I fucking qualify.
Before I left, I promised my wife I would be restrained. She is very concerned, because she knows what can happen. But inches from the runway, waiting for the smooth mannequin boys with surgically removed hips and buttocks swaying like sunglassed Gumbys with the newest designs from creative director Frida Giannini, I know the promise is useless.
I have an addiction. It isn't drugs or gambling: I get to keep what I use after I use it. But there are similarities: the futile feeding of the bottomless beast and the unavoidable psychological implications, the immediate hit of the new that feels like an orgasm and the inevitable coming-down.
It started three years ago. I have never fully revealed it, and am only revealing it now in the hopes that my confession will incite a remission and perhaps help others of similar compulsion. If all I buy is Gucci, I will be fine. It has taken a while to figure out what works and what doesn't work, but Gucci men's clothing best represents who I want to be and have become—rocker, edgy, tight, bad boy, hip, stylish, flamboyant, unafraid, raging against the conformity that submerges us into boredom and blandness and the sexless saggy sackcloths that most men walk around in like zombies without the cinematic excitement of engorging flesh.PATNA: Bihar’s minority welfare minister Abdul Ghafoor on Monday said he would not have any hesitation in meeting the convicted former RJD MP Mohammad Shahabuddin at Tihar central jail, whenever he visits the national capital in near future.A photograph showing Ghafoor and a former MLA of RJD holding meeting with Shahbuddin inside Siwan district jail, had gone viral in the month of March last year, leading to a debate whether a cabinet minister visiting a convicted prisoner inside the jail is ethical.“I will definitely call on him (Shahabuddin) whenever I will go to Delhi. Will let you people know whenever I will visit the national capital,” Ghafoor said while interacting with a section of media persons on the sidelines of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s weekly ‘Lok Samvad’ programme here.Shahabuddin is still a national executive member of his party.On being asked if Shahabuddin's controversial remarks against CM Nitish Kumar, calling him “a CM of circumstances” while coming out of Bhagalpur central jail, annoyed the state machinery against the convicted former MP, Ghafoor promptly disapproved Shahabuddin’s remark and said, “Nitish Kumar Ji was made CM in a truthful circumstance.”The minister also denied any partial role of Bihar government in Shahabuddin-related judicial matters. He said, the former RJD MP was recently transferred to Tihar jail at the directive of the Supreme Court and the state government didn’t play any partial role in it.“Bihar government went to the apex court not only in Shahabuddin's case but also in many other cases including those of expelled RJD MLA Rajballabh Yadav, expelled MP Pappu Yadav, BJP MLC Tunnaji Pandey and Gaya road rage case,” the minister argued.On being asked about the controversial photograph showing him with Shahabuddin inside the jail and having some snacks, the minister reiterated what is wrong if a political person went to meet the former MP of his party after procuring necessary permission from the concerned jail authorities.Last year, when the minister’s photograph having some snacks with Shahabuddin inside the Siwan jail went viral, RJD chief Lalu Prasad had defended Ghafoor, saying “There is nothing wrong or illegal in dining with a convict.”The minister avoided a direct reply on being asked whether RJD should remove Shahabuddin from its national executive after his conviction in a murder cases. “His wife Heena Shahab had contested Lok Sabha polls from Siwan seat on RJD symbol. She is still with party,” the minister said.Welcome back to the masses Dave Chappelle.
Fresh off a successful gig hosting "Saturday Night Live," the beloved comic is getting three specials on Netflix.
On Monday, the streaming giant announced that Chappelle and director Stan Lathan have teamed up to produce a new stand-up comedy special exclusively for Netflix.
They'll also partner to release two unseen concert specials from Chappelle's personal comedy vault. Those shows -- filmed at Austin City Limits and The Hollywood Palladium -- will debut simultaneously in 2017.
Chappelle, who in 2005 famously walked away from a lucrative contract and the third season of his popular Comedy Central sketch series, "Chappelle's Show," spent several years making impromptu appearances at comedy venues before returning to stand-up more regularly in 2013.
According to Netflix, Chappelle has performed in more the 500 shows in the past three years -- with tickets typically selling out in minutes.
The Chappelle news comes on the heels of Netflix mega deal with Chris Rock to produce two new stand-up streaming specials.You understand how to use equipment in combat.
Prerequisite(s): Base attack bonus +1.
Choose a piece of equipment, such as anvil, boots, a cloak, rope, a shield, a heavy blade scabbard, a sunrod, or wondrous item.
Benefit(s): You can use any equipment trick relating to the chosen item as long as you meet the trick’s prerequisites. If the item would normally be considered an improvised weapon, you can treat it as either a normal weapon or an improvised weapon, depending on which is more beneficial for you.
Special: You can gain Equipment Trick multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of equipment.
In addition to the feat or skill requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (piece of equipment) feat.
Anvil Tricks
Source PPC:MM
In addition to the feat or skill requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (anvil) feat. You may use these tricks with any anvil weighing 50 pounds or more.
Counterweight (Climb 5 ranks) : You can use your anvil as a counterweight when you climb a rope or chain to reduce your Climb DC by 5.
: You can use your anvil as a counterweight when you climb a rope or chain to reduce your Climb DC by 5. Improve Armor (Craft [armor] 5 ranks) : You can spend an hour with your anvil and a suit of non-magical metal armor to temporarily increase the armor’s armor bonus by 1. This bonus ends after the next time the wearer is hit.
: You can spend an hour with your anvil and a suit of non-magical metal armor to temporarily increase the armor’s armor bonus by 1. This bonus ends after the next time the wearer is hit. Quick Fix (Craft [any] 5 ranks) : You can spend 1 minute with your anvil and a metal item with the broken condition to remove the broken condition from the item for 1 hour. The item does not recover any hit points, and at the end of the hour it regains the broken condition and loses an additional 1d6 hit points (unless properly fixed by then).
: You can spend 1 minute with your anvil and a metal item with the broken condition to remove the broken condition from the item for 1 hour. The item does not recover any hit points, and at the end of the hour it regains the broken condition and loses an additional 1d6 hit points (unless properly fixed by then). Smash Through (Improved Bull Rush): When you end your move adjacent to a closed door, you can open the door as part of your move action (instead of as a separate move action) by smashing it with an anvil as you move. If the door is stuck or locked, you must succeed at a bull rush combat maneuver check that exceeds the door’s break DC.
Boot Tricks
Source PPC:DTT
In addition to the feat or skill prerequisites for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (boots) feat. A pair of boots refers to any set of footwear that has hard soles. These equipment tricks can be used with either magic or mundane boots.
Cleat Stomp (Improved Unarmed Strike) When you make a successful unarmed strike against an opponent while wearing a pair of boots with cleats, the target takes 1 point of bleed damage. The bleed damage can be stopped by a successful DC 15 Heal skill check or by magical healing. The effects of this trick stack with other sources of bleed damage but not with other bleed damage dealt by this trick.
When you make a successful unarmed strike against an opponent while wearing a pair of boots with cleats, the target takes 1 point of bleed damage. The bleed damage can be stopped by a successful DC 15 Heal skill check or by magical healing. The effects of this trick stack with other sources of bleed damage but not with other bleed damage dealt by this trick. Heel Crush (Improved Dirty Trick) When you succeed at a successful dirty trick combat maneuver check against an opponent within melee range, you can crush the target’s foot or similar appendage with your boot heel. Instead of inflicting one of the conditions that can normally be imposed by a dirty trick, you reduce the target’s movement speed by half (to a minimum of 5 feet). You can’t use a dirty trick combat maneuver in this manner against an opponent that is using a movement type other than its land speed, and movement types other than land speeds aren’t affected by this equipment trick. As usual, a creature with a movement speed of 5 feet can’t take a 5-foot step.
When you succeed at a successful dirty trick combat maneuver check against an opponent within melee range, you can crush the target’s foot or similar appendage with your boot heel. Instead of inflicting one of the conditions that can normally be imposed by a dirty trick, you reduce the target’s movement speed by half (to a minimum of 5 feet). You can’t use a dirty trick combat maneuver in this manner against an opponent that is using a movement type other than its land speed, and movement types other than land speeds aren’t affected by this equipment trick. As usual, a creature with a movement speed of 5 feet can’t take a 5-foot step. Sharp Veer (Combat Reflexes) Whenever you use the charge or run action, you can make one 90-degree turn during your movement. You must move at least 10 feet in a straight line after this turn if you are charging.
Cloak Tricks
Source PPC:DTT
In addition to the feat or skill prerequisites for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (cloak) feat. At the GM’s discretion, you can use these tricks with any cloth object that is roughly the same size and shape as a cloak for a creature of your size (such as a curtain).
Heavy Blade Scabbard Tricks
Source PPZO9410
In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirement listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (heavy blade scabbard) feat to use a trick. You may use these tricks with any sword scabbard designed for a heavy blade (see the fighter weapon groups). At your GM’s discretion, you may be able to use some of these tricks with a scabbard intended for a light blade, but that requires a separate Equipment Trick feat and may be less effective.
Instrument Tricks
Source PPZO94102
Bards and other musicians must sometimes improvise more than their music. These instrument tricks expand any musical instrument’s uses and supplement the Equipment Trick feat presented on page 2. Some tricks might be unusable for certain instruments at the GM’s discretion; for example, an organ is too unwieldy to use as an improvised weapon. In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (instrument) feat to use a trick.
Attention Grabber (Perform 5 ranks, Bluff 5 ranks or bardic performance or raging song class feature) : Your loud or discordant performance covers your allies’ movements. Creatures within 30 feet of you that can hear you play an instrument take a –2 penalty on Perception checks, other than Perception checks made in response to your actions, for as long as you play.
: Your loud or discordant performance covers your allies’ movements. Creatures within 30 feet of you that can hear you play an instrument take a –2 penalty on Perception checks, other than Perception checks made in response to your actions, for as long as you play. Goad Animal (Handle Animal 5 ranks or Animal Affinity): You can use your soothing performance to handle an animal that is friendly toward you, such as a mount or pet. When playing your instrument, commanding the animal to perform a trick it knows is a free action, and pushing it to perform a trick it does not know is a standard action. If you already can make an animal respond more quickly, such as with the link ability of an animal companion, this trick provides no benefit.
You can use your soothing performance to handle an animal that is friendly toward you, such as a mount or pet. When playing your instrument, commanding the animal to perform a trick it knows is a free action, and pushing it to perform a trick it does not know is a standard action. If you already can make an animal respond more quickly, such as with the link ability of an animal companion, this trick provides no benefit. Jaw-Dropping Distraction (Perform 7 ranks, Bluff 7 ranks or bardic performance or raging song class feature): When using your instrument, you can attempt a Perform check instead of a Bluff check to feint an opponent. If you succeed, the creature is denied its Dexterity bonus to AC against one target of your choosing (other than you) until the beginning of your next turn. Once you have used this trick against a creature, whether or not you succeeded at the check, you cannot use this trick to feint the creature for 24 hours. Creatures with uncanny dodge are immune to this trick.
When using your instrument, you can attempt a Perform check instead of a Bluff check to feint an opponent. If you succeed, the creature is denied its Dexterity bonus to AC against one target of your choosing (other than you) until the beginning of your next turn. Once you have used this trick against a creature, whether or not you succeeded at the check, you cannot use this trick to feint the creature for 24 hours. Creatures with uncanny dodge are immune to this trick. Play to the Crowd (Perform 3 ranks, Diplomacy 3 ranks or bardic performance or raging song class feature): You can use Perform, rather than Diplomacy, to improve an NPC’s initial attitude toward you as long as you are able to perform for at least 1 minute. You cannot use this trick to increase the NPC’s attitude beyond friendly.
You can use Perform, rather than Diplomacy, to improve an NPC’s initial attitude toward you as long as you are able to perform for at least 1 minute. You cannot use this trick to increase the NPC’s attitude beyond friendly. Ruffian’s Riff (Catch Off-Guard): You can treat a musical instrument as an improvised weapon with the performance special feature. When you use a masterwork musical instrument as an improvised weapon, you treat it as a masterwork weapon (adding a +1 enhancement bonus on your attack rolls). Your attacks with a magical musical instrument are treated as magic for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
Ladder Tricks
Source PPZO94102
Ladders are not a common adventuring staple due to their cumbersome size.
Yet some adventurers who take ladders with them into the field use them to great effect. In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (ladder) feat to use a trick.
Lantern Tricks
Source PPZO94102
Lanterns come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Each of these tricks can be performed with any sort of lantern or lamp, except when a specific kind of lamp is indicated in the description. In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (lantern) feat to use a trick.
Mirror Tricks
Source PPZO94102
Adventurers carry mirrors for many unconventional uses.
You may perform the following tricks with a mirror or, at the GM’s discretion, with a similarly reflective handheld item, such as a highly polished piece of metal. In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (mirror) feat to use a trick.
Net Tricks
Source PPC:DTT
In addition to the feat or skill prerequisites for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (net) feat. To use any of these equipment tricks, you must be proficient with nets.
Pole Tricks
Source PPZO94102
Each of these tricks can be done with a pole or balancing pole, but specific poles have further abilities. In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirements listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (pole) feat to use a trick.
Pole Trip (Catch Off-Guard or Improved Trip) : You can treat a pole as an improvised weapon with the reach and trip special features. You can treat an unhinged folding pole as an improvised weapon with the disarm and trip special features. A pole or folding pole used as an improvised weapon deals 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage.
: You can treat a pole as an improvised weapon with the reach and trip special features. You can treat an unhinged folding pole as an improvised weapon with the disarm and trip special features. A pole or folding pole used as an improvised weapon deals 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage. Seek the Unseen (Perception 1 rank) : When you attempt to find a creature you cannot see (either because it is invisible, or because you are blind), you can sweep a pole through any two adjacent squares within 10 feet of you as a standard action. Make a melee attack against an AC of 10. If you hit, and if a creature you cannot see is in the designated area, you deal no damage but have successfully pinpointed the creature’s current location.
: When you attempt to find a creature you cannot see (either because it is invisible, or because you are blind), you can sweep a pole through any two adjacent squares within 10 feet of you as a standard action. Make a melee attack against an AC of 10. If you hit, and if a creature you cannot see is in the designated area, you deal no damage but have successfully pinpointed the creature’s current location. Wall Climb (Climb 3 ranks): You can climb narrow passageways if your pole can reach a wall or other solid surface on both sides, bracing yourself and scooting the pole further along the surface as you climb. This method is reliable but laborious; you gain a +10 circumstance bonus on your Climb checks to climb in this manner, but you climb at half the usual speed.
Rope Tricks
Source PCS:PSFG
In addition to the feat, skill, or other requirement listed for each of these tricks, you must have the Equipment Trick (rope) feat to use rope tricks. Rope tricks can be performed with hemp rope or silk rope, or with similar rope-like items at the GM’s discretion.
Coil (Sleight of Hand 5 ranks) : You can coil rope rapidly, requiring only 1 round to coil 20 feet of rope. (Coiling 20 feet of rope normally takes 1d6 rounds.)
: You can coil rope rapidly, requiring only 1 round to coil 20 feet of rope. (Coiling 20 feet of rope normally takes 1d6 rounds.) Hogtie (Improved Grapple) : When you attempt to tie up an opponent you are grappling, your penalty is only –5 instead of the normal –10.
: When you attempt to tie up an opponent you are grappling, your penalty is only –5 instead of the normal –10. Knotted Weapon (Weapon Proficiency [spiked chain]) : You can use a knotted length of rope as a spiked chain that inflicts bludgeoning damage instead of piercing damage.
: You can use a knotted length of rope as a spiked chain that inflicts bludgeoning damage instead of piercing damage. Lash (Weapon Proficiency [whip]) : You can use a length of rope as a whip at no penalty. The piece of rope that is used as a whip must be 10 feet long—length in excess of this must remain coiled or otherwise unused at your feet or side.
: You can use a length of rope as a whip at no penalty. The piece of rope that is used as a whip must be 10 feet long—length in excess of this must remain coiled or otherwise unused at your feet or side. Lifeline (Climb 5 ranks) : When you or a nearby creature is falling (from a failed Climb check or otherwise), you can throw a held rope as an immediate action, maintaining a grip on one end. If you are falling, this is treated as an attempt to catch yourself while falling made with a +10 bonus, but there must be some sort of solid anchor available for your rope to loop around. When attempting this check on another creature, treat it as if you yourself were falling. If the weight of the creature exceeds twice your heavy load limit (your own equipment does not count against this maximum), you are pulled after it.
: When you or a |
This release is the first step in that direction. The current API is not finalised so ideas and feedback are much appreciated!
For more details on this feature see our guide here.
Extendible DSL
You can now provide your own methods to DRY up your schema definitions:
module MyMacros def maybe_int ( name, * predicates, & block ) required ( name ). maybe ( :int?, * predicates, & block ) end end Dry :: Validation :: Schema. configure do | config | config. dsl_extensions = MyMacros end Dry :: Validation. Schema do maybe_int ( :age, gt?: 18 ) end
Feel free to experiment with this and if you discover any common patterns let us know by reporting an issue. It might be a good candidate to be added to dry-validation!
…and more!
Yes, there’s more :) For detailed information about the changes and improvements please read the CHANGELOG.
Check out dry-validation and tell us what you think!Ambitious Pittsburgh leaders clambering for a spot among the nation’s most bicycle-friendly cities point to European cities as the ultimate inspiration.
The sharp ring of bicycle bells dashing across crowded Danish streets. Dutch canals enveloped by dusty, worn-in commuter bikes instead of cars. Children traversing urban alleyways without supervision or fear.
“We rode 70 miles,” said Mayor Bill Peduto in June, fresh from a weeklong trip to Copenhagen. “We’d stop and we’d look, and we’d say, ‘Huh. We can do this in Pittsburgh.’ We saw the potential was there.”
Bicycle advocates want to sear such images into the minds of American mayors.
“To ride a bike in Pittsburgh, or any American city, you have to come through a lot of barriers,” said Zach Vanderkooy, Green Lane Project coordinator, whose organization People for Bikes gave $250,000 to Pittsburgh and funded Peduto’s trip. “It’s not considered normal or easy, or even very convenient, but that’s what we’re trying to change.”
Peduto pledged in July to make cycling projects a priority in city infrastructure plans, including the first five miles of protected, two-way bike lanes.
A stretch running from Schenley Plaza to Anderson Playground in Schenley Park cost nearly $93,000, almost half of the project’s phase-one budget, said Patrick Hassett, assistant director of transportation and engineering with the Department of Public Works.
Though inexpensive compared with highway projects, the construction is not cheap, he said.
“It depends on how far we retrofit,” Hassett said. “Just the basics — markings, signage, bollards and paint — runs us about $40,000 per quarter-mile. That adds up fast.”
Funded to evolve
Twenty years ago, Pittsburgh was “kind of the worst” for bicyclists, Peduto said. “Today we’re among the top 30 cities in the nation, but you know what? We can do better.”
With Bike Pittsburgh, a nonprofit advocacy group, the city installed 70 miles of on-street bicycle infrastructure, established bike corrals and valet services at city festivals, and freed up 7,000 bicycle parking spaces.
Leaders spent $22 million in building 20 miles of riverfront trails. Bike share stations and protected lanes are next, Peduto said.
Unlike larger, more bicycle-friendly cities such as Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis, Pittsburgh has no dedicated funding for projects.
“We rely on grants, mostly,” said Patrick Roberts, principal transportation planner with the Department of City Planning.
Roberts estimated the city could amass up to $2.5 million this year, $1.38 million from the city capital budget. About $416,000 of local matching money does not have to be spent immediately, he said.
“We have the money,” Roberts said. “We just need a plan.”
Business owners Pete and Dana Provenzano of Plum, who own Zano’s bar just off Saline Street in Greenfield, are not thrilled with the city’s piecemeal strategy.
New bike lanes along Saline narrowed the street and drove Second Avenue bus commuters who leave their cars all day deep into the neighborhood.
“I’ve got no problem with people who ride bikes — if they’re ever looking for an inviting spot off the trail and come in for a bite, we’ll take care of them — but the bike lanes took away what little parking we had,” said Provenzano. “Now the city wants to talk to us about it, but it’s too late.”
Planners could have addressed parking before crews installed the bike lanes, he said.
“It’s hard enough being a little local bar,” Provenzano said.
Little learners
Advocates agree early education is key to spurring any radical cultural shift. In many Dutch, Danish and Canadian cities nearly every child gets daily training.
“Biking programs are really difficult to run,” said Phil Koch, national executive director of the Marilyn G. Rabb Foundation, a Chicago-based nonprofit.
The foundation mentors up to 300 kids a year through its Positive Spin biking programs, held after school and during summer with Pittsburgh Public Schools.
“We work with more kids here than we do in any other city, and still the logistics of moving and servicing dozens of bikes, plus organizing a staffer or two for every handful of kids — it’s really hard,” Koch said.
The foundation spends $300 to $500 per child, he said, including a year-end, 100-mile trip. To reach all of the district’s 26,463 students, it would need $8 million to $13 million.
“Without sustained school district support, expansion on that scale from an outside group just isn’t feasible,” he said.
Even if bikes were available, places to park them are not. Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said racks are sparse, with just a few spaces each at Taylor Allderdice High School, CAPA and Barack Obama Academy.
Coaxing kids to ride through steep hills and pockmarked streets is as much a product of robust public transportation as early intervention, said Chris Metka, state coordinator with the federal Safe Routes to School program.
That’s where Pittsburgh has an advantage, said Eric Boerer, Bike Pittsburgh’s advocacy director.
Port Authority started adding bike racks to its 702-bus fleet in 2001 — though the agency does not track their usage, said spokesman Jim Ritchie. Grants paid for the latest batch, at about $700 per rack.
More, better access
Cycle tracks and protected lanes attract less avid riders, particularly women, according to a 2013 study by Ohio University.
Peduto promised to open access to 500 rental bikes with $2.2 million in grants throughout Downtown, the North Side, South Side Flats, Oakland and the East End by next year.
Hassett said city planners want to extend that access into the Hill District and Larimer: “We have to get bikes to the people who need them.”
Simon Blenski, bicycle and pedestrian planner with the Minneapolis Public Works Department, said corporate and university buy-in helped jolt commuting goals with roving mechanics, bicycle parking garages and discounts on insurance premiums through tech-savvy ride trackers. Pittsburgh could do the same, he said.
Bike Pittsburgh’s Bike Friendly Employer program boasts “the nation’s largest network of certified, bike-friendly establishments,” said Dan Yablonsky, the group’s business programs assistant.
BNY Mellon added parking at three Downtown locations, 4moms installed a bike share for employees to move between their Downtown office and Strip District warehouse, and Downtown-based Fukui Architects extended tax benefits for bike commuters.
“Even the city planning department has a (bike) rack on the fourth floor,” Hassett said, “but that’s because it’s important to us. It’s a gradual evolution in Pittsburgh culture.”
Megan Harris is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach her at 412-388-5815 or mharris@tribweb.com.+ 36
Architects Supermachine Studio
Location Onnuch Junction, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, จังหวัด กรุงเทพมหานคร 10110, Thailand
Category Offices Interiors
Architect in Charge Yupadee Suvisith
Area 989.0 sqm
Project Year 2016
Photographs Wison Tungthunya
Client Hubba in collaboration with Sansiri More Specs Less Specs
Text description provided by the architects. With their ambition, Hubba, a co-working space operator, wants to create their new edition of their space differently than their first one. They collaborate with Sansiri, one of the biggest developers in Thailand, to curate their space in Habito, Sansiri's brand new mall locating in the center of the residential territory they created. Hubba came up with the idea of enlarging the portion of “making” within the ecosystem of “working” to suit the new neighborhood. They call it “Artisan space”, which consists of several handmade facilities such as pottery and wood studio, open kitchen and photography dark room. Screening room for different lectures, workshops and seminars is also added. The intention is to expand their already wide networks, strengthen the concept of being a “hub” and reinforce their “co-working” philosophy.
The design of Hubbato space takes shape from the a funny idea of extending networking lines of Hubba's original logo and multiply them to occupy/unify space on ground and second floor. We realized that the scheme could be made possible thinking that there are supposed to be quite a number of M&E lines to be installed in the project for functional reason already. Our main operation is to add more into the system and design the organization of these conduits. We color them turquoise to make them visually present (or even emphasize them) throughout the space. We, as designers, usually struggle with M&E elements in our project but, in case of this project, we decide to make it excessive to the degree that it has become an incorporated ornament in architectural space.Why LegitAction?
Our democracy is facing its biggest legitimacy crisis in a generation or more. Over the past seven plus years, the GOP and their billion-dollar corporate backers have led an assault on four of the most important pillars of our democracy, and as a result the legitimacy of our system of government is in peril.
The Right to Vote: The GOP has pursued systematic voter suppression at the state level, intentionally making it harder for minorities and low-income citizens to vote. The Popular Vote: Two of our last three presidents have won the White House while losing the national popular vote because of the esoteric system known as the Electoral College. Campaign Finance Reform: Since the Citizens United ruling, we have seen a rise in electoral bribery and corruption. The Supreme Court: The GOP torched the legitimacy of our highest court last year when they abandoned their constitutional responsibilities by blocking Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination.
These are four real threats to our democratic legitimacy, and together, they resulted in Donald Trump.
I want to continue to do my part to fight for our democracy, which is why I launched LegitAction to help restore our democratic legitimacy. Together, we will fight to undo Citizens United, protect voting rights, end the Electoral College, and protect the Supreme Court.
I hope you will join me in this fight.
-RussToday is the final day for registration with Irish Water in order to be eligible for the Government's Water Conservation Grant.
Approximately 1.32 million households have registered with Irish Water to date.
A €100 Water Conservation Grant will be paid beginning in September 2015 to all households that have registered with Irish Water by midnight tonight, whether or not they are connected to public drinking water or waste water services.
Households do not need to do anything further at this stage in relation to the grant once they have registered with Irish Water as the Department of Social Protection has confirmed it will be writing to registered households beginning in late August explaining how to apply for the grant.
The grant will be paid by the Department of Social Protection on behalf of the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government to the occupier who registers with Irish Water in respect of their principal, private residence.
Householders can call LoCall 1890 448 448 to register with Irish Water or alternatively as high calls volumes are expected in the call centre today, can register online at www.water.ie.
Further information on applying for the Government's Water Conservation Grant is available on www.watergrant.ie.God bless you (variants include God bless or bless you[1]) is a common English expression, used to wish a person blessings in various situations,[1][2] especially as a response to a sneeze, and also, when parting or writing a valediction.[1][3] The phrase has been used in the Hebrew Bible by Jews (cf. Numbers 6:24), and by Christians, since the time of the early Church as a benediction, as well as a means of bidding a person Godspeed.[4][5] Many clergy, when blessing their congregants individually or as a group, use the phrase "God bless you".[6]
Origins and legends [ edit ]
National Geographic reports that during the plague of AD 590, "Pope Gregory I ordered unceasing prayer for divine intercession. Part of his command was that anyone sneezing be blessed immediately ("God bless you"), since sneezing was often the first sign that someone was falling ill with the plague."[7] By AD 750, it became customary to say "God bless you" as a response to one sneezing.[8]
The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77, although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for.[9] Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed,[9] that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits,[10][11] or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence.[9] In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil.[12] The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation.[13] Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating.[9][10][11]
In some cultures, sneezing is seen as a sign of good fortune or God's beneficence.[9][14] As such, alternative responses to sneezing are the French phrase à vos souhaits (meaning "to your wishes"), the German word Gesundheit (meaning "health") sometimes adopted by English speakers, the Irish word sláinte (meaning "good health"), the Italian salute (also meaning "health"), the Spanish salud (also meaning "health"), the Hebrew laBri'ut (colloquial) or liVriut (classic) (both spelled: "לבריאות") (meaning "to health"), the Arabic saha (spelled "صحة", also meaning "health").
In Persian culture, sneezing sometimes is called "sabr =صبر," meaning "to wait or be patient." And when trying to do something or go somewhere and suddenly sneezing, one should stop or sit for a few minutes and then restart. By this act the "bad thing" passes and one will be saved.
In Greek culture, sneezing was widely recognized as a divine omen. In Book 17 of Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope speaks to Eumaeus in private about the suitors feasting in the halls of the king's palace, and how surely Odysseus will return and kill them. Suddenly her son Telemachus sneezes and Penelope laughed. A sneeze meant the intercession of the gods to make her statement come true. It was a blessing from the gods, connecting the sneeze to the "God Bless You."
References [ edit ]Exciting personal news: in a couple of month’s time I shall be saying hasta luego to London and will be moving with my girlfriend to Valencia in Spain for the foreseeable future, where the plan is to continue with my freelance work.
This means that a clearout of my present home/studio is required and one particular item I feel deserves a better home is this 2 metre-long reproduction of my epic ‘Panorama of London’ drawing which Theprintspace in Hoxton kindly printed large and mounted onto a sheet of board to include in an exhibition they were staging last summer. It’s about 5 times larger than the original drawing and the reproduction standards are exceptional. Sadly since that short display, opportunities to exhibit it have been slim and it has sat unappreciated in storage ever since.
Therefore I am open to offers - a new tenant of the Shard perhaps (the place from which the drawing’s view is based) or a gallery, cafe or collector. Please direct all enquiries to me.mikehall@gmail.com
For more images and information about this artwork please visit: http://www.thisismikehall.com/panorama-of-london
Further news about my big move shall follow soon!
prologue: apologies for the quality of the photos in this post, these phone camera snaps are the only ones I have of the artwork’s installation.By Leo Babauta
Like a chump, I struggled for years trying to change my habits.
I started an exercise program or diet with unrestrained optimism, probably a dozen times. I threw away all my cigarettes and tried quitting smoking about seven times. I tried waking up early, reading more, writing daily, getting out of debt, watching less TV, and failed at all of those.
It feels horrible when you can’t stick to habits, and I constantly felt bad about myself. What I didn’t realize back then, until I started successfully changing my habits in late 2005, is that it wasn’t a matter of me not having enough discipline. It was a matter of doing habit change all wrong.
I was making some big mistakes when it came to habit change, and once I fixed those mistakes, I got immensely better at sticking to changes.
If you’re struggling with habit change, here are some of the mistakes I used to make, in hopes that it will help you too.
Not changing your habit environment. We often rely completely on willpower to stick to habit change, but in practice that rarely works. Much better is changing the environment around you. Make it easy to do your habit, by putting your running shoes next to your bed and sleeping in your running clothes, for example, or having lots of healthy food around you, or writing out small steps you can take in your spare time to reduce debt. Make it hard to do the things you don’t want to do, by getting rid of all the junk food in your house or setting up accountability with friends with a big consequence for missing exercise or eating fast food, or put your TV in the closet or unplug your router and give it to someone to hold for a couple hours. Be smart and figure out how to change your environment so your habit succeeds, and if it fails, change your environment some more. You expect comfort. Habit change is by its nature uncomfortable, but most of us want to do the same things we’ve always done and never be uncomfortable. It’s why most people don’t exercise, because they dislike the discomfort. If you allow yourself to be open to discomfort, at least a little at a time, you’ll be less likely to quit. Don’t like running? Just do a little of it, and be willing to push through a little discomfort. What you learn is that there’s nothing wrong with being uncomfortable, and this becomes a superpower for changing any habit. You don’t start small. Most people are optimistic and try to make too big a change. There’s so many reasons to start small with a habit change that I can’t even list them all, but let’s take some of the most important. If you start small, the discomfort of change isn’t overwhelming. If you start small, you overcome the problem of inertia and not getting started. You also overcome the problem of burning through all your enthusiasm, or using up your willpower reserves. You make it impossible to say no, impossible to fail, if you start small. Some examples: meditate for 2 minutes, just get out the door and run for a minute, eat 1 vegetable a day, smoke 1 time less per day. You have unrealistic fantasies about the habit. When we start a habit change, it’s usually because we have some kind of picture in our heads about how great our lives will be once we make this change: we’ll be healthy and fit and sexy, our lives will be uncluttered and simple and beautiful, we’ll be happy. Unfortunately, changes in reality are pretty much never as we fantasized about, and so we become disappointed and discouraged. A better approach is to realize that these fantasies or ideals aren’t true, hold onto them loosely, and instead to an approach of curiosity: what is it like to change? What is discomfort like? How can I be happy in each step along the way, instead of only at my goal? You start right away. I don’t know how many times I threw away my cigarette’s at a moment’s whim, deciding that moment to quit smoking. What I realized is that starting immediately is a bad idea, because it meant I was taking the change too lightly. The habit change was as small a commitment as taking out the trash, and as easily put off. Except that if I kept putting it off it didn’t stink as much as the trash. So I learned a better way: set your start or quit date in the future. At least a few days, maybe even a week or two weeks. My quit date for smoking was Nov. 18, 2005, and I marked it on my calendar and it became important. I wrote out a plan, had replacement habits for triggers like stress and being around other smokers, set up accountability, read about it. The habit change then took on importance, and so I was much less likely to just drop it. You don’t have accountability. One of the best ways to change your habit environment is to set up accountability. Create a challenge and tell people about it. Set a consequence for failure — I’ve asked a friend to throw a pie in my face if I didn’t stick to a change, for example. Join an accountability group. Report daily. Ask them to not let you fail and slip away. The accountability will help keep you on track when all the other things fail.
If you can fix these habit mistakes — and they’re fairly simple to fix — you’ll be increasing your odds of success a dozenfold at least. These fixes changed my life, and I hope they change yours too.Thibaut Courtois’ father expects Chelsea to decide the fate of current No. 1 Petr Cech before the young Belgian commits his future to the club.
• Mourinho: No Courtois-Costa swap
• Brewin: Chelsea show champion credentials
• Worrall: A masterclass from Mourinho
Courtois Jr is currently on loan at Atletico Madrid, where he has spent three seasons playing in La Liga, and is yet to make an appearance for Chelsea despite having joined in 2011.
The relationship between Jose Mourinho and Courtois Sr has been stretched in recent months, with the Chelsea boss reportedly wanting the goalkeeper to sign a new, long-term deal at Stamford Bridge.
Thibaut Courtois joined Chelsea in 2011 but has yet to play a first-team game for the Blues.
However, the Courtois camp has been reluctant to pen a new contract with Chelsea without a reassurance of first team football - and Courtois Sr has suggested Cech's future must be considered first before anything is decided for his son.
"Chelsea have a good goalkeeper in Cech, so cohabitation with both is not possible," Courtois Sr told Belgian news agency RTBF. "Alternating between the two is possible on paper but this is not what we want. This is not a situation we want.
"For now, we expect to discuss with Chelsea but it is impossible for Courtois to join a club to be their number two, and the conclusion is the same for Petr Cech.
"Every week he dazzles us. He produces big performances and his team continues to amaze and produce good results, in part thanks to him. This is a big success. It goes beyond our expectations.
"He is very happy. He does not bother about tomorrow, and plays it game by game and works every day to improve. He is happy to be appreciated by his teammates and the staff."
Mourinho recently ruled out the prospect of selling Courtois to Atletico; his comments were later dismissed by Atletico director Clemente Villaverde, who claimed Mourinho did not make the transfer decisions at the club and that he would pursue above the manager's head in order to sign Courtois permanently.Untitled a guest Jul 1st, 2014 334 Never a guest334Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 9.57 KB Piracy has had a long-standing, terse relationship with PC games for well over a decade. On the one hand, we have the advocates who tout that pirates are all that stands between a gamer’s wallet and greedy corporations. On the other, less blatantly displayed hand, we have legitimate buyers suffering DRM measures and game developers deprived of their hard-earned money. Piracy has always been a turbulent topic to navigate. There are too many stakeholders involved and too much misplaced hearsay about things like DRM and copy-protection. The cold, hard truth of it is, piracy is leeching the PC gaming industry in disastrous ways mostly to gamers — and we're all too oblivious to recognize it. Dropping the hammer...on your own foot A brutally succinct report by Tweak Guides outlines exactly how piracy hurts gamers most. The report contains facts backed by uncomfortably solid stats and sheds light on dispelling the myths surrounding piracy. Many are eager to point out that piracy isn't all bad. The following are some common claims made in favour of piracy, followed by the reality of the situation. “Games cost too much!” The first complaint many gamers will use in their defense against piracy is that PC games are overpriced. Consider the price of a console version, of maybe shelling out $40, for a game isn't your cup of tea, but the fact of it is, PC games are generally cheaper than console versions. An Xbox 360 copy of Metro: Last Night (released in May) will cost you a hefty $65, a PS3 version will cost $59, and a PC version costs $48. This is not an exception. Yet sales of console games are miles ahead of their PC counterparts. Lower PC game sales have consequences. The fewer copies that sell, the lower the publisher’s profit margin is and the less likely they are to be able to offer discount deals. Since piracy effectively allows people to play a game without purchase, it is actually lowering our chances of getting a legit copy for less. And here we hit the freeloading problem: people who contribute nothing toward the cost of developing the game. This weight is then carried by paying customers. Not seeing the problem yet? Simply put, developing a video game isn't cheap. According to industry analysts, GTA V is estimated to have cost around $137 million to develop. Game development costs are increasing across the board, as consumers expect more with each new release. If enough people pirate this game, Rockstar will have to rely on console sales to make a profit. There is increasingly less incentive to develop PC-exclusive titles when a developer sees little chance of breaking even. For a real-world example, Crytek, developer of the popular Crysis series, cited piracy as its reason for switching from PC exclusives to multiplatform versions after sales of Crysis took a hard hit. "It promotes the game!" There is absolutely no way to tell whether the buzz created by word-of-mouth and pirated games will result in increased sales or increased piracy. In some cases, it may actually be damaging. Some companies have leaked DRM-addled copies of a game pre-release, just to ward off pirates and protect day one sales. These copies provided intentionally terrible gameplay, but the attempt backfired as devs faced a backlash of poor user reviews on Metacritic and deliberate down-rating once word of the DRM measures got out. "I wanna try a game before I buy!" Gamers often want to check out a game before they commit to buying it. This is a valid argument, and it’s why game demos exist. Yet again, though, there is no guarantee they will actually buy the game once they try a pirated copy. It would be illogical to play a game through and then purchase a legit version. It’s human nature: why spend money if you can get something for free? "People Will Pay for Good Games!" An oft-touted defense from righteous gamers is that a good game sells itself. This is untrue. The most popular pirated games every year are all big titles, known by general consensus as “good games”. Source: Gamefront Crysis 2 sold only 486,943 copies that year. There is no evidence that a good game will indeed “sell itself”. "PC games sell less because more people have consoles!" Though not a direct defense against piracy, this is used to justify why poor PC game sales can't be blamed on piracy. It’s hard to pin down a figure for how many gaming-capable PCs exist. Many PC aficionados buy components separately and so sales of pre-built PCs do not accurately reflect the number of gaming PCs. One way to get an idea is by looking at sales of GPUs. This year, for instance, NVIDIA reported that GPU sales revenue was at $832.5 million, an increase of 7.1% from last year. And considering even a graphic card over two years old can handle Call of Duty 4 at 30 FPS, it is a fair estimate to say that almost every graphic card sold this year has been capable of gaming to some extent. Suffice to say, PC gaming is not in decline. According to VGChartz, between 2005-12, 6 times as many games were played on PCs than on the 3 consoles combined. This is data taken from a small sample of gamers, and to compensate for that, we can safely attest that there are at least as many PC gamers as console gamers. "DRM causes piracy. Removing it will mean more sales." Spore, the most pirated game of 2008, has SecuROM protection (a DRM measure), and yet was the most downloaded game that year. DRM in a game is no deterrent to piracy. Gamers love to hate DRM and rightfully so. It disrupts gameplay. But consider this. DRM is only a response from desperate developers to wild increases in piracy, which has reached a point where pirated copies out-do sales. Games didn't start off with DRM. Piracy caused it. Game devs know pirates will get around security measures. Since most games usually sell well only within the first 2 months, DRM aims to prevent Day 0 or Day 1 piracy. It is not meant to eradicate piracy. And what happens when well-intentioned developers remove DRM altogether? When The Witcher 2 launched, it was exactly what gamers wanted, a well-made PC exclusive free of DRM. Instead of selling well, CD Projekt found that more than 80% of its players used a pirated copy. Steam’s DRM is one of the few successful combatants of piracy. The client still rakes in huge revenue, and probably a large reason why devs haven't given up hope altogether. "Sure, PC gaming is dead, that totally explains the number of games." This claim implies that piracy must not be hurting PC gaming if devs are still creating PC versions of a game. The fact of it is, PC gaming was never dead. But piracy is having an incredible impact. The Move to Consoles Development and support for PC titles are being cut and devs are being pushed into doing one of two things: shifting to consoles or changing their business models to episodic or subscription-based gaming. For the skeptics, several prolific developers have called out pirates as being the reason for their shifting strategies. Cevat Yerli of Crytek explains: “Speaking in terms of PC exclusivity...if the situation continues like this or gets worse, I think we would only consider PC exclusive titles that are either online or multiplayer and no more single-player." John Carmack of id Software (developer of Wolfenstein), Cliffy B of Epic Games (Gears of Wars developer) and Robert Bowling of Infinity Ward (Call of Duty developer) have all spoken out about the impact of piracy on their companies. In a blog post titled, “They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More”, Bowling writes: “If the same game has the potential to sell many times more copies on a particular platform because sales are not being undermined by piracy, then quite clearly the priority of the developers and publishers should be to focus on that platform in their design, development and marketing decisions. " Less PC Exclusives, More Console-First. Fewer PC-focused games mean poor ports for multiplatform titles or those built for consoles. This is problematic, because consoles run on a fixed hardware platform whereas a PC has multigenerational hardware capability. Ported games may thus have fewer graphics and audio adjustments, have frame rate caps built into the game engine, are poorly optimized and suffer graphical compromises mandatory to run on a current-gen console. Other problems include console-oriented UI, resulting in awkwardly large HUDs for PC games like Skyrim. Adding to this, game engines like Unreal Engine 4 are being designed to "exclusively target the next console generation.” PCs are an afterthought. PC Game Versions Delayed. Developers are wizening up. They see the lack of piracy in console games and are pushing back release dates for PC versions. Michael Plater, the creative director of Tom Clancy's EndWar, blamed the game’s delayed PC launch on piracy. “The level of piracy that you get with the PC just cannibalizes the others, because people just steal that version,” he said. “Piracy's basically killing PC." Even post-E3 2013, devs remain elusive about porting this year’s big titles to PC. A Bleak Future for PC Gaming. Piracy isn't visibly disrupting anything, and yet if gamers don't act, PC gaming could go the same way as gaming on Macs – near nonexistent. Peter Tamte, a Mac game developer, imparted these cautionary words to all PC publishers, and they appear to be listening: "Shift development to platforms where piracy is less of a problem, like game consoles." TLDR: The only winners of the piracy game are the piracy sites that rake in subscription fees and DRM developers. PC gamers and game developers alike are losing.
RAW Paste Data
Piracy has had a long-standing, terse relationship with PC games for well over a decade. On the one hand, we have the advocates who tout that pirates are all that stands between a gamer’s wallet and greedy corporations. On the other, less blatantly displayed hand, we have legitimate buyers suffering DRM measures and game developers deprived of their hard-earned money. Piracy has always been a turbulent topic to navigate. There are too many stakeholders involved and too much misplaced hearsay about things like DRM and copy-protection. The cold, hard truth of it is, piracy is leeching the PC gaming industry in disastrous ways mostly to gamers — and we're all too oblivious to recognize it. Dropping the hammer...on your own foot A brutally succinct report by Tweak Guides outlines exactly how piracy hurts gamers most. The report contains facts backed by uncomfortably solid stats and sheds light on dispelling the myths surrounding piracy. Many are eager to point out that piracy isn't all bad. The following are some common claims made in favour of piracy, followed by the reality of the situation. “Games cost too much!” The first complaint many gamers will use in their defense against piracy is that PC games are overpriced. Consider the price of a console version, of maybe shelling out $40, for a game isn't your cup of tea, but the fact of it is, PC games are generally cheaper than console versions. An Xbox 360 copy of Metro: Last Night (released in May) will cost you a hefty $65, a PS3 version will cost $59, and a PC version costs $48. This is not an exception. Yet sales of console games are miles ahead of their PC counterparts. Lower PC game sales have consequences. The fewer copies that sell, the lower the publisher’s profit margin is and the less likely they are to be able to offer discount deals. Since piracy effectively allows people to play a game without purchase, it is actually lowering our chances of getting a legit copy for less. And here we hit the freeloading problem: people who contribute nothing toward the cost of developing the game. This weight is then carried by paying customers. Not seeing the problem yet? Simply put, developing a video game isn't cheap. According to industry analysts, GTA V is estimated to have cost around $137 million to develop. Game development costs are increasing across the board, as consumers expect more with each new release. If enough people pirate this game, Rockstar will have to rely on console sales to make a profit. There is increasingly less incentive to develop PC-exclusive titles when a developer sees little chance of breaking even. For a real-world example, Crytek, developer of the popular Crysis series, cited piracy as its reason for switching from PC exclusives to multiplatform versions after sales of Crysis took a hard hit. "It promotes the game!" There is absolutely no way to tell whether the buzz created by word-of-mouth and pirated games will result in increased sales or increased piracy. In some cases, it may actually be damaging. Some companies have leaked DRM-addled copies of a game pre-release, just to ward off pirates and protect day one sales. These copies provided intentionally terrible gameplay, but the attempt backfired as devs faced a backlash of poor user reviews on Metacritic and deliberate down-rating once word of the DRM measures got out. "I wanna try a game before I buy!" Gamers often want to check out a game before they commit to buying it. This is a valid argument, and it’s why game demos exist. Yet again, though, there is no guarantee they will actually buy the game once they try a pirated copy. It would be illogical to play a game through and then purchase a legit version. It’s human nature: why spend money if you can get something for free? "People Will Pay for Good Games!" An oft-touted defense from righteous gamers is that a good game sells itself. This is untrue. The most popular pirated games every year are all big titles, known by general consensus as “good games”. Source: Gamefront Crysis 2 sold only 486,943 copies that year. There is no evidence that a good game will indeed “sell itself”. "PC games sell less because more people have consoles!" Though not a direct defense against piracy, this is used to justify why poor PC game sales can |
Sunday was submitted by Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar, and was formulated based on a Shin Bet opinion regarding the volatility of partners from the Gaza Strip. Meretz party head Zahava Gal-On slammed the decision as placing “draconian restrictions on Israeli Arab citizens’ right to marry,” calling the designation of all Palestinians as a security threat “racist” and discriminatory.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-extends-law-restricting-unification-of-citizens-with-spouses-from-enemy-states-1.515423
Erekat slams ‘racist’ Israeli citizenship law
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — PLO official Saeb Erekat on Sunday slammed Israel’s decision to extend a law which prohibits granting residency or citizenship to Palestinians from the occupied territories who are married to Palestinian citizens of Israel, a statement said. “What the Israeli government has approved is a racist law attempting to distort the Palestinian social fabric and force the displacement of Palestinian families,” Erekat said. “Israel not only wants to control Palestinian freedom of movement and steal land and natural resources through its colonial settlement enterprise, but seeks to control the very right of our people to choose and establish a family.”
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585638
Army to impose two-day curfew in the West Bank
JPost 14 Apr — Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has declared a two-day general quarantine in the West Bank while Israelis observe the Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars and Independence Day, the army reported on Sunday. The quarantine is a general curfew over the entire area which will only allow movement that is considered “humanitarian, medical or an emergency.” The restrictions will be lifted on Tuesday at midnight.
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=309798
Proposal to extend Buraq wall plaza by destroying Al Magharbeh Hill
MEMO 12 Apr — Israeli media reports have unveiled for the first time a scheme which threatens Al-Magharbeh Hill and the historic sites close by. The so-called “Sharansky Proposal” is to expand the Buraq (“Western”) Wall plaza to the south-west of the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa, destroying the historic hill and Islamic sites in the process. The intention is to provide additional prayer areas for Jews. Natan Sharansky is the head of the extremist Jewish Agency who was born in Russia. His proposal is to extend the plaza in front of the Buraq Wall – know to Jews as the Western, or Wailing, Wall – towards what Israelis call Robinson’s Arch on the southern wall of the Islamic Sanctuary. The proposal has been drafted in response to an order from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do something about keeping Jewish men and women separate when saying their prayers at the Wall … Palestinians regard this as yet another stage in Israel’s Judaisation of the occupied Holy City.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/5723-proposal-to-extend-buraq-wall-plaza-by-destroying-al-magharbeh-hill
Water restrictions in Area C threaten to displace villages
MASAFER YATTA (Ma‘an) 13 Apr by Charlie Hoyle — “Life is hard, but I won’t leave the village,” Zahira al-Jundi says. Despite winter rainfall which has painted green patches on the rolling south Hebron hills, the 145 residents of Tuba face a daily struggle to access the most basic levels of water needed to survive. Like 70 percent of Palestinian communities in Area C, Tuba is not connected to the water network. The weekly sight of a water tanker negotiating the rocky sand-colored terrain to reach the village is a welcome relief for residents, but only a temporary measure to ease the humanitarian impact of an acute water shortage. Located in 30,000 dunams of land designated by Israel as a closed military area, or Firing Zone 918, Israel’s Civil Administration forbids all construction in Tuba. Villagers live in caves and tents and depend entirely on cisterns and tankered water to meet their daily needs.
“These communities live in conditions similar to that of a post-disaster situation, such as an earthquake or tsunami,” Advocacy Task Force Officer for EWASH, Alex Abu Ata, tells Ma‘an.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=576309
Illegal setter gets more than 4 times as much water as Palestinian neighbor — and US signed off
Mondoweiss 13 Apr by Philip Weiss — Lauren Gelfond Feldinger in Haaretz reports on water distribution in the West Bank and says that the Palestinian Authority has gone along with the apartheid system of inequitable division because of the Oslo Accords. The figures: “On average, West Bank Palestinians have access to about 70 liters a day per person, although in some areas availability is as low as 15 liters, depending on the season. In contrast, Israeli citizens inside the Green Line or in West Bank communities utilize around 280-300 liters per person a day year-round, according to rights organizations, water NGOs and the Palestinian Water Authority.” Feldinger says that EWASH (a coalition of 28 international NGOs working locally on Palestinian water issues) along with the Middle East Children’s Alliance, started a program to get international volunteers to use only 24 litres of water for one day, so as to dramatize the inequality.
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/illegal-palestinian-neighbor.html
Jewish settlers attack Palestinian property, uproot saplings
NABLUS (PIC) 13 Apr — Heavily armed Jewish settlers went on the rampage in Orif [or ‘Urif] village, south of Nablus, under Israeli military protection on Friday night. Local sources said that the settlers, guarded by Israeli occupation forces, attacked citizens’ homes and property to the east of the village and damaged olive and almond saplings that were planted by the villagers only a month ago. They explained that a number of institutions in the village had organized a day for volunteers in which they planted those saplings. They said that the soldiers attacked the citizens who tried to stop the attack and fired flare bombs and teargas grenades at them.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7iJpS%2fYN0JGwUXFkKqzxxtF7Tfmqc30q9qBtDjMsPLmObiLeqn5bCcWWY3pcT9aCi7a7lVvG207J4VsNq5Goj%2b6VziZN59gT3s1FiLe%2bud1k%3d
‘It is time to guard our house!’: Nazareth Illit mayor promises to prevent a Palestinian school in order to ‘stop the demographic deterioration’ of the city
Mondoweiss 12 Apr by Adam Horowitz — The above statement was published by Nazareth Illit mayor Shimon Gapso and posted on a Facebook page for the city. Nazarth Illit is a predominantly Jewish city located inside the state of Israel that was established in the 1950s overlooking the Palestinian city of Nazareth to promote the Judaization of the Galilee. We have covered the rampant racism in the city before. Ofer Neiman provided the following translation: “An account to/for the residents – what have we done on the issue of the city’s identity? Upper Nazareth – Jewish Forever! Not to be taken for granted, but the result of a staunch standing and a daily struggle…”
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/publishes-demographic-deterioration.html
Violence / Raids / Attacks / Protests / Arrests
VIDEO: 13-year-old boy arrested in Hebron
Hebron (ISM) 13 Apr — A thirteen year old boy was arrested from his home in the Old City of Hebron, blindfolded and detained inside several small checkpoint boxes as well as the military base on Hebron’s Shuhada Street. International activists who attempted to document the incident were physically stopped and threatened by soldiers and settlers. The boy was taken from his home and transported to Checkpoint 56, a small metal box on the border between the Israeli and Palestinian controlled areas of the city. He was blindfolded and shut inside the checkpoint for around 20 minutes. After this, he was removed by soldiers and walked down Shuhada Street, still blindfolded, and put inside another small checkpoint box. After 15 minutes he was removed from this checkpoint and walked to an Israeli army base. International activists who attempted to follow to document the situation were stopped by soldiers who called them “Nazi pigs”, pushed them and refused to accept their passports as identification. After several minutes of the soldier harassing activists a group of around fifteen settlers arrived, several carrying automatic weapons. They pushed and threatened the international activists — see video below.
http://palsolidarity.org/2013/04/video-13-year-old-boy-arrested-in-hebron/
Al-Khalil (Hebron): New report documents the loss of childhood
APTnet 11 Apr — A newly released report compiled by internationals working in the West Bank city of Hebron documents an alarming rate of abuse of the rights of children. Human rights workers in H2, the portion of the city under Israeli military control, have witnessed 47 detentions or arrests of children age fifteen and under by soldiers since the start of February. Other violations documented in the report include conducting war training when children are present, delaying children and teachers as they pass checkpoints to access schools, detaining children in adult facilities, questioning children without the presence of an adult, and blindfolding children in detention … Documentation in the report was collected by three human rights organizations working in Hebron. Christian Peacemaker Teams, International Solidarity Movement, and Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine all maintain teams in Hebron in order to provide protective presence and documentation in civilian neighborhoods.
http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2013/04/11/al-khalil-hebron-new-report-documents-loss-childhood
Israeli military invades houses during settler tour of Hebron
ISM 13 Apr by Team Khalil — Israeli soldiers invaded at least four Palestinian houses in the city of Hebron on Saturday 13th April, prior to and during the settler tour, intimidating children and families. During the tour, around fifty settlers and Jewish tourists occupied the Palestinian souq (market), surrounded by around fifty heavily armed Israeli soldiers, border police and police officers. Before the tour began, around twenty soldiers walked through the market, pointing guns into doorways, intimidating shoppers and restricting movement for Palestinians. At this point soldiers invaded two Palestinian homes, stationing themselves on the roofs of these homes for several hours until the end of the tour … As the tour progressed through the souq, a group of soldiers split from the main group and invaded two other Palestinian houses, in one home disturbing a family with several young children and in another walking in on a young woman who was home alone (see video below). She stated that they enter her home every week, and she is usually the only person there. The soldiers are all heavily armed, aggressive and do not respond when asked why they are entering private Palestinian property.
http://palsolidarity.org/2013/04/israeli-military-invades-houses-during-settler-tour-of-hebron/
Army invasion of Burin
Burin (ISM) 12 Apr — At 2am on Thursday 11 April Burin village near Nablus was invaded by over ten army jeeps, 100 soldiers and border police. The Army raided houses arresting 3 young men from the village and destroying the cultural centre used by the community. Solidarity activists entered the village shortly after 2am and witnessed soldiers all over the village, detaining a youth and raiding several homes. They were able to enter the home of one family and stay with them as the Army pulled back at around 4:30am. The family had several small children including a baby … The Army appeared to be targeting members of the cultural centre in the village, which is used to organise events, teach English and is a space for local people and youth to use computers and learn. The centre was destroyed, donated computers were thrown on the floor and the doors and equipment were smashed … Burin village is regularly invaded by the Israeli Army due to its steadfast resistance to the stealing of village land by the illegal settlements of Yitzhar and Bracha. These illegal settlements are particularly notorious and the villages surrounding them regularly suffer settler harassment.
http://palsolidarity.org/2013/04/army-invasion-of-burin/
Israel destroys West Bank community center, arrests 20
Burin (EI) 12 Apr by Jillian Kestler-D’Amours — Large slabs of wood lay scattered on the brightly tiled floor. Ripped posters were still clinging to the walls by bits of tape. A handful of computer hard drives were ripped out, and lay haphazardly on their sides. The electricity wires were cut, and broken windowpanes let in what little light entered the room. “[The Israeli interrogator] told me, ‘We are now breaking your dream and your friends’ dreams,’ ” said 23-year-old Ghassan al-Najjar, while standing on piece of a broken wooden desk. “They said, ‘We will come back soon, but next time will be to take you and put you in the prison.’ ” Al-Najjar founded the Bilal al-Najjar Martyrs Center with friends in his home village of Burin, in the northern occupied West Bank, in 2007. Located in the heart of the village, the center provides language and computer classes, and other educational resources, to women, children, the elderly, and anyone else in Burin.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-destroys-west-bank-community-center-arrests-20/12364
45-year-old wounded in clashes south of Hebron
HEBRON (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Dozens of Palestinians suffered tear-gas inhalation during clashes at the southern entrance of Hebron, an official told Ma‘an Friday. Rateb al-Jbour, the coordinator of popular committees in Hebron, told Ma‘an that the Israeli troops attacked a weekly march south of Hebron. This march aimed to condemn the closure of the roads link between Hebron and its southern villages. It also condemned Israeli violence and negligence in Israeli jails. Israeli troops fired tear-gas toward Palestinians.
Yousef Abu Maria, 45, the coordinator of popular committees in Beit Ummar, was struck by a tear-gas canister. The march was launched after Friday prayers, and Palestinians from several factions participated.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585023
3 teens injured in Beit Ummar clashes
HEBRON (Ma‘an) 13 Apr — Three teenagers were injured during clashes in Beit Ummar on Saturday, a local official said. Committee spokesman Muhammad Ayad Awad told Ma‘an that Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets during clashes with locals, injuring three teenagers aged 15, 16 and 17. One teenager was hit in the jaw, another in the abdomen, and one in the foot.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585350
Updated: Nabi Saleh demonstration violently suppressed by Israeli forces; activist shot three times
ISM 12 Apr — UPDATE 13th April 2013: The injured Spanish activist returned to hospital Saturday morning, after experiencing continued pain, dizziness and fatigue. She had been shot three times with plastic coated steel bullets at Nabi Saleh demonstration the day before. She is currently under observation at the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, being treated with antibiotics — Around one hundred Palestinians, joined by a handful of Israeli and international activists, participated in today’s demonstration in Nabi Saleh. After midday prayers, protesters marched from the centre of the village, deviating from their usual route and walking across the main road and up the hill, trying to reach the water spring stolen by settlers from Halamish settlement more than three years ago. By the time protesters reached the hilltop, several Israeli Border Police officers waiting and immediately started to shoot tear gas canisters and rubber coated steel bullets at them. One Spanish international activist was hit by a rubber coated bullet in the right leg. As people retreated from the hilltop back to the main road, Israeli forces continued shooting tear gas canisters.
http://palsolidarity.org/2013/04/nabi-saleh-demonstration-violently-suppressed-by-israeli-forces-activist-shot-three-times/
VIDEO: Silwad protest, 12-4-2013
Published on Apr 12 – Fierce resistance was sparked yesterday by the vicious beating of a 60-year-old former judge Ahmad al-Zir after so called “settlers” attacked him the previous day with an iron bar which fractured his skull and left him unconscious as he was tending his land between Ofra colony and the Palestinian village of Silwad. “They were hitting him again and again on the head, cursing him and telling him to shut up,” said Mahmoud Hussein, a relative and an eyewitness of the alleged attack Reuters reports. Village youths tracked down the Israelis to their encampment and burned down one of their improvised homes. Israeli forces were sent to the scene late Thursday to disperse the angered Palestinians. They fired at the protesters, wounding two with live bullets, including one in the chest, medics said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uzsyPljZUVM
Palestinians, Israeli troops clash near Ramallah
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 13 Apr – Five young Palestinian men were hurt Friday in clashes with Israeli troops in the central West Bank town of Silwad near Ramallah. A Ma‘an reporter said fierce clashes erupted as Israeli forces tried to prevent hundreds of worshipers from performing Friday prayer in the open in private Palestinian lands slated for annexation to the nearby Israeli settlement of Ofra. Despite the presence of Israeli troops, more than 250 worshipers managed to access the agricultural lands and perform Friday prayer. However, after the prayer the soldiers showered the worshipers with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets. Young worshipers responded by hurling stones and empty bottles at the Israeli soldiers who chased them across the town’s alleys.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585112
Clashes break out in al-Khader
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Clashes broke out after Friday noon prayers between Palestinians and Israeli forces in al-Khader village south of Bethlehem, a local official said. Popular committee coordinator Ahmad Salah told Ma‘an that dozens of Israeli soldiers positioned in the alleys, and over the rooftops in Umm Rukba area in the village. They fired tear gas canisters at the Palestinian youths.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585032
Protesters set Israel watchtower on fire
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — Palestinian demonstrators on Saturday threw two home-made bombs toward a concrete military watchtower, causing soldiers to temporarily evacuate it. Israeli troops left the watchtower immediately and dozens of demonstrators piled burning tires against the Israeli separation wall around ‘Aida refugee camp, witnesses said. Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets toward the Palestinians. Five Palestinians suffered from tear-gas inhalation.
In the al-Khader village near Bethlehem, clashes erupted between Israeli troops and Palestinian youths. Three Palestinians were wounded with plastic-coated steel bullets. Two of them were hit in the head while the third one was hit in his back. Dozens suffered from tear-gas inhalation and were transferred to Beit Jala hospital for treatment.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585408
Israel arrests 3 Hamas leaders in Jenin
JENIN (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — Israeli forces on Sunday arrested three Hamas leaders from Jalqamus village east of Jenin, locals said. Israeli forces raided the village and detained two brothers, Abed al-Haj, 45, and Rabe, 44. They also detained Abed al-Rahim Sami al-Haj, 43, after raiding his house. Abed al-Basit al-Haj was the spokesman of Hamas in Jenin, and he served 13 years in Israeli custody, most of the time in administrative detention.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585428
Israeli forces raid Hamas leader’s house
JENIN (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Israeli forces raided the home of a Hamas leader at dawn on Friday near Jenin, locals said. Soldiers ransacked Sheikh Jihad Nawadha’s home in Yamun village in the northern West Bank, locals told Ma‘an. Forces questioned the 48-year-old Hamas leader but did not arrest him, they added. Nawadha has spent six years in Israeli jails.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585015
Witnesses: Israeli forces raid Bethlehem refugee camp
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — Israeli forces raided several homes in ‘Azza refugee camp in Bethlehem on Sunday, locals said. Witnesses told Ma‘an that Israeli troops raided several homes in the camp. No arrests were reported.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585557
2 detained in Bethlehem refugee camp
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Israeli soldiers detained two Palestinians from ‘Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem on Thursday, locals said. Forces raided the camp and detained 21-year-old Mahmoud Mukhles and Omar Aziyeh, 25, from their homes, locals told Ma‘an. Aziyeh has been detained by Israel several times and is due to be married later in April.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585024
Israeli forces detain 2 near Ramallah
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Israeli forces detained on Friday two Palestinians at in Aboud village north of Ramallah. A Ma‘an reporter said Israeli forces placed a checkpoint at the entrance of the village, and arrested Mahmoud al-Barghouthi, 23, and Fayeq al-Barghouthi, 25. Clashes broke out in the area after the arrests.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585038
Every soldier has a name
Haaretz 14 Apr by Gideon Levy — The soldier hiding behind the army places full responsibility on the most moral army in the world — What happened on the evening of April 3 at the foot of the guard tower of the Einav checkpoint, at the entrance to Tul Karm, seems to have been an execution; no other term can describe it. Four young Palestinians were approaching the checkpoint on foot. The Israel Defense Forces began monitoring them when they were still as much as two kilometers away, watched them approach while trying repeatedly to ignite the Molotov cocktail they carried and did nothing to stop them. When they finally threw the device at the tower’s concrete wall — to protest the death from cancer, the previous day, of Maysara Abuhamdieh, a Palestinian prisoner incarcerated in Israel — two soldiers emerged and shot at the four. Amer Nassar died on the spot; Fadi Abu Assal, who was shot in the hand, fled; Diya Nassar was apprehended. But that was not enough for the soldiers: They pursued Naji Balbisi into the yard of a nearby leather factory where they shot him in the back, apparently at close range, killing him.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/every-israeli-soldier-has-a-name.premium-1.515336
‘My son is not a terrorist’
JPost 11 Apr by Ben Hartman — Taiba family says Hichmat Masarwa went to Syria to find brother; rejects claims he was joining global jihad forces — If you ask his family, Hichmat Masarwa did what any brother would do, risking his life to find his little brother Hussein, who had disappeared in one of the most dangerous corners of the earth.If you ask the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Masarwa slipped into Syria to link up with international jihadi groups … “This is a lie and a fraud, nothing less,” said Otman Masarwa, Hichmat’s 52-year-old father, sitting in the courtyard of the family’s multi-level house in Taiba, 12 kilometers east of Kfar Saba, on Thursday. “They made him out to be a terrorist; he is no terrorist,” Otman said, surrounded by his other sons – Hamad, 26; Karam, 25; and Abdallah, 23. The Masarwa clan is one of the largest in Taiba, numbering by some estimates well over 15,000 people.
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?ID=309540&R=R1
Prisoners / Hunger strikers / Court actions
Israel offers to exile Issawi abroad
JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Israel on Friday offered long-term hunger striker Samer Issawi a deal to exile him to a UN member country, Israeli spokesman said. Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, said that an offer was presented to exile Issawi for health reasons. He added that “the EU and UN who demanded his release declined to find a country that will accept him.” The Palestinian minister of detainees told Ma‘an that Issawi, who has been on hunger strike for over 265 days, rejected the offer and insists on returning to his hometown, Jerusalem.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585066
Two very different Israeli replies to Samer Issawi’s invitation
Mondoweiss 14 Apr by Ira Glunts — This week in a public letter, Samer Issawi, the Palestinian prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for eight months, challenged Israelis to visit him in the hospital where he is close to death in order to “stare into … [his] …face,” and by doing so confront the horror of his imprisonment. “I chose to write to you: intellectuals, writers, lawyers and journalists, associations, and civil society activists. I invite you to visit me, to see a skeleton tied to his hospital bed, and around him three exhausted jailers. Sometimes they have their appetizing food and drinks around me.” On Saturday, two markedly different Israeli responses to Issawi were reported. A group of twelve activists attempted to visit Issawi at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot. Of the group, only two women, the writer Ilana Hammerman and Chava Lerman, succeeded in approaching the prisoner’s room, although they were prohibited from visiting Issawi by hospital guards who used force to deny them entry. The police were summoned and evicted all 12 activists, briefly detaining Hammerman and Lerman …
A different type of response to Samer Issawi’s invitation came from a group of Israeli writers who included A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz. Instead of going to the hospital, the writers sent a letter to Issawi via Facebook, suggesting he end his hunger strike. I was not able to locate the letter on Facebook or anywhere else. This is how Ha’aretz described parts of the authors’ written statement:
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/different-issawis-invitation.html
PA minister: Israel to allow foreign press to visit Ofer prison
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 13 Apr — Israel will allow foreign journalists to visit Ofer detention center near Ramallah on Sunday, a Palestinian Authority official said. Issa Qaraqe, PA minister of detainee affairs, said during a press conference Saturday that the unprecedented visit is an attempt to alter the truth about conditions for Palestinian prisoners. Israel will try to present the prison as a “luxurious five star hotel,” he said. Since February, two Palestinian detainees have died in Israel’s prison system and thousands of detainees are denied basic rights, Qaraqe said. Journalists at the briefing should ask Palestinian detainees about their medical issues, infirmary conditions, and whether Israeli doctors treat them when they are sick, the PA minister added. They should ask Palestinian minors about interrogation methods and torture they were subjected to by Israeli prison authorities, Qaraqe said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585262
Prisoner to start hunger strike over rearrest
HEBRON (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — A 31-year-old prisoner says he will go on open hunger strike on Sunday in protest over Israeli efforts to cancel his amnesty. Ayman Abu Daoud was pardoned under the Oct. 2011 prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas. He was rearrested in February and is being held at Megiddo prison. “All doors are closed in my face and the Israeli administration wants to sentence me for 36 years. I am desperate and I will start a hunger strike on Sunday until I am free from this detention,” Abu Daoud told the Ahrar Prisoners Center. Abu Daoud previously served seven years of his sentence for injuring an Israeli settler. Israeli authorities also demolished his home.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=584950
Bethlehem demonstrates for prisoners
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Hundreds of Palestinians marched through Bethlehem on Thursday demanding the release of prisoners from Israeli jails. Protester marched to the Nativity Church, chanting slogans including “free despite chains.” Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe addressed demonstrators and said peaceful protests would lead to freedom for prisoners.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=584969
11 prisoners hurt in Israeli prison fire
NAZARETH (PIC) 13 Apr — Hebrew media reported that 11 Palestinian prisoners were hurt at dawn Saturday when fire broke out in the Israeli prison Ohli Kedar in Beersheba. The website of Yediot Ahronot said that the prisoners’ injuries were light to moderate, adding that some of them were treated in the prison for smoke inhalation while others were flown to Soroka hospital.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s78yjbgp391xvLaPDEy%2bjqERHwbu5FUIBt%2bBMH06UhGBHlYl0Gn2tkbeDJUt9lttO6fJ7ThUZYnERi%2b6fRqAbbPQ514npMoFs05bYydJ5KTVM%3d
Israel releases Bethlehem prisoner
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Israel on Thursday released a 19-year-old Palestinian from Bethlehem after detaining him in Ramon jail for a year. Dozens of Palestinians gathered to welcome Foad Faraj in Doha, southwest of Bethlehem. Faraj told Ma‘an that Palestinians were suffering in Israeli jails, particularly those with poor health. He urged organizations to intervene for their release.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585001
Sharp rise in Hamas attempts to abduct soldiers
Ynet 14 Apr by Yossi Yehoshua — According to the Shin Bet internal security service, 33 kidnapping attempts have been foiled since the beginning of the year, compared with 24 thwarted attempts during all of 2012. Senior officers in the IDF Central Command warned that over past few months Hamas has stepped up its efforts to abduct soldiers and use them as “bargaining chips” to bring about the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4367254,00.html
Gaza siege
Gaza farmers destroy goods bound for Europe
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — Farmers in the Gaza Strip on Sunday destroyed three tons of rotten herbs and spices that were to be shipped to markets in Europe before Israel closed the border crossings. Muhammad Zuweid, a marketing official in Gaza, told Ma‘an that three tons of mint, sage, basil, and tarragon were ready to be exported to Europe and waiting at the Kerem Shalom crossing. After days of closure, the goods expired and became unsafe to use, he said. Moreover, the herbs are not heavily consumed by local markets. The available amounts exceed the needs of the local markets, which is why they were selected to export abroad. He explained that the tarragon herb is not used locally, but it is usually exported abroad. Salvia officinalis, or garden sage, was being prepared for export for the first time this year.
Israel closed Kerem Shalom and the Erez passenger crossing on Monday after militants in Gaza fired a rocket across the border.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585505
Poverty forces Gaza children into labor market
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — Poverty in the Gaza Strip is forcing a growing number of Palestinian children to drop out of school and enter the job market … “I have been selling cigarettes for one and a half years,” Mustafa al-Assar, 12, told Ma‘an. “My father forced me to leave school in the third grade. I work from the early morning selling cigarettes to drivers, bystanders, and passengers at the main road of al-Nuseirat.” Mustafa’s father is also a street vendor, selling cigarettes for eight hours a day from a moving vehicle for fear of being arrested by customs police. He tells Ma‘an that three of his children work on the streets, selling cigarettes and other goods … Muhammad al-Hour, 15, is also a street vendor in Gaza. He sells tea and coffee in a parking lot next to al-Nuseirat refugee camp. “I wake up at 6 a.m. every day. I take a teapot and a coffeepot, and head to the parking lot of al-Nuseirat refugee camp. Many students and drivers buy coffee and tea from me.” Muhammad says his father is old and can no longer work and his brothers and sisters are too young to earn money.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585148
Hamas arrests ‘collaborators’ as amnesty ends
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 12 Apr — Hamas is arresting alleged collaborators who did not hand themselves in during a month-long amnesty that expired Thursday, the Interior Ministry in Gaza said Friday. On March 12, Hamas said it had a list of collaborators but offered a one-month amnesty for informers to give themselves up in return for leniency. The list has been handed to security forces who will arrest all those who did not surrender “in the coming hours,” interior ministry spokesman Ibrahim Salah told Ma’an.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=584970
Israel’s spies fleeing Gaza as repentance campaign ends
GAZA (PIC) 13 Apr — Informed sources revealed that a number of spies working for the Israeli occupation regime fled or tried to flee along with their families from the Gaza Strip during the last two days. The sources told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that as the period set by the Palestinian interior ministry for the repentance of Israel’s informers and spies had ended, two of them escaped along with families through the northern side of Gaza. He added that the security forces caught another spy with his family as he was trying to flee Gaza in addition to other spies in different security operations. He noted that the movement of suspects is under constant surveillance by the security apparatuses in Gaza and there would be another campaign in the coming days to arrest those proved to be involved in espionage activities for the occupation. For his part, spokesman for the interior ministry Islam Shahwan said that the security campaign that gave a chance for the spies to turn themselves in had paid off … Spokesman Shahwan affirmed that some spies turned themselves in and repented for what had done without stating their number. He also said that the number of spies in Gaza is limited and declining.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uhttp://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7Tt2Bbw0VAnrKZ%2fJilXqtYE%2brIpcW%2bW2CU1XL9dGYO2u2qn9HrK1Y8K%2bfLYLSXhW6PAOSxlZmJhwjoZvu9jwxD4lSC3chyd03f%2fnT8d3OSU8%3d
Gaza court sentences two men for collaboration with Israel
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 14 Apr — A military court in the Gaza Strip on Sunday sentenced two people to custodial sentences for collaborating with Israel. One man was sentenced to 20 years in jail, and the other to seven years, on the charges of spying for Israel. On Friday, Hamas security forces began arresting alleged collaborators who did not hand themselves in during a month-long amnesty which began on March 12.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=585692
Israeli military refuses to investigate deadly Gaza strike that killed 12 civilians
Mondoweiss 14 Apr by Alex Kane — The Israeli military will not open a criminal investigation into the most controversial strike carried out during the November 2012 assault on Gaza, according to a report in Haaretz. On November 18, 2012, in the midst of Israel’s latest operation in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli warplane dropped a large bomb on the al-Dalou family’s home. The attack killed ten members of the family and two neighbors. It instantly became a grim symbol of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense, the military name given for the assault in November that killed 101 Palestinian civilians, according to a UN Human Rights Council report.
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/military-investigate-civilians.html
Turkey’s Erdogan to visit Gaza in May
ISTANBUL (AFP) 14 Apr — Turkish Prime |
the star of this fight is Behemoth who is too fast and drifty for its own good and manages to perform some sweet ass tricks off of the arena floor flipper. Ant, I’m not gonna lie, that corkscrew twist was badass but that only scores you points in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the judges aren’t looking for that kind of shit even if it is the very essence of the term “style”. Pay close attention and you’ll also see the back panel of the floor flipper catch on the arena and bend outward, breaking the damn hazard already. Because it’s a glorified political joke Donald Thump has no style of its own, but one thing it does have is a fucking menacing blade and the robot manages to get a solid cleave in on the side of Sabretooth visibly bending up its left wheel guard. Sadly, this will be the last thing James Davies’ Meme Machine brings to the table as after this hearty exchange of civil political dialog Behemoth comes in, rams face-first into Donnie, and kills it. A thousand sad Pepes for Donald Thump.
Once again this has become a match between Behemoth and Sabretooth and it’s come down to driving skill. Behemoth hits a floor seam near the pit which seems to remind the team that the pit exists, so Behemoth decides to go and push the button to open it up. Sabretooth isn’t too fond of this idea and tries to land in a hit but gets deflected backwards into the pit button causing it to be activated two times in a matter of only a few seconds. Not sure what to do in this situation the producers just drop the pit and call it even. No rogue house robots, and thankfully no Fog of fucking War. Sabretooth very nearly immediately fucks everything up by driving into the pit but somehow manages to drift across it to land one final mega hit onto the front of Behemoth.
Because of a complicated series of events that have taken place in this battle thus far, this hit winds up killing both robots at the same time and requires the fight to be sent to the judges. Behemoth just stumbles backward and ceases all movement, however Sabretooth ends up getting flipped over. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue for Sabretooth as it can drive upside down, but thanks to one goddamned hit Donald Thump managed to land on Sabretooth’s side panel there is now a chunk of metal propping the robot’s wheels off of the ground. You can see them still spinning, fully functional, but all it took was one mere “bigly” and Gabe’s house of cards fell apart like Hillary Clinton’s dreams of presidency.
WINNER: Behemoth, Judges’ Decision
GROUP TWO
Up first in group two is someone we all know and love. Former series 8 champion, the only competitor to flip the new house robots, and inventors of the Turbo Dab, APOLLO. Formerly a very showy robot built by a team of professional entertainers, Apollo dabbed for the last time in series 9 and has returned with a more “serious” team consisting of brothers Dave and Alan Young. You can still tell which one of them is the entertainer, by the way, because Alan Young is a professional robot builder and he looks exactly like what you think a “professional robot builder” would. It’s kind of like how if you hear someone is an unfunny Internet comedian your first mental image sort of resembles the photograph on this website’s “About” page. Apollo has been and always will be our favorite “big fuck off flipper” so I guess that means everyone else better buckle up because Apollo is about to [lame joke about launching things into outer space].
APOCALYPSE is group two’s next robot and it’s, uh, something? Featuring lettering designed using that edgy grunge font all of us had back in high school Apocalypse’s main weapon is its axe… followed by two more axes, one on either side of the robot. Because design. It’s like an unholy combination of Splinter and Terrorhurtz with the added bonus that because of the way it’s goofy ass nuclear explosion stickers are applied the robot looks like it has a perpetual smug face. Apocalypse was built by Ed Wallace after he convinced his boss to let him build a robot on company time. The catch is that Ed’s boss, Chris Page, gets to tag along and be a part of his team. Oh, and Chris’ son Miles, too. I don’t know about you but the last thing I’d ever want to do in my life is “literally anything with my fucking boss from work”. Holy shit, when I used to work in IT we would have these bullshit forced “team building” outings and they were the most dreadful goddamned things in the world. Even though we got a free day off of work to go to them I’d always find myself pining to just be sitting at my desk because at least I’d be able to contemplate suicide in peace.
Anyways, rounding out this episode we have THE SWARM. Ever since Ian Watts stopped winning with Bigger Brother he’s gone into some fucking DARK territory in robot combat. Back in series 8 he showed up with this thing called Or Te that sort of looked like Bigger Brother if it was the victim of a Nintendo 64 cartridge-tilting glitch and it died in a single blow from Supernova. Since then he’s become absolutely convinced that shitty minibots are the way to go even though he’s systematically been proven wrong every fucking time. Remember Creepy Crawlies from BattleBots? Yeah, Ian was one of the masterminds behind that great idea and even though the producers of the show decided to feed his robots to Son of Whyachi for TV ratings he still stood by his design. Not only that but one of the fucking robots in The Swarm is a holdover from Creepy Crawlies! Let me just offer one more piece of trivia to demonstrate how far gone this guy is. The Swarm is comprised of five robots, only four of which compete at any given time; the robots are Blenda (spinner), Pinza (clamp), Rubber Duck (flipper), and not one but two fucking robots named “Skye”. Just… whatever, man. He’s also dressed as a pirate for some fucking reason. I just don’t know anymore.
GROUP BATTLE 2
APOLLO Team MAD Weapon: Pneumatic flipping arm
APOCALYPSE Team Asgard Weapon: Overhead axe w/ side grappling arms
THE SWARM Team Big Brother Weapon: Horizontal spinner, flipper, clamp, & wedge
Before the match starts Apollo and The Swarm are eyeing each other from across the arena like there’s about to be some kind of stupid dance battle but the minute the fight begins Apollo is just like “fuck it” and plows through The Swarm like they were pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto. Rubber Duck gets turned on its ass and has to self-right, Blenda starts destabilizing due to the gyroscopic forces of its weapon, and Pinza and Skye just fucking bolt away. Apocalypse starts hunting down Pinza as its arms just lazily flail all over the place while Apollo’s drivers seem confused as to who they’re going to pick as their target. Even Noel Sharkey is like “what the fuck are you supposed to do in this situation” and he’s a professor. Allegedly.
The two larger robots seem to start getting some semblance of a strategy as Apollo tussles with Blenda and Apocalypse tries to do something with Pinza, however idle conversation from Apocalypse’s drivers inform us that their goddamned weapon isn’t even working which reduces their machine to little more than a doorstop that can give hugs (assuming the side arms even work to begin with). So Apocalypse is a total write-off, but Apollo is still around and after banging against Blenda and causing the little robot to spin wildly out of control the space-themed flipper hits its stride, gets its hands on Pinza, and indiscriminately chucks it into Sir Killalot’s corner. Blenda is again ricocheted away, this time by Apocalypse’s ass, and as Pinza comes to a rest in the corner of the arena you can see that it’s flaccid pinchers are completely broken.
Apollo finally picks on someone its own size and tosses Apocalypse. For Apocalypse’s sake, and probably for the sake of Ed’s goddamned job, it’s a good thing the robot doesn’t land on its head because in its current situation of not having a functional weapon to self-right with that probably would’ve been the end of this fight. Apollo flips Apocalypse yet again but once more “luck” shines in Ed’s favor because his robot lands on its wheels a second time. I threw “luck” in quotes because even though Apocalypse is on its wheels it’s also in Sir Killalot’s corner who proceeds to pick the robot up and leave it to burn on the flame pit, and burn it does. I guess all the excitement was too much for the nuclear-themed robot because Apocalypse just sits there on the grill and promptly bursts into flames internally.
This leaves all of The Swarm alone with Apollo which is probably the most hilarious mismatch I’ve seen in the series reboot thus far. Watching The Swarm try to do literally anything against the former champion and just be brushed off or — in the case of Rubber Duck — be thrown completely out of the arena from the center of the field. I really have no idea why I am gravitating toward this ridiculous analogy but for some bizarre reason it’s just making me have flashbacks to Dragon Ball Z where everyone was trying to gang up on Cell and he’d just be like “lol nope” and knock people away from him. The takeaway here is I used to watch some stupid shit on TV when I was in middle school and I’m ashamed of it. Due to the weight distribution of The Swarm and the way the Robot Wars rules are written 3 out of the 4 components of The Swarm need to be immobilized in order for the multibot to be considered “knocked out”. Well, Pinza’s been on its ass since the start of the fight, Rubber Duck has just been thrown into fucking low orbit, and after making the power play of opening up the pit Skye has decided to fall right in.
Whoops.
WINNER: Apollo, KO
ROCKET MAN
Oh joy I forgot about these segments. You’d think after two seasons’ worth of “CHECK OUT THIS HOT NEW TECH” that the producers would’ve realized that nothing could top the deep symbolism of Angela losing to a robot in Connect Four but nope it’s a brand new season and that means we’ve got some more weird technological bullshit that may or may not be useful to humans. This time around we’ve got a guy in a goofy ass jetpack suit so I am going to go ahead and preemptively check the box next to “not useful to humans”.
Angela asks Sethu where Britain stands in the “robot revolution” to which Sethu has to muscle out this bizarre sort of non-answer about how there’s various disciplines of robot engineering and that Britain is doing well in the realm of “control”. Notice how he didn’t say the country was doing well in regards to design, that’s because the guy in the fucking jetpack suit has thrusters strapped to his legs and arms instead of his back meaning he’s one muscle spasm away from becoming a goddamned Garry’s Mod ragdoll mid-flight. Pay close attention to the clip of him pointing the rockets at the camera and you’ll notice the one in the upper right doesn’t even flicker or ignite. How this motherfucker isn’t dead by now is beyond me.
I get that personal flight and jetpacks have been a major fantasy in the world of science but this guy’s getup just seems unnecessarily dangerous. He’s got six rockets strapped to his extremities which is a bad idea for reasons I’ve already mentioned, he’s got the gas tank strapped to his back, and on his chest he’s placed lithium batteries. Congratulations man, you’ve invented a literal fucking bomb. All this so you can pretend to be David Blaine and hover 10 inches off of the ground. He claims that there’s potential for soldier and medical extraction using this suit but all I’m seeing is a very expensive way of unintentionally throwing white hot flames on soldiers crippled by land mines. Science!
SABRETOOTH vs. APOCALYPSE
Apocalypse enters this “robot redemption” round after a humiliating defeat at the hands of Apollo. The Swarm was also present but none of those robots were big enough to pose a threat so really we’re just seeing a team deal with the aftermath of having their robot thrown through the air several times. Apparently Apocalypse landed bad enough to twist its chassis which in turn caused its drive motors to seize up which then caused its speed controllers to burst into flames. No word yet on their axe which has accomplished fuck all but Ed seems confident that he can beat Sabretooth with just a “lucky shot”. Meanwhile Gabriel from the Sabretooth team is busy making rash decisions after sustaining damage from a robot literally named fucking “Donald Thump” that resulted in him losing the fight to Behemoth. Of course Sabretooth has been fixed, Gabe’s brought enough parts with him to build four of the fucking things or whatever, but rather than drive the robot himself he’s decided to hand the controls over to a teammate? Bro, you know if you lose this match you’re out of the competition for good, right?
It seems that the right side hammer on Apocalypse is still propped open so I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that it hasn’t been fixed and probably wasn’t ever functional in the first place. That said, the robot’s axe is actually working for once and Apocalypse just goes to fucking town on Sabretooth indiscriminately swinging its blade down right onto the drum and into the belt mechanisms. It’s this level of “not giving a fuck” that causes Sabretooth’s front feeder wedge to pop loose on one side and if you watch closely you’ll see Sabretooth’s drum isn’t even working now. Gabe immediately starts losing his fucking mind up in the driver booth prompting Jonathan Pearce to start heckling him and call him a villain, but honestly I can’t blame the guy for getting pissy that his robot is losing to a machine that not 30 minutes ago was literally on fire.
Sabretooth is on the ropes after sustaining damage to its weapon so its driver makes the smart move of running into the pit trigger because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you start losing. The robot doesn’t even touch the button but I guess whoever’s job it is to watch the pit trigger shrugged and said that was good enough because the trigger activates and rather than open the pit it unleashes the stupid “Fog of War” hazard. Since this is the first time we’ve seen this effect I’ll go ahead and wait while you take it all in. Yes, that confusion you’re feeling is normal, it’s a hazard that temporarily takes the “spectator” out of the “spectator sport” of robot combat. The hitch is nobody can see what’s happening in the arena which is fine I guess but this has the possibly unintended side effects of also blocking the vision of the judges, the hosts, the people who drive the house robots, and most importantly the fucking audience. If anything the Fog of War is just a free period of 10 seconds where robots with spinning weapons can get free spin up time and the last thing we need in this sport is some bullshit arena effect that only serves to benefit those kinds of fucking robots even more.
So nothing happens during the Fog of War other than Sabretooth driving into a visible spot of the arena and getting tossed by the floor flipper, but only because the person operating the hazards was able to see it. Great effect guys, can’t wait to see what you come up with in series 11. Once the smoke clears Apocalypse goes right back to stabbing Sabreooth and you can see smoke start rising up from Gabe’s robot, not to mention the fact that one of the robot’s weapon belts is frayed and coming apart. Slowly Gabe begins to realize the error of his ways as he adopts this weirdly upset tone and starts commanding his teammate to drive into Apocalypse who by this point has an easy win as long as the robot doesn’t fucking blow up again. Seconds later Apocalypse shits out a drive belt so I guess there goes that. Sabretooth musters a great box rush on Apocalypse which puts the hammer bot into the wall and seems to disable it. Sabretooth’s stand-in driver is clearly holding back because he thinks Apocalypse is incapacitated, which is the sportsmanlike thing to do here, but Gabe is basically jumping up and down by this point yelling “NIGGA FUKKEN HIT THAT MO’FUGGAH AGAIN”.
Apocalypse’s driver chimes in and says his robot’s dead and this finally gets Gabe to chill the fuck out.
WINNER: Sabretooth, KO
DONALD THUMP vs. THE SWARM
Up next is The Swarm and everyone’s favorite meme machine Donald Thump. Dara catches up with Donnie’s builder James Davies during some repairs and James just sort of casually points out that he’s shock-mounted a £1,000 motor using jeans. Literally jeans. This isn’t like some weird composite material that just so happens to be named “jeans” or anything, it’s fucking denim. A Canadian tuxedo. It’s a strip of cloth that he rolled around the motor and called it a day. For fuck’s sake no wonder this thing broke down in its first round, it probably got a wedgie from the underwear that’s likely bundled around its goddamned batteries or something. On the other end of the pits Ian Watts is sort of having this personal epiphany that maybe his mini robots are a bad idea, but then he’s like “no, they’re different“. You were so close.
Before the match even starts Donald Thump has already broken down. The driver explains to a nearby member of the show’s tech crew that his radio is intermittent and that the weapon probably isn’t going to work. Fantastic. This is what happens when the producers initially reject an entry and then decide to pick it up literally a week before shooting because the team changed the name to Donald fucking Thump and it’s LOL SO FUNNY COVFEFE TINY HANDS CHEETO FACE. Since Donald’s weapon is fake news the robot really has no choice but to plow into the robots of The Swarm head first. Donald Thump is equipped with 3mm Hardox armor layered with some rubber padding which I’m told is weak compared to other heavyweights. I really didn’t have a barometer to compare this claim against but now I do because after just one fucking hit from Blenda’s spinner Donald Thump loses an entire front panel of armor. Blenda weighs just 33kg and it’s taken a piece of armor off of something literally three times its weight. God damn.
Donnie goes for the pit but instead gets the house robots sent out which break up the action. Somewhere in the fray Rubber Duck manages to get underneath the corner of Donald Thump and give it a tip which is kind of impressive because I don’t have any idea what kind of pneumatics you can fit into a ~25kg robot like Rubber Duck but I’ll be damned if getting it to heave 110kg worth of shitty political jokes isn’t impressive. Even more impressive is Blenda who comes out of nowhere and sidelines Donald Thump ripping off the rest of its goofy ass face. The hit sends the tiny robot reeling into Dead Metal’s corner but because the robot is so tiny Dead Metal can’t even properly slice into it. What ensues next can best be described as “literally Twitter” because Donald Thump takes one more hit from Blenda, stops working, and is just immediately overwhelmed by a bunch of annoying tiny bitey insects. Pinza comes in and clamps onto Donnie’s side, Blenda scrapes some more paint off of the machine, and Skye starts pounding Donald in the ass. Good night alt-right!
WINNER: The Swarm, KO
APOLLO vs. SABRETOOTH
We now move on to the heat semifinals where Apollo has been waiting for its challenger. Heeding the call and qualifying for this fight is Sabretooth. Both of these robots made it this far by beating Apocalypse into submission; Apollo repeatedly threw the axe-wielding robot into the air until it literally caught fire while Sabretooth was busy getting its ass kicked but still managed to catch a stroke of luck after Apocalypse ejected a drive chain and promptly caught fire a second time. Apollo has the distinction of having battled The Swarm and took an easy win over the cluster bot by heaving one of them out of the arena and letting the rest finish themselves off. Dave Young also takes a moment to lament how he receives messages from creeps on social media ever since he won the championship in series 8. Look, I’m not saying I may have sent him a message on Facebook that consisted of awkward slash fiction between me and him, but I’m also not saying I didn’t.
Right away Sabretooth is already doing twists in the air courtesy of Apollo who looks to be in top form this series. Realizing its drum isn’t going to protect it from being thrown into the fucking ceiling Sabretooth immediately starts running away. It looks like the goal here is to try and catch Apollo from the sides or more correctly probably the back but it’s just not happening; Apollo’s got those little leading wedges on its flanks and any time Sabretooth tries something fancy it just rides up on top of Apollo and ends up doing an aerial twist combo that even Simone Biles would be jealous of. Yes that was an Olympics joke. I’ve been writing this goddamned website for over two years now and I’m running out of referential humor.
Back in the arena Gabe is like “drum?” and wouldn’t you know it, Sabretooth’s drum just so happens to be full of shit again. I don’t know a damn thing about engineering at this scale but I think Sabretooth has two separate motors running its drum each with its own belt. This serves the purpose of doubling the drum’s power but I think the setup would also act as a form of redundancy? So both of Sabretooth’s weapon motors are dead? Where the fuck did they come from, Pulsar’s overstock? Sabretooth rams into the piece of set decor that harbors the pit trigger and misses it by an even bigger margin than last time but the thing still somehow activates. I can already tell this is going to become a “thing” this season. Dead Metal hooks onto Sabretooth and Gabe starts doing that weird excitable jump of his until he manages to break free, charges straight at Apollo, and launches all the way up Apollo’s chassis.
Sabretooth gets thrown at the wall yet again and we get a shot of the robot’s weapon operator shaking his head while gesturing with his transmitter. I guess he just now realized the robot’s drum has stopped working which makes me wonder if he’s just been dicking around on his phone or something for the past two minutes. This fight has turned into such a shit show that Dave Young is now just openly mocking and teasing his opponents as he plays catch with Dead Metal using Sabretooth as the football. Sabretooth bumps into the side of the “Dial of Doom” thing but I guess nobody was looking because nothing happens. Jonathan acknowledges that Sabretooth missed the button but the jury’s still out on whether or not he saw Sabretooth crash into the fucking wall and still activate the trigger earlier in this match. Speaking of walls, Sabretooth drifts a little bit too closely to one of them and Apollo seizes the opportunity by cutting the drum bot off and launching it straight over the barrier and into the third place playoff.
WINNER: Apollo, KO
BEHEMOTH vs. THE SWARM
The last time Behemoth was in a position where the team thought they had a “free win” they completely fucking blew it. And I mean it, too. Big time. They outfitted their robot, which has been a giant bulldozer for nearly two decades, with a garish “clamping” device that didn’t work at all and the end result was they lost to a team whose robot’s special ability was that it could do a fucking handstand. Ant Pritchard was annihilated so badly in that moment that it would’ve been a more respectable death for him and his robot to be completely eviscerated by PP3D and hauled away in a goddamned trash bag. Needless to say, Behemoth is going into this match — this potential “free win” — with its scoop and I’ll be damned if Behemoth’s ill-fated clamp thing even still exists. Ant probably threw it into a fucking river after series 9.
“Scatter!” Shouts Sam Watts as the fight begins and Behemoth just floors it forward like a goddamned freight truck hitting bumps and seams in the floor but not once losing any steam. Behemoth is basically treating the arena like its own personal playground and in the course of like 15 seconds we see the bulldozer get some sweet ass air off of Skye, plow head first into Blenda and fling it across the floor, and somehow careen into Pinza in such a way that rolls the pincher bot over and causes its batteries to fucking blow up. Blenda gets dangerously close to Matilda which prompts Jonathan to start reading some erotic fanfiction of her and now that he’s cursed this whole fight Behemoth skids into her ass and gets violently upended. The bulldozer is unfazed however and promptly finds its way back onto its wheels and continues hauling ass.
Blenda is quite obviously the most dangerous part of The Swarm and rather than avoid it Behemoth seems to have made it its number one target because it’s just repeatedly being hammered on and thrown around. Then again I guess I can see why because Behemoth’s scoop system alone probably weighs close to Blenda’s entire 33kg so not much damage is being done. There’s a few bites and nibbles taken out of Behemoth’s scoop but for all intents and purposes the thing is like what would happen if a section of the arena wall just came to fucking life and started moving around on its own. Somewhere in this mess Skye has been rolled over and now that it’s an easy target Behemoth disposes of it by throwing it out of the arena. Pinza gets rolled back over and even though the robot flipped over and exploded earlier in the fight it’s still somehow mobile.
At some point all of Behemoth’s “affection” made Blenda stop moving but Sam Watts still continues to encourage his teammates to keep driving around especially now that there’s only two minibots left and any further fuck ups will result in The Swarm being counted out. Pinza, who previously burned something up, decides to burn up a second time as wisps of smoke start rising up from the peak of the robot’s chassis followed by a full blown open flame. Behemoth mercy kills Pinza once again leaving Rubber Duck as the sole component of The Swarm still running. The fight is basically over by this point but Rubber Duck still feels compelled to avenge the death of its ragtag coalition of scrap metal friends so it charges into the side of Behemoth, fires its flipper, and immediately blows out its pneumatics. Rubber Duck’s flipper jams open and vents all of its CO2 right next to Sir Killalot who grabs the tiny robot and skullfucks it over the flame pit until the officials kill the fight.
WINNER: Behemoth, KO
SABRETOOTH vs. THE SWARM
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Both of these damn robots keep losing why are they getting one more fight?” It seems complicated but really it’s simple. These two competitors are playing off for third place in the heat, this is because the robots that finish third and second advance onward to a 10-way consolation rumble where the rumble winner gets a ticket to the Grand Finals as a wildcard. So here we are once again with Sabretooth, a robot that cost a ton of money and came with enough spares to build a copy yet it still got literally Trumped, and The Swarm, the robot equivalent of a pack of rabid chihuahuas with the combat effectiveness of a shotgun shell filled with cotton balls. “The robot is flawless,” quotes Jonathan Pearce in regards to Sabretooth. No, actually, I think by virtue of this piece of shit ending up in the third place playoff it most certainly has flaws. Many.
For the first time in this heat we’re seeing the “spinner stopper” component of The Swarm named Skye, not to be confused with the small blue wedge which is also named Skye because fuck coming up with a different name I guess. The new Skye is equipped with a bunch of pieces of tire strapped down to the robot in a hexagonal pattern; these rubber pads are meant to absorb impacts from spinners and slow them down, but I feel like throwing a rubber-covered ~25kg robot at a 110kg heavyweight spinner is just going to result in the “spinner stopper” being thrown into the fucking rafters while nothing actually happens to said spinner. Speaking of being thrown into the rafters, Sabretooth’s weapon is finally working for what feels like the first time this episode and thanks to the fact that its opponents all weigh about a quarter of its total weight Sabretooth is just hurling minibots all over the place.
The Swarm is still surprisingly able to hold their own despite the fact that Blenda keeps losing every weapon to weapon contact it makes with Sabretooth, and Rubber Duck manages to slip in and briefly destabilize the drum bot if only for a moment. Sabretooth swings wide across the arena to line up another shot and drifts over the arena floor spikes prompting them to fire upward… and just keep fucking going. Two of the five spikes literally fire straight up out of the floor completely out of their housings and clatter back down as field debris. Had it not taken me a fucking month to write this article I could’ve been at the forefront of the wave of jokes at the expense of North Korea’s “missile program” but since the current status of the spike hazards are a metaphor for my fucking life right now I’ll have to concede this one to Reddit. Everyone just kind of plays off the fact that one of the hazards just blew up because now they’re forced to deal with it since this isn’t something that can be suitably handled with creative camera editing and not showing that corner of the arena, sort of like what they do every time the floor flipper gets fucked up.
Speaking of things that aren’t working anymore, Sabretooth’s fucking drum has stopped again. The floor flipper still works though, and since Sabretooth and Blenda get too close to it — as in directly on top of it — they get thrown on their asses. Rubber Duck also takes a “me too” tumble and it appears the flipper is not able to self right even though this seems like something it should be able to do. Skye (the wedge one) tries to bump Rubber Duck onto its wheels but Sabretooth is too busy doing donuts and slinging the broken floor spikes all over the place so nothing ends up happening. It takes the help of the floor flipper to get Rubber Duck back on its wheels which it then fucks completely up by driving onto the flame pit and getting stuck there. The version of Skye covered in pieces of tire gets slammed into the wall and because the robot is shaped like a mess of knotted Christmas lights it gets high centered and stops working. Blenda has also managed to die on the flame pit with Rubber Duck leaving only the wedge version of Skye mobile. Jesus fucking Christ this fight fell apart quickly.
The wedge Skye also ends up getting immobilized against the wall but by this point three of the four Swarm machines have broken down which as per Robot Wars rules means it’s incapacitated. Technically The Swarm is saved by the clock so the match goes to the judges but I think we all know who won this one. Sabretooth has done the unthinkable and beaten up on the robot equivalent of a bunch of first graders and is the first competitor to qualify for the wildcard rumble. Considering the fact that the robot’s weapon is a fucking distaster this season I doubt we’re going to see much more of Gabe’s robot and just to be an ass I’d even wager that Sabretooth is eliminated first even though I’m fully aware there’s still 9 more spots left that could be filled with a whole bunch of shitty robots.
WINNER: Sabretooth, Judges’ Decision
HEAT FINAL
BEHEMOTH vs. APOLLO
BEHEMOTH Make Robotics Weapon: Pneumatic lifting scoop
APOLLO Team MAD Weapon: Pneumatic flipping arm
Finally we’re at the heat finals. See, the new format isn’t so complicated after all. At least we’ll never be forced to watch multiple potato fights like what happened with Foxic and MR Speed Squared ever again. Hopefully. Both of these heat finalists have made it this far by consistently winning all of their matches and avoided needing to be saved in the redemption rounds. Behemoth is introduced first and for the first time in a long time this goddamned dinosaur of a robot looks to be in top form. Disabling Donald Thump was kind of a gimme, but Behemoth managed a judges’ decision over Sabretooth and then went on to play soccer with The Swarm. Also in the esteemed ranks of “robots who have claimed a free win from The Swarm” is Apollo who played double time against The Swarm and Apocalypse in its opening melee and followed that performance up with a victory over Sabretooth that required Apollo to throw it out of the arena. The field has been cut down to two and as much as I want to see Behemoth win a heat for the first time in 18 years I’ve gotta admit the team is kind of fucked with an opponent like Apollo, a former champion.
I feel like this fight is kind of a fantastic mismatch just because of the substantial difference in size and shape between these two robots. That and the fact that Behemoth immediately rides up Apollo’s wedge and gets thrown backward within the literal first five seconds of this match. Behemoth is basically the equivalent of a robotic boulder though and it seems to always eventually find its way back down to its wheels. I’ve gotta hand it to Ant and his team though, their robot takes some serious fucking tumbles and it still just skitters away like it didn’t just land on its corner two seconds prior. The two robots drive around near the newly repaired floor spikes which causes Jonathan to start ranting about the repair costs coming out of his paycheck which doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense unless he himself was responsible for breaking them. Knowing Jonathan he probably was and when the tech crew reviewed the security footage they saw him sneaking around under the arena disconnecting one of the spikes and shoving it in Matilda’s tail pipe.
Behemoth has yet to score any points in this fight but quickly manages to do so as with a quick 180 maneuver Apollo gets blindsided and rolled over. Behemoth goes into beast mode right away and takes Apollo into the pit trigger which I don’t think was intentional beyond “this is the closest part of the wall where we can ram this guy so here goes nothing”. All hell breaks loose. The pit opens, Dead Metal gets ahold of both robots, and Apollo’s team immediately start complaining that they can’t see their robot. It’s good to know that after three new seasons in this arena they’ve never addressed the issue of the teams sometimes not being able to see their fucking robots. Sure, they “fixed” the “Ironside vs. Pulsar knock-out-counter-didn’t-stop-counting-down-for-one-booth” problem by cramming everyone into a single driver booth but I guess this wasn’t a high enough priority. Fog of War? More like Shitty Driver Booth Box… of War!
Alan Young climbs onto the side of the driver booth so he can shout commands down to Dave. Mark my words, someday this is going to result in the wall breaking and someone falling to their fucking death. Behemoth very nearly gets chucked out of the arena but I guess Ant is getting that stroke of luck he said his team needed because they’re still in the game. Behemoth retaliates by flipping Apollo onto its back on top of the fire. Apollo responds by heaving Behemoth across the arena right into Dead Metal’s fucking face. This fight is escalating to absolutely ridiculous heights and as Behemoth scoops under Apollo once more Apollo skirts away but over-corrects and exposes its backside to the demon bulldozer. Behemoth wastes absolutely no time at all kicking Apollo square in the ass and punting it straight into the pit, ending the fight. Gotta be honest, definitely not the direction I was expecting this match to go but holy shit am I hyped for Behemoth. First heat victory since its debut in series fucking two.
WINNER: Behemoth, KO
So with that Behemoth is the first Grand Finalist of series 10. Former champion Apollo and [something nice and optimistic here] Sabretooth are not yet out of the running however as they’re both moving on to the wildcard rumble later on. It’s still anyone’s game, Apollo could make a comeback and rise from their early grave and as unlikely as it sounds Sabretooth might be able to do something as well with the help of a fucking miracle. Next time on Robot Wars we have a heat that’s just a total goddamned nightmare. Reigning champion Carbide returns and is met with last season’s runner up Eruption. A distant third-ish place from last year, Aftershock, also makes its comeback. Make no mistake, heads are going to roll and I guarantee at least one person is going to literally die at some point. Oh, and Gabriel is back too… if that’s your thing.
That’s a wrap this week time on The Update. I apologize for this edition coming out so long after the debut of the episode, but right now it’s just not possible for me to have been able to follow each episode’s broadcast with a weekly article. I wish I could say things have been getting better post-Hurricane Harvey but they are not, and now that we’re treading into the territory of Thanksgiving and Christmas my time and availability is only going to be more of a lost commodity. We’ve got six episodes in series 10 and my realistic goal here is to get half (or more) of them done before the end of the year and finish the remainder in January. That seems like a doable goal and one that I feel I can hold myself to. I’m going to try and get them out each week, but make sure you’re following BattleBots Update on Facebook so you’ll get the alerts and posts. I’ve also still got that PayPal link for one-time donations, plus a Patreon page if |
, this time between the serpent/bird clan and a people who had a bull totem, either an ox or a buffalo.Chiyou himself is often described as a man with a bull's head. This image is an important one since the union of these totemic clans becomes a driving force among the Nusantao. The bull totem clans seem linked with various peoples living along coastal Southeast Asia of the time. These peoples may have spoken Austro-Asiatic, Hmong-Mien and Daic languages.The image of a water buffalo or a man with buffalo horns appears also in the iconography of the Sumerians. Indeed, we see that the water buffalo in Sumer is none other than the Southeast Asian swamp buffalo. Remains of this species have also been found at Sumerian archaeological sites.The swamp buffalo is different than the river buffalo of India. It originates in Southeast Asia but is historically absent from India. It was however found in ancient Sri Lanka apparently brought by sea from Southeast Asia.To see some Powerpoint slides from Stephen Oppenheimer's presentation of swamp buffalo in Sumer, click here (large file).The combined emblem for the new clan union involved three elements -- serpent/dragon, bird and ox/buffalo.The serpent could be found as a common spiral or a coiled "embryo" design. The bird totem could be represented by feathers or a bird's head. Also, by a tau symbol representing the tree of life, which in local mythology has a bird resting in its branches. The buffalo motif comes in the form of the bull's head or horns.These motifs can be seen in the bicephalous jade ornaments of the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay culture of the mid to late 3rd millennium BC in which the dual heads would represent both horns and a hybrid bird-serpent creature. These motifs also appear in that culture's lingling-o ornaments. The Sa-Huynh-Kalanay culture represents the Nusantao in Southeast Asia during this period.We will discuss these symbols more as we go along.The warring clan confederacies believe in their symbols. These were a very spiritual people. While some among them undoubtedly used religious elements only as a means to an end, the evidence points more toward people who believed in the supernatural. We only have to look at some of behaviour and actions of some of history's more recent kings, sultans and emperors from this region to know that magic played an important part in the people's beliefs.Any clan competition going on in this world was only an extension of something greater happening in the spirit world. Magic plays a large part in their culture.Regards,Paul Kekai ManansalaSacramentoSome Tenants Get Hot Plates While Others Get Electric Stoves View Full Caption
HARLEM — Rent-stabilized tenants of an apartment building with more than 150 city violations have gone without cooking gas for nearly half a year.
But not all residents of 301 St. Nicholas Ave. have needed gas. At least one group of tenants who pay market-rate rent received an electric stove after discovering they couldn't cook in their new apartment.
Gloria Atterbury, 66, who suffers from kidney failure, has been living in a rent-stabilized unit in the six-floor building with her family for 10 years. But after a July 8 fire in the ground-floor bodega at 301 St. Nicholas Ave., Con Edison shut off the gas to allow Newcastle Realty, the owner, to make repairs. That was months ago.
"I need to cook every day, I'm a dialysis patient," said Atterbury, whose family has had the apartment for more than 30 years. "My family bought me a toaster oven. They [the management company] haven't done anything about it. It's been six months."
Atterbury and other tenants said they have been offered hot plates to cope with the loss of their stoves.
Matt Mikaelian, 28, and his roommates, who pay the market rate for their three-bedroom unit, got a different response. They were given an electric stove in November after complaining to the landlord.
The group was unaware that the building didn’t have cooking gas when they moved into the apartment in mid-October from the Catskills. He and two friends signed the lease to a market-rate apartment — $2,900 for a three-bedroom — that had been completely renovated and had brand-new appliances.
A few days after moving in, they found out they couldn’t use the stove and called Newcastle.
"The management company said we should've asked," Mikaelian said. "We never would've moved in if they told us this was an issue."
Mikaelian had just paid moving costs, two months’ rent and bought furniture. He considered leaving but didn't have the money to move into another apartment.
Eventually, Newcastle's president Margaret Streicker agreed to take a percentage off their first month's rent and install an electric stove, Mikaelian said.
None of the tenants in rent-stabilized units were offered the same deal, said Vaniqua Picard, 26, who lives with her grandmother.
"I'm happy for them. Somebody should get something out of this," said Picard. "But I'm enraged for my grandmother. She’s been living here for more than 20 years. It's not fair to the older people."
Picard's grandmother is considering withholding her rent until the gas is restored, she added.
Older tenants have also been asked to move out in exchange for money, residents said.
Residents have filed 135 complaints with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The complaints include peeling plaster, no heat and hot water, no cooking gas and problems with mice, according to HPD's website.
The building's 156 open violations are for for a range of issues like a busted lock in the front door, not repairing damage from the July fire, and not fixing broken smoke alarms, according to HPD.
In October, the building was fined $1,000 for not having heat and hot water. The money, which was due Dec. 20, has not been paid, an HPD spokeswoman said.
Newcastle Realty did not hire a plumber until November, according to Con Edison.
An inspection needed to turn the gas back on is set for Jan. 6.
The management company, through a spokesman, said getting the cooking gas turned back on has taken six months because they needed to complete structural repairs before working on the gas.
"A fire started in a delicatessen in the building and we had to do structural work in advance of the gas work," Newcastle spokesman George Arzt said.
While residents went without cooking gas, owners continued to renovate apartments, install new lights and paint the hallways. Some tenants said they are being pushed out to make room for more market-rate apartments.
“They called me and said, ‘Since you’re not happy, would you consider taking some money,’” said Atterbury, who has lived in a rent-controlled apartment for 25 years. “They want me out.”
Atterbury, who immediately declined the offer, did not receive a specific dollar figure. Some of her neighbors have been offered more than $100,000, she said.
The money was tempting but Atterbury was afraid she wouldn't be able to find another two-bedroom apartment in Harlem for less than the $800 a month she pays now. She goes to dialysis twice a week and can't afford to pay higher rent, she said.
“The older tenants are paying less rent than the new people coming in," said Stephanie Edmond, a tenant in her 60s who pays $1,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. "The person who received the electric stove is probably one of the people who are paying more.”
Although she understand the economic realities of the situation, she still feels it is unfair.
“It’s wrong,” she said. “The person who would need to utilize the stove more is the person who is paying the least amount of rent because that person has more of a financial burden."Nvidia could be planning to make its big reveal of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card in less than two weeks’ time, perhaps in an effort to spoil AMD’s Vega party – even if the card doesn’t actually fully launch until next month (as per other rumors).
Invitations have just gone out for an Nvidia press event in San Francisco on February 28, which the graphics card maker reckons will be a showcase of ‘awesome’ PC gaming hardware.
As Game Debate, which received the invite, points out, that just happens to be the same day on which AMD has organized its ‘Capsaicin and Cream’ livestream, which is reportedly going to be the initial reveal of Vega cards (the company’s next-gen graphics offerings).
Both events are tied up with GDC (the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco), and it wouldn’t be the first time in the tech world that one company has scheduled an event in an attempt to steal thunder from a rival (we're looking at you, Microsoft and Apple).
Of course, Nvidia will need something juicy to show off, leading to the speculation that this will be the GTX 1080 Ti – the next big thing in the GeForce pipeline.
Ignore the cynics, switch to Linux – these are the best Linux distros
March of the graphics cards
Other rumors have pointed to a March launch for the 1080 Ti, and indeed a new one has popped up today from Nordic Hardware. The site claims to have got a tip from Taiwanese graphics card manufacturers that the supercharged GTX 1080 is currently in production and will be out next month, most likely in the penultimate week of March.
So we’re looking at a reveal at the end of this month, followed by availability later in March – if the various voices making themselves heard on the graphics grapevine are correct. Of course, all of this remains guesswork, albeit educated guesswork, at this point.
Nordic Hardware didn’t have any further information to reveal in terms of the spec of the 1080 Ti. Previous chatter has pointed to the card having a base clock of 1503MHz (with boost to 1623MHz) and 3,328 CUDA cores (only 256 less than the mighty Titan X). It will allegedly have less video memory than the Titan X, though, at 10GB (as opposed to 12GB).
Obviously enough, Nvidia has to make sure the 1080 Ti isn’t so close to the performance levels of the Titan X that it upsets buyers of the latter (because the new card will be considerably cheaper – relatively speaking, as it’ll hardly be cheap).Supporters of less restrictive marijuana laws in Oregon and across the nation are cheering the departure of Michele Leonhart, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Leonhart has steadfastly defended the criminalization of marijuana in America�s four-decade-old war on drugs, despite scientific evidence that the drug is not as harmful as alcohol.
Leonhart has led the DEA since 2007 and has been at the agency for 35 years. She is leaving because of a scandal involving her agents� unsanctioned, drug cartel-funded sex parties in Colombia, but marijuana reform activists have pushed for her replacement for years, citing her opposition to both recreational and medicinal marijuana.
Perhaps more than any other government official, Leonhart has resisted efforts to reconsider marijuana�s status as a Schedule 1 substance, a category that includes heroin and other drugs considered highly dangerous and addictive. In 2011, the DEA rejected a petition to reclassify marijuana in the wake of approval by California and other states of its use for medical purposes. In a letter to organizations that filed the petition, Leonhart said she rejected the request because marijuana �has a high potential for abuse,� �has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States� and �lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision.�
Such comments revealed either ignorance or a willing disregard of research that has identified potentially beneficial medicinal uses of marijuana. The lack of medical acceptance cited by Leonart stems in large part from the federal government�s role in discouraging more extensive research to test the drug�s medical effectiveness.
Leonhart also has ignored the tectonic shift in popular opinion that has moved solidly behind not only medical marijuana, but increasingly behind recreational marijuana as well. When the 2011 petition was filed, just eight states had approved medical marijuana. Now, 35 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of marijuana consumption for medical purposes. In addition to exceptions for medical usage, 18 states and the District of Columbia have decriminalized marijuana � Oregon was the first state to do so in 1973. And four states � Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska � have gone further and legalized it for recreational purposes.
The DEA�s �Reefer Madness� position on marijuana has run counter to that of President Obama. While he has stopped short of expressing unequivocal support for legalizing marijuana, the president has repeatedly emphasized the importance of giving science priority over ideology in debate over marijuana. In a 2014 interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker, Obama sparked a national controversy when he remarked that he didn�t think marijuana use posed a greater risk than drinking alcohol.
The president should nominate a replacement for Leonhart who shares his commitment to science, and who is willing to take the health impacts of marijuana and other drugs into consideration when formulating drug policy. It would also be helpful if the next DEA chief understood, unlike Leonhart, that the war on drugs, including its criminalization of marijuana and the mass incarceration that resulted, has been a massive and destructive waste of taxpayer dollars and human lives. Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have far more important things to do than aggressively pursue Americans who use or sell a drug that four states have legalized, with more on the way, and that polls show a majority of Americans believe should be legal everywhere.
Marijuana reform advocates have harbored quiet reservations about Obama�s nomination of Loretta Lynch as attorney general, who was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.
Like Leonhart, Lynch, a former federal prosecutor, spent decades in the trenches of the war on drugs, and her position on marijuana was influenced by that experience. That�s problematic, since the Department of Justice, under Attorney General Eric Holder, declared two years ago that it would not interfere with individual states� legalization of marijuana, as long as they followed some federal guidelines. During the confirmation hearings, Lynch told senators that she did not support legalization, that she did not agree with the president that marijuana may be less dangerous than alcohol, and that the department under her direction would continue to crack down on interstate transportation of the drug and pursue cases involving its distribution to minors.
Lynch�s comments raise the disturbing possibility that she might reverse the current Justice Department�s policy of tolerance for state legalization. President Obama should put those worries to rest by appointing a new DEA chief who is willing to accept, even embrace, the rescheduling of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act. The president should also endorse bipartisan legislation � whose sponsors include Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. � that would end the federal war on pot in states that have legalized it by amending the Controlled Substances Act to immunize from federal prosecution citizens who are in compliance with state marijuana laws.
Oregon, along with a handful of other states, is a pioneer in legalization, and Congress and the nation will be watching closely to see what happens in the state�s emerging legal marijuana market. Officials in these states should be allowed to experiment, modifying and improving policies as legalization evolves, without fear of interference from Washington, D.C.A nearly $7,000 return trip to Hong Kong, $1,300 worth of gingerbread cookies and almost $5,000 for a video produced with factual errors on a road tolls plan that was quickly kiboshed are just some of the ways council members spent taxpayer money in 2016. An overview of expenses claimed last year contain the usual free compost events, movie nights and snacks for residents, paid for out of a max $31,585.79 allowance for each councillor’s office. Other categories of expenses are paid for separately out of council’s general expense budget, including rent for constituency offices.
Councillors Jim Karygiannis and Ana Bailao, above, were the two city councillors who spent the most in 2016 while Councillors Michael Ford and Stephen Holyday, below, spent the least. ( Toronto Star File Photos )
Mayor John Tory, whose larger office budget is approved by council, slashed his expenses nearly in half over last year from a total $103,319 to $56,581. Included in this year’s expenses was printing of a special banner and sign used at a November speech announcing Tory’s decision to push for road tolls declaring: “Time to Build.” By January, the province quickly decided it wouldn’t be so, with Premier Kathleen Wynne reversing her pledged support of that plan.
Article Continued Below
The big banner’s future uses remain undefined. The mayor’s office also expensed $4,884 for a video produced by Octopus Ink advertising agency about the road tolls plan, one that had “laughably too many errors” on a rendering of a planned transit expansion map, transit advocate Steve Munro tweeted at the time.
Travel expenses added up for some councillors, including $6,893 on a trip to Hong Kong for Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33 Don Valley East). That was the second time Carroll had flown to Hong Kong in 2016, following a trade mission led by Tory in the spring. Carroll told the Star she attended a conference for the pedestrian-centric Walk21 organization she said was focused on “urban transit development.” At the same time, Carroll said she was following up on the earlier trade mission. “The second reason for travelling to this destination is to tour and learn more about a social enterprise called the Nesbitt Centre,” Carroll wrote in a letter attached to the expense claim. “The Nesbitts run a training institute for adults with developmental disabilities that uses both municipal partnerships and government permissions to operate social enterprises to employ their students.”
Though she was among the most frugal spenders in 2016 overall, Councillor Christin Carmichael Greb (Ward 16 Eglinton-Lawrence) expensed four nights at the five-star Carlton hotel in Tel Aviv at a nightly rate of $429 (CAD) per night and another three nights at The King David hotel in Jerusalem for $458 per night on a business mission with the mayor to Israel in November. In all she expensed $3,096.40 for accommodation for seven nights.
Councillor James Pasternak (Ward 10 York Centre), who went on the same trip but stayed only five nights, expensed hotels at nightly rates of $178 (CAD) and $104 for a total $742.
Article Continued Below
Carmichael Greb did not respond to a request for comment. Top spending councillors, including Jim Karygiannis (Ward 39 Scarborough-Agincourt), saw a large chunk of expenses attributed to constituency office rents. In Karygiannis’ case $1,551 per month for a ground-floor space near Finch Ave. East and Kennedy Rd. His monthly rent was only bested by Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti whose rent was 30 cents more per month. Karygiannis said he wanted to negotiate a lower price, but that city staff warned he might put himself in a conflict. The location is the same building where he had his office as a federal MP. “People know where I am,” Karygiannis said being in the same building where he had an office as a federal MP. When asked if he considered a cheaper location, he said: “It’s probably the cheapest location there is.” Other expenses added up for councillors in 2016. After spending $985 for gingerbread cookies for his annual “Cookies for Christmas” December event, Councillor Vincent Crisanti upped the sugar and spent $1,294 in 2016.The Blockchain Wallet: Should You Stay or Should You Go?
Rate this post
NEW YORK (InsideBitcoins) — Many in the bitcoin community have been pointing out various security and technical issues with the Blockchain.info wallet for quite some time, and it appears that these problems are finally catching up with the online bitcoin wallet provider. Amid reports of hacked accounts, a questionable mixing service, and a variety of other security-related issues, the team behind bitcoin.org has decided to remove Blockchain.info from the recommended wallets section of the website.
So what has gone wrong with one of the most widely-used bitcoin wallets on the market?
Malicious Tor exit nodes
A problem related to malicious Tor exit nodes could be viewed as the most serious issue with the Blockchain.info wallet. At one point in time, any exit node was able to attempt a man-in-the-middle attack on a Blockchain.info user if they were connecting to the blockchain.info website through Tor. To Blockchain’s credit, this issue has already been dealt with through the creation of a new Tor hidden service for their bitcoin wallet. Before they launched the hidden service, Blockchain.info decided to block all Tor traffic as a short-term solution.
Delays on source code updates
Another complaint about the Blockchain.info wallet has been the inability for the team behind the wallet to update their public code repositories in a timely manner. In many instances, it would technically be a lie to say that the Blockchain wallet was open source because the code did not match what was available in the public GitHub repository. While no malicious behavior is expected to be behind this discrepancy, the fact that there were delays in updating those public repositories was still a bit unnerving for a chunk of the bitcoin community.
Blockchain now has a separate website where users can confirm that the code running on the blockchain.info website is the same code that is hosted in their public repository.
Falling behind on best practices
Blockchain.info has also fallen behind when it comes to enhanced features for their users. For example, users of the Blockchain wallet are not able to use the security advantages involved with multisig addresses. As Coinbase, Coinkite, Greenaddress, and other bitcoin wallet providers have been trumpeting the benefits of enabling multisig addresses for their users, Blockchain.info has still not added the ability to manage multiple keys for a single address.
“There is always a tradeoff between convenience and security.”
Many in the bitcoin community are also waiting for Blockchain.info to implement BIP 0032, which allows for hierarchical deterministic wallets. These wallets allow bitcoin users to generate an unlimited number of addresses and private keys from the same seed. This means that wallets can be easily backed up and transported to other wallet software with nothing more than a twelve-word mnemonic phrase. Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin has a summary of the advantages and possible issues with deterministic wallets over at Bitcoin Magazine. In a response to some criticisms on the Bitcoin.org GitHub repository, Blockchain CTO Ben Reeves mentioned BIP32 support should be coming in early 2015.
Blockchain.info has also been criticized for not forcing two-factor authentication on new accounts, but there are instances where someone who only has access to one device may want to create a Blockchain wallet. As a compromise, Blockchain has decided to force two-factor authentication via email for all accounts that tie their email address to their Blockchain wallet account.
A new security disclosure
To top it all off, Blockchain recently disclosed that an update of their wallet software led to weaknesses in the manner in which new private keys were generated by its users. Users of the Android, iOS, and Chrome apps were not affected, and the issue was quickly resolved in a supplementary update. This latest issue has led some bitcoin developers and researchers to question the depth of Blockchain’s code review process.
http://t.co/I7mAKbiEuL's code review is so bad it doesn't even catch spelling mistakes, let alone RNG breaks: https://t.co/CGrhUWP54o — Peter Todd (@peterktodd) December 8, 2014
Switching wallets may not be the right solution
One thing to keep in mind before you decide to jump ship is that Blockchain.info is still the longest standing wallet provider in the bitcoin industry. Although it’s reputation has taken a few hits recently, they still have a proven track record when it comes to online bitcoin wallets. The team behind the Blockchain wallet have basically set the standard for everyone else to follow.
It’s important to remember that many other wallet providers are still young and untested. If anything, this situation may have shown the bitcoin community that we are not quite ready for the mainstream adoption that so many of us desire.
As always, it should be mentioned that it’s best to keep large bitcoin holdings in some form of cold storage.
Editor’s note: We asked Blockchain.info’s CEO Nicolas Cary for his comments and he told Inside Bitcoins:
“There is always a tradeoff between convenience and security. We try to keep the barriers to wallet creation as low as possible so anyone in the world can create a Bitcoin wallet for free. We provide software that lets users manage and spend their own Bitcoins, without tracking, interference or permission. This also means that to a certain extent, our role is limited to educating users about best practices and innovating security features. To this end, we are developing tools that will help users learn about security and audit their own security.”
You can follow @kyletorpey on Twitter.
Walk/Don’t Walk photo credit: nickjefferyBY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, January 8 2013
House floor summaries are now available for bulk download in XML format, the office of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) announced today.
The project is the first of several set to roll out for the 113th Congress that were coordinated or initiated by the Legislative Branch Bulk Data Task Force, Don Seymour, Digital Communications Director for Speaker Boehner, wrote in a blog post.
Every House session, corresponding to roughly a calendar year, is available in one bulk file going back to the 109th Congress from 2005.
"The task force was created to expedite the process of providing bulk access to legislative information and to increase transparency for the American people," Seymour writes. "It includes the House Clerk, legislative branch agencies such as the Government Printing Office and Library of Congress, representatives from House leadership and key committees, and the House Chief Administrative Officer."
Seymour notes that the innovation follows other previous improvements, with real-time updates on House floor proceedings available in XML since 2011, video streaming platform HouseLive.gov, the use of low-cost video conferencing tools, the online streaming of committee hearings and other work with developers and transparency advocates.
Seymour promises that other efforts to make the legislative process more open are to come.TSN anchor Jennifer Hedger, earned the scorn of CFL fans and one astute player when she discussed the Raptors loss to the Cavaliers on Friday night’s SportsCentre….
Black is a member of the Toronto Argonauts, who won a Grey Cup in 2012. In Toronto. With 53,000 people at the Rogers Centre. With another 5.3 million watching on TV. Hell, even Justin Bieber was there.
CFL fans can be a sensitive bunch when they feel slighted, as we’ve chronicled before, and they didn’t disappoint this time around…
As a number of the Twitterati pointed out, TSN is the exclusive holder of CFL broadcast rights and therefore, would probably prefer that their own anchors refer to it as a professional league…
As for Hedger, she got chirped pretty good at her Twitter account @jenniferhedger…
@jenniferhedger Serious question – why do sportscasters in Toronto so easily discount the @TorontoArgos as a professional sports team? #CFL — Rider fan (@GreyCupBound) May 28, 2016
@jenniferhedger r u going to respond to your claim that Toronto hasn’t won a pro championship since early 90’s? Why no respect for #Argos? — Guy D (@Guyzer) May 28, 2016
The answer to that question, at least for now, would be no.Government accuses Coalition of having a'secret agenda' after rejecting family benefit rise
Updated
The Federal Government has attacked the Coalition over its decision to reject a boost to family tax payments for people with new babies.
Labor announced the increased payments in last week's budget as a measure to replace the $5,000 baby bonus.
The Opposition is set to support the axing of the bonus, but treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says the Coalition will not go ahead with the higher benefit payments.
"We will not support new spending measures from the Labor Government other than those we specifically identify," he told AM.
"And that is not on the list.
"What we're endeavouring to do is to be entirely consistent and our consistency is based on what we have before us, and what we have before us is a budget that's in a mess."
The baby bonus will be scrapped from March 1, 2014 - a move which will save the budget $1.1 billion over five years.
Labor instead wants to increase payments for Family Tax Benefit (A), giving parents $2,000 for the first child and an additional $1,000 for subsequent children.
Treasurer Wayne Swan says the Opposition has a "secret cut agenda".
"The sad truth is that the Liberals have a secret cut agenda which they won't reveal to the Australian people but which is dribbling out almost day by day," he said.
"I think what this really shows is they're not being frank with the Australian people about their secret agenda to cut to the bone."
But Mr Hockey has blamed Labor repeating the Coalition's description of the budget as being in an "emergency situation".
"We will have to do what we have to do even if it means legislating their announced savings in order to deliver a stronger budget, to build a stronger budget, to build a stronger economy."
Gillard receives boost in opinion polls
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has received a boost in the latest newspaper polls as she continues her push to get states and territories to sign up to the Federal Government's education reforms.
Fairfax's latest Nielsen poll says support for Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister has increased four points to 46 per cent, leaving her level with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, whose support dipped four points.
Ms Gillard also closed the preferred prime minister gap in News Limited's Newspoll, gaining two points to 39 per cent while Mr Abbott's support dipped two points to 40 per cent.
Labor's primary vote jumped three points to 32 per cent in the Nielsen poll compared with the Coalition's vote, which dipped five points to 44 per cent.
However the Coalition still retained an election-winning two-party preferred lead of 54 to 46 per cent.
Newspoll's primary (Coalition 46 per cent, Labor 31 per cent) and two-party preferred (Coalition 56 per cent, Labor 44 per cent) numbers remained steady.
Topics: federal-government, alp, family, tax, budget, australia
First postedEndless plane generator a guest Sep 9th, 2013 123 Never a guest123Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint HTML 5 8.96 KB <!DOCTYPE html> < html ng-app = "myApp" > < head > < link rel = "stylesheet" href = "http://getbootstrap.com/dist/css/bootstrap.css" / > < title > Endless plane generator < / title > < style > html, body { height: 100%; } body { max-width: 960px; margin: auto; padding: 2em 0; }.row { margin-bottom: 1em; }.center { text-align: center; } < / style > < script src = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.7/angular.min.js" >< / script > < / head > < body ng-controller = "MainCtrl" > < div class = "row form-group" > < div class = "col-md-4" >< h3 > Dimensions < / h3 >< / div > < div class = "col-md-1" > Rows < / div > < div class = "col-md-3" > < input type = "number" min = "1" max = "10" ng-model = "rows" ng-change = "start()" class = "form-control" / > < / div > < div class = "col-md-1" > Columns < / div > < div class = "col-md-3" > < input type = "number" min = "1" max = "10" ng-model = "cols" ng-change = "start()" class = "form-control" / > < / div > < / div > < div class = "row form-group" > < div class = "col-md-4" >< h3 > Name < / h3 >< / div > < div class = "col-md-8" > < input type = "text" ng-model = "name" ng-change = "start()" class = "form-control" / > < / div > < / div > < div class = "row form-group" > < div class = "col-md-4" > < h3 > Properties < / h3 > < br / > < button ng-click = "addProp()" class = "btn" > New property < / button > < / div > < div class = "col-md-8" > < div ng-repeat = "prop in props" class = "row" > < div class = "col-md-6 input-group" > < input type = "text" ng-model = "prop.first" ng-change = "change()" class = "form-control" / > < span class = "input-group-addon" > < input type = "radio" name = "default-{{$index}}" value = "0" checked = "checked" ng-click = "setDefault($index, 0)" / > < / span > < / div > < div class = "col-md-6 input-group" > < input type = "text" ng-model = "prop.second" ng-change = "change()" class = "form-control" / > < span class = "input-group-addon" > < input type = "radio" name = "default-{{$index}}" value = "1" ng-click = "setDefault($index, 1)" / > < / span > < / div > < / div > < / div > < / div > < div class = "row" > < div class = "col-md-12" > < table class = "table" > < tbody > < tr ng-repeat = "r in data.visitable" > < td ng-repeat = "c in r" ng-click = "toggle($parent.$index, $index)" ng- class = "data.class[$parent.$index][$index]" class = "center" > {{data.names[$parent.$index][$index]}} < / td > < / tr > < / tbody > < / table > < / div > < / div > < div class = "row" > < div class = "col-md-12" > < textarea rows = "15" class = "col-md-12" > {{proptext}} {{text}} < / textarea > < / div > < / div > < script > Array.prototype.uniq = function () { var b = this; return b.reverse().filter(function (g, f, d) { return d.indexOf(g, f + 1) === -1 }).reverse() }; function ex(e, d, f) { if (d >= 0 && d < e.length && e[d][f]) return true; return false; } var app = angular.module('myApp', []); app.controller('MainCtrl', function ($scope) { $scope.rows = 3; $scope.cols = 3; $scope.name = 'Room'; $scope.text = ''; $scope.data = { visitable: [], names: [], class: [], directions: [] }; $scope.props = []; $scope.proplist = []; $scope.proptext = ''; $scope.build = function () { var i, j, k, l, m, n, o = []; $scope.text = ''; for (i = 0, k = $scope.data.visitable.length; i < k; i++ ) { for ( j = 0, l = $scope. data.visitable [ i ].length; j < l; j++ ) { if ( $scope. data.visitable [ i ] [ j ] ) { $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ] = [ ] ; if ( ex ( $scope. data.visitable, i, j - 1 ) ) $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ].push ( 'east of'+ $scope. data.names [ i ] [ j - 1 ] ) ; if ( ex ( $scope. data.visitable, i + 1, j ) ) $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ].push ( 'north of'+ $scope. data.names [ i + 1 ] [ j ] ) ; if ( ex ( $scope. data.visitable, i + 1, j - 1 ) ) $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ].push ( 'northeast of'+ $scope. data.names [ i + 1 ] [ j - 1 ] ) ; if ( ex ( $scope. data.visitable, i + 1, j + 1 ) ) $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ].push ( 'northwest of'+ $scope. data.names [ i + 1 ] [ j + 1 ] ) ; $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ] = $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ].length? $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ] : [ 'a room' ] ; $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ] = $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ].uniq ( ).join ('and') ; $scope. text + = $scope. data.names [ i ] [ j ] +'is'+ $scope. data.directions [ i ] [ j ] ; $scope. text + = '. The printed name is "' + $scope. name + '".' ; $scope. text + = '. The description is "[' + $scope. name.toLowerCase ( ).replace ( / \s+ / gi, '-' ) + '-description]".' ; if ( $scope.proplist.length ) { for ( n = 0 ; n < $scope.proplist.length; n++ ) { if ( Math.floor ( Math.random ( ) * 2 ) == 1 ) { m = $scope.props [ Math.floor ( Math.random ( ) * $scope.proplist.length ) ] ; $scope. text + ='' + $scope. data.names [ i ] [ j ] +'is'; $scope. text + = m.default == 0? m.second : m.first; $scope. text + = '.' ; } } } $scope. text + = '
' ; } } } } $scope.toggle = function ( r, |
management application for mobile devices.
"We started out with a list of 100 features that we thought were awesome," Masiero remembers, but his team's enthusiasm ran smack into the collective disdain of the user experience designers they'd brought in from an outside agency, who deemed feature after feature irrelevant for mobile users, arguing that so many options would just confuse them.
By the time the designers were done, they had whittled the list of features down by 80%. "Their message was simple," says Masiero. "Less is more." In a mobile application, it is better to cleanly provide the 20 most important pieces of information than force people to navigate through 100 that they might never use. "We learned that you have to drop completeness in the name of usefulness."
What's more, Masiero, like a lot of other tech leaders, realized that in this age of mobility and user-driven technology, IT shops that don't have a user experience expert onboard need to get serious about begging, borrowing or stealing one -- an increasingly difficult proposition.
Developers with user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) expertise are hot these days, according to Shane Bernstein, managing director of QConnects, a Culver City, Calif.-based digital recruitment firm. And it's a fairly recent phenomenon, he says. Between 2010 and 2011, QConnects saw a 25% increase in the number of requests for UX designers; between 2011 and 2012, the increase was 70%.
Salaries are going up as well. Recruiters cite starting salaries ranging from $70,000 to $110,000, with the upper end hitting $150,000 and up. The Creative Group, a division of Robert Half Technology that specializes in design, marketing and interactive talent, began tracking UX designers separately in its annual salary survey in 2011. Salaries went up 6.2% in 2012 and it expects another 4.8% increase in 2013.
"And be prepared for a local variance factor," says Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group. "If you live between San Francisco and San Jose, add 30%."
Thanks to Apple, users expect perfection
In design parlance, the user interface (UI) is what the user sees; the user experience (UX) is how the application behaves. Both recruiters and practitioners stress that designers need to know the latter as much as the former. That is, they need to concentrate not only on how a design looks, but on the whole "wireframe" of the application, and where their requests are going into the back-end of the system.
What's driving the demand for such skills? Many people in the industry lay the credit -- or perhaps blame -- on Apple, with its near-fetishistic attention to how design, hardware and interface intersect. "Now people expect everything they interface with to have the ease of use of the iPhone," says Matt Miller, CTO of Irvine, Calif.-based technical recruiting firm CyberCoders.Posted 28 September 2012 - 10:51 PM
(This is a wiki thread! Whoever is on and sees the new codes first, please update below!)
June 12
from E3:
PC / Mac: CBWBT-5KKKK-BZRBJ-TJ3TT-3FC9X
Xbox 360: KTW33-FTZWH-K5H3F-5XB3T-BZKWH
PlayStation 3: 5JCTT-RW3K3-FR5WB-ZTKJB-ZRWXS
good till midnignt june 2013
-----------------
May 15th:
PC/Mac: CT53B-K3BX5-H5FTB-BTT3J-J995C
Xbox: K3CBB-5JFZC-J3S3R-5FTT3-W5RBR
PS3: WBWTT-HJSC3-CW5K3-SJ5JJ-BJF69
May 3rd
PC/Mac - CJC33-F9Z5C-ZCRJJ-JB3TT-J5HSR
X360 - KJC3J-XZWSK-BJS3F-K6T33-9RTRF
PS3 - KJ533-TTS5J-5WWWJ-SBCBJ-ZB6Z3
PC/Mac - 5TK3B-Z9SWC-SWRT3-TJ33T-HZW3B
X360 - 5J5B3-99K9K-J3HBR-5FJBJ-HK9FF
PS3 - W3W33-KJZKT-KKWCJ-9TCT3-BKX33
4/25/13
1 Gold Key each :
From Twitter (active through 4/29) :
PS3 - CB53J-FZFKB-5W5KB-ZJCTB-B5S5T
360 - WT5JJ-BHC95-33HJR-W6TJ3-B5WKS
PC / Mac - CTKTJ-WHSKC-Z56BJ-BTB3B-9C6FT
From Facebook :
PS3 - KTCBJ-ZZRCJ-W5WCT-ZB5BJ-BKKJK
360 - KBWJT-5SKSK-BBZBR-56JJ3-5KHB9
PC / Mac - WT533-J99WW-ZC6JJ-TBJT3-SWKTB
Mar 14th -
Luck of the Zafords Weekend Codes (Good for Chulainn SMG and green skins. Note that Chulainn SMG is only for FIRST character you load. So load your highest level char after applying code. Skins are granted to everyone and will appear in customization station.)
Good through Sunday Mar 17
PC / Mac Zaford Gear SHiFT Code: KTCBJ-C9RTC-BSFTJ-33TT3-FBWHF
Xbox 360 Zaford Gear SHiFT Code: KJCJ3-RCWC6-5K9BF-WFBT3-3WFKK
PlayStation 3 Zaford Gear SHiFT Code: CTK3B-99K3J-XXKW3-ZTWTJ-HJH5J
From Randy Pitchford's twitter on 3/14 (1 golden key each):
From Randy Pitchford's twitter on 3/5 (5 golden keys)
Texas Independence Day Whoops MultiKey (FIVE Keys) Through March 4
1 Golden Key from @GearboxSoftware, active through 2/24:
From Randy Pitchford's twitter on 2/16
5TCJB-35RZC-ZHXBR-56B3J-3SSHK
Expired
Shift codes from V-Day app on facebook:.
Valentine's Day skin codes are up! Active through Feb. 17th.
New codes posted by @GearboxSoftware on 2/8 @ ~10:35am CST
Active through February 10
5 Golden Keys
From Randy Pitchford's twitter on 2/7 ~10:00 P.M.
From Britanni Johnson's twitter (2/2):
New codes posted by @GearboxSoftware on 2/1 @ ~10:40am CST
Active through February 3
from twitter: codes posted on 1/29/13 at 9:31 P.M.
PS3: WTCJJ-XT6CJ-5WK53-HT5BJ-W6HTJ
PC/Mac: KJW3B-BT9WC-9K6BB-BTTJ3-WTX99
360: WJC3J-TXXSK-SSX3X-C6JJ3-3CJW5
From Randy Pitchford's twitter (1/27):
Both PC codes no longer valid as of 1/28/13.
New keys from @GearboxSoftware on 1/25:
PlayStation 3 SHiFT Code: CTWJJ-95F53-CKCW3-9JWJT-T5ZBB [Active through January 27]
Xbox 360 SHiFT Code: 5BCTT-XX6SC-ZSXJX-KFJBJ-66R5W [Active through January 27]
PC / Mac SHiFT Code: 53KJ3-CK9W5-Z5XB3-T3BJT-969KW [Active through January 27]
From Randy Pitchford's twitter:
Still valid as of 01/20
Expired
From twitter, in honor of GBX winning G4TV's 2012 game of the year. Each code will give you FIVE new Golden Keys!
(Confirmed valid as 1/19)
(Confirmed valid as of 12/31)
(Confirmed valid as of 01/20)
(Confirmed valid as of 01/20)
(Confirmed valid as 1/19)
PS3 - K3C3J-6ZHC3-W5CKT-STW3T-JSKWHPC/MAC - 53WJJ-THTXW-HWRTJ-3TJBT-53R6SX360 - CJC3J-659X6-3T9TX-WRJTB-BWK9JPS3 - CJWBT-HH9CT-CKWWB-STC3T-96Z6HPC/MAC - CBC3B-5ZTF5-9WR3J-TTJJT-3K5K5X360 - 535JB-959RX-T39JX-CX3TB-9XC3HPS3: CTK33-6JCRB-CKCCB-SJ5BJ-FZT6CPC/MAC: K35JT-B3FXC-ZCFJB-BTTBB-CFHRTX360: WBCT3-CX3Z6-JB9JF-W6JTB-3RB9TMac/PC: KJWJ3-SCBFK-S5F3J-JBBB3-BHCJ3PS3: 5JKJJ-CXZ53-5WWKT-H3WBJ-ZZ55X360: WB5TJ-9KF95-3TZ3X-KR3JJ-FW9R3K3WTJ-TXZWW-SCRJJ-33BTJ-933ZS5B533-TR5ZW-TTHBR-WF3J3-KWZK95BCTT-XX6KB-WKWKT-SBKBJ-66RJBW3CJJ-BZR5C-ZK6T3-TT3TT-JS6T35TKB3-R9CKT-K5WKT-H3CJT-BZF56WTC3B-Z5ZWC-HW6JT-JJJBJ-9FWXRW35BB-SC5S5-3JSBF-C63JT-TFHKCC3WJ3-56FKB-W5WCB-SBKBJ-9R5KCW3KJ3-69JR5-9CXT3-JTJJT-WSCK5W3W3B-BHX9K-3TSTX-WXJ3J-XCHKHWJCJJ-HCBFB-CCKC3-H3CJT-6FBHWPS3: 53WBJ-T6Z5B-WWWCJ-HBKBB-THTR6PC/Mac: C3CBT-RC3XW-9WF33-BTJ3T-SB99JXbox360: C3CTB-XK695-33Z3R-W6BTB-XJC36PS3: CBWBJ-CSC5T-5CWKT-ZBC33-WB9FWPC/Mac: W3CTB-HXR5W-S56B3-TTB33-SXTXF360: CTKT3-93FZK-SSXJX-KX3TT-X6XSXPS3: 5JKJJ-H65K3-CCKCJ-HT5B3-9HS9TPC/Mac: C3WBT-C6F5C-HCRTJ-3J3BT-C96ZWXBOX360: K3CBJ-WBRSC-H96BF-K6TBT-56RC3PC/Mac: CTWBT-X5ZWC-9WRB3-BJ3B3-RWF96XB360: 5TC3B-9F695-9ZX3R-5FBJT-J5TX3PS3: WJC3J-TXXKJ-KKW5T-H3KJ3-3CJZTPC/Mac: KBCBB-BFFWC-HKXBT-3TBTJ-9XZ3CPC/Mac: C35TB-ZWFCW-HCF3T-TTBTJ-RHWT6XBOX 360: WBKJJ-B3RHK-ZH6BX-KRTBB-3FBCHXBOX 360: CTWJT-9H59W-9HRJR-WFBTT-XHKR9PS3: K3K3B-66K5T-CWCCT-9BK3T-BF5KSPS3: WJ5TJ-WRKKT-WW5W3-HJWTB-ZBXJKNew Codes as of 1-9-13These are worth 5!PC / Mac Borderlands 2 SHiFT Code: K3K33-3W9JT-6XJJT-TB3JB-HWZZFXbox 360 Borderlands 2 SHiFT Code: WBWJ3-JHKSK-ZHXT6-CRTJT-BW59WPlayStation 3 Borderlands 2 SHiFT Code: WBK3B-FKWCT-KWKWB-SJWTB-XCZK3XBox 360: W3KTJ-FZ9CS-XS6BR-K6JJ3-XCFXTPS3: WTWBJ-HKZ9C-TCCWB-ZT5JJ-6HRZSPC/Mac: WT5TB-XC5ZC-CX3T3-BBT3B-B35WBPC/MAC: WTCBB-H5WHC-5F3T3-TBT3T-HR6TJPS3: CTC33-TZH9K-TW553-STKJ3-RJ3H5X360: WBKJT-SSZ5S-6S6B6-5FTTB-X5KSCThese codes are twitted by President of Gearbox Software Randy Pitchford:orSome of these codes are also available at the BL Facebook Page They are only good for a very short time so use them NOW!More info:
Edited by koalak, 12 June 2013 - 09:51 PM.Current E and Mahindra Racing have teamed up to give eight lucky winners the chance to challenge Karun Chandhok around the streets of the Moscow Formula E circuit in a full-motion simulator!
What: Karun Chandhok will talk you through the tricky Russian circuit, giving you driving hints and tips, before letting you loose in the centre’s full motion monocoque simulators. You’ll get a practice session, quali and a race.
Where: Let’s Race simulator facility, in Surrey, UK, just down the road from where Karun will be preparing for the final races of the Formula E season.
When: Tuesday 23 June, 11.30am to 2pm BST.
Who: Eight lucky winners and Formula E racing driver Karun Chandhok. Current E super snapper Shiv Gohil will be on hand to capture all the action and show off his sim skills too.
How: Simply follow @Current_E and @MahindraRacing on Twitter and retweet the competition post before 12pm BST on Sunday 21 June. Winners will be notified the same day, by 6pm BST.
The boring stuff: Minimum height is 1.5m. By entering, you consent to being photographed, filmed and named for our editorial and promotional material. The experience cannot be exchanged for cash. Refreshments are not provided but are available to purchase on site. We cannot contact unsuccessful entrants. While there is no age limit, please be aware that you must be able to make your own way to and from the venue. Please make sure you share the original competition Tweet otherwise we will not be able to count your entry. Winners may bring one guest each (there is a viewing grandstand for guests to watch the racing although guests will not be able to participate in the simulator session).Joy as deal struck to make Kadcyla, which costs an annual £90,000 per patient at full price, available for routine use
A drug that can extend the lives of women with advanced breast cancer has been approved for routine use on the NHS.
Charities and campaigners reacted with huge disappointment when the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) rejected the drug, Kadcyla, on cost grounds in 2016.
But a deal has now been struck between NHS England and the manufacturer Roche, backed by Nice, to make the drug available to around 1,200 women a year in England. Until now, the drug has been funded only through the cancer drugs fund.
In clinical trials, Kadcyla, which has a full list price of £90,000 a year per patient, was shown to extend the lives of people with terminal cancer by an average of six months. It also dramatically improves quality of life, compared with other treatments, and reduces side effects.
Details of the price agreed between Roche and the NHS are being kept confidential.
Kadycla is for people with Her2+ breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and cannot be removed through surgery. Previous treatments, usually Herceptin, must have failed for patients to receive the drug.
Kadcyla, also called T-DM1, combines Herceptin with a potent chemotherapy agent. It works by attaching itself to the Her2 receptor on cancer cells, blocking signals that encourage the cancer to grow and spread. The chemotherapy element also goes inside the cell and causes it to die from within.
New therapy offers hope against incurable form of breast cancer Read more
Kadcyla is given intravenously once every three weeks.
The chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, speaking at the NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool, said: “NHS cancer survival rates are now at record highs, and this year we’re going to be making major upgrades to modern radiotherapy treatments in every part of England.
“NHS England is also taking practical action to drive greater value from taxpayers’ growing investment in modern drug treatments, and that work is beginning to bear fruit.
“Today’s announcement on Kadcyla shows that for companies who are willing to work with us, there are concrete gains for them, for the NHS and, most importantly, for patients able to get new and innovative drugs.
“In this case, tough negotiation and flexibility between the NHS and Roche means both patients and taxpayers are getting a good deal.”
Richard Erwin, general manager at Roche, said: “This is a positive example of how solutions can be reached when all parties show flexibility.”
Delyth Morgan, chief executive of the research charity Breast Cancer Now, said: “We are absolutely delighted that tough negotiation and flexibility by Nice and NHS England, and the willingness of Roche to compromise on price, have ensured that thousands of women with incurable breast cancer will be given precious time to live.
“We want to congratulate and thank the hundreds of thousands of women, men and families across the country for their relentless campaigning to ensure this crucial lifeline drug is routinely available to those that need it.
Testicular cancer: men most at risk could be identified using new gene group Read more
“However, this news comes at a time when there is a real possibility that Perjeta, the first-line treatment for this group of patients, could soon be removed from NHS use, with a decision imminent.
“Perjeta’s benefits are extraordinary, offering nearly 16 additional months of life to women with incurable breast cancer, and it is imperative that a solution is found to save this drug, at a cost affordable to both the NHS and the taxpayer.”
Prof Carole Longson, director of the centre for health technology evaluation at Nice, said: “The committee acknowledged the comments received from patients during the consultation on the draft recommendations for trastuzumab emtansine [the generic name for Kadcyla], in particular that 115,000 people had signed a Breast Cancer Now petition urging Nice and the company to ensure that it remains available.
“We are therefore very pleased that the company and NHS England have been able to agree a deal that will achieve this.”When I was 11 my neighbour told my first crush that I liked him. Later he relayed his reaction back to a group of us on the driveway, bare feet padding up and down on the late afternoon concrete.
He said he doesn’t like Asian cunts.
My neighbour winced involuntarily at the word. Even before Googling it, something about the way it spat out the mouth imitated poison.
I absorbed the shock like violence. With an exaggerated eye roll, I mounted my bike and rode away – the beginnings of a polished nonchalance cultivated throughout adolescence.
The irony was that my crush was himself half Asian.
***
My first real love years later, was a boy who could have been the grown up version of that crush. They had the same sharp jaw and ethnic mix – the only difference being that he conceded to return my affections for some time. It seems likely that on some level I sought out his love as a salve for the broken promise of that first crush – that I had still been searching for some vindication for my pre-adolescent self.
Early on, I came to understand that my personhood was definable by my ethnicity foremost, then my gender and my looks. I felt gratified each time I was told that I was a “cool Asian” or a “pretty Asian”. It never occurred to me that I was passively – eagerly – internalising harmful messages about myself because I so deeply desired acceptance.
To protect myself, I took nothing but a critically detached interest in the white boys my girlfriends dated. I constructed my personality around the trope of the sarcastic Asian sidekick, a persona that relegated me to the background – nonthreatening and untouchable. Yet, it was an identity that I could finally inhabit freely.
It served my ego that there were Asian boys who took some interest in me, but I was quietly conscious that such a pairing was somehow undesirable. When I briefly dated one, we were mistaken for brother and sister on more than one occasion. This confirmed one of my deepest fears. To them, weren’t we all just sexless members of one massive, monolid, extended family?
This insecurity still overwhelmingly influences my interactions with men, despite the fact that I now live in a country where I belong to the ethnic majority:
An Asian cunt among Asian cunts.
***
In my early twenties, I rushed through first dates; wilfully intoxicating myself in anticipation of sloppy, impersonal sex. I used my body to win the validation of undeserving boys. I was fully aware of the cognitive dissonance inherent in my actions and so I labeled the experiences “exercises in sexual freedom”.
What I have learned from numerous UTIs is that sexual freedom is not the same as free sex. The former has something to do with embracing intimacy from a place of strength. I have been using sex to get over an adolescence of feeling othered.
I am acutely aware of the fact that my accent, paired with my face, makes me somewhat of a commodity in this city. I am Asian Girl-lite for white men starting out in Asia-lite. Singapore is an appealing city to the white expat man, with its resplendence of rooftop bars and easy access to exotic cunt.
The fact that I embody that exotic cunt while speaking like them seems to make me more palatable, like an order of sashimi with a side of hot chips. The attention is disorienting and flattering and sickening all at once, and has an inverse resonance with my teenage experience.
You speak such good English, I am frequently told.
I’ll slit your throat. I smile back.
***
I know too that despite my best intentions, attempts to “decolonise” romantic relationships are unfairly burdensome. Jenny Zhang writes in Rookie (Far Away From Me, April 2015) of the “paralyzing” pressures put on women of colour to align their politics with their personal lives: “To make sure that everyone whose mouths we want to kiss and faces we want to touch have to be thoroughly vetted and pose no difficulty […] to our beliefs.” Such rigorous appraisals are an inevitably sobering prospect for a fledgling romance.
My best friend back in Australia is blessedly carefree in matters of the heart. She goes on dates and takes for granted that men are attracted to her because she is interesting and fun and beautiful. She never has to account for the multitudes of ways her ethnicity might impact on an interaction.
When she reminds me to play it cool with a guy, I can’t find the words to explain how, after an adolescence spent at a distance, I often feel lucky to be on the receiving end of white male attention. That I nevertheless second guess any attention I receive because it is so often predicated on sexualised assumptions about Asian women.
When a guy did not make a move after a first date, I descended into a spiral of anxiety. I assumed that I must have said or done something, or that there was something intimately wrong with me. It never occurred to me that he simply wanted to get to know me. That my Asian body was not my only resource to plunder.
I want to claim my race and my ethnicity. To look at myself and simply see myself. I don’t want to shrink from my skin and disavow the people I am from. I want to accept my Asian body as a neutral one and not a body that is fraught with meaning.
I am an Asian cunt.WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran was not upholding its obligations under the landmark nuclear deal struck in 2015 by former president Barack Obama.
“I don’t think they’re living up to the spirit of the agreement,” he told reporters at his private golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey, where Trump is currently spending a 17-day retreat from Washington.
“They are not in compliance with the agreement and they certainly are not in the spirit of the agreement in compliance, and I think you’ll see some very strong things taking place if they don’t get themselves in compliance,” he went on to say.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up
Trump has been signaling for weeks that he would like to declare Tehran noncompliant with the terms of the accord. In July, he instructed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to verify to Congress that Iran was abiding by the pact.
But two weeks ago, he told The Wall Street Journal he did not suspect he would do the same three months from now. Under the agreement, the White House must certify to Congress every three months whether Iran is honoring the deal, which rolled back sanctions in exchange for curbing Iran’s nuclear program.
“We’re doing very detailed studies,” he told the Journal. “We’ve been extremely nice to them in saying they were compliant, OK? We’ve given them the benefit of every doubt. But we’re doing very detailed studies.”
“I think they’ll be noncompliant,” he added, discussing what he will declare after the next 180-day cycle. “I think they’re taking advantage of this country. They’ve taken advantage of a president, named Barack Obama, who didn’t know what the hell he was doing. And I do not expect that they will be compliance.”
Furthermore, The New York Times has reported that Trump and his aides are actively seeking to find a way out of the deal.
At the time of the certification, the administration was emphatic that while Iran was technically complying with the pact, it did not believe it was living up to its spirit.
A senior administration official briefed reporters hours before the certification, citing Iran’s ballistic missile testing and development, support for terrorism, support for the Bashar Assad regime in Syria and other human rights violations and arbitrary detainment of foreigners.
Also cited was Tehran’s “continuing hostility of Israel” and its “cyber attacks against the United States and Israel,” the official said.
In his remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump continued his practice of criticizing his predecessor.
“President Obama in his wisdom gave them $150 billion,” he said. “He gave them $1.8 billion in cash. That’s a hard one to figure. But that was his decision. I think it’s a horrible agreement.”
As a presidential candidate, Trump was highly critical of the deal, often calling it the worst ever negotiated. But he also provided contradictory messages for how he would handle the Iranian challenge.
In his address at the 2016 AIPAC conference, for instance, Trump said he would both “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran” and “enforce the terms of the previous deal to hold Iran totally accountable.”
As president, he has refrained from abrogating the agreement, but has intimated he would like to do so if Iranian behavior did not change.
He did, however, impose new sanctions on multiple Iranian entities and individuals in February after Tehran defied a United Nations Security Council resolution by testing ballistic missiles.
The Senate late last month also imposed mandatory penalties on people involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. It would also apply terrorism sanctions to Iran’s prestigious Revolutionary Guard and enforce an arms embargo.The Caro-Kann is one of the most difficult openings to beat in chess. It was a favourite of Capablanca, and in more recent times has been used with great success most famously by Karpov, and also by British players like Jon Speelman. My great rival and friend Keith Arkell has also used this opening in countless number of games - he likes the solidity of Black’s set-up, and believes that the extra e-pawn that Black enjoys is very useful for any endgame. How to crack it? Not easy.
How to crack it? Not easy. The most popular ways that Black can play the Caro is to either develop the bishop to f5, which has become the most popular way to play, or the other move …Nd7, which is the favourite of Karpov and Speelman, and is the subject of this article.
Black plays an early …c5
Black plays an early …b6
Black plays an early …Nb6
White puts the bishop on e231
SAVANNAH ST.
(2-1) NR/NR 1ST 2ND F 17 14 31 44 55 99 Box Score | Quotes | Notes
Highlights | Postgame Waco, Texas • Attendance: 7,072
99
BAYLOR
(4-0) 9/9
THE RUNDOWN
WACO, Texas -Odyssey Sims scored 22 points and No. 9 Baylor extended the nation's-best home winning streak to 61 games with a 99-31 victory over Savannah State on Thursday night.
Sims, the preseason AP All-American point guard, has scored at least 22 points in every game this season for the Lady Bears (4-0).
Baylor had a 6-minute span without a field goal in the first half, but still led by 14 when freshman Nina Davis had a putback basket of her own miss with 6 minutes left in the first half. That ended the Lady Bears' streak of eight consecutive missed shots.
Davis had 17 points while two Lady Bears had double-doubles: Kristina Higgins (14 points, 11 rebounds) and Sune Agbuke (10 points, 10 rebounds).
HIGHLIGHTS
• The Lady Bears extended their program-record home win streak to 61 games; the streak is the longest active streak in the nation after UCONN snapped Stanford's string of 82-straight wins on Dec. 29, 2012. Baylor's last loss in Waco came against Texas, March 7, 2010 by a score of 70-54.
• Baylor has won 31 straight regular season games since a 71-69 loss to No. 4 Stanford on Nov. 16, 2012, in Honolulu.
• With 22 points, senior Odyssey Sims extended her streak of double-digit scoring to 14 games. Sims was last held to single-digits against UCONN, Feb. 18 when she had nine.
• Sims has now scored double figures in the first half of all four games this season (13 vs. Grambling State; 14 vs. Nicholls State; 24 vs. Rice; 11 vs. Savannah State).
• Freshman Nina Davis' 17 points helped her reach double figures in each of her first four collegiate games.
• Davis' 12 points at halftime marked the first time she's had double figures in the first half of her young career.
• Sophomore Kristina Higgins notched her first career double-double with career highs of 14 points and 11 rebounds, along with career-tying bests of 2 blocks and 1 steal.
• Junior Sune Agbuke tallied her second career double-double with season highs of 10 points and 10 rebounds.
• Agbuke and Higgins' double-doubles mark the second time this season that Baylor has had two players total double-doubles (Davis and Khadijiah Cave vs. Nicholls State on Nov. 14).
STAT OF THE GAME
Baylor outrebounded Savannah State, 63-40.
TWEET OF THE GAME
Sophomore post Kristina Higgins has 12 points and 10 rebounds for her first career double-double. Baylor leads 54-19 -- Lariat Sports (@BULariatSports) November 22, 2013
TOP QUOTE
"This team is so young that there's going to be stretches where we look good--we're energized and do some good things--and then there's going to be stretches when we look bad and we've just got to be patient and keep teaching at every time out." - Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey
WHAT'S NEXT
The Lady Bears continue play in the Athletes in Action Classic Friday at 7 p.m. against Northwestern State at the Ferrell Center.In his time the composer's 'dangerously stimulating' music was blamed for melancholy, hysteria, hypnosis and even triggering orgasm
Reports may seem far-fetched that a German production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, feted as a highlight of the 200th-anniversary celebrations of his birth this month, have taken such a heavy psychological toll on members of the Düsseldorf audience that some have needed medical attention.
But in his day, the German composer was held responsible for a lot more than fainting and heart palpitations: his works were viewed as a threat not only to the health of musicians and listeners but also to any society that was trying to uphold order.
"No musician's music was seen as such a potentially dangerous stimulant as Wagner's," says James Kennaway, a historian specialising in music and medicine. "While the Nazis famously saw him as a model of musical health, at no time before or since the 1800s has one figure so dominated the debate on music as a pathogen as Wagner."
His music was seen not just as a symptom of the physical and sexual pathologies associated with a nervous modernity – everything from neurasthenia [nervous exhaustion] and degeneration to perversion and fatigue – but also as the direct cause of these.
Respected doctors blamed him for much mental illness, with the Dutch psychiatrist Jacob van Deventer concluding in 1891 that "a large number of the mentally ill are passionate lovers of Wagnerian music".
The medical profession put this down partly to the sheer length of his operas, partly to the "pathological lack of rhythm" in Wagner's music, which led the late-19th-century author of popular science Grant Allen to conclude that the "gathered energy has to dissipate itself by other channels, which involves a certain amount of conflict and waste, leading to fatigue". This was also a time when the medical profession widely believed that disease was "unrhythmical" while health was "rhythmical".
'Catalepsy provoked by sound of the tuning fork' Desire-Magloire Bourneville and Paul Richer, Iconographie photographique de Salpetrière. (Paris: Aux Bureaux de Progres Medical 1879-80, vol 3, plate 20.) Photograph: 11859/The British LIbrary
Probably the first acknowledged victim of the nervous strain caused by what Kennaway calls Wagner's "lush timbres and radical harmonies" was Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the first singer of Tristan und Isolde, who died in 1865 in a "Tristan" delirium at the age of 29 shortly after his debut performance, muttering: "Farewell, Siegfried; console my Richard!" In a letter, a distraught Wagner admitted his music had "driven the singer to the abyss".
Women were considered to be particularly susceptible to the "disease" of musical nervousness that was often referred to as Wagnerianism. The music was inextricably linked to eroticism (take the incest in Die Walküre and the adultery in Tristan), and was believed to nurture dangerous sexual feelings among young, unmarried women. Wagner was blamed not only for the premature onset of menstruation but also infertility, melancholy, hysteria and hypnosis.
The Gestalt psychologist Christian von Ehrenfels went so far as to claim that he could literally "point to the bars" of Tristan that triggered orgasms. Kennaway points out: "This was also an era when women were dissuaded from playing the piano because the effects were said to be as dangerous as those of strong alcohol on men."
Just as men of a nervous disposition were encouraged to stay away from whisky, love affairs and cigars, so women were urged to avoid piano-tuning and Wagner.
In one recorded case, a psychiatric patient was said to have been haunted by Wagnerian auditory hallucinations, while Wagner's very own patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, passed out during a performance of Tristan because of nervous strain. Aloys Ander, who played Tristan in a Vienna production, died insane in an asylum in 1865.
"The idea of music being a potentially unhealthy form of stimulation, similar to drugs or electricity, had been commonplace during the 19th century," says Kennaway. "But with Wagner, the danger became specifically associated with modern music and modern urban lifestyles in diagnosing the fashionable disease of the time, neurasthenia."
Critics even suggested that Wagner's music was sickly and feminine, a suspicion that prompted a popular link to be made between Wagner and homosexuality – viewed then as a medical condition |
educated: Not very important
Having ambition: Essential
Hard work: Essential
Knowing the right people: Not very important
Your talent: Essential
Your ethnic group: Can’t choose
Your class: Can’t choose
Your religion: Can’t choose
Your gender: Can’t choose
What kind of work did your first parent/caregiver do?
Father: Coal miner.
What was this parent’s highest achieved level of education?
None.
What kind of work did your other parent or caregiver do when you were around 14?
Mother: Teacher.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Cale, pictured for the Guardian. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
What was your (other) parent or caregiver’s highest achieved level of education? (if applicable)
Apprenticeship.
Can you give an example of art or culture that you love?
Visual arts, mixed media, film and of course, music. I want to explore more tech/art hybrids as I did last year with Loop>>60Hz: Transmissions from the Drone Orchestra.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Making all forms of art – fusing progressive technology to create new platforms of expression.
Please tell us more broadly about your experience in your industry. Is there anything else you want to tell us?
My classical training was the genesis for hard work and practice. Understanding you must learn the basics and practice to make them your own. Knowing the “how” is an important edge when I started working in the avant-garde, and the Velvet Underground and beyond. Working in the avant-garde set me up well for the recording industry – while a student at Goldsmiths I longed to push beyond my classical teachings, wishing to move into the avant-garde where I could be a part of new music, something yet to come. That premise has never stopped. To this day, it’s what I must do each day: create music beyond the premise set before.Two quarters of the Hurd, Q1 and Q2 of 2012: Google Summer of Code, Barrier of Entry, Core, Porting.
Google Summer of Code
Jérémie Koenig released the final report on his Google Summer of Code project Java on Hurd along with a summary of his changes and the challenges he faced. In a similar track, Samuel Thibault merged the slab branch, concluding Maksym Planeta's Goggle Summer of Code project on an improved memory allocator.
Pino Toscano improved the Hurd implementations of nanosleep, ptsname_r, getlogin_r, getgroups, and sendto, for POSIX compliance.
Barrier of Entry
Samuel Thibault, Ludovic Courtès and Thomas Schwinge reduced the barrier of entry into hacking the Hurd.
As part of this, Samuel prepared DDE in incubator, making about half the Linux kernel 2.6.29.6's network drivers compile on the Hurd, together with a netdde debian package and testing notes.
Ludovic contributed a continuous testing framework using a Nix-based GNU QEMU image. Thanks to his work, we now have automatic tests (background).
Thomas on the other hand moved the translators cvsfs and smbfs into the incubator Git repository, as well as libfuse, reducing the barrier of entry to improving them, so integrating cvs and samba in the filesystem and using FUSE translators can be stabilized more easily. Also he improved the Hurd build system, removing automatically generated files from the source repository, as now running autoreconf is all you need to create them.
Roland McGrath merged many glibc changes for upstream inclusion, reducing the maintenance load for our regular glibc development work.
The Core of the Hurd
Ludovic Courtès, Maksym Planeta, Samuel Thibault and Richard Braun took a dive into the core of the Hurd. Ludovic fixed invalid port deallocation in `symlink' and made console-run resilient against missing /dev/console. Maksym tested the performance of tmpfs, showing a speedup for apt-get calls from 22 seconds with ramdisk and 32 seconds with ext2fs to 16 seconds with tmpfs for apt-get invocations, showing the possible wins due to going deep. An obvious use case for tmpfs are faster Hurd LiveCDs. Samuel made it easier to dive in by improving debugging in GNU Mach. The debugger is now aware of the difference between kernel space and user space. This should substantially reduce the development time for features in Mach by giving nicer stack traces. And in the deepest core of the Mach, Richard improved memory mapping with a red-black tree, which should speed up memory access.
Porting
As in the previous quarters, we also saw lots of ported packages, including Richard's work on libpcap which brought wireshark and pcap_inject for easier network testing, libtool thanks to Samuel Thibault and Peter O'Gorman, gnat by Svante Signell for Ada support (a language used in many mission-critical applications such as automotive and aerospace, offering features like strong typing, modularity, run-time checking and parallel processing), and iconx thanks to Samuel Thibault, which fulfills a requirement of tests for many packages, among them glib - and allowed Svante Signell to port the literate programming language noweb and ifupdown. Also Thomas DiModica merged the cthreads to pthreads patch and added a branch for it to make it easier to work on getting Hurd to use the more current pthreads.
With his Debian GNU/Hurd maintainer hat on, Samuel Thibault posted some new bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd porters.
And now, as a final note, we want to share a story about real-life debugging on a Hurd system; IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2012-03-02:
<youpi> yay GNU/Hurd <youpi> I have added i_translator check in e2fsck, it was missing <youpi> I had a volume that was keeping making ext2fs crash <youpi> with a reproductible scenario <youpi> could easily work out it was i_translator, then add a check to e2fsck, run it, which indeed fixed, them, and voilà, ext2fs was working again <youpi> all that on the same machine with *no* system reboot <youpi> just ext2fs restart :)
So if you want to experience enjoyable debugging of code deep in the core of your system, please get in contact -- and maybe already grab the source code.
The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). More detailed.
GNU Mach is the microkernel upon which a GNU Hurd system is based. It provides an Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanism that the Hurd uses to define interfaces for implementing in a distributed multi-server fashion the services a traditional operating system kernel provides. More detailed.This article first appeared on In These Times.
Everyone agrees that the $1 trillion in student debt carried by Americans is a problem. Yet on a national level, Congress has only managed a deal that will keep interest rates low for new loans this year, but let them go up in the future.
Now, one state, Oregon, is looking at broader, more far-reaching changes. On July 1, the state legislature unanimously passed a bill that could dramatically alter how public education in Oregon is funded.
The proposed program, called Pay It Forward, was conceived by students and backed by the Oregon Working Families Party, a political party/grassroots organization that promotes progressive, pro-labor candidates and policies. Pay It Forward would eliminate tuition as we know it at the state’s public universities and colleges. Instead of paying up front, students would sign up to pay the state a proportion of their income after they finish school.
It’ll be a few years yet before anything goes into action. The bill instructs the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Committee to set up a pilot plan for Pay It Forward to be considered by the state’s 2015 legislature. But the move has set off a broad debate nationally, with both conservatives and progressives coming out for and against the plan.
Some herald it as a debt-free degree, but that largely depends on how you define “debt.” Students won’t have a fixed sum hanging over their head, gathering interest that’s being skimmed off by a for-profit lender or big bank — but they will be making regular payments of a (small) chunk of their income for a (rather long) time. Though the final details will be hammered out in the pilot program, the bill suggests that graduates of four-year programs pay 3 percent of their income — and grads of two-year schools pay 1.5 percent — for 24 years. The goals are to eliminate the upfront cost of college and to allow students to take jobs that pay less but have more social benefit without worrying about making monthly debt payments. Students who make a lot of money will pay a larger amount into the fund, and each generation will fund schools for the generation after them — hence the name, Pay It Forward.
It’s noteworthy that the proposal came from students themselves. In the fall of 2012, Barbara Dudley, the founder of the Oregon Working Families Party, taught a capstone class at Portland State University on student debt with professor Mary King. The Pay It Forward plan had been considered elsewhere — most recently in Washington state — and the students considered it as along with other proposals for state and national action to solve the student debt crisis. “We fell in love with it,” says Kevin Rackham, who was a junior at Portland State when he took Dudley and King’s course.
The students were deeply involved in every step of shaping the bill, says Sami Alloy, a WFP campaign manager. “They decided that they thought this was a just way to create a shared responsibility model that would remove that initial financial and psychological barrier.”
The students presented their proposal (the full text of which is available on the Oregon WFP’s website) to a panel of legislators and secured a champion in Portland Democrat Rep. Michael Dembrow, chair of the Oregon House higher education committee, who introduced the bill. The Working Families Party made the bill a legislative priority, and the students worked with Alloy and Dudley to lobby for the bill. They were backed by a coalition that included the Oregon Student Association, Portland State University Association of University Professors, Jubilee USA, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and Teamsters Local 206.
“With the hard work of the students and the political power we’ve built as the WFP, we were able to build consensus in the legislature, but I don’t think that anybody expected it to move this fast or to be so unanimous,” Alloy says. “The reason this has struck such a chord is that people are hungry for a solution to the student debt crisis.”
In 2011, the student report notes, 60 percent of Oregon University System students took out loans to pay for education, and the average student graduated with $22,216 in debt, above the national average of about $21,700. According to the students’ report, Oregon ranks 42nd in the nation in terms of state appropriations for higher education, with per-student funding from the state dropping by $2,700 between 1990 and 2010. In same period, published tuition and fees at public universities more than doubled. And those universities are at record enrollment and projected to keep growing.
In 2011, Oregon’s legislature passed Senate Bill 253, which established educational objectives for the by 2025: that all adults in the state have a high school diploma or equivalent, 40 percent have an associate’s degree or other meaningful postsecondary certificate, and 40 percent have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. In other words, the legislature has stated that higher education is a public good and that the state has an interest in ensuring that Oregonians have access to it.
The state is far from reaching its goals. As of 2011, the student report notes, only 29 percent of Oregonians have a Bachelor’s degree or higher (compared to a national average of 30.4 percent), 27 percent have an associate’s degree, 33 percent are high school graduates and 11 percent do not have any degree. While the state also voted to extend the Oregon Opportunity Grant for low-income students to go to college, the students noted that 60 percent of Oregon University System students took out loans to pay for education. The average student graduated with $22,216 in debt, above the national average of about $21,700.
The report estimates that under the Pay It Forward plan, an average student who obtains a bachelor’s degree would pay $39,653 into the Pay It Forward fund, which would cover the value of their tuition and fees, plus another $7,000 or more. In some ways, the plan would function like social insurance, socializing the costs of education and cutting down on the risks for students. If you happen to strike it rich, you will pay much more than your tuition might have cost, but if you’re unemployed (or stuck in a low-wage job), you pay next to nothing. The plan would lower most graduates’ monthly payments, but not eliminate individual responsibility to pay.
This policy seems aimed squarely at students who come from modest means, who are looking at a college degree as their path up the socioeconomic ladder — in other words, students who look at college as an investment in their future, but who know that in today’s economic climate, even a college degree isn’t a clear path to stability and comfort.
However, Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of education policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, sounds a warning note on the Century Foundation’s website. For most students, she notes, tuition and fees are not the largest part of college expenses. At the University of Oregon, for instance, tuition and fees run about $9,800 per year, while room and board costs more than $10,000 and books and other expenses another $3000-plus. Many students, she writes, would still wind up having to borrow to cover costs without having to work while in school — unless they receive federal Pell Grants or Oregon maintains its Opportunity Grant program for lower-income students.
Goldrick-Rab, additionally, says in a blog post that the system could be improved by creating more incentives for lower-income people to attend college, by making community colleges free for the first year, and by imposing some form of graduated repayment rather than a flat rate, so that students who go to community colleges pay back a smaller percentage of their income than those who go to four-year universities, and those who go on to make above the 80th income percentile would pay a premium.
Alloy and Rackham agree that that maintaining some level of need-based aid for the lowest-income students is important in addition to this plan. “We’ve been working closely with advocates, including the state treasurer, to implement this in a way that would be complementary to need-based aid, to open doors to students in the most accessible way possible,” Alloy says. “We don’t want students who would otherwise get their education for free to be accountable to pay into a fund for 24 years.”
A less-discussed aspect of Pay It Forward is that it would take the profit motive out of state-level student lending. Instead of private lenders (or the federal government, which pays private lenders to administer its direct loans) making money off of the often-steep interest on student loans, students would pay their money directly back to the state, in a process more akin to paying taxes than paying back a loan. Pay It Forward would thus remove the fat interest payments for private lenders and perhaps most importantly, put that money back into the hands of the state to reinvest in the university system.
“We see this as an issue [of] how we prioritize investing in our future,” Alloy says. “Are we funneling money out of the local economy straight to the financial sector or are we putting it into students?”
The current debate on the federal level, she notes, has been limited to renegotiating interest rates or allowing income-based repayment, at least since the Obama administration’s 2010 move to end direct subsidies to private lenders by moving from the Federal Family Education Loan Program to direct lending. But big lenders like Sallie Mae continue to benefit in either of those cases, Alloy notes. To take advantage of income-based repayment and loan forgiveness, you transfer your loan to the federal Direct Loan program — which means the government buys out your lender, and the government, not the lender, takes the loss. Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist who studies inequality in higher education, points out that the devil will be in the details when it comes to getting the banks out of the business. Financial institutions and student lenders are big spenders on lobbying, and will no doubt fight hard against anything that would cut into their profits.
The Working Families Party has made fighting Wall Street a central part of its agenda nationally, and Alloy says that cutting the financial sector out of the process is especially important to them as the plan moves toward implementation.
The ultimate question is whether Pay It Forward will solve the problems with the current system. “This is an admirable political mobilization around this issue, but the plan is very porous in its current state,” says Cottom. “There are a lot of holes, and we should be really explicit about what those are. Whenever you have implicit assumptions, that’s where inequality tends to manifest itself.”
Students who expect to make a lot of money after college — or whose families already have enough to pay for school up-front — may see Pay It Forward as yet another incentive to go to a private university or leave the state entirely. “Higher-income students are never shopping for colleges locally. For them, the college shopping process is a national process, so a state-based focus doesn’t address them at all,” Cottom says. The students who stay in state are the ones who are less likely to see exponential returns from their college degree, she points out. “Knowing what we know about their likelihood of social mobility, I don’t know how taxing those students on their income is sustainable. If you don’t have wealthy people paying into the system I don’t know how it works.”
Those from lower-income families or those who look at the bleak job market and see little to inspire them may still not want to pay 3 percent of their income in an economy where low-wage service jobs are the fastest-growing fields. They may still see the cost of college as too high.
A recent Pew survey found that student debt was nearly a quarter of the household income of the lowest fifth of households by annual income; it is only 2 cents of each dollar that the richest 10 percent make. Pay It Forward would represent a slight increase for the wealthiest, while it would be a major break for the poorest.
In the 1970s, Yale tried a somewhat similar “equity finance” plan for its attendees, who would pay into a fund based on their incomes. While the Yale plan was substantially different from Pay It Forward, it’s worth noting that graduates who wound up well off (as Yale graduates are wont to do) complained about having to pay more than other graduates. Timothy Noah wrote about this at Slate in 1999, noting: “[T]he only significant way the program seems really to have gone awry is in misjudging the gratitude of those who would benefit from it.”
There were also problems with collection, which is also a concern for the Oregon program — particularly figuring out ways to collect payments from former students who then leave the state.
Another problem, pointed out by the American Federation of Teachers in a white paper on Pay It Forward, is that to ensure funding for the program, institutions will have an incentive to admit students who are likely to make more money after graduation. Cottom agrees, pointing out, “An unintended consequence of this is judging how successful the program is based on graduates’ income levels.” One of the biggest questions that the pilot program will have to address is that of start-up funding. If upfront costs are eliminated, schools will face a funding gap until the Pay It Forward fund generates enough money to be self-sustaining. The student report suggests bonds, which would then have to be paid back.
The students and the Working Families Party stress that Pay It Forward is intended as a shared responsibility plan, contingent on the state continuing to fund higher ed through tax revenue. But Goldrick-Rab and Cottom both worry that without incentives to lower the costs of higher ed, students will still end up shouldering most of the burden, and costs will continue to rise.
Perhaps the biggest — and least tangible — question is whether the Pay It Forward plan is a shift back toward a view of higher education as something that benefits the entire society and should be paid for, progressively, by the entire society, or whether it is a further embrace of the neoliberal idea that education is a personal investment that should be paid for by the individual. The advocates for the program — including the students who created it — see it as the former, but they are aware that the bill was able to pass through the legislature unanimously because conservatives see it as the latter.
“We agree that education should be fully funded by the public, our parents’ generation was able to benefit from that priority, that education is a public good,” Alloy says, referring to the steep decline in state investment in higher ed. “States have stripped away that funding. We need to get it back.”
If we think of debt as an obligation to pay back, with interest, an amount of money we borrowed, usually from a bank, Pay It Forward is not debt. Instead, it’s an obligation to pay something back to the state that put you through school, to make sure those schools are there for the people coming after you. It’s still personalized and implies that you owe something for having been educated, but it’s a debt that you pay to sustain a social institution, and that is, to a degree, a shift in thinking.
The students who came up with Oregon’s Pay It Forward plan see it as the beginning of the fight to fix higher ed funding. They endorse the passage of several federal bills, including the restoration of bankruptcy protections for student loans, and a bill that would forgive student loans after a certain number of payments. Knowing that those are unlikely to move anytime soon, though, they’re committed to finding — and helping implement — local solutions.
“Even if, for whatever reason, Pay It Forward ends up not happening, we find out the system doesn’t work, we got something to happen. There haven’t been real big developments in student debt in a long time,” Rackham says. “A lot of the people I’ve worked with are very passionate about staying on board with Pay It Forward. I definitely plan on being very involved with that process.”WASHINGTON -- Glenda Ritz, the Indiana state schools superintendent who has repeatedly gone up against Gov. Mike Pence (R) on education policy, announced Thursday that she will be running for governor in 2016.
“We need a leader that understands the connection between education and economy rather than simply having a partisan agenda to create more schools,” she said in her announcement.
Ritz is essentially the only person standing in the way of Republicans achieving complete control over Indiana politics. She is currently the sole statewide Democratic officeholder and has been fighting furiously since her upset electoral win in 2012 to maintain her agency's role in shaping state education policy.
Although Ritz didn't officially jump into the race until Thursday, her candidacy was widely expected. On Wednesday, she sent a letter to Indy Pride, welcoming visitors to Indianapolis for the Pride Festival this week. She did so on "Ritz for Governor 2016" letterhead.
She joins former state House Speaker John Gregg and state Sen. Karen Tallian in competing for the Democratic nomination to take on Pence in 2016. Gregg narrowly lost to Pence in 2012.
As superintendent, Ritz chairs the State Board of Education, which oversees education policymaking in Indiana. The other 10 members have been gubernatorial appointees, and there have been public clashes between Ritz and her board colleagues.
In the final hours of its session in April, the GOP-controlled Indiana General Assembly approved a bill allowing Board of Education members to pick their own chair; the superintendent would no longer automatically hold that position. In other words, Pence wouldn't have had to face Ritz so often under this setup.
Republicans originally wanted the change to happen this summer but backed off after complaints from Democrats. It will now take effect after the 2016 elections.
Under the new arrangement, the governor has only eight appointments on the board. The other two are named by the leaders of the Indiana House and Senate.
Pence has insisted that the changes have nothing to do with politics.
“I just think this is a common-sense reform,” he said in February, noting that state boards in dozens of other states elect their own chairs.
Pence has also taken a hit in his approval rating since he signed the state's "religious freedom" law in March. The measure would have allowed any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense if sued by a private party. Many opponents of the bill pointed out that because the legislation's language was so broad, it would have opened the door to widespread discrimination against LGBT individuals.
After significant backlash both nationally and within Indiana, Pence eventually signed a revised version of the measure that made it clear the law could not be used by businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
“No candidate for this or any other office can ignore the disaster made by the current leadership to use religious rights as a divisive political issue during the last session of the General Assembly," Ritz said Thursday. "We must respect the personal and civil rights of all of Indiana’s citizens and bring forward legislation that respects the rights of all Hoosiers.”
Have a tip or story idea to share with us? Email us at scoops@huffingtonpost.com. We'll keep your identity private unless you tell us otherwise.
Want more updates from Amanda? Sign up for her newsletter, Piping Hot Truth.Dallas Cowboys safety J.J. Wilcox laid a massive hit on New York Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr.
Near the end of the first quarter in Sunday night's game, the talented second-year player went over the middle and was met by Wilcox. Watch what happened next in the video embedded below.
It wasn't until after the game that news was released of Wilcox breaking his nose on the play. According to David Helman of DallasCowboys.com, Wilcox told trainers to leave the nose alone until after game. And apparently Beckham told Wilcox that he'd never been hit that hard before.
It's crazy to think that Wilcox finished the game with a broken nose, but that just goes to show how tough of a player he is. Wilcox ended his night with three total tacks, one pass deflection, and the huge win. Beckham Jr. only had 44 receiving yards.Story highlights 5 of the bodies are found in a burned station wagon, police say
An inspection of the tunnel occurred a few months ago, a company official says
The partial cave-in was on the Chuo Expressway 50 miles west of Tokyo
It's not clear what caused the collapse, or when the tunnel might reopen
Nine bodies -- eight of them burned -- have been pulled from vehicles crushed in a tunnel collapse about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo, a highway police spokesperson said early Monday.
Five of those were recovered in one charred station wagon, and three others were in another burned vehicle, according to the police spokesperson. The other fatality was in a truck.
The Sasago tunnel on the Chuo Expressway remained closed Monday morning, one day after the cave-in occurred on the highway's Tokyo-bound lanes, Otsuki police said.
Officials from the East Yamanashi Fire Department said the section of concrete that fell was about 50 to 60 meters long and about 20 centimeters (8 inches) thick.
Soon after the collapse, Japanese public broadcaster NHK aired images showing smoke rising, a blue car with its side smashed in, and emergency vehicles on the scene.
JUST WATCHED Tunnel collapse in eastern Japan Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Tunnel collapse in eastern Japan 01:04
Crews worked through the night trying to get to victims, all the while wary that the tunnel might collapse further. Those efforts continue, and authorities have not said if they believe more bodies will be found.
The privately held Central Nippon Expressway Company operates the 4.7-kilometer-long Sasago tunnel, among others, as well as expressways and toll roads around Japan.
Central Nippon Expressway conducts annual inspections of the tunnel, with one particularly thorough inspection held every five years, a company spokesperson said. A more intensive inspection of the Sasago tunnel was held sometime in the past two to three months, the spokesperson added.
The Chuo Expressway is a particularly busy stretch of highway that runs between Tokyo and, among other places, Mount Fuji.
While it is a ways from the Japanese capital, the partial tunnel collapse and its subsequent closure is expected to cause major traffic and other headaches, especially for those who rely on it for business.
Authorities have not given any indication as to when they expect the tunnel to reopen, nor is it clear why the collapse occurred.Following the capture Sunday morning of a Palestinian Authority resident carrying a pack of explosive devices, Jerusalem District Police Commander Yoram HaLevy confirmed to reporters that the would-be bomber had targeted the Jerusalem light rail.
The terrorist was intercepted by train security guards after arousing their suspicion. During questioning by the guards, the terrorist admitted that he was carrying bombs in his bag.
The terrorist was distanced from the train and sections of Yafo and King George streets were shut down to both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Police arrived at the scene shortly after and arrested the would-be bomber.
HaLevy told reporters that the terrorist was carrying a relatively large explosive pack, which he apparently intended to set off after he boarded the light rail train.
The District Commander added that Israeli security forces had no prior warning ahead of the attempted attack, and that the bomber was stopped only thanks to alert train guards.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat praised the guards’ work, thanking them for warding off what could have potentially been a catastrophic attack.
“This morning, thanks to the alertness of the light rail guards of the City of Jerusalem, a huge terror attack was prevented.”SOCHI, Russia – There have protests both serious and sublime against Russia’s anti-gay propaganda laws. The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion video released before the Sochi Games fell into that latter category.
The 30-second clip, set to Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me?”, features a two-man luge team thrusting back and forth before the punchline at the end: "The games have always been a little gay. Let's fight to keep them that way."
It’s been viewed over 2 million times on YouTube.
Scroll to continue with content Ad
But Olympic two-man luge athletes aren’t exactly laughing.
According to the New York Times, they see it as an attempt to fight against stereotypes by trafficking in one against the two-man luge:
“They’re making fun of our sport for their cause and it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me,” Christian Niccum, an American Olympian, said after completing two training runs at the Sanki Sliding Center.
“If I were to go hug my dad and someone took a picture and showed it in really slow motion, they could use it in a video like that and that’s just ridiculous. It’s my dad. Can’t we show affection to each other without it being some sort of sexual contact? This is sports. It’s the same thing. Why does it have to be like that?”
(If it compares to two men lying on each other and trusting back and forth, that must be quite the hug...)
Also from the Times:
The problem, according to another American, Matthew Mortensen, is that making fun of doubles luge has become hackneyed. “For some reason,” he said, “whether it’s Jimmy Kimmel or Conan O’Brien or anyone – doubles luge is always the target. It’s never about football players taking a snap or whatever. We’ve heard all this stuff before.”
An excellent point: Why single out the two-man luge?
Story continues
One of the founding sports for the Olympic Games was wrestling, people. And the luge is a little gay? Fun fact: Vlad Putin? Huge fan of men pinning each other down.U.S. Sen. John McCain has issued a veiled criticism of President Donald Trump's medical deferments that kept him from serving in the Vietnam War.
In an interview with C-SPAN last week, McCain lamented that the military "drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur."
One of Trump's five draft deferments came as a result of a physician's letter stating he suffered from bone spurs in his feet. Trump's presidential campaign described the issue as a temporary problem.
McCain spent six years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967.
Trump derided McCain's service in 2015, stating his fellow Republican wasn't a "war hero" and adding "I like people who weren't captured."
McCain's spokeswoman didn't immediately return a request for comment Monday.This article is about the role a person may take as a model. For other uses, see Model (disambiguation)
Model Caitlin O'Connor posing on a typical studio shooting set
A model is a person with a role either to promote, display or advertise commercial products (notably fashion clothing in fashion shows), or to serve as a visual aid for people who are creating works of art or to pose for photography.
Modelling ("modeling" in American English) is considered to be different from other types of public performance, such as acting or dancing. Although the difference between modelling and performing is not always clear, appearing in a film or a play is not generally considered to be "modelling".
Types of modelling include: fashion, glamour, fitness, bikini, fine art, body-part, promotional, and commercial print models. Models are featured in a variety of media formats including: books, magazines, films, newspapers, internet and television. Fashion models are sometimes featured in films (Prêt-à-Porter and Looker); reality TV shows (America's Next Top Model and The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency); and music videos ("Freedom! '90", "Wicked Game", "Daughters" and "Blurred Lines").
Celebrities, including actors, singers, sports personalities and reality TV stars, frequently take modelling contracts in addition to their regular work.
History [ edit ]
Early years [ edit ]
Modelling as a profession was first established in 1853 by Charles Frederick Worth, the "father of haute couture", when he asked his wife, Marie Vernet Worth, to model the clothes he designed.[1][2] The term "house model" was coined to describe this type of work. Eventually, this became common practice for Parisian fashion houses. There were no standard physical measurement requirements for a model, and most designers would use women of varying sizes to demonstrate variety in their designs.
With the development of fashion photography, the modelling profession expanded to photo modelling. Models remained fairly anonymous, and relatively poorly paid, until the late 1950s. One of the first well-known models was Lisa Fonssagrives, who was very popular in the 1930s.[3] Fonssagrives appeared on over 200 Vogue covers, and her name recognition led to the importance of Vogue in shaping the careers of fashion models. In 1946, Ford Models was established by Eileen and Gerard Ford in New York; it is one of the oldest model agencies in the world. One of the most popular models during the 1940s was Jinx Falkenburg who was paid $25 per hour, a large sum at the time.[4] During the 1940s and 1950s, Wilhelmina Cooper, Jean Patchett, Dovima, Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker, Evelyn Tripp, Carmen Dell'Orefice, and Lisa Fonssagrives dominated fashion.[5] Dorothea Church was among the first black models in the industry to gain recognition in Paris. However, these models were unknown outside the fashion community. Compared to today's models, the models of the 1950s were more voluptuous. Wilhelmina Cooper's measurements were 38"-24"-36" whereas Chanel Iman's measurements are 32"-23"-33".[6]
The 1960s and the beginning of the industry [ edit ]
In the 1960s, the modelling world began to establish modelling agencies. Throughout Europe, secretarial services acted as models' agents charging them weekly rates for their messages and bookings. For the most part, models were responsible for their own billing. In Germany, agents were not allowed to work for a percentage of a person's earnings, so referred to themselves as secretaries. With the exception of a few models travelling to Paris or New York, travelling was relatively unheard of for a model. Most models only worked in one market due to different labor laws governing modelling in various countries. In the 1960s, Italy had many fashion houses and fashion magazines but was in dire need of models. Italian agencies would often coerce models to return to Italy without work visas by withholding their pay.[7] They would also pay their models in cash, which models would have to hide from customs agents. It was not uncommon for models staying in hotels such as La Louisiana in Paris or the Arena in Milan to have their hotel rooms raided by the police looking for their work visas. It was rumoured that competing agencies were behind the raids. This led many agencies to form worldwide chains; for example, the Marilyn Agency has branches in Paris and New York.[7]
By the late 1960s, London was considered the best market in Europe due to its more organised and innovative approach to modelling. It was during this period that models began to become household names. Models such as Jean Shrimpton, Tania Mallet, Celia Hammond, Twiggy, Penelope Tree, and dominated the London fashion scene and were well paid, unlike their predecessors.[8] Twiggy became The Face of '66 at the age of 16.[9] At this time, model agencies were not as restrictive about the models they represented, although it was uncommon for them to sign shorter models. Twiggy, who stood at 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm) with a 32" bust and had a boy's haircut, is credited with changing model ideals. At that time, she earned £80 an hour, while the average wage was £15 a week.
In 1967, seven of the top model agents in London formed the Association of London Model Agents. The formation of this association helped legitimize modelling and changed the fashion industry. Even with a more professional attitude towards modelling, models were still expected to have their hair and makeup done before they arrived at a shoot. Meanwhile, agencies took responsibility for a model's promotional materials and branding. That same year, former top fashion model Wilhelmina Cooper opened up her own fashion agency with her husband called Wil |
in making that distinction more visible, it is worth carefully thinking through the implications of deacons routinely wearing apparel that is widely associated in popular perception with priests. In many circumstances, some other distinctive symbol may be a more effective sign of order than a clergy collar.
4.1 As a matter of normative expectation, a deacon has an identifiable area of ministry that is at least on the margins of, if not entirely outside, the institutional framework of the Church. In discerning a vocation to ordination as a deacon, the presence of such a ministry is a presumptive (though not conclusive) positive indicator, and the absence of such a ministry is a presumptive (though not definitive) negative indicator.
4.2 The liturgical ministry of a deacon is most coherent when it is an authentic reflection of that deacon’s secular (i.e. “in the world”) ministry. When a deacon is liturgically present (as distinguished from merely happening to be in the room at the time) at a celebration of the Eucharist, he or she reads the Holy Gospel, prepares the gifts at the Offertory, cleans up after Holy Communion, gives the Dismissal, and also any ancillary stage directions to the congregation (e.g. “Let us confess our sins …”).
4.30 While the rubrics specify that either a deacon or layperson may lead the Prayers of the People, because it is a deacon’s peculiar office to present the needs of the world to the Church, a deacon ought to be at least significantly involved in these prayers, even if perhaps only in the naming of specific intercessions at the appropriate times.
4.31 The liturgical ministry of deacons flourishes when it is allowed to bear witness to the mark of servanthood. It is not inherently part of the diaconal charism to preside at public worship. A deacon is not, merely by virtue of order, automatically privileged to do so in the absence of a Priest.
4.32 A Liturgy of the Word and Administration of Holy Communion from the Reserved Sacrament presided over by a deacon, while permitted in the canons, lies outside the normative parameters of diaconal ministry. Consequently, in the Diocese of Springfield, it requires explicit episcopal permission. Such permission should be sought only in the most exceptional, extenuating and compelling circumstances.
4.40 The community of deacons in a diocese properly constitute a college. It is appropriate that they assemble on a regular basis for purposes of prayer, consultation, continuing formation, and mutual support.
4.41 On occasion, the college of deacons may choose to speak, under the pastoral guidance of the Bishop, with a collective voice. In this way, deacons partially fulfill their charism as the conscience of the Church, holding the Body of Christ accountable to her mission of seeking and serving Christ in all people.
4.42 The Bishop may appoint, in accordance with the canons, a deacon to serve as convener of the College of Deacons.
4.5 According to canon law, those who are to be ordained Priests are first ordained as Deacons. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but the practice is of such universality and antiquity that it seems imprudent to change it peremptorily. In the Episcopal Church, such “transitional” deacons remain in that order for a minimum of six months.
On the Ministry of Priests
5.0 In the New Testament, it is impossible to discern a clear divide between the ministry of Bishops (overseers) and the ministry of Priests (presbyters, elders). Nonetheless, during very early times still (mid-second century), such a distinction appears and becomes quite sharp.
5.1 The ministry of a priest is not of a fundamentally different character than the ministry of a bishop, but is, rather, an extension of the Bishop’s ministry through delegation. The difference is not one of kind so much as one of degree and scope. Most of what has already been said about the pastoral, homiletical, sacramental, and catechetical ministry of the Bishop applies equally to priests, only on a smaller scale.
5.2 The Bishop, as chief priest and pastor of the diocese, lives in a close collegial bond with the presbyters. Together, they exercise a shared stewardship in the work of pastoral care for the flock of Christ committed to their charge. Their common disposition toward the laity is that of St Paul in Galatians 4:19: “My little children, with whom I am in travail until Christ be formed in you.”
5.30 The classic pattern of priestly ministry takes place in the context of a parish, as bread-breaker and word-proclaimer to a local community of Christians who gather at the same altar on a regular basis. A parish priest becomes a “parson,” a term that signifies a collective entity—in this case, the entire parish community—being symbolically concentrated in one individual. A parish priest is that community’s “parson” with a presumption of a close sharing in the joys, sorrows, and ordinary experiences of the people.
5.31 As “parson,” the parish priest also becomes the collective face of the community in that community’s secular context. While it is the job of all the members of the laos to represent Christ in their daily lives, those in the world will tend to look to the Priest as the local Christian community’s ambassador, and will tend to judge the parish based on their experience of its pastor.
5.4 However, not all priests are “in charge” of a local Eucharistic Community. Some are retired from such ministry and continue to serve the diocese by assisting in a parish or supplying where there is a vacancy. Others have an extra-parochial ministry, and earn their living in a secular or para-church context, such as chaplaincy (hospital, school, military) or in a secular position, very often in an academic setting. Others, particularly those who came to ordination later in life, after a secular career, stand in “ready reserve,” able to be deployed by the Bishop on short notice as needs arise.
6.0 When a local church (diocese) is well-ordered—with the Bishop, Laity, Deacons, and Presbyters all exercising their charisms in a cohesive manner—and the collective heart of the people is centered on him who is the Head of the Body, the circumstances exist for the church to grow into the calling of all churches, which is to bear witness to the resurrection of Christ, compellingly announce to the world the coming kingdom of God, and model to the world what life in that kingdom looks like.
+Daniel Springfield
Feast of William Laud, 2016A e s t h e t i c A p p r e c i a t i o n o f B G 2
P a r t I : W o r l d M a p & D i s t r i c t s o f A t h k a t l a
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Aesthetic Appreciation series of posts; this one covering what I consider to be the choicest examples of area design in Baldur's Gate 2.
Baldur's Gate series, please refer to my Baldur's Gate-esque campaigns available for Neverwinter Nights (see
Anyway, it's funny how it took me 15 years before I saw these pre-rendered maps in their full glory (just a few days ago I started mucking around with them). I have left them un-watermarked so that people can enjoy them without a blemish. That said, there may be a few minor artifacts but I can't do anything about that; it just seems to be how they are in their raw form.
The raw image files have been manually extracted, downsized to 3000px in width, and converted by me for manageable presentation purposes (TIS→PNG→JPG). At 2-10mb the full-sized images are still quite large but at least they're down from 30mb! It's eye-candy time! Hi, my name's Lilura and welcome to myseries of posts; this one covering what I consider to be the choicest examples of area design in A picture says a thousand words. As such, and in stark contrast to my other write-ups which go into great detail, my commentary here will be sparse. No point clogging the post up with descriptions of images when people can see for themselves, and form their own impressions. So yeah, this series of posts is just for shits n gigs. If you want in-depth commentary on theseries, please refer to my treatment of BG and BG2. And, depending on how keen you are, you could also check out thecampaigns available for(see here ) as well as my two-part analysis of the Infinity Engine user interface (see here ). You won't find this sort of content anywhere else online so make yourself a cup of coffee, and I hope you enjoy the reads!Anyway, it's funny how it took me 15 years before I saw these pre-rendered maps in theirglory (just a few days ago I started mucking around with them). I have left them un-watermarked so that people can enjoy them without a blemish. That said, there may be a few minor artifacts but I can't do anything about that; it just seems to be how they are in their raw form.The raw image files have been manually extracted, downsized to 3000px in width, and converted by me for manageable presentation purposes (TIS→PNG→JPG). At 2-10mb the full-sized images are still quite large but at least they're down from 30mb!
O v e r v i e w — T h e W o r l d M a p
C o u n t r y o f A m n — C a p i t a l C i t y : A t h k a t l a
A strong argument could be made for the campaign of Baldur's Gate 2 standing as the most epic in the entire genre. I mean, for a lot of people BioWare's representation of the city of Athkatla, the country of Amn, and the exotic locales that stretch out beyond the bounds of civilization, are without peer. The sprawling Shadows of Amn world map speaks for itself; and the best part is? It's actually much bigger than it looks because the hundreds of sub-areas are not even shown..! (In contrast, and in keeping with its campaign in general, the Throne of Bhaal world map is comparatively pathetic!)
This is the only map that is watermarked because I did it for my BG2 walkthrough a while back.
Athkatla (see inset, above) is Amn's capital city and one of its largest trade ports. The famous trade route that has featured in many RPGs over the years, known as the Coast Way, snakes its way 200 miles north, linking Athkatla to Baldur's Gate city.
The city of Athkalta is comprised of seven major districts and innumerable sub-areas that can be explored in non-linear fashion... from opulent palatial residences to the stinking slums; from minor abodes to mega-dungeons - it's all here.
The rest of this post is given over to high resolution images of the seven major districts - surfaces only. Most of these districts feature vast subterranean areas, some which I'll cover when I get to the "Dungeons" post. I didn't bother with the Gates "district"; it's minor and unimpressive.
W a u k e e n's P r o m e n a d e
You dare to attack me here? Do you even know whom you face? You will suffer! You will ALL suffer!
Twice the size of Waterdeep's Market and built as an open, oval stadium surrounded by terraced 50-foot walls, Waukeen's Promenade lies at the city's center and provides four 75-foot-wide levels for consumer and mercantile traffic. — The Lands of Intrigue.
This district presents itself in spectacular fashion, with Irenicus destroying a large portion of the wall as he unleashes his arcane arsenal against the authorities of Athkatla, the Cowled Wizards. You can see the collapsed portion in the north, sealing off re-entry to the "
The conspicuous circus tent in the center contains a non-trivial illusion which must be dispelled if the party is to recruit the wingless Avariel, Aerie.
And, ofc, the Adventurer's Mart will be frequented by the heroic party over the course of the campaign.. — The Lands of Intrigue.This district presents itself in spectacular fashion, with Irenicus destroying a large portion of the wall as he unleashes his arcane arsenal against the authorities of Athkatla, the Cowled Wizards. You can see the collapsed portion in the north, sealing off re-entry to the " Chateau " from which Irenicus emerged - with Charname and party in pursuit!The conspicuous circus tent in the center contains a non-trivial illusion which must be dispelled if the party is to recruit the wingless Avariel, Aerie.And, ofc, the Adventurer's Mart will be frequented by the heroic party over the course of the campaign.
T h e S l u m s
Coo! You'd be the one I be looking for, if I not be mistaken?
The domed structure in the northwest is the Planar Sphere, a massive area in itself that I'll cover later. The Copper Coronet is also huge, with an entrance down to the sprawling sewers that lead to the slaver compound; the exit for which brings you back out to the surface, near Gaelan Bayle's home. Anomen, Korgan and Nalia can be recruited here; in fact, it's where most of the party members hang out (if they're told to).
The domed structure in the northwest is the Planar Sphere, a massive area in itself that I'll cover later. The Copper Coronet is also huge, with an entrance down to the sprawling sewers that lead to the slaver compound; the exit for which brings you back out to the surface, near Gaelan Bayle's home. Anomen, Korgan and Nalia can be recruited here; in fact, it's where most of the party members hang out (if they're told to).
T h e B r i d g e D i s t r i c t
I'm warning everyone, so as to get the word out that there are guards on the streets. We've had a...a string of killings, and I don't want any more happening.
What, a couple of fools die in a bar fight or something?
This is where we solve the first part of the Skinner Murders. The Planar Prison is accessed from the theater below the Five Flagons inn, centrally-located on this map. Also, Twisted Rune.
This is where we solve the first part of the Skinner Murders. The Planar Prison is accessed from the theater below the Five Flagons inn, centrally-located on this map. Also, Twisted Rune.
T h e D o c k s
My name is Renal, as I'm sure you've been told. Renal 'Bloodscalp'...a little nickname I've earned over time. Rather grisly, but it keeps the fearful in line.
The Shadow Thieves are based in the northwest and the Harpers in the southwest. Mae'Var's thieves' guild is central on the lower tier of the docks, where Edwin can be recruited after jumping through hoops. A demi-lich dwells here, too! Naturally, this is also our point of departure when we set sail to Brynnlaw at Chapter 3's end.
Note the sloppy patchwork of buildings in the top-right corner of the image. Most people aren't gonna see that when they're playing, though. And the top-left corner is just left blank (but again, it isn't seen in normal game-play).
The Shadow Thieves are based in the northwest and the Harpers in the southwest. Mae'Var's thieves' guild is central on the lower tier of the docks, where Edwin can be recruited after jumping through hoops. A demi-lich dwells here, too! Naturally, this is also our point of departure when we set sail to Brynnlaw at Chapter 3's end.Note the sloppy patchwork of buildings in the top-right corner of the image. Most people aren't gonna see that when they're playing, though. And the top-left corner is just left blank (but again, it isn't seen in normal game-play).
T h e G o v e r n m e n t D i s t r i c t
Look ye all upon this foul drow that we have bound before ye! A creature of evil and darkness, my brethren! A creature of foulness and deceit, bent only on our destruction!
Most prominent is the H.Q of the Council of Six, who are the true rulers of Athkatla (along with the Shadow Thieves). This is where the aristocrats live in their estates. Viccy and Jan are recruitable here.
Note the elevation of this district over the lowly peasant neighborhoods. :P
Most prominent is the H.Q of the Council of Six, who are the true rulers of Athkatla (along with the Shadow Thieves). This is where the aristocrats live in their estates. Viccy and Jan are recruitable here.Note the elevation of this district over the lowly peasant neighborhoods. :P
T h e T e m p l e D i s t r i c t
Death to the disbeliever!
Temples of this, that and the other. Also, guarded compound. The lengthy Unseeing Eye quest takes the party far below the district. The beholder and illithid encounters make this district one of the deadliest in Athkatla. Keldorn and Haer'Dalis can be picked up here. From memory, there is a path beneath the district that brings you out to the Docks.
T h e G r a v e y a r d
You work for the Shadow Thieves, on the pretense they will help locate your missing companion, Imoen. Yes, they are Shadow Thieves, and yes, they are as nefarious as you have probably heard. I would offer an alternative.
Vamps! Bodhi lurks in her lair beneath these crypts.
Vamps! Bodhi lurks in her lair beneath these crypts.
EoPImmune molecules in infected mothers tied to brain and behavior abnormalities in offspring.
In 2010, a large study in Denmark found that women who suffered an infection severe enough to require hospitalization while pregnant were much more likely to have a child with autism (even though the overall risk of delivering a child with autism remained low).
Now research from MIT, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, the University of Colorado, and New York University Langone Medical Center reveals a possible mechanism for how this occurs. In a study of mice, the researchers found that immune cells activated in the mother during severe inflammation produce an immune effector molecule called IL-17 that appears to interfere with brain development.
The researchers also found that blocking this signal could restore normal behavior and brain structure.
“In the mice, we could treat the mother with antibodies that block IL-17 after inflammation had set in, and that could ameliorate some of the behavioral symptoms that were observed in the offspring. However, we don’t know yet how much of that could be translated into humans,” says Gloria Choi, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the lead author of the study, which appears in the Jan. 28 online edition of Science.
Finding the link
In the 2010 study, which included all children born in Denmark between 1980 and 2005, severe infections (requiring hospitalization) that correlated with autism risk included influenza, viral gastroenteritis, and urinary tract infections. Severe viral infections during the first trimester translated to a threefold risk for autism, and serious bacterial infections during the second trimester were linked with a 1.5-fold increase in risk.
Choi and her husband, Jun Huh, were graduate students at Caltech when they first heard about this study during a lecture by Caltech professor emeritus Paul Patterson, who had discovered that an immune signaling molecule called IL-6 plays a role in the link between infection and autism-like behaviors in rodents.
Huh, now an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and one of the paper’s senior authors, was studying immune cells called Th17 cells, which are well known for contributing to autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel diseases, and rheumatoid arthritis. He knew that Th17 cells are activated by IL-6, so he wondered if these cells might also be involved in cases of animal models of autism associated with maternal infection.
“We wanted to find the link,” Choi says. “How do you go all the way from the immune system in the mother to the child’s brain?”
Choi and Huh launched the study as postdocs at New York University School of Medicine, working with Dan Littman, a professor of molecular immunology at NYU and one of the paper’s senior authors. They began by injecting pregnant mice with a synthetic analog of double-stranded RNA, which activates the immune system in a similar way to viruses.
Confirming the results of previous studies in mice, the researchers found behavioral abnormalities in the offspring of the infected mothers, including deficits in sociability, repetitive behaviors, and abnormal communication. They then disabled Th17 cells in the mothers before inducing inflammation and found that the offspring mice did not show those behavioral abnormalities. The abnormalities also disappeared when the researchers gave the infected mothers an antibody that blocks IL-17, which is produced by Th17 cells.
The researchers next asked how IL-17 might affect the developing fetus. They found that brain cells in the fetuses of mothers experiencing inflammation express receptors for IL-17, and they believe that exposure to the chemical provokes cells to produce even more receptors for IL-17, amplifying its effects.
In the developing mice, the researchers found irregularities in the normally well-defined layers of cells in the brain’s cortex, where most cognition and sensory processing take place. These patches of irregular structure appeared in approximately the same cortical regions in all of the affected offspring, but they did not occur when the mothers’ Th17 cells were blocked.
Disorganized cortical layers have also been found in studies of human patients with autism.
Preventing autism
The researchers are now investigating whether and how these cortical patches produce the behavioral abnormalities seen in the offspring.
“We’ve shown correlation between these cortical patches and behavioral abnormalities, but we don’t know whether the cortical patches actually are responsible for the behavioral abnormalities,” Choi says. “And if it is responsible, what is being dysregulated within this patch to produce this behavior?”
The researchers hope their work may lead to a way to reduce the chances of autism developing in the children of women who experience severe infections during pregnancy. They also plan to investigate whether genetic makeup influences mice’s susceptibility to maternal inflammation, because autism is known to have a very strong genetic component.
Charles Hoeffer, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado, is a senior author of the paper, and other authors include MIT postdoc Yeong Yim, NYU graduate student Helen Wong, UMass Medical School visiting scholars Sangdoo Kim and Hyunju Kim, and NYU postdoc Sangwon Kim.Ok, we were just joking before, but now we seriously do think that Indonesian politicians are competing to see who can say the crazies, most scaremongering thing possible about LGBT issues. After Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu recently declared that the pro-LGBT movement was more dangerous than nuclear warfare, today we have Tangerang Mayor Arief R Wismansyah saying that feeding your baby canned milk and instant noodles might make them gay.
We wish we were joking.
Arief talked about the LGBT issue during a seminar on pregnancy at the Tangerang City Health Office on Tuesday. The seminar, titled “The First 1,000 Days of Life for Tangerang City,” was focused on the importance of providing proper nutrition for babies, especially in their first 1,000 days of life.
“To create Indonesian children that are healthy smart and competitive, the most important thing is, from the beginning, to provide them adequate nutrition, especially breastfeeding,” Arief said as quoted by Okezone.
Most scientists would strongly agree with the crucial importance of early childhood nutrition, but we’re pretty sure there isn’t a single credible scientist who would agree with what Mayor Arief went on to say. According to him, nowadays parents are so busy that they often only feed their children formula and instant foods, which can have a permanent negative effect on their child’s development.
“So, it’s no wonder that recently there are more LGBT,” he concluded.
Wow.
Now to be fair, Arief also said at the seminar that regional leaders such as himself should not discriminate against any of their citizens, even if they are deviant members of the LGBT community.
Which is a nice thing to say. Because it would be really unfair to discriminate against somebody just because their lazy parents turned them gay by feeding them formula and instant noodles as a child.
Mayor Arief’s statements are just one glaring example of the misinformation surrounding LGBT issues in Indonesia. Modern science has shown through numerous studies that homosexuality has a strong genetic component.
But if Mayor Arief has any scientific studies proving the link between drinking formula, eating instant food and being gay, we’d be happy to take a look.
Note: There is an image of a press release from the Mayor’s office circulating online which contains quotes from Arief’s talk at the session that are significantly different from those in the Okezone article we cited above. If the press release is a truly accurate representation of his speech, then it did not make the same kind of direct link between eating instant food, poor childhood nutrition and becoming LGBT that was clearly shown in the Okezone article.Story highlights Since 1950, violence in films has more than doubled, a new study finds
In PG-13 films, gun violence specifically has tripled since 1985
Experts are still debating whether watching violence promotes it in real life
When was the last time you saw a blockbuster film that didn't include a gun?
It might be hard to remember. Americans love movies that depict violence, a new study shows ; 94% of the most popular movies since 1985 contain at least one violent scene, and half of those involve a gun.
For the study, published this week in the scientific journal Pediatrics, researchers analyzed the 30 top-grossing films every year from 1950 to 2012. They identified violent sequences in each movie and noted whether the scenes included a character carrying a gun with the intention of harming or killing a living target.
Since 1950, violence in films has more than doubled, the study authors concluded. Perhaps more surprising is that gun violence in PG-13 films has tripled since 1985, even exceeding the amount found in R-rated films in more recent years.
"Parents need to realize that just because a movie has been rated PG-13 does not mean that their 13-year-old should go to see it," study author Daniel Romer said. "We would like to see Hollywood go back to labeling movies with lots of violence, and gun violence in particular, with an R rating, just like they have been doing for explicit sex all along."
JUST WATCHED Study: Violence triples in PG-13 movies Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Study: Violence triples in PG-13 movies 05:11
The average American sees seven movies in theaters every year, according to Nielsen's 2012 American Moviegoing Report. Those rated PG-13 are often the highest-grossing, bringing in about 45% of the market share.
The Motion Picture Association of America first began using the PG-13 rating in 1985. The rating urges parents to be cautious, saying "some material may be inappropriate for pre-teenagers," but theaters do not check IDs for those seeing a PG-13 movie. And some worry that exposing children to violence on the screen may encourage them to act it out in real life.
"There has been a long line of research showing that continued exposure to screen violence among children, mainly on TV, predicts the emergence of later aggressive behavior," Romer said. "We don't know if seeing gun violence on the screen has a unique effect, but it is concerning considering that we have seen a rise in the use of guns in schools and other settings in recent years."
Experts are still debating whether watching violent movies or playing violent games leads to real-life violence.
In 2000, a coalition of public health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, published a joint statement, saying science had clearly shown "a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children."
They said viewing violence led children to view aggressive acts as acceptable behavior and to become emotionally desensitized. The effects were "measurable and long-lasting," according to the statement.
Since then, several scientific studies have shown just the opposite. And the American Psychological Association has convened a task force to review the new evidence and potentially update its position.
"The problem is that people are looking for a yes-or-no answer... when there is none," Brad Bushman, professor of psychology at Ohio State University, wrote in an opinion article for CNN.
Bushman and his colleagues recently conducted a study that showed college students who played violent video games for 20 minutes at a time for three days showed more aggressive behavior each day they played.
"The argument I hear most often is that video games can't be dangerous because millions of people play these games without becoming violent," Bushman wrote. "That's because they come from good homes, aren't victims of bullying, don't have mental health issues and don't have many of the other risk factors for violence. But what about players who are already predisposed to violence?"
Those who don't believe a link exists have crime data on their side. Coinciding with the rise of violent video games and violence in movies is a significant decrease in juvenile violent crime. In 1993, at the peak, teens aged 12 to 17 had a serious violent crime offending rate of 52 crimes per 1,000 juveniles, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. By 2011, that number had dropped to just six crimes per 1,000 juveniles.
While the study authors saw gun violence in PG-13 films triple, the same was not true for R- and G/PG-rated films. Violence in R-rated films held at a steady rate while G-and PG-rated films saw a decrease over the same time period.This past week six couples in my parish joined about 850 other couples in the Archdiocese of Washington at the Basilica here for the Jubilarian Mass. Couples celebrating 25, 40, 45, 50 and 60 or more years of marriage gather each year to receive gratitude and recognition from the diocese for their witness to the fact that love never fails. We may fail, but love is our constant call, and, if we will let love have its way amor omnia vincit (love conquers all).
In times like these the witness of many years of marriage is all the more necessary and all the more inspiring. My parents made it to 45 years before my mother died. And I know they were not all easy years. I have written on that here before. But as the years ticked by Charles and Nancy Pope, my parents were quite inseparable. When my mother did die, and she died suddenly and tragically, I knew my father wasn’t long for this world. We kids wondered how dad would manage without mom. Shortly after her death he wondered aloud how he could go on living when half of him was gone.
Saying those words witnessed to the miracle of holy matrimony where God takes two and makes them one. My father and mother did not get to that place quickly or easily (there we some stormy years in their forties). But they got there, by God’s grace, they got there.
My Aunt and Uncle just celebrated their 50th. Again, many years, lots of love but also their share of struggles and sorrows. Yes, God is faithful, and he will do what he says: “They are no longer two, they are one.” (Matt 19:6)
In the Basilica last Sunday some one did the math and found that there were 33,000 years of Holy Matrimony collectively among the Jubilarians in that place. Amor omnia vincit.
Many will point to the crisis of Holy Matrimony today. I would not be so foolish to deny it and have discussed it here. But to those who say it is not reasonable or possible to expect people to get married and stay that way today, My mom and dad, my aunt and uncle, 850 other couples in the Basilica and 33,000+ years of marriage all stand in witness to the fact that God can do this, and God STILL does this.
I am not a married man in the conventional sense, but I have had the privilege of talking with many married couples over the years, and I have asked of, and been able to discern the ingredients of success in holy matrimony, and the priesthood, by extension. Here are few brief pointers that the successful have offered in one way or another over the years to me:
1. No Ideal Marriage – Many people want marriage to be ideal, if there is any ordeal they want to look for a new deal. And the problem is that they want marriage to be ideal. But there is not such thing. Every marriage is imperfect. It has blessings, but also burdens. Clinging to the “ideal Marriage” fantasy is a recipe for resentment and disappointment. Living in reality is essential. Many good marriages are far from ideal, but they are good. And the best should not be the enemy of the good.
2. Always remember, you are sinner, who married a sinner. God wants marriage, as a sacrament to be a means of salvation for both spouses. Hence, marriage somewhat presumes that work was necessary for both spouses upon the beginning of a marriage. Let God do his work, and that work is sometimes painful. Marriage is an important way that God teaches and virtues such as humility, forgiveness, patience, kindness, honesty, accountability, and so forth. Honestly, if we do not learn these virtues and receive them from God, we will likely go to hell. Marriage is one of the ways God works to save us. It is a call to holiness, and as a sacrament, it is a way to holiness.
3. Stay in your lane and work your own stuff first. Always begin by saying, “My marriage is not perfect because I am in it.
4. Some of God’s gifts come in strange packages. For those who are faithful, all things work together for good (cf Rom 8:28). Notice that, ALL things. Not just the good things, even the bad things. Spouses bring many blessings to one another in pleasant ways. But even the less pleasant and difficult things, for the reasons stated in # 2 above, redound to our good if we can learn to learn from adversity as well as pleasantries. A spouse, by God’s grace, is a means by which the other spouse grows in holiness.
5. What you feed grows – It is usually the case when couples date that they compliment each other and overlook negative things rather easily. But a few years into a marriage when the “I Do” has become “You’d Better” the negative is focused on. Couples in crisis all too easily have great recall of all the foibles and sins of the other, what they have done and not done is easily recited. When I ask what is good about the other, suddenly the memory is less clear and the recitation less articulate. It is a simple truth that what you feed will grow, and what you starve will shrink and die. Couples who have made often talk of being blessed with a poor memory, and a forgetfulness of hurts, and of being grateful for the blessings that their spouse brings. They have learned to feed the positive and starve the negative.
6. Beware the noonday devil – It often happens that when one sets about a good thing like marriage, priesthood or the religious life, or other paths, that at the four or five year mark a certain lethargy sets in that combines boredom, perhaps some discouragement and a desire to get free for something new. This is the noonday devil, the five-year itch. Beware it, but even more, ignore it. Those who make it through this transition are all glad they did. I say “transition” because that is what it is. Life cannot simply be based on newness and thrills. Our commitments must ultimately have deeper roots to be stable and it is important to transition to the daily living of the tasks before us. One ultimately adjusts to slowing down to the pace of life and comes to appreciate what is familiar and stable. If one can make this transition in marriage a more stable and mature love replaces the more mercurial love of romance and courtship.
7. Marriage is hard because life is hard. It is so easy to think life would be better outside the marriage or in another marriage. No. Life is hard. It is hard being a priest, it is hard being single, it is hard being married. Life is hard. Life also has joys in all these states. One of the hard truths that sets us free if we accept it is simply that life is hard. There is not escaping this. There is no where to go where this will not be so. Running from marriage because it is hard is futile. If you try to run from this truth you will meet yourself coming back. There is no escaping this, we live in paradise lost. Life is hard. Running never works.
8. Your spouse’s strengths and struggles are very much related. If we are honest we will discover that what we most like about people is only separated by 3 degrees from what we dislike. For example, we may know someone who is a great organizer or manager. And we very much like and depend on the leadership they have. However, the same person can also be controlling or a bit anxious about things. Their strength and their struggle are very closely related. Perhaps too we know of person who is passionately committed and creative. But that same person also struggles with the passion of anger, or the moodiness of the creative. Someone many be very outgoing and friendly, but they also, thereby, struggle to be committed to core principles and may be a people-pleaser. Successful spouses learn to take the bad with the good, and to accept that what they most like and admire about their spouse, is also accompanied by a less desirable side to it. But at the end of the day they are able to link the two, accepting the tension with appreciation for what it points to.
9. Happiness is an inside job – Most successful spouses come to love and admire many things about their spouse, and their marriage |
what should pagans take away from this movie? Certainly not mythological accuracy: if you only knew the myths, most of the film will probably seem nonsensical. I admit that the mythological discrepancies still leave me conflicted, if only because they drastically alter the relationships among some of these deities. But I left the theater feeling much better about Thor than I expected; while it may not get any of the surface right, it captures a surprising amount of the substance. Thor gives us the glories and the tragedies of Norse mythology, if we’re willing to abide a little trickery in the delivery. Loki would be proud.
Eric Scott was raised by the Saint Louis coven Pleiades, a Wiccan family based in the Alexandrian tradition. His fiction and memoir explore the joys and doubts of being a second-generation pagan in the modern world. He recently completed his MFA at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ashé! Journal, Killing the Buddha, Kerouac's Dog, and Witches & Pagans. In his spare time, he draws elaborate metaphysical diagrams on his bedroom wall and sings for a Taoist glam rock band.CHICAGO, March 5 (UPI) -- The cable and Internet company Comcast has begun a project to blanket Chicago with public WiFi using its existing service equipment.
The project uses the equipment already in the homes of Comcast subscribers, the Chicago Tribune reported. A company official said subscribers' privacy and speed will not be at risk because the public WiFi signal will be separate from theirs.
"They'll look like two separate networks and they'll act like two separate networks," Tom Nagel, who heads the Xfinity WiFi initiative for Comcast, told the Tribune. "Any use on the public side doesn't impact the private side."
WiFi started about 15 years ago and became a perk for coffee shop patrons and a service at public libraries. Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson, a telecommunications and cable research firm, said when wireless companies began charging for data downloads four years ago, WiFi became a lot more popular.
"Suddenly, there was a huge economic incentive to rely on WiFi whenever it was available, and you started to see the consumption of WiFi go through the roof."
XFinity customers will be able to log on to WiFi signals using their own credentials, the company said. Non-customers will get two free hours a month and will be able to pay by the hour if they want.The kea is an unusual parrot. It is the only truly alpine parrot in the world, and gained early notoriety among settler farmers for attacks on their sheep. Innately curious, kea are attracted to people wherever they enter its mountain domain, and are a feature at South Island ski-fields and mountain huts. Their attraction to people and their paraphernalia is a two-edged sword, providing both new threats and new opportunities.
Identification
The kea is a large, strong-flying, olive-green parrot with scarlet underwings and a slender grey-black bill. Sexually dimorphic, female body mass is about 20% less than males and the bill is shorter. Juveniles have yellow ceres and eyelids, which fade to grey as the bird matures.
The commonest call is a long, loud, high-pitched descending cry which may be broken “kee-ee-aa-aa”, or unbroken “keeeeeaaaa”. Many quiet contact calls are given. Juvenile calls are less stable in tone, being more of a loud uncontrolled whooping or squealing.
Kea are unlikely to be confused with other species. Kaka are smaller, olive-brown and very rarely seen above the timberline. They excavate the wood of live trees, whereas keas do not. Kaka have more varied calls, including fluting whistles and harsh grating ‘skraaarks’. The extremely rare and localised kakapo is larger, flightless and nocturnal. It is yellow-green rather than olive-green and lacks a scarlet underwing.
Distribution and habitat
Kea range over about four million hectares along the axial ranges of the South Island, from Farewell Spit to Waitutu, plus the Kaikoura Ranges. They can be found from coastal dunes to high alpine peaks, but are most common in montane forests and adjacent subalpine and alpine zones. They are absent from the Marlborough Sounds, Catlins, Blue Mountains and both the North Island and Stewart Island.
Kea mainly nest within native forest. Their foraging habitat includes all types of native forest, sub-alpine scrub, tussock and herb-field. They socialise on prominent rocky outcrops and windy saddles above or below the timberline, and are frequently reported in pine forests adjacent to native forest.
Population
Estimating kea population size is difficult due to their extensive range, rugged terrain, low kea density, cryptic behaviour of adults and flocking behaviour of juveniles. With current data, any population estimate is little more than a guess. Density in the upland beech forest of Nelson Lakes National Park in 2011 was approximately one adult female kea per 2,750 hectares, down from about one per 550 ha in 1998. Arthurs Pass National Park holds possibly ten times the density of Nelson Lakes. In a Westland rimu forest the density is roughly one adult female per 500 hectares. A conservative estimate of one adult female per 2000 hectares of forest gives a total population of 4000 adults (males plus females). Productivity estimates predict about one juvenile for every breeding pair, giving a total population of about 6000 birds. Other commonly cited estimates are 15,000 and 1,000-5,000. Both of these seem extreme given recent survey data, with the actual number of kea likely to be between these numbers
That the kea persists despite the shooting of 150,000 birds between 1860 and 1970 indicates a high reproductive potential. Fats and proteins scavenged from the carcasses of deer and sheep may have boosted productivity among the reclusive breeding adults. Juveniles were probably disproportionately culled, being more gregarious, conspicuous and inquisitive than adults.
Threats and conservation
Bounty hunting of kea as a measure to protect sheep was outlawed in 1971, and full protection was finally granted in 1986.
Contemporary threats include introduced mammalian predators, environmental lead, and conflict and accidents with humans and their equipment. Episodic, semi-catastrophic mortality events are thought to be associated with plagues of stoats which ensue after mast seeding of beech and rimu. Ironically, kea are also killed accidentally in possum traps and by poison baits deployed to control predators. Predator control has been associated with substantial increases in nest survival and therefore in recruitment of young birds. The conservation status of this species was changed from naturally uncommon to nationally endangered in 2013.
Breeding
Kea nest mainly below the tree line, on the ground in natural cavities such as a rock crevice, the hollow base of a large tree, a hollow under the roots of a tree, a hollow log or a dirt cavity under the lip of an old river terrace. The usually 4 eggs are laid July to January (peak laying in August-October). Incubation takes 22-24 days, and chicks stay in the nest for 3 months. The female does all the incubation, brooding and feeding the young by regurgitation. The male brings food to the female, feeding her by regurgitation near the nest site. Fledging peaks in December-February, with an average of 1.6 fledglings per nest
Normally one clutch is laid per year. An individual female may nest in several successive years, but not all females nest every year.
Behaviour and ecology
Kea are monogamous, with long-term pair-bonds. Reports of polygamy were not upheld by radio tracking studies. Juvenile kea congregate in loose, wandering flocks. Breeding adults may join flocks when they pass through their home range. Flexible social hierarchies develop within flocks. Kea are considered highly intelligent compared to other parrots, birds and even mammals. Juveniles are tolerated by unrelated adults and this facilitates learning of complex foraging skills. Juveniles ‘play’, and the juvenile period is long compared to other parrots.
Adaptability is a key part of kea ecology. They have benefited from some human-induced modifications to their habitat, including scavenging from dead deer, chamois and tahr shot by hunters, digging for huhu grubs in pine forestry areas, and digging for grass grubs in pasture.
Distinctive behavioural and morphological traits of kea compared to other parrots include the slender bill, digging for food, ground nesting, winter breeding, social dynamics, intelligence, prolonged juvenile phase and use of alpine habitat. This combination of traits indicates an evolutionary history in an unforested habitat. It is likely that these characteristics evolved from a kaka-like ancestor during uplift of the Southern Alps over the last 5 million years. Kea may have an important role in dispersing seeds of alpine plants.
Food
Kea are omnivorous, taking a wide range of plant and animal matter. They forage in trees and scrub for shoots, fruits, leaves, nectar and seeds, dig in the soil for insect larvae and plant tubers (e.g. native orchids), and excavate rotten logs for huhu grubs, especially in rimu forests and logged pine plantations. A few kea prey upon Hutton’s shearwater nestlings in the Seaward Kaikoura Range, and throughout their range they scavenge from carcasses of deer, chamois, tahr, and sheep. Some birds perch on sheeps’ backs and dig through skin and muscle on the rump to reach the fat around the kidneys, which can result in fatal septicaemia. This behaviour is not common, but was the reason why kea were persecuted for over a hundred years.
Weblinks
www.keaconservation.co.nz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kea
http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/birds/land-birds/kea/
References
Anderson, R. 1986. Keas for keeps. Forest & Bird 17: 2-5.
Bond, A.B.; Diamond, J. 1992. Population estimates of kea in Arthurs Pass National Park. Notornis 39: 151-160.
Bond, A.B.; Diamond, J. 2004. Geographic and ontogenic variation in the contact call of the kea (Nestor notabilis). Behaviour 142: 1-20.
Bond, A. B.; Wilson, K.-J. et al. 1991. Sexual dimorphism in the kea Nestor notabilis. Emu 91: 12-19.
Clarke, C.M.H. 1970. Observations on population, movements and food of the kea (Nestor notabilis). Notornis 17: 105-114.
Diamond, J.; Bond, A.B. 1991. Social behavior and the ontogeny of foraging in the kea (Nestor notabilis). Ethology 88: 128-144.
Gould, J. 1856. On two new species of birds (Nestor notabilis and Spatula variegata) from the collection of Walter Mantell, Esq. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London: 94-95.
McLelland, J. M.; Reid, C. et al. 2010. Evidence of lead exposure in a free-ranging population of kea (Nestor notabilis). Journal of Wildlife Diseases 46: 532-540.
O'Donnell, C.J.F.; Dilks, P.J. 1986. Forest birds in South Westland; status, distribution and habitat use. New Zealand Wildlife Service Occasional Publication No. 10.
Robertson, C. J. R.; Hyvonen, P. et al. 2007. Atlas of bird distribution in New Zealand 1999-2004. Wellington, The Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Inc.
Robertson, H. A.; Dowding, J. E.; Elliott, G. P.; Hitchmough, R. A.; Miskelly, C. M.; O’Donnell, C. F. J.; Powlesland, R. G.; Sagar, P. M.; Scofield, R. P.; Taylor, G. A. 2013. Conservation status of New Zealand birds, 2012. NZ Threat Classification Series 4. Department of Conservation. Wellington.
Wilson, K.-J. 1990. Kea, creature of curiosity. Forest & Bird August 1990.
Young, L. M.; Kelly, D. et al. 2012. Alpine flora may depend on declining frugivorous parrot for seed dispersal. Biological Conservation 147: 133-142.
Recommended citation
Kemp, J. 2013. Kea. In Miskelly, C.M. (ed.) New Zealand Birds Online. www.nzbirdsonline.org.nzFour-time USSR Champion Alexander Beliavsky is still an active chess player at the age of 61, and in a recent interview he talked about the challenge Vassily Ivanchuk and Viswanathan Anand face playing elite chess in their mid-40s. As a coach for Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, though, he’s also very much in tune with the new generation, and explains what sets Magnus Carlsen and Anatoly Karpov apart from other chess players.
Alexander Beliavsky won the 1973 World Junior Championship and then a year later, at the age of only 21, he won the first of four USSR Championships (1974, 1981, 1987, 1990). He now represents Slovenia and has played a total of 15 Olympiads, most recently in Tromsø last year. That record includes leading the USSR team to gold medals in 1984 in the absence of both Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.
In the new interview he talked to Yury Vasiliev for ChessPro, and we’ve translated some of the highlights from the Russian original. Beliavsky was born, like 46-year-old Vassily Ivanchuk, in Lviv, and was asked why Ivanchuk had failed to claim the World Championship title:
: Ivanchuk’s talent is phenomenal! But the main thing is his attitude to chess, his unique devotion to it. You can, of course, say that Vassily was unlucky, but you can also talk about psychological factors: at critical moments he would lose control of the situation. Take, for instance, the match against Ponomariov, when Ivanchuk was the undisputed favourite.
Now Vasya is at a critical age. I call 42-43 years old the “Balzac age” for chess players. And he’s already crossed that threshold, a truly critical one, when very strong chess players – suddenly! – collapse in some tournaments. And later, approaching 50, they collapse in more and more…
And when Ivanchuk told me, “Somehow I’ve started to “blunder” recently…” I replied, “Vasya! Don’t pay any attention! Be grateful that you’re winning two tournaments out of three, because later you’ll win one, and then not even one…”
Yury Vasiliev: You really consoled him, then…
A pessimist is a well-informed optimist (laughs). That Balzac age for a chess player is the point after which it’s very tough to fight for the World Championship title.
Not for everyone. Two more than convincing examples: Vishy Anand and Boris Gelfand. Despite their “post-Balzac age” they continue to fight for the highest title. Boris wins Grand Prix stages and Vishy is back above 2800.
All the way back in 2005 in the Argentine San Luis, Anand showed how he plays tournaments. He singles out 3-4 “victims” and puts everything into those games. And, as a rule, he manages to win. Ten years have since passed and Anand continues in the same spirit. That allows him to allocate his energy evenly at his 45 years old. It’s not enough for ten games, but when concentrated into three or four it works out for him. At the Vugar Gashimov Memorial in Shamkir he acted according to that well-established pattern. He identified three victims for himself, “devoured” them and then made draws in all the other games.
Including the first game with Magnus, when he had a won position?
Since before the tournament he hadn’t planned on beating Carlsen it turned out he was mentally unprepared when he got winning chances during the game…
You have to talk about Anand, Gelfand and Ivanchuk in the context of that “Balzac age”. They still keep on dazzling us with their chess. That trio, in my view, is the last remaining link between the chess players of the “pre-computer” age and those of the “computer age”.
And which age do you belong to?
I consider myself a dinosaur.
As a playing “dinosaur” you’ve encountered historical figures at the board – Keres and Reshevsky. Back then people hadn’t even heard of computers. At the other end of the scale, you’ve faced the “children of the computer” (by analogy with Petrosian’s “children of the Informant”) – Carlsen and Caruana…
Those are extremes. And between them I played all the rest.
I remember well: Tilburg 1981 - you won, ahead of Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky and Garry Kasparov. And you also won Tilburg 1986, ahead of Karpov. But how did things go against Samuel Reshevsky?
I lost. I treated Reshevsky as a “pensioner” who I absolutely had to beat, and therefore I lost to him.
And against the youngsters?
Against Carlsen in the “Youth vs. Experience” match I won, at the Olympiad in 2008 we drew and I lost one game to him. So my score is better than against Reshevsky…
And Caruana?
I’ve got a positive score against Caruana. We played three games, two ended in a draw and I won one in 2009.
Have you been working with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave for a long time?
Yes, about four years, I think. We’ve had training camps together – both in Lviv and Slovenia, and I’m sometimes his second at tournaments.
During the Alekhine Memorial, the first half of which took place in the Louvre, I talked to Maxime on a couple of occasions, and he told me he hadn’t previously treated chess seriously enough – that he’d lost a lot of time and now regretted it…
Maxime really has become a professional in the last few years. Before he very much loved chess and would solve some studies i.e. he treated chess like an amateur. But in the last two years, when he made it into the world elite, he’s started to take his obligations very professionally.
In Khanty-Mansiysk Maxime performed extremely poorly…
He wasn’t in his best form, but Maxime has a lot of other tournaments this year. He now plays in the Grand Chess Tour series, which is starting in Norway with the next stage in the USA, and I think he should really concentrate on that, since it will offer new opportunities.
What do you think about Magnus Carlsen?
I know of only two chess players who played better in the last hour of play than in the opening and middlegame - those are Karpov and Carlsen.
A feature of their “chess nature”, to use Aron Nimzowitsch’s term?
A feature of their mentality, I’d say.
Is it only down to that feature that Magnus wins tournament after tournament?
I’d also note his excellent technique in converting advantages. Well, and in general, he calculates variations well. Karpov also calculated variations well in his best years.
Boris Gelfand once told me that when he played Carlsen he had the feeling there was a reincarnation of Karpov sitting opposite him.
Boris and I have never talked on that topic, but we expressed ourselves almost identically.
Do you think someone can knock Carlsen off his pedestal, despite his “Karpovian” ability to outplay his opponents in the last hour of play?
Of course they can! Was it impossible to knock Karpov off his pedestal, despite his ability to outplay opponents in the 5th hour of play? Kasparov came along and did it very convincingly. I myself witnessed how Caruana was so on fire in St. Louis that Carlsen looked like a bit player next to him.
He won seven games!
And in all three of those he didn’t win there was a moment when he was totally winning.
Beliavsky also talked about his encounters with the "Patriarch of Soviet Chess" and 6th World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik:
From 1973 right up until his death Botvinnik and I were friends. When I moved to Moscow I always dropped by his flat on 3 Frunzenskaya. He would offer me tea. Gayane Davidovna, his wife, was already in hospital, so he would cook something himself. He didn’t have an impact on me so much as a chess player as he did as a personality. I could see the scale of his personality.
I think he was the greatest investigator of chess. He knew how to properly formulate its laws. He knew how to formulate a law for himself that would function in all cases, something few chess players were capable of. The majority are talented people who have ideas that are, perhaps, more beautiful than Botvinnik’s were. But Botvinnik was better than everyone else at formulating fundamental laws, and he was also better at applying them in practice.
It's all pawn chains and tactics! Botvinnik 1-0 Capablanca, 1938
Well, and of course he was naturally a great talent. Like all great chess players, he was a brilliant tactician. The chess players of that generation loved to say they were great strategists, but in actual fact they were above all great tacticians – because chess, for the most part, is a tactical game. It becomes a strategic game only when pawn chains are formed. When the pieces don’t come into contact with each other and a wall is formed between them you need to think about how to relocate your pieces. But when that pawn wall isn’t there it’s about calculation: “I go here, he goes there”.
Botvinnik was above all a theoretician of pawn chains. He had a great ability to formulate the laws of positions where pawn chains form a particular structure.
See also:Most people who use the Internet seem take its nature and characteristics for granted, like we take air and water for granted. Your relationship with air and water -- what you can do with it or within it -- is for all practical purposes an unchanging fact of nature. What you can or cannot do with or on the Internet, however, is the result of specific decisions and actions by individual human beings who hold different motivations -- be they political, cultural, social, academic, economic, or business motives. The actions themselves take different forms: programming, engineering, design, business, or legislative. These decisions and actions determine things like how much privacy you have, how easily your digital activities can be tracked and by whom, how your online identity relates to your offline identity, and to what extent you can have more than one online persona.
The fact that anybody can create their own software programs and use them on the Internet, or plug new devices into the Internet, without having to obtain permission or license from any authority is the result of conscious decisions by the people who first created the Internet: decisions that could have been made differently if those creators -- working mainly in the United States in the late 60's -- had been working in a different political and cultural context.
The basic technical protocols that have enabled the Internet to work in such a globally interconnected way are developed and shared openly by a community of engineers. When Tim Berners-Lee invented the computer code that led to the creation of the World Wide Web in 1990, he did not try to patent or charge fees for the use of his technology. Instead he shared it openly, enabling a rapid expansion of web pages across the Internet, which became the basis for most of the Internet's commercial value, and all kinds of innovation that he couldn't have anticipated.
How the Internet evolves from here on out similarly depends on the choices being made by programmers, engineers, business managers, corporate lawyers, lawmakers in legislatures around the world, regulators, police, military, and national security authorities, activists, investors, consumers and ultimately all technology users. It will favor whoever is most active in shaping it to their liking.
The threats to our digital rights seem to come from a combination of corporations and governments. How are these two sources of control similar and different? How do they relate to one another?
Governance is a way of organizing, amplifying, and constraining power. The point of democratic government is that we give up our rights to do absolutely anything we please at any time to anybody in exchange for order, security, services, and also the protection of the rights of weak or unpopular minorities against majority mob rule. The political processes of modern democracy -- however imperfect -- are supposed to be a way of confirming and re-affirming that government is operating with the people's consent. Constitutions, independent judiciaries, and other structures are supposed to constrain the abuse of power and hold government power accountable. Control that has no basis in the public interest is illegitimate -- although exactly how one defines "public interest" and "legitimate" control is always a matter of passionate debate in a democratic society. In authoritarian states the "public interest" and the control required to maintain it is generally not up for debate in any meaningful way.From left: Kieran Culkin, composer Rostam Batmanglij, Tavi Gevinson, Michael Cera, director Anna D. Shapiro and “This Is Our Youth” playwright Kenneth Lonergan at the Cort Theatre in New York.
NEW YORK — The music playing when you first file into the Cort Theatre to see ‘‘This Is Our Youth’’ is no mere canned, off-the-shelf tune. It’s an original by a Grammy Award winner.
Rostam Batmanglij, the guitarist, keyboardist, and co-writer for alt-music darlings Vampire Weekend, is making his Broadway debut — albeit only sonically — alongside Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, and Tavi Gevinson.
‘‘I try to take every project — whether it’s an album, making just one song, or doing a score like this — and enjoy it for what the limitations are and how that sets you free in other ways,’’ says Batmanglij, whose ‘‘Modern Vampires of the City’’ won the Grammy this year for best alternative album.
Advertisement
Batmanglij has written five classical pieces for the play — two each that bookend Acts 1 and 2 and a longer song for when theatergoers noisily arrive, rustling their Playbills and chatting. He put plenty of thought into each.
Get The Weekender in your inbox: The Globe's top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here
‘‘I know there’ll be some people sitting in the audience who will be listening to every note just because they can’t help it. I’m like that sometimes. If there’s music around, I have to be listening to it. It’s hard for me to turn that off,’’ he said. ‘‘I have to keep it interesting for those people.’’
The Kenneth Lonergan play, which follows 48 hours in the life of three young New Yorkers in 1982, includes three Frank Zappa songs, and Batmanglij decided not to compete. ‘‘I thought it was important that the music in the world of the play be separate,’’ he said.
Anna D. Shapiro, who directs the play, said she was delighted by the result, which was first heard at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company this summer. It is now in previews at the Cort, and opens Sept. 11.
‘‘He understands the function of music without you having to explain it to him,’’ said Shapiro. ‘‘If he sees that one part of the narrative is taken care of, he’s not going to double down. He’s not going to try to out-Frank Zappa Frank Zappa. Thank God.’’
Advertisement
Batmanglij took inspiration from the play’s setting on the Upper West Side, which he got to know while majoring in music at Columbia University. He asked himself: What instrument is most associated with the neighborhood? He decided on a piano. So he started experimenting.
Batmanglij often records himself playing melodies with his iPhone and it turns out that Memo 471 on his device became the skeleton of one song. When he plays it, a lovely piano riff emerges, betraying the composer’s classical roots.
‘‘I studied classical music at college so, for me, this is almost more of what I was trained to do than what I do for a living,’’ he said. ‘‘I hear it in everything, and I think it’s a part of all the music that I make.’’
Batmanglij may be a novice when it comes to writing for the stage, but he’s penned music for films, including ‘‘Sound of My Voice’’ (2011) and a piano piece for ‘‘The East’’ (2013), both directed by his brother, Zal.
Producer Scott Rudin — who recently tapped James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem to write music for the Broadway revival of ‘‘Betrayal’’ — knew Batmanglij was a fan of Lonergan’s films and sent him the script for ‘‘This Is Our Youth.’’ He read it in one sitting and was hooked.
Advertisement
Batmanglij has had to adjust the work for the Broadway run, including adding the tune as the audience arrives, mixing in some strings and lengthening the Act 1 ender from 10 seconds to 10 minutes.
‘I studied classical music at college...I hear it in everything, and I think it’s a part of all the music that I make.’
He said he’s loved collaborating with new people and using a different part of his brain. He also hopes the music he’s written for Broadway will have another life, and even won’t rule out returning one day to write a musical.
For now, though, his day job is calling: He’s got a song coming out soon with Charli XCX, and he’s always collaborating with his Vampire Weekend bandmates. ‘‘I’ve definitely enjoyed this project a lot, but I also feel like the world of songs is calling me,’’ he said.European parliamentarians have raised concerns about surveillance at the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics, after a Guardian investigation uncovered the extent of phone and internet snooping planned for the Games.
Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of the European parliament, and two other MEPs have tabled written questions raising concerns over the surveillance and security measures.
The questions reference a research project carried out by the Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, the results of which were first published in the Guardian last month.
The investigation found that Russia's FSB security service has been busy upgrading internet and phone networks using Sorm, Russia's lawful interception system. Sorm has been described as "Prism on steroids", a reference to the programme used by the NSA in the US and revealed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.
"Given that everybody seems to be spying on everyone else these days, it seems legitimate to ask questions not only about the EU and the United States but about Russia as well," said In 't Veld. "Russia is a particular problem because of the Olympics, which it is using as a pretext for stepping up surveillance, with no court oversight."
All Russian internet providers are required by law to feed information back to the FSB by default, using special Sorm boxes that they must install on their networks. The Guardian investigation found that Russian authorities have fined Sochi providers who have not installed the correct equipment in recent months.
Combined with other technologies, there is a fear the surveillance could be misused to root out potential political or gay rights protesters. "It is easy to imagine how this surveillance could be turned into a political tool," said In 't Veld.
The Sochi Olympics are a personal project of President Vladimir Putin, and are the most expensive Games on record at more than £30bn. But as Russia has sent the Olympic torch to the north pole and to outer space in grandiose preparations for the Games, international attention has been focused on issues such as gay rights, with the country's new laws against "homosexual propaganda" in force at the Olympics.
In 't Veld has asked for clarification from Europol, the European police agency, over a data-sharing agreement that is planned with the Russians but has not yet come into force.
British intelligence services have renewed intelligence co-operation with Russia, which had been suspended since the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. The exchange of information over security threats to the Games was agreed during a visit by David Cameron to Sochi in May, and confirmed by John Sawers, the head of MI6, during a parliamentary hearing this month.
The European Council and commission are obliged to reply to the MEPs' questions in the coming weeks, and In 't Veld hopes it will open a debate about what Europe can do in the runup to the Sochi Games.
"I hope this will act as a wake-up call, and that the commission will take some action to ensure that there are at least some safeguards put in place," she said. "We need to start talking about it, at least."Week in Keyboards #33
JD45
I almost forgot, but this has been a long time coming. The JD45 is now available to pre-order. Starting at least 2 years ago this has been in development for a long time and looks to be a high quality 40%(ish keyboard). Designed by jdcarpe who you might know from the community (lately the designer behind Leandren’s 60% plates) and Wilba who has designed a lot of PCB’s (planck).
It is also being manufactured by TEX which is yet again another reputable name in keyboards. With the people that are involved it is one of the safer GB’s to participate in.
It can be bought assembled or as a kit, and supports both alps and MX switches. The case also offers a couple of options, my favourite being the HHKB style with blocked corners.
Brocaps Sale (Closing Very Soon)
There are currently (at time of writing) two bro sales happening right now. These are raffle sales so do not guarantee a cap.
They feature the new Reaper in a collectors edition, that is an optional pack that includes a t-shirt, sticker and a poster. But the cap is also available to buy by itself.
The other caps available are the ‘classic’ reaper, and some gamer sets. The classic reaper comes in IBM, Topre and MX variants whereas the gamer sets only come in either IBM or MX.
Sky Dolch
This was a GMK set run on Massdrop that did not seem to be too popular. However, Sheraton from Originative Co bought a load and they are available to buy from Originative. The Sky Dolch is a variant of Dolch (surprise) with cyan legends.
The Clack Crate
“a subscription box for mechanical keyboards.”
At this point I think you can only speculate on whether this is a good idea or not. I have never really thought of the subscription boxes in a good light and I don’t know whether you could make an affordable box with things you would want. Mechanical keyboards is not always the cheapest hobby so I don’t quite see it happening in such a good way.
But you never know, it could be good.
Wooting Keyboard
The Wooting keyboard has been known about for a while but last week brought the announcement of what made it special. If you missed that, it features analog switches. This allows you to sense how far the keys are depressed, opening up some potentially interesting possibilities.
What Wooting seem to be doing right, is responding and listening to feedback. So if you want to say something, now would be a good time.
KeyKollectiv and Booper
Something is happening between these two.
Widgie Pidge’s Prints
From HWS (Binge is a part of this) comes these very nice prints. Not directly keyboard related but HWS is a popular entity in the community and I really like them myself, so I thought they were worth mentioning.
$12 for some HWS art seems good to me.
RAMA
KingRama has seemingly come out of nowhere and has started to produce some very nice looking things. The first which I have mentioned before is a machined aluminium keycap. Everything about it seems quite nicely designed. The packaging and the design of the keycap itself all come together.
More recently I noticed the addition of some really beautiful keyboard prints on their shop. I like the colours, the limited edition markings the choice of keyboard. Might be a little bit expensive for me but I am certainly tempted.
RoastPotatoes Posters
Just promoting myself here. I still have HHKB Posters. They are A3 and really quite nice.Google received a U.S. patent this week for technology that would enable it to use the cloud to control an army of robots.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday issued a patent to the Mountain View, Calif. company for methods and systems associated with managing and giving tasks to multiple robots.
Google, which has been increasingly focused on robotics the past few years, filed for the patent on Feb. 3, 2013.
The technology involves sending task instructions to the group of robots, along with monitoring the "health" of the robotic systems or its ability to accomplish its task.
In the company's patent application, Google noted that a robot, or robots, may receive instructions through the cloud, where data about the robots' work and functions could also be stored.
"This could be important to Google because it could be a foundational patent, or a patent for a technology that is essential in a field," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. "This dictates how work could be spread across multiple robots, depending on which one, or ones, |
yna told TOK FM private radio.
“Now it’s the other way around, and I pay higher instalments.” (1 euro = 4.2263 zlotys) (Additional reporting by Ivana Sekularac, Aleksandar Vasovic and Matt Robinson in Belgrade, and Marcin Goclowski in Warsaw; Writing by Matt Robinson; editing by Janet McBride)Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption No-one was hurt in the bizarre incident in the French capital
A confused driver has ended up trapping his car on the steps of a Paris metro station, after mistaking it for the entrance to an underground car park.
"There's a sign saying 'Haussmann Parking' right in front... I made a mistake," the driver - identified only as Johan - told the AFP news agency.
The 26-year-old managed to brake in time to stop the vehicle, leaving the back wheels sticking out.
No-one was hurt in the incident, which immediately drew a crowd of onlookers.
Many took pictures of the car - a Dacia Duster - stranded on the stairs at the Chaussee d'Antin-La Fayette metro station.
The driver was later asked by French police to do an alcohol test, which he passed.
A member of staff at a local restaurant was quoted by AFP as saying that a similar incident took place at the site about five years ago.Roseville, CA- As the weather heats up, so does Roseville criminal activity. The Roseville police log digest update for the ten-day period covering March 10-20, 2017.
To provide information that can help solve a prior crime, call: Crime Stoppers at (916) 783-STOP You may be eligible to receive a Reward of up to $1000, while remaining anonymous.
Northeast Roseville
Olympus Pointe, theft: Overnight March 14/15, someone went into an unlocked vehicle in the 1700 block of Grazziani Way and stole items of value. Some of the victim’s property was later recovered in Sacramento.
East Roseville
Johnson Ranch, prowler arrested: At 1:20 p.m. March 10, officers responded to a report of a man trying the doors of a closed medical office in the 9200 block of Sierra College Boulevard. They detained a 45-year-old Citrus Heights man and arrested him on suspicion of prowling and possessing burglar’s tools.
Meadow Oaks, theft: Between midnight and 8 a.m. March 10, in the 1000 block of Charleston Circle, someone stole a tailgate with a backup camera from a Ford F250 pickup.
Cirby Ranch, suspicious activity call results in an arrest: At 7:15 a.m. March 19, an alert resident reported a suspicious man walking around the area of Greenborough Drive and Motherlode Drive. An officer found a man matching the description walking away from a driveway on Hot Springs Court. Their investigation led to the 26-year-old Antelope man being arrested on suspicion of possessing heroin and a concealed dagger (fixed blade knife). Officers checked the neighborhood and found that someone had rummaged through about ten unlocked vehicles and took some small items from them.
Central Roseville south of the rail yard
Cirbyside, vehicle theft: Between 7 p.m. March 18 and 10:30 a.m. March 19, someone stole a green 1996 Honda Accord from an apartment complex in the 1100 block of Conroy Lane. The car is a classic “Honda Hunter Special”-an older sedan that’s easy to steal with a shaved key or other common car thief tactics. If you depend on one of these good older work-horse cars, protect it with a Club steering wheel lock or other highly visible theft deterrence device.
Folsom Road, warrant arrest: At about 9:30 p.m. March 17, an officer was patrolling the 200 block of Harding Boulevard, and saw a bicyclist he recognized as being wanted on warrants. The man ran, but the officer quickly chased him down. The 43-year-old Roseville man was arrested without further incident on three Placer County warrants.
Folsom Road, stolen car: Between 9 p.m. March 18 and 9 a.m. March 19, a late-model sedan was stolen from the 300 block of Margaret Way. At about 6 p.m. March 19, an officer found the stolen car, license plates removed, parked in the lot of a hotel in the 200 block of Harding Blvd. The stolen car was returned to the victim, and the theft is under investigation to identify a suspect.
Folsom Road and Hillcrest, fights, arrests made: Just before 10 p.m. March 16, two men got into a fight on the footbridge at Royer Park. One of the men allegedly threatened the other man with a knife and tried unsuccessfully to stab him. An officer checked the area but was unable to find the involved parties. At 2 p.m. the next day, officers responded to a fight at a gas station at the corner of Douglas Blvd. and Keehner Drive involving the same two men, one armed with a knife and the other with a stick or club. The officers investigated and arrested both Roseville residents, ages 35 and 46, on suspicion of assault and other related charges in connection with both fights.
Downtown, assault: At 8:25 a.m. March 18, officers responded to three men fighting in the 500 block of Vernon Street with weapons. The three men had gotten into an argument, and two of the men were hitting the third man with metal objects. The victim, an adult male, was taken to the hospital for treatment. Two men from Rio Linda and Citrus Heights, both 27 years old, were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and other related charges.
Downtown, trespassing: Officers continue to frequently check the Vernon Street Garage at night for people trespassing and racing cars inside the garage. Several people have been contacted and cited or warned; our city ordinance prohibits being in city-owned parking garages except to park or pick up a car. At 4:30 a.m. March 19, officers contacted several people congregated inside the garage, and one, a 19-year-old Roseville resident, was arrested on a felony warrant.
Atlantic Street collision update: At approximately 9:30 a.m. March 5, a man driving a 1996 Toyota Corolla exited from westbound I-80 onto Atlantic Street and collided with a bicyclist. The bicyclist was taken to the hospital with major injuries. Officers responded, evaluated and arrested the Toyota driver, a 32-year-old male from Arbuckle, on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury. We’re sorry to report that the bicyclist, a 61-year-old Roseville resident, passed away in the hospital on March 9 as a result of his injuries. The collision is still being investigated
Cirbyside, vehicle theft, “Honda Hunter Special”: Overnight March 11-March 12, someone stole an early 90s Honda Civic station wagon from Tamarack Court. This car was a “Honda Hunter Special”-an older car favored by vehicle thieves because they’re easy to steal. We always recommend that people who rely on an older sedan park it inside the garage whenever possible and use a “Club”-type steering wheel lock or another highly visible theft deterrent when parking it outside
Cresthaven, burglary: Between 7 and 10 a.m. March 16, someone went into an unlocked garage in the 600 block of Vernon Oaks Drive and stole items. (2017-16557)
Downtown, reckless driving: At about 1 a.m. March 12, an officer was patrolling Vernon Street and heard the sound of a loud vehicle exhaust and tires screeching from someone racing around in the Vernon Street Parking Garage. He stopped a car coming out of the garage and arrested the driver on suspicion of reckless driving, and had the car towed. As a reminder, Roseville’s Municipal Code prohibits going into city garages except to park or retrieve a vehicle.
Central Roseville north of the rail yard
Roseville Heights, shots fired: At 1:48 a.m. March 10, officers responded to shots fired in a parking lot on Lincoln Street near Main Street. Two men who didn’t know each other got into an argument, and one suspect, still unidentified, retrieved a handgun from his car and fired several shots, then left the area. Fortunately no one was hit and no property damage was reported. The incident is under investigation.
Los Cerritos, robbery: At 10:47 p.m. March 10, a male juvenile was waiting for his ride in a front parking lot of the Fairgrounds after a dance when a car pulled up next to him and two young men got out, punched the victim and took his phone, then left. The case is under investigation.
Kaseberg-Kingswood, thefts from vehicles: In the early morning hours of March 11, someone rummaged through parked vehicles in the 1400 block of Dorchester Drive and stole sunglasses, tools, clothing and other items. Some of the stolen items were found discarded nearby on Kingswood Drive.
Roseville Heights, assault: At 11:21 a.m. March 17, officers responded to a fight involving three adults, one armed with a knife, in the 300 block of High Street. No one needed medical attention. A 37-year-old Lincoln man was arrested on suspicion of battery, brandishing a knife, and a Sacramento County warrant.
Roseville Heights, DUI collision: At 8:22 p.m. March 17, officers responded to a report of a pickup driver who had sideswiped three parked cars on Main Street near Berkeley Avenue, lost a tire and drove away. Officers found the truck nearby and arrested the driver, a 52-year-old Roseville man, on suspicion of DUI.
Vineyard, vehicle theft: At 2:06 a.m. March 20, officers responded to a report that a white full-size van had just been stolen from a parking lot in the 2000 block of Opportunity Drive. They saw the stolen van being driven westbound on PFE Road, and tried to stop it. The driver refused to pull over and kept driving at normal speeds (35-40 mph) through the Antelope area with officers following. The suspect then began to drive in a dangerous manner, turning his headlights off and crossing into the opposing lane of traffic, so officers discontinued the pursuit to protect public safety. They’ll continue to investigate the theft and attempt to identify the suspect.
North central Roseville
Highland Reserve, stolen car recovered: Just before 5 a.m. March 17, officers stopped an occupied stolen car in the 900 block of Pleasant Grove Blvd. They searched the car and found a concealed handgun. A 19-year-old male from Citrus Heights was arrested for possessing a stolen car and weapons charges.
Industrial, burglary and vehicle theft: At about 7:20 a.m. March 12, someone broke into an auto service center in the 8000 block of Washington Boulevard, stole tools and loaded them into a van parked inside. The suspect backed the van through a roll-up door and drove away. The stolen van was abandoned shortly afterwards on Misty Wood Drive. A man was seen parking the van and transferring items from it into a waiting newer dark colored sports car, driven by a woman.
Industrial, burglary: Between midnight and 8 a.m. March 15, someone went into a garage on Redhead Court via an open side door and stole sporting equipment.
Stanford Crossing, DUI collision: At 7:41 p.m. March 19, officers responded to the 6600 block of Maple Creek Drive for a traffic collision. A sedan driver collided with a fire hydrant and two parked cars and drove away. Officers located the driver and his car nearby and arrested the 42-year-old Roseville man on suspicion of DUI and misdemeanor (non-injury) hit-and-run.
West Roseville
Woodcreek, vandalism: Overnight March 13-14, someone threw rocks and broke the windows of a vehicle in the 1600 block of Atwell Drive. (2017-15984)
Quail Glen, vandalism: Between midnight and 9 a.m. March 10, someone broke windows of a vehicle in the 1800 block of Avenida Martina. (2017-16229)
Junction West, vandalism: Overnight March 11/12, someone threw rocks at cars on Amber Fields Way and Blue Skies Way. Two cars were damaged. Between 1:30 and 9:30 a.m. March 14, someone broke the window of a vehicle in the 1700 block of Braithwaite St.
West Park, trespassing: At 9:23 p.m. March 18, officers responded to a report of two people seen inside a home under construction in a new home development on Foxfield Way. Officers detained two juveniles and cited them for prowling on private property.Alamy
Graphene, hailed as one of the thinnest, strongest and most conductive materials ever found, seems to have bagged one more amazing property. Experiments suggest that it can be used to create ultrashort laser pulses of any colour, owing to an ability to absorb light over a broad range of wavelengths.
The discovery could help researchers to build small, cheap and highly versatile ultrashort-pulse lasers, with potential applications ranging from micro-machinery to medicine.
Conventional ultrashort-pulse lasers use a material that absorbs light like a sponge and then releases it back in quick bursts, typically lasting for femtoseconds (one femtosecond is 10−15 seconds, or one millionth of a billionth of a second). These'saturable absorbers' function only at specific wavelengths, says Roy Taylor, a physicist at Imperial College London. Applications such as monitoring pollutants in the atmosphere need to use multiple wavelengths to detect a range of molecules, so several separate lasers are required.
In 2009, physicist Andrea Ferrari of the University of Cambridge, UK, and his collaborators first showed that graphene — a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, with the atoms arranged in hexagons like chicken wire — can act as a light sponge in the infrared spectrum1. More recently, Taylor, Ferrari and colleagues from the United Kingdom and Switzerland have coaxed the material to produce pulses of infrared radiation lasting tens of femtoseconds2, 3.
Now, the researchers have improved their device to produce a broad spectrum of infrared wavelengths, which are useful in applications such as fibre optic communications. Moreover, their results, together with the known properties of graphene, suggest that the material should be able to yield similar ultrashort pulses over the entire spectrum of visible light as well, says Ferrari. The team's latest results will be reported at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in San Jose, California, in June.
On–off switch
Graphene’s ability to absorb light of any colour comes from the peculiar structure of the energy levels of its electrons. In a typical solid non-metal material, electrons can exist in a low-energy state, in which they are bound to atoms, or in a higher-energy state, where they are able to move around and carry an electric current. Between these two states is a 'band gap', which requires a certain energy to be bridged. An electron can cross the band gap if the material absorbs light with that particular energy — which means a particular wavelength. In the semiconductor materials used to make transistors in computer chips, electrons jumping over the band gap switch the current from 'off' to 'on'.
In graphene, by contrast, there is no band gap, and the electrons' energy can vary along a continuum. That makes single-sheet graphene useless in transistors, says Byung Hee Hong, a physicist at Seoul National University, but it gives the material an advantage in optics, enabling it to absorb a wide range of wavelengths of light.
“Usually, different materials are needed for different wavelengths, and there are not many [conventional] materials that can be used for the near-infrared region,” says Hong, who was not involved in the new study.
Graphene is also chemically and mechanically stable enough to prevent thermal damage by intense laser beams, Hong adds. And a major advantage of graphene-based ultrashort-pulse lasers is that these devices can be as small as a pencil, making them versatile and easy to use.A British couple thought their trip of a lifetime was ruined when they arrived to the Birmingham, England airport expecting to hop a flight to Las Vegas, but instead learned their flight was departing from Birmingham, Alabama.
Richella Heekin and Ben Marlow, however, received some amazing news after their sad tale went viral this week.
Virgin Holidays has offered the couple free flights and five nights of accommodations in Las Vegas, the Daily Mail reported.
Las Vegas trip ruined when girlfriend confuses Birmingham, Alabama airport with Birmingham, England A British couple was expecting the trip of a lifetime when they arrived at the Birmingham Airport in England recently for a flight to Las Vegas.
The company told the Mail: "We read your article about the couple who booked flights to Las Vegas from the wrong airport and we'd like to right that wrong.
"We can offer flights from Manchester direct to Las Vegas for them - not quite Birmingham, but better than Alabama."
Heekin, who was devastated over the mishap, said she was "overwhelmed" by Virgin's offer.
"We have been able to laugh at our mistake and we've had calls and tweets from Australian and American news," she told the Daily Mail. "So it's so lovely of Virgin to do this."
Marlow said this in response to the news: "I'm over the moon. We didn't expect the publicity. We have had some horrible comments, but I've just laughed them off.
The trip was a surprise gift for Marlow's 30th birthday.
"In 20 years' time we will look back and remember that we were all over the news," Marlow said. "It's been mad really."In a new video, former Planned Parenthood employees reveal they were incentivized to pressure women into getting abortions to meet monthly corporate quotas.
In the video from Live Action, Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood manager in Storm Lake, Iowa, explained that if her center met its quota for abortion referrals, employees would be rewarded with pizza parties, paid time off, and other rewards.
After administering a pregnancy test to a woman, Planned Parenthood employees would tell her how much it cost and ask how much she would be able to pay towards it. If a woman was unable to pay for a mere pregnancy test, they would use that fact to pressure her towards an abortion.
“If they’d say, ‘I’m not able to pay today,’ then we would say something like, ‘Well, if you can’t pay $10 today, how are you going to take care of a baby?'” Thayer said. “‘Have you priced diapers? Do you know how much it costs to buy a car seat? Where would you go for help? There’s no place in Storm Lake’ — or whatever town they were in — ‘where you can get help as a pregnant mom. So really, don’t you think your smartest choice is termination?’”
“I felt like I was more of a salesman sometimes, to sell abortions,” said Marianne Anderson, a former Planned Parenthood nurse. “We were told on a regular basis that you have a quota to meet to keep this clinic open.”
Don't believe Planned Parenthood has abortion quotas? This is an award given to a @PPact facility for exceeding the number of abortions. pic.twitter.com/gSPxPUczGF — Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) February 8, 2017
Planned Parenthood frequently pressures women on Medicaid, who are living at or close to the poverty line, to pay for half of the cost of their visits. The nation’s largest abortion provider, which touts itself as a source of prenatal care poor women rely on, largely does not provide prenatal care nor does it offer ultrasounds to pregnant women other than to use them for an abortion procedure, Live Action has revealed.
Planned Parenthood is currently embroiled in a fight with Congress to continue receiving more than $540 million taxpayer dollars annually, and they’re desperately trying to cover up the fact that they specialize in abortion by claiming that abortion only accounts for 3 percent of the services they provide. But this is a lie. Planned Parenthood performs 30 percent of abortions in the United States, and less than 2 percent of the all pap tests and breast exams in the country.
On February 11, pro-life advocates plan to protest outside of Planned Parenthood locations nationwide to support Republican-led efforts to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider.Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, writes about the release of GOV.UK
The release today of GOV.UK, the new home of government services and information, proves that we can deliver digital public services at a fraction of the price of previous government IT projects. GOV.UK will cost taxpayers up to £70m less per year than the services it replaces, and substantial further savings will be achieved as more departments and agencies move on to the platform.
Savings are important, of course, but what singles out GOV.UK as unique in government is the fact that it has been created putting its users’ needs at its heart, not the needs of government. It has been planned, written, organised and designed around what users need to get done, not around the ways government want them to do it. The build of GOV.UK was guided by this principle at every step, and as a result delivers a service that is simpler, clearer and faster for users. Being built and tested in public meant that we could take the views of real users into account and feed them into successive improved versions.
Today marks the start of a new way of delivering public services digitally. GOV.UK is a platform for future digital innovation. In stark contrast to the way IT has been delivered in government in the past, GOV.UK can rapidly accommodate new standards for development and security, catering to emerging technologies and user requirements quickly and effectively. It has been built the way Amazon built Amazon, and in the way that BA transformed their online business, by being agile, iterative and focused on users. GOV.UK has also been built using open source technology, which means we don't have to pay expensive software licensing costs.
The release of GOV.UK is a key element in the Digital by Default agenda. Digital by Default aims to transform public services online – making them better and cheaper for taxpayers and more effective and efficient for government. This approach was reaffirmed in the Civil Service Reform Plan, which we published in June. In it we set out a series of practical actions which will help make central government smaller, faster, more unified, more accountable for delivery, more commercially capable and more digital.
In the way it has been built, and will be continue to be updated and improved on the basis of experience and user feedback, GOV.UK is an example of how the Civil Service should keep continuously changing and improving and remain focused on outcomes. The public wants services to be delivered better – and today we are responding with a digital platform that will make services quicker and easier to use, and produce efficiencies for government.
Mike Bracken, head of the Government Digital Service, and his team, who built GOV.UK, are to be congratulated on delivering this key milestone in the Digital by Default agenda – though much remains to be done if we are to achieve the fundamental digital transformation that is required across government. Our plans on this front will be described in more detail in our Digital Strategy, which will be published later this year.
All that’s left to say is, go try out GOV.UK and tell us what you think – as many of you already have done while we have been creating it. We look forward to hearing your views.Buy Photo The Winter Lights at the North Carolina Arboretum in 2015. (Photo: Angeli Wright/awright@citizen-times.com)Buy Photo
Get out the hot cocoa and the holiday cheer: The season of giving has arrived this year.
Check out our ultimate list of ways to get in the holiday spirit, from light display magic to chopping down a fir tree, Christmas movie classics to gift-shopping at local art markets. The winter holidays are never-ending in Asheville, and, with this list, you can find ways to keep the season going each day of the month.
Sift through the whole list or browse category-by-category in the list below: Places to see holiday magic, places to chop down a tree, places to catch a festive film, places to see a holiday show (theater), places to wear your Santa hat, places to do some holiday shopping and/or places to hear some tunes.
Places to see holiday magic
It's hard to think of a better place to celebrate holiday grandeur than at America's largest private residence. Christmas at Biltmore, running now through Jan. 8, uses the last century of winter traditions to create an unforgettable holiday experience. With more than 70 intricately decorated trees and thousands of lights, each room of the expansive Biltmore Estate shines with extravagance. The theme of this year's display is "Hearth and Home," emphasizing the destination's many fireplaces for a bit of added coziness. Hang around to experience the Candlelight Christmas Evenings, when the lights dim and the house is lit by the flickering flames of candles and fireplaces, much like it would have appeared during the Vanderbilt family's first Christmas in 1895. Head to biltmore.com for pricing and more information.
Asheville's brightest holiday celebration, open 6-10 p.m. nightly until Jan. 1, can be found in the picturesque landscape of the North Carolina Arboretum, 100 Frederick Olmsted Way. The Arboretum's Winter Lights features nearly 500,000 LED lights nestled into beautiful garden scenery and brings joy and wonder to children and adults alike. Guests are welcome to stroll the grounds and listen to holiday tunes while sipping cocoa, cider or a local brew — or grabbing a snack from the Savory Thyme Cafe's weekend buffet. Entry is $18 for adults, $16 for kids 5-11 and free for children 4 and younger. Winter Lights tickets are date-specific and can't be purchased at the gate, so head to ncarboretum.org to book a time or for more information.
Another bright and cheerful event is the annual Shadrack's Christmas Wonderland, now lighting up the night at the WNC Agricultural Center Fairgrounds. In coordination with some festive, rock-riff music, the pulsing light display is a great place for families to celebrate the holiday spirit — all from comfort of their vehicles in a drive-thru experience. New this year to Shadrack's is Santa's Village, featuring children's games, a bouncy house, s'more roasting, refreshments and pictures with Santa himself. The music begins from dusk to 10 p.m. each night, including holidays, and entry costs $25 per family vehicle. Visit shadrackchristmas.com/asheville for more information.
All aboard the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad: The Polar Express has arrived. The one-hour and 15-minute minute train ride departs the depot in Bryson City and travels through quiet wilderness, making a special winter-only trip to the North Pole. The ride uses sounds and stories from the popular animated movie, treating passengers to cocoa and treats en route to Santa's home base. Santa greets each child with a special gift before the train heads back home. Varying by day and by location on the train, adult prices range from $42-$88 and, depending on age (along with day/location), child prices range from free to $64. Visit gsmr.com for tickets and more information.
Buy Photo Carolers perform season favorites among the Winter Lights at the North Carolina Arboretum. (Photo: Angeli Wright/awright@citizen-times.com)
To have a historic holiday, visit the Smith McDowell House for the annual Victorian Christmas celebration. Guests can tour the historic home and hear a reading of Clement Moore's "A Visit From St. Nicholas." While history buffs might find the educational experience fascinating, children of all ages and tastes will enjoy participating in the 12 Days of Christmas scavenger hunt, held throughout the house. The exhibit runs Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. through Jan. 8, but is closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year's Day. Head to wnchistory.org for more.
On Dec. 3, Biltmore Park Town Square presents its annual, free Holiday Magic and Memories celebration from 1-5:30 p.m. Jugglers, magicians and stilt-walkers will fill Town Square Boulevard, along with face-painting stations, balloon art, crafts for kids and refreshments. Santa Claus arrives at 2:30 p.m. for photos with children (and, of course, young-at-heart adults), and the Roberson High band will perform just before the lighting of the Christmas tree, from 5-5:30 p.m.
On Dec. 2 and 3, Biltmore Village celebrates its annual Dickens in the Village event, lighting up its streets with more than 1,000 luminaries and a 25-foot tree. The old fashioned celebration features carolers, Santa visits and horse-drawn carriage rides. The Christmas tree lighting happens at 6 p.m. Dec. 2, with a festive singalong and freshly roasted chestnuts. From 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Dec. 3, The Montford Park Players and other entertainers will be dressed in period costumes, caroling through the streets. Head to historicbiltmorevillage.com/dickens-festival for more about the celebration.
In downtown Asheville at the Grove Arcade, 20 competition gingerbread houses are on display from the Omni Grove Park Inn's annual Gingerbread House Competition. For its Winter Wonderland festivities, the beautiful downtown building is decked out in holiday decorations — and, each Sunday, Santa arrives in the building from 1-5 p.m. for story time and photos. To see the winners of the national gingerbread competition, head up the mountain to the Grove Park Inn, where the display is open to the public Sunday through Thursday after 3 p.m. until Jan. 5.
Santa gets extreme out at Chimney Rock State Park. The thing is: In order to climb down (and back up) millions of chimneys on Dec. 24 and 25, Santa needs a lot of practice. To keep in shape, he can be spotted each day from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Dec. 3-10, swinging from a 200-foot rappel on one of the world's largest (natural) chimneys. Santa on the Chimney gives kids a chance to both meet with Santa and Mrs. Claus and see him in action. The event promises live holiday music, hot cocoa, cookies and kids' activities. Hanging out with Santa is included in the park's admission cost, which is $13 for adults and $6 for kids 5-15. Learn more at chimneyrockpark.com.
Buy Photo The Winter Lights at the North Carolina Arboretum in 2015. (Photo: Angeli Wright/awright@citizen-times.com)
For a closer, shorter (and less expensive) train ride, drive out to North Asheville for the Jingle Bell Trolley Train with the Craggy Mountain Line. Operating out of the depot at 111 N. Woodfin Ave., the renovated 1927 Asheville streetcar pulls into the station adorned with twinkling lights and blasting jolly music. The ride is short, but fun — a three-mile open-car roll through the woods — and passengers can wait for their ride in a parked train car filled with cookies and cocoa. The ride ends back at the station and guests are herded into another car to meet with Santa. Rides run every hour on the hour from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Dec. 3, 10, 17 and 23. Rides are $10 per person and free for kids 3 and younger. Head to craggymountainline.com to learn more.
Honorable mentions: The Olde Fashioned Holiday celebration and parade in Hendersonville on Dec. 2 (parade beginning 10 a.m. Dec. 3), Brevard's Holiday Twilight Tour and Parade from 3-8 p.m. Dec. 3, Weaverville's Candlelight Stroll from 6-9 p.m. Dec. 9 and the ice skating rink in Hendersonville, open daily from 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
Places to chop down a tree
While it's certainly easy to head to your nearest hardware store to pick out the annual family Christmas tree, it's a whole other ballgame when it comes to picking out (and chopping down) your tree yourself. Sorry, trees.
Out in Leicester, Sandy Hollar Tree Farm is open daily from 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. until Dec. 18. Tree-pickers head out to the tree fields, past herds of farm animals, on a hayride with the farm's staff, then roam through the rows of firs. Guests can either (attempt to) saw the tree down themselves or opt for help from the staff (and their trusty chainsaws). A shop on the premises offers wreaths, garland, decorations, refreshments and crafts. Sandy Hollar is located at 63 Sandy Hollar Road. Reach the farm at 828-683-3645.
Over in Jackson County, Tom Sawyer Tree Farm and its Elf Village offer 80 acres of Fraser firs, open daily until Dec. 23. Sizes range from three to 12 feet, and after finding the perfect tree, guests can visit the elf-sized collection of houses in the Elf Village, where kids can make crafts, visit Santa Claus, write and mail letters to Santa, hear holiday stories, roast s’mores and take horse and carriage rides. Tom Sawyer farm is at 240 Chimney Pond Road in Glenville and can be reached at 828-743-5456.
Up in Marshall, pick a tree from Frosty Mountain Christmas Trees, at 13623 Highway 212. A short distance off the Interstate, near the Tennessee state line, the farm grows 80,000 trees on 55 acres up high in the mountains. Find the farm by looking for its enormous American-flag barn. Call Frosty Mountain at 828-656-8100 for directions or information.
Looking for one closer to you? There are lots of farms to choose from in Western North Carolina. Start by looking up these farms to figure out which farm (and tree): Boyd Mountain Christmas Tree Farm and Mehaffey Tree Farm in Waynesville, Buck Knob Farm in Cullowhee, Hutch's Mountain Trees in Glenville (for more in Jackson County, check out jacksoncountytrees.com), Little Switzerland Fraser Firs in McDowell County and, way up in Avery County, Cartner Christmas Tree Farm.
Places to catch a festive film
On Dec. 12, don't miss a double feature of holiday favorites at one of Asheville's largest entertainment venues. The Orange Peel will first screen the Will Ferrell classic "Elf" at 6:30 p.m. (rated PG) for a free seated show, and then, at 8:30 p.m. the R-rated holiday drama "Love Actually" rolls onto the screen for a second free show.
Down on Asheville's South Slope, Grail Moviehouse is planning to get in the spirit with "It's a Wonderful Life." In fact, the owners credit a scene from the movie for one-half of the theater's name (the other half, of course, from "The Holy Grail"): When George Bailey runs down the street shouting Christmas wishes in the movie, he shouts, "Merry Christmas, Moviehouse!" The theater also expects to have a few kids' holiday favorites as well, along with a holiday-themed film for its "Bad Movie Night!" series, which celebrates cheap and cheesy B-movies. Check in to grailmoviehouse.com for show times and dates.
Places to see a holiday show
In 2010, NC Stage and Flat Rock Playhouse joined forces to bring "Life from WVL: It's a Wonderful Life" to Western North Carolina audiences. This year, each company has its own production. (Photo: File photo by Erin Brethauer)
Nothing quite says "holiday season" like the magic of classic Christmas theater. Of course, plays are wonderful any time of year, but there's just something about watching an old favorite on stage that instantly puts you right into the seasonal spirit.
To start off with a true classic, from the classic North Carolina state theater, Flat Rock Playhouse is bringing "A Christmas Carol" to stage this season, now through Dec. 17. The Charles Dickens tale comes alive on the theater's Mainstage in Flat Rock, Wednesday through Sunday, with shows at 2 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $15-$40 at flatrockplayhouse.org.
Also kicking off the holidays with "A Christmas Carol," The Montford Park Players are straying from the troop's normal Shakespearean lineup. Shows start at 5 p.m. on Dec. 10, 11, 17 and 18 at the Hazel Robinson Amphitheater, 92 Gay St., in Asheville's Montford neighborhood. Shows are free, though, for this show, the Players suggest bringing along some dry or canned goods to be donated to MANNA FoodBank in the giving spirit.
Over in the River Arts District, the Magnetic Theatre presents another year of comedy with "The 45th Annual Bernstein Family Christmas Spectacular."The sketch comedy romp delights audiences in Asheville every year with new material and delightfully drunken family traditions. The R-rated performance sells out nearly every year, so advanced ticket purchase is recommended. The show opens Dec. 2 and runs Thursdays through Sundays at 7:30 p.m. until Dec. 23. On Dec. 10 and 17, the theater will present extra 10 p.m. late shows. Tickets are $24 and are available at themagnetictheatre.org.
Also hilarious at Magnetic is the monthly SuperHappy Trivia Challenge live game show, which is doing its holiday special at the theater at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 14. A combination of "The Match Game" and NPR's "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me," SuperHappy invites panelists of Asheville personalities to answer brain-tickling questions in front of a live audience. Tickets are $16 at themagnetictheatre.org.
At downtown's North Carolina Stage Company comes history-laden entertainment with "All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914." The show tells the unexpected tale of a peaceful moment during World War I, when Allied and German soldiers laid down their weapons to celebrate the holiday together. The show runs Dec. 7-23, Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 |
People of the Bhatti tribe in Pakistan
Zosimus (491-518)
Next came the massive entry of Albinos from Central Asia (during this period Asia was almost completely emptied of Albinos): The Byzantine historian Zosimus (491-518), In his book "Historia Nova" gives this account as to why the White tribes (Germanics and Slavs) started westward into Europe.
Quote: While these affairs were so conducted, a barbarous nation, which till then had remained unknown, suddenly made its appearance, attacking the Scythians beyond the Ister. These were the Huns. It is doubtful whether they were Scythians, who lived under regal government, or the people whom Herodotus states to reside near the Ister, and describes as a weak people with flat noses, or whether they came into Europe from Asia. For I have met with, a tradition, which relates that the Cimmerian Bosphorus was rendered firm land by mud brought down the Tanais, by which they were originally afforded a land-passage from Asia into Europe. However this might be, they, with their wives, children, horses, and carriages, invaded the Scythians who resided on the Ister; and though they were not capable of fighting on foot, nor understood in what, manner even to walk, since they could not fix their feet firmly on the ground, but live perpetually, and even sleep, on horseback, yet by the rapidity with which they wheeled about their horses, by the suddenness of their excursions and retreat, shooting as they rode, they occasioned great slaughter among the Scythians. In this they were so incessant, that the surviving Scythians were compelled to leave their habitations to these Huns, and crossing the Ister, to supplicate the emperor to receive them, on their promise to adhere to him as faithful soldiers. The officers of the fortified towns near the Ister deferred complying with this petition, until they should learn the pleasure of the emperor, who permitted them to be received without their arms. The tribunes and other officers therefore went over to bring the Barbarians unarmed into the Roman territory; but occupied themselves solely in the gratification of their brutal appetites, or in procuring slaves, neglecting every thing that related to public affairs. A considerable number therefore crossed over with their arms, through this negligence. These, on arriving into the Roman dominion, forgot both their petition and their oaths. Thus all Thrace, Pannonia, and the whole country as far as Macedon and Thessaly were filled with Barbarians, who pillaged all in their way.
Jordanes, (circa 551 A.D)
The Roman historian Jordanes, in his book on the history of the Goths, called "Getica" (circa 551 A.D), gives a similar account as to why the White tribes (Germanics and Slavs - Turks came later) started westward into Europe.
Quote: But after a short space of time, as Orosius relates, the race of the Huns, fiercer than ferocity itself, flamed forth against the Goths. We learn from old traditions that their origin was as follows: Filimer, king of the Goths, son of Gadaric the Great, who was the fifth in succession to hold the rule of the Getae after their departure from the island of Scandza,--and who, as we have said, entered the land of Scythia with his tribe,--found among his people certain witches, whom he called in his native tongue Haliurunnae. Suspecting these women, he expelled them from the midst of his race and compelled them to wander in solitary exile afar from his army. (122) There the unclean spirits, who beheld them as they wandered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon them and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps,--a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech. Such was the descent of the Huns who came to the country of the Goths.
(129) When the Getae beheld this active race that had invaded many nations, they took fright and consulted with their king how they might escape from such a foe. Now although Hermanaric, king of the Goths, was the conqueror of many tribes, as we have said above, yet while he was deliberating on this invasion of the Huns, the treacherous tribe of the Rosomoni, who at that time were among those who owed him their homage, took this chance to catch him unawares. For when the king had given orders that a certain woman of the tribe I have mentioned, Sunilda by name, should be bound to wild horses and torn apart by driving them at full speed in opposite directions (for he was roused to fury by her husband's treachery to him), her brothers Sarus and Ammius came to avenge their sister's death and plunged a sword into Hermanaric's side. Enfeebled by this blow, he dragged out a miserable existence in bodily weakness. (130) Balamber, king of the Huns, took advantage of his ill health to move an army into the country of the Ostrogoths, from whom the Visigoths had already separated because of some dispute. Meanwhile Hermanaric, who was unable to endure either the pain of his wound or the inroads of the Huns, died full of days at the great age of one hundred and ten years. The fact of his death enabled the Huns to prevail over those Goths who, as we have said, dwelt in the East and were called Ostrogoths.
The White (Albino) migrations from Central Asia
(131) The Visigoths, who were their other allies and inhabitants of the western country, were terrified as their kinsmen had been, and knew not how to plan for safety against the race of the Huns. After long deliberation by common consent they finally sent ambassadors into Romania to the Emperor Valens, brother of Valentinian, the elder Emperor, to say that if he would give them part of Thrace or Moesia to keep, they would submit themselves to his laws and commands. That he might have greater confidence in them, they promised to become Christians, if he would give them teachers who spoke their language. (132) When Valens learned this, he gladly and promptly granted what he had himself intended to ask. He received the Getae into the region of Moesia and placed them there as a wall of defense for his kingdom against other tribes. And since at that time the Emperor Valens, who was infected with the Arian perfidy, had closed all the churches of our party, he sent as preachers to them those who favored his sect. They came and straightway filled a rude and ignorant people with the poison of their heresy. Thus the Emperor Valens made the Visigoths Arians rather than Christians. (133) Moreover, from the love they bore them, they preached the gospel both to the Ostrogoths and to their kinsmen the Gepidae, teaching them to reverence this heresy, and they invited all people of their speech everywhere to attach themselves to this sect. They themselves as we have said, crossed the Danube and settled Dacia Ripensis, Moesia and Thrace by permission of the Emperor.
Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, the Rhodope mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east. The areas it comprises are southeastern Bulgaria (Northern Thrace), northeastern Greece (Western Thrace), and the European part of Turkey (Eastern Thrace). The biggest part of Thrace is part of present-day Bulgaria. In Thrace, the agreement made by Rome with the Albino Goths, resulted in the local Black Kings having to take Albino princesses as wives. Naturally the common Blacks were expected to do the same. This resulted in a partially mulatto society.
Thus the Huns forced "MOST" Whites out of their ancestral lands in Asia, and into Europe: causing death and displacement for the native Blacks in Europe. Hungary was a center of Hun activity so we will have a look at ancient Hungary. As an interesting note: the Albinos say the following "The exonym "Hungarian" is thought to be derived from the Bulgar-Turkic On-Ogur (meaning "ten" Ogurs), which was the name of the Utigur Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars, and prior to the arrival of Magyars. Strange, wouldn't it seem more reasonable that Hungary is derived from "Hun" the powerful nation of Mongols who once ruled it? We can't help but wonder if the fact of the Blackness of the Huns might have something to do with that nonsense.
Ancient Hungary
Hungary's original inhabitants were the Pannonii (Pannonians), a group of tribes akin to Illyrians. From the 4th century B.C. it was invaded by various Celtic tribes. Little is heard of Pannonia until 35 B.C, when its inhabitants, allies of the Dalmatians, were attacked by Augustus Caesar, who conquered and occupied Siscia (Sisak). The country was not however, definitely subdued until 9 B.C, when it was incorporated into Illyricum, the frontier of which was thus extended as far as the Danube.
In AD 6, the Pannonians, with the Dalmatians and other Illyrian tribes, engaged in the so-called Great Illyrian Revolt, and were overcome by Tiberius and Germanicus Julius Caesar (He received the agnomen Germanicus in 9 B.C, when it was posthumously awarded to his father in honour of his victories in Germania). After a hard-fought campaign which lasted for three years, the rebellion was crushed in AD 9, the province of Illyricum was dissolved, and its lands were divided between the new provinces of Pannonia in the north and Dalmatia in the south. The date of the division is unknown, most certainly after AD 20 but before AD 50. The proximity of dangerous barbarian tribes (Quadi, Marcomanni) necessitated the presence of a large number of troops (seven legions in later times), and numerous fortresses were built on the bank of the Danube.
Some time between the years 102 and 107, between the first and second Dacian wars, Trajan divided the province into Pannonia Superior (western part with the capital Carnuntum), and Pannonia Inferior (eastern part with the capital Aquincum). According to Ptolemy, these divisions were separated by a line drawn from Arrabona (Győr) in the north to Servitium (Gradiška) in the south; later, the boundary was placed further east.
(The Carpi or Carpiani were an ancient people that resided in the former Principality of Moldavia (modern eastern Romania). The archaeology of Moldavia in the period 106-318 shows the coexistence of two distinct material cultures, one sedentary, the other exhibiting the features of a nomadic steppe culture - the Albinos. The sedentary culture was on a material level not significantly higher than other barbarian regions on the fringes of the Roman empire. The ethnic affiliation of the Carpi remains disputed, as there is no direct evidence in the surviving ancient literary sources. A strong body of modern scholarly opinion considers that the Carpi were a tribe of the Dacian nation. Other scholars have linked the Carpi to a variety of ethnic groups, including Sarmatians, Thracians, Germans, and Celts).
For five hundred years the Carpathian Basin had been "the people's highway", with various White tribes such as the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards migrating across the area after sojourning for various lengths of time. Later, the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the stress of this migration of Germanic tribes, and Carpian pressure. After four centuries of existence, Roman civilization was swept away by the great migrations of Albino peoples.
Later, the Huns who had been chasing the Albinos out of Asia arrived: that was the military power that finally forced the withdrawal of the Roman legions. In the middle of the 5th century, Pannonia was ceded to the Huns by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II.
The Huns
The Huns were a nomadic pastoral people from Mongolia eastern Asia who invaded Europe circa 370 A.D, and created an enormous empire centered in Germany. They were possibly the descendants of the Xiongnu, a northern people who were frequently at war with the Shang of China. Note, the Turkic, so-called "White Huns" (Hephthalites) had no direct connection with the Huns, these were White tribes who deliberately called themselves Huns, in order to frighten their enemies.
Attila
The historian Priscus (circa 450 A.D.) was a Greek-speaking Roman citizen who often meant with Attila, he described Attila’s personal features in his works, which are now mostly lost. Jordanes was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat who turned his hand to history later in life, he quotes Priscus thusly: When Attila's brother Bleda who ruled over a great part of the Huns had been slain by Attila's treachery, the latter united all the people under his own rule. Gathering also a host of the other tribes which he then held under his sway he sought to subdue the foremost nations of the world---the Romans and Visigoths. His army is said to have numbered 500,000 men. He was a man born into the world to shake the nations, the scourge of all lands, who in some way terrified all mankind by the dreadful rumors noised abroad concerning him. He was haughty in his walk, rolling his eyes here and there, so that the power of his proud spirit appeared in the movement of his body. He was indeed a lover of war, yet restrained in action, mighty in counsel, gracious to suppliants and lenient to those who were once received into his protection. He was short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head: his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with gray: and he had a flat nose and a swarthy complexion showing the evidences of his origin..
The images above are taken from this Chinese scroll
Modern Mongolians - the kind Albino media never shows
During Atila's reign he was one of the most feared enemies of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans. The Huns invaded the Sassanid Persian Empire. When defeated in Armenia by the Sassanians, the Huns abandoned their invasion and turned their attentions back to Europe. In 440 they reappeared in force on the borders of the Roman Empire, attacking the merchants at the market on the north bank of the Danube that had been established by the treaty.
Persian Sassanian King Shapur II
Crossing the Danube, they laid waste to the cities of Illyricum and forts on the river, including (according to Priscus) Viminacium, a city of Moesia. Their advance began at Margus, where they demanded that the Romans turn over a bishop who had retained property that Attila regarded as his. While the Romans discussed turning the Bishop over, he slipped away secretly to the Huns and betrayed the city to them.
While the Huns attacked city-states along the Danube, the Albino Vandals led by Geiseric captured the Western Roman province of Africa and its capital of Carthage. Carthage was the richest province of the Western Empire and a main source of food for Rome. The Romans stripped the Balkans area of forces to use them to defeat the Vandals in Africa, which left Attila a clear path through Illyricum into the Balkans, which they invaded in 441. The Hunnish army sacked Margus and Viminacium, and then took Singidunum (modern Belgrade) and Sirmium. During 442 Theodosius recalled his troops from Sicily and ordered a large issue of new coins to finance operations against the Huns. Believing he could defeat the Huns, he refused Atila's demands.
Attila responded with a campaign in 443. Striking along the Danube, the Huns, equipped with new military weapons like the battering rams and rolling siege towers, overran the military centres of Ratiara and successfully besieged Naissus (modern Niš). Advancing along the Nisava River, the Huns next took Serdica, Philippopolis, and Arcadiopolis. They encountered and destroyed a Roman army outside Constantinople but were stopped by the double walls of the Eastern Roman capital (Constantinople - Byzantium). They defeated a second army near Callipolis (modern Gallipoli). Theodosius, stripped of his armed forces, admitted defeat, sending the Magister militum per Orientem Anatolius to negotiate peace terms. The terms were harsher than the previous treaty: the Emperor agreed to hand over 6,000 Roman pounds (ca. 2000 kg) of gold as punishment for having disobeyed the terms of the treaty during the invasion; the yearly tribute was tripled, rising to 2,100 Roman pounds (ca. 700 kg) in gold; and the ransom for each Roman prisoner rose to 12 solidi.
In 450, Attila proclaimed his intent to attack the Visigoth kingdom of Toulouse by making an alliance with Emperor Valentinian III. He had previously been on good terms with the Western Roman Empire and its influential general Flavius Aëtius. Aëtius had spent a brief exile among the Huns in 433, and the troops Attila provided him against the Goths and Bagaudae had helped earn him the largely honorary title of magister militum in the west. The gifts and diplomatic efforts of Geiseric, who opposed and feared the Visigoths, may also have influenced Attila's plans. However, Emperor Valentinian's sister was Honoria, who, in order to escape her forced betrothal to a Roman senator, had sent Atila a plea for help – and her engagement ring – in the spring of 450. Though Honoria may not have intended a proposal of marriage, Attila chose to interpret her message as such. He accepted, asking for half of the western Empire as dowry. When Valentinian discovered the plan, only the influence of his mother Galla Placidia convinced him to exile, rather than kill his sister Honoria. He also wrote to Attila strenuously denying the legitimacy of the supposed marriage proposal. Attila sent an emissary to Ravenna to proclaim that Honoria was innocent, that the proposal had been legitimate, and that he would come to claim what was rightfully his.
Attila gathered his vassals—Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Scirians, Heruls, Thuringians, Alans, Burgundians, among others and began his march west. In 451, he arrived in Belgica with an army half a million strong. Aëtius moved to oppose Attila, gathering troops from among the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Celts. A mission by Avitus, and Attila's continued westward advance, convinced the Visigoth king Theodoric I (Theodorid) to ally with the Romans. The combined armies reached Orléans ahead of Attila, thus checking and turning back the Hunnish advance. Aëtius gave chase and caught the Huns at a place usually assumed to be near Catalaunum (modern Châlons-en-Champagne).
The two armies clashed in the Battle of Châlons, whose outcome is commonly considered to be a strategic victory for the Visigothic-Roman alliance. The Albino king Theodoric was killed in the fighting and Aëtius failed to press his advantage, because he feared the consequences of an overwhelming Visigothic triumph as much as he did a defeat. From Aëtius' point of view, the best outcome was what occurred: Theodoric died, Attila was in retreat and disarray, and the Romans had the benefit of appearing victorious.
Two examples of just how delusional modern Albinos are.
Attila returned in 452 to claim his marriage to Honoria anew, invading and ravaging Italy along the way. The city of Venice was founded as a result of these attacks when the residents fled to small islands in the Venetian Lagoon. His army sacked numerous cities and razed Aquileia completely, leaving no trace of it behind. Legend has it he built a castle on top of a hill north of Aquileia to watch the city burn, thus founding the town of Udine, where the castle can still be found. Aëtius, who lacked the strength to offer battle, managed to harass and slow Attila's advance with only a shadow force. Attila finally halted at the River Po. By this point disease and starvation may have broken out in Attila's camp, thus helping to stop his invasion.
Emperor Valentinian III sent three envoys, the high civilian officers Gennadius Avienus and Trigetius, as well as the Bishop of Rome Leo I, who met Attila at Mincio in the vicinity of Mantua, and obtained from him the promise that he would withdraw from Italy and negotiate peace with the Emperor. After Attila left Italy and returned to his palace across the Danube, he planned to strike at Constantinople again and reclaim the tribute which Marcian had stopped. (Marcian was the successor of Theodosius and had ceased paying tribute in late 450 while Attila was occupied in the west; multiple invasions by the Huns and others had left the Balkans with little to plunder).
Attila died in the early months of 453: The conventional account, from Priscus, says that at a feast celebrating his latest marriage to the beautiful and young Ildico (if uncorrupted, the name suggests she was Albino) he suffered a severe nosebleed and choked to death in a stupor. An alternative theory is that he succumbed to internal bleeding after heavy drinking or a condition called esophageal varices, where dilated veins in the lower part of the esophagus rupture leading to death by hemorrhage.
Jordanes says: "The greatest of all warriors should be mourned with no feminine lamentations and with no tears, but with the blood of men." His horsemen galloped in circles around the silken tent where Attila lay in state, singing in his dirge, according to Cassiodorus and Jordanes: "Who can rate this as death, when none believes it calls for vengeance?" Then they celebrated a strava (lamentation) over his burial place with great feasting. Legend says that he was laid to rest in a triple coffin made of gold, silver, and iron, along with some of the spoils of his conquests. His men diverted a section of the river, buried the coffin under the riverbed, and then were killed to keep the exact location a secret.
Byzantine Emperor Justinian II
Justinian II (669 – 711) was the last Byzantine Emperor of the Heraclian Dynasty, reigning from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711. Justinian II generated enormous opposition to his reign, and it resulted in his deposition in 695 in a popular uprising, and he only returned to the throne in 705 with the help of a Bulgar and Slav army. His second reign was even more despotic than the first, and it too saw his eventual overthrow in 711, abandoned by his army who turned on him before killing him.
Roman Coins of Emperor Justinian II depicting Jesus Christ as a Black Man
Later, in about the seventh century, Mongols once again went to war to rid Asia of it's last Whites - the Turks!
The University of Calgary: Applied History Research Group - The End of Europe's Middle Ages
Origins of the Ottoman Empire
Pressured out of their homes in the Asian steppes by the Mongols, the Turkish tribes converted to Islam during the eighth and ninth centuries. By the tenth century, one of the Turkish tribes, the seljuk, had become a significant power in the Islamic world and had adopted a settled life that included Islamic orthodoxy, a central administration, and taxation. However, many other Turkish groups remained nomadic and, pursuing the gazi tradition, sought to conquer land for Islam and to acquire war booty for themselves. This led them into conflict with the Seljuk Turks, and to pacify the nomadic tribes, the Seljuks directed them to the eastern domain of the Byzantine Empire, Anatolia. The tribe known as the Ottomans arose from one of the smaller emirates established in northwestern Anatolia after 1071. The dynasty was named for Osman (1259-1326), who began to expand his kingdom into the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor, moving his capital to Bursa in 1326.
With the coming of the White Turks, now Blacks in Anatolia, Arabia, the Middle East, and North Africa, would be killed and displaced - and many who survived would be "Absorbed": creating a new "Sub-Race" of "Brown-Skinned" Turks, who often call themselves Arabs: vis-à-vis their Islamic religion. They are now the ruling elite in North Africa, the middle East, and Arabia.
Conversely: the Black Asians would themselves be "Absorbed" by the remaining Central Asian Albinos and Mongol Albinos: Producing the modern Asian. In 1218, Genghis Khan - one of these now "Whitenized" Asians, sent a trade mission to the Turk Qutb ud-Dīn Muhammad I (who by 1205 had conquered the remaining parts of the Great Seljuq Empire, proclaiming himself Shah (king): he called himself "Khwarezm-Shah"), but at the town of Otrara (a Central Asian town that was located along the Silk Road near the current town of Karatau in Kazakhstan) the governor there, suspecting the Khan's ambassadors to be spies, confiscated their goods and executed them. Genghis Khan demanded reparations, which the Shah refused to pay. Genghis Khan then sent a second, purely diplomatic mission, they too were murdered. Genghis retaliated with a force of 200,000 men, launching a multi-pronged invasion, his guides were Muslim merchants from Transoxania. During the years 1220–21, Bukhara, Samarkand, Herat (all Central Asian cities), Tus (Susa), and Neyshabur (Persian cities) were razed, and the whole populations were slaughtered. (This represented the first wholesale slaughter of Black Persians).
The advance into Europe continued with Mongol invasions of Poland, Hungary and Transylvania. When the western flank of the Mongols plundered Polish cities, a European alliance consisting of the Poles, the Moravians, the Christian military orders of the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and the Templars assembled sufficient forces to halt the Mongol advance at Legnica, but only briefly. The Hungarian army, their Croatian allies and the Templar Knights were beaten by Mongols at the banks of Sajo River on April 11, 1241. After their victories over European Knights at Legnica and Muhi, Mongol armies quickly advanced across Bohemia, Serbia, Babenberg Austria and into the Holy Roman Empire. But before Batu's forces could continue into Vienna and northern Albania, he received news of Ogedei's death in December 1241. As was customary in Mongol military tradition, all princes of Genghis's line had to attend the kurultai to elect a successor. Batu and his western Mongol army withdrew from Central Europe the next year.
The Chronicon Pictum (Képes Krónika) The Chronicon Pictum (English: Illuminated Chronicle or Vienna Illuminated Chronicle, Hungarian: Képes Krónika - is a medieval illustrated chronicle from the Kingdom of Hungary from the fourteenth century. It represents the international artistic style of the royal courts in the court of Louis I of Hungary. The illuminated decoration of the manuscript was performed in the Kingdom of Hungary before 1360 and it provides knowledge of Hungarian life, historical traditions, and legends. Its full name is: Chronicon pictum, Marci de Kalt, Chronica de gestis Hungarorum, that is Illustrated Chronicle, Mark of Kalt's Chronicle About the Deeds of the Hungarians. The 147 pictures of the chronicle are great source of information on medieval Hungarian cultural history, costume, and court life in the 14th century. Many miniatures seen inside this chronicle are painted with gold. The artistic value of the miniatures are quite high, if we compare similar miniatures from Western Europe from the same time. The characters are drawn with detail and with knowledge of anatomy. Even the eyeballs are painted, which can only be checked through microscope. All miniatures showing Attila the Hun are disrupted or even rubbed out (especially the last, showing Attila's death); this cannot be due to the time as all other miniatures and text are preserved well. The miniatures make use of symbolism, i.e. "primus ingressus" ('first incoming') is with a camel, while the "secundus ingressus" ('second incoming') is with a white horse, probably meaning that entering the Carpathian Basin the first time was not a successful or was a culturally diverted act (as the camel is a "diverted" horse and white horse is the "pure quality"). The text of Latin is without error and is representing a high quality. For unknown reasons, the chronicle was stored in Vienna, Austria, where it was found in the 19th century; this is why it is also referred as "Vienna Illuminated Chronicle". The manuscript is presently kept in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Budapest).
The Franks
In the 560s the Avars (a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins: They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups: founded the Avar Khaganate, a state which maintained supremacy in the region for more than two centuries and had the military power to launch attacks against all its neighbours. The Avar Khagnate was weakened by constant wars and outside pressure, and the Black Franks under Charlemagne managed to defeat the Avars, ending their 250-year rule. In the middle of the 9th century, the Slavic Balaton Principality, also known as Lower Pannonia, was established by the Franks as a frontier outpost when they destroyed the Avar state in the western part of the Pannonian plain; however this vassal state was destroyed in 900 by Hungarian tribes.
After the fall of the great Hun and Avar nomadic empires, only the Western Slavic and Southern Slavic people, who had been settling in the area since the 6th and 7th centuries succeeded in establishing themselves in the Carpathian Basin. In 895/896, under the leadership of Árpád, some new Albinos crossed the Carpathians and entered the Carpathian Basin. The tribe called Magyers was the leading tribe of an alliance that conquered the centre of the basin. The Magyers confederation of Turkic tribes was probably led by two high princes: the kende (their spiritual ruler) and the gyula (their military leader). The high princes were either elected by the leaders of the tribes or appointed by the Khagan of the Khazars (Modern Jews) who had been exerting influence over the Magyars. Around 862 the seven tribes separated from the Khazars.The force led by Árpád is estimated at about 400,000 people, consisting of seven Turkic tribes, one Kabar tribe, and other smaller tribes.
In the first half of the tenth century, during the decades that followed the Conquest, raiding expeditions of Magyar mounted warriors subjected all of Europe to a constant state of terror. In time, however, they began to feel the effects of Western counter-strategy. When the Magyars invaded Bavaria in 955, the armoured cavalry of Otto the Great, of the Black Holy Roman Emperor, checked their advance, and in the decisive battle at Lechfeld it annihilated the Magyar assailants. Although the Magyars launched further attacks on Byzantium following this devastating defeat, it became clear that they had arrived at a decisive historic cross-road. Two alternatives confronted them: either they settle down, form a state and adjust themselves to the people of Europe, or else the same fate would befall them as that of the other nomadic peoples who had been annihilated in previous centuries.
The Hungarian Kings
Stephen I
Stephen I, also Saint Stephen, was the last Grand Prince of the Hungarians between 997 and 1000 or 1001, and the first King of Hungary from 1000 or 1001 until his death in 1038. He was born as Vajk in Esztergom. The year of his birth is uncertain, but many details of his life suggest that he was born in or after 975. He was the only son of Grand Prince Géza and his wife, Sarolt, who was descended from the prominent family of the Gyulas. Although both of his parents were baptized, Stephen was the first member of his family to become a devout Christian. He married Gisela of Bavaria, a scion of the imperial Ottonian dynasty.
After succeeding his father in 997, Stephen had to fight for the throne against his relative, Koppány, who was supported by large numbers of pagan warriors. He defeated Koppány mainly with the assistance of foreign knights, including Vecelin, Hont and Pázmány, but also with help from native lords. He was crowned on 25 December 1000 or 1 January 1001 with a crown sent by Pope Sylvester II. In a series of wars against semi-independent tribes and chieftains—including the "Black Hungarians" and his uncle, Gyula the Younger—he unified the Carpathian Basin. He protected the independence of his kingdom by forcing the invading troops of Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor to withdraw from Hungary in 1030.
Note the reference to "Black Hungarians" above: as would be expected, the Albinos have a ridiculous explanation. From Wiki: "Black Hungarians" or Black Magyars were a semi-independent group of the Magyars before and after the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century. The nomadic tribes sign the four cardinal points by colors: The North is "black", West is "white", South is "red", and East is "blue".
Stephen established at least one archbishopric, six bishoprics and three Benedictine monasteries; thus the Church in Hungary developed independently of the archbishops of the Holy Roman Empire. He ensured the spread of Christianity among his subjects with severe punishments for ignoring Christian customs. His system of local administration was based on counties organized around fortresses and administered by royal officials. Hungary, which enjoyed a lasting period of peace during his reign, became a preferred route for pilgrims and merchants traveling between Western Europe and the Holy Land or Constantinople
Charles I (1288 – ), the first King of Hungary and Croatia (1308–42) of the House of Anjou. He was also descended from the old Hungarian Árpád dynasty. His claim to the throne of Hungary was contested by several pretenders. Nevertheless, although he was only a child when his grandfather, King Charles II of Naples sent him to Hungary in 1300, Charles would strengthen his rule in the kingdom against his opponents and the powerful magnates following a long series of internal struggles. His most successful achievement was the mutual defense union with Poland and Bohemia against the Habsburgs (Holy Roman Empire). Charles was born in Naples, southern Italy, the only son of Charles Martel, Prince of Salerno and his wife Clementia, a daughter of King Rudolph I of Germany. His paternal grandmother, Mary, a daughter of King Stephen V of Hungary, declared her claim to Hungary following the death of her brother, King Ladislaus IV of Hungary.
The House of Anjou (Angevin Empire)
The term Angevin Empire is a modern term describing the collection of states once ruled by the Angevin Plantagenet dynasty.
The Angevins, also known as the House of Anjou, were a noble family founded in the early years of the Carolingian Empire. They first emerged as part of the minor feudal nobility, in what would soon be known as the Kingdom of France during the 10th century. After Geoffrey III, Count of Anjou inherited Anjou from his mother in 1060, the family began to grow in prominence, soon acquiring Maine. After going on crusade and becoming close to the Knights Templar, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was received through marriage by Fulk of Jerusalem in 1131. The senior line of the family branched off to become the House of Plantagenet, assuming the nickname of Geoffrey V of Anjou, its founder, eventually going on to rule the Kingdom of England, Lordship of Ireland, Principality of Wales and various other holdings in the vast Angevin Empire in 1154.
The Carolingian Empire (800–888) is a historiographical term which has been used to refer to the realm of the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty in the Early Middle Ages. This dynasty is seen as the founders of France and Germany, and its beginning date is based on the crowning of Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, and ends with the death of Charles the Fat. Depending on one's perspective, this Empire can be seen as the later history of the Frankish Realm or the early history of France and of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Crusades
Albino history often implies that the Crusades were about freeing the “Holy Lands” from Arab Muslims. But historically Black Empires never fought over religion, everyone’s religion |
scientist’s level of reality.
The point, for the climate denier, is not that the truth should be sought with open-minded sincerity – it is that he has declared the independence of his corner of reality from control by the overarching, techno-scientific consensus reality. He has withdrawn from the reality forced upon him and has retreated to a more comfortable, human-sized bubble.
In these terms, the denier’s retreat from consensus reality approximates the role of the cellular insurgents in Afghanistan vis-a-vis the American occupying force: this overarching behemoth I rebel against may well represent something larger, more free, more wealthy, more democratic, or more in touch with objective reality, but it has been imposed upon me (or I feel it has), so I am going to withdraw from it into illogic, emotion and superstition and from there I am going to declare war upon it.
So, from this point of view, we can meaningfully refer to deniers, birthers, Tea Partiers and so forth as “reality insurgents”, and thus usefully apply the principles of 4GW to their activities – notably, they are clearly operating on a faster OODA loop than the defenders of mainstream reality, and thus able to respond more quickly, with greater innovation, than the sclerotic bureaucracy of institutionalised reality. [Open source bazaars – media-effective denial memes spread virally through community far quicker than effective strategies of rebuttal do.]
(n.b. There is a problematic tendency with a certain type of intellect – the scientist, the technocrat – which assumes that, because it is prepared to organise and change on the basis of dry statistics and data, then, if only everyone else could be exposed to the same data, there would be instant consensus for change. In fact, of course, the majority of human beings do not work like this.
Indeed, there is a positive, indeed, cognitively vital, aspect to intuitive thinking, and the realm of myths, narratives, paradigms of meaning, purpose and significance underlies even the worldview of the technocrat-scientist. Without an ability to engage with and understand the deep psyche, the techno-scientist is doomed to repeat his statistics into the ether without meaningful effect.)
The deniers are operating from a different ontological platform – an emotional reading of reality where there are forces wishing to control them and restrict their personal power and agency, and there are the forces of freedom, which is the side they believe they are on.
They are wrong, of course, but it is important to demonstrate to them that they are wrong on the level they are operating from – not by citing more climate statistics at them, but by demonstrating that the forces they are serving are actually the most vicious extant representatives of the control they profess to hate.
And all this is but one example of the ways in which the traditional ideological blocs of the Cold War have fragmented into complex multipartite civil reality wars.
Reality, you might say, as failed state; its interior collapsing into permanent conflict under the convergent pressures of deviant globalisation, its coasts predated upon by new mutant forms of memetic pirates.
Each individual also carries reality-divisions inside their own head:
As a general point, there is a fundamental dissassociation endemic to industrialised humans that results in some deleterious, and, at this critical juncture, very dangerous outcomes. We necessarily develop many internal veils and compartments in order to buffer the fundamental ethical, environmental and cognitive dissonances industrialised existence presents us with.
The clearest example, though, and perhaps the major reality-distinction in most people’s minds, is between their immediate, everyday life and the magic fantasy world that exists in the media-realm.
This is part of the reason why voting is always such a let down - you mark your piece of paper and walk out and feel cheated, somehow, of the promised connection with the Other world.
Is it any wonder that we don’t, really, expect anything to ever come of the political process? Can we even imagine what it would feel like to organise ourselves around beliefs, ideas, a particular narrative of reality any more?
This is just one example of the divisions within ourselves: We dimly recognise the scale of the environmental crises, and then waste moments of our lives fretting about whether our local recycling scheme accepts plastic bottles. We wish to be delivered from our lust for foreign holidays – but, like St Augustine, not too soon. We hope for people in the public eye to speak the truth, then laugh at their naivety when they fail to anticipate how unrealistic, how gauche doing so makes them seem.
This is a fertile region to mine for effective change – in the mediated nature of our relationship with each other, in our increasing mutual reality-drift away from one another, and in our own divided, disassociated minds, incapable of actually connecting together the realities we know, the facts and ideas we come to believe in, and the image of power and government which hangs before us in our mind’s eye.
I can only offer these leads – the power of unflinching awareness, of looking directly at the crisis we find ourselves in; the natural centrifugal tendency of human consciousness, when it is given the necessary time and space, free from distraction and negative stimulus; our minds’ ability to re-coalesce, despite ourselves, into unified singularity; and, perhaps most importantly, the remediating power of joining together in reality with other human beings: of connecting the ideas, the facts, the data, the lonely realities discovered in the long watches of the night lit only by the ghostly lantern-light of a laptop, with the immediate, pulsing, reviving, hope-giving reality of mutual conviviality and of shared human presence.It’s just one of those days, right? You’re sitting there with a big to-do list and no motivation to get started.
This happens to all of us from time to time. Such a day can struck with no warning. Sometimes even immediately after a highly productive day.
… So now what? What to do to save it and get some work done despite the adversity?
First of all, let’s face it, if you don’t feel like doing something you most likely won’t generate any good results… Do you expect a sprinter to win the 100 meter dash at the Olympics if they don’t feel like running? Of course not, it’s impossible.
So is there any point in forcing yourself to work only so you can screw it up? I’m not going to say something like “yes and no” because that’s just lame and I hate when people say that (don’t you?), so I will choose one side and say: no.
However, the fact is (whether you realize it or not) what you’re feeling isn’t really the lack of motivation to do every possible kind of work. It’s just a lack of motivation to do the work that you’ve originally planned for the day.
I mean, you have your to-do list (or other form of personal work organization tool) with a number of tasks on it, and when you look at them, nothing seems interesting enough to get into. As I said before, there’s no point in forcing yourself to something because you’d most likely have to do it over again after the initial screw up. What you can do, however, is find a suitable replacement and use it as a starting point.
Your favorite kind of tasks
No matter what line of work you’re in there’s always something you’ve enjoyed doing every time. Some specific kind of task that comes easy to you and you don’t need to put much effort into it to produce great results. Everybody has something like this, and this is a great starting point for an initially unproductive day.
We all know that getting started is always the most difficult part. A space shuttle uses most of its fuel during the first couple of seconds after launch. The initial movement always creates the biggest friction. Starting with your favorite task gets you going and helps you to fight this resistance.
As life shows, once you’re working for a while you can switch to different tasks more easily. There’s a high probability that you will be able to come back to your to-do list and execute it despite the initial resistance.
Everything’s in your mind. If your mind tells you that it doesn’t feel like working you simply need to trick it into working by starting with a task that doesn’t really feel like work. That’s all there is to it.
So what’s the remedy for a bad start?
1. Find your favorite kind(s) of tasks that don’t feel like work, and come easy to you.
Ones where you can create great results with little effort. They don’t have to be the highest leverage tasks possible, but they still need to be useful. By useful I mean tasks that move you forward towards your goals.
Moving forward towards your goals is something you need to devote special attention to. Working just for the sake of working is the stupidest thing you could do. If something doesn’t bring you closer to your goals then you’re better off reading a book … or even watching a cat video on YouTube.
2. Create a specific task within this favorite field and work on it.
For example, if you enjoy writing you can start by crafting a guest post for a popular blog. Simply set the exact topic you want to write about, and get going immediately. In such a scenario this is a great task to start with.
3. Once you’re done switch to other tasks from you to-do list.
Getting started is always the most difficult part and now you’ve done just that, so there’s a big probability that you won’t have any problems switching to other tasks.
What’s the friendly initial task for me?
My university diploma says that I’m a programmer. And I’ve always enjoyed playing with PHP code. So whenever I don’t feel like doing anything I start by working on improving my blog.
(No matter how well optimized your blog is there are still some things that can be improved.)
It’s also a task that’s congruent with my goals. Improving the blog’s structure gives me extra points for SEO, usability, accessibility, or performance (depending on the thing I focus on).
Now it’s your turn. Tell me what your friendly initial task is. Do you have more than one?
This is a guest post by Karol K (@carlosinho). He is a 20-something year old writer, a web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland, and a grad student at the Silesian University of Technology. He shares his thoughts at newInternetOrder.com. Tune in to get his online business and personal productivity advice.
Photo credit: ‘Lazy Dog‘ from Big StockAmidst high security, intense drama and a media spectacle, the Supreme Court on Monday removed Hadiya from the custody of her parents and ordered that she be sent to her college in Salem, Tamil Nadu, to complete her studies. The SC order states that she is to be treated like any other student, as per the hostel rules. Hadiya deposed before the SC that she wants her freedom, that she has been in unlawful custody for the last 11 months and going forward, wants her husband to be her guardian so she can complete her education and be a good citizen.
Advertising
The NIA submitted its 100-page report on forced conversions to the Supreme Court. It also questioned the role of the organisation ‘Sathya Sarani’ where Hadiya took temporary refuge from her parents, stating that Hadiya was forcibly converted to Islam by the Popular Front of India (PFI) and brainwashed by ‘hypnotic counselling’. The Court reportedly commented on this aspect, wondering whether the aspect of conversion in Kerala must be delinked from the Hadiya case. The matter has been adjourned till the third week of January.
Hadiya, who went by the name Akhila before she converted to Islam has been caught in a legal maelstrom since 2016, the subject of two habeas corpus petitions filed by her father Ashokan. The first petition was dismissed, after which in August 2016, Ashokan filed the second habeas corpus petition, alleging that Hadiya was going to be forcibly married off so she could be taken out of the country and that she was in the clutches of radicalised Muslims. On December 21 Akhila had claimed to have married a Shafin Jahan two days before. This move angered the High Court, which on May 24 annulled the marriage and called it a ‘sham’. Shafin Jahan then filed a Special Leave Petition against the HC order in the Supreme Court, which then ordered an NIA probe into the incident.
Exercising its ‘parens patriae (father of the country)’ jurisdiction, the Kerala High Court proved to be every bit the paternalistic, parochial Indian father, desperate to protect the child-adult-girl. Laying great emphasis on the contentions of Hadiya’s father which included the “right to give his daughter away in marriage” it was anxious and concerned about Hadiya’s “continued obstinance” to return to her parents and stated,
Advertising
“Though the learned Senior Counsel has vociferously contended that the detenue is a person who has attained majority, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that the detenue who is a female in her twenties is at a vulnerable age. As per Indian tradition, the custody of an unmarried daughter is with the parents, until she is properly married. We consider it the duty of this Court to ensure that a person under such a vulnerable state is not exposed to further danger, especially in the circumstances noticed above…” (emphasis supplied)
The order of May 2017 continues to rely on this obfuscated reasoning, completely devoid of any legal merit. The High Court was unable to accept that Hadiya delved into the study of Islam as this is not “normal human conduct of a girl aged 21 years”. It went on to blame unidentified persons for her indoctrination, unable to believe that she acted out of her own free will. It opined that Hadiya was married off so as to take her out of the reach of the High Court.
We are left wondering how a young woman’s act of marrying a man, whether arranged or not, whether forced or not, can take her out of the Court’s clutches. An adult woman who has not been proved to be mentally incapable of taking her own decisions does not have a ‘natural guardian’ and is well within her rights to marry whoever she pleases, with or without her parent’s consent. Whether her wedding was invalid under Islamic law is a different issue that was not even touched upon by the Court.
While the order points out various serious discrepancies in Hadiya’s conduct, such as using a variety of spellings for her new name, and even a different name from Hadiya on affidavit, it is unable to offer any solid proof of indoctrination or mental incapacity, which could serve as grounds for exercising its parens patriae jurisdiction to order Hadiya to stay with her parents. The NIA investigation and its report in the SC will be crucial to establish whether this was a case of indoctrination or a conversion out of free will.
While Hadiya’s counsel relied on a variety of cases in the HC to show that a major has an absolute right to choose a religion of their choice, the Court refused to accept this, stating that all the cases cited were cases of romantic liaisons and this case was nothing like that. An absolute inability to accept the autonomy and agency of a young woman to explore a different religion, an artificial distinction was created in order to accept and normalize one instance of free choice (falling in love) but not another (conversion).
Earlier in the order, the High Court also stated that “is not normal for a young girl in her early 20s, pursuing a professional course, to abandon her studies and to set out in pursuit of learning an alien faith and religion.” The HC believes that the “normal youth (are) indifferent towards religion and religious studies”, a mere opinion that cannot form the basis of deciding whether a woman converted out of her free will or not.
While ‘Sathya Sarani’ and its head Sainaba are referred to multiple times as having influenced Hadiya, it was not proved in the HC that the organization has links to extremist organizations or been involved in radicalization or forced conversions. The Kerala HC made up for the lack of evidence by relying on its morality and biases, its prejudiced notions of how a young woman must behave and its obvious sympathies with Hadiya’s parents who were unable to exercise any control over their adult daughter. While the judge the person is certainly free to his opinions, he is the custodian of law and is not free to apply his faulty reasoning and cultural biases while passing an order.
The icing on the cake in this order comes at the very end.
“A girl aged 24 years is weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways. This Court exercising parens patriae jurisdiction is concerned with the welfare of a girl of her age. The duty cast on this Court to ensure the safety of at least the girls who are brought before it can be discharged only by ensuring that Ms.Akhila is in safe hands.”
The Kerala High Court has a history of passing judgments such as these where the decisional autonomy and general agency of an adult woman is questioned, and parental authority is held supreme. The reasoning in all these cases is reflective of a deeply institutionalized patriarchy that exists in society, where a young adult woman is referred to as a ‘girl’, infantilizing her and decrying her capacity to take her own decisions. The parental authority over women, the act of ‘giving’ away a woman in marriage, the need to ‘protect’ her are all deeply sexist Indian notions that prevent women from living freely. All of these notions have found its way into the High Court order in 2017 and it is indeed deeply disturbing that a woman’s constitutional rights are taken away by relying on these fallacies.
Advertising
Judges must remember that they are not custodians of our ‘girls’ morality and the HC focusing narrowly on Hadiya’s ‘vulnerability’ as a young girl, has taken the attention away from what might be a serious issue of radicalization. It is hoped that the Supreme Court, prevents the continued politicization of this case and takes a decision based on the law and the evidence on record, and not on mere sentimentality.Dyschronometria is a condition of cerebellar dysfunction in which an individual cannot accurately estimate the amount of time that has passed (i.e., distorted time perception). It is associated with cerebellar ataxia,[1][2] when the cerebellum has been damaged and does not function to its fullest ability. Lesions to the cerebellum can cause dyssynergia, dysmetria, dysdiadochokinesia, dysarthria, and ataxia of stance and gait.[3] Dyschronometria can result from autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxia (ADCA).[4]
Fabrica, published in 1543, showing the base of the human brain, including optic chiasma, cerebellum, olfactory bulbs, etc. Andreas Vesalius
Signs and symptoms [ edit ]
Common signs of dyschronometria are often generic to cerebellar ataxia, including a lack of spatial awareness, poor short term memory, and inability to keep track of time.[citation needed] The defining symptoms, while not completely understood, involve time perception. For example, when asked to wait for thirty seconds, or tap every second that has gone by, those affected will be able to perform the task for a short time and then become derailed. This can result from a loss of focus, however, more often than not the individual affected can no longer tell what they are doing and they become disoriented.[5] This often takes form in forgetting basic time keeping unless a timer is set, such as when cooking for example. Dyschronometria does not affect the 24-hour circadian rhythm, which is sustained by a different biological process.[citation needed]
Causes [ edit ]
The most common cause of cerebellar ataxia, and by extension dyschronometria, is cerebellar damage. This can be by form of a trauma, or by disease and genetics. Examples of trauma include a car accident, stroke, epilepsy, and head trauma.[6] These traumas are especially detrimental to elderly and children due to the decrease in brain matter, thus making these events if taken place have an increased risk of damaging the cerebellum. This also explains why dyschronometria is seen more commonly in the elderly due to the deterioration of physical brain matter. Other probable causes for the deterioration of brain matter in the elderly include increased supranational activation, decreased cerebellar activation (which is consistent with fronto-cerebellar dissociation).[7]
Dyslexia [ edit ]
An interesting case of dyschronometria has to do with dyslexia. When dyslexia was studied within children, it was found that dyslexic children were often stressed as well as mentally exhausted. These children would place little to no importance on their present state, a behavior that would continue into adulthood.[8] It remains unclear as to whether dyslexia is a symptom of dyschronometria, a cause, or both.
Dementia [ edit ]
Dementia has a huge effect on dyschronometria and was one of the main sources of how dyschronometria was discovered. Through studies, dementia is both a cause and an effect of dyschronometria. This has to do completely with the fact that with dementia the brain is constantly rewiring itself and thus information becomes lost causing the person who had dementia to become confused as well as disoriented, and in most cases completely unaware of the passage of time.[citation needed] As a cause, dyschronometria causes the person to become disoriented and completely unaware of time, thus making bits and pieces of their brain involving a memory to become lost, ultimately leading to dementia in the long term. [9]
Errors and Inaccuracies [ edit ]
Diagnosing [ edit ]
Despite dyschronometria's easily recognizable symptoms, the fact that they may also be present in other cerebellar ataxias can make diagnosis difficult. Other ataxias may also have symptoms that affect gait, speech, thought process, spatial awareness, and time orientation used in their diagnoses, covering up the fact that most of these patients also have dyschronometria. The most common ataxias dyschronometria has been seen to be evident in are dyssynergia, dysmetria, dysdiadochokinesia, dysarthria as well as ataxias effecting stance and gait. Dyslexia can be another problem in those individuals affected by dyschronometria, however it is uncertain whether dyslexia is developed or worsened by having it, or if it is the opposite in that having dyslexia increases the chance of developing dyschronometria. Another problem that dyschronometria faces in detection is that it is a relatively new term for this side effect and precursor to dementia, compared with other cerebellar ataxias such as those mentioned above. Even when dyschronometria is detected, it has usually progressed to the point where it cannot be reversed, and there is no benefit in taking the testing medication to either slow down the dyschronometria or the process of dementia setting in, which is what dyschronometria is a signal for.
However the greatest error in diagnosing dyschronometria is that this cerebellar ataxia hides itself in its symptoms and signs. The signs seen in those diagnosed with dyschronometria are not obvious, and are often mistaken for other cerebellar ataxias or dementia by medical professionals. In addition, medical professionals usually expect to see circadian rhythm being disrupted by noting sleeping cycles and patterns that have no logical sense to them, which has nothing to do with dyschronometria. Other errors in diagnosing dyschronometria include the idea that those who have dyschronometria have a speech impediment, suffer from delusions bordering psychosis, impairment of long term memory, or the complete loss of conscious understanding of time. These misconceptions mostly stem from the fact that this cerebellar ataxia is rarely diagnosed without being seen in dementia or with another ataxia.[1]
Clinical testing [ edit ]
Testing and diagnosing for dyschronometria also been shown to be ineffective. Dementia is caught so late despite the signals seeming obvious because psychological tests that try to catch signs of dementia, such as dyschronometria, are not very helpful. With these tests, the bell curves formed after statistical analysis and a wide range among normal test takers ensure that only patients that have extreme abnormal tests, test positive, and these cases are often already obvious to diagnose.[10] Diagnosing of dyschronometria is also difficult due to the lack of research as well as professionals concentrating in this cerebellar ataxia. Neuroscientists are only just starting to do more research into this lack of awareness and keeping time. When the science and the tests are more specialized and this topic has been looked into at a greater depth, the sensitivity of the tests that have been and will be conducted will be able to give more answer to the questions that are continuing to arise.
Treatments [ edit ]
It has not been determined what role drugs may play in the treatment of cerebellar ataxia. In the research done by Trouillas in Lyon, France, the pharmacology of cerebellar ataxia was examined by manipulating key components found at the nerve level within the cerebellum or the inferior Olive. This was done mostly through the modification of the GABA, dopamine, and serotonin receptors which did seem to show positive results in the primary stages of the experimentation. The clinical benefits presented in this study justifying the prescription of d-l-5-HTP or better with the l-5-HTP with benserazide to patients with certain cerebellar ataxias including that of Dyschronometria. At the present as stated, this is the best indication for treatment of the cerebellar cortical atrophies. Even still it is important to stress that the response to this treatment may be slow and irregular.[11]
Neuroplastic rehabilitation [ edit ]
Previously, neuroplasticity used as a rehabilitation method were looked into as a potential treatment for dyschronometria. However these studies were not further developed since the 1980s. With current techniques and research from the neuroscience community, this is still a viable option not to eliminate the cerebellar ataxia, but to slow its progress of development.[12]Forty-five percent of nonprofits plan to add jobs this year, about the same share that created new positions in 2013, finds a survey released today.
As the economy continues to improve, nonprofits are not only adding jobs but are increasingly avoiding layoffs: Only 7 percent intend to eliminate positions this year.
Public-policy groups, followed by health, social-services, and community-development organizations and arts and cultural groups, were most likely to report plans to hire.
The study of 413 organizations was conducted by Nonprofit HR, a human-resources consulting firm, and the Improve Group, a consultancy whose clients include charities.
Room to Grow
Employers that said they will add jobs were most likely to hire staff members to provide direct services (42 percent) and program management (40 percent), followed by fundraising (36 percent).
“Nonprofits are hiring because there is a significant demand for their services, and they recognize that they must grow and develop their staff in order to meet these demands,” wrote Lisa Morton Brown, executive director of Nonprofit HR, in an e-mail to The Chronicle.
Ms. Morton Brown was encouraged to see that 21 percent of groups planned to hire more staff members in their finance and operations divisions, an increase of 4 percent from 2012.
The uptick indicates that nonprofit groups are on a solid footing to make the personnel investments they need to be effective in delivering services, she says.
“In the past, we’ve seen organizations underinvest in operational staff in an effort to keep non-programmatic salaries at a minimum, but this often hurts organizations rather than helping them,” she wrote in her e-mail to The Chronicle.
Turnover Prospects
The survey also shows that the brightening economy is allowing groups to take steps to avoid overburdening existing staff members, according to the survey’s authors.
Advertisement
Forty-five percent of organizations plan to hire staff members to support new programs, instead of using current staff members to do the extra work. This finding is an 8-percent jump from 2012 and a 16-percent stretch from 2010.
Employers reported a 16-percent turnover rate last year, down just one percentage point compared with 2012, a sign that the improving economy is not yet driving more people to leave their jobs.
The majority of organizations surveyed expected a similar rate in 2014, while nearly one-quarter of nonprofits expected the turnover rate to decline even further.
Still, one-fifth of the groups reported turnover as a major employment challenge, citing the cost of hiring and training new employees.
But some organizations in the survey reported an upside to employee turnover. “The changes in personnel were in line with how the organization is changing,” wrote an official at a small community-development group. “The new personnel were better fits.”
Steady Challenges
Other findings signal obstacles nonprofits face in keeping staff members and adding new ones:
An inability to offer competitive pay topped the list of challenges groups faced in keeping employees, followed by lack of ways to promote staff members and heavy workloads.
Retaining midlevel staff members proved the most difficult issue for 40 percent of employers, while 39 percent of groups struggled to keep entry-level workers. Only 4 percent reported trouble keeping chief executives and others at the top of the organization.
Seventeen percent of nonprofits had a formal strategy in place to retain employees, though that represented an increase from 10 percent in the previous year’s survey. Among the most popular perks used to keep workers were generous vacation time, a retirement or pension-plan match, and flexible work schedules.
While many groups reported that they would like to fill new positions with staff members who reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the communities they serve, less than half the groups had a formal diversity strategy.
More than two-thirds of groups do not have a formal succession plan for senior leadership and only 14 percent of groups reported a goal to form one. Organizations often voice desires for such a plan, but are remiss in taking the time to formulate one, said the survey’s authors.
“Succession planning sends a strong message to staff about opportunities that may exist for them to grow and develop professionally,” wrote Ms. Brown Morton in her e-mail to The Chronicle.
Download a free copy of the “2014 Nonprofit Employment Practices Survey.”
Where Nonprofits Are Adding Jobs
42%: Direct service 40%: Program management and support 36%: Fundraising
26%: Member and constituent services 21%: Finance, administration, and operations 11%: AdvocacyThe console is capable of playing NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance and Famicom cartridges of both PAL and NTSC format.
Love playing retro games from the NES and SNES-era, but are sick of having all those consoles clutter up your living room? Or maybe your new-fangled HDTV is struggling to deal with the decades-old machines? Hyperkin has you covered, announcing the RetroN 5 retro-gaming console. The console can play games designed for the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance and Famicom (Japanese NES). It can play games from both PAL and NTSC regions, and supports HDMI output with up to 720p resolution.
Just as the GBA supported Game Boy Color and Game Boy games, and the Genesis supported Sega Mega Drive games, so to will the RetroN 5. Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) games will also work in the SNES slot. This means the console can play games from nine different systems. The Famicom slot is the latest addition to Hyperkin's line of RetroN consoles, with the company stating that "we found that we could incorporate one more cartridge slot without hindering our current developmental cycle."
Six controller slots line the sides of the console, supporting controllers from the NES, SNES and Genesis. As well as being able to use any controller for any system (for example, you can use a SNES controller to play Genesis games), the RetroN 5 comes with its own unique wireless controller. The new controller has a Microswitch Directional Pad instead of a traditional directional pad.
The console also supports save states for games of every system. This means that you can save your game at any point in time by accessing the console's main menu. The console also autosaves your progress whenever you shut it down.
Hyperkin says that the RetroN 5 does a great job of tidying up the sounds and visuals of the games it plays. It supports both standard 4:3 and widescreen 16:9 aspect ratios, and makes use of audio interpolation for a smoother, cleaner audio output.
Hyperkin has offered no news of when the new console will launch, or how much it will cost.
Source: HyperkinEARTH CITY, Mo. -- With their high school football season set to open in just two days, the McCluer North High Stars have spent time preparing for their season opener at a local park.
Because of the continued unrest in nearby Ferguson, Mo., the Ferguson-Florissant school district has been shut down all week. That means no school, and it also means the facilities at McCluer North, McCluer and McCluer South-Berkeley have been shut down.
About 15 minutes away, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher and members of the front-office staff have been looking for ways to help. When informed that McCluer North had been practicing two miles away from the school at Wedgwood Park, the answer became clear.
Editor's Picks Wagoner: Rams provide escape from Ferguson The Rams found a way to provide the closest thing they can to an escape from the tension and emotion in Ferguson, Missouri, Nick Wagoner writes.
The Rams invited the football teams at each of the three schools to come to Rams Park on Wednesday to use the indoor facility for practice and stay to watch the Rams close their training camp with their own practice.
McCluer North and McCluer High Schools took the Rams up on their offer Wednesday, and McCluer South-Berkeley is expected to come to Rams Park soon.
Fisher made it clear that all three schools have an open-door policy for as long as they need a place to practice.
"It means a lot to us," Fisher said. "You can all imagine what they're going through in addition to everybody in Ferguson. It's just very, very sad. We hope that things get worked out just as soon as they possibly can. This is different. This is football players and football players. This will be something that I hope they'll always remember."
After going through a practice on the team's indoor 80-yard field, the teams emerged from the Rams' locker room and took their sideline seats in a tent just to the north of the field. When Fisher was done speaking, many of the Rams players walked over and gave high-fives to the players from McCluer High.
Later in the workout, Fisher again walked over to the tent and invited the players to participate in a team drill in which the offense starts from deep in its own territory. The McCluer North players crowded near the end zone and provided plenty of noise for the Rams offense to deal with in a simulation of what the situation would be like in a game.
When the drill was finished, the McCluer North players provided plenty more energy for the Rams by offering up their own team chants. They also got to participate in the breakdown huddle at the end of practice. They formed a circle and yelled "1, 2, 3, Ferguson!"
Marquis Prophete, McCluer North's senior captain and left tackle, said it was his second time visiting Rams Park but under much different circumstances.
"Freshman year we got to come here, but this is a different experience altogether," Prophete said. "It means a lot to me. The Rams don't just think 'OK, they are in the same state or the same area,' but they see us. They know we need to practice and we need somewhere to practice at. I think it's really nice of them to reach out to all three of the schools. It's really great for them to look out for the community."
Last week, the Rams also donated 75 tickets to each of the three schools to attend the team's preseason game against the Green Bay Packers. Tensions remain high in Ferguson, but the Rams plan to continue to look for ways to help.
If nothing else, the chance to practice on a real field offers each player the chance to simply forget about what's going on at home.
"It was nice morale for the team," McCluer North coach Courtland Griffin said. "Some of our kids do live in that neighborhood. Just to get away from it and clear their minds and not worry about what's going on in the streets and get away with football for a while, it's an awesome thing to do. This whole day has just been one of the most awesome days ever. We will remember this forever."Democracy doesn’t depend just on voting — counting matters, too. And city hall is looking at shifting the way Toronto does both. City council is to consider a “ranked ballot” initiative at its two-day meeting starting Tuesday. If this measure ultimately comes to fruition, it could radically alter the way Canada’s sixth largest government is elected.
Toronto City Council is going to consider a "ranked ballot" initiative at its two-day meeting starting June 11, 2013. Under this system everyone elected to city council, including the mayor, would need the support of more than 50 per cent of voters. ( Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Reform is welcome. Toronto’s mayor and city councillors are now chosen through a flawed first-past-the-post system that grants victory to the person attracting the most ballots. It sounds fair, but successful candidates seldom win a majority of the vote — they only need more than their next most popular rival. That put Councillor James Pasternak in office even though he secured a mere 19 per cent of the vote in York Centre. And Councillor Gary Crawford won Scarborough Southwest with just 25 per cent. Three-quarters of voters preferred somebody else. Under a ranked ballot system, everyone elected to Toronto City Council would need the support of more than 50 per cent of voters. Here’s how that would happen: rather than selecting just one person to be mayor, for example, electors would mark their top choice as well as their second, third and fourth favourite, and so on.
Article Continued Below
When the ballots were counted, if nobody emerged as the first pick of a majority of electors, the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated. That person’s support would then automatically be divided among those candidates who were these voters’ second-place option. Eliminations and transfers would continue until one candidate finally amassed more than 50 per cent support. It’s more complicated than a first-past |
has stolen a seat,” Merkley said in an interview. “We will use every lever in our power to stop this.”
It’s a move that will prompt a massive partisan battle over Trump’s nominee and could lead to an unraveling of the Senate rules if Merkley is able to get 41 Democrats to join him in a filibuster. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also reminded her Twitter followers on Sunday night that Supreme Court nominees can still be blocked by the Senate minority, unlike all other executive and judicial nominees.
Any senator can object to swift approval of a nominee and require a supermajority. Asked directly whether he would do that, Merkley replied: “I will definitely object to a simple majority” vote.
Merkley's party leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, has said he will fight "tooth and nail" any nominee who isn't "mainstream."
It would be only the second time in modern history that the Senate has mounted a filibuster against a nominee. Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, tried to block the confirmation of Samuel Alito in 2006 but failed. Obama’s Supreme Court nominees each received more than 60 votes, but Republicans did not require a supermajority or the procedural vote that Merkley will demand.
Republicans immediately dinged Merkley as a hypocrite for being a leading advocate of changing the Senate rules four years ago.
"When Democrats were in the majority, Sen. Merkley wanted to end filibusters. But I guess he only meant when Democrats are in the majority and in control of the White House," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The Democratic stance dashes McConnell's hopes to return to the tradition of not filibustering Supreme Court nominees. In an interview with POLITICO on Friday, McConnell said the “practice was that you didn’t do it even though the tool is in the toolbox.”
“There are a lot of tools in there. Until Bush 43, the filibuster tool was always there. But it wasn’t done,” McConnell said. “Two good examples: There was no filibuster against [Robert] Bork and, of course, the most controversial Supreme Court nomination ever was Clarence Thomas. Democrats were in the majority; he was approved 52-48.”
But McConnell blocked Garland from even having a hearing for nearly a year during the end of Obama’s presidency, and Democrats have not forgotten his unprecedented blockade. They’ve been lining up party-line votes against some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees — and now, Democrats like Merkley are laying the groundwork to halt the only nominee that they have ultimate leverage over.
“A very large number of my colleagues will be opposed,” Merkley said.
POLITICO has reported the leading contenders for the nomination are Judge Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Neil Gorsuch of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They were confirmed to appeals courts without a dissenting vote, though Democrats are sure to treat them more harshly after Garland's nomination stalled for months.
McConnell is loath to change the rules of the Senate to allow confirmation of Supreme Court nominees by a simple majority but has not said explicitly what he would do if Democrats block Trump’s nominee. The Senate rules can be changed by a simple majority using the so-called "nuclear option" — last invoked by former Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to ease the confirmation of Obama's judicial and executive nominees.
The Kentucky Republican told POLITICO that it’s up to Democrats where the Senate rules go — but also guaranteed Trump’s nominee will be confirmed, an implicit threat that if at least eight Democrats don’t get on board, there could be a unilateral rules change.
“We’re going to get this nominee confirmed. I hope he or she will be confirmed based upon the completely outstanding credentials that we’re going to see,” McConnell said. The nominee "hopefully will be treated the way such a nominee would have been treated as recently as Bush 43.”
Trump has made clear he wants McConnell to go nuclear if Merkley and other liberal Democrats are successful in blocking his high court pick's nomination.The country's first high-speed rail project could happen in Texas, where Houston and Dallas would be connected along a 240-mile stretch of railroad. What Texas Central Partners and other high-speed rail advocates are calling the Texas Central Rail, however, Citizens Against Government Waste considers a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
When the TCR was first introduced, executives at TCP claimed that no taxpayer dollars would be used to finance the project. However, this has proven to be false, since TCR's former president and chief executive officer, Tim Keith, stated that TCP would in fact be seeking federal taxpayer dollars to help finance the construction debt of the project. Due to the overwhelming evidence against its viability, there is little doubt that TCR will lead to taxpayer dollars being wasted for an unwise and unwarranted project.
Furthermore, the proposal fails to meet the "Buy American, Hire American" standard President Trump has set for new infrastructure projects around the country. TCP has partnered with Central Japan Railway Co. (also known as JR Central), the company behind the Shinkansen "bullet train" system that transports Japanese passengers daily. TCP has agreed to buy JR Central trains, which will be built in Japan, using Japanese materials, parts, and labor.
The Japanese Bank for International Cooperation, a state-owned entity that provides financing for export-based projects, will also be taking a significant role on the project. The Bank of Japan has also stated that it "will guarantee a large portion" of the multi-billion dollar debt the project will incur. And the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development has already put $40 million into the project.
Potentially having someone other than taxpayers on the hook seems to be the good news. But the numbers that TCP has proposed for financing the construction of the project do not add up.
Ridership estimates are grossly exaggerated. TCP claims that a whopping 5 million passengers annually would ride the train by 2025, or approximately 13,700 passengers daily. To highlight how outlandish these numbers are, consider that over the last eight quarters an estimated 2,800 passengers flew between Houston and Dallas on a daily basis. For the TCP projections to become a reality, the high-speed rail would have to capture every single airline passenger, as well as an additional 10,900 daily passengers, for a total ridership that is five times higher than current air travel alone.
In addition to the bloated ridership projections, TCP has greatly underestimated the cost of construction with a price tag of $10-12 billion. However, according to a Reason Foundation study done by Baruch Feigenbaum, the cost is more likely to be around $18-20 billion. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) concurs with the Reason Foundation's analysis, estimating the project to cost $18.3 billion. Unlike the Reason Foundation and TxDOT, TCP has not provided the data to back up its low-ball estimate.
Clearly, the estimated ridership and construction costs do not appear to be grounded in reality. Furthermore, TCP is entrenched in lawsuits about eminent domain over private property needed to build the railroad.
In December 2016, a Houston judge denied TCP's petition to recognize the railroad's eminent domain claims. The judge's ruling also prohibited access to private property in order to conduct surveys necessary for an Environmental Impact Statement, a required first step for the infrastructure project.
With wildly unrealistic ridership projections, along with a TxDOT study indicating that these ridership projections are unlikely to cover operational costs, not to mention the dubious legal justification and questionable foreign investment, the TCR may come to a halt before it gets on track.
Andrew Nehring (@AndrewNehring) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a state policy manager at Citizens Against Government Waste.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.First he skipped breakfast, and then found there was no time for lunch. As afternoon stretched into evening, the famished young doctor considered slipping away for a bite, but there were too many patients turning up at the emergency ward. At 7.30pm, he thought he might take a breather after just one more case. It seemed easy enough. No question of life or death -- just one 10-year-old boy, sobbing loudly over a fractured leg. The child was riding an autorickshaw when it hit a divider and the leg got caught.
Suresh Sana, the 28-year-old postgraduate doctor on duty at MS Ramaiah teaching hospital in Bangalore, explained to the parents that a clear X-ray could be obtained only if the boy calmed down and stopped crying and shaking. But the child proved difficult to soothe. Eventually, Sana dispatched the family to the X-ray unit. When he met them there to get the results, however, Sana suddenly found himself a target of the relatives’ wrath. It was a bewildering turn in the course of his life – until then, a clear upward arc. He had been the first in his father’s village to win a medical seat, and was newly engaged to be married. And here was this patient’s aunt, giving him a sharp slap that carried the sting of public ingratitude. “Why don’t you behave like a doctor?” she snapped, seemingly furious over the delayed X-ray. Then a male relative grabbed Sana by the collar and punched him in the face. His head hit the chipped cream paint of the corridor wall, and he fell unconscious. Down the hall, framed images of goddess Saraswati and the god Venkateswara hung silently above the fracas.
Fallen from grace
Ten or fifteen years ago, doctors in India were still treated as demi-gods. They commanded vast respect and could not, would not, be questioned. A punch in the face over an X-ray? Unthinkable.
But those were the days before healthcare emerged as a hardcore business. Technology has advanced, yet trust has faltered. “Patients have a perception that doctors and hospitals are out to fleece them,” observes GD Ravindran, a professor of medicine and medical ethics at St John’s Medical College in Bangalore. Second-guessing has also become routine, with Internet search habits eroding the previous doctor-knows-best mindset. Those are big bumps in the road toward a shared desire for a positive outcome.
Compared to road rage, however, hospital rage appears far more complex. From all accounts, it stems from frustrating shortfalls in the public health system, crucial gaps in communication between doctor/patient/relatives, low-level political bullying and high expectations for recovery. And don’t discount the brain-wiring. “When a relative suddenly and unexpectedly dies…it is far easier for the brain to blame the doctor and the institution he represents, who are quickly demonized as outsiders with their arcane and mysterious ways,” says Sai Gaddam, a neuroscientist and Bangalore-based author who recently completed a book titled Keepers of the Flame: What Outrage, Snark and Trolling Reveals About Our Social Brain.
Consider the annals of Indian doctor-bashing in recent times. In Tuticorin, a female anesthesiologist was hacked to death in January 2012, allegedly by the husband of a pregnant woman who did not survive an emergency surgery. In Imphal, a professor of medicine was shot in the head in March 2014 while working in her private clinic. In Kanpur, a medical college turned into a virtual war zone in February 2014 after a local politician allegedly exhorted police to mount a raid there, in a hail of rubber bullets. In New Delhi, a female doctor was assaulted in September 2013 by a mob in a public hospital’s casualty ward and threatened with rape. In Hassan, drunken buddies of road accident victims periodically disrupt the emergency ward at the district hospital, manhandling medical staff and breaking furniture – the latest incident was in early March 2014. In Raichur, someone splashed petrol on a nursing home in February 2014 and set it ablaze.
Trouble comes to both government hospitals and private clinics. Sometimes a lucky doctor can run away and hide in a locked toilet. But not always. The weapons vary: a knife, a stick, an iron pole normally used to suspend an IV drip. In the wrong hands, it can be wrenched from a hospital bed and smashed against the side of a doctor’s head, perforating an eardrum. “The sense of fear stays with you,” says 33-year-old Kailash Bagale, who in June 2012 made the mistake of trying to appease an angry mob in a recovery room at the Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research in Bangalore. The pain in his ear subsided after three months.
The hazards of being a junior doctor
In the Ramaiah hospital case, the punch in the face led to a brief strike by Sana's colleagues. This is how such incidents tend to surface – if only sporadically and locally – with short media bulletins detailing a fresh strike, usually by the younger doctors. They carry the lion’s share of responsibility in emergency wards on late nights and weekends, when the atmosphere is most likely to get edgy. If beds are scarce, tempers flare. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, it is the junior doctors who are thrashed,” says Anirudh Lochan, Secretary General of the Young Doctors’ Association of India.
Interviews with three dozen medical professionals and analysts across India indicate that violence against medical personnel has increased over the past three years, despite a wave of state laws passed in 2008/2009 that explicitly prohibit such attacks on doctors, nurses, paramedics and hospital property. The legal remedies were first prescribed in Andhra Pradesh, moving up to Haryana and across to Rajasthan, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and elsewhere, categorizing such attacks as non-bailable offenses and mandating prison terms of one to 10 years, depending on the state. (Health is considered a state subject in India.) As a deterrent, such laws have clearly failed.
The consequences appear grave. Interviews suggest that doctors are now less likely to take risks, since the death of a patient might provoke mayhem. “If a patient comes in a serious condition and I spend all night in the ICU, if he dies, they will be after my blood,” says Rajan Sharma, an orthopedic surgeon in Haryana. A defensive strategy involves shunting complicated cases to other clinics and hospitals, with the delay actually magnifying the health risks in some cases. And referrals just add to the frustration. At the Bangalore-based Institute of Public Health, director N Devadasan argues that India’s stubbornly high maternal mortality rates can be linked to this practice of referring pregnant mothers to institutions that lie further away from their homes.
The violence has also led to growing fissures within health systems, with younger doctors resentful of becoming punching bags without adequate protection from their supervisors and institutions. Strikes may provide an outlet for outrage, but they also lead to neglect of countless other patients.
Meanwhile, boundaries are blurring between India’s violent political culture and the blue-curtained hospital space. According to medical superintendents and social workers, numerous politicians like to throw their weight around crowded emergency rooms in a bid to pump up the vote bank in their constituencies. Their designated patient must get immediate attention, or else. “Don’t you know who I AM?” seems a common prelude to bullying and shattered windows, courtesy of his or her entourage. At St John’s, security chief MB Aparna also points a finger at groups he considers troublemakers, including the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike and autorickshaw unions.
It can be difficult to grasp the severity of the problem, though, because data is simply not available – unlike in China, where a well-documented spike in attacks on medical staff was highlighted by The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, spurring coverage in foreign media. In India, doctors are frequently reluctant to file an FIR, wary of getting tangled in a time-consuming process or creating more enemies in their locale. Some give way to the urge to hush up the incident, and simply carry on, albeit demoralized. Moreover, police often seem unaware of the recently enacted laws and favor private exchanges of cash, or apologies, over registering an FIR.
“The ignorance of police personnel should be penalized,” insists Narendra Saini, Honorary Secretary-General of the Indian Medical Association. “Even if they do know the law, they give importance and sympathy to the patients’ relatives, which in my opinion, should be curbed.” Saini reports that he is getting “five to eight times more complaints than I used to,” from doctors who are harassed or attacked.
Tamil Nadu, for one, has promised to post more police on hospital grounds. Elsewhere, some hospitals have taken the initiative to install more CCTV cameras and post signboards in red and black letters spelling out the penalties for anyone who creates trouble. Some are getting slightly more creative: at Victoria Hospital in Bangalore, for example, medical superintendent Devadass PK is excited about commissioning pictorials that will portray the dire consequences of assaulting a doctor or destroying medical property. He describes an image of someone punching a man wearing a white coat, with a big ‘X’ over it. The next frame will show a glum man behind bars. That’s a bit more dramatic than a ‘No Smoking’ sign.
But the law-and-order prescription can only go so far. Consider the clash at Ramaiah hospital, which happened last November. After Sana collapsed, he was revived by another doctor and admitted to the hospital for two days. Physically, there wasn’t much wrong with him – some bruises on his face, and a bit of hypoglycemia due to his empty stomach – but the depression was worrisome. The hospital had encouraged him to file an FIR but he doubted much good would come from that. He rose from his hospital bed and went home to his village in Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh, where his family grows sunflowers. His parents persuaded him to withdraw the FIR, fearing some further retaliation from a family wealthier than theirs. Sana brooded over the incident, asking himself if he had made any mistakes. He realized that there had been some language barrier, as he couldn’t catch everything the relatives were shouting in English and Hindi. But that could not justify what happened, he reasoned.
When he returned to Bangalore, the police handed over a letter of apology from the boy’s relatives. He tossed out the letter and refused any meetings. “I didn’t want their apologies,” Sana says curtly. “They did the wrong thing.” He still feels an aversion to that particular corridor in the hospital. But he has not given up his specialization in orthopedics. He sits waiting for the next patient, his scuffed sandals hidden by sanitary blue hospital netting.
Reached by telephone, the boy’s uncle declines comment on the case. “Please, Madame, it’s over,” he says.
The Talking cure
In Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, the January 2012 murder case of 55-year-old anesthesiologist Sethulakshmi has yet to be adjudicated, after being shifted to an understaffed court slated to handle crimes against women. The accused was held in prison for six months then mysteriously released, despite a tough state law aimed at protecting medical personnel. “The legal system in India is so corrupt. Whatever you do, it is totally useless,” says TS Gopinath, the son of the deceased and himself a government-employed doctor in Chennai. But he says that prosecution won’t bring peace of mind either. “We have lost a life. We have nothing to lose anymore,” says Gopinath. The family opted to shut down the private, seven-bed hospital.
Up north, a 29-year-old female doctor who was mauled by a mob last September at Lok Nayak Hospital in New Delhi needed three months off before she could resume work at a different hospital in a different state. (She requested that her name be withheld.) She recounts that she was the lone doctor posted one night in a casualty ward when two patients came in. One woman showed serious signs of ectopic pregnancy, so the doctor gave her priority. The other pregnant patient did not appear to have any complications. But after turning her attention to the more pressing case, she was challenged by another woman who identified herself as a politician. “How dare you deny my patient?” bellowed the woman, clawing the doctors’ clothes and pulling up her shirt. A bunch of male followers surrounded the doctor and called out threats of rape. Meanwhile, a frightened security guard and a nurse had vanished. After about 15 minutes, other doctors arrived and rescued her from the mob of 30-odd people. “When the police came, they should have taken strong action. They just let them go away,” she recalls. The doctor resigned that night. “I was scared they would attack me again,” she says. Her father promptly arrived by train and escorted her out of Delhi.
Siddarth Ramji, who took over as medical superintendent of Lok Nayak shortly after this event, says that the hospital has beefed up security since then. Hospital representatives have also held meetings with community leaders to explain problems of understaffing and request some patience. (For example, Lok Nayak employs 600 nurses, compared to the 1300 that are supposed to be on the roster.) Rules were changed to allow only one attending relative at a time. Having seen previous violent outbursts punished with fines of a few thousand rupees, Ramji, too, is skeptical of legal remedies. “Preventive action is going to be far more important,” he predicts.
In his view, one crucial task is to train doctors to communicate more effectively with patients and their family members. Medical colleges should stop waiting for the stodgy Medical Council of India to introduce changes in the medical curriculum and instead take the initiative to train doctors to become more accommodating in answering questions and more empathetic in their manner.
In Bangalore, St John’s Medical College is held up as a rare example of an institution that fosters communication. There, clinical psychology professor Tanya Machado introduces students to some basic skills through role play, such as breaking the news of sudden death to relatives. “It’s very important to teach doctors that there will be anger in the normal process of grieving. They are going to accuse you of incompetence. Let them cry, let them get angry,” she advises. Other tips: “Try to give the message very clearly. It may have to be repeated a number of times. Maintain eye contact. Don’t stand with your arms crossed.”
Such sensitivity training should also be extended to nurses and office staff, according to VL Sateesh, medical superintendent of the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore. New batches of staff are trained to develop listening skills, despite the hectic pace of emergency settings. “If the relatives have the feeling of being neglected, the anger and frustration increases,” he says. Information-sharing is very important, he continues. If a patient arrives in a very serious condition, his relatives should be advised accordingly, not reassured that everything will turn out well.
Based in Mumbai, Shalini Ratan is starting to offer communications workshops for doctors in Maharashtra and elsewhere. Getting beyond their disease-centric training is a challenge. “I know that overnight they can never change,” she observes.
Will the talking cure have any significant impact? Krishnamurthy Balasundaram, the dean and director of Mysore Medical College and Research Institute, reports that violent incidents abated in the last six months after junior doctors were instructed to spend more time responding to concerns of the relatives. “Ours is an overburdened hospital. When doctors are overwhelmed, they get impatient and sometimes become rude. Now they have learned their lesson. Even if you talk to [patients’ relatives] for only a few minutes, ultimately it will take less time,” he says.
Other suggestions include introducing 24-hour inquiry desks at hospitals, a call center for registering grievances, and better mechanisms to file claims of medical negligence in a peaceful manner. (For various reasons, the Consumer Protection Act has not lived up to its promise in channeling healthcare disputes.) Given the multi-lingual mix in urban centers, both medical personnel and security guards must also bone up on their language skills to interact with a broad cross-section of society.
And this election season, politicians must be told to stay out of emergency rooms. A vote soaked in the blood of a doctor is hardly a sign of a healthy democracy.
Margot Cohen is a writer from New York. Her interest in India follows previous reporting stints in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.HE’S WELL KNOWN for his acting, but Sean Penn is also an activist who has an aid group, the J/P Haitian Relief Organisation.
Next week will see him focus on the latter side to his work when he presents the Front Line Defenders award at a ceremony in Dublin City Hall.
Penn will be taking a trip to the Irish capital to present the 2014 Front Line Defenders award for human rights at risk at 8.30am next Friday, 7 March.
The ceremony is the result of a partnership between Front Line Defenders and Al Jazeera Media Network and this year’s winner was selected from 110 nominations from 51 countries.
A jury of members of the Irish and European Parliaments, a representative of Front Line Defenders and a representative of Al Jazeera Media Network picked the overall winner, who will be named on the day.
Front Line Defenders was founded in Dublin in 2001, with the aim of “protecting human rights defenders at risk, people who work non-violently, for any or all of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)”.
As well as Penn, also attending the ceremony will be Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, who is director of Sudanese human rights organisation SUDO.
He received the inaugural Front Line Defenders Award in 2005.Queensland yachtsman who 'lost everything' in shipwreck calls on public for help
Posted
A solo yachtsman who has "lost everything" after his boat was shipwrecked on an island off central Queensland has called on the public to help salvage his uninsured vessel.
James Swan, a 68-year-old retired builder from Mackay who has spent the last three years single-handedly circumnavigating the world, was sailing his 12-metre yacht around the Whitsundays, when he ran into trouble.
"I was leaving Middle Island, which is the southern group of the Whitsundays, [and] my headsail on the yacht parted," Mr Swan said.
"I started the engine, but unfortunately part of the sail went in the water and got caught around the propeller."
Without power, Mr Swan said he had no choice but set off a distress signal and watch his boat smash into the rocks.
"The boat was pounding against the rocks and I feared for my life," he said.
"I grabbed a blanket, a pair of jeans, jumped onto the slippery rocks and found my way to an overhanging ledge which gave me some shelter."
Winched to safety
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority was alerted by Mr Swan's distress beacon around 4am on Wednesday.
Rescue helicopters from Rockhampton and Mackay were called in to help winch Mr Swan to safety.
Mr Swan said he was relieved by the sight of the helicopter and thought to himself, "here comes my taxi".
He was flown to Mackay around 8:30am but did not require treatment in hospital.
'A sign to give up boating'
Despite being safely back on land, Mr Swan said his dilemma was far from over.
"I'm in a bit of a dilemma here, because everything I own in on the boat — the boat is a wreck and it's not insured."
Mr Swan said he understood that without insurance he would have to fund the removal of his boat from Middle Island.
"As I'm giving up boating, I need somebody to salvage it," he said.
"I willing to let them have the boat for nothing... I only request that I have my personal belongings."
Mr Swan said he hoped a member of the public could help him.
Topics: sailing, travel-health-and-safety, accidents---other, oceans-and-reefs, emergency-incidents, whitsundays-4802Nonetheless, the companies are already moving forward as one in some ways and have been since 2010.
In a filing in April with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla anticipated recognizing $44 million in revenue this year from SolarCity for energy storage product sales, up from $8 million from SolarCity last year. That means, according to an analysis by GTM Research, which tracks certain clean technologies, Tesla could sell almost 60 percent more batteries for on-site storage at single buildings or facilities to SolarCity over 2016 than was installed for that segment of the United States storage market last year.
Bob Rudd, vice president of development, energy storage and microgrids at SolarCity, declined to give specifics, but said he was in talks for a number of large installations, any one of which could double what the company had installed. But interest in these kinds of projects is growing, and SolarCity and Tesla have plenty of competition to build them.
Massachusetts, for instance, approved a storage mandate earlier this year, joining California and Oregon, and other states are weighing storage targets. New Jersey has an incentive program, and New York City recently set a target for its utilities to install 100 megawatt hours of storage by 2020.
The project here could produce enough energy to run 725 average Connecticut homes each year over its 20-year life. But the batteries can also act as a bulwark against outages during storms, said Drew A. Rankin, chief executive of the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative, which mainly supplies wholesale power to a consortium of utilities in the state.
“We see it as a huge benefit,” he said.
The Kauai project, among the largest storage installations in the nation, is a way for the island to better use its abundance of solar energy to meet aggressive renewable goals, said David Bissell, chief executive of the electric cooperative there. The state, which relies heavily on diesel fuel for electricity and pays some of the highest rates in the country, has a mandate to use 100 percent renewable fuel by 2045.
Kauai has already come close — as high as 98 percent — but only for minutes at a time, Mr. Bissell said, and is at 40 percent renewable in its generation mix overall. Not allowed to use wind because of the island’s endangered seabird population, they need to add more solar, which is their lowest-cost source of new generation, but they already have more power coming into the grid during the prime daylight hours than the system needs. Hence, they turned to storage.
A request for proposals a few years ago yielded several applications, but no one came in with a price low enough, including SolarCity. But the company kept trying and eventually came up with a price that made sense for the utility, Mr. Bissell said. The solar panels will sit on about 50 acres and fill the batteries during the day with enough energy to power 5,000 homes through the evening peak. It is due to come into service in the first quarter of next year.
“It’s pretty cool,” Mr. Bissell said, adding that they were already looking to develop an even bigger project. “We’re very bullish on solar and storage.”JANIFEST via Getty Images Traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the currently free bridges that would get a new toll under the proposed Move NY plan.
Driving in New York City is a nightmare, and public transportation can be unpleasant on a good day. But there are plans afoot to ease congestion in certain parts of Manhattan and inject much-needed new funds into the ailing mass transit network.
A group of transportation experts over the summer proposed a controversial scheme to charge people for driving cars into Midtown and Lower Manhattan, which see the city’s worst traffic.
The congestion pricing plan, called Move NY, would focus on peak traffic times ― like the weekday rush-hour periods ― in the area south of 60th Street. It would charge a cashless toll of $5.54 for drivers crossing this street in either direction. It would impose the same toll on bridges that span the East River ― the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queensboro, and Williamsburg bridges ― which currently allow drivers to enter and exit the city’s central business district for free. The plan would reduce existing tolls on bridges that link other parts of the city.
The Move NY group, helmed by former New York City traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz, says the plan would cut the number of cars in Manhattan’s business district and would direct around $1.1 billion annually to the city’s subways and buses, as well as to bridges and streets.
Congestion pricing is already in effect in central areas of London, Singapore, Oslo, Stockholm, and a few other cities around the world ― and it’s been mostly successful. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration proposed a similar plan back in 2007, but it was ultimately shot down by the state assembly.
Now, almost a decade later, the idea is being revisited. “Congestion pricing is an idea whose time has come,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told The New York Times in mid-August. Though he has not said whether he supports Move NY specifically and didn’t comment for this story, Cuomo has assembled a panel to advise him on a policy to ease street traffic and direct new funds to subways and buses.
The Move NY group has been circulating a Change.org petition urging Albany to take up its plan in the 2018-2019 state budget, but it’s attracted few signatures.
Brendan McDermid / Reuters New York Governor Andrew Cuomo favors congestion pricing as a concept, but hasn't said whether he would support Move NY.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t support congestion pricing, and said in August he thinks it’s “inconceivable” that such a measure would pass.
There’s no guarantee such a plan would succeed in New York, though studies have shown that congestion pricing can work if implemented properly. Experts we spoke to favored it as a way of easing crowded streets.
Plus, something’s got to give in the Big Apple. While problems with traffic seem to be getting worse, bus ridership is on the decline. Underground, the century-old subway network is straining to carry more rush-hour commuters than ever, and service has become increasingly unreliable.
Between 2010 and 2015, the city gained 370,000 new residents and 10 million tourists. Though the number of cars entering Manhattan’s business district dropped by 6 percent during that time, the speed of traffic below 60th Street slowed by 12 percent, according to a report from the city’s Department of Transportation.
The subways handle a staggering 5.65 million passengers each weekday. Ridership increased by 159 million people from 2010 to 2015, yet maddening subway delays have become routine. City buses saw 46 million fewer passengers in the same period, with average speeds south of 60th Street plummeting by 20 percent.
The number of for-hire vehicle registrations ― including Uber and Lyft cars, as well as taxis ― has exploded since 2010. This may be adding to congestion on city streets and increasing toxic tailpipe emissions, though research into the matter has been far from conclusive.
“It’s not a healthy situation,” said Jon Orcutt, director of communications and advocacy at TransitCenter, a New York-based advocacy and research group. He blamed ride-hailing apps for increased congestion and said he suspects the businesses are eating into bus ridership. He sees congestion pricing as a viable solution.
LOIC VENANCE via Getty Images A police officer controls the traffic in Times Square, downtown Manhattan.
Research shows that congestion pricing has significantly cut traffic in cities where it has been imposed. Traffic volumes shrank by 13 percent to 30 percent in Singapore, where a policy has been in place since 1975; in Stockholm, where congestion pricing was enacted after a six-month trial in 2006; and in London, where congestion pricing was rolled out in 2003. Greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 15 percent to 20 percent, according to a 2010 report from the International Council on Clean Transportation.
In London, traffic has actually increased recently in the area where there’s congestion pricing. The city may roll out a tougher plan in the coming years. On Monday, London began a new rule that levies an additional fee on drivers of older, more polluting cars in the congestion zone area during peak hours.
In the U.S., congestion pricing as as concept has been unpopular, because drivers perceive roads as free, said Robert Krol, an economics professor at California State University, Northridge, and senior affiliated scholar at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
Krol points to a middle way, of sorts, in the form of variable tolls, which are higher during peak traffic times, or tolled express lanes, so drivers can choose to pay if they’re in a hurry. Both techniques have been successful in the U.S. and accepted by drivers, he said.
Congestion pricing “is the most effective way of reducing congestion and speeding up travel times,” said Krol.
And despite de Blasio’s dismissal of congestion pricing, Orcutt said he thinks it’s probably coming eventually. “For New York, I think it is a no-brainer,” he said.Rahul Gandhi was in Kashmir to lay the foundation of the 6.5-km-long Z-Morh tunnel.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
At a function to lay the foundation stone of Z-Morh tunnel, which will link Kargil with Kashmir Valley throughout the year, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and chief minister Omar Abdullah recalled the bonhomie between Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru and vowed to strengthen the bond.
"I am a Kashmiri. I myself am from Kashmiri family and want to have lifelong relations with the people of Jammu and Kashmir," Rahul said.
He said he extends his hand to Omar Abdullah like Jawaharlal Nehru extended it to Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah for holistic and comprehensive development of Jammu and Kashmir.
"I have two goals for Kashmir. First, I want to see permanent bond is established between us. I want to understand your problems deeply. I want to have lifelong relationship with you (people)," he added.
"I want that youth of this place should become part of India's development and progress like other states of the country," he said.
Rahul said Jammu and Kashmir should benefit in all sectors like education, health, infrastructure and power.
Talking about the importance of tunnels and road connectivity, Rahul said that he visited Ladakh last year and was informed that the region remains cut off with rest of the world in winter.
"This tunnel (Z-Morh) is the first step toward remaining connected with Ladakh throughout the year. The next step will be a tunnel at Zojila," Rahul added.
The two tunnels one at Z- Morh and another at Zojila will be 6.5 km and 12 km long respectively and once completed they will make Srinagar-Leh road fair-weather.
Rahul said that he would be visiting Kashmir regularly |
ON Sports Radio (eonsportsradio.com)
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hash-tag #MCYvADL
To purchase tickets visit www.aleague.com.au
Melbourne City FC Squad: 1.Thomas SORENSEN (GK), 2.Manny MUSCAT, 3.Josh ROSE, 5.Ivan FRANJIC, 6.Osama MALIK, 8.Neil KILKENNY, 10.Anthony CACERES, 11.Bruce KAMAU, 12.Nick FITZGERALD, 13.Yoshi, 14.Daniel ARZANI, 17.Tim CAHILL, 18.Paulo RETRE, 20.Dean BOUZANIS (GK), 22.Michael JAKOBSEN, 23.Bruno FORNAROLI (C), 26.Luke BRATTAN, 27.Fernando BRANDAN, 34.Denis GENREAU
**three to be omitted**
Ins: 5.Ivan FRANJIC (promoted/returns from injury), 13.Yoshi (new signing), 34.Denis GENREAU (promoted)
Outs: Nil
Unavailable: 7.Corey GAMEIRO (ACL - season), 9.Nicolas COLAZO (ear - tbc), 28.Steve KUZMANOVSKI (tbc)
Adelaide United Squad: 1.Eugene GALEKOVIC (gk) (c), 3.Iacopo LA ROCCA, 4.Dylan McGOWAN, 5.Taylor REGAN, 8.ISAÍAS, 9.Sergi GUARDIOLA, 12.Mark OCHIENG, 13.Marc MARINO, 14.George MELLS, 16.Jesse MAKAROUNAS, 18.Riley McGREE, 19.Ben GARUCCIO, 20.John HALL, 21.Tarek ELRICH, 22.Ryan KITTO, 24.Jordan O’DOHERTY, 25.James HOLLAND, 45.Danny CHOI
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 13.Marc MARINO (promoted), 12.Mark OCHIENG (promoted), 14.George MELLS (promoted)
Outs: 7.HENRIQUE (Knee - 6 weeks)
Unavailable: 2.Michael MARRONE (Achilles - 9 weeks), 10.Marcelo CARRUSCA (Foot - 4 weeks), 11.Sergio CIRIO (Knee - 7-9 weeks), 17.Nikola MILEUSNIC (Quad - 3 weeks), 23.Jordan ELSEY (Knee - season)
Saturday, 29 October 2016
Newcastle Jets v Sydney FC
McDonald Jones Stadium, Newcastle
Kick-Off: 5:35PM (Local) (5:35PM (AEDT))
Referee: Daniel Elder
Assistant Referee 1: Ryan Gallagher
Assistant Referee 2: James Cleal
Fourth Official: Stephen Lucas
TV Broadcast: Live coverage on Fox Sports 505 from 5.00pm (AEDT) and Sky Sport Pop-Up 2 (New Zealand)
Radio Broadcast: 1233 ABC Newcastle, 702 ABC Sydney, ABC Local Radio NSW Grandstand Digital, Online & via the ABC Radio Mobile App – A-league Live, EON Sports Radio (eonsportsradio.com)
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hash-tag #NEWvSYD
To purchase tickets visit www.aleague.com.au
Newcastle Jets Squad: 3.Jason HOFFMAN, 4.Nigel BOOGAARD (C), 5.Ben KANTAROVSKI, 6.Steven UGARKOVIC, 7.Andrew HOOLE, 8.Mateo POLJAK, 9.Aleksandr KOKKO, 10.Wayne BROWN, 11.Labinot HALITI, 13.Ivan VUJICA, 16.Nicholas COWBURN, 17.Radovan PAVICEVIC, 19.Morten NORDSTRAND, 20.Jack DUNCAN (gk), 23.Devante CLUT, 28.Johnny KOUTROUMBIS, 30.Pierce CLARK (gk)
**one to be omitted**
Ins: 9.Aleksandr KOKKO (returns from injury), 17.Radovan PAVICEVIC (promoted), 28.Johnny KOUTROUMBIS (promoted)
Outs: 15.Andrew NABBOUT (groin - 1-3 weeks), 22.Lachlan JACKSON (ankle - indefinite)
Unavailable: 1.Ben KENNEDY (gk) (Achilles - season), 2.Daniel MULLEN (knee - indefinite), 21.Daniel ALESSI (knee - season)
Sydney FC squad: 1.Vedran JANJETOVIC (gk), 3.Riley WOODCOCK, 4.Alex WILKINSON, 5.Matt JURMAN, 6.Joshua BRILLANTE, 7.Michael ZULLO, 8.Milos DIMITRIJEVIC, 9.BOBÔ, 10.Milos NINKOVIC, 11.Bernie IBINI, 13.Brandon O’NEILL, 14.Alex BROSQUE (c), 17.David CARNEY, 18.Matt SIMON, 20.Danny VUKOVIC (gk), 21.Filip HOLOSKO, 22.Sebastian RYALL, 23.Rhyan GRANT
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 3.Riley WOODCOCK (promoted), 11.Bernie IBINI (promoted)
Outs: Nil
Unavailable: Nil
Saturday, 29 October 2016
Western Sydney Wanderers FC v Central Coast Mariners
Spotless Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park
Kick-Off: 7:50PM (Local) (7:50PM (AEDT))
Referee: Shaun Evans
Assistant Referee 1: Allyson Flynn
Assistant Referee 2: Owen Goldrick
Fourth Official: Luke Withell
TV Broadcast: Live coverage on Fox Sports 505 from 7.45pm (AEDT) and Sky Sport Pop-Up 2 (New Zealand)
Radio Broadcast: 702 ABC Sydney, ABC Local Radio NSW, 666 ABC Canberra, Grandstand Digital & Online & via the ABC Radio Mobile App – A-league Live, Crocmedia A-League Live (www.facebook.com/A-leagueLIVERadio), EON Sports Radio (eonsportsradio.com), Coast FM 96.3, Hawkesbury Radio
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hash-tag #WSWvCCM
To purchase tickets visit www.aleague.com.au
Western Sydney Wanderers FC squad: 1.Jerrad TYSON (gk), 2.Shannon COLE, 3.Jack CLISBY, 5.Brendan HAMILL, 6.Mitch NICHOLS, 7.Steve LUSTICA, 8.Dimas (c), 9.Kerem BULUT, 10.Nicolás MARTÍNEZ, 11.Brendon SANTALAB, 12.Scott NEVILLE, 13.Bruno PIÑATARES, 14.Jumpei, 15.Kearyn BACCUS, 17.Artiz BORDA, 18.Robbie CORNTHWAITE, 19.Jacob MELLING, 20.Andrew REDMAYNE (gk)
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 2.Shannon COLE (promoted), 19.Jacob MELLING (promoted)
Outs: Nil
Unavailable: Nil
Central Coast Mariners squad: 1.Ivan NECEVSKI (gk), 2.Storm ROUX, 3.Scott GALLOWAY, 6.Blake POWELL, 7.Fabio FERREIRA, 8.Nick MONTGOMERY (c), 9.Roy O’DONOVAN, 10.Mickael TAVARES, 11.Connor PAIN, 12.Trent BUHAGIAR, 13.Kwabena APPIAH, 14.Adam BERRY, 16.Liam ROSE, 17.Josh BINGHAM, 19.Jacques FATY, 20.Paul IZZO (gk), 21.Michael NEILL, 22.Jake McGING
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 13.Kwabena APPIAH (promoted), 16.Liam ROSE (return from international duty),
Outs: Nil
Unavailable: 23.Jake Adelson (ACL – indefinite), 4.Jacob POSCOLIERO (quad strain – 1 week)
Sunday, 30 October 2016
Brisbane Roar FC v Perth Glory
Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane
Kick-Off: 4:00PM (Local) (5:00PM (AEDT))
Referee: Jonathan Barreiro
Assistant Referee 1: Nathan MacDonald
Assistant Referee 2: Andrew Lindsay
Fourth Official: Alex King
TV Broadcast: Live coverage on Fox Sports 505 from 4.30pm (AEDT) and Sky Sport Pop-Up 2 (New Zealand)
Radio Broadcast: 612 ABC Brisbane, ABC Local Radio Qld, 720 ABC Perth, ABC Local Radio WA, Grandstand Digital, Online & via the ABC Radio Mobile App – A-league Live, EON Sports Radio (eonsportsradio.com)
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hash-tag #BRIvPER
To purchase tickets visit www.aleague.com.au
Brisbane Roar FC squad: 1.Michael THEO (gk), 3.Luke DEVERE, 4.Daniel BOWLES, 5.Corey BROWN, 7.Thomas KRISTENSEN, 8.Jacob PEPPER, 9.Jamie MACLAREN, 10.Brett HOLMAN, 11.Tommy OAR, 13.Jade NORTH, 16.Nathan KONSTANDOPOULOS, 17. Matt McKAY (c), 19.Jack HINGERT, 21.Jamie YOUNG (gk), 22.Thomas BROICH, 26.Nicholas D’AGOSTINO, 28.Brandon BORRELLO, 33.Joey KATEBIAN
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 16.Nathan KONSTANDOPOULOS (promoted), 26. Nicholas D’AGOSTINO (promoted)
Outs: Nil
Unavailable: Nil
Perth Glory Squad: 2.Alex GRANT, 3.Marc WARREN, 4.Shane LOWRY, 5.Rhys WILLIAMS, 6.Dino DJULBIC, 7.Joel CHIANESE, 8.Rostyn GRIFFITHS (c), 9.Andy KEOGH, 10.Nebojsa MARINKOVIC, 13.Nicholas FEELY (gk), 14.Chris HAROLD, 15.Brandon WILSON, 16.Joe MILLS, 17.Diego CASTRO, 19.Josh RISDON, 22.Adam TAGGART, 24.Milan SMILJANIC, 33.Liam REDDY (gk)
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 4.Shane LOWRY (promoted) 5.Rhys WILLIAMS (promoted), 22.Adam TAGGART (promoted)
Outs: 11.Richard GARCIA (not selected)
Unavailable: nil
Monday, 31 October 2016
Melbourne Victory v Wellington Phoenix
Etihad Stadium, Melbourne
Kick-Off: 7:50PM (Local) (7:50PM (AEDT))
Referee: Alan Milliner
Assistant Referee 1: Matthew Cream
Assistant Referee 2: Wilson Brown
Fourth Official: Kurt Ams
TV Broadcast: Live coverage on Fox Sports 505 from 7.00pm (AEDT) and Sky Sport 2 (New Zealand)
Radio Broadcast: 774 ABC Melbourne & ABC Local Radio Vic, Grandstand Digital & via the ABC Radio Mobile App – A-league Live, Crocmedia A-League Live (www.facebook.com/A-leagueLIVERadio), 1116 SEN (Melbourne), EON Sports Radio (eonsportsradio.com)
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hash-tag #MVCvWEL
To purchase tickets visit www.aleague.com.au
Melbourne Victory squad: 2.Jason GERIA, 4.Nick ANSELL, 5.Daniel GEORGIEVSKI, 6.Leigh BROXHAM, 7.Marco ROJAS, 8.Besart BERISHA, 10.James TROISI, 11.Mitch AUSTIN, 13.Oliver BOZANIC, 14.Fahid BEN KHALFALLAH, 15.Alan BARO, 16.Rashid MAHAZI, 17.James DONACHIE, 20.Lawrence THOMAS (gk), 22.Stefan NIGRO, 23.Jai INGHAM, 25.Sebastian PASQUALI, 27.Alastair BRAY (gk)
**Two to be omitted**
Ins: 10.James TROISI (returns from injury), 22.Stefan NIGRO (promoted), 23.Jai INGHAM (promoted)
Outs: 21.Carl VALERI (soreness – 1 week)
Unavailable: Nil
Wellington Phoenix Squad: 1.Glen MOSS (gk), 2.Jacob TRATT, 4.Roly BONEVACIA, 5.Ryan LOWRY, 7.Gui FINKLER, 9.Kosta BARBAROUSES, 10.Michael MCGLINCHEY, 11.Hamish WATSON, 12.Adam PARKHOUSE, 13.Marco ROSSI, 14.Alex RUFER, 16.Louis FENTON, 17.Vince LIA, 18.Ben LITFIN, 20.Lewis ITALIANO (gk), 21 Roy KRISHNA, 22.Andrew DURANTE (c), 23.Matthew RIDENTON
**two to be omitted**
Ins: 5.Ryan LOWRY (promoted), 16. Louis FENTON (promoted), 18. Ben LITFIN (promoted).
Outs: 19. Tom DOYLE (hamstring - 1 week).
Unavailable: Alex RODRIGUEZ (hamstring 1-2 weeks).
[ad type="leaderboard" devices="desktop,tablet"] [ad type="topMrec" devices="desktop,tablet,mobile"] [ad type="skin" devices="desktop,tablet"] [ad type="bottomLeaderboard" devices="desktop,tablet,mobile"]Earlier this year, Julian Assange announced the formation of the WikiLeaks party:
The party will combine a small, centralised leadership with maximum grass roots involvement and support. By relying on decentralised Wikipedia-style, user-generated content structures, it will do without apparatchiks. The party will be incorruptible and ideologically united.
The hope for many was the mixed bag of WikiLeaks supporters would – even if not elected – show Australian political circles a thing or two about how to achieve the party’s much touted mantra of “transparency, accountability and justice.”
Fast forward to August 2013, and the WikiLeaks party appears to be imploding. Six party members have publicly resigned, including Victorian Senate candidate Leslie Cannold and Western Australian volunteer coordinator Natalie Banks. Daniel Matthews, one of the founders of WikiLeaks and loyal friend to Julian Assange since his time at university, has also resigned, prompting many to ask: what the hell just happened?
The WikiLeaks party preferenced the extreme right party Australia First above the Greens in New South Wales, and placed WikiLeaks-supporter Western Australian Greens senator Ludlam below the Nationals. While many party members initially claimed their unpalatable choices were an “administrative error”, many have since suggested such claims are a bald-faced lie, especially since Greens staffer Max Phillips had already noted last week that WikiLeaks party’s NSW deputy registered officer Cassie Findlay had informed him of their preferences at least a week before the “error” became public knowledge.
Others, such as Western Australian WikiLeaks party Senate candidate Gerry Georgatis, aren't claiming preferencing decisions are any kind of mistake. In fact, Georgatis seems happy about it, which may have something to do with the fact that he was a previous Greens candidate. Crickey reports he broke with the Greens in 2009, and one may guess, was potentially thrilled at the opportunity to slide the knife in at any cost – much to the horror of party volunteers, who appear to be quitting en masse.
Assange has since taken responsibility from the party's implosion. The WikiLeaks party made public statements suggesting the party’s NSW were a mistake, and the Western Australian preferences simply “symbolic.” As Greens staffer Giovanni Torre responded, it is a gesture that has a strong chance of electing a Coalition senator above [current WA Greens senator] Scott Ludlam.” And for all this misery? It appears the WikiLeaks party may not even win a single seat.
So how did this mess occur?
The answer lies with participatory democracy in party processes. WikiLeaks party’s national council seemed to compromise mostly of a self-elected group of friends and loosely linked acquaintances. They rushed to select potential electoral candidates and create a policy platform in time for the Australian Electoral Council (AEC). The WikiLeaks party national council meetings seem to have mostly been a closed affair – as a result, there possibly wasn’t critical oversight to scrutinise processes and add much needed pressure to ensure the party was run democratically.
As news of the untenable preference deals broke and the wrath of disillusioned supporters rained down upon the WikiLeaks party, a strange thing happened: the Pirate Party Australia (PPAU) began to trend on Twitter for the first time.
Trends Australia (@TrendsAustralia) Pirate Party AU, @piratepartyau is now trending in Australia http://t.co/giFpgT62Zv
Founded in 2009 by Rodney Serkowski with approximately 20 members, the PPAU took two attempts at AEC enrolment. Their first attempt at registration was lodged when former prime minister Julia Gillard called the election for August 21. As a result, the party was unable to formally contest the 2010 federal election. This may have been a blessing in disguise, giving the fledgling Pirate Party Australia three years to develop mechanisms for accountability which the WikiLeaks party failed to put in place.
The PPAU has created a policy platforms on more than 17 areas, including taxation, foreign affairs, social welfare (which the Australian Privacy Foundation describes as a “remarkably comprehensive platform which is very positive on human rights and privacy issues in its heartland area of the digitally literate"). Details of the PPAU’s policy platforms are publicly available and appear to include over 150 references.
Deputy secretary, press and policy development officer Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer says:
Although we're not elected, we do an extensive amount of activism on the issues we have policies on. We're constantly making submissions on inquiries and reviews. We're a force to try and make the incumbent parties consider certain issues, and to make them rethink their approach. And if they don't, we'll try to take their seats.
Now numbering over 800 members, in keeping with the PPAU’s commitment to transparency and participatory democracy, the party published all emails with other parties on their preferencing deals and decisions. All PPAU members then voted, ranking parties accordingly.
PPAU’s lead Senate candidate for NSW Brendan Molloy described how the party achieved its transparent and accountable model:
Basically we used an open and transparent policy development process: public development meetings are held on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and Mumble (open source voice communication software.) All drafts of policy development were done with the support of Working Groups and were placed on a public wiki for discussion, before being voted on by the members before being adopted. Referencing was a part of that; as a party that believes in truly evidence based policy development, we put strong emphasis on well sourced statements. As all our meetings are public and all minutes are published, oversight exists by default. We run background checks on all candidates: police background checks for one, and googling the nominees secondly. And as we have an open preselection process, the candidates have to present to the party why they should be preselected as a Senate candidate. Then the members of those states take a vote on whether those candidates should stand, and in what order they will stand on the Senate ticket. Then all of those anonymous ballots are published.
It seems the Pirate Party Australia has actually realised values can be more than just hollow jingoism. They have found a way to make their party processes reflect their members' values by using a grassroots participatory model to create a set of preferences.
The outcome? Their preferences appear saner than most of the rest of the bunch – and by a long shot.
While they may be a long shot for the 2013 election, they don't plan on going anywhere. Surveying the wreckages of the WikiLeaks party preferencing fiasco, PPAU president Simon Frew noted: "Politics is a marathon: it's easy to sell out for as short term gain, but it always eventually comes back to bite you if you sell out your ideals."The White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Rick Dearborn, left, and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller. AP Photo/Susan Walsh A top aide to President Donald Trump passed along information about a person who wanted to set up a meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter.
According to CNN, Rick Dearborn, who is now Trump's deputy chief of staff, sent information to campaign officials last year about the effort, which was not previously reported.
Dearborn was skeptical about the request, CNN's senior congressional reporter, Manu Raju, said in an interview on Wednesday evening.
The person mentioned in the email was identified only with "WV." One of CNN's sources said it was a reference to a contact in West Virginia.
The report said the email came around the same time as a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son; Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law who's now a senior White House adviser; Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman; and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.
The email represents another example of Russia's attempts to make inroads with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Russian operatives reportedly targeted Carter Page, who was briefly a foreign-policy adviser to the campaign, as a potential opening to Trump's inner circle.
Page, along with Manafort and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, had documented contacts with Russian operatives before and after they joined the Trump campaign. All of them have denied engaging in any untoward interactions with the Kremlin on behalf of the campaign.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has come under scrutiny in recent months for his previously undisclosed talks with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during the campaign. He did not mention during his Senate confirmation hearings earlier this year that he had such discussions, but later said he did indeed meet with Kislyak on several occasions.
A special counsel, Robert Mueller, is leading the FBI's ongoing investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.Robbie Dickson’s latest acquisition is a McLaren 720S, a super-fast sports car that will sell for more than $300,000 when it becomes available to buyers in Canada this year.
The White Rock resident is part of a recent surge that auto dealers are noticing in the market for high-end vehicles in Metro Vancouver. Dickson made his latest acquisition earlier this month when the 720S debuted at the Geneva Auto Show, adding it to his collection that already included another McLaren, and a Lamborghini.
“You’ve heard the saying that Vancouver is the supercar capital of the world right now, and it’s so true … It’s almost to the point where when you see a McLaren or a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, and nobody really even notices,” he said.
Dickson sees international money, particularly from China, as a major driver of this trend: “I think it’s purely because of the amount of wealth — young wealth — in Vancouver.”
Three thousand vehicles valued at more than $150,000 were insured in B.C. last year, according to ICBC. That’s double the number insured just three years earlier, in 2013.
Between 2013 and 2016, the total annual dollar value of vehicle sales in B.C. and the territories shot up 35 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. Meanwhile, the yearly number of sales grew more slowly, increasing by about 20 per cent.
Izzam Ahamed, general manager of Vancouver’s Regency Lexus, has watched an increasing number of customers make the switch from automakers like Honda, Toyota and Hyundai to Lexus and other luxury manufacturers. One factor seems to be the region’s famously high real estate prices.
“People’s perceived wealth has definitely increased with the price of their homes,” he said. “They feel that … they deserve to be driving a Lexus or any other premium brand.”
Between 2014 and 2016, the Lower Mainland saw a 28-per-cent increase in the number of sales of luxury vehicles like BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar, according to statistics provided by Ahamed.
He believes there’s also been a trickle-down effect as international money flows into the Vancouver area through the real estate market and tourism. Many of the more-recent buyers have been realtors and fashion consultants at high-end clothing stores — even fellow vehicle salespeople.
“We’re not seeing so much of the foreign money, it’s just that we see a lot of people benefiting from consumerism in general in Vancouver,” he said.
At Ferrari Maserati of Vancouver, GM Mark Edmonds agrees that Vancouver’s growing status as a playground for the wealthy explains some of the interest in luxury vehicles. But he also pointed out that many high-end manufacturers now offer models with prices that are more accessible to people who aren’t fabulously wealthy.
“I’m born and raised in Vancouver, and when I was a kid there was one parent on my hockey team that had a Mercedes, and you never saw a Ferrari and you rarely saw a Porsche. A Lamborghini was like a UFO,” Edmonds said.
“Nowadays, everybody has a Mercedes, everybody has a BMW. Now those people who used to buy Mercedes or BMWs try and be a bit different … they need to go somewhere else.”
Anyone willing to drop more than $150,000 on a car likely has a lot of extra cash, but they’re going to need even more in the coming years as ICBC begins to move away from insuring luxury vehicles. Beginning this year, high-end vehicle owners will have to pay more than double the standard rates for basic insurance, and some owners will also have to buy their own damage policies.
blindsay@postmedia.com
twitter.com/bethanylindsay
CLICK HERE to report a typo.
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. Email vantips@postmedia.com.Sen. Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE (R-Ala.) said Tuesday he would recuse himself from any possible investigations related to Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE if he is confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE's attorney general.
Sessions said during a confirmation hearing the politically charged comments he made about the Clintons during the presidential campaign would give the appearance he is not impartial in potential probes of the private email server she used while secretary of State or of the Clinton Foundation.
"I do believe that that could place my objectivity in question," Sessions told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley Charles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleyOvernight Health Care: Drug execs set for grilling | Washington state to sue over Trump rule targeting Planned Parenthood | Wyoming moves closer to Medicaid work requirements Senate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks Lower refunds amplify calls to restore key tax deduction MORE (R-Iowa). "I believe the proper thing for me to do would be for me to recuse myself."
ADVERTISEMENT
Republicans in Congress have vowed to continue an investigation into Clinton’s private email setup.
Sessions’s comments are designed to assuage critics who believe the Justice Department could be politicized under Trump.
The Alabama senator was a vocal campaign supporter of Trump, who suggested that Clinton should be imprisoned for her private email setup.
Sessions said he would refuse an order from the president to name a special prosecutor to go after Clinton, a move Trump called for during the campaign.
“I believe that would be the best approach for the country because we can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute,” Sessions said. “This country does not punish its political enemies. What this country ensures [is] that no one is above the law.”
But it’s unclear whether Trump wants to continue with such a probe as president.
If an investigation does go forward, it would likely be overseen by Sessions’s deputy if he is confirmed.
Read more from The Hill:
Live coverage of Sessions confirmation hearingRising NRL stars including Luke Brooks, Mitchell Moses and Bevan French have been hand-picked to take part in a specialist pathways program under the guidance of NSW True Blues legends Brad Fittler, Andrew Johns, Danny Buderus, Anthony Minichiello and Mark O’Meley at ANZ Stadium tomorrow (Wednesday, 21 December).
The young trio will be joined by more than 40 of the state’s most promising talents ranging from 14-22 years of age, including five country-based players, in a program designed to help guide the next generation of Blues players through position-specific sessions.
The session will have a strong focus on halves and hookers, with Johns and Fittler to mentor the No.6 and 7 contenders, while Buderus will run skill sessions for the hookers.
Players from country NSW will travel from as far as the Riverina and Tamworth, with the program providing a greater opportunity to regionally based players.
Newly appointed Blues assistant team manager Mark Donaldson will also address the players.cgarcia
Offline
: Off
p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Canon 80D dynamic range: good news! (quick test with RAW images)
https://lightful.github.io/talk/photo/sensor/80D_vs_7D2_dr.png
However, at high ISO, the 80D is slightly under the 7D2 level. I don't know if this is related to cheaper electronics or if the new tech has some influence. Note also that both cameras true ISO level could differ.
Here are the numbers, using also the ones from my 7D2 analysis (same technique) to compare:
ISO 100 (
80D - DR 13.22 at 8MP (12.43 at 24MP), read noise 2.8712 DN
7D2 - DR 11.60 at 8MP (10.94 at 24MP), read noise 5.88731 DN
ISO 200 (
80D - DR 12.74 at 8MP (11.95 at 24MP), read noise 3.99545 DN
7D2 - DR 11.70 at 8MP (11.04 at 20MP), read noise 6.28073 DN
ISO 400 (
80D - DR 11.92 at 8MP (11.13 at 24MP), read noise 6.37543 DN
ISO 800 (
80D - DR 11.09 at 8MP (10.29 at 24MP), read noise 11.3868 DN
ISO 1600 (
80D - DR 10.25 at 8MP (9.45 at 24MP), read noise 20.3616 DN
7D2 - DR 10.41 at 8MP (9.75 at 20MP), read noise 15.4014 DN
ISO 3200 (
80D - DR 9.41 at 8MP (8.62 at 24MP), read noise 36.395 DN
ISO 6400 (
80D - DR 8.63 at 8MP (7.84 at 24MP), read noise 62.2559 DN
7D2 - DR 8.95 at 8MP (8.29 at 20MP), read noise 42.3891 DN
ISO 12800 (
80D - DR 7.64 at 8MP (6.85 at 24MP), read noise 124.027 DN
7D2 - DR 8.00 at 8MP (7.34 at 20MP), read noise 82.8706 DN
ISO 16000 (
80D - DR 7.33 at 8MP (6.54 at 24MP), read noise 153.517 DN
ISO 25600 (
80D - DR 6.74 at 8MP (5.95 at 24MP), read noise 231.801 DN
The new sensor uses a black level of DN (data number) 512 for ISO 100 and 200, but continues using 2048 for the remaining ISO levels. The saturation level seems to be the DN 16383 at all ISO levels, which is unusual. For example, the analyzed ISO 100 picture has 871 blue pixels with DN 16383, 1039 red pixels with DN 16382, and 1660 plus 1632 green pixels (two green channels) with DN 16383; the image is overall underexposed and from DN 10000 to 16381/2, each DN only counts 0-2 pixels.
There are two masked areas in the 25.5MP image (6288x4056): one 264 pixels wide at the left and the other 34 pixels height at the top. So, the effective image area is 6024x4022 (one-two pixels in the frontier of both areas, showing visible artifacts, are not truly usable). The masked area does not receives light and its standard deviation can be measured to determine the read noise, and to infer from that the DR. The area used has been the left one, but the top measures almost the same noise levels (unlike with other sensors, where the top masked area has some oddities).
Edited on Apr 03, 2016 at 10:19 PM · I have completed a more detailed study of the RAW images. Definitely, the sensor dynamic range versus ISO graph now resembles the profile of the Canon competitors. To make this graph I have used the 7D2 results generated with exactly the same technique on september 2014 (see https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1319060/0 ):However, at high ISO, the 80D is slightly under the 7D2 level. I don't know if this is related to cheaper electronics or if the new tech has some influence. Note also that both cameras true ISO level could differ.Here are the numbers, using also the ones from my 7D2 analysis (same technique) to compare:ISO 100 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-80d/80DhSLI00100NR0.CR2.HTM 80D - DR 13.22 at 8MP (12.43 at 24MP), read noise 2.8712 DN7D2 - DR 11.60 at 8MP (10.94 at 24MP), read noise 5.88731 DNISO 200 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-80d/80DhSLI00200NR0.CR2.HTM 80D - DR 12.74 at 8MP (11.95 at 24MP), read noise 3.99545 DN7D2 - DR 11.70 at 8MP (11.04 at 20MP), read noise 6.28073 DNISO 400 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-80d/80DhSLI00400NR0.CR2.HTM 80D - DR 11.92 at 8MP (11.13 at 24MP), read noise 6.37543 DNISO 800 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-80d/80DhSLI00800NR0.CR2.HTM 80D - DR 11.09 at 8MP (10.29 at 24MP), read noise 11.3868 DNISO 1600 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-80d/80DhSLI01600NR0.CR2.HTM 80D - DR 10.25 at 8MP (9.45 at 24MP), read noise 20.3616 DN7D2 - DR 10.41 at 8MP (9.75 at 20MP), read noise 15.4014 DNISO 3200 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-80d/80DhSLI03200NR0.CR2.HTM 80D - DR 9.41 at 8MP (8.62 at 24MP), read noise 36.395 DNISO 6400 ( http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRO |
wide collection of art throughout the building donated by the Nagel family. The building is certified Gold in LEED standards to be environmentally friendly and more sustainable. As well as Nagel, Nelson Hall is another LEED residence hall that was built in the last eight years.
DU completed the first ever (Peter S. Barton) lacrosse-only stadium that was specifically designed for the sport in 2005, as well as Ciber Field soccer stadium (2010) on the northern end of campus, adjoining the Nagel studio space for the School of Art, as well as the Pat Bowlen varsity sports weight training facility underneath the stands.
The environmentally friendly $25 million Morgridge College of Education was opened in June 2010.
At the beginning of the summer of 2011, the 41-year-old Penrose Library closed for a $32 million renovation, and reopened in the Spring of 2013 as the Anderson Academic Commons, a 21st-century high-tech collaboration and study space - one of the most advanced and technologically capable libraries among universities throughout the country.
The university has five residence halls, Johnson McFarlane Hall (JMac), Centennial Halls, Centennial Towers, Nelson Hall and Nagel Hall. Johnson McFarlane Hall was recently[when?] energy star certified as one of the most energy efficient buildings on campus, and is the oldest co-ed dorm in the western United States.
Academics [ edit ]
Demographics [ edit ]
The University of Denver has an undergraduate student body of 5,758 in 2015, and a graduate student body of 6,389, with a total student enrollment of 11,476. The ratio of undergraduate women to men is 54% women to 46% men. Of the class of 2011, 67.0% are White, 2% are Black, 6.8% are Hispanic, 5.2% are Asian or Pacific Islander, 1-2% are American Indian, 11% are international (there were more than 1,400 international students as of 2013 ), and 9.1% are race/ethnicity unknown. Around 63 percent of the student body is from outside the state of Colorado. For 2011 the average accepted high school student obtained a 3.74 GPA, SAT range of 1220 to 1500 and, an ACT of 28. Roughly over 50% of the incoming freshman class for 2011 was in the top 10% of their graduating high school class. The University of Denver likes to promote inclusiveness; therefore, there are numerous programs and people available to help transfer (or international students). There are International Student Advisors available to help with issues such as cultural adjustment and immigration. (Frequently Asked Questions | University of Denver, www.du.edu)
Ritchie Center Tower
Rankings [ edit ]
The University of Denver has been received national recognition including most recently by the U.S. News & World Report 2018 Rankings:
#87 (tie) in National Universities (86th in 2016)
#76 Best Law School and #10 for its part-time law program. [22]
#17 Best Graduate School - Social Work
#40 Best Graduate School - Library and Information Studies
The undergraduate business program, The Daniels College of Business, was ranked 87th best in 2016 by BusinessWeek, and it was ranked the 71st best program by U.S. News in a 2008 ranking.[23]
The Creative Writing Doctoral Program in the Department of English, one of the oldest such programs in the nation, is ranked 1st by Poets & Writers magazine.[24] The program was founded by the distinguished novelist, John Edward Williams, co-recipient of the 1973 National Book Award in Fiction, along with John Barth, for his novel Augustus.
The Financial Times has ranked the Daniels College of Business Executive MBA program in the top 100 programs in the World in a 2011–2012 ranking.
In a 2012 survey performed by the College of William and Mary and published by Foreign Policy Magazine, the Josef Korbel School of International Studies ranked 11th in the world for its graduate masters program, ahead of such schools as Syracuse, Yale, Stanford, University of California-Berkeley, Oxford and MIT.[25]
F W Olin Hall for Biological and Natural Sciences
In 2006, Men's Fitness magazine ranked DU in the top-25 fittest colleges in America because the university actively promotes a healthy lifestyle for its students. The Coors Fitness Center has top-of-the-line equipment, personal trainers, nutritionists and fitness classes. Students also can play in 30 club and 22 intramural sports, and DU is located near some of the city's best recreational opportunities and the great outdoors.
The University of Denver has almost 70.2% of its undergraduate student body study abroad before graduation, placing it first in the nation among all doctoral and research institutions in percentage of undergraduate students participating in study abroad programs.[26]
The Aspen Institute's 2011–2012 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes, a biennial survey and alternative ranking of business schools, recently[when?] ranked the Daniels College of Business the 15th best MBA program in the world. The survey puts emphasis on how well schools are preparing their students for the environmental, social, and ethical complexities of modern-day business.
On October 3, 2012, the university hosted the first U.S. presidential debate of 2012.
Academic programs [ edit ]
In addition to traditional undergraduate programs, the University of Denver is home to the following graduate entities:
Divisions:
Division of Natural Sciences & Mathematics
Divisions of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
Colleges:
Buchtel Tower and the Sturm College of Law Tower
Schools:
Institutes and Centers:
Programs:
Graduate Tax Program
DU-Iliff Joint Program
Graduate School of Social Work Doctoral Program
Josef Korbel School of International Studies-Sturm College of Law Joint Program
Daniels College of Business-Sturm College of Law Joint Program
Interdisciplinary Programs:
Cognitive Neuroscience – (Psychology and Biology)
Video Game Design – (Computer Science and Emergent Digital Practices)
Students in the graduate programs represent over half of the total enrollment of the school.
Daniels College of Business; the eighth oldest business school in the country
Aside from the Sturm College of Law, the university operates on a quarter system, sometimes known as trimester academic calendar, in which an academic year is divided into three academic quarters lasting 10 weeks per each quarter. This academic system allows students to take more classes each year than students in a more traditional 15-week semester system.
Nelson Hall Tower
Offering students a learning experience abroad, the Cherrington Global Scholars program offers every undergraduate the chance to study abroad at no cost above the normal university tuition, room and board.[30]
The art and music scene of DU is on the rise due to the recent construction of the Robert and Judi Newman Center for Performing Arts. This building houses the Lamont School of Music, the University of Denver Department of Theater, and the University's Newman Center Presents performing arts series. The Lamont School of Music is a structured conservatory setting which allows students to focus on their talents in a competitive manner. The theatre department, reestablished in 1985, is being transformed into a nationally competitive theatre school.
With the recent addition of more faculty members and renovation beginning on Margery Reed Hall, the Theatre Department has become a magnet for theatre students in the region. Much of the faculty have many professional connections with local theatre companies (Curious, DCPA), as well as contacts in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many other regions, providing students with many available options for internships and quick job placement.
The university has established the Emergent Digital Practices program, focusing on art, design, media, culture, and technology studies in a hands-on, collaborative environment.
Sturm College of Law: the first law school in the nation to earn certification by the U.S. Green Building Council
Recently,[when?] the University of Denver Sturm College of Law has undergone an internal renaissance. In 2003, the University of Denver Association of Trial Lawyers of America trial team won the national championship in New Orleans, taking Harvard's title from the previous year.[31]
The Institute for Public Policy Studies (IPPS) boasts two former Colorado Governors as teaching faculty. Richard Lamm was joined in January 2007 by Bill Owens.
As of 2017, the Daniels School of Business also offers an online MBA program.[32]
Margery Reed Hall Ivy
The university established an Undergraduate Research Center. This center provides funding for the Partners in Scholarship program, offering students the opportunity to work directly with a faculty member over the course of a quarter or over the summer. The student may design the research project with the faculty member's approval or may work with a faculty member on an existing research project, thus affording students an opportunity for close mentorship and relationship-building that strengthens the student's overall learning experience. Annual conferences on campus highlight student research efforts
The Ricks Center for Gifted Children is a private school on the campus of DU that teaches preschool through eighth grade. Since April 1997, the school has been accredited by The North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCACASI). It was founded and is directed by Norma Hafenstien.
Study Abroad Program [ edit ]
For the past five years, University of Denver has been in the top five rank in the country of study abroad program for undergraduate students. On the 2015-16 academic year, DU had about 70 percent of participation leading them to be the fourth in the national rank. The director of the Office of International Education, Denise Cop, acknowledged that there is an increase in cultural self-awareness and knowledge of cultural worldview frameworks of the students that go study abroad. The top destinations of DU students are United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, however many students go to universities in Australia, New Zealand and Scotland. DU's Office of International Education also offers to their students support and advice for all undergraduate students who want to study abroad.[33]
Athletics [ edit ]
DU's athletic teams are known as the Denver Pioneers. The school has been fielding athletic teams since 1867, winning 33 NCAA Division One titles since 1949—among the top 15 of all schools. Denver is best known as a major power in winter sports, in particular, skiing and ice hockey. DU has won 24 NCAA national team skiing championships (more than any other school). Ice hockey is DU's flagship spectator sport, with eight NCAA titles (tied for second among all schools), most recently in 2017 and including back-to-back crowns in 2004 and 2005. The program has produced 75 NHL players and regularly sells out the 6,000 seat Magness Arena on campus, the showpiece of the Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness.
Magness Arena looking northwest
Exterior of the Daniel L. Ritchie Center
The Pioneers' major conference affiliations changed in July 2013. Denver moved its primary affiliation from the Western Athletic Conference to The Summit League, hockey moved from the Western Collegiate Hockey Association to the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, and men's lacrosse moved from the ECAC Lacrosse League to the Big East Conference. In addition, the women's gymnastics team joined the newly formed Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference in 2013 and later moved to the Big 12 Conference in July 2015.
The Pioneers captured their first men's lacrosse championship in 2015, beating Maryland, 10-5. They are the first Division I men's team west of the Appalachians to win a men's NCAA lacrosse championship. The 2016 men's soccer team advanced to the NCAA College Cup.
The school has identified itself as the Pioneers since 1925.[34] Previous mascots were Pioneer Pete (1920s to 1968), Denver Boone (1968 to 1998), and Ruckus the red-tailed hawk (1998 to 2007). A 2013 task force generated three new mascot options, but none of them carried enough votes from the University community to merit selection.[35]
Notable alumni and faculty [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:By the time Californians vote on Proposition 64 in November, millions of dollars will have been spent both by backers and opponents of legal recreational marijuana use in the state. By one count the war chests now total more than $10 million, and the money is heavily tilted toward legalization.
Supporters of Prop 64 have raised almost $9.3 million according to a report at LA Weekly while opponents have raised about $160,000. But those only include the groups that report contributions to the California Secretary of State. The LA Weekly noted:
But there’s a third horse in this race. The antipot group Smart Approaches to Marijuana says its political arm, SAM Action, has raised more than $2 million to fight legalization in California and elsewhere this election season.
Contributions to the main committee supporting legalization, “Yes on 64,” total at least $6.6 million to date, and many big donors have a dog in the fight. The Sacramento Bee reported that a company named Weedmaps that helps patients with legal dispensaries and doctors, has given $1 million to support the legalization effort. And that’s just a single example, the newspaper reports several others.
At stake is a recreational marijuana market that could reach $6.5 billion in annual sales by 2020 and raise $1 billion annually in state taxes. To paraphrase Mark Twain, whiskey’s for drinking, pot is for fighting over.
Marijuana Use Leads to Laziness, Study Suggests
The popular notion may hold true: marijuana can cause laziness. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers from the University of British Columbia in Canada, who found the primary active compound in marijuana – tetrahydrocannabinol – made rats less willing to attempt a cognitively challenging task.
Lead study author Mason Silveira, of the Department of Psychology at Columbia, and colleagues report their findings in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States; a 2014 survey found more than 22 million Americans reported using the drug in the past month.
However, as of June 2016, 25 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, and more states are expected to follow suit. This highlights the need to gain a better understanding of the risks and benefits marijuana use may pose.
Read more at Medical News Today.First - jocelyncd.deviantart.com/art/R… Gallery - jocelyncd.deviantart.com/galle… Prev - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Next - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Despite Kellen's adversity, there's something to be said about letting people have time to dwell on things. Just take Aiken for instance. He's really come a long way. Much to learn still, but even he acknowledges that.It's always hard to imagine in the moment that someone who wronged you might have an epiphany and realize they were wrong. But it really can and does happen. I've had it happen with a couple aunts, and while my grandmother still won't directly talk to me since coming out, she's eased up enough that I get Christmas cards again (although written out to "Joshalyn", but that's probably as good as I'm going to get with her). And a few of my older queer/trans friends have told me stories of "my ____ didn't talk to me for years, but now we're closer than ever." It's not always going to be the case unfortunately, but it does happen and I do prefer to be optimistic.Maybe there's hope for Kellen someday. Not today. Probably not tomorrow. Maybe not even this year. But maybe it could happen... someday.As for the present, I know people are eagerly waiting for the encounter between Fara and Kellen, but that's going to need to wait. Fara is much more concerned about the victim than she is about the guilty party.©2004-2015Rain, all characters and all other aspects of the story are copyright material belonging to me.hominishostilis:
pissbabyanarchist:
spellingmistakescostlives: How about a total and complete shutdown of white men buying guns until we figure out what the hell is going on.
Stop being a racist asshole. Thanks.
The first mass shooter in American history ….was female.
Who holds the record for the deadliest shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, you ask? That would be Korean immigrant, Seung-Hui Cho, with 32 murders in a matter of hours at Virginia Tech in 2007.
DC Sniper? Black
Elliot Roger? Mixed.
Oregon Community College shooter? Mixed.
2012 Miami? Haitian.
2011 Carson City, Nevada? Mexican.
In 2009 – the same year that model second-generation immigrant Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 soldiers at Fort Hood – model first-generation Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people in Binghamton, New York.
Hey – everybody remember the wall-to-wall coverage of the mass shooting at a Salt Lake City shopping mall in 2007? Five people were killed.
Here’s a clue: Two days after the attack, the Times ran an article titled, “Anti-Bosnian Backlash Is Feared in Utah.” (The killer: Bosnian immigrant Sulejman Talovic.)
After Mexican immigrant Salvador Tapia slaughtered six employees at the Windy City Core Supply warehouse in Chicago in 2003, the Times plastered the story all over – one article on Page 14 of the late edition.
The Washington Post also ran one.
But please, continue this narrative of “da evil white men” because you’re too fucking stupid to do anything but gawp at the news.CLEVELAND—Senator Ted Cruz strode out on stage at the Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday to thunderous, extended applause. He left, smiling tightly, to equally thunderous, equally extended boos.
The applause was Cruz’s reward for appearing at the Republican National Convention hosted by Donald Trump. The boos were his penalty for refusing to endorse Trump during the speech. It was the latest stunning turn at a convention that remains stubbornly fractured, despite pleas to paper over differences on three straight nights. The GOP simply isn’t ready to unify.
The rapturous reception when Cruz came out was striking but not so strange. After all, even though the feud between Cruz and Trump grew increasingly bitter as the primary campaign went on, polls showed substantial overlap between their two voter bases. But it became clear from the start of the speech that Cruz, like a trio of other famous Texans, wasn’t ready to make nice.
“I want to congratulate Donald Trump on winning the nomination last night,” Cruz said. It was a twice-barbed comment: Not only was it not an endorsement, the insistence that Trump had won only Tuesday, after a series of revolts by pro-Cruz delegates were put down, was a subtle jab. The rest of the speech included a series of double-edged remarks that could be taken as either support for party unity or continued disdain for Trump:
“I want to see the principles our party believes prevail in November.”
“What if this, right now, is our last time?... Did we live up to our values? Did we do all we could? That’s really what elections should be about.... We’re fighting, not for one particular candidate or one campaign, but because each of us wants to be able to tell our kids and grandkids... that we did our best for their future, and for our country.”
“Freedom means religious freedom, whether you are Christian or Jew, Muslim or atheist.”
And perhaps most cleverly: “Don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
Cruz can be an excellent speaker, and he was on his game Wednesday. The crowd was into it. But as the address approached its conclusion, and it became clear that there was no endorsement coming, the crowd grew increasingly agitated. Pockets of people pointed and shouted, “Endorse Trump!” And as Cruz reached for the big finish, the boos broke out. It was stunning. Across the press box, jaded journalists’ jaws hung agape.
The up-and-down pattern exemplified by Cruz’s address persisted throughout the night. Early in the evening, Laura Ingraham delivered a barnburner of a speech. “We should all, even all you boys with wounded feelings and bruised egos, pledge to support Donald Trump now,” she said. “This is the most important election since 1980.” (Cruz apparently didn’t hear her.) But a sleepy, meandering speech by casino owner Phil Ruffin, punctuated with borderline laughable statements—“If Donald tells you something, put it in the bank. His handshake is better than any contract you will ever write”—let the air out of the room. A bit later, Pastor Darrell Scott of Cleveland Heights had the room on its feet; businessman Harold Hamm got them to sit back down again. Governor Scott Walker, whose endorsements of Trump had been tortured, offered stronger backing in his speech, which was punctuated by a refrain of “America deserves better.” But he was followed by Lynne Patton, vice president of the Eric Trump Foundation. Yes, really.
Adding to the weirdness, Newt Gingrich decided to kick off his own speech with an impromptu attempt to walk back Cruz’s non-endorsement. “I think you misunderstood one paragraph that Ted Cruz, who’s a superb orator, said,” Gingrich insisted. “He said, you can vote your conscience for anyone who would uphold the Constitution. In this election, there is only one candidate who will uphold the Constitution.”
Gingrich praised Trump for inviting his competitors speak at the convention without demanding an endorsement. Trump couldn’t have been taken by surprise; the speech Cruz delivered was nearly identical to prepared remarks sent out ahead of time. The radical honesty made for great television, but it was also likely political malpractice. Not only did it make the Cruz boos the big story of the night, but the victim was Mike Pence, the vice-presidential candidate whose speech was meant to be its centerpiece.
And it was a good speech. Pence was self-effacing and poised. He movingly praised his mother, wife, and children. Poking fun at his relatively low profile compared to Trump, the Indiana governor quipped, “He’s a man known for a large personality, a colorful style, and lots of charisma, and so I guess he was just looking for some balance on the ticket.” (He also stands to bring some accent balance to the ticket. He told the audience the change Trump would bring would be “hhhhuge,” emphasizing the initial letter.)
Despite a less bellicose reputation than his vanquished rivals for the running-mate slot, Pence showed that he could be an able attacker. Democrats “tell us this economy is the best that we can do. It’s nowhere near the best that we can do. It’s just the best that they can do.” He said that if Hillary Clinton were elected, the nation would have to “get used to unelected judges using unaccountable means to take unconstitutional actions.” He also managed to put a slightly friendlier gloss on “Blue Lives Matter” mantra other speakers have recited at the convention. “We will always stand with those who stand on the thin blue line of law enforcement in America,” Pence said.
In short, it was polished, smooth, and effective—not the most memorable speech in political history, but a strong performance, which was exactly what the Donald Trump campaign needed and wanted when it selected a veteran politician as a running mate. Unfortunately for Trump and Pence, though, he was neither the best nor the most memorable speaker of the night. That honor went to Ted Cruz.
—David A. GrahamSearch results of inspections of Toronto food premises conducted over the past 2 years. By using this page you accept the terms of use.
DineSafe is Toronto Public Health's food safety program that inspects all establishments serving and preparing food. Each inspection results in a pass, a conditional pass or a closed notice. Find out more about the inspection system.
The Dinesafe Web site is designed to provide information to the public concerning the Toronto Public Health Food Premises Inspection and Disclosure System. It is not a substitute for the notification and posting requirements of Municipal Code Chapter 545 - Licensing.
The inspection report information posted on this website describes conditions found in food premises within the City of Toronto at the time of the most recent Toronto Public Health inspection. In the majority of cases, inspection results will be posted to this site within 24 to 36 hours of an inspection. Results from inspections done on Saturdays and Sundays will be posted to the site by end of day Monday. The date and time of the most recent posting are indicated on the site.
While every effort is made to keep the information on this website accurate and up-to-date, the City of Toronto and Toronto Public Health are not responsible for discrepancies between information posted on this website and inspection reports posted on food premises and cannot guarantee that all information is accurate, complete or current at all times. This website is not intended in any way to guarantee the condition of food premises and should not be relied upon for such purposes. The City of Toronto and Toronto Public Health make no warranty or representation, express or implied concerning the accuracy, completeness or currency of the information contained on this website and assume no liability for any inaccurate or incomplete information, or for any actions taken in reliance upon any information provided on this website.
No endorsement of any food premises, or the products or services offered by a food premises, is expressed or implied by any information, material or content included on this website.
If you have any questions about particular food premises or if there is a food premises location not listed on this website, please let us know by calling 416-338-7600 between 8:30 a.m and 4:30 p.m.
Close.Sometimes, I feel like I have to set these things up. This isn’t one of those times. The other day, Bryce Harper batted against Aroldis Chapman. Who wouldn’t want to examine that plate appearance in detail? We’re talking about the game’s premier one-inning pitcher, a guy who does something that might never have been done before, and then you’ve got the hottest hitter on the planet, a guy whose at-bats are worth setting alerts for if you’re not already tuned the hell in. Yeah, they’ve matched up before. Yeah, Chapman struck Harper out all three times, on a combined 10 pitches. That was that Bryce Harper. This is this Bryce Harper. Or, as you might know him, Bryce Harper.
The evening: Friday, May 29. The setting: nobody cares. This is about the individuals, not the circumstance, and while the leverage could’ve been higher, the game was close enough everyone was trying their hardest. This was about something other than deciding the score. This was arguably the game’s most watchable hitter and arguably the game’s most watchable pitcher. So you know they had to combine for a watchable matchup.
Pitch No. 1
Just your standard triple-digit fastball at the letters. Hell of a way to introduce yourself to someone. But it wasn’t just a fastball at the letters — it was a fastball at the letters, that Harper swung at. Now, Harper does swing at the first pitch fairly often. And Chapman doesn’t have an unusually low first-pitch-swing rate, himself. But I can’t imagine putting myself in that situation. You’re a left-handed batter, and you’re standing in against someone you see once a year, and he throws 100 with the flu. Who has the balls to try to hit the first pitch? And Harper took a good and mighty cut. At least, that’s what they said, because he didn’t embarrass himself flailing. And he didn’t make no contact. Some guys get their timing by watching. Harper gets his timing by swinging.
The previous batter, incidentally, struck out swinging at consecutive high fastballs. That’s what Chapman does. Maybe Harper thought he could get ahead of the at-bat. Also, I want to point something out. From earlier in the game, against Anthony DeSclafani, who has a pretty good fastball himself:
Look at Harper’s right leg. It’s up, like normal. You know about his aggressive leg kick. Now look at the same leg as Harper sees the first pitch from Chapman:
The kick’s not totally gone, but it’s nearly eliminated, with Harper instead putting his toe down and keeping his heel up. It’s all in the interest of trying to simplify and be quicker to the ball. With his regular swing mechanics, Harper might not be able to connect. This way, he might buy himself milliseconds. For a hitter, few things are more precious than extra milliseconds.
Harper, in the playoffs, used his regular swing mechanics against the flame-throwing Hunter Strickland.
Pitch No. 2
Here we have a not-very-good elevated slider, but it’s too elevated to really do anything with, and plus, with Chapman and his margin of error, there might not be any such thing as a bad slider. There are just better sliders and worse sliders. Harper ends up sort of fighting the pitch off. He uses the same muted right-leg mechanics. If you break it down frame by frame, you see evidence that Harper got his foot down a split-second earlier than on the first pitch, which would’ve just been a response to finding timing, having seen a pitch go by. This is the danger of those other pitches. With Chapman, hitters get so geared up for the impossible velocity, they can end up in front of ordinary velocity. After 101, 91 looks like 71. (This is an exaggeration.)
Pitch No. 3
And, why not go back to the well? Harper swung at one high fastball he was never going to hit. Then he swung at a high slider he was never going to hit. So why not go for the letters again? Harper recognized this one — it’s like he was expecting the high fastball. Which, granted, isn’t the toughest thing to see coming given the circumstances. The slider had just missed badly. Wouldn’t want to risk a miss again at 0-and-2. The heat’s there; Chapman trusts the heat. On the other hand, bases empty, three-run game. Lots of wiggle room. The argument for a slider here is, what’s the harm, really? The argument for a fastball is, this is Bryce Harper, and testosterone comes into play. As a pitcher, you want to get rid of him. Chapman had lots of count to play with. Just had to put one high enough the only downside would be a ball. Based on the catcher’s body language, he knew exactly where this pitch was going to go. Imagine looking that casual, catching Aroldis Chapman.
Pitch No. 4
By showing the pitches right away, it kind of ruins the surprise, but this was a fastball that didn’t get up enough, or that didn’t hug the outside edge enough. You pick. Whatever the case, Harper hit the ball back up the middle, and maybe that’s when you notice the little “102” reading. That’s why you don’t want to be too critical about the pitch location — this was a fastball at 102 miles per hour. Actually, a few tenths above that, even. Over Chapman’s career, when hitters have swung at fastballs at least 102 miles per hour, they’ve whiffed more than 40% of the time. At that speed, any fastball is a good fastball. Harper just caught up to it, enough. He didn’t even hit it the other way.
Chapman thought the heat would suffice. The first signal was for a changeup.
We don’t know why he shook it off. We could come up with a million reasons. Maybe it was about ego. Maybe it was about trying to think two steps ahead. Maybe it’s just that, when you’re Aroldis Chapman, and you have your fastball, sometimes you wonder why you even bother with anything else. It’s as close to unhittable as any pitch in the game. For all I know, it’s the most famous pitch in the world.
Tweeted the creator of Baseball Savant:
Bryce Harper’s base hit last night vs Aroldis Chapman’s 102.2 MPH fastball was the hardest pitch in PITCHfx era anyone has gotten a hit on. — Daren Willman (@darenw) May 30, 2015
That’s not a totally true fact. It’s true for the regular season, but in October 2010, this happened:
Your browser does not support iframes.
PITCHf/x put that one at 103.5. Without question, a faster pitch than the one hit by Harper. But there’s no point in dwelling on that. Even the 50th-fastest pitch struck for a hit is a blessing. At those velocities, the primary goal for any hitter is to survive long enough to see another sleep. And also, Carlos Ruiz’s double looks almost accidental. It’s like he put that bat out there, and the ball did the rest of the work. Harper went back through the box. It’s something. His advice for hitting Chapman, after the game:
How do you hit a 102-mph fastball? “Close your eyes and swing,” Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper said.
It’s funny Harper should say that. His eyes were wide open.
And he missed squaring the ball up by that much. Not that Harper isn’t more than happy to take the single. But you look at that image, and then you can mentally move the baseball or the bat just a matter of millimeters. Suddenly, instead of a grounder through the middle, you have a line drive. You have a fly ball. You might have a home run.
All because Harper found his timing, and didn’t try to match power with power. This is a very much non-Harper-like follow-through:
You can picture how Harper usually finishes. That’s not it. You can build a maturity narrative around this if you want. Or you can stop short of that and just recognize that Harper made an adjustment because he didn’t want to humiliate himself. Avoiding humiliation is a powerful motivator.
Ultimately, Chapman got a taste of his own medicine — 102 out, 103 back. And Chapman, like many of the hitters he pitches to, couldn’t catch up to the speed.
Noted the Reds’ broadcast as Harper removed his batting gloves at first:
Jeff Brantley: I think if you’re a left-handed batter facing Chapman in this kind of situation, you gotta reach down deep in your belly to hang in there. Thom Brennaman: No doubt about it. That’s pretty impressive.
What you can’t get from the text is Brennaman’s tone. He didn’t sound awestruck. He didn’t even sound just matter-of-fact. There was resignation in his voice. Surrender. A very much reluctant admission that Harper had faced the best, and Harper was better. In that moment, Brennaman conceded that maybe Bryce Harper just can’t be stopped. He’s not the only one who’s thinking it. He’s not the only one surrendering.When President Barack Obama comes to Colorado on Wednesday to praise state lawmakers for taking a tough stance on gun control — an example that he hopes Congress will follow — it will be to a backdrop of a changing economic landscape brought on by the new laws.
Because of strict new gun bills signed recently by Gov. John Hickenlooper that ban high-capacity magazines and require universal background checks on gun transfers, hunting groups are organizing boycotts, shooting competitions are being canceled and more and more businesses that serve the gun industry are announcing that they’re taking their companies — and the jobs they provide — to more Second Amendment-friendly locales.
On Monday, organizers for the Rocky Mountain Western States Regional IDPA Championship shooting competition canceled their July 4-6 event because the new laws will go into effect on July 1. Organizers expected 300 out-of-state shooters to come to Montrose for the weekend.
“With these new Colorado laws going into effect July 1, and based on the ambiguous way in which they were written, we have decided to cancel the Rocky Mountain Western States Regional IDPA Championship,” said event organizer Walt Proulx in a press release.
This is the second competition to cancel. Earlier, the 2013 Ruger Rimfire Challenge World Championship, to be held in Byers, Colo. July 19-21, was canceled and has yet to be rescheduled “outside of Colorado,” according to the Ruger website.
Hunters may also make good on their threat to avoid the state.
“There’s a united front of sportsmen that are tired of having their freedoms and liberties and fundamental rights taken away from them,” Chris Jurney, vice president of the Colorado Outfitters Association, told the AP. “That kind of unity among sportsmen is going to be big, and unfortunately for those of us who live here, we’re going to suffer the consequences of this misguided legislation.”
Hunting is big business in Colorado. Non-resident hunters accounted for $195 million in retails sales in Colorado in 2011, according to research by the National Shooting Sports Association. Colorado is the third most popular hunting destination for out-of-state hunters, behind only South Dakota and Wisconsin.
While the impact of a potential hunting boycott has yet to be measured, impacts from losing jobs and businesses will likely be felt sooner.
Magpul Industries, which makes the sorts of magazines that will become illegal as of July 1, is making good on its promise to relocate.
“Our transition to a new home will occur in a phased and orderly a manner to allow us to continue to serve our customers during the move, as well as to allow an orderly transition for affected employees,” the company wrote on its Facebook page. “We are actively working on those plans.”
Magpul has not said where it is moving, but noted in an earlier post that it could have operations in several states.
“We will likely become a multi-state operation as a result of this move, and not all locations have been selected,” the company wrote.
Magpul employs 200 people and accounts for $85 million to the Colorado economy.
Other companies are following Magpul’s lead. Lawrence Tool & Molding, which makes parts used by Magpul, said it will follow the company out of state so that it can continue to be a supplier. That company employs 82 people.
Five-person company Carbon Arms also told the Denver Post that they would consider moving.
Fort Collins-based HiViz Shooting Systems, which makes rifle and handgun sights and other products, became the |
never set out with themes or work out what I’m trying to say, or what I’m trying to explore in a broad sense, rather I try to think of scenarios and situations that I know resonate with me on some deeper level. Something I think about a lot. You know, that’s generally the rule of thumb, if something is part of my daily endless churning cycle of thoughts then it’s something worth putting into the comic because I know it’ll hold my interest. I always go back to Krazy Kat, where Herriman basically did the same joke every day for the entire run of the strip, but there was something about that which was endlessly compelling—so I’m always looking for that in a long-form version.
TH: We see versions of Patience keep showing up in Jack’s mom, the woman in the 1980s bar, the 2029 prostitute—their appearances speak to her as an enduring image or character.
DC: Yeah, those are examples of decisions you make in the moment, that resonate in the story.
TH: The time-travel narrative immediately invites the reader to project their own personal history into the narrative, that notion of what one would change if it were possible is one of the major driving forces behind the story.
DC: Yeah, it’s funny because as a kid I thought about that all the time, every day at school something would come up, “If only I wouldn’t have picked my nose in front of that girl in science class!” Those little minor events that constantly go through your consciousness you wish you could eradicate are a big part of it. But when you reach my age you have such a huge accumulation of those, you stop worrying about it. There’s not a single thing I could personally pick to go back and redo. There are of course many things that I regret, but it would take a lot of time traveling to fix them all (laughter).
But part of the process of doing the book was sort of embracing all of those events that make you exactly what you are in this moment, you know, and that’s something I was thinking a lot about with the book. You have these two versions of Jack, the main character, and one of them is an innocent young man, and the other is the exact opposite of that in many ways. There are obviously many versions of how he could have ended up, and you see this kind of flowchart of decisions and events that turn you from this one person into another person who’s almost unrecognizable.
TH: It’s heartbreaking in the story how difficult lives are, specifically Patience’s—the residents of White Oak are frightening on many levels, particularly their child rearing—
DC: (laughter)
TH: —as always in your work, the incredible observational detail immediately sets it apart, and not to get too personal, but I’m sure the experience of being a father played into the narrative.
DC: Oh yeah. Well, you start to think back on your own childhood and about all the horrible parenting decisions my parents made—especially growing up in the ’70s, that was sort of the low point of parenting (laughter), and so everybody I know around a certain age has such awful memories about their parents’ carelessness and self-obsession, so I’m very aware as a parent of not doing what was done during that era—so I’m sort of hyper aware of that when I see it out in the modern world. It’s one of those things where you really can’t believe that certain people are allowed to raise kids (laughter) when they’re completely inept in every other phase of their lives, it’s shocking to see.
TH: With Jack as a character, there’s this almost dream of omniscience running throughout, he’s the author of the story, ultimately directing events, but on another level, is he something of a stand-in for you, revisiting your earlier work? I got a real shock at a certain point and undoubtedly started reading too much into this, imagining clues and references in specific panels, backgrounds, locations, perhaps aged versions of previous characters, and dialogue…
DC: (laughter) I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case, but I can say that I was definitely very influenced in the story by my own work because I had spent so much time putting together the Modern Cartoonist art show and monograph, and then that was followed immediately by compiling The Complete Eightball, so I was very much in the world of my own comics in a way that I’ve never been. Normally, I try to not look at my own comics at all, and I try to be influenced by things outside of not only my own work, but outside of comics—I try to find unfamiliar things to be influenced by in each book, and in this case I was really kind of immersing myself in my own work, using myself as a reference in the way that in an earlier book I might have used Charles Schulz or Johnny Craig, or somebody like that (laughter). It was kind of an odd experience and I did find myself creating little glimmers of recognition with old characters and giving little nods to previous ways of working, maybe.
TH: A return to Chicago in the year 1985 seemed poignant.
DC: Yeah, that was the year that I began, so…
TH: Your career as a cartoonist.
DC: Yeah… (pause).
TH: You’ve explored numerous genres in your work, playing with conventions and tropes—not as a formal exercise, but in service of telling an emotionally impactful story—but what does genre mean to you when you’re using it in a book?
DC: You know, I find that I have this sort of perverse idea that I’ll do my own version of a superhero story or a science-fiction story—I think normally that would involve someone rereading all the time-travel science fiction to understand what that genre was all about, and either going along with that or subverting it in some way, but the way I do it is to start with no knowledge of it at all and imagine that I’m an alien coming to earth and I’ve been told about time-travel genre science fiction, and then just trying to reimagine that entirely on my own. So the whole background I have is the most generic—I’ve seen The Terminator and Back to the Future, the original Time Machine from 1960 with Rod Taylor—and I can’t even definitively say that I’ve read a time travel story. And I’m not interested at all in the physics of it or in the mind-fuck aspects of it, it’s all just a great thing to use in a story. It’s a great device and it has sort of a primal quality in that everyone’s thought about it, and everyone has their own ideas of how it would be used. I wanted the main character to be somebody who never would have thought about it except as a desperate last resort.
TH: If I think about the best genre writing, it’s a means to another end, it’s a set of structures or rules that get you to arrive at the real point in an interesting way—I’m thinking of someone like David Goodis, who’d use a heist narrative, or whatever—
DC: Which wouldn’t work out, or make sense, but would show the bleak despair of his characters. Yeah, you know I was sort of high-mindedly thinking of movies like Solaris or Alphaville, things like that, which are not in any way like this story, but are things that purport to be science fiction but are using it for very different means and ends.
TH: Patience is very much a “comic book” as opposed to a comic that makes reference to newspaper strips, and it has the structural diversity you’d expect, big double-page splashes, and the color seems to me really important to the pacing—can you speak to how those formal elements work with the narrative?
DC: It was a thought when I was beginning—certainly the last books I mentioned, I’d been mostly looking at newspaper strips—it was all of a sudden an era at that time, not only where there were a lot of reprint books on strips you could never see before, but for me it was the era of eBay and being able to buy huge bulk collections of newspaper strips, so I’d have four feet of clipped Sundays and dailies sitting in my studio. I was so immersed in that world for the first time that it felt really exciting for those books of mine, and when I was done with Wilson, I really felt like I was done with that. I really had this desire to go back to regular old comic books. So the way the book looks has a lot a lot to do with thinking of the two-page spreads in an open comic book. The way I intend it to be read as a book, you’re looking at the two pages at once, your eye is taking that all in. So I drew the entire book as two-page spreads and conceived them as units in the story as well as these sort of singular visual spaces.
When I began, the influences I was thinking of were Ditko’s Dr. Strange, and also Mr. A, where he draws those crazy landscapes with Mr. A standing in some behind-the-scenes reality where giant words like “Lies” and “Deceit” are attacking him (both laughter). I mean there’s something really threatening and primal about those drawings to me. And then Kirby’s big, expansive, cosmic-consciousness thing. But when I was trying to find the perfect reference for those to inspire me, I could never find them—they were all in my head. I always imagine Kirby having all of these images of like “going into the pure light,” the kinds of things I was trying to draw, but it’s all machinery—very different from the kinds of things I was looking for. So as with many things I do, my influences are the way I imagine something that doesn’t actually exist.
TH: My assumption is that there would be great interest in making a film of any book you do now. Since you’ve been immersed in that world for periods, is it inevitable that the cinematic language is in the back of your mind—this would be sort of unique to you as a cartoonist who has straddled both worlds.
DC: I don’t ever think about that when I work on a book—it’s just sort of a trick I play on myself, I just assume that a movie is not going to happen—that it will exist only as a comic. But of course everyone who sees this one, sees that it leans more heavily on the visual end of things, so I think there is a lot of curiosity about that aspect of it, but it’s not anything I’ve pursued at this point.
TH: Do you mean visually that it’s quote-unquote cinematic, or…?
DC: Or that it’s something a director might look at and say “This is the kind of thing I can see up on a screen.”
TH: But to your point, it does read very much as a comic book—to use an example, the silhouettes at the outset are a really effective introduction to the story and themes that probably works best specifically in comics.
DC: Yeah, there are some images that would work on film, but a lot of it is that the language of comics allows you to be, I don’t know, garish and extravagant in a way that doesn’t read that way—but if they were filmed it would look mannered and over the top.
TH: In terms of your experience in that world, does it really come down to economy and editing, skills that are applicable to comics?
DC: Because you have such an intimate interaction with the people you’re working with in that environment, a real honesty and bluntness comes through—you can’t afford to be polite and say “Oh, that’s great, let’s just film it as it is.” Everything is brutally picked over—some of that is not valuable, some of it is just people trying to get their opinions across and that becomes sort of a power play, but a lot of it is a way you learn—there are many things I think are clear that I’m trying to get across—a subtle, clear, universal point—that aren’t coming across at all. You talk to very smart people who are reading the stuff and they have no idea what you’re actually trying to say. And that’s really illuminating for me (laughter). So I sort of feel like in the comics, I leave all that stuff in, in the hopes that there are eight people in the world who it’ll come across to. But I also don’t want those things to be off-putting to the rest of the world, so I try to make a book work on some level for everybody and maybe on a deeper level for those few who are really in tune with it. But on a film that’ll never make it, unless you’re writing, directing, and producing your own thing and don’t have a lot of outside influence.
TH: I’ll ask you a big question: what affects you the most artistically? Or maybe for you, when you’re working on a comic, is there a desired artistic effect—is it some kind of ineffable emotional response?
DC: Do you mean what am I trying to get across?
TH: Yeah, we talk about these very specific elements of your work or art in general, but at the end of the day what’s the most important thing for you?
DC: You know, I try not to do anything that’s not deeply felt. For all the characters and situations, I have to kind of be living in the story. Before I ever get started, I have to have thought about the story so much that I know the characters completely before ever drawing them for the first time. And I just have to hope that that in some way comes across. That I’m not just filling up pages and trying to get through the story, to do an assignment, or anything like that, but that I’m trying to really get across something that’s deeply emotional and powerful to me, and hope that it all means something to somebody else.
TH: The art that means the most to you, that’s also what you take away from it?
DC: I think I have a pretty good sense of that, when an artist is doing something that comes from that place, rather than sort of trying to please their fans or whatever…
TH: Or fill in the expected blanks somehow…
DC: Right.
TH: I want to ask you about the evolution of your drawing style—the early issues of Eightball were really dense and angular, with a lot of hatching that is sometimes grotesque and jarring—that style is sort of the gestalt of that early work.
DC: Yes, a signature—
TH: But gradually a lot of that was drained away toward a more simplified style, the comics became less about foregrounding art style and more about fusing all the elements together in terms of storytelling—can you talk about that at all?
DC: Certainly I’m now intimately conversant with that, having gone through the work for The Complete Eightball—I can see in a lot of the early work, I was using the skills I had, a slick-ish inking style, I knew a lot of comic book techniques, I was using those to obfuscate some of my deficiencies, really my drawing—there’s kind of an odd push and pull between the crudeness of some of the artwork and the overwhelming work put into each panel. I think it has a certain draw, for sure, I can look at that stuff now and it feels very indelible. It doesn’t feel like you’re looking at a John Romita comic, where you’d see the same face perfectly drawn over and over and over, and that has a very different effect than if you’re looking at my early comics that have these kind of bizarre, angular, as you say, images that feel—I don’t know, they do feel indelible, as I say, in a certain way now. I can’t imagine them being reconceived. The thought of redrawing them would only damage them.
TH: Do you think now more that the best comics are those in which you can’t separate elements in this way?
DC: I don’t know—I’m not one to try to overanalyze why comics work or don’t. I always feel that’s like people who listen to comedians and then take apart their jokes to find out why they work—it’s such a joyless endeavor. Something like the strip Barnaby is such a repudiation of any rule I would make about comics (both laughter). It’s got everything wrong with it and yet it works perfectly.
TH: You’ve always seemed to me, even when you were in your late 20s, to be sort of an elder statesman of comics, the smartest guy in the room, and I know how crucial your support and encouragement has been to younger cartoonists—I’ve never heard you talk about this—did you ever have sort of a mentor once your older brother left home?
DC: No—no, I didn’t. And I often think about what a great shortcut that would have been (laughter). But there’s also sort of the beauty of figuring it out for yourself. You have to have a certain dementia to keep at it, when you’re just constantly not living up to what you’re trying to do. I was just visiting Charles Burns in Philadelphia and he showed me some comics he’d done in high school that were incredible, better than just about anyone working professionally today. He just had it right out of the gate. The inking doesn’t really look like his current inking, but it was incredibly accomplished and just beautiful, beautiful stuff. And I surely didn’t have that to keep me going (laughter). It was really just a demented mission to find my way.
TH: The culture is so different now—and a book like this, your work, has such a different place in it—but do you look back on the comics world of the early ’90s fondly? It was such a big event in my mind for a new issue of the comic to come out then.
DC: (laughter) I try not to over glamourize it, because in many ways it was just the most dispiriting, small-time world (both laughter) that just made you feel awful all the time. The thought of trying to explain what you were doing to anybody outside of that world was hopeless, they would look at you like you were telling them you were saving your own earwax or something—“Why in the world would you do that?!” But of course I did like the smallness of the world in many ways—just on this book tour last week I met a few people who said, “I used to write you letters in the Eightball days,” and when they told me their names I knew who they were immediately. We knew everybody—me, Jaime, Gilbert, and all those guys, would always talk—“Hey, do you get letters from this guy?” It was sort of a one to one relationship.
TH: I have a really clear memory of picking up the first issue of Eightball and being very shocked by the subheading on the inside front cover—
DC: (laughter)
TH: —what does “An Orgy of Spite, Vengeance, Hopelessness, Despair and Sexual Perversion” bring back to you now?
DC: It’s funny, I remember just needing to fill space. I liked how in old men’s adventure magazines they would include some guiding principle for the manly men among us, and it always seemed kind of aggressive and over-the-top, so I thought I was going to do one of my own—but I remember not thinking about it very hard, but just writing the first thing that popped into my head, and later thinking “That was a weird manifesto to try and live up to!” (both laughter)
TH: Those early issues railed against the phoniness and shallowness of mainstream consumer culture as contrasted with your personal obsessions and interests—positioning you as something of a spokesperson—unwitting, probably—for a larger culture of disillusionment. Is your rejection of mainstream culture so strident these days?
DC: It’s truly a losing battle (laughter). I mean, our culture has gotten so fragmented since then. Really at that time, there was the huge monolith of mainstream culture and then there were these little fringes that had no impact at all on anything. You really had to go through so many hoops to buy even my comics, which would have been thought of as sort of a big success, but if it was even a little more fringy, like personal zines people were doing or small, independent films, it was almost impossible. You really had to be an insider in this hipster world to know how to find stuff like that. Nowadays, everybody’s in some weird niche that none of us can even comprehend. I remember thinking at one point that if the population increases a certain percentage, and the readers for our kind of comics grow with the population, then we could have our own kind of little niche support out of that tiny fragment of society that would keep us going. And that’s almost actually happened.
TH: Although there’s also still plenty of horrific stuff to react against.
DC: It’s funny, back when we began, we always thought “Our comics are the real mainstream comics, they’re about day to day events, and they’re for adults, and superhero comics are really of no interest to anybody else, only for the fanboys”—and then the whole world kind of repudiated that really loudly (laughter). I talk to parents of my son’s friends and they couldn’t be more excited to go see The Avengers, so I truly wonder what’s happened to us.
TH: You’ve mentioned the retrospective exhibition and monograph in conjunction with working on Patience—how did that museum world affect you, and what does the art world acceptance of comic art, and specifically your work, mean to you?
DC: It was interesting because there are so many protocols and mores of the museum and art worlds that don’t apply to comics, even in the nomenclature that they use to describe the artwork—they call pages “panels,” and it got really confusing and I kept trying to reeducate them, so things like that were really funny and made you realize that it’s another world. They would do these really careful condition reports on all the artwork, noting that something had an ink stain on the corner—yeah, that’s kind of how it is (laughter). We’re not really working on these with cotton gloves trying to keep them in pristine condition; these are just the artifacts of the process. If the book had ink stains, that would be bad. So it was sort of a funny meeting of these two, what you would think would be connected worlds, but in many ways, they were not at all.
I went into it, not thinking I particularly wanted to do it—it was one of those things that I agreed to in a weak moment then kind of regretted it, but then once the shows actually happened, I found that it was really kind of profound to walk into a room with all of my work on the wall. I couldn’t accept it as myself, really. I kept trying to think of myself as the greatest collector of Daniel Clowes artwork—I took more pride in looking at the little cards that listed “Collection of Daniel Clowes” than the artwork itself. Which I guess says more about me than I want to admit, but to see the artwork on the wall and to give it this kind of extra charge was a really good thing. You’d see people who had read the books for years and knew the work intimately who would see the page on the wall and stop and say “Oh my god”—they were taken aback by seeing the real thing, to see it sort of demystified. On the other hand, there were of course a lot of people who had never known the work or heard of me at all, and you’d see them looking at the artwork and getting lost in the narrative, and then wander over and pick up the book—so it worked in those two separate ways in a really interesting way.
And I’ve always liked to look at original art—there’s always something that’s compelling to me, and I own a lot of artwork by my favorite artists—a lot of it is to sit there knowing that you’re sitting at the same distance from the art as when that artist drew it, that they were all over the page; there’s some connection there that’s really meaningful. Of course, I don’t really have experience with my own artwork (laughter). Though, sometimes I will dig out an old page and it’ll pop in my head what I was listening to on the radio when I drew it. There are these mnemonic things with the artwork that don’t exist with the printed art that can be really uncanny.
TH: After a big project like Patience, is there a lull or were you right back to work?
DC: I was hoping for a lull, but for the last few books I’ve finished, I’ve had something I had to do right away, so I’m pretty sure I haven’t had a break at all for over ten years, I’d say. Maybe at the beginning of Patience I could consider that a little break, but I was also working pretty hard to get something together. So I really wanted to take like a month off, but after two days I started to feel so useless. What do people do? And I kind of hopped right back into it—right now I’m on this book tour so I can’t really do anything, it’s too distracting, but before and after that, I’m starting on a new book; I have something very vaguely in mind. But really, all I want to do right now is comics. It sort of feels like, “What could be better than that?”
Todd Hignite was founding editor of the magazine Comic Art, is the author of The Art of Jaime Hernandez/The Secrets of Life and Death, and In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists, and curated the museum retrospective R. Crumb's Underground. He first interviewed Daniel Clowes 25 years ago.The first ever turbocharged Honda Civic Si (Photo: Honda Motor Co.)
New York — The news of a five-door Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo rocked the New York Auto Show last week. A Porsche station wagon? Hell must have frozen over.
But the indignation from performance purists was tempered by the fact the German sports car manufacturer was bringing back an old friend: the manual gearbox in its Porsche 911 GT3 track animal.
Porsche isn’t the only automaker making manual news as the stick defies its long-predicted demise. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the stick shift has been greatly exaggerated. In the last year Ford, Honda and Hyundai all have touted their manual options as automakers vie for an important niche buyer: the enthusiast.
News that the 911 GT3 was stiffing the stick back in 2014 seemed the nail in the coffin for a transmission option viewed by many as an anachronism in the 21st century. Stick take-rates peaked at 25 percent for cars in 1987, according to EPA figures, and have plummeted to between 3 percent and 7 percent over the last decade. In 2016 just 3.8 percent of sales were manual, according to Edmunds.com.
Once a rite of passage for 16-year-olds to master, the stick shift used to boast better fuel economy and better acceleration than its automatic counterpart. But with the advance of modern, multi-ratio automatic gearboxes, the stick’s advantages have melted away. Automatics do everything better, it seemed.
Except, automakers are learning, stoke passion.
Porsche’s state-of-the-art, dual-clutch, seven-speed PDK automatic transmission vaulted the 2014 GT3 to performance heights unseen by its manuals. Lightning-quick, 100-millisecond shifts, head-snapping launch control, and 3-second zero-60 acceleration — more than a half-second quicker than the previous generation’s stick. But purists complained that the technology was removing the fun factor from the legendary driver’s car.
“Though a lot of our customers want the performance advantage of the PDK, there are still some who want the engagement of the manual over the lap time,” says Porsche Product Experience Manager Frank Wiesmann.
Buy Photo Manual transmissions have lost the edge in fuel economy but retain their hold on driver engagement. Honda’s Civic Si, above, and Ford’s Focus RS target such “anti-SUV people.” (Photo: Henry Payne / The Detroit News)
So the 2018 GT3 will offer a six-speed manual for 2018 as well as its automatic PDK. The decision was encouraged by Porsche’s positive response to the recent Porsche Cayman GT4 and Boxster Spyder performance models — both of which come exclusively with sticks.
Honda showed off a whole lineup of manual Civics in New York — including its top-trim, 305-horsepower Type R hot hatch that comes with stick only. The entry-level, $21,300 Civic Sport will come with a manual option, as will the 205-horsepower Civic Si. All three Civics are performance-minded, with the Sport manual a gateway drug to nascent enthusiasts who want to take their Honda to the track and to work.
“A manual transmission in a performance vehicle contributes to the credibility of the product. It’s how you know a Type R, for example, is a hot hatch,” says IHS Automotive senior analyst Stephanie Brinley.
She adds that the move to manuals is also part of a healthy sales market where “automakers are trying to find ways to be more competitive.” Edmunds.com says the percentage of vehicles offered with manuals has climbed from 19 percent in 2012 to over 27 percent today.
As consumers move to SUVs, Ford is trying to keep its small cars competitive by offering performance variants of its hatchbacks — so-called “hot hatch” Focus ST, Fiesta ST and Focus RS models. Sales for the trio — which come in manual only — were up over 21 percent last year.
“Performance cars are the exception to the rule on the sale shift out of cars and into SUVs,” says Ford spokesman Chris Terry. “They are bought by people who want to drive, who want to get the most performance enjoyment out of their vehicles. These are anti-SUV people.”
Eager to make its mark in the enthusiast world, Korean-automaker Hyundai last year introduced the 2017 Elantra Sport featuring a 201-horsepower turbo engine, sophisticated dual-clutch automatic transmission — and a stick. Hyundai showed off the manual version to media at an autocross course in Indiana.
The Sport’s stick has been a success, with a consumer take rate of 25 percent. Hyundai’s three-door “hot hatch” Veloster Turbo has achieved similar success since its launch as a 2012 model.
“Manual transmissions have become a tool to attract enthusiasts rather than price-point or fuel economy,” says Mike Evanoff, chief of Hyundai product planning. “The manual take on the base, non-turbo configuration is much lower.”
That conforms with Ford’s experience, which says the take rate for base price, non-performance versions of its Focus and Fiestas is a lowly 5-6 percent.
In courting performance customers with manuals, Ford says they are bringing in a younger, more affluent, more educated buyer who also tend to be evangelists for the brands they adopt.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne.
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2p1FiDZThe novel I, Jedi touches on lightsabers, their construction, and their power. They have power cells that discharge very slowly (like a laptop that's turned off) and this power drain isn't significantly affected by simply being active - they are incredibly efficient.
The power is drained faster when something hits the blade, be it a solid object, a blaster bolt, or another lightsaber.
In The Krytos Trap, a novel from the X-Wing series, Corran Horn (pre-I, Jedi days) discovers a wing of a Jedi museum on Coruscant and finds several lightsabers in it. One of them, which he 'borrows' briefly, still works and helps him immensely in the culmination of the book's plot. Later, Luke talks with Corran about the museum and the lightsabers, and comments that the lightsaber Corran found was one of three in the entire exhibit that functioned without recharging.
This demonstrates that lightsabers DO have power cells that can run dry, even when deactivated, AND that this can take decades - the lightsaber in question hadn't been recharged since before the Clone Wars, and the novel was set post-ROTJ.CLOSE The private school principal in Georgia who gained national attention for a racially charged comment she made during a high school graduation ceremony has been fired.
A small Atlanta-area private school is at the center of a national firestorm after the school's director made a racially charged statement. (Photo11: 11Alive)
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — The small Atlanta-area private school director who gained national attention for a racially charged comment she made during a graduation ceremony last week has been fired.
Dr. Heidi Anderson, chair of the board of directors at TNT Academy, wrote in a letter sent to the Gwinnett County NAACP that the board voted to dismiss school director Nancy Gordeuk:
In light of recent events, the board of directors of TNT Academy has moved to dismiss Nancy Gordeuk as principal. During the coming transition, we will continue to prioritize support for our most recent graduates. Moreover, we will continue our commitment to providing students with the best educational classes, transcription services, and academic credit recovery possible.
During last Friday's graduation celebration, Gordeuk accidentally dismissed attendees before the school valedictorian could give a speech. As people began filing out of the room, she asked them to come back.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gordeuk made the incendiary comment as she tried to regain the attention of graduates and their families.
"She forgot the final speech. So she dismissed us all at first," said one of the graduates, Donte Lambert. "Then she told everyone to come back. One parent got mad and he told his child to come on," Lambert said.
Gordeuk also told WSB-TV that she was frustrated in part because an unknown person had walked to the front of the auditorium to record the graduation ceremony. After asking him to sit down, she later called security, but not before calling him a "goober" and a "coward."
CLOSE The director of a small private school caused quite a stir when she made a racially charged statement during a graduation ceremony. The incident was caught on camera and though she has since apologized, many parents are still angry. VPC
According to video recordings of the ceremony posted to social media, those comments appeared to cause an unrelated family to walk out with their graduate.
Gordeuk then addressed her mistake about the valedictorian to the crowd.
"You people are being so rude to not listen to this speech," Gordeuk told the audience, according to video recordings. "It was my fault that we missed it in the program. Look who's leaving — all the black people."
Several black honors graduates appear to walk off the stage in protest. Cell-phone video recorded by audience members has since gone viral.
Gordeuk later apologized to parents in an email, saying, "The devil was in the house and came out from my mouth. I deeply apologize for my racist comment and hope that forgiveness is in your hearts."
Many parents and community leaders had called for Gordeuk to be fired.
Georgia NAACP President Francys Johnson said the organization is pleased with the board's decision.
"Beyond the inappropriate remarks, the former principal attempted to legitimize the bizarre episode by claiming 'the devil made her do it,' " Johnson said in an emailed statement. "This is not just about Mrs. Gordeuk's comments. The NAACP would defend Mrs. Gordeuk's right as a private citizen to free speech. However, those entrusted with responsibility for our children must set a high standard marked by civility. That is obviously a test the former principal failed."
TNT Academy is a non-traditional school for home-schooled students hoping to obtain accredited degrees.
Contributing: The Associated Press.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1HiYPn3To open an occasional series looking at MLS ownership, Graham Parker sat down with MLS Commissioner Don Garber to talk about the phenomenon he believes is the most important development for the league in recent years: the change from a small number of owners, with multiple teams each, incubating the league, to a growing raft of entrepreneurs developing individual sides.
In 2011, Los Angeles Galaxy won the MLS Cup at the Home Depot Center. The popular narrative of that moment was how David Beckham, totem of the designated player era, finally delivered an MLS Cup — and there’s certainly a lot to that. But when the trophy came out to be presented, MLS Commissioner Don Garber did not hand it immediately to Galaxy captain Landon Donovan, but instead made a short speech of thanks to L.A. owner Phil Anschutz, whose AEG also owned the majority stake in the team the Galaxy had just defeated, Houston Dynamo. Garber then presented the trophy, which bears Anschutz’s name, jointly to Donovan and Anschutz.
On the face of it, it was one of those fairly standard ceremonial quirks that crop up in sports everywhere. If there was an odd note to it, it was the curiously valedictory feel of Garber’s speech — not that anyone gave it too much thought as the moment gave way to photographers grabbing the shot they really wanted: Beckham raising the trophy aloft.
But this was an important moment in the recent history of MLS. We were indeed quietly marking the passing of an era that preceded Beckham’s arrival. At one point, post-contraction in 2002, AEG owned around half the teams in the league. When MLS kicked off this season, AEG was one of 18 owners of 19 teams (soon to be 21 teams with 20 owners) — a diversification of the league’s governance that has transformed the culture of MLS ownership from one of paternalist oversight to one where an increasing number of owner-operators personally direct and invest in their vision on a day-to-day basis.
Before the season started, I sat down with Commissioner Garber to talk about the changing face of MLS ownership and its significance. We started by discussing the broad cultural forces that have shaped the context for the league — forces that might be described in broad strokes as globalization, the digital era, and the shift in demographics of sports audiences powered by the Hispanic and youth markets. This all ties in to what Garber calls “our whole point of difference, our core value, our unique selling proposition: This world is shrinking and soccer is the universal language of the world.”
We then talked about the popular history of the league — a narrative that, in its crudest form, might run from its foundation, to aging stars, to contraction, to soccer-specific stadia, to designated players, and now, perhaps, to the return of the natives, with the recent Clint Dempsey–led influx of U.S. national team players returning from Europe. But possibly the most |
a minimum of 3.0Mbps??? I mean sure I would love the 20Mbps, but heck Folks are kinda desperate. Many here are still on Dial up at less then 20kbps (Yeah thats not a mistype) we are lucky to get that on these old copper lines.
Hank
Searching for a new Frontier
Premium Member
join:2002-05-21
Burlington, WV ARRIS NVG443B
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP
Ubiquiti NanoStation loco M2
Hank Premium Member Tweakbl - What you are describing is the common scenario in West Virginia. I believe the project manager would love to get things moving forward here. It is obvious that Frontier has bit off more than they can chew here in WV. It appears that corporate is happy to have its customers pay for a higher speed and only supply them with the current minimum standard. Meanwhile corporate continues to purchase additional systems and while claiming they do not have sufficient revenue to finish projects, such as the DSLAM in your area, while projects that have been started ages ago remain unfinished with no completion date in site. You are absolutely correct it is not the CSR or local technical personnel that are holding things up. From my conversations they would love to see things completed and modernized as much as you and I would.
I wonder when/if our Governor will ever release the negative report that was compiled by a third party that accurately described how poorly Frontier and WV has managed projects in WV.
I would love to see them complete one of the rural projects that was promised when they applied to purchase Verizon.
Best wishes.Attack on Kerava Police Station on the 6th of November (Finland)
6 November 2011
We attacked the Kerava police station with fire on Sunday the 6th of November at 5 in the morning.
We threw six molotovs at the main entrance and at a separate entrance to the police parking garage.
However, we did not throw molotovs into the building because we did not want our action to bring harm to those possibly imprisoned at the station, knowing this course of action could have very well placed these people in mortal danger.
We want to take a stand against the oppression of nature, animals and life, the oppression that the police as the vanguards of the state enforce and maintain.
Organize, form affinity groups and take action!
Solidarity to all fighting for total liberation!
Solidarity to all who have been robbed of their freedom by the state!
Death to the state!
FAI – Informal Anarchist Federation – Northern chapter
FUCK THE POLICE!
Tags: FAI - Informal Anarchist Federation - Northern chapter, Finland, Fuck the Law, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), International Revolutionary Front, Molotovs
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Direct Action.London can be a confusing place to be a stranger. It has no unifying grid system; no Haussmann-era boulevards to offer sight lines. Streets run at all angles, turn back on themselves, change names or stop without warning. Those who don't know the city tend to fall back on the tube map for navigation; but that brings its own problems, making adjacent spots look far apart, and missing out entire districts. London's tourists spend a lot of time being lost.
A few will receive offers of help from someone like Tim Fendley. He tells one story of a party of South Americans, staring in bafflement at one of the hundreds of different spider-maps that portray part of the city's bus networks, trying to work out why it didn't match the tube map in their guide book. He tells another of a German family, on the verge of requiring counselling because of the father's refusal to accept that any city could be so ludicrous as to position a station called Bond Street on a street that wasn't called that. Fendley, he explains, “pretends to be a helpful Londoner as a form of research”.
Fendley, you see, has an ulterior motive. He’s the founder and creative partner of Applied, a mapping consultancy which promises to “push the boundaries of information design”. Its ambition, to make it possible to navigate any city, however unfamiliar, is written into the name of the system of maps and signs it designed for the British capital: Legible London.
“Cities are wonderfully complex, and wonderfully hard to pin down,” Fendley tells me in Applied's office in Clerkenwell. But “they are starting to wake up to the need to explain themselves. Fifteen years ago, councils wouldn't employ urban designers: they were seen as a bit odd. Now, nearly every council in the UK is going to have an urban design team.”
London is an extreme case, but it’s hardly unusual for a city to be hard to navigate. The new cities of the Gulf have grown up without comprehensive address systems, making life difficult for everyone from taxi drivers to basically anyone waiting for a parcel. In Seoul, Fendley points out, an American-style grid of six lane highways has been laid over an organically grown Asian city; and buildings in each neighbourhood were, until recently, numbered not by their location but by the order in which they were built.
But it's the inconsistencies of naming in Cleveland, Ohio, that have been occupying Applied recently. The city receives a fair number of tourists, most of whom come to watch sports; but relatively few of them stick around and explore. So it's turned to the firm’s recently established New York office to design a new set of maps of the downtown to encourage them to stick around.
Applied's vision of Downtown Cleveland.
The biggest barrier to doing so at the moment is the inconsistencies in naming, which can sometimes make it surprisingly difficult to work out where you are at all. While exploring the city himself, Fendley found himself unable to find a venue called the Rock Hall. He could find the famous Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – that was easy – but not the other Rock Hall, that people kept telling him about. “People just laughed,” he says. The two were the same place.
Then there's the fact that so many of the city's neighbourhoods have had names imposed on them by developers; one area had ended up with five of them. Part of Applied's job in drawing up its new maps was simply to get agreement on what to call places. “Even if you don't like the new name you're all better off calling it the same thing,” Fendley says. “A lot of what we do is nomenclature.”
The same applies in London too, where the firm has come up with a three tier system. At the top of the hierarchy sit the “districts” such as the City or West End, names for large swathes of the city. Each of these is made up of “villages”: areas like Soho or Holborn, with which most Londoners will be familiar, and many of which were once literal villages.
Image: Applied/TfL.
And beneath that, you’ll find your “neighbourhood”. That’s your immediate surroundings, no more than a few streets – the area which you wouldn't consider it a chore to cross to buy a cup of coffee. These generally take their names from dominant streets or buildings.
Image: Applied/TfL.
So this point...
...is the Carnaby neighbourhood of Soho (a village), in the West End (a district).
That said, London is a mess, and there are places where this clean and logical system falls apart. “The structure breaks down around Trafalgar Square,” Fendley says, “because of the density of very high powered nodes”. Trafalgar Square isn't “in” Soho or St James or Westminster, it's just Trafalgar Square; the same applies to neighbouring points like Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square.
London’s cycle hire docking stations are generally labelled with the name of their village, to tell you which bit of town you’re in; those around Trafalgar Square, though, refer simply to “West End”. That feels a bit of a cop out.
But, Fendley says, we navigate as much by landmarks ("nodes") as by districts; and the firm's chosen naming convention for the heart of London was the result of extensive research about what people called that area.
“Legible London isn't about cleaning it up,” Fendley says. “We just reflect what's there.” This act of cataloguing, he argues, is an important business. “Councils can rename streets, but nobody is responsible for the names of areas. So we said, we're not going to play god, but we are going to look after this.”
All this is very exciting to map geeks like me. (Our discussion had a distinctly fractured quality, because I kept spotting interesting things on the maps adorning the meeting room's walls, and demanding he explained it to me as if I were a small child in the Natural History Museum.) But Fendley points to a number of ways better mapping can have a real tangible impact too. London's tube is crowded with people taking journeys that’d be much easier on foot if only people knew how. Maps can open up new areas of the city to visitors, too. Applied's research found the 86 per cent of visitors to Oxford Street never get off the main drag to explore the neighbouring districts, simply “because they're not aware of them. They can't see it, so it's not there.”
The biggest argument, though, is that better signage is relatively cheap. Fendley reckons that rolling out Legible London signage to the entire city would cost £50m; it can easily cost that much to refurbish one tube station. “Infrastructure is hardware. That's expensive. This is the software.”
The Legible London maps can be seen on free standing signs in some areas, and at public transport locations more widely. (Some of them, incidentally, flip their perspective from the normal north-is-up convention, so that "up" is whatever is in front of you.) But there are still huge swathes of outer London that they don't seem to cover. Nonetheless Applied has come up with names for everywhere: a list released after a freedom of information request last year showed that there were 767 villages and 3,345 neighbourhoods.
All these could soon be visible to the world. The firm is now working on a zoomable online version of the map, that'll cover the whole of London and include postcodes too.
“It's all about answering four questions,” he says. “Where am I? Where is it? How do I get here? And what else is here?” Once the app arrives, visitors to London may have answers at last.Latest Release Features Graphics & UI JavaFX 8 Multi-Layer Rendering Canvas Particle System Dynamic Texture Manipulation Sprite Sheet Animations Target Screen Resolution (+Fullscreen) Customizable Intro Video / Animation Customizable Main Menu / Game Menu (3 built-in menu styles) Customizable UI elements (Dialogs, Bars, Buttons, etc) Customizable Global CSS for menus / UI elements
Application Framework FXEventBus Log4j2 Time Management System (in-game time + real time) Multithreading Performance Monitor + Profiling Global Services Framework Developer Panel
User Input Key & Mouse Bindings Full Input Mocking
I/O EasyIO & Networking (TCP and UDP) Asset Management (".png", ".jpg", ".wav", ".mp3", ".txt", ".ttf/.otf", custom)
Physics JBox2D Unified Collision Handling (jbox2d + FXGL physics)
Utilities GameUtils
Gameplay Ents Game Loop Quick Time Events (QTE) Achievement System Notification System Saving / Loading System User Profiles (Save/Load/Restore Game Settings)
AI gdxAI AStar JavaScript Behavior Injections (for entities) + JavaScript Coding Environment Text/Script Parsers
If you have a use case (feature) that FXGL doesn't cover, raise an issue, carefully describing the use case.In terms of the art rock world, Liars are a “band’s band.” They’re critically acclaimed, musically daring, and only slightly off the mainstream radar despite having no intention of putting themselves in that position. They’re the kind of group Radiohead usually wants as an opener (a true sign of admiration and perhaps secret envy), and a constant presence whenever other bands make their own year-end lists.
If you’re unfamiliar with the shapeshifting trio’s unprecedented career arc, here’s a summary. In 2001, they were part of the New York post-punk scene that birthed LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Rapture, and their debut, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, positioned them as the most volatile and abrasive of the bunch; that record’s final song turns into a 30-minute loop. Three years later, they decamped to a New Jersey cabin and made They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, a shocking left turn where they completely ditched the wiry guitars and catchy, shouted hooks for murky electronic drone and lyrics based on the Salem witch trials. Rolling Stone gave it one star, which maybe happens once every five years; Spin granted it the lowest possible score and called it “unlistenable.” Liars holed up in Berlin to make their masterpiece, 2006’s Drum’s Not Dead, an eerie concept record/drum circle of an LP.
It was considered far more accessible than its predecessor. By 2010, they settled in Los Angeles and made Sisterworld, a fairly straightforward rock record mostly centered on the awfulness of Los Angeles.
What I’m trying to say is that all of the above makes it abundantly obvious that Liars are die-hard Clippers fans. How could they not be? Looking at their album titles, you sense that Liars are drawn to doomsaying and human frailty, their artistic trajectory and itinerant lifestyle embracing how nothing is permanent, whether good or bad. That’s the sort of attitude you need for a team owned by Donald Sterling, in which prosperity can seem fleeting if not entirely accidental. Most importantly, they maintain a fairly antagonistic relationship with the city that’s welcomed them, while having no immediate plans to, y’know, move. Why would they?
Lead singer Angus Andrew is quite literally the biggest Clippers fan in rock — the native Australian and recent newlywed is 6-foot-6 and could probably suit up right this moment as a Birdman-like intimidator for Doc Rivers. As a counterpoint to our previous Celtics chat with Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, Andrew gave us his thoughts on how the Clippers avoided a raw deal, made the best possible coaching hire, and if they can finally put up their own championship banner at Staples Center.
Now that Doc Rivers is a done deal, what does he bring to the table?
More Grantland Q&As Click here for all of our interviews with fascinating people from the worlds of sports and pop culture. To say “everything” would be an understatement. He’s a top-five coach with championship experience who will garner immediate and faithful respect from the players and organization. In an instant, the Clippers go from talented question mark to legitimate contenders. Not to mention this virtually locked in Chris Paul to re-sign for five years. With Blake [Griffin] already signed for five and now Doc for three — the Clippers’ future has literally never looked brighter. Plus, coupling “Rivers” with “Clippers” allows for all sorts of appropriate analogies!
How much of this year’s playoff failure can you attribute to the coaching style of Vinny Del Negro?
Oh, VDN … Look, I love the guy. He took us from the Dunleavy doldrums to the best season in franchise history. But it’s true, he’s not a strategist. His role was really just to let Chris Paul coach from the floor, which is fine in the regular season, but when it comes to the playoffs you actually need to call some plays! So yeah, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was completely Vinny’s fault, I will say that in order for the Clips to become a dominant playoff team in the future it was essential we part ways with him.
The Clippers have been a tremendous offensive team, yet their defense was exposed in the Memphis playoff series. How do you envision Doc Rivers changing the character of the team on this end?
That’ll be one of the real tests for Doc. He’s credited with incredible defense in Boston, but we all know that Tom Thibodeau implemented the system and KG made it happen. Can Doc create the same intensity here for the Clips?
Do you think the Clippers got a proper return for Eric Bledsoe in the form of J.J. Redick and Jared Dudley?
I certainly had hoped for more. Plus, lest we forget, this deal also included Caron Butler and a second-round draft pick! Caron and Bledsoe happened to be two of my absolute favorite players on the Clippers, so emotionally, I took it kinda hard. I was just amazed that the Suns could score Bledsoe and Caron by only giving up … Jared Dudley?! That seems crazy to me.
Still, from a strategic standpoint, I’ve come to terms with the trade. We needed good, solid outside shooters and a proper starter at the 2 spot, so let’s hope it all pans out.
How much pleasure did it bring you to see Dwight Howard leave the Lakers? Or do you think his departure helps the team?
If I was a Lakers fan, I’d be relieved right now. Sure, this upcoming year is going to be a tough pill to swallow. But I think they’re better off without Dwight and his ridiculous max contract. It was obvious he didn’t really want to be in L.A., and if he stayed, it most probably would’ve been based entirely on earning more money.
Former Lakers like Antawn Jamison and Matt Barnes are seeking to join the Clippers, whereas the Lakers desperately signed former Clipper Chris Kaman to be their starting center. Are we seeing a true culture change in Los Angeles basketball?
Absolutely! I hope it lasts.
Are there any missing pieces on the Clippers’ current roster, and if so, what cheaply available free agents can fill them?
I think we’re missing a really good backup big guy. We just re-signed Ryan Hollins, who is nothing to write home about, and we let go Ronny Turiaf, which was a good move. Unfortunately, at this point, the remaining free agents at the 4 or 5 aren’t truly inspiring. I’m not sure we can afford them, but I’d like to see either Brandan Wright or Byron Mullens on our team. Both can stretch the floor a bit, which would be great in combination with Blake.
Are the Clippers a championship team as currently constructed?
I hate to say it, but … no. I certainly think the introduction of Doc Rivers is going to make a huge difference for us. But unless Blake lives up to the hype and becomes an absolute solid and dominant star this season, I think we’ll find it difficult to go over the top. To me, we really need another go-to big man.
Exactly how long do you expect the Clippers to be a championship-caliber team before Donald Sterling inevitably screws this up?
Oh come on now. Look, the man has a bad, bad reputation that undoubtedly is completely warranted. But you have to admit the last few years has seen a marked change in attitude and intelligence. Isn’t it possible that he’s turned a corner and somehow realized that actually paying his employees is a sound strategic investment?180 Shares Email
David Mulroney says China’s Communist Party takes actions that are “a form of interference in Canadian affairs.”
Canada’s former Ambassador to China and former national security advisor David Mulroney is warning Canadians about the efforts of China’s Communist Party to push a “United Front” in order to influence public opinion in Canada.
As noted by the CP, Mulroney said “China does have a strategy for influencing public opinion and political opinion in other countries on issues that are important to China.”
Mulroney pointed out that these actions are increasing under the more aggressive government led by Xi Jinping:
“Under Xi, China has undertaken a co-ordinated campaign known as the “united front” to influence events in foreign countries, including Canada, said Mulroney.”
Part of that effort has been based on using Chinese students and Chinese citizens living in Canada to create the impression of support for the Communist State:
“During past visits by Chinese leaders to Ottawa, the Chinese embassy has bussed in students from Kingston and Montreal to counter the inevitable demonstrations against the Chinese government, he said.” Adds Mulroney, “The Chinese communist successfully links patriotism to support for the party and the government.” Chinese students often bristle at reading criticism about their country when abroad and feel embattled, so it can drive them to be “super patriots.”
The former ambassador notes that while every country pushes their influence, those attempts are usually public, whereas China does things behind the scenes:
“We do that above board, we do that publicly. Where China differs is its willingness to use diaspora groups, people who have an economic stake in China to work behind the scenes. That’s a form of interference in Canadian affairs.”
United Front is a long-time Communist tactic
As we know, “free trade” with China doesn’t really exist, because of the nature of their Communist government. The “United Front” is a well-known Communist tactic, used to push sinister goals behind the facade of groups that don’t seem Communist controlled, even though they are.
Canadians must heed the warnings of Mulroney, and go a step further to make sure that “free trade” with China never happens. Canadian Patriots must speak out against a deal that would be a betrayal of our country, and would turn us even more into an economic and political colony of a ruthless Communist government.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
*****
You can support SpencerFernando.com by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon, or making a contribution through PayPal.Why All Mass Shootings Are Terrorist Attacks
-By Eric Varney
(This is an older Blog entry from ‘Coffee, Cigarettes, & Politics,’ written on 12/08/15. This was imported as an effort to keep all my work together. Thank you for reading and enjoy.)
When you choose to open fire on a group of people, you’re committing terrorism. Except, that’s not the FBI’s definition of terrorism. When people hear the word ‘terrorism,’ they think of words like ‘Muslim’ or ‘Extremist’ It might even conjure up memories of the Shoe Bomber or 9/11.
Names like James Holmes, Jared Lee Loughner, Ted Kaczynski, and Robert Deer come to my mind. Only one of the four names mentioned has been classified a domestic terrorist. The other three were counted as lone wolves. Now, I only bring up Ted Kaczynski because he was classified as a domestic terrorist and that is representative of what this country used to do when faced with a monster.
Between 1978 and 1995, the man dubbed ‘the Unabomber’
Theodore John Kaczynski a mathematician and a domestic terrorist of United States is also known as a Unabomber. The man left his academic career in 1969 and started living in primitive lifestyle. Later between 1978 to 1995 he killed three people and injured many and started targeting those who are involved in modern technology for his bombing campaign. To know more click visit had killed three and injured twenty-three in his mail bombing campaign. He gets counted as a domestic terrorist. Just three dead! Of course, we hadn’t yet reached the twilight zone where there were more mass shootings than days in the year and were trying to paint a group of people as terrorist. This trend didn’t start happening until some time had went by after the World Trade Center attacks. The military industrial complex, always looking for a way to go to war, had worked it’s way deeper into our patriotic fabric, altering it forever.
Jared Lee Loughner and James Holmes killed more people each than Ted and both got classified as lone wolves, all because they were white and the crime was committed with firearms. Let’s get real, if both shooters had been brown they wouldn’t be classified as mentally ill, the less intelligent half of this country would call them terrorists, all without a care to the actual facts behind the events or the facts about the ruthless people who commit these violent acts,.OQO Talk
While greeted with heaps of initial skepticism, forum jockeys over atnow seem convinced that a junior member by the name of TRF has successfully hacked the OQO to run OS X Leopard. Adding a video filmed by Mr. Blurry Cam didn't hurt the cause. TRF's OQO is setup in a dual-boot Vista / OS X mode which boots Leopard in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. WiFi, sound, power management and Bluetooth... it's all there with applications popping with serious snap. The only thing missing at the moment is WWAN access which TRF is now testing. While not yet a "plug and play" hack, it's "definitely doable," he says. Perhaps, but we'll need more details to say the least. Video excerpt posted after the break.[Thanks Albert L. and lambda jones] Read -- Forum post Read -- Full VideoImage caption Terry Brice, from Gloucestershire, Tony and Pamela Adams, from Wales, Kye Thomas, from Cornwall, Michael and Maggie Barton, from Berkshire, and Malcolm Beacham (not pictured), died in the crash
A man in charge of a fireworks display held on the night of a motorway crash in which seven people died has been cleared of breaching health and safety laws.
Geoffrey Counsell had denied a charge of failing to ensure public safety for the Taunton Rugby Club display.
A judge at Bristol Crown Court directed the jury to find him not guilty.
The pile-up involved about 30 cars when they were engulfed by a thick fog on the M5 on 4 November 2011.
Speaking outside court, Mr Counsell said he believed the decision to prosecute him was "motivated by a desire to find someone to blame for this terrible accident, simply for the sake of doing so".
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it sought evidence from experts and eyewitnesses before making the decision to charge Mr Counsell.
The court had previously been told the smog was so thick that motorists on the northbound carriageway likened it to having a tin of paint thrown over their windscreens.
Image caption Geoffrey Counsell was cleared of all charges over the crash on 4 November 2011
Mr Counsell, 51, from Ashill, Somerset, had been originally charged with seven counts of manslaughter but the charges were dropped earlier this year.
Not enough evidence
Instead, he was charged under the Health and Safety at Work Act with failing to operate the display so as to ensure that others who might be affected were not exposed to risks.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Geoffrey Counsell's lawyer Gavin Reese read a statement on his behalf outside court
Mr Justice Simon ruled Mr Counsell had "no case to answer" following an application from the defendant's barrister at the halfway point in the trial.
He said the prosecution's case was "heavily weighted" on "hindsight" and there was not sufficient evidence to show that Mr Counsell ought to have foreseen that smoke from the display could have drifted and mixed with fog to create thick smog.
"I have therefore concluded that the evidence is such that the jury cannot continue in these circumstances and it is my duty to stop the trial and order an acquittal," he added.
Mr Counsell, who ran Firestorm Pyrotechnics, was the contractor hired by Taunton Rugby Club to run the £3,000 display, which was watched by about 1,000 people.
He set off 1,500 shots in 15 minutes - just 200 yards from the motorway.
Witnesses described seeing the smoke drift across the nearby carriageway.
Grandparents Tony and Pamela Adams, from Newport, south Wales; father and daughter Michael and Maggie Barton, from Windsor, Berkshire; battle re-enactor Malcolm Beacham, from Woolavington, Somerset; and lorry drivers Terry Brice, from South Gloucestershire, and Kye Thomas, from Cornwall, died and 51 people were injured in the crash.Former political director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance Dia Chakravarty has been appointed Brexit Editor of the Telegraph.
The paper said that Chakravarty will lead a Brexit team which comprises: commissioning Brexit editor Asa Bennett, Brexit correspondent James Rothwell, and Brussels correspondent James Crisp.
Chakravarty, a prominent Leave campaigner during the EU Referendum campaign, will provide leadership of the Brexit team and will also be central to Brexit-themed Telegraph video, podcasts and exclusive subscriber events – the Telegraph said.
Chakravarty said: “It’s an honour to be able to shape The Telegraph’s coverage of Brexit, arguably the most important political event in generations.
“The Telegraph is one of the finest news brands in the country, and as ongoing negotiations unfold my aim is to provide a clear narrative cutting through the noise. Together with the support of my colleagues, I very much look forward to taking on the challenge.”
Chakravarty has not previously worked full-time as a journalist. She began her career as a tax consultant before moving into communications and public affairs.So how was your weekend? Good, good. Mine? Pretty uneventful, really. I did find out that an Android app that I’ve been using for years has been phoning home to China, but other than that…
The app in question is ES File Explorer, currently boasting some 300 million downloads in its Play Store listing. I’ve been using it for its remote file manager abilities, which basically turns my phone into an FTP server so I can transfer large files wirelessly over my home network. Little did I know that the app was also transmitting data back to a Chinese server at the same time.
But now I do, and it’s all thanks to some forum threads and my new favourite app.
Unknown Folder “baidu”
This all started with a thread on the Sony Xperia Care Forums that I came across last week. Honestly, the original idea for this post was to warn prospective Sony buyers about potential spyware in the My Xperia app. From that thread:
To sketch the magnitude of the problem: potentially, the Chinese government can: Read status and identity of your device
Make pictures and videos without your knowledge
Get your exact location
Read the contents of your USB memory
Read or edit accounts
Change security settings
Completely manage your network access
Couple with Bluetooth devices
Know what apps you are using
Prevent your device from entering sleep mode
Change audio settings
Change system settings All of the above can potentially be monitored and managed remotely via internet WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION!
Apparently the culprit is a folder in the internal (root) storage of Xperia devices called “baidu”. If you didn’t know, Baidu is the Chinese search giant that’s widely rumoured to have close ties with the PRC government. Hold that thought…
The proof that Sony was leaking data to Chinese servers was proved with a screen grab from an app I had never heard of, OS Monitor—it’s available on both the Play Store and F-Droid. Since F-Droid only hosts apps with some sort of open-source license, I figured it was legit. Best part of all? It doesn’t require root.
baidu.cuid
Back to Baidu, I had noticed a file in the internal storage of my Nexus 5 called “baidu.cuid”. A bit of searching yielded a thread on XDA with other Nexus owners also in possession of this mystery file. The consensus seems to be that ES File Explorer is to blame. From that thread:
To those that thought it *might* be ES File Explorer – I salute you. My research: I deleted the directory and tried a bunch of apps to try and find the culprit. Then I did a root search of my phone for the word “baidu.” I used CM11’s file explorer rather than a 3rd party app. Here’s what came up: In folder /data/data/com.estrongs.android.pop/shared_prefs is a file: __Baidu_Stat_SDK_SendRem.xml. When I look at the XML it’s pretty simple. It’s sending a logfile. I don’t know what it’s sending a log of-that bothers me. I also did a little more background research. Apparently one of Baidu’s founders is an angel investor in EStrongs. I hate to say it, but this might compel me to stop using ES File Explorer even though it’s a great app…
For your reference, here are the contents of the XML file on my device:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' standalone='yes'?>
<map>
<int name="timeinterval" value="24" />
<string name="cuid">|077024260485253</ string>
<long 3947ECD933FCB2F4F91AB27AEE2A34 8D name="lastsendtime" value="1415026434602" />
<string name="mtjsdkmacss"> qU7242VmtgqdqpefypCliw==</ string>
<string name="cuidsec"> WTUMQrCjbexVl0YepOKIUd7mCsyLmA RNinh5Cm28RQCYwTvuRxLO51ktKMfZ czzApSx3piqrtcuuN25IcN2bNA==</ string>
<boolean name="onlywifi" value="false" />
<boolean name="exceptionanalysisflag" value="false" />
<int name="sendLogtype" value="1" />
</map>
Someone smarter than me will have to figure out exactly what’s going on here. But thanks to OS Monitor I can at least confirm that ES File Explorer is indeed connecting to a server in Beijing:
Again, I can’t say exactly what is being shared here, but the fact that an app with access to everything on my device and my home network is making a remote connection without my express consent is enough for me to stop using it. Immediately.
If you suspect that there may be spyware on your Android device then OS Monitor is your new best friend.
Further Reading:
Xperia Care Support Forum: Unknown folder “baidu”
XDA Developers: What is baidu folder for?
Google Play Apps: OS MonitorSt. John's South MHA Tom Osborne says assault rifles should be outlawed altogether in Canada, to avoid tragedies like the double-murder suicide in Conception Bay South earlier this week.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary says Brian Dawe, 43, shot and killed his former girlfriend Julianne Hibbs on Tuesday night inside a medical clinic in Villa Nova Plaza.
He then killed her boyfriend, Vince Dillon, 45, who had been waiting in the parking lot.
Dawe's body was found on Wednesday morning at an Anglican cemetery in Mount Pearl. Police said they found the 9-mm handgun used to shoot Hibbs and Dillon, as well as an AK-47 assault rifle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
The RNC said the weapons were legally owned, but the magazines were unlawfully modified.
Osborne said on CBC's On Point Radio on Friday there is only one purpose for anyone to own an assault rifle and it's necessary for the federal government to take action.
"The only reason anybody would have an assault rifle is to kill people — that's what they're designed and built for. They shouldn't be allowed on our soil," Osborne said.
"Newfoundland and Labrador has always been known as a very peaceful place. We need to have our law enforcement here, [the] RCMP and RNC, equipped and funded to be able to deal with these new challenges, but we need to focus on the federal government to prevent these from being legal."
The RNC said it found a total of 43 weapons inside Dawe's home, not including the two weapons found inside his vehicle where they discovered his body."Can't Get You Out of My Head" is a song recorded by Australian singer Kylie Minogue for her eighth studio album, titled Fever, which she released in 2001. The song was released in Australia by Parlophone as the lead single from the album on 8 September 2001. It was released on 17 September 2001 in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the single was released on 18 February 2002. Jointly written, composed, and produced by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is a midtempo dance song which combines the genres of synth-pop and nu-disco, which lyrically details its narrator's obsession towards her lover. The song is famous for its "la la la" hook.
In addition to acclaim from music critics, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" found commercial success on a large scale. It peaked at number one on the charts of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and every other European country excluding Finland. It also topped the charts of Minogue's native Australia as well as New Zealand. In the United States, the song peaked at number seven on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming Minogue's biggest hit in the region since "The Loco-Motion". "Can't Get You Out of My Head" reportedly reached number one in 40 countries across the globe. It was certified triple-platinum in Australia, double-platinum in the United Kingdom, and gold in the United States. It became Minogue's first single to sell in excess of one million copies in the United Kingdom, where it also stands as the 28th best-selling single of the millennium. As of 2013, the song was Minogue's highest selling single and one of the best-selling singles of all time, with worldwide sales exceeding five million.
The accompanying music video for the song was directed by Dawn Shadforth, and featured Minogue performing various dance routines in different futuristic backdrops. It became notable for the revealing hooded white jumpsuit Minogue wore during one of the scenes. The song has been performed by Minogue during all of her concert tours as of 2017, with the exception of the Anti Tour. Following its release, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" ranked on a number of decade-end lists compiled by magazines such as Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and NME. It is considered to be Minogue's strongest commercial breakthrough in the United States and is said to have been the reason behind the success of its parent album Fever in the region. "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is also recognized as Minogue's signature song and was a defining point in her musical career. In 2012, the song was re-recorded for inclusion in Minogue's orchestral compilation album, The Abbey Road Sessions.
Background and recording [ edit ]
In 2000, Minogue signed to the Parlophone Records label and released |
It was only at the invitation of her husband that she took the stage.
'Would you like to say a couple of words?' Trump asked her from the microphone at a podium in a rule full of lawmakers and power brokers.
Melania Trump earned a kiss from President-elect Donald Trump after she delivered brief remarks at a luxury hotel owned by her husband
'It’s great to be here and thank you all for your support,' Melania Trump said, 'and tomorrow we start the work.'
'Ahead [there is] a lot of responsibility, a lot to take care of, and we will Make America great again,' she said in Slovenian-accented English, leaning into the microphone while gripping the podium with one hand.
Her brief remarks won applause enthusiastic whoops from the crowd.
President-elect raised his arms after his wife spoke as if to signal that all had gone well.
Melania Trump used her husband's 'Make America Great Again' slogan
The president-elect gently guided her down some stairs and pointed to the back of the room, from where the future first lady exited
THE WAY OUT: President-elect Donald Trump points toward the back of the room to show Melania Trump how to leave after her brief public remarks
THE REWARD: Melania Trump receives a kiss from her husband after delivering brief remarks at a podium, where she referenced the'responsibility' and hard work ahead
When she was done, the president-elect raised his arms as if to signal that all had gone well.
Then the two embraced and exchanged a kiss on the lips.
Then, he grabbed the soon-to-be first lady by the hand and escorted her down a few stairs.
The president-elect pointed to a spot in the back of the room, where Melania Trump soon walked, as she prepared to leave.
Her husband then took the podium to salute and also poke fun at the gathered lawmakers, mentioning that Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas was always asking him for campaign funds and didn't support him, 'but that's the way it is.'
President-elect Donald J. Trump (not pictured) and his wife Melania Trump arrive Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on the day before the inauguration
President-elect Donald Trump smiled with pride while his wife delivered brief remarks in front of a podium carrying an inaugural seal
She spoke at the luxury hotel owned by her husband and leased from the federal government.
The event was held inside the Presidential Ballroom in Trump's luxury hotel in Washington.
Trump continues to be the owner of the hotel, although he told reporters he was relinquishing control of his business when he took office, with his adult sons and an executive now in charge.
Former White House ethics experts have said the hotel poses a potential conflict of interest because the government is a party to the lease and foreigners and other visitors contribute to the Trump Organization's bottom line when they stay there.
Trump joked about the quality of the interior, which his company renovated inside the historic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
'Where is this? This is a gorgeous room,' he quipped. 'A total genius must have built this place.'NumbersUSA again this year is at one of the nation's three largest Earth Day Festivals, at the Texas State Fairgrounds. We are displaying our giant red and green U.S. population chart, as usual. And, as usual, lots of people do some double takes at seeing the population issue raised in the midst of scores of booths about green products, recycling, lower-consumption living, etc. Melanie Oubre and I will be posting a few observations during this 43rd Earth Day weekend.
Melanie's comments are below mine.
ROY'S COMMENTS
We are experimenting this year to see what happens if we don't put the word "immigration" in public and start only with U.S. population issues. We introduce immigration only when people read it in the survey they are taking or in the handouts -- or, as often happens, they say, "so how do you exactly propose that we keep that (meaning the red on the chart) from happening.."
Last year, we had the big lettering on the red part of the chart that said "Growth from Immigrants and Descendants." That brought lots of people to the booth to yell at Anne and me. We had some major debates as a result. But I'm not sure how much we accomplish getting into debates with people who are dead set against limiting immigration -- unless they are the actual policymakers.
One of the problems for us with a public that hasn't thought much about our issues is that they at first have never thought that problems from population growth are related to immigration. Secondly, they often don't even know problems from population growth are related to population growth!!!
This year, I thought I wanted to get people to first think about the population growth, so we changed the wording on the red part of the chart to "ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE???" This way, we could start with just talking about the reality of population growth before getting into the causes.
"I'm sorry I won't finish this survey because it brings up immigration," a woman just said as she got up from the chair in front of our booth where we are having people take our population survey. "I happen to believe illegal immigrants ought to be allowed to stay."
This was after showing a great deal of interest in the U.S. population growth we display on our wall. Her first reaction was that the "Catholics and evangelicals" just keep having too many babies. But when she got to the question that noted that American fertility is not causing any long-term growth and that immigration has tripled is causing it, she felt we had tricked her.
Uh, oh. Another offended person. A husband and wife each took our foldover population cards and started walking off. But she apparently was shocked to see immigration show up on the card, turned, gave it back to Melanie and said, "We want immigrants to come here."
But her husband kept the card. Maybe we have a chance of batting 50/50 in that household.
"Hmmm, I was just walking through the booths and was kind of surprised to see something on population," one middle-aged man said. "I remember having a class on population in college. Bad professor. Too bad."
We have laptops set up at the front of our booth table with a big sign inviting folks to take the on-line population survey. People are wary. They tend to stand several feet in front of the booth and read the big charts from afar, to protect themselves from being pulled in, I guess.
A woman was ready to argue with me about the population wall, seeming to want to know how we proposed forcing people to have fewer kids. I told her we don't as an organization deal with those issues, in part because Americans having 2, 3, 1, 4, 0 and 5 and more kids are averaging just two kids per woman since 1972.
Once she found out we work to reduce immigration, she was all for the idea and indicated a lot of concern about Texas growing so fast from immigration. It is interesting how there are so many ways to come to this issue -- and to be turned off.
Just like last year, the people who are the most thoughtful in their questions and seem genuinely interested in the nuances of the issues are people who are immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.
When a young businessman asked how we can stop all that U.S. population growth and I said it had to be through immigration reductions, he said, "But my parents are immigrants from Japan. If they hadn't been allowed to come in, I wouldn't be here."
I often respond to that kind of comment by saying that a person who is a fourth child could say the same thing as a reason why everybody should have four children, but that wouldn't mean it would be good public policy. The Japanese-American saw some validity in that and in my comments that we aren't advocating an end to immigration but just a return to the traditional 250,000 a year level before 1965. He wanted to know why the numbers had gone over a million. He was quite impressed with how only about 3% of immigrants come in because of extraordinary skills and how most are low-educated and low-skilled. In the end, he agreed that it is difficult to imagine how America will be what we want it to be environmentally if we grow from 300 million to 625 million by the end of the century.
Another man from Argentina engaged in a long discussion, talking about how he left Argentina after the president there suddenly gave citizenship to huge numbers of Bolivians and almost immediately gave them the ability to vote. "I have nothing against the Bolivians and understand why they would want the opportunity, but it destroyed my country's economy."
MELANIE'S COMMENTS:
Day Two of Earth Day has started out very well. We have had many people take our poll within the first couple of hours. Roy and I hoped that official Earth Day would bring a larger crowd and it certainly has.
My favorite thing to see is while people are walking by our booth, their eyes travel upward to the top of our red and green chart, then their jaws drop. Many people I talk to do not realize the rapid population growth that has happened since the first Earth Day nor the projected growth that should have all of us weary.
My favorite analogy to use when talking about the growth is "look at Dallas, now double that." This is something that really scares people, and it should. They tell me that they already think Dallas has grown too large and sprawled out way too much.
One man made a comment, "well, I won't be here in 2100 (when the population of the US will reach 625 million." I said that I won't be here either but it is still somehting I worry about. To have that view is quite selfish. He was blessed with a livable Earth and we should do all we can to preserve it for our descendants.
An 8 year old boy came up to the table, and started asking questions. He did not know our current population, but when I told him that we add about 3 million people per year, he looked at me in disbelief. "That's too much" he said. I told him what a visa was, and that we would like to limit the number that the government gives out each year. He said "that would be great because it would bring that red down" talking about our chart. He was very smart, and was determined to figure out how many immigrants come here every day. On paper, he divided 365 by 1,500,000 in front of me. This boy has a bright future! The answer was 4,109.
A lady told me how she has purposely limited the number of children she and her husband have had. They have 2 children, and are not having anymore because of population concerns. She was very disheartened when her immigrant neighbors on either side of her house moved in and had five children each. She would like to have another child, but is thinking about more than herself. She thought that every family should do the same.
A lady told me the sad story of how her husband got laid off from his road building job. He was working for a state and federal contractor who replaced him with people that were being paid $12/hr. He had all the certifications for operating heavy machinery, once his certifications were finalized, he got fired. They suspect that the company used him to get the proof of certifications and now hired uncertified and unqualified workers. This is a very dangerous job, and there was news last week that a worker lost a leg because of clumsiness. This is irresponsible and unfair. He is out of work still, and lives are being put in danger every day because of this company. They are looking into whether the company broke the law and will do all that is needed to get justice.
I am really enjoying talking to everyone here.
-Melanieby Drew Baumgartner
This article will contain SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!
It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished…. when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, ‘it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.’ And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever. John Adams
There are always folks who will defend punishment for the guilty — whether it’s prison, public shaming, or being shot by a cop — but that often necessitates retroactively framing those who receive punishment as guilty. In the wakes of countless police (and neighborhood watchmen) shootings, the offenses that have been deemed worthy of death have ranged from stealing a pack of cigarettes to wearing a goddamned hoodie. It’s an absolutely despicable line of reasoning (even when it’s “I agree they didn’t deserve to die, but…”), but it falls completely on its face in the case of Philando Castile, who was inarguably guilty of no crime whatsoever. This is exactly the situation Adams was warning against. There is no virtue in innocence or — in the parlance of Bitch Planet — compliance, so why follow the rules at all?
I’m wary of hanging a theme on an anthology — this issue features three stories by three creative teams — but Bitch Planet: Triple Feature 1 hangs together quite beautifully around this notion that compliance offers no actual security. It’s a theme we’ve seen played out in the flashbacks of the main series, but these stories, as with the case of Philando Castile, feature women who aren’t “guilty” of anything anyone can argue as deserving of punishment. They’re punished anyway, so why be compliant?
Each story in the issue hits this note from a different angle (though they all nail the depressingly familiar casual sexism that defines this series’ dialogue), but the clearest articulation is in the closing story, from Conley Lyons, Craig Yeung, and Marco D’Alfonso. Their protagonist, Leslie, wants nothing more than to be a respected businesswoman. But, you know, respect isn’t something that’s afforded to women (even as a pretense) in Bitch Planet.
If compliance can’t get her seen, what other option does she have?
The conversation doesn’t stop there. What do you wanna talk about from this issue?While flight to safety investing has traditionally been directed towards investments with low risk-return profile, it is interesting to see how the events around the world have turned people to bitcoin, which is typically synonymous with high risk-reward.
Bitcoin's unique ability to be used either as a store of value or medium of exchange has attracted people to choose it to park their money. Here’s a look at how bitcoin is becoming a solution to multifaceted problems in different parts of the world.
Caribbean Islands
In the past months, several institutions in the Caribbean Islands have seen the termination of Correspondent Banking Relationships (or simply CBRs) by global banks; the number was at 16 across five countries as of May 2016, per an IMF report.
While the full impact of such an exodus isn’t easily quantifiable, IMF chief Christine Lagarde’s statement reflects its deep impact; she says, “Correspondent banking is like the blood that delivers nutrients to different parts of the body.” The immediate effect of CBR withdrawal is loss in business confidence and a discomfort in basic transactions such as sending money in and out of the region.
In the face of such problems, regulatory authorities have shown openness towards cryptocurrencies in select countries of the region. In November 2015, the Central Bank of Barbados released a working paper titled, “Should Cryptocurrencies be included in the Portfolio of International Reserves held by the Central Bank of Barbados?” It analyzed the potential role of the cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin as part of the portfolio of external assets held by a central bank.
In February of 2016, Bitt, a fintech start-up in Caribbean launched a digitized Barbadian Dollar on the bitcoin blockchain. Bitt is working to digitize all fiat currencies in the region by making them transactional for bitcoins to overcome the inefficient exchange and settlement system.
In April, it received an investment of $16 million from retail giant Overstock.com “to further its goal of building a financial ecosystem in the Caribbean that remedies the issues which people in the region experience daily.”
In addition, a Jamaica based start-up Caricoin is actively working to integrate bitcoin with the banking system to solve the problem of CBR. Its app supports all Caribbean currencies to allow anyone to make payments in local currency just using bitcoin as the store of value.
“Many businesses and professionals are genuinely scared about what they will do if they lose their bank accounts because of the CBR issue and are looking to bitcoin-based solutions as possible alternatives. But many others also see it as a business opportunity,” said Karsten Becker, Head of Compliance, Caricoin.
India
India has been a fertile ground for virtual currencies such as bitcoin. It is home to 1.25 billion people with 38% in the age bracket of 20-44, it is the second largest smartphone market in the world with 35% of its population having access to internet, a figure likely to double by 2020. It is backed by government initiatives such as Digital India and a strong push towards a cashless economy. Despite all this, bitcoin was not widely adopted until Modi government’s demonetization drive.
Since the announcement of banning of INR 500 and INR 1,000 currency notes to uncover India’s parallel economy, which is approximately one-fourth of its GDP, the interest in bitcoin has spiked. The positive factor is that such interest is despite a mandatory PAN card disclosure and banking transactions to purchase bitcoins. In other words, “cash” cannot be directly used to buy bitcoins.
Bitcoin prices on Indian exchanges jumped to a 25% premium compared to its U.S. counterparts in the initial days after demonetization, which has now come down to about 10% premium.
“Bitcoin adoption in India is growing exponentially. At Zebpay, we are doubling the number of new users every 2-3 months. This trend has become more robust post demonetization” said Sandeep Goenka, Co-founder, Zebpay.
Venezuela
Venezuela is in a deep economic crisis led by the collapse in global oil prices and inadequate macro and microeconomic policies. The country is facing major stagflation, with inflation touching 181% in 2015 alone, while its GDP is expected to shrink by more than 10% in 2016. In the last month, its currency has further depreciated by 60% against the U.S. dollar in the black market which “makes the largest-denomination note of 100 bolivars now worth less than 3 U.S. cents in the crisis-hit OPEC nation” as per Reuters.
Amid such a dismal state of its economy and a fast depreciating currency, bitcoin has emerged as an option to cash out of bolivar. Surbitcoin is Venezuela’s first and prominent bitcoin exchange. In addition, Xapo, a bitcoin wallet, has reported high number of users in Venezuela for its bitcoin based app. The graph below reflects the weekly volumes on LocalBitcoins in bolivar.
Many Others
Further, amid ailing and fragile economic conditions, people in countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Argentina have embraced bitcoin which is reflected by the high volume of trading in bitcoin. In the U.S., bitcoin prices have remained firm amid a charged political atmosphere and subsequent victory of President elect Donald Trump.
Final Word
Although bitcoin provides a solution to many economic ailments, it suffers from regulatory ambiguity, links to nefarious activities and volatile price movement. However, bitcoin is slowly overcoming the negativity built around it and is playing the role of a savior for many in different parts of the world.Posted by Darren Urban on March 26, 2014 – 12:17 pm
About five weeks into the season last year, Carson Palmer approached coach Bruce Arians to talk about rookie running back Andre Ellington.
“Let’s make him a wideout,” Palmer said.
“No,” Arians responded. “We can use him as a wideout as a running back.”
Arians recounted the conversation Wednesday at the NFL owners meetings. Ellington’s receiving skills are not only well-known but have been discussed quite a bit, by Arians, Palmer and Ellington. “We are going to have a lot of fun this spring because his skill set is so unique,” Arians said. Once again, Arians talked about the Ellington workload and the fine line between riding the running back and not subjecting him to too much punishment.
“He is still not a guy who you will pound up the middle 30 times a game and survive,” Arians said. “He can run the football 30 times a game if you do it correctly, but you’d rather have him have 10 catches and 20 carries and let Stepfan Taylor or (Jonathan) Dwyer have the rest of the carries pound the rest of the ball up in there.”
(Noteworthy that Arians didn’t mention Ryan Williams as a possibility? Perhaps.)
Arians said the mismatches offensive coordinators find these days with tight ends used to be the ones for running backs, naming old-school guys like Ronnie Harmon and Todd McNair. “It will be fun with Andre, see how people play him,” Arians said.
One other Ellington note: Arians said the staff has to be careful with how much of the offense is actually built around the back. “You’ve got to watch that you don’t create too much stuff and then he sprains an ankle and you don’t have any offense because you put too much in one basket,” Arians said. “You still have to have your cinch-it-up, grind-it-out football.”
Tags: Andre Ellington Posted in BlogYou can help Ribbitribbitt get his dream EQII playground.
On the official EverQuest II Forums a player posted a sad plea:
My 6 yr old son has cancer and was recently given 6 - 12 weeks to live.
He has a frog that he likes to run around Tenebrous Tangle Island on; however, it is sparse and he has requested to add trees, fences, stairs, animals and all kinds of other items to make his island fun and exciting.
Are there any decorators out there that would be willing to assist in adding these items (and any others their imagination poses) to help me make the island even more fun for him. I don't know how much I'll be able to accomplish on my own while still providing him quality time to enjoy it.
The EQ2 community has rallied around Ribbitribbitt. A guild has been created and players of all types are grinding status to get him a Tier 3 guild hall by Saturday. Players have donated decorations and even status houses to give him his choice of playgrounds.
Hellzelves tells us "On Saturday we will get together to decorate everything and finish up the crafting at 4 eastern/1 pacific. End game raiders will be taking all comers for duelbets for the cause."
If you would like to help, please check out this thread on the official forums, or contact guk.sylestia, guk.ubring or guk.myranda in game.That's no small amount of money by any means, and it's steadily growing for Google's total Internet properties. Money spent on traffic acquisition costs was around seven-percent in 2012, but now in 2017, it's reaching up to eleven-percent.
Google is one of the most well-known companies in the world, but even so, the search giant still pays a nice chunk of cash each year to maximize profits and visibility as much as possible. Money that Google pays to have Google-served ads on websites, the default search engine on iOS, and Google apps preinstalled on Android phones is referred to as "traffic acquisition costs", and the company pays $19 billion each year for it.
These costs naturally go up as Google's traffic increases, and when looking at mobile-centric partners, Google has already paid $7.2 billion in the past year (three times more compared to what it paid in 2012) to ensure that its name is consistently represented across smartphones, tablets, etc.
What exactly does that $7.2 billion go towards? Owners of virtually any Android phone know that the Google search bar is typically set at the top of the home screen by default and that an assortment of Google's many first-party apps are preinstalled out of the box, including the likes of YouTube, Photos, Duo, etc. These are things that come as a result of those fees paid by Google, and it helps to keep the company's search platform and many services in front of users eyes from day one.
A lot of money goes into crafting what you see on your phone as soon as you take it out of the box.
When a company like Samsung or LG wants to add the Play Store onto their Android devices, they have to voluntarily agree to install other Google apps on their phones in order to do so. This is how things have been for years now, but antitrust authorities in Europe are currently investigating to determine whether or not Google is abusing the power it has over these companies with its ownership of Android.
It'll more than likely take years before a final verdict is reached on this matter, but even before it does, this has the chance to further increase fees that Google pays to have its search bar on home screens and have so many of its apps preinstalled from day one.
These rising costs don't' seem all that surprising as Google continues to increase in popularity and size, but in any case, it's still interesting to better understand just how your smartphone came to be. You might not have thought too much about what apps were installed on your Galaxy S8 or LG G6 when you powered it on for the first time, but Google paid billions of dollars to ensure that certain elements were in place upon turning that screen on.
Just some nice food for thought for your Tuesday morning.
Google is spending $1.1 billion to hire HTC's best smartphone talentSinger/bassist Mike Dean and singer/drummer Reed Mullin of hardcore punk veterans CORROSION OF CONFORMITY recently joined forces with a number of well-known musicians from the metal and hardcore scenes to create the new project TEENAGE TIME KILLER.
The instrumental parts for the upcoming debut release from TEENAGE TIME KILLER, which is named after a RUDIMENTARY PENI song, were recorded at Dave Grohl's (FOO FIGHTERS, NIRVANA) Studio 606 in Northridge, California on the famous Sound City mixing board, which was the central focus of Grohl's acclaimed "Sound City: Real To Reel" documentary.
In a brand new interview with Jump Metal (see below), Mullin revealed some of the names that are going to be involved with the project:
* Jello Biafra (DEAD KENNEDYS)
* Tony Foresta (MUNICIPAL WASTE
* Tommy Victor (PRONG, DANZIG)
* Dave Grohl (FOO FIGHTERS, NIRVANA)
* Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, SEPULTURA)
* Phil Rind (SACRED REICH)
* Randy Blythe (LAMB OF GOD)
* Pepper Keenan (CORROSION OF CONFORMITY)
* Karl Agell (CORROSION OF CONFORMITY)
* Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein (MISFITS)
* Keith Morris (BLACK FLAG, CIRCLE JERKS)
Back in May, Blythe posted an Instagram photo of him with Dean and Mullin in the studio and described his contribution to TEENAGE TIME KILLER, a track called "Hung Out To Dry", as "old-school C.O.C.-style thrash punk."Image copyright Getty Images
A crop of Hitler-related hashtags has emerged on social media in the past week or so - what and who is behind this?
#HitlerWasRight, #HitlerDidNothingWrong, and - most recently - #IfHitlerWasAlive have all been doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook over the past few days.
References to Hitler on social media are, of course, nothing new - in the past 12 months, "Hitler" has been used more than 10 million times on Twitter. But there's been a clear upsurge recently - related to both Germany's performances in the World Cup, and the Israel-Gaza conflict.
It's intended to inflame - to be grossly offensive Rabbi Kenneth Cohen, Director, Vine & Fig Project
Taken together, these three hashtags have been used more than 15,000 times in the past week. As their titles would suggest, they include all manner of anti-Semitic vitriol. But a large chunk of the discussion is critics pushing back, and condemning those who've used it.
The hashtags seem to have begun to pick up during Germany's key games in the World Cup. For example: "I think the last time the Germans destroyed someone like that was WW2. #HitlerDidNothingWrong." Though he didn't use one of these hashtags, a Malaysian MP caused outrage when - in reference to Germany's 7-1 thrashing of Brazil - he tweeted: "WELL DONE..BRAVO...LONG LIVE HITLER..."
Some of the World Cup-related references to Hitler were probably intended as jokes - albeit bad ones. But the use of the hashtags soon took on an anti-Semitic turn.
As the Israel-Gaza conflict gathered pace, the hashtags then got picked up by some pro-Palestinians - though not, it should be stressed - among many Palestinians themselves. Indeed many Palestinians were vocal in urging people to stop. "Reprehensible" "bigoted" and "hateful" is how Yasmeen Serhan, a Palestinian-American student describes the #HitlerWasRight hashtag. "Such a trend has no place in Palestinian activism," she says.
The #HitlerWasRight and #HitlerDidNothingWrong hashtags have been used intermittently and it's hard to trace their origin. But with #IfHitlerWasAlive it's much easier to identify the source - it began trending as a result of a number of individuals in Pakistan.
As with the other hashtags, the condemnation was robust. "My guess is these are uneducated people," says Zohaib Nawaz Tarar, a Pakistani student and computer programmer now living in Spain who was one of many who tweeted his condemnation. "There is a group of people starting hashtags just to get them to trend. These are stupid people who don't know real facts."
Image copyright Social media Image caption A large part of the discussion on the hashtags is people condemning their use
"It's intended to inflame - to be grossly offensive," says Rabbi Kenneth Cohen who also stepped into the Twitter conversation to condemn the comments being made. "It's also counter-productive - it reflects baldy on the people using that hashtag. It's not very bright."
"At a time when we should labouring to defuse the tensions, there are some people going out of their way to inflame them," he adds. Cohen believes the relative anonymity of social media means people feel free to say things that would be completely socially unacceptable in person.
That people make often entirely spurious comparisons to Hitler should not come as a surprise, says Mike Godwin, who back in 1990 researched what is known as Godwins Law of Nazi Analogies. In its simplest form, Godwins Law states that in any online discussion or forum, someone will - if it's left there long enough - eventually bring up Hitler or the Nazis. "It's the model of evil," in the Western world he says. If you want to escalate a debate "this is where you'll go".
Such references to Hitler have probably existed since before the internet, says Godwin. But the internet - and now social media - has magnified the phenomenon, making it much more visible.
Reporting by Cordelia Hebblethwaite
You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending
All our stories are at bbc.com/trendingAn adaptation of (the first two parts of) H. P. Lovecraft‘s short story Herbert West – Reanimator but updated to a more contemporary setting and infused throughout with some very campy and decidedly black humour. All the actors involved play it entirely straight and the dry jokes are delivered so dead-pan that it just makes this movie even funnier.
Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a very intense, dedicated and some-what weird medical student who comes to the Miskatonic University in New England in order to further his studies after an unfortunate incident at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, resulting in a(n un)dead professor, caused him to leave there rather unceremoniously.
West rents a room and basement space (for his experiments) from fellow student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbot) who eagerly takes him in for the extra income and despite his girl-friend Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton)’s reservations that West is too “creepy” for a house-mate. Soon after, Dan’s pet cat Rufus goes missing so he and Megan search the house top to bottom and finally find its corpse in West’s refrigerator… along with some mysterious vials of strangely glowing green liquid. Dan later confronts West about the dead cat and West explains that the cat was already dead when he found it but didn’t want Dan or Megan finding it in such a condition so he refrigerated it till he could break the bad news to them gently.
Dan then asks West to explain the green liquid and West tells him that it is the result of his ongoing experiments to find a cure for death itself. Dan, of course, is sceptical so West proves the efficacy of his “reagent” by injecting it into the dead cat. Rufus is reanimated and immediately goes crazy – attacking them both – so they kill the cat a second time. Both shocked and exited by this event Dan agrees to assist West in his experiments and the pair decide to try to perfect the reagent by experimenting on corpses stored in the University’s morgue. The chaos resulting from this experiment causes the medical school’s Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson), Megan’s father, to stumble into the pair in the morgue but the Dean is killed by a reanimated corpse – which West re-kills with a bone-saw.
Realising the Dean’s corpse is the freshest they’re likely to get, West injects it with the reagent and it too is reanimated… but it too behaves violently toward them. When police and security officers arrive and subdue Halsey, West and Dan – to explain the scene of carnage – claim that the Dean simply went crazy and attacked both them and the corpses in the morgue. The reanimated Dean is strapped into a straight-jacket and taken away – put into the care of his brain specialist colleague Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale). After lobotomising Halsey, Dr. Hill soon realises that the Dean is in fact dead and reanimated. Realising that West must be onto something with his research, which the doctor had earlier scoffed at, Hill determines to get West’s secrets for himself.
Little does Hill realise quite how unhinged Herbert West was becoming with each increasingly disastrous and chaotic experiment. Hill tries to blackmail West into handing over his secrets, West plays along just long enough to decapitate Hill with a shovel… and then West wonders how his reagent will work with body parts…
Content Warning: be prepared for very dark humour with very gruesome and bloody scenes… also some nudity and a particularly controversial depiction of a sexual assault (that gives new meaning to the phrase “giving head”).
Watch the trailer here:
Re-Animator – Tagline: Herbert West Has A Very Good Head On His Shoulders… And Another One In A Dish On His Desk
Runtime: 86 min (unrated) / 95 min (R-rated) / 106 min (extended cut) – Colour – English.
The Lovecraftian’s Rating: 9/10 (Extremely Good) – this might be schlock, but it is schlock of the highest order – a very funny and gory horror comedy. Jeffrey Combs‘ performance is particularly brilliant and it cements in place the foundation for his (as well as director Stuart Gordon‘s and producer Brian Yuzna‘s) prominent position in Lovecraftian cinema history.
Buy Re-Animator on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy Re-Animator on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
—
Please feel free to comment on this review – or, if you’ve seen the movie, add your own review – by replying to this post.
Go HERE for a full list of Lovecraftian film and TV adaptations. We have an expanding section of our website dedicated to The Lovecraftian – purveyor of all the latest news, updates, chatter and trends from the field of Lovecraft lore – the man, his works and his weird worlds of Yog-Sothothery. Stay up-to-date with the news and join The Lovecraftian’s adventurous expeditions into the world of the Cthulhu Mythos by following him on Twitter where fact and fiction become entwined! The Lovecraftian’s main webpage can be found HERE.
Also: Check out The Lovecraftian Herald, an online newspaper concerning all things Lovecraftian in the world of social media and beyond. Published daily by us here at Harbinger451.
For the uninitiated:
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an influential and prolific American writer of early twentieth century cosmic horror fiction who saw himself chiefly as a poet – though many believe that it is his immense body of often literary correspondence that is in fact his greatest accomplishment – he wrote over 100,000 letters in his lifetime. He inspired a veritable legion of genre writers then, and to this day, to set their fiction within his strange cultish world.
The Cthulhu Mythos: Lovecraft, somewhat light-heartedly, labelled the “Mythos” that he created in his body of work Yog-Sothothery – and also, on rare occasions, referred to his series of connected stories as the Arkham Cycle. It was his friend August Derleth who coined the term “Cthulhu Mythos” (named after one of the monstrous beings that featured in Lovecraft’s tales) to encapsulate his epic vision of a chaotic and dark universe filled with unspeakable horror.
Brought to your attention by Harbinger451.
Copyright © 2016 Harbinger451 – All Rights ReservedFormer Florida Gators quarterback Will Grier is in Morgantown this afternoon, reports Mike Casazza of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, scouting West Virginia as a potential transfer destination.
Grier, who was ranked as the nation's No. 2 pro-style quarterback in the 247Sports Composite out of high school was the starting signal caller in Gainesville this past season, leading the Gators to a 6-0 record and a Top 10 ranking. He was then suspended for a calendar year by the NCAA due to a failed drug test, presumed to be performance enhancing drugs. Grier |
Music Man. They Might Be Giants gives Squidward his big dance number involving a chorus of tap-dancing sea anemones. John Legend penned a ballad — though Landau clarifies that the only romance in the show is between Plankton and his computer wife. “We very specifically asked all of the artists to write how they write, and not try to do what they think Nickelodeon or SpongeBob would sound like,” Landau adds. “What’s amazing is, when we hear them sung by our performers, you can tell exactly who wrote which song. We really wanted that difference.”
The SpongeBob Musical begins its world premiere performances on June 7 at Broadway in Chicago’s Oriental Theatre. From there, the limited engagement runs through July 3, 2016, and a Broadway run is thereafter expected in the 2016-17 season.
SpongeBob’s musical future could have veered any number of creative directions, but Landau is confident in the imaginatively designed, incongruously scored approach she and Nickelodeon have honed over the past seven years — or 17, if you consider SpongeBob’s journey to Broadway began when the character first debuted back in 1999. Landau hopes her production honors the most important ingredients of the world inhabited by the iconic pop culture pore-bearer.
“When we first talked to Steve Hillenburg, the creator of SpongeBob, I said to him, ‘What is absolutely essential to this world?’ recalls Landau. “And he said, ‘The light, the sky flowers—and bubbles.’”Did you know the Texans pressured the QB with their inside linebackers more than 30 other teams last year?
Patriots had a staggering 66 QB pressures from the inside linebacker position. The Texans were next best with 41. pic.twitter.com/hdzv5ddg8Q — Pro Football Focus (@PFF) June 4, 2015
Assuming I am capable of correctly dividing 41 by 16 (and that, my friends, is no sure thing), that means the Texans averaged 2.56 pressures from their inside linebackers per game last year.
2014 was the Texans' first year in Romeo Crennel's system. Houston's inside linebacking corps last season also was without Brian Cushing entirely for two games and, as he made his return from a season-ending injury in 2013 after returning from a different season-ending injury in 2012, it's fair to say that he wasn't the Cushing of old for several of the 14 games in which he did play. Mike Mohamed, Akeem Dent, Jeff Tarpinian, and Justin Tuggle flashed at times, but not to the point that you felt like the Texans had the position locked down for the foreseeable future.
To that end, the Texans drafted Benardrick McKinney in the second round of the 2015 NFL Draft. It's too early to presume that McKinney will be starting next to Cushing when the Chiefs come to town in Week One, but teams generally don't take players that high unless they believe they're going to be contributing quickly and starting in short order (even if Brett's not high on the pick).
With McKinney on board, what should be a healthier Cushing (despite undergoing another three (3!) surgeries since the end of the 2014 season, he says he's "the best physically [he's] been in a while"), and the presence of Vince Wilfork in the middle of the line, do you anticipate Crennel bringing more pressure with his inside linebackers this year?COMPARE CHANGES IN U.S. RELIGIONS OVER 2 DECADES COMPARE CHANGES IN U.S. RELIGIONS OVER 2 DECADES Join the conversation: Religion, spirituality & ethics | Reader forum: Your beliefs @FAITH_REASON ON TWITTER @FAITH_REASON ON TWITTER MADISON, Wis. (AP) A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional Thursday, saying the day amounts to a call for religious action. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote that the government can no more enact laws supporting a day of prayer than it can encourage citizens to fast during Ramadan, attend a synagogue or practice magic. FAITH & REASON: Obama will still acknowledge it "In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray," Crabb wrote. Congress established the day in 1952 and in 1988 set the first Thursday in May as the day for presidents to issue proclamations asking Americans to pray. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison-based group of atheists and agnostics, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2008 arguing the day violated the separation of church and state. President Barack Obama's administration has countered that the statute simply acknowledges the role of religion in the United States. Obama issued a proclamation last year but did not hold public events with religious leaders as former President George W. Bush had done. Crabb wrote that her ruling shouldn't be considered a bar to any prayer days until all appeals are exhausted. U.S. Justice Department attorneys who represented the federal government in the case were reviewing the ruling Thursday afternoon, agency spokesman Charles Miller said. He declined further comment. Obama spokesman Matt Lehrich said in an e-mail to The Associated Press the president still plans to issue a proclamation for the next prayer day. "As he did last year, President Obama intends to recognize a National Day of Prayer," Lehrich said. The American Center for Law and Justice, which represented 31 members of Congress who joined the federal government as defendants, called Crabb's ruling flawed and promised to appeal. "It is unfortunate that this court failed to understand that a day set aside for prayer for the country represents a time-honored tradition that embraces the First Amendment, not violates it," ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow said in a statement. The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group of Christian lawyers, issued a statement saying Crabb's ruling undermines American tradition dating back to the nation's birth. Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney Richard Bolton didn't immediately return a message seeking comment. Crabb wrote that her ruling was not a judgment on the value of prayer. She noted government involvement in prayer may be constitutional if the conduct serves a "significant secular purpose" and doesn't amount to a call for religious action. But the National Day of Prayer crosses that line, she wrote. "It goes beyond mere 'acknowledgment' of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context," she wrote. "In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience." Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreQuite a number of Destiny 2 players were disappointed last week when they discovered that some of the things they were used to doing in the game were no longer doable, because they'd been locked by the increased level cap that came with the Curse of Osiris expansion. Not owning the expansion means not having access to things like the Prestige Leviathan raid or the Trials of the Nine mode. These exclusions felt particularly egregious given that both activities were part of the base game, and the controversy also came on the heels of multiple other Bungie missteps.
Today the dev team took to the Bungie Blog to acknowledge mistakes have been made, and explain how it's going to clean up this latest mess. The solution is not going to make everyone happy. Prestige-level activities were meant to "rise to the new Power cap," the post begins, while time-limited PvP playlists were "meant to evolve each season" with new maps. Both of those cases require ownership of the expansion, but neither have been received well by the playerbase.
"The Prestige Raid was a novel experience that players value, even if they don’t own Curse of Osiris, and it was a mistake to move that experience out of reach. Throughout the lifetime of the Destiny Franchise, Trials has always required that players owned the latest Expansion. However, for Destiny 2, Trials of The Nine launched as part of the main game, so it’s not right for us to remove access to it," Bungie wrote.
"To make matters worse, our team overlooked the fact that both of these mistakes disabled Trophies and Achievements for Destiny 2. This was an unacceptable lapse on our part, and we can understand the frustration it has created."
The quote above is a pretty astonishing admission of failure for such a high profile studio to make. That the changes broke certain in-game achievements from being earned no doubt also landed the game in hot water with the console manufacturers, which may have accelerated today's response.
To rectify the issues outlined, a hotfix is coming later this week—tomorrow, hopefully, following the scheduled maintenance—that will bring the Prestige Leviathan raid back to Power level 300, and reduce the level of its rewards to match, which will make it (and the associated achievements) available to all players.
The Prestige Nightfall will remain at 330 Power level, but "The Prestige" achievement will be changed so that it only references the Prestige Raid, and Bungie is "investigating adding a 3rd difficulty to all Prestige activities, so that we can provide both a challenge that stays relevant with each new Expansion, and a Prestige version that is available to all players."
Other aspects of the change are considerably kludgier, however. Trials of the Nine events will only require Curse of Osiris ownership when it features Curse of Osiris maps; for other weeks, it will be available to everyone. New seasonal rewards that launched with the expansion will not be available to players who don't own it, however. The same goes for standard Nightfalls: When a Curse of Osiris map is running, it will require the expansion, and when it's not, it won't.
Time limited events—Iron Banner, Faction Rallies, and The Dawning—will be open to everyone, but again, rewards that launched with Curse of Osiris will require ownership of the expansion to be earned.
If you think that sounds like an unnecessarily complicated, messy solution to a fairly simple problem, you're not alone. Some players in the Destiny 2 subreddit are unhappy because the power level of some items will be reduced to 305, which makes the Prestige raid significantly less rewarding. Several posts say that the third difficulty level Bungie mused about is the way to go: "This is a frustratingly obvious solution and there is no good excuse for why it was not the default decision," as one put it.
Unfortunately, the launch of the hotfix means that the Faction Rally planned for tomorrow will be postponed, "to ensure all of our players can access the activity and appropriate rewards." And that's not the only thing that's going to take longer than expected to arrive: Bungie also said on Twitter that the infamous Prometheus Lens weapon will be nerfed to be "way too weak" to put an end to the laser light show that's currently flashing all over the Crucible, and won't get a "proper, play-tested" adjustment until sometime in January.More than 174,000 people have signed an online petition calling on Crawford County Sheriff Lewis Walker to fire investigator James Hollis for forcing a man to decapitate his deceased 2-year-old dog.
» RELATED: Health official: Owners should not remove a dog’s head for rabies testing
Crawford County resident Joe Goodwin said he was ordered to do so on Friday, Dec. 1 at the behest of Hollis and other deputies, who were worried Goodwin’s dog may have had rabies, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
Goodwin’s dog, a pit bull mix named Big Boy, was shot to death by a deputy after it allegedly lunged at him. The deputy had come by the house after a woman reported being bitten by a dog on the property.
Goodwin wasn’t home at the time, but his girlfriend contacted him when she saw Big Boy dead near the mailbox.
Joe Nate Goodwin said he decapitated his 2-year-old dog at the behest of sheriff’s deputies. Photo: Macon Telegraph
» RELATED: 9 things you should know about the rabies virus
According to the Care 2 petition titled “Fire Cop Who Ordered Man to Cut Off His Dog’s Head,” the situation was under control until Hollis arrived and demanded Goodwin decapitate his dog.
Following the Dec. 1 incident, Hollis, who has a history of voluntary resignations and was previously fired from the Zebulon Police Department, was placed on administrative leave with pay during an internal investigation, according to the Macon Telegraph.
According to Georgia public health officials, if there’s concern about a person getting rabies from a rabid animal’s saliva or brain tissue, it’s recommended that a professional cut off the dead animal’s head for testing.
» RELATED: New study might have the answer to why your dog keeps lashing out
Goodwin is not a veterinarian or trained animal control officer.
“James Hollis' behavior was absolutely outrageous,” the Care2 petition states. “There was no reason for him to order Joe Nate Goodwin to cut off his own dog's head.”
Goodwin posted the encounter with Hollis on his Facebook page, in which Hollis is seen telling Goodwin and his girlfriend that they had to remove Big Boy’s head, put it in a bag and take it immediately to the health department for rabies testing.
“We asked you to remove the dog’s head... and you’re refusing, right?” Hollis could be heard saying. In the video, Hollis appears to push Goodwin against a car.
» RELATED: Atlanta just approved harsher penalties for 'dangerous dogs' owners
Goodwin regrets following the orders, but did as he was told because he was afraid of being shot or taken to jail, the AJC previously reported. He also didn’t think he could afford having a professional remove Big Boy’s head for a fee.
According to Walker, Goodwin was advised by the county health department about the options regarding the decapitation and testing.
But even though Goodwin was given the option to do it himself, state public health officials say a trained professional should remove the head using gloves, face and eye protection.
» RELATED: Dangerous or misunderstood? Local governments in Georgia restrict pit bulls
Goodwin’s dog tested negative for rabies, but it’s possible that Goodwin may have compromised the test by cutting off his dog’s head without sterile equipment.
More about the case at macon.com.Home /
Amazing /
The Entire World Population can Sink into the State of Texas
Published by
Tweet
There are many concerns these days about over population. Day by day you can see traffic increasing or housing developments being constructed around you. Where are these people coming from? There cannot be that many people in the world that your little town needs to turn into a suburb! There are seven billion people in the world. That is a huge number! The world has lands that have yet to be farmed or even disturbed how is it possible that the world is over populated?
The world is not technically over populated there are areas that have a higher human density than what it should. If you were to consider every square foot of the earth and divide it by the number of people on the planet we would all have a good chunk of square footage. However the majority of the earth is water, hence the reason for the perception of over population.
If it comes down to the numbers the entire world’s population can fit in Texas. This has been said many times and when it comes down to basic math, it is true. Texas is 268,581 Square miles, if some amazing engineer were to design the father of all complexes; basically a China housing unit on steroids is the only thing that would work. The building would cover the entire state of Texas. Rivers, ponds, and creeks included; literally every square inch of Texas would be engulfed in this building. There would be one thousand square feet per person.
This is not a whole lot of space but is some. For those who are depth perception impaired, a thousand square feet is about the size of ten parking spaces. See, not very large. However since most live in groups the average “apartment” should be a few thousand square feet. Whoever the engineer and architect are will have their work cut out for them.
It really is amazing that the entire world can fit in one state, a little scary considering the state but still amazing. However, just because we can all fit in the state it does not take care of over -population because we have nowhere to shop, nowhere to grow food, and even with the best of recyclers in the building we will have to figure out a system for waste disposal of all kinds. There are hundreds of problems that make this very unique situation a mind boggling disaster.
How do we farm mass amounts if we are all shoved under the same roof. The thought that everyone in the entire world is under one roof is appealing in the sense that we would all have to work through the big problems together, so no more allies and enemies. We live together therefore we fight together.
Would we has a race come together to find a way to live in one gigantic musical note of harmony? Or would we choose the easier path of segregation and form our racial cliques as if we all live behind bars?
Not only do the concerns of how do we farm and raise cattle for food need to be addressed, but how do we survive in general. Idealistically we all go back to the barter system so than there would not be any reason to discuss whether we are using Pounds or Yen. Yet, where is commerce to commence?
Does Arizona get turned into the industrial super capital of the “new world of Texas”? Do we turn the inland border of Texas to the work force site? Like a belt of commerce around the housing unit? Either way that is a lot of traveling every day if you live in the most southern apartment of Texas.
Even though there seem to be many positive sides of placing the entire planet under one roof. Things such as, no more worries about nuclear missiles being launched at our country, maybe we will all agree on one language after a few centuries under one roof, currency could be eliminated. The whole idea is still a little intense. At least we have the knowledge that if need be, head for Texas.
It is true that Alaska is larger in square footage, but burr. The harvesting season is not incredibly promising nor is the survival rate. Then again maybe the planet trying to survive a few years in Alaska will completely solve the over-population issue in for us.
It is a wonder where these questions come from. Why is that once our population has grown to such vast quantities, do we want to know about stuffing everyone into one area?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 made no mention of her choice for vice president at a Tampa rally as anticipation around the announcement builds.
ADVERTISEMENT
At her Tampa event Friday evening, Clinton panned 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 and his nomination acceptance speech the night before, which she painted as a cynical view on America and an appeal to the country's fears. She gave no hints as to who she might tap for VP.
She is widely expected to select Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports that the announcement will come via Twitter and text message to supporters at some point Friday night.Eugene Curran, a forestry inspector with the department, says agroforestry offers a variety of benefits for Irish farmers.
"In west Cork, there are some good agroforestry silvopastoral systems, providing the land owner with access to the grass despite having trees in the same field.
Trees are planted in rows allowing plots to be grazed, and farmers can cut silage and hay in between the rows of trees.
"This flexibility will suit many farmers. Any management system that can provide land owners with a renewable energy source, offset carbon emissions from other farming practices, reduce nutrient input and runoff, stabilise drainage, enhance animal welfare, increase biodiversity, improve animal nutrition, enhance the landscape and in some cases increase productivity by 50pc is well worth a second look" he said.
Agroforestry and organics
Professor Jim McAdam of Queens University Belfast has led the way on agroforestry research in Ireland since he began his trial plots 26 years ago in Loughgall, Co Antrim. The results of these trials prove the environmental benefits of agroforestry as well as documenting the economic benefits.
Agroforestry looks like a natural fit for organic farmers, but the uptake on agroforestry remains low.
For those participating in the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS), the DAFM Organic Unit has confirmed that payment under both schemes on the same land parcels is not permitted.
In addition, farmers who may be negotiating numerous schemes like the OFS and GLAS are not keen to take on another scheme due to paperwork and simple logistics.
However, as the agroforestry measure is a new scheme, once farmers become familiar with the concept, it could become a favoured choice with many farmers, organic and conventional.
Demonstration plots
Liam Beechinor has a demonstration agroforestry plot near Dunmanway, Co Cork. It was planted in April 2012 and is a mixture of oak and ash trees. The trees are planted at 5x5 metre spacing.
To date Liam is very happy with the plot's progress. In the first year of growth he took two cuts of silage off the ground and then grazed it with sheep later.
As a farmer Liam likes the idea of being involved in forestry and by planting an agroforestry plot on his farm it made the "decision to plant good land with trees much easier as you know you can still work the land.
"I definitely spend a lot more time in this area now that the trees are here, you find yourself coming to check on the progress and growth of the trees which is interesting. I think that this is a great way to incentivise farmers to plant trees," said Liam.
Richard Auler, a longterm organic farmer with IOFGA, based in Cahir, Co Tipperary is just starting to experiment with agroforestry. Richard always planted trees on the farm and in 2011 he put in a new plantation, 85pc of which is oak and the remainder mixed species.
His agroforestry plot was put in place last year. It is 4.2ha and is mainly apples, various walnuts, sweet chestnuts, hazelnuts and willow. The area is fenced for rabbits and the trees are planted in 10m wide rows to allow for grazing sheep and silage cutting.
"This part of the farm was always difficult to work with as there are low electric lines so I hope that the agroforestry plot will suit this area and remain extremely productive which is one of the great benefits of developing agroforestry on the farm," said Richard.
Grace Maher is development officer with the IOFGA, www.iofga.org
Indo FarmingReady 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.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each 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 we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Robert Bork died on December 19, a deeply embittered man, but the rewrite of history that began immediately after he was denied a seat on the Supreme Court has won the day. Despite persistent right-wing assertions, Bork was not rejected because of a liberal campaign of “brazen lies,” “smears” and “distortions”—as The Wall Street Journal claimed—but because, as one Reagan White House aide admitted, he was a “right-wing zealot,” hostile to abortion, civil rights, free speech, church-state separation and human rights. Ad Policy
Because Bork’s handlers, particularly Washington lawyer Lloyd Cutler, knew Bork couldn’t win if people knew what he was really like, they tried to package him as a “moderate conservative” in the mold of Justice John M. Harlan. It didn’t work. Bork had spoken out too much on too many issues to keep his real views secret.
And these views were extreme indeed:
Equality: Bork condemned the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause decisions that outlawed the poll tax (“a very small tax,” he called it); established the one-person, one-vote principle; abolished school segregation in the District of Columbia; barred courts from enforcing racially restrictive housing covenants; prevented a state from sterilizing certain criminals or interfering with the right to travel and prohibited discriminating against out-of-wedlock children. As late as June 1987, he declared, “I do think the Equal Protection clause probably should have been kept to things like race and ethnicity.”
Bork’s hostility to governmental action on behalf of minorities was not limited to court action. He lambasted the 1964 Civil Rights Act provision requiring white businesses to serve blacks, calling it based on a principle of “unsurpassed ugliness.” He also condemned the Supreme Court’s 1966 decision allowing Congress to bar literacy tests. “At almost every critical turning point in the civil rights movement,” testified Republican William T. Coleman, Jr., Gerald Ford’s secretary of transportation, Bork had “turned the wrong way.”
Free Speech: In 1971, Bork wrote that the First Amendment should protect only “explicitly political” speech, which he defined as limited to “criticisms of public officials and policies, proposals for the adoption or repeal of legislation or constitutional provisions and speech addressed to the conduct of any governmental unit in the country.” He later expanded the protected class to include scientific or moral discourse that “directly feed[s] the democratic process,” but as late as June 1987 he still did not think “courts ought to throw protection around …art and literature.”
Privacy: Bork opposed not only the abortion decision but also Griswold v Connecticut (1965), which allowed married couples to use contraceptives. Even Reagan’s solicitor general, Charles Fried, was unwilling to go that far.
While on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, he also established a reputation for ingenuity in denying litigants access to the courts.
Because of these views, Bork faced a torrent of opposition. More than 2,000 law teachers, more than 40 percent of the total at accredited law school, were against his nomination, including the deans of Harvard, New York University, Michigan, Georgetown, Northwestern and many other schools. Conservative Philip Kurland of the University of Chicago wrote, “Bork’s entire current constitutional jurisprudential theory [is] directed to a diminution of minority and individual rights.”
Most important, five of the fifteen members of the American Bar Association committee on the federal judiciary refused to give Bork a “qualified” rating—the first time the ABA had not been unanimous in favor of a Supreme Court nominee since it began evaluating candidates during the Eisenhower administration; four found him “not qualified.”
As a result, despite a planned multimillion-dollar campaign on his behalf, some 22,000 postcards sent to the Judiciary Committee by Jerry Falwell and his followers, several million letters and over $1 million in direct solicitations by Richard Viguerie, the country turned against Bork after the hearing, even in the South. Southern women were particularly concerned about his views on privacy, and Southern Democratic senators, who were now dependent on black votes, feared that his confirmation would reopen civil rights wounds.
Bork lost in committee 9-5, but insisted on a floor vote. After two days of desultory debate, the Senate voted 58-42 to reject the nomination, including six Republicans who voted against him.
Although Bork lost, the Republicans didn’t. They have persuaded many Americans that Bork was treated unfairly, and have used this as a weapon with which to bludgeon the Democrats and charge up their base.
Once again, politically manipulated mythology has replaced objective history.BABIES who die from SIDS have brain stem abnormalities regardless of whether they were exposed to risks such as suffocation or co-sleeping, new research has found.
The international research team, involving a Melbourne scientist, will now look at whether a blood test can be developed as an early screening tool to identify infants at risk of sudden and unexpected death in their first year.
A collaboration between the Boston Children's Hospital and Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health's Dr Jhodie Duncan analysed the brain stems of 71 infants who had died suddenly and unexpectedly over 11 years
They all had abnormalities of four neurochemicals in the brain stem, which is at the base of the skull and connects the brain to the spinal cord.
It keeps bodily functions such as blood pressure and oxygen levels constant in response to changing factors in the environment.
Dr Duncan said the research, published in the journal Pediatrics, suggested this abnormality left the infants unable to adequately respond when faced with a stressor while asleep.
"In a healthy infant, if a pillow goes over their face, the brain normally detects changes in oxygen levels and initiates arousal responses. The baby would turn its head and continue breathing,'' Dr Duncan said.
Infants with the abnormality did not "respond properly" in the same situation, which lead to death, she said.
"There is some evidence that there might be lots of little episodes that occur, and it finally gets to the stage where the infant just can't respond adequately - and that's the night they die.''
Dr Duncan said research would now focus on finding a way to identify these at-risk infants, potentially through a blood test to detect the neurotransmitter serotonin, or through infant hearing tests.
UK research found babies who died of SIDS had worse hearing than other babies.
brigid.oconnell@news.com.au
Originally published as Breakthrough: Cause of SIDS identifiedA 911 call placed by Austin Harrouff's mother reveals that her son was wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat moments before allegedly murdering a random couple and biting pieces of flesh off one of the victims.
Harrouff, 19, was arrested Monday night after he allegedly killed John Stevens II, 59, and his 53-year-old wife, Michelle Mischon, 53, outside their Jupiter, Florida home, in what has been described as an unprovoked attack.
According to a police report released Thursday afternoon, Austin's mother, Mina Harrouff, contacted the authorities on the night of the slayings saying that her son had been acting strangely for days and claiming superpowers.
The mother said her son abruptly left the Duffy's restaurant they were having dinner at on Monday after having an argument with his father.
During the call, Mina said her son, a Florida State student and fraternity member, was last seen wearing white shorts, a blue polo and a red 'Make America Great Again' hat.
The hat's statement has been popularized by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, as he has used the slogan on merchandise for his campaign.
Scroll down for videos
Concerned mom: Mina Harrouff, Austin's mother (pictured together) called police before he allegedly killed a random Florida couple on Monday. She supplied cops with a description of what he was wearing
Mina said Austin (right) was sporting a red 'Make America Great Again' hat (file above left) when he left the restaurant they were having dinner at before he allegedly went on a random killing attack
The 19-year-old college student is accused of stabbing to death Michelle Mishcon, 53, and her husband, John Stevens III, 59 (pictured together) before reportedly biting pieces of flesh off of the man's face
About five days before Harrouff allegedly launched a deadly knife attack on the random couple, he posted a video online in which he mused about bodybuilding and steroids.
Daily Mail on Wednesday uncovered Harrouff's YouTube channel containing several videotaped fitness tutorials, as well as impromptu karaoke performances by Harrouff.
The rising sophomore studying exercise science is also accused of biting pieces of flesh off John Stevens' face and stabbing the couple's neighbor, 47-year-old Jeff Fisher, who tried to come to their rescue.
An autopsy showed that Mishcon was beaten to death, while her husband died of multiple knife wounds and was partially cannibalized. The wife had also been stabbed, but those injuries were not fatal.
Online tutorial: Harrouff had posted bodybuilding tutorials on YouTube in the days and weeks leading up to the attack. In his latest video, posted just five days before the attack, the teen talks about why he does not want to take steroids
Harrouff walked four miles north towards his father's house, but inexplicably turned onto the 19000 block of Southeast Kokomo Lane where the Stevenses were sitting in their garage
On August 11, Harrouff uploaded online a 2-minute video in which he appears shirtless and explains his approach to bodybuilding, and why he has decided to reject steroids.
‘I came to the realization of something,’ Harrouff says into the camera. ‘I no longer want to follow Arnold or any other bodybuilder. I want to follow myself, you know. I want to actually believe in myself.
'I don’t need drugs. I know that they can change me, but the thing is, that is not being healthy. Being healthy is what's natural, you know, what comes natural to you. You think steroids are natural?’ he asks rhetorically.
Harrouff then continues: ‘I think steroids really aren't for me. I used to think I needed steroids to be, to be a bodybuilder, to be this thing, to be this symbol.'
He concludes his monologue with the words: ‘we're all the same though, peace out.’
http://video.palmbeachpost.com/?ndn.trackingGroup=90068&ndn.siteSection=palmbeachpost_nws_loc_sty_ppap&ndn.videoId=31281863&freewheel=90068&sitesection=palmbeachpost_nws_loc_sty_ppap&vid=31281863
'Vacuum pose': The aspiring bodybuilder recorded a tutorial showing how to perform the vacuum pose
Harrouff had raised the subject of steroids in another video posted a couple of days earlier, in which he is seen driving and talking with a fake Southern accent.
'I don't feel like it'd be beneficial for me to do steroids,' he says. 'It damages my health, I feel like I have to depend on it every day. That's a life not worth living for me.'
In another minute-long clip recorded in his car, the 19-year-old, speaking in a bizarre voice reminiscent of the Muppets character Kermit the Frog, Harrouff argues that the best chest exercise is the bench press.
The video ends with an unhinged Harrouff cursing and screaming hysterically into the camera.
Harrouff raised the subject of steroids in another video, in which he is seen driving and talking with a fake Southern accent
HISTORY OF DUI'S AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE OF AUSTIN HARROUFF'S DENTIST DAD REVEALED Austin Harrouff is pictured with his father, Dr Wade Harrouff, a Florida dentist The South Florida home where alleged cannibal Austin Harrouff spent his youth may have been plagued by substance abuse. According to criminal records obtained by the Daily Mail, Harrouff’s dad was arrested twice for Driving Under The Influence of drugs or booze. Wade Harrouff, the suspect’s 61-year-old dad, was pulled over by Juno Beach Police in July 26, 2011 after cops observed him driving erratically about 11.30pm in the tiny beach town. The car was accelerating and braking while driving through empty parking lots and a park that was closed for the night. When the officer came to Harrouff’s window, Harrouff appeared confused and agitated. He readily admitted to having four vodka cocktails at a strip club. To make matters worse, Harrouff admitted to being on ‘numerous medications’ for muscle relaxations and back pains. The officer smelled the odor of alcohol on Harrouff’s breath after he refused to take a Breathalyzer test. He was booked in the local and charged with DUI and two counts of reckless driving. Court records show the state authorities didn’t prosecute the DUI but a judge found him guilty of two counts of reckless driving. He was sentenced to six months’ probation and 50 hours of community service. In April 2012, however, Wade was not off probation yet when he was picked up for DUI again, this time by a Florida State Trooper who found him sleeping at the wheel of his car on the side of a road near West Palm Beach, with the engine on. Harrouff told the trooper he was on his way home from a girlfriend’s house in Delray Beach when he felt tired and stopped. The trooper, however, said Harrouff’s Jeep Cherokee matched the description |
29 290 45.5 297 309 292.1 111⁄ 2 11.5 299 311 292.5 291⁄ 4 292.5 300 312 293. 3 291⁄ 3 46 300 312 295.0 291⁄ 2 295 302 314 296. 3 112⁄ 3 12 303 315 296. 6 292⁄ 3 46.5 304 316 300.0 30 300 300 47 307 319 300.5 6 115⁄ 6 12.5 308 320 303. 3 301⁄ 3 47.5 310 322 304.8 12 13 312 324 305.0 301⁄ 2 305 312 324 306. 6 302⁄ 3 48 314 326 307.5 303⁄ 4 307.5 315 327 309.0 3 121⁄ 6 13.5 316 328 310.0 31 310 48.5 317 329 313.2 6 121⁄ 3 14 320 332 313. 3 311⁄ 3 49 320 332 315.0 311⁄ 2 315 315 322 334 316. 6 312⁄ 3 49.5 324 336 317.5 121⁄ 2 14.5 325 337 320.0 32 320 50 327 339 321.7 3 122⁄ 3 15 329 341 mm cm inch 5.0 mm 7.5 mm 6. 6 mm 8.4 6 mm mm Foot length Mondopoint EUR UK* Typical last length range *UK sizes listed are nominally unisex, but women's UK sizes may vary.
Children sizes are approximations converted from foot length by adding an 8% allowance at the toes and matching the result to the closest practically available last size.
Children's shoe sizes Foot length, mm Mondopoint EUR UK US Typical last length range, mm 120 120 19.5 3.5 4 130 136 123 125 20 4 4.5 133 139 127 20.5 4.5 5 137 143 130 130 21 5 5.5 140 146 133 21.5 5.5 6 143 149 135 135 22 147 153 138 140 22.5 6 6.5 150 156 142 23 6.5 153 156 146 145 23.5 7 7.5 157 165 148 24 160 166 150 150 24.5 7.5 8 163 169 154 155 25 8 8.5 167 173 157 25.5 8.5 9 170 176 160 160 26 9 9.5 173 179 164 26.5 177 183 166 165 27 9.5 10 180 186 169 170 27.5 10 10.5 183 189 173 28 10.5 11 187 193 176 175 28.5 11 11.5 190 196 179 180 29 11.5 12 193 199 182 29.5 197 203 185 185 30 12 12.5 200 206 188 30.5 12.5 13 203 209 192 190 31 13 13.5 207 213 195 195 31.5 13.5 1 210 216 198 32 213 219 200 200 32.5 1 1.5 217 223 204 205 33 1.5 2 220 226 207 33.5 223 229 210 210 34 2 2.5 227 233 213 34.5 2.5 3 230 236 217 215 35 3 3.5 233 239 220 220 35.5 3.5 4 237 243 224 36 240 246 226 225 36.5 4 4.5 243 249 230 230 37 4.5 5 247 253 232 37.5 250 256 236 235 38 5 253 259 Foot length, mm Mondopoint EUR UK US Typical last length range, mm
Size conversion [ edit ]
The standard also includes quick conversion tables for adult shoe sizes; they provide matching sizes for shoes marked in Mondopoint, UK and US systems. Converted values are rounded to a larger shoe size to increase comfort.
Mondopoint conversion Mondo EUR UK US men US women 215 34 2.5 3.5 4.5 220 35 3 4 5 225 35.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 230 36.5 4 5 6 235 37 4.5 5.5 6.5 240 38 5.5 6.5 7.5 245 38.5 6 7 8 250 39.5 6.5 7.5 8.5 255 40 7 8 9 260 41 7.5 8.5 9.5 265 41.5 8.5 9.5 10.5 270 42.5 9 10 11 275 43 9.5 10.5 11.5 280 44 10 11 12 285 44.5 10.5 11.5 12.5 290 45.5 11 12 13 295 46 12 13 14 300 47 12.5 13.5 14.5 305 47.5 13 14 15 310 48.5 13.5 14.5 15.5 315 49 14 15 16 320 50 15 16 17
European shoe size conversion EUR Mondo UK US men US women 34 215 2 3 4 34.5 215 2.5 3.5 4.5 35 220 3 4 5 35.5 225 3.5 4.5 5.5 36 225 4 5 6 36.5 230 4 5 6 37 235 4.5 5.5 6.5 37.5 235 5 6 7 38 240 5.5 6.5 7.5 38.5 245 5.5 6.5 7.5 39 245 6 7 8 39.5 250 6.5 7.5 8.5 40 255 7 8 9 40.5 255 7.5 8.5 9.5 41 260 7.5 8.5 9.5 41.5 265 8 9 10 42 265 8.5 9.5 10.5 42.5 270 9 10 11 43 275 9.5 10.5 11.5 43.5 275 9.5 10.5 11.5 44 280 10 11 12 44.5 285 10.5 11.5 12.5 45 285 11 12 13 45.5 290 11.5 12.5 13.5 46 295 11.5 12.5 13.5 46.5 295 12 13 14 47 300 12.5 13.5 14.5 47.5 305 13 14 15 48 305 13 14 15 48.5 310 13.5 14.5 15.5 49 315 14 15 16 49.5 315 14.5 15.5 16.5 50 320 15 16 17
United Kingdom shoe size conversion UK Mondo EUR US men US women 2 210 34 3 4 2.5 215 34.5 3.5 4.5 3 220 35 4 5 3.5 225 35.5 4.5 5.5 4 230 36.5 5 6 4.5 235 37 5.5 6.5 5 235 37.5 6 7 5.5 240 38 6.5 7.5 6 245 39 7 8 6.5 250 39.5 7.5 8.5 7 255 40 8 9 7.5 260 40.5 8.5 9.5 8 260 41.5 9 10 8.5 265 41.5 9.5 10.5 9 270 42.5 10 11 9.5 275 43.5 10.5 11.5 10 280 44 11 12 10.5 285 44.5 11.5 12.5 11 290 45.5 12 13 11.5 290 46 12.5 13.5 12 295 46.5 13 14 12.5 300 47 13.5 14.5 13 305 47.5 14 15 13.5 310 48.5 14.5 15.5 14 315 49 15 16 14.5 320 49.5 15.5 16.5 15 320 50 16 17
Labels [ edit ]
Shoe size in the primary sizing system used in production should be placed first on the label, preferably in a bold font, and approximate shoe size conversion to other systems should be included as well.
Difficulties in shoe size comparison [ edit ]
Differences between various shoe size tables, makers' tables or other tables found on the Web are usually due to the following factors:
The systems are not fully standardised. Differences between shoes from different makers, which are due to different methods of measuring the shoes, different manufacturing processes, or different allowances [1] are sometimes related to different countries. A "German" size may then differ from a "French" size, although both countries use the Continental European system.
are sometimes related to different countries. A "German" size may then differ from a "French" size, although both countries use the Continental European system. Different widths may have the result that for wide feet, a shoe multiple sizes larger (and actually too long) may be required. This may also result in different size indications, especially if different typical widths are attributed to different sizing systems or countries.
Some tables for children take future growth into account. The shoe size is then larger than what would correspond to the actual length of the foot. [6]
An indication in centimetres or inches can mean the length of the foot or the length of the shoe's inner cavity. This relation is not constant but varies due to different amounts of wiggle room required for different sizes of shoes.
There are several U.S. systems, which differ substantially for sizes far above or below medium sizes.
Further, some tables available on the Web simply contain errors. For example, the wiggle room or different zero point is not taken into account, or tables based on different U.S. systems (traditional and athletic) are simply combined although they are incompatible.
Moreover, though the ISO had released a technical specification (ISO/TS 19407:2015) for converting shoe sizes across various local sizing systems, the organization noted that the problem of converting shoe sizes accurately has yet to be fully resolved. At best, its own published standards for shoe sizes conversions only serve as "a good compromise solution" for shoe-buyers.[18][19]
Please note that the following tables indicate theoretical sizes calculated from the standards and information given above.
Unofficial adult shoe sizes comparison
Unofficial children's shoe sizes comparison
See also [ edit ]On Thursday, a United States District Court dismissed three previously pending lawsuits against Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who achieved notoriety after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2015.
According to the court order, enough has changed in Kentucky since the suits were filed to render them virtually irrelevant. The state elected a new governor, Matt Bevin, who signed an executive order to take the names of County Clerks off of marriage licenses that eventually turned into a Kentucky Senate Bill to create a new marriage license form. The bill was eventually signed into law.
Although Davis tried to appeal a 2015 preliminary injunction that ordered her to continue doling out marriage licenses to same-sex couples while the case was being decided, LGBTQ Nation notes that the law had changed by the time arguments were ready to be heard.
And so, on Thursday, the court officially struck down the cases, writing that "in view of the fact that the marriage licenses continue to be issued without incident, there no longer remains a case or controversy before the Court."
Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and Davis' representation, called the dismissal "a victory" in a statement, according to LGBTQ Nation.
Kim Davis has won! We celebrate this victory for her and for every American. County clerks are now able to perform their public service without being forced to compromise their religious liberty. The case is now closed and the door has been shut on the ACLU's attempt to assess damages against Kim Davis. This victory is not just for Kim Davis. It is a victory for everyone who wants to remain true to their deeply-held religious beliefs regarding marriage while faithfully serving the public.
The dismissal might be a victory for Davis, but thanks to the new law that removes county clerks from the signatory process for marriage certificates, the same-sex couples in Kentucky are likely celebrating as well.8.30am: Good morning, welcome to the Guardian's live coverage of the continuing crisis in Libya.
• Britain, France and the US have agreed that Nato will take over the military command of the no-fly zone over Libya. The move represents a setback for Nicolas Sarkozy, who had hoped to diminish the role of the alliance. Barack Obama agreed in separate phone calls with Sarkozy and David Cameron that political oversight would be handed to a separate body made up of members of the coalition, including Arab countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which are outside Nato.
• Fighting is continuing in the rebel-held Misrata, with residents reporting shelling and sniper attacks with water and food running short. A doctor told Associated Press that tanks had opened fire on a peaceful protest Monday. "The number of dead are too many for our hospital to handle," said the doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity. Regarding food, he said: "We share what we find and if we don't find anything, which happens, we don't know what to do."
• Barack Obama has said it may not be military might that ousts Gaddafi, rather belief among rebel Libyans that it is time for change. "Potentially what we may see is all the enthusiasm that the Libyan people had for a change in government that was occurring a few weeks ago," and that had repressed by Gaddafi's "brutal amplification of force" would now be reawakened, the president said. He added that Gaddafi may try to hang on to power rather than admit defeat.
• Right on cue, Gaddafi has told supporters "we will not surrender". "We will defeat them by any means... We are ready for the fight, whether it will be a short or a long one... We will be victorious in the end," he said in a live television broadcast, his first public appearance for a week.
"This assault... is by a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history," Gaddafi said in a speech followed by fireworks in the Libyan capital as crowds cheered and supporters fired guns into the air.
8.41am: The Guardian's Middle East editor Ian Black is in Tripoli, and has more on Gaddafi's speech at his Bab al-Aziziya compound in the early hours of this morning.
It was his first public appearance in a week, and there was nothing in it to suggest any lessening of his determination to sit out what he calls the "colonialist-crusader" attacks on Libya. The US may have intelligence about a weakening of Gaddafi's resolve or plans to leave the country but the face he presents to his people is as defiant as ever. There would be "no surrender" to powers who belonged "on the dustheap of history" he pledged to the approving roar of the crowd. It seemed clear that he was aware of growing rumours about his whereabouts after two strikes on Bab al-Aziziya – with one opposition source reporting him at a hideout deep in the Sahara. "I am here, in my modest tent," Gaddafi told them. "I am here."
8.58am: Chris McGreal is still on the outskirts of Ajdabiya, where he says the battle lines "remain as they were yesterday".
There continues to be a lot of incoming shelling from Gaddafi side against the rebels – if anything it is more intense this morning, suggesting Gaddafi forces, far from being broken by the airstrikes, might actually be being resupplied and reinforced. The situation is unclear but certainly at the moment it seems the rebels are on the back foot – they're just sitting and waiting, taking the shelling. The bursts of artillery are not very accurate, but periodically the shells do kill or injure someone. The shells come in waves, around every 20-30 minutes, and the effect is to say the least very unnerving for the rebels, a lot of whom have pulled back from the frontline. There's now a few hundred up at the front, but a few kilometres back are several thousand more.
9.05am: Sweden has frozen around 10 billion kronor ($1.6 billion) of assets belonging to Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya, according to AP.
Jonatan Holst at The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority says "it's not impossible" there could be more hidden in the Scandinavian country. He would not give details of the public Libyan assets, but said Wednesday the information has been received by financial institutions in Sweden. The Stockholm-based watchdog ordered Swedish companies to start reporting any financial links to the Libyan regime on 2 March. Holst says the value of the assets began to grow as more people with ties to the Libyan regime were added to the asset search list.
9.26am: This video shows Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen outlining the details of an operation to enforce Libya's arms embargo.
9.45am: Nato warships will begin patrolling off Libya's coast today to enforce the UN arms embargo on the country, a spokesman said.
The allies agreed on Tuesday to organize the naval mission, which initially will consist of two Nato naval flotillas that routinely patrol the Mediterranean, AP said. The flotillas are made up of two frigates, six minesweepers and a supply ship.
A Nato official said the mission will be commanded from Nato's operational centre in Naples, Italy. He says more nations are likely to contribute warships to the task force.
9.53am: From 1pm we'll have a panel of experts answering questions on the Libyan crisis:
• Anthony Aust, former legal adviser at the Foreign Office who served at the UK mission to the United Nations and helped draft the resolution on Kuwait in 1990.
• Paul Smyth, a RAF former wing commander and Tornado navigator.
• Dr Laleh Khalili, a lecturer in Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
I'll post a link to the live Q&A page later this morning.
10.06am: This Al-Jazeera video from the frontline on the outskirts of Ajdabiya shows rebels being fired at by Gaddafi forces.
10.22am: It's difficult to get updates from Misrata – we're working on this and will hopefully have more as the day progresses – but here's a worrying witness testimony as heard on ABC's PM news programme.
The rebels are trying their best to secure a perimeter around the hospital but it's not safe because the rebels are holding just only light weapons. It's not a battle, it's a massacre what's happening here in Misurata. Most of the citizens who were in the areas under the control of Gaddafi's troops and army, they have moved down toward the sea looking for some safer places. They are stepping away and escaping from the gunfire.
10.30am: Time magazine has a good piece on the difficulties - understandable enough - the rebels in Benghazi have in cobbling together an effective alternative government and fighting force at the same time.
"The big problem here is that most of the revolutionary guys don't trust the military people because a lot of military guys were with Gaddafi from the start," says Najla Elmangoush, a criminal-law professor at Benghazi's Garyounis University and an activist at council headquarters. "We welcomed them when they joined," she adds. "But people are concerned that maybe they'll try anytime to change sides." The regime is trying to encourage that fear, spreading false rumors last weekend that rebel commander Younis had returned to the regime's camp.
10.53am: A resident in Misrata, which has come under heavy shelling from Gaddafi's forces, has told Reuters that coalition aircraft have launched two strikes in the area.
"The allied planes bombed twice so far. At 12:45 this morning (2245 GMT last night) and then again less than two hours ago," the resident, called Saadoun, told Reuters by telephone from Misrata. "They (pro-Gaddafi forces) haven't fired a single artillery (round) since the air strike.
11.07am: More than 335,600 people have fled Libya, mainly to Tunisia and Egypt, since the beginning of the crisis, according to the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA).
The situation of civilians in and around Ajdabiya, Misrata and other locations where active fighting continues remains of grave concern. In addition to the risk of personal injury from the fighting, the population of these towns may also have humanitarian needs arising from the disruption of regular services and supply lines. The presence of assistance actors inside Libya remains very limited due to prevailing security conditions.
11.21am: Tom Kington has emailed from the USS Kearsarge, from where Harrier jets bombed Gaddafi forces last night. This has shades of Joseph Heller's absurdist Catch-22.
US Navy vessels patrolling off the coast of Libya have been told to keep an eye out for Muammar Gaddafi's least expected threat – his submarine. Documents pinned up on the bridge of one vessel list the sea-borne threats American sailors may encounter as they take on the colonel, including Gaddafi's Soviet-era Foxtrot class submarine. But intelligence on the sub is reassuring, suggesting it has rusted into ineffectiveness alongside much of Gaddafi's pre-embargo arsenal. "Operations rare to non-existent" states the document, adding the submarine is currently being overhauled and "operates primarily on the surface," submerging "only for a few hours."
11.28am: Here is a video of Gaddafi in full flow last night in front of fired-up crowds, vowing not to surrender against the west's "crusade".
11.30am: A reminder of our upcoming Q&A on Libya with a panel of experts (see 9.53am for details). It'll be happening between 1pm and 2pm here.
11.38am: Tom Kington on the USS Kearsarge has another update from last night's operations:
Four US Harrier jump jets flew bombing missions from an Navy vessel off the Libyan coast on Tuesday night as coalition forces continued attempts to dislodge Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
The Harriers, armed with GPU 12 laser guided bombs, took off from the USS Kearsarge at 11pm local time, returning at 2am before aircraft refuelled and took of for a second sortie.
The Kearsarge's group of six Harriers attacked targets outside Benghazi on Sunday morning and near Ajdabiya on Sunday night, hitting tanks, artillery pieces and mobile missile launchers.
Officials did not reveal Tuesday night's targets, but Libyan government forces were reportedly continue to shell rebels in Ajdabiya, suggesting they remain a viable target for coalition aircraft.
Marine Colonel Mark Desens, who commands the Harriers, said that flying the vertical take-off jets from the Kearsarge gave them an advantage over conventional jets flying from airbases further away from Libya.
"With the Harriers we can turn them around very quickly and do two sorties a night," he said.
11.42am: An interesting snippet from Reuters, who have spoken to an official at Agoco, a Libyan oil firm based in rebel-held Benghazi. Despite the surrounding chaos the company is still producing 95,000 barrels per day of oil, with two oil field working. This is around 25% of the normal level but they hope to resume full production in a couple of weeks.
11.58am: Now briefly to Yemen. Brian Whitaker writes:
After declaring a state of emergency in Yemen at the weekend, President Saleh won backing for it on Wednesday morning from the Yemeni parliament -- though almost half the MPs absented themselves from the session.
The text of the draft emergency law has been published (in Arabic) on al-Masdar's website. It provisions are truly draconian, imposing restrictions on the media, travel and public meetings, even regulating the opening of shops and allowing for the "temporary takeover" of property.
The state of emergency is supposed to last for just one month, though it's worth recalling that a similar "emergency" declared in Egypt in 1967 has remained in place almost continuously since then.
12.01pm: News of a renewed assault my Gaddafi loyalists on another rebel-held town, Zintan, about 50 miles south-west of Tripoli. Reuters spoke to a resident:
Gaddafi's brigades started bombardment from the northern area half an hour ago. The bombardment is taking place now. The town is completely surrounded. The situation is very bad... They are getting reinforcements. Troops backed with tanks and vehicles are coming. We appeal to the allied forces to come and protect civilians.
12.13pm: David Cameron has been speaking about Libya at the start of his pre-budget prime minister's questions in the Commons (see Andrew Sparrow's live politics live blog for full coverage.
Cameron said the no-fly zone has had "an early and good effect" in terms of forcing Gaddafi's forces back from Benghazi and protecting civilians. He added:
Clearly there is great concern about what the regime is doing in Misrata, and any idea that their second ceasefire was any more meaningful than the first ceasefire we can see is complete nonsense.
Asked by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, about Arab contributions to the military effort, Cameron said Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan were now involved but conceded that due to the speed of the response the Arab involvement was not as great "as perhaps would have been welcomed".
Quizzed by Miliband about whether or not Gaddafi himself was viewed as a possible target – the source of apparent differences earlier this week between the government and military – Cameron said that all actions would be in line with the UN resolution, adding:
All targets should be in line with that, but I don't propose to give a running commentary on targets, or frankly to say anything beyond that.
12.34pm: A brief, and expected, update via the Associated Press - Nato commanders have confirmed that the alliance's warships are now patrolling off Libya's coast to enforce the arms embargo.
12.36pm: An image, below, from the under-siege rebel town of Ajdabiya – a rebel fighter at a checkpoint.
-
12.42pm: Reuters have managed to get another telephone update from Misrata:
Western air strikes early on Wednesday hit an air base south of Libya's rebel-held Misrata where government forces are positioned, but snipers shot two people dead in the centre of the city, a resident said.
"This morning, air strikes twice hit the airbase where Gaddafi's brigades are based," the resident, called Sami, told Reuters.
"Two people were killed by snipers an hour ago in the centre of the town. Their bodies are now at the hospital, which I visited a while ago. Shooting is still going on there (in the city centre) now," he said.
1.00pm: Our live Libya Q&A with a panel of experts is about to begin. Post your questions, or read our experts' answers, here.
1.44pm: A doctor in Misrata has told the BBC World Service that there are no pro-Gaddafi tanks in the city today – "because all the tanks have either escaped or been destroyed by the allied forces". However the doctor said the hospital where he works is still surrounded by snipers loyal to Col Gaddafi. "They are shooting anybody going in or coming out of the hospital. Until now we have four civilian dead."
2.13pm: A resident in Misrata, who has asked not to be named, has told the Guardian that snipers are targeting the hospital in Misrata, 75km east of Tripoli on the Libyan coast, despite Gaddafi forces's heavy artillery having been silenced.
A coalition bombardment has silenced the cannon and tanks this morning, but snipers are targeting the hospital there.
The resident said he had spoken to a contact in Zintan, close to the Tunisian border, who said the town was being bombarded by Gaddafi's forces and is now "facing the fate of Zawiyah" and "needs desperate help".
2.27pm: The Guardian has been told that text messages are being sent to people in Tripoli, claiming to be from rebels in Benghazi and the east, but actually sent by Gaddafi's regime.
A source in Libya said the texts say the country will be split in two. The texts also threaten that rebels from Benghazi are heading to the west of the country to rape and pillage in Tripoli, with the help of western powers.
Separately, our source claims that state television in Tripoli is showing pictures of dead people which the reports say were killed in the coalition air strikes – however some of the dead have been recognised by viewers as relatives who disappeared during Gaddafi's crackdown on Tripoli.
The Guardian is unable to confirm the source's account at this moment in time.
2.37pm: Mahmoud Jibril has been appointed head of the Libyan interim government, a spokesman for the Democratic Libya Information Bureau has told the Guardian.
Jibril is a key opposition figure who met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week.
2.51pm: The rebel Libyan interim government is to set up its own independent television station, the Guardian has been told.
The Democratic Libya Information Bureau said the interim government would set up an "independent, free" television station based in Qatar and streaming in Libya.
No more information was immediately available.
2.57pm: There were lots of interesting questions (and answers) on our Libya Q&A.
Users LettuceGnome and Albalha asked about the make-up of the rebels, and where they've got their weaponry from.
Dr Laleh Khalili, a lecturer in Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, answered:
"The composition of the opposition is at the moment both amorphous and unknown. There are indications that the early members of the revolutionary group throughout Libya were the youth, professionals, academics, etc with various ideological orientations (including nationalists, leftists and Islamists). In Eastern Libya, a "tribal" elements is also introduced into the mix; as well as people who have grievances against the regime for having suppressed a revolt there in the early 1990s. However, with the defection of some army officers, bureaucrats, and diplomats, it seems that former members of the regime (e.g. the ex-Justice Minister, Al-Jalil) might be having the upper hand now there and the professionals seem to have been sidelined. We do not know who the west-Libyan members are or even whether they have yet been named to the Council.
The rebels seem to be well-armed both because of army defections to their side, and because they have probably gained control of the arsenals and military bases in their region. There are speculations as to why the mutinying parts of the Army are not more visible in the fight against the Qaddafi regime. It could be because they hesitate about fighting against other divisions of the military; or it could be that any sort of battle is massively complicated by the arming of civilians and the lack of experience of these opposition civilians in fighting militarily.
Whether or not the National Front for Salvation of Libya was supported by the CIA is something that we will not know for certain until some sort of archives or memoirs indicate as much, but we do know that Saudi Arabia has previously donated substantial amounts to NFSL. NFSL may be issuing statements in support of the opposition, but it is not clear as to whether they are actually involved on the ground, or not."
3.21pm: The Democratic Libya Information Bureau, has emailed with a potted CV of Jibril, who has been appointed head of the Libyan interim government (See 2.37pm).
Educated at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA, he led the team who drafted and formed the unified Arab training manual. He was also responsible for organising and administering the first two training conferences in the Arab world in the years 1987 and 1988. He later took over the management and administration of many of the leaders' training programmes for senior management in Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and Britain.
The DLIB did not know what the unified Arab training manual means, but they are keen to emphasise his education in the US.
3.27pm: Some more interesting points raised in our Q&A. Paul Smyth, a RAF former wing commander and Tornado navigator, discussed some of the military issues.
bluesforallah asked about the use of Western group troops. Paul responded:
Ultimately, this is a Libyan problem that demands a Libyan solution. External intervention on the ground should not include western forces but be limited to Arab nations. If a buffer zone (as in Cyprus or Bosnia) becomes necessary I would suggest Egypt should be encouraged to monitor and police it. Nb: airborne monitoring of a ceasefire could involve western air power as it has the necessary capabilities.
bill2 wondered if a successful resolution is possible in Libya without resorting to ground troops. Paul replied:
No war in history has been won from the air, or the sea. I agree that air power has yet to win a war. But is this a war? It is a crisis in which the absence of land forces may not prevent a successful outcome (whatever that is defined as). A germane lesson from Iraq (1991), the Balkans in the 1990s and especially Afghanistan in 2001 is that air & sea power can have a decisive effect on a ground conflict. That has already happened at Benghazi but the rebels are going to have to improve their martial capabilities immensely if they are to successfully advance west. That would take some time. The removal of the regime's military capability and the evaporation of popular support for Gaddafi in the west of Libya may allow for another uprising that would make an advance from Benghazi unnecessary...
3.30pm: Anthony Aust, former legal adviser at the Foreign Office who served at the UK mission to the UN and helped draft the resolution on Kuwait in 1990, addressed legal issues in our Q&A.
User myopicmuppet asked to what extent military action could be justified by the UN resolution. Anthony replied:
Much will depend on the specific circumstances. But, in my view para 4 of resolution 1973 entitles foreign forces to operate on the ground (not just in the air) to protect civilians being targeted by Qadafi's forces, provided the forces are not in reality an occupation force.
3.39pm: Some very bullish comments from Ali Zeidan, one of 31 members of the Libyan National Council, who told reporters in Paris that the rebels could overcome Gaddafi's forces in 10 days if the coalition continued its air strikes. He also said he wanted the international community to train and arm the rebel fighters. Zeidan's remarks do not exactly mesh with what the Guardian's Chris McGreal is reporting from Ajdabiya (8.58am).
3.48pm: Air strikes have forced Libyan government tanks to roll back from Misrata, a doctor tells AP.
A doctor in Misrata said the tanks fled after the air strikes began around midnight. He said the air strikes struck the aviation academy and a vacant lot outside the central hospital, which was under maintenance. "There were very loud explosions. It was hard to see the planes," the doctor said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals if Gaddafi's forces take the city. "Today, for the first time in a week, the bakeries opened their doors." He said the situation was still dangerous, with pro-Gaddafi snipers shooting at people from rooftops. "Some of the tanks were hit and others fled," he said. "We fear the tanks that fled will return if the air strikes stop."
3.51pm: Right on cue, the Guardian's Chris McGreal has just emailed on the situation in Misrata.
Nearly 12 hours of allied air strikes have virtually wiped out Muammar Gaddafi's forces that were attacking the rebel-held town of Misrata and ended five days of bloody assault |
in the region. "Zabadani is being bombed at the rate of six barrels per day, and there are supportive military troops brought by the army via Serghaya [north of Zabadani] to support its positions amid continuous shelling coming from the checkpoints surrounding Zabadani,” Suleiman said.
A Zabadani resident told Al-Monitor via Skype that hundreds of residents from al-Sheelah, al-Mahatta and Zaatout — where the targeted checkpoints are situated — fled to the Inshaat neighborhood on the road to Bloudan, east of Zabadani, and to al-Mamoura region on the road to Bukain south of Zabadani — all regions controlled by the Syrian regime.
The resident said that all the displaced people were women and children who were able to pass through the regime's checkpoints. However, the men moved west of the city since they feared arrest in case they leave the city.
On Aug. 24, the regime proposed a truce to rebel fighters through civil society groups in the reconciliation committee of the Bloudan area, according to Suleiman. He said, “The truce was rejected because the regime is still using explosive barrels as its soldiers continue to shell civilians.”
Two weeks after the truce was rejected, regime forces continue to bomb the region in a bid to restore its position at the Shallah checkpoint and secure its surroundings. On Sept. 5, regime forces targeted Zabadani with barrel bombs.
After establishing a truce with the regime in April, the region was still being raided by barrel bombs, as well as ongoing sniper operations targeting civilians at the checkpoints in the Bloudan Mountain, which overlooks the town.
Al-Monitor met with residents who fled to the town of Baqin. They said that in July the army had arrested a number of women because of their family ties to some of the fighters in the region. This fueled resentment among residents toward the rebel fighters, as they considered them responsible for the arrests and for pushing the regime to bomb civilian areas, while highlighting the rebels’ failure to break the siege on the town. Matters worsened as the regime threatened to storm Zabadani if the fighters did not hand themselves over, especially after seizing control over neighboring villages — including the towns of Rankous and Kara — in the eastern mountains. Rebel fighters responded by launching the operation on the Syrian army checkpoints around the town.
It seems, however, that this operation has not achieved its main objective, which was to decrease artillery shells — which had been launched from these checkpoints — toward the west of Zabadani. Capturing the checkpoints has not made it safer for civilians or rebel fighters to leave the region, since it is still being targeted by the Syrian army. However, this might make it easier for rebel fighters who are based on the eastern side of the Bloudan Mountain to move toward the city of Rankous.
Rebel fighters have controlled Zabadani for over two years, but most of its residents live in nearby villages and towns such as Madaya and Bloudan. As the fighting continues, there appears to be little hope of these residents returning to their homes anytime soon.The business world is changing rapidly but few innovations have had such an immediate impact as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy.
Also known as Bring Your Own Phone (BYOP), Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) and Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC), this policy permits employees to bring personal devices, including smart phones, laptops and mobile tablets, into the workplace – and use these devices to access company applications and information: even if this information is privileged.
BYOD for schools is also gaining popularity: giving students the chance to use their devices within an educational setting. However, for the sake of this BYOD guide we will focus on BYOD for businesses.
What is the idea of BYOD?
As technology advances at a rapid pace, it’s increasingly difficult for IT departments to cope with the constant changes in technology. By contrast, many individuals constantly invest in new technologies – from the Google Nexus 9 to the iPhone 6 – and would prefer to access data on these devices because they are often quicker and more efficient.
By introducing a BYOD policy, a small or medium business can empower its workforce, reduce costs and increase productivity.
How did BYOD begin?
First mentioned back in 2005 in a university paper produced by Rafael Ballagas (see BYOD: Bring Your Own Device), BYOD began to grow in popularity in 2009 when it was implemented by Intel (see Learn from Intel’s CISO on Securing Employee Owned Devices).
According to Intel, the number of employee-owned mobile devices being used on the job trebled from 10,000 to 30,000 from 2009-2010: and it was predicted that around 70 per cent of its employees would be using their own devices by 2014.
BYOD really took off in 2011 however, when the likes of Citrix Systems and Unisys shared their approaches to this emerging trend. It is seen as a consumer enterprise that allows consumers to blend with companies.
What are the advantages of BYOD?
In its webinar training report, Intel outlined a number of advantages to BYOD including:
Increased productivity: When employees use their own devices they will typically respond faster to communication and also be available for a greater percentage of the day. Employees are also often both more comfortable and happier when working on their own technology.
When employees use their own devices they will typically respond faster to communication and also be available for a greater percentage of the day. Employees are also often both more comfortable and happier when working on their own technology. Boost in control: There are fewer unauthorised devices on the network because these personal devices are encouraged.
There are fewer unauthorised devices on the network because these personal devices are encouraged. Security enhancement: The chance to respond to and recover from security issues is boosted by the fact that these devices are mobile.
The chance to respond to and recover from security issues is boosted by the fact that these devices are mobile. Feeling flexible: Employee satisfaction has been lifted because they can work with increased flexibility. They won’t need to carry two devices and they will have access to their data whenever and wherever they want.
Employee satisfaction has been lifted because they can work with increased flexibility. They won’t need to carry two devices and they will have access to their data whenever and wherever they want. Financial savings: From reducing costs on device maintenance, software licensing and hardware expenditure, small and medium businesses no longer have to manage a second device for employees. It could also be argued that employees are more likely to take better care of their own devices.
What are the disadvantages of BYOD?
While BYOD appears highly attractive to businesses on the surface, there are some issues to be wary of:
Employee costs: While the costs are taken away from the business, they are put on to the employee – and indeed not every employee will have the latest technology in their possession or even want it. Being told by a company that you need the latest device could be off-putting; as well as the fact that employees may face maintenance costs or other repairs.
While the costs are taken away from the business, they are put on to the employee – and indeed not every employee will have the latest technology in their possession or even want it. Being told by a company that you need the latest device could be off-putting; as well as the fact that employees may face maintenance costs or other repairs. Device issues: Provide the technology for your employees and you are sure that it will carry all of the technological features your business needs. However, if employees use a plethora of different devices with contrasting operating systems and capabilities then there could be a host of issues.
Provide the technology for your employees and you are sure that it will carry all of the technological features your business needs. However, if employees use a plethora of different devices with contrasting operating systems and capabilities then there could be a host of issues. Security issues: While there are security advantages to having mobile devices, perhaps the biggest issue with BYOD is the potential security problem. Whereas a company can invest in protection for its data and anti-virus systems for in-house technology, everyday security is threatened if employees don’t have the same protection on their own devices. Indeed should an employee choose to leave a company then there is a significant risk that they will maintain access to a company’s key data at the touch of a button. The risk also expands to employees too: they may feel their own data is at risk by being linked to company systems.
How to plan and implement a BYOD policy
Should you decide that BYOD is right for your business then you must develop a clear BYOD policy.
Speak to your employees: Make sure your employees are consulted and are happy with the implications of a BYOD policy before you implement it. If the majority have high quality devices and are enthusiastic then it could be right for your business. Agreements: Employees should be aware of what they are responsible for, particularly in terms of costs, and also what will occur if they leave the firm. Technology: Find technology that can work on a variety of devices. Find out what technology your employees use before you roll out the technology. Security: Research the security options available and ensure that anti-virus and anti-spyware technology is in place and included in your BYOD policy. Make sure that people only have access to the data they actually need.
Innovation can help employees work better: giving employees what they want while making suitable efforts to protect your business could lead to huge benefits.AutoGuide.com
According to a recent report, the next-generation Subaru WRX STI will be electrified.
Speaking to Dutch website AutoRAI, Subaru Europe’s sales and marketing manager David Dello Stritto said the current WRX STI’s 2.5-liter turbocharged boxer engine “can simply not exist in the future.” That means it will likely be replaced by a plug-in hybrid powertrain that could open some new possibilities for the sports sedan. For example, Subaru could use electric motors to power the rear wheels, while retaining a boxer engine so the WRX STI doesn’t lose its entire soul.
SEE ALSO: Subaru Viziv Concept Signals the Future of the Impreza
It will be some time before the hybrid WRX STI is introduced however. There will be a gap when the current-generation WRX STI exits the lineup and the new model is introduced, while Subaru works on the hybrid powertrain. “There will really be a new WRX STI in the future, but it takes time,” added Dello Stritto. “We’re not giving up on ‘fun to drive.’ The new Impreza delivers this fun in a different, more sensible, CO2 emissions-complaint way.”
Dello Stritto was careful to not explicitly say the next WRX STI will be hybrid, but suggested as much. Considering the next WRX will be underpinned by the new Subaru Global Platform, it would makes sense for it to take advantage of electrification since the platform was engineered with hybrids in mind.
[Source: AutoRAI via Autocar]
Discuss this story on our Subaru WRX ForumOnce or twice a week, I take this cardio weight class at my gym. Every time I go, I usually reach a point where I’m sure I’m about to pass out, throw up, or both. Even though I hate it, I also kind of like it. It feels good to be pushed to your limit.
One day we had a substitute instructor. Let’s call her Kayla. She was about 22. Pretty. Blond. Thin. Our regular instructors were definitely older, like most of us in class. But whatever. I thought the age difference might be a good thing. Maybe she’d be extra tough on us.
She wasn’t. Class that day was remarkably, disappointingly easy. And slow. For the first time, I didn’t even break a sweat.
But here was the worst part: Near the end, as we completed a tedious sequence of leg lifts that were so easy one woman was actually texting while she did them, Kayla shouted, “You ladies are amazing!”
Really? “Amazing”?
For a moment, I felt like a very old woman. Like I was taking a samba class at some retirement home, feebly shuffling through the moves, while my vibrant young teacher “encouraged” me toward some sad personal best, a feat that would certainly earn me some hot cocoa and a nap afterward. What I didn’t feel was motivated. Or amazing.
What’s wrong with amazing? Or phenomenal? Or any other superlative we throw around a hundred times a day?
Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with them. Sometimes they just help us express emotion. If you’re starving, and you just took your first bite of a fresh, hot burrito, phenomenal might be the only way to describe that burrito. That’s not a problem. It certainly won’t bother the burrito.
But if you’re trying to motivate someone—a student, an employee, your child—calling them amazing won’t pump them up the way you hope it will. Not in any lasting way. What’s worse, it could have the opposite effect. Here are three reasons why.
Reason 1: It’s Paula praise.
Back when American Idol had its original lineup of judges, you could pretty much script how it would go when a contestant finished singing: First Randy Jackson said something vague and awkwardly hip. The contestant responded with a kind of wince. Next, Paula Abdul rhapsodized about the singer’s complete and utter perfection. Most contestants looked grateful at this point, but there was something else there, too: impatience. A restlessness to get it over with, because Paula’s feedback didn’t carry any weight. When she finally finished, and it was time to turn to Simon, the contestant would take a deep breath, and every single time, their expression changed: This is the one that counts, it said.
Although Simon Cowell’s review was usually critical, and far too often it was unnecessarily cruel, it actually meant something to the contestants. Everyone likes a pat on the back, but having someone call you amazing when you know you hit a ton of wrong notes just feels wrong. And if you’re handing out amazings like peanuts at a bar, pretty soon no one’s really interested in your opinion.
Reason 2: It’s unspecific.
One night when my college friends and I were getting ready for a night out, someone told my friend Andrea she looked pretty. Instead of just saying thank you, she said, “Why? Why do I look pretty?” We proceeded to mock her for the rest of the night. It became a joke we replayed over and over.
Still, it illustrates something: General praise doesn’t tell us what we’re doing right. In some ways, a vague compliment is a little scary; once the burst of good feeling is gone, the mind wants more. It just doesn’t know how to get it.
As a teacher and a parent, I have probably said “Wow!” or “Cool!” or “Good job!” thousands of times. Honestly, it’s a lazy reflex, a way to give attention without putting in any effort. And sometimes it’s the best I can do. I just need to recognize these phrases for the fluff that they are.
Effective feedback is specific; what Grant Wiggins called “actionable.” If I really want to motivate someone, to make feedback count, I have to tell them what they’re doing right. If my 6-year-old son has just tied his shoe, instead of telling him he’s amazing, I’ll actually build him up more if I say, “You got the knot a lot tighter this time.”
Reason 3: It praises the person, not the effort.
Let’s look at it again: “You’re amazing.” Specifically, the you’re. When praise focuses on the person, rather than their actions, it can actually do more harm than good.
In her 2007 article, The Perils and Promises of Praise, Stanford professor Carol Dweck explains that people belong to two different groups when it comes to intelligence. One has what she calls a fixed mindset: they view intelligence as something we’re born with, something that can’t really be changed. The other group has a growth mindset, believing intelligence can be shaped and developed with effort and experience. Those with a growth mindset are much more motivated to work hard on challenging tasks, because they believe effort pays off. It’s not easy to motivate someone with a fixed mindset: A person who believes they are naturally smart takes fewer risks, “seeking tasks that will prove their intelligence and avoiding ones that might not.” It stands to reason that this principle would work the same way with other qualities too, like creativity, strength, talent, even being a “math person.” If you believe your abilities are set in stone, why bother trying anything new or challenging?
The good news is, the right kind of feedback can shift people from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset. By telling a student she is smart, or talented, or creative, you only reinforce the fixed mindset. What you’re saying is that her success is due to natural ability, not effort. On the other hand, if you focus on the effort, if you say, “You really pushed yourself on that problem and stuck with it until you figured it out,” that describes something she can replicate, something she can keep doing to achieve the same kind of success again.
I’m pretty sure Kayla has very little experience as an instructor. I can’t really fault her for calling us amazing; she was just trying to be nice. But I hope someone shows her a better way. Because I can imagine an alternative Kayla—even with the thin and pretty and blond still intact. First, she’d give me something truly challenging to do, like a plank. The first time, she’d come by my mat and tell me I needed to lower my hips more, which I would try to do, but it would be hard. The next time she came by, she’d notice the change, saying something like, “Good straight line.” Not an amazing line—I wasn’t there yet. But a good one. I’d know exactly what I was doing right, and what to keep doing.
And knowing something like that? It’s actually kind of amazing. ♥Hillary Clinton sharpened her attacks against Bernie Sanders Friday as her campaign gains confidence, criticizing his gun control record and subtly accusing him of making a sexist remark in the recent debate.
During a sunny campaign event in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday, Clinton apparently referred to a moment in the Democratic debate when Sanders said that “all the shouting in the world” will not improve gun laws.
“I’ve been told to stop shouting about guns,” Clinton said to cheers. “Actually I haven’t been shouting, but sometimes when a woman talks, some people think it’s shouting!”
Politics Newsletter Sign up to receive the day’s top political stories. View Sample Sign Up Now
She used the same line earlier in the day at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum. Friday was the first time Clinton has implied Sanders showed sexism in the Democratic debate by remonstrating Clinton for raising her voice. (Sanders also said in the debate in response to former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley that “we can raise our voices.”)
A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the remark.
At the Virginia event, Clinton went on to describe “outrageous” legislation that Sanders voted for in Congress, referring to a 2005 bill that gave gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits. As a Senator from New York, Clinton voted against the bill.
“It’s basically an NRA gift to the gun manufacturers and gun sellers,” Clinton told the crowd, who had showed up on a war October day to see the presidential candidate alongside her Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. “It’s wrong, and we have to fight against it, and we have to repeal it.”
Gun control is one of the few issues where Clinton is further to the left than Sanders, and it is an issue she believes will help her win over the Democratic base. One of her strongest moments during the debate last week came when host Anderson Cooper asked Clinton whether Sanders is strong enough of on gun control. “No,” Clinton said in the debate, “not at all.”
Sanders voted in favor of the 2005 bill giving gun manufacturers legal immunity. He also opposed the 1993 Brady Bill, which mandated background checks on firearms purchases.
Read More: Read the Full Text of the Primetime Democratic Debate
Clinton’s criticism of Sanders comes with some political risk: the Vermont senator is extremely popular with the Democratic base and has high favorability ratings. Voters who trust Sanders’ authenticity and believe in his insurgent vision could perceive Clinton’s attacks as establishment bullying.
Clinton has thus far been careful not to alienate Sanders’ supporters, targeting him on what is likely a winning issue for her. But members of the crowd after the Alexandria rally didn’t appear to mind her attacks.
“She should stay strong against Bernie Sanders,” said Kimberly Smith, a retired senior director at a high-tech company. “But that doesn’t mean that she should take him out at the knees.”
Though Clinton has still not mentioned Sanders by name at her rallies, the former Secretary of State has not hesitated to contrast her self with her insurgent opponent following Clinton’s success in last week’s debate and her subsequent rise in the polls. The hour after the end of the Benghazi hearing was the best fundraising hour of her campaign, a Clinton aide said. “I am a progressive who likes to get things done,” she told her crowd in Virginia on Friday, repeating a line she used in the debate.
“Sanders has a record of voting for gun shop owners. That is unacceptable,” said an attendee, Gita Kangarloo who said Clinton should be critical of Sanders. “I cannot accept anyone that votes for any step in favor of guns.”
Read More: Democrats Push for Gun Control Ahead of 2016
Sanders has built a huge and growing following of the Democratic vote who are galvanized by the Vermont senator’s fire-and-brimstone speeches on inequality and political corruption, and his liberal vision for the United States.
Later in her remarks, Clinton seemed to obliquely criticize Sanders’ often grim vision of the United States. “Other candidates will be other here hurling insults at anyone, talking about what’s wrong with America, wanting to divide us,” Clinton said. “I still believe there is nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by building on what’s right with America.”
On Friday, she also compared herself with Sanders on an area he has had a distinctive advantage: small-dollar fundraising. Sanders has so far had much more success accruing small-dollar donations than Clinton, attracting tens of millions of dollars from donors giving an average of $30.
“A lot of people don’t realize my campaign is being built by small dollars,” Clinton said. “I am grateful for the hundreds of thousands of grassroots activists who are joining this campaign. The veterans and workers, the students, the teachers the partens the grandparents across our country.”
Her argument that she is running a grassroots fundraising campaign may be difficult claim for her to make: through the third fundraising quarter, Clinton raised only about 20% of her total funds from amounts under $200. Sanders, meanwhile, has raised 88% of his cash from amounts under $200.
And while Clinton revealed Friday that she has 500,000 individual contributors to her campaign, a Sanders aide told TIME that he has 750,000.
But Clinton has risen in the polls since the Democratic debate on Tuesday and has looked increasingly confident on the trail, particularly since her performance in the Benghazi hearing on Thursday. She holds a commanding lead over Sanders in the polls.
“I can’t tell you how great it feels to be here on this beautiful day out in the sunshine!” Clinton said on Friday.
Read Next: The Gospel of Bernie
Contact us at editors@time.com.Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards gave the Clone Club much reason to rejoice.
Tatiana Maslany — best known for playing… too many characters to count, honestly — took home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. It was her first Emmy win, having been nominated once before in 2015.
“I should have had this written down,” the Orphan Black star said with a laugh as she took the stage. “There are so many people I feel so indebted to.” She went on to thank the show’s creators for her “dream job,” as well as the show’s “incredible writers’ room, beautiful cast and crew.”
She concluded, “I feel so lucky to be on a show that puts women at the center. Thank you so much to the Academy. Thank you.”
Orphan Black wrapped its fourth season on BBC America this summer; its upcoming fifth season will be its last.
“I didn’t expect it at all,” Maslany told reporters backstage. “It’s such an honor. The category I’m in is all these woman I’ve looked up to so long and whose work I so admire. … I haven’t quite breathed yet since I got off the stage. Hopefully at some point it’ll sink in.”
On a scale from 1 to freaking out, how are you handling Maslany’s well-deserved win? Drop your thoughts in a comment below.At first glance, it looks like another Boeing 747-200 airliner, a plane that changed commercial aviation, opened up flying to millions, and crisscrossed the world’s oceans and continents. But the aircraft bears the words “United States of America” on the side of its blue, white and silver fuselage, and is known as Air Force One when it is carrying the president. It is an Air Force plane with a military mission, and it differs from a civilian airliner in plenty of ways, from nose to tail.
The VC-25A (the military designation of the flying White House) has a different shape at the very tip of its nose and at the rear of its fuselage. The nose design includes an air refueling receptacle designed to enable Air Force One to gulp down gas in the middle of the sky and to have almost unlimited range. The rear fuselage has minor contour changes to accommodate special equipment related to the presidential mission. To ensure the VC-25A is self-sufficient on the ground, it is equipped with a second Garrett AiResearch GTC331-200 auxiliary power unit.
It is an Air Force plane with a military mission, and it differs from a civilian airliner in plenty of ways, from nose to tail.
The two virtually identical presidential VC-25As, known to the 89th Airlift Wing as SAM 28000 and SAM 29000, are otherwise unremarkable in any exterior comparison to a commercial 747. The cockpit of the VC-25A provides ample room for two pilots, navigator, and flight engineer, and is roomier than the flight deck of a comparable airliner. Yet in spite of the enormous size of the VC-25A, the flight deck is essentially the same size as the one on the earlier VC-137C.
The presidential pilot happens to look down at the world from a lofty perch. On the VC-25A, the pilots sit on a flight deck situated fully 29 feet above the ground, roughly 100 feet in front of the main landing gear, and 12 feet in front of the nose gear. Being this high up and this far forward demands careful thinking, and a great deal of training, when Air Force One is being maneuvered on the ground.
CREW POSITIONS
In addition to the four flight crewmembers on the front deck, the VC-25A has crew positions for three ACSOs (airborne communications systems operators) although even on routine missions it carries an extra ACSO for a total of four. In the early days of military flying, a separate crew position was needed on large aircraft to operate the radios, and the first airborne radio operators were drawn from the Army’s Signal Corps. Since World War II, radio operators have typically begun their training at Keesler Field, Mississippi, and have been responsible for the HF (high-frequency), VHF (very high frequency), and UHF (ultra high-frequency) radios found on most transports. A 1982 study for the Pentagon’s air staff by Chief Master Sgt. Ken Witkin, a radio operator on then-Vice President George H.W. Bush’s aircraft, Air Force Two, changed the name of the career field from “airborne radio operator” to ACSO. The ACSOs who serve aboard Air Force One are part of the Presidential Pilot’s Office and serve under a chief of communications. Under this non-commissioned officer, is a second slot is for a standardization and evaluation ACSO.
The communications gear effectively renders obsolete the original mission of the the Air Force’s other Boeing 747 model, the E-4B National Airborne Command Post, operated by the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. With the communications afforded by the VC-25A, the president no longer needs a separate command post in wartime.
The VC-25A has a special communications suite served by its three radio operator positions. The MCS (Mission Communications System) provides for worldwide transmission and reception of both normal and secure communications. The MCS includes multifrequency radios and 85 telephones for air-to-ground, air-to-air, and satellite communications. The airmen working at the radio stations have a huge responsibility for strategic communications but they also handle prosaic tasks such as showing television and film programming to the president and other dignitaries. Much of the design work on the communications suite was directed not by a corporate executive or a senior officer but by one of the actual operators, Chief Master Sgt. Jimmy Bull, who once held the top communicator’s job.
The MCS suite is located on the VC-25A’s upper deck behind the flight crew. Fifty percent greater in size than the suite on previous presidential aircraft, MCS has far more than the standard communications gear found on other big aircraft. The press has speculated that some equipment is provided for a “Doomsday” scenario in which the commander-in-chief would be aloft at the outbreak of a war. Official sources say simply that the VC-25A carries a full suite of communications equipment, enabling the president to talk to just about anyone. The communications gear effectively renders obsolete the original mission of the the Air Force’s other Boeing 747 model, the E-4B National Airborne Command Post, operated by the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. With the communications afforded by the VC-25A, the president no longer needs a separate command post in wartime.
In the event of a ballistic missile attack on the United States (a “Doomsday” scenario), Pentagon planning includes sufficient air-refueling tankers to keep Air Force One “tanked” with JP-8 aviation fuel indefinitely. Extra work was done on the VC-25A’s engines to increase the amount of oil available to lubricate them, since this factor – coupled with crew fatigue – would limit the duration the aircraft can stay aloft. The president could be kept airborne for five or six days in the VC-25A with minimal difficulty.
STUDYING THE INTERIOR
Since the design features of the 747 are well known, it is the interior of the presidential VC-25A that makes Air Force One different. Everyone associated with Air Force One takes great pride in the aircraft and its systems. There are no publicity hounds in the 89th Airlift Wing, however. On rare occasions when the press is exposed to more than the rear passenger compartment of Air Force One – as when National Geographic magazine filmed a special on Air Force One – activity has been closely watched. When Hollywood asked the Air Force for a guided to tour of the inside of Air Force One, the initial response was negative. Only after President Bill Clinton had dinner with Harrison Ford at the actor’s ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo., did moviemakers win a look at the presidential plane.He will address the portion of the festival focusing on interactive technology.
South by Southwest on Thursday announced FBI director James Comey will address the portion of its festival focusing on interactive technology.
He will be a featured speaker in Austin, Texas, on March 13. Comey currently is under a U.S. Justice Department inspector general's investigation for an FBI probe into emails linked to Hillary Clinton's private email server.
In July, Comey announced that the FBI wasn't recommending criminal charges for Clinton. But, just 11 days before the election, he divulged that the FBI discovered new emails that could be relevant to that investigation.
Comey later said the FBI wasn't changing its July recommendation, but Clinton supporters blamed the incident for costing their candidate votes.
President Donald Trump has asked Comey to remain in his post for the remainder of a 10-year term expiring in 2023.It was the sixth day of summer and quietly they sat, older boys and very young men. There was the college senior waiting his turn. There was the son of a doctor eager to please.
And then there was the teenager in white looking very dazed.
Even more surreal and imaginary then how he appeared from a distance, eighteen year old Kwame Brown found the NBA Draft to be a train hurtling an oceanside cliff. Two weeks ago he was in an alternate universe, he was in high school. Now, he was the number one pick, a rich kid framed by television cameras, asked to explain his rags to riches tale.
“It means financial stability” he said, aware of the circumstance that he was the first high school player drafted number one. “I’ll be coming into money I have never seen before. It’s a great opportunity to touch so many lives.”
But history and touching lives didn’t mean crap to Michael Jordan. He was president of the Washington Wizards. His installation in the front office was exactly what it appeared, a long shot gamble to revive a franchise. By 2001, the Wizards were hemorrhaging money, the cupboards were bare of talent. Their owner, scrappy Abe Pollin who made his fortune two decades ago by building things, operated the old fashioned way.
But the NBA had changed in the past few years, explosive talents replaced skilled players. Kevin Garnett, a high schooler was drafted in 1995. Kobe Bryant, a high schooler was drafted in 1996. Tracy McGrady, a high schooler, was drafted in 1997. One was passionate, one was electric, one was silky smooth. All three were iconic talents and looked upon as path setters. Their lesson: college didn’t matter.
The Wizards won 19 games the year before; they were beyond desperate and searching for a fix. And so it was the NBA draft in 2001: Michael Jordan’s first big decision collided with Kwame Brown’s unbelievable dream.
Jordan passed on the Duke senior who would end up having a thirteen year career. He passed on the Barcelona seven footer who had skilled footwork and a soft touch around the basket. He passed on the sophomore shooting guard out of Arkansas who could score from anywhere. Shane Battier, Pau Gasol, Joe Johnson escaped the Wizards radar.
Instead, Michael Jordan selected Kwame Brown, a gangly, often uncomfortable in his own frame teenager from Georgia, a seven foot player with small hands, a high school resume and not much talent.
Michael Jordan could have had Pau Gasol who was Rookie of the Year in 2002. Pau would become an All Star, and win two titles. He could have had Joe Johnson, the brilliant scorer and future All Star. But he selected Kwame Brown.
In 250 games for the Washington Wizards, Kwame Brown averaged 7 points and 5 rebounds. Kwame played basketball as if he had gloves binding his hands. By the time his tenure with Washington ended via a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers, the faded romance about the reserved Georgian making history was hardly worthy of a footnote; it was now a joke. Of course it always is that way with love stories too good to be true. Love comes first. Then regret.
But no one specifically said Kwame Brown was going to be one of the exceptions. No one specifically said he was going to be dominant. What they said on draft night to fit their narrative of a first date romance was that Kwame Brown might possibly be another Kevin Garnett. And right then and there they sealed Kwame Brown’s fate. They were already announcing Kwame Brown’s defeat in historic terms.
* * * * *
In 2001, there were very few rivers Kevin Garnett had not crossed. He was an All Star. He was a six year veteran who improved every year. At the end of the 2001 season he was a force to be reckoned with. He had incredible athleticism and quickness around the rim. He had a mid range soft as butter shot. He rebounded as if he was angry that the ball had the nerve to even think of getting close to the rim. Garnett dominated every possession of every game with a murderous intensity. He played like someone he loved had tragically died, angry and passionate, all heart on his sleeve. Reflexively, life imitated art. Someone he loved did tragically die. He played with even more of a wrath then, a fuck you rage. His best friend and fellow teammate, Malik Sealy, was killed in a car crash in 2000.
This was a world Kwame Brown would never understand, this passion fight that seemed to blind Garnett to almost everything. Of course there was something so radical about Kevin Garnett, about his hysterical fury on the court, about his explosiveness and the desire bleeding out his pores.
Joe Smith did not play that way.
In 1995, when Kevin Garnett was a senior in high school, Joe Smith was the College Player of the Year. He was the AP Player of the Year. He was the Naismith College Player of the Year. He was the ACC Player of the Year. Naturally, under the old system of evaluation, of waiting your turn, Joe was the number one pick; four picks later Kevin Garnett was drafted.
Joe’s rookie year he averaged 15 points and 8 rebounds playing 35 minutes, pretty acceptable for a player coming out of college. But he lacked Garnett’s explosiveness and athletic talent at the rim. Kevin Garnett only averaged 10 points in 28 minutes his rookie year. But four years later, in what would have been Garnett’s senior year in college, he averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds while Joe Smith struggled to score. It was the second straight injury year for Joe Smith. But for Kevin Garnett, his on court dominance was just beginning.
The success of Garnett had NBA executives scrambling. Their season ticket holders, to whom they owe explanations, witnessed Garnett’s mastery of defense and offense.
One of the teams who passed on Garnett was Abe Pollin’s Washington Bullets. Washington chose Rasheed Wallace, a power forward with jump shooting ability trained by Dean Smith at North Carolina. Rasheed was a very good player but he would never become great. And so it was a very painful lesson for young and old NBA team builders alike. Certain young players had the talent and maturity to enter the NBA. Garnett as well as Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady were examples of franchise changing players. This radicalized the stakes.
The executives were on the hunt for this new breed of NBA talent. No longer could they afford to miss out on someone even if that meant taking chances, even if that meant |
was purchased by Canada when the United Kingdom decided to move to an all-nuclear power fleet.
Design [ edit ]
As built the Upholder/Victoria class was designed as a replacement for the Oberon class for use as hunter-killer and training subs. The submarines, which have a single-skinned, teardrop-shaped hull, displace 2,220 long tons (2,260 t) surfaced and 2,455 long tons (2,494 t) submerged.[2][3] They are 230 feet 7 inches (70.3 m) long overall with a beam of 25 feet 0 inches (7.6 m) and a draught of 17 feet 8 inches (5.4 m).[2]
The submarines are powered by a one shaft diesel-electric system. They are equipped with two Paxman Valenta 1600 RPS SZ diesel engines each driving a 1.4-megawatt (1,900 hp) GEC electric alternator with two 120-cell chloride batteries.[2][4] The batteries have a 90-hour endurance at 3 knots (5.6 km/h; 3.5 mph).[4] The ship is propelled by a 5,000-kilowatt (6,700 hp) GEC dual armature electric motor turning a seven-blade fixed pitch propeller.[4] They have a 200-long-ton (200 t) diesel capacity. This gives the subs a maximum speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) on the surface and 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) submerged. They have a range of 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) at 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph) and 10,000 nautical miles (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at snorting depth.[2][5] They have a range of 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) at 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph).[2] The class has a reported dive depth of over 650 feet (200 m).[3]
The Upholder/Victoria class are armed with six 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes. In British service, the submarines were equipped with 14 Tigerfish Mk 24 Mod 2 torpedoes and four UGM-84 Sub-Harpoon missiles.[2] They could also be adapted for use as a minelayer.[5] The submarines have Type 1007 radar and Type 2040, Type 2019, Type 2007 and Type 2046 sonar installed.[2] The hull is fitted with elastomeric acoustic tiles to reduce acoustic signature.[3] In British service the vessels had a complement of 7 officers and 40 ratings.[2]
Refits and Canadian alterations [ edit ]
During the refit for Canadian service, the Sub-Harpoon and mine capabilities were removed and the submarines were equipped with the Lockheed Martin Librascope Submarine fire-control system (SFCS) to meet the operational requirements of the Canadian Navy. Components from the fire control system of the Oberon-class submarines were installed.[6] This gave the submarines the ability to fire the Gould Mk 48 Mod 4 torpedo.[3] In 2014, the Government of Canada purchased 12 upgrade kits that will allow the submarines to fire the Mk 48 Mod 7AT torpedoes.[7]
These radar and sonar systems were later upgraded with the installation of the BAE Type 2007 array and the Type 2046 towed array.[2][3] The Canadian Towed Array Sonar (CANTASS) has been integrated into the towed sonar suite.[3] The Upholder-class submarines were equipped with the CK035 electro-optical search periscope and the CH085 optronic attack periscope, originally supplied by Pilkington Optronics.[3][4] After the Canadian refit, the submarines were equipped with Canadian communication equipment and electronic support measures (ESM). This included two SSE decoy launchers and the AR 900 ESM.[3]
Operational history [ edit ]
Royal Navy [ edit ]
The submarine was laid down as HMS Unicorn at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead yard on 13 March 1990.[8] She was launched on 16 April 1992, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 25 June 1993.[8] She was the last ship built at Cammell Laird until construction began on HMS Queen Elizabeth in June 2010.
After entering service, Unicorn operated in the Mediterranean Sea and east of Suez, the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean and in the Persian Gulf. She returned to Devonport and was decommissioned on 16 October 1994.[8]
Transfer [ edit ]
Looking to discontinue the operation of diesel-electric boats, the British government offered to sell Unicorn and her sister submarines to Canada in 1993.[9] The offer was accepted in 1998.[9] The four boats were leased to the Canadians for US$427 million (plus US$98 million for upgrades and alteration to Canadian standards), with the lease to run for eight years; after this, the submarines would be sold for £1.[8]
Problems were discovered with the piping welds on all four submarines, which delayed the reactivation of Unicorn and her three sisters.[8] Unicorn was handed over to the Canadian Forces on 6 August 2001 and sailed to Canada, arriving on 19 October.[10] The submarine was commissioned into Maritime Command as HMCS Windsor with the hull number SSK 877 on 4 October 2003.[8]
Royal Canadian Navy [ edit ]
Windsor is the only Canadian submarine deployed in the Atlantic.[11] In April 2002, after departing for the submarine's first training mission, Windsor was forced to return to port after the discovery of a faulty seal in the communications mast.[10] From 27–30 September 2004, Windsor took reporters and photographers from Halifax and Windsor newspapers to document life aboard a submarine.[12] During April 2006, the submarine was involved in the naval exercise Joint Express.[13]
In 2007 the submarine entered Halifax for refit. Originally scheduled for completion in two years, the refit was still not complete as of early 2011.[14] During the refit, rust was discovered which will restrict the maximum depth to which the submarine can safely dive.[15] According to reports, due to unexpected problems, the refit suffered delays and cost overruns. These included bad welds in the hull, broken torpedo tubes, a faulty rudder and tiles on the side of the sub that continually fell off. In 2010, the Royal Canadian Navy spent $45 million on repairs to Windsor for which it had budgeted $17 million. The refit began in 2007 and was scheduled to be completed in 2009. The submarine was relaunched on 11 April 2012.[16][17] After being out of the water for five years, Windsor was lowered back into the water. The submarine was then guided out of the lift area to a nearby dock where the submarine remained for more testing until sea trials.[18]
Shortly afterwards one of the engines was declared unusable, and Windsor was drydocked in March 2014. Work was scheduled to be completed in September at a projected cost of $1.5 million.[11] The work was expanded in June to incorporate other maintenance needs on the submarine as well as a main sonar system upgrade for a total cost of $18 million.[19] On 8 October 2014, Windsor completed her dry-dock maintenance and upgrade cycle and was re-floated.[20]
In Fall 2015, Windsor deployed for large NATO naval exercises Joint Warrior and Trident Venture with Athabaskan, Halifax, Montréal, Goose Bay and Summerside, returning on 17 December.[21] On 15 February 2016, while operating off the US East coast, one of her batteries was found leaking a discharge. The submarine put into Norfolk, Virginia where she awaited specialists from Canada to arrive. After repairs were performed at Norfolk, Windsor returned to Halifax in March 2016.[22][23]
The submarine deployed in June 2016 to participate in NATO naval exercises off the coast of Norway. However, while in transit, one of the submarine's diesel generators refused to engage. The submarine returned to Halifax for repairs, which were effected and the submarine sailed for Europe a week later.[24][25] The submarine returned to Halifax on 9 August.[26] In September Windsor was among the Canadian warships deployed to the NATO naval training exercise "Cutlass Fury" off the east coast of North America.[27] Beginning in February 2017, Windsor deployed into the Atlantic Ocean, taking part in a NATO naval exercise and monitoring sea traffic in shipping lanes. The submarine returned to Halifax on 20 June 2018.[28]
References [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]''We could easily be turning out 90 tons a month, because we've got the orders but not the working capital,'' said Guillermo Robledo, chosen by the workers to be the plant manager. Instead, he added, ''we're in the ironic position of having to extend 60-day credit lines to our customers, some of whom are large multinationals'' with much easier access to capital than a workers' cooperative.
Like most of the cooperatives, this factory is run by an administrative council, whose members are elected by the workers. Monthly assemblies are held to discuss issues like salaries -- which have nearly doubled since the low point as the economy collapsed -- how many new workers to hire and who they should be.
The IMPA workers have even voted to turn space that was not being used into a neighborhood cultural and arts center. Dance, drama and music classes and performances now take place regularly there, movies are shown in a small theater on an upper floor and artists have been allowed to set up studios where they paint, draw and sculpture.
''Being a factory and a cultural center simultaneously is something unique,'' said Eduardo Murúa, a leader of the cooperative. The positive response to the cultural activities, he said, provides ''an umbrella that prevents the banks from acting against us'' and has gained the factory favorable publicity and financial support from city government.
Faced with the loss of jobs and tax revenues, the municipality has sought to help by taking legal title to abandoned or derelict factories and the machinery inside. Under new legislation, it rents the premises to the workers' cooperatives on concessionary terms for two years and supports them in their efforts to negotiate with creditors.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
But with the Argentine economy -- especially companies that export goods -- finally showing some signs of recovery, the original owners of some plants have resurfaced, with hopes of reclaiming their proprietorship. That has led to legal struggles and, in one case, even violence.
In April, the police sought unsuccessfully to enforce a court order and evict workers from the Brukman textile factory, a producer of men's suits, jackets and pants. The 56 employees who have been running the plant since the end of 2001, though owed wages, had not followed the procedures established by the city ordinance to gain control. That provided a legal basis for owners' complaints that they are merely trespassers and thieves.
At factories where ownership is not in dispute, the employee-managers confront other problems. Initially, workers say, some longstanding suppliers and clients were reluctant to do business with them, which they attribute to class prejudices, and even now, bank loans and supplier credits are nearly impossible to get.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
''It was difficult to get started because even though the company had a reputation, people did not believe that we workers were capable of managing things,'' said Jorge Luján Gutiérrez, an employee of the Chilavert print shop. ''We had to show that the high level of quality was still intact and that the only thing missing was a few executives in the front office.''
Workers acknowledge that they, too, have had to change their attitudes. As owner-managers, they are no longer concerned just with production, but also with aspects of running a business that were alien to them before.
''We had no notion of all the things we were going to have to learn,'' said José Camilo Guglielmero, a founder of the cooperative that now runs Ghelco, S.A., a leading producer of sauces and toppings for ice cream and pastries. ''I've never liked to speak in front of people, but now I'm talking to clients and helping to design marketing and sales campaigns.''
Now that they are shareholders and not just employees, the workers are also more willing to make personal sacrifices in the name of the corporation. At Ghelco, for example, ''everyone makes the same wages now, from directors to the janitors,'' Mr. Guglielmero said: 600 pesos, or $200, a month, compared with the 1,200 pesos a month he said he earned under the previous owners.
''Everybody is a partner here,'' Mr. Robledo said of IMPA. ''That's our strength, the commitment we feel to something that is our own.''CLOSE Averaging 10.6 points in last 7 games. The Enquirer/Tom Groeschen
Kevin Johnson is coming off a career high 18-point game for the University of Cincinnati. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)
Kevin Johnson is hot, after starting slowly this year for the University of Cincinnati basketball team.
Johnson, a 6-foot-3 senior shooting guard from Summit Country Day, comes off a career high 18-point game in UC’s 119-68 rout of Fairleigh Dickinson this past Saturday. The No. 24 Bearcats (9-2) next play Marshall (7-4) on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Fifth Third Arena (CBS Sports Network).
Johnson averaged only 2.0 points through the Bearcats’ first four games. Johnson since has averaged 10.6 points, having scored in double figures in five of seven games. For the year, Johnson is averaging a career high 7.5 points per game.
“It’s a long year, and you’re gonna go through ups and downs,” Johnson said. “Just staying in the gym getting extra shots and being confident, trying to figure out what I can tweak to keep improving our offense.”
Johnson’s slow getaway may have been partially because of having bronchitis in preseason. Healthy now, the lanky Johnson has started to score and also maintained his elite level of defense. Johnson is tied for the team lead in steals, with 15.
“Kevin is our best defensive player, and it’s not even close,” UC coach Mick Cronin said.
UC junior forward Gary Clark was named American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year last season by league coaches, when Clark’s numbers included 1.5 blocks and 1.2 steals per game. But, it was Johnson who received UC Co-Defensive Player of the Year honors (along with since-departed forward Octavius Ellis) at the team banquet.
“Gary Clark is extremely smart,” Cronin said. “He led us in blocked shots, and coaches love him because he never takes a bad shot. Coaches want to vote for Gary Clark for something. He plays quietly good defense. He helps, he rotates, he blocks shots.”
Still, it is Johnson who often sets the tone with tenacious perimeter defense. Quick, fast and smart, Johnson tries to thwart opposing guards before they can get their offense started.
“You’ve got to embrace any role you get on the team,” Johnson said. “It all counts. Being a defensive person who can guard on the perimeter is something we need. Stopping penetration is big for our defense and key for our team victory. I just try to do my part.”
The 18 points last Saturday were a nice bonus for Johnson, including 4-for-6 from three-point range. Johnson also made the weekly AAC honor roll.
“Kevin played so hard the other night,” Cronin said. “He’s such a good athlete, but I never saw him as tired as he was the other night. He was playing so hard, trying to smother FDU. That was our game plan and he was so bought in, trying to smother them. It was the first time I ever took in him out in four years because he was tired.”
NEWSLETTERS Get the Bengals Beat newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-876-4500. Delivery: Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Bengals Beat Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
UC has made the last six NCAA Tournaments and, barring something unforeseen, should make it seven.
“Being a senior, winning our conference title, winning the conference tournament and trying to make a run, that would be the greatest thing,” Johnson said. “I’d love for us to go deep in March. That’s my plan. That’s what I would wish for my last year.”
Scouting Marshall: Marshall was picked to finish fourth in Conference USA in a preseason poll of league coaches.
The Thundering Herd are an offensive machine, ranking 17th nationally with an 86.2 scoring average. Marshall also has trouble stopping people, ranking 335th in scoring defense at 83.1.
“Great offensive team,” Cronin said. “We’re going to use some of their clips to show our guys, ‘Here’s how you do it right.’ ”
Yet, the Herd are relatively undersized, one reason they allow so many points.
“Their rebounding is a weakness, but that tells you how good they are on the offensive end, to be 7-4,” Cronin said.
Marshall is led by 6-3 junior point guard Jon Elmore, who averages 21.1 points and 6.9 assists. Stevie Browning, a 6-3 senior guard, averages 16.7 points.
Other probable starters are 6-5 senior forward Ryan Taylor (12.5 ppg), 6-4 senior guard Ryan Loop (11.6) and 6-9 sophomore forward Ajdin Penava (6.4).
Third-year Marshall coach Dan D’Antoni is the older brother of NBA Houston Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni.
Flying high: UC is known as a defensive team, but the Bearcats are shooting 49.6 percent from the field and averaging 80.1 points per game. Both figures are the best of the 11-year Cronin era.
UC lineup: Probable UC starters are 6-6 sophomore guard Jacob Evans (15.1 ppg), 6-9 junior forward Kyle Washington (15.0), 6-4 senior guard Troy Caupain (10.5), Clark (8.7) and Johnson (7.5).
-
No. 24 Cincinnati vs. Marshall
Tipoff: 7 p.m. Thursday at Fifth Third Arena (13,176)
TV/Radio: CBS Sports Network/700-WLW AM
Records: UC 9-2, Marshall 7-4Comparisons between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are nothing new. Both are idiosyncratic, outsider social democrats—“grumpy old socialists” some say — who've risen to prominence representing popular views abandoned by elites, particularly elites of the institutional center-left parties in each of their countries. Both were seen as fringe candidates when they first stepped forward last year and elites just can't wait to re-marginalize them again — but that may not be so easy, both because of who they are and because of what they represent.
Comparisons first kicked into gear when Corbyn won election as Labour leader, naturally gaining Sanders' congratulation, though naysayers were commonplace, even then. Then, when Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, comparisons intensified—their supporters, for one thing, were strikingly similar. There were dissenting voices, but the broad similarities were so striking that even Tony Blair couldn't help but notice them, professing bafflement, leading Guardian commentator Deborah Orr to respond:
Advertisement:
Tony Blair says he is “baffled” by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders because of “the question of electability”. For him, these choices are simply not pragmatic. No matter what fine ideas candidates may espouse, for Blair the key matter is whether they can achieve power. Not that he thinks Corbyn and Sanders are exactly brimming with fine ideas: “Free tuition fees: well, that’s great,” he says. “But someone’s going to have pay for it.”
But the answer, of course, is obvious. Pragmatism itself doesn’t seem terribly pragmatic any longer. Pragmatism, as practised by Blair, ended in disaster, despite the supposed cleverness of its compromises.
The same could be said of Clintonian pragmatism as well. But Hillary Clinton has been pragmatic enough to move left in response to Sanders—a process that's continued even after she was declared the presumptive nominee, and Sanders had supposedly squandered his chance to have any influence.
Corbyn, too, was supposedly washed up after the Brexit vote. He lost a no-confidence vote among Labour members of parliament, 172-40, and the only questions were how he would leave, and who would replace. Yet simultaneously, the leading candidate to replace him, Angela Eagle, was embarrassed when her local Labour Party opposed the no-confidence vote. More broadly, Labour membership surged massively by 100,000 in support of Corbyn, as he issued a defiant message, reaffirming his commitment to traditional Labour Party principles and the people who supported him, and the coup plotters admitted defeat:
One senior MP told The Telegraph: "It's finished. He will win easily in a second contest if he is on the ballot, it's everything we wanted to avoid."
Democracy! It's such a bother!
Here in America, elite commentators were puzzled, if not dismissive, when Sanders focused on fighting for the platform to reflect his goals. Who pays any attention to platforms, anyway? But Sanders saw elite contempt for the platform as yet another elite blind-spot, a weak-point to be turned to his advantage. Platforms are only irrelevant if there's no one there to hold party leaders accountable. To make sure there is someone there, one has to wage a fight on their behalf—precisely what Sanders has done, sustaining his call for a political revolution. The results have been impressive, as Steve Bennen noted:
The document, which is available in its entirety, is surprising in its audacity on everything from free community college to expanding Social Security, overturning Citizens United to banning assault weapons, criminal justice reform to repealing the Hyde Amendment that prevents public funding of abortion.
There can be little doubt that many of these provisions and more – reforming the carried-interest loophole, postal banking, the industry ties of Federal Reserve board members – can be attributed directly to the Sanders campaign’s role in negotiating the terms of the platform. The senator and his team made a concerted effort to move the document to the left, and they achieved their goals in dramatic fashion.
Advertisement:
Everyone expects Clinton's campaign to move back toward the center—and Sanders lost some key votes after Bennen, most notably on trade. But the Sanders team has altered the dynamics—perhaps permanently. They have laid out markers—and gotten them accepted by the party — that will provide rallying points for moving left, not right, in future situations. And if that's what's already written in the platform, it will further encourage folks to continue thinking farther and farther outside the “pragmatic” box.
It's not limited to the platform. Clinton herself recently announced a significant shift in her higher education policy, including “eliminating tuition at in-state public universities for families making under $125,000 by 2021.” As political scientist Corey Robin argued, though still imperfect (“ I think means-testing higher ed makes about as much sense as means-testing Social Security or elementary school”) it represents a significant advancement:
Way beyond anything between Clinton v. Sanders, this plan by Clinton is something that can, potentially, change the way people think about their taxes and what the state can do for them. It’s a step toward a political and ideological realignment.
But also, a potential change in way people think about their own power:
[I]t could help change our sense of where power lies. It could help more people see what the good activist and the smart organizer already sees: that if we could just possibly get our shit together, we might, sometimes, find power elsewhere. Not power in the abstract, but power to change the concrete terms and conditions of our daily lives.
This is precisely what Bernie Sanders means by a political revolution. And for all the shortcomings one still sees in Clinton's plan, this significant shift towards his position validates him even more powerfully at this more fundamental level.
Advertisement:
Yes, Sanders and Corbyn are unlikely leaders, precisely because the entire elite leadership structures have lost their way, leaving a void that only unlikely outsiders could fill. The elite dysfunction that gave rise to them isn't going away, even if they could get rid of Sanders and Corbyn overnight. But the mass desire for a functioning democracy — one that actually meets people's needs — isn't going anywhere either. That's the real significance of Sanders and Corbyn—they've helped rekindle that desire.Someone broke into an Alcova Heights apartment last week, used the bathroom, and didn’t flush. From this week’s Arlington County crime report:
UNLAWFUL ENTRY, 02/17/12, 3600 block of S. 5th Street. Between 7:45 am, on February 14, and 6 pm, on February 15, an unknown subject entered the victim’s apartment and used the bathroom. There were no items reported missing. There is no suspect description.
According to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck, the bathroom bandit may not have flushed, but he or she did, at least, turn off the lights.
“An unknown subject defacated in the victims toilet and didn’t flush,” Sternbeck said in an email. “The suspect also turned off interior lights in the residence that were left on… there were no signs of forced entry.”
Sternbeck said he could not recall any similar incidents in Arlington in recent memory. The rest of this week’s crime report, after the jump.Photos of this amazing hearse recently popped up online, and it’s pretty irresistible to anyone who likes weird cars, dead things, or any combination of the two.
According to this Flickr user, the 1947 18-window Frankenstein Buick hearse, currently rotting away in some field in Greece, is a mutant version of a Buick Roadmaster Eight. The description states that it was originally built in Flint, Michigan, and most likely coachbuilt in Greece.
The Frankenstein hearse is powered by a Mercedes Benz engine and has 1956 Chevrolet tail lights and bumper.
Apparently it’s for sale. And ships worldwide.
Someone definitely needs to save this thing from the field.
UPDATE: The hearse was bought by Dante Fontana. You can follow the restoration of his 1947 Buick Nekrofora on this Facebook group.Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
In March, shortly after President Barack Obama signed an extension of the Violence Against Women Act into law, the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women sent an email to the hundreds of nonprofits and government agencies around the country that rely on its annual grants. The message was grim: Due to cuts mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, better known as sequestration, programs that fight domestic violence and sexual assault would see a $20 million drop in funding over the next year. It was Washington at its most inept: Almost immediately after renewing VAWA, a popular law intended to help victims of abuse, Congress had stunted its own efforts, leaving already cash-strapped programs looking for ways to scrape by.
In the months since sequestration kicked in, Congress acted swiftly to restore funding for tuition aid for active-duty service members and prevent unpopular furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration. But lawmakers have shown little interest in restoring funding to programs that deal with domestic violence and sexual assault.
“The tower is understaffed and the rescue plane can’t land,” says Kim Gandy, president and CEO National Network to End Domestic Violence. “We’re talking about really vital services to people who are already in a terrible situation and really in need of emergency services—and there aren’t alternatives.”
The projections are bleak. Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) office estimates that 70,120 fewer domestic violence victims will have access to recovery programs and shelters; 35,900 fewer people will get help obtaining non-shelter services such as restraining orders and sexual assault treatment. Cuts to programs related to the Victims Against Crime Act will hurt another 310,574 people. And the effects are already being felt:
In Shreveport, Louisiana, the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, a group of 11 nurses who make house calls to collect evidence from rape victims, is considering closing for good.
The Kentucky Domestic Violence Association is eliminating a sexual assault prevention coordinator and asking another to go part time; if funding isn’t restored by next year, it may be forced to close shelters.
The Department of Defense, which originally planned on hiring 829 sexual assault response coordinators to combat the epidemic of rape in the military, said recruitment for some positions will be put on hold.
The Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center in Portland, Oregon, which provides services to American citizens who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and forced marriages in 175 countries, is considering closing its doors in September, meaning around 550 women will have to find a new place for crisis services. The center, the only private organization in the United States that provides such services specifically for Americans overseas, is uniquely vulnerable to the budget cuts because it is ineligible for funding from both the Violence Against Women Act (because it works overseas) and from the proposed International Violence Against Women Act (because that overseas work is with Americans). The center was counting on a grant from the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime, but was told there would be no new grants this year. It has already canceled community outreach and volunteer training events in order to stay on budget. “They say we have to make sure that this population is served but there’s no funding stream for it,” says Paula Lucas, the organization’s founder.
Melinda Reed, executive director of the Friendship Center in Helena, Montana—the only domestic violence shelter in a three-county area—was already trying to make ends meet after losing out on a major federal grant when she took the job in April; sequestration makes it less likely she’ll be able to restore funding for things like cash stipends and food assistance for women and children. “It’s gonna be pretty devastating,” Reed says. “We are currently operating with reduced staffing and that is our foreseeable future.”
In Rhode Island, the biggest enemy is the calendar. On June 1, the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence is dramatically scaling back its victims’ advocacy services to four days a week. Deb DeBare, RICADV’s executive director, says that by closing on Mondays, her program will ultimately serve about 1,600 fewer people than it would if it were operating at capacity. That’s 1,600 people for whom it will be that much harder to get restraining orders or custody rights. “This is sort of the nail in the coffin,” DeBare says. It is also resulting in layoffs this summer. Nine full- and part-time positions are scheduled to be eliminated, and at least one shelter is reducing the number of beds on site (by 10). DeBare says the personnel moves are a consequence of a multitude of factors, “a slow and painful belt-tightening” that has hit her agencies since the economic crisis began.
Domestic violence programs were, for the most part, already pressed for cash before sequestration, subsisting mostly on a patchwork of state and federal grants, and private donations. A 5 percent cut in Utah is particularly is particularly painful because the state is almost wholly reliant on federal funding.
“The rural areas are so remote that for the services that are available, there are many people that can’t access services to begin with,” says Peg Coleman, executive director of the Utah Domestic Violence Council. “So 5 percent of a very skeletal budget has an enormous impact.”
Just last year, the oldest shelter in Utah, at the YWCA in Salt Lake City, closed down an entire wing of its building due to diminishing federal funding—a loss of about 30 beds.
“That’s the choice: Do we not respond?” Coleman says. “I don’t know that we can keep doing this. We can’t keep doing a response of 80 hours on a 20-hour salary. It’s not sustainable and it’s not humane.” Advocates have asked lawmakers to restore at least some of the funding that has evaporated over the last year. And perhaps the quick response to the FAA cuts is an indication that a concerted lobbying effort really is an antidote to the worst of sequestration. But Gandy, who casts her work as a matter of literal life and death, fears for the worst.
“They’re gonna wait for more pain, and maybe wait for some woman who couldn’t get emergency shelter to be murdered.”State-funded attorneys representing nearly 27,000 low-income Californians have helped many of them avoid eviction and settle disputes over housing and child custody far more often than those facing similar disputes without lawyers, the state Judicial Council reports.
The project provides legal assistance to people in seven counties, including San Francisco, facing certain types of high-stakes civil suits in which the other side has a lawyer. While low-income people charged with crimes have a constitutional right to a lawyer at government expense, there is no such right in civil cases.
A review of cases resolved between 2011 and 2016 found that lawyers provided by the project were able to reach settlements about twice as often as people in similar cases without lawyers. In addition, feuding family members found ways to collaborate, the number of evictions declined, and tenants who left their homes usually found replacement housing, the Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the state courts, said in a report released Friday.
Another finding was that, with legal representation, far fewer low-income people gave up defending their cases and defaulted.
“Attorneys are able to successfully negotiate settlements and reduce emotional tensions between the parties,” the report said. “They can also help people resolve their own issues, armed with a clearer understanding of their options.”
The council provided funds, starting in 2011, to legal service agencies and local courts to pay for lawyers and court services in cases involving housing, child custody, domestic violence, and impaired or disabled people who require guardians or conservators.
Aid was offered to those making no more than twice the federal poverty level, or $48,000 for a family of four. A majority of the clients were female and nonwhite, the report said.
In San Francisco, the funding was directed at child custody disputes. Over nearly four years, the report said, lawyers from a nonprofit operated by the Bar Association of San Francisco represented low-income litigants in 227 cases and provided advice and assistance to an additional 1,742 people representing themselves.
When the cases were concluded, the report said, the number of clients with sole legal custody of their children had increased from 5 to 10 percent, and the number with joint legal custody had risen from 37 to 58 percent.
The housing cases in other counties involved tenants who had received eviction notices. With legal representation, the report said, only 6 percent were actually evicted. And while 78 percent of the tenants wound up leaving their homes, a large majority reached settlements that helped them find new homes, the report said.
It recommended seeking state funding to expand the program, noting that federal legal aid for the poor is in peril. President Trump’s budget would eliminate federal funding for the Legal Services Corp., the nonprofit that is the largest source of support for low-income Americans in civil cases.
Federal funding cuts are “threatening to increase the justice gap, rather than move closer to the goal of equal access,” the Judicial Council report said.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelkoSARAH PALIN (7/8/2014): The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored.... So it's time to impeach.
Well, since clicking on that page there already caused Facebook to change all my pop-up ads to snow machine and moose clubbing products, let's stay with it.
SARAH PALIN (7/8/2014): Enough is enough of the years of abuse of this President. His unsecured border crisis, for me, is the last straw. It makes kinda the battered wife say no más.
Now, if I may, it appears ex-Governor Palin is finally finished with mangling the English language, and has moved on to making Spanish incomprehensible. (audience laughter) She's like a serial killer of language, or whatever the opposite of a Rosetta Stone is.
Anyway, the point is this. Her point is, the real victim of children fleeing violence in central America is Latina Sarah Palin. It might be easier to dismiss this call for impeachment as just another serving of Sarah Palin's patented word sausages, if not for the fact that people who didn't quit their elected offices mid-term are echoing it.
REP. DOUG COLLINS, R-GA (12/3/2013): You gotta go up there and you just impeach him. REP. KERRY BENTIVOLIO, R-MI (8/19/2013): Tell me how I can impeach the President of the United States.... It would be a dream come true. REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MN (5/16/2013): There isn't a weekend that hasn't gone by that someone says to me, Michele, what in the world are you all waiting for in Congress? Why aren't you impeaching the President?
That's my Michele Bachmann impression.
The truth is, for most Republicans, impeachment is probably too good for this President.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MN (1/30/2014): He declared himself King Obama. SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY (1/16/2013):... this king complex... REP. LO |
"All politics is local". You cannot get more local than the hundreds of Tea Party community groups acting together to advance a comparable objective. Consider adopting the proposed draft of the NTPP Mission Statement. The mission of the Naples Tea Party Patriots is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens in an effort to return our state and our nation back to the vision of our Founding Fathers. That includes a return to smaller government that is fiscally responsible, based upon genuine free enterprise and markets, fair and minimal taxes and restricted government intrusion. We recognize and support the strength of a grassroots organization, using activism coupled with civic responsibility at the local level. We recognize essential God given truth, morals, and principles on which our country and state believes, the cornerstone purpose being the preservation of individual Liberty. We hold that the United States is a Republic, and government authority comes from the consent of the people, entrusted in the hands of term-limited officials. We recognize the sovereign rights of the States and the People, as set forth by the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution. We support the original Bill of Rights, with emphasis upon property rights, the right to keep and bear arms and freedom of religion and speech. At all times we shall promote the freedom and liberty of the people of New York above all else. At the recent October 2, 2010 Watkins Glen Tea Party Rally, long time activist Bob Schulz informed and invigorated a group of 450 enthusiasts. Their exuberance is well placed, because the waking up process is irreversible. Mr. Schulz advocates the petitioning for right of grievances. The Tea Party philosophy, as professed by NTPP, strictly adheres to a non-violent course, when confronting the tyranny of a government that has forgone any claim to legitimacy. No wonder the rats are jumping ship and getting out of Dodge. Political pressure is the only language that gets the attention of public officials. Armed with righteous outrage and equipped with a rational and moral philosophy, the Tea Party brigade is marching into the corridors of power with the scent of victory in the air. Such an optimistic viewpoint is seldom displaced on BREAKING ALL THE RULES. The reality of the New World Order is horrendous for humanity. The clock is running down. The fate of America rests in the balance. The last best hope is for an enormous critical mass to explode and implode the ruling class. Tea Party members are in the vanguard of this second American Revolution. Their philosophy is America at her best. SARTRE – October 10, 2010Trump's nomination of South Carolina's popular Indian-American governor as U.N. Ambassador sends powerful signals at home and abroad.
Donald Trump says he doesn’t approve of “identity” politics – the idea of privileging a person’s ethnicity or gender as a criterion for political appointment.
But how much identity politics was involved in his decision to nominate South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as our nation’s next U.N. ambassador?
Quite a lot, it would seem.
To be sure, Haley is well-liked in GOP elite circles. She’s rightly earned kudos — and not just from Republicans — for her diplomatic handling of the Confederate flag controversy. But aside from traveling overseas to develop trade deals for her state, she has no special qualifications to represent America in a world forum.
Of course, Hillary Clinton had no real qualifications to become President Obama’s Secretary of State, either. She’d traveled to world capitals with husband Bill as First Lady. She’d represented New York, a global city. But that was it. Obama, who didn’t have real qualifications for his own job, anointed Clinton as part of a deal to resolve the outcome of the 2008 Democratic primary race.
And apparently the world loved the idea.
The world may come to love Haley, too. She’s what liberals like to call a “woman of color” in a party that is still criticized for its lack of diversity. Moreover, Trump’s been under fire for naming personal loyalists and policy iconoclasts to top posts at Justice, CIA and the National Security Council – all of them older white men.
Perhaps the world needs reassurance that Trump is prepared to operate within more traditional bounds. And so does the liberal media. So, there’s little doubt that the nomination of Haley, a one-time Tea Party insurgent who opposed Trump’s candidacy for months, is useful in an “optical” sense.
Haley’s also Indian-American, an ethnic immigrant group that Republicans have been eyeing for several years now as a possible counterweight to Democratic dominance of African-Americans and Hispanics. While comprising no more than 3 million people, their influence far outweighs their numbers. For one thing, they are the country’s richest Asian sub-group with average incomes (roughly $90,000) nearly twice the national level ($49,000). They are mainly doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs, with privileged visa status, and special access to federal small business loans.
They also have a propensity to open their wallets. Not only Haley but fellow Indian-American governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has benefitted mightily from their largesse. Currently, Indian-Americans still tilt Democratic by a 2-1 margin, far less than Hispanics, but broadly in keeping with other Asian-American groups. But that could well change with Haley’s ascension, one of the less obvious sub-texts to her recent nomination.
That sub-text may also have a powerful global twist. Just last year, the Obama administration made a big push to recognize India as a major strategic bulwark in Asia against the influence of China, Muslim Pakistan and ISIS. The recently elected Indian president, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who was once barred from entering the US because of his alleged involvement in anti-Muslim pogroms, was warmly welcomed by President Obama at the White House.
And Indian immigrants, who are heavily involved in politics in their native land and maintain ongoing transnational family and financial ties, are watching these developments closely. Many are just as proud of Modi, who represents a distinct break with India’s quasi-socialist past and an embrace of Republican-style conservatism, as they are of Haley.
After Modi visited Obama, he also stopped in New York, where Indian-Americans of both parties turned out in record numbers at Madison Square Garden and treated him to a hero’s welcome
None of this rising Indian-American sentiment was lost on the Trump campaign, which undoubtedly views Modi and the Indian-American community as future strategic allies, too. Trump spoke at a number of major fundraising events with Indian-Americans where he professed his love of the community and its culture. It may not be known for months how Indian-Americans voted in November but it would come as no surprise to anyone if Trump performed better than any GOP candidate in recent memory.
Publicly, Haley still tends to play down her ancestry. She grew up in the South where Indian culture is virtually unheard of. She’s also a Christian in a community whose members are mostly Hindu or secular. And as a staunch conservative, she’s not a big fan of the kind of identity politics that liberals celebrate as part of their ideological creed.
But she may well benefit from this politics just as Trump and his fledgling administration could on a number of levels — which the crafty real estate mogul probably realized all along. Haley’s nomination sends a number of interesting political signals, and Democrats, who would love to have a Haley in their own party, will be hard-pressed not to confirm her.YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP (AP) – A 19-year-old white Ypsilanti Township woman was ordered to write a 200- to 250-word essay on diversity, attend a racial sensitivity class, spend six months in jail and serve two years’ probation for racial slurs aimed at her black next-door neighbor.
Judge Darlene O’Brien called Leah Keaton’s behavior “very, very hurtful” during Monday’s sentencing in Washtenaw County Probate Court, AnnArbor.com reported Thursday. Keaton had pleaded guilty July 23 to ethnic intimidation.
“I want to get my life on a better track,” Keaton told O’Brien.
Keaton’s 23-year-old neighbor told police she was pushed to the ground after confronting Keaton and her ex-boyfriend, Joseph Starr, on July 3 upon overhearing them repeatedly use a racial slur.
Police left after no one answered the door at Keaton’s home, about 30 miles southwest of Detroit. But officers returned after receiving complaints that Keaton and Starr were throwing rocks at the neighbor’s house and singing songs about killing black people.
Keaton and Starr were arrested a few days later. Authorities later learned the same racial slur had been used toward the neighbor’s 63-year-old father.
“You are a danger to the race you are targeting,” assistant Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brenda Taylor told Keaton. Taylor also read aloud in court a Facebook post in which Keaton bragged about the incident.
Laura Dudley, Keaton’s court-appointed attorney, argued that her client was influenced by her ex-boyfriend. Starr was sentenced Aug. 8 to 60 days in jail after pleading no contest to assault and battery.
(© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)YPG (People's Defense Units) Press Office released the balance sheet of war for the month of May.
“During May, 2017, the invading Turkish army and gangs acting under their command attacked Rojava and Northern Syria 80 times with heavy weaponry, howitzer and mortar fire.
Artillery attacks caused material damage on civilian houses and properties. The invading Turkish army's jets and unmanned aerial vehicles flew over Rojava and violated Rojava borders 32 times.
During the month, two brief clashes took place between our forces and the invading Turkish army at the border.
Attacks by the invading Turkish army left 3 civilians dead, one other wounded.
As result of attacks by the Turkish army and gangs under their command, 2 YPG fighters were martyred and 4 others were wounded.
Within the scope of legitimate defense, YPG/YPJ forces retaliated against the interventions and attacks of the Turkish army and allied gangs 51 times. Two soldiers of the invading Turkish army and 20 members of Turkish-backed gangs were killed, 8 gang members were wounded, 1 unmanned scout plane was hit another was damaged.
During the month of May, ISIS gangs launched two comprehensive attacks on the positions of YPG/YPJ fighters partaking in the defense of Shaddadi. These attacks were repelled by our fighters, of whom 10 fell as martyrs whilst putting up a brave fight.
YPG/YPJ forces' participation in the Operation Wrath of Euphrates continued during May when significant successes were achieved and strategic locations such as Tabqa were liberated. YPG/YPJ fighters' struggle made a positive contribution to the progress of the campaign for the liberation of the Tabqa town and surroundings of the Raqqa city. During the month, 92 YPG/YPJ fighters were martyred in the Operation Wrath of Euphrates.
4 YPG fighters fell as result of accidents and 3 others in various parts of Rojava.
During the month of May, 111 YPG fighters, of whom 8 are YPJ members, fell as martyrs in Rojava and Northern Syria.”For those who where wondering about paint being unlocked, here are the results: NOUnfortunately it is not possible at all to unlock paints at any level (unless i missed 1 small key point,which i dont think i did) So, heres why... You can unlock the paint and set it just as you would be able to any other part (rims engine ect..) and process the order/send it... However in game the order will go through except the paint will not be affected and will not change (unless its already unlocked) So what im assuming they did was make it the same way they made the payments and load it from in game, not the app...thus making it impossible to get paints with no requirements...I haven't looked into using charles method for paint unlocks but here is a link if you where curious... Charles MethodKarachi, May 5
The mystery illness of three Pakistani brothers has baffled the medical community which is trying to diagnose their ailment that leaves them paralysed after sunset.
The three —Shoaib, Rashid and Ilyas Hashim aged one, nine and 13— are residents of Mian Kundi, a village some 15 kilometres from Quetta. They are like normal kids in the day full of energy but once the sun sets their bodies are unable to move.
"Known as the solar kids" in their village the children get back their energy and start moving around once the sun rises.
The three have been admitted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) in Islamabad for tests and possible treatment.
"It is a rare medical condition which we have never encountered before and we are investigating it," Dr Javed Akram, the Chancellor at Pims, said.
A nine-member board was formed to conduct tests and blood samples and test reports have already been sent to thirteen international collaborators, including Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins Medical Institute in the US and Guys Hospital in London.
Hundreds of tests have been carried out, but to no avail.
According to the early diagnosis, the three may be suffering from a congenital disease called Masthenia Syndrome which is a rare illness with only 600 cases reported all over the world so far.
"From what we know, theirs is the first reported case of such an illness in Pakistan and we are trying to solve this condition with the help of medical science," he said.
"Their bodies are clearly synced to the movement of the sun."
Their father Hashim, who works as a security guard at IT University in Quetta, has told doctors his sons were born with the condition.
"Their bodies appeared to be dependent on sunlight from birth. When villagers heard about them, they were amazed, and they were christened'solar kids'," Hashim told a television channel.
Interestingly Hashim, married to his first cousin, has three more children who are normal, including two boys and a girl.
"They are like normal children and two of them go to study at the local madrassa everyday. The sun rays appear to give them energy and life. But as soon as the sun starts setting in their strength and energy appears to vanish and their bodies are paralysed," he said.
The children attend classes at the seminary and also play cricket with their siblings and friends.
They also tend to help out their father out with his part-time livestock farming, tending to the sheep and goats.
Dr Akram said his team is working with a team of 27 Pakistanis and 13 international doctors to treat the three brothers.
"What is good is their illness has shown no signs of worsening with time and there might be a cure for them," he added. — PTIHere comes the biggest cleantech startup launch since Bloom Energy: Acompany called Transphorm has emerged from stealth on Wednesday afternoon at Google’s headquarters, touting an energy-efficient power conversion module for power-hungry devices from servers to electric car batteries to solar panels, and an enviable $38 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital.
Founded in 2007, Transphorm is looking to make power conversion more energy-efficient and reduce the wasted energy out of systems. The grid is rather inefficient, particularly as electricity powers up devices. Transphorm says its power conversion modules can eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses, and to do so, the company is betting on the semiconductor material gallium nitride (as opposed to silicon), which is the same material used in LED lighting. Transphorm CEO Umesh Mishra said at the event:
“The current solution, which is based on silicon, is a solution which has reached its limit in high voltage power conversion. We can’t eke out any more efficiency out of this technology. The time is now to do something different and to impact the 10 percent of wasted energy that occurs in power conversion.”
Transphorm hasn’t invented gallium nitride; other companies have been tinkering with the material for years. But Mishra says most companies that use gallium nitride are working on low voltage conversion, while Transphorm is cracking high voltage conversion.
At the event, Kleiner Perkins’ Randy Komisar said one thing that attracted Kleiner to Transphorm was the size of the problem: It’s an impact that could take the equivalent of the entire West Coast off the grid, said Komisar. Transphorm CEO Mishra is a professor of electric and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara and has submitted patents for gallium nitride based devices.
Komisar said Transphorm can make devices that are small and that its customers can turn into converters, power supplies, PV, motor drives, and hybrid cars. “Our biggest competitors are companies that make power conversion devices using silicon,” said Mishra.
In terms of how much more the technology will cost compared to the standard on the market today, Mishra said only, “No new technology is cheap.” Komisar said he expected the tech to be as cheap as the silicon version as the company reaches higher volumes. Mishra also said the company wasn’t looking to build chip fabs at this time, but could do so one day in the future. Transphorm says it will announce its first products next month.
Transphorm is also working on a project for the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, and raised a grant from ARPA-E, which describes the company’s project as “compact motor drives and grid-tied inverters operating at high power (3-10 kW) with efficiency greater than 96 percent.” For that project, Transphorm will build gallium nitride-based power switches for inverters and converters operating at high frequency. Transphorm’s $38 million in funding was raised over three rounds.
For more research on electric vehicles and energy management check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required): Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry The Real Reason Google is Buying Wind Power The Developer’s Guide to Home Energy Management AppsThe blocksize / Bitcoin XT debate is getting pretty heated (see this thread). In Computer Science, real data and real deployments are the things which matter and no amount of arguing or simulations are a substitute for real deployments.
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
For the blocksize debate, people usually point out that network bandwidth/latency is limited in different parts of the world and larger blocks can mean that only people with high bandwidth connections can participate in the network. We can easily test this out. There is a great resource PlanetLab that is used by thousands of researchers to run real-world experiments. Think of PlanetLab as Amazon AWS for researchers. It has real nodes/hardware deployed all over the world and you can run real experiments on it. Instead of debating “what will happen when someone in India with a 256 Kbps joins XT with 8MB blocks”. You can actually run XT on nodes in India using PlanetLab and just see what happens. I’m happy to put XT developers in touch with the PlanetLab core devs for this experiment.
Real data trumps everything. Period.Adobe Lightroom comes with a handy feature call “presets”. As the name suggests, presets allow you to save the settings for multiple effects, and then apply them all to a new photo with a single click (much like an Instagram filter). There are numerous sites offering Lightroom presets for free or for a price. What you may not know is that the free raw photo editor darktable has a similar feature: darktable styles.*
Creating darktable styles
If you want to export the darktable modules applied to an image as a style, go to the Lighttable view and select the image.
In the right hand side toolbar, you will see an option called “styles”:
Make sure the image you want is selected and click “create” in the styles box. A pop-up will appear that will let you name this new style, and give it a description. You can also select which modules you wish to include in the style:
After you save the style, it should appear in the Styles box.
Applying darktable styles
There are two ways to apply a darktable style to an image.
In the Lighttable view, click on a new image, and then double-click on the style that you just created. The style should now be applied! (This is the best way to apply a style to multiple images: just hold Ctrl or Shift to select more than one image before double clicking on the style).
Alternatively, styles can be applied to an image in the darkroom view. Make sure the lower pane is expanded (so that you can see the row of thumbnails). In the lower left you should see an icon with three circles and a triangle.
Click on this and the available will styles will pop up. Select the one you want to apply it.
Once a style has been applied, you can edit the settings for each module to tweak it for that image.
Sharing darktable styles
If you’ve created a great darktable style, or you want to apply one of the best darktable styles created by someone else, you can head over to dtstyle.net which acts as a free repository for darktable styles.
You can download any of these styles (or all of them at once using the link at the top right). Each style will be a ‘.dstyle’ file.
To add a downloaded style to darktable, click ‘import’ in the styles pane in the lighttable view. Navigate to the saved ‘.dstyle’ file and import it. You can now apply it just as you would with one of your own styles. Here is our alligator snap from above with dstyle.net’s “Lomo Style” applied:
You can save one of you own presets by clicking export in the ‘styles’ pane in the Lighttable view. Select the directory to save to, and you’ll create a file called “StyleName.dstyle”. If you think other photographers in the community could benefit from the style, upload it to dstyles.net!
* darktable also has things called presets, but these are a different concept to Lightroom presets (just to be confusing). darktable presets are module specific. Each module has its own unique set of presets that can be applied.JRM Adds Anthony Alfredo to Late Model Lineup for 2017
Anthony Alfredo, a 17-year-old native of Ridgefield, Conn., will join the JR Motorsports Late Model program in 2017, the team announced today. Alfredo will drive the No. 8 JRM Chevrolet in 20 Late Model events in the Southeast.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Jan. 9, 2017) – Anthony Alfredo, a 17-year-old native of Ridgefield, Conn., will join the JR Motorsports Late Model program in 2017, the team announced today. Alfredo will drive the No. 8 JRM Chevrolet in 20 Late Model events in the Southeast, competing alongside veteran Josh Berry in the No. 88 Chevrolet to solidify the team’s two-car lineup.
Alfredo was the 2016 Southeast Limited Late Model Series Pro Division champion, and spent much of last year racing Late Models for Lee Faulk Racing. He comes to JRM on the heels of a season which included one win at Greenville Pickens (S.C.) Speedway, 15 top-five and 23 top-10 finishes in 26 starts.
“Anthony is an exciting addition to our championship-caliber Late Model team at JR Motorsports, and he will be an invaluable part of the effort on the track and off,” said L.W. Miller, director of motorsports at JRM. “Over the past three seasons, the team’s performance has been on an upward trajectory and the addition of a talented young driver like Anthony is a good way to keep that on the rise going forward.”
Alfredo’s racing career began in go-karts at the age of 6. His talent earned him a spot on Faulk’s developmental team after competing in the Winter Heat Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Legend Cars. Alfredo went on to make 18 starts in the Late Model and Limited Late Model classes for Faulk, earning a victory, seven top-five and 15 top-10 results in 2015.
“I am so grateful to have the opportunity to drive for JR Motorsports' Late Model team this year,” Alfredo, a senior with Keystone National High School said. “I am very excited for the upcoming race season and look forward to furthering my progression as a driver with JRM. Being a teammate with Josh Berry is something that can help me improve a lot as I know I can learn so much from him.”
Now in its 16th year of competition, the JRM Late Model program has scored 40 victories in the last three seasons and a pair of track championships since 2012. Berry also won the CARS Late Model Stock Car owner championship in 2016.
Photo credit: Keith Anderson PhotographyA no-brainer renewal from USA Network: The cable network has picked up drama Suits for a third season with a 16-episode order. The series, starring Gabriel Macht and Patrick J. Adams, is coming off a strong summer portion of its second season as the Universal Cable Prods.-produced legal series seems to be hitting its stride. “Quite simply, Suits is as good as it gets,” USA Network co-presidents Chris McCumber and Jeff Wachtel said. “Sophisticated storytelling, sharp dialogue, and award-worthy performances make this show a cornerstone of our original programming lineup.” The summer finale of Suits drew 6.5 million viewers and posted series highs across all demos. Suits returns in January with six new episodes to wrap up Season 2.
The series is executive produced by Aaron Korsh. Doug Liman and David Bartis of Hypnotic also serve as executive producers. Suits joins Royal Pains, White Collar and Covert Affairs, which also were recently renewed.This blog was originally posted one year ago, on January 22, 2016. In light of President Trump's executive order to pause refugee resettlement and prioritize safe zones for Syrian refugees, we are reposting without changes or edits to the original.
This Sunday's New York Times Magazine feature on Syrian refugees demonstrates how the best way to help the greatest number of refugees and displaced persons is to help them near their homes.
Resettlement is expensive, Eliza Griswold reports:
"Refugees place a large burden on natural resources and social services. As a result, relations between Syrians and their hosts are souring. (Jordanians, groaning under the burden of 633,000 refugees, joke darkly that they live 'between Iraq and a hard place.') Part of American strategy in the region has been to ease tensions between Syrians and their hosts. The United States provides services (schools and hospitals) for the refugees as well as for the citizens of host countries."
Resettled refugees often face financial and social challenges. The al-Haj Ali family featured in the story requires assistance from a local organization to pay their rent, two teenage sons work six-hour shifts after school, and the father works late into the night.
"'We didn't expect it to be so expensive,' {the father} said of life in Aurora, an industrial river town 41 miles from Chicago, where the al-Haj Alis arrived in March. 'What can we do?'...
"....School was still a challenge. After nearly a year, neither {teenage son} spoke enough English to hold a conversation. Unlike their fellow refugees, who learned English by watching television and American movies, the boys preferred to spend their downtime watching Arabic-language news about Syria or YouTube videos from home."
Refugees resettled in non-contiguous countries make up a very small percentage of the total number of displaced Syrians:
"The al-Haj Alis are five of the 2,647 Syrian refugees who have been resettled in the United States, roughly 0.06 percent of the more than 4.5 million driven from the country since the uprising began in 2011. The scale of the crisis is such that of the 20 million refugees flooding the world today, one in four is Syrian. Although President Obama has committed to bringing at least 10,000 more Syrians to the United States by this October, that number is still a trickle compared with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's effort to resettle 25,000 in Canada; Chancellor Angela Merkel's acceptance of nearly 93,000 in Germany last fall; and President Francois Hollande's promise to bring 30,000 more Syrian refugees to France over the next two years."
The combined totals of each of the above countries' commitments amount to less than four percent of the "more than 4.5 million" displaced Syrians. The United States could take in 100,000 Syrian refugees and 95 percent of displaced Syrians would still need to be helped in their home region.
"Of the 20 million refugees worldwide, less than 1 percent will be officially resettled, and of those, the United States takes about half."
Refugee resettlement is expensive, challenging, and often necessary. The vast majority of displaced people, however, will have no opportunity to resettle in a wealthy, western nation. The world could increase resettlement tenfold and tax the resources of the receiving countries beyond responsible limits and barely move the needle on the number of displaced persons needing help. As NumbersUSA's immigration and gumballs video demonstrates, the best way to help the most people (whether they seek relief from poverty or violence) is to help them as close to home as possible.
Join the conversation here.
JEREMY BECK is the Director of the Media Standards Project for NumbersUSAhttps://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/would-appointing-a-war-criminal-as-commissioner-redeem-the-nfl/
Former NFL star Ray Rice pleaded guilty of abusing a woman whom he later married, and was fired by the League after a video of the crime was made public.
Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice was an architect of an illegal war of aggression that resulted in the slaughter of a half-million people, the displacement of millions more, trillions of dollars in debt, and the creation of a nihilistic terrorist group that has now been designated our existential threat du jour. She is a war criminal who remains impenitent despite abundant proof of the crimes to which she is a party.
The NFL is seeking to rehabilitate its public reputation amid accumulating scandals. This inspired Beltway scribe Susan Milligan to propose that the League could redeem itself by replacing “one Rice with another” – that is, firing incumbent NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and hiring War Criminal Condi Rice as his successor.
Stalin famously said that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. In contemporary America, one domestic violence incident in which the victim survived constitutes a career-ending scandal, but helping to orchestrate the murder of 500,000 foreigners is a glorious patriotic accomplishment.
Installing Rice as NFL Commissioner would usefully demolish any pretense that the NFL is something other than a corporatist appendage of the Warfare State.
5:36 pm on September 15, 2014
The Best of William Norman GriggFrance will be competing in the 2014 World Cup after its team won 3-0 against Ukraine on Tuesday. But few were expecting the team to pull it off, so TV and radio hosts thought they could safely pledge to do crazy things in the case of victory. Most have kept their word, writes Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine.
Antoine de Caunes, the host of the French TV show Le Grand Journal on Canal +, said live that he would present his show in English and "fully dressed as an Englishman" if the Bleus won. The next day, he donned his strongest French accent and was elegantly dressed on set in a brown-and-yellow checked jacket over a blue cardigan with floral tie.
Doria Tillier, the Grand Journal's weather forecaster, promised she would present the forecast "à poil," ie naked. Would she fulfil the promise? She finally presented the weather report in Poil, a village in the centre of France, though there was, at the end, a distant shot of her running naked across a field, chanting "Et un, et deux, et trois zeros" - "And one, and two, and three-nil."
Meanwhile, Cyril Hanouna, host of the French TV show Touche pas à mon Poste! (Don't touch my television!) said he would bleach his hair if the team won. The following day he appeared on set, as promised, with blond hair.
Marc Dorcel, a French producer of pornographic films tweeted an hour before the game that all of his movies would be available for free during the entire night on his website. Twenty minutes after the game started, his post had been retweeted more than 700 times, and 45 seconds after the team's victory, Dorcel's website was inaccessible due to heavy traffic.
Sebastien Cauet, a host on NRJ radio, said he would take a bath in the studio with another radio columnist. At the final whistle, Cauet jumped in.
Politicians also took part in the fun. The MP Philippe Gosselin came to the French National Assembly wearing flip-flops as he had promised while the MP Daniel Fasquelle came wearing the French team's jersey.
What French public figures will do if the team wins in Brazil is unclear - but the scale of the achievement would clearly demand an even crazier response.
Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on FacebookBush Bazaar, Theatre Deli's new project, invites the audience to haggle with actors over how much to pay – just one of their pioneering shows that ask questions about the value of art
How much would you pay for 10 minutes of theatre? £2? £3? Maybe even £5, if the actors ask really nicely? Might you decide to pay nothing at all?
These are some of the questions posed by Bush Bazaar, an intriguing interactive show, conceived and produced by the theatre company Theatre Delicatessen, which on Tuesday night takes over the Bush theatre's new building in west London. For three weeks, 22 theatre groups, comprising more than 100 performers, will be occupying the theatre's every nook and cranny, waiting to pitch for your custom: after paying your entry fee, you will decide how much to pay for each performance. You can wander the building, bartering and haggling for the actors' time, as if over spices or rugs in a crowded north African bazaar.
At the show's heart is the timely question of value: of money, of course, but also the value of theatre – how much we are prepared to pay for it, and what effect that decision has on our relationship with what we see. Roland Smith, one of Theatre Delicatessen's three artistic directors, explains: "We wanted to do something in response to the crash: less about what actually happened, and more to do with the concept of transaction, of the marketplace. Then the repercussions of that, and their effects on arts funding. We wanted to explore 'what is the value of art?' "
This isn't the first time that Smith and his co-directors, Jessica Brewster and Frances Loy, have mounted a show like this: their 2010 piece Theatre Souk did much the same thing, installing young theatremakers all over the company's then headquarters, the former Uzbekistan Airways building in London's West End, and asking them to barter with their audience.
Bush Bazaar is, in effect, a reprisal of this show, which they also plan to stage again in their own building in the autumn – but the fact that it's taking place in a mainstream theatre shows just how far Theatre Delicatessen, more often known as Theatre Deli, has come since four young people (producer Mauricio Preciado Awad has since moved on) first got together in 2007.
Their intention was to mount large-scale, immersive theatre in the only spaces they could afford: empty office blocks awaiting dereliction or resale, which they would occupy for a peppercorn rent and a limited period, turning those ghostly buildings into living, breathing arts centres.
Their first base was a disused workshop on Regent Street: there, in 2009, Theatre Deli created the acclaimed Pedal Pusher, a true-life story of three cyclists doing battle for the Tour de France. Next up was the Uzbekistan Airways building a few streets away; here, true to the company's name - chosen, Smith says, to show that they want their theatre to be "quality, fresh, organic; plus we want a deli on every corner eventually" - continued to produce a diverse range of shows, including an all-female version of A Doll's House.
Theatre Deli's present home is the old BBC London building in Marylebone, a labyrinthine series of corridors and abandoned recording studios. Here, under the name Marylebone Gardens, Smith, Brewster, Loy and their collaborators are building a flourishing artistic community. There's a basement performance space, where the company's superb, Falklands-inspired production of Henry V has just finished; an "indoor garden", turfed with artificial grass, with a big screen for Olympics-watching; and upstairs, a warren of studios and rehearsal rooms, available to artists and other freelancers for a reasonable fee. Theatre Deli is also offering space to promising young theatremakers in exchange for a few shifts on reception.
The building functions, in effect, through a system of bartering – just like Bush Bazaar. The show's themes also reflect the way Theatre Deli has had to negotiate its temporary tenancies (a complex process, for which it enlisted the help of property developer James Bowdidge), and sources of funding (only one of its eight shows, A Doll's House, has ever been awarded money by Arts Council England, so the troupe has had to find ingenious ways of balancing the books). "We're working with commercial property developers, City lawyers, investment banks," Smith says. "This idea of the bazaar mirrors the sorts of deals we have to do every day."
So entrepreneurial is Theatre Deli that its very success poses a worrying question: are the cuts to arts funding in fact justified, if young companies like this can function perfectly well without it? Brewster looks pained: "The fact is that we still have to do other jobs," she says (each of the directors works full-time; Brewster and Loy also have two children apiece). "If I were being petulant about it, I'm almost at the point where - to the big funding bodies, mentioning no names - it is like, 'Can you please come and look at what we're doing, who we're housing here, and who we're giving opportunities to?' We need some support, because to be completely honest, we are coming very close to a line."
Smith adds: "Nobody's ever walked up to me and said, 'you know, what we really need you to do is put on theatre'. It's completely our choice; and I think we need to find our own way of making work." Brewster nods; then says firmly, "That |
the Bible. It is the only living Judean date palm, the last link to the vast date palm forests that once shaded and nourished the region.
The seed has grown into a healthy, 4-foot-tall seedling, surpassing the previous record for oldest germinated seed -- a 1,300-year-old Chinese lotus, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.
Scientists using radiocarbon dating have confirmed that an ancient Judean date palm seed among those found in the ruins of Masada in present-day Israel and planted three years ago is 2,000 years old -- the oldest seed ever to germinate.
One sprouted. Scientists estimated that it was about 2,000 years old based on carbon dating of other seeds found at the site, but they had no way of directly testing the planted seed without risking its chance of germinating.
After the Methuselah seed germinated, Solowey found fragments of the seed shell clinging to the roots -- enough for dating.
The shell fragments initially dated to AD 295, give or take 50 years, but a small percentage of "modern" carbon incorporated as the seed germinated made it appear 250 to 300 years younger. Correcting for this factor, the researchers reported that the seed dates from 60 BC to AD 95, similar to the other seeds from the site.
That placed the seed at Masada a few years after the Roman siege there in 73, when, according to the ancient historian Josephus, nearly 1,000 Jewish Zealots in the Masada fortress committed mass suicide rather than capitulate to the Romans. They burned most of their food stores, leaving a single cache to show that they did not starve to death.
"These people were eating these dates up on the mountain and looking down at the Roman camp, knowing that they were going to die soon, and spitting out the pits," Sallon said. "Maybe here is one of those pits."
Archaeologists excavating the ancient fortress of Masada unearthed the seeds in 1965, and they sat in storage for four decades before being planted.
The seeds probably survived for so long because of the extremely arid conditions of the Masada mesa, said Cary Fowler, seed preservation expert and executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which maintains the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
Preliminary comparison of Methuselah's DNA with modern date palms shows a 20% to 50% difference from current varieties, differences which may include lost traits for resistance to pests and diseases.
Sallon and her colleagues hope to cultivate more ancient date seeds and eventually reintroduce the Judean date palm to the area. "It should be there because that's where it belongs," she said.
They also plan to test the tree for the medicinal properties hinted at in historical writings.
"Is it really the tree of life?" Sallon asked.
That question won't be answered until around 2010, when Methuselah -- if female -- may bear fruit.
--
wendy.hansen@latimes.comToday we are going to showcase the new custom building mechanics.
This is a simple step-by-step process on how crafting now works via the new workshop tables. Don't worry, this can be as easy or as brutally complex as you would like, so I'm sure that plenty of folks out there will want to make self contained fortresses within fortresses, surrounded by moats eventually. For now, however, let's focus on the basics.
Here you can see the carpentry we made using log walls. We made 15 log walls and placed them in a square, designated a zone, selected carpentry as a zone, and made a carpenter workbench in the utils section. As you can see, the biggest difference in this update is the fact that you can finally see inside of the workshops, not only that, you can make them any size and shape you would like.
Here we are selecting a wooden helmet, with any luck one of our idle citizens will take the materials needed to the proper workstation. By focusing building to workstations we eliminated the biggest internal gripe we had. Previously, there was no real reason not to plop down a series of buildings around a single stockpile. Now you can make stockpiles inside of the buildings, making things much more streamlined and simple!
Our civilian is building the wooden helmet. Now construction takes time, around 5 -10 seconds for each pieces, meaning no more building 40 helmets at once the instant a siege appears, you have to plan ahead!
Theres the helmet, now let's see where she places it.
Using our new transpancy effect, you can see behind the log walls and spot the wooden helmet on the floor.
Here is a showcasing of a carpentry building decorated using the new aesthetic items. This way they will add happiness to the people using the building.
As you can see, this updated version of the engine will allow for the customization that you all have been asking for. Expect the latest version soon!In January I start EMT Training and maybe make at least one of my childhood dreams come true. I’ve been saving for years for this: while the program is cheap, I’m effectively losing my monthly salary. I found it really easy to calculate my burn rate in J. I’ve talked about J before so I’ll assume you know the basics and we can skip all of that.
Note: Just to be absolutely clear, the numbers below are made up. I’m not living off 500 dollars a month.
Basics
First some warmups. Let’s assume I have 3000 dollars in my bank account and estimate my spending at 600 a month. How long can I live off my savings? That’s a pretty trivial calculation in any language.
3000 % 600 5
Great, but 600 is just an estimate. I’m going to have to start paying for my own health insurance, but I’m also going to live more frugally. Let’s say my uncertainty is about a 100 dollars in either direction, so I could be spending as low as 500 or as much as 700. How much time do I have for each rate?
In most languages, I’d have to use a loop or a map. But J is designed from ground up to work with arrays. If you do a binary operator on two equal length arrays, it will operate elementwise.
3000 3000 3000 % 500 600 700 6 5 4.28571
If the arrays are different lengths? For most operators, this breaks. But if you just have one number, that’s not a length-one array. It’s just an “atom”, or scalar. You can divide an array by an atom or vice-versa: just stretch the atom into a same-size array.
r =: 500 600 700 NB. Rate of spend 3000 % r 6 5 4.28571
Tables
I have 3000 dollars in my bank account right now. One thing I forgot to account for is my FSA: I have, say, 1000 in refunds I can get from my pharmacy. I want to see how many months I have both with and without the FSA money.
s =: 3000 4000 NB. Savings 3000 4000 % r | length error
Oh right, arrays of different lengths. What I want is 3000 % r and 4000 % r independently. To do with we use the table adverb. +/ creates an addition table and */ is a multiplication table.
1 2 3 4 */ 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 2 4 6 8 3 6 9 12 4 8 12 16
By extension, %/ is the ‘division’ table, aka the number of months per initial savings and rate of spend.
3000 4000 %/ r 6 5 4.28571 8 6.66667 5.71429
That tells me how many months I’d have, but I want something a little more detailed. I’d like to know, for a given savings and rate of spend, how much I’d have each month. Since the rate of spend is fixed, at month t I’d have s - r*t left. That’s easily representable by a 3D table. First, we get the r*t table:
i. 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 r */ i. 7 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 0 600 1200 1800 2400 3000 3600 0 700 1400 2100 2800 3500 4200
This table is a rank 2 array. Rank 1 arrays like s and r are commonly called lists. As with lists, you can subtract an rank 2 array from an atom, which produces a new table.
2000 - r */ i. 7 2000 1500 1000 500 0 _500 _1000 2000 1400 800 200 _400 _1000 _1600 2000 1300 600 _100 _800 _1500 _2200
Since that works, -/ will also work. Just as making a ‘table’ out of two lists gave us a table, making a ‘table’ out of a list and a table will give us a rank 3 array.
] burnrate =: s -/ r */ i. 7 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 3000 2400 1800 1200 600 0 _600 3000 2300 1600 900 200 _500 _1200 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 4000 3400 2800 2200 1600 1000 400 4000 3300 2600 1900 1200 500 _200
There’s three dimensions here: initial savings, rate of spend, and time. We represent the third dimension by the empty newline between the first 2D table in burnrate and the second. For a rank 4 array, we’d have two empty lines between each ‘brick’ in it. Most monads in J can operate on arrays of arbitrary rank, and we’ll see why that’s useful in the next section.
In the meantime, let’s use the plot package to see what our finances look like.
load 'plot' 'yrange 0 5000' plot burnrate
Prefixes
What if I don’t leave my job immediately? At most I’m willing to work three more months. For every extra month, I make a 500 dollar profit. This is independent of my monthly expenses. My savings per month are no longer a linear function of time, and I can’t just add the arrays together. Instead, let’s do this with a reduce. We’ll get a given month’s savings by subtracting the spend (or add the income) to the previous month’s value.
First, since we’re dealing with both positive and numbers, let’s make r negative. Since - is a verb, we represent negative x as _x. I’ll also reduce the size of s and r to make the examples smaller.
r =: _500 _600 s =: 3000
The accumulate adverb is /\. We know / is the reduce/table adverb. \ is the prefix adverb. f\ x applies f to every prefix of x.
]\ 'abc' a ab abc
Hopefully you can see why /\ is accumulate. +/\ 1 2 3 is the array 1 (1 + 2) (1 + 2 + 3).
For real numbers (+ a) = a, so +\ just gives us a triangle matrix.
] income =: +\ 3 # 500 500 0 0 500 500 0 500 500 500
But we actually want six months, so let’s slap some extra zeros on there.
NB. There's probably a better way to do this ] income =: 0,.~^: 3 +\ 3 # 500 500 0 0 0 0 0 500 500 0 0 0 0 500 500 500 0 0 0
Next I wrote a fill dyad that uses ‘gerunds’ to combine two verbs. The implementation is a bit out of scope, but all it does is replace 0’s in array with a given atom.
fill =: ( ]`[ ) @. (( 0 &= ) @:] ) " 0 9 fill income 500 9 9 9 9 9 500 500 9 9 9 9 500 500 500 9 9 9
r is a list, so we can’t do r fill income. Instead, let’s make another table!
r fill / income 500 _500 _500 _500 _500 _500 500 500 _500 _500 _500 _500 500 500 500 _500 _500 _500 500 _600 _600 _600 _600 _600 500 500 _600 _600 _600 _600 500 500 500 _600 _600 _600
+/\ r fill/ income will accumulate over the tables, but we want to accumulate over the elements of each row in the table. Most verbs in J work on arbitrary arrays, so applying verbs subarrays is a common problem. We handle that with the “rank” conjunction: f"n x applies f to the rank-n subarrays of x. r fill/ income is rank 3. +/\ accumulates over the tables, +/\"2 accumulates over the rows in each table, +/\"1 accumulates over the elements in each row, and +/\"0 doesn’t really do anything. We want +/\"1.
] results =: +/\" 1 r fill / income 500 0 _500 _1000 _1500 _2000 500 1000 500 0 _500 _1000 500 1000 1500 1000 500 0 500 _100 _700 _1300 _1900 _2500 500 1000 400 _200 _800 _1400 500 1000 1500 900 300 _300
Now let’s slap on an initial time, add our savings to every atom, and plot it!
plot s + 0," 1 results
There’s probably a much better way to calculate this and I don’t like how there’s no “0 months of income” plot, but I’m still pretty happy with this graph.
One thing J taught me is just how many tradeoffs are in a programming language. Not just at the level of performance, safety, or semantics, but on a “what is this language for” level. J doesn’t have a lot of “common” language features, like dictionaries or sane conditionals. Instead it has things like first-class array manipulation and simplex generators. I wouldn’t want to use it for web scraping or text munging, but it’s now my favorite tool for calculations. It’s a sort of hybrid of a general purpose language and a DSL. Let’s call it a Specific Purpose Language, where the purpose in this case is “doing stuff to numbers”.
What other special purpose languages do you like? Feel free to email or tweet me your thoughts.Well, I hit 500 followers a little while ago, but I think it’s just about time to do a new contest just because. This one is a little bit different, so please read the rules carefully.
- In order to enter the contest, reblog this post with a card that follows one of the prompts below. The winner will create the best card overall from all the cards entered this way. Simple enough, right? You don’t have to be following me, but you know. I’d like it if you were. - If you can’t download MSE for some reason, find someone who can or make a really, really clever image edit of some MSE render. Cards will fare FAR better if they have images, and ONLY WITH ARTIST CREDIT. Seriously, if you make a post with art and don’t attribute the artist, you’ll be disqualified. For real. - The winner will receive their choice of any combination of FIVE standard booster packs and a FOIL Conspiracy “Swords to Plowshares.” If you are outside of the U.S. and are chosen, please include instructions for how to mail stuff to you.
These are the prompts:
- Create an archetype of any animal of your choice. How do the card’s mechanics reflect the intended flavor? Do they succeed in that flavor? A brief explanation doesn’t hurt.
- Invoke an emotion that most people wouldn’t associate with the color of the card you make. For instance, recklessness in blue, or compassion in black. It’s okay to get stereotypical, if you’re into that.
- Interact with the graveyard in a way that we haven’t seen in Magic before. How can you play with it without breaking the rules? Bonus points if you create a new ability for it.
- Show the story of a transformation. This can be any part - how X transformed, why X made a transformation, the end result of X’s transformation, etc.
- Make a card that marginally benefits all players, but still helps out its controller - and do it without making something that only works in single- or multi-player games, i.e. make it able to work in all game types.
- Design the first card in a cycle that implicitly explains each other card in the cycle.
As always, if you want to make me really happy, new mechanics, good digital art, and general creativity help. Fandom cards, anime cards, and IRL cards will probably not help much.
And as always, thank you all.
-AbelzumiTHE SPIN / BILL BOYARSKY There's a Better Way to Treat Rev. Grier
Hodgman asked if Grier knew Simpson before he was ordained in 1986. "I could have seen him in a lot of different places, I don't know where," Grier replied. "More than five times?" asked Hodgman. "No idea," said Grier. "Less than five times?" Hodgman asked. "No idea," said Grier.
Hodgman hammered away in true prosecutorial style. He called him "Mr. Grier," rather than Rev. Grier. His questioning was blunt and unrelenting.
I wondered about that Friday when I watched on television as Grier, once a famous Rams football player, testified at the O.J. Simpson trial. Hodgman tried to pry from him details of a chat with the defendant that allegedly was overheard by one or more jailers. Just what the deputies overheard is unknown. But Hodgman seems to think it will help his case and the hearing will continue today.
If the Rev. Rosey Grier was minister of one of the town's biggest churches, would prosecutor William Hodgman treat him with more deference?
Some people watching thought Hodgman was on the right track, that Grier was being evasive.
Defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. disagreed. "This man has an absolute right to privacy," said Cochran. "He is here as a minister."
Just how much a member of the clergy must reveal is a complex issue. Judge Lance A. Ito allowed limited questioning of Grier, but if the jailhouse conversation becomes crucial to the Simpson murder trial, the issue no doubt will be carried to appellate courts. It might become a landmark church-state issue.
But legalities aside, as I watched Grier's testimony and listened to a tape of it afterward, I felt I would have treated him differently had I been in Hodgman's place.
*
I first became aware of Rosey Grier as a formidable person in 1968 when I was covering Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's campaign for President.
Previously, I'd known he was a great football player, a member of the Rams' Fearsome Foursome mid-'60s defensive line. But to me he was just a player on a team I didn't like.
He was at Sen. Kennedy's side during the California primary campaign, as a friend of the family's, a campaigner in African American neighborhoods--and as protection.
Kennedy spoke before huge crowds, bigger than anything seen today. He waded into the crowds, indifferent to danger. This was before Secret Service agents accompanied candidates, and Kennedy scorned security. Grier, 6 feet 5 inches, weighing 290 pounds, was by his side, a powerful visual and physical deterrent.
Not enough of a deterrent, of course, to save the senator's life.
The night Kennedy won the California primary, Grier was with him at the Ambassador. After his speech, Kennedy headed down a narrow kitchen corridor.
There, Sirhan Sirhan opened fire, fatally wounding Kennedy. With the senator on the floor, a crowd in the corridor turned on Sirhan. Grier subdued him. As he testified at Sirhan's 1969 trial, "I folded his leg around my arm and put him on top of a table." The crowd moved in on Sirhan. Grier said he saw "one guy hurting his leg and some people coming at him from the front, so I swung on them and kicked the guy back and they seemed to realize we were trying to save the guy so they stopped."Google has released version 1.5.1 of its App Engine software development kit (SDK) – the first point update to the 1.5 branch. Announced at the Google I/O developer conference, App Engine 1.5 added Go to the list of supported languages available to developers, albeit on an experimental basis.
The latest release of the SDK sees the open source (Apache License 2.0) ProtoRPC framework added as an official Python API and adds presence support to the Channel API. App Engine now includes a Geolocation Header (X-AppEngine-country) with every client request, attempting to identify the country from which the request originated. Support for WebP, Google's WebM-derived still picture format, has also been added to the Images API and the SDK can now emulate the High Replication Datastore (HRD) consistency model.
Further details about the update can be found in a post on the Google App Engine Blog and in the release notes for Python and for Java. Version 1.5.1 of the Google App Engine is available to download from Google Code, the company's project hosting site.
See also:
Google and Mozilla tussle over WebP image format, a report from The H.
(crve)Seemingly on a daily basis, I receive a phone call or email from a new frog keeper who has discovered some unknown organism in their vivarium. These alien organisms often spark fear or worry. Are they harmful? Will they hurt my frogs or kill my plants? What is it? Here, I’ll post photos of different unidentified organisms and try to shed some light on what they are, what they do, and the like. Remember, in general fungus is beneficial for your tank. It helps keep things cleaner by breaking down waste into nutrients plants can use, and often even helps plants grow better! In fact, we designed and created Josh’s Frogs Bioactive Booster to introduce beneficial fungus into your tank and help it stabilize faster.
What is it?
Some kind of neat bracket fungus, a close relative of the mushroom.
Is it harmful?
Only if you’re allergic to awesome! Bracket fungus are quite uncommon in vivaria, as they seem to require decent airflow to thrive. Consider yourself lucky, and enjoy it while it lasts! Like many fungi in the vivarium, they’ll only be visible for a brief time before disappearing, sometimes never to be seen again. Springtails or Isopods in the vivarium will earnestly consume fungi.
What is it?
It’s a mushroom, and a brightly colored one at that! What you’re seeing is the fruiting body of the mushroom – the vast majority of the organism is called the mycelium, which looks like roots and is probably spread throughout the piece of wood the mushroom is on, deriving nutrients from the wood as it decomposes.
Is it harmful?
Only if you’re a piece of wood. Mushrooms and fungi will cause wood in a vivarium to break down a bit more quickly, but that’s part of nature. Mushrooms will not harm your frogs or plants, and actually can contribute to a cleaner and healthier vivarium. Enjoy it while you can – mushrooms typically only last a day or two.
What is it?
The powdery white growth appears to be a variety of mold (sometimes called mildew). Mold likes to grow on wet, nutrient rich surfaces.
Is it harmful?
Mold will not harm your plants or frogs, and is a completely normal part of the cycling process of a new vivarium. In the first 6 months or so, expect to see lots of mold. Mold comes in many different colors – the most common are white or green. Springtails and Isopods will make short work of any mold.
What is it?
An alien. Kill it with fire. No, just kidding! This is a slime mold. Slime molds are pretty uncommon in vivaria, but will randomly pop up from time to time. In the years I’ve been working with vivaria, I’ve only seen a handful of slime molds crop up. Slime molds are not a true fungus, but they serve many of the same purposes in a vivarium. The slime mold pictured is actually a colony of several thousand normally single celled organisms that come together when food is scarce.
Is it harmful?
Slime molds are completely harmless, although their appearance in a vivarium can seem quite startling. Like mushrooms, they are often gone very shortly after they are first seen.
What is it?
Yet another variety of mushroom. This one may not be as colorful as the orange one shown previously, but it makes up for it’s pale complexion with numbers! When this mushroom appeared in a vivarium, several hundred of them were visible. In a couple days, none could be seen.
Is it harmful?
Nope.
What is it?
This appears to be an unusually colored blue mold.
Is it harmful?
I wouldn’t recommend breathing it in, but it will not harm your plants or frogs. Springtails or Isopods will make short work of it.
Is your frog tank being invaded by aliens? Have something in your vivarium that needs to be identified? Email us a picture at Zach@JoshsFrogs.com, and let us identify it for you! If it’s cool or unique enough, your photo may even end up here!Share. The wine will flow red and the music will play loud. The wine will flow red and the music will play loud.
Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow!
And you thought last episode's wedding was awkward...
Man.
Just, man.
Still shaking.
If you're a fan of HBO's Game of Thrones who hasn't read the books, you've made it. You've made it through the scene. And if you've somehow managed to make it through pure, without anyone on comment boards or social media knowingly or unknowingly spoiling it for you over the past three years, congratu-freakin-lations! We only wanted you to experience the shock and trauma that we all felt after reading the "Red Wedding" scene in A Storm of Swords. Just an exquisitely awful event that managed to out-do the unpredictable and horrifying death of Ned Stark back in Season 1.
And one of the things this episode, "The Rains of Castamere," did to throw you off the scent of the oncoming bleakness was to actually lighten the mood a bit. With the reveal that Roslin Frey was actually beautiful, and Walder giving a look to Robb in the crowd, as if to say "See, you could have had that." And then Blackfish awkwardly turning from the remaining Frey girls, who were smiling their homely smiles at him. I'm sure many tears were shed throughout this magnificent, game-changing episode, but for me, I was just tense. Just tense and cold the whole time. And it's a scene so powerful that, all in all, it really can't be done wrong - but I'm still so glad it was done right.
From Robb watching his wife and unborn child die, to Cat watching Robb die, to Cat then, in a final act of futile defiance, slitting the neck of Walder's wife before meeting her own end, this was just a domino trail of agony. On a show that features unrelentingly cruel things, the ugly and dark-hearted Walder Frey has now risen up the ranks to be this show's top monster. With help, of course, from the Lannisters and the turncoat Lord Bolton, who revealed to Robb, during the Young Wolf's death, the true architects of the scheme.
Lord Tywin didn't even have to send an army after Robb, or protect his castle in the west. He simply had to gain enough power to turn all other avenues against Robb and then have others do his dirty, foul work. Yes, I fear even those who've read the books and knew this was coming could never be fully prepared to see it all transpire on screen. It just leaves you shaking. Especially the silence that accompanied the end credits. With the actual "Rains of Castamere" song, which has been used to close out a couple episodes before, only being used as the musical cue from the band to signal the attack. And the cue for Cat to take notice that something was awry.
In this really big and emotional episode, what really wound up getting to me, tears-wise, was when The Hound knocked out Arya and dragged her away from the slaughter. It was thuggish and brutal, and yet you still got the sense that he's safest person for her to be with. And that he cares for her, despite now not having anyone to trade her to for gold. And Arya, already having been mocked by The Hound for being overcome with fear due to being so close to getting home, now has watched, in person, her hopes ripped to shreds right in front of her. And while being so courageous too; she was actively running in to help. We can only assume that Arya will be in a really dark place now. And this is a girl who already threatened The Hound with "Someday I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull." But Arya being carried away from the carnage, having been so close to her mother and brother, was the absolute definition of heartbreaking.
Moving from wolf to wolf here (and it's hard to imagine that other great things also happened in this awesome episode): Grey Wind might be dead, but Summer is alive and well, and ripping out Wildling throats while under the control of Bran! Actually, this chapter moved a lot of characters closer together than they've ever been. So, so close, but yet so far. Just as Arya was within reach of being reunited with her loved ones, Bran was hiding in the windmill, right above Jon and Ygritte. And while the two of them didn't get to meet face to face, Bran did see Jon through the eyes of Summer. So at least, for those seeking small forms of solace, Bran knows that another member of his family is alive and knows where he is.
There was also the running theme of the Stark nobility connecting the two stories; with Arya not letting The Hound kill the old man on the road and Jon Snow speaking out against the Wildlings icing the elderly horse breeder. Yes, even though the Starks have all been scattered, their honor and mercy have prevailed. Of course, The Hound reminded Arya that her kindness will get her killed and perhaps the unjust death of her brother and mother will help solidify that advice.
The scene with Bran saving Jon through "warg"ing was also excellent, with many elements finally all coming together. Even Orell managed to throw the last bit of his consciousness into his eagle before he died from Jon's blade. And now Bran will head north of The Wall with the Reeds and Hodor while Osha takes Rickon (who was actually given some emotions to play) off to live with the Umbers. It's clear that Bran, who's able to enter the minds of human beings, is unlike anything Jojen could have anticipated.
Feeling more apart from the stories in Westeros than ever, thanks to the gravity of the episode, Dany's story had a ton of action and bloodshed as well, with Jorah finally getting to show off more of his skills, holding his own next to Grey Worm and Loverboy McMercenery as the three of them entered Yunkai through the back gate and, essentially, won the entire city for her in one night. What was most evident here though was the little bits of squabbling between Jorah and Barristan (still) and Jorah's jealously over the way that Dany looks at Daario. Sometimes it's easy to forget how young Dany is, but in the scenes with Daario, it really comes out. Especially at the end when she doesn't seem to be relieved that Jorah is alive, but swoons at the sight of the still-standing Daario. Meanwhile, Barristan didn't seem concerned about any of the other three guys at all.
Game of Thrones will never be short on big moments, but the tradition of the ninth episode knockout punch has remained fantastically intact in Season 3. "The Rains of Castamere" was downright brutal, whether you've read the books or not. Because seeing it actuality happen, seeing Robb take all those arrows and seeing Cat's neck get cut, will just rock you to the core no matter what you're individually anticipating. Plus, Robb's wife was changed up a bit for the show anyhow, and her addition to the wedding party, plus the reveal of her pregnancy, wound up being a bit of extra tragedy sprinkled on top of the misery.
You can also visit our Game of Thrones wiki. While you’re there, feel free to contribute key differences you see between the TV and book version of the lore. If you comment on this article, please be mindful of others who haven’t read ahead and stick to discussion of what’s been aired. Thanks!
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and on IGN at mattfowler.Last week the Guardian reported that a Texan board of education wanted to get religion more prominently into the classrooms. Nothing new there, I hear you say (OK, I can’t actually hear you say that, but I’ll presume for the sake of this increasingly tortured intro that you did, and you can always email to correct me later). Except this time it’s not the same old Evolution vs Creationism Intelligent Design debate regarding biology classes and science textbooks – this time the battle lines have been drawn in History.
The christian fundamentalist board wish to amend history lessons to stress the role God played in the initial formation of America. One of the board members is David Barton, founder of the Christian heritage group WallBuilders whose mission statement is:
“…to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena” – Source: Wallbuilders
I guess David’s been too busy reading his Bible to bother reading, say, the US Constitution. It’s a shame, because he wouldn’t even have to read very far into it – in fact the first amendment in the Bill of Rights is:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” – Source: US Constitution, quoted here from Wikipedia
This is what’s often referred to as the ‘Separation of Church and State’ clause – prohibiting the establishment of a national religion by the Congress or the preference of one religion over another, non-religion over religion, or religion over non-religion.
If David’s too busy to read through the constitution of his own country before making bold statements regarding the founding principles of the nation, maybe he has time to look over a few other historical facts. For example, when we think of religion in America, we might well think of the ‘One nation under God’ line in the Pledge of Allegiance – the patriotic mantra recited by millions of American school children every morning. A line which was only officially adopted in 1954.
Or perhaps the board should look into the history of the phrase ‘In God We Trust’ – the official motto of the United States. Since 1956. America, by the way, was around before 1956.
Or perhaps the board might want to look at the founding fathers, and their religious beliefs.
Benjamin Franklin was a deist – believing that religious truth in general could be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion
was a deist – believing that religious truth in general could be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion George Washington believed in religious freedom, and to this day historians and biographers continue to debate the degree to which he can be counted as a Christian, and the degree to which he was a deist.
believed in religious freedom, and to this day historians and biographers continue to debate the degree to which he can be counted as a Christian, and the degree to which he was a deist. Thomas Jefferson openly opposed organised religious institutions, and even published his own version of the Bible – removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects
Hardly the basis of the fundamentally-Christian ideology the Texan board would have us believe lies at the historical foundations of America.
Also on the board is Reverend Peter Marshall – a charming preacher from New Orleans. For a quick flavour of the teachings of this mild-mannered Christian preacher, I’d recommend a look at his website:
First comes the news that more than 10,000 homosexuals were expected in New Orleans over Labor Day weekend for the 34th annual Southern Decadence party. It was supposed to start two days after Katrina arrived… Was [this] finally enough for the Lord. Did He allow Katrina as a judgment on the wickedness and decadence of New Orleans? Well, what do you think? To borrow the saying from Fox News, “we report, you decide.” – Source: Peter |
out manoeuvre their attackers.
Three ships, Neptune, Sun and Ruby passed by the star destroyer. A horde of TIE fighters pursuing them, the main ship now having access to more easy shots. Ruby flew ahead of the three ships, the other two keeping in V formation behind her. "Ruby we are nearly there, just a little more… There! ready for hyperspace jump!" Neptune cheering enthusiastically into the comms. Ruby felt no joy over the small victory of escaping, it had cost her most of the team. Suddenly both Neptune and Sun's ships shuddered. "Oh crap, they have a tractor beam is getting a lock on us!" Sun cried out as he frantically tried to escape the hold on his ship. Neptune didn't say anything, too absorbed in trying to find a way out of the lock. "I've got you!" Ruby yelled as she flipped her ship back around, now turning to face the small fleet of TIE fighters and the menacing star destroyer. "No Ruby get out of here!" Sun calling on Ruby's now silenced comm system.
Ruby flew above her two team mates, opening fire with her laser cannons. She caught another pair of TIE fighters with her fire. Now she flew in between her friends and her enemies, the tractor beam now catching her instead. In retaliation, frustration and defeat ruby fired her proton torpedoes, the explosion destroying several more TIE fighters. Behind her Sun and Neptune zipped away, managing to jump away just in time. Out of options and surprises, Ruby admitted defeat, slamming her hand down on her control panel as she was slowly pulled towards the metal behemoth that assuredly meant her end.
"Captain, we have pulled in one of the rebel fighters, the other two managed to escape."
"Very well, have the pilot escorted to the holding cells for interrogation," Weiss turned to leave, her eyes flicking to her Lieutenant as she did so. Once again she caught hints of anger in his face, "Something wrong Mr Winchester," Weiss purposefully leaving out his rank. Cardin grew red in frustration,
"You let two of them escape! If we had used all of our weapons we would have obliterated them!"
"If we did we would have most assuredly killed our own people,"
"Why did we even send out the TIE fighters then!" Cardin moving to within striking distance of Weiss. She had expected this, he had after all been the one scorned for promotion in her place, it was only a matter of time before something like this was to happen. "Those X-wing class fighters are incredibly agile, and even have shielding capabilities, our fire power while great, is not precise enough to take out so skilled a group of pilots."
"That rebel scum could barely be called pilots, they are just jumped up criminals, terrorists!"
"Be that as it may Cardin," Weiss now dropping all form of respect for the man, "they are our enemy, and it pays not to underestimate them. Two may have escaped, but we managed to capture what I believe to be their leader, the information we pull out of him could be invaluable to hunting down the rest of the rebels."
Blake knelt before the holo projector. A blue light enveloped the dark room as a hologram phased into existence. "Inquisitor Belladonna, you have a new mission," the hologram speaking in a neutral tone. Blake looked up to see Adam's face, his eyes covered by his red visor. "You are to go the planet Tatooine, there is rumoured to be a young Jedi there," Adam's voice as usual was filled with a mixture of anger and glee.
"What am I to do with the jedi?" Blake asked hesitantly, yet interjecting an air of reverence. Adam looked down at her quizzically, "You are to destroy them of course. Hmm, is something wrong Blake… you seem… different."
"I'm fine Adam," Blake subconsciously started playing Pazzak in her head. Adam continued to looked confused, "You are hard to read Blake, just don't fail this time. Lord Vader is becoming frustrated with your recent… performance." Blake nodded, lowering her head as the hologram faded.
She breathed a sigh of relief, glad the Pazzak trick had worked and hidden her surface feelings. Blake strode out of the small dark conference room, moving with purpose in order to further avoid any contact with the stormtroopers and naval officers that inhabited the star destroyer. Thankfully for the most part they all avoided her, all cautious of the dangerous inquisitors that worked for the Emperor directly.
Blake found her quarters without interruption. The room was sparse, the life of an inquisitor was spent on the move, leaving little room for personal effects. All she had to her name was the clothes on her back, the lightsabers on her belt and above all these, the Jedi holocron. She retrieved it from the hidden compartment she had made. The gold trimmed crystalline cube felt comforting in her hands, the holocron always being strangely warm to touch. Puling back her dark hood she sat crossed legged, placing the holocron on the floor in front of her. Closing her eyes she cast her mind outwards. She felt the life moving around the ship, she could feel the soft thrum of the engine, the methodic breath of the ships life support systems.
She let out her own breath. Focusing now on the holocron, she could hear the soft clicks as it opened. She opened her eyes as a blue image took form. The old Jedi master started the recorded lessons. At this point Blake had nearly memorised all of the lessons, but they were still calming to listen too. Yet while comforting, there was always a small feeling of regret that hit Blake when she listened to the holocron.
It had belonged to a young Jedi, like all that remained he was on the run form the Empire. He was just another target for Blake. She caught up too him on Dantooine, a planet that held the ruins of an ancient Jedi temple. In those very ruins she fought the Jedi, using her hatred and anger to overpower him. In the end he laid down his lightsaber, accepting his death.
Blake struck him down without hesitation. There in the ruins she stood victorious. Then it hit her, the years of repression, frustration and sadness. In the ruins that reminded her of her homeworld, she realised her true enemy.
Since that day Blake had studied the ways of the force anew, in secret. Any Jedi she was sent after somehow escaped. Her ruse could only last so long, and she knew it. They had begun to suspect her and she had decided that now was the time to run. First though she had to warn the young Jedi on Tatooine.
Yang slammed back another drink, adding the empty cup to her small collection. The cantina was quiet at this time of night, only a few regular patrons still in attendance. Thankfully the band had finally stopped, after having played the same song for what seemed like an eternity at the request of an Ithorian sitting the front row. It was all quiet now, leaving Yang truly alone with her thoughts.
For the second time in her life she lost her sister. Both times at the hands of the Empire. The first had been when they had come for her father, she could still picture her mother pulling them away as her father fought off the Imperial assassin. Yang broke free of her mothers grasp and had tried to help, but it was too late. She remembered her fathers face as he was struck down by the red blade. Her hand drifted down to her boot, where she hid her fathers lightsaber. Clutching it lightly she remembered the last time she saw her sister, all those years ago.
Over a year ago Yang started her search, after spending several years moving from place to place, she finally had her own ship. Taking what jobs she could, Yang had slowly bought information and made certain friends, all to find out where her sister was, and if she was still alive. Finally a friend had told her of a crack pilot who had joined the Rebel Alliance, Yang had known it was her. As much as she hated her 'gift', the force was damn useful for these things.
Then, a few hours earlier, her same friend had informed her that her sister had been ambushed, and was presumed dead. Yang paid the bartender, giving a handsome tip as she sauntered out of the cantina. Tatooine nights were cold, but Yang was too drunk or upset too care. Stumbling through the empty streets Yang let a few tears roll down her cheeks. Her purpose for the last year was gone, her sister was gone, she didn't have anything else to push her on. She was defeated.
It took Yang much longer to get back to the spaceport than she expected, having taken several wrong turns. As she walked towards her ship she noticed a figure out of the corner of her eye. Pretending to be more intoxicated than she was, Yang slowed down, hand always close to her double barrel blaster carbine that sat holstered at her side.
The figure remained in the corner of her vision, clearly following her. as Yang entered her hangar she stopped, standing idle for a few seconds. Straining her hearing she heard the soft patter of feet. She spun, pulling her blaster free and pointing it at the entrance.
Standing in the darkness stood a figure garbed in black. The figures face was hidden by a black hood, but the slightly revealing outfit proved the assailant to be female. Yang grew panicked, visions of her fathers death flashing before her eyes. "Assassin…" Yang muttered under her breath, "Jedi, I'm here too wa-" the figure was cut off as Yang fired.
Her twin blaster bolts missed Blake, who had dodged just in time. Yang continued to fire, her bolts were wild and random. Blake pulled her lightsaber from her belt and ignited it, now swatting away the blaster fire. "Stop! I'm here to warn you!"
"Shut up! I'll kill you!" Yang screamed in anger, her eyes alight with fury, watching the familiar red blade in Blake's hands. Blake pushed out with the force, throwing Yang back into the hull of her own ship. With a grunt Yang steadied herself, throwing aside her blaster. "You… You killed them, you took my family away," Yang said through gritted teeth. Blake looked stunned, staring at the woman before her. She had felt hate, felt the darkside before, and had used it. This was no Jedi, whoever this woman was, she was consumed by anger.
"Calm down, don't use your hate, you're a Jedi," Blake pleaded. Yang took no notice, only growling in response as she circled her opponent. Closing her eyes Yang touched the force, letting it flow through her once more. It was like a drug, one that Yang had not used for some time, now flooding back into her system. The lightsaber in her boot shook slightly, before jumping up into her hand. She activated it, the yellow light further illuminating the open hangar. "Listen to me, I'm not here to kill you, I'm not here as an inquisitor. Calm down let us speak for a moment," Blake lowering her lightsaber as she spoke, deactivating it.
Yang rushed forward, swinging the yellow blade in a downward arc. Blake rolled out of the way, reigniting her own blade. Yang's lightsaber cut into the ground, her body rushing forward from her momentum. Pulling it free she swung again, this time her blade met Blake's. The two lightsabers crackled against each other, the two now locked in a battle of strength. Yang pushed Blake back, her face set in a look malice as she did so. Blake used to force to trip Yang up, disrupting her focus Blake managed to push her back, and move to a safe distance. "Stop! I don't want to fight you!"
"You took them away from me!" Yang screamed back, lunging desperately. Knocking Yang's lightsaber to the side, Blake stepped to her left as Yang came barrelling after her deflected blade. Letting out another cry Yang spun, her lightsaber spinning with her. Blake pulled forth her Shoto lightsaber, igniting it and forming a cross with her other blade. Yang hit Blake's defence, becoming locked in another battle of strength. Yet this time, Blake closed her eyes and focused, channelling the force to give her extra strength. On the edge of her mind she could feel Yang's anger, she could feel the seductive call of the darkside. It begged her to unleash it, to beat back this sorry mistake for a Jedi, to strike her down and prove her power.
Yet she resisted, opening her eyes to focus on her opponent. Blake watched as Yang's eyes slowly changed, the lilac iris' slowly growing yellow with hints of red forming on the outer ring. She had seen those eyes many times. "Don't succumb to the darkside… calm yourself…there is no need to fight… We are on the same side…" Blake managed to say through grunts as she held off Yang.
If Yang could hear her, she did not make any indication. Using as much willpower as she could, Yang pushed out with the force, sending Blake flying back into the wall of the hangar. A smile crept onto her face as she strode confidently over to the assassin. Blake held out her lightsabers defensively, making no moves to attack. Yang started wailing on her, she had no form, no technique, only the strength her anger gave her. Blake started to buckle under the assault, arms sore form absorbing the heavy blows.
One swing hit too hard and Blake's off hand lightsaber fell from her grip. Now with two hands on her main lightsaber, she endured the continued storm of swings. Panting form exhaustion Blake watched Yang, the flashes of the lightsabers colliding highlighting her face. She grew tired as well, her strikes coming slower. One may think too prove themselves through victory in combat, but the true victory is knowing when not too fight. Blake remembered one of the teachings of the holocron. She remembered the sacrifice of the Jedi she faced on Dantooine, his death being the turning point for Blake. Blake dodged the next strike, throwing her hand out to push Yang back a few steps. Yang grimaced, but returned to circling Blake.
This was her test, her fight against her old self, against the darkside. Blake deactivated her lightsaber and threw it aside. Yang looked surprised, but appeared not to falter. Blake shut her eyes and knelt, trusting in the force she accepted her fate.
Weiss read over the report of the skirmish. She had lost several TIE fighters, most too the captured rebel pilots proton torpedoes. However, even with the losses the mission was a success, the rebels had been routed. Furthermore, she now had one captured, and would soon learn where the rest were hiding.
It was time for the interrogation, Weiss making her way down from the bridge to the lower levels where the holding cells where. Accompanied by two stormtroopers she approached the Rebel pilots cell. To her surprise there was already a pair of stormtroopers guarding the door. "Trooper who is inside the cell?"
"Lieutenant Winchester mam," the stormtrooper remaining motionless as he spoke. Weiss frowned, cursing to herself quietly. "dismissed," Weiss said with a wave of her hand, and the two stormtroopers left, replaced by her own. Weiss opened the cell, and looked in to see a beaten woman laying on the floor of the cell, Cardin standing domineeringly over her. "Lieutenant Winchester! On whose authority are you interrogating the prisoner?" Weiss commanding as she strode to stand in front of Cardin. Cardin looked surprised, and for a moment was stunned, "Uh, my own Captain," he said shakily. Weiss looked down at the prisoner, grimacing at the sight of her bruised face. "I am in control of this ship Mr Winchester, never forget that. I gave no order for her to be interrogated yet, in fact I planned on conducting it myself. You are hereby placed on probation, do not test me again." Weiss turned away from him, Cardin taking this as approval for him to leave.
Cardin turned back to watch Weiss help the rebel stand, moving her to a more comfortable sitting position. He glared with contempt, a plan slowly forming in his mind.
"I apologise for my subordinates behaviour, it was quite inappropriate. However you must understand, you are a traitor to the Empire, a miscreant and a murderer, these things tend to inspire rather negative reactions in others." Weiss waited for a response but got none, "Very well, if you do not wish to speak you don't have too. I will not beat you, torture you or any other barbaric act to pull information out of you." Weiss turned away for a moment, using her comms to call in the stormtroopers. The cell door slid open, and the soldiers stepped inside, accompanied by a floating spherical droid.
Weiss caught a glimmer of fear in the rebels eye, Weiss raising her lips into a sinister smile. "I see you know of the interrogation droid. I will give you two options, I will let the droid inject its serum, a powerful substance that may help you in remembering certain information. If you resist you will be taken to a slave facility in some far reaching part of the galaxy. If you willingly tell me what I need to know I will find you a clean cell on an imperial planet, if your information is particularly useful I may even find it in my heart to downgrade some of the charges against you." Weiss studied the rebel pilot, her face was hard to read under the bruising, but her eyes spoke volumes. They stared at the droid, at the long metal syringe that protruded out towards her.
"Fine, I'll talk," the pilot said is a hoarse voice. Weiss smiled, extending a hand towards her.
"A wise decision, I am Captain Weiss Schnee. Lets go to a more comfortable setting to talk." Ruby took her hand, eyeing the interrogation droid carefully as she was escorted out of the cell. Weiss led Ruby through the quiet hallways of the star destroyer, the two stormtroopers standing at Ruby's sides. They eventually came to a stop at what appeared to be a small private chamber. A large stainless steel table dominated the room, black chairs lining either side. Weiss motioned for Ruby to take a seat. Ruby fell into the chair, still watching Weiss with suspicion. Weiss sat opposite her, the stormtroopers standing against the wall behind Ruby. "So, lets begin then, where is your base located, the one from which you launched the attack?"
"Did you really think, I would betray my friends?" Ruby asked, voice filled with genuine surprise and a hint of amusement. Weiss frowned,
"I imagine I will be calling the droid back then, how disappointing," she waved at one of the stormtroopers who left to collect it. "Now I will give you one last chance to tell me under more agreeable circumstances," Weiss' tone was stern now, slowly losing patience. Ruby glared back, the two staring each other down. Suddenly Ruby sprung into action, kicking the table to slide her chair back into the stormtrooper behind her. Using her shackles she swung her hands at the stunned stormtrooper, the metal handcuffs impacting with his plastoid helmet. Weiss shot up, calling her extra security on her comm.
Ruby grasped the troopers blaster, managing to wrestle it from his control, blasting him in the chest at point blank. She spun to aim he blaster at Weiss, whose face was a picture of shock. "Put down the blaster, there is no way out of this the than your surrender. Be reasonable," Weiss freezing under the threat of the blaster. Ruby scowled, "I would rather die than betray the people important to me, the people fighting to stop you," her voice filled with contempt. Weiss cursed herself for not wearing a blaster of her own, she was a captain and had had no intention of entering firefights, but her intentions were irrelevant now.
"You're coming with me, you're my ticket off this thing," Ruby motioning with her blaster for Weiss to move. The door to the private chamber opened, Ruby quickly aiming her blaster in that direction and firing. The stormtrooper managed to let of a wild shot as he went down, just missing Ruby. "Lets move 'captain', I think I have had enough imperial hospitality for today."
Yang held the lightsaber over Blake's head, hovering just inches away. She gripped the lightsaber hard, hands clenching down on the hilt. Her jaw ached as her teeth remained locked together as she fought back her anger. Yang's breathing was heavy, panting hard after the exertion of the fight. "Pick up your weapon," Yang grumbled. Blake shook her head,
"I will not fight you, I did not come here to kill you."
"Then what are you here for, you're an imperial assassin, don't even try to deny it,"
"I won't, although the proper term is inquisitor, but assassin is apt." Blake stood slowly, her face hidden in the shadow of her hood. Yang still held her father's lightsaber in both hands extended towards Blake. "I'm here to warn you that more of my kind will be coming for you, the Empire is on your trail."
"So you came here to scare me huh, well it's not going to work!" Yang shuffled on her feet, anxious for more fighting.
"It should," Blake looking directly at Yang now, her amber eyes glowing in the light of the yellow saber. "If I intended to stay with the Empire, you would be dead right now. You have no control, no finesse. What's worse is you stray too willingly to the darkside, you are supposed to be a Jedi."
"I'm not a Jedi," Yang said forcefully, straightening herself and holding the lightsaber at her side, still ignited.
"Well the Empire thinks you are one, and even if you don't want it, you are force sensitive," Blake crossing her arms as she spoke. Yang squinted in confusion,
"Who are you? Why are you trying to help me, you work for the Empire,"
"I 'worked' for the Empire. I am in the process of leaving that behind." The two of them stood in silence for a few moments. Finally, Yang deactivated her lightsaber, sliding it back into her boot. "Whatever, I got your message, now leave me alone." Yang turned and walked to her ship, shutting the ramp behind her. Blake watched her go, a strange feeling of disappointment coming over her. She had come to help a Jedi, and had found a drunk mercenary.
Even though she was disappointed, she felt a moment of relief. Her task was done, she was free now to follow her own path. Blake walked away, not noticing the blonde figure in the cockpit of the freighter, watching her leave.
Yang studied her as she walked away, "didn't even tell me your name."
Next time on Star wars: Beacon of hope; Ruby's Escape!
Thanks for reading, shout out to Dane-of-Celestia for creating the artwork that inspired this story.
(P.S disclaimer: I don't own either properties, just love them dearly and like to write things on occasion)Change is nothing new for FC Kansas City. The two-time defending National Women’s Soccer League champions have overcome important personnel changes each of the previous two offseasons only to lift the league trophy at seasons’ ends.
Some three months after beating Seattle Reign FC in the NWSL Championship for the second year running, FC Kansas City is now without 2013 NWSL MVP Lauren Holiday, defenders Amy LePeilbet and Leigh Ann Brown (nee Robinson), and forward Amy Rodriguez. The former three retired — center back LePeilbet and right back Robinson after playing every minute for the club in 2015 — and Rodriguez is pregnant with her second child and due to miss most if not all of the upcoming NWSL season.
After a second-place finish and a semifinal exit in 2013, midfield stalwart Desiree Scott left FC Kansas City and Lauren Sesselmann, her teammate for club and country, was taken by the Dash in the expansion draft. Both were full-season starters for the Blues. FC Kansas City also traded away starter Kristie Mewis in a deal which brought them Rodriguez, who returned from her first pregnancy to net 13 goals, second-most in the league.
And heading into 2015, the Blues lost half of their starting defense. Kassey Kallman was traded to Boston to acquire Heather O’Reilly and Nikki Phillips took the year off. So did midfielder Jenna Richmond.
[MORE: Will NWSL’s new allocation ranking system create fairness, transparency?]
But this offseason is the biggest hit yet for FC Kansas City, a franchise which few knew anything about when the NWSL announced its founding members late in 2012 but one which has since blossomed into the most consistent team throughout the first three seasons of NWSL. How will the champions deal with the loss of four core players and stay near the top of a league which has seen aggressive movement by competitors this offseason?
“I don’t necessarily want to say rebuild, because every time when people say rebuild it’s almost like they are looking for an excuse not to win,” FC Kansas City coach Vlatko Andonovski says when presented with that ‘R-word’ so many teams in the offseason. “No, there is no rebuild, just a couple of changes. If you look at our roster from year two to year three, there are just as many changes, maybe, but not big names like this. We make changes every year, whatever we need to do to make the team better. This year, we were forced to make the changes. It’s not because we wanted to, but still I think that we are already on the way to create this good team.”
In the past week, FC Kansas City acquired two 2015 World Cup participants: U.S. striker Sydney Leroux in a three-team trade and New Zealand defender Katie Bowen in the 2016 NWSL College Draft.
Leroux is the most important piece of the puzzle for FC Kansas City, who traded Sarah Hagen — a forward trying to fight her way back into the picture of the U.S. national team — to Orlando Pride just weeks before learning of Rodriguez’s pregnancy. Acquiring Leroux is clearly an answer to the sudden void at the forward position for FC Kansas City, but the move isn’t as reactionary as it appears.
“It took almost a year, the Leroux trade,” Andonovski says with a hint of relief. “I think that it if it wasn’t for Huw, it wasn’t going to happen.”
“We worked awfully hard on it,” Williams interjects.
He continues: “Every team in this league wants a Sydney Leroux. She’s a player that can be an absolute, immediate impact and sure, it became more viable and more important perhaps after the A-Rod situation, but we were far, way along before that. We were close a couple of times and then it fell through and we had to start all over again. But it was a lot of people working awfully hard to make it happen.”
[REPORTS: Teenager Pugh turning down college to go pro, play for Thorns, USWNT]
Leroux has been public over the past year about her desire to play in Kansas City, where her husband, Dom Dwyer, players for Sporting Kansas City. She inquired about a trade to Kansas City last year while in Seattle, which the Reign took as a sign that she wasn’t as committed to them as they were to her, and so they traded her to the Western New York Flash.
Seemingly the biggest challenge for FC Kansas City is fitting Leroux’s preferred direct style of play into the possession-oriented brand of soccer the Blues have trademarked through the first three years of the league. Andonovski offers a strong rebuttal to any concerns about Leroux fitting into the Blues’ system.
“She’s not any more direct than Amy Rodriguez was, but our style didn’t change and A-Rod was the leading scorer in the league,” he said (Rodriguez’s 13 goals in 2014 were second to Kim Little’s 16). “My point is that I think she will adapt the style very well and she will enjoy it and she will be very successful.”
Leroux played in only three games for the Flash, scoring once. She hasn’t played in a competitive match since June at the World Cup after undergoing surgery on her right ankle in July. She scored five goals in 22 games for Seattle in 2014 after netting 11 goals in 19 games for Boston in 2013. Leroux will be expected to shoulder much of the scoring load in 2016, but the club is high on former No. 2 overall draft pick Tiffany McCarty, who was also acquired in that Leroux trade.
Still, FC Kansas City’s biggest challenges remain in the back and in midfield.
LePeilbet helped anchor a league-best defense which gave up only 20 goals in 20 games last season, even without U.S. defender Becky Sauerbrunn — voted defender of the year all three seasons of the NWSL thus far — for almost half of the regular season due to World Cup duties. It was LePeilbet who returned to playing like her days in WPS — when she won back-to-back defender of the year awards of her own in 2009 and 2010 — to hold down the back line.
Brown exits NWSL as one of the all-time underrated players, playing 6,192 of a possible 6,420 in club history, including the playoffs.
And Holiday took the league by storm in 2013, leading the NWSL in goals (12) and assists (9) en route to MVP honors. She returned from Canada this summer as a 2015 World Cup champion and exited on top of the NWSL as well in October. For both FC Kansas City and the U.S. national team, she is irreplaceable.
“It’s going to be more adapting as a group than it is one player,” said Huw Williams, director of soccer operations for the club.
“Filling in for Lauren is not easy. I don’t think anyone will be able to do for us what she did.”
[MORE: NWSL Draft analysis | Sonnett No. 1 to Thorns | Rodriguez No. 2 to SBFC]
Andonovski and Williams speak of a system and fitting players into that FC Kansas City way. Young midfielders like Mandy Laddish, Frances Silva and Erika Tymrak — whose play in 2013 earned her looks from then-U.S. coach Tom Sermanni — will need to take on larger roles. Shea Groom must also take on a larger role in the absence of Rodriguez, who is due in mid-July and could miss the entire season. (Rodriguez said through a club representative, “If I can, I will be back this year.” But even if she returns in 2016, her time will be limited with the season likely to end in late September or early October.)
Midfielder Katrina Gorry could return to the club — FC Kansas City still holds Gorry’s rights — depending on Australia’s plans for the year (the Matildas still need to qualify for the Olympics). FC Kansas City is also currently out of open international spots after acquiring one for Bowen.
Stalwart and all-time underrated midfielder Jen Buczkowski will likely only be available for the first half of the season as she begins physical therapy school. Richmond is unlikely to return to the team after a year away.
Defensive voids are a point of concern as well, but the acquisition of Brittany Taylor — who earned caps with the U.S. in 2010 and 2011 — will fill the need for a starting center back. Williams calls her one of the best non-national team players in the NWSL.
Taylor should adapt well to Andonovski’s defensive style and system which has proven to work with multiple personnel.
[GORDON: Houston chooses forward Daly after she chooses NWSL — here’s why]
Phillips will not be returning to play this season. Brianne Reed, the Blues’ other second-round draft pick, was part of a historic Rutgers defense which brought the program to its first College Cup.
“We feel like both players have the potential to be starters on our team, and now it is up to them and how they are going to compete against other players on the team,” Andonovski said. “Both of them are great defenders and that is definitely a position that we needed.”
Still, it’s hard to objectively not look at 2016 as something of a rebuild for FC Kansas City. But that doesn’t mean the coaching staff of the two-time defending NWSL champions has lowered its expectations.
“It’s not going to be a rebuilding in terms of, ‘hey, it will take a couple of years here,'” he says. “Our goal is a three-peat. We think we’re starting to build something special here.”Osama bin Laden AP
Updated 6:41 p.m. Eastern Time
Senators serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee will be able to see post-mortem photographs of Osama bin Laden, congressional aides confirm to CBS News' John Nolen.
Members will need to call and make an appointment to see the photos, and then go to the CIA to view them. A viewing room has been set up for that purpose.
President Obama announced last week that he would not release the gruesome post-mortem photographsto the public, telling CBS News that "[i]t is important to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool."
Some have said they need to see the photos to confirm that bin Laden is truly dead. The White House has pointed to a video of bin Laden taken from his compound as evidence that the al Qaeda leader is gone.
Three Republican senators, including vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Saxby Chambliss, initially claimed to have seen the photos before acknowledging they were likely duped by photoshopped fakes.
UPDATE: Members of the House Intelligence Committee and House Armed Services Committee will have the same access to the images as their Senate colleagues.The Garda has said it has “no evidence” that €35,000 worth of alcohol was distributed to members of the force policing the Corrib gas pipeline works in the immediate aftermath of clashes with protesters.
Allegations that a company contracted to Shell E&P delivered large quantities of alcohol to the Garda – including a single delivery worth €35,000 to Belmullet Garda station in December 2007 – emerged in British media at the weekend.
According to the report, the €35,000 consignment was delivered to Belmullet Garda station from Northern Ireland in an unmarked van. The report carried an allegation that a senior garda expressed relief the walls of the Garda station were high, as prying eyes would not see what was happening.
Commenting on the allegations, the Garda press office last night issued a short statement: “On the 7th December, 2011, allegations were made to the district officer at Belmullet that alcohol was distributed to members of An Garda Síochána on behalf of Shell E&P. Inquiries conducted in relation to these allegations found no evidence of alcohol being distributed to members of An Garda Síochána by, or on behalf of, Shell E&P.”
‘Sweeteners’
The report in the Observer newspaper included allegations that members of the local community were offered “sweeteners” including cookers, school fees, and home and farm improvements.
Protester and retired school teacher Maura Harrington claimed last night she was aware “that sweeteners were coming from Shell”. She also referred to a report by a special rapporteur for the UN, Margaret Sekaggya, which she said expressed concern at shortcomings in official investigations.
Ms Harrington accused the Garda of a “Jesuitical distinction between what is delivered to the Garda station and what is distributed to the members”.
Ms Harrington welcomed the publication of the report in the Observer newspaper and said the longer the protest, now in its 13th year, continued, the more information came into the public domain.
She called for a new investigation by international jurists, possibly under the umbrella of the UN, into the allegations, “the environmental case and the economic case that we are selling our natural resources for a fistful of beads, baubles and a few bottles of booze”.I hate getting change. Quarters I can stomach, but pennies, nickels, and dimes I find infuriating. I know damn well that they are worth something, and that if I just collected them all and deposited them over time, they would add up to a lot of money. But instead they end up in every corner of the house, under couch cushions and behind the bureau, gathering dust.
A new app being released to the public today, Acorns, can't solve my problem with physical coins, but it does the equivalent with every digital dollar I spend. The app links to any credit or debit card and automatically rounds up purchases to the nearest full dollar, investing the rounded-up cents into a portfolio of index funds. You could always add a lump sum to your account, but the "spare change" approach is meant to gently nudge users toward regular contributions. It's an attempt to take the complex and often expensive process of putting your savings to work and simplifying it down into a mobile app with some basic choices and minimal fees.
Users can swipe through five different options that vary in terms of risk and reward, aiming for a higher return if they have more of a financial cushion to fall back on. But there is no option to pick individual stocks or asset classes. "We don't believe that people can really time the market," says said Jeff Cruttenden, co-founder and COO of Acorns. "We focus less on beating the market and more on index portfolios where we can capture the market and keep fees low."
That's a strategy which is becoming increasingly popular with ordinary investors. Acorns invests in index funds offered by Blackrock and Vanguard, which recently topped $3 trillion in assets, and helped to pioneer the passive approach to retail investing. Unlike going direct with those big names, Acorns has no commissions, no minimum account balances, and no penalties on withdrawals. It charges a flat $1-a-month fee and a 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent management fee on the money invested, compared to the mutual fund average of 1.29 percent.
For most people, being able to afford life's big-ticket items — kids, mortgage, retirement — means putting money into investments that grow in value over time. Realistically most |
cut conservation goals by 90% after the utilities argued they were no longer economical. This year, a national energy-efficiency non-profit, comparing the largest electric utilities on conservation efforts, ranked Florida’s among the worst.
Rooftop solar is another alternative. The state could offset nearly half its electricity needs this way, according to a 2016 federal analysis. But that too would threaten utilities’ profits because they don’t own those panels or the resulting power — their customers do. In 2014, the companies convinced the Public Service Commission to ax the state’s solar rebate program. Last year, they spent more than $20 million promoting a purportedly pro-solar ballot amendment widely panned as precisely the opposite.
Even without more conservation or solar, the state could have ensured that utilities build only those power plants Florida needs.
The commission said it carefully weighs all its decisions to balance customers’ and utilities’ interests. Its deputy executive director for technical matters, Mark Futrell, said commissioners have seen value in — for instance — replacing old gas plants with more efficient new ones requiring less fuel for the same amount of energy.
But the watchdog group Integrity Florida concluded in a recent report that the system is effectively rigged in favor of the companies. Floridians representing consumers, businesses, environmental interests and state government echoed that finding in nearly 40 interviews with the Center for Public Integrity. They pointed to the millions of dollars the major utilities spend on campaign contributions that flow to state officials, many with a say over appointments to the five-commissioner agency, and the 96 lobbyists working on those companies’ behalf.
“The power the utility industry has... is enormous,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican who served in the state Legislature for two decades, “and anyone that tries to tell you differently is lying.”
A worker prepares the ground for more solar panels at Florida Power & Lights Indian River solar-energy center near Vero Beach, Florida, on Oct. 10, 2017. FPL is nearly tripling its solar-powered portfolio with the eight sites it has under construction, but the state still falls far short of other sunny locales for solar usage. (Photo11: Jamie Smith Hopkins / Photos by The Center for Public Integrity)
The natural-gas state
The story of natural gas in Florida is also a story of FPL, which serves roughly half the state’s customers. The company, based in Juno Beach, started down this road to wean itself off oil. Then natural-gas prices jumped more than fivefold in the U.S. between early 1999 and mid-2008, with some of that increase ending up in utility bills.
In 2004, as FPL again sought to pass on higher fuel costs to customers, its officials said they would diversify their electricity generation to blunt such swings.
Instead, FPL doubled its reliance on natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing — fracking — unlocked gas from shale, and that supply rush tanked prices beginning in 2009. Suddenly gas looked like a smart choice. Fuel diversity, not so much.
FPL said its strategy has saved consumers $8.6 billion in fuel costs and prevented 108 million tons of carbon emissions since 2001.
Its residential customers pay 19% less for each kilowatt-hour of electricity than do average Americans, according to federal figures for 2016. If the Obama-era Clean Power Plan were in effect, FPL said it would already be in compliance far ahead of schedule — with coal just 3.5% of its mix and falling, its rate of carbon emissions is 30% better than the national average. Even replacing old gas plants with new ones substantially reduces those emissions, FPL said.
What upsets critics isn’t the shift to gas, but the extent of it — and that FPL and other Florida utilities are still adding gas plants. The electric grid covering most of the state is on track by 2021 to have the largest share of gas generation among all the U.S. and Canadian regional grids overseen by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory body. This high reliance carries risks, the organization noted.
Elected officials, community leaders, and the media were invited on a tour of the Florida Power & Light Barefoot Bay Solar Energy Center, which is currently being built off of Micco Road at the southern edge of Brevard County. (Photo11: TIM SHORTT/FLORIDA TODAY)
Past governors called for more renewable energy. Bush, a Republican who served from 1999 to 2007, worried about over-reliance on gas. Charlie Crist, the Republican-turned-independent (and later Democrat) who followed him, feared the consequences of global warming and pushed the state to take action, winning no friends in the utility industry.
His successor, heavily backed by utilities, has different priorities. Republican Gov. Rick Scott put an FPL executive on his transition team, supported the Sabal Trail pipeline and made national news for banning the state’s environmental protection agency from even referring to climate change.
A 2017 ranking of states for the ease with which companies can use renewables, compiled for retail and information-technology trade groups, puts Florida sixth from the bottom. The state was 15th in the country for total solar generation last year, bested by less sunny places and far outstripped by other high-potential locales.
North Carolina — headquarters of Duke Energy, which runs Florida’s second-largest utility — has nearly six times the electricity powered by rooftop and large-scale solar, according to Energy Information Administration data. If No. 1 California stopped building solar altogether and Florida added as much new production every year as it has right now in total, they wouldn’t pull even until 2048.
Asked when it might reach 50% renewable power, FPL said that “setting an arbitrary goal for energy from renewable resources comes at a high cost and with reliability concerns.” California has high electricity rates, FPL notes — though other factors have contributed, including an overbuild of gas-fired power plants.
Both FPL and Duke Energy said precipitous price drops only recently made solar competitive with gas in Florida, among the minority of states without a requirement for utilities to hit renewable targets. The state requires a cost-driven approach, and FPL’s Valle said his company jumped on solar as soon as the economics worked.
“We’re building more solar than just about any other utility in the nation now,” he said.
Florida utilities told the state this year that they’re expecting to build 4,000 megawatts of solar and 8,900 megawatts of gas-fired power plants in the next decade. FPL planned about 2,100 megawatts of solar, which it’s now on track to build by 2023, and 2,900 megawatts of new gas-fired generation, retiring both coal and older gas units in the process.
In August, Duke Energy Florida agreed to build 700 megawatts of solar over the next four years rather than the similar amount it had expected to spread over a decade, along with a battery-storage project and more than 500 electric-vehicle charging stations. Still, the utility is also building a 1,640-megawatt gas plant. It will be capable of making more electricity than the coal units the utility plans to retire next year and the incoming solar combined.
The transition from fossil fuels isn’t going faster because the company must consider customers’ interests, said Tamara Waldmann, director of Duke Energy Florida’s distributed generation strategy and renewables. “We want to be mindful of the affordability of electricity in our state.”
Florida’s power players
The shift across the country to cleaner electricity isn’t a simple exercise. Utilities must grapple with potential solar tariffs, tax policy, the likely future cost of battery storage, the best way of using intermittent energy sources. To make it easier and reward utilities for steps like helping customers use less power, some states have changed their regulatory structures by de-linking electric sales from revenues.
Florida has not.
It’s hard to tell how much of Florida’s situation is driven by regulators as opposed to the companies they oversee. Investor-owned utilities, especially in recent years, have so much clout here.
The four largest of these utilities influence state lawmakers through political giving — in the 2016 election cycle alone, about $1.4 million to the Republican Party, $376,000 to the Democratic Party, at least $1.5 million to political action committees supporting the governor and other major state officials, plus direct contributions to about 80% of serving state legislators. They influence appointments to the Public Service Commission, according to the Integrity Florida report, a process in which both the Legislature and governor play a role.
A Tesla Powerpack connected to solar panels on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. (Photo11: Tesla)
They even influence the commissioners, who know from experience that a good job in the industry could await “if they do the bidding of the electric companies,” said Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor. At least three former commissioners are lobbyists for electric utilities in the state.
Commission officials also realize if they push back too much, they’ll lose their jobs, said Timothy Devlin, ousted as executive director of the agency in 2011. The same happened to four commissioners in 2010.
Early that year, those commissioners voted to approve just 6% of the nearly $1.3-billion rate hike FPL asked for and rejected the $500 million increase Duke Energy’s predecessor requested. All were drummed out within months, two by the state Senate and the rest by a legislatively controlled nominating council.
FPL spokesman Dave McDermitt said in a statement that claims about its pull in the state capital are “ludicrous charges by individuals or organizations with an old axe to grind or who are trying to advance their own political and/or policy agendas.” Of FPL’s spending on lobbying — seventh-highest in the state — and roughly $15 million in political giving in the 2016 election cycle, he said, “Like most Americans, we participate in the political process.”
There certainly seems to be no friction between the utilities and the commission anymore. At a regional conference last year, Julie Brown, its chair, welcomed the crowd of state utility regulators and industry executives, including from FPL and Duke Energy. She said she was looking forward to “the opportunity to have dialogue with fellow sister commissioners from different states in the South, and you know, not be subject to [the public-record] Sunshine Law … and really talk about the best practices,” according to audio recordings obtained by the Center.
The commission declined the Center’s requests to interview Brown and other commissioners. In a statement, it said Brown was simply encouraging commissioners from other states to strengthen their relationships with each other “and learn best practices.” The agency “vigorously strives to ensure that Florida’s consumers receive reliable, safe service at a reasonable cost,” balancing consumers’ needs with those of utilities, it said in its statement.
The solar push
Jody Finver drew gasps as she showed her electric bills to a roomful of people in Miami Shores: under $10 a month, down from roughly $110 before she put solar panels on her roof. Finver was telling the crowd how to go solar cheaper with Solar United Neighbors of Florida, a non-profit helping people form co-op buying pools to get bulk discounts and technical assistance.
Finver’s panels produce enough to power her house and then some.
A chapter of an organization expanding around the country, the group formed in the middle of last year’s battle over the solar amendment. It was kick-started by people like Deirdre Macnab, former president of the Florida League of Women Voters.
Elected officials, community leaders, and the media were invited on a tour of the Florida Power & Light Barefoot Bay Solar Energy Center, which is currently being built off of Micco Road at the southern edge of Brevard County. (Photo11: TIM SHORTT/FLORIDA TODAY)
Utilities say the state has low rooftop solar adoption because electric rates are cheap. But because Floridians use more electricity in their hot — and getting hotter — state, the average residential bill here is nearly 10% higher than (and FPL’s roughly the same as) the national average. Macnab, who paid $3,000 a year for electricity before solar panels reduced that by two-thirds, said the co-op pitch is simple: You can save, too.
“We’re trying to get the state to a tipping point,” she said.
Solar United Neighbors of Florida has launched 19 co-ops, some still enrolling members and others that have helped about 500 households go solar. Six more co-ops are planned for January alone. Organizers are heartened by the demand — their waiting list for new co-ops extends through next fall — and by communities taking their own steps to move the needle.
Among those is Orlando, a city trying to go entirely renewable by 2050. Leaders made that commitment knowing their utility would cooperate: It’s municipally owned.
It’s also coal-heavy, so there’s a lot of work to do. Chris Castro, Orlando’s director of sustainability, thinks the goal is necessary and attainable. The city is trying everything: Amped-up conservation that propelled Orlando from the 30th to the 20th most efficient large city in the country in a 2017 ranking. A new solar site on a coal-ash landfill. A planned solar-with-battery-storage project. Panels on parking-lot roofs and a floating solar array in a pond.
And rooftop solar? Orlando’s utility is getting into the business. Taking a page from the co-ops, it’s launching a program to help customers aggregate their demand for lower prices.
But the utility serves 250,000 households and businesses. FPL, with 4.9 million customers, shapes Florida’s future in a bigger way.
The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit, non-partisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2jrepsJBQ and Canonical were proud to announce a few hours ago on their Twitter account that the recently announced BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition smartphones moved from pre-order to being available to buy.
Until June 17, 2015, the BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition device, which is powered by the latest Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system from Canonical, was available only for pre-orders, but now you can buy it directly from BQ's online store for the sum of €199.90 ($227).
As expected, BQ sells the Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition smartphone only in countries that are part of the European Union, as well as Norway and Switzerland. All new orders will be processed by BQ starting June 22, 2015, and will be shipped by the end of the month, most probably.
Technical specifications of BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition
BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition is a dual-sim smartphone that comes with impressive features, such as a MediaTek Quad-Core Cortex A7 CPU running at 1.3 GHz, a 5-inch capacitive IPS HD display that offers a 1280x720 resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio and 294 HDPI, 1GB RAM, as well as 16GB eMMC internal storage.
The device also boasts a 13MP camera with dual-flash and autofocus on the back and a 5MP camera on the front. It supports a broad range of multimedia file formats, support for microSD cards of up to 32GB, ambient noise cancelation, brightness sensor, notification LED, proximity sensor, and a Lipo 2500 mAH battery.
Regarding the connectivity and communication features, we can mention that BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition sports a Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, 3G + (HSPA+/UMTS/GSM), A-GPS, GSM (850, 900, 1800 and 1900) and UMTS (900, 2100). You can buy it right now from BQ.
The new @bqreaders E.5 phones have moved from pre-order to being available to buy! See here >> http://t.co/zIXEBi9g7l pic.twitter.com/1gyKp2RsdX — Ubuntu (@ubuntu) June 17, 2015A debate is ramping up over whether to let EMTs and firefighters carry guns on the job.
Some emergency medical services workers say they now routinely face more violent patients and dangerous situations. But the prospect of armed EMTs worries critics who question whether it would improve their safety or lead to other problems.
Tim Holman, chief of German Twp. Fire and EMS in Clark County, said he is weighing the pros and cons to allow his paramedics and emergency medical technicians to carry concealed handguns on the job, because they encounter belligerent and unpredictable people, and police are not always immediately available to subdue or arrest troublemakers.
Holman in September 2011 hosted a forum at the EMS World Expo in Las Vegas called, “Is it Time to Arm our EMTs?” He said some EMS departments across the country are considering arming their crews, because the job is becoming more dangerous and there has been a string of violent and deadly attacks on medical responders.
“It is a hot topic, and I am trying to make it a hotter topic, because it is something that needs to be looked at because we cannot depend on law enforcement to protect us,” he said.
But critics said medical first-responders do not have the training to act as police officers, and learning how to avoid and escape violent situations would make EMS workers safer and make more sense that equipping them with lethal weapons.
Holman said EMT safety is a major problem, and there has been far too many attacks on prehospital medical professionals across the country.
On Sunday, an EMT in Fort Wayne, Ind., was injured after he was struck by bullet fragments when his ambulance was shot 17 times while transporting a stabbing victim, according to news reports. In June, an ambulance that was responding to a call of a shooting in Houston was shot at least four times by the armed suspect. In March 2011, a Long Island paramedic was responding to a car crash, when suddenly the motorist pulled out a gun and unloaded on first-responders. Police eventually killed the gunman, but medic crews had to hide behind an ambulance to avoid gunfire.
Support growing
Holman said twice he has stared down the barrel of a gun after responding to requests for medical assistance. He said members of his department have been punched and assaulted, and EMS workers nationally are increasingly targeted by vicious gangs, anti-government extremists, unpredictable criminals and intoxicated or infuriated people. He said carrying a concealed weapon could give EMS workers the ability to protect themselves against potentially fatal attacks.
Holman said he is simply studying the issue, and he does not expect that his EMS crews will pack heat anytime soon. German Twp. trustees would have to change the township’s policy forbidding public employees from carrying guns on the job, and trustees have not discussed the issue.
“At this time, I really do not have an opinion about this,” said Trustee Charles Metzger. “It may come to that someday … but I can tell you that any kind of decision will be way down the road.”
But Holman’s proposal has garnered support.
Philip Mulivor, spokesman for Ohioans for Concealed Carry and a former New York paramedic, said he thinks EMTs and paramedics should be allowed to carry concealed firearms, because they should not have to fear for their own safety while providing life-saving treatment.
“First-responders face many dangers, and they can be both unpredictable and severe, and I don’t see why we should deprive them of the ability to protect themselves in life-threatening situations,” Mulivor said. “It would be particularly sad if we had a firefighter or paramedic — God forbid — lose their lives because they did not have the same means to defend themselves that any other law-abiding citizen in Ohio can have.”
Law enforcement officers are dispatched to emergencies at the same time as EMS crews when dispatchers identify safety concerns, and medical responders stage away from dangerous scenes until police arrive and secure the areas, said Dr. James Brown, chairman of emergency medicine at the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University.
But he said incomplete information about the nature of the emergencies and unpredictable people at the scenes mean that medical first-responders are put in potentially life-threatening situations, and police cannot respond to every scene.
“In this day and age, I would feel better if I was armed if I was them,” Brown said. “I would be supportive of any chief who felt the circumstances were such that they needed to go that route.”
He said medical first-responders would need additional training to handle firearms in crisis situations to learn how to properly and effectively react when confronted with imminent danger. But he supports any departments that decide their workers should be allowed to carry concealed firearms, because he said EMTs and paramedics have inherently dangerous jobs, and violence against all health care workers is on the rise.
About 60 percent of nonfatal assaults and violent acts in the U.S. workforce occurred in the health care and social assistance industry, and three-fourths of these assaults were by health care patients and residents of health care facilities, according to an August 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Labor that analyzed data fro 2003 to 2007.
A health care worker or social assistance employee is almost five times more likely to be a victim of a nonfatal assault or violent act than the average worker in all industries combined, the report said. Assaults and violent acts were the second leading cause of fatal occupational injuries in those industries in 2007, behind only transportation incidents, and one-quarter of the 134 people who were killed on the job that year died as a result of violence.
More training to diffuse attacks
But some members of the EMS community said it is not a good idea to mix EMS responsibilities and handguns.
EMS workers operate in dangerous environments, but they do not have the training or legal right to act as police officers, said Kip Teitsort, a veteran police officer and paramedic in Missouri who teaches the nationally recognized defensive-tactics class “Escaping Violent Encounters for EMS and Fire.”
Police officers try to bring suspects and attackers under control by using less-lethal force, and they only withdraw their guns as a last resort, Teitsort said. Unless armed EMS workers go through the same training as police officers, they will have only concealed firearms at their disposal for protection, which could result in a deadly mistake, he said.
“I am fully for people carrying guns, but I am just not for EMS providers carrying guns on scene,” he said.
Teitsort said EMS departments need to invest in training their workers how to diffuse dangerous situations and escape attacks. He said his classes teach EMS workers how the brain works during a crisis, what to expect during an attack, how to avoid and retreat from dangerous scenarios, and how to document the encounters.
About 71 instructors nationwide teach Teitsort’s classes, including Lt. Jeffrey Susong, a paramedic with the Dayton Fire Department.
Susong said police must go through intense training about when to use deadly force, and medical first-responders should not have to make such decisions. He said EMS workers should just focus on providing treatment, and if a dangerous situation arises, they should know how to mitigate or retreat from the threat.
“I don’t believe that putting a gun in our hands is necessary,” he said. “I’d like to think that when people call us, they know we are not aggressors and we are there to help.”
The Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Division of EMS said implementing policies that would allow EMTs, paramedics or firefighters to carry concealed weapons would have to happen at the local level. Local EMS departments contacted for this article said they have policies that forbid employees from carrying weapons, and they support the policies.
Last month, The Columbus Dispatch reported that 10 of the 14 firefighters who carry city-issued firearms were not certified by the state, and city officials took some of the guns out of service because the department lacked a use-of-force policy.
German Twp. police Chief Bill Dickerson said he has “mixed feelings” about the concept of arming EMTs, and he doubts his township will have armed EMS workers anytime soon.
“I have all kinds of questions that I don’t have the answers to,” he said.George Lucas is the visionary director behind Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and American Graffiti. He is also Ewok-shit insane.
Just The Facts
He's only directed 6 films in his entire career, yet he's arguably more famous than Mozart. Only three of them were good. But that's okay, because he can buy and sell your sorry ass fives times over, and writes golden checks for wish-granting blowjobs. Is the love-child of Alex Trebek and Santa Claus.
New Hope
George Lucas started off as a high-school slacker bouncing from auto racing to community college before attending USC film school. He dropped out of community college and is now worth $3 billion.
Stay in school, kids!
Lucas started off as something of a beatnik, and was very interested in fringe filmmaking. As the ring-leader in a posse of edgy film students called the dirty dozen, he ended up making nine short films with names so pretentious they'd make U2 blush.
If they hadn't long ago cauterized their shame receptors.
But eventually he grew tired of all that hippy shit, so Georgie got into the big time with a film called "THX 1138" (those initials sound familiar?) which is about:
"...a dystopian future in which a high level of control is exerted upon the populace through omnipresent, faceless, android police officers and mandatory, regulated use of special drugs to suppress emotion, including sexual desire."
It was critically panned at the time, despite being a pretty solid sci-fi flick. Rather than take his lumps and learn valuable lessons from the failure, Lucas blamed it all on the studio's attempts to make the film "marketable" and "coherent".
Strikes Back
Despite his monetary failure, the studios gave him another shot. Lucas put the sci-fi sexy on the back shelf for a bit and called on his auto racin' days to create the film "American Graffiti". Originally written on a dare from Francis Ford Coppola to make "a happy, normal movie," the plot was your classic post-high school pre-college romp flick. Keep in mind, at the time, this was still a pretty original concept. Also it had Suzanne Somers back when she was still bangable...
Actually, with the right lighting...
The Return
After unsuccessfully attempting to obtain the rights to Flash Gordon, Lucas went about writing another space movie.
Star Wars: One of the greatest treasures of American cinema. Lucas had toiled against studio skepticism, limited budget and creative impositions. He was so desperate to get his dream on film that he gave up his salary, opting instead to keep the merchandising rights. The studio execs laughed maniacally at their ingenious victory, and let the piddly little director have his fuck-all merchandising rights. No matter what you think of the man, the fact that every action figure and Jar Jar Binks pool toy is actually a big fuck you to his naysayers is pretty goddamn cool. Suck it, studios.
Phantom
After directing Star Wars in 1977, Lucas inexplicably ceased directing for 22 years. But he was still a very busy man. Aside from building a merchandising empire, buying a huge ranch (the first step every rich guy takes towards becoming an irredeemable psychopath,) and jerking off into thousand dollar bills, he continued to work on movies in some capacity. In 1980-1981, he wrote/produced both Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, which is still referred to by film critics as "the Lucas moneyshot".
He also started to look like Gordon Freeman.
His work over the next seven years (Return of the Jedi, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade) solidified his position as Nerd Pope and put him in the running for Geek Messiah. Finally in late 90's, when the world had almost forgotten that Lucas was even a director, George held a press conference to tell everyone the good news.
Attack
From 1999 to 2005, George Lucas came out with three prequels to the Star Wars trilogy. Directed, produced and largely written by Lucas, they promised to tell the origins of his universe - Darth Vader, the Clone Wars, the Empire - and set up the original films like fans had always wanted.
He totally succeeded! In the sense that he did indeed make three films.
Me-sa can be rallying point of hatred?
The first film, The Phantom Menace, debuted to extremely negative reactions. Rambling, overly indulgent, poorly written, and a little racist only begin to describe what amounted to an assault on the childhoods of Lucas' fanbase.
The second film, "Attack of the Clones", was also largely dismissed critically. Lucas had always been a very visual filmmaker, and it became clear that he had spent the better portion of the previous two and a half decades perfecting blue screen technology to avoid having to look at something nature produced ever again.
The third film, "Revenge of the Sith", was generally received more favorably than the previous two prequels, although many have pointed out that a slap in the face is also usually more favorable than a kick in the groin.
It's good, but can we add some Wompas in there, maybe a jive talking robot? Oh and make the nerd kick first.
Revenge
Oh, but Lucas had got a taste for ruining trilogies, and much like Vader, he wasn't strong enough to resist the dark side. He pulled Harrison Ford away from Calista Flockhart's jagged vagina, checked him out of the home on a day pass and raped his legacy right in the tailpipe, all for the benefit of Shia Lebouf's career.
George Lucas is straight crazy and he'll cut a bitch for no reason, we guess is what we're trying to say here.
The rebel filmmaker had finally gotten what he wanted: Total control. Thanks to his massive fortune and excellent track record, George stopped having to fight and compromise with his work. He stopped blowing executives in alleys to get the cash for just the effects he absolutely needed; he stopped debating and taking peer feedback; he stopped putting emphasis on characters because he couldn't afford the set-pieces, and with nobody to challenge his vision, retreated to his ranch alone to figure out how to sell more action figures first, more video games second, and make good movies somewhere in the high teens - just above prank-calling Ridley Scott, and right below splicing racist aliens into Casablanca.
But good god, the prequels are over. At least there is finally some peace...
God is dead.Nature is anything but predictable. She constantly surprises us with new discoveries, strange anomalies, and baffling enigmas. We strive to understand her, but just when we think we have her figured out, we are presented with yet another mystery.
One such mystery can be found in the many cases of animals that turn up in places they have no business being in. It is not always completely clear how these animals have become so unexpectedly dislocated from their natural habitats, but one thing that is certain is that these cases are almost always perplexing.
Among the many reports of out of place land animals, one can find others that describe aquatic creatures, some quite large and dangerous, showing up in the strangest of places. The prospect of coming across a creature totally unexpected in the depths of a lake or river holds a certain peculiar fascination. In such locales we think we can fish and have an idea of what we’ll catch, that we can swim and be totally safe. We seem to have a sort of false sense of familiarity with such places, so when something totally new rises up from the water, we are truly reminded of how unpredictable nature can be.
Let us take a look at some of these head scratching cases of aquatic beasts that, for whatever reason, have wound up in some of the most bizarre places.
To most people, sharks are shadowy creatures that lurk within the depths of the ocean. These often frightening denizens of the deep are what we might expect to find along coasts, out at sea, or perhaps in our nightmares, but certainly not at a golf course. Right?
Welcome to the Carbrook Golf Club, in Brisbane, Australia, a place that gives the term “water hazard” a whole new dimension. The course boasts beautiful scenery, a full 18 holes of golf, and a lake full of sharks. The small lake, which is located in the center of the golf course, harbors at least six full grown bull sharks measuring from 8 to 10 feet long, whose dark shapes and fins slicing the surface of the water have become a common sight.
The sharks are believed to have become stranded in the small lake during flooding in 1996, when the Logan and Albert rivers broke their banks and spilled onto the course. Since then, the sharks have not only survived in their new habitat, but are thriving and are even said to be breeding, giving the lake its new name “Shark Lake.” Many golfers sit by the side of the lake watching the beasts swim through the water just feet away, and golfers often pause during games in hopes of catching a glimpse of the sharks before continuing on to the next tee.
Bull sharks are large sharks that prefer shallow water and are known to be generally aggressive. A great many shark attacks have been attributed to this species. They are perhaps most well known for their unique and somewhat disconcerting ability to survive in fresh water. In fact, bull sharks can thrive in freshwater habitats, and have been known to venture hundreds of miles up rivers. Bull sharks are often found in many rivers throughout the world, and have been seen as far up the Mississippi as Illinois. They are even known to pop up in lakes, such as Lake Nicaragua, a large freshwater lake in Nicaragua that is known to have a breeding population of bull sharks.
However, Carbrook Golf Club is thought to be the world’s first shark infested golf course, and as such has attracted considerable publicity with its unusual guests. The sharks have become popular for corporate events, and some people have wedding ceremonies at the lakeside, where fins can sometimes be seen cruising through the water in the background as the couples exchange vows. There is also a tournament held at the course called the “Shark Lake Challenge.”
The sharks might be frightening, but so far people have had mostly a positive attitude towards them. Some even go as far as to throw pieces of meat to the sharks, even though the lake is well stocked with fish. Whether people want the sharks there or not, when visiting Carbrook Golf Club, it may be a good idea not to dive in for a lost ball.
While the presence of bull sharks in lakes or rivers may be alarming, at least they are known to frequent fresh water. What of even larger sharks with no such propensity?
Although rarer, there have been a fair number of accounts of great white sharks lurking in fresh water. Perhaps the most infamous and deadly account is the Matawan Creek incident of July 15, 1916.
The incident occurred at the height of a series of gruesome shark attacks along the New Jersey shoreline from July 1 to July 12, 1916. In total, 5 people were viciously attacked by what is believed by many to have been possibly a great white shark. What is curious about this case is that during this string of horrifying attacks, three separate attacks also happened in a small freshwater creek 15 miles from the ocean.
Matawan Creek lies in New Jersey and is a partial tidal inlet of Raritan Bay. On July 15, 1916, 12-year-old Lester Stillwell was killed while swimming in the creek. During the grisly attack, 24-year old Watson “Stanley” Fisher jumped in in an attempt to rescue the boy, whereupon the shark turned its attention on the would be rescuer and killed him as well before disappearing into the bloodied murk. Later that same day, a shark ferociously attacked and severely injured 14-year-old Joseph Dunn in the very same creek.
The attacks in a calm freshwater creek so far from the ocean stunned people and created widespread panic. The attacks are so notorious that they are believed to be one of the inspirations for the novel and subsequent film “Jaws.” While the true culprit of these attacks remains unknown, some believe it to have been the work of a great white shark. That a large great white was captured in Raritan Bay two days after the attacks suddenly ceased seems to somewhat support this theory.
There is the chance that these attacks may have indeed been carried out by the more freshwater inclined bull sharks, but still other accounts in freshwater clearly describe a great white.
A fisherman at Tuggerah Lake, a small freshwater lagoon about 90km north of Sydney which is connected to the ocean by a small tidal channel, claimed to have captured a large great white shark in his net. The man described the shark as being bigger than his 18 foot long boat, and claimed it was around 21 feet in length.
The startled fisherman said he cut the net in a panic and watched the shark sink back into the depths of the lake. Tuggerah Lake had never had any reports of sharks in its waters before, and the find was said to be so incredibly odd that some experts have doubted the veracity of the story.
Another great white shark measuring 16 feet and weighing 3500 pounds was haunting marshlands and shallow, brackish water bordering on freshwater deep within St. Helena Sound in South Carolina in 2013. The tagged shark made its way much further inland than any previously observed great white and experts said it was highly unusual behavior for this species.
Great whites are not known to inhabit such habitats, nor are they known to have any tolerance for or ability to adapt to freshwater, yet there various other reports and sightings of great whites spooking people in freshwater lakes, rivers, and estuaries. There have even been sporadic and unconfirmed sightings of the beasts in America’s own Great Lakes.
If there were great whites in the Great Lakes, they would certainly not be the only toothy out of place resident there. The Great Lakes have produced quite a few accounts of pirahnas in their waters as well. The deadly piranha, popularized in Hollywood for swarming upon animals to strip them to the bone in seconds, are world renowned for their razor-sharp teeth and vicious bites. They are also native to the Amazon River Basin in South America, which makes the Great Lakes pretty far from home.
One piranha was caught at a popular swimming hole called Sandy Bottom, in Dollar Bay, Michigan, which lies along the shores of Lake Superior. The man who caught the piranha wasn’t quite sure what he had reeled in at first, and brought it to a bait shop where it was identified as a red-bellied piranha. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the unusual catch stirred up quite a bit of panic among swimmers in the area, with many people refusing to go into the water |
had met with his agent, Bill Duffy, yesterday November 8th to get up to speed as to the various trade scenarios out there. Despite the inactivity for years over Okafor trade rumors, this one is getting traction.Part of the Truthout Series Solutions
(Photo: MATEUS_27:24&25 / Flickr)The Army wants to stop making M-1 Abrams tanks for a couple of years and redesign the tank for urban warfare. Once made specifically to fight cold war battles with Soviet tanks on the plains of Europe, the M-1 is a relic for the new type of urban warfare and the recent wars have show that they are vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). We have around 2,300 M-1s stashed around the world and 3,000 M-1s surpluses in the Nevada desert, waiting for the next large country-to-country tank war that may never come.
Enough members of Congress, however, do not want to stop the tank production in a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) plant in Lima, Ohio, that is run by General Dynamics. At around eight million dollars each, continuing to make more tanks to save jobs while we have 3,000 sitting in the desert is an expensive jobs program.
This is not the first time the M-1 program was steeped in the politics of weapons procurement, which often does not match what the military needs, but instead, what the politicians need to save jobs in their districts and states.
I have been investigating the M-1 tank since the early 1980s, partly dealing with the politics of buying a major tank during the cold war, and partly from looking at the early testing scores that showed major problems with the effectiveness of the tank. In the late 1970s, two companies, Chrysler and General Motors, had competing prototypes of the M-1. General Motors had a large and traditional diesel engine in the tank, and Chrysler, which had tried and failed to develop turbine engine technology for cars and trucks for the commercial market, wanted to recoup their costs and put a risky and complicated turbine engine in their tank. The Army was ready to give the contract to General Motors, but politics intervened. In 1987, the Washington Monthly laid out the scene around the all-important decision of what tank was to be chosen:
On a July afternoon ten years ago, Lt. Colonel George Mohrmann sat at his desk on Capital Hill awaiting a phone call. As head of the Army’s congressional liaison office, he was ready to deliver a stack of sealed letters to members of Congress announcing the winning contractor in the multi-billion dollar competition to build the Army’s M-1 tank. The two competing contractors, Chrysler and General Motors, offered a clear choice. Chrysler had built its tank around a radically different and unproven tank engine, the turbine; GM had used a more conventional diesel engine. The two tanks had undergone months of head-to-head trials at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
GM had won. The Army, it seemed, was not going to risk adding the M-1 to its growing list of overly sophisticated weapons that cost too much and don’t work. “We were sitting there poised to deliver [the envelopes],” Mohrmann recalls. “The decision [to select GM] had been made. We were just waiting for the Secretary of Defense to be briefed.” The call, however, was surprising. The Pentagon told Mohrmann not to deliver the letters. The next day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered a whole new round of competition. A week later, Rumsfeld turned the M-1 tank program upside down. He mandated that the tank be redesigned to incorporate the turbine engine. Four months later the award-which promised to generate $20 billion in sales – went to Chrysler and the Army was on its way to getting a weapon suited more for a paved interstate than a battlefield. … That isn’t another story about the Army’s incompetent bureaucracy. “You can blame the Army for a lot of things,” says Anthony Battista, a staff member of the House Armed Services Committee, “but not for the troubles of the M-1.” Rather, it’s a story of how outside factors can overwhelm military considerations in the Pentagon decision-making process, how narrow interests – in this case the ailing Chrysler Corporation and, by a strange twist, the U.S. Air Force – can outweigh the need for a reasonably-priced and effective military. The M-1 was never just a weapon; it was also a bail-out package.
I remember in my first investigations of the developmental problems of the M-1, I spoke to one of two Army engineers who tried to fight the politics to keep the turbine engine out of the M-1. He believed that it would be a life-long problem with the M-1. These two engineers made a valiant effort to keep this engine from compromising soldier safety. They failed, and the Army bureaucracy, who secretly wanted the diesel engine, made examples of them and threw their careers away. The engineer who I talked is now driving a taxi and was blackballed in the industry.
Also See: Defense Companies Use Congress to Save Their Profits, No Matter What (Part One)
Though the Army tries to deny it, this politically selected turbine engine has been a headache throughout the life of the M-1, and there have been unsuccessful attempts by the Army to replace it. One of the biggest problems is the amount of fuel the M-1 sucks up. This voracious appetite for fuel, along with its increasing weight as the Army piled on more and more in the tank, requires the M-1 to have an unusually large round of nannie fuel trucks to keep it going. And the turbine engine takes up about two-thirds of the tank’s maintenance costs.
In 1990, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) (I founded and ran POGO for years and still serve on its board of directors), did a report on how much trouble this turbine engine caused:
As a result of the M1’s lack of fuel efficiency, the Army has had to increase the number of trucks that follow it. As of 1981, the Army had to add the following equipment to each M1 tank battalion: 6 five-ton trucks
6 tank pump units
1 semi-tractor with 5,000 gallon fuel trailer
6 tank pump units
6 1.5 ton cargo trailers With the introduction of the M1A1, the fuel situation has worsened. The Army has had to add another four 10-ton, 2,500 gallon fuel carriers, according to Maj. Mazzia of the Army’s Ft. Knox Armor School. This totals 128 support vehicles assigned to each battalion of 58 M1A1 tanks. While the M1 may be able to move quickly across terrain, it must always wait for these vehicles to catch up. Nonetheless, in the past, Army officials have seemed unconcerned about the M1’s fuel consumption: “We don’t even think about the fuel consumption as a [tank crewman]. We don’t care.” – Sgt. Kinney, hearings before the House Armed Services Committee, 1982. Indeed, instead of combating the fuel consumption problem, the Army is making it worse: In an effort to standardize the fuel used by all Army vehicles, the Army will no longer use diesel to fuel the M1. Instead, a type of aviation fuel, which runs less efficiently in the M1, will be used by all Army vehicles. General Patton emphasized the folly of disregarding tank fuel consumption in his famous statement: “My men can eat their belts, but my tanks gotta have gas.”
If you think that it isn’t a big deal to drive those extra support vehicles, such as fuel trucks, in a war zone, take a look at this video of what IEDs do to those types of vehicles and decide whether you would want one of your kids to drive these nannie vehicles. There are long-term consequences of political intervention on military weapons procurement.
Now, the M-1 has way outlived its mission of fighting Soviet tanks and the Army, knowing that they will be needed weapons for insurgency fighting and urban warfare, wants to redesign the M-1. They found that despite that it is the largest and most armored vehicle in the Army arsenal, it has shown to be vulnerable to IED attacks, something that happens on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the M-1 was built to fight Soviet tanks face to face, most of its armor is in the front of the tank, leaving the back and flat underbelly of the tank at the mercy of the cheap, but effective, IEDs. There have been various discussions about the IED problem with the M-1 as our two most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan progressed. In 2005, USA Today reported:
The U.S. military’s Abrams tank, designed during the Cold War to withstand the fiercest blows from the best Soviet tanks, is getting knocked out at surprising rates by the low-tech bombs and rocket-propelled grenades of Iraqi insurgents. Abram’s heavy armor is up front, however, insurgents sneak up from behind, fire from the rooftops above and set off mines below. In the all-out battles of the 1991 Gulf War, only 18 Abrams tanks were lost and no soldiers in them killed. But since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with tanks in daily combat against the unexpectedly fierce insurgency, the Army says 80 of the 69-ton behemoths have been damaged so badly they had to be shipped back to the United States. At least five soldiers have been killed inside the tanks when they hit roadside bombs, according to figures from the Army’s Armor Center at Fort Knox, Ky. At least 10 more have died while riding partially exposed from open hatches.
The ill-fated turbine engine was also so vulnerable to grenades that the Army needed an expensive retrofit program to try to armor and deflect attacks on the tank’s rear engine. Take a look at this insurgent video where a homemade IED launches the 70-ton M-1 tank into the air.
So, the Army decided, especially with 3,000 unused tanks sitting in the Nevada desert, that they needed to close part of their tank facility in Lima, Ohio, for a couple of years to regroup and redesign the M-1. (The effectiveness of successfully redesigning the M-1 is a topic for another day.) General Dynamics, which bought the tank division of Chrysler and runs the government-owned plant, reacted with howls of lost jobs and military vulnerability if the Army stopped making the M-1, even for a few years.
The Army held to this decision. According to Reuters:
Brett Lambert, the Pentagon’s top official for industrial policy, said his office is working with the Army to preserve the most critical and fragile industrial capabilities in the armored vehicle sector. Lambert said the answer is not to keep buying more tanks that the country does not need and cannot afford. “We are operating in a budgetary environment that … is a zero sum game. For every dollar that we invest in technologies that are no longer needed … those are real dollars that we can’t invest in new technology and new factories,” he said.
Undeterred by their Army customer, General Dynamics called out the big dogs in Congress with the threat of large layoffs and deadly loss of national security. In an excellent expose, the Center for Public Integrity iWatch wrote a damning and thorough piece on how General Dynamics rallied the Congress for their cause while generously lubricating the Congressional will with plentiful campaign contributions. I usually don’t quote such large sections of an article, but they drilled to the bottom of this mess and produced a very disturbing, if not surprising, chart of the money flow to save this program:
The Pentagon, facing smaller budgets and looking towards a new global strategy, has decided it wants to save as much as $3 billion by freezing refurbishment of the M1 from 2014 to 2017, so it can redesign the hulking, clanking vehicle from top to bottom. Its proposal would idle a large factory in Lima, Ohio as well as halt work at dozens of subcontractors in Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states. Opposing the Pentagon’s plans is Abrams manufacturer General Dynamics, a nationwide employer that has pumped millions of dollars into congressional elections over the last decade. The tank’s supporters on Capitol Hill say they are desperate to save jobs in their districts and concerned about undermining America’s military capabilities. So far, the contractor is winning the battle, after a well-organized campaign of lobbying and political donations involving the lawmakers who sit on four key committees that will decide the tank’s fate, according to an analysis of spending and lobbying records by the Center for Public Integrity. Sharp spikes in the company’s donations – including a two-week period in 2011 when its employees and political action committee sent the lawmakers checks for their campaigns totaling nearly $50,000 – roughly coincided with five legislative milestones for the Abrams, including committee hearings and votes and the defense bill’s final passage last year. After putting the tank money back in the budget then, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have authorized it again this year, allotting $181 million in the House and $91 million in the Senate. If the company and its supporters prevail, the Army will refurbish what Army chief of staff Ray Odierno described in a February hearing as “280 tanks that we simply do not need.” … The $3 billion at stake in this fight is not a large sum in Pentagon terms – it’s roughly what the building spends in a little more than a day. But the fight over the Abrams’ future, still unfolding, illuminates the major pressures that drive the current defense spending debate. These include a Pentagon looking to free itself from legacy projects and modernize some of its combat strategy, a Congress looking to defend pet projects and a well-financed and politically savvy defense industry with deep ties to both, fighting tooth-and-nail to fend off even small reductions in the budget now devoted to the military – a total figure that presently composes about half of all discretionary spending.
General Dynamics-Related Campaign Donations to Key Lawmakers
One-week periods from Jan. 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012
As I mentioned in last week’s column, Congress are enablers to the defense industry to keep their money and profits flowing, regardless of the effect on national security. The M-1’s history is a blatant example of how years of weapons politics between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Congress are not producing the weapons that our troops really need and not adding to national security for all the money that is spent.
Congressman Buck McKeon (R-California), the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, despite a ruling from the Department of Labor, still wants defense companies like General Dynamics and Lockheed to send out warning pink slips to their employees, right before the November election, even though the unlikely cuts due to sequestration won’t happen until months after the election.
Members of Congress in both political parties have used the Pentagon for years as an ineffective jobs program while corrupting weapons procurement and enabling, not only the defense industry, but sympathetic DoD staffers and officers who are hoping for a good post-retirement defense job. POGO recently published an analysis that shows there is a recent trend where five large defense contractors actually had fewer jobs as they received more and more money. Not exactly an argument for the Pentagon as a jobs creator … more like profit creator for the companies.
It would take some political courage, but the current administration and the Army should stick to their decision and not allow the Congress to artificially keep an unneeded and ineffective tank to keep rolling off the production lines in Lima at $8 million a piece – only to be adding to the growing number of unused tanks sitting in the desert as remainders of another time. What type of political IED can take out the M-1? It is a tough question, but perhaps we need to ban defense contractors from giving money to the Congress because national defense is too important for these potentially deadly political games.OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell
Eran Hammer Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 25, 2012
Update: three years later I wrote something new… introducing Oz.
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, that’s OAuth 2.0.
Last month I reached the painful conclusion that I can no longer be associated with the OAuth 2.0 standard. I resigned my role as lead author and editor, withdraw my name from the specification, and left the working group. Removing my name from a document I have painstakingly labored over for three years and over two dozen drafts was not easy. Deciding to move on from an effort I have led for over five years was agonizing.
There wasn’t a single problem or incident I can point to in order to explain such an extreme move. This is a case of death by a thousand cuts, and as the work was winding down, I’ve found myself reflecting more and more on what we actually accomplished. At the end, I reached the conclusion that OAuth 2.0 is a bad protocol. WS-* bad. It is bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it. It is the biggest professional disappointment of my career.
All the hard fought compromises on the mailing list, in meetings, in special design committees, and in back channels resulted in a specification that fails to deliver its two main goals — security and interoperability. In fact, one of the compromises was to rename it from a protocol to a framework, and another to add a disclaimer that warns that the specification is unlike to produce interoperable implementations.
When compared with OAuth 1.0, the 2.0 specification is more complex, less interoperable, less useful, more incomplete, and most importantly, less secure.
To be clear, OAuth 2.0 at the hand of a developer with deep understanding of web security will likely result is a secure implementation. However, at the hands of most developers — as has been the experience from the past two years — 2.0 is likely to produce insecure implementations.
How did we get here?
At the core of the problem is the strong and unbridgeable conflict between the web and the enterprise worlds. The OAuth working group at the IETF started with strong web presence. But as the work dragged on (and on) past its first year, those web folks left along with every member of the original 1.0 community. The group that was left was largely all enterprise… and me.
The web community was looking for a protocol very much in-line with 1.0, with small improvement in areas that proved lacking: simplifying signature, adding a light identity layer, addressing native applications, adding more flows to accommodate new client types, and improving security. The enterprise community was looking for a framework they can use with minimal changes to their existing systems, and for some, a new source of revenues through customization. To understand the depth of the divide — in an early meeting the web folks wanted a flow optimized for in-browser clients while the enterprise folks wanted a flow using SAML assertions.
The resulting specification is a designed-by-committee patchwork of compromises that serves mostly the enterprise. To be accurate, it doesn’t actually give the enterprise all of what they asked for directly, but it does provide for practically unlimited extensibility. It is this extensibility and required flexibility that destroyed the protocol. With very little effort, pretty much anything can be called OAuth 2.0 compliant.
Under the Hood
To understand the issues in 2.0, you need to understand the core architectural changes from 1.0:
Unbounded tokens — In 1.0, the client has to present two sets of credentials on each protected resource request, the token credentials and the client credentials. In 2.0, the client credentials are no longer used. This means that tokens are no longer bound to any particular client type or instance. This has introduced limits on the usefulness of access tokens as a form of authentication and increased the likelihood of security issues.
— In 1.0, the client has to present two sets of credentials on each protected resource request, the token credentials and the client credentials. In 2.0, the client credentials are no longer used. This means that tokens are no longer bound to any particular client type or instance. This has introduced limits on the usefulness of access tokens as a form of authentication and increased the likelihood of security issues. Bearer tokens — 2.0 got rid of all signatures and cryptography at the protocol level. Instead it relies solely on TLS. This means that 2.0 tokens are inherently less secure as specified. Any improvement in token security requires additional specifications and as the current proposals demonstrate, the group is solely focused on enterprise use cases.
— 2.0 got rid of all signatures and cryptography at the protocol level. Instead it relies solely on TLS. This means that 2.0 tokens are inherently less secure as specified. Any improvement in token security requires additional specifications and as the current proposals demonstrate, the group is solely focused on enterprise use cases. Expiring tokens — 2.0 tokens can expire and must be refreshed. This is the most significant change for client developers from 1.0 as they now need to implement token state management. The reason for token expiration is to accommodate self-encoded tokens — encrypted tokens which can be authenticated by the server without a database look-up. Because such tokens are self-encoded, they cannot be revoked and therefore must be short-lived to reduce their exposure. Whatever is gained from the removal of the signature is lost twice in the introduction of the token state management requirement.
— 2.0 tokens can expire and must be refreshed. This is the most significant change for client developers from 1.0 as they now need to implement token state management. The reason for token expiration is to accommodate self-encoded tokens — encrypted tokens which can be authenticated by the server without a database look-up. Because such tokens are self-encoded, they cannot be revoked and therefore must be short-lived to reduce their exposure. Whatever is gained from the removal of the signature is lost twice in the introduction of the token state management requirement. Grant types — In 2.0, authorization grants are exchanged for access tokens. Grant is an abstract concept representing the end-user approval. It can be a code received after the user clicks ‘Approve’ on an access request, or the user’s actual username and password. The original idea behind grants was to enable multiple flows. 1.0 provides a single flow which aims to accommodate multiple client types. 2.0 adds significant amount of specialization for different client type.
Indecision Making
These changes are all manageable if put together in a well-defined protocol. But as has been the nature of this working group, no issue is too small to get stuck on or leave open for each implementation to decide. Here is a very short sample of the working group’s inability to agree:
No required token type
No agreement on the goals of an HMAC-enabled token type
No requirement to implement token expiration
No guidance on token string size, or any value for that matter
No strict requirement for registration
Loose client type definition
Lack of clear client security properties
No required grant types
No guidance on the suitability or applicability of grant types
No useful support for native applications (but lots of lip service)
No required client authentication method
No limits on extensions
On the other hand, 2.0 defines 4 new registries for extensions, along with additional extension points via URIs. The result is a flood of proposed extensions. But the real issues is that the working group could not define the real security properties of the protocol. This is clearly reflected in the security consideration section which is largely an exercise of hand waving. It is barely useful to security experts as a bullet point of things to pay attention to.
In fact, the working group has also produced a 70 pages document describing the 2.0 threat model which does attempt to provide additional information but suffers from the same fundamental problem: there isn’t an actual protocol to analyze.
Reality
In the real world, Facebook is still running on draft 12 from a year and a half ago, with absolutely no reason to update their implementation. After all, an updated 2.0 client written to work with Facebook’s implementation is unlikely to be useful with any other provider and vice-versa. OAuth 2.0 offers little to none code re-usability.
What 2.0 offers is a blueprint for an authorization protocol. As defined, it is largely useless and must be profiles into a working solution — and that is the enterprise way. The WS-* way. 2.0 provides a whole new frontier to sell consulting services and integration solutions.
The web does not need yet another security framework. It needs simple, well-defined, and narrowly suited protocols that will lead to improved security and increased interoperability. OAuth 2.0 fails to accomplish anything meaningful over the protocol it seeks to replace.
To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade
Over the past few months, many asked me if they should upgrade to 2.0 or which version of the protocol I recommend they implement. I don’t have a simple answer.
If you are currently using 1.0 successfully, ignore 2.0. It offers no real value over 1.0 (I’m guessing your client developers have already figured out 1.0 signatures by now).
If you are new to this space, and consider yourself a security expert, use 2.0 after careful examination of its features. If you are not an expert, either use 1.0 or copy the 2.0 implementation of a provider you trust to get it right (Facebook’s API documents are a good place to start). 2.0 is better for large scale, but if you are running a major operation, you probably have some security experts on site to figure it all out for you.
Now What?
I’m hoping someone will take 2.0 and produce a 10 page profile that’s useful for the vast majority of web providers, ignoring the enterprise. A 2.1 that’s really 1.5. But that’s not going to happen at the IETF. That community is all about enterprise use cases and if you look at their other efforts like OpenID Connect (which too was a super simple proposal turned into almost a dozen complex specifications), they are not capable of simple.
I think the OAuth brand is in decline. This framework will live for a while, and given the lack of alternatives, it will gain widespread adoption. But we are also likely to see major security failures in the next couple of years and the slow but steady devaluation of the brand. It will be another hated protocol you are stuck with.
At the same time, I am expecting multiple new communities to come up with something else that is more in the spirit of 1.0 than 2.0, and where one use case is covered extremely well. OAuth 1.0 was all about small web startups looking to solve a well-defined problem they needed to solve fast. I honestly don’t know what use cases OAuth 2.0 is trying to solve any more.
Final Note
This is a sad conclusion to a once promising community. OAuth was the poster child of small, quick, and useful standards, produced outside standards bodies without all the process and legal overhead.
Our standards making process is broken beyond repair. This outcome is the direct result of the nature of the IETF, and the particular personalities overseeing this work. To be clear, these are not bad or incompetent individuals. On the contrary — they are all very capable, bright, and otherwise pleasant. But most of them show up to serve their corporate overlords, and it’s practically impossible for the rest of us to compete.
Bringing OAuth to the IETF was a huge mistake. Not that the alternative (WRAP) would have been a better outcome, but at least it would have taken three less years to figure that out. I stuck around as long as I could stand it, to fight for what I thought was best for the web. I had nothing personally to gain from the decisions being made. At the end, one voice in opposition can slow things down, but can’t make a difference.
I failed.
We failed.
Some more thoughts…Stanley “MC Hammer” Burrell
Burrell was adopted during his infancy by a night club manager, and a police department assistant in East Oakland. Growing up as a die hard Oakland A’s fan, Stanley would sell stray baseballs and dance outside of the stadium with hopes of making enough money for a ticket. Soon the young Stanley was viewed as a trademark for the stadium, and as a result Team Owner Charles O Finley hired the boy as a clubhouse assistant and the teams batboy. One day during some down time, future Hall of Fame player Reggie Jackson saw Burrell and gave him the nickname “Hammer” because of a striking resemblance with past slugger Hank Aaron.
By the mid 80’s after his time with A’s had come to an end, young Hammer began pursuing his career as a rapper. His first album was with a rap music group called Holy Ghost Boys that contained mostly Christian lyrics. Garnishing almost no commercial success with this group Hammer took a large risk and decided to stray off onto his own. With 20,000 dollars he borrowed from 2 former Oakland A’s players, Hammer started his own independent record label called Bust It Productions. Selling records out of the trunk of his car, Hammer’s music began to spread. His song “Let’s get it Started” became a local hit and sold just over 60,000 copies.
Soon after the popularity of “Let’s get it Started” Hammer’s name began to spread nationwide. His unforgettable dance moves and unique for the time “Hammer Pants” blew up his career at an astronomical pace. “Too Legit to Quit” and “You Can’t Touch This” became massive mainstream hits, and huge paychecks were soon to follow.
As his fame began to grow people from his past soon came out from every corner of his life. While supporting a good majority of his family and friends, Hammer’s record sales began to decline due to the Growing popularity of the Gangsta Rap movement. Soon there would be very little room for Hammer’s positive and optimistic rap lyrics. By 1996 Burrell was over 13 million dollars in debt, and decided to file Bankruptcy. To top things off, his previous collaborator Kevin Christian filed a law suit for 16 million dollars claiming (and Hammer would later admit to the charges) copyright infringement on the song, “oh oh, you got the shing.”
Although Hammer has since gotten back on his feet through various stand in and hosting gigs, his career has been unable to get anywhere close to the commercial success he enjoyed in the early 90’s. One thing that has been consistent throughout MC Hammer’s life has been his devotion to Christianity. Burrell is one of the few celebrities that have avoided divorce, as he has remained married to his first wife for nearly 26 years. He is currently an ordained minister, and has changed the original meaning of MC (master of Ceremonies) to a more relevant to his work acronym where MC stands for “Man of Christ.”Dame Sally Davies asks GPs and pharmacies to ensure they are prescribing correct drugs after 16 cases of drug-resistant strain of STI this year
Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease, England’s chief medical officer has said.
Dame Sally Davies has written to all GPs and pharmacies to ensure they are prescribing the correct drugs after the rise of a highly drug-resistant strain of the infection.
The warning comes after a national public health alert was triggered in September by an outbreak of highly drug-resistant gonorrhoea in the north of England.
“Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease due to the continuing emergence of antimicrobial resistance,” Davies writes.
“Gonorrhoea has rapidly acquired resistance to new antibiotics, leaving few alternatives to the current recommendations. It is therefore extremely important that suboptimal treatment does not occur.” The letter is also signed by the chief pharmaceutical officer, Dr Keith Ridge.
Drug-resistant gonorrhoea outbreak sparks England-wide alert Read more
At least 16 cases of “super-gonorrhoea” have been detected by Public Health England (PHE) since March, the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV reported in September.
The strain, which is resistant to the first-line antibiotic azithromycin, was first reported in Leeds in March and has spread, with cases reported in patients from Macclesfield, Oldham and Scunthorpe. All of the cases were reported to involve heterosexual patients, and some people have reported partners from other parts of England.
The EU’s infectious diseases monitor has been warning about the growing threat of drug-resistant gonorrhoea for some years.
Without treatment, gonorrhoea can lead to serious long-term health problems, including infertility and potentially life-threatening pelvic inflammatory disease in women. In pregnant women it can also cause permanent blindness in a newborn.
Almost 35,000 cases of gonorrhoea were reported in England last year and it is the second most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the UK after chlamydia. The majority of cases affect people under the age of 25.
Infected patients may experience discharge or pain while urinating, but about 10% of men and almost half of women do not suffer any symptoms.
Research published this year suggested that some GPs are prescribing antibiotics that no longer work for people with gonorrhoea, raising the chances that drug-resistant forms will spread.
The study led by PHE, published in the journal BMJ Open, found that many GPs were still giving their patients ciprofloxacin, even though it has not been recommended for treatment since 2005.
In 2007 ciprofloxacin was on 42% of prescriptions for gonorrhoea, and even as recently as 2011 it was still prescribed in one in five cases.
Dr Andrew Lee, PHE’s consultant in communicable disease control, said: “Investigations are ongoing into a number of cases of antimicrobial resistant gonorrhoea, these are seen from time to time around the country and those affected have been effectively treated with alternative antibiotics. We know that the bacterium that cause gonorrhoea can mutate and develop new resistance, so we cannot afford to be complacent.
“Individuals can significantly reduce their risk of any STI by using condoms with all new and casual partners and getting tested regularly. Public Health England will continue to monitor, and act on, the spread of antimicrobial resistance and potential gonorrhoea treatment failures, to make sure they are identified and managed promptly.”8.1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print
A recent article from the Australian media outlet SBS showing how Scientism is psychologically identical to religion or other forms of ideological extremism and dogma has some interesting implications regarding the supporters of police and the state. Before I make that connection, take a look at what the article had to say about the psychological roots of extremism.
Last year, the University of Maryland’s Arie Kruglanski detailed evidence that psychology, not theology, is at the root of extremist ideologies. Extremist groups like ISIL offer adherents a sense of personal worth, he argued, but they also provide believers with certainties about the world that they so desperately need. Whether studying extremists in Morocco, Northern Ireland, Palestine, the Philippines, Spain, or Sri Lanka, Kruglanski found that believers all displayed a desire for certainty and structure that was higher than average. For extremists, Kruglanski wrote in the online journal E-International Relations, the world is one of “good versus evil, saints versus sinners, order versus chaos; a pure universe in black and white admitting no shades of gray.” As his research shows, we all have different baseline levels of need for closure, but our distaste for ambiguity can also be heightened by uncertainty and stress. Extremism results, in part, when our natural need for order is enflamed by disorder. The content of extremist beliefs, beyond their status-reassuring certainties, is incidental. Moral relativism, which holds that objective criteria do not exist for judging norms, seems to spring from this link between extremism and the craving for certainty. As NYU student Zachary Fine observed in The New York Times last year: “The byproducts of absolute truths and intractable forms of ideology … historically seem linked to bigotry and prejudice.” Indeed, Kruglanski’s concept of the need for closure and the very study of the intolerance of ambiguity stem from post-World War II attempts to understand Nazism. The psychology of extremism reveals an important point: part of what makes a belief system dangerous is its dogmatic denial of uncertainty.
Every supporter of the state and their guardians, the police, cite the necessity of their existence with a list of all the scary things that could happen if those agencies did not exist. Nevermind that those scary things still do happen and are done more often by the state and its servants than by any individual in history, or all of them not serving the state, combined. It is always primal fear of the chaos and uncertainty that exists naturally in our reality which becomes the sticking point for why people continue to believe that police, governments or other bureaucracies MUST exist. That this can be demonstrated to be irrational through examining the horrors of authoritarianism makes no difference to them.
The reason that logic and reason do not matter to those who put faith in powers above their own is that it is all predicated on emotional response and has nothing at all to do with any legitimate intellectual factors. Police, the state, theism and all other institutions of authority over the individual are merely ‘safety blankets’ for the emotionally fragile. And through the masses of people who are unable to reason through their fears and emotional and existential hang-ups, there comes support for institutions which provide the perfect home for the very worst among us. Their beliefs have created a protector costume and filled it with predators.
The world is an uncertain place with the possibility of danger always present. That is the very nature of our reality. Reality cannot be policed against. You cannot construct laws to undermine the laws of probability. No system or institution can eradicate chaos from this existence. It exists naturally as part of the experience of living. Without that uncertainty and breadth of possibility our lives would mean nothing. Money that cannot be spent is worthless just as lives that cannot be lost have no purpose. Surviving the difficult obstacles that reality throws before us is what makes it worth living. Perfection is an unchanging hell.
Chaos exists. It is a natural extension of our being. To allow ourselves to fear it to the extent that we attempt to deny the inevitable through comforting delusions of order only creates disorder. Order is entropic. It breaks down over time. Things that break down must undergo radical processes to do so. These radical processes are what we experience as an increase of disorder in our world. Therefore it is not chaos which threatens us as much as what we do out of fear of it. That fear can set off a chain reaction of social and belief structures that do even more to create the things we feared in the first place.
If the world seems increasingly disordered to you, it is not because more order is needed. It is because having tried that solution unsuccessfully for so long has created the perceived increase in disorder. If terrorists and criminals seem worse than ever it is because |
kind of incredible reputation or groundbreaking rum philosophy which the company garnered for itself. They exited the business, and many of their bottles rested unsold in Alberta shops for many years, unknown and unappreciated – I picked up several just by driving around, and I’m sure that they can still be picked up to this day by the enterprising rumhound. And yet, and yet….the rums they made remain curiously alive in the memories of those who tried them (I’m one of those weird beings), and may even, I can hope, grow in reputation in the future…if they can still be found. They were larger than usual outturns of a now almost forgotten, largely unreviewed independent bottlers’ philosophy, and deserve a look – whatever one’s final opinion might be – for perhaps that reason alone.
Postscript:
Mr. Reynier’s conclusion in the nineties when he was working with Murray McDavid, was that for full control of the quality of distillation and wood meant one had to have a distillery — he was referring to whisky, and has since extended his thinking on the subject, to encompass rums. He thought about the matter ever since, searching for a suitable rum distillery project or functioning distillery to buy, but never finding the proper one, and concluded he would have to start from scratch. That project came to fruition in Grenada, where for the last two years he has been involved in propagating seven different varieties of cane on Grenada, with a new, modern distillery on the cards, which is expected to go operational by 2019 – in July 2018 ground was broken, foundations are expected to be completed by October, steel frames by December and machinery installed by the first quarter of 2019. By July of that year, distillation operations are expected to commence, and then this post will have to be updated again, though what with laying down stocks to age, the earliest we can expect a rum from Renegade is perhaps 2021.
The new operation will be called the New Renegade Rum Distillery, and so (if you’ll forgive my little bon mot), the brand which was thought to have bought the farm has in fact been resurrected and established another one. The plan is, with Graham Williams of Westerhall, to release an interesting new range of independently bottled rums from this Grenadian base, under a revitalised Westerhall label.
Other notes
My source for much of this essay is Mr. Reynier and online web pages. But perhaps I should take the time to tip my hat – twice – to all those employees of the company who were involved in making this brand but who are so rarely acknowledged.
Compliments to Marco Freyr, whose MM/Renegade biography and bottle list was my first stop. Just as Serge Valentin is the gold standard for tasting notes, Marco is the man for historical detail.
Bottlings
2007
Guyana, Enmore Distillery, 16 YO (1990- 2007 ), Madeira Finish (1180 bottles)
2007 Guyana, Uitvlugt Distillery, 12 YO (1995- 2007 ), Chateau d’Yquem Finish (1300 bottles)
2007 Jamaica, Hampden Distillery, 15 YO (1992- 2007 ), Chateau Latour Finish (1060 bottles)
2007 Panama, Don Jose Distillery, 10 YO (1997 -2007 ), Port Finish (1380 bottles)
2008
2009
2012
Guyana, Diamond Distillery, 11 YO (2001 – 2012), Tempranillo finish (1800 bottles)
ReferencesI was listening to the Darren Smith show last week and Marty Caswell asked him if he thought he’d be able to recognize any of the Padres’ relatively unknown players when they ventured out to Peoria this week. I sure as hell wouldn’t recognize 95% of them.
Not only are all these players young and unknown, but since dumping cable and relying solely on the radio broadcast I am completely out of the loop. I’m bad with names and faces as it is, but I really only see the player’s mugs when they are on the Petco Park scoreboard or in the peripheral media.
I noted this last season as well and hoped Jesse and Ted would do me a solid.
Since switching to the radio broadcast full time I've noticed I don't know what the #Padres look like anymore. — Gaslamp Ball (@gaslampball) August 2, 2016
Maybe @jesseagler and @TedLeitner could describe the player's faces like they would to a police sketch artist. — Gaslamp Ball (@gaslampball) August 2, 2016
Anyway, for some reason I can’t embed this particular quiz, so just click the link below and let me know how you do. There are both players and coaches, so settle in and do your best. You only need to enter their last name. You can skip the ones you don’t know.LG's Smart TVs have reportedly been logging details of owner viewing habits even after users disable data collection in the settings menu. The alarming discovery was made by one user, who found that even after he turned off an option that enables "collection of watching info," the Smart TV still phoned home to a non-functional URL with specifics on channels he'd been watching and even filenames of movies stored on an attached USB drive. "I decided to do some traffic analysis to see what was being sent," he writes. "It turns out that viewing information appears to be being sent regardless of whether this option is set to on or off."
The TV apparently identifies itself with a unique device ID, and transmits the data in unencrypted form with every change of the channel. LG's customer service department told the user that the logging is fair game since he agreed to the company's terms and conditions. They went on to say that any concerns should be directed at the retail store where he purchased the TV in question. We've reached out to the company for more details on the situation.When it comes to Linux applications, at times there are so many choices and alternatives. But sometimes there are only a few options.
One of our readers had requested to make a list of decent Linux photo management software. Something that could replace now defunct Picasa on Linux.
Turns out, though not many, there are some really good applications for managing photo libraries available out there. Either you have a huge collection of photos or only a few of them, one of these options ought to suit your needs.
Top photo management applications in Linux
This list of best photo management applications for Linux is different from our earlier list of best photo applications for Linux. That list contained image related applications for various purposes such as editing, painting etc., while this list deals with only photo managing applications.
If you prefer videos, we have put up a video on our YouTube channel. Do watch it and subscribe to our channel:
So, here we go. I’ve also included the installation commands of these applications for Ubuntu and its derivatives. All you need to do is open a terminal and run those.
gThumb is a lightweight photo management application built mainly for GNOME desktop environment. It includes all the basic photo management features as well as some editing and advance operations. Some of the main features of gThumb are:
Image Viewer : Supports all the major image format (including GIF) and metadata (EXIF, XMP etc).
: Supports all the major image format (including GIF) and metadata (EXIF, XMP etc). Image Browser : All the basic browsing operations (thumbnails, move, copy, delete etc) and bookmarking support.
: All the basic browsing operations (thumbnails, move, copy, delete etc) and bookmarking support. Image Organizer : Organize photos with tags, catalogs and Libraries. Importing photos from Digital Cameras. Web albums (Picasa, Flickr, Facebook etc) integration.
: Organize photos with tags, catalogs and Libraries. Importing photos from Digital Cameras. Web albums (Picasa, Flickr, Facebook etc) integration. Image Editor: Basic photo editing operations, filters, format conversion etc.
And there’s much more, check the official gThumb feature list. If you use GNOME or GNOME based desktop environments (like MATE) you should definitely try this one out.
gThumb Installation
sudo apt install gthumb
digiKam is mainly developed for KDE, but works just as well on other desktop environments. It comes with a lot of features with an interface that works nicely. The main features of digiKam includes:
Photo Organizer : Albums, sub-albums, tags, comments, metadata, sorting support.
: Albums, sub-albums, tags, comments, metadata, sorting support. Photo Importer : Import support from Digital Cameras, USB devices, Web Albums (including Picasa & Facebook) and some other features.
: Import support from Digital Cameras, USB devices, Web Albums (including Picasa & Facebook) and some other features. Photo Exporter : Export support for various online platforms and format conversion.
: Export support for various online platforms and format conversion. Photo Editor: Wide range of photo editing operations.
digiKam is certainly one of the best Linux photo management software, if not best.
digiKam Installation
sudo apt install digikam
Shotwell photo manager is also for GNOME desktop environment. Shotwell, while isn’t as feature-rich as gThumb, does what it promises. The main features of Shotwell are:
Import photos from Disks or Digital Cameras.
Event, tags and folder based organization.
Basic photo editing features and format conversion.
Supports uploading to web services (Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr etc).
If you want something simple, you can check this one out.
Shotwell Installation
sudo apt install shotwell
KPhotoAlbum is a photo management application also intended to be used on KDE desktop environment. What makes KPhotoAlbum unique is its categorization process and time-based browsing. You can categorize photos by People, Places, Events etc. And for time-based browsing, it has a dedicated timeline or Date Bar at the bottom of the user interface.
KPhotoAlbum comes with a wide range of features for photo management and editing. Some of the main features include:
Advance photo organization (with categories, sub-categories, tags, metadata, annotation support and much more).
Wide range of import and export options (including almost every major photo sharing platforms).
Various editing options (includes batch operations).
All these advanced organization features do have their downsides – user has to do most of them manually. But if you’re a KDE lover, this can be a good pick. You can use KPhotoAlbum on other desktop environments too, but it delivers the optimal experience on KDE.
KPhotoAlbum Installation
sudo apt install kphotoalbum
Darktable is more of a photo editing application than an organizer. Darktable stands out for its own user interface regardless of the desktop environment you might be using, and of course for its editing capabilities. The basic features include:
Basic photo organization.
Advance and feature-rich photo editing.
Export support for Picasa & Flickr and format conversion.
If you’re into photo editing and retouching, Darktable is a nice choice.
Darktable Installation
sudo apt install darktable
Others
If you want a simple application for pulling images from your portable devices (cameras, phones, portable drives etc) and storing them on your Hard Disk, using Rapid Photo Downloader is a no-brainer. It is an incredible application for importing and backing up photos from portable devices. The installation and configuration process is quite easy and simple.
For installing Rapid Photo Downloader on Ubuntu, fire up a terminal and run this command:
sudo apt install rapid-photo-downloader
If you are still interested in trying a few more options, here you go:
GNOME Photos (Photo viewer for GNOME desktop environment)
Gwenview (Photo viewer for KDE desktop environment)
Picty (Open-source photo collection manager)
So, are you using, or plan to use, any one of these applications? Which, according to you is the best photo management application for Ubuntu or any other Linux? Do you have any favorites to term as Linux photo manager? Do share your views.Today, December 15, ownCloud, Inc. and Collabora have just announced a partnership to bring a new tool for LibreOffice and ownCloud users, based on the LibreOffice Online project and the robust, open-source ownCloud Server self-hosting cloud storage solution.
The two companies have been proud to announce the first preview of CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition), a tool designed to offer users a virtual machine containing the LibreOffice Online and ownCloud Server project, allowing them to edit office documents, such as word, spreadsheets, and presentations via the web-based interface of ownCloud.
This is not the first time we hear about LibreOffice Online for ownCloud, as we reported a few weeks ago that a group of independent developers were working on a so-called LibreOnline project. This was a version of LibreOffice Online transformed into an app that could be installed on the ownCloud server, but not as polished and mature as CODE.
We talked with Jos Poortvliet, ownCloud Community Manager, who exclusively told Softpedia that Collabora hired the team of developers behind the LibreOnline project to add more features to it and deploy LibreOffice Online for ownCloud on a mass scale. As such, we found out that the LibreOnline tool might soon disappear now that CODE was released.
"LibreOffice Online is what the name suggests - an online version of the well known LibreOffice suite of productivity apps. 'Collabora and LibreOffice Online' integrated into ownCloud Server brings these powerful productivity features to ownCloud users. No other cloud technology offers the quality of rendering LibreOffice brings to the browser and this development edition already offers a wide range of features, with more to come," said the Collabora representatives.
Highlights of Collabora's LibreOffice Online for ownCloud
The current state of the LibreOffice Online project comes up with a quite simple user interface, but the Collabora have developers managed to add more useful features to it, integrating its technologies into ownCloud's web-based user interface. As this is a development preview of LibreOffice Online for ownCloud, Collabora promises to implement even more attractive functionalities to it in the near feature.
LibreOffice Online's rendering capabilities are on par with the desktop version of the open-source and cross-platform office suite, which means that the documents edited on the LibreOffice desktop client will look the same when viewed online via the LibreOffice Online for ownCloud application. It supports all the common elements embedded in the documents, including images, graphics, text styles, tables, and word-art.
The main difference between LibreOffice Online and other offerings that are available on the market is that the former uses the same rendering engine for displaying documents online, which means that, practically, users won't notice any changes in their documents when they continue their work online or vice-versa.
ownCloud users interested in trying out Collabora's LibreOffice Online Development Edition can grab a copy right now from the company's website, but you can also install LibreOffice Online on your ownCloud Server if you follow the instructions provided by the project's developers in the “Collabora and LibreOffice Online” GitHub repository.I believe the best qualities I have came from her. In no particular order, she was very engaged in politics; she was a Democratic poll judge almost every election, and from the time I was little she took me canvassing door-to-door for candidates. I got interested in politics when I was very young. She was an English teacher and is an avid reader. From the beginning her attitude was that any book or magazine in the house or in the library was fine to read. She’s a wonderful cook, and I learned that from her.
Several writers have depicted you as a child abandoned by a father consumed with building his empire. How much did your father actually make you a part of his life?
Growing up, I thought of him kind of like a favorite uncle—someone I knew absolutely loved me and would be there for me but not someone who knew who my friends were or what I was interested in. I would see him a handful of times a year. We went for birthdays and Christmas.
At the 74-room, 20,000-square-foot Playboy Mansion in Chicago, where he lived from 1959 through the mid-1970s before relocating to Playboy Mansion West in Los Angeles?
That’s right. Those visits were lots of fun. It was like a child’s dream because the house had a huge game room. To me it was a game house, with a pool table and a Ping-Pong table, and you didn’t have to put quarters in the pinball machines. Every game he owned had a board next to it where you put up the leading scores. Everybody competed to get on or move up the board. He would get the newest games, so that was the first time I saw Pong, Pac-Man, Frogger and Donkey Kong. We’d have a lovely dinner and conversation, and then we would play games. He was highly competitive with me and I with him.
In what ways are you most like Hef?
It’s different now than it might have been 20 or 40 years ago, but I would say my competitiveness, my almost unending desire to make it the best it can be, whatever the “it” is, whether it’s wrapping a birthday present or helping develop a strategy for a company. There’s no “It’s good enough” for me. There’s just an unyielding commitment to trying to be the best, do the best.
My parents weren’t married that long, but there’s a reason they were attracted to each other. In addition to their progressive political views, we have very much the same wickedly dark sense of humor. I could easily finish a lot of my father’s sentences, and either of us could take something and turn it into a quip. I think of myself as a very loyal friend.
There had to be times when you just wanted more time with him, among other things.
When I was younger I was less forgiving of his shortcomings than I became as I got older. I’ve had this conversation with friends who have had challenging relationships with one or another parent. The only thing I can say is what I feel: The other person isn’t going to change. That is who they are. With someone who is genuinely abusive or a bad person, you should just get out of town. But if they’re being the best person they know how to be, then you have to decide if there isn’t much there you can love and not become consumed with what they’re not able to give you.
How did you react to your father’s relationship with Barbi Benton from 1969 to 1976? She was born only two years before you.
He met her in 1969, my last year of many at the National Music Camp at Interlochen, in Michigan, where I was involved in music and drama. I remember being there and reading newspaper stories about him going to Europe, where she was shooting a movie. As a girl I was a little suspicious of her and slow to warm up. I don’t think it had to do with anything in particular that I didn’t like about her. My dad was very youthful, so I don’t think it had much to do with the age difference. I just remember thinking, as I did when my mom began dating the wonderful man she has been with for 40 years now: Is this a good person and a good relationship? Barbi and I have actually become quite good friends.
You were almost thinking like a protective parent whose kid is dating.
It took 10 years, but I came to understand that she was a wonderful influence on him. She got him to travel and broaden his horizons in ways he hadn’t before. I’ve told Barbi many times that he became a richer, better person in the years of that relationship. I used to tease her and say, “You know, we could borrow each other’s clothes.”
What do you remember most about growing up in the village of Wilmette, Illinois, about 14 miles from downtown Chicago?
The music of the 1960s was my high-school soundtrack. I remember a large framed photo of Ringo Starr that my father got for me, which was kind of cute because the Beatles had visited the Chicago Mansion. They might have stayed the night, but I’m not positive. I strongly suspect that Bobbie Arnstein, my father’s long-time executive assistant and right-hand person, said to him, “You should get something for Christie. She’s a teenager and this is the Beatles.” How my father wound up with Ringo, I have no idea. I was actually a Paul person.
What was your classroom role?
I was the one whose hand shot up all the time when the teacher asked a question. I loved school. I met many of my friends, particularly from New Trier West High School in Northfield, Illinois, because we were in shows together. I started in fifth grade, playing the title role in Sleeping Beauty, all en français. In high school I had a small role in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros and a much bigger role in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. I spent six summers at Interlochen, playing Daisy Mae in Li’l Abner and Luisa in The Fantasticks and singing in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. I was wise enough to know that I didn’t have the level of talent it takes to make it a career.
What kind of trouble did you get into as a young woman?
We were reading Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience in a high school advanced English class. At the time, girls couldn’t wear slacks to school. It was already seen as silly, but the rules hadn’t changed. I said to the eight other young women in the class, “We’re reading Civil Disobedience. Let’s all show up in slacks tomorrow. What are they going to do?” Five girls showed up in slacks, and I got sent to the principal’s office—the other girls had brought skirts to change into. My mother was called, and she thought I was in the right and they were in the wrong. I had an intellectual debate with the principal, who said, “If we didn’t have dress codes, the students might show up in bathing suits.” I remember saying, “Honestly, it would be incredibly uncomfortable being in school all day in a bathing suit, so I doubt that’s a genuine worry.”
You were known as Christie Gunn in those years. Did any of your friends know Hef was your dad?
I had my sweet 16 party at the Mansion, so my 14 closest girlfriends knew.
Did any friends avoid associating with the daughter of Mr. Playboy?
Not in any way that blew back on me or that I was conscious of. When my best girlfriend from grammar school and I went out to lunch years later, she told me that when we were in third grade, she was at home having dinner with her parents and somehow the subject of work and dads came up. She told them, “You know, Cindy’s dad is a doctor, and Christie’s dad is the editor of playboy.…” playboy was just a name to her; she could easily have said he was the editor of National Review. She told me that her father had said to her, “You shouldn’t believe all the things your little friends tell you.”
When boyfriends entered the picture, did you ever find yourself having to introduce them not only to your father but also to your mother and stepfather?
My high school boyfriend certainly knew my mom and Ed Gunn, but I don’t believe he ever came to dinner with my dad. Once I got into high school, I don’t remember bringing any boyfriends to meet my father.
Did you ever seek or receive relationship advice from your father?
Not when I was younger, but we talked about religion and politics. At certain points when I became an adult we might have talked about relationships, though, candidly, I was probably trying to secretly give him relationship advice under the guise of discussing relationships.
Did you have a lot of boyfriends?
I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16. That was my step-father’s edict. My mother took me to get the birth control pill when I was a freshman in college. I had a very open relationship with my mother. There were a couple of guys I went out with a couple of times, but pretty quickly I was “going steady,” as we would say back then, with the same guy through high school. I met my college boyfriend, Paul, very early in my freshman year. We fell in love and lived together for three years, and then we were a couple during my senior year even though he was in his first year at Georgetown Law.
In 1974 you graduated from Brandeis, worked at Playboy over the summer and then moved to Boston. What career path did you have in mind?
My long-range plan was to apply to Yale’s combination law and public policy graduate program. My dream was to wind up on the Supreme Court or in the Senate. Part of the divorce decree was that our dad would pay for whatever colleges we got into. I had no interest in Radcliffe, where my mother thought she’d like me to go. A friend of mine, the television and film director Ed Zwick, was going to Harvard and suggested Brandeis: liberal arts, great academics, coed, close to Boston. I loved it.
I changed my last name to Hefner the summer before my senior year. I’d been elected to Phi Beta Kappa my junior year. I had this idea that the certificate would be important to me and it would have my name on it, and I didn’t have warm fuzzy feelings about my stepfather. Whatever the challenges of navigating the world with a famous last name, it seemed about the safest environment to make the change. So I went to court and changed my name to Christie Ann Hefner.A record number of immigrants and refugees arriving on Canadian shores helped push Canada's official population over 36 million as of July 1, Statistics Canada says.
The data agency says there were 437,815 more people living in Canada than there were on the same day a year earlier, bringing the official population to 36,286,425.
In absolute terms, that's the biggest annual surge since 1988. In percentage terms, the population grew by 1.2 per cent.
The "increase is one of the largest increases since the baby boom in the 1950s," BMO economist Doug Porter said, "although this recent increase is driven more by immigration."
Indeed, the numbers show that some 320,932 immigrants arrived in Canada between the two Canada Days. More than 30,000 Syrian refugees are included in that figure, as they are classified as permanent residents by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
"The country had not received such a large number of immigrants in a single annual period since the early 1910s, during the settlement of Western Canada," Statistics Canada said in a release.
Ontario leads the way
Two provinces still make up the majority of the country's population:
Ontario at 13.9 million.
Quebec at 8.3 million.
By age bracket, the single largest demographic group was people between ages 50 and 54, with 2,711,318 across the country.
Other statistics as of July 1 include:Image copyright Getty Images
It did not feature much on the conference platform, but in the hurly burly of Labour's conference in Manchester the so-called English question loomed large - or what impact the planned, if vague, new constitutional settlement for Scotland should have on the way England is governed (and Wales and Northern Ireland too).
I stumbled on three themes.
One was the fury of Ed Miliband and his close circle with the prime minister - at what they saw as a cynical and short-termist attempt to turn English unease at the fiscal privileges going to Scotland into new voting procedures in the Commons that would favour the Tories.
A senior Labour official told me he didn't see how Ed Miliband could now negotiate the detail of Scotland's new budgetary arrangements with David Cameron, given the collapse of trust between the two.
All of which will increase the unease of Scottish nationalists that they may have been sold a hobbled pup of putative enhanced devolution by the main unionist parties in the closing days of the battle over whether Scotland would break free of the UK.
Federal structure
That said, if Cameron, Miliband and Clegg can swallow their personal animosities and sit round a table, what Labour would propose, or so I am told, would be a new federal structure for income tax.
This would divide income tax into a portion set by the UK chancellor of the exchequer, to cover the imputed proportional costs of UK-wide responsibilities, such as defence and diplomacy.
And then there would be a chunk reserved for Scottish responsibilities, including health, education and proposed additional elements of welfare.
The divide would be a bit spurious, in the sense that income tax - as opposed to other taxes, such as VAT - pays for only a chunk of total public services.
But this federal tax structure would give the Scottish parliament the wherewithal to expand or shrink the public sector according to the perceived needs of Scotland, and irrespective of what was happening in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
And if Wales and Northern Ireland wanted similar partial control over taxes, this federal model would presumably be workable for them.
But possibly Scots would feel short-changed by Labour's proposal, when the Tories have offered to hand stewardship of all income tax to them.
Also, would handing this power to Scotland be seen by English people as equitable, in view of the other element of what the unionist parties offered Scotland, namely more generous funding in perpetuity of public services from Westminster, via the Barnett formula?
Scottish services better funded?
Which brings me to my third Labour conference theme on all this, namely that MPs did in fact queue up to tell me how unhappy their constituents were that the Scots were getting more money than them from the UK kitty for public services, plus the right to set their own taxes.
The perception is that the Scots' public services are significantly better funded than England's. And at the level of the whole of England and the whole of Scotland, that is true.
But it isn't the whole story. Poorer English regions, such as the North East, receive more public funding per head than England as a whole - though they still don't do as well as Scotland.
So total public spending on services is £8,529 per head in England, £10,152 in Scotland, and £9,419 in north-east England.
As it happens, in the important provision of healthcare, the North East is actually a bit more generously financed than Scotland, receiving £2,066 per head, compared with £2,051 north of the border - though just £1,662 in the South East.
So is the bellyaching I heard from Labour's northern MPs about Scotland receiving special favours unfounded?
Probably not, for two reasons.
The first is that the North East is much poorer than Scotland as a whole, and has a disproportionate number of people out of work and in poor health. So it has been the convention since World War Two that there should be an element of correcting these regional social and economic inequalities in the allocation of public funds.
Using gross disposable household income as a proxy for inequality, folk in the north east are 12% poorer than Scots, and yet they receive 7% less money for all public services.
It is perhaps not unreasonable for north-easterners to argue that is unfair.
No consensus
There is of course a school of thought that says public services should be earned, as it were, by the people who use them.
So there are Tory MPs in the South who say that the relatively small sums spent on health for their hardworking - and relatively prosperous - constituents is the true political crime.
Perhaps what these tensions and contradictory claims highlight more than anything is how there is no consensus about the regional distribution of taxpayers' money for public services.
And Scotland's new fiscal settlement has lit the touch paper on a potentially explosive national debate on all this.
One Labour MP, Nick Brown, told me he wanted a Barnett-style formula for all nations and regions - or a formula that allocates funding based on regional needs, such as the relative health of local people.
Or to put it another way, he wants to reduce the scope of governments to reallocate funds to constituencies and areas where a bit of de facto bribery might win precious votes at election time.
But assessing public service need is not hard science. There will always be an element of ideology and dirty politics in how public service funds are shared out.
That said, can anyone compellingly say why it is right to give comfort and confidence to the Scots that their public services will be generously resourced for years and years, while withholding that comfort from the people of the more deprived North East?Chicago native and Chicago Bulls guard Dwyane Wade talks about his time growing up in Chicago during “An Undefeated Conversation: Athletes, Responsibility, and Violence” on August 25, 2016 at the South Side YMCA in Chicago, Illinois. Four panels made up of community members, athletes and journalist talked about the issues of gun violence, solutions and the roles that athletes have to help the solve the issues.
Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. The Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officers: A summer of horrific gun violence that continues daily from Orlando, Florida, to Milwaukee is prompting athletes and activists across the country to ask themselves what can be done. This week, The Undefeated looks at some of the issues involved and holds a town hall discussion in Chicago, the site of some of the nation’s worst gun violence.
A mother shared how her life was shattered after her 13-year-old son was shot to the death in a drive-by. A former NFL star explained how carrying a gun nearly led to him shooting an innocent man. A WNBA player recounted how three young cousins died in shootings.
Almost everyone had a heart-wrenching story to tell about the impact of gun violence and some tears were shed during a series of panel discussions hosted by The Undefeated that aired Thursday night on ESPN.
The conversations, hosted by ESPN’s Jemele Hill, were held at the South Side YMCA in Chicago and focused on athletes, their experience with violence and police and the responsibility to act. It was a fitting setting, not far from a part of the city that’s been hit hard by violence.
Chicago’s story is truly the tale of two cities.
An Undefeated Conversation Hard stories of violence and loss
Losing the sacred space of the front porch
Chicago and the struggle for hope
Athletes getting back in the protest game
Athletes and notable guests in attendance at ESPN's town hall
Marcellus Wiley 'Live by the gun, die by the gun'
Talk is great, but change is better: Town hall attendees react
Photos: An Undefeated Conversation Tourism this year is expected to surpass the previous record of 50.97 million as people flock to downtown attractions such as the Michigan Avenue shopping district, Navy Pier and Grant Park. At the same time, though, more than 2,600 people have been shot in the city, mainly on the South and West sides. With 463 murders as of Wednesday, Chicago is on pace to record its largest number of homicides since 1997, when 761 people were killed in the city.
Even if pro athletes can escape this environment, they’re not immune to the violence. Cappie Pondexter, a member of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky and a two-time champion with the Phoenix Mercury, has lost three family members in Chicago to gun violence over the last seven years.
All were under the age of 23.
“To lose someone you grew up with, to lose someone you played with, it’s the hardest thing to deal with,” said Pondexter, whose 23-year-old relative was beaten to death less than a month ago in Chicago. “To see my family members have to plan for funerals, it’s been hard. It’s something you really can’t explain unless you experience it.”
It’s those dangers that once led ESPN analyst Marcellus Wiley, a lineman for 10 years in the NFL, to carry a gun. Wiley grew up Compton, California, with uncles who were gang members, and he lost several family members to gun violence.
He described one night in downtown Buffalo, New York, where he drew his weapon when a passer-by tapped on his car window, only to ask for directions. It “made me realize I was going to hurt someone in my likeness,” he said.
Besides Pondexter and Wiley, other panelists spoke about being impacted by the violence. Stephanie Brown, a resident of Chicago’s South Side, described to the audience her pain after her 13-year-old son, Darius, was shot to death in 2011, the innocent victim of a drive-by, while playing basketball at a local park.
“You’ve got children out here that they just want to play,” Brown said. “Darius was playing ball. Nobody could have ever paid me to believe I would lose my son at 13 to gun violence.
“It’s hurtful to see our own kind killing each other.”
Besides the crime in their communities, panelists expressed frustration over their interactions with police. ESPN analyst Doug Glanville, who played for three teams over his nine-year baseball career, said he was shoveling snow in his Connecticut driveway when he was approached by an officer whose jurisdiction was in another town.
“I kind of stood up wondering why he’s approaching me,” Glanville said. “He said ‘Sir, you trying to make some money shoveling people’s driveway around here?’ ”
Glanville said he remained calm and defused the situation.
Dwyane Wade, who appeared via satellite, described his encounters with police while growing up in a South Side Chicago house headed by a drug-dealing mother, Jolinda Wade, who appeared in the show’s first segment.
“I was scared of them,” Wade said. ““The police would come knock down our doors many times. And you really didn’t know what to expect from them. Sometimes they’d be nice, sometimes they’d plant something on you. So a lot of times I would run if I heard any loud knock, if I heard the police.”
Once Wade started his NBA career that has earned him well over $100 million, he expected his adult encounters to be limited — and never expected his 13- and 8-year-old sons to be subjected to police encounters anytime soon.
He was wrong.
“In Miami, we lived on a very popular block, a very rich kind of neighborhood, and at the end of the day there’s not many of us in that neighborhood,” Wade said. “So our kids were stopped. What’s the first thing they do when police stopped them? They ran.”
Wade was forced to gather his sons for “the talk,” a conversation many African-American parents have with their sons about encountering police.
“We really had to educate them and say, hey, stop, say your name, say where you live, answer the questions they ask you,” Wade said. “Put your hands down. Don’t put them unless they tell you to. Just go |
2013 Medium Bronze
granite Subject Constance Lloyd
Dionysus The Dionysus statue in 2018 Medium Bronze
granite Subject Dionysus
The Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture is a collection of three statues in Merrion Square in Dublin, Ireland, commemorating Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. The sculptures were unveiled in 1997 and were designed and made by Danny Osborne. [1]
History [ edit ]
Statue and companion pieces
English sculptor Danny Osborne was commissioned by the Guinness Ireland Group to create a statue commemorating Oscar Wilde, which was unveiled in 1997, by Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland.[2] The initial budget of IR£20,000 was later increased to IR£45,000.[3] Since marble alone was deemed inadequate, the statue was formed from different coloured stones from three continents.[4] The torso is of green nephrite jade from British Columbia, Canada, and pink thulite from Norway.[5] The legs are of Norwegian Blue Pearl granite with the shoes being black Indian charnockite and finished with bronze shoelace tips.[5] The statue also wears a Trinity College tie made from glazed porcelain, and three rings – Wilde's wedding ring and two scarabs, one for good luck, the other for bad luck.[2]
The statue is mounted with Wilde reclining on a large quartz boulder obtained by Osborne himself from the Wicklow Mountains.[5] The sculpture also includes two pillars flanking the boulder with one pillar having a nude pregnant representation of Wilde's wife Constance Lloyd on top. The other one has a male torso representing Dionysus, the Greek God of drama and wine, atop it. Both flanking sculptures are in bronze and granite,[2] and both pillars have inscriptions from Wilde's poems carved onto them.[6] The inscriptions of the quotes copy the personal handwriting of figures including Seamus Heaney, John B. Keane and Michael D. Higgins.[7]
Three people, living at the time near to the artist's West Cork studio, posed as models for the three sculptures.
When the statue was unveiled in 1997, it was the first statue commemorating Wilde, who had died 97 years earlier. It received near unanimous praise for the materials used and for its location near his childhood home at 1, Merrion Square.[3] In 2010, the porcelain head of Wilde had to be replaced because cracks were forming on it. The porcelain head was replaced by a new one made of white jadeite.[4]
Impact and significance [ edit ]
In a May 2001 article in the Irish edition of The Sunday Times Mark Keenan commented on the surprisingly long wait for a commemoration of Wilde in his native city and suggested an explanation for the delay, "... a decade ago, more conservative elements among the Dublin public may not have dared allow his city to commemorate his name."[8] Art historian Paula Murphy agreed, saying, "It has taken nearly one hundred years for an Irish body, public or private, to risk suggesting that we might consider Oscar Wilde worthy of such commemoration. But then it has taken the same length of time for Ireland to awaken, reluctantly, to the existence of sexuality and the reality of the way in which it dictates a lifestyle."[9] It took as long for London, where Wilde spent most of his adult life, to commemorate the dramatist: Maggi Hambling's A Conversation with Oscar Wilde was unveiled in 1998.[10]
Discussing the work in her 2012 article "Sculpting Irishness: a discussion of Dublin's commemorative statues of Oscar Wilde and Phil Lynott" for Sculpture Journal, Sarah Smith writes:
Another distinction is the figure's facial expression, which, disrupting the realism of the figure, might be described as a rather contorted sneer. Intended by the artist to represent two antithetical sides of Wilde, one half of his face is smiling widely... while the other bears a sombre expression... and this divide is echoed in his posture on either side. Because of its positioning at the corner of the park on the turn of the outer pathway, the visitor to the monument sees one side of Wilde when approaching and another when walking away. One is the witty Wilde who is most often remembered in popular culture, the other the "broken man" he became following his two-year incarceration for committing homosexual acts.[2]
Smith argues "we cannot help but read this work according to today’s conventions of dress and gesture", saying:
The choice of pose for Wilde, which invokes familiar art historical and popular images of 'feminized masculinity', the use of colour for this ‘colourful character’ and his gaze directed at the nude male torso all coalesce with our knowledge of his homosexuality. We consequently see an overemphasis on his sexuality in this work, augmented by the nicknames given to it by Dubliners.[2]
See also [ edit ]As Renée Elise Goldsberry watched the closing ceremonies of the Rio Olympics with her family this past summer, she mentioned to her son Benjamin, 7, and daughter Brielle, 3, that it was likely that the celebrated Final Five gymnasts would be paying a visit to her work soon—work, of course, being the smash Broadway musical “Hamilton.”
“I said: ‘I think they’re all coming to see ‘Hamilton’ this week, and I’m going to get to meet them,’” she recalls, laughing, as she adds that her son emphatically proclaimed that he, too, wanted to go backstage to meet Simone, Gabby, Aly, Madison, and Laurie.
But as wonderstruck as Benjamin and Brielle were about their mother potentially introducing them to famous Olympians, Goldsberry explains that they are also quite excited at the prospect of having her home for a while after she wraps up her run in “Hamilton” on September 3— and the two are, for now, mutually exclusive.
“I told them: ‘Just so you know, when Mommy comes home, the gravy train is over! I’ll be home with you, but I’ll no longer have this access to the most famous people in the world,’” Goldsberry jokes.
She recounts the anecdote at our late-August cover shoot and interview, and it’s easy to relate to the delight she describes in her kids, and just as easy to laugh along as she hits the high notes of the funny exchange. Simply put: She’s as skilled at bringing to life a humorous moment with her family as she is at bringing the history of 1700s Manhattan to life onstage in “Hamilton.”
Throughout her career, Goldsberry, has used her musical and dramatic talents to breathe complexity and value into a variety of characters across mediums that range from the small screens of network television (think notable arcs as Geneva Pine on “The Good Wife” and as Evangeline Williamson on “One Life To Live”) to the stages of Broadway (her resume on the Great White Way includes stints as Nala in “The Lion King,” Mimi in “Rent,” and originating the role of Nettie in “The Color Purple”).
But for her, and for the entirety of “Hamilton’s” original ensemble cast, which included the show’s brilliant creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, the critically acclaimed show has been a success like none other—both in terms of its cultural impact and its outsized popularity on Broadway.
“A major theme in ‘Hamilton’ is ‘who lives, who dies, and who tells your story,’ [and] Lin-Manuel Miranda show us, in this musical, the power of the storyteller—their perspective is the one that is passed on,” she says. “The beauty of being in ‘Hamilton’ is that we get to do more than entertain people—we’re actually informing them and exposing them to the work that some of our founding fathers and mothers did that, surprisingly, we don’t know about. We inherit so much without knowing who to thank for it all.”
As Goldsberry prepares to close the book on “Hamilton”—a turn that garnered her a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, as well as a Lucille Lortel Award, a Drama Desk Award, and a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album with the rest of the original cast—she’s both humble about her part in the production, as well as proud of the history “Hamilton” has made.
“I knew the show was the biggest thing I had ever come in contact with…I did not know, however, that anything could be as big as this feels right now,” she says. “I didn’t know how to anticipate the pervasive impact that ‘Hamilton’ has had on things that are not even typically related to theater or to music. ‘Hamilton’ has influenced politics and education and fashion and pop culture… It has been awesome to ride this particular wave and have access to such a wide contrast of people and experiences.”
While “Hamilton” may account for a particularly high-profile chapter in her own personal story, Goldsberry’s disarming humility seems, in part, to be the maturity of an experienced performer who knows the ups and downs of the acting life. But it also reflects a personal foundation in a love for her family that, as she tells it, has always kept her grounded.
Goldsberry grew up alongside an older brother, whom she considers her best friend (he now lives with his family in Charlotte, NC), and she also has two much younger brothers whom she adores. She spent some of her childhood in Houston, TX, before going to high school near Detroit, MI, and has long steeped her life in the arts and in her family. Goldsberry’s father is a chemist and physicist, as well as a successful auto-industry executive, and her mother is an industrial psychologist—and they brought the arts into her life from an early age by filling her childhood with music and enrolling her at the Houston International Theatre School at age 8.
“I remember, from my earliest days, my mother singing my name to me so I’d know how to spell it, and singing my phone number,” she recalls. “[My father] loves every form of music. My father is one of the only people I know who doesn’t get stuck in any one particular era of music… So I grew up with the best of the oldies and the best of the current jams playing in my home and in our car at all times.”
Not surprisingly, the home she’s created for her own kids with her husband, Alexis Johnson, follows a similar model. “All children are naturally very artistic and expressive. We definitely place a strong value on that in my home. My kids see me and their father being that way all the time,” she says. “Even when I’m not home, my husband is always playing music and they’re having dance parties and things of that nature. They are highly influenced by the arts. They love it.”
Goldsberry also takes care to relish the unique joys that raising kids in NYC offers, especially with the network of friends that she and her husband have cultivated. “We have a family that we’ve constructed for ourselves in Harlem where we live—good friends that we spend a lot of time with who have children the same age and have similar values,” she says. “New York is a wonderful city for children… You can literally go to any playground, at any time, and there’s a playdate waiting for you.”
After finishing high school in Michigan, Goldsberry continued to pursue her goals in the performing arts as she went on to major in theater at Carnegie Mellon and get a master’s in jazz studies from the University of Southern California. “Everything was a goal for me. There wasn’t any one thing I wanted to do,” Goldsberry says of her early career aspirations. “I wanted to be on Broadway, I wanted to be a recording music star, I wanted to be a movie star—like any kid. There was nothing that wasn’t attractive to me in the arts.”
She met Johnson, who works in cable and television distribution, at church and describes their relationship as one based in mutual support and true partnership—especially when it comes to raising their children. “What’s really great is that our family—our marriage and our children—are our first priority. We believe that every member of the family has to be able to thrive to survive,” Goldsberry explains. “I don’t know how I would juggle all the things I do without [my husband] being invested in me being rested, for example, and if he’s going to go on a boys’ trip or take time to work out…it’s very important to me that he also gets to do what he needs. I don’t ever see anything that’s helpful to his mental and spiritual happiness as something that takes away from our family. We believe those things add to our family. This makes for a very loving and fruitful co-parenting relationship.”
The graceful ease that Goldsberry displays as a mother certainly suits her, and perhaps even more so because she faced a challenging path to parenthood. She had her first child, Benjamin, at age 38, after four years of miscarriages. And she doesn’t ever take her family or her professional achievements for granted, stating in her Tony Award acceptance speech this past June: “I have spent the last 10 years of my life, what some would consider the life blood of a woman’s career, just trying to have children. And I get to testify in front of all of you that the Lord gave me Benjamin and Brielle and he still gave me this.”
SIGN UP FOR NEW YORK FAMILY
WEEKLY SCOOP A curated selection of the best of New York Family’s print and online content in your inbox each week, including parenting, education, lifestyle, and family fun coverage for parents of toddlers to tweens.
Email *
Website *
Receive Updates and Special Offers Receive occasional updates and special offers for New York Family's products and services.
This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms.
Given the road she’s traveled to build her family, Goldsberry is understandably reflective on the topic of women balancing their pursuit of motherhood with their career goals. “In a city like New York and in the times we live in, women are so empowered to follow their dreams, but I think the focus is narrowly on career dreams, and we’re taught that having a family and being a mom is a threat to that… But in reality, there are so many women who have accomplished every career dream they’ve ever pursued, but there’s a hole in their life because marriage and family didn’t just happen,” Goldsberry explains. “My mantra is: Spend your life fighting for both things, because you don’t have to choose. Chase your family and your career. And most importantly, don’t wait! We don’t have to have success in our career before we focus on our family. In my experience, every time I committed to taking a step forward in my personal life, something remarkable happened in my career.”
If Goldsberry shows an attitude of strength and sensitivity when discussing her views on family, it’s equally present in influencing the professional choices she makes. “My family is particularly proud of me and very supportive of what I do, so I try to honor that with the things I choose to do,” she explains. As she puts it, she has a career that is sometimes at odds with keeping things continuous and structured at home—so she aims to select roles that are “responsible and important.”
The obvious example is “Hamilton’s” Angelica Schuyler Church, the mature and quick-witted eldest of the three “Schuyler Sisters,” and Alexander Hamilton’s intellectual match, close friend, and sister-in-law: “I aspire to be like Angelica… She’s extremely intelligent, extremely positive, and she uses her power for good. She’s relationship-oriented. She’s very influential, and she uses her influence to benefit her family and the world around her. She’s brave. She’s beautiful. And she values the love of her family. She’s witty and fashionable and world-traveled and connected and a bunch of things that everybody would want to be,” Goldsberry says. “It’s wonderful to know there was a real woman who was all of those things so long ago, even before women had any rights whatsoever. It’s a joy to find things within me that bring her to life.”
Goldsberry’s two upcoming post-“Hamilton” projects—the titular role in an HBO movie called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (based on Rebecca Skloot’s acclaimed book of the same name) and a Netflix series called “Altered Carbon,” based on a buzzworthy sci-fi book series—offer her similar opportunities to portray multifaceted female characters.
“Henrietta Lacks,” which also stars Oprah Winfrey and is slated to air in the spring of 2017, tells the largely unsung true story of a woman whose cervical cancer cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s. Like with “Hamilton,” the story of Henrietta Lacks is one that’s a vital piece of American history but yet is widely misunderstood and underplayed. “It’s another phenomenal, unbelievable story that you just can’t believe you didn’t know,” Goldsberry says of the project.
Swinging in the opposite direction—from historical storytelling to science-fiction storytelling—Goldsberry’s upcoming role as Quellcrist Falconer in “Altered Carbon,” which she’ll begin shooting in Vancouver, Canada, in October, may not have a heroine from the history books at its core, but there’s quality of character and a purpose of story that’s right in line with her past choices. “I’ve been at home in New York City telling a story about the past and playing a heroine from the past, and now I’m going to be in another country telling a story about a heroine in the future,” she says of the series, which is set 500 years in the future in a world where human personalities can be stored and downloaded into new bodies. “But whether I’m playing Mimi in ‘Rent’—a heroin addict dying of AIDS; Angelica Schuyler Church—a founding mother of our country; Henrietta Lacks; or Quellcrist—the fierce rebel leader in ‘Altered Carbon,’ all my characters have a lot in common. They are all powerful women who love hard, and whose love changes their world.”
In the present moment in her own world, with her new projects still in preproduction and her “Hamilton” tenure at an end, Goldsberry is mostly looking forward to taking herself out of the limelight for a moment and adding a chapter to her story between projects that’s devoted to quality time with her family.
“My favorite thing is just being with my kids and my family,” she says with a relaxed smile. “It’s been an amazing couple of years giving birth to this awesome show. But the focus has been on me, and we need to balance that out. I want more time to cheer on my family. Whether it’s my son doing his school musical, my daughter when she’s dancing around the house, or my husband in any of the wonderful things he’s doing in his profession. That’s what really recharges me the most. I’m looking forward to this coming season, where I don’t always have the spotlight and the responsibility. The greatest joy is supporting the people I love.”
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
Save
SaveRepublican presidential front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE this week walked back his assertion that he could eliminate the country’s debt after two terms as president.
In an interview with Fortune Magazine published Friday, Trump was asked how his pledge to pay off the $19 trillion debt in 10 years was possible.
ADVERTISEMENT
“No, I didn’t say 10 years,” Trump responded. “First of all, with low interest rates, you can think in terms of refinancings, and get it down. I believe you can do certain things to pay off the debt more quickly. The most important thing is to make sure the economy stays strong. You can do it in smaller chunks. You can do it in larger chunks. And you can do it in refinancings.”
Trump had, in fact, told The Washington Post editorial board earlier this month that he would pay off the debt in eight years by renegotiating trade deals. The Post called that claim “nonsensical.”
His plan was also derided by budget hawks, who called it ridiculous.
Trump added in the Fortune interview that he now wants to pay off a “percentage” of it, but he hasn’t decided what that figure would be.
“It depends on how aggressive you want to be,” he said. “I’d rather not be so aggressive. Don’t forget: We have to rebuild the infrastructure of our country. We have to rebuild our military, which is being decimated by bad decisions. We have to do a lot of things. We have to reduce our debt, and the best thing we have going now is that interest rates are so low that lots of good things can be done that aren’t being done, amazingly.”Billionaire developer Martin Selig on Monday delivered a $1.4 million check to Seattle City Light to pay down overdue electric bills on his properties.
Billionaire developer Martin Selig on Monday delivered a $1.4 million check to Seattle City Light to pay down overdue electric bills on his properties.
The payment came the same day The Seattle Times reported Selig’s properties had racked up $1.9 million in unpaid light bills, with about $1 million of that more than 90 days delinquent.
In an interview, Selig said that the payment “got us current” and that he’d pay upcoming bills as they came due.
Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen confirmed the payment had been received by the utility.
Though he has a history of falling behind on utility bills, Selig said as one of the city’s largest landlords he hadn’t regarded his past-due payments as unusual. He noted he’d been working with City Light on a payment plan to get current on the electric bills.
He said his company, Martin Selig Real Estate, does not face a financial crunch and is proceeding on several ongoing development projects.
In the interview, Selig also made it clear he is disavowing support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Selig had been listed as a co-host for an Aug. 30 Seattle fundraiser for Trump. He’d recently said in multiple interviews he supported the GOP nominee as a loyal Republican.
But on Monday, Selig said he would not be participating in the fundraiser and also would not donate money to Trump’s campaign or even vote for him in November. Selig cited blowback he received after his name was associated with Trump.
“Do you know what it’s like being a Jewish Republican in Seattle?” Selig said.
“The repercussions of what you hear from people is stunning,” he said, adding he’d previously “had his eyes blinded” in supporting Trump by default as the Republican candidate. Now, he said he’ll write in a candidate for president this fall instead of voting for Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Selig is the latest of several Trump fundraiser co-hosts who have since disavowed any interest in supporting the Republican nominee.
At least three other business executives listed as co-hosts of the upcoming fundraiser said they did not support Trump and would not attend the event.
State Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, a Trump campaign leader in Washington, said a draft invitation to the event prepared by the Republican National Committee had been prematurely circulated before plans had been finalized.Today's red post collection includes both the Taliyah Q&A and the Shurima Story Q&A #2, a reminder that Ascension is live this weekend in the Rotating Game Mode Queue, Meddler with context the upcoming 6.10 Aurelion Sol nerfs and 6.11 plans for Ekko, and more!
RGM Queue: Ascension live this weekend!
"From the original clone-tastic One For All to the frenetic manatee magic of Ultra Rapid Fire, featured game modes provide unique spins on the classic League formula. It’s time to kick things off with the next game mode in the rotation: Ascension is now live!
As a refresher on the mode, let’s go over the basics:
Unlike Summoner’s Rift, you can’t walk out of your base to reach the battle; you’ll have to use the Golden Transcendence trinket or right-click a pad to teleport into the fray
Earn victory by scoring points; the first team to 200 takes it down
You earn 1 point for kills, 3 for capturing a Shuriman relic, 5 for landing the killing blow on an Ascended champion, and 2 points for each kill you acquire while Ascended
Claim Ascension by taking down Ancient Ascendant Xerath in the center of the map (he’ll respawn after the Ascended champion dies)
Be cautious when approaching the Ascendant, you'll need your whole team to battle him and claim the buff
The Ascension buff yields awe-inspiring power including bonus health and infinite mana, AD & AP, CDR, as well as armor and magic pen
The gifts of Ascension come with a price: healing and regeneration effects are halved and the opposing team always has vision on Ascended champs We did touch up the visuals slightly while specially tuning Champion Mastery so you can earn points in the mode. You’ll also be able to earn keys for your wins and loot chests for your (or your premade’s) S-, S, and S+ games.
Ascension is now available and lasts through the evening on Sunday (we’ll shut it down very early Monday morning--usually between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM).
If you need to catch up on the rules for any game mode, check back at leagueoflegends.com each Friday, and we’ll give you the lowdown in a quick post like this one.
We’ll be trying out different things with the rotating game mode queue over the next few months, such as potentially turning it on longer depending on how popular it is, changing the mode cadence or what modes are available. We’re looking for your feedback as we go, so let us know. GLHF, and we’ll see you on the sand-strewn battlefield of Ascension!"
Context on 6.10 Aurelion Sol Nerfs
Meddler
"When balancing champions one of the primary statistics we consider is a champion's win rate when played by experienced players. Comparing average win rates can be really misleading as you point out, so comparing win rates when all the players involved have a decent level of experience on a champion tends to be more valuable for champions once they've been out for at least a little while.
Looking at champion win rates for May when those champions are played by people with more than 30 games on them Aurelion Sol's got the highest experienced win rate in the game and still has a lower average number of games played than many other champions, given he hasn't been out as long. He was strong before 6.9, and we were talking about whether he was sufficiently out of line we needed to nerf him. The 6.9 changes, Catalyst in particular, have pushed him to a point where don't feel we can afford to leave him as strong as he is, even if his play rate isn't high.
In terms of the changes we're making in 6.10 we're hitting the ult damage because, as a powerful initiation and/or peel tool it doesn't need to be as high as it is on base damage. That makes it a good place to hit when we need to reduce overall power. The W change is aimed at giving a bit more reward to opponents who CC Aurelion Sol or force him to pull his stars in (increased time until he's got longer ranged sustained threat again). It's possible that will hit him harder than intended in terms of ability to deal with closing threats, that is meant to be a core weakness for him though. We'll assess post 6.10 ship, see where he ends up.
Regarding the bug you mention with his Q and Windwall/Braum do you have a video of the Q using its edge, instead of core, for Windwall/Braum shield collisions? Just had a look at that in game and I'm seeing the core used as expected. It does look like Braum E's blocking the CC on the Q though. It was scripted that to be consistent with Anivia's Q, that doesn't seem like the right approach here though, Braum at the least should be getting CC'd."
Meddler
"Quote:
Since he is so new and the average number of played games is so low, should you take into account that learning to play against him might be an even steeper learning curve than learning to play him? Playing against learning curve is something we keep an eye on, with the exception of pretty easy champions to play (e.g. Garen) we don't see steeper against than playing as curves though. Even then its debateable once you get more experienced players onto those champs who'll optimize things new players aren't in a position to take advantage of (champion specific learning curve versus general game knowledge learning curve that a champion can take advantage of e.g. wave management)."
Meddler
"We'll look at him post patch. It's possible 3s is the correct spot, 4s is our best estimate at present though, hence we're going with that for 6.10."
Meddler
"Quote:
The fact that aurelion sol's highest win rate playerbase is less experienced than other champions probably means his kit is very straight forward and lacks variations. It means that he's the most recently released champion. Turns out that the longer a champion's been out the more likely it is people will have played a lot of games on it.
Skill curve wise he's got a pretty steep learning curve with a lot of things to optimize. Conceptually he's fairly simple, execution and use of those effects is much harder though. Singed and Rumble follow the same pattern (simple kit, top 10 learning curve)."
Meddler on tentative Ekko changes in 6.11
Meddler
"AP scaling on Ekko's utility's got some promise and its something we're currently testing out as part of a set of changes aimed to pushing Ekko furter towards AP builds/away from tank builds in patch 6.11.
Changes we're currently testing (subject to change as usual of course):
Q outgoing damage to 40-100 + 0.2 (from 60-120 + 0.1)
Q slow to 30% + 10% per 100 AP (from 32%-60%)
R damage to 150-450 + 1.5 (from 200-500 + 1.3)"
Meddler
"Quote:
Hey Meddler, is there any chance you might look at his passive too? The movespeed he gets is already pretty huge, does it also need to slow whoever he procs it on? Possible, we want to focus on the things we think are the biggest issues to address first though. It's very much tank Ekko we want to target here as well, not all builds equally. AP Ekko by contrast's a much healthier champion."
Meddler
"Quote:
You mentioned that you are planning these changes for 6.11.
Are there any numeric nerfs lined up for 6.10 to make him less aggravating to deal with until you identify how to truly fix the issue? No, there's nothing in 6.10. Our final day to submit 6.10 changes was last Wednesday (patches lock around a week before they go out) and our focus in 6.10 was primarily on follow up to all the mid-season changes."
Meddler
"Quote:
Does Ekko's ultimate even need to do damage? Isn't the reposition and heal enough power and thematically appropriate? Damage on Ekko's ult does a couple of things we like:
It encourages riskier, more offensive plays with the ult. Removing the damage by contrast would push Ekko towards mainly just using it to get out of a fight safely, rather than sometimes using it to re-engage, to set up an ambush etc.
It makes a significant amount of Ekko's damage unreliable, introducing a skill test for Ekko and a point of counterplay for his enemies. Tank Ekko's currently a problem, AP Ekko's much more reasonable. If we were removing all the damage from his ult we'd need to give him a lot of that back elsewhere to keep him functional, at least for the AP build. That'd have to be put in more reliable, less CD gated places though."
Nidalee & Lucian being looked at for nerfs in 6.11
Riot Sotere
"We'll be taking a look at her for 6.11."
Meddler
"We'll be nerfing Lucian because of Lucian. Ranges most likely (possible options at present look like Q passthrough range and W range), with the goal of keeping his in fight power/mobility but making him pay a bit more price for it.
Champion Q&A: Taliyah, the Stoneweaver
ADillonMostDirty
"Hey everyone!
We've gathered a bunch of Rioters from the Taliyah team for some Q&A about the Stoneweaver! Whether you're interested in Taliyah's gameplay, story, or art, ask away and we'll be happy to answer!
On hand for questions today we have:
Daniel " ZenonTheStoic " Klein - Designer
" Klein - Designer Ariel " Thermal Kitten " Lawrence - Writer
" Lawrence - Writer Curtis " Riotc3Sound " Chrun - Sound Designer
" Chrun - Sound Designer Jeremy " Riot Shadowstorm " Dempster - Tech Coordinator
" Dempster - Tech Coordinator Anthony " RiotPastaBomb " Possobon - Motion Graphic Artist
" Possobon - Motion Graphic Artist Hing " Hdot " Chui - Concept Artist
" Chui - Concept Artist Janelle "RiotStellari" Jimenez - Promotion
Gameplay & Design
ZenonTheStoic
"Quote:
What niche does Taliyah fulfill specifically? She's a disruptor with very high burst/pick potential. She won't control the battlefield quite as much as Anivia, but if she catches you in a WE, you're going to have a bad time."
ZenonTheStoic
"Quote:
Hey Guys!
Was Taliyah always going to be a control mage? Were there maybe other versions of characters that she could have ended up being? I love hearing about development stories and such, akin to how Braum wasn't always Braum during development, and how he started out as a totally different character, and ended up going through a bunch of changes. Did something similar Happen to Taliyah? Or was she always intended to be a Stone Mage Earthbender type of dude?
Thanks for doing the Q&A! We wanted to make a traditional mage from the very beginning (which is why we went with the elemental theme; felt very traditional), so disruptor or burst mage suggested themselves. There could have been a version where she would have been a bit more of a battle mage (think Karthus/Ryze), but that didn't feel appropriate for someone as young as her and someone whose mastery over rock was expressed through the metaphor of weaving.
So yeah, we wanted a control mage from the very beginning."
ZenonTheStoic
"Quote:
Her second role is support. Do you expect her to see substantial play as a mage support, ala Brand or Annie?
We wanted to make sure that support isn't her BEST role, because if it was it would feel bad to take her mid lane. Her scalings are quite aggressive (1.2 on the Q, 1.2 on the E) so as a support, she falls off a cliff (with no Yasuo to save her :P) once she can no longer put points into her Q.
That said, her W and R are amazing support abilities and her level 1 push is unmatched among caster supports (Q has amazing base dmg if you don't dodge it, which minions don't)"
ZenonTheStoic
"Quote:
What would you recommend for runes and masteries on Taliyah. Standard mage stuff. Thunderlord's is great on her since she can proc it with one Q cast on fresh ground."
Riot ShadowStorm added: "Quote:
What would you recommend for runes and masteries on Taliyah. In playtests, my rune page was Magic Pen marks, Armor seals, Magic Resist glyphs, and Flat AP quints. For masteries, I ran 12-18-0 with Thunderlord's Decree. They were called "Weaving Stones" and "Breaking Bones", respectively. =)"
ZenonTheStoic commented:
"Quote:
Why can't you cast w and e together? I feel like in higher levels of play having to set out the e and then having to use w to throw someone into it is faaaar too telegraphed. You should be able to make use of good mechanics to combo the skills together. Additionally from a game design standpoint are you at all worried over recent champions (specifically control mages) over reliance on rylai's crystal scepter? It's pretty mandatory on Aurelion Sol and Taliyah and you'll rarely see an azir or viktor without it. Not to mention Elise and Nidalee. It feels like a lot of champions are getting strength from the item to the point where you might run into a DFG issue again where champions start getting balanced around the items existence. Good question! Here's one of my design mantra: optional power is mandatory. If you give a champion a potential thing they can do that is powerful then in a solved state of the game where the player has mastered the champion, they will HAVE to use that thing. You're right that the W into E combo is highly telegraphed. That's very much on purpose! I want Taliyah to put her laning opponent on notice before she gets to land the WE combo. This allowed me to make landing the WE combo feel extremely powerful. Note that there are positive outcomes for Taliyah in this situation that do not include landing the WE--zoning the opponent from farm is one, landing free chip dmg with the E is another. Additionally, Taliyah has the advantage of having a slow on her E, so if an enemy aggresses on her sufficiently that they're inside the E area, Taliyah can guarantee a followup WE combo with the E slow." When asked about her W into E combo,
Taliyah's R and why it doesn't so damage, ZenonTheStoic explained: When asked aboutR and why it doesn't so damage,
"Quote:
Will you be updating her ultimate so it does damage and my friend and I thought up a cool ability where she pulls up a piece of the ground and depending where she is it will have different effects (River will slow, jg will do more damage to monsters, bot lane gives more life steal |
tournament, he packed up and flew off again to do CQD training with Dieter. Steinberg's warning was just 13 days old.
EVERYTHING ELSE MIGHT as well have been chiseled in stone on the day he was born. The two knee surgeries in Park City, Utah, a year later. The three back surgeries. The Thanksgiving night he took an Ambien and forgot to erase his text messages, and how that enormous storm started small, with Elin calling numbers in his phone, confronting the people on the other end, including Uchitel's friend Tim Bitici, who was in Vermont with his family when his phone rang. The horrors big and small that followed. The butcher paper taped up over the windows to block the paparazzi. The sheet his crew hung over the name of his yacht. The internet comments he read while driving to Augusta National before the 2010 Masters, obsessed over what people thought. The questions from his kids about why Mommy and Daddy don't live together, and the things he won't be able to protect them from when their classmates discover the internet. The tournament where he shot a 42 on the front nine and withdrew, blaming knee and Achilles injuries.
That day, Steve Williams saw a friend in the parking lot.
"What happened?" his friend asked, incredulous.
"I think he's got the yips, mate," Williams replied.
In the 1,303 days between his father's death and the fire hydrant, Tiger set in motion all those things, and when he can finally go back and make a full accounting of his life, he'll realize that winning the 2008 U.S. Open a year before the scandal, with a broken leg and torn ACL, was the closest he ever got to BUD/S. He could barely walk and he still beat everyone in the world. He won and has never been the same. The loneliness and pain tore apart his family, and the injuries destroyed his chance to beat Nicklaus and to leave fame behind and join the Navy. He lost his dad, and then his focus, and then his way, and everything else came falling down too.
But first, he got one final major.
"I'm winning this tournament," he told his team.
"Is it really worth it, Tiger?" Steve Williams asked.
"F-- you," Tiger said.“A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs,” Samuel Johnson said back in 1791. “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
Over two centuries later, denigrating women who dare to express their thoughts remains a popular cultural pastime. This is especially true when women speak publicly about “serious” topics like religion, business, and politics. And there is no better example of this phenomenon than the condescension with which Teen Vogue’s political coverage has been greeted in 2016.
But while Teen Vogue’s coverage is praiseworthy, it is not all that exceptional. Women’s publications have been offering substantive, worthwhile political takes for years now. That we still find this development remarkable is a measure of how our culture has segregated “women’s issues” from politics at large.
A brief history of women’s news
Once upon a time, there was news, and there was women’s news. Your local paper—let’s assume you subscribed; this would have been several decades ago—came to you every day packed with meaty, manly sections such as “Business” or “Politics.” Then, perhaps on the weekend, you would get an extra section, containing—oh, happy day—news that even your wife could read.
This was the “Lifestyle” section, and it covered all topics deemed feminine: cooking, fashion and beauty, parenting, maybe even a little celebrity news. (“Arts and Literature,” a Very Serious Section, still belonged to the boys.) The magazine world more or less followed the same format, with seriousness invariably reserved for men and masculine topics. People understood that a men’s magazine like Playboy could still feature hard-hitting articles and interviews, but Cosmopolitan was strictly for learning how to eat a donut off your man’s penis
This dichotomy is simplistic and sexist. And it never entirely held water—even back in the 1960s, Cosmopolitan published daring-for-the-time coverage of birth control. But it’s what we’ve been taught to expect from the media. Men cover and read Real News; women cover and read … well, woman stuff.
This bias is still reflected in how journalists are assigned stories. Women have been attending and graduating journalism school more often than men since the 1970s; by 2010, 64% of J-school graduates were female. Yet as of 2015, 65% of political journalists, 67% of criminal justice reporters, and 62% of reporters covering “business and economics” were male. Even in the lifestyle section, women can only pull even; the gender split there is precisely 50-50.
The rise of the feminist blogosphere
But over the course of the past decade or two, the underlying paradigm of women’s media has changed. Magazines for women and girls, ranging from Teen Vogue to Elle and Cosmopolitan, understand that political advocacy and more traditional lifestyle or entertainment coverage are not mutually exclusive. That shift is largely thanks to the rise of the feminist blogosphere.
, created a launchpad for several writing careers (mine included), and arguably helped to create an entirely new genre of mainstream media. Throughout the 2000s, a combination of loathing for former US president George W. Bush and the increased accessibility of blogging platforms led to the emergence of feminist blogs. Some, like Feministe, launched as early as 2001. By 2004, major players like Feministing and Shakesville had joined the scene. And by 2008, “feminist blogging” had become a large and noisy subculture, one which has since launched New York Times bestsellers (by my count, there were two this year alone)created a launchpad for several writing careers (mine included), and arguably helped to create an entirely new genre of mainstream media.
The writers of these sites—nearly all women, and nearly all amateurs—annihilated the boundaries of traditional women’s media. Not only was their writing “political” by definition, the subculture rewarded an assertive, opinionated style and the ability to tackle a wide variety of topics. Essays about abortion rights belonged on a feminist blog, but so did posts about wage discrimination, Ben Roethlisberger’s rape charges, and the latest Judd Apatow movie. On the blogosphere, the traditional division of subjects under newspaper sections was collapsed. The only real criteria when it came to determining coverage was that the subject had to affect women—which, upon close examination, turned out to be true of literally everything.
Almost by accident, the feminist blog movement was training an army of female journalists and editors. Feministe’s Jill Filipovic now writes for outlets like Cosmopolitan and the New York Times; Ann Friedman, who once wrote for Feministing, is now a regular columnist at New York Magazine. The executive editor of Feministing, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, is now senior editorial director of culture and identities at Mic. Kate Harding blogged at Shakesville and founded her own blog, Shapely Prose, in 2007. All of these women made their names while covering beats they might have been barred from in more traditional newsrooms. They were also creating a substantial readership for politically engaged coverage done in a female voice.
The first mainstream publication to successfully adopt the feminist-blog approach was also one of the best. In 2008, Anna Holmes’ Jezebel made the then-risky move of combining politics coverage and traditionally feminist op-eds with fashion and celebrity gossip, betting that the same woman could plausibly enjoy reading both Megan Carpentier on Hillary Clinton and Sadie Stein on bandage dresses. Jezebel’s traffic soon outstripped its more dudely counterpart Gawker, and created a model for women’s media that is still the norm today. In 2011, Tavi Gevinson significantly expanded that model to cover teen girls, launching the largely teen-written Rookie Magazine. This month alone, Rookie has published both a “get the look” makeup tutorial for Donyale Luna (known as the first black supermodel) and an activist’s guide to fighting Islamophobia. (I was, full disclosure, a staff writer for Rookie for its first two years, and a contributor to the Holmes-edited Book of Jezebel.)
In 2008, Jezebel presented itself as an adversarial counterpart to the “ladymags” like Cosmopolitan or Vogue, exposing egregious examples of photoshopping and cringe-inducing racist “trend” coverage. (“Navajo” was evidently big for white ladies in 2011.) But at the same time, Jezebel’s success pushed establishment magazines to change the way they operated. Now there was incontrovertible evidence that women enjoyed being spoken to like intelligent human beings, rather than clothing-obsessed toddlers. Before long, the ladymags and the ladyblogs were not adversaries so much as cousins. They now draw on an increasingly shared strategy and talent pool.
. So: Teen Vogue publishes stronger, more adversarial Trump coverage than Time or Newsweek? Teen Vogue contains both skincare tips and Native American history lessons? Of course it does. Teen Vogue, unlike Time or Newsweek, is drawing explicitly from a rich tradition of aggressive, opinionated, adversarial coverage of sexist white men
That same tradition spearheaded by the early feminist blogosphere holds that femininity is not a form of stupidity. Call it Dworkin’s Curse: For decades, feminists struggled to overcome the perception that they were sexless, grim bra-burners, uninterested in pleasure or aesthetics. Now that feminists are finally willing to talk about makeup and Beyonce, we get stereotyped as fluffy.
Yet just as it has long been widely understood that Playboy readers could be interested in both modern short fiction and looking at women’s breasts, in the 2010s, only the most dour or dismissive of bros could conclude that serious political engagement is incompatible with an interest in rainbow highlighters. Everyone loves rainbow highlighters. They make you look like a beautiful pixie who fronts a glam-rock band. Also, white nationalism is a cancer on our democracy. Women are capable of holding both of these truths in their minds, and prioritizing them accordingly.
Under the incoming Trump administration, it’s crucial that we banish the idea that there is a boundary between “women’s journalism” and “serious journalism” once and for all. When the president of the United States has admitted to committing sexual assault on tape; when an architect of GamerGate architect sits in the White House; when states start passing “heartbeat bills” designed to effectively overturn Roe v. Wade, those aren’t “women’s issues”—they’re national news. A failure to treat them as such will leave us unprepared to adequately oppose Trump and Trumpism.
The feminist-blog movement, and the women’s media revolution that followed, has trained the exact press corps we need for this moment in history. Now we need to stop feigning shock at the women and girls who are running circles around mainstream publications’ political coverage, and start listening to what they have to tell us.by Allen St. Pierre, Former NORML Executive Director
By Norman Kent, Esq., NORML Board Member
Okay, it is only February 1st, and more people this year have already died from peanut butter than pot.
Seriously, when you think about what has crossed the pages of our nation’s conscience in the past month, you have to wonder why we are all not getting high.
With thanks to Michael Phelps, I have ten good reasons to believe drug law reform will ‘take’ this year. Here is why.
Number One: The President
First of all, we elected a President who has admitted inhaling, and whose half brother just got arrested in Kenya for possession of marijuana. Growing up in urban Chicago, and having come from Hawaii, home of ‘Maui Waui,’ we have a man in the oval office that has an herbal background.
I am therefore not intimidated that, on his third day in office, while he was working on a nationwide economic stimulus package, some renegade prosecutors raided a medical dispensary in California. Those ugly efforts will cease soon enough. I am encouraged by President Obama’s prior public statements that such raids are counterproductive and provide illusory answers to real problems.
Number Two: The Medicine
Just as I was exploring the placement of my mom into an assisted living facility for early stage Alzheimer’s patients, I see a study released by Ohio State University this month. The research is indicating that marijuana has some potential capacity to reduce brain inflammation, which plays a role in Alzheimer’s. Mom, those brownies might taste differently next week.
While evidence showing the benefits of marijuana in multiple sclerosis cases has been advancing significantly, work in Alzheimer’s disease is still in its infancy. Still, another recent study performed at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, inhibits the formation of a brain plaque that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.
Number Three: The Politics
If you light up a joint while walking down High Street in Medford, Massachusetts, not much is likely to happen to you. As of Jan. 2, Massachusetts became one of 12 states that have decriminalized marijuana possession to some extent. The new civil penalties for possession of less than 1 ounce include a $100 fine and forfeiture of one’s stash for those over 18 years of age. Minors will receive the same fine and be required to attend drug education classes.
In city after city, and state after state, once silent minorities are becoming vocal majorities and voting to enact legislation freeing marijuana from unjust law enforcement. When given the chance, we are winning the war against prohibition. Legislators in Michigan, Connecticut and even Florida are starting to re-introduce bills to lower penalties for pot. The whirlwind is commencing; just ask anyone in a dorm room within a wave of the White House after the inauguration.
Number Four: The Media
Marijuana has gone mainstream. Media outlets are no longer hiding in the shadows afraid to produce honest reports about the culture of marijuana. We are less likely to see commercials of pot smokers having their brains grilled in a frying pan. We are more likely to view legitimate programming which produces truths rather than trash about your stash.
One such report was featured on NBC news last week, a snippet of an hour long production on MSNBC entitled ‘Marijuana, Inc.’ Focusing more on economics then the sociology of pot, the well-supported report inescapably concluded that marijuana commerce is here to stay and unlikely to change. As even the NY Daily News said, “When it comes to marijuana, a whole lot of people voted some time ago to just say yes.” Ask the cast of the award winning Showtime series, ‘Weeds,’ which captures a growing American spirit.
Number Five: The Public
Even the Department of Health has said that 95 million Americans have over the age of 21 have tried marijuana at least once. Everyone except Bill Clinton has inhaled. The anti drug warriors have a hard time explaining to the average adult in the 21st century that millions of Americans are wrong when they light up every day.
It is normal to smoke pot. The vast amount of marijuana users today are parents choosing to calm down instead of liquor up, not just kids, looking to get high after class. Of course, they are too, adults treating arthritis, patients using it for multiple sclerosis, or people with HIV fighting a wasting syndrome. Pot smokers cross ethnic, sociological, and economic boundaries.
Number Six: The Celebrities
There is a lot of reason to hate the celebrity culture, paparazzi, and people who get their daily pulp from finding out where Brittany Spears went shopping. As more media types get busted with pot, the less newsworthy it becomes. The public could care less. An arrest for pot is not a career-ending event. As I finish this piece and send it off for distribution, I am watching Snoop Doggy Dogg being interviewed on ESPN for the NFL Countdown to the Super Bowl. It does not seem to have hurt him. And guess what Michael Phelps got caught doing this weekend? Toking off a bong!
Macauley Culkin, Bud Bundy, Willie Nelson, Art Garfunkel, and Al Gore’s son also make the High Subscription List. So do Allen Iverson, Matthew McConaughey, Whitney Houston, Oliver Stone, and even Queen Latifah. All have posted bail for pot. They are not doing too badly for themselves. Go visit Celebstoner for more prime examples of the intersection of celebrity and cannabis.
Number Seven: The Growers
In speaking out against rescheduling marijuana so as to remove it from its classification as dangerous, the most significant point that the Office of Drug Control Policy makes is that today’s weed ‘is not your grandfather’s pot.’
Exactly! It is not, but they miss the mark when they say today’s pot is ‘stronger.’
Today’s pot is also cleaner, safer, and healthier to consume. From vaporizers to hydroponic labs, the marijuana grown and consumed today is more precisely cultivated, carefully processed, and lovingly manicured then the mold-encased, dried-out weed we grew up on decades ago. That pot was often delivered to Americans from overseas after being buried in the dark, musky cargo hulls of ships for weeks at a time.
Now that Americans grow our own marijuana at home, we do not hear stories on a daily basis about people smoking rat poison or buying oregano. We have returned to the roots of our forefathers, lest we forget that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all grew hemp. They did not turn out too bad, either. Today’s pot growers are the new revolutionary farmers.
Number Eight: The Police and Jails
Sadly, the criminal justice system in America is teeming with serious crimes and violence against Americans. A Department of Homeland Security must necessarily focus on threats from abroad. From drive-by shootings to corporate white collar crime, the jails in our country are simply not capable of housing all those who should arguably be locked up. So law enforcement has to prioritize. Building jails and keeping people in prisons costs more money than communities can afford. Pot smokers are the residual beneficiaries.
The necessities of twenty first century law enforcement have reduced pot to secondary priorities. More and more cities are encouraging cops to treat simple pot possession as a civil traffic infraction and just write a ticket. As those progressive initiatives take hold, pot prosecutions will diminish and pot users will be treated more fairly.
Number Nine: The Non Profits
The wealth of non profit organizations advocating drug law reform is growing exponentially. We are not just NORML anymore. Benefactors like Peter Lewis and George Soros have underwritten drug reform movements the way Hugh Hefner once helped NORML. The Marijuana Policy Project, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, the Drug Policy Alliance, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition are just a small sampling of honorable groups fighting to change the public perception in the way drug consumers are viewed and treated. If you enhance their efforts today, there is less of a chance that you will be bonding yourself or your child out of jail tomorrow.
Number Ten: The Internet
There is no better way to end this column then to point towards the awesome power of networking to generate partnerships for the common good. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of reformers can be linked for a specific goal, a targeted protest, or unified voice to speak out for or against a new law or proposed regulation.
The NORML blog and podcast draws hundreds of thousands of Americans daily who would otherwise never be reached but for the arm of the ‘Net. Stopthedrugwar.org, Marijuananews.com, and cannabisnews.com are amongst the target specific Internet resources drug law reformers can access instantly. There are too many more to mention.
Finally, the Internet has spawned awesome networking groups such as Facebook and MySpace, where activists, organizers, and reformers can synthesize their partnerships and causes. And there is always something new unfolding, like Twitter, which I have not figured out, but I know is catching on.
It’s Up to Us!
For too many years, pot smokers have been political prisoners, captive to repressive government and a rolling tide. 2009 represents a renewed opportunity to make the waters of justice run our way again.
*This was originally published at KentVent.comHow does the aging of the farmer population and the lack of succession planning lead to the permanent loss of farmland? Moreover, what can you do about it? Follow the dots and learn about what you can do to help in Rogue Farm Corps' new infographic.
10.5 million acres of farmland will change hands in the next 20 years and up to 80% of farmers and ranchers do not have a succession plan in place. As a result, the next generation often has to sell of all or some of the farmland to afford the costs of attorneys and state estate tax. The fragmented land is at risk for development, and quick sales to the highest bidder make it hard for beginning farmers and ranchers to purchase it.
Tools like working lands easements can help farmers get cash by selling development rights instead of selling their property. This helps divide the estate, preserves the land, and makes the land more affordable to the next generation of land stewards. Read more about our Farm Preservation Program's work to advocate for these tools.The first ever multiplayer game within the Zelda series was first released as part of a package with the Game Boy Advance port of A Link to the Past back in 2002, which was followed three years later with The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on the Game Cube.
Since this year marks the 25th anniversary of the series, Nintendo is giving fans a great year to remember, with the Ocarina of Time remake on the 3DS, a special orchestral concert, a special day at the video game festival GameCity and Skyward Sword for the Wii. But fans from now can download the special edition of the Four Swords game, which has been updated from its original GBA incarnation with some nice changes. When you consider that the game is free to download on the 3DS, DSi XL and DSi, this is worth checking out!
You start the game with Princess Zelda being kidnapped by Vaati, an evil spirit who has escaped from his prison that is the Four Sword and after being woken up by some fairies from Vaati’s attack, Link takes ahold of the Four Sword and is split into four different colors (green, red, blue and purple) and you all head out to rescue the princess once again.
After a detailed tutorial from some Stray Fairies at the Chambers of Insight, you set off as the green link and your selected second colored Link of your choice through four main areas within the map, with three stages on each area (two being levels where you reach a goal and one being a boss stage). Each area will take approximately up to an hour to two hours depending on your experience and while it is ideal for gamers traveling or those looking for a quick game, it was a bit shorter from what I was expecting and Nintendo have included some new areas that longtime fans might recognize during their playtime.
One of the other reasons that this is the easiest game to beat from this series is that the puzzles and gameplay mechanics are made to make the mechanics of the two or more controlled Links accessible for everyone. But then, this was originally a free exclusive and so this isn’t a major complaint as I still had a small burst of fun while I was playing it.
While I have not had the chance to play with other people on the multiplayer mode, the developers have included a single player mode that is added to this edition of the game and it sees you playing as the main green Link and selecting one of the three other colored Links that can accompany you on each level.
The gameplay for the single player mode is surprisingly quite effective, as you can switch between the two Links or have one follow the other to push objects, light torches and defeat enemies in some fun and clever ways. At times though, it can be a bit frustrating that one Link tries to destroy the enemies while one just simply follows you and doesn’t do anything and can especially be annoying when trying to figure out how to defeat the boss of each stage. While you can re-spawn with a certain amount of rupees that you can collect from cutting grass, defeating enemies and opening treasure chests, which helps to even out this small flaw within this gameplay mechanic.
But getting through the obstacles and puzzles doesn’t have this issue, as it is these sections of the levels that can be quite fun to solve. For example, the two characters ride a handcart to reach from one end of the level to the other while avoiding enemies and trying to get to several treasure chests that is great to see used differently in each level.
With some nice, colorful graphics, an interesting gameplay and the fact that this little gem is absolutely free to download for 3DS, DSi XL and DSi consoles, this is a great quick fix for all types of fans and gamers before The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is released on the Wii in November. A title almost too good to be free and one of the best games I have downloaded on my 3DS!
Rating:[4/5]The Battle of Ortona (20–28 December 1943) was a battle fought between two battalions of elite German Fallschirmjäger (paratroops) from the German 1st Parachute Division under Generalleutnant Richard Heidrich, and assaulting Canadian troops from the Canadian 1st Infantry Division under Major General Chris Vokes, most of whom were fresh recruits whose first taste of combat was during the Invasion of Sicily. It was the culmination of the fighting on the Adriatic front in Italy during "Bloody December". The battle was known to those who fought it as the "Italian Stalingrad,"[6][7] for the brutality of its close-quarters combat, which was only worsened by the chaotic rubble of the town and the many booby traps used by both sides. The battle took place in the small Adriatic Sea town of Ortona, with a peacetime population of 10,000.
Part of the Italian Campaign (World War II) the battle to liberate Ortona resulted in 2,300 Canadian casualties in a single month (including 500 dead) before the town was won for the Allies.[8][9]
Background [ edit ]
Communities around the Moro River. Ortona was a city of strategic importance, as one of Italy's few deep water ports on the east coast.
By late 1943, the entire Italian campaign was not intended to win the war but to remove Italian troops from other areas of Europe, divert German forces from France and reduce the strength of the German army; the D-Day invasion was already in the planning stages for the following spring or summer.[10] As one source indicates, "By dividing Nazi forces between several separate fronts, the Allies would prevent Hitler from striking a deadly blow at the USSR or from concentrating an invincible army along the coast of Normandy".[11]
The British Eighth Army's offensive on the Winter Line defences east of the Apennine mountains had commenced on 23 November with the crossing of the river Sangro. By the end of the month, the main Gustav Line defences had been penetrated and the Allied troops were fighting their way forward to the next river, the Moro, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of the mouth of which lay Ortona. For the Moro crossing in early December the exhausted British 78th Infantry Division on the Allied right flank on the Adriatic coast had been relieved by the Canadian 1st Infantry Division, under Major-General Christopher Vokes.[12] By mid-December, after fierce fighting in the cold and mud, the Division's 1st Infantry Brigade had fought its way to within 2 mi (3.2 km) of Ortona and was relieved by the 2nd Infantry Brigade for the advance on the town.
Some historians indicate that Ortona was of high strategic importance, as it was one of Italy's few usable deep water ports on the east coast, and was needed for docking allied ships and to shorten Eighth Army's lines of supply which at the time stretched back to Bari and Taranto. Allied forces were ordered to maintain the offensive, and going through the built-up areas in and around Ortona was the only feasible option. Ortona was part of the Winter Line defence system and the Germans had constructed a series of interlocking defensive positions in the town. This—together with the fact that the Germans had been ordered to "fight for every last house and tree"—[13][14] made the town a formidable obstacle to any attacking force.
Other historians, including Rick Atkinson, assign lesser importance for Ortona. He quotes Field Marshal Albert Kesselring who said, "We do not want to defend Ortona decisively.. but the English have made it appear as important as Rome"; General Joachim Lemelsen, the temporary commander, replied, "It costs so much in blood, it cannot be justified".[15] Nonetheless, the Allies believed it would be merely a minor battle and proceeded with the plan; the Germans then rose to the occasion, holding the town with great determination.[16]
Battle [ edit ]
The Canadians faced elements of the renowned German 1st Parachute Division.[Note 1] These soldiers were battle-hardened after many years of war, and defended doggedly.
The initial Canadian attack on the town was made on 20 December by Canadian 2nd Brigade's Loyal Edmonton Regiment with elements of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada under command.[14] Meanwhile, elements of the division's 3rd Infantry Brigade launched a northerly attack to the west of the town in attempt to outflank and cut off the town's rear communications but made slow progress because of the difficult terrain and the skillful and determined German defence. On 21 December 1943, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders entered Ortona, assisted by the tanks of the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade's Three Rivers Regiment.[17]
The Germans had concealed various machine guns and anti-tank emplacements throughout the town, making movement by armour and infantry increasingly difficult.[18] The house-to-house fighting was vicious and the Canadians made use of a tactic that had previously infrequently been used: "mouse-holing". This tactic involved using weapons such as the PIAT or cumbersome Teller anti-tank mines[19] to create a large aperture in the wall of a building, as houses within Ortona shared adjoining walls.[18] The soldiers would then throw in grenades and make their assault through the mouse holes, clearing the stairs to the top or bottom floor with grenades or machine guns; they would follow to reach any adversaries and struggle in repeated close-quarters combat.[14] Mouse-holing was also used to pierce through walls into adjoining rooms, sometimes catching enemy troops by surprise. The tactic would be used repeatedly as assaulting through the streets caused heavy casualties for both Canadian and German troops.[20]
Mouse-holing also allowed the soldiers to progress through the town, building by building, without entering the streets where they would face enemy fire.[21] While some sources attribute the strategy to the Canadian forces, a British training film of 1941 had already illustrated the concept. The Canadians were certainly early, effective and courageous users of the technique.[22] Throughout the battle, engineers on both sides also used the brutal but effective tactic of using demolition charges to collapse entire buildings on top of enemy troops.[23][24]
On 28 December, after eight days of fighting, the depleted German troops finally withdrew from the town. The Canadians suffered 1,375 dead[3] during the Moro River battles of which Ortona was one part. This represented almost a quarter of all Canadians killed during the entire Italian Campaign.[25]
Legacy [ edit ]
Ortona was successfully liberated but the month would be considered as "Bloody December" by Canadian forces because of the numerous casualties in and around the town.[25] As well, over 5,000 Canadians were evacuated due to battle exhaustion and illness. In addition to the Canadian losses, the German 1st Parachute Division and the 90th Light Infantry Division (Wehrmacht) also suffered numerous casualties. [26]
The contribution made by Canadian troops was summarized as follows by Major General Christopher Vokes in his report on the Ortona offensive: "We smashed the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division and we gave the 1st German Parachute Division a mauling which it will long remember".[27] Nonetheless, after WW II, the significance of the battle in Ortona was minimized by others, perhaps because it did not have a significant impact on winning the war. Surprisingly, General Bernard Montgomery did not include it in his memoirs.[28]
In November 2000, the Government of Canada erected a plaque at the Piazza Plebiscito in Ortona, in recognition of the battle as a National Historic Event of Canada that "symbolized the efforts of the Canadian Army in the Italian Campaign during World War II". The plaque reads as follows: "In early December 1943 the 1st Canadian Infantry Division and 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade began their most savage battle of the Italian Campaign. In the mud and rain troops attacked from the Moro River to Ortona. Then, from house to house and room to room there raged a ferocious battle against resolute German defenders. With extraordinary courage the Canadians prevailed, and just after Christmas finally secured the town".[29]
Notes [ edit ]
^ "the best German troops in Italy" in [General] Alexander's estimation. Atkinson 2013, p. 303
^ [2] Sources are often confused between figures for the eight days of fighting at Ortona and those for the whole of the December campaign. Zuehlke gives Canadian losses for this period of 1375 dead and 964 wounded[3] while the Canadiansoldiers.com website says casualties for Canadian 1st Infantry Division in December (including 1st Brigade's crossing of the Moro, 2nd Brigade's fighting in the town and 3rd Brigade's attempted outflanking attack) totaled 4,206 including 695 killed.[4] Mainly Canadian. Includes losses to the Loyal Edmonton Regiment of 172 casualties, of which 63 killed; the Seaforth Highlanders 103, of which 41 killed.Sources are often confused between figures for the eight days of fighting at Ortona and those for the whole of the December campaign. Zuehlke gives Canadian losses for this period of 1375 dead and 964 woundedwhile the Canadiansoldiers.com website says casualties for Canadian 1st Infantry Division in December (including 1st Brigade's crossing of the Moro, 2nd Brigade's fighting in the town and 3rd Brigade's attempted outflanking attack) totaled 4,206 including 695 killed.
Citations [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Coordinates:Jingjing and Chacha (警警 and 察察, a pun on the Chinese word for police, Chinese: 警察; pinyin: jǐngchá) are the cartoon mascots of the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen, People's Republic of China. Debuting on January 22, 2006, they are used to, amongst other things, inform Chinese Internet users what is and is not legal to consult or write on the Chinese Internet. According to the director of the Shenzhen Internet police, "[we published] the image of Internet Police in the form of a cartoon [...] to let all internet users know that the Internet is not a place beyond of law [and that] the Internet Police will maintain order in all online behavior."[1]
The Shenzhen police plan to place images of the two characters on the main page of all Shenzhen websites and bulletin board systems, creating an online 'police presence' that works to remind citizens to monitor their own behavior in accordance with the Chinese law, much as a visible police presence does in the real world.[2] Clicking on the images will take a user to either of the characters' own personal webspace,[3] where Chinese Internet users can learn about the laws and regulations related to Internet, keep up-to-date on the newest Internet policies, and submit questions to Jingjing and Chacha live through the instant messaging service Tencent QQ or through their blogs. In addition to engaging the public on Internet censorship-related issues, they also handle cases relating to computer viruses, computer crimes, and other such matters. As of January 2006, there were six police officers assigned to carry out these duties.[citation needed]
In August 2007, Beijing police announced a similar campaign using animated officers. The Beijing version of the characters will appear every half-hour on 13 of China's top web portals and display messages about Internet laws and conduct.[4]
Criticism [ edit ]
Despite these extra functions, the China Digital Times reported that it was told by an official at the Bureau that the main purpose of Jingjing and Chacha was still just to "intimidate" users, openly reminding them to "self-regulate their online behavior" (see chilling effect).[5]
See also [ edit ]U.S. RC-135 Rivet Joint and other spyplanes operating in international airspace off Syria. While a WC-135 “nuke sniffer” flew towards the Black Sea.
The White House’s warning about an imminent chemical attack and the visit Assad paid to Hmeymim airbase, near Latakia, today are among the most likely reasons for a rather unusual presence of U.S. spyplanes off Syria in the last couple of days.
Once again, the hint of a busy intelligence gathering operation underway along the coasts of western Syria comes from the signals collected by aircraft spotters, airband listeners and ADS-B monitors, who have reported the movements of U.S. Air Force RC-135s along with a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft.
Among those who have tracked the flights, the famous ADS-B / ModeS tracking enthusiast running the popular @CivMilAir and @ADSBTweetBot Twitter feeds, who has traced the missions of one RC-135U Combat Sent (that had already operated in the same area yesterday), one RC-135V Rivet Joint and one P-8 Poseidon on Jun. 27, more or less as Assad posed for some photos inside the cockpit of a Russian Sukhoi deployed to Syria.
After chem weapons accusations defiant #Assad visits Russian air base. US a/c carrier+intel planes buildup in Med@AnshelPfeffer @CivMilAir pic.twitter.com/rNsoVGBvhW — avi scharf (@avischarf) 27 June 2017
The Rivet Joint is the USAF’s standard (SIGINT) gathering platform, meaning that it can eavesdrop and pinpoint “enemy” radio signals, and disseminate the details about these targets via tactical data-link to other aircraft, while the Combat Sent is designed |
are our ‘leaders’ doing about it? Not much. Certainly nothing outside of the mindset that got us here. We tinker. Pull a lever here, push a button there. But nothing changes, and nothing will until we evolve our perspective past the three dimensional grab-bag free for all we find ourselves in today.
In the 1970’s an Australian professor by the name of Bill Mollison and his student David Holmgren, recognizing this flaw in the current worldview, developed one of their own. It became known as Permaculture. Permaculture can mean either permanent culture or permanent agriculture. In its essence it is a design philosophy for the building of systems that are meant to last.
This emphasis on permanency is a movement into fourth dimensional space-time. Its an abandonment of the deep-rooted ideas we have inherited about getting while the getting’s good. No, we say, we want to stay. This planet is a good place and we have become smart people in 3D. The time has come to become wise in the fourth and on into the higher dimensions. We have this potential.
Permaculture is one way to begin this transition. It is very elemental, not calling for the end of civilization but rather the transformation of it. It is an ethical design principle with one goal: to create health and happiness that goes on for a long time.
The philosophy is summed up into 3 core tenets and 12 principles.
The Core Tenets:
Care of the Earth Care of People Reinvestment of Surplus
The 12 Principles (By David Holmgren):
Observe and Interact – “ Beauty is in the mind of the beholder”
By taking the time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation. Catch and Store Energy – “Make hay while the sun shines”
By developing systems that collect resources when they are abundant, we can use them in times of need. Obtain a yield – “You can’t work on an empty stomach”
Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work you are doing. Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback – “The sins of the fathers are visited on the children of the seventh generation”
We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well. Negative feedback is often slow to emerge. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – “Let nature take its course”
Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources. Produce No Waste – “ Waste not, want not” or “A stitch in time saves nine”
By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste. Design From Patterns to Details – “Can’t see the forest for the trees”
By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go. Integrate Rather Than Segregate – “Many hands make light work”
By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other. Use Small and Slow Solutions – “Slow and steady wins the race” or “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”
Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and produce more sustainable outcomes. Use and Value Diversity – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”
Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides. Use Edges and Value the Marginal – “Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a well-beaten path”
The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system. Creatively Use and Respond to Change – “Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be”
We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.
Through these basic principles, permaculture has been developed into a deep and exacting science. Using the patterns found in nature it has created countless small, efficient, sustainable systems that provide for the needs of its occupants. Beyond mere survival, it creates a natural and connected way of life.
For me its practical, common sense approach is refreshing. Instead of getting gloomy and doomy we focus our energy on positive action. What comes is really quite a beautiful thing.
Check out this short trailer for a longer documentary by Geoff Lawton, the director of the Permaculture Research Institute in Australia. It’s very well done.
If you like what you see I encourage you to learn more. The internet is packet with good info. If you live in the city check out urban permaculture; good stuff happening if you know where to look.
TVP
AdvertisementsIt all started with an email from Andy at Huckberry. They were doing an offer that week with a company called GORUCK. Andy wanted to introduce me to Jason, its founder.
I’d read about GORUCK before, and knew they had a really cool story. Jason had served in the Army as a Green Beret and wanted to offer civilians the same type of rugged backpack that he used during his military service. Jason started the GORUCK Challenge as a way to field test his packs in a memorable and convincing way, but they became so popular that they took on a life of their own.
The Challenge is a 9-13 hour team event in which a Special Forces veteran — called a Cadre — leads you on a 15-20 mile “guided tour” of your city. It begins at night and runs until the morning. Along the way, you take part in military-inspired challenges and “missions,” which includes doing some basic training calisthenics, taking a little swim, carrying logs (and each other), and a lot of marching. Oh, and you do it all while wearing a backpack filled with 30 to 40 pounds of bricks and other equipment. They tell you to bring $20 for a taxi – if you can’t go on, you have to call one to pick you up. The GORUCK Challenge is designed to push the individual physically and mentally and build teamwork and camaraderie among those participating. It isn’t a race. You don’t get a medal for first prize. The goal of the Challenge is to finish it, and finish it as a team. “Good livin’” is what Jason calls the whole experience: “when life is actually tough but you love it, your attitude is great, and you smile.”
Sounds…interesting, right? So when Jason invited me to take part in a Challenge, I accepted. It was partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted something to push me in becoming a better man.
I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
Full disclosure: Jason waived the fee for my entry into the Challenge, but I bought the backpack myself, and he didn’t even so much as hint that he’d like me to do a review. I just wanted to write this up for those who are curious, and to encourage readers to do it, as I think it’s worthwhile.
How I Trained for the GORUCK Challenge
As soon as I said yes, I started to fanatically research the Challenge: What’s it like? How should I train? What should I bring? Will I survive?
I quickly discovered that details about the Challenge are hard to come by. The folks at GORUCK keep a pretty tight lid on what the Challenges entail. They don’t even let you know the start point of your Challenge until the day before the event. The surprise and intrigue are all part of the fun of the GORUCK Challenge. Members of the GORUCK family — individuals who have successfully completed a Challenge — play along with the clandestine vibe and keep blog posts about their experience pretty vague.
The guys at GORUCK say you really don’t need to train for it and that if you’re in pretty decent shape, you’ll get through it just fine. They argue that the Challenge is more mental than physical. Also, because every Challenge is different, it’s hard to know exactly what to train for.
After completing the Challenge, I have to agree with them. I trained for a GORUCK Challenge that was entirely different than the one I actually experienced. Based on my research of previous Challenges, I thought there was going to be lots of Indian Runs and city blocks-worth of walking lunges and bear crawls. My challenge had a few bear crawls at the beginning, but no walking lunges or Indian Runs at all. Dang. Honestly, I probably could have completed the Challenge just fine without my special GORUCK training program.
That isn’t to say that my intensive training went to waste. The drills I concocted for myself pushed my body and mind further than they had gone in a long time, and I’m now in the best shape of my life. The conditioning definitely mentally steeled me to complete the grueling 9-hour challenge. I don’t regret one bit of the hours and sweat I put into getting ready for it.
If you’re interested in training for the GORUCK Challenge, below I provide my weekly workout routine as an example. As mentioned above, I thought there would be lots of windsprints, bear crawls, and lunges during the challenge, so I designed my conditioning routine around those exercises.
I also took 15-minute ice baths after my most intense workouts. They served a few purposes: 1) you typically get dunked in cold water at the beginning of a challenge. I wanted to be ready for that, 2) the ice baths aided in recovery, and 3) they were part of an experiment I was doing on naturally increasing my testosterone (the results on that in the new year).
Brett’s GORUCK Training Program
I started this training program back in August. For the first three weeks, I did the running and the lunges/bear crawls without the fully loaded GORUCK GR1. After that, I completed all my conditioning workouts while wearing the brick-filled rucksack. However your train for the GORUCK, I definitely recommend spending time getting used to carrying that thing around.
Monday: 5×5 Stronglifts Weightlifting Routine
Tuesday: 50- x 40-yard windsprints with loaded GORUCK pack (1-minute rest between each sprint). 15-minute ice bath after workout
Wednesday: 5×5 Stronglifts Weightlifting Routine
Thursday: 5K run with loaded GORUCK pack + 300-yard 75-pound sandbag carry. 15-minute ice bath after workout.
Friday: Alternated between 720-yard bear crawls and 720-yard walking lunges with loaded GORUCK pack. 15-minute ice bath after workout.
GORUCK Challenge Class #335, Oklahoma City. November 24, 2012.
After months of training, the night of the Challenge arrived. I double-checked my gear, kissed Kate and Gus good-bye, and drove down to OKC to pick up my brother. The starting point of our Challenge was in front of the downtown baseball stadium. We arrived shortly before 10PM to find 15 other people standing around in front of a statue of Mickey Mantle, nervously waiting for our cadre to arrive.
Our GORUCK class had a great mix of folks from all walks of life. Military veterans and current servicemen, police officers, and just regular old civilians. Our team of 17 even had two hardy gals.
Around 10:15, our cadre, Beaux, rolled up. Beaux is a Force Recon Marine with multiple deployments in Iraq. He now works as a Special Ops trainer for the Navy and leads GORUCK challenges on the weekends for fun. He’s a badass. Beaux did a roll call, asked to see our load of bricks, and then established the ground rules. He informed us that he has his PhD in pain, suffering, and discontent, and that we’d be matriculating through the school of pain and suffering that evening. After the “pleasantries,” we started our 9 hours of Good Livin’.
I could go into detail about the Challenge, but I won’t. I don’t want to ruin the experience for folks wanting to sign-up, and there’s something special about keeping only the GORUCK family in the know about what goes on. It’s much like a fraternity.
With that said, I’ll briefly describe what Cadre Beaux dished out to GORUCK Class #335.
The Welcome Party
The evening began with Basic Training, or what Beaux called “The Welcome Party.” We did push-ups, flutter kicks, bear crawls, and rolled around on the ground, all while wearing our fully-loaded packs. The worst exercise was the Human Centipede. Our team of 17 people laid down in a line on the ground and we had to put our feet on the shoulders of the man behind us and put our face as far up the rear-end of the person in front as we could. We proceeded to do push-ups and crawl around like inchworms on the ground in this position.
The point of Basic Training isn’t simply to do difficult calisthenics. It’s actually an introductory lesson on the importance of teamwork in the GORUCK Challenge. It took us all a bit to figure that out, but as soon as we did, training became a lot easier.
After pounding us physically and mentally for about an hour and half, Beaux told us to go dunk ourselves in a freezing cold pond nearby. Getting into the water wasn’t that bad; I was used to hanging out in cold water with my ice baths. Getting out was a different story. It was 34 degrees that night and really windy. Needless to say, we were all uncomfortable and a bit miserable for the rest of the night.
Fighting Zombies
Beaux had crafted a series of missions for us that night that followed a Zombie Apocalypse storyline. Every mission had a time limit. If we didn’t complete it in time we were punished with “Fist Pumping,” which involved pressing heavy objects above our head while Beaux blasted music from his SpongeBob SquarePants speakers.
The missions involved lots of low crawling and carrying giant logs on our shoulders. The hardest part of the Challenge for me was buddy-carrying our teammates two miles to “medical help” after they had been “bitten by zombies.” My back and legs were smoked after that.
Teamwork was emphasized throughout. You had to do everything as a team. We marched as a team, were punished as a team, and lifted heavy crap as a team.
Our Challenge ended at about 7:30AM. Not a single member of Class #335 dropped out during the night. We started as a team and we finished as a team.
Individuals who successfully complete a GORUCK Challenge are awarded a GORUCK Tough patch for their bag. Beaux led us to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial for the presentation of patches. For those of us from the OKC area, that place holds a lot of meaning. I had several school friends lose parents in the terrorist blast that killed 162 people. But the community rallied together to support the families of victims and rebuild. Beaux gave a solemn and inspiring speech about the values and mission of the GORUCK Challenge and what it means to be an American — it was to encourage that same sort of camaraderie and teamwork that the community of OKC demonstrated in the aftermath of the bombing.
Beaux presented us our patches one-by-one, shook our hands, and welcomed us to the GORUCK Family.
And with that, my four-month journey to the GORUCK Challenge was over.
Final Thoughts and Why You Should Do a GORUCK Challenge, Too
For the next week I was sore as all get out. My shoulders and back were scraped and bruised, but I saw them as badges of honor. All in all, I found the GORUCK Challenge to be a tremendously satisfying experience.
While I was training for it, some people asked me why I would want to do something like this. Looking at it from the outside, things like the GORUCK Challenge, and obstacle and adventure races of all sorts, can indeed seem kind of silly. Sure, it’s easy to think, “Gee, isn’t it sad that society has become so devoid of challenge that people have to pay money to stay up all night carrying around a rucksack full of bricks?” Maybe. But the alternative is doing…nothing. And being an armchair critic. The reality of living in the modern age is that there are no longer things built in to the culture that force us to push ourselves – we have to actively seek out these experiences ourselves. The fact that there were a good number of former and current military guys in my class shows that everyone is looking for, craving really, an extra layer of challenge in their lives. Every man should be regularly stretching both his physical and mental capabilities. We may not be under zombie attack (yet), but every man should know that he’s ready for anything, and feel confident in the knowledge that he’ll be able to perform when his limits are pushed.
I see guys all the time who settle down in the suburbs, have a kid, grow a gut, and spend their nights watching Netflix. Soft suburban dads. I’ve decided I won’t let this to happen to me. And I’ve found it’s important to have goals to train for — things to motivate myself to stay physically active and mentally sharp. That, to me, is the value of doing something like the GORUCK Challenge. I bet you’d find it worthwhile too.
Good Livin’ gentlemen.
PS: Things have come full circle. Huckberry is once again offering a super deal on the GORUCK Challenge. If you buy a GORUCK rucksack, you get free entry into a Challenge. Pretty dang sweet. As Huckberry puts it, “This gift is sort of like combining a Christmas present and New Year’s resolution into one, and in the best/worst possible way. No pain, no gain.”
Thanks to Ryan Long from Blue Line Tactical and his friend George for providing the pictures of the event.U.S. President Barack Obama is reaching out to his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Pena Nieto, as Washington launches a charm offensive to close a massive Pacific Rim trade deal next week.
As of Thursday afternoon, he had not made a similar call to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
There's rising concern, meanwhile, in Canada's 80,000-job auto-parts manufacturing sector that the Trans-Pacific Partnership could seriously harm the industry.
Story continues below advertisement
The White House announced Thursday that Mr. Obama called the Mexican President on Wednesday regarding Trans-Pacific Partnership talks to discuss "the importance of bringing the negotiations to a swift conclusion." Mr. Harper's staff said the Conservative Leader had not received a phone call from the White House.
Both Canada and Mexico, NAFTA partners with the United States, are standing in the way of of a TPP deal because of a dispute with Japan over how much of each auto or car part can be made overseas and still qualify to be sold in North America without duties under the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mexico, though, is arguably a far more vital auto-sector ally for Mr. Obama in his quest to seal a TPP deal. Mexico ranks second behind the United States and ahead of Canada in annual auto production, and its output is growing every year. The country once considered the junior partner in NAFTA will be producing five million vehicles annually by 2020, while Canadian output is expected to be about two million vehicles.
Japan, one of the most influential players in the 12-country TPP talks, has so far refused to give ground on rules in the proposed accord that could hurt the Canadian and Mexican auto sectors.
The ambitious talks aim to create a free-trade zone stretching from Chile to Japan that comprises 40 per cent of global economic output.
Under NAFTA, Canada, the United States and Mexico require more than 60 per cent of cars and auto parts to be made within the NAFTA zone in order to enter their markets tariff-free.
Trans-Pacific deal rules provisionally agreed to by Japan and the United States say that in the TPP zone, vehicles would be tariff-free even if only 45 per cent of their content is made within the TPP zone, and auto parts with as little as 30 per cent. The Canadian auto-parts industry has been pushing the government hard to hold the line at a minimum domestic content threshold of 50 per cent.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The existing NAFTA requirement for more than 60 per cent North American content gives some vehicle companies and parts makers a reason to consider Canada, even amid the flood of new automotive investment to Mexico and the U.S. South.
Canada's attractiveness as an auto manufacturing location is already weakening today as the flow of capital favours Mexico. And one senior auto parts industry executive says the domestic content level of 30 per cent sought by Japan would eliminate any reason to consider investing here.
Mexico and Canada effectively blocked a TPP deal in Maui this summer over autos. Trade ministers are once again preparing to gather, this time in Atlanta on Sept. 30, as Washington and Tokyo launch what they hope will be a final push for a TPP deal. Canada and Mexico have the potential to play the spoiler again in Atlanta.
Rick Roth, spokesman for federal Trade Minister Ed Fast, said the Conservative government will not sell out Canadian industry. "Our position at the negotiating table is informed by the views of job creators like Canada's auto assemblers, as well as our parts suppliers, not anti-trade activists," he said.
The full-court press in negotiations comes with Canada less than four weeks away from a federal election.
Mr. Harper said as recently as last week that Canada can't afford to walk away from a TPP deal.
Story continues below advertisement
The potential for a TPP that hurts the auto-parts industry comes when red flags are already flying high over some Canadian assembly plants.
Two large plants are on the endangered list – an FCA North America (Chrysler) plant in Brampton, Ont., and a General Motors Co. car factory in Oshawa, Ont. One GM plant in Oshawa is scheduled to close in 2017, although its life has already been extended several times. The future of a Ford Motor Co. engine plant in Windsor, Ont., is also in doubt because no new investment has been earmarked for it.A Salty, Martian Meteorite Offers Clues to Habitability
by Staff Writers
Moffet Field CA (NASA) Aug 29, 2014
This meteorite, EETA79001, a basalt lava rock nearly indistinguishable from many Earth rocks, provided the first strong proof that meteorites could come from Mars. Originally weighing nearly 8 kilograms (17.6 pounds), it was collected in 1979 in the Elephant Moraine area of Antarctica. Image courtesy NASA/JSC/JPL/Lunar Planetary Institute.
Life as we know it requires energy of some sort to survive and thrive. For plants, that source of energy is the Sun. But there are some microbes that can survive using energy from chemical reactions. Some of them even eat salts, such as perchlorates.
Perchlorate (ClO4-) is a highly oxidized form of chlorine. Perchlorate salts are found not only on Earth, but also on Mars. They're highly toxic to humans but are useful for components such as rocket fuel.
It was good news for future Martian explorers when in 2008 an instrument on the Mars Phoenix polar lander discovered evidence of perchlorate in a flat valley informally called "Green Valley." Four years later, the new NASA Curiosity rover uncovered more of the substance near the equator.
Now, there's stronger evidence that the salt is widespread. New research shows that a martian meteorite recovered on Earth has perchlorate in it as well as other salts, namely chlorate and nitrate.
"We analyzed it and didn't know what to expect," said lead author Samuel Kounaves, a chemistry professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts. "We found perchlorate, not so high as on Mars, but at a well detectable level."
Learning about salts on Mars also leads to related questions about organic materials and habitability on the Red Planet in general. While it's a harsh environment for microbes today, it's possible that they could survive in protected areas (such as underground), or that they were there in the past when climate conditions may have been warmer and wetter.
The results of the study, called "Evidence of martian perchlorate, chlorate, and nitrate in Mars meteorite EETA79001: Implications for oxidants and organics," was recently published in the journal Icarus.
Checking for contamination
Kounaves led the Phoenix team that discovered perchlorate on Mars, so he is familiar with what the substance looks like on the Red Planet. With this new discovery, his team took pains to make sure that this meteorite was not contaminated in any way from the surrounding environment.
"We said that if this is terrestrial contamination it should match the material where the meteorite was found in Antarctica," Kounaves said.
The team used samples from a meteorite that was recovered in Antarctica during the 1979 field season. It is estimated to be 170 million years old (give or take 20 million years), was ejected from Mars about 65 million years ago, and is believed to have arrived on Earth roughly 12,000 years ago.
Researchers are sure the meteorite came from Mars because of the noble gases trapped inside of it, which are generally nonreactive gases such as helium, neon and argon. These gases have been analyzed on Earth, Mars and Venus in past missions and the match was closest to that of Mars.
To check for contamination, Kounaves' group examined the ratios of types (isotopes) of nitrogen and oxygen, and discovered that the isotope ratios were different in the meteorite than in the ice where it was recovered, or in the nearby Antarctic Dry Valley soils. Similar results were also found for the ratios of chlorate and perchlorate to nitrate.
The perchlorate and other salts Kounaves was interested in was embedded in the very center of the 17 pound meteorite, three inches from the closest surface.
"It's hard to believe that in the short period of time it laid in the ice in Antarctica it would have picked up that much perchlorate, nitrate and chlorate," he said.
Looking for life
The presence of perchlorate on Mars has some astrobiological implications. On Earth, perchlorate is typically used for making fuel, explosives and matches, but it is a health hazard to humans. Terrestrial microbes, however, can use it as a source of energy.Perchlorate can also lower the freezing point of water to approximately -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit.)
On the cold Martian surface, where water exists in frozen polar ice caps and in frost, perchlorate makes it possible to keep water as a liquid. Microbes, however, could have a tough time living in such a brine because it lowers the availability of water molecules for life, Kounaves cautioned, similar to how ocean salts are harsh for certain types of organisms.
Concentrations of perchlorate on Mars are only about 1 percent, too low to be easily detected by any instruments on orbiting spacecraft, such as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. That said, there are features on the Red Planet that are visible from orbit, such as gullies, that suggest flowing water. There are other explanations as well for these features, however, such as frozen carbon dioxide.
The links between perchlorate and water and life are not a given, but Kounaves said examining the relationship helps him better understand the potential for life on Mars. Figuring out the boundaries of habitability helps answer that question.
Mars is a harsh environment. It is very cold and dry. The surface is baked by radiation, and disturbed by occasional global dust storms. For microbial life to survive under such extreme conditions is highly improbable, but Kounaves said that life may find protection deep underground, and the search for life should, perhaps, begin there.
"It's possible that if you go deep enough - maybe a kilometer underground, who knows how deep - there may be areas on Mars that may have allowed life to survive after having emerged billions of years ago." he said.
Looking for organics
A related question to searching for salts on Mars is finding organic materials. Searching for organics has been a point of contention over the years, particularly with regard to some famous experiments on NASA's Viking 1 and 2 landers in the 1970s.At first blush, the Viking experiments seemed to show evidence of life.
A gas exchanger detected oxygen from a sample of Mars soil that was treated with organic and inorganic compounds. Another experiment with Earth organic compounds inside Mars soil showed evidence of carbon dioxide, and another experiment detected organic residues in a sample of heated Mars soil.
Critics, however, pointed out that microbes don't necessarily release oxygen and it was unclear if the organic compounds that were detected were, indeed, from Mars.
The Curiosity rover did find organics while heating up a portion of martian soil, but it was unclear if those organics were due to terrestrial contamination, as NASA acknowledged in results released in December 2012. The only thing that was clearly martian in this sample was evidence of water, sulphur and substances containing chlorine.
"We have no definitive detection of martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said NASA Goddard's Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of the Curiosity instrument that found the results at that time.
However, it's also possible that the act of heating up or altering the soil could destroy any organics that would have been present in the first place, and that's leaving aside the question of how radiation would damage organics on the surface."Maybe it's in rocks, ancient rocks, where the organics may be protected," Kounaves added.A president nicknamed “the Punisher” who is responsible for a brutal “war on drugs” that so far has killed over 7,000 people has been cordially invited to the White House.
President Donald Trump on Saturday told Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte to visit Washington, during a call that the White House described as “a very friendly conversation.”
The invitation further signals Trump’s willingness to praise and publicly associate with illiberal world leaders. Along with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Duterte is the latest leader accused of widespread human rights abuses and authoritarian tendencies who Trump has embraced in recent weeks.
Duterte drew worldwide attention during last year’s Philippine election for his vows to violently crack down on crime and repeated inflammatory remarks, which included saying he wanted to participate in a gang rape and calling Pope Francis a “son of a whore.”
Western media often referred to Duterte as the Donald Trump of the Philippines because of his populist rhetoric and outsider persona. Duterte last year dismissed the comparison, saying that Trump is a bigot while he is not. Although Duterte’s rise is unique and different from Trump’s in numerous ways, both did come to power in 2016 appealing to voters who were opposed to establishment politics.
But while Trump’s administration has struggled to implement the major policy changes he vowed as a candidate, Duterte has fulfilled many of the grim promises of his campaign. In less that a year, at least 7,000 people have died in Duterte’s “drug war.” Many of the killings are carried out extrajudicially by vigilantes who Duterte has encouraged to kill drug dealers and users.
Erik de Castro / Reuters Policemen stand guard near the body of a man killed during what police said was a drug related vigilante killing in Pasig, Metro Manila.
Human rights groups have released a string of damning reports documenting the violence and accusing Philippine police of carrying out extrajudicial killings with impunity ― often falsely claiming self defense or planting evidence. Philippine press photographers have spent long nights covering the killings, showing bodies strewn across the streets of Manila as distraught relatives mourn the dead. Stray bullets have killed children as young as four-years-old.
The killings slowed somewhat following the murder of a South Korean businessman earlier this year, but the death toll continues to rise.
Duterte has viciously defended his “drug war” as a success, and accused the most prominent opponent of the killings ― Philippine Senator Leila de Lima ― of being involved in the drug trade herself. Duterte has also taken aim at rights groups, and vowed to continue his bloody anti-drug campaign until 2022.
“My order is shoot to kill you. I don’t care about human rights, you better believe me,” Duterte said last August.
Erik de Castro / Reuters Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte talks to reporters after a news conference at the presidential palace in Manila, Philippines March 13, 2017.
The United States is a key political and military ally for the Philippines, but that allegiance has been fraught since Duterte’s election. He has made overtures toward increasing ties with Russia and China, vowed to kick out American military stationed in the Philippines and holds a longstanding personal grudge against the United States.
The White House canceled a meeting between former President Barack Obama and Duterte last fall, after the Philippine leader called Obama a “son of a whore” and told the U.S. president to go to hell. In October, he said on a visit to Beijing “I announce my separation from the United States.”
Despite Duterte’s anti-U.S. statements, analysts say most of his tangible policy changes geared towards Washington have been minor. Since Duterte’s election, officials in U.S. and the Philippines have continued to speak of the important relationship the two countries possess. The two share concern over the South China Sea dispute and North Korea’s growing nuclear program, the latter of which was discussed in Saturday’s phone call between Trump and Duterte.
The White House press release covering the call stated that the two leaders “discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world.” The statement noted that Trump “enjoyed the conversation,” which included talk of regional security and Trump’s upcoming visit to the Philippines in November.San Rafael Immigrants Prepare for New Drivers License Law
Over 330 Marin Organizing Committee leaders packed a church gymnasium in San Rafael for a workshop on AB60, signed by Governor Brown last year, which grants valid California drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants beginning in 2015.
MOC leaders actively supported the legislation last year, meeting with the author Assembly Member Alejo early in the process and securing the support of Assembly Member Marc Levine. Because few free and low-cost resources are available to families that want to apply or study for the written test, MOC leaders have taken matters into their own hands, meeting with DMV officials and preparing their own educational materials.
“We’re not waiting for the experts to tell us what to do,” said Cristina Garcia, a leader with Parent Services Project. ”We are becoming the experts.”
In San Rafael, Immigrants Prepare for New Drivers’ License Law, Marin Organizing CommitteeThe most important aspect of any democratic election is participation. A democracy gains its legitimacy through elections only so far as those elections represent the will of the people. Limit voter participation, and there is a direct correlation between the legitimacy of an election and the democratic system. President Trump and Vice-President Pence’s “election integrity” commission is unequivocally declaring war on voters – our democratic legitimacy be damned.
The commission recently sent a letter to all 50 states asking that they provide all the names and associated birthdays, last four digits of social security numbers, addresses, political parties, and voting histories since 2006 of people on their voter rolls. This letter is helping to lay the groundwork for nationalized voter suppression.
America risks one-party rule if gerrymandering isn't stopped | Russ Feingold Read more
The commission is requesting the same information that Republican state governments have used to create hyper-partisan gerrymandering and enact restrictive voter ID laws. Such measures have been disturbingly successful at suppressing voting of minority and low-income citizens, groups that tend to vote with Democrats. This assault on voters might seem farfetched, except that we’ve seen this strategy too many times before to claim ignorance now.
After slavery ended, white elites invented felony disenfranchisement as a means to delegitimize black citizens and prevent them from gaining influence. We saw Jim Crow gut-punch our democracy in yet another attempt to disenfranchise minorities. We are witnessing history repeating itself.
Nationally, the Democratic party is gaining support as the country’s demographics become increasingly diverse. The majority of black, Native American, Hispanic and Asian voters vote as Democrats. The Republican party has known for several years now that its best tactic to cling to power is not to build a party worth supporting, but to deny participation in the political process to Democratic party voters.
Making matters worse, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Office, long heralded as the ultimate guarantor of civil rights, including voting rights, might unknowingly be supporting the commission’s efforts. The Civil Rights Office sent out a letter on Wednesday, the same day as the commission sent its letter, seeking information from states on how they maintain their voter rolls. The office charged with upholding the 1965 Voting Rights Act must resist playing a leading role in further dismantling this most fundamental democratic right.
I would expect these actions from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or any of the other authoritarian regimes we have sanctioned around the world – regimes that stay in power by suppressing their people and manipulating election results. We must not lie to ourselves when we see the warning signs here at home. This commission is a harbinger of a top-down, White House-endorsed assault on voters, specifically Democratic voters: the same voters who denied Trump the popular vote.
State leaders have a moral and constitutional obligation to our democracy and to their citizens to refuse to cooperate with this commission.
States should refuse to hand over any of the requested voter information, as California, Virginia, Rhode Island and Kentucky have refused to do at this writing. The Connecticut, Oklahoma and North Carolina secretaries of state, on the other hand, have agreed to send “publicly available” information to the commission. This is a mistake.
Our democracy cannot afford to turn over any information now and ask questions later. States turning over any information, including publicly available information, legitimize the commission and betray the trust and privacy of voters. Having publicly available information for in-state use is different from providing information for a national voter database that will be placed at the hands of nefarious actors. States must take a stand to protect their voters’ most fundamental democratic right.
Additionally, Democrats must refuse to participate in the commission. The secretaries of state for New Hampshire and Maine should step down from the commission immediately. Participation risks granting legitimacy where there can be none. Two lone Democrats on this commission will stand no chance of preventing the pre-cooked outcomes. Instead, they and their states are being used to cloak the commission in the guise of bipartisanship. If Democrats refuse to participate, the commission will be left with no clothes on.
The litany of research on voting in recent years has failed to come up with but a handful of voter fraud cases. On the other hand, voter suppression techniques, such as those employed by the Republican party, effectively disenfranchise scores of voters across the country. If |
despite being in a similar situation.
Meanwhile, the pick prompted instant interest in Becerra’s downtown Los Angeles House seat. Former Assembly Speaker John Pérez announced his candidacy for the seat within hours of the news.
Born in Sacramento, Becerra grew up in a 685-square-foot home he shared with his parents and three sisters. A self-described “affirmative action baby,” Becerra was the first in his family to go to college, earning his undergraduate degree in economics and law degree from Stanford University.
Becerra said that his parents will serve as his touchstone in his new job, which is the second-most-powerful elected position in California behind the governor.
“They now are the models that I look to to know if I’m doing a good job” as the state’s top law enforcement officer, Becerra told The Chronicle. “Am I protecting people like my parents from violence and criminal activity? Am I protecting them from consumer abuse? Am I making sure that they have clean air and clean water? Am I making sure... that other immigrants like them know that they have a home in California?”
The Legislature has 90 days to confirm his selection once Harris leaves office. His two years as attorney general would then provide a launch pad either for election to a full four-year term or higher office.
Brown said in a statement that Becerra, who was a state deputy attorney general for three years before his 1992 election to Congress, “will be a champion for all Californians and help our state aggressively combat climate change.”
Genial and well-liked on Capitol Hill, Becerra served on several high-profile deficit-reduction committees, where he defended Social Security from GOP efforts to cut benefits and raise the retirement age. He is the highest-ranking Latino in Congress and former chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Term-limited out of his House leadership job as caucus chairman this year, Becerra flirted with a U.S. Senate bid and was floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
In an interview with The Chronicle last spring, Becerra described how his father, now 88, dropped out of school in the sixth grade because he “got tired of being put in the corner and having a dunce cap put on him because he had a difficult time understanding English.” Now he has a grandchild who was just accepted at Yale, Becerra said. His mother, now 82, came to the United States from Mexico at 18 to marry his father.
Becerra said in the interview that he had envisioned continuing his career in Congress, but was always ready to do more.
“Put me on the field,” he said. “I just want to play. I don’t care what the position is. I’ll catch. I’ll block. Whatever you need me to do, I’m going to try to do.”
Becerra is married to Dr. Carolina Reyes, a Stanford graduate with a medical degree from Harvard. They have three daughters, Clarisa, Olivia and Natalia.
Carolyn Lochhead is the San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent; Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com; mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead; @MelodyGutierrezA federal judge in Denver on Monday ordered the consolidation of seven lawsuits brought against the Cinemark theater chain by survivors and relatives of those killed in a shooting rampage in which 12 moviegoers were slain as they watched a Batman film.
U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson also set May 5, 2014, as the earliest start date that any of the personal injury and wrongful death claims against Cinemark could proceed to trial.
Merging the cases and setting a tentative calendar for the litigation came during the first court hearing stemming from civil suits accusing Texas-based Cinemark USA Inc of lax theater security in connection with the July 20 massacre.
Twelve people were killed and 58 wounded when a gunman opened fire on Cinemark patrons in Aurora, during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
The suspect, 24-year-old former neuroscience graduate student James Holmes, is charged with dozens of counts of murder and attempted murder. The criminal case against Holmes is in a preliminary stage with no trial date set. He has not yet entered a plea and defense lawyers have said in court that Holmes suffers from an unspecified mental illness.
In addition to four personal injury suits and three wrongful death complaints consolidated for pretrial proceedings in federal court by Jackson, a separate lawsuit has been filed in state court on behalf of a dozen victims and victims’ families.
Christina Habas, an attorney representing three of the 13 individual plaintiffs in the federal cases, told Jackson she anticipates adding additional plaintiffs.
The idea behind consolidating numerous similar lawsuits is to streamline pretrial proceedings and avoid duplication of discovery motions and depositions.
The lawsuits stemming from the mass shooting in July accuse Cinemark of failing to take proper precautions to prevent such an outbreak of violence.
The plaintiffs claim, among other things, that the theater should have had more security in place because it was aware of previous crimes in or near the multiplex, including “assaults and robberies” and at least one gang shooting.
Cinemark has filed a motion seeking dismissal of the lawsuits, contending the company and its employees could not have anticipated having to deal with “a madman’s mass murder” at the theater.
“It would be patently unfair, and legally unsound, to impose on Cinemark, a private business in the entertainment industry, the duty and burden to have foreseen and prevented the criminal equivalent of a meteor falling from the sky,” the motion states.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty, who is assisting Jackson with the cases, told lawyers for both sides he plans to rule in January on the motion to dismiss.
Cinemark attorney Kevin Taylor said he cannot fully prepare a defense until law enforcement authorities return surveillance video footage from at least 16 cameras that the company had at the theater complex and until he is allowed to see statements police took from hundreds of persons at the crime scene.
A state judge presiding over the murder case against Holmes has denied a request by lawyers for several survivors for a court order requiring prosecutors to turn over sealed evidence in the criminal investigation for review in the civil suits.A South African utility company has been given an ultimatum to reduce it’s number of white employees by 44.3% over the next five years. This means 3,389 whites have to go. It is part of the Federal “Black Empowerment” program.
For years, Eskom has been under orders to only hire non-whites as new employees. The firm says it is having major problems finding enough qualified non-white applicants. Currently, Eskom’s middle managers are 30% white and it’s skilled labor force is 21% white.
The South African government has also ordered Eskom to reduce it’s safety requirements to make it easier for non-white applicants to qualify for jobs.
Eskom is ordered to reduce the number of white engineers by 1,081, and the number of white skilled laborers by 2,179.
South Africa is currently experiencing a rapid collapse of it’s electrical infrastructure and power routinely goes out all over the country.
Source (South Africa Channel 24)The chant started moments before Democratic state's attorney candidate Kim Foxx took the stage to claim victory Tuesday night.
"Two down, one to go," began a small group of young supporters.
The two down? State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, freshly dumped by primary voters, and former Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, fired in the fallout of the Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal.
"Two down, one to go! Two down, one to go!" the chant quickly grew louder, spreading within seconds and echoing across the Wolf Point Ballroom inside the downtown Holiday Inn overlooking the Chicago River.
The one to go? Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
While not on the ballot for three more years — if he chooses to run again — Emanuel in many ways remained at the center of Tuesday's primary election.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders repeatedly slammed the mayor and highlighted his ties to Hillary Clinton in hopes of winning votes in Chicago but fell just short in the Illinois primary after a late surge.
Former President Bill Clinton remarked how never again should a community have to wait more than a year to view the video of a police shooting — stopping short of mentioning that Emanuel fought the release of the McDonald video for a year until a judge ordered the mayor to make it public.
And as voters swept Alvarez out of office by nearly a 30-point-margin amid strong dissatisfaction of her handling of the McDonald case, Emanuel has faced similar plummeting approval ratings and a lack of public trust in how he dealt with the shooting.
Since late November, Emanuel has scrambled to gain control of the McDonald scandal, which has led to accusations of a cover-up, calls for his resignation, his acknowledgment that Chicago cops use a "code of silence" to conceal wrongdoing and a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the Police Department's use of force. The mayor's legal fight to withhold the video came as Alvarez took more than a year to charge white police Officer Jason Van Dyke with murder for shooting the black teenager 16 times.
Alvarez ultimately filed charges the same day Emanuel released the video.
Anita Alvarez: “I have been honored to serve.” March 15, 2016. (WGN-TV) Anita Alvarez: “I have been honored to serve.” March 15, 2016. (WGN-TV) SEE MORE VIDEOS
At a City Hall news conference Wednesday, Emanuel said he didn't think the state's attorney's race served as a referendum on his handling of the controversy.
"I don't need just an election to know we have a lot of responsibility post-Laquan McDonald," Emanuel said. But the mayor did acknowledge Foxx's overwhelming victory represented more than just a switching of the letterhead at the state's attorney's office.
"I think the voters were clear they want to see a change, not just in the sense of the prosecutor, but at our Police Department, in our community relations and how we work together," Emanuel said. "It's an unequivocal and unambiguous message to all of us that we have a lot of work to re-establishing trust."
A political strategist to his core, Emanuel at one point joked that he'd promised his staff he wouldn't wade too much into the presidential race and instead would "try to resist my inner pundit DNA." As a former congressional leader and senior aide to two presidents, Emanuel isn't accustomed to being sidelined when presidential politics are front and center on the national stage, much less in Chicago.
But with friends Hillary and Bill Clinton in town regularly to campaign in recent days, Emanuel kept his public distance. Clinton aides said that neither the former president nor the former secretary of state held any private meetings with the mayor while they were here. Emanuel also would not say Wednesday whether the Clintons had invited him to campaign with them.
"I've got to be honest. People elected me to be mayor," Emanuel said. "There were enough candidates over the last three months. They didn't need another candidate."
Sanders sought to make Emanuel a political liability in Illinois, mocking the mayor's closing of nearly 50 schools, labeling his record as "disastrous" and calling on Clinton to reject his endorsement. The Vermont senator also aired a TV ad in which a Chicago school principal criticized the mayor as being a chief backer of the city's "corrupt political system" and another TV spot that featured Emanuel's opponent in last year's runoff election, Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia.
In the end, the attacks didn't move the needle enough to keep Clinton from taking Illinois, as she easily won suburban Cook County and Chicago while racking up big margins in the city's majority African-American wards.
"It wasn't too effective, because Hillary still won," South Side Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, said of Sanders' anti-Emanuel efforts. "But I think it did create some damage to the Clinton campaign in the city of Chicago."
The overwhelming vote against Alvarez was more indicative of Emanuel's struggles to regain Chicagoans' trust, Beale said.
"Anita's race was around the corner, and she didn't have the time to correct the damage," Beale said. "The people respect you more when you come out with the facts and try to correct it versus withholding information for political reasons and having it blow up on you. The luxury that the mayor has is that he's got three years to correct that."
Ald. Danny Solis, 25th, a top Emanuel ally, agreed but also argued some of the problems that have cropped up, from the state's attorney's office to systemic practices in the Police Department, aren't the mayor's fault.
"There have been some circumstances that he didn't necessarily cause himself, and right now they've got him a little bit behind the eight ball," Solis said. "I expect there will be some substantive police reforms. And even if his popularity doesn't go up, that's going to be a big win for us."
A Chicago Tribune poll published in early February showed Emanuel's approval rating at a record-low 27 percent. The same poll had Alvarez's job approval at 30 percent.
Asked if he would have suffered the same fate as Alvarez had he been on the ballot Tuesday, Emanuel joked, "Well if I was, I would have spent more money than I did last night."
As for the "Two down, one to go!" chant that broke out at Foxx's celebration, Emanuel was caught unawares.
"I didn't see it," he said.
bruthhart@tribpub.com
jchase@tribpub.comHas market turmoil left you feeling afraid? Well, it should. Clearly, the economic crisis that began in 2008 is by no means over.
But there’s another emotion you should feel: anger. For what we’re seeing now is what happens when influential people exploit a crisis rather than try to solve it.
For more than a year and a half — ever since President Obama chose to make deficits, not jobs, the central focus of the 2010 State of the Union address — we’ve had a public conversation that has been dominated by budget concerns, while almost ignoring unemployment. The supposedly urgent need to reduce deficits has so dominated the discourse that on Monday, in the midst of a market panic, Mr. Obama devoted most of his remarks to the deficit rather than to the clear and present danger of renewed recession.
What made this so bizarre was the fact that markets were signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem. Bear in mind that deficit hawks have been warning for years that interest rates on U.S. government debt would soar any day now; the threat from the bond market was supposed to be the reason that we must slash the deficit now now now. But that threat keeps not materializing. And, this week, on the heels of a downgrade that was supposed to scare bond investors, those interest rates actually plunged to record lows.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
What the market was saying — almost shouting — was, “We’re not worried about the deficit! We’re worried about the weak economy!” For a weak economy means both low interest rates and a lack of business opportunities, which, in turn, means that government bonds become an attractive investment even at very low yields. If the downgrade of U.S. debt had any effect at all, it was to reinforce fears of austerity policies that will make the economy even weaker.
Photo
So how did Washington discourse come to be dominated by the wrong issue?A TINY tyrant might have been born in North Korea as fears mount that Kim Jong-un’s wife has birthed a son to inherit his ruthless regime.
The supreme leader’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, resurfaced on Sunday to join her husband for a military demonstration — after some eight months out of the country’s spotlight, The Sun reports.
Rumours spread suggesting she had either crossed Kim and disappeared or was carrying his baby.
North Korea observers feared she might have fallen foul of her despotic husband or incurred the wrath of his equally menacing sister, Kim Yo-jong.
One North Korea watcher told Yonhap News Agency: “Ri showed up at public events every two months last year but has not appeared in public for over seven months this year. That’s quite extraordinary. Some sources speculate Ri’s disappearance may be linked to a check on her activities by Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong.”
But now we know she hasn’t been purged and the question remains over whether she has given birth to the next leader of the oppressed nation.
High profile defector Jang Jin-sung said the truth would be a closely-guarded secret among the regime’s elite. Jang fled the country in 2004 after making his name as poet laureate of North Korea and even meeting the last leader Kim Jong-il.
After escaping, he helped South Korea’s intelligence service to combat the North, but could only hazard a guess at the reason for Kim’s wife’s absence from the public eye.
Speaking to the Daily Star Online, Jang said: “If I claimed to know what’s going on, it would be a lie. That would be the most secret detail of the regimen. If any individual claims to know what’s going on about the relationship between these two, that would be a lie.”
The regime managed to keep the birth of the tyrant’s first child secret from the world — news about Kim’s daughter named Kim Ju-ae only surfaced through basketball star Dennis Rodman.
The ex-NBA player became pals with Kim — who happens to loves the American sport — after visiting North Korea in 2013.
This means an official announcement of any more births would be unlikely — unless Rodman makes another visit perhaps.
The same level of secrecy surrounded the nation’s previous leader according to another defector, Kim Joo-il, who escaped from North Korea in 2007.
He told the Star: “When I was in the North I didn’t know who Kim Jong-il’s children were, I didn’t know about Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un — none of them.”
All that is known is that the North Korean first lady was last seen publicly with chubby hubby Kim at a newly-built commercial development in Pyongyang on March 8 this year.
Some 36 weeks later she re-emerged at his side on December 5 to observe an air force demonstration at a military base.
The interval between sightings is just a month short of the average pregnancy length of nine months. But it is still plenty of time to conceive, carry and deliver a healthy baby, with many infants surviving births at this stage.
Ri Sol-ju has vanished before, but for no longer than four months at a time, reports South Korea’s Chosun IIbo newspaper.
The country’s first ladies are often kept from the limelight, with Kim’s wife’s following a long-trend of decreasing public appearances.
She publicly joined Kim on 22 occasions in 2013, 15 in 2014 and just seven last year and four this year, says the South’s Yonhap News Agency.
North Korean tradition states that leaders must pass on power to a male heir. The means Kim can’t hand over the regimen to his firstborn as she is female, and it’s safe to assume he’s hoping for the birth of a male soon.
Commenting in his memoir, Dear Leader, Jang notes that “North Korea is a patriarchal society, which went straight from feudal Confucianism to Kim dynastic rule.” He explained how women are also forced to address men as their superiors.
While we can only speculate that Kim has a new son, it remains a certain possibility that the next supreme leader of the isolated nation has been born.
This story originally appeared in The Sun and has been republished here with permission.President Barack Obama joked Saturday that he would use predator drones to kill the Jonas brothers if they tried to court his daughters. One newsman who is known for praising the president isn’t laughing. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann said Monday Obama’s joke went too far.
During his second appearance at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner Saturday, Obama said:
“Jonas Brothers are here, they’re out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking?”
The quip has been compared to a joke by President George W. Bush a previous year making light of the fact that WMDs were never found in Iraq.
Philadelphia Daily News‘ Will Bunch tweeted. “Let’s be honest, fellow progressives, we’d be all over Bush if he made the same ‘predator drone’ joke Obama told last night.”
Olbermann seemed to agree with that assessment Monday night.
“The modern benchmark for going too far with humor in a presidential address was infamously achieved in March 2004. President Bush one year into the war in Iraq narrating the slide show at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington. ‘Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,’ [said Bush]. Not everybody laughed. In hindsight, it has gotten less funny still,” said Olbermann.
Jonathan Alter joined Olbermann to discuss the president’s performance. “Did he or do we know who did the predator drones jokes about the Jonas brothers and did you think they were in bounds? Because, frankly, I thought that was over the edge. I thought that was almost in [Bush’s] ‘where are the weapons of mass destruction? Under the desk’ thing,” Olbermann asked Alter.
“Well, Keith, I would submit that you are not like me, the father of two daughters,” answered Alter. “If someone comes for your preteen daughters, predator drones are actually a mild response.”
Death by predator drone isn’t a laughing matter for many of Obama’s critics on the left. Adam Serwer at the American Prospect wrote, “You have to wonder why in the world the president’s speech writers would think it was a good idea to throw a joke about predator drones into the president’s speech during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, given that an estimated one-third of drone casualties, or between 289 and 378, have been civilians.”
This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast May 4, 2010.Loki Updates for May
You thought we’d skip this month due to the big Loki release, didn’t you?
Daniel Foré Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 30, 2017
If you’ve recently installed Loki 0.4.1 you may not have noticed that some of these things are new. But for those upgrading from Loki 0.4.0 here’s a list of updates for the month of May.
Look & Feel
You may have noticed new battery icons in the panel, but you may not have noticed several other icon changes like a refined Terminal icon, new USB key icons, non-generic icons for meson build files and CSV files, and more.
AppCenter
More specific error messages in the payments dialog
There are now more detailed error messages when payments fail; you’ll be told if the error occurred because of incorrect payment info, processing issues, or if something else went wrong like your bank blocking the payment.
We also received several reports about the “date” field in AppCenter payment dialogs. It now accepts dates formatted as either MM/YY or MMYY.
Panel
A long requested feature fulfilled! The power indicator now includes a brightness slider.
The applications menu received performance improvements along with the ability to start an AppCenter search.
The notifications indicator will no longer save notifications marked by apps as “transient”. Also, when apps request to withdraw a notification they will now be removed from the indicator. Thanks to your reports, we’ve tracked down and fixed several possible crashes when apps send bad info with their notifications.
We’ve also improved stability of the Ayatana Indicator compatibility layer.
Bits and Bobs
Fixed an issue where hitting the esc key in authentication dialogs didn’t actually cancel the authentication action. Fixed an issue where Language & Region settings was empty when first run. User Accounts settings now sends a toast for undo.
Our development library Granite was updated to version 0.4.1 and received its own blog post, so make sure to check that out.
In addition to the updates mentioned above, you can always rely on updated translations, stability fixes, and general code cleaning. Make sure to pop open AppCenter and hit “Update All” to get the latest and greatest.Ayumi Nakanishi for TIME Sabotage singer, Onie, 29, prepares for a show at a punk rock event at Institut Teknologi Indonesia, located in Jakarta suburb of Tangerang, Indonesia.
It's after midnight in Jakarta and, below a highway overpass, a party is just getting started. Students and the unemployed are listening to well-worn cassette tapes, swigging from bottles filled with a cocktail of beer and local wine and loitering in front of Movement Records a punk-music shop that has become a nexus for local youths. It is also home to Onie, one of Jakarta's self-proclaimed original street punks, who both works and sleeps on the premises. "It is very quiet at night," Onie says. "The shops are closed, so society is O.K. with us being here. My friends can come at night and argue, laugh and fight for as long as they want."
Although they are from different backgrounds, Onie's cohorts all proudly call themselves punks a name first coined 30 years ago. His gang must be one of the last anywhere in the world to use the term today, and stepping inside Movement Records is to walk into a shrine to another era. Posters and stickers of their heroes bands from the 1970s such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Clash adorn every inch of wall space. "Punk is about freedom," says Onie. "People can choose what they want to do and what they want to say."
When the punk movement first surfaced in England in 1977, its nihilistic posturing and contempt for cultural and pop-music traditions rattled both the social and entertainment establishments. Long after the movement petered out or became commercialized elsewhere, it took hold for the first time in Jakarta in the mid-1990s at a time when the music's belligerence seemed to perfectly echo the hostility many young people felt toward the authoritarian regime of then President Suharto. Onie recalls listening to Guns N' Roses and boy band New Kids on the Block and never feeling a real connection with the music. "Then an Indonesian friend told me that I had to listen to Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and I loved it," he says. Punk soon proliferated as rapidly as cassette duplicates of the albums could be made, and Onie and his friends would meet nightly at Blok M beside Jakarta's main 24-hour bus terminal to swap bootlegs of albums by the likes of American punk rockers the Casualties and Scottish four-piece the Exploited.
"The youth were attracted to the freedom and rebellion that punk offered," says Trax magazine's music editor, Farid Amriansyah. "They were looking for an identity and punk gave it to them." Onie's friend Aca found his mood reflected in the stark lyrics of Fight Back, the 1980 protest anthem by English hardcore-punk band Discharge: "People die in police custody/ Where's the justice in that?/ Don't see none/ Fight the system, fight back." These words directly inspired Aca to join street protests in 1998, when he was tear-gassed and bludgeoned with the butts of police rifles. "I felt so alive then," he says. "I learned from punk and I was ready to fight no matter what." Eko, the owner of another record store, Anti Music Records, and a former member of one of Jakarta's first punk bands, the Idiots, says he constantly lives by punk's rebellious code. "I am always in a punk state of mind," he declares, as if electronica or hip-hop had never happened. "Punk is better than religion to me."
Amriansyah explains that there are thousands of punks in the country. "Through an underground network of fanzines, record trading, the growth of independent distribution outlets and the power of the Internet," he says, "the scene is widely spreading to every region in Indonesia." But these days peer support, not protest, is one of the main attractions. One of Jakarta's youngest punks, 11-year-old Doing, meets up with his friends every afternoon at a playground near Blok M. With calloused bare feet and PUNK tattooed on his fingers, he survives by playing his ukulele on buses for money. "Punks are my family," Doing says.
At this family's core are the members of Marjinal, a punk band that has helped over a thousand street kids earn cash by teaching them how to busk. "Music gives these kids a way to survive, to make some kind of living," says Mike, Marjinal's lead singer. "Punk, to me, is addressing the things that are rotten in society. It tells us that we have the ability to be independent and take care of each other."
There isn't a kid at a Marjinal show that doesn't know the lyrics to every one of the songs. "How are you, everybody?" sings Mike to a crowd of around 200 children, five years old and up. "Including the one who lives under the bridge, under the heat of the sunshine, the ones that live on the streets. How are you?" The children sing along as they pile onto the stage. "Let's share the good and the bad times together!" Mike exhorts over the roar of their voices. It may be 30 years late, but for many of these kids punk is the best thing that has ever come to Indonesia.Esports fans continue to rail against Team Imagine chairman and CEO of Turin Pharmaceuticals Martin “cerebral” Shkreli, whose insane markup on life-saving drug Daraprim attracted widespread ire this week. The revelation of Shkreli’s business maneuvers has sparked a debate within the League community, causing many to question whether the quality of unethical business practices in esports is falling behind those in other industries.
“The community has constantly pushed to make esports ‘bigger’ through mainstream popularity, but what we don’t realize is that when our field competes with established, mainstream industries, we fall woefully behind in the quality and scope of our unethical behavior,” commented esports analyst Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields. “If our corrupt practices are obsoleted by the viciousness of free market competition, what would we be without professional teams withholding payment from players, or esports leagues covertly installing bitcoin mining software?”
“It’s simply impossible for tiny esports companies to compete with those in established industries, both in monetary and moral terms,” complained TSM owner Andy ‘Reginald’ Dinh. “People like Shkreli can make tens of millions from selling a medicine they didn’t even develop. I only make a few million from talent I didn’t develop.”
Contrary to public opinion, irritable ogre Shkreli claims that the rise of major malfeasance and the fall of small-time graft in esports is merely the natural evolution of the industry, and is ultimately a change for the better.
“Esports is rank with inefficiency and ineptitude, and it’s holding everything back,” said Lesser Old One Shkreli. “Sure, MYM threatened to sell Kori’s mother’s house, but they probably would have sold it at market price, instead of bribing surveyors to inflate its value and dumping it on unwary investors. Sure, Link wrote a 17-page manifesto criticizing every aspect of CLG, but he forgot to profit from the media frenzy by short-selling stock in his former team.”
Meanwhile, Shkreli has been criticized for insufficiently abusing monopolistic control over a product with inelastic demand.
“If Shkreli is going to charge an unjustifiably-exorbitant amount of money for a product that costs pennies to make, he could’ve at least marked up the pill by another 50%, and offered it in three awesome color designs,” said League fan /u/Tilthonus.
While some in the League community views Shkreli as an admirable competitor in the market for corrupt practices, hate from the general public continues to grow for the businessman who has done nothing different from the rest of the pharmaceutical industry, except be more transparent. For the time being, it doesn’t look like the CEO is repentant for his actions. When asked how he sleeps at night, Shkreli replied, “You know, Ambien,” referring to the cheap, easily-accessible sleep remedy.Why I don't like factory_girl
Once upon a time, I was building my First Serious Rails App. I was drawn to Rails in the first place because of automated testing and ActiveRecord; I felt the pain of not using an ORM and spending about a week on every deploy making sure that things were still okay in production. So of course, I tried to write a pretty reasonable suite of tests for the app.
To gloss over some details to protect the innocent, this app was a marketplace: some people owned Things, and some people wanted to place Orders. Only certain Things could fulfill an Order, so of course, there was also a ThingType table that handled different types of Things. Of course, some Types came in multiple Sizes, so there also needed to be a Size Table and a ThingTypeSize table so that a User could own a Thing of a certain Type and a certain Size.
Stating that creating my objects for tests was difficult would be an understatement.
Then I read a blog post about FactoryGirl. Holy crap! This would basically save me. With one simple Factory(:thing) I could get it to automatically build a valid list of all that other crap that I needed!
So of course, I had to write my spec for a thing:
describe Order do it "generates quotes only from Things that are of the right size" do order = Factory(:order) thing = Factory(:thing, :size => order.size) thing = Factory(:thing) order.quote! order.quote.thing.should == thing end end
This test worked. It also generated around 15 objects, saved them in the database, and queried them back out. I don't have the code running anymore, but it was like 30-40 queries, and took a second or two to run.
That was one test. I was trying to test a lot, even though I wasn't good at test first yet, so my suite got to be pretty big. Also, sometimes my factories weren't the best, so I'd spend a day wondering why certain things would start failing. Turns out I'd defined them slightly wrong, validations started to fail, etc.
How did we get here?
This story is one of Ruby groupthink gone awry, basically. Of course, we know that fixtures get complicated. They get complicated because we have these crazy ActiveRecord models, don't use plain Ruby classes when appropriate, and validations make us make extra objects just to get tests to pass. Then fixtures get out of date. So let's introduce a pattern!
Of course, since we know that Factories are really useful when things get complicated, let's make sure to use them from the start, so we don't have to worry about them later. Everyone started doing this. Here's how new Rails apps get started:
steve at thoth in ~/tmp $ rails new my_app create create README.rdoc <snip> create vendor/plugins/.gitkeep run bundle install Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/......... <snip> Using uglifier (1.2.6) Your bundle is complete! Use `bundle show [gemname]` to see where a bundled gem is installed. steve at thoth in ~/tmp $ cd my_app steve at thoth in ~/tmp/my_app $ cat >> Gemfile gem "rspec-rails" gem "factory_girl_rails" ^D steve at thoth in ~/tmp/my_app $ bundle Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/........ <snip> steve at thoth in ~/tmp/my_app steve at thoth in ~/tmp/my_app $ rails g rspec:install create.rspec exist spec create spec/spec_helper.rb $ rails g resource foo invoke active_record create db/migrate/20120714180554_create_foos.rb create app/models/foo.rb invoke rspec create spec/models/foo_spec.rb invoke factory_girl create spec/factories/foos.rb invoke controller create app/controllers/foos_controller.rb invoke erb create app/views/foos invoke rspec create spec/controllers/foos_controller_spec.rb invoke helper create app/helpers/foos_helper.rb invoke rspec create spec/helpers/foos_helper_spec.rb invoke assets invoke coffee create app/assets/javascripts/foos.js.coffee invoke scss create app/assets/stylesheets/foos.css.scss invoke resource_route route resources :foos steve at thoth in ~/tmp/my_app $ rake db:migrate == CreateFoos: migrating ===================================================== -- create_table(:foos) -> 0.0065s == CreateFoos: migrated (0.0066s) ============================================ $ cat > spec/models/foo_spec.rb require'spec_helper' describe Foo do it "does something" do foo = Factory(:foo) foo.something! end end ^D $ bundle exec rake spec /Users/steve/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/ruby -S rspec./spec/controllers/foos_controller_spec.rb./spec/helpers/foos_helper_spec.rb./spec/models/foo_spec.rb *DEPRECATION WARNING: Factory(:name) is deprecated; use FactoryGirl.create(:name) instead. (called from block (2 levels) in <top (required)> at /Users/steve/tmp/my_app/spec/models/foo_spec.rb:5) F Pending: FoosHelper add some examples to (or delete) /Users/steve/tmp/my_app/spec/helpers/foos_helper_spec.rb # No reason given #./spec/helpers/foos_helper_spec.rb:14 Failures: 1) Foo does something Failure/Error: foo.something! NoMethodError: undefined method `something!' for #<Foo:0x007f82c70c07a0> #./spec/models/foo_spec.rb:6:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>' Finished in 0.01879 seconds 2 examples, 1 failure, 1 pending Failed examples: rspec./spec/models/foo_spec.rb:4 # Foo does something Randomized with seed 27300 rake aborted! /Users/steve/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/ruby -S rspec./spec/controllers/foos_controller_spec.rb./spec/helpers/foos_helper_spec.rb./spec/models/foo_spec.rb failed Tasks: TOP => spec (See full trace by running task with --trace)
Woo! Failing test! Super easy. But what about that test time?
Finished in 0.01879 seconds
Now, test time isn't everything, but a hundredth of |
it successfully met, only for the book to be recalled due to a printing error that left numerous profanities insufficiently censored.[11] That printing error aside, Jim Lee took full responsibilities for the series' delays, explaining that he was involved with the DC Universe Online video game, and that Miller's scripts had been written some time earlier.[12][13][14]
Despite drops in sales since the first issue, All Star Batman & Robin issues regularly topped DC Comics' highest-selling chart on the months when they came out.[15]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Initially released with great fanfare and much anticipation, All Star Batman has consistently received negative reviews from critics. Nearly all complaints about the series are directed at Frank Miller's writing, specifically his non-traditional interpretation of the main character. In the series to date, Batman is consistently displayed as violent, cruel and almost childish at times, excited by his own sadism towards criminals, musing over the injuries he inflicts and disarray that follows. Infamous examples of this include his verbal and physical abuse of Dick Grayson in an attempt to prevent him from grieving over his parents' deaths, and the action of throwing a Molotov cocktail during a fight.[16]
All Star Batman & Robin #2. The infamous and often-repeated line from#2.
In issue #2 Miller's gritty style of dialogue led the title character to introduce himself to Grayson as "the Goddamn Batman". The phrase went on to become something of a meme among comic book fans for its perceived comedic value,[17] and has, since its sudden fame, been repeated at least once in nearly every subsequent issue of the comic. According to reviewer Brett Weiss, the line "drew derision from fans and critics alike".[18] DC Comics would even later parody the line's fame in its Superman/Batman comic by having a super deformed Batman introduce himself to the 'canon' Batman by saying "I'm the goshdarn Batm–", only to be swiftly told to shut up. Another infamous element of the story was Grayson frequently being referred to as "Dick Grayson, Age 12", no matter what the circumstance.[19]
Reviewer Peter Sanderson of IGN Comics, while acknowledging that the series is "widely reviled", and opining that DC Comics' publicity for the series was "misleading", suggested that Batman's treatment of Grayson was comparable to a drill sergeant's treatment of a new recruit, but questioned whether this would merely traumatize Grayson further. He nonetheless claimed to be "fascinated" with how this behavior reveals Batman's personality, likening his rough treatment of Grayson to the psychologically frightening experience to which V subjected Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta. Sanderson also pointed out that Miller's view of All Star Batman & Robin as prequels to his graphic novels Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again suggests that the darker, grittier take on Batman and his more dysfunctional relationship with Robin make sense when taken in context, and that Batman's rough treatment of Dick Grayson reveals a lot about the inner workings of Batman's personality.[4] Reviewer Brett Weiss, in the Comics Buyer's Guide #1636 (December 2007), gave the first issue of the series high marks for being interesting and edgy, but opined that by issue #6, the series became "a bad joke", citing the series' "absurdly bad, faux-noir dialogue", and presenting Batman "as a psychopath, as opposed to merely dark and disturbed." Weiss praised Jim Lee's art as "gorgeous", but opined that it was wasted on the title, which he saw as "something that seems to be bad on purpose".[18] The series is also known for the recalled issue #10, in which a printing error allowed the word "fuck" to be published uncensored. Unreturned copies were later sold on eBay at inflated prices.[1][20]
Comics journalist Cliff Biggers, in Comic Shop News #1064 (November 7, 2007), called the series "one of the biggest train wrecks in comics history", expressing amazement at how he feels Frank Miller disregarded every aspect of Batman's character in order to tell "a Sin City story in bat-garb." Reviewing issue #7, Biggers excoriated the sequence with Batman and Black Canary as "farcical" and "Tarantinoesque", arguing that Miller's work could not get worse. Biggers gave the issue a "D", explaining that it would be an "F" if not for Jim Lee's art, and suggested that to salvage the work, DC should reprint the book with blank word balloons and let readers submit their own scripts. Reviewing the first three issues of the series, William Gatevackes of PopMatters said that "[Jim Lee's art] is beautiful [but] cannot make up for the writing or the holes in the storytelling." Gatevackes criticized what he perceived to be a lack of plot, saying that "it seems like [Miller is] expanding four issues of story over 20 issues of the book." Gatevackes compared All Star Batman & Robin unfavorably to Miller's previous work, saying: "One is puzzled as to what happened to the Frank Miller who gained his fame on Daredevil, Ronin, and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Can he come back? Because until he does, All Star Batman and Robin should be avoided at all costs."[16]
Iann Robinson, writing for CraveOnline, wrote an essay critical of All Star Batman & Robin, calling it "a comic series that just spirals deeper and deeper into the abyss of unreadable. I understand Miller's need to re-invent, but this is just badly done and in poor taste." Robinson commented that "the art by Jim Lee is first rate [and] really wonderful to look at, [but] Frank Miller has stripped Batman of all of his dignity, class, and honor. This isn't the Dark Knight; this is Dirty Harry in a cowl. The worst part is that this is exactly what Batman isn't about." He added, "In one fell swoop, Miller has erased all the good he did for Batman with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. All of that is just gone."[21]
The internet reviewer Linkara declared that the characters in the book were so removed from the original characters that they were instead different people playing the roles of the real heroes, referring to Batman as "Crazy Steve" and Wonder Woman as "Bonkers Betty". He stated that the book seemed to believe that "rampant violence, both physical and emotional, is the solution to all of life's problems." He also criticised the characterisation, dialogue, pacing, fight-scenes and plot as bad to non-existent as well as declaring that the pacing of the comic and time jumps were so confusing that it was possible for a reader to interpret that Dick Grayson was kidnapped by Batman before his parents were murdered. He did however praise the artwork by Jim Lee, although he did say that the artwork just drew attention to how bad the writing was. Linkara also accused Miller of casual homophobia and misogyny for how some of the dialogue was written, using gay as a slur and for having the women portrayed as little more than objects for the reader to admire.[22]
The book also has its defenders. Jon Morris, writing for The High Hat, named All Star Batman & Robin one of the best superhero comics of 2006, finding All Star's take on the character "an intriguing alternative take on a character long reimagined to the point of incoherence. Surely the readers as a whole have seen Batman the tortured soul, Batman the awkward father figure, Batman the authoritarian and Batman the zillion-other-paternal character archetypes countless times before under the stewardship of a few dozen other authors; why not for a scant twelve issues have a book about a Batman who might just be what a control-obsessed, Kevlar-suited sadist would be like in real life — which is to say "distinctly unpleasant"? It’s unsavory, sure, but who buys Batman comics because he’s warm and cuddly?"[23]
Dark Knight: Boy Wonder [ edit ]
After the series was on hiatus for nearly two years, DC Comics announced on April 2, 2010, that Miller and Lee would return to the series in 2011. Instead of falling under the "All Star" print, the series will be re-branded as Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, and would run for six issues, completing the story Miller originally intended to tell.[24] Although DC publicized the series as starting in February 2011, it has met with additional delays as Jim Lee focused his efforts on the new Justice League series, part of DC Comics' relaunch that began in September 2011. In October 2015 at the New York Comic Con, Miller announced that he had "just started" working on the sequel with Lee.
Collected editions [ edit ]
The series has been collected into the following volume:
Title Material collected Hardcover Paperback All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, Volume 1 issues #1–9 ISBN 1-4012-1681-1[25]
ISBN 1-4012-2008-8 Title Material collected Hardcover Absolute All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, Volume 1 issues #1–10 ISBN 1-4012-4763-6
Notes [ edit ]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is carving out a clear lead in swing states that are key to the November 6 presidential election, even as national polls show him neck-and-neck with Republican rival Mitt Romney.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at an Obama Victory Fund Concert at the Filmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami, Florida, June 26, 2012. REUTERS/Larry Downing
Helped by the White House’s recent loosening of immigration rules, Obama leads Romney in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, according to a Quinnipiac University survey on Wednesday.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll showed Obama ahead of his challenger by just 3 points: a lead of 47 percent to 44 percent which is within the margin of error.
However, the Democrat’s lead stretches to 8 points when the race is measured in 12 tightly contested states.
Voters are still deeply worried about the economy, and Obama’s campaign could suffer a heavy blow if the Supreme Court rules against his healthcare overhaul on Thursday.
But on paper, Obama seems to have an easier path than Romney to winning 270 electoral college votes, and thus the election, if he can hold on to some of the big swing states he won in 2008.
Among the most contested battleground states today, Obama won Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida in 2008.
“If he can keep those leads in all three of these key swing states through Election Day he would be virtually assured of re-election,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Despite his inroads in key states, voters are still critical of Obama for his handling of the economy.
Forty-nine percent of respondents in the NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll said they are less optimistic about the economy compared with 43 percent who are more optimistic.
Fifty-three percent disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, which is up 1 point from last month.
Although polls consistently show that voters see Romney as less likeable than Obama, the former Massachusetts governor’s message that he is a job creator strikes a note with Americans tired of dire monthly unemployment statistics.
Romney “gets a gift from God on the first Friday of every month,” analyst Greg Valliere, the chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group, told the Reuters Washington Summit, referring to monthly Labor Department jobs reports. The latest report said unemployment rose a tenth of a point in May to 8.2 percent.
Romney is also looking for an electoral boost if the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of Obama’s 2010 healthcare overhaul when it rules on the issue on Thursday.
“My guess is they’re not sleeping very well in the White House tonight,” Romney said in Sterling, Virginia, a swing state where Obama leads most polls.
“If the court upholds it... It’s still a bad policy and that means if I’m elected we’re going to repeal it and replace it,” he said at an electronic design and manufacturing company.
SWING STATE BUS TOUR
Obama will likely try to assuage fears about unemployment when he stages his first bus tour of the 2012 campaign in Ohio and Pennsylvania for two days next week.
Obama was ahead of Romney by 9 percentage points in Ohio (47 percent to 38 percent) and 6 points in Pennsylvania (45 percent to 39 percent) in the Quinnipiac poll. He led in Florida by 45 percent to 41 percent.
No one has won the White House since 1960 without taking at least two of those three states.
Respondents in all three states said they favored Obama’s order earlier this month to halt deportations of the children of illegal immigrants.
Negative ads targeting Romney as a job killer during his time as a private-equity executive with Bain Capital have helped drag his poll numbers down.
“There isn’t a data point that says that the ads aren’t working. They’re all having an impact,” Bill Burton, head of the Priorities USA Action “Super PAC” that backs Obama, told the Reuters Washington Summit.
In the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 33 percent of swing state residents - and 28 percent of people nationally - said they had a more negative opinion of Romney based on what they had seen, read or heard about his business record recently.
The swing states were identified as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.Special By By Justin King Oct 5, 2013 in World A student in Bryant School District in Arkansas brought home a worksheet that presented her with a scenario that referred to the Bill of Rights as “outdated” and that as part of a special committee she would need to throw out two of the Amendments. A photo of the worksheet asking students to "omit" two Amendments in the Bill of Rights Lela Spears When asked if there was any portion of the Bill of Rights she would be willing to give up, the mother said No, never. The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The amendments recognize a person’s inalienable rights to things such as free speech, due process, trial by jury, and the right to bear arms, as well as many other staples of traditional American values. They also establish limits on Federal power. A photo of the worksheet asking students to "omit" two Amendments in the Bill of Rights Lela Spears Question and Answer with Lela Spears: How does the assignment make you feel about the type of education your child is receiving? After she brought it home and explained her assignment to me, it made me question exactly what she was being taught. Where I can see a class using critical thinking skills to modernize the words, as to help them better understand the Amendments, giving an assignment to remove two then add two with little explanation as to why is upsetting. When I asked my child what the assignment was to teach her she had no idea. Only that she was TOLD to do it. She didn't even understand what the Amendments meant. How can she make an informed decision when she doesn't understand what she is "throwing out"? That was new to me. I also did not like the fact her teacher used, "you have been selected to help a special committee" bullshit. Do you feel the Bill of Rights is "outdated?" I wouldn't say outdated in the sense that we need to throw out the Amendments and start fresh. I do think some of the wording could be modernized along with clarifying parts where there has been/can be misinterpretation. Do you think that after this assignment your child might have believed that the government has the ability to change the Bill of Rights by some special committee, rather than by a 2/3 majority vote in the House and Senate? Funny thing, she was never told how the Bill of Rights is amended; I do not believe that amended was even used in the class language, only "changed". I read through the handouts she was given (they do not use a book for this class, nor take one home to study from, only handouts that are put in a box for their table to share and place in their binders), around 6 in total, and nothing about how an Amendment is ratified. I believe that, with the wording of the assignment, many children will think that the Bill of Rights is amended and can be changed by a "special" committee instead of an act of Congress. I know that my child will not think this is true since I have made it my mission to be very much involved in her education. As more anecdotal evidence emerges concerning what will be taught under the Common Core, states are beginning to The worksheet was handed out to Sixth grade students in a History class. According to the girl’s mother, Lela Spears, she has not received any government or civics classes and this was the first assignment dealing with the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The school district is participating in the embattled Common Core curriculum.When asked if there was any portion of the Bill of Rights she would be willing to give up, the mother saidThe Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The amendments recognize a person’s inalienable rights to things such as free speech, due process, trial by jury, and the right to bear arms, as well as many other staples of traditional American values. They also establish limits on Federal power.How does the assignment make you feel about the type of education your child is receiving?Do you feel the Bill of Rights is "outdated?"Do you think that after this assignment your child might have believed that the government has the ability to change the Bill of Rights by some special committee, rather than by a 2/3 majority vote in the House and Senate?As more anecdotal evidence emerges concerning what will be taught under the Common Core, states are beginning to rethink their position on the program. More about common core, Bill of rights, Amendments More news from common core Bill of rights AmendmentsJohn von Neumann famously said
With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
By this he meant that one should not be impressed when a complex model fits a data set well. With enough parameters, you can fit any data set.
It turns out you can literally fit an elephant with four parameters if you allow the parameters to be complex numbers.
I mentioned von Neumann’s quote on StatFact last week and Piotr Zolnierczuk replied with reference to a paper explaining how to fit an elephant:
“Drawing an elephant with four complex parameters” by Jurgen Mayer, Khaled Khairy, and Jonathon Howard, Am. J. Phys. 78, 648 (2010), DOI:10.1119/1.3254017.
Piotr also sent me the following Python code he’d written to implement the method in the paper. This code produced the image above.
""" Author: Piotr A. Zolnierczuk (zolnierczukp at ornl dot gov) Based on a paper by: Drawing an elephant with four complex parameters Jurgen Mayer, Khaled Khairy, and Jonathon Howard, Am. J. Phys. 78, 648 (2010), DOI:10.1119/1.3254017 """ import numpy as np import pylab # elephant parameters p1, p2, p3, p4 = (50 - 30j, 18 + 8j, 12 - 10j, -14 - 60j ) p5 = 40 + 20j # eyepiece def fourier(t, C): f = np.zeros(t.shape) A, B = C.real, C.imag for k in range(len(C)): f = f + A[k]*np.cos(k*t) + B[k]*np.sin(k*t) return f def elephant(t, p1, p2, p3, p4, p5): npar = 6 Cx = np.zeros((npar,), dtype='complex') Cy = np.zeros((npar,), dtype='complex') Cx[1] = p1.real*1j Cx[2] = p2.real*1j Cx[3] = p3.real Cx[5] = p4.real Cy[1] = p4.imag + p1.imag*1j Cy[2] = p2.imag*1j Cy[3] = p3.imag*1j x = np.append(fourier(t,Cx), [-p5.imag]) y = np.append(fourier(t,Cy), [p5.imag]) return x,y x, y = elephant(np.linspace(0,2*np.pi,1000), p1, p2, p3, p4, p5) pylab.plot(y,-x,'.') pylab.show()
Related posts:Global Warming: Sea temperatures calculated wrong, worse climate change may haunt
New Delhi : The scientists have spotted a major mistake in recording the sea temperatures, claiming that the temperature has been rising way more than the recorded data, leading to worse global warming situation than already imagined. Global warming may be worse than we thought, claims a new study.
The study has raised doubts over the ways researchers have worked out the sea temperatures until now, suggesting that the sea temperature rose much faster than suggested earlier.
Also Read: Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis crashes Cambridge University's website
The methodology widely used to understand sea temperatures in the scientific community may be based on a mistake, the new study suggests, and so our understanding of climate change might be fundamentally flawed.
Also Read: The universe shouldn't exist, according to top CERN scientists, raise doubt on Big Bang theory
As per findings, it has been learned that around 100 million years ago, the oceans were much cooler than we know. This means all the calculatons which have been done so far have given a faulty data.
Until now, the scientists do calculation to a temperature which is 15 degree warmer than what the study suggests it was 100 million years ago.
Also Read: First footprints of 200 million year old huge carnivorous dinosaur found
"If we are right, our study challenges decades of paleoclimate research," said Anders Meibom, the head of EPFL's Laboratory for Biological Geochemistry and a professor at the University of Lausanne.
Also Read: India's first Jurassic era fossil found in Kutch village
"Oceans cover 70% of our planet. They play a key role in the earth's climate. Knowing the extent to which their temperatures have varied over geological time is crucial if we are to gain a fuller understanding of how they behave and to predict the consequences of current climate change more accurately."
Also Read: Albert Einstein's 'happiness notes' sold for whopping 1.5 million dollars in JerusalemVladimir Putin has condemned a deadly terrorist attack in Paris, and confirmed Moscow’s readiness to continue cooperation with France in battling terrorism.
© AFP 2018 / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Updates on Charlie Hebdo Attack: Manhunt Underway, France Mourns Victims
MOSCOW, January 7 (Sputnik) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned a deadly terrorist attack in Paris, and confirmed Moscow's readiness to continue cooperating with France in the battle against terrorism, the Kremlin press service reported Wednesday.
"The Head of the State has condemned this cynical crime and has confirmed readiness to continue cooperation in the fight against terror threat," the statement published on the Kremlin's official website read.
Putin also expressed his condolences to the victims' families and wished the injured a speedy recovery.
Earlier on Wednesday, other world leaders also expressed their sympathy over the tragedy in Paris.
"This terrifying terrorist attack in France is not simply an attack on French citizens and France's home security. This is an attack on the freedom of speech and press, which cannot be justified," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as quoted by DPA news agency.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States condemned the attack in the strongest terms.
"Everybody here at the White House is with the families of those who were killed or injured in this attack," Earnest said, speaking on the MSNBC channel.
Poll Is the Western media in some way responsible for the attack on Charlie Hebdo? Yes: Islam, and other beliefs, should be respected otherwise more attacks are going to happen. 45.7% (817)
No: The right to free speech in the West is more fundamental than your religious belief. 48.4% (866)
I'm not decided. 5.9% (106) Voted: 1789 All polls Yes: Islam, and other beliefs, should be respected otherwise more attacks are going to happen.
No: The right to free speech in the West is more fundamental than your religious belief.
I'm not decided. All polls
David Cameron called the murders in Paris "sickening" on his Twitter account, adding that Britain stood "with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press".
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the attack was a "barbaric act and an outrageous attack on press freedom", as quoted in a statement on the NATO website.
Earlier on Wednesday, three armed men rushed into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and shot at least 12 people, 10 of them journalists and two police officers.
Following the attack, the terror alert in France's Ile-de-France region, which includes Paris, was raised to the highest level.GLASGOW, Scotland—There is a buzz to Glasgow I have not felt for years. It is the vibration of excited youth. For in next week’s referendum on Scottish independence, history will be made with the enfranchisement of sixteen and seventeen year olds, and they are up for the debate and the decision.
I’ve always felt young people are massively underestimated in Britain. Politicians and commentators make the mistake of thinking that young people aren’t interested because they tend not to vote in high numbers at general elections.
The truth is they have simply been ahead of the game in identifying the weaknesses of the political system and the disconnect from voter concerns. But engage young people in the things they care about and they will take part –- that’s what the Yes and No camps are finding in a vote that is likely to see unprecedented levels of turnout.
Check out the campaigns in less than 90 seconds:
This group of first time voters is small –- just around 3% of the referendum electorate. But with the polls so close, basically neck and neck when the error margin is factored in, they are a group of voters who could turn out to be crucial. According to polls, the Yes vote has a 14 percentage point lead among the 16 to 24 year-old age group.
The argument has raged about what kind of figures to use to engage young people. The temptation to get young politicians out is strong. But when I was young I tended to hate smart young things on political stages. I thought of them as jumped up and irritating, and tended to think they must be talking rubbish. I was probably not alone.
If Scotland votes YES, the Loch Ness monster will move to Lake Windermere. — Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) September 10, 2014
One Yes campaign adviser told me on Wednesday how wary they have been of directly targeting young voters for fear of their tendency to rebel, even when they know the rationale to be right.
So the campaigns have been debating who to put up for debates? Do you risk alienating young people with a young person? Or do you go for an older figure, relying on tapping in to the relationships and clever conversations most will have struck up at some time with grandparents, uncles and aunts?
Young people are badly judged, too, when it comes to their sophistication. It always irritated me as a teenager when I was beginning my television career in Glasgow chairing a debate show called “Open To Question.” Every week a panel of young people would grill a politician or public figure about politics, history and the future. Every week adults watching would gasp at the direct questioning, the willingness of young people to ditch politeness to ask the important questions. The guests would marvel at how difficult it was to be grilled by young people compared to professional interviewers. So I was especially excited to chair a young people’s referendum debate for Channel 4 News with a cross section of Yes, No and Undecided first time voters.
There wasn’t a single dud intervention. The questions were calm, intelligent and to the point. The professional politicians put on the spot in the debate had nowhere to go. And there was a refreshing conviction. The Yes side were optimistic and the No side were positive about being part of the United Kingdom. It had none of the grumpy antagonism you might hear from adults in this city.
The most striking part of the conversation came, inevitably, at the end. One after another, people in our debate told me how British meant little or nothing to them. They had no great desire to wrap themselves in an identity that encompasses the English and Welsh. Even some of those in the No camp.
And that is the bit Prime Minister David Cameron, Labour leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg don’t seem to have understood. There is a complete mismatch in their arguments.
As the party leaders travelled up from London to love-bomb Scotland with talk of British history, a family of nations, common bonds and aspirations, it seemed many here just didn’t know what these men were going on about. Scottishness is something too many English don’t get, because we feel British. Our identity includes Scotland. For the Scots, even many of those who would rather stay in the Union, their identity is something quite different.
And all the talk of this being irreversible, drastic, tragic and heartbreaking doesn’t seem to have much effect. It may feel like the time for emotion, with the possible breakup of Britain seemingly real and close. But the emotion from those voting Yes is optimism. As we saw on Wednesday, the teenagers here aren't interested in nostalgia and sentimentality.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy is one of the main anchors of Channel 4 News.NSW boosts road funding to improve safety
Updated
The New South Wales Government has announced an additional $7 million of funding for safety projects in the state under its new Safer Roads program.
The extra money will go towards highway and motorcycle route safety reviews and improving pedestrian safety in the next two financial years.
Some of the funds will come from the State Government's Community Road Safety Fund, which spends revenue raised by speed cameras on road projects.
NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay says the state's roads desperately need improving after years of poor government and flooding.
"The asset we took over was in a terrible state and the catch-up has been horrendous - two record $5 billion budgets and on top of that two very wet years that have made it even harder to do it," Mr Gay said.
The Government says the funding will include:
An extra $2 million a year for highway safety reviews, including work on the Kings Highway;
Three million dollars a year towards a motorcycle route safety improvement program including improved signage and line marking along roads including the Old Pacific Highway, Putty Road, and the Oxley Highway;
And $2 million a year towards boosting pedestrian safety.
The new funding is part of a raft of measures intended cut the number of road deaths in the state by 30 per cent by 2021.
"It is important that we put money into improving signage for motorcyclists and coming up with new ideas for safety for them - it's an area that needs to be looked after," Mr Gay said.
"One of the key areas of increase in our fatalities is in pedestrians, and it's important to have this extra money in their sector as well."
Easter road offences down
Meanwhile, the message to motorists appears to be getting through, with NSW Police announcing that the number of Easter holiday traffic offences has declined so far this year.
The official holiday period ends at midnight tonight (AEDT), as people return home from the Easter long weekend.
Traffic and Highway Patrol Commander Inspector Phil Brooks says figures collected so far show the number of offences is lower than last year.
"We've issued nearly 3,500 speeding infringements, which is about 245 down on the same time last year, so people may be getting the message there," Inspector Brooks said.
Inspector Brooks said police had issued a further 5,600 infringement notices for other offences.
Topics: state-parliament, nsw
First postedA North Texas jeweler refused to buy a treasured gold necklace from a struggling mother - and gave her money from his own pocket instead.
Syrian refugee Noah, who declined to give his surname, was working at the jewelry store when a Texas woman came in and tried to sell her jewelry, CBS reports.
The mom-of-two told him she was broke and was selling the precious piece of jewelry to pay her bills. Noah was so moved by the woman's story he decided to intervene.
Syrian refugee Noah, who declined to give his surname, was working at the jewelry store when a Texas mother came in and tried to sell her jewelry
He refused to buy the jewelry.
Instead, he reached in his own pockets and paid her enough money to kept the debtors off her back.
'I let her tell me how much she wanted to sell it and I gave her exactly what money she wanted,' said Noah, who added that she had appeared sad and had 'tears in her eyes.'
The moment was captured on security cameras.
'I didn't think about it, I just grabbed the money. I grabbed the money and gave it to her,' said Noah.
The mom-of-two told him she was broke and was selling the cash to pay her bills. Noah was so moved by the woman's story he decided to intervene
He refused to buy the jewelry. Instead, he reached in his own pockets and paid the mother-of-two enough money to kept the debtors off her back
Noah, (pictured, who did not want to show his face) fled to the United States to escape from the conflict in Syria two years ago, said he had sent the footage to a friend back in the Middle East
The stunned recipient broke down in tears at the kindness was seen on the store's surveillance footage hugging the store clerk.
Noah, who fled to the United States to escape from the conflict in Syria two years ago, said he had sent the footage to a friend back in the Middle East.
But unknown to him, that friends uploaded the footage which rapidly went viral and has now been seen thousands of times.
'Doesn't matter what religion you are. It doesn't matter where you're from. This is our humanity. Everybody should do that,' said Noah.
The generous clerk said he felt happier giving to the less fortunate than keeping his money to himself.Getty Euro countries quietly urge Grexit Eurozone parliaments have begun approving the bailout, but some still would prefer Greece itself to opt for a “timeout.”
BERLIN — A number of Eurogroup countries are quietly urging Greece to re-consider a temporary exit from the eurozone, arguing that the requirements it would face under a third bailout are too much for the country to bear, eurozone officials say.
Even though the Eurogroup agreed on Thursday to begin new bailout talks with Greece, some members — including Germany and a group of smaller northern and eastern European countries — still believe an exit is the better option, albeit one that Athens would have to ask for.
“Greece can recover much faster outside of the eurozone than inside,” an official from a smaller eurozone country said.
Berlin, which has had a fraught relationship with the Tsipras government, has stepped back from trying to give Athens private advice, relying instead on smaller countries to make the case.
But the real strategy is to let events take their course. Athens is counting on significant debt relief, a concession other eurozone countries aren’t willing to make, despite pressure from the International Monetary Fund. Once the realities of a third bailout, which would entail deep spending cuts and tough reforms under strict supervision, sink in in the coming weeks, a sweetened Grexit offer could become a more attractive option for Athens.
The Greek parliament gave Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras a clear mandate Thursday to start negotiating the tough austerity measures that are the condition of the €86 billion bailout. Lawmakers in some of Greece’s most skeptical creditor countries have followed suit: the Finns and Dutch gave the green light Thursday and Germany’s Bundestag should do the same Friday.
Following the backlash to the so-called “timeout” plan in recent days, these countries don't want to appear to be trying to force Greece out. Therefore, it's important to them that Greece simply have the option.
But their preferred plan is still for Greece to leave the euro with the promise of significant financial aid from the eurozone and continued assistance from the European Central Bank to cushion of the effects of its exit. It could then undertake a hard restructuring of its debt, a step that’s not possible as long as it’s a member of the euro. Eventually, it would be allowed to rejoin.
The better path
The idea for a Greek “timeout,” first proposed by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble ahead of last weekend’s emergency summit, provoked an angry response from France and several other eurozone countries. They worry that a “Grexit,” even a temporary one, would set a dangerous precedent that would destabilize the already fragile eurozone. The question is whether they can halt the momentum building behind the German-led bloc.
Included in the draft agreement, the timeout clause was then taken out as a concession to Tsipras, who has so far refused to consider it, insisting that Greece can fulfill the obligations of a new rescue.
Schäuble, speaking on German radio Thursday, has continued to argue openly that a temporary Grexit “may be the better path for Greece.” At the same time, he pledged to support Chancellor Angela Merkel and vote for the bailout in the Bundestag Friday.
As pressure builds on Greece to follow through with its reform pledges in the coming weeks amid intense public resistance, eurozone officials say, Tsipras may reach the same conclusion as Schäuble: that leaving the currency union is in Athens’ best interests.
The advantage for Greece would be that it could remain in the European Union with a devalued currency that would make its economy more competitive, proponents of the option argue. Athens could also restructure its economy at a more gradual pace than is now being demanded by creditors.
“Greece can recover much faster outside of the eurozone than inside” — eurozone source
Yet a Grexit would also wipe out the value of Greeks’ assets, and, many fear, further destabilize the country both economically and politically. And even after a “haircut,” Greece would have difficulty financing a debt burden denominated in euros with a new, considerably weaker, currency.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers from the single currency area, acknowledged with an edge of frustration Thursday that the debate about Greece being suspended from membership refused to disappear.
“I would be |
and the Chocolate Factory that he began to achieve the kind of critical and artistic success that would mark his work after 40. Distracted by the possibility of collaborating on a film with Robert Altman to be titled Oh, Death, Where Is Thy Sting-a-ling-ling, he could not have anticipated the reaction to his latest novel for children, which he considered a distraction from his real work for adults that had been ignored for the past decade.
He was also increasingly in ill humor, dissatisfied with being confined to writing for children. He wrote a vicious attack on his peers in the field of children's literature requested by the New York Times, and it was so mean the paper moved it from the Sunday Book Review to a burial within the paper. He complained to Alfred Knopf, who wrote him that "in your case the point isn't that they should welsh at putting you on the front page but rather that they were stupid enough to expect a piece from you that they could print there."
illustrations for the first british edition of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'
Amazingly, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, offered in combination with James and the Giant Peach, could not be sold to British publishers. They felt the stories were "too adult." Dahl told his agent, "I refuse to peddle these two books around to all the publishers of London." There has always been something extremely disturbing about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, from the poverty-stricken house where the Buckets sleep together in one bed like animals, to the gruesome deaths and mutilations suffered by the winners of the contest. The hope that Wonka himself offers is also desolate - like James Trotter, his happiness consists of escape from a hateful and confusing world.
While he occupied himself writing viciously pornographic, misogynistic stories he would try to sell to Playboy, his wife continued starring in films and he both resented and enjoyed her success. Envy turned into concern when Neal suffered two brain aneurysms and was reduced to a shell of her former self, becoming deeply depressed and losing the last of her movie star looks in the process. She was also pregnant.
returning from the hospital after Patricia's stroke in 1965When Lucy Neal was born in perfect health, Dahl went back to the drawing board. He needed money to provide for his family badly, and his screenplay adaptation of Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice, much revised by other screenwriters, helped the bottom line. His fragile emotional state was directed largely in anger at Patricia Neal. He would threaten to go after other women in front of her, and mocked her vulnerability to friends. He still cared for her, but something of what they had together had been lost. The attention he once reserved for her was redirected towards their children.
Further adventures in Hollywood, including a comically bad first adaptation of Ian Fleming's book for his son, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, met with little critical or financial gain. A movie adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory initially met similar troubles: the studio wanted to change the title because "Charlie" was seen as a racial epithet that targeted African-Americans. Director Mel Stuart was disappointed with Dahl's script and brought in an unknown to rewrite it. David Seltzer added many of the film's most famous lines, and Dahl was a beacon of rage.
politically correct oompa loompas for the 1985 editionThe movie changed everything, though. Dahl's books began to sell through the roof - at one point in 1968 his publishers owed him over a million dollars. Knopf was panicked that after they rejected his book The Magic Finger, he would leave them for rival Harper & Row. It did not help matters when they hated his next effort, a story titled "The Fox", that Wes Anderson would adapt into a stop-motion feature in 2009. The internal memo within Knopf said, "the writing is poor, the fantasy is unbelievable, the plot is badly worked out and...contains a long middle section in which there isn't really much to illustrate." The company was also concerned about what they perceived as the book's pro-shoplifting point-of-view.
The book appeared as The Fantastic Mr. Fox, substantially altered so that the foxes were stealing from their persecutors after suggestions from Fabio Coen, an editor at Random House. Affected by the allegations of racism, Dahl revised Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, replacing the Oompa Loompas with tiny hippies. Driven by the criticism, his two best works followed, both novella-length: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Danny the Champion of the World, in which he glamorized himself as a libertarian-esque father. He dedicated the book to his family.
Despite his love for them, he could not stay completely faithful in middle age. He took up with the wealthy heiress and mother of Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt, gamely coaxing her into the bed he shared with Neal while she shot another film on location. He was finding women were still extremely attracted to him even in his advanced age.
Patricia Neal made a friend out of a young woman, Felicity Crosland, who worked for David Ogilvy's advertising agency, but the moment she saw Patricia's husband, it was all over. When his daughter Tessa found out about the affair, she became another way of hiding the relationship from Patricia. Everyone who criticized Dahl for cheating on his wife was excommunicated from his good graces.
The Dahl family even vacationed with Crosland, and in Stephen Michael Shearer's biography of Neal, he describes a moment where Felicity gave Neal a triumphant look in a women's bathroom, gloating over the theft of her husband. While she did eventually put the pieces together - the little love notes, the glances between the two - the marriage continued until 1983, with Roald begging his wife to allow him to continue seeing Crosland.
By the late 1970s, a hip replacement, a growing dependence on alcohol, and his struggles on the page had combined to drive Dahl to despair. Money was not coming in as fast as it was going out, and building a pool for Patricia was only one of the expenses that took a toll on the family's finances. He was thrown out of a country club for screaming about the number of Jews allowed to dine in his presence, and his reputation began to take a hit. Many of his old friends no longer wanted to associate with him, and his daughter Lucy became addicted to cocaine.
with theo and ophelia dahl in 1982After Dahl finally married Felicity Crosland, entering the first happy marriage of his life was a panacea on his troubles. He finished the four-book contract with Random House that had dogged his thoughts, and began to write with a clear head. Some of his best work followed, and his collaboration with the illustrator Quentin Blake bore immediate fruit with the publication of The BFG by FSG, his first book away from his publisher of many years. He left because of Robert Gottlieb.
Dahl's clashes with Gottlieb amounted to a fundamental lack of respect for his editor. He suspected Gottlieb of not knowing as much about modern art as he did, and he was extremely pissed off that the editor wanted to censor his references to the size of Stravinsky's penis in My Uncle Oswald, a book that concerned a conspiracy to market and sell the semen of the world's finest male individuals. The Jewish Gottlieb had other reasons to object to some of Dahl's perceptions, even defending Proust when Dahl referred to him in one essay as an anti-Semite. Roald's departure from Random House was far from amicable. Robert Gottlieb wrote him the following letter:
Dear Roald,
This is not in response to the specifics of your last several letters to me and my colleagues, but a general response to everything we've heard from you in the past year or two.
In brief, and as unemotionally as I can state it: since the time when you decided that Bob Bernstein, I and the rest of us had dealt badly with you over your contract, you have behaved to us in a way I can honestly say is unmatched in my experience for overbearingness and utter lack of civility. Lately you've began addressing others here - who are less well placed to answer you back - with the same degree of abusiveness. For a while I put your behavior down to the physical pain you were in and so managed to excuse it. Now I've come to believe that you're just enjoying a prolonged tantrum and are bullying us.
Your threat to leave Knopf after this current contract is fulfilled leaves us far from intimidated. Harrison, Bernstein and I will be sorry to see you depart, for business reasons, but these are not strong enough to make us put up with your manner to us any longer. I've worked hard for you editorially but had already decided to stop doing so; indeed, you've managed to make the entire experience of publishing you unappealing for all of us - counterproductive behavior, I would have thought.
To be perfectly clear, let me reverse your threat: unless you start acting civilly to us, there is no possibility of our agreeing to continue to publish you. Nor will I - or any of us - answer any future letter that we consider to be as rude as those we've been receiving.
Regretfully,
BG
After Gottlieb sent it off, the entire office gave him a standing ovation.
His loss was the gain of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A novel about a pedophilic monster who abducts a young girl and forces her to stare at the phalluses of larger giants, The BFG (essentially, The Big Fucking Giant) was just crazy enough to work. FSG editor Stephen Roxburgh saw the best of Dahl's previous successes in the book. In essence, the flatulent, verbally confused giant was Dahl's insensitive reimagining of his stroke-addled wife. Replete with cannibalism, explosive gas, and inspiring nightmares, it is hard to believe that anyone thought The BFG was appropriate for children, other than a sixth sense that it was something anyone might enjoy.
On the whole, Roxburgh's editorial advice was more up Dahl's alley. He knew how to approach Dahl - like a tenured elder - and Dahl incorporated his substantial rewrites of the book's dialogue verbatim. The resulting manuscript, followed in succession by Dahl's autobiographies as well as hits The Witches and finally Matilda, cemented Dahl's reputation as the finest and most popular children's writer in the world. The BFG was the second most popular children's book ever in France (behind Wonka), and Dahl was hugely famous in that country.
an early quentin blake drawing for "The BFG"
During this period, Dahl was open to making changes to the less politically correct elements of his books. He could not help noticing his sensibility was rooted in another generation, and he was smart enough to be conscious of the disconnect. He grudgingly edited out the more racist and disturbing parts of The BFG, and when it came time to edit his manuscript of The Witches, he was also open to more substantial alterations.
Roxburgh's revisions to The Witches were far more extensive than those he had proposed on The BFG. The editor's major suggestion was that the Witches should turn the narrator into a mouse, an idea that it is now impossible to imagine The Witches without. Dahl saw that these were improvements and went ahead, but Roxburgh had to be more subtle about his other objections to the novel. Apologizing in advance, he pointed out that the women in the story "took a lot of abuse."
with daughter Tessa in 1986
Despite changes to tone down that aspect of the final manuscript, feminists saw The Witches as a complete disaster. Catherine Itzin reported that the book is an example of "how boys learn to become men who hate women." In a reference guide to YA literature, Michele Landsberg wrote that, "Almost every one of his numerous books rehashes the same tired plot: a meek small boy finally turns on his adult female tormentors and kills them."
The criticism he received in those quarters and the abiding hatred he felt for Robert Gottlieb intensified his hatred of Jews. He explained to an interviewer in 1983 that "there is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. I mean there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason." Eventually a class in San Francisco would write him a bunch of letters on this subject. Two children managed this effort:
Dear Mr. Dahl,
We love your books, but we have a problem... we are Jews!! We love your books but you don't like us because we are jews. That offends us. Can you please change your mind about what you said about jews!
Love,
Aliza and Tamar
In 1985, the 71-year old Dahl began to fall seriously ill and his mind had started to go. A plagiarism incident revolving around a story he had stolen tarred his name and his writing became at the same time roundly terrible and excessively sexual. It is no wonder that his first effort at Matilda was so different from the classic we know today. A row with Roxburgh after he had incorporated all of the man's work on the book drove Dahl to another publisher for it, and Matilda was released by Viking instead, immediately selling more than any book Dahl had ever written.
By the end of the 80s, Dahl was cracked. He became obsessed with attaining knighthood for some reason, wanting Felicity to assume the title of Lady Dahl. He began giving money away in earnest to hospitals in order to increase the likelihood of this event - indeed, he always had a selfish reason for doing anything benevolent. His reaction to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie ensured his knighting would never occur, for he wrote to The Times of London that the man was "a dangerous opportunist." (His real jealousy likely oriented around the fact that Rushdie had won a Booker Prize and he hadn't.) People started to distance themselves from the old man in droves. When Martin Amis told Dahl he was about to have dinner with Rushdie, Dahl responded, "Tell him he's a shit."
felicity dahl at gipsy house
He died on November 23, 1990. Felicity Dahl became the principal executor of the tremendous wealthy estate, against the wishes of Dahl's daughters - they termed it a "stepmatriarchy." After Jeremy Treglown published his masterful life of Dahl, she toyed with suing him for slander and immediately designated a replacement biography, tapping Donald Sturrock to compose a more favorable portrait of her late husband. Reading the softer, authorized book, you would hardly notice that Dahl's attitude towards women and Jews resembled Willy Wonka's perspective on union labor.
I still remember squinting against the glare of a flashlight at my copy of Danny the Champion of the World, feeling the first true wonder of a story whose outcome I could not possibly anticipate. Dahl's books teach us that the world is a horrible, bigoted place, full of those who wish us ill. It is precisely because he attempted themes that other children's authors never even touched that his fantasies stand out so much in a crowded room.
The cumulative effect of these horror stories on me was unpleasant. Dahl's oeuvre, which I consumed with great fervor, illuminated a terrible side of my childhood, one I might rather have been indoctrinated in later on. The fact that the world is full of such misery is not a consoling idea at that age. But so what? To be so gifted and yet so full of disdain for others was Dahl's problem, not my own. His creations reflect that self-hatred, but if they did not, they would not be honest explications of a cruel and merciless world.
Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here and twitters here. He last wrote in these pages about the studios of the artists.
"You Are A Tourist" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)
"Unobstructed Views" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)
"Doors Unlocked and Open" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)
The seventh studio album from Death Cab for Cutie, titled Codes and Keys, is available on May 31st and you can preorder it here.
with his wife after her oscar for Hud in 1964TANGAIL: At least two unknown assailants hacked a Hindu tailor to death in central Bangladesh Saturday, police said, amid a rise in attacks on religious minorities by extremist groups in the Muslim-majority nation.
Police said the victim, named as Nikhil Chandra Joarder, 50, may have been murdered for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) several years ago.
The militant Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the murder, according to a US-based monitoring group, amid a rise in attacks on religious minorities in the Muslim-majority nation.
“They came on a motorcycle and attacked him as he sat on a roadside. They hacked him on his head, neck and hand,” deputy chief of Tangail district police Aslam Khan told AFP.
Police officials told AFP they were investigating whether the killing was linked to extremist militants suspected of a series of minority killings, or was tied to a family dispute.
Bangladesh is reeling from a series of brutal attacks on members of minority faiths, secularists, foreigners and intellectuals in recent months, including two gay activists and a liberal professor in the past eight days alone.
Many of the killings have been blamed on or claimed by militant groups, and in several cases attackers riding motorbikes hacked the victims to death with machetes or cleavers.
Police said locals had filed a complaint against Joarder, who owned a tailoring shop, to police in 2012 for making comments deemed derogatory.
He was charged with hurting religious sentiments and spent three weeks in jail.
“But the trial did not proceed after the complainants withdrew the charges,” Abdul Jalil, the police chief of Gopalpur sub-district told AFP.
Another police official said that the dispute appeared to have ended peacefully, adding that the victim's family said he was also being threatened by a relative.
The murder came less than a week after suspected militants hacked to death two gay rights activists in the capital Dhaka, saying they tried to promote homosexuality in the deeply conservative nation.
In February suspected militants decapitated a top Hindu priest inside a temple complex in a northern district, in an attack claimed by the IS group.
The IS has also claimed responsibility for a spate of recent murders of foreigners, and Sufi, Ahmadi, Shia and Christian minorities.
However, the government denies that international militant groups such as IS or Al Qaeda have a presence in the country, instead blaming homegrown militants for the killings.
The murders come amid a long-running political crisis that some suggest has radicalised opponents of the government. Analysts say militants now pose a growing danger in the South Asian country.
At least 30 members of religious minorities, secular activists, foreigners and intellectuals have been murdered in Bangladesh in the past three years.
Hindus, the country's largest religious minority, make up nearly 10 per cent of Bangladesh's 160 million people.This is the second article in a two-part series. Read Part One here.
New Haven, Connecticut - One day in 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson sat in his office scratching his head. He faced a dilemma. The war in Europe was very good for American business, but he needed to persuade the American public that entering the war was good for democracy.
The problem was that Americans were deeply sceptical of capitalism, far more than today. As John Reed wrote in "Whose War?", an essay that ran in the socialist magazine The Masses: "The rich has [sic] steadily become richer, and the cost of living higher, and the workers proportionally poorer. These toilers don't want war... But the speculators, the employers, the plutocracy - they want it... With lies and sophistries, they will whip up our blood until we are savage - and then we'll fight and die for them."
Reed wasn't on the fringe. Six weeks after Congress officially declared war, enlistment totalled over 70,000 recruits. The military needed a million men. Something needed to be done, but initiating a draft alone would only incite rioting in the streets.
NYPD under fire for spying on Muslim students
So Wilson launched an enormous propaganda campaign to turn public opinion around. He sent 75,000 speakers into communities around the country to deliver 750,000 speeches in favour of war. For the unmoved, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which criminalised criticising the government during wartime.
Americans often ascribe to economcis effects that are in fact caused by politics. Before the Espionage Act, for instance, there were hundreds of radical newspapers, many of them socialist or communist - or just sympathetic to the plight of workers. After the war, most disappeared. That wasn't the result of market forces. The US government went to great pains at great expense to persuade Americans to embrace an approved ideology while it silenced dissidents with old-fashioned censorship. The Masses, along with 70 other radical publications, went out of business, because the US Post Office wouldn't deliver it.
Yet they were the lucky ones.
'A turnkey totalitarian state'
The Wilson era saw 2,000 prosecutions under the Espionage Act. One was Eugene V Debs, the union organiser. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving a speech, lambasting the draft for World War I. Today, the Obama administration hopes to convict Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking documents to WikiLeaks, including a video of an American helicopter gunning down Iraqi children.
The War on Terror has inspired new laws and new ways to decimate civil liberties. The US Department of Justice recently rationalised the killing of Americans abroad. Attorney General Eric Holder twisted himself into knots trying to separate due process from judicial process. The difference apparently means that it was okay to murder an American working for al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Worse is our spying on everyone, including Americans. The National Security Agency (NSA) is building a huge complex in Utah to house server farms that can handle yottabytes of data (a yottabyte equals one septillion bytes, or one quadrillion gigabytes). According to James Bamford, the NSA wants to eavesdrop without needing court orders. As one source said, we are becoming "a turnkey totalitarian state".
If the NSA is collecting information on everybody, who does it consider an enemy of the state? "Terrorists" is one answer, but how do you define "terrorist"? Are terrorists also political extremists?
What about someone who believes in the right of the people to revolt against the government if it is not fulfilling the will of the people? The United States' founding ideals are so radical that it seems exercising them might be considered a threat to American security by those in charge of protecting Americans.
Police violence as standard operating procedure
The US government has spent about $635bn over the past decade militarising local law enforcement. That, as Stephan Salisbury has reported, includes "tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, Tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases".
In 2003, a federal judge ruled that the New York Police Department could broaden its surveillance programmes in the name of public safety. The AP later revealed that the NYPD had been keeping tabs on Muslims and Islamic groups as far away as Yale University (where I teach). Weeks afterward, it became public that New York City's police force, the largest in the US, had also been monitoring the activities of Occupy Wall Street protesters.
"Today, a militarised police force that authorised spying on Americans is... containing unrest at home while the 1 per cent continues to make a killing."
Naturally, there have been attempts to characterise protesters as bums, deviants, criminals or whatever. This is no doubt true in some cases, but even if it were true in all cases, these are still Americans invoking the guaranteed privilege of citizenship - and their actions are being met with the full force of the militarised state. The United States seems to be the land of the free as long as you don't collectively complain about the superstructures of money and power.
But we're not just talking about the marginalised. The middle class, it's safe to say, believes in the American dream; its protests were against bailouts for banks and sacrifice for everyone else. And yet these respectable law-abiding citizens met with police violence, too. If violence is standard operating procedure, doesn't that legitimately call into question the legitimacy of the state?
Liberated markets don't equal a liberated people
The Espionage Act suppressed dissent so that the one per cent of 1917 could continue making a killing on the war in Europe. Today, a militarised police force that has authorised spying on Americans is doing the same thing: containing unrest at home while the 1 per cent continues to make a killing. And they are making a killing without much regard for the laws that the police enforce.
As Yale's Bruce Judson noted, it's nearly certain that Wall Street firms committed felonies in the run-up to the 2008 crisis and afterwards - perjury, obstruction of justice and false claims that allowed them to defraud shareholders, taxpayers and homeowners of billions. And yet federal regulators hesitate to act.
"With each decision not to prosecute, Wall Street executives justifiably conclude that they are immune to the rules," Judson wrote recently in The National Memo. "As a result, it appears that Wall Street criminal activity is increasing in frequency..."
Such criminality sank the economy and destroyed millions of jobs, and the damage may be deeper than we know. According to the Center for Working-Class Studies, the de facto unemployment rate is around 28 per cent. This figure estimates the percentage of people who have given up looking for work, who are employed only part-time and who have enrolled in Social Security early.
And such criminality impedes freedom, because it undermines security. We don't hear enough about the relationship between freedom and security. Freedom is typically defined as choice, doing what you want to do, being all that you can be, et cetera. But what is freedom without the security of having a job, good health, property and faith in a promising future? The answer is not much.
The United States' power elite generally regards capitalism and freedom as synonymous and proportional - liberated markets equal a liberated people. Perhaps that's true philosophically, but in practice, the opposite has usually been true. The more unfettered capitalism becomes, the more destructive it becomes. It's that simple. Yet the US government has decided that national security is more important than economic security, and over three decades, these have acted as opposing forces to diminish our core liberties.
This wasn't an accident. About three decades ago, the government unleashed capitalism from the bonds of the New Deal in the name of freedom. Capitalism slowly and then quickly destroyed lives and stole billions. When protesters rose up in the name of freedom, the government smacked them down. As Howard Zinn wrote in A People's History of the United States: "The courts and jails had been used to reinforce the idea that certain ideas and certain kinds of resistance could not be tolerated."
Zinn was talking about social tensions that arose at the close of World War I. After the censorship, incarcerations and political intimidation had come to an end, the establishment was worried. A socialist movement, one more energised than before the war, was mounting an attack - and violence was breaking out.
Today another kind of movement is growing. What the future holds, no one knows. But in 1919, one of President Wilson's advisers said he worried about this threat to both major parties. He said: "Steadily from day to day, under our very eyes, [there is] a movement that, if it is not checked, is bound to express itself in attack on everything we hold dear. In this era of industrial and social unrest, both parties are in disrepute with the average man."
John Stoehr is the editor of the New Haven Advocate and a lecturer at Yale.
Follow him on Twitter: @johnastoehrA revamped regulatory landscape this year has elevated the attractiveness to political operatives of groups like Crossroads and others, organized under the auspices of Section 501(c) of the tax code. Unlike so-called 527 political organizations, which can also accept donations of unlimited size, 501(c) groups have the advantage of usually not having to disclose their donors’ identity.
This is arguably more important than ever after the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case earlier this year that eased restrictions on corporate spending on campaigns.
Interviews with a half-dozen campaign finance lawyers yielded an anecdotal portrait of corporate political spending since the Citizens United decision. They agreed that most prominent, publicly traded companies are staying on the sidelines.
But other companies, mostly privately held, and often small to medium size, are jumping in, mainly on the Republican side. Almost all of them are doing so through 501(c) organizations, as opposed to directly sponsoring advertisements themselves, the lawyers said.
“I can tell you from personal experience, the money’s flowing,” said Michael E. Toner, a former Republican F.E.C. commissioner, now in private practice at the firm Bryan Cave.
The growing popularity of the groups is making the gaps in oversight of them increasingly worrisome among those mindful of the influence of money on politics.
“The Supreme Court has completely lifted restrictions on corporate spending on elections,” said Taylor Lincoln, research director of Public Citizen ’s Congress Watch, a watchdog group. “And 501(c) serves as a haven for these front groups to run electioneering ads and keep their donors completely secret.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Almost all of the biggest players among third-party groups, in terms of buying television time in House and Senate races since August, have been 501(c) organizations, and their purchases have heavily favored Republicans, according to data from Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.
They include 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations, like Crossroads, which has been the top spender on Senate races, and Americans for Prosperity, another pro-Republican group that has been the leader on the House side; 501(c)(5) labor unions, which have been supporting Democrats; and 501(c)(6) trade associations, like the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has been spending heavily in support of Republicans.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Charities organized under Section 501(c)(3) are largely prohibited from political activity because they offer their donors tax deductibility.
Campaign finance watchdogs have raised the most questions about the political activities of the “social welfare” organizations. The burden of monitoring such groups falls in large part on the I.R.S. But lawyers, campaign finance watchdogs and former I.R.S. officials say the agency has had little incentive to police the groups because the revenue-collecting potential is small, and because its main function is not to oversee the integrity of elections.
The I.R.S. division with oversight of tax-exempt organizations “is understaffed, underfunded and operating under a tax system designed to collect taxes, not as a regulatory mechanism,” said Marcus S. Owens, a lawyer who once led that unit and now works for Caplin & Drysdale, a law firm popular with liberals seeking to set up nonprofit groups.
In fact, the I.R.S. is unlikely to know that some of these groups exist until well after the election because they are not required to seek the agency’s approval until they file their first tax forms — more than a year after they begin activity.
“These groups are popping up like mushrooms after a rain right now, and many of them will be out of business by late November,” Mr. Owens said. “Technically, they would have until January 2012 at the earliest to file anything with the I.R.S. It’s a farce.”
A report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration this year revealed that the I.R.S. was not even reviewing the required filings of 527 groups, which have increasingly been supplanted by 501(c)(4) organizations.
Social welfare nonprofits are permitted to do an unlimited amount of lobbying on issues related to their primary purpose, but there are limits on campaigning for or against specific candidates.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
I.R.S. officials cautioned that what may seem like political activity to the average lay person might not be considered as such under the agency’s legal criteria.
“Federal tax law specifically distinguishes among activities to influence legislation through lobbying, to support or oppose a specific candidate for election and to do general advocacy to influence public opinion on issues,” said Sarah Hall Ingram, commissioner of the I.R.S. division that oversees nonprofits. As a result, rarely do advertisements by 501(c)(4) groups explicitly call for the election or defeat of candidates. Instead, they typically attack their positions on issues.
Steven Law, president of Crossroads GPS, said what distinguished the group from its sister organization, American Crossroads, which is registered with the F.E.C. as a political committee, was that Crossroads GPS was focused over the longer term on advocating on “a suite of issues that are likely to see some sort of legislative response. ” American Crossroads’ efforts are geared toward results in this year’s elections, Mr. Law said.
Since August, however, Crossroads GPS has spent far more on television advertising on Senate races than American Crossroads, which must disclose its donors.
The elections commission could, theoretically, step in and rule that groups like Crossroads GPS should register as political committees, which would force them to disclose their donors. But that is unlikely because of the current make-up of the commission and the regulatory environment, campaign finance lawyers and watchdog groups said. Four out of six commissioners are needed to order an investigation of a group. But the three Republican commissioners are inclined to give these groups leeway.
Donald F. McGahn, a Republican commissioner, said the current commission and the way the Republican members, in particular, read the case law, gave such groups “quite a bit of latitude.”Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption One Delhi resident said his household had been without water for four days
More than 10 million people in India's capital, Delhi, are without water after protesters sabotaged a key canal which supplies much of the city.
The army took control of the Munak canal after Jat community protesters, angry at caste job quotas, seized it.
Keshav Chandra, head of Delhi's water board, told the BBC it would take "three to four days" before normal supplies resumed to affected areas.
All Delhi's schools have been closed because of the water crisis.
Sixteen people have been killed and hundreds hurt in three days of riots.
At the scene: Defiant India protesters stand ground in Haryana
Watch: What future for India's caste system?
Sixteen million people live in Delhi, and around three-fifths of the city's water is supplied by the canal, which runs through the neighbouring state of Haryana.
Mr Chandra said that prior warnings meant that people had managed to save water, and tankers had been despatched to affected areas of the city, but that this would not be enough to make up for the shortfall.
The army took control of parts of the canal on Monday morning, but repairs are expected to take time.
The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder, who is near Delhi's border with neighbouring Haryana state, said protesters who have set up road blocks are refusing to budge.
"We don't trust them. Let's get something in writing. Let them spell it out," one demonstrator who refused to be named told the BBC.
Image copyright Delhi Jal Board Image caption The Munak canal which was damaged by Jat protesters
Image copyright EPA Image caption Millions in the Indian capital are without running water
Image copyright EPA Image caption Families are dependent on tankers delivering water supplies
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted that the army was "trying to assess in how much time water would reach Delhi and whether any damage had been done to the canal".
Protesters went on the rampage despite a curfew and the deployment of the army, which is reported to have opened fire on them in the districts of Rohtak and Jhajjar.
Why are the Jats angry?
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sanjoy Majumder said protesters had created road blocks "effectively encircling Delhi"
The land-owning Jat community is relatively affluent and has traditionally been seen as upper caste.
They are mainly based in Haryana and seven other states in northern India.
Comprising 27% of the voters in Haryana and dominating a third of the 90 state assembly seats, they are a politically influential community. Seven of the 10 chief ministers in Haryana have been Jats.
The Jats are currently listed as upper caste but the demonstrators have been demanding inclusion in caste quotas for jobs and education opportunities that have been available to lower castes since 1991.
In March 2014 the Congress-led national government said it would re-categorise Jats as Other Backward Castes (OBC), opening the way to government job quotas.
But India's Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the Jats were not a backward community.
As jobs have dried up in the private sector and farming incomes have declined, the community has demanded the reinstatement of their backward caste status to enable them to secure government jobs.
Haryana state minister Ram Bilas Sharma said the situation was returning to normal, traffic had resumed on national highways and that railway lines between Delhi and the cities of Jaipur and Chandigarh had reopened.
Mr Sharma also confirmed that the government would introduce a bill on reservations and quotas for the Jat community in the next assembly session, although he did not say when that would be.
Meanwhile, India's federal government has said it will set up a top-level committee to look into the grievances of Jats.
The violence had earlier forced the closure of several key roads and national highways, and paralysed the railway system in northern India.The Samsung Galaxy S7 is one of the most anticipated smartphones of 2016, but in an unprecedented leak we’re able to show you how the phone will look right now.
Thanks to a series of case renders that we’ve acquired from case-maker Olixar, you can see the overall design of the Galaxy S7 — and how it looks in the FlexiShield case, of course. The design is quite similar to the Galaxy S6, but there are some important differences, too.
The front-facing camera has moved to the far right side of the top bezel. The SIM card tray has moved lower on the side, potentially to give space |
” vital evidence, and pressured inmates to finger his hand-picked suspects in return for time out of jail, prostitutes and crack cocaine. Nobody even bothered to look for the real killers. Due to recent revelations by the media, a few of Scarcella’s victims are having their convictions thrown out; a handful of men (and one woman) are being released after more than 20 years in prison. Others are still incarcerated. Scarcella, meanwhile, has been enjoying a happy, taxpayer-funded retirement since 1999.
A recent Guardian investigation explored how routine it is for the most brutal cops to be protected, honored and promoted in Chicago. “A crew of detectives…used electric shock, suffocation and mock executions to coerce confessions of more than 120 men from the 1970’s through the early 90s.” The ringleader, Jon Burge, was convicted years later on trivial charges (obstruction of justice and perjury). He served only three and a half years in prison, and is still collecting his pension. The other cops involved in these crimes have never been charged at all. Another alpha Chicago cop, Francis Valadez, was honored several times and eventually promoted to Commander, even though he’s accused of coercing six murder confessions, plus battery and assault. In one case he tortured an injured man for 36 hours to obtain a confession that was later proved false by DNA testing. His resume also includes the fatal shootings of four people–so far. His most recent killing, in August, was of Rafael Cruz Jr., an unarmed man fleeing in his car. According to the Guardian, “Valadez has garnered 131 awards across three decades on the force.”
Cops are determined to dominate every situation they encounter. They insist on immediate obedience, whether warranted or not; legal or not. Attempts by civilians to protest their treatment or assert their rights are routinely answered with intimidation and violence. This carries over into cops’ private lives too. They walk around with feelings of entitlement and superiority even when they’re not on duty. Cops flash their badges and draw their weapons during traffic incidents and barroom brawls; they terrorize their personal enemies; they often beat up their families and their “beloved” K-9 dogs. They demand special privileges and civilian submission at all times.
Every day there’s new proof that u.s. police kill, rape and brutalize with impunity. Cops are also notoriously corrupt. Nightclubs, casinos and restaurants bribe them to get special treatment. Tow companies pay them off to generate more tows. Drug dealers and crime syndicates put cops on their payrolls as shields from arrest and prosecution.
Groups of cops run protection, arms and narcotics rackets; they rob banks and carry out murder for hire and human traficking. Many have dual gang loyalties. For instance, Texas “Cop of the Year” Noe Juarez turned out to be working for Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s most vicious drug syndicates. He got them assault rifles, police scanners and access to police databases in the u.s., among other things. In the 1990’s, more than 70 supposed “anti-gang” police in L.A. were implicated during an investigation that uncovered assassinations, theft of massive amounts of impounded cocaine, routine use of false testimony and a level of brutality unusual even for the LAPD. It turned out that several of the cops were actually Bloods associates, who joined the police to get the upper hand over rival gangsters.
Corruption and outside illegal moonlighting can obviously undermine a police force if it gets too far out of hand. But a certain amount of individual criminal initiative is expected and admired. It’s normal lumpen behavior. Cops aren’t supposed to be choir boys; they’re gangsters.
Increasingly, u.s. police are encouraged to grab property, cars, electronics and jewelry from the civilians caught up in their investigations—even those who are completely innocent. Cops hold seminars to learn which items are easiest to resell, and how to “legally” get away with ripping off “little goodies,” as one enthusiastic DA calls them. In 2012, $4.3 billion worth of so-called “civil assets” were seized by police; seizures have gone up rapidly since then. Much of the loot from this “for-profit policing” goes right back into police department coffers to spend on anything they want. Some of it is handed directly to individual cops as bonuses.
Two tiny police forces in Florida—Bal Harbour Police and Glades County Sheriff’s Office—were recently discovered to have laundered over $55 million belonging to narco gangs. Under the pretext that they were conducting an “undercover investigation” into how illegal drug money got turned into legal assets, these enterprising cops accepted millions in money-laundering “commissions” from a range of criminal groups. Flush with unaccountable cash, the cops bought fancy cars, guns and computers, partied at high end resorts, and withdrew over $831,000 in cash out of a slush fund. They didn’t arrest a single “money launderer.”
Cops lie about pretty much everything. That goes with the badge. Scarcella, Burge, and Valadez are no isolated examples. It’s completely routine for cops to plant evidence, frame innocent people using false testimony, coerce confessions through torture and doctor their reports. The other gangster cops cover for them unconditionally under a strict code of silence. If civilians happen to inconveniently catch a cop in a lie, nothing serious happens to them anyway, no matter how dire the consequences for innocent people.
In the early days of the u.s., police were virtually all white settler thugs. Most of them still are. A key function that police carry out for their political sponsors—and for themselves—is to repress whatever rebellions and freelance organized street gangs emerge among oppressed peoples. Cops are eager to do this. Their own goal in carrying out repression has nothing to do with safety or security for civilians. They’re not even mainly concerned with helping their capitalist patrons. Instead, their aggressive presence in ghettos, barrios and reservations is an opportunity to advance their “careers” and to enforce their own violent gang supremacy. Within oppressed communities, cops look at rebels and street gangs as turf rivals, to be dominated and eliminated as competitors.
The police are riddled with (and sometimes led by) extreme white supremacist sub-cliques. For example, the “Lynwood Station Vikings” was just one of a series of “elite” racist sub-gangs that have emerged inside the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department over the years. Fully-blooded Vikings (including some top department officers) had “998” tattood on their ankles, referring proudly to the code for “officer-involved shooting.” Membership in this gang-within-a-gang was by invitation only. But all the cops knew about it. The walls of Lynwood Station were openly decorated with racist cartoons of Black men as well as a map of the police district drawn in the shape of Africa. Efforts to discipline the Vikings were heavily discouraged by top LASD brass, even in the face of negative publicity and numerous costly civil rights lawsuits.
Historically, membership in police gangs has served as an access point into white privilege in the u.s. For instance, immigrant Irish—a nationality that was originally considered “non-white”—took advantage of police affiliation as part of a process of “graduating” to whiteness. By participating in officially-sanctioned armed gangs to enforce ruling class “law and order”—especially, repressing people of color—Irish cops proved their loyalty to u.s. capitalism, augmented their social prestige and helped their communities move up the racial heirarchy.
Although the FBI has taken the lead in organizing the repression of political dissent in the u.s., they often count on street cops as their rank and file enforcers. The larger urban police forces have their own counterinsurgency forces, too. It was LAPD cops—350 of them—that fired round after round into the Los Angeles headquarters of the Black Panthers in 1969, (trying unsuccessfully) to murder everybody inside. It was the Philadelphia Police department that attacked a MOVE house in 1985 with automatic weapons and firebombs, killing six adults and five children, and burning down more than 50 homes in the Black community.
Cops are predators. They intimidate, bludgeon, shoot and terrorize their way into a position of power, material comfort, prestige and privilege. Their “job” is actually a hustle; a disguised protection racket through which public money is used to oppress the public; we get to pay our own oppressors. On top of that, police use their gangster power to generate opportunities for endless corruption and sadistic gratification. But what about the good cops? The idealistic, friendly ones who just want to help their community?
No good cops
Gangsters, like all of us, are friendly or unfriendly depending on their personality and the specific situation. Some criminal organizations even like to project a benevolent façade alongside the lurking threat of violence. Good public relations can certainly be an asset for a gang, just like it is for a rapacious corporation or an opportunist politician. (Consider the mobster Giovanni Gambino, who made this carefully-calibrated pitch in an interview on NBC News: “The Mafia has a bad reputation, but much of that’s undeserved. As with everything in life, there are good, bad and ugly parts….”)
But what’s most important to us about police is their actions, not their image. And contrary to the usual media propaganda, police “work” is fundamentally incompatible with idealism or community service. How friendly a gangster acts doesn’t change their basic criminality when push comes to shove.
During the very first year on the street, each rookie cop witnesses incidents of sadistic cop brutality, blatant racism and glaring corruption right in front of their eyes. More often than not, these police crimes are committed by “role models”—the ones you’re supposed to admire and imitate if you want to succeed as a cop. After witnessing or participating in repeated abuse of civilians and other gangster behavior, a rookie cop’s collaboration becomes virtually irreversible. They’ve become part of a criminal subculture. Whatever their original dreams or loyalties were, they’ve now joined a gang and accepted its code. (In D. Watkins’ The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America, an East Baltimore resident describes a cop acquaintance: “He ain’t Black no more, he’s white! Better yet, he’s blue, he’s with the biggest gang in the city.”)
I want to emphasize this last point, because I believe it’s central to analyzing cops’ position in society. There are no good cops, no “public servant” cops. This isn’t a personal thing. But nobody can be part of the constant, pervasive racism, institutional brutality and ingrained corruption of policing in the u.s. and come out with clean hands.
In that respect, police are no different than other organized crime groups. Most organized crime is actually non-violent. And many gang members want it to stay that way; they are the growers, smugglers, lookouts or salespeople, who would prefer to live a fairly normal life. That’s understandable, but it doesn’t matter much in practical, class terms. Their affiliation with a parasitic criminal enterprise, their complicity, their loyalty and their silence makes them gangsters.
The same is true of “reluctant” u.s. cops: the ones who try to avoid gratuitous violence; the ones who wish they could just have a regular “career” enforcing the law, without all the unpleasant brutality. That’s not going to happen, though. If they really wanted to enforce the law, the first thing they’d have to do is arrest their partner, or their boss. They know better. And so should we.
Working class heroes?
Many u.s. citizens evade this reality. Instead of acknowledging that cops are gangsters, a lot of civilians mentally classify them as heroic skilled workers. That’s what we were taught, after all. The script is that cops are public servants doing a dirty but necessary blue-collar job, complete with union card.
The twisted pretense that police are working class heroes resonates strongly among privileged civilians, especially the worker elite, which often shares cops’ macho values and fear of the proletariat. Once we classify cops as exemplary workers worthy of our grateful support, why would we want to tie their hands? Aren’t police “working conditions” tough enough already?
The idea that cops are working class heroes should be easy to refute, since they repress each and every freedom struggle—including, of course, the struggles of oppressed workers. Cops have no intention of carrying out any actual labor, either.
For their part, police unions are notoriously rabid defenders of cop illegality, loudly demanding an absolute free hand in terrorizing the population. Cop “labor contracts” are full of provisions preventing prosecution—or any accountability at all—for the most sadistic elements in their ranks. Still, the tendency to identify cops as salt-of-the-earth uber-workers is remarkably persistent, suggesting it is deeply rooted in u.s. class politics.
No matter how many videos and eyewitness accounts of racist, murderous cops come to light, no matter how many popular political leaders are railroaded and assassinated, no matter how many picket lines and demonstrations are viciously beaten down, there’s still a loyal audience that clings to a narrative of heroic “good cops” who are being undercut by ungrateful civilians and unfairly tarnished by a few “bad apples.”
Some civilians argue that cops should be given immunity when they use illegal violence, because they are upholding righteous “law and order.” At the same time, others argue that cop criminality is completely abnormal—something that only happens when there is a rare breakdown of discipline. Logically, these two arguments cancel each other out. If cops are already acting legally, they don’t need impunity from criminal acts. And if you give cops impunity, you can’t pretend that they are supposed to act in a legal manner. These are in fact simply two contradictory threads of a single hypocritical authoritarian ideology. Meanwhile, out in society, thugs with paychecks and unions are still just thugs.
Depending on gangsters
Cop gangs are the largest organized crime groups in most parts of the u.s. Openly displaying their weapons, oozing arrogance, they have the run of the streets. In daily life, it’s almost impossible to completely avoid them. What’s worse is this: Because the police are so institutionalized, we ourselves can easily become complicit in their criminality.
Most of us are poorly-armed; vulnerable to criminals. To our misfortune, we sometimes find ourselves depending on a group of cop criminals to defend us. That isn’t just ironic; it’s disastrous. It undermines our freedom struggles and offends our human dignity.
We rationalize that it’s the cops’ “job” to protect us. (Even though we know that repressing people isn’t really a job.) We tell ourselves that, however bad the cops may be, at least they’re official, “approved” thugs, which makes them better than those “unapproved” thugs down the block. A more practical part of our brains calculates that the cops have their own selfish reason to protect us from the other criminals: they’re maintaining their status as the dominant gang.
Calling in cops may sometimes seem like the best of our bad options. Which means we need better options.
For one thing, asking for police protection often backfires. Cops have utter contempt for civilians, especially civilians who don’t have connections or privileges. We have to be very careful how we speak to them, constantly pantimoming respect and submission. Cop aggression is notoriously volatile, and can turn on us in a split second.
But even when calling the cops doesn’t backfire in such an immediate practical way, it still damages us. When we ask cops to protect us—to take control of emergencies in our lives and and resolve our problems—that helps make their ongoing atrocities against other people more legitimate. It draws us into the orbit of police criminality. To a greater or lesser extent, they take on the role of our preferred gang, our chosen thugs. That in turn becomes a point of poisonous unity with our rulers.
Because we live surrounded by violence and insecurity, civilians are tangled up in a knot of fear, helplessness and dependency on criminal cops. We have to untangle that knot before we can become free.
The new upsurge of mass struggle against cop violence in the u.s. is a very hopeful sign. But we also have to be prepared for what happens when the struggle against police power intensifies; when cops and their paymasters feel that their dominance on the street is threatened. Some of our most important radical leaders have been assassinated by cops. Others have spent decade after decade in hellhole prisons, captured in actual warfare with cops. When revolutionary struggle rises again, there will be more captives, and more casualties.
We don’t yet have a strong enough movement to carry out widespread community self-policing or militant counter-repression. In the meantime, it’s important to understand our enemy as deeply as possible. There have been desperate cries to end police brutality for a long time. But stopping it, I think, will involve recognizing cops’ fundamental criminality. Cops in the u.s. aren’t civil servants to be reformed. They aren’t workers to be retrained. They’re gangsters.
Postscript:
Even after I became a radical, I had a hard time really comprehending that the police were my enemy. I understood the concept, intellectually. But because I lived a sheltered life, it was kind of abstract. Are those macho working class guys you call when somebody steals your car really all that bad?
The first time I was in a demonstration that was violently attacked by police, it affected me strongly. Those cops really enjoyed beating and gassing us, even after we fled. Especially after we fled. In that moment, things were not so abstract.
Later I was in other demonstrations and picket lines attacked by cops. At the same time, cops kept murdering, framing and imprisoning prominent radicals. I was outraged, shaken. These were leaders of my movement. But in retrospect, I realize that I kept drifting back into a default civilian frame of mind about cops. Yes, I was a radical activist. And pigs were pigs; I got that on some level. But even my personal negative experiences didn’t fully revolutionize my attitude towards cops.
For a few years I worked at a job site where a bunch of cops hung out. They would come by to collect their payoffs, play with their guns and dogs and swap war stories. They didn’t know my political views of course. Seeing how cops acted when their guard was down was an eye-opening experience for me. I was particularly surprised that Italian mafia guys hung out at the same place (although usually not at the same time). The owner was “connected,” but he was also in tight with the cops. It worked out fine for him. This fascinatingly ugly scene did make a lasting impression. But afterwards, my attitude about cops was still full of contradictions. These cops were acting like criminals. But were they all like that, all the time? Or did they have some kind of dual role in society?
When I began working in industrial jobs, I saw that many of my co-workers also had contradictory thoughts about cops. Attitudes would ebb and flow. The baseline assumption was that cops were some kind of uber-workers—macho and elite like us, but more so. Then suddenly, if we went out on strike, cops took on a whole different aspect. It was crystal clear that they were on the other side of the struggle. Their intent was to dominate us and help the employer. We didn’t necessarily know exactly how things were going to play out, though. Sometimes cops posed as reluctant enforcers—fellow union members who sympathized with our cause but had a job to do. Then again, sometimes they seemed like pure thugs who got a kick out of pushing us around. Eventually even the longest strikes would end, and cops would begin to slip back in the mental “heroic worker” box, until the next time. (This is clearly different from how proletarians interact with cops, which is much less ambiguous.)
What my personal experience has taught me is that denial about cops’ gangster role in society is extremely powerful, especially among the privileged. Respect for cops is a key element of the authoritarianism indoctrinated into us from birth, an element that’s constantly reinforced by u.s. culture. Pro-cop propaganda is relentless. It surrounds us every place we go—school, movies, TV, books, parents, friends. Much of the Left is vulnerable to this mindset too, especially during periods when the movement is weak. For example, lately some activists have been talking wistfully about police as “part of the 99%.” (Among other things, this clueless assertion implicitly marginalizes the prisoners of war and political prisoners held captive inside the u.s. gulags.) It seems like privileged people are always trying to make excuses for cops in our minds, even when it’s against our better judgment.
There may be a kind of stockholm syndrome at work here. Cops have so much real and mythological power over civilians that we can be seduced and intimidated into acting like their compliant hostages. On an everyday level it’s hard to treat them as enemies—it’s too frightening and depressing. In that respect civilians in the u.s. are no different from other civilians around the world who are forced to tolerate organized crime. Like Italian civilians living under the thumb of the ‘ndrangheta, submitting to the mafias yet at the same time trying to ignore them as much as possible. Or middle class Tokyo civilians, going about their daily business, pretending that yakuza syndicates don’t control big chunks of their economy using violence and intimidation. After all, cop gangsterism tends to only become a pressing issue when it crashes into our personal lives. For some people, that’s every day. But for privileged people, it may be rare.
Most of my life I viewed cops as some sort of mutant labor elite, morphing back and forth between labor aristocrats and “agents of repression.” But as wiser comrades pointed out, this just doesn’t work as a useful explanation for how cops operate in society. It mystifies them instead of explaining them. I realized finally that I needed to dig deeper and think harder about their class nature. I know that analyzing cops more accurately isn’t going to stop their crimes. But it seems like a step in the right direction.
I used to have the naive impression that gangsterism was an exotic subcultural activity on the seedier margins of capitalism. And I used to assume that the lumpen were desperate outcasts or pathalogical parasites at the bottom fringes of society. But what I think now is that organized crime has become a massive, normal feature of everyday capitalist life. It’s a complex social space that can draw in people from a variety of classes; it generates its own stratifications and internal conflicts. Most of the lumpen is made up of very poor people with radically limited options. But there are some other people who gravitate toward the lumpen not only to survive, but also to “succeed,” and to participate in male bonding and conquest. Inside the working class, there are parts of the lumpen that have a higher standard of living than the proletariat. Examples in the u.s. include many motorcycle gangs, mercenaries, mafiosi—and cops.
Lumpen activity is “an integral part of the social whole,” Rosa Luxemburg wrote. “All sections of bourgeois society are subject to such degeneration. The gradations between commercial profiteering, fictitious deals, adulteration of foodstuffs, cheating, official embezzlement, theft, burglary and robbery, flow into one another in such fashion that the boundary line between honorable citizenry and the penitentiary has disappeared.” The examples she gives of lumpen activity may sound mild compared to the rawness of crime in the u.s. these days. But her point remains: criminality is all around us, in a multitude of “legal” and “illegal” guises.
“Cops versus criminals” is the default mindset in the u.s. We’re indoctrinated to use these ideologically-burdened categories to designate opposite poles of society. But in reality cops are criminals too. They’re associates of a certain subset of criminal gang: the ones that capitalists organize, permit and encourage to violently dominate and control us. Like other gangsters, cops exist to prey on civilians and, especially, on the oppressed.
—Bromma, February, 2016by Scott Sind
When we are aware of our weaknesses or negative tendencies, we open the opportunity to work on them.
Ever had one of those moments when all you wanted to do was crawl back in bed, put a pillow over your head and shut out the world for a few hours? For a few days?
For the rest of the year?
I’m willing to bet that you have wanted to throw in the towel at some point. And it’s okay if you have. It’s a perfectly normal response, actually.
Human beings have an elaborate, built-in defense mechanism designed to keep us safe. The only problem is that the system doesn’t do a very good job of threat assessment. All dangers are equal, whether the threat is a hungry lion or the empty judgments of others. Our minds and bodies react the same way to both—we retreat back into our cave, where the soft glow of the fire keeps us safe and warm.
You’ve said it before: “It just won’t work.” “Why am I even trying this?” “I don’t know what I’m doing.” “This is stupid.” Deep down you know you’re trying to rationalize your way out of doing something that’s scary, whether it’s looking for a new job, starting a business, writing a book, or calling up your estranged sibling. And every time you rationalize, you sink further into the depths where the pressure of negativity will ultimately crush you.
A few years ago I wrote a novel. Sometimes it was easy, when the words flowed onto the page and I saw the story clearly in my head. Other times it was as if my fingers were made of lead and the story disappeared behind layers of thick fog. On those days I felt like giving up—like I was never going to finish, and even if I did, the book would be terrible.
So I quit writing. My manuscript sat there, untouched, for over a year, and I agonized over it daily because I had sunk so deeply into the rationalization that I wasn’t cut out to be a writer. Every day that I didn’t write I died a little bit inside. I knew that I should be creating, giving the characters life and using words to paint the pictures I saw in my head onto the page.
A little over a year into my creative isolation, I had an epiphany. I started thinking about my book, and my life as a writer, differently. I discovered little tricks to coax the writer within me out long enough to put words on the page. At first these were fleeting moments—maybe ten minutes here and there. But soon, and without much effort, I was spending more and more time working on my novel, enjoying the process, and even laughing off those moments when I couldn’t produce any words.
The very things that had previously driven me into isolation—fear and insecurity—actually propelled me forward now. I’d learned, through various techniques and mindset shifts, to prevent myself from sinking completely into the depths of negativity. The result? I’m now more focused and better able to climb over obstacles and wade through the challenges that come my way. I’m happy to share these tips with you so you can accomplish more, and live an abundant, more confident life.
1. Frame your questions in a positive light.
“What if I fail?”
“What will people think of me if I’m wrong?”
These kinds of questions bait us into negative thinking. By framing our decision-making this way, we’ve already primed ourselves for disappointing outcomes. We’re expecting the lion to pounce at us from the brush.
Instead, flip the questions around to highlight the positives and advantages. Not “What could go wrong,” but instead, “What could go right?” Try “This will be great” instead of “I could fail miserably.” This method of thinking helps you remain centered on the benefits rather than the drawbacks.
2. Focus on building and celebrating small habits.
Climbing out of negativity starts with a first step, no matter how small. Practicing a daily habit is a great way to start building momentum. If you’re struggling with focus, start meditating for five minutes a day. Then slowly build on that until you can focus for longer periods of time. If you’re suffering from writer’s block, write in a journal for five minutes a day. That will grow into 10 minutes, and then 20.
The most important thing is to create positive habits that you can celebrate, which naturally counteracts negativity.
3. Give yourself permission to smile and laugh.
When we’re in a negative space it’s hard to find humor in anything. Research shows that laughing and smiling can increase our levels of serotonin, the happiness hormone, and also raises our endorphin production, which creates a natural “high.” This leads to reduced stress and other psychological and physiological benefits.
A great way to start is to figure out what makes you laugh. For a few days, keep track of what kinds of things make you laugh out loud, or smile, or just generally make you feel good. Then accumulate as many of these sources as you can—books, articles, cartoons, blogs, etc. When you’re feeling particularly negative, grab one of these and escape for a few minutes. (Read The How of Happiness.)
4. Stop saying “can’t” and “won’t.”
When we want something but are struggling to accomplish it, we often sabotage our own progress by convincing ourselves that our goals are out of reach. Saying “can’t” and “won’t” are like slamming on the brakes: “I can’t write,” “I can’t do it,” “I won’t ever be able to.” Using these words in this context reinforces the negative messages. Instead, focus on what you can do: “I can write for 5 minutes a day,” and “I can figure out the steps to make it happen.”
Highlight your abilities rather than your limitations. Focus on all the possible positive outcomes…
To use another example, if you don’t travel because you’re afraid the plane “won’t” stay in the air, or that you “can’t” communicate in a foreign language, understand that the odds are in your favor and that the rewards will far outnumber the tragedies. Compare your fears to the consequences of not acting, and center yourself on the widespread realities, not the make-believe stories.
5. Be careful with “always”— and “never,” too.
“Always” and “never,” likewise, are absolutes and evoke feelings of powerlessness. Thoughts like “I always have problems with this,” or “Oh, I could never do that!” disempower us. Make small shifts into how you use language: “I’ve had these problems in the past, but I can learn to overcome them,” or “I can do that if I really want to.”
Reclaim your power by eliminating absolutes and acknowledging the possibilities.
6. Vary your environment.
Sometimes we just need different surroundings. Take a walk. If you work at home, join a co-working center. If you work in an office, take breaks outside. Go on vacation for a short time if you’re able. The more you experience, the greater the chances you’ll find enough breathing room and inspiration to pull you out of your funk.
7. Move as if your life depended on it.
Because it does!
It’s common knowledge—exercise boosts all sorts of feel-good chemicals in our bodies, not to mention it’s just plain good for you. If you’re not currently exercising at least three times a week, start now. And start small—don’t jump into a rigorous program without first acclimating your body. Walk before you run. Do bodyweight exercises before you transition to machines. You get the idea. Prime yourself for small wins and build positive habits that will last your entire life.
8. Challenge yourself.
The act of learning—whether it’s a skill, language, hobby or sport—benefits us in many ways. It takes our mind off our problems. It challenges us to focus. It heightens our feelings of accomplishment, which tends to drown out negativity. And it boosts our confidence as we learn and grow.
As I started digging myself out of my creative hole, I took on projects and hobbies that forced me to learn new skills and new ways of dealing with the struggles of being a beginner. When I finally sat down to write once again, I had a fresh perspective on the craft that opened up a wealth of new ideas.
9. Have a conversation with yourself—literally.
Journaling helps us tap into our inner problem-solver, allowing us to work out issues without over-thinking them. Getting our negative thoughts out of our heads and onto paper may help to relieve those feelings of malaise.
Choose a time of day when you’re able to remove all distractions and free-write for 5 to 10 minutes, journaling spontaneously about anything that comes to mind. It’s amazing how resilient and innovative we can be when it comes to solving our own problems through self-reflection. (Read Creative Confidence.)
10. Let go of past mistakes…
I abandoned my book partially because I’d written a section that I adored, but took the story and main character on a path that didn’t make sense. I wanted desperately to make it work, but I realized I’d written myself into a corner. Once I went back and deleted that section, the story opened up again.
Holding on to past mistakes or bad choices keeps us rooted in place, unable to grow or move forward. Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them allows us to take those lessons to heart and move past those barriers.
11. …and allow yourself to make new ones.
We learn by trying, and failing, and then trying again. Mistakes contribute to our overall experience of living, and by allowing ourselves to fail, we allow ourselves to live fully. We become attuned to the lessons our mistakes teach us, and over time we learn to appreciate them.
The next time I wrote something that made little sense or didn’t move the story forward, I didn’t hesitate to go back and rewrite it. I realized it was part of the process and not an indictment against my ability.
12. Practice random acts of kindness.
Treating others with kindness and respect helps us feel better about ourselves. When that kindness is unexpected, the reaction and gratitude of a stranger fills our positivity reservoir.
The other day a stranger in front of me paid for my Starbucks coffee. He didn’t stop for recognition, and he left the store before I could thank him. So I did the same for the person in line behind me. Her smile and genuine reaction inspired me for the rest of the day.
13. Bring fun back into your life.
What better way to escape negativity than to engage in activities that lift you up.
Plan for fun every day. See a movie. Play a game. Remember what used to light you up, and do more of those things. Get back into your inner child’s mind, when every new experience filled you with wonder and awe—new experiences are a great way to do this.
14. Set boundaries for family and friends (no gossip, judgment or unsolicited “advice”).
Gossip can be fun, certainly. As humans, we tend to take pleasure in drama and the mistakes of others. But this is inherently negative energy. Take a stand against this kind of interaction—tell your friends and family that gossip is off-limits. Same thing with judgment, and with unsolicited advice directed at what you’re trying to accomplish. Do your best to set boundaries keep external negativity away.
15. Don’t take other people’s negativity personally.
I’m taking this one right out of Marc and Angel’s book—literally. Here’s a quote:
“Don’t take other people’s negativity personally. Most negative people behave negatively not just to you, but to everyone they interact with. What they say and do is a projection of their own reality—their own attitude. Even when a situation seems personal—even if someone insults you directly—it oftentimes has nothing to do with you. Remember, what others say and do, and the opinions they have, are based entirely on their own self-reflection.”
16. Get out of your head and get present.
Too often we obsess over what still needs to be done. We spend so much time running different scenarios in our head that we lose track of the good, the beautiful, and the uplifting that’s already ours. Rather than stew over something that hasn’t yet happened, take the time to express gratitude for the love presently in your life. Choose to focus on the things that are important to you today.
Marc and Angel have shared some powerful thoughts about getting out of your head by changing your beliefs. Check them out.
17. Give yourself room to breathe.
Sometimes all we need is a little space.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to be a certain way that anything short of perfection sends us into self-loathing.
Take a step back, just breathe, and lean into the beauty of your quirks. Lean into being right where you are, just the way you are. Don’t try to be perfect. Just be an excellent example of being human.
Afterthoughts
The most successful people have experienced negativity at various points along their journeys. Maybe their negativity was a result of fear or feelings of inadequacy, as mine was. Or perhaps they suffered failures or disappointments that put them back at square one.
Whatever the cause, there wouldn’t be any success stories without corresponding stories of struggle. The people who persevere and ultimately achieve their goals do so because they learn how to win the battle against soul-crushing negativity. Whether or not they achieve recognition and fame for it, they become great because of their ability to keep on going in the face of the mental obstacles they encounter along the way.
You, too, have what it takes to be one of the greats.
Your turn…
How has soul-crushing negativity affected you? What challenges have you faced, and how have you conquered them? What would you add to this list?
Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
Author Bio: Scott Sind is the author of ActivateThought.com, where he writes about leadership, success, creativity, and professional development. He’s on a mission is to help burned-out employees and business owners build a life that enables them to do meaningful, rewarding work they truly love. Grab his free mini-guide 6 Surprising Ways to Avoid Burn Out.
Photo by: Katarina JuarezFisker have been hard at work behind the scenes, locking down over half a billion dollars in DoE funding plus an additional $115 million in private sector funding so far this year. They are reportedly on track to begin sales of their Fisker Karma luxury hybrid later this year and with a pre-order book already 1,600 names long it seems they’ll have no shortage of customers. They are having the first generation of Karma sedans built by Valmet in Finland (they build Porsche Boxters as |
global IT heavyweights but it’s a paradigm that the federal government is aiming to change with the launch of an ICT Procurement Taskforce.
Assistant minister for digital transformation Angus Taylor said that the opportunity to widen the scope of how government agencies procure new technology solutions is too good to ignore.
Read Next
“We’ve got to let the outside in; government needs to be porous. We need to open up our ICT contracts to smaller players to solve Government problems,” Mr Taylor said.
“To capitalise on digital solutions in the private sector, we need to remove barriers for start-ups and SMEs who want to pitch their ideas and win Government ICT work.”
With procurement seen as the main gateway for technology providers to get their solutions into the public sector, Mr Taylor said that the existing mechanisms will need to be streamlined.
Speaking at an Open Opportunity forum in Canberra, Assistant Minister Taylor said a future procurement platform should be able ‘to ingest and provide technology’.
“In this framework you would be able to build on Government platforms to provide services and solutions. These solutions may be based entirely or partially on high quality Government data,” he said.
The taskforce is the latest initiative emanating from Mr Taylor’s office, having recently reshaped the Digital Transformation Office (DTO) into the Digital Transformation Agency to drive the government’s digital agenda.
The new agency is responsible for co-ordinating and integrating digital delivery across government. It will also look to provide greater transparency on the return on investment from government-led ICT and digital projects.
While any move to loosen the restrictive ICT procurement welcome will be welcomed by the local industry, the taskforce faces the arduous task of rewiring established methodology and an internal culture.
Technology adviser and CEO of Huxxer Corporation, Antony Harrowell, said the biggest hurdle facing smaller tech outfits is getting on the panel in the first place.
“The existing framework is so onerous that most start-ups just can’t compete with a more established player, especially at a federal level.”
There’s no reason that a local provider can’t provide the desired solution but they are simply not going to get a look in,” he added.
Part of the problem, according to Me Harrowell, is that agencies are often unwilling to get out of their “comfort zone.”
“The tender-based model and the way they are assessed immediately locks out companies that may have good ideas but don’t always fit the bill as far as keywords are concerned.”
The taskforce is expected to report back to the government in early 2017. Submissions can be made at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet website.
Supratim Adhikari Technology Editor Melbourne
Setting the agenda for Australia's $150BN agribusiness sector The program for Australia's premier agribusiness conference - The Global Food Forum - is set. Hear from more than 30 industry leaders including PepsiCo's CEO, Danny Celoni, Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of A2 Milk Company, Barry Irvin, Executive Chairman, Bega Cheese and Costco's Managing Director, Patrick Noone. Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park Book Now
Read NextIn the world of Windows Phone one it’s easy to forget that companies besides Nokia make devices. They tend to dominate the airwaves, but other companies do make some solid devices out there running Windows Phone. One of those devices is the Samsung ATIV S. That with a little bit of push from Samsung could have been so much more. If you happen to be holding one of those devices unlocked and free of carrier branding you might be able to get the GDR2 update for it right now.
Our pals over in Germany at WPArea.de have been receiving tips and screenshots showing off the Samsung ATIV S humming along at OS version 8.0.10327.77 – which as you remember is GDR2.
What can these folks look forward to in it? You’ll be getting some small improvements in usability and performance within the Xbox Music app. FM radio is now supported as long as you plug in a pair of headphones. Data Sense is included. Skype and other VoIP apps (like Lync) have improved stability and performance. Improved HTML5 compatibility in Internet Explorer. You can select your favorite lens to automatically open when you press the physical camera button. IBM Notes Traveler and Sina Weibo (China), CalDAV and CardDAV support.
Oddly, the folks over in Deutschland aren’t seeing FM Radio or Data Sense show up in their update to GDR2.
Have an unlocked/unbranded Samsung ATIV S? Check to see if you have an update and let us know below!
Thanks for the tip Enis!
Source: WPArea.DEImage copyright Getty Images Image caption Lauri Love is an electrical engineering student
A group of MPs says there will be "potentially fatal consequences" unless the government halts the extradition of an alleged computer hacker to the US.
Lauri Love, 32, from Stradishall, Suffolk, who has Asperger syndrome, is suspected of hacking into FBI, US Central Bank and Nasa systems.
Campaigners want President Trump to be asked to allow the student to be tried in the UK.
A government spokesman said it was for a judge to decide on extradition cases.
Deep concern
In a letter to the Attorney General Jeremy Wright, which was also sent to Downing Street, a cross-party group of MPs said "eminent experts" judged Mr Love would be at "very high" risk of suicide if sent to the US for trial, and urged them to pass on their concerns to their American counterparts.
Naomi Colvin, from the Courage Foundation, which runs Mr Love's defence fund and support campaign, said: "To the best of my knowledge, and that of Lauri's legal team and his family, the UK Government has not made any kind of representation to Donald Trump asking for us to be able to try Lauri here".
In October 2016, more than 100 MPs wrote to the-then president Barack Obama calling on him to block Mr Love's extradition, stressing their "deep concern" for his safety.
Image caption Mr Love has a long history of serious mental health issues
Mr Love was first arrested at home in 2013 and had computer equipment seized by British police who then released him on bail.
He was not charged in the UK, where the investigation into him was dropped.
Mr Love was given permission at the end of April to challenge his extradition to the US.
The appeal will be heard on 28 and 29 November at the Royal Courts of Justice when Mr Love's legal team is expected to offer new evidence.Defenseman Jeremy Lauzon and forward Zach Senyshyn - both 2015 draft picks - will be among 32 players competing during the camp, which will run from Dec. 10-14 in Blainville, Quebec.
BostonBruins.com - Two Boston Bruins prospects have been named to Team Canada's selection camp roster for the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship.
Lauzon, a second-round pick in 2015, has played just 10 games this season for Rouyn-Noranda (QMJHL) because of injury, tallying two goals and six assists with a plus-8 rating.
The 19-year-old Senyshyn has tallied nine goals and eight assists in 21 games for Sault Ste. Marie (OHL). The 15th overall pick in 2015, Senyshyn has tallied 81 goals over the last four seasons for the Greyhounds.
Canada opens the tournament on Dec. 26 against Russia at Air Canada Centre in Toronto.Screencap of TWiT.tv's Lisa and Leo Laporte.
BitTorrent, the biggest name in file sharing, is already responsible for a huge chunk of internet traffic every day. Now the company has decided to double down with a nearly real-time livestreaming service called BitTorrent Live.
BitTorrent says BitTorrent Live will not be competing with the burgeoning Facebook Live. "Think of it more like an alternate to Hulu," Christian Averill, vice president of marketing, told Motherboard.
However, the fact that it is hosting livestreams means BitTorrent Live will be competing on some level with YouTube Live, Twitch, and other live broadcasting platforms.
Its focus seems to be on professionally-created content, however, rather than the type of low-production value stunts Facebook Live is becoming known for. Only BitTorrent's partners will be able to use the platform to stream.
In a release, BitTorrent emphasized that since the company's founding 12 years ago, it has "changed the way the internet works, and more than once." Now it's hoping to do that again by "fixing the way live video streaming works."
While pre-packaged programming—think Netflix, Youtube, Amazon's streaming services for TV shows and movies—has benefitted from "enormous innovation" in the way it's distributed online, BitTorrent says "there has been very little innovation around the distribution of live video on the internet."
It will be fascinating to see if BitTorrent can make a name for its live product through either stability or its range of programming
The new service will be supported by BitTorrent's peer-to-peer livestreaming protocol, which the company said will make it as stable as over-the-air TV.
Several channels featuring live events are on board for the launch, spanning sports, news, and tech. One of the sports-focused channels is Fightbox, which covers MMA and boxing. The news channels on the free tier are an interesting balance that includes live programming from conservative outlet Newsmax as well as OpenNews TV, which BitTorrent's release describes as "live video talk shows from the best progressive talk radio personalities." Leo Laporte's TWiT.tv Netcast Network with its suite of more than 20 online shows will also be using BitTorrent Live.
As anyone who's ever used a live-streaming service even once knows, none of them are perfect or stable. It will be fascinating to see if BitTorrent can make a name for its live product through either stability or its range of programming.
BitTorrent seems to have cable and satellite TV in its sights as well. According to the company's release, the future of BitTorrent Live sounds a lot like a cable package. It will include "subscription based, ad supported, and Pay Per View premium tiers."
"BitTorrent Live is the platform that can turn large scale live streaming into a business model," Eric Schwartz, BitTorrent Live's vice president of media, said in a statement.There are two major reasons why we should all give Greek food a try. Firstly, Greek cuisine is a mother of all western cuisines. Its 4000 thousand years long culinary tradition and ingredients adopted from the East have influenced the cuisines of Europe and beyond in the best ways possible!
DISCOVER GREAT RECIPES, TIPS & IDEAS!
Secondly, Greek cuisine is a Mediterranean cuisine. We have already discussed the benefits of the Mediterranean diet and stressed the importance of using fresh ingredients like olive oil, vegetables, grains, seafood, and fish. Greek cuisine encompasses all of these, but also adds meat, both white and red (including poultry, lamb, pork, and rabbit). Other widely used foods include cheese, yogurt, bread, olives, zucchini, eggplant, herbs, and lemon juice. As far as sweets are concerned, there’s an abundance of fruits, nuts, and honey; however, that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
The good news is we don’t need to travel to Greece in order to enjoy delicious Greek food! Imagine days filled with tzatziki, gyros, baklava, and frappes. Ready to go to Greece? Brace yourselves, some seriously tasty food is coming your way!
#1 Gyros
Gyros are the first Greek food to try after setting foot in this country. There are gyro stands and restaurants at almost every corner throughout the country. Gyros are not only utterly tasty and authentic; they’re also very fulfilling and, on top of it all, ridiculously cheap!
Gyros are made of pita bread, a slightly leavened flatbread, wrapped around chicken or pork. The meat, which is roasted vertically and turning on the spit, is called ‘gyro’. The meat is sliced and then combined with tomatoes, onions, French fries, lettuce, tzatziki, and various condiments (ketchup, mustard, etc.) Warning: Gyros are quite messy to eat, which makes them even more satisfying!
Dilly Grecian Gyros
#2 Greek Salad
People in Greece serve Greek salad with almost every meal, as a starter or side dish. It contains tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and feta cheese cubes. Onions, bell peppers, and lettuce can be added optionally. Dressings can vary depending on personal preferences but they usually include olive oil, vinegar (or lemon juice), salt, and pepper. Oregano is often added for an extra Mediterranean twist!
Sunshine Greek Salad
#3 Moussaka
When you and your big hungry family decide to have Greek food, enter the first taverna and order a moussaka. This juicy and creamy dish has a number of versions in the Balkan and Middle Eastern countries but in Greece, the traditional recipe is made with sautéed eggplant, minced meat (usually lamb), and tomato, all covered a white, savory sauce and baked until brown. Onion, garlic, and spices (salt, pepper, cinnamon, allspice) are also commonly added. When it comes to moussaka, the serving temperature is very important; it should be served warm in order to prevent it from falling apart.
Light and Easy Moussaka
#4 Tzatziki
To most people in the western countries, tzatziki is the first association for Greek food. This simple and yet spectacular sauce has many variations but it is essentially made of yogurt, garlic, olive oil, as well as fresh herbs like mint and dill. Cucumbers (finely chopped or grated) can also be added. Tzatziki tastes best when served chilled and makes beautiful combinations with freshly-fried foods like potato pancakes, breaded vegetables, fried chicken and more!
Creamy Tzatziki Sauce with Garlic and Dill
#5 Souvlaki
Souvlaki translates as ‘skewered meat’ and is one of the most beloved Greek foods. It is comprised of skewered & seasoned meat, complemented with tzatziki sauce. However, the fact that the word ‘souvlaki’ is also used to refer to any type of meat wrapped in a pita can be rather confusing to inexperienced Greek food enthusiasts, so beware when you order it!
Pork Souvlaki with Lemon Rice
#6 Saganaki
Saganaki is a term which encompasses a number of dishes prepared in a small pan. The most famous Greek food belonging to this category is the appetizer made of cheese, fried until bubbly, seasoned with lemon juice & pepper and served with bread. Other Greek foods cooked in a saganaki frying pan include mussels saganaki and shrimp saganaki, both of which include tomato sauce, spices, and feta cheese.
Shrimp Linguine in a Tomato and Feta Sauce a.k.a Shrimp Saganaki Linguine
#7 Pastitsio
Pastitsio, also known as Greek lasagna, is a baked pasta dish which includes ground meat and sauce. The typical Greek version is made with a bucatini layer on the bottom (or another kind of tubular pasta), followed by ground meat (beef is most commonly used, sometimes lamb and veal), tomatoes, as well as spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, or allspice. Pastitsio is covered in a sauce which can be either Béchamel or egg-based custard. Finally, cheese is sprinkled on top. This Greek food is usually served as a main course, accompanied by a salad.
Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna) with Greens
#8 Baklava
If you’d been to Greece without tasting baklava, you’ll need to go back as soon as possible and remedy this wrongful doing! Baklava is a rich, very sweet dessert made of layers of crispy filo pastry and filled with chopped nuts.
After baking, this sweet Greek food is covered in a sticky sherbet (boiled water & sugar) or honey, which is then left to get absorbed into the pastry. Besides in Greece, baklava is also found in almost all Levant, Balkan, and Middle Eastern countries. What sets the Greek variety apart, though, is the fact that it is supposedly made of 33 layers of filo pastry, one for each year of Christ’s life.
Baklava Rolls
#9 Loukoumades
You’re relaxing on a beautiful Greek beach when suddenly you’re startled by a loud “Loukoumadeeeees!” Don’t worry, it’s only the vendors who sell tasty Greek donuts. Traditionally, loukoumades are small golden balls of fried dough sprinkled with sweet syrup, nuts, powdered sugar, and/or cinnamon. Modern varieties of this sweet Greek food can be filled with chocolate cream or fruit jams. Whichever variety you decide to try, you can expect a soft & fluffy inside and a crispy outside. Don’t forget to pair them with a frappe for a perfect summer satisfaction!
Loukoumades – Greek Donuts
#10 Greek Coffee
When it comes to coffee, there are two authentic Greek varieties to choose from. The first one is Ellinikos, a type of coffee regularly made in almost every Greek household and usually served in a traditional copper pot called ‘briki’. Ellinikos can be made with three different levels of sweetness – very sweet, medium, and no sugar.
DISCOVER GREAT RECIPES, TIPS & IDEAS!
The other popular coffee variety is frappe. Frappe is an iced, foamy drink made of instant coffee granules and water. Besides refreshment, Greek frappe offers an instant wake-up at zero calories!
I believe that food should not only taste good, but make you feel good as well and that is why I am so interested in exploring ingredients, preparing meals, and finding ways to make the whole cooking experience fun and exciting! Being a blogger for MyGreatRecipes unites my two passions – food and writing, and I am enjoying every second of it!The Yemeni military has announced the manufacture of a medium range ballistic missile dubbed the Qaher M2.
The domestically-built missile, which weighs 350 kilograms and has a range of 400 kilometers, was unveiled during a ceremony on Tuesday.
A picture of Yemen’s domestically built Qaher M2 missile released by the Arabic-language al-Masirah television network on March 28, 2017
According to a statement released by the Yemeni army, the Qaher M2 was announced after three successful test launches on Saudi military facilities.
Read More:
Meanwhile, Yemeni snipers have killed three Saudi troops in the kingdom’s Najran region.
The attacks by the Yemeni forces against Saudi targets are carried out in retaliation for Riyadh’s military aggression against its impoverished neighbor, which was launched in March 2015.
Read More:
The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, says the Saudi campaign has claimed the lives of at least 10,000 Yemenis and left 40,000 others wounded.The main factors influencing the amount of physical exercise people carry out are their self-perceived ability and the extent of their desire to exercise. A study of 5167 Canadians, reported in the open access journal BMC Public Health, has shown that psychological concerns are the most important barriers to an active lifestyle.
Sai Yi Pan, from the Public Health Agency of Canada, led a team of researchers who carried out a study which examined data from a nationwide series of telephone interviews. She said "Our findings highlight the need for health promotion programs to enhance people's confidence and motivation, as well as providing education on the health benefits of physical activity".
One interview question asked participants how confident they were that they could regularly do a total of 30 minutes of moderate physical activity (PA) three or four times a week and a total of 60 minutes of light PA each day. This'self-efficacy' score was consistently found to be related to higher PA across gender, age group, education level and family income level. According to the authors, "Confidence in one's personal ability to carry out exercise plays a central role in the direction, intensity and persistence of health-behavior change. People who have higher PA self-efficacy will perceive fewer barriers to PA, or be less influenced by them, and will be more likely to enjoy PA".
Likewise, participants were asked to what extent they intended to be physically active over the next six months. This 'intention score' was another important independent correlate of physical activity.
The strong effects of self-efficacy and intention on PA suggest that interventions designed to increase PA should target these factors. The authors conclude that, "Future research is needed to identify how those influences can be optimally incorporated into interventions that will increase people's belief in their ability and motivation/intention to be physically active".
Source: BioMed CentralUbuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin Beta 1 has been released with new HUD menus enabled by default. However, new experimental 'Locally Integrated Menus' (LIM) are still not there.
LIM may land in Precise as a Feature Freeze Exception or may be available in next Ubuntu 12.10 release. However, if you have installed latest Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1, these menus can already be installed from PPA.
If Locally Integrated Menus are enabled, they will totally replace auto-hiding global menu on top panel. These menus are integrated in window decorations itself. A small icon indicates LIM and when clicked, you get all the options in a drop-down menu.
Check out the video:
You can test LIM by running the commands below. Please note that they are still in development so there can be issues.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/lim
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
To enable LIM run the command below:
gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.appmenu menu-mode locally-integrated
To revert, run the command:
gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.appmenu menu-mode global
Use PPA-Purge if you want to remove packages installed by LIM PPA:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:unity-team/limGiant Pyramid of Captured German Helmets from WWI
Grand Central Terminal, New York, 1918
Pyramid of German helmets near Grand Central Terminal: black-and-white photoprint, ca. 1918: View of the employees of the New York Central Railroad, assembled in Victory Way, showing the pyramid of captured German helmets, with Grand Central Terminal in the background. Two cannons are shown at the left and right. [Source]
Any history buffs know what figure lies at the top of the pyramid? Some commenters have speculated that it may be Nike the Goddess of Victory.
Beyond a well-framed shot, I find this photograph interesting for the symbolism, sociological impact and historical significance. Many people may find the sight of so many ‘enemy’ helmets too macabre with each helmet representing a dead or captured soldier. And how does such a public display affect the psyche of citizens? To be located near Grand Central Terminal means it would have been seen by a lot of people.
The cannons in the foreground, the numerous flags, the eagles atop the pillars; the symbolism in this shot is very powerful. And what of the pyramid itself? Is it a frame with just an exterior lining of helmets, or does the entire structure consist of them?Highways and bridges -- and other critical parts of the nation's transportation infrastructure such as railways -- need serious upgrades and repairs.
How serious? The American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. infrastructure a D+ in terms of condition and performance.
But federal transportation funding has been highly uncertain for years. And this year is no exception.
The Highway Trust Fund, which is primarily supported by the federal gas tax, is facing a shortfall this summer. So if Congress doesn't act soon, the government will have to slow payments to states.
And that would put many projects in jeopardy at the height of highway repair season.
The questions are how much more do lawmakers want to dedicate to the Highway Trust Fund, and where do they want the money to come from?
It's not just a short-term question. The Trust Fund is projected to spend more than it takes in for years to come.
One reason: The federal gas tax hasn't been raised from 18.4 cents a gallon for 20 years.
Related: Gas taxes: What you pay
Had it been adjusted for inflation all along, it would be about 29 cents today, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And the 24.4 cents diesel tax, which also provides dedicated highway funding, would be closer to 39 cents per gallon.
"We are trying to build a 2014 infrastructure system with 1993 dollars. This is obviously an untenable formula," the ASCE notes on its blog.
Another reason for anticipated shortfalls over the next decade: More fuel-efficient cars.
The engineering group, along with the AAA, are proponents of raising the federal gas tax.
Some lawmakers are as well. They've proposed raising the per-gallon tax gradually over a few years and then tying it to inflation thereafter.
To date, however, lawmakers' have simply chosen to add to what the gas tax brings in with additional money from general federal revenue -- an estimated $55 billion since the end of 2008.
General revenue now accounts for more than 25% of spending on federal surface transportation programs, according to transportation expert Emil Frankel, a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who just published a new paper on the issue.
Frankel said policymakers should decide whether they want to fund transportation investment by a hybrid of user fees and general revenue, or solely by user fees, the way electricity and water services are.
It's a question lawmakers are expected to dodge -- at least this summer.
The most likely scenario is that Congress will cut a deal to temporarily shore up the fund using general revenue, because proposing a gas tax hike, while never popular, could prove toxic in an election year.
"This is about jobs and local politics and fixing potholes," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist for the Potomac Research Group.Carpool Karaoke’s next pit stop? Broadway.
The June 6 installment of CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden will feature the latest edition of the viral sing-your-hits-in-a-moving-vehicle bit — and this one is tied to the Tonys, which Corden is hosting.
EW has learned that Hamilton mastermind and 2016’s likely Tony darling Lin-Manuel Miranda will take a seat in Corden’s music mobile, and the pair will be joined by Audra McDonald (who stars in Shuffle Along), Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson (who’s currently on Broadway in Fully Committed), and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt actress Jane Krakowski (Tony-nominated this year for She Loves Me). On the set list? Plenty of show tunes.
Selena Gomez has also filmed a Carpool Karaoke segment that is scheduled to air in late June. Corden’s recent passengers include Nick Jonas, Demi Lovato, Gwen Stefani, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Jennifer Lopez.
The Tony Awards can be seen live on CBS at 8 p.m. ET on June 12.Here’s the mildly irritating truth of the developing wearables era: Your favorite wrist gadget might give you a skin rash.
That much became clear when Fitbit Force users began posting images of their unsightly rashes on Fitbit’s forums last month. The red, blotchy rashes were showing up underneath the area where the Fitbit’s battery and charging port reside. One user was diagnosed with contact dermatitis, and may have a permanent scar from the blistering and scabbing that eventually occurred.
Similar complaints have appeared on Engadget’s forums, and photos of especially nasty rashes have been published by the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC News.
Fitbit confirmed to Consumerist that the fitness band’s materials could cause a rash for some users, and that those users can either get a refund or exchange the band for a different product. The company says it tests its products to satisfy “a variety of internationally accepted standards” for material safety.
“As with any jewelry or watch, numerous factors could cause a skin irritation, such as nickel sensitivity (surgical stainless steel is an alloy containing traces of nickel), reactions to bacteria that can accumulate in wristbands, or a sensitivity to the material of the band elastomer,” Fitbit’s statement reads. To wit: You’ll find occasional complaints about skin rashes for the Pebble smartwatch and the Jawbone Up as well.
In other words, there’s always a chance the latest and greatest smartwatch could be rash-inducing, and while Fitbit’s problem is getting the most attention, it surely won’t be the last time we hear of this sort of thing.
Just wait until it happens to Apple. Rashgate, anyone?Chicago native Gina Rodriguez said she will play a Chicago paramedic "who happens to be a lesbian and an ex-addict" in the upcoming science-fiction drama "Annihilation."
Rodriguez, who grew up in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side, said "Annihilation" is about five women who are going into the Shimmer, an entity that's starting to destroy the world.
"So we're trying to stop it. We have guns, we're doing some (expletive) stunts and it's a brilliant storyline," said Rodriguez, who plays Anya Thorensen. Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh also star. A release date has not yet been announced.
Rodriguez, 32, revealed the new details about her "Annihilation" role as part of her interview for the cover of the October issue of Latina magazine. Rodriguez shows off her shaved head, a controversial look she embraced for "Annihilation."
"I think it all plays into the idea of being your own hero and not feeling like you have to live up to other people's expectations. I am not my beauty. Who I am is not my (expletive) hair, and to be an actor is to transform," Rodriguez said.
"To represent a community is to commit, to give my entire all. So if I'm going to represent Latinos in the industry and in art, if I'm going to represent my little cousins in Chicago, they're going to know that I went full out. Who are we afraid of? What are we afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is we die. Anything else you can handle."
Rodriguez is on a roll for magazine covers. She was also the face of the September issue of Health magazine to promote her fall projects.
The third season of her CW series "Jane the Virgin" is set to premiere 8 p.m. Oct. 17. She also stars in "Deepwater Horizon," based on the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The film is due out Sept. 30.
RELATED STORIES:
Gina Rodriguez transforms into Lil Wayne for 'Lip Sync Battle'
Watch Gina Rodriguez teach Elmo ABC in Spanish
Check out the latest movie reviews from Michael Phillips and the Chicago Tribune.BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Wearing big hair, loads of makeup and high heels, small-town drag queen Ambrosia Starling is the new worst nightmare of suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Moore has called out Starling twice by name in recent days while defending himself against allegations of violating judicial canons with his opposition to same-sex marriage. During a news conference and in a written statement, Moore cited the cross-dressing entertainer as a reason he’s at risk of losing his job for the second time since 2003.
That’s fine with Starling, who helped lead an anti-Moore rally on the steps of the Alabama Supreme Court building in January. Opponents that day filled out more than 40 complaints against Moore, who already was the subject of other complaints and now faces removal from office if convicted of violating judicial ethics.
“If it takes a drag queen to remind you that liberty and justice is for all, here I am,” Starling said Tuesday between sips of coffee.
Moore contends the effort to oust him is unfounded and politically motivated.
Born and raised in the southeast Alabama city of Dothan, Starling is a gay man who dresses up like a woman to perform drag shows. Most days, the 43-year-old Starling dresses like a male and goes to a regular job, referring to himself as “he.”
But the entertainer prefers the pronoun “she” when dressed as Ambrosia Starling, a stage name for drag shows. Fearful of losing his day job or endangering others in a Deep South state where many gays still fear violence or discrimination, Starling agreed to an interview on the condition that only the stage name was used.
“I have a 71-year-old mother who lives with me that I have to worry about,” Starling said. “Her well-being and safety is No. 1 for me.”
Starling wore her drag outfit to that demonstration against Moore outside the Supreme Court five months ago. In a long blue dress and light-colored coat, Starling referred to Moore as a bigot and asked crowd members to submit complaints against Moore to the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission, which accused the Republican Moore of wrongdoing on Friday, resulting in his suspension.
This Story Filed UnderThe dungeon at Montbazon just south of Tours is claimed to be what remains of the oldest castle in France.
Earth-and-timber fortifications proved entirely inadequate to protect western europeans from the Viking and Hungarian incursions of the ninth and tenth centuries. Although motte-and-bailey castles were successfully used by William of Normandy to conquer and subdue England in the late eleventh century, construction of stone castles in London and Colchester seems to indicate that he recognized that these earth-and-timber structures were but temporary defenses for his kingdom. More permanent fortifications, made of masonry, were needed to defend the lands of Europe and their inhabitants from foreign attacks and domestic rebellions.
Yet, despite the obvious need for stone castles and the fact that by the end of the twelfth century they dotted the landscape of every medieval principality, one of the most difficult dates to determine in the history of medieval military technology is when they began to be built in Europe. Unless the historian of fortifications is willing to accept the early-tenth-century Italian charters for stone castles, which are without archaeological confirmation, there are neither written sources nor archaeological evidence to prove the existence of a stone castle before the late tenth century.
This was a period of instability and lack of strong central government throughout all of Europe, a condition that seems to have led to experimentation in fortification construction, experimentation that probably produced stone castles. As in the case of the motte-and-bailey castle, the late-tenth- and early-eleventh-century count of Anjou, Fulk Nerra, may be credited as the initiator of this new defensive construction.
Fulk was faced with almost continual conflict throughout his reign, from both outside and inside his territory, and he countered by building fortifications. Fulk fortified all of his borders with castles, at least 30 major strongholds in all. Frequently, these became the targets of his enemies, but rarely did they fall. Moreover, Fulk’s own offensive forces, quartered in these fortifications, were able to make extensive attacks into his enemies’ lands, ultimately giving him much more territory at the expense of his neighbors.
Most of Fulk Nerra’s fortifications were constructed using earth and timber, and some of them were motte-and-bailey castles. However, at least two, at Langeais and at Montbazon, seemed to have been constructed in stone. Both of these castles played important roles in Fulk Nerra’s castle-building strategy. Langeais was built on the Loire River, and together with the fortress at Amboise, which had been constructed upstream by Fulk’s father, Geoffrey Greymantle, controlled the entire region. Montbazon was built to the east of Langeais, on the Indre River, and provided defense for a southern route of communication with the fortresses of Amboise, Langeais, and Loches.
It has been suggested that the stone ruins at both sites date from Fulk’s reign. The ruins of Langeais reveal a tower keep (also called a donjon) originally 15 to 16 meters high with an outer rectangular perimeter measuring 17.5 by 10 meters. The walls were built on a shallow crushed-rock foundation that in places is only 70 centimeters below the surface. The walls were made of ashlar, and measured between 1.2 and 1.7 meters thick. The fill between the ashlar frame was composed of limestone and mortar. It was built not on a man-made motte, but on a natural rise of relatively low height. No wooden elements survive, but it is apparent that the tower was divided by wooden floors into three levels and that access was gained by a wooden door and staircase.
That these are the ruins of Fulk Nerra’s castles is disputed. Fulk’s castle at Langeais is first mentioned in documents dating to 993/994, and three historians, J. F. Verbruggen, Marcel Deyres, and Gabriel Fournier, claim that what is mentioned there was nothing more than a wooden fortress. The stone keep, in ruins today, did not replace it until the late eleventh century and then was not built as a military structure but as a domicile. Disputing their conclusions are Pierre Héliot, J. F. Fino, Bernard S. Bachrach, and Philippe Contamine, who contend that the stone tower at Langeais was indeed Fulk Nerra’s late-tenth-century fortress and that it was constructed for defensive purposes. As proof, they claim that the extensive and unsuccessful siege operation that Odo I, count of Blois, undertook there in 996 could only have occurred if the structure was a stone fortress.
The dating of the stone fortress at Montbazon to Fulk’s reign is also disputed. Although built in a similar rectangular pattern to Langeais, the keep at Montbazon was much larger. It measured 19.65 by 13.75 meters at the base and stood between 28 and 30 meters high. The walls were also thicker than at Langeais, measuring between 2 and 2.4 meters. There may also have been an exterior (or curtain) wall with a tower built on its northeast corner.
Fulk Nerra’s Montbazon castle dates to the early eleventh century, as a written reference of 1005/6 attests to its completion by that time. Again it is Héliot’s and Bachrach’s contentions that the stone castle that now lies in ruin there today is Fulk Nerra’s, while Deyres claims that it should be dated after 1050, although even he admits that stylistically it could have been built earlier.
The dispute is perhaps inconclusive, but what may ultimately shift the argument in the |
the grid.
On his warm up lap he ran over one of the kerbs at the Acque Minerali chicane. He quickly slowed down and quickly turned the wheel a few times and decided everything was fine and decided to proceed on a fast lap. However, sadly everything was not fine. He had hit the kerb hard and had weakened the front wing. Heading into the 190mph+ Villeneuve curva his front wing failed. With no front downforce Ratzenberger had no chance of making the turn. The car speared off the track. Incredibly there was no tyre barrier; instead there was a concrete wall.
Ratzenberger slammed in the wall and from the data from his car it has been determined he was doing 195 mph. The survival cell did exactly was what it was meant to do. However, this was before the invention of the HANS device. As he hit the wall the belt held his torso down but there was nothing restraining his head. His head snapped forward.
As the car spun down towards Tosa it was clear by Ratzenberger's head movements that he was at best unconscious and that he was badly injured. Doctors were there immediately and doing everything they could to resuscitate the driver. He was airlifted to the hospital in Bologna but nothing could be done and he was pronounced dead. He died from a Basilar Skull Fracture. This is the same injury that took the lives of Dale Earnhardt, Gonzalo Rodriguez and Greg Moore.
The death of Ratzenberger was the first in a Grand Prix car for 8 years and the first at a weekend for 12 years. Ayrton Senna in particular was utterly devastated. When the medical team was trying to save Roland, Senna took a car and drove straight to the crash sight to check on the condition of Roland and to see if he could do anything.
When Senna found out later that Ratzenberger had been killed he was distraught. It ended up with him having a conversation with Professor Sid Watkins that Watkins later put in his book. I advise anyone reading this to try and get a copy. This is what was said.
Sid Watkins: What else do you need to do? You have been world champion three times; you are obviously the quickest driver. Give it up and let's go fishing"
Ayrton: "Sid, there are certain things over which we have no control. I cannot quit, I have to go on.
24 Hours later Senna was dead. Looking at those statements there is something very prophetic about it.
Millions went to the Senna funeral and suddenly Roland seemed forgotten. Max Mosley was one of the few that did go to the funeral of Ratzenberger. He summed it up like this “‘Roland had been forgotten. So I went to his funeral because everyone went to Senna's. I thought it was important that somebody went to his"
The Simtek team Roland drove for carried on until mid way through the 1995 season when finally the money ran out. In the process of the team being liquidated an auction was held selling off various things to pay debts. A bike presented to the team by Ratzenberger was sold off for £420. A gift that meant so much to Roland and the team was bought for just £420.
With the development of the HANS device the injuries suffered by Roland that took his life will almost certainly never happen to any driver.
Roland Ratzenberger
RIP
1960-1994Prince Honorious Jorg Ancrath—’Jorg’—is the nastiest bastard in the kingdom. He’s fourteen years old, and he’s led a brutal band of brigands since he was eleven years old and ran away from his father’s castle. Now he’s decided to go home and claim his rightful place as heir from his equally nasty murderous bastard of a father, a process complicated by dark magic and Jorg’s desire to kill a whole lot of people.
A whole lot of people.
“People who like this sort of thing,” as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “will find this the sort of thing they like.” I can think of no quote more apt for Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns: Book One of the Broken Empire.
Well, actually, that’s not quite true. I could also quote the Minstrel’s song concerning brave Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail—you know, the one that goes, “His head smashed in and heart cut out, and his liver removed, and his bowels unplugged, and his nostrils raped and his bottom burned off and his penis-”
Yep. It’s that kind of book. Sort of like Joe Abercrombie’s books, or R. Scott Bakker’s, except with rather fewer characters who approach decentness. Or sanity. Or anything like a single redeeming virtue. Before I was halfway through reading Prince of Thorns, I caught myself referring to it as “the bloody teenage psycho book.” Jorg is a rapist, an unconflicted murderer, a character who comes across as a sociopath dialled up to the max living in a world of (male) sociopaths.
And having said that, kudos to Lawrence for writing a teenage stone-cold rapist/killer with such a compelling voice that I did not throw the book against the wall and proceed to cuss him out with prejudice. Because, since the story is told from Jorg’s point of view, the reader ends up spending all their time in the stone-cold killer’s head. Lawrence succeeds in making his character—not likeable, nor, save occasionally, sympathetic, but in a bizarre, twisted way, understandable.
There were moments when I almost enjoyed reading Prince of Thorns. Jorg’s assault on Castle Red, which has oddly sympathetic monsters—monsters far more sympathetic than the protagonist—and some very effective, creepily-depicted necromancers. The necromancers under Castle Red are the best thing about the book, in my opinion. (I have to admit, I was rooting for them.)
“I guess the skull hit her in the bridge of the nose, because that’s where the mess was. No blood, but a dark stain and a writhing of the flesh as though a hundred worms wriggled, one over another… “…The necromancer took a breath, like a rasp drawn over ironwork, rattling in her throat. ‘That,’ she said, ‘was a mistake.'” [p 228]
I also found it interesting that this is not, as it looked at first glance, a medievalesque world, but a post-apocalyptic one. And that the necromancers—and some other magic-users—have some unpleasant interest in Jorg’s fate.
I wanted to like the book. Decent premise, interesting setting—hell, I’m even willing to suspend my disbelief about a fourteen-year-old brigand leader. I’ve suspended my belief about less likely things, after all.
But. Goddamnit, but.
Not only is Jorg a son-of-a-bitch, without anything resembling a shred of honour or principle in his whole body, and not only is he surrounded by like-mindedly murderous sorts, but the whole book is—what’s that marvellous phrase? Oh, yes. Sausage fest. A complete and utter sausage fest. Women exist to be raped, used, or otherwise projected upon by the various demons haunting Jorg’s id.
There is one passage emblematic of this, which I found particularly disturbing. It concerns Jorg’s first experience in a whorehouse, and it’s creepy. Not in a good way:
“The combination of a woman and time on my hands wasn’t one I’d tried before. I found the mix to my liking. There’s a lot to be said for not being in a queue, or not having to finish up before the flames take hold of the building. And the willingness! That was new too.” [p 173]
In my experience, you have to be either especially clueless, or trying very hard, to achieve that level of misogynist creepy.
I’m not going to stand here and insist on high feminist standards in every work of fiction I read (much as I’d appreciate it if more books had them). I don’t have very high expectations to start with. But a certain indication that the author sees women as people, and doesn’t leave me trying hard not to throw up because I can’t see very much in his book that undermines his protagonist’s view of the world—from where I’m standing, that indication is a minimum requirement.
While I didn’t like Prince of Thorns very much at all, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad book. Problematic, but not necessarily bad. If you like bleak, bloody, and gruesome novels about cold-blooded unprincipled sociopaths who achieve their murderous dreams, then this book will be perfect for you. I wish you joy of it, because for all its flaws, Prince of Thorns has some damn good writing.
Me, I need to go scrub out my brain.
Liz Bourke is reading for a postgraduate degree in Classics at Trinity College, Dublin. She also reviews for Ideomancer.com.ILGA-Europe are extremely concerned by news of human rights abuses emerging from Azerbaijan.
Exact numbers are hard to clarify at this point. According to our sources in the region, at least 50 members of the LGBTI community have been detained in raids that have taken place throughout the second half of September.
“Attempts by the authorities in Azerbaijan to downplay these detentions are not convincing.” commented Evelyne Paradis, ILGA-Europe Executive Director.
“Forcing any LGBTI people to be medically examined against their will is disturbing enough, but we also have received multiple reports of verbal and physical abuse. There is no justification for this indiscriminate targeting of people perceived to be members of the LGBTI community. It is a clear and serious breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
On 26 September, the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed that police raids had been taking place against individuals said to be “disrespecting the people around them”. The Ministry said that so-called sexual minorities had been detained, that the detainees had been forced to undergo medical examinations, and that the police investigation was not yet complete.
Human rights organisations and lawyers working in the region have spoken to LGBTI detainees and ILGA-Europe has seen victim accounts that appear to be credible.
Some victims told human rights activists that they were only released after handing over the contact information of other members of the LGBTI community to the police. Other detainees reported being arrested during the day or at their place of work.
Azerbaijan currently lies at the bottom of ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Europe ranking, with minimal legal protections for LGBTI people.
The Ministry’s press service also stated that 16 people had been diagnosed with “AIDS or syphilis”. ILGA-Europe have not spoken directly with ministry officials but we assume that this is an inaccurate reference to HIV testing, confirming the authorities’ overall lack of understanding on the issue.
Evelyne Paradis continued: “ILGA-Europe are worried about the fate of the victims of these raids, and are calling for the immediate release of anyone still in detention. An independent investigation is now required, along with thorough monitoring of any subsequent trials.
We also ask intergovernmental institutions (such as the Council of Europe, the European Union, OSCE and the United Nations) to use all mechanisms available under their respective human right mandates to condemn the situation in Azerbaijan.”Car gets stuck in croc-infested river
Updated
A New South Wales woman travelling in the Northern Territory accidentally submerged her four-wheel-drive in a crocodile-infested river after mistaking a boat ramp for a river crossing.
Photographs released by police show a crocodile lurking close to where the woman's white Troop Carrier became stranded in the East Alligator River, about 300 kilometres east of Darwin.
Police said the woman had mistaken a boat ramp for Cahill's Crossing, where vehicles are able to cross the river between Kakadu and Arnhem Land.
In 1987, a 40-year-old man was decapitated by a five metre crocodile near the area where the woman's car became submerged.
Two people, including a 11-year-old girl, have been killed by crocodiles in the Territory this year.
Police say the woman was able to get out of her vehicle and back to the riverbank without any problems from crocodiles.
But they have reminded tourists to take extreme care near Top End waterways.
"Members of the public need to be reminded that when travelling through the NT it is their responsibility to research the area and be aware of the extreme road conditions, especially that of remote areas," Brevet Sergeant Ben Higgins said.
"All water crossings should be considered extremely dangerous and exceptional care should be taken to avoid similar incidents such as these, especially considering the number and size of crocodiles that inhabit remote waterways."
Topics: animals, human-interest, animal-attacks, offbeat, law-crime-and-justice, police, darwin-0800, australia, nsw, nt, oenpelli-0822
First postedFor the best part of seven years, football has been Greg Broughton’s job. It’s been his life. The reliable defender took a less traditional route to the highest level and has since wrung the most out of a body that has gradually been worn down by the rigours of AFL football and struggled to recover the longer his career has progressed.
Saturday night’s game against Sydney at the SCG will be Broughton’s 110th senior appearance and his final at AFL level after the 28-year-old announced his retirement from the game this week, with injuries finally taking their toll this season, both physically and mentally.
Broughton was part of the Fremantle recruiting scheme that gave the ‘Moneyball’ philosophy wings, a system that refused to turn a blind eye to those that had slipped between the cracks in their draft year for whatever reason. And a drive that not only landed Broughton, but also Michael Barlow and Hayden Ballantyne, and drew more attention to the quality of older talent lingering in the state leagues.
The triple WAFL premiership player didn’t enter the inside of an AFL club until the Dockers selected him with one of the last live picks in the 2009 national draft at pick No. 79. From there, he became a regular fixture in Fremantle’s back six where he played 68 games before making one of the biggest decisions in his life to pack up his life and move across the Nullarbor to play for one of the competition's expansion clubs.
After playing 37 games in his first two years and slotting in nicely in the SUNS defence, 2015 hasn’t panned out the way Broughton hoped. A spate of injuries has prevented him from not only getting on the park, but also remaining there. Having not played since injuring his knee in round ten, the Subiaco product will return on the weekend for a last hurrah.
“Personally it’s been a tough year, mentally and physically. A few injuries on-field it's come to a time I think where there’s a question mark whether to go another year at this level – I don’t think I would have been able to,” Broughton told SUNS TV.
“So I think it’s a pretty easy decision on my behalf. I’m just looking forward to the next chapter in life and whatever that throws at me; I’m willing to take on.
“I think early days my body would hold up (better). I think I like to say I’m more of a crash and bash type player. In the latter stages of my career I started to get sorer and sorer and more injuries.”
Not many players play one game, let alone 100 and Broughton is grateful for the opportunity Fremantle gave him at the end of 2009 when they plucked him from Subiaco after being part of three consecutive premierships in the WAFL.
“I just want to thank the Fremantle Football Club for giving me the opportunity and also the Gold Coast SUNS. To live out my childhood dream has been amazing. It’s something that I will cherish forever,” Broughton said.
After a strong start to his career in Perth and after finishing third in the coveted Doig Medal in 2011, Broughton made the bold decision to pursue an opportunity with the SUNS. A move he confesses was what he needed at that time of his life.
“I think it was a big call. I think personally I just needed a change and for me to move interstate I think it was the right decision from speaking to friends and family. Gold Coast gave me the opportunity to come across and I took it,” he said.
As one chapter closes, another opens for Broughton as he braces himself for life away from an AFL club. The West Australian is on the back nine of a plumbing apprenticeship that looms as his next step.
Although, after spending time in the NEAFL coaches box this year as he battled through another injury, Broughton’s interest in coaching has spiked, with the lure of assisting young players trying to find their way in the game attractive.
“First of all I’d like to get my plumbing apprenticeship finished off, whether that’s in six or twelve months time. That’s my number No. 1 priority,” he said.
“I spent a bit of time on the sidelines and I’ve grown an interest in that coaching capability. I feel that I’ve got the knowledge to help some young guys out or teams out. Wherever that is I’ll look at that in the long term.”Isaiah Brock joined the Army in April 2012 and was eventually assigned to the 54th Quartermaster Mortuary Affairs Company. In simple terms, that means he spent parts of the past four years extracting dead soldiers from countries in which the United States is at war.
"I aided in the process of returning these fallen heroes back home," Brock explained. "So we would basically look through all of their wounds, annotate everything, go through all of their belongings, and then... you know how there's always a transfer case and then you have a flag draped over the top of the transfer case? That's us. That's what we do."
First he was stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Then Kuwait.
It got crazy one day in Afghanistan.
"So we were on the boardwalk in Kandahar, where they have all of these stores," Brock said. "We work closely with Marines. So I was walking with a few Marines. And we started to hear gunfire. Then we heard an alarm go off. So we all hit the floor and locked and loaded."
A terrorist had escaped a prison on base.
He was in a watch tower. He was shooting.
"We could see the gunfire," Brock said. "He was right there."
By luck, or the grace of a higher power, Brock survived that incident and every other thing that goes along with serving this country in a foreign land where enemies come in all forms. Documents show he's responsible for assisting in the extraction of more than 30 fallen soldiers, meaning if you know somebody who died fighting for the United States in recent years, it's possible Brock helped return them home.
That's been his job.
That's been his life.
And, on a lighter note, he's always enjoyed basketball, which is why one of the highlights of Brock's time in the Middle East came in August 2015, when he participated in the Hardwood Classic -- an event put on by the Troops First Foundation at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait that connects soldiers with basketball coaches and culminates with a tournament.
"It's just a fun thing," said Oakland University coach Greg Kampe. "The soldiers basically get a week off to just play basketball. People come and watch the games. It's really just a way for them to get their minds off of what they're doing."
Isaiah Brock served in the Army in Afghanistan and Kuwait. Photo provided by Brock family
Kampe first heard about Troops First from his friend, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo. He thought it was neat. So he told Izzo to let him know the next time an opportunity to participate presented itself. Few months later, by coincidence, Kampe ended up playing golf at Oakland Hills Country Club with Rick Kell, who works with Troops First. Kampe relayed to him his interest in traveling to the Middle East. Kell told him he'd love to have him.
"So I told him, 'Next time you go, I'm in,'" Kampe said. "Then he later called and told me, 'We're going in August, if you really want in.' And I said, 'Absolutely.'"
So that's how Greg Kampe ended up in Kuwait.
He was joined by fellow coaches Steve Lavin, Dino Gaudio, Jimmy Patsos, Pete Gillen, Gary Stewart, Ed Conroy and Reggie Minton. While there, Greg Kampe met Isaiah Brock, who was on Lavin's team.
"We scrimmaged Lavin's team one day, and there's this 6-foot-8 kid who actually looks like he can play a little bit," Kampe said. "I got to talking to him, and when I found out his story I was like... wow. Here's a guy whose job is to go into the battlefield and extract bodies. The medics go and get the wounded. The ones who are dead, it's his job to get them out."
Brock told Kampe he planned to attend college after he was discharged.
Kampe was intrigued.
"I just thought maybe I could bring him to Oakland and give back and help this young man get his education," Kampe said. "He's got the GI Bill. But that doesn't cover him like a scholarship would. And I thought him being around my players would just be unbelievable from a leadership perspective. I wanted my players to meet him and be around him. And if he ever played basketball, that would be awesome, too. So I told him I couldn't promise playing time. But I told him I could give him an opportunity to experience college basketball."
Now, Brock was intrigued.
So he started taking online college courses while he was still serving. He took two classes and got a B in both. He was discharged from the Army this past April. He enrolled at Oakland in June. He took two summer classes. He got an A in one and a B in the other. He's now on Oakland's student-athlete advisory committee. He's been mentoring and even tutoring younger athletes.
And the NCAA just ruled him ineligible.
***
Isaiah Brock graduated in 2011 from Forest Park High in Baltimore, which is the same school from which the 39th Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, graduated many years earlier. Film director Barry Levinson, too. But Forest Park has more recently become less of a launching pad for greatness. According to U.S. News and World Report, only 70 percent of its students graduate, and just 6 percent meet the standard of "college readiness." In other words, even if you're a good student relative to your surroundings, odds are you won't have the proper credentials to meet NCAA freshman eligibility requirements once you graduate from Forest Park.
Such was the case for Isaiah Brock.
"They weren't focused on college preparedness as a high school," said Oakland athletic director Jeff Konya. "So Isaiah was technically a non-qualifier."
To be clear, Brock has a qualifying standardized test score. And he's shown the ability to do college-level work. It's just that the NCAA is focused on a high school transcript from five years ago and using it to refuse to allow Brock to play this season.
Isaiah Brock with his mother and father. Photo provided by Brock family
Which is insane, isn't it?
"I don't want to speak for the NCAA, but I think they put an emphasis on Isaiah Brock in 2011 and what his credentials at that time would suggest," Konya said. "But Isaiah Brock in 2016 is a different person. He's taken college classes and passed them with a 3.0. So if the issue is that he's not prepared academically to do college work, I'd argue the proof is in the pudding."
Indeed, it is.
But here's the good news: the NCAA can still fix its mistake.
Oakland plans to appeal the initial decision and simply make the case that this 22-year-old freshman who spent the past four years serving his country doesn't deserve to have an unnecessary hurdle placed in front of him now. He's been awarded the Army Commendation Medal, a National Defense Service Medal, a Global War on Terrorism Medal, a Army Service Ribbon, and a Certificate of Achievement. He's already doing college work and flourishing. He's developed into a leader on campus and in the locker room. So the idea that he'd be judged from a college-readiness perspective based off of five-year-old transcripts from a substandard high school is nonsensical.
"He never even thought about getting eligible out of high school," Kampe said. "He was always just going to join the Army."
So my question for the NCAA is simple: why?
Why would the NCAA not want Isaiah Brock competing this season? Who benefits from making him ineligible?
By all accounts, he's a nice athlete but not necessarily the type of player who projects as someone who will make a real difference in the Horizon League standings. He's just someone whose story Kampe loved, somebody who is majoring in Psychology and eventually wants to be a counselor. He's a real-life war hero who has returned to this country, enrolled in college and done literally everything you'd want somebody to do to prove they're serious about getting an education.
"We had a 'Welcome Back' event for student-athletes this year, and we took the time to mention Isaiah's story, and he got a standing ovation," Konya said. "That's the kind of impact, in short order, that he's been able to achieve with his fellow student-athletes at Oakland."
Bottom line, the NCAA needs to make this right.
It has the power to apply a waiver and make Isaiah Brock eligible immediately, and it should, if only because there's no good reason not to. This is the type of student-athlete who should be celebrated and even placed in commercials that double as propaganda. He's not the type of student-athlete who should have to sit a season while proving he can do college work when he's already proven that and so much more.
"Isaiah went and fought so that organizations like the NCAA can exist, and he did so in a way that he's now a decorated military veteran," Konya said. "It's a great story. And hopefully it has a happy ending. Hopefully common sense wins the day."How do Oahu voters feel about the Honolulu rail project?
Not so great.
The Civil Beat Poll shows that 41 percent of people surveyed say that how the rail work has unfolded — with cost overruns and a tax increase extension — is “troubling.”
About that same number (42 percent) say building rail was a “bad” idea.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Just 15 percent of voters say they feel “good” about how the whole project is progressing. Two percent say they are unsure.
That said, a healthy majority — 64 percent — still want the rail line to go the full 20 miles from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center. Only 28 percent want to stop the route at Middle Street, which is 4.3 miles and eight planned stations shy of the popular shopping mall.
“This isn’t exactly buyer’s remorse, but it’s something that deeply divides many Oahu residents,” said Matt Fitch, executive director of Merriman River Group, which conducted The Civil Beat Poll. “But I think there is also the sense that it’s underway, let’s just finish the damn thing.”
In a separate question, voters were given the option of Ala Moana, Middle Street, tearing the project down or ending it where it is at. Go to Ala Moana, said a clear majority (55 percent) again.
Civil Beat surveyed 851 registered Oahu voters July 25-27. The poll sampled 70 percent landlines and 30 percent cell phones and had a margin of error of 3.4 percent.
How should Honolulu pay for rail? The route is currently estimated to be short $1.5 billion of what’s needed to get to Ala Moana.
If more local taxes are unavoidable, nearly half surveyed (48 percent) prefer the additional revenue come from the general excise tax. Oahu voters are already paying a 0.5 percent GET surcharge until 2027 for rail.
Hawaii Elections Guide 2016 • Stay plugged in to campaigns and candidates this election season with Civil Beat’s Hawaii Elections Guide 2016, your source for information on federal, state and local elections.
Only 8 percent are comfortable with increasing only property taxes, although 24 percent preferred equal increases in both taxes.
Finally, the poll asked whether keeping rail costs low was more important than having a more effective but also more expensive rail system.
One-third (33 percent) said keep costs low, one-fifth (21 percent) sided with effectiveness and 37 percent said leaders should “try to strike a balance.”
Honolulu rail is funded by the GET surcharge, a third of which is paid by visitors statewide and about 20 percent on Oahu, and by federal money.
Coming Friday: How’s Barack Obama doing? How’s David Ige doing? And are we headed in the right direction?
Get engaged! Join in the discussion of candidates and issues in the 2016 elections in our new Facebook Group, Civil Beat Politics. Connect with others and learn how to get involved in community issues that are central to this year’s elections.About
This little device integrates an auto grinder and filter system. Now you could enjoy the aroma and flavor of coffee from the beginning.
Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System
This is an Re-launched project. I can gladly announce we will have a better and cooler Portable Coffee Brewing System.
Here are 3 major points to backup my announcement.
1. The grinder unit is upgraded with "Metal" cone burr set. Our Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System will be the first battery powered grinder with metal burr.
metal burr
2. The top cover is redesigned by industrial designer. The power button becomes an individual button.
top cover & lid
3. Safety switch mechanism is added. When the lid is open, the grinder will stop working. Increased safety for the metal burr.
the metal burr will not work when the lid is open.
Here is our story:
Many modern travelers spend lots of time in trans-continental trips. We are one of this kind of travelers. Our company is a leader in the disposable utensil industry in Taiwan. My boss always complains that he cannot have a good cup of coffee during his trips. Therefore, the project manager which is me (Steven) teamed up with our in-house designer (Kevin) to discover the solutions for every coffee lover.
There are many different portable coffee extraction solutions in the market already. Usually, you need to get 2 to 3 different "hand operated" gadgets in order to have a “freshly ground” coffee. In reality, as a frequent traveler, we opt to minimize the gadgets for our precious luggage space. In order to achieve these goals, we decide to develop our own coffee brewing system.
This project had started since June, 2009. It all stared from a brainstorming sketch. How to combine the "hand" grinder with the filter is our first topic: brainstorming sketch.
brainstorming sketch 1
At this stage, we came up with the prototype with "hand" grinder. After the testing round, it was proved a failure. The reason was that you needed to spin the burr thousand times in order to finish grinding 9 grams of coffee beans.
This is the Prototype Zero! Just want to try the rotation structure could work. Prototype Zero.
Prototype Zero
Then we move to Prototype 1. Here, we had the grinder and the brewing cup structure combined.
prototype 1-the hand grinder brewing system
Then we moved to a more serious stage for the structure and considered the "battery" powered grinder: this was the structure idea.
brainstorming sketch 2
This was still far from the goal: portable brewing system. Therefore, we went into the artwork stage and built another mock up.
Prototype 2
HooRayyy! This time, the grinder + brewing system worked!
Based on prototype 2, we built the First Generation of Maroon Coffee Brewing System. Finally, it was released to Taiwan market in early 2013. Maroon Coffee Brewing System
(1st generation) Maroon Coffee Brewing System
In Nov. 2013, we finished the 2nd generation Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System prototype and launched the Kickstarter project.
But it didn't go all the way to success. Instead, during the past 44 days, we had received advice from all over the world. I absorbed these ideas and suggestions with my heart. Then transforming them into solid actions.
The 1st action was to cancel the project and do the Re-launch
First of all we successfully lowered our funding goal to CAD 20,000. We made this happen by finding an investor in the USA. The investor sponsored our project in a lump sum amount. That is why we can set the new goal at a much lower level!
Secondary, the pledge amount for one Maroon brewer came down to CAD 97.50 per unit. This early bird discounted price is only available for 210 units. Since we received an lump sum amount from the sponsor directly, we would like to share this benefit with the rest of our supporters! I figure out it is the most direct way to express our gratitude to you backers. The regular price is still CAD150 per unit.
Now let's see what features are improved:
1. The Auto Grinder: Fragrance appears right after the coffee bean ground. The best part of making a coffee is the moment when you smell the aroma of fresh ground coffee beans. The hotels only provide the convenient coffee packs or those espresso capsule machines. Therefore, we definitely need a grinder that can do the grinding smoothly and effortlessly. Who wants to exercise their muscles in a relaxing moment? This grinder unit uses 4 rechargeable CR2 lithium batteries as the power source.
CR2 battery box
We tested it can serve over 10 cups of 12 gram coffee beans. You can always recharge the batteries with an AC adapter (accessory). The grinder will stop automatically after the beans are empty in the chamber. Just press one button, then the grinder will do all the jobs.
2. The Conical Metal Burr:
This version is using conical Metal Burr. Perhaps this is the FIRST "Portable auto grinder" with Conical Metal Burr. Built for professional coffee lovers. The metal burr provides the same ground quality and coarseness from the coffee grinders. The precise ground coarseness is the most obvious different from those ceramic burr with floating mechanism.
conical Metal Burr
3. The reusable metal filter:
Aroma comes from the crema. We use stainless steel mesh for the filter. Why the stainless steel? The idea is to minimize the stuff you carry in your trip. When you go out, just grab this device and you are ready for a good coffee. No need to worry about bringing enough filter paper during your trip.
metal mesh filter
4. The compact pour-over filter cups:
For those coffee lovers, Acidity, Body and Flavor of coffee will be balanced when you choose the right coffee beans. This is a brilliant design to minimize the size of the cup and the filter. The coffee filter can be stored in the cup. By lifting the filter and turn 90 degrees, the filter can steadily sit on the cup.
Pour-over filter cup
5. The top cover and the safety switch mechanism.
The coffee bean chamber lid is functioning as the top cover and the safety switch. When the lid is locked, the grinder will start. Once the lid is unlocked, the grinder will stop.
Locking lid & safety switch
All 3 gadgets are integrated into one small and compact cube. And we make the shape rounded with curves. Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System can become one of the decoration on your shelf. The conventional brewers try so hard to mingle with the rest of the kitchen wares. Now, our Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System can stand beside your books or vastly seamlessly.
Why Kickstarter?
Our company, Taiwan Jhonsin Co., Ltd, started the development of the first generation of Maroon Travel Coffee Brewing System in Taiwan 4 years ago. Not until January, 2013, we had launched the first generation into Taiwan market. Ever since then, Maroon is sold in Taiwan region exclusively.
I'm the project manager of this item. I'm from Canada and working in this Taiwan company now. When I started this marketing task for Maroon in early 2013, I figured out Maroon Coffee Brewing System is the killer in the coffee market. Therefore, I eagerly want to share this product with my North American people. However, we didn't have enough marketing budget to promote this item internationally.
More importantly, before we go to the international market, we want to improve our Maroon Coffee Brewing System. After all, we already sold approximately 500 units in the past 9 months. Therefore, I gathered our product designer and our molding supplier. I present the weakness of Maroon and ask them to improve this first generation model.
We worked very closely everyday to make sure every aspects of weakness are improved. The result is that we re-designed the entire structure. Now you can see our prototype as the improved model!
The Difficulties:
The coffee consumption in Taiwan is only 1/3 of the North America coffee consumption. Thus, with sales speed is really slow, we need a long time to accumulate enough money for opening the molds for the improved model.
Therefore, we need your pledge to support our project. And you will have this unique Portable Coffee Brewing System!
Production Plan:
Right now we will assembly the entire batch in our supplier's factory located in Taiwan. The final design of Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System will stay the same, except for some minor adjustments before mass production.
We work with our current molding supplier which had done the production and mold opening of the first generation of Maroon Coffee Brewing System. Therefore, we should be on schedule because we are working the experienced suppliers.
The tooling and molding process will take 80 days. Production of parts will take 20 days. Assembly will take 10 days. This is an optimistic schedule. If this project is succeeded, we can expect the shipment will be ready in the beginning of May, 2014.
Thank you so much for checking out our project!!!
Remember if we don't reach our goal then we won't get funded, and no one will get Maroon Portable Coffee Brewing System. So please share this information with your friends and family! (buy one here early and get discount)!TSN Toronto reporter Mark Masters checks in daily with news and notes from Maple Leafs practices and game-day skates. The Maple Leafs practised at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday.
Before a question could be asked, Nazem Kadri addressed reporters on Thursday |
stifle it. Lancelot and Guinevere betray King Arthur, Tristan and Iseult break the law, Romeo and Juliet go insane, and in the name of “love” every new fling causes undeserved pain for others. All of this is, of course, the raw material for blockbuster videos and bestselling novels in America today.
The serious flaw with the whole system of Courtly Love is its inherent tendency toward anarchy and narcissism. Meeting alone in the dark, far removed from everyday responsibilities and social constraints, lovers do not really get to know one another. Their supposed love for one another is grossly self-absorbed, their lovemaking little more than mutual masturbation. With the flattering image reflected in the other’s eyes, they imagine themselves identical. The heterosexual, who is the protohomosexual, gazes dizzily at his beloved as if at his own reflection in the water.
The protohomosexual’s narcissism, his inflated sense of self, leads him to believe that the irresistible force he calls “love” is inherently ennobling and that his liaisons need no other sanctioning than mutual consent. But his passion only propels him to deceit and unintended cruelty—to his beloved, to his family and hers, to any children they might conceive, even to himself.
Star-crossed lovers standing up against the world in order to get married is a tired cliché. Yet marriage-as-rebellion and sex-as-self-actualization remain the unquestioned stage upon which we woo, marry, and divorce one another. This is the house we have erected for conceiving and rearing children.
It is a house of cards. Having already overturned the social and moral pressures of the community and erected a dating system not unlike civil war, having already privatized marriage and turned it into a statement about his freedom and erotic preference—“This is my choice, my love!”—the protohomosexual closes the curtains of his bedchamber to find only another obstacle to his happiness: fertility.The Labour Party’s 2010 manifesto committed it to protecting the ‘pubs on which community life depends’. The underlying alarm that the traditional English public house is rapidly disappearing has been raised so many times over the past two centuries that it may seem a small miracle that any are still standing. Some of the threats to the pub are more real than others, however, and of these one of the most serious came from the monster gin palaces of the Regency era.
The palaces began to appear in the early 19th century in all of England’s rapidly growing towns and cities – in Manchester and its suburbs of Bolton and Blackburn, in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Hull – but also in smaller places such as Lincoln and Scarborough. But these new venues were small in comparison with the great palaces that were built in London between the 1820s and 1830s. The 14 largest of these were serving a total of more than half a million customers a week at their peak and, on a good night, any one of them could take as much as a guinea a minute.
For several years these establishments seemed poised to drive London’s old pubs out of business: the drinks were cheaper, the settings fancier and, according to an article of 1835, the more capital investors poured into improving the premises, the more ‘publican after publican was compelled to embellish expensively or lose the trade’. The palaces were infinitely more efficient in moving customers in and out and by all accounts they should have eliminated the competition. In the short term the gin palaces flourished and their owners made enormous profits by turning old pubs into assembly lines that could serve hundreds of people an hour. In the long term, however, the model was a failure. The primary reason for this was that the success of the palaces depended on turning the experience of drinking into a mere mechanical act.
Palaces for all
Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank have done much to shape our impression of gin palaces. The first in his Sketches by Boz, the second in his increasingly lurid cartoons of shabby drunkards drinking themselves into an early grave. In both instances we are given a strong visual idea of gas lights and plate glass windows on the outside, gleaming counters on the inside and, behind these, huge casks of fancifully labelled spirits – ‘Old Tom’, ‘Young Tom’ and the like. Their basic layout was established by about 1815. The idea behind this was to promote high customer turnover. Long counters, already a fixture in many shops and pubs, were added and chairs removed along with all other amenities that might have encouraged people to linger. Customers would enter through one door, buy their drinks at a counter and, having downed them, promptly exit through another door.
Today the palaces are mostly remembered, if at all, for their architectural conceits. Several were designed by notable architects.The first, and in many ways the most notorious, Thompson and Fearon’s on Holborn Hill, was designed and built by John Buonarotti Papworth between 1829 and 1832. (Papworth’s other projects included the Landsdowne Place and the Crescent in Cheltenham.) The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, founded in 1826 with the goal of publishing improving literature for the working classes, wrote slightingly in 1837 of the palaces’ ‘jumble of awkward, tawdry, meretricious finery’, but even it had to concede that some were major buildings in their own right, including one by George Maddox and another by the architect William Inwood (or one of his sons).
Investors in palaces singled out existing public houses, buying them and pouring vast sums into their renovation. The cost of converting a ‘common public-house’ in Southwark into a ‘splendid gin-palace’ was rumoured to be £3,000. Twice that amount is supposed to have gone into furnishing a gin palace in Lambeth. Buildings on this scale represented huge investments of capital. The Temperance Journal (1839) estimated £2,000 for an establishment of an ‘ordinary class’, £10,000 or more for one of the showier palaces. If valuations from retail bankruptcies are any guide, investments in the palaces were high even by the inflated standards of Regency London. Of a list of these failed businesses, only one, the haberdashery of Stephens and Croft, put a comparable sum (£4,000) into improving its premises.
The new palaces were a far cry from the old gin shops of the 18th century. These served drams to a handful of customers and, because they were small-scale and often unlicensed, tended to be hidden from view, often operating out of the backroom of a shop or private home. One such shop in St Thomas, Exeter, was typical. It was run by a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Knapman. In 1838 a neighbour complained about the noise, ‘there being but a slight partition dividing the shop from the sitting-room of the dwelling-house’. Gin shops like Mrs Knapman’s continued to operate well into the 19th century, though they had faced competition from wine and spirit merchants who were selling cheap drams as a sideline from as early as the 1780s. By 1791 the latter were mockingly referred to as ‘Wine and Brandy Vaults’, an epithet that would subsequently be shortened to ‘gin-vaults’.
The new style palaces operated as both on- and off-licence establishments. A spur to their development was an ill-conceived piece of legislation intended to reduce smuggling. In 1825 duties on English spirits were reduced from 11s 8¼d a gallon to 7s. The most immediate effect of this was to make spirits more affordable to the working classes, especially as beer, to all intents and purposes, had been priced beyond their reach. In London, the price of porter had jumped from 3½ pence a quart in 1791 to 5½ pence in 1819. One thing the new generation of gin shops had in common with the old was the welcome they extended to the poor. This was a group that the pubs, with their expensive offerings and ambition to attract a more upscale clientele, were increasingly excluding – in 1826 the writer Sydney Smith took them to task for ‘treating humble and ill-dressed people with the most sovereign contumely and contempt’.
With the reduction of duties the consumption of domestic spirits more than doubled in England and Wales, rising from just under 3,700,000 gallons in 1825 to just over 7,400,000 in 1826. The number of licences to sell spirits also shot up and with them the number of gin palaces. The combination – rising consumption and an explosion of outlets – fuelled the nascent temperance movement. Concerns about the effects of both surfaced shortly before the official launching of the British and Foreign Temperance Society in 1830. A great many people believed that the working poor were squandering both their money and time on cheap gin. The new-style gin shops first came under sustained attack in autumn 1829 when the magistrates in Middlesex, who controlled the licensing of pubs across north London, urged their colleagues to withhold licences from speculators who were buying out old alehouses for the sole purpose of retailing spirits. The satirist George Cruikshank weighed in, publishing in 1829 a particularly macabre cartoon ‘The Gin Shop’ in Scraps and Sketches and the subsequent attention it received in the newspapers encouraged concerned citizens to voice their own complaints in letters to the Editor of The Times.
It was in one such letter dating from 1829 that the new buildings were compared to palaces, but the epithet ‘gin palace’ did not appear in print until the end of 1833. A year later it was being used with increasing frequency in newspapers, temperance propaganda and even in a comedy which appeared in December that year, Harlequin and Queen Mab.
A model for success
The label ‘gin palace’ mocked the size and garishness of the new buildings. But the term also pointed to another defining feature: the fact that they were purpose-built like the new large-scale department stores and pubs. The British and Foreign Review (1840) likened the palaces to ‘traders on a large scale – the Swan and Edgars of their trade’. The Era (1839) compared the practice of selling drinks over a counter with that of selling ‘goods in a draper’s shop’, while the Temperance Journal evoked the ‘mercantile-house’: ‘Your gin-palaces are scarcely more than this’.
These huge shops provided a business model for the gin palaces that centred on three features: low wages, low prices and high-volume sales. The practice that set all of this in motion was that of ticketing merchandise. Fixed prices allowed retailers to dispense with skilled clerks. In turn, reduced labour costs allowed them to sell at a discount. Entrepreneurs who followed the model made their profits not through customer loyalty but through high turnover. And to attract a steady stream of new customers they relied on increasingly eye-catching window displays.
The cardinal feature of the grand shops was their cash nexus. Every relationship, whether between employers and employees or between proprietors and customers, was reduced to a mere monetary exchange. The gin palaces took this state-of-the-art retail model and applied it to an activity (drinking) that had always had a strong social component. The result was something of a paradox. The palaces were enormously crowded places and yet the experience of the typical drinker was a solitary one. One of the most outspoken of the proprietors, Henry Bradshaw Fearon, commented that eight out of ten of his customers would drink a penny’s worth of gin ‘in less than a minute’, upon which they would immediately leave. The American politician Theodore Sedgwick visited three palaces in Holborn in 1836 and in each he saw customers going ‘in at one door and out at another’. None of the people ‘stayed long, as far as we could see; they came in, drank, and went off.’ Or, as another observer put it in 1831: ‘Every minute the door opens, and some slide in, and some slide out, without saying a word to each other.’
This pattern of hasty drinking in part reflected the status of the clientele. A large number, if not most, were recent immigrants to the cities, whether London or the factory towns of the north. They were, by extension, strangers to each other. But the pattern was also glumly consistent with the haste and indifference with which many working-class people in the capital necessarily bolted down their food. Customers might conceivably have lingered had there been seats. But there were none, just as there were no newspapers, no meeting facilities and no activities or games such as were offered in pubs. Instead, premium was placed on cultivating repeat business and maximising turnover. The physician, John Hogg, a great enemy of the palaces, played up this distinction when he asked what might happen ‘if the poor man, tired from his labour, [should] ask leave to sit down and take his pot of porter’? His exhausted labourer would ‘most probably be told by one of the flippant attendants at the bar that they can give no such accommodation; that, in fact, they do not provide room for people who come there on business’.
The flippant attendants Hogg mentions are unlikely to have said even this much to the average customer, not when there were so many behind them waiting to be served. When George Wilson, a grocer living on Tothill Street, St James’s, was asked to testify before a parliamentary committee on drunkenness in 1834, he spoke of men working ‘in their shirt sleeves behind the counters, the exertion from the number of customers not allowing them to wear their coats’. The barman described by the journalist George Augustus Sala in 1859 was in constant motion, one hand on a tap, the other ‘presented for the requisite halfpence... his face is flushed; his manner short, concise, sententious. His vocabulary is limited; a short “Now then”, and a brief “Here you are”, forming the staple phrases thereof.’
The great spirit dealers
The one person customers almost never saw was the gin palace owner. Most chose to live as far away as possible from the noise and commotion of the premises, typically in the suburbs. David Brooke, a Leeds factory worker who testified before the same committee, told how the owner of the local palace had recently moved into a new house, ‘more like a mansion than a tradesman’s residence’, in the suburb of Woodhouse. Owners who lived on the premises spent little or no time interacting with their customers. George Wilson spoke of landlords who lived like gentlemen and kept ‘horses and grooms, and large establishments, and shopmen to serve their customers’. If they did any work at all, it was to ‘superintend the counting-house department, and give orders to those around them’. A few years later, in 1838, the Morning Chronicle was similarly grumbling about ‘the gin-seller, who drives up to his establishment in his four-wheel chaise, and who leaves the spinning of his gin and the gathering of his large profits to his barmaids’.
The great question was where these men got the money to build the palaces and here their critics could only speculate. They were sure that the distillers were operating their own tied-house system but, while there is occasional evidence for this, it is far from overwhelming. The 1834 committee hoped to turn public opinion against the palaces by showing that there was a cartel behind them, but it failed to produce hard proof. One witness spoke vaguely of a ‘company formed in London for the purpose of buying any old free public-house that can be met with’. Elsewhere he baldly claimed that a ‘great many’ of the palaces were ‘under the control of the great spirit dealers’. Robert Edwards Broughton, a London police magistrate and barrister, was more cautious, saying that he knew of individual investors, but not of any company per se. Thomas Hinton and Thomas Hartley were also circumspect, the latter saying only that ‘there never appears any want of money to enlarge or to decorate these places’.
For contemporaries the most elusive piece of the puzzle was how the owners of the gin palaces could make a profit by selling at a discount, especially after they had spent thousands of pounds upgrading their facilities. The answer, all too familiar to us today, was to keep prices low by keeping wages down and turnover high.
Temperance reformers could have solved the puzzle had they considered more deeply the implications of the counts they made of the palaces’ customers. But it better suited their purposes to attribute the palaces’ profits to unscrupulous business practices. The usual explanations came down to the two offered by the Lord Mayor of London, Henry Winchester, in an exchange with a publican in 1834: ‘Either the gin must be very bad, or the glasses very small, to afford any profit.’ In at least one establishment, the glasses must have been very small indeed, for they were supposed to have held just a farthing’s worth of gin. The existence of ‘squib’ glasses especially designed for Manchester’s child labourers, and which held a halfpence’s worth of gin, was also rumoured.
Not only was the gin ‘very bad’, it was also watered down. This had been standard practice in the 18th century, but the palaces cut even more corners. They did not serve shots of pure spirits: they served mixed drinks and weak ones at that. Fearon made no secret of selling gin containing equal parts water and spirits. The drams at another palace were allegedly so weak as to be ‘little better than strong grog’. Theodore Sedgwick tried a half-penny’s worth of gin and found it ‘undoubtedly adulterated; it seemed to be sweetened, and certainly had not the flavour of pure gin’.
In accusing the palace owners of diluting their drinks and then serving them in ridiculously small measures temperance reformers undercut their own argument, namely that the new-style drinking establishments had led to a major increase in drunkenness among the working poor. So which was it? Did the palaces lead to an upsurge in alchohol consumption or were the drinks they served too weak and too small to have made much of a difference?
In the short run, per capita consumption of spirits did increase. But the driving force behind that increase was not the palaces: it was the sharp reduction in duties that took place in 1825. And at no point did per capita consumption come close to the high (2.2 gallons) reached at the height of the gin craze in 1743. In 1831, by contrast, the average English person aged 15 or older was drinking just 1.42 gallons of spirits a year. To put the figure in historical perspective, it is significantly higher than today’s average (just over a half-gallon per head), but considerably lower than the 5.9 gallons the average American was drinking in 1830.
Reinventing the gin palaces
In their first incarnation, the gin palaces filled for the poor the void left by the pubs. They also welcomed another ostracised group: women. If temperance reformers are to be believed, female customers actually outnumbered men in the palaces that catered to Manchester’s factory workers in the mid-1830s. One is supposed to have been frequented by ‘not fewer than 2,000 persons, chiefly females’, on a Saturday night. Another, kept under close observation for eight Saturdays in a row, reportedly served an average of 163 women and 112 men every 40 minutes.
The 1830 Beer Act effectively ended the monopoly of the palaces by giving the poor a new place to drink: the beer shops. In return for paying an annual excise of two guineas any ratepayer could now sell beer and within days of the Act’s taking effect thousands of licences had been purchased for the new ‘Tom and Jerry shops’. The Beer Act also made beer more affordable by abolishing the duty on beer (though not on hops and malt). At the same time, owners of existing licensed establishments embarked on a new round of improvements in an attempt to create an attractive alternative to the dingy beer shops. While the palaces led the way, the pubs were never far behind. There was, however, one crucial difference: the new pubs did not, as a rule, sacrifice sociability. If anything, they made this their chief selling point. Games and wholesome sport – skittle, lawn bowls, quoits, cricket, baths and a swimming pond – these were the principal attractions of William Laxton’s 1839 blueprint for a suburban public house in the ‘Old English Style’.
By the 1850s the distinction between the gin palaces and the newly renovated pubs was quickly fading. Part of the reason lay in the growing prosperity of the working classes: rising wages, combined with reduced duties on beer and spirits, meant that many of those who had once used the palaces could now afford to buy their drinks from a pub. The haughty publicans Sydney Smith complained about were also more accommodating, if only because the middle classes increasingly preferred their homes and clubs to the rowdiness of the pubs.
What is fascinating is the direction of this change: the pubs could have become more like the palaces and visually they did. But ultimately, it was the palaces that became more like the pubs. The practice of building ever-more elaborate drinking establishments continued unabated for another half-century, but the idea that pubs are as much social as commercial spaces emerged unscathed. There are countless businesses that succeed by moving their customers in and out like so many parts on an assembly line; the English pub is not one of them.
Jessica Warner teaches history at the University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.The Airtricity League Premier Division season draws to a close this evening with the final series of matches in the 33-game campaign.
While the title has already been decided and the trophy resting proudly in Richmond Park, there are still plenty of issues going down to the wire this evening.
The battle for runners-up spot is a two-horse race between Dundalk and Sligo Rovers with Stephen Kenny’s side holding a two-point advantage over the FAI Ford Cup finalists going into their final game away to Bray Wanderers.
If Sligo, who today announced that both Gavin Peers and Gary Rogers have signed for the 2014 season, fail to beat Shamrock Rovers at Tallaght Stadium then Dundalk take second but if Sligo win, then Dundalk must beat Bray as they have an inferior goal difference to Ian Baraclough’s side.
Shamrock Rovers are still in with a shout of fourth place, and a possible Europa League spot if Sligo win the FAI Ford Cup on 3 November, but they must win tonight in Tallaght and hope Derry City fail to win their final league game of the season at home to Limerick.
Limerick and Cork City are engaged in a battle for sixth spot with the Leesiders holding a one point advantage over the Shannonsiders and a win over newly crowned league champions St Patrick’s Athletic in Turner’s Cross will deliver Cork another top-six finish.
While Shelbourne’s relegation was confirmed last weekend, the battle to avoid finishing 11th and facing a promotion-relegation play-off against either Longford Town or Mervue United will ensure plenty of nail-biting moments this evening as Bohemians, UCD and Bray Wanderers look to haul themselves to safety.
Bohs are away to FAI Ford Cup finalists Drogheda United while UCD travel across Dublin to bottom side Shelbourne and Bray host Dundalk at the Carlisle Grounds.
Meanwhile, at City Calling Stadium, the second leg of the First Division Promotion Play-Off takes place with Mervue United holding a 1-0 advantage from the first leg over Longford Town.In the Game
MISC’s design won a backer poll asking which ship we should build as the next starter. The finished product ended up being a fair amount more capable than a standard Aurora or Mustang, and so we have dubbed it a ‘Tier II’ starter (alongside the 300i and future ships to be announced).
The Reliant is available in the current patch and can be spawned at Port Olisar. Remember that the Reliant mixes both human and Xi’An technology, which is why it has such distinctive weapons hardpoints and a rotating flight mode.
You can learn more about the MISC Reliant Kore in the video, via the updated 3D model in the holoviewer or in the image galleries below. The team at MISC has produced six special blueprints for Reliant Kore owners to explain the ins and outs of their new ship. Enjoy!Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report Standard Edition is on the way! Earlier this year Insight Editions and Sideshow Collectables published the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report Collectors’ Edition. But at over $300 it was outside the price range of a lot of fans who were clamouring for a Standard Edition.
And that wait is nearly over! A $45 hardback edition of the book is available for pre-order on Amazon (or £30 on Amazon.co.uk)!
“For hundreds of years now, scientists at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation have been monitoring the behavior of an alien life-form so powerful that its potential for military application appears limitless. Although all attempts to harness the beast’s abilities have ended in appalling bloodshed, the acquisition of the Xenomorph remains a priority. As such, Weyland-Yutani has granted you access to their detailed files on the alien in the hope that you will be able to help capture and subjugate one of these fascinating yet deadly creatures
This exclusive in-world book utilizes specially commissioned illustrations and thirty-five years of Alien movie concept art and film stills to create a deeply engrossing reading experience that explores the nature of the Xenomorph in unparalleled detail. Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report contains extensive information on the characters, locations, vehicles, and weapons from the movies, along with an in-depth breakdown of the Xenomorph’s life cycle, to give readers the most comprehensive look at one of movie history’s greatest monsters.
Covering all aspects of this hugely popular franchise’s thirty-five-year history, Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report is the ultimate book for fans.”
How exactly the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report Standard Edition will differ from the Collectors’ Edition is currently unknown but it is fair to assume that this version of the book will not include the sculpted slipcase.
We previewed the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report Collectors’ Edition back in August. You can check out that preview in our articles section.
The Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report Standard Edition is currently slated for release on the 20th of September 2016. Thanks to Miguel Santos for the tip.How did they get up there? Excavators dismantle Chinese highrise from the top down
This 18-story residential tower in Taizhou, Zheijiang Province, eastern China is being dismantled by excavators hauled to the top by cranes.
The building was completed in January and was hailed as a luxury development with a 'perfect' ocean view. But months later it was found to be leaning.
One apartment owner, who gave his surname as Zhan, moved out just 17 hours after moving in.
Why don't they use dynamite? Labourers use excavators on top of a residential building being demolished in Yuhuan County of Taizhou City, Zhejiang province
'I bought the unit on the 16th floor because of the beautiful ocean view. It's such a pity I can't live in it,' Mr Zhan told China Daily.
'I heard loud banging sounds like an explosion. It was really scary. And then we were told that a pillar in the foundation had cracked.'
Experts have suggested the ground beneath the highrise sank because the reclaimed land it was built on is unable to support such large buildings.
Hu Zhizhong, an architectural researcher at Taizhou University, said reclaimed land commonly'settles unevenly', but the sinking in this building was so severe that it could be that the land is simply unsuitable.
Unsafe: The highrise was supposed to be a luxury development with an ocean view, but it was built on reclaimed land and soon found to be leaning
Apartments in the building, which is in a luxury community, were selling for more than £500 a square metre in 2009 - before construction was even finished. The homes were handed over to buyers in January and the building was found to be sinking shortly after.
In September, after the sinking seemed to speed up, the developer starting to reinforce the building. But in early November, one of the construction's main supporting pillars broke and the building and some nearby had to be evacuated.
China has had seen scandals surrounding poorly designed and constructed buildings in the past.It’s been simmering for a while, but the sugar crisis in Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest sugar producing states in the country reached a brink after based sugar mills put crushing operations on hold and 65 private millers including the likes of and sent closure notices to the government.
ALSO READ: Sugar crisis deepens in UP: 65 private millers notify suspension of operations
What’s gone wrong and where could this crisis be headed? Here’s a quick explainer –
1) Millers are unhappy – why?
Private Mills, numbering almost a 100, claim they have been running losses in successive crushing seasons because the cost of cane is higher than the cost of sugar. The special advisory price (SAP) paid by millers to farmers has increased from Rs 165 three years ago to Rs 280 a quintal, marking an increase of 70%. But prices of sugar, which are controlled by the government, on the other hand have risen only by 7-8% in the same period, which has left millers reeling under losses. In per kg terms, cost of production for millers is Rs. 36 but realization is only around Rs 29.5, which means millers are making a loss of Rs 6-7 per kilo of sugar sold. They already owe Rs 2,300 Cr to farmers as arrears for last year.
2) What are the millers demanding?
The millers have been demanding affordable cane prices, in line with the recommendations of the Committee. They say, their paying capacity has come down to Rs. 225 a quintal and any price above that would lead them to incur losses. Millers want the price of cane to be at 70% of the revenue realized from sugar, bagasse, molasses and press mud, or at 75% of revenue realized from sugar.
3) What is the Central govt proposing to do now?
A high level meeting has been convened today to discuss a relief package for the sugar industry. Among the proposals expected to be discussed include giving interest free loans where millers can borrow funds, and the centre bears the interest, increasing import duty from 15% to 50% in order to curtail imports and jack domestic prices, relaxation in the tenure of loans given to factories, export incentives, creation of a 5 million ton buffer stock among other things. In total the package could cost Rs. 50,000 Cr according to a report in this newspaper.
4) Will the government cut cane prices?
While millers are lobbying for a rollback, farmers are demanding that be raised above Rs 300. This being an election year the state is unlikely to rollback prices. But if the state had to compensate millers for the Rs. 50-55 per quintal gap between current (Rs 280) and millers’ paying capacity (Rs 225), the government would have to bear a Rs. 4000 Cr subsidy burden. The state government is clearly in a fix as on one hand it is under political compulsion to announce higher prices, and on the other, deal with demands of a rollback or subsidy which it can ill afford given strained finances of the exchequer.
5) What’s the impact of this crisis on farmers & the state?
There are 35 lakh cane farmers in and sugar is a Rs 35,000-crore industry, which also happens to be the biggest industry in the state. A delay in crushing will adversely impact farmers as they now want to clear fields to sow wheat according to reports. “Any delay will adversely affect both the crops but the government is yet to get the mills started. The cane was Rs 280 per quintal last year and factoring in inflation and increased input costs it should be fixed at Rs 327 per quintal for the current year," Professor Sudhir Panwar of Lucknow University told the Economic Times. With the state unlikely to yield to this demand for higher administered prices, this is likely to become a major political issue in where farmers are an influential vote bank.First Crystal Cruises announced on Friday that it would be re-routing its ships away from Istanbul and the beach resort of Kusadasi, citing “ongoing safety concerns” for the change.
Now MSC, an Italian cruise line, has also said it would be suspending its calls in Turkey. It said the decision would affect MSC Magnifica’s itinerary, with weekly calls to Izmir and Istanbul, from March 29, 2016, being replaced by ports in Greece - Athens and Mykonos.
“This decision was taken by the company amid growing concerns by guests as a result of the recent tragic events in Istanbul,” said an MSC spokesman. A bomb explosion at the heart of Istanbul claimed the lives of 10 people, including nine German tourists, on January 12.
Crystal has revised its itinerary for Crystal Symphony’s sailings on April 24 and May 1, introducing Greek ports of call.
“The safety and peace of mind of our guests are our primary concerns and we do not take any risks with either,” said Edie Rodriguez, CrystalCEO and president. “The itinerary changes will allow our guests to continue with their planned holidays in the same standard of excellence and luxury, without the added worry of security in a particular destination.”
• Istanbul bomb might spark surge in Spain holiday bookings
A bomb blast in Sultanahmet Square killed 10 people
Turkish ports of call scheduled for April and November aboard Crystal’s new luxury yacht, Crystal Esprit, will also be changed, the company said, though the new itineraries have yet to be finalized.
For both Crystal Symphony’s sailings, pre-reserved Crystal Adventures will automatically be cancelled, while the line is in the process of developing a host of new shore excursions, which will be available in the online Guest Check-In/Priority Check-In & Planning Centre (PCPC) at crystalcruises.co.uk.
• Scenic building a luxury cruise yacht, with a submarine and helicoptersParks and Trek
A series of drawings from December 2014 depicting the cast of the popular situation comedy Parks and Recreation, if they were all in Starfleet.
This was one of those 'just for fun' / 'itch I had to scratch' things - it came directly from a conversation on twitter with stellar comics artists Kate Brown, Paul Duffield and Faith Erin Hicks, who I guess are all also super into Parks and Rec and Captain Jean-Luc Picard and thus are clearly people of quality. The image of Ron Swanson rocking the Riker look remained resolutely stuck in my head, and so as a Christmas present to myself I decided to draw it.
In terms of internet pageview glory, this was one of the most popular things I've ever done, demonstrating once again my singular knack for having really good ideas that I can in no way make money from. (What can I say, it's a gift.)
Here is a gallery of all the pictures! I still hope to add a couple more sometime to round out the cast, so keep an eye on my twitter or tumblr just in case.At the origin on Christianity, Jesus Christ was thought to be a celestial deity much like any other. Like many other celestial deities, this Jesus 'communicated' with his subjects only through dreams, visions and other forms of divine inspiration (such as prophesy, past and present). Like some other celestial deities, the Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in a supernatural realm. As for many other celestial deities, an allegorical story of this same Jesus was then composed and told within the sacred community, which then placed him on earth, in history, as a divine man, with an earthly family, companions, and enemies, complete with deeds and sayings, and an earthly depiction of his ordeals. Subsequent communities of worshipers believed (or at least taught) that this invented sacred story was real (and either not allegorical or only 'additionally' allegorical).
As such, it's important to know what minimal Jesus mythicism is and is not because there's a lot of kooks out there, especially on the internet, proposing preposterous ideas that are backed up by no evidence or horrible scholarship, and it tends to drown out the legitimate arguments like Carrier's.
On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 53 [1], p. 53
Minimal mythcism, sometimes called theor thethat people like Richard Carrier argue for goes as follows [1]:July 14, 1798. [Expired.]
Chap. ⅬⅩⅩⅣ.—An Act in addition to the act, entitled “An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States.”
Section 1.Penalty on unlawful combinations to oppose the measures of government, &c.
Ante, p. 112. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty; And with such intent counselling &c. insurrections, riots, &c.and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and on conviction, before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months nor exceeding five years; and further, at the discretion of the court may be holden to find sureties for his good behaviour in such sum, and for such time, as |
:
- 6 gang members of the Turkish army have been killed.
- One tank, a bomb laden vehicle, one DShK truck and an excavator belonging to the Turkish army have been destroyed. Another dredger of the occupying Turkish army and a vehicle of the gangs have been damaged.
- 2 Turkish surveillance aircrafts were downed and confiscated by our forces.
- 4 of our comrades fell martyrs last month in Efrîn as result of the bombardments of the occupying Turkish army.
RAQQA OPERATION
Our forces of YPG and YPJ took an active part in Raqqa's liberation operation against ISIS in August.
The main results of the operation in August are as follows:
- 65% of Raqqa has been liberated.
- SDF special units rescued nearly 2000 civilians that were held hostages by the gangs and led them to safe zones.
- 9 neighbourhoods liberated from ISIS in August. The liberated neighbourhoods are Old Raqqa, Nazlat Shehade and Hisham bin Abdulmelik south of the city, El Kerîm north-west of Raqqa, al-Diriyah in the west, and the neighbourhoods Mehdî, el-Refqa, Mensur, Reshîd in the eastern part of the city.
- The western and eastern flanks in Raqqa have met in this month.
- 1244 ISIS gang members have been killed, while dozens other gang members have been injured. 76 corpses of the gangs are in the possession of the fighters.
- 3 gang members have been captured alive.
- 28 bomb laden ISIS vehicles have been destroyed by the fighters before they could reach their destination.
- A workshop for improvised mines, a factory for the preparation of bomb-laden vehicles, 3 military vehicles, 3 DShK 12.5 and DShK 23 have been destroyed, while also a drone has been shot down.
- This month, our fighters seized many weapons and ammunitions. Workshops that were used for the creation of mines and mortars have also fallen under the control of the fighters.
- 3 tunnels used by the gangs have been discovered, and special units swept the mines in liberated regions.
During Raqqa's liberation operation in August, 101 of our fighters, including 2 YPJ fighters, fell martyrs during their heroic struggle, and another 8 of our fighters also fell martyrs in battles with ISIS in Shedad.
5 of our fighters, one YPJ fighter among them, lost their lives due to accidents, and another 3 due to illnesses."New Horizons is currently making its way to the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt en route to a distant destination beyond Pluto. Along the way, the intrepid spacecraft has captured unprecedented images of a distant object called Quaoar — a dwarf planet about half the size of Pluto. Image: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Discovered back in 2002, Quaoar (pronounced "kwa-war) requires 285 years to make a complete orbit around the sun, compared to Pluto's 248 years. It measures about 1260km across, and features one moon, named Weywot.
Image: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Back in July, New Horizons used its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to snap a series of images of the distant Kuiper Belt object. When the pictures were taken, Quaoar was about 6.4 billion kilometres from the Sun, and about 2.1 billion kilometres from New Horizons. These images show the object at a different angle from what we're accustomed to here on Earth, which will allow scientists to study the light-scattering properties of Quaoar's surface.
Sadly, New Horizons is not going to Quaoar, but it is headed towards an interesting destination nonetheless. On 1 January 2019, the space probe is expected to arrive at 2014 MU, a small Kuiper Belt object about 30-45km in diameter.
Incredibly, New Horizons will be about 43.3 AU from the sun (where one AU equals the average distance of the Earth to the Sun), or about 6.5 billion kilometres when it arrives. At that distance, it will take New Horizons about six hours to transmit its findings back to Earth. New Year's Day 2019 will be an exciting one, indeed.
[NASA]There are hundreds of diggers buried below London and it's legal to shoot a Welshman in Hereford. These are among the rumours that resurface occasionally across England and seem to have extraordinary sticking-power. But for all their tenacity - they're not true. BBC News looks at some of the stories that have become legend.
Arise, Sir Loin
The knighting of a tasty piece of meat, thus giving it the name "Sir Loin" has been variously ascribed to Charles II, Elizabeth I and James I.
The story regarding James I is still honoured in Lancashire, where it's said during a meal in 1617 at Hoghton Tower near Preston, the monarch was overcome by a succulent steak and gravely made it a knight of the realm.
It is true that the tower was playing host to the king as he and his retinue made their way back to London from Scotland - and who knows, he may have jestingly touched his sword to the chunk of beef.
But while it is possible the monarch enjoyed a pun, the word "sirloin" first appeared in English as far back as the early 16th Century and therefore pre-dates the reign of James.
In English, the cut of meat was originally spelled "surloyn" or "surloine", according to etymologists, and it is most likely the name came from the French words "sur", meaning "over" or "above", and "longe" meaning "loin".
Diggers deep under London
Various news outlets, including the New Statesman, Daily Telegraph and ITV reported rich people who excavated under their houses to fit in swimming pools and home cinemas found it more economical to abandon diggers below ground rather than take them back up to street level.
But Dan Williams from Williams' Basements, says the idea is "utterly ludicrous".
"Of course we always have an exit strategy," he says.
"Not only are [diggers] expensive bits of kit, but they take up a fair bit of room. When you consider the price of property and land in London, it doesn't make any sense to dump them in a valuable space and cover them in concrete."
Where to pinch a pooch
Police in Whitby, North Yorkshire, were contacted by worried pet-owners who had heard small red and yellow stickers were being put on car tyres outside homes where valuable dogs lived.
And it would seem many cars had these little stickers on.
The police enlisted the advice of a tyre fitter to prove that marks left on vehicle tyres were not the work of dog-nappers.
It turned out that rather than indicating the best place to make off with man's best friend, red dots denoted the heaviest part of a tyre and a yellow dot the lightest.
The stickers had been on car tyres since they were last tested but householders only started noticing them once they were pointed out - a frequency illusion called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Psychologists explain it's because the human mind is biased towards things it's recently learned - if we learn something new, we are more likely to pay attention to it when we encounter it again shortly afterwards.
A similar, related theory says humans are generally biased against information we do not know, so it's after we learn a piece of information we more easily become aware of it.
On a separate note - a ploy used by some "psychics" uses the same phenomenon. If you're told seeing a white feather means a dead loved-one is watching over you, you'll spot them all over the place.
Try it and see.
The 'Da Pinchi Code'
A series of symbols sprayed on to pavements outside homes have often spawned claims they're the work of burglars who've left a code to help fellow-criminals target vulnerable premises.
Similar to the scratchings made by Victorian tramps to highlight households where a cook would provide a good meal, overlapping squares were meant to indicate the homeowner was "nervous and afraid", while two diamonds chillingly suggested the occupant was "a vulnerable female".
The rumours weren't simply words on the street - even Warwickshire Police has fallen foul of the hoax, although near neighbours West Mercia Police were quick to scotch the myth in Worcestershire.
However - the symbols are actually ground works markings used by gas, electricity, water, cable and telecoms contractors.
Different paint or chalk colours have specific meanings that indicate whether there are live power lines, flammable material, water, drains or a proposed excavation route.
Killing Celts with longbows
Are you within your rights to shoot a Welsh person with a longbow after midnight in Chester; or on a Sunday in the Cathedral Close in Hereford; or a Scots person within the city walls of York (other than on a Sunday)?
No. Of course you're not.
The myth about slaying Celts could have originated from a City Ordinance of 1403 passed in response to the Glyndŵr Rising, which imposed a curfew on the Welsh. Both Chester and Hereford were frequently under attack from Wales in the medieval period.
As for killing a Scot in York, a Mr Henry Shrimp submitted this Freedom of Information request to York City Council in 2012:
"In York, excluding Sundays, it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow. As such, please tell me the number of Scots who have been shot in the last ten years by those taking advantage of this law."
In response, the council replied:
After an extensive search of our records I can confirm that there are no records of any Scotsmen being legally shot with a bow and arrow in the last ten years. There is however a vague recollection of an alleged occurrence several centuries ago which involved a group of men from the Nottingham area, dressed in green, who were enjoying a stag night in York.
Regardless of any ancient legislation, the Law Commission said: "It is illegal to shoot a Welsh or Scottish (or any other) person regardless of the day, location or choice of weaponry."
Murder and manslaughter laws, as well as the universal right to life under the Human Rights Act, would trump any ancient code. Obviously.
Watch it on the radio
Thieves in places including Cheshire, Coventry, London and Cardiff embarked on a crime wave of stealing car radios in the mistaken belief they could pick up satellite television channels.
The rumour started when Ford stated some 2006-07 Focus models would feature SIRIUS Satellite radio as a factory-installed option.
It was thought a misunderstanding occurred because Sky Digital picked up digital radio, then the chip must also pick up digital television.
In January 2007, Ch Supt Sultan Taylor from the Metropolitan Police said: "We have had a big increase in the number of Ford vehicles broken into and we are sure it is because local thieves have got wind of this ridiculous notion that they can get satellite TV from car radio chips."
Det Insp Nick Wallen from West Yorkshire Police reiterated his colleague's point, telling thieves their "pointless actions" would result in prosecution.Kim Jong Un is not a happy drunk.
The ruthless North Korean dictator overindulged on spirits this September when he ordered several top military vets to write apology and self-criticism letters, according to a Japanese media report.
KIM JONG UN REPORTEDLY BANS SARCASM
“That none of you were able to produce not even one military satellite is a misconduct that is commensurate to treason,” the sauced despot allegedly told his country’s top military brass during an all-night reprimand.
But the next morning, the tyrant was no longer inebriated and asked why the elderly officials were at his villa, apparently having no memory of his tanked-up tirade, UPI reported.
SATELLITE PHOTOS SPOT SECRET NORTH KOREAN PRISONS WHERE THOUSANDS TORTURED
“Why are you gathered here?” Kim allegedly said, adding: “Be careful about your health because you are all old.”
With that, the military men began crying – a reaction which pleased Kim, according to the account of the strange session.
“They were relieved because they thought they were going to be purged,” a source told Tokyo Shimbun. "Everyone is showing loyalty out of fear of being executed and no one dares speak against Kim."
Under Kim Jong Un, who rose to power following his father's death in 2011, North Korea has seen steady progress in its nuclear and missile programs, including two nuclear tests this year.
North Korea is now "fully equipped with nuclear attack capability," Kim announced proudly after the August launch of a submarine-launched missile. He was exaggerating, but the strings of tests indicate that North Korea may have medium-range missiles capable of striking American military bases in the Pacific in the next couple years, experts say. Some analysts have said they believe Pyongyang may be able to hit the western United States as early as 2020.
South Korean defense officials say North Korea doesn't yet have such a weapon, but some civilian experts have said they believe the North has the technology to mount warheads on shorter-range Rodong and Scud missiles that can strike South Korea and Japan.
"I think that they're struggling with getting the (intercontinental ballistic missile) program up and operational," U.S. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the head of U.S. forces in Korea, said in Senate hearings earlier this year. But "over time, I believe we're going to see them acquire these capabilities if they're not stopped."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.WA bushfires: German backpackers, farmer believed killed in Esperance blaze
Updated
Three German backpackers and a farmer who tried to warn others about a bushfire burning out of control near Esperance in WA are believed to have died while still in their vehicles.
Key points: Two men and two women killed in fires near Esperance
Police have no knowledge of other deaths or missing persons at this stage
More than 300 people evacuated from Scaddan, Grass Patch, and Salmon Gums to Norseman to the north and Esperance to the south
Stockyard Creek, Mullet Lakes residents told to act now to survive
Police say evacuation point at Salmon Gums is no longer safe
WA Fire Commissioner Wayne Gregson confirmed two men and two women had died in fires in the Grass Patch and Salmon Gums areas.
Commissioner Gregson said he understood one man was in one vehicle and the other victims were in a second.
The ABC understands one of the men who died was Kym Curnow, a local farmer who had been driving around neighbouring properties telling people to evacuate.
Farmers helping fight the fire have also told the ABC three German backpackers died in a second vehicle.
Police are yet to confirm the identities of those killed.
Esperance resident Andy Johnston told the ABC the farmer ensured his neighbours had escaped, before jumping in his own car to drive away.
Commissioner Gregson said he had no knowledge of earlier reports suggesting a further two deaths.
"There's been no reports at this stage of any other injuries, or any other persons missing," he said.
Mr Gregson said three buildings had been lost in the fires that were started by lightning strikes.
Where the fire has gone thorough it looks like Chernobyl. Trevor Tasker, DFES Regional Superintendent
Esperance Shire President Victoria Brown said the remote coastal community was in shock after "the day from hell".
"It was devastating," she said.
"They got many of the fires out, but there were a few still burning, and they combined into an inferno."
WA Premier Colin Barnett and Emergency Services Minister Joe Francis flew to Esperance on Wednesday morning to offer support.
Mr Barnett said he was devastated at the loss of four lives in the fires, but praised the response from the community.
"There's probably over 200 people out there now fighting the fire," he said.
"And for the people of Esperance, they've been very stoic, very brave, and really [are] all pitching in.
"The volunteers, looking after those who've come in from the smaller communities, making sure they've got something to eat, helping to arrange accommodation for them."
Emergency Services Minister Joe Francis said people should offer their thoughts and prayers to the Esperance community and in particular, the family and friends of the deceased.
"It's a terrible tragedy and its a horrible way to start what's obviously going to be an incredibly challenging bushfire season."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is at the APEC summit in the Philippines, said Australians applauded the firefighters and SES workers as they put their lives on the line to keep communities safe.
"Summer can be a very challenging and dangerous time in Australia as we know, and this is a tragic event," he said.
"Four lives lost in this fire in Esperance, so as I said, the Federal Government is committed to providing the support that it does in these circumstances.
"I've spoken to the Justice Minister Michael Keenan who is responsible for emergency response and I've also spoken to the Premier of Western Australia... at this stage, Colin says he's keeping federal agencies briefed, but... there is not a need for the involvement of federal agencies as such, but we are obviously ready to provide assistance whenever required."
Commissioner Gregson said more than 300 people had been evacuated from Scaddan, Grass Patch, and Salmon Gums to Norseman to the north and Esperance to the south.
A community meeting is due to be held in Esperance to discuss the latest on the bushfires.
Area destroyed, fire chief says
Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) Regional Superintendent Trevor Tasker said the blaze at Salmon Gums was the worst he had ever seen.
"The wind and weather conditions... there was no stopping it," he said.
Mr Tasker said the speed of the fire caught firefighters off-guard.
"It definitely wasn't planned, it was on the spot and flying by the seat of your pants," he said.
"It was moving at a rate of knots that you've never seen before."
Later, after travelling through the fire-ravaged area from Norseman to Esperance, Mr Tasker said he was shocked by the devastation.
"I believe that from about 25 kilometres from the Norseman side of Scaddan 'til about two or three kilometres from the Esperance side it's just total destruction, both sides of the roads, gone," he said.
"A lot of wheat bins have collapsed with just the heat on their legs, they've fallen over. Where the fire has gone through it looks like Chernobyl.
We got our family out of the house when we realised that our property was in the line of the fire. Mic Fels
"It's heartbreaking. Where there should be luscious crop there's just blackened ground and I know there will be a lot of sheep out there in a bit of grief, but we've got to make sure that everyone's safety is paramount before they can go back in there."
A bushfire emergency remains in place for Grass Patch and Salmon Gums, 100 kilometres north of Esperance and at Stockyard Creek and Mullet Lakes, 25 kilometres east of the town.
DFES said the bushfires were contained but not controlled and that firefighters were protecting homes and strengthening containment lines, assisted by aerial support.
Smoke from bushfires has been seen on satellite imagery over Victoria.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said the scale of the fires had been extraordinary.
"[It's] a sign just of how widespread this event has been, it certainly has been quite amazing to see it on the satellite imagery... a bit of a stark reminder just of the tragic consequences that we've seen over the last day," forecaster Neil Bennett said.
'The kids are crying'
Salmon Gums farmer and bushfire brigade volunteer Mic Fels and his family left their home yesterday as the fire approached.
"It's just devastating. You know, the bizarre range of feelings that you have," he told ABC News 24.
"We got our family out of the house when we realised that our property was in the line of the fire.
"The kids are crying. You're chucking all the things in the car like you can think of, like favourite teddy bears and books - our accounts and photo albums, but it's a pretty scary experience for the family.
"When you know the loss of other people you know, young middle-aged people with young children and families and involved in the community and now they're gone, it's pretty upsetting."
Primary schools at Grass Patch, Scadden, Cascade and Salmon Gums are expected to remain closed until next week.
DFES Chief Superintendent Murray Bawden said weather conditions today were much more favourable than yesterday.
"We had some 111 incidents sparked by lightning yesterday so quite significant, but most importantly in the Great Southern Area around Esperance area, extreme weather conditions, with high winds, some of the wind gusts around 93 kilometres," he said.
"The key thing for us is the fire's now come out into an accessible area largely in the paddocks and across the pastoral lands.
"We're expecting much higher relative humidity and dew point today and much less wind speeds around 20 kilometre per hour, which should allow firefighters the opportunity to get around the head of the fire and then we can start mopping up over the next four or five days."
'Everyone has just rallied together'
Shire of Dundas Community Development Officer Pania Turner has been helping coordinate supplies and sleeping arrangements for the influx of people to Norseman from the fire-affected areas.
She said about 90 people slept in the town hall and on the oval last night, along with their animals.
"We have had families, their animals, pets, their horses, coming in," Ms Turner said.
"We've got a good crowd down at the local sports oval with all of their animals, and we have families and young children at the town hall.
"Everyone has just rallied together, as communities do."
Meanwhile more than 120 people have sought assistance at an emergency evacuation centre set up at the Esperance Civic Centre by the Department for Child Protection (DCP).
DCP director general Emma White said staff were helping affected people find accommodation and counselling.
Horizon Power said 165 properties remained without power in the Salmon Gums, Grass Patch and Scaddan areas.
The utility provider said aerial patrols had found more than 100 electricity poles had been burned down in the fires.
Extra crews are due to be flown to Esperance overnight to help restore power supplies.
"We expect the damage to our assets in the bushfire-affected areas to be significant and it could be several days before we can restore power to those areas where poles and wires have been burned down," Horizon Power's Craig Julian said.
The fire, first reported Sunday morning, has burnt through 170,000 hectares so far.
Commissioner Gregson said severe, extreme and catastrophic fire conditions were expected across the state over the weekend.
ABC/AAP
Topics: bushfire, fires, disasters-and-accidents, esperance-6450, wa, australia
First postedA few months after Chicago government officials voted to repeal the city’s soda tax, Philadelphia’s version of the controversial tariff may be headed for a similar fate.
This week Pennsylvania State Rep. Mark Mustio announced his intention to file a measure to pre-empt local sweetened beverage taxes, including Philadelphia’s 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.
“The imposition of this unfair tax is threatening those efforts in a very real way, with some grocery stores reporting as much as a 20 percent drop in overall revenue since its inception,” Mustio said, according to a report on Law.com. “To avoid the tax, supermarket customers are purchasing their food and beverages right over city borders. In the grocery industry, a revenue drop of this magnitude is very difficult to overcome. If the tax stays in place, it is not inconceivable that stores may begin to close, which would be a tragedy for people living in those neighborhoods.”
Mustio’s declaration followed a previous memo from State Sen. Mario Scavello which sought sponsors for a proposal to repeal the tax. The measure also applies to drinks that include either natural or artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame and stevia.
Revenues from the tax will be directed towards funding pre-K program, government employee benefits, city programs and rebuilding city parks and recreation centers.
Almost a year into its existence, results for the tax have been mixed. In March, PepsiCo announced layoffs at two Philadelphia area distribution plants, as well as one in Wilmington, Del., based on the “economic realities created by the recently enacted beverage tax.”
In August, media outlets reported that revenue collected from the tax had fallen below projections for every month since the measure took effect in January 2017. According to a report on CNBC, revenues through June stood at $39.3 million, or roughly 15 percent below the city’s original estimate of $39.7 million.
Since then, revenues have declined further. In October, city officials released figures showing $6.1 million in revenue for that month, down from September’s high of $7.4 million.
Beyond its financial impact, the tax appears to have had little effect on overall grocery store sales in the city, according to a Harvard University School of Public Health study released last month. Though sales of sweetened beverages have dropped 57 percent in the city, they have increased 38 percent just outside the city, indicating that consumers are leaving town to purchase untaxed products in Philadelphia County.The yellow sand-filled Fitch Barrier is a crash cushion commonly seen in front of bridge abutments and other potential roadside hazards. The barrel-shaped design is considered one of the more cost-effective crash attenuators on the market today. Modules are designed to handle impacts from compact cars to SUVs without ramping, minimizing the likelihood of injuries to passengers and reducing property damage, while meeting all the requirements of the NCHRP 350 standard. [To learn more about NCHRP 350, visit this Federal Highway Administration web site]
In 1998 Fitch received the Kenneth Stonex Award from the Transportation Research Board, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, for his lifelong contributions in the field of roadside safety.
The National Science Foundation lists the Fitch Barrier (aka "Yellow Barrels") as one of the Fifty "...inventions, innovations and discoveries that have become commonplace in our lives."Hello and welcome to my blog! This post begins a series in which I will build a sitting bench of Honduran mahogany. The Tea Garden Bench will reside along a winding pathway of the tea house garden and will provide a place to sit briefly and take in the surroundings.
My goal in constructing this bench is to improve upon previous and similar builds, both in joinery and in execution of details. I first built this design in white oak, with the intention of placing it in my own small garden, but ultimately it found itself in the workshop. It has been there for some time allowing me to think about ways to improve upon it in all aspects.
In creating this bench I utilized set-back dovetail joinery at the corners, wedged through tenons at the center upright and a full length stretcher. The stretcher features a through tenon with dovetailed keys at the ends and a joinery system of my design for the center upright.
The stretcher end joint relies upon a soft touch in its assembly and while it does lock tightly I decided to revisit that joint for this bench. Instead, I chose a joint that would be able to lock in a more permanent fashion, the keyed through tenon.
For the center upright, I have decided to replace the wedged through tenons with a blind version of the same joint. The blind version, known as Jigoku-hozo, or Hell-tenons, will seat with wedges and be otherwise invisible. Wedged through tenons that are otherwise exposed to the elements become uneven with the top and I fear may be uncomfortable or snag clothes, both things are something to avoid.
Finally, I will replace the joint that supports the center upright with a joint found in traditional Japanese carpentry. I will be utilizing a form a tsugi-te, or splicing joint, to bring the two sides of the stretcher together. More specifically I will be using a sao-tsugi, or rod tenon, to join the two halves. The type of rod tenon I plan to use is a sao-shachi-sen-tsugi, or wedged key rod tenon. I will detail this more specifically as I approach cutting out the joint. I’ve cut these joints in the past for Henry’s Bed. Chris Hall’s carpentry drawing series details these joints very specifically and is well worth the read for those who wish to understand these joints in detail.
My work begins by first acquiring the right materials. The splicing joint relies upon the use of material free of grain runout and so I had to be especially picky. My supplier’s only vertical grain Honduran Mahogany was available in the form of 12/4 stock, a slab’s worth to be specifc. Luckily I will have plenty of material for future leg stock. This material is too thick for my track saw and so I took to the bandsaw, working to ‘split the line’ as I cut.
After breaking down that stock to form two halves of the stretcher they were put aside to acclimatize. When heavy stock is broken down it must be given some time for the interior to adjust.
While that material rests I focused my attention on the main portion of the bench, utilizing a 9′ section of nearly 14″ wide 6/4 material. This material is rift sawn, showing radial grain along the majority of the board and flat grain along one edge. The 9′ section allowed me to create the bench from one continuous piece. My first task was to plan out the cross cuts and break the slab down from 9′ into a 6′ main section and two adjoining 18″ sections. The slab, being just over 9′, allowed me to trim the ends, a required step in prepping rough lumber.
My next task was to joint the center section of the slab, creating a reference face. The slab was in very nice condition and so my work required only that of the try plane to remove the bow and slight twist present in the material.
The resulting slab is now flat and true on one face.
Next, I repeat the same jointing process on the two side pieces. As I worked these two pieces I came across a few areas to repair. The first area, a large crack stemming from a bark inclusion in the wood. I do not want rainwater running through the crack and so I thought it best to cut out the crack and join in new material. I was careful to match the grain direction on the spline to ensure that the joint would be able to move in exactly the same direction over the course of the seasons.
Shown here I am flattening the floor of this joint using a western router plane. A evenly decked floor will allow good glue contact along the interior of the joint.
Once the adjoining piece was in place, the joint was finish planed and shows how well it will disappear in use. It is very common in timber carpentry work to see stock repaired in a fashion much like this, especially when working with materials that have become quite rare, such as this Honduran mahogany. These repairs help to keep this material functioning to the peak of its ability, and these repairs wear very well.
The crack transfers through the wood and reveals itself on the bottom of the board. This gave me an opportunity to install a locking key. The locking key is used to prevent the two halves from working apart.
I decided to put one of these keys at each corner, allowing me to utilize them later for attaching the brass feet. The joint runs crossgrain and provides quite a deal of long grain glue contact.
To complete the prepping stage and move onto joinery, I must next surface the opposing face of this stock. I’m starting that work with the top board, first marking out the intended thickness.
Then working with first my jack plane, followed by the try plane to thickness this board. I’ve decided to use this face as my reference and so I’m checking it with winding sticks to ensure that it is accurately flat.
With the stock prep now complete, I can begin cutting joinery, a step I will continue in the next blog post in this series.
I hope that you have enjoyed following along, and I very much look forward to reading your comments posted below.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Reddit
Tumblr
Pinterest
WhatsApp
More
Email
Pocket
Telegram
Skype
Like this: Like Loading...Honestly I never played Blake Stone, because as the wikipedia entry says DOOM came out a week later. Blake is a Wolf3d variant, so I would imagine that the same build environment that can build Wolf3d can build Blake (Borland C 3.1 & TASM 3.1).
For those of you interested in this 20+ year old artifact, you can download the source code here. And as mentioned Blake can be purchased through steam as part of the Apogee Throwback Pack.
An update to the whole thing, Marakaate has fixed the source well enough to compile! You can read about his adventure here, and download his updated source here. He’s also asked me to plug his BBS, marabbs.no-ip.org.. You can just telnet to the IP address. There is some palette issues as they are compiled into the game, not read from the data files (wtf?) and have been extracted from an exe, however the starting logo is all wrong.. But the game works.
So, enjoy!You can argue to what degree he was a product of his time, and how far he went beyond that, but it's clear that HP Lovecraft was pretty racist and all in all, firmly on the side of the establishment.
The cultists in The Call of Cthulhu, apprehended by the police on a voodoo raid, are referred to as "men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type". And The Horror at Red Hook is a veritable orgy of xenophobia, again with the brave police barely able to keep some particularly despicable type of foreigner under control.
Ich hätte gern ein cooles Steampunk Lovecraft MMO, in dem ich eine Kultistin spielen kann. — Tiny Tiia (@TiiaAurora) February 20, 2014
"I would like a cool Steampunk Lovecraft MMO where I can play a cultist."
This tweet got me to thinking: yeah, that would be pretty awesome. And such a refreshing change. Usually, in Lovecraftian things, the protagonists are associated with the establishment and fight against the "monsters". (To use a vague term encompassing the various supernatural horrors.) Protagonists are professors, police, Good Upstanding Members Of The Community. Antagonists are foreigners, mongrels, mutants, criminals.
I run the occasional Lovecraftian pen and paper RPG session set in 1817. There, I try to occasionally change the formula by allying the monsters with the establishment, the theory being that lust for power trumps xenophobia. It's basically a tweak to make the setting more palatable.
Neil Gaiman's excellent A Study in Emerald (PDF) puts the protagonists on the side of the establishment, which is also on the side of the monsters.
That leaves us with a final juxtaposition: the protagonists are allied with the monsters against the establishment. How to do this in a game? Computer games tend to be very much "history as written by the victors". The most egregious example is maybe "Colonization", which manages to be about US history, lionizing "founding fathers", while completely ignoring slavery out of squeamishness. The only time we get to play anti-establishment figures is in carefully circumscribed freedom fighter roles - as American revolutionaries, or fighting against some ill-defined far-future corporate dystopia.
How can we make a cultist game work? Why does the game's protagonist side with the monsters? One option is that they are less monstrous than they seem. It's just the boring minds of the establishment who find them frightening and incomprehensible. But this is a copout, I think. Friendly freedom-fighter Cthulhu is an absurd image.
A second option is that the protagonist means to use these monsters as tools. This is better, but then the protagonist isn't really a cultist - and you just know that "using extradimensional horrors for fun and profit" is going to go horribly wrong. Here, the protagonist is more of a cultist "fellow traveler", a word usually translated as "useful idiot".
So let's say that the monsters are indeed monstrous, and the protagonist is indeed on their side. Why? Because they have reached the point where they desperately want change, even if it's change for the worse. When I first finished reading 1984, I lay awake willing an asteroid strike or plague to happen in that world. The gridlock of oppression in the book is so self-perpetuating that it feels only a major catastrophe might break the pattern and set people free.
Having established why the protagonist might side with the monsters against the establishment, how do we get the player to side with the protagonist? Again, in most games, the player is nominally on the side of the establishment. Yes, there are plenty of antiheroes, but that tends to just mean they're assholes. Being on the side of the rebels is only permitted in carefully constructed settings where we get repeatedly told that the establishment is monstrously evil. Ideally, we'd want something subtler and more interesting than "the establishment burnt down my village and is now spit-roasting babies".
What well-known antiheroes are there we could use for inspiration? Right now, I can think of two: Captain Nemo, at least in some incarnations. Nemo is a violent anti-imperialist who still gets portrayed in at least an ambivalent light. And of course there's V from V for Vendetta. Moreso in the original graphic novel, where he is a bona fide bomb-making crazy anarchist, than in the movie, which cleans him up a bit for general audiences.
In neither case, their motivations for the violence they wreak is immediately explained. With Nemo, we never find out in detail, whereas with V, his past is revealed gradually. So it's not necessary to put a "the establishment burn down the village" scene right at the start.
So there we have it: you could make a great game about being a cultist, and it doesn't have to be unsubtle. You can use flashbacks or other show-don't-tell moments to gradually explain how at least to the protagonist, worshipping supernatural horrors is their only remaining hope to break a pattern of oppression they see as too solid to fight against alone.
Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!Citizen lobbyists make progress with Republicans on climate
Susan Phillips Bio Recent Stories Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the |
Jewish, restricting Jews’ rights, de-naturalizing recent citizens and detaining recently arrived immigrants was perhaps not so bad after all. Many of these same public figures would gain powerful government positions during World War II. Their willingness to serve within the Vichy government rather than use their political influence to take a stand against it enabled the regime to normalize its rule.
Consider, for example, bishops in the French Catholic Church. At a time when 85% of French citizens were Catholic, the churches found themselves flooded with laity seeking guidance in the wake of Germany’s invasion. Thus Catholic bishops held significant power to shape popular understandings of political circumstances. From 1933-1940, many bishops spoke out against the evils of Nazism in what Archbishop of Cambrai Jean Chollet described as a “crusade” in “defense of civilization.” Others, including prominent bishops in big cities like Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse, formed a “front of defense for the bible” to protest Nazi ideology in alliance with the Jewish rabbinate.
Yet in August 1940, even before France and Germany embarked upon an official collaboration, the French Catholic episcopate formally endorsed the Vichy regime’s first anti-Semitic decree, the Statut des Juifs. Shortly thereafter, the State Council, Vichy’s highest judicial body, purged all Jews from public office. Simultaneously, more Catholics were ushered into government appointments than at any time since 1878. In the magazine Informations Catholiques Français, the episcopate characterized its “national role” as a common effort between civil authorities and religious authorities — meaning, at this point, Catholics only. Later on, as state policies of classification and denaturalization both widened and worsened, from confiscation of Jewish belongings to forced evictions of Jews from their homes, the Association of Cardinals and Archbishops encouraged “the union of all French” around Marshal Pétain’s regime. Time and again, the episcopate would call on laity to rally in support of the regime and its National Revolution philosophy. In contrast, bishops would no longer publicly ally with the rabbinate and there was no public protest on behalf of Jews until late August 1942.
Similarly, in the contemporary U.S., we have seen many public figures who once spoke out against Trump and his pro-surveillance, pro-discrimination, pro-torture, and pro-deportation agenda begin to call for compromise. Some are accepting positions within the Trump administration. One of the most prominent Democratic figures to recently strike a conciliatory tone is former Vice President Al Gore, now an environmental policy activist, who said on October 10th that “[Trump] would take us toward a climate catastrophe.” On December 5th, Gore went to Trump Tower in New York City and boarded its gilded elevators to meet with Trump in “a sincere search for areas of common ground.” Two days later, Trump nominated a dear friend of the fossil fuel industry, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, to run the EPA (NPR reports that Pruitt’s official biography calls him “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda” and that he has allowed energy executives to ghost-write his letters to the EPA). Gore’s search for common ground was, via Trump’s appointment, publicly mocked. Yet what is truly dangerous — and what the lessons of Vichy France teach us — is how attempts at accommodation repeatedly reveal trusted leaders’ willingness to look the other way when it comes to some threatening proposals (including, say, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants or revoking the citizenship of flag burners), in favor of attempts to nudge Trump on others (transportation, infrastructure). Such acquiescence quietly extends the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable, with obvious consequence for shared moral sensibilities.
Meanwhile, on the right, Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker quipped recently, “one by one, Republicans who stood up to Trump or questioned his statements and antics have made a pilgrimage to Trump Tower to kiss the president-elect’s ring, or joined his administration, or decided uncharacteristically to just keep their mouths shut.” Senator Ted Cruz, House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Representative Jason Chaffetz were among the first to accede. Rucker is also correct that both the vocal and now-silent about-faces are significant (I have written on silence as a political statement in Vichy France here). Mitt Romney, who called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” in March 2016 but after the election dined at Trump International Hotel with the President-elect, emerged from the meal with his toothpaste-ad smile to declare, “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump. We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.”
Romney is in the running to be U.S. Secretary of State. By kowtowing to Trump, Romney is normalizing a man and a sweeping political agenda he very recently and publicly decried. He and other never-oh-maybe-now-Trump politicians are modeling what it looks like to accept rather than resist authoritarian abuse, to put short-term self-interest ahead of conscience. They will not protect the vulnerable.
Subsequently, as Trump assembles a team of loyal advisors and a cabinet of extremists (including Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, and the David Duke-approved Stephen Bannon), as he surrounds himself with more military generals than any other democratic leader in the world (a distinction that also generally separates democracies from autocracies), and as he potentially incorporates pliable “mainstreamers” such as Romney into his regime, we must resist the delusion that the latter is typical partisanship at work. In fact, by acting as if the acquiescence of rank-and-file Republicans is typical, we risk allowing Trump’s proposed policies to go unchallenged—just everyday politics and therefore normal.
2. Symbolic Consecration
Normalization depends on an authoritarian regime’s ability to accumulate symbolic capital.
Normalization hinges on the successful combination of political capital with symbolic capital. Unique in its emphasis on misrecognition, symbolic capital naturalizes political capital by deflecting attention away from its power dynamics. Put differently, symbolic capital allows political circumstances to appear natural and self-evident. Symbolic consecration, in turn, allows existing modes of domination to become entrenched.
In Vichy France, one way the regime accumulated symbolic capital was in underscoring supposedly shared symbols and worldviews among variously situated authorities. On November 19, 1940, Catholic Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier of Lyon proclaimed from his pulpit to a crowd of hundreds, “Work, family, fatherland — these words are ours.” One month later, Gerlier praised Pétain’s National Revolution philosophy in the Journal des Débats, a French weekly, stating: “The Marshal said one day: ‘our fatherland must recover the beauty of its roots.’ What is then the most beautiful of all the roots if not Christianity, which gave it birth?” In doing so, he echoed not only Pétain’s speeches but also the Marshal’s essays which described a worldview in which Jews were not a part of the natural French community. Statements like these, echoed by bishops throughout France from their pulpits to the pews, conflated the government’s political agenda with the Church’s ideology and powerfully legitimized the National Revolution’s exclusionary philosophy.
Now, consider how following Trump’s Twitter announcement last week that he would leave his businesses to focus on running the country, the official account of the Office of Government Ethics cheered “@realDonaldTrump Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest. Good call!” Trump never said he would pursue divestment, and the extent to which he will “leave” his businesses is dubious, at best. Kellyanne Conway did, after all, just announce that Trump would remain executive producer on television’s The New Celebrity Apprentice even while he occupies a presumably more-executive office, and Trump, while claiming the position is nothing more than a title, still admits that he has “a big stake” in the show.
And what about cable news and online media “debates” over whether Japanese internment camps of the 1940s set a precedent for the possible detention of Muslims in the U.S., asking with impenetrable gravity if there is such a thing as facts and, relatedly, whether or not there was voter fraud in the election (news flash: there wasn’t, and this is just another way to legitimize GOP efforts at voter disenfranchisement), or even asking are Jews truly human?! Sure, some of these extreme claims are important to report on. At each turn, however, we must be cautious: Trump has yet to hold a public press conference (the longest of any incoming president since Carter in 1976), he continues to control the narrative via his indignant tweets, and he does so especially when major news stories break about him. What do you remember more? Trump’s $25 million fraud settlement for Trump University, or that he was pissed off at Hamilton? The problem is that every time journalistic norms are applied to exceptional circumstances — every time an individual or organization expresses Trump’s goals as its own or debates unconscionable ideas and policy proposals as if they might have merit — extreme ideologies creep closer to the mainstream. From the periphery to the fringe to the presidential podium, ideas that are anything but become normal politics.
Finally, the comparison of normalizing authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism is most direct when we look at the rise of Nazism in Vichy France and the rise of “neo-Nazi,” “white supremacist,” or “alt-right” actions and reactions in the U.S. today. When journalists discuss whether neo-Nazi leaders are “intellectuals,” “hipsters” or “dapper,” when they devote articles to evaluating these agitators’ fashion choices, and when they frame white supremacists as “the new think tank in town,” they downplay the danger of those advocating for racist, religious, and anti-immigrant violence in America. Even in using the term “alt-right” rather than neo-Nazis, we risk dampening what Noah Berlatsky in Quartz describes as “the revulsion of recognition” — the kind of outcry so many of us hope would have arisen if, from the start, all media had bluntly reported on hate crimes, hate speech, and extremism in the runup to the 2016 presidential election. “Alt-right” sounds reasonable, even over the shouts of “Heil Trump!” and calls for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” in the U.S. It obscures a hateful long tradition of promoting racism through false science and mock intellectualism. “The invention of new words and phrases to conceal old evils is itself an old evil,” Berlatsky writes. In not calling out supremacists, we enable symbolic violence by allowing the regime to accumulate symbolic capital.
I have hardly scratched the surface of everything about “Trumpism” that scares me in light of my research on Vichy France. Still, if there is there is one lesson worth learning, it is this: it is awfully easy for civilians to adapt to authoritarianism and the symbolic and ultimately physical violence that often accompanies it. Social classification categories and censuses, forced registration of individuals and their property, restrictive changes to employment and immigration law, internment or deportation—each of these policies once seemed unfathomable in France, yet each helped lay the groundwork for the Holocaust to come. Each is also mirrored by a policy openly espoused by candidate Trump or his most trusted advisors. Thus while I am not saying genocide is coming, I am arguing that increased symbolic and physical violence is happening in the United States today. I also believe that internment and forced deportations are possible. We therefore cannot let our leaders of the hook when they make choices to accommodate racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, attacks on queer and trans people, and deep economic inequality — each of these operates intersectionally and we must combat them together or not at all. Likewise, fear and instability mask extreme words and actions as rational and moral, but here, too, we must fight at every turn, recall our past, and be stubborn in safeguarding the future. We must remain vigilant even when our worldviews are coopted and coerced, even when the unthinkable creeps closer to normal.
Aliza Luft is Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCLA. This post is based in part on her paper, “A Bourdieusian Approach to Explaining the Rise of Religious Nationalism in France,” available at SocArXiv.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Like this: Like Loading... RelatedState Sen. Mark Obenshain’s (R) campaign for attorney general of Virginia formally filed for a recount on Wednesday.
A runner for Obenshain’s campaign was sent over to the Capitol in Richmond to formally file the papers Wednesday morning.
“This morning we are filing a petition for recount and a memorandum in support of the recount and it’s actually on its way over to the court as we speak,” Obenshain attorney Stephen C. Piepgrass said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning. “As soon as the petition is filed the process begins for a special recount court to start planning the recount.”
Obenshain filing for a recount comes only two days after the Virginia State Board of Elections certified the attorney general race with Obenshain’s opponent, state Sen. Mark Herring (D) as the winner. The State Board of Elections certified that Herring won by a slim 165-vote margin, a margin small enough that either candidate could call for a recount.
Obenshain officials said that they expect the recount to happen in mid-December, roughly around the week of Dec. 15. The Obenshain campaign expects the recount to take one day but possibly two for all the state’s jurisdictions to conduct the recount.Having found little success during their time in Call of Duty so far, the organization is starting fresh for the new season, picking up Adam ‘Assault’ Garcia, Renato ‘Saints’ Forza, Peirce ‘Gunless’ Hillman, and Brice ‘Faccento’ Faccento. It might be tempting to look at this team and see a collection of left-overs, albeit a fairly impressive one. With the likes of Evil Geniuses, EnVyUs, Luminosity, Rise Nation and even FaZe having had rumors of their rosters floating around from shortly after the Call of Duty Championships, the new Echo Fox line-up looks at a glance to simply feature those high-profile players left out of the aforementioned squads.
Assault
On closer inspection, however, Echo Fox actually looks like an incredibly well-balanced team. They have immensely talented stars, a strong balance of carry threats across roles and just enough experience and leadership to bring it all together. Far from being the rostermania leftovers, Echo Fox could ultimately be one of the most dangerous squads put together. There’s certainly some risk – every player on the team has a question mark of some kind hovering over them, but few players are so perfectly rounded as to avoid doubts entirely, especially heading into such a significant game change. The potential upside of this squad, however, is massive.
-
x
Saints
Assault offers Echo Fox an elite Assault Rifle player. Many of the best players in the world over the last year were those who could devastate an enemy team with an AR, from the likes of Matthew ‘FormaL’ Piper, Samuel ‘Octane’ Larew and Austin ‘SlasheR’ Liddicoat to bursts of form from James ‘Clayster’ Eubanks and Trei ‘Zer0’ Morris, the role has never been more impactful nor more competitive. With so many AR titans on the circuit, every aspiring champion must feature an exceptional AR slayer to match them. Even if WWII doesn’t lend itself to AR dominance to the extent that Infinite Warfare did, such is the talent of those players that being significantly outclassed in that position is likely to be costly. Assault may not boast the pedigree of those names, but through his time competing he has demonstrated immense talent. Throughout his time under Cloud9 Assault was one of the team’s primary carry players, a key element in almost all of the team’s success. Despite having limited experience playing for a consistently tier-one team, Assault has demonstrated on several occasions an ability to perform under pressure, stepping up at both Call of Duty Championships that he’s competed at and suffering no dip in performance the first and only time he’s competing in a grand final Though in terms of accolades Assault might technically be the least successful member of this squad, even among champions Assault has the potential to be the star player for Echo Fox.
Gunless
Throughout his career, Saints has been one of the most consistent elite SMG players in the world. At his best, he can go toe-to-toe with almost any counterpart, and periods of distinct slumps have been few and far between. Infinite Warfare was actually perhaps a slightly quieter season for Saints on an individual level than some years, although even then there were flashes of brilliance from time to time. Some of Saints’ greatest seasons, however, have been in the original boots-on-the-ground era, with Ghosts, in particular, standing out. When he’s on his game, there are few SMG slayers that can compete with Saints. As a player, Saints is one of the most valuable in the world – in terms of sheer skill and reliability as an SMG player, there are few that compare. Unfortunately, a reality of Saints’ career has been that he’s never attended an event overseas. With one major open event confirmed for Europe, Echo Fox may well have to write off an entire tournament, likely forced to use a stand-in. The coming year has every indication of once again being incredibly stacked. As such, every team that might have the potential to win an event – of which Echo Fox certainly should be, on paper – must seize every possible opportunity. There will be no guarantee of a “next time” for any squad that throws away a shot at a trophy, barring OpTic Gaming, who are always a law unto themselves. Major tournaments aren’t yet so abundant that being hamstrung for a major open is insignificant. All things considered, the upsides of Saints as a player outweigh this negative, but it’s not to be entirely overlooked when considering how Echo Fox’s season might ultimately look.
x
Faccento
Where Saints brings solid slaying power with an SMG, Gunless perhaps offers a little more nuance. At the height of eUnited’s success in Infinite Warfare, Gunless wasn’t just putting up numbers – although he managed that as well – but crucially he was a fantastic play-maker, someone who was set up to make the big game-changing plays and routinely delivered. Unfortunately, Gunless missing out on CWL Anaheim and then moving to FaZe saw him fall out of the spotlight somewhat, with the FaZe squad never quite finding a recipe for success after his addition. Much of the criticism he faced following the move seemed born more of the circumstances than his in-game play. His performances under FaZe, while perhaps not quite so exceptional, were never overtly poor. Gunless does face pressure to re-elevate his game, however, if he is to reclaim a place among the true titans of the game. That pressure is only enhanced by the mover to boots-on-the-ground, a setting in which Gunless has never competed, and still being so early into his career he will have prove he has the longevity and adaptability that is the hallmark of Call of Duty’s greats.
On this team, the burden of leadership will almost certainly fall entirely to Faccento, with no other players leaping out as natural leaders. It is a role, however, that he may well thrive in. Faccento has often been praised for his in-game leadership, particularly in more tactical modes like Search and Destroy. By all accounts a smart strategist, it was Faccento who was credited with Rise Nation’s creative SnD play. With a return to boots on the ground, and the presumed re-introduction of Capture the Flag as a third game-mode, the scope for strategy may well be higher than any recent season for WWII. Faccento is not entirely without experience in boots-on-the-ground titles, and with stand-out in-game leaders a fairly uncommon commodity, if Faccento can excel in that role for this team he may well prove critical to their success. The primary criticism of Faccento has often been his individual play, which can be streaky – impressive highs, as demonstrated in Rise Nation’s CWL Vegas win, but also underwhelming lows at times. On Echo Fox, however, Faccento has more fire-power to work with than he’s ever had before. On this team, Faccento shouldn’t need to have a heavy slaying presence. The rest of his team-mates might each be the super-star of separate teams, such is the caliber of talent on this squad, and so for Echo Fox to find success Faccento likely need not do more than avoid being the source of a significant deficit. Averaging a neutral or even slightly negative performance statistically will be perfectly acceptable for Faccento if he can indeed provide the leadership and structure to bring these pieces together into a successful unit.
-Without warning to some employees and the property manager, Perdition Smokehouse, a Texas barbecue and craft beer restaurant on University Avenue, served its last meals Sunday night.
Kathy Lococo, property manager at Lawrence J. Lococo and Co., received an email Monday from Chuck Stilphen, owner of Perdition Smokehouse, saying that he could no longer endure the financial loss of continuing operations. Stilphen could not be reached for comment by email.
Perdition Smokehouse opened in June 2014 with two Texan smokers for its meats and more than 40 craft beers on draft. The restaurant brought in Michael O’Brien, former chef at Mikkeller in San Francisco — a restaurant that Stilphen also owns.
The closure surprised some neighboring businesses, which regularly saw the restaurant with customers, while others saw it written in the stars.
“I thought it was a place that people will go to. I don’t know about the closure,” said Ryan Johnson, a cashier at Red Tomato Pizza House. Johnson also said businesses are hard-pressed in Berkeley because of high rent.
Robert Gaustad, owner of Bobby G’s Pizzeria, said he noticed that Perdition Smokehouse kept scaling back its hours.
“I learned early on when restaurant economics were going bad,” Gaustad said. “You can’t stay in business if you’re closing early. You’re not busy.”
Lococo said Perdition Smokehouse was the fourth restaurant located on the 2050 University Ave. property since her client Craig Larsen has owned the building.
Larsen attempted to open Amadeus Cafe in 2013, but it closed within a week. Indian restaurant Zaika and upscale Meridian International Sports Cafe also opened and closed after long-term tenant Plearn Thai moved out and down the street in 2008 after nearly 25 years.
Stilphen was one year into a 10-year lease with Lococo’s firm.
“We’re not sure what we’re going to do next,” Lococo said, recognizing the difficulty to keep a business. “There’s a lot of money that was put into that restaurant.”
The property management company must work with Stilphen to figure out how to make rent, and former employees of Perdition Smokehouse may need to do the same. Employees could be seen cleaning the draft lines and packing up the restaurant Tuesday. One mentioned that he had received notice only Monday that the restaurant was closing.
“It’s a tough business, and with a location that pricey, one has to be wealthy, in my opinion, to take it over. I feel bad for the Perdition owners,” Gaustad said in an email. He attributed his pizzeria’s nine years in business to being an owner-operated location open seven days a week.
Restaurant Realty Company lists the property online for $150,000, with a $15,000 monthly rent for potential restaurateurs who would take over the lease, which expires in April 2024.
Contact Pamela Larson at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @PamReporting.Page Content
The Pathway and River Cleanup is an annual event involving thousands of volunteers who generously donate their time to help clean up Calgary. This year's event will take place on Sunday, May 6 from 9 a.m. to noon.
Volunteer registration
To volunteer for the Pathway and River Cleanup, you must be:
12 years or older
Accompanied by a parent or guardian (if you're between 12 and 16 years old)
Physically fit
Willing to get dirty
Able to commit to three hours of clean up on event day
Volunteers are encouraged to register as a group with a designated leader. Any registered volunteers without a group will be assigned to one.
All Pathway and River Cleanup volunteers must be registered.
To register as a volunteer, please review the following:
You are encouraged to register as a group with a designated leader. If you do not have a group, you will be assigned to one.
Volunteers may request a specific cleanup location at the time of registration. We will do our best to accommodate specific location requests, but cannot guarantee preferred placement.
If you do not request a specific location, one will still be assigned to you.
Group leaders
Each group must have a designated leader. New group leaders are required to attend a one-hour, in-person orientation session. Returning group leaders must attend the orientation session every three years, but must complete annual online training.
Group leaders will be responsible for the following:
Recording and submitting group member names and signatures for insurance purposes ( forms must be submitted by event day ).
). Conducting a group member orientation session prior to event day to communicate event logistics and safety procedures.
Ensuring the safe and effective clean up of their designated area.
Personal safety
The personal safety of our volunteers is top priority. Risks will be minimized as much as possible. However, volunteers may come in contact with the following:
Tripping hazards
Unstable ground or rocky shorelines
Heavy or bulky items
Sharp items (e.g. glass, metal, discarded needles)
Hazardous materials
Illegal campsites
Volunteers will receive safety information and training prior to event day.
If you have any questions about volunteering for the Pathway and River Cleanup, please contact 311.There was a time, not so long ago, when Real Salt Lake was more than just a soccer team. I can still remember the feeling of walking in to the hallowed RioT, and taking my seat in Section 4 among thousands of fellow supporters; all of us knowing that when our players took the field the game was ours to win or lose. We were the team that played the beautiful game, week in and week out, the way it was supposed to be played. We controlled our own destiny. We were a team to be feared by lesser squads. Although we were small, and our resources slight when measured to the bigger fish, our resourcefulness, and our commitment would surely see us through. There were none too powerful to receive our well-defined brand of justice.
The spotlight of Major League Soccer most often shone far away from our small-market corner. The bigger teams, with their deeper pockets, and bigger stars always seemed to get the accolades, and the rewards that we felt were our due. But if one listened closely to the right kind of people, you could tell that there was a deep respect for RSL, and for what it did on the field. Among league pundits, and opposing coaches, and players it was clear that RSL had something worthy of admiration, something to be desired. We were the proof not only that big spending wasn’t the only path to success in this league, but that maybe it wasn’t even the best path. We didn’t always win, but by always competing toe-to-toe with the LA Galaxy, and the Seattle Sounders of the world we earned a place among the MLS Elite. And for the other rank-and-file teams we were the team to beat. We were the goalpost by which a smaller market team’s success was measured, and among the fans of those teams we were held in a level of contempt that only great success, over many years of greatness, can buy.
Those days are gone now.
Bit by bit some thing has been picking us apart. We no longer control the game, or our own destiny. We no longer play attractive, positive soccer. We fans no longer take our seats at the RioT with confidence. We still show up. We still sing the songs of our people. We still bring the noise and the energy that our stadium is known for. However, a lot of the belief is gone.
I think that most RSL fans are not as fickle as one might suspect if one goes too deeply into the rabbit-hole that is social media. Most of us will continue to support the good, the bad, and the ugly. But I can not argue with, nor criticize those whose hearts are filled with bitterness, and anger for what has happened to our team. I have no argument against one who might say that they are not going to renew their season tickets for 2016. Many of us were brought up into the light of RSL, and became fans of a playing style, and a philosophy that no longer exists. Many of the same players are still here. We still believe in them. And every now and again you might catch a glimpse of the old RSL fighting through the darkness of this foul season. But those games, such as our 2-0 defeat of Seattle Sounders on August 22, only make the rest of it that much more painful to bear. Those fleeting glimmers of our older, truer colors, only remind us of what we have lost, and further bleakens our view of the future.
There is no reason to believe that we can’t get back everything we have lost. Although new rules supporting bigger and bigger spending among the haves of MLS has many prognosticators spelling doom and gloom for the have-nots, I don’t believe the sport has fundamentally changed. There is still room for hard work, and dedication, and a Team-Is-The-Star philosophy. I believe in this. It is why I became a fan of this team. It is just harder, and harder to believe that the current management is capable of taking us in that direction. It doesn’t take a soccer genius to see that what we are doing, tactically and strategically, is not working. And it will not start working next week, or next year, or ever. The sooner the front office acknowledges this failure, and begins to change it, the sooner we can get back to the RSL Soccer we are all dying to support.
Res Ipsa LoquiturDonald Rumsfeld now claims fashioning a democracy in Iraq seemed "unrealistic" to him from the beginning, something Jon Stewart said should be filed under “comments that would have been useful earlier" on Thursday night's "Daily Show."
As Stewart pointed out, Rumsfeld's earlier comments were the complete opposite.
"There are doubters, and those who say it can't be done," Rumsfeld said in a 2004 clip. "There have always been doubters who have said it couldn't be done."
Stewart attempted to complete Rumsfeld's 11-year-old speech:
"And one of those doubters will be me retrospectively, 11 years after the invasion, I sought and worked tirelessly to make happen, so my point is I was right all along."
Stewart has said he regrets not being harder on Rumsfeld in a 2011 interview. And while he may not have another chance to grill the former defense secretary, he used Thursday's show to point out how Rumsfeld was not only wrong... but has also been remarkably inconsistent.
It was a segment he called "Learning Curves Are For Pussies."The advance estimates for this year’s economic growth have again placed the burden of growth on consumption expenditure in the March quarter. Working backwards from the whole year’s gross domestic product (GDP) numbers, we get private final consumption expenditure, or PFCE, (real) growth of 11.7% for the three months ended March.
That growth in PFCE comes after a 6.4% growth in the third quarter and on the top of a decent 6.6% growth a year ago. At the same time, the fourth quarter GDP growth is estimated at 7.7%, not very different from the preceding three quarters.
So what’s the story with consumption?
While government statisticians are predicting a growth which is the highest in the last at least eight quarters, the private sector—economists, consumers and companies—are not exhibiting the same degree of optimism.
For instance, the MNI India Consumer Survey shows that consumer confidence has fallen nine times in the last 12 months and in February, remained very close to December’s record levels. Nielsen data show packaged consumer goods industry growth across categories from biscuits to detergents has slowed to 5-6% in January and February, down from 11-12% in the March 2015 quarter.
Or consider automobiles. While passenger vehicle sales grew in February—and a measly 2% at that—owing to utility vehicle sales growing, car sales fell for a second straight month.
Industry captains, too, haven’t guided for such a sharp recovery in consumption, as portended by the advance estimates. Leaders from consumer goods firms such as Dabur India Ltd and Marico Ltd have said that the benefits from rural reforms announced in the Union budget might take as long as three quarters to kick in and consumption continues to remain soft.
Meanwhile, leading indicators published by State Bank of India and Nomura, too, aren’t that optimistic about overall growth and highlight downside risks.
Summed up, it means that the factors for weak consumption growth of the past two years—rural distress, weak macroeconomic sentiment and the lack of a pick-up in discretionary demand—haven’t really turned around. While budget measures, a good monsoon and pay commission impact may very well push up consumption the next fiscal, a 11.7% growth in January to March looks tough.
One final note: in the previous fiscal year’s advance estimates, consumption growth for the March 2015 quarter was projected at 11.8%. When provisional numbers in May 2015 were released, PFCE growth was reported at 7.9%. After revisions, it stands at 6.6% now.Many people have passed by the Poway American Little League Minor A baseball fields and caught a glimpse of Elisa Marquez this season. They usually pause, stop and then stay a while.
Some of the attention is because Marquez, 11, is a girl playing with all boys. But most of it is because Marquez is a girl striking out a lot of boys and then getting in the batter’s box and ripping base hits all over the field.
Elisa Marquez runs the bases during a game earlier this year. Elisa Marquez runs the bases during a game earlier this year.
“She probably was the best fielder and pitcher and one of the best hitters in Minor A,” said Paul Klepsch, who is the vice president of PALL and coached Marquez on the Minor A Yankees this past season. “She did awesome.”
So awesome that she became the first girl in at least the last 15 years — and maybe ever — to be selected to a PALL all-star team. She is playing with the PALL 11-year-old All-Star Team, which opened District 31 play Sunday with a 13-0 win over Poway National. Marquez tossed some three innings of shutout baseball.
“It feels good to make all-stars,” said Marquez, who was throwing a baseball around with her two older brothers, Nathanael, 15, and Daniel, 13, during an interview last week. “The team is nice. They treat me as one of the teammates and I like that.”
Playing baseball with the boys is no big deal for Marquez. She started playing in the street with her older brothers and the neighbors when she was 5. It wasn’t until last year, though, that she played organized baseball. It was her first time playing any organized sport.
“I knew from when we first started tossing the ball she had talent,” Nathanael said, proudly. “I had one of those bad gloves, so when she threw the ball it would sting when I caught it.”
That right arm of hers averaged over two strikeouts per inning for the Yankees during the regular season. She had a.500 batting average, a.708 slugging percentage and a.636 on-base percentage. The Yankees went 22-2 en route to the league title, but Marquez did much more than hit, pitch and play defense.
“She was always picking the players up when they were down,” Klepsch said. “You would always hear her in the dugout talking a player up after they made an out. She would always try to find a silver lining.”
That helped Marquez, who has played shortstop, catcher, first base, second base and outfield to go along with pitching, earn the prestigious Cameron McAfee Award, which is a sportsmanship award.
Each team in the league selects a player that has best exhibited the qualities of good sportsmanship — positive attitude, enthusiasm and cooperation — over the course of the season.
“I got (those traits) from my mom (Anne) and dad (Michael),” Marquez said with a smile.
And the baseball talent? Well, her brothers take credit for that.
“Everyone asks where she gets it,” Nathanael said. “We are like ‘we worked with her a little bit.’”
Softball tends to eventually steal away the talented girls from baseball. But Marquez has lasted in the sport longer than many and she has no plans on ever making the switch.
“It will always be baseball,” said Marquez, who claims the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres as her favorite professional teams and Buster Posey as her favorite professional player. “I have never played softball. I don’t like it.”
But she does like playing baseball. And she is out showing everyone just how great she is at it.Another California Cop 'Shares' A Suspect's Intimate Photos With His Fellow Officers
from the to-serve-and-titillate dept
A Palo Alto Police Department detective has been disciplined for sending a supervisor a picture of a "scantily clad" woman he found on her cellphone while investigating her involvement in an alleged burglary, according to a new independent police auditor's report…
The independent police auditor said the department's investigation was "thorough" and agreed with its findings and analysis. But they were concerned that it took the supervisory detective more than two weeks to report the incident to the sergeant, though the delay may have been due in part to "non-overlapping" work schedules, according to the report.
The first was the sergeant's instruction to the supervisory detective to delete the picture from his cellphone. The sergeant said he wanted to prevent it from being distributed again.
"While the sergeant's intentions were good, it would have been preferable to obtain a'screen shot' or some other evidentiary preservation of the photograph before deleting it," [aud |
Nature's daughter, War's daughter, Fate's granddaughter, Time's lover and mother to his biological son (prior to either of them taking their office), Evil's stepdaughter, and Death's wife's cousin.
In "Under a Velvet Cloak,” Kerena (Nox, Incarnation of Night) is the lover of the original Sir Gawain, Knight of the Round Table, and mother of the original Gawain (Gaw-Two) who was tainted at birth and destined to die early. Kerena's quest to save Gaw-Two is what eventually leads her to become Nox, the Incarnation of Night and Keeper of Secrets. Gawain (Orlene's ghost husband) is the direct descendant of Sir Gawain, and carries the family taint, so the second Gaw-Two, born to Orlene and Ghost Gawain, is also tainted and destined to die early. Nox is also the great-aunt (many times removed) to Niobe and her children and grandchildren.
Lesser Incarnations [ edit ]
Hypnos: Incarnation of Sleep
JHVH: Incarnation of Jewish God (assumed to be Jehovah)
Lesser Incarnations serving Nature/Gaea [ edit ]
Eros: Incarnation of Love
Hope: Incarnation of Hope
Phobos & Deimos: Named after the Greek gods of fear and panic. These lesser Incarnations act as assistants to Gaea (Nature). Their functions are not explained in the books (although presumably they have similar natures to their Greek equivalents).
Lesser Incarnations serving War/Mars [ edit ]
Pestilence: disease in general, but especially consistent with the aftermath of battles.
Conquest: manager of individual battles
Famine: starvation consistent with battles (although this incarnation has served Death/Thanatos on at least one occasion)
Slaughter: a representation of the bloodshed associated with battles
The essentials formed a covenant
Cultural references [ edit ]
The Showtime series Dead Like Me was inspired by the book On a Pale Horse. [2]
was inspired by the book. In 2007, Anthony wrote that Disney had sold the TV rights to On A Pale Horse to Touchstone/ABC, who were "filming a pilot program".[3] In 2009 Javier Grillo-Marxuach wrote a pilot for the series for ABC,[4] but it was not picked up.COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio lawmakers' final compromise budget plan includes a small-business income-tax cut and a increase on cigarettes, a legislative conference committee revealed late Wednesday night.
The committee's budget plan would also impose new restrictions on abortion clinics, allow later bar hours during the Republican National Convention, provide pay raises for local officials, block journalists' access to concealed-handgun records, and remove a proposed state tax on Social Security benefits.
Under the plan, business owners would receive a 75-percent income-tax reduction on their first $250,000 of net income for the 2015 tax year. In tax year 2016, they would pay no state income tax at all on their first $250,000 of income.
Any income beyond $250,000 would be taxed at a flat rate of 3 percent under the budget plan.
The committee added a new rule that would only allow abortion clinics to enter into a required ambulatory transfer agreement with a local, private hospital if the hospital is within 30 miles of the clinic.
The proposed rule, which could threaten the only remaining abortion clinics in Toledo and Cincinnati, had been removed from the Senate budget by Sen. Sandra Williams of Cleveland, who subsequently became the only Senate Democrat to vote for the bill.
Conferees also kept another abortion clinic rule, offered by the Senate, which would automatically deny any variance application for a transfer agreement that the Ohio Department of Health director doesn't approve within 60 days. The Women's Med Center in Dayton has had such a request pending for two years.
The cigarette tax hike was set at 35 cents per pack. The Senate version had a 40-cent increase, while Gov. John Kasich had proposed a $1 per pack increase.
The budget plan also would:
The budget plan is expected to clear a final vote in the Ohio House and Senate before heading to Kasich's desk.Mar 10, 2016; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Wisconsin Badgers coach Greg Gard coaches on the sidelines against the Nebraska Cornhuskers during the Big Ten Conference tournament at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
The college basketball season will officially tip off on Friday with numerous televised games and ranked teams, including two games featuring top 12 squads, two of which involve Big Ten teams Michigan State and Indiana playing Arizona and Kansas in the Armed Force Classic in Hawaii.
The Wisconsin Badgers will begin the 2016-17 season at home Friday night against the Central Arkansas Bears out of the Southland Conference. The game will be considered as part of the Maui Invitational inland portion. It will the first ever meeting between the two programs as Central Arkansas is fairly new to the Division 1 sector.
It will be the first game in his first season for head coach Greg Gard, whose tenth ranked Badgers are looking to build off last year’s Sweet 16 appearance after returning all five starters. The team will also be looking to start the season on a better note after last season’s surprising opening loss to Western Illinois, a team that finished last in their conference and just 10-17 overall on the year.
Wisconsin has won 36 of its last 42 non-conference regular season games and will be looking to start off the season right against a Bears team that is picked 11th out of 13 teams in their conference before hitting the road to Omaha to take on a dangerous Creighton Bluejays team on Tuesday. Five of those six losses during that span came last season.
After taking over the Badgers halfway through last season and enduring hardships and a below-standard record, Gard will not have to worry about rebuilding as the team returns its nine top scorers.
“It helps when you have a mature group,” Gard said. “When you have four seniors leading the way … your best-coached teams are always your player-coached teams. This group has taken on a leadership and ownership of that locker room.”
The Bears ended last season with a 7-21 record, but are much better off than they were two years ago, finishing the 2014-15 campaign with just two wins.
Central Arkansas returns a big time scorer in Jordan Howard who averaged just over 20 points per game last season.
The game will tip off at 7:00 pm at the Kohl Center in Madison. It will not be televised, but can be streamed online through BTN Plus or tuned in on the radio with Matt Lepay and company on 1310 AM or 101.5 FM.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday said Tehran would stop producing 20 percent enriched uranium if it is guaranteed fuel for a medical research reactor, seeking to revive a fuel swap deal that fell apart in 2009.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the 66th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York, September 22, 2011. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi
“Any time they can guarantee us this sale... we will stop 20 percent enrichment,” Ahmadinejad told a small group of reporters in New York, where he is attending a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.
“Whenever these assurances are given, we will do our part,” Ahmadinejad said. “We will cease domestic enrichment at the 20 percent level. That’s all. But we will continue the building of new power plants.”
Tehran’s refusal to halt enrichment has provoked four rounds of U.N. sanctions on the world’s No. 5 oil exporting state and tighter U.S. and European Union restrictions.
Ahmadinejad touched on the issue of the sanctions, acknowledging they had hit the Iranian economy but denying they had had a devastating impact.
“At the end of the day, sanctions do have an effect, we never maintained that they had no effect whatsoever,” he said. “But they do not have a decisive effect.”
Western nations suspect Iran is trying to use its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons. The Islamic Republic has denied the charge, saying it wants to produce nuclear energy.
Tehran plans to build 19 new 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plants to meet growing electricity demand.
UNDERGROUND BUNKER
Iran recently began shifting enrichment centrifuges to an underground bunker near the holy city of Qom as part of a push to triple output capacity of higher-grade enriched uranium, a development Washington called “troubling.”
Western analysts say that Iran’s drive to produce 20 percent enriched material puts it closer to the 90 percent threshold suitable for atom bombs.
Iran says it needs the material to fuel a Tehran research reactor it says helps in treating hundreds of thousands of cancer patients.
A tentative pact brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, in 2009 to exchange Iranian low-enriched uranium (LEU) for higher-refined fuel from abroad collapsed after Iran backed away from its terms.
The fuel swap plan was envisioned by the West as a way to reduce mistrust and help pave the way for broader talks on Tehran’s nuclear program but subsequent discussions have revealed major differences standing in the way of reviving any such deal.
Western diplomats have made clear they want Iran to send out most of its low-enriched uranium — potential weapons material if refined further — as part of any fuel swap.
Iran has made equally clear it is not prepared to part with more LEU than it agreed to under the original plan even though its stockpile has more than doubled in the intervening period.
Analysts and diplomats believe the original deal fell victim to Iran’s internal power rivalries as Ahmadinejad’s rivals — who have only grown stronger since the deal was first outlined — raised new conditions which proved unacceptable for the West.News
There were speculations as to whether Daft Punk actually played live during their Grammy Performance along with Nile Rodgers, Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder in which the robots were perched inside a booth behind all the front runners, the usual place for the mysterious duo though.
That is until Jim Logiudice a professional model and prop maker for film uploaded to his blog a set of photos outlining the build of their console based around the ‘Mother’ space craft control room from Aliens (very fitting). Full statement below;
Here’s the set we built for Daft Punk’s Grammy performance tonight. Tino Schaedler and Optimist Design teamed up with Daft Arts to create this amazing mid-century modern design set. Check out the old school audio equipment integrated into the set. Very cool. The recording booth is patterned after the “Mother” space craft control room from the movie Alien. The robots gold mirror mixing console actually worked and was played live.
Although we don’t like poking holes in stories its hard to pass up on the details that only the “mixing console actually worked and was played live” which could mean any number of things as to how involved Daft Punk were in the performance. Was it merely fading tracks or actually mixing levels and more? Who knows but the pair did manage to take home four of the statues including the coveted ‘Album of the Year’ for Random Access Memories’.
Still not impressed? Soak up a few more shots of the build.Man who shot a Meriden mosque gets 6 months in federal prison Despite forgiveness from Muslims, mosque shooter get prison
HARTFORD >> A man who fired rifle shots towards a Meriden mosque in the hours following the terror attacks in Paris last year, was sentenced Friday to six months in federal prison, with credit for time served, followed by a period of three years of supervised release.
Ted Hakey, Jr., 48, of Meriden, appeared before U.S. District Judge Michael Shea apologetic and remorseful for his actions and said he wanted to dedicate his life to educating others about the Islamic faith.
“I didn’t have hatred for Muslims, I had hatred for terrorists, but the lines started to become blurred,” Hakey said of his decision to fire shots at the Baitul Aman Mosque on Main Street in Meriden in the early morning hours of Nov. 15. “I have come to learn that terrorists do not follow Islam.”
In addition to the sentence, Hakey was ordered to pay $5,130 to the mosque. He was ordered to self surrender to the bureau of prisons on Aug. 15.
On the evening of Nov. 15, Meriden police responded to a call from the Baitul Aman Mosque, where there were reports of bullet holes and damage caused by shots fired at the building.
Based on the trajectory of the bullets, law enforcement determined they had been fired from a high-powered rifle from the direction of Hakey’s house, according to court documents.
Hakey was arrested on Dec. 18, and later formally charged with one count of damage to religious property. Hakey pleaded guilty to that charge in February, and at the change of plea hearing reportedly admitted to consciously choosing the mosque as his target.
Hakey has been free on a $400,000 bond and reportedly apologized to the Baitul Aman community in early April.
Mohammed Querishi, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Connecticut Chapter, spoke on behalf of the mosque community and said he believed that Hakey’s apologies were heartfelt and sincere.
Querishi urged the court to consider no prison term at all for Hakey, given his efforts to apologize to and learn from the mosque community. Querishi said Hakey has helped in a recent Twitter campaign to promote peaceful practices of Muslims since his apology.
“Healing is more important than unnecessary retribution,” Querishi said, adding that the mosque’s community values forgiveness and maintaining peaceful relations.
According to information gathered by prosecutors, when investigators searched Hakey’s home, they found ammunition, a camouflage suit, and a chair near the window in the attic. The window faces the direction of the mosque, according to the government. Hakey was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1990, according to court documents.
In addition, a search of Hakey’s internet and social media history showed a pattern of hate speech against Muslims, including a post on Nov. 15 that read, “If the Muslims attack over here again it’s over for them!!!! Americans will snap and play Cowboys and Muslims! It will get ugly I think that’s why they have not done anything.” This post and others like it were shared in a sentencing memorandum from the government to the court.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Raymond Miller asked the court to consider Hakey’s prior displayed hatred of the Muslim community in imposing a sentence. In addition, Miller said that Hakey’s actions incited fear in the mosque’s community, as bullet holes and casings had been found in the mosque.
“Forgiveness does not preclude that actions have consequences,” Miller said.
Based on accounts from Hakey to a psychologist hired by the defense team, Hakey had had a number alcoholic beverages prior to firing the shots on Nov. 15.
A psychological analysis of Hakey done for the court found that Hakey “presents an interesting combination of healthy and unhealthy behavior,” according to James Connolly, the psychologist who prepared the document at the request of the defense counsel.
Connolly’s report noted Hakey is an episodic alcoholic and he has recently developed a habit of using firearms while intoxicated. The report noted the mosque was hit by the gunfire because of it’s proximity to Hakey’s home, not because of a pledged hate of Muslims.
“I note that it is my professional opinion that there is insufficient evidence that Mr. Hakey may be fairly characterized as having intentionally selected the mosque as the object of his shooting because of the religion of the individuals who worship there,” Connolly wrote. “The nature of the action when considered in its full situational context appears to be more a squalid incident of random alcoholic carelessness rather than the intentional and selective destruction of the place of worship of followers of Islam.”
In addition, Jeffrey Cohen, the attorney representing Hakey in the case, spoke for close to an hour, repeating that his client had been immediately remorseful for his actions and that Hakey’s actions differed from other hate crimes in that his target was not personal or intentional. Cohen said Hakey fired randomly, and it was the geographic proximity of the mosque to his home that resulted in bullets going in that direction.
“I don’t believe he would have gotten in his car to drive to a mosque and shoot at it,” Cohen said.
While Shea credited Hakey for his apology and subsequent actions in educating himself about the Islamic faith, the judge said he would not consider the psychologist’s report as it relied too heavily on self-reported facts from Hakey, and he concluded that Hakey did act intentionally in firing at the mosque. Shea also noted the added danger of mixing alcohol with firearms.
“Your selection of the target in this case makes this crime more serious,” Shea said. “Your crime is very serious and the sentence must reflect that.”
Hakey faced up to 20 years in prison for the crime, but a range of between eight and 14 months had been recommended to the court because of Hakey’s lack of significant criminal history and his acceptance of responsibility.
“We all have a right to worship freely and without fear of violence, and individuals who commit hateful, divisive and violent acts against others need to know that a prison term will be the end result,” said U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly. “This is an appropriate sentence that balances the need for justice with the defendant’s genuine expressions of remorse and the victim’s plea for a sentence that didn’t include jail time.”
Daly also praised the mosque community for accepting Hakey’s apology and turning a bad situation into what Daly described as a positive movement for social change.The name that most people associate with Twin Peaks is David Lynch, but co-creator Mark Frost was right there with him during the show’s development and production. Most recently he’s the author of the brand-new book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and he’s here today to answer your questions.
Before you start breathlessly filling the comments with queries about Showtime’s 2017 return to Twin Peaks, which Frost also co-wrote, note that he’s not going to be able to reveal anything about the plot of the new show. (That should be obvious, but we thought we’d share that just in case.)
Advertisement
That said—he can absolutely speak about the original Twin Peaks series, his book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and maybe even the other projects he’s been involved with over the years, like his mystery novels centering around Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or the 2005 Fantastic Four movie and its 2007 sequel (both of which he co-wrote).
He’ll be here answering your questions live starting at 1:00 pm ET, so go ahead and start composing questions in the comments. What does your log have to say about that?
Update, 2:00 pm EST: The Q&A is now closed. Thank you so much to Mark Frost for stopping by io9 today. (And also to the reader who asked about the fish in the percolator.)In his appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Donald Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, refused to deny that Trump had a hand in the misleading statement issued by his son about his meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer last June.
Trump Jr.’s initial statement said: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”
Virtually everything in this statement is dishonest.
It wasn’t an “introductory meeting.” The purpose of the meeting was not to make an introduction. Indeed, Trump Jr. has insisted that he didn’t even know the name of the person he was going to meet.
The purpose of the meeting, as we now know from emails released by Trump Jr. himself, was to obtain “very high level and sensitive information” about Hillary Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” There was no ambiguity about the source of this information, the Russian government. Trump Jr. had been told that Russia’s chief prosecutor was offering the Trump campaign “official documents and information” that would be “very useful” to his father’s presidential campaign.
Trump Jr. did not ask Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort “to stop by.” He set up the meeting with them beforehand, and forwarded to them the emails disclosing the exact purpose of the meeting.
The meeting was not primarily about “the adoption of Russian children.” It was primarily about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Indeed, when the Russian lawyer tried to change the subject to the Magnitsky Act, a sanctions program that prompted Russia to halt American adoption of Russian children, Trump Jr. found that subject so off-point that he terminated the meeting.
And the meeting was, in fact, entirely about a “campaign issue.” The whole point of taking the meeting was to get information from Russia that could be “very useful to your father,” who at the time was the presumptive nominee of the Republican party.
Given the level of dishonesty in Trump Jr.’s statement, it is more than a little interesting to know who had a hand in foisting this lie on the American people. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that on the way back from Trump’s Europe trip last Saturday, Trump’s advisors huddled in a cabin on Air Force One “helping craft a statement” for Trump Jr.
And, according to the Times story, Trump personally “signed off” on the misleading statement that his son issued shortly thereafter.
If the Times story is accurate, then Trump’s fingerprints are all over a conspiracy to cover up the truth about his son’s meeting with the Russian lawyer.
So it wasn’t surprising that Chuck Todd asked Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, whether the President was, as reported, involved in his son’s misleading initial statement about the meeting.
Sekulow first attempted to dodge the question with a narrow, unresponsive bit of lawyer-speak. “The President did not draft the response,” Sekulow insisted. And the statement “came from” Trump Jr. and his lawyers, not President Trump.
Of course, Todd hadn’t asked Sekulow whether Trump actually “drafted” the response, or whether the statement “came from” him. He had asked whether the President was “involved” in the drafting, as the Times had reported.
Todd, to his credit, caught Sekulow’s dodge and followed up. He observed that Sekulow had not responded to his question, and pressed as to whether the President had received a “heads up” about the statement, or had signed off on it before it was issued.
If the Times report had been inaccurate, and the President had been uninvolved in the process of drafting and issuing his son’s statement, this was Sekulow’s chance to say so.
But he didn’t. Instead, he dodged and weaved. Again. “I can’t say whether the President was told a statement was going to be coming from his son on that. I didn’t have that conversation.”
Whatever this is supposed to mean, it certainly doesn’t mean “no” the President had no involvement in reviewing or approving the statement, as reported by the Times. And we can only chuckle at the idea that Sekulow hadn’t discussed his client’s involvement in the statement prior to going on Meet The Press to defend it.
It makes far more sense to interpret Sekulow’s dodge as meaning something like, “Yes, the President was involved and approved the statement, just like the Times reported, but I’m going to pretend I know nothing about it because I can’t admit it on national television.”Subjected to sub-zero temperatures and compelled to work despite a state of emergency, sub-contracted Wal-Mart warehouse employees halted work and forced their boss to shutdown the building, according to a union-backed group.
“They are running a slave trade,” charged Dion Stammis, an employee of Linc Logistics, the company contracted by Wal-Mart to run the Hammond, Indiana facility. Linc’s parent company, Universal Truckload Services, did not respond to multiple requests for comments; neither did Wal-Mart.
Advertisement:
The Warehouse Workers Organizing Committee, a labor group backed by the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America union, started organizing last year against alleged abuses in the Hammond warehouse. (The same group supported 2012’s multi-week work stoppage at Wal-Mart’s top U.S. distribution center, in Elwood, Illinois.) They allege that unaddressed issues including broken dock doors and lack of heaters leave the warehouse’s workers exposed to snow, rain, ice, and freezing temperatures. WWOC organizer Sean Fulkerson told Salon that the facility “had torpedo [gas] heaters before Wal-Mart got the contract,” but “when they switched it over to a Wal-Mart facility they pulled out the heaters” because “they didn’t want to pay the gas bill.” Now, he charged, “people were getting written up for going to the bathroom and trying to warm their hands under their hand driers.”
When Linc switched sub-contractors last fall, WWJ alleges workers were told they would have to re-apply for their jobs and pay $40 each for background checks; organizers say the company backed down – and employees not only kept their jobs but got a rare raise - after a delegation of community activists and Wal-Mart retail employees confronted management in support of the warehouse workers (captured on the campaign video below).
Linc labor strife escalated during a Sunday evening shift on January 5, after county officials declared a state of emergency due to extreme weather, ordering non-emergency vehicles off the road. Organizers say employees of Linc and its sub-contractors were working in temperatures of negative 15 degrees, as worsening weather meant mounting risks if they were required to stay until the scheduled late-night end of their shift.
Stammis told Salon that he and other employees repeatedly went to management that evening seeking permission to leave early, but were rebuffed. “We’re like, ‘What’s going on, the whole world is shutting down outside,’” said Stammis. “He’s like, ‘No, get back to work, we’ve got to work until we finish everything.’”
“We got really, really mad,” Stammis told Salon. “This dude doesn’t really give a crap about us.” He cited tires freezing, a vehicle repeatedly getting stuck, and snow piling up on the dock. “The temperatures are dropping,” said Stammis, and “the wind was just blowing, ripping through.”
After being repeatedly turned away, Stammis said, workers took up a more dramatic form of protest: “Basically we all stopped work.” Instead of moving goods, Stammis told Salon, nearly all of the dozen employees on site started looking up weather info on their cell phones as ammunition to collectively confront their boss. Seeing what was happening, Stammis said, their boss came over and told them to finish up certain tasks and then “get the hell out of here,” a few hours before the end of their scheduled shift. Management also shut down the warehouse all day on January 6.
Advertisement:
The Hammond conflict – one front in union-backed efforts to wrangle the Wal-Mart supply chain – continued once employees returned to the warehouse. Organizers say they've informed OSHA a worker suffered frostbite after being required to come back to work in sub-zero temperatures on January 7. Last Thursday, workers presented management with a “We’re Not Going to Freeze For Freight” petition demanding heaters, and requested the company release OSHA logs. “The only places with heat,” said Stannis, “are the office and the breakrooms.”
While Linc directly employs him and its sub-contractors directly employ most of his immediate co-workers, Stammis contended Wal-Mart “should have the most responsibility” for the conditions in which they haul its products. “They revere Wal-Mart as gods…” he told Salon. “Our boss always says, ‘They’re our number one customer,’ meaning the customer is always right.” Stammis added, “They are running a complete slave trade under everybody’s nose.”ASHBURN, Va. -- Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III took to Twitter on Wednesday night to say he'll once again prove his doubters wrong.
It all started when the quarterback was being criticized about not sliding -- or doing so awkwardly -- at the end of plays in which he ran the ball during Monday's preseason victory against the Cleveland Browns.
Just want y'all to know I will keep working on getting down and not take those bigs hits. Got it right the third time - Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) August 19, 2014
Others then piled on with deeper examinations of Griffin's playing style.
Griffin, however, responded with a tweet about how he has responded to doubters throughout his playing career.
They doubted in High School They doubted a turnaround at @Baylor They doubted a Heisman was possible Keep doubting. It's nothing New. - Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) August 20, 2014
Some fans liked Griffin's message. Others chastised him for being so visible, wanting him to keep quiet.
Earlier this offseason, coach Jay Gruden said of Griffin: "He wants everybody to love Robert, and that's not going to be the case at the quarterback position."
Griffin did not say his tweet was in response to any one thing.
"I said what I needed to say, there's no need to look into it," Griffin said Thursday. "It's right there on Facebook, it's on Instagram, it's on Twitter. It is what I believe and what our household deems necessary to go out every day and be successful. That's all I've got to say."
Griffin is not the only quarterback on social media -- Seattle's Russell Wilson (4,986) and San Francisco's Colin Kaepernick (6,628), for example, have tweeted more than Griffin (4,445). Others, such as Andrew Luck, do not.
Griffin is comfortable in the spotlight and an extrovert -- he probably signed more autographs than any other Redskins player during training camp. In his first two seasons, the Redskins limited his news conferences to after games and once during the week. He's now available every day, a change the Redskins trumpeted and one Griffin likes.
His socializing extends to Twitter, though he tweeted only 17 times in the past week.
"To each his own," Griffin said. "There's 1.1 million people on Twitter that want to hear what quarterbacks and guys have to say. It's not that we tweet all the time, but anytime we tweet something, it gets blown up."
Griffin happens to have 1.17 million followers. But he says social media is a way to escape. He doesn't go out much, save for the occasional movie.
"We spend a lot of our day focused on football so when we get a chance to unwind, whether it's watching reality TV or being on Twitter for five minutes a day, that's not subtracting from what we do on the field and in the film room," Griffin said. "A lot of guys have to find ways to unwind and relax for 10 to 20 minutes out of the day and that's the way we do it."Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement Apple has unveiled a second generation of its iPhone, with support for faster 3G wireless networks. The company is hoping to boost its share of the smartphone market, which is dominated by Nokia and Blackberry. The new devices were launched by Apple boss Steve Jobs who said the phone would be "more affordable" for consumers, starting at $199 (£100). The new iPhone also comes with GPS satellite navigation built in for location-based services. The iPhone was first launched last year and was criticised for its support for slower 2G networks only. Mr Jobs said the 3G iPhone was "three times faster" downloading content over a mobile network compared to the original device. Analyst John Delaney, research director for consumer mobile at IDC, said the iPhone 3G was disappointing. They are going for volume. But they have got a big mountain to climb outside of the US
Analyst John Delaney "To me it's more about what they didn't say, than what they did. Everyone knew it would be 3G and have GPS." Apple has a 20% share of the US smartphone market, but only 5% worldwide. Rival manufacturers Rival handset manufacturers have also been designing devices which assume the iPhone's mantle as the "most desirable phone on the market", including Nokia's N96 and the Blackberry Thunder. Google's Android platform will also hit mobile phones later this year, adding yet more competition to the high-end consumer smartphone market. The big talk in the corridors of the Moscone Centre was about the new lower cost of the device.
BBC Technology reporter Maggie Shiels
Hands on with iPhone 3G Apple has sold more than six million iPhones since the device debuted in the US in June last year and the firm says it is on course to sell 10 million by the end of 2008. Mr Jobs said the cost of the original iPhone was the "number one reason" that people had not bought one of the devices. Mr Jobs said "The iPhone started at $599. It now sells at $399. We want to make it even more affordable." The cheapest 8GB iPhone 3G will sell for $199, while a second model with 16GB of storage will sell for $299. Mr Jobs pledged that the $199 price would be the same across many countries. The 3G iPhone will be released on 11 July The new iPhones will be launched on 11 July in 22 countries, including the UK. In the UK, mobile network O2 said the iPhone would be available for free on some contracts, starting at £45 a month. The carrier said the phone would also be available to pay as you go customers but it did not disclose pricing for calls and data. Reaction to the new 3G iPhone from developers and media at the conference in San Francisco was broadly positive, said BBC technology reporter Maggie Shiels. Henry Kannapek told BBC News that the $199 price tag would be hard to resist when the phone hit the shops. "It's tremendous. It's an incredible price. It's the best mobile device I have ever seen. I've got some cheap cell phones and I want to buy one of these." Developer Chris Cooksey of Wimba said Apple would score big with such a low price point. "It's a great price. They have made huge improvements to the phone and the fact that you can do third party applications rules." Mobile developer Robert F. Farnum, of Boingo.com, told BBC News he was all set to splash out on the new device for his family. 'Pretty excited' "I've got six people in my family that need to get one so I just sent them all e-mails saying they have to buy it. The price just blew me away and the software is amazing. It is the best phone on the market." HAVE YOUR SAY I'm quite old-fashioned when it comes to phones (I'm 30). I basically want it to make and receive calls Mark, London Michael Arrington, of the influential blog TechCrunch, said: "I was pretty excited by what I saw but I was hoping for a thinner model and a front-facing camera. But I think with the 3G speed and the price point it looks like a winner." Analyst John Delaney said: "The fact it's cheaper is interesting. But how is it going to be cheaper? "If Apple is doing it by cutting the retail price, it will drastically hit their margins if they sell volume. "If the lower price is through operator subsidy, they are becoming a bit more humble. But that's not clear at this stage. "Either way, they are going for volume. But they have got a big mountain to climb outside of the US." Do you have an iPhone? Are you planning to buy the new model? Are you at the launch? Your comments: Apple made it easy for me to return to Mac with the ability to run dual OSs, but I'll have to stay with my i-760 PDA until Mac moves into support by more than one wireless phone provider. I'm a business user and not sold on a music/TV market model.
John Keating, Cheyenne, Wy, USA I am waiting for an iPhone has a more realistic storage capicity. iPods themselves are capable of 160g or more. To claim a phone replaces your Ipod with only 16g of storage is not an intelligent marketing strategy nor intelligent purchasing. My goal is to downsize the number of electronics i carry, not have to consistantly switch out music and information that my current Ipod already holds.
Melissa Kamara, Rolling Meadows, IL USA The iPhone won't be an option for me until it is available on pay as you go.
BNB, London After Apple's arrogant and blase behaviour over their flaws in the Safari browser, I am going to stick with Nokia. At least their platform is secure and they have decades of experience of designing excellent phones and operating systems
Vish, London Wow. Stevie finally finally gets his act togetether¿ the iPhone moves from being a "toy" to a real communication device... all thats left now is to open up the software to third party developers. Kudos Apple....welcome to the big time!
Funwa, lagos, Nigeria This is absolutely disgusting, I had to dish out about $399 for the iPhone 1.0. I got a sub-par phone which incidentally I had to replace two times because of quality control issues at Apple. Now they release a 3G version that is substantially cheaper, I am more anti-Apple than ever.
Sherif Kadry, Houston, TX Scandinavia's Macophiles have waited a long time. Please hurry - or some of us might defect.
Clare, Copenhagen, Denmark They've listened to the consumers, and responded! I've loved my iPhone (1st gen), though agree it's not for all; but the new model has wider appeal, and will push the competition (and innovation). Of course, the nay-sayers are probably gearing themselves up to complain about something else now - probably the camera, or the fact that it doesn't make espresso.
Terry, Southampton Two weeks ago I paid $299 for an iPhone and now the 3G will be available for $100 less. There is something wrong with this picture, Apple! On top of this, the iPhone doesn't support Hotmail or MSN email accounts!
Kanishka Niyangoda, Washington, DC
E-mail this to a friend Printable version Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these?The Insecurity of Things: Part 1 – Look into the Mirai
NOTE: This is part |
qqah in Syria’s north last Wednesday, reported Lebanon’s Daily Start last week. In this town that fell out of Assad’s control last March, the jihadists stick to the same modus operandi – they detonated a car bomb killing two FSA commanders.
After a fierce fight at Rasoul group headquarters, the FSA militants had to withdraw to Turkish territory.
Islamic extremists launch their own war
While last weekend Russia and the United States reached a deal on a framework that will see the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons by mid- 2014, Islamic extremists in Syria made it clear they are not interested in soothing the conflict.
In fact, extremists have taken the Lavrov-Kerry deal to strip Damascus of chemical weapons as a clear signal to act.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri announced that Islamist militants must avoid any alliances with other rebel forces supported by the west and the Gulf Arab states.
“I warn my brothers and people in Syria of unity and jihad and against coming close to any of these groups,” said Zawahri as quoted by Reuters.
The news came as no surprise, particularly after the publication last week of the defense consultancy IHS Jane’s report about almost half of the rebel forces fighting against the Syrian government being either hardline Islamists or open jihadists with strong Al-Qaeda links.
Already in July it had become obvious that there was a coolness between most active jihadists and FSA fighters, when a senior figure of the rebel Free Syrian Army was executed by Al-Qaeda-linked militants during negotiations.
Since the CIA and US special operational troop’s instructors have been coaching Syrian rebels at bases in Jordan and Turkey since November 2012, it is an open question which sides the graduates of such courses have taken by now.
IHS Jane’s report insists there are 100,000 fighters opposing President Bashar Assad’s forces at the moment, of which no less than 45,000 are Islamic extremists that are actually the spearhead of the anti-Assad forces.
Total jihad approaching
While the Pentagon continues to insist its plans include equipping and training only “moderate”Syrian rebel forces, the CIA reportedly has got an official blessing to monitor the arming of the Syrian rebels.
The mantra about arming only moderate rebels has been sounding for months now, but since Islamist fighters have now finally become the backbone of the rebel’s forces, it raises the question about the final beneficiary of the US’s reported $400 million aid to the Syrian rebels.
The sudden acts of aggression of jihadists in Syria, attacking relatively moderate FSA fighters, are strangely coinciding with Russia conducting negotiations with both sides of the Syrian conflict in order to bring the warring parties behind to the negotiation table.
Al-Qaeda associates might really succeed in squeezing FSA moderates out of Syria which would automatically put Russia in an awkward position of conducting useless negotiations, with a Syrian opposition swiftly losing its remaining political clout. But that would also mean that the US could only supply weapons directly to Al-Qaeda jihadists as the only remaining force capable of opposing President Bashar Assad.
In that case Moscow would be left with only one imperative: to support the legitimate government of democratically elected President Bashar Assad in order to prevent the Middle East from sliding into the uncontrollable chaos of total jihad.
In turn, if Washington really wants to topple President Assad, it would have to make a choice between either officially declaring its support for Al-Qaeda and its global expansion agenda, or joining Moscow and battle Islamic extremists in the Middle East.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files
–In the aftermath of the government of India’s disruptive move to demonetise two high-value currency notes late last year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come under fire.
While it has been ridiculed for the dozens of tweaks it has made to the rules vis-a-vis demonetisation, of late the central bank has also received flak for the delay in accounting for the old notes deposited by citizens. In fact, for the first time ever, it has failed to release the balance sheet for the week ended June 30, the day it officially closes its accounting year. This evasive move, reportedly an after-effect of demonetisation, drew further criticism. Some on Twitter have called the RBI a “Shakespearean Tragedy,” others labeled it “India’s biggest non-performing asset (NPA).”
However, on Monday (July 17), social media commentators seemed to have largely missed a landmark court ruling that could be the proverbial shot in the arm for the bank regulator in its endeavour to clean up India’s nearly Rs10 lakh crore stressed-asset problem.
In its ruling, the Gujarat high court (HC) allowed the banks to continue with the bankruptcy proceedings against Essar Steel, which owes Rs45,655 crore to various lenders. Essar, along with 11 other companies, accounts for nearly 25% of the gross NPAs of Indian banks. This judgment marks a big win for the central bank and cannot be ignored amidst the brickbats it is receiving.
A landmark judgment
On June 13, the RBI directed the banks to take the top 12 large defaulters to the bankruptcy courts. Each of these accounts have an outstanding loans of over Rs5,000 crore. At least 60% of the total amount owed has been classified as non-performing assets by banks at the end of March 2016.
It’s the first time that the RBI has directed banks to take the defaulters to court. The move comes about a month after the government made changes to the Banking Act, giving the RBI more powers to deal with NPAs. Now, the banking regulator has the authority to direct lenders to initiate the insolvency resolution process in case of default. On June 13, the RBI enforced this authority.
Bankers explain that the dirty dozen has been involved in other resolution processes, too, but none has worked out in the last two-to-three years. For instance, the various lenders of Essar Steel had come together to try the joint lenders forum (JLF) tool for recovery. In this process, the creditors brainstorm to find an effective resolution. However, either there has been discord among the banks or with the promoters, leading to delay.
Essar had earlier offered a loan-restructuring process wherein it was to begin payment of dues only after 25 years and that, too, at a mere 1% interest. This evidently is a terrible proposition for the banks.
Following the RBI’s move to push it towards the bankruptcy courts, Essar Steel moved the HC on July 04. It claimed that as a restructuring process is already underway, this step would disrupt the firm’s operations. Out of Essar’s total debt, Rs32,864 crore had been declared as non-performing by March 31, 2017.
However, the HC rejected Essar’s plea, providing relief to the banks. The RBI argued the urgency to resolve the toxic loan problem, saying that and taking defaulters to the bankruptcy court will speed up resolution.
“Typically, once a case is admitted to the bankruptcy court it can be resolved in less than a year as opposed to the 2-4 years taken via other mechanisms. Therefore, this judgment is pertinent,” explained a public sector banker, requesting anonymity.
This will help improve the banks’ financial health. The Rs10 lakh crore stressed loans, which includes NPAs and restructured loans, form 12% of the total loans in Indian banking. So out of every Rs100 lent, banks are likely to recover only Rs88.
In fact, India’s stressed loan problem now exceeds the GDP of 137 countries.
Given this backrop, the RBI’s move is a good judgement call, Sunil Srivastava, deputy managing director (corporate accounts group), the State Bank of India, said.
Strong signal
The judgment is also a signal to other debtors. “It also sends out a strong message to the other borrowers that they can’t use the same grounds again to stall the proceedings,” said Ashvin Parekh of Ashvin Parekh Advisory Services, which provides banking and transaction advisory services to lenders and other financial firms. Parekh called it a “landmark judgment.” After Essar, another borrower, Bhushan Power & Steel, too, had reportedly planned to approach the HC. It has defaulted on loans worth Rs43,000 crore.
Meanwhile, Essar is expected to approach the supreme court (SC), lawyers believe it will meet the same fate there.
“In such cases, the court first tries to determine if they are indeed NPAs or not, and if the borrowers have been serving these loans or not. If these are rightly classified, then the RBI can direct them to a speedier process. So, even if it goes to the SC, which is likely, I think the HC proceeding may hold ground there, too,” explained Ramesh K Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner, Advaya Legal.
Meanwhile, bankers have cautioned that moving the bankruptcy court isn’t a magic wand and that the recovery process will be gradual. However, now at least debt recovery is somewhere in sight.Nearly three years have passed since President Thomas S. Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the historic change to the church’s missionary program. It’s become known colloquially as the “age change” — meaning that worthy young men can serve at the age of 18 instead of 19 and after graduating from high school. Young women can serve at 19 instead of 21.
While serving as a young man — and later teaching for a short time at the Mission Training Center in Provo, and even now having Mormon missionaries into my home as often as possible and working with them at every opportunity — I’ve learned a few things about the differences between happy, successful missionaries and the unpleasant alternatives.
I call them my 11 can’t-miss tips for successful missionaries.
Be obedient — period
Sister Anaseini Kolo of Lotofoa, Ha'Apai, (Anaseini Kolo)
1. Be obedient — period. Following mission rules brings blessings you cannot fathom until you are immersed in obedience. Learn the rules and follow them.
Don't judge
Elder Braden Birch of Farmington, Utah. (Matt Birch)
2. Don’t judge. At times, you will feel tempted to judge other missionaries and their efforts. Remember, your skills and natural abilities may be different than those you serve with. Their best effort doesn’t need to be good enough for you; it needs to be good enough for the Lord.
Be obedient every minute of every day
Missionaries from the Utah Provo Mission. (Jason Wright)
3. Be obedient every minute of every day. You are unlikely to meet returned missionaries who were obedient but still regret their missions. But you will certainly encounter others who were never consistently obedient and never found the promised success and happiness. Being obedient doesn't mean you won't have difficult days, but it does mean more much success and happiness than otherwise.
Serve your companions
Elder Brerick Hullinger and Elder Dylan Holden prepare to baptize Tyshaun Spencer.
4. Serve your companions. Iron their shirts, make their beds and shine their shoes. If you’re blessed to be assigned a more challenging personality or someone who’s struggling, serve them even more.
Be obedient — even in the small things
Elder Colton Utley of St. George, Utah, and his companion. (Tricia Utley)
5. Be obedient — even in the small things. Obedience is the only frequency that the Spirit operates in. Be sure you’re dialed in every time you walk out your front door to share the gospel.
Give praise
Sister Stephanie Wright and Paige Sears. (Ann Wright)
6. Give praise. Tell your companions, especially the challenging ones, that you think they're great missionaries and, eventually, they will be. At some point you will inevitably be assigned the companion with the “reputation.” Let them know you’ve only heard terrific things about them and offer a clean slate. When your mission is complete, be the one who says every single companion he had was amazing.
Be obedient
Elder Jared Bellon, left, and Elder Zachary Shorts. (Julie Bellon)
7. Be obedient. You will make mistakes and grow better each day at effectively teaching the gospel. But while you can't be perfect in all things, you can be perfectly obedient.
Love
Sister Susana Zubeldia, left, and Sister Lindsay Sorensen (Rick Sorensen)
8. Love. Love those you teach with all your heart, even the ones who ultimately reject the message. You will plant seeds that may not be harvested for months or years by others who will come after. But you'll harvest some that were planted by missionaries now home, married and gray.
Exercise faith
Sister Jessica Wells, middle, stands with President and Sister Lima. (Kevin Wells)
9. Exercise faith that obedience leads to greater success. If you have faith in this principle, you will see it unfold in miraculous ways.
Love each and every day
A group of missionaries point out their mission destinations on a map. (Audrey Lusk)
10. Love each and every day. Young missionaries only get this opportunity to serve 24/7. Leave nothing behind and don't regret a single day.
Be yourself
Elder Kyle Hodges and Elder Vinicius Machado. (Sharon Hodges)
11. Be yourself! Smile! Laugh! Have fun! Sometimes elders and sisters think that obedience and the black name tag means you’re required to shelf your personality and become ultra serious. The Lord doesn’t want us to be different people — he wants us to be better versions of ourselves.Barrow Neurological Institute and IBM Watson Health today announced results of a revolutionary study that has identified new genes linked to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The discovery gives ALS researchers new insights that will pave the way for the development of new drug targets and therapies to combat one of the world's most devastating and deadly diseases.
The groundbreaking discovery involved IBM Watson, a cutting-edge form of artificial intelligence, to help unravel the mysteries of the brain and provide Barrow scientists with never-before-known data. IBM Watson became known around the nation in 2011 when it competed against human contestants on Jeopardy, and won.
"We are very excited about this discovery," says Robert Bowser, PhD, director of the Gregory W. Fulton ALS Research Center at Barrow Neurological Institute and one of the nation's leading ALS researchers. "ALS is one of the most complicated diseases to unravel and there is no cure. We hope that the use of IBM Watson for Drug Discovery will allow us to identify new and more effective treatments for ALS. "
ALS is a progressive and degenerative disease in which the cells that control voluntary muscle movements die, leading to paralysis and, ultimately death. Scientists don't yet know what causes ALS and there is just one FDA-approved medication but is only marginally effective. Most individuals die from ALS within three to five years from the onset of symptoms. Approximately 6,000 people are diagnosed with ALS every year.
Barrow began working with IBM last year to explore unidentified genes and proteins that may be linked to ALS using its life sciences solution, Watson for Drug Discovery. The cognitive tool, which uses machine learning, natural language processing, and other cognitive reasoning technologies, was trained about proteins that Barrow already knew were related to the disease using data given by Barrow as well as all published research information surrounding ALS.
Within months, Watson for Drug Discovery rank ordered all of the nearly 1,500 genes within the human genome and proposed predictions regarding which genes might be associated with ALS. The Barrow team then examined Watson's top evidence-based predictions and found eight of the top 10 ranked genes proved to be linked to the disease. More significantly, the study found five never before linked genes associated with ALS. Without IBM Watson for Drug Discovery, researchers predict the discovery would have taken years rather than only a few months. Barrow, located at Dignity Health St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center and is considered one of the world's leading neuroscience centers.
"We could have individually looked at the 1,500 proteins and genes but it would have taken us much longer to do so, "says Dr. Bowser. "IBM Watson for Drug Discovery, with its robust knowledge base, was able to rapidly give us new and novel information we would not otherwise have had."
The newly launched Watson for Drug Discovery is a cloud-based offering that aims to help researchers identify new drug targets and alternative drug indications. It is among a growing portfolio of products to help the life sciences community address the long, complex and costly process of drug discovery and development. This marks IBM Watson Health's first collaboration dedicated to understanding neurological diseases.
"Traditional research tools are fast becoming inadequate to help data scientists and researchers keep pace with and find relevant insights among the now billions of documents which are spread all over the world," said Dr. Tina Moen, PharmD, Deputy Chief Health Officer for IBM Watson Health. "Watson for Drug Discovery can help organizations far more rapidly pinpoint the most promising paths to drug discovery. We are honored to support Barrow's efforts to identify the underlying cause of ALS."
###(Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is asking the federal government to reimburse the state for 100 percent of emergency costs for at least 90 days after Superstorm Sandy swept ashore on October 29.
In a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency dated November 30 and released on Monday, Christie said the economic damage from the storm could be nearly $40 billion.
FEMA generally reimburses states for 75 percent of emergency clean-up and repair costs from natural disasters. The agency can cover more, but state officials must ask for the relief.
Christie previously asked for 90 percent reimbursement.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asked for full reimbursement for qualifying expenses not long after the storm subsided. He has estimated that New York needs nearly $42 billion to recover from the storm and prepare for future severe weather.
The state of Connecticut is also asking for $3.2 billion for mitigation efforts, and it suffered another estimated $360 million in damages.
In New Jersey, getting money to help cover clean-up and restoration costs will be critical to making sure that the Jersey Shore, a popular summer vacation spot and a key source of revenue for the state, is up and running in time for the 2013 tourist season, Christie said in his letter.By John Sudworth
BBC News, Seoul
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement Yangyang International is an airport looking for a reason to exist. Built on South Korea's east coast just seven years ago, you won't find any delays or long queues here. In fact, you won't find any passengers at all. The initial vision could not have been more different. Up to three million people a year were meant to throng the gleaming floors of the departure and arrival halls, built at a cost of almost $400m (£260m). But last year an average of just 26 passengers a day came through the doors, vastly outnumbered by the 146 airport staff on hand to serve them. In November the last commercial flight took off, and the terminal became what the Korean national press has dubbed a "ghost airport", an impressive monument to overestimated demand. But it is not an isolated example. Empty spaces In fact, if there was to be an award for the world's quietest international airports, South Korea would surely be one of the favourites. Politicians, in order to gain votes, promise their constituents an airport
Choi In-wook
Korean Citizens Action Network At the other end of the country from Yangyang, way down in the south-west, is the even newer Muan International Airport. It opened less than two years ago, and although a handful of flights do at least land there, the terminal is struggling. Built amidst the surrounding onion fields, it looks an unlikely spot for a thriving airport, and the scene inside is, once again, one of empty check-in desks and empty spaces. Figures for last year show passenger levels at less than 3% of capacity. "It might be better if it was used a bit more," said one passenger I spoke to, part of a group of Korean tourists preparing to catch one of only two flights leaving that day. "But having said that," she added, "it is nice to come to an airport that isn't busy for a change." Vanishing demand As elsewhere, the project was meant to be a boost for the local economy, bringing in visitors, and connecting the local economy with the wider world. But the region's farmers and fishermen may now wonder if it was a worthwhile investment. South Korea has a total of 14 regional airports. Figures show that 11 of them lost money last year. What should have been the 15th, another new east-coast airport, already more than 80% complete, has been suspended because of lack of demand. And there is currently an ongoing debate about the wisdom of the plans to build yet one more, somewhere near the southern port city of Busan. One reason for the lack of demand for air travel may be the simultaneous development of a high-speed rail link that now whisks travellers from one end of the country to the other in less than three hours, as well as the construction of a network of new motorways. 'Political logic' Local airports have been built by "political rather than market logic", according to one newspaper. The Korean Citizens' Action Network, an organisation that monitors government spending, claims that hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on terminals and runways that simply are not needed. Yanyang airport was built at a cost of almost $400m "Politicians, in order to gain votes, promise their constituents an airport," said spokesman Choi In-wook. "Rather than checking the need thoroughly, the feasibility studies can be distorted to support the projects, and as a result there is an oversupply of airports in this country." Could not the case be made, though, that some of today's under-used airports may turn out to have a long-term future? "Maybe," he said. "If they honestly forecast that there would be large, initial losses for a long-term strategic benefit, then fair enough. But from the beginning the feasibility reports are inaccurate, so no one knows the true prospects." Both the government and the Korea Airports Corporation, the body that manages the regional airports, refused the BBC's request for an interview. There are those, like the staff at Yangyang airport, who do indeed believe that they may still find a profitable future for their terminal. But it is the views of the passengers that really matter - and for now, they are voting with their feet.
Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionUpdate 11/06/15: I just saw yesterday that the FabFree inworld group as well as its blog will still be available. Check out this post from them to learn about the upcoming changes to the group.
I saw on Plurk yesterday that the inworld group Fabulously Free in SL was closing. Even though I had left the group some time ago, I still feel sad about it closing. Why, if I had already moved on from it, you ask?
When I first started Second Life, I was a shopping fiend…at all the freebie malls. I had started getting into joining groups, and one day I saw someone with a Fab Free group tag activated. I joined the group, and I found so many quality freebie items. Like, they just put the item in the group notices for everyone to get. The generosity of the designers blew me away. And for those who didn’t put items in the notices, there were landmarks to their shops to get their gifts. Fab Free introduced me to many stores in Second Life, when people had no problems going to the main store to shop.
I had taken this picture in July, and didn’t know how to incorporate it until now. Go figure…
There were a number of reasons that led me to leave the group. Mainly, I felt I had outgrown the group. I was finding information from other resources about freebies and discounts, plus I had the income to buy my items. The group chat was indeed a community of people, but I didn’t really like the tone some members gave off. The group has changed hands a few times since I left, so maybe the community improved under new leadership – I’m not sure. But with the advent of events and store owners focusing more on the bi-weekly and monthly events, the main stores weren’t as much of a priority. The notices and information reflected this change. So with 42 groups and me occupying 95% of those slots most of the time, I made the choice to depart.
The main reason that I’m sad that Fab Free is closing is that I wonder where the newbies will go to get information? Second Life is vast, and as many of us know, it’s really hard for a single outlet to reach EVERYONE, or most of the people in SL. However, since Fab Free has been around since 2007 (before I even came to SL), it’s easy for a good amount of people to just refer a newbie to the Fab Free group for information. Don’t get me wrong, there are people who blog freebie items. But what’s the likelihood of them being found? I do hope that someone in their community steps up and forms their own group to make up for the void. With 20K + members, it could happen, right? We’ll see.
Styling Credits
Hair: *Milk* Hair~Poppy Seed (now Besom)
Skin: –Glam Affair – Alice – SummerParty – Jamaica
Phone: [ Z U L U ] Phone 5 Black Mesh
Glasses: * S O R G O – AKIRA / Leak (SG)
Dress: –David Heather-Connexion Dress/Black
Necklace: Mandala
(FEMALE)-A-_Necklace [MANDALA]ONLIEST(ALL-COLORS)
(FEMALE)-C-_Necklace [MANDALA]ONLIEST(ALL-COLORS)
Purse: PP – Diamonds Apple Clutch – Black
Rings: Izzie’s – Midi Rings gold
Pose: Di’s Opera
AdvertisementsThe Oakland Raiders have been struggling ever since they lost to Jon Gruden and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl. When looking at what went wrong for the Raiders, one could look at a multitude of factors, but one of those factors that clearly had a large impact were their failures in the draft.
Since 2002, the Raiders have made 21 draft picks in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. Of those 21 guys, four remain on the team right now, and one of those four, Rolando McClain, is expected to be released any day. The other three players are Darren McFadden, Stefen Wisniewski and Lamarr Houston.
Houston and Wisniewski are likely mainstays on the Raiders for years to come. McFadden on the other hand, could very well be at risk of being moved himself. He will be a free agent after next season, is injury prone and is coming off one of his worst seasons in the NFL. Given the purge that occurred on the first day of free agency, it is clear that McKenzie is not afraid to make the big decisions. I would not be surprised at all if McKenzie trades McFadden given the right offer.
In the salary cap era of the NFL, it is impossible to build a winning franchise without having good drafts. Free agency is too expensive to fill even most spots on your roster. In addition, before the current collective bargaining agreement, rookies were grossly overpaid, making a poor draft choice even more painful and harder to overcome.
If the Raiders hope to get back to the days when they were one of the best teams in the league, they will need to improve their drafting. General manager Reggie McKenzie is known to be a good judge of talent, especially at the college level and is expected to be a very good drafter. The Raiders still don't have a full compliment of draft picks this season, but they have more than last year, and they have a first round pick. That should be enough for McKenzie to show his capabilities and reverse the trend of poor drafting by the Raiders.In letters to The Lancet Psychiatry, James Coyne and others criticize a UK study for deliberately trying to be politically manipulative. The study made global headlines this year with a finding that smoking high potency marijuana tripled the risk of developing psychosis and schizophrenia.
The study was previously reported on by Mad in America.
Like other correspondents, Coyne argues that there could have been some other underlying factor that led to people at risk of psychosis being drawn to high potency marijuana, which the authors failed to discuss.
“Scaremongering headlines in the media predictably followed,” writes Coyne. “The Daily Mail screamed ‘Scientists show cannabis TRIPLES psychosis risk: Groundbreaking research blames ‘skunk’ for 1 in 4 of all new serious mental disorders.’ Undoubtedly, politicians and policy makers who have already made up their minds about regulation of cannabis will seize on the study as support for their views. The authors must share some of the blame for misinterpretations of their results. They were pre-committed to causal language and failed to acknowledge important limitations of their study… Awareness of the obvious political and policy implications of results, and the likely misuse to which they could be put, apparently failed to discourage the authors from inappropriate causal inferences and ignoring of obvious limitations of their study.”
Coyne also points out that, “Cases and controls were poorly matched. Half of the cases were black individuals and only a third were white, with these proportions reversed among controls. There are also highly significant differences in gender, education, and ever being employed.”
In their reply, the authors of the original study argue that, in the kind of study they were doing, “one generally assumes causality rather than sets out to prove it.” They also state that they did not find any higher “genetic” risk for schizophrenia in the people who developed schizophrenia; therefore, they argue, that proves there was no predisposing factor involved.
Coyne, James. “Cannabis and Psychosis.” The Lancet Psychiatry 2, no. 5 (n.d.): 380–81. Accessed May 6, 2015. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00113-3. (Full text with free registration)
Gage, Suzanne H, Marcus R Munafò, John MacLeod, Matthew Hickman, and George Davey Smith. “Cannabis and Psychosis.” The Lancet Psychiatry 2, no. 5 (n.d.): 380. Accessed May 6, 2015. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00108-X. (Full text with free registration)
Crow, Timothy J. “Cannabis and Psychosis.” The Lancet Psychiatry 2, no. 5 (May 2015): 381–82. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00167-4. (Full text with free registration)
Di Forti, Marta, Evangelos Vassos, Michael Lynskey, Morgan Craig, and Robin MacGregor Murray. “Cannabis and Psychosis – Authors’ Reply.” The Lancet Psychiatry 2, no. 5 (n.d.): 382. Accessed May 6, 2015. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00177-7. (Full text with free registration)When JR Hildebrand hit the wall at the final corner of the 2011 Indianapolis 500, he so nearly got away with it. The rookie kept his foot to the floor in a desperate attempt to keep his remaining two wheels moving for the last few hundred yards, and he duly crossed the yard of bricks three seconds clear of all his rivals – bar one.
Even the eventual winner was just 2.1 seconds ahead at the line. And he only made it because, having been 20 seconds back with 15 laps left, he had his brain firing on all cylinders. Unfortunately for Hildebrand, Dan Wheldon was in the ‘Zone’.
“The last 20 laps were incredibly important,” Wheldon told me a few weeks later. “There were two different strategies but I had to drive flat out. It wasn’t about saving fuel, it was about maximising the draft from other cars and making sure every one of those laps was the best it could possibly be.
“But when you’re in the Zone – especially in a confident time of your career – you do things and you’re like… really? The team later told me I’d made an adjustment to the weight jacker and anti-roll bars at every single corner for the last 20 laps. And I didn’t know it.
“In fact I didn’t believe them. I told them I wasn’t doing that many changes, no way. So they showed me the data. I was doing them without even knowing. When you get in the Zone you have the ability to do things totally naturally.”
Finding the subconscious edge
This “natural” ability is the holy grail of performance in any sport, as I found during seven years of hunting down legends of everything from tennis to gymnastics, boxing and skydiving for In The Zone. It happens only when the subconscious mind filled by years of practice is allowed to do its job – uncluttered by the superfluous information, doubts and worries dreamt up in our conscious thoughts.
Of course, adjustments to the weight jacker and anti-roll bar aren’t the most natural part of driving a car. They’re hardly as ingrained as using wheel and pedals to control speed and direction, but they are crucial to oval racing at 200mph. At the Indy 500 it’s assumed you are pushing the car to its limit.
These set-up changes allow that limit to be pushed ever further. By making so many micro-adjustments without thinking, Dan Wheldon gained seconds that would prove invaluable on that fateful final lap.
Yet this wasn’t even his first time in the Zone around Indianapolis…
“Sometimes you do the best things when you don’t win and people don’t notice,” he smiled. “Talking of the Zone: when I came second in 2009, with 10 laps left my car wasn’t as quick as Helio [Castroneves]’s. It was incredibly loose and getting looser by the minute. I’d hold my breath for the corners, purely because I could barely turn the wheel.
“I was never scared but I was astounded as to how I didn’t crash because it was that loose. I’ve never had to hold my breath before. You know when you want to be really quiet and tiptoe in your house when you’re a kid? It was exactly like that.
“It was just tiny increments on the wheel. It was crazy. If anything that was an even higher level of performance given the equipment. That blew my mind.”
Why Wheldon was ready for anything
Most top-level racers have experienced similar peaks but Wheldon is a good example of a driver for whom the Zone did not just appear by chance. A meticulous planner by nature, he always obsessively ensured his overalls were laid out neatly, even after the race.
But he paid the same attention to his mind, using techniques like visualisation to be “prepared for anything” and bring on this elusive state when it mattered.
“I never told anybody about the confidence I had at Indianapolis in 2011,” he added. “It’s one of those things you keep to yourself, but I always had a feeling something good would happen. You can visualise not doing well too, so it’s visualisation with confidence. That, for me, is what completes it.
“Then once the race starts it’s just complete concentration. In IndyCars anything can happen quickly. Particularly on the ovals, there are times when the car will snap, so it’s about being able to react quickly.
“If your mind’s elsewhere, if you’re not 100 per cent in that Zone, the car will go. So you think of nothing other than making sure you are racing the car as hard as you can.
“What feels most magical is when you’ve got a lot of confidence, your car’s not quite right and you’re still able to extract the fun out of it. That is the magical moment for me: to nail that perfect performance.”
In The Zone by Clyde Brolin out now RRP £18.99 (Blink Publishing)
http://bit.ly/InTheZoneBookAs we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, prog-rock legend Mike Portnoy shared with Noisecreep his recollections of the day.
In sharing his story, the former Dream Theater and current Adrenaline Mob drummer revealed a fact that has to stand as one of the strangest coincidences in music history.
But before we get to that, Portnoy's story begins.
"I remember waking up Tuesday, September 11th 2001 to my wife telling me to put on the TV because I wasn't going to be going into NYC as planned.
"Dream Theater was working in NYC at the time mixing our album 'Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence' and I would've been driving in that afternoon for our session. But as the events of the morning unfolded, I found myself glued to the TV in disbelief as to what I was witnessing. It was all too surreal. I felt like I was watching a Will Smith Hollywood film. It couldn't possibly be really happening."
From there, Portnoy recounted what it was like to visit a post-apocalyptic New York City soon after.
"When I finally did return to work in New York City, a few days later, it was just as surreal as there was a sadness and almost deafening silence still lingering throughout the streets of Manhattan."
And then the kicker. A strange little fact that remains a bizarre, strange footnote to the 9/11 tragedy.
Portnoy picks up the story.
Amazon
"On a personal side note, one of the strangest coincidences of my career was that Dream Theater's Live Scenes From New York was released on Tuesday, September 11th 2001, the cover artwork of which illustrated a big apple (representing NYC) with the World Trade Center in flames!
"It has to be one of the most unbelievable coincidences in the history of rock album covers! Suffice to say, we pulled the CDs off the shelves immediately and changed the cover art."
Watch 'Mob Rules' from Adrenaline Mob
/
Like Us on Facebook | Sign Up for Our Newsletter Follow @Noisecreep on TwitterCanada's myriad of government-funded tech incubators, accelerators and other startup-assistance agencies have a bit of a reputation for being competitive, territorial silos. The organizers of a new joint initiative in Silicon Valley are hoping to lay those turf warrior tendencies aside in the interest of a greater goal: collectively helping Canadian tech entrepreneurs build key business connections.
The initiative between organizations in Waterloo, Toronto and San Francisco is called Canada House, and it involves the creation of a new, short |
most viewed trailer on YouTube in 2014, until it was surpassed in October by the trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron.[88] However, in mid-December the trailer reached 93 million views and was again the most viewed of 2014.[89] The trailer accumulated over 100 million views in its first week of release through different channels and websites, becoming the biggest trailer ever released in history.[90] By February 2015, the trailer had been viewed more than 193 million times on YouTube alone.[91] And by late February, Fifty Shades of Grey related material garnered over 329 million views including 113 million views for its official trailer.[87] A second trailer was released on November 13, 2014.[92] A third trailer aired during Super Bowl XLIX, on February 1, 2015.[93]
The film was promoted through an ad campaign that asked people whether they were "curious".[94] Nick Carpou, Universal's president of domestic distribution, said: "Our campaign gave people permission to see the film."[95] "Valentines is a big deal for couples and a great relationship event, and the date with the long Presidents Day weekend created a perfect storm for us. This date positioned us to take full advantage of the romance angle, which is how we sold the film in our marketing campaign," he said.[96]
Rating and censorship [ edit ]
There was initial speculation that the film could receive an NC-17 rating in the United States. Studios typically steer away from the adults-only rating due to the impact the classification has on a film's commercial viability, with some theater chains refusing to exhibit NC-17-rated films. While screenwriter Marcel said she expected the film to be NC-17-rated,[97] producer De Luca anticipated the less restrictive R rating.[98] On January 5, 2015, the MPAA did give the film an R rating, basing its decision on "strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and language."[99]
On January 30, in Australia, the film was rated MA15+ by the ACB for "strong sex scenes, sexual themes and nudity".[100] On February 2, 2015, the British BBFC classified the film an 18 certificate, mentioning "strong sex".[2] In Canada, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia, the film was rated at 18A by the OFRB, MFCB, AFR, and BCFCO, respectively, due to its "occasional upsetting or disturbing scenes, and partial or full nudity in a brief sexual situation."[101][102] In Quebec, the Régie du cinéma rated the movie under the 16+ category for its eroticism.[103] In France, the film earned a 12 rating.[104] In Lebanon, the film earned an NC-21 rating.[105] In Argentina, the Advisory Commission of Cinematographic Exhibition (the rating arm of the INCAA) rated the film SAM16/R.[106]
Anti-pornography watchdog group Morality in Media argued that the film's R rating "severely undermines the violent themes in the film and does not adequately inform parents and patrons of the film's content", and that the MPAA was encouraging sexual violence by letting the film by without an NC-17 rating.[107][108]
The film was scheduled for a February 12, 2015, release in Malaysia, but it was denied a certificate by the Malaysian Film Censorship Board (LPF) for its "unnatural" and "sadistic" content. The LPF chairman, Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid, said Fifty Shades was "more pornography than a movie."[109][110] The film was also banned in Indonesia,[111] Kenya,[111] Russia's North Caucasus,[112] the United Arab Emirates (UAE),[113] Papua New Guinea,[114] Cambodia,[115] and India.[116] The film was released in Nigeria for a week, before being removed from cinemas by the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB).[117] Studios will not pursue a theatrical release in China.[111]
The film's sex scenes were censored after protests from various religious groups in the Philippines, and as a result it is in limited release in that country with an R-18 rating from the MTRCB.[110] A similarly cut version was released in Zimbabwe.[118]
Roughly 20 minutes were cut from the film for screening in Vietnam, leaving no sex scenes. The scene in which Ana is beaten with a belt is skipped entirely.[119]
Opposition campaign [ edit ]
On January 28, 2015, a campaign in the United States by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation started two petitions to boycott the film's release. Their website makes more than 50 allegations that the film has a negative impact on the community. It said, "Hollywood is advertising the Fifty Shades story as an erotic love affair, but it is really about sexual abuse and violence against women. The porn industry has poised men and women to receive the message that sexual violence is enjoyable. Fifty Shades models this porn message and Hollywood cashes the check."[120] By February 7, one of the petitions had garnered more than 53,000 signatures.[121]
On February 2, in Michigan, a man petitioned to halt the film's release at a local Celebration! Cinema. Despite the man's efforts, the president of the cinemas declined to cancel the release of the film. He said, "We've been in business for 70 years and people often times object to content, and it's not our job to censor the content of a widespread movie. It's not in our best interest. It's not in the community's best interest." The film sold 3,000 tickets before the release and was expected to sell a total of 10,000 tickets.[122][123]
The American Family Association called for theaters not to show the film: "The irony is not lost that the film's main character is named, 'Christian,' while this film presents anything but a 'Christian' view of intimacy... It is the epitome of elevating abuse, and we call on all theaters to reject promoting such abuse on their screens."[124]
Thomas Williams of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture commented on the release of the film in the United States on Valentine's Day, stating "The irony of Universal Pictures' decision to release its bondage-erotica film Fifty Shades of Grey on the day dedicated to honoring a Christian martyr has not gone unnoticed to many observers, who seem to find the choice unclassy at best."[citation needed]
Home media [ edit ]
Fifty Shades of Grey was released via DVD and Blu-ray on May 8, 2015. The Blu-ray edition features an unrated cut of the film;[125] the version includes an additional three minutes of footage, the bulk of which are in the form of an alternative ending.
Upon its release on home media in the U.S., the film topped both the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks combined Blu-ray Disc and DVD sales, as well as the Blu-ray Disc sales chart for two consecutive weeks up to the week ending May 17, 2015.[126]
Reception [ edit ]
Box office [ edit ]
Fifty Shades of Grey grossed US$166.2 million in the US and Canada and US$404.8 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of US$571 million against a budget of US$40 million.[3] It is currently the fourth-highest-grossing film directed by a woman (behind Mamma Mia!, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Wonder Woman),[127] and at the time of the end of its theatrical run, it was the fourth-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time (behind The Hangover Part II, The Passion of the Christ, and The Matrix Reloaded).[128] Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be US$256.55 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film.[129]
Tickets went on sale in the United States from January 11, 2015.[91] According to ticket-selling site Fandango, Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest-selling R-rated title in the site's 15-year history, surpassing Sex and the City 2.[130] It also had the biggest first week of ticket sales on Fandango for a non-sequel film, surpassing 2012's The Hunger Games.[130][131] It is fourth overall on Fandango's list of top advance ticket sales behind The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, and The Hunger Games.[132] The demand prompted US theater owners to add new showtimes.[130][133] Weeks before the film's release, several box office analysts suggested as much as a US$60 million domestic four-day opening[91][134][135][136][137] while Box Office Mojo reported that a US$100 million opening could be possible.[138]
Outside the United States, Fifty Shades of Grey pre-sold 4.5 million tickets in 39 markets.[139] In the UK, it sold £1.3 million (US$1.9 million) worth of tickets a week before release.[140] On release, it set several records at the box office, including:
United States & Canada [ edit ]
In the US and Canada, it is the highest-grossing sex film,[149] the seventeenth highest-grossing film of 2015,[150] and the fourth-highest-grossing romantic film of all time.[151] It opened in the US and Canada simultaneously with Kingsman: The Secret Service on Thursday, February 12, 2015, across 2,830 theaters[152][153] and was widened to 3,646 theaters the next day making it the widest R-rated opening (surpassed by Mad Max: Fury Road),[154] and the fourth-widest R-rated release of all time.[155] It earned US$8.6 million from Thursday night previews which is the second-highest late-night gross for a film released in February (behind Deadpool) and the third-highest for an R-rated film (behind Deadpool and The Hangover Part II).[152][156] The film topped the box office on its opening day grossing US$30.2 million (including Thursday previews) from 3,646 theaters setting a record for highest February opening day (previously held by The Passion of the Christ) and fourth-highest overall among R-rated films.[157][158] During its traditional three-day opening the film opened at No. 1 at the box office earning US$85.1 million, setting records for the biggest opening weekend for a film released in February (a record previously held by The Passion of the Christ).[145] Women comprised 82% of the total audiences during its opening day,[159] and 68% on Valentine's Day.[160]
Revenue from the second weekend dropped massively by 73.9% to US$22.25 million, which is the second-biggest drop for a 3,000-plus-screen release (only behind Friday the 13th's 80.4% drop) and the biggest for a 3,500-plus-screen release.[161][162][163] It is just the eighth film to open on more than 3,000 screens to drop by 70% or more.[164] The film topped the box office for two consecutive weekends before falling to No. 4 in its third weekend while Focus took the top spot.[165][166]
Other countries [ edit ]
Outside the US and Canada, box office analysts were predicting as much as US$158 million opening.[167][168][169] It opened Wednesday, February 11, 2015, in 4 countries, earning US$3.7 million.[170] It opened in 34 more countries on February 12, earning US$28.6 million in two days.[171] The film set opening-day records for Universal Pictures in 25 markets and opening day records for an R-rated film in 34 territories.[168][169] Through Sunday, February 15, it earned an opening-weekend total of US$156 million from 58 countries from 10,979 screens (US$173.6 million through Monday) where it opened at No. 1 in 54 of the 58 countries, marking the biggest overseas opening for an R-rated film, the fourth-biggest of 2015, and Universal's third-biggest overseas opening weekend ever.[147] The film set an all-time opening record in 13 markets, Universal's biggest opening weekend ever in 30 markets and biggest opening for any R-rated film in 31 markets.[147]
The biggest opener outside of the United States was witnessed in the UK, Ireland and Malta, where it earned £13.55 million (US$20.8 million) in its opening weekend, which is the biggest debut ever for an 18-rated film and the second-biggest for a non-sequel film (behind I Am Legend).[172][173] In just 10 days of release it became the highest-grossing 18-rated film of all time.[174] It topped the UK box office for two consecutive weekends.[175] Other high openings include Germany (US$14.1 million), France (US$12.3 million), Russia (US$11 million), Italy (US$10.1 million), Spain (US$8.7 million), Brazil (US$8.3 million), Mexico (US$8.1 million), Australia (US$8 million).[147] In Japan, the film was unsuccessful opening at No. 5 with $682,000 but falling out of the top 10 the following week.[176][177] The Hollywood Reporter cited out possible reasons for the film's failure, attributing it to the "delayed release of the new Japanese-language editions of the books, poor timing for the film release and an R-15, re-edit blurring out parts of the sex scenes."[178]
It topped the box office outside of the US for three consecutive weekends[179] until it was overtaken by Warner Bros.' Jupiter Ascending in its fourth weekend.[180] It became Universal Pictures' highest-grossing R-rated film of all time overseas (breaking Ted's record),[148] Universal Pictures' highest-grossing film in 14 countries,[nb 1] and Universal Pictures' eighth-highest-grossing film overseas.[181] In total earnings, its largest markets overseas are the UK, Ireland and Malta (US$52.5 million), Germany (US$43.7 million), Brazil (US$31.3 million), France (US$29.5 million), and Spain (US$22.6 million).[182][183][184]
Critical response [ edit ]
Fifty Shades of Grey. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson later admitted to regretting making
Fifty Shades of Grey received generally negative reviews, with criticism of its acting, screenplay, and pacing; however, some critics noted it as an improvement over the book, and others praised the cinematography and set design. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 25% based on 261 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "While creatively better endowed than its print counterpart, Fifty Shades of Grey is a less than satisfying experience on the screen."[185] Metacritic gave the film a score of 46 out of 100, based on reviews from 46 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[186] In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[187]
Claudia Puig of USA Today wrote that "the dialogue is laughable, the pacing is sluggish and the performances are one-note."[188] Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times wrote: "Fifty Shades of Grey the movie, for the record, is not quite as bad as Fifty Shades of Grey the book. But that's not saying much".[189] We Got This Covered critic Isaac Feldberg gave the film one and a half stars out of five and wrote that it "feels like two, distinct films grappling for dominance over the screen: one a sensual and stylish romance, and the other a numbingly explicit Harlequin bodice-ripper brought to life. Regrettably, the latter and lesser of the two ends up on top".[190] The Guardian lead film critic Peter Bradshaw gave the film one star out of five, calling it "the most purely tasteful and softcore depiction of sadomasochism in cinema history" with "strictly daytime soap" performances.[191] A. O. Scott of The New York Times called the movie "terrible", but wrote that "it might nonetheless be a movie that feels good to see, whether you squirm or giggle or roll your eyes or just sit still and take your punishment."[192]
In a positive review for The Daily Telegraph, Robbie Collin called the film "sexy, funny and self-aware in every way the original book isn't."[193] Elizabeth Weitzman of New York's Daily News praised the directing, screenplay, and Johnson's performance, but called Dornan's performance, the leads' chemistry, and the supporting cast "underused". She praised the film for honoring the essence of its source and the director's way of balancing "atmosphere with action".[194] In The Guardian, Jordan Hoffmann awarded the film three out of five stars, writing, "this big screen adaptation still manages to be about people, and even a little bit sweet", and that the sex scenes "are there to advance the plot, and only the most buttoned-up prude will be scandalised."[195] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B−, writing: "This perfectly normal way of consuming erotica suggests that the movie Fifty Shades of Grey will work better as home entertainment, when each viewer can race past the blah-blah about how well Christian plays the piano and pause on the fleeting image of the man minus his pants."[196] In The Sydney Morning Herald, Timothy Laurie and Jessica Kean argue that "the film provides a language for decision-making around violence more developed than most Hollywood fodder", and that "film fleshes out an otherwise legalistic concept like 'consent' into a living, breathing, and at times, uncomfortable interpersonal experience. It dramatises the dangers of unequal negotiation and the practical complexity of identifying one's limits and having them respected."[197]
Various critics have noted the similarities between Fifty Shades of Grey and Adrian Lyne's 9½ Weeks (1986).[198][199][200] Both films are literary adaptations, centering on a sadomasochistic affair.[201][202]
In an interview in June 2017, Taylor-Johnson later admitted to regretting directing the movie, claiming that her differences with E. L. James caused her to walk away from the series.[203][204]
Pornographic-adaptation lawsuit [ edit ]
In June 2012, the film company Smash Pictures announced its intent to film a pornographic version of the Fifty Shades trilogy, entitled Fifty Shades of Grey: An XXX Adaptation.[205] A release date of January 10, 2013, was announced.[206] In November 2012, Universal, which had secured the Fifty Shades film rights, filed a lawsuit against Smash Pictures, stating that the film violated its copyright in that it was not filmed as a parody adaptation but "copies without reservation from the unique expressive elements of the Fifty Shades trilogy, progressing through the events of Fifty Shades of Grey and into the second book, Fifty Shades Darker".[207]
The lawsuit asked for an injunction, for the profits from all sales of the film, as well as damages,[208] saying that "a quickly and cheaply produced pornographic work [...] is likely to cause Plaintiffs irreparable harm by poisoning public perception of the Fifty Shades Trilogy and the forthcoming Universal films."[209] Smash Pictures responded to the lawsuit by issuing a counterclaim and requesting a continuance, stating that "much or all" of the Fifty Shades material was part of the public domain because it was originally published in various venues as a fan fiction based on the Twilight series. A lawyer for Smash Pictures further commented that the federal copyright registrations for the books were "invalid and unenforceable" and that the film "did not violate copyright or trademark laws".[210] The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and Smash Pictures agreed to stop any further production or promotion of the film.[211]
Sequels [ edit ]
In April 2015, The Hollywood Reporter reported that E. L. James' husband, Niall Leonard, was enlisted to write the script for the film's sequel.[212] In the same month, at the 2015 Universal CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Universal announced the release dates of the sequels, with Fifty Shades Darker being released on February 10, 2017, and Fifty Shades Freed was released on February 9, 2018.[213] However, the sequels did not see Sam Taylor-Johnson returning as director.[214] On August 20, 2015, the U.S. House of Cards director James Foley was a frontrunner to direct the sequel.[215] In November 2015, Universal Studios announced that both films will be shot back-to-back.[216]
Parody [ edit ]
A spoof version of the film, Fifty Shades of Black, was released on January 29, 2016, in North America. Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez wrote the script, in which Wayans stars as Christian Black. The film was distributed by SquareOne Entertainment in Germany and Open Road Films in the United States;[217] IM Global produce and finance it, as well as handling international releases. Kali Hawk parodied the role of Anastasia Steele, with supporting cast including Affion Crockett, Mike Epps, Jane Seymour, and Fred Willard.[218] It was released theatrically on January 29, 2016 and described as less funny "than the unintentionally-funny film it's trying to lampoon."[219]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ [181] It is Universal Pictures' highest-grossing film of all time in Brazil, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Venezuela, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Paraguay, Romania, Serbia/Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.▲ONE OK ROCK ▲ONE OK ROCK
＜Ozzfest Japan 2015＞
11月21・22日(土・日) 幕張メッセ 国際展示場 9～11ホール
11月21日(土) DAY 1
KoЯn（コーン）
Evanescence (エヴァネッセンス)
Bullet for My Valentine (ブレット・フォー・マイ・ヴァレンタイン)
Of Mice & Men（オブ・マイス・アンド・メン）
VAMPS (new) / ONE OK ROCK (new) / SiM (new)
and more…
11月22日(日) DAY 2
Ozzy Osbourne & Friends (オジー・オズボーン・アンド・フレンズ）
"featuring
Geezer Butler from Black Sabbath (new)
Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine (new)
Zakk Wylde from Black Label Society (new)"
Jane's Addiction (ジェーンズ・アディクション) (new)
Hatebreed (ヘイトブリード) (new)
A Day To Remember (ア・デイ・トゥ・リメンバー)
Black Label Society (ブラック・レーベル・ソサイアティ)
BABYMETAL (new) / Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas (new)
人間椅子 (new) / 9mm Parabellum Bullet (new)
and more…
＜プレイガイド一般発売日＞
7月12日(日）～
11月21・22日(土・日) 幕張メッセ 国際展示場 9～11ホール11月21日(土) DAY 1KoЯn（コーン）Evanescence (エヴァネッセンス)Bullet for My Valentine (ブレット・フォー・マイ・ヴァレンタイン)Of Mice & Men（オブ・マイス・アンド・メン）VAMPS (new) / ONE OK ROCK (new) / SiM (new)and more…11月22日(日) DAY 2Ozzy Osbourne & Friends (オジー・オズボーン・アンド・フレンズ）"featuringGeezer Butler from Black Sabbath (new)Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine (new)Zakk Wylde from Black Label Society (new)"Jane's Addiction (ジェーンズ・アディクション) (new)Hatebreed (ヘイトブリード) (new)A Day To Remember (ア・デイ・トゥ・リメンバー)Black Label Society (ブラック・レーベル・ソサイアティ)BABYMETAL (new) / Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas (new)人間椅子 (new) / 9mm Parabellum Bullet (new)and more…＜プレイガイド一般発売日＞7月12日(日）～
オジー・オズボーンがオーガナイズする伝説のロック・フェスティバル＜Ozzfest Japan 2015＞の第4弾アーティスト発表が発表になった。大トリDay2のヘッド・ライナーのOzzy Osbourne & Friendsがステージを共にするフレンズはなんと、ギーザー・バトラーfrom Black Sabbath、トム・モレロfrom Rage Against the Machine、ザック・ワイルドfrom Black Label Society。オジーの元に豪華メンバーが集結する。Day1では、ヘッド・ライナーKoЯnが結成20周年を記念したスペシャルセットを魅せる。さらに、VAMPS、ONE OK ROCK、SiM、BABYMETAL、Jane's Addiction、Hatebreed、Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas、人間椅子、9mm Parabellum Bulletなど、新旧とりまぜて、いま猛烈に勢いのあるアーティストが顔を揃える。国内外から最強のBAND達が2015年11月幕張メッセに大集結する＜Ozzfest Japan 2015＞。「伝説」を目撃するべし。Ozzy Osbourne & Friendsへの参加が決定したトム・モレロ(from Rage Against the Machine)による第4弾アーティスト発表動画も公開されている。When Americans think of federal prisons, they probably don't picture nursing homes. But maybe they should. Thanks to the long mandatory sentences that come with many drug offenses, elderly inmates have emerged as the fastest-growing sector of the federal prison population.
As of June 2017, there were nearly 35,000 federal inmates over the age of 51; 10,000 were over the age of 60. Many of these prisoners suffer the same illnesses afflicting the elderly population in free America, from heart disease to Type 2 diabetes to cancer. The difference is that elderly prisoners receive care while shackled to a bed.
Many aging and sick federal prisoners die under horrid conditions—but they needn't. In 1984, Congress empowered the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to petition for the early release of inmates in "extraordinary and compelling" circumstances. This power is formally called "compassionate release." It's perfectly legal and reasonably safe: Older prisoners seldom resume their criminal behavior upon release, and terminally ill prisoners almost never do.
Yet the BOP uses compassionate release sparingly. After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer—which is often fatal when treated by even the country's finest physicians—Michael Hodge, who received a 20-year sentence for marijuana trafficking, asked to be allowed to die at home with his wife. He was denied without explanation.
For years, advocates on both the left and the right have begged the BOP to use compassionate release more often. In 2013, Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz joined them, citing the astronomical cost of incarcerating and treating the elderly. By his office's calculations, prisons with older populations spend $10,114 on health care annually per prisoner, while facilities with younger populations spend just $1,916. In 2016, the U.S. Sentencing Commission expanded the criteria in hopes of addressing both the human and the financial costs of forcing aging drug war prisoners to spend their final days locked up.
While we don't know how many petitions the BOP denies each year, Human Rights Watch reports that it has granted, on average, less than two dozen annually since 1992.
That could soon change. In July, Sen. Richard Shelby (R–Ala.) ordered the BOP to explain in full how it administers this option, and asked for data on everything from who gets rejected and why to how many prisoners have died while waiting for the BOP to decide on their petitions.
Reformers have a long list of policies they'd like the Bureau of Prisons to change. Some would require completely rethinking how we incarcerate people. But allowing the sick and elderly to die with dignity should be a relatively easy call.Every now and then you’ll find yourself in a position where you’ll need to address unacceptable behavior on the part of one of your students. Some of these behaviors include: cheating, plagiarism, sleeping in class, lying, being disrespectful, disruptive, or abusive. Whichever the case may be, it is always disappointing when students engage in these types of behaviors, and at times, you may feel frustrated, angry, or even helpless. At times like these, it is important to remember that an improper behavior on the part of your student, does not warrant an in-kind retaliatory response on your part.
I’m not saying you should ignore the behavior, on the contrary. I’m a strong advocate for addressing unacceptable behavior immediately. What I am saying is that your personal feelings towards your student’s behavior should not be the basis for your response. It will be difficult in the beginning to try to be completely impartial and to remain emotionally detached from the situation, but it gets easier with time and practice.
I am always disappointed when my students do something that warrants disciplinary action, but I don’t take it personally.
So, how do you deal with disciplinary problems?
Here are 5 tips that will help:
#1. School Policy:Mar 27, 2017; Stockton, CA, USA; South Carolina Gamecocks forward A'ja Wilson (22) blocked a shot by Florida State Seminoles guard Leticia Romero (10) during the fourth period in the finals of the Stockton Regional of the women's 2017 NCAA Tournament at Stockton Arena. South Carolina won 71-64. Mandatory Credit: John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports
DALLAS—A’ja Wilson, South Carolina’s 6’5 heartbeat and best remaining player in the NCAA Tournament, doesn’t lead the country in any major statistical category.
But the player coach Dawn Staley repeatedly touted for player of the year awards at every opportunity has her Gamecocks 40 minutes from a national title for two simple reasons: she does everything well. And there doesn’t appear to be any way to stop her.
“Number one, she’s very active,” Mississippi State coach Vic Schaefer, tasked with finding an answer to Wilson in Sunday night’s championship game, said on Saturday. “She’s physical. She’s not going to stop working. She’s a constant worker. Just a competitor. She wants to be in the moment. She wants the big shot. But if she doesn’t take it, she’s going to go clean it up… Because of her competitive spirit, because of how hard she plays, just makes her even harder to deal with because she’s got a skill set to go with it. It is multi-dimensional.”
Much has been made of the way South Carolina has weathered the loss of Alaina Coates, their senior big who paired with Wilson all season. And part of the reason is the emergence of Kaela Davis, to be sure. But if Wilson couldn’t do so many things well, play the part of bother herself and Coates, South Carolina wouldn’t be here.
Let’s break it down: she scores, and efficiently. She’s 31st in the country in points per 40 minutes, at 25.0, just ahead of Michigan State’s Tori Jankoska and Louisville’s Asia Durr, two ball-dominant guards. She doesn’t force it, though: battling double-teams all year, Wilson still rankes 25th in the country in true shooting percentage, at 64.2 percent, ahead of players like Katie Lou Samuelson.
She rebounds with the best in the country as well, with those numbers ticking up in Coates’ absence this March. Against Stanford, for instance, she collected 19 rebounds, eight offensive, on a night when the Gamecocks weren’t hitting perimeter shots and Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer created a defensive gameplan around stopping Wilson specifically.
That’s only half the battle, though, not that it kept Wilson from 13 points on 5-for-11 shooting to have two defenders on her at all times, and a third cheating down from the perimeter on post touches. There’s the fact that Wilson’s block percentage is up over eight percent, yet her steal percentage is 2.5 percent—in layman’s terms, she rim protects like an elite big, but gets into passing lanes like a quick guard.
“Yeah, I mean, she’s an All-American,” VanDerveer said after Stanford lost to South Carolina Friday night. “She’s a terrific player. She blocks shots or she changes them. What did she end up with? 19 rebounds? She’s on that glass.”
If Mississippi State knows how to slow down Wilson, they haven’t deployed that strategy yet. In two games this season, both South Carolina victories, Wilson is averaging 20.5 points, nine rebounds, 3.5 blocks, 2.5 steals and an assist.
It’s the culmination of a journey for the program that began when Wilson, the number one player in the country her senior year in high school, elected to stay home in South Carolina and play for Dawn Staley. For the program, it provided “credibility, to say we’re on the rise”, according to Staley.
Now that ascent is nearly complete, and Wilson is at the center of it. She was taking nothing for granted Saturday, but she couldn’t help but imagine what it would mean to bring that trophy home.
“I cannot put it into words how it feels growing up watching a program where you would go and maybe cheer here and there to now we are selling out arenas,” Wilson said. “I cannot go to a grocery store without someone knowing who I am. It is a great feeling knowing that I am doing all of this in my backyard and giving back to the state (South Carolina) because the state has done so much for me I cannot ever repay them enough. It is a great feeling to be doing this at home, and later on I can tell my kids that I was a part of something special here at South Carolina.”The Working Families Party (WFP) is a minor political party in the United States, founded in New York in 1998. There are active chapters in New York, Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Nevada, West Virginia, New Mexico, Ohio, and Illinois.[4][5]
The Working Families Party of New York was first organized in 1998 by a coalition of labor unions, community organizations, members of the now-inactive national New Party, and a variety of advocacy groups such as Citizen Action of New York and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.[6] The party's main concerns are jobs, healthcare, raising the minimum wage, universal paid sick days, the student debt crisis, higher taxes on the rich, public education, and energy and environmental reform. It has usually cross-endorsed progressive Democratic or Republican candidates through fusion voting, but will occasionally run its own candidates.
Ideology [ edit ]
WFP follows the ideals of progressive politics,[7] describing itself as a "grass roots independent political organization".[8] Right-wing writer Seth Lipsky of the New York Post describes WFP as "quasi-Marxist"[9] and some right-leaning publications refer to WFP as the Tea Party of the left.[10][11][12][13]
Electoral strategy [ edit ]
Like other minor parties in the state, the WFP benefits from New York's electoral fusion laws that allow the party to support another party's candidate when they feel it aligns with their platform. This allows sympathetic voters to support a minor party without feeling like they are "wasting" their vote. Usually, the WFP endorses the Democratic Party candidate, but it has occasionally endorsed moderate Republican Party candidates as a strategy for spurring bi-partisan action on its policy priorities.
In some cases, the WFP has put forward its own candidates. In the chaotic situation following the 2003 assassination of New York City councilman James E. Davis by political rival Othniel Askew, the slain councilman's brother Geoffrey Davis was chosen to succeed him in the Democratic primary. As it became clear that Geoffrey Davis lacked his late brother's political experience, fellow Democrat Letitia James decided to challenge him in the general election on the WFP ticket and won Brooklyn's 35th City Council district as the first third-party candidate elected there in 30 years.
Some of the party's endorsed candidates include Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, Chicago Mayoral Democratic Candidate Jesús "Chuy" García, US Senators Chris Murphy (CT) and Jeff Merkley (OR), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and New York City Public Advocate Letitia James.
In 2006, the party began ballot access drives in California,[14] Delaware, Massachusetts,[15] Oregon, and South Carolina.[16] In 2010 Oregon joined South Carolina and New York as states that allow fusion voting.
Edwin Gomes, running in a February 2015 special election for the Connecticut State Senate, became the first candidate in the nation to win a state legislative office running solely as a nominee for the Working Families Party.[17]
In 2015, NY WFP ran 111 of its candidates, winning 71 local offices.[18]
In 2015, the WFP endorsed Bernie Sanders in his campaign for U.S. President, its first national endorsement.[19] In 2016, after Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee, the WFP endorsed her for president.[20]
In 2017, Joshua M. Hall, |
You’re playing a team like that that’s got so much high-powered offense, they’ve got really good goaltending, they’ve got a lot of D that can skate. They’re going to come out and they’re going to come at you. So especially on the road, you’ve got to be able to weather that storm and try to establish our game and dictate how we’re going to play. That’s tough to do in an opponent’s building sometimes, but I thought we did a fairly good job of that.
Martinez, on whether Jonathan Quick had a nice game after being pulled the night before:
I mean that’s every night. Quickie is the best goalie in the world and he never quits on pucks. He’s always staying in the battle and staying in the fight.Vindolanda is a rare archaeological site, one that even after 45 years of continuous excavation seasons still keeps releasing more treasures from the past.
The treasures are not those that we think of in a traditional sense but rather a hoard of very normal finds. What makes these ordinary items extraordinary is the fact they are approaching 2,000 years old, and yet many of them look as if they were discarded or lost just recently.
Dr Andrew Birley, CEO and Director of Excavations for the Trust explained ‘We know this site very well and at the start of each season there are buildings and artefacts that we hope to uncover. There are of course illusive finds that you want to make and are still searching for and then there are discoveries that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up!’
On the 16th June one of those spine tingling discoveries was made in the deep anaerobic trenches where the oxygen-free conditions enables almost perfect preservation of the ancient remains. A barrel stave, dating c AD90, complete with the most vivid brand and numbers was unearthed. The stave, made from pine and almost certainly imported from Spain bears the as yet unidentified makers brand. The numerals MCC indicate the barrel contained a quantity of 1200 but what the contents were remains a mystery.
Dr Briley went on to say ‘the barrel stave has been one of the highlights of the season so far and we hope over the coming weeks we will know more about ALBIN – NORB as images of the stave have been sent to specialists in both Spain and here in the UK for further interpretation. However, we can guess that ALBIN could mean ALBINVS, the name of the manufacturer of the barrel, and NORB is the place of origin’.
The Vindolanda Trust is currently working up plans for a £1.3m extension to the museum, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, especially to house the wooden artefacts, a collection which is steadily expanding.
VINDOLANDA TRUSTIn the Copenhagen area, nearly everyone knows about the Nygart plastic surgery clinic. Sure, they might not know the name. But they know the work.
Nygart has been running ads on public buses in Copenhagen since 2007 that feature a pair of surgically-enhanced breasts without a thread of clothing to obscure the surgeon’s fine work. Although the ads have led to spirited public debate in the past, they have remained a mainstay and now hardly raise an eyebrow with the natives.
An advertisement for Nygart’s newly-opened clinic in Malmö has at least one Swedish politician up in arms, even though the ad’s fully-clothed model is far tamer than the clinic’s Danish bus ads (to say nothing of the video stunt the clinic pulled that featured a naked woman strutting through Copenhagen - see it here ).
While the Malmö ad, which features a scantily clad woman advertising the clinic’s special introductory offer on breast implants, has mostly just turned heads among the Swedes, Malmö politician Rasmus Ling of the Green party has slammed it as being “degrading” to women, telling The Local that he was appalled by the flesh friendly advert.
"It's degrading. The advert sends out a message to all women who pass that they should change their bodies with a risky operation. It's not a procedure for medical purposes, just to please a cosmetic motive," said Ling. The tax policy spokesperson for the Greens was particularly annoyed that the adverts were on display in the main train station as it is run by the state owned Jernhusen organization. "Travellers shouldn't have to see such adverts. What this advert is saying to women is 'if you don't look like me, then you should change yourself to look more like me.' If people want to find information about cosmetic surgery there are plenty of other places to do so."
Jernhusen, which also runs train stations in Stockholm and Gothenburg, have stated that the adverts comply with Swedish regulations and that they had no intention to censor it.
"Plastic surgery isn't an illegal enterprise and should reasonably have the same right to market its services as any other company would," Ann Hermansson, marketing manager of Jernhusen told the local Sydsvenskan newspaper.
Nygart clinic’s owner, Jesper Nugart, said the Swedish politician’s reaction to the advert was over the top.
"In Denmark the breast is completely naked. The next step is to advertise like that in Sweden too," Jesper Nygart told Sydsvenskan.
In addition to the clinics in Copenhagen and Malmö, the Nygart group also has locations in Lyngby, Aarhus and Odense.Formatting may be lacking as a result. If this article is un-readable please report it so that we may fix it.
Posted on July 21, 2011, Phil Owen Comic-Con 2011: Star Wars: The Old Republic To Have Limited Launch
When pre-orders went up this morning for Star Wars: The Old Republic, something odd happened. Origin was saying something about “limited quantities” and whatever, leading us to be angry and whatever because we thought EA was just being needlessly stingy.
But it turns out that quantities are limited for a reason, as we learned at SWTOR’s Comic-Con panel today, and that reason is that BioWare is going to launch SWTOR with a limited number of players rather than have millions of folks dive in all at once when they go online this winter. One can see the wisdom of such a tactic.
So if you don’t manage to land a pre-order today, be sad but don’t worry, because you will eventually get to play the game. Eventually.About
(EN)
Capitán Kalani y el sindicato robótico, it's a 2d 8-bits NES style game, in which you control the captain after receiving a distress call from the biggest Factory of robots of the world. In the way, you’re going to discover something more worrying than a distress call, in each part of the game you're going to find out what’s really happening there (pretty simple, but NES games weren't that clever either). Discover the utopian world that hide a big mystery, and find out who are the Robot's Syndicate behind the truoubles. The game will be in spanish and english, 3 save slots, checkpoints and a way to buy more health (in game currency).
(ESP)
Capitán Kalani y el sindicato robótico, es un juego 2d con estilo de 8bits, en el cuál controlas al capitán después de recibir una llamada de auxilio desde la fábrica de robots más grande del mundo; en el camino vas a descubrir algo más preocupante que una llamada de auxilio, en cada parte del juego irás descubriendo qué es lo que realmente está pasando (es bastante simple, pero los juegos de NES tampoco eran tan brillantes). Descubre un muno utópico que encierra un gran misterio, y encuentra quiénes son el Sindicato Robótico que están causando problemas. El juego estará en español e inglés, tiene 3 arcivos para guardar, chekpoints y una forma de adquirir salud (con dinero dentro del juego)
(EN)
Why it could be interesting? The story will progress every scenario and you will take to diferent locations to discover a new point of view from the game’s world, beside, the mechanics will change every change of location. Talking about mechanics, you start with the basic Walkin Jumping Double jumping Ducking Shooting Health Bar Regenerating shield (ok that's not quite ‘basic’). And after? You will have to learn how to survive without some of them. The action is fluent the most of the time, with some in calm moments to take a breath; every level have different scenarios that require certain abilities, improve mechanics or kill everything in sight, sometimes it's the scenario the one that kills, and some times are the enemies. Also will have what you love of a NES game, misspelled words, lag, unfair platforms and more
(ESP)
¿Qué lo hace interesante? la historia va a progresar con cada escenario y serás llevado a diferentes locaciones para ver una nueva perspectiva del mundo, además, las mecánicas también van a ir cambiando. Hablando de mecánicas, inicias con lo básico, caminar, saltar, doble salto, agacharse, disparar, barra de salud y escudo regenerativo (bueno, ese no es muy básico) ¿Y después? vas a tener que aprender a sobrevivir sin alguno de ellos. La acción es fluida la moyor parte del tiempo, pero con algunas partes calmadas para tomar aliento; cada nivel tiene diferentes escenarios que requieren algunas habilidades, mejorar mecánicas, matar a todo lo que se mueva o sobrevivir al entorno. Además va a tener lo que amas de los juegos de NES, palabras mal escritas, lag, plataformas injustas y más.
Play the demo
Aquí puedes descargar el demo
https://poiesusgames.itch.io/capitan-kalani
(EN)
The style intended at first glance to be atompunk (kind of The Jetsons), and that's the purpose of the first levels; the music, the enemies, the colors and the background try to emulate the style, but don’t stop there, and the game blends with the change of style,from the high class suburbs to the low class neighborhood. On the other hand, the game is made in 8 bits style, using the exact same color palette of NES (except for the main character and the last boss), with the same height screen restriction, and pixel size of the enemies (16x32 px max); also some things changed to improve the style, the width of screen so you can play in wide screen, the number of colours per character (5, the NES restrictions are 3 per sprite) or the number of colors in the screen, transparency and background parallax.
(ESP)
El estilo a primera instancia intenta ser atompunk (como los supersonicos) y ese es el propósito de los primeros niveles, la música, los enemigos, los colores y el fondo intentan emular ese estilo, pero ahi no se detiene y éste se mezcla con con el cambio de estilo en el juego, desde los edificios de la clase alta, hasta los barrios bajos. Por otro lado, el juego está hecho en un estilo de 8 bits, usando la misma paleta de colores que el NES (excepto por el personaje principal y el último jefe), con la misma restricción de altura en la pantalla, y el tamaño de pixeles de los enemigos (16x32 px máx); además, algunas cosas fueron modificadas para mejorar el estilo sin perder el aspecto retro, como el ancho de la pantalla para que lo puedas jugar en pantalla ancha, el número de colores por personaje (5, el nes sólo permitía 3 por sprite), el número de colores en pantalla, transparencia y paralax en el fondo.
(EN)
The music its also limited to the NES capability, using famitracker to make the compositions, the only difference is the length of the songs, making them longer, so you can enjoy a good OST
(ESP)
La música también está limitada a la capacidad del NES, usando famitracker para hacer las composiciones, la única diferencia es la duración de las pistas la cuál es más larga para que puedas disfrutar un buen OST
Here some examples
Algunas pistas
(EN)
So far, 10 areas with different scenarios each one were planned, the budget estimate the amount for paying the rent, food, internet, a better pc and software to finish the project, that doesn't mean this is only an idea, almost a half of the game is already complete (except for the last boss) and i’m only looking the resources to do it on full time and finish on time.
The demo only cover 2 levels with their respective bosses, the reason why didn't include more is because I want to polish a bit more the rest of the game, but if everything goes right and you want it, I will release a last last last demo with more content before releasing the full game.
In addition, if i get the resources, after the release of the game, i will start a video series teaching how to make a game like mine for beginners, covering programming, art, music and design, so you will be able to make and share your own game with everyone. Also if i raise a little bit more, i will be recording how i make the game, not only the working stuff, but also the struggles of making it and after the release, i'm going to work on it to make a kind of documental of making an indie game, because i want you to know everything about making game if thats what you want to do, i really really love videogames and want new ‘kojima's’ in the industry.
I would love to say that my game will be the best, but i can't say it, yet i can promise it will be enjoyable
(ESP)
Hasta ahora, están planeadas 10 niveles con diferentes escenarios cada uno, el presupuesto cubre lo estimado para pagar renta, comida, internet, una mejor pc y un software especializado para terminar el juego, eso no significa que sea solo una idea, casi la mitad del juego está completo, estoy buscando los recursos para poder trabajar de tiempo completo en él y terminarlo a tiempo.
El demo sólo incluye dos niveles con sus respectivos jefes, la razón por la cuál no incluí más es porque quiero pulir un poco el resto, pero si todo sale bien y así lo quisieran, podría liberar un último último demo con más contenido antes de que salga el juego terminado.
Además, si junto los recursos, después de terminar el juego voy a iniciar una serie de videotutoriales enseñando cómo hacer un juego como el mio para principiantes, cubriendo programación, arte, música y diseño, para que así tu también puedas hacer y compartir tu propio juego. Si llegara a conseguir un poco más de recursos, estaré grabando cómo hago el juego, no solo la parte técnica, sino también los problemas en el proceso y después de terminarlo procuraré hacer una especie de documental sobre el desarrollo de un juego indie, así si decides trabajar haciendo videojuegos conozcas un poco más amo los videojuegos y quiero ver nuevos Kojimas en la industria.
Me gustaría decir que mi juego será el mejor, pero no puedo, lo que sí puedo es prometer que lo vas a disfrutar.Steven Croft has been on Lancashire's books since 2005
Lancashire must avoid becoming a "yo-yo" club moving between the divisions, says vice-captain Steven Croft.
The Red Rose, back in Division Two this year, have been promoted or relegated in each of the last three seasons.
All-rounder Croft, 30, was appointed understudy to new captain Tom Smith by Lancashire boss Ashley Giles.
"In my eyes we definitely want to go up, we don't want to be looming around Division Two for longer than we need to be," Croft told BBC Radio Lancashire.
"At the same time we want to try to build a side who can compete for next season as well.
"We don't want to keep yo-yoing. We want to get that stability and consistency that will keep us up in Division One and competing for the title as well."
The rise and fall of Lancashire 2011: Division One - champions 2012: Division One - relegated 2013: Division Two - champions 2014: Division One - relegated
After their relegation, new director of cricket and head coach Giles, 41, took over in October replacing Mike Watkinson and captain Glen Chapple, who has moved to a player-coach role for the upcoming campaign.
The former England spinner has recruited Australia fast bowler Peter Siddle and former South Africa opener Alviro Petersen as they look for an immediate return to Division One.
"They're the two areas we needed," added Croft. "With our batting we needed strengthening. I think Alviro will hopefully contribute and I think our homegrown batters have got to contribute more as well.
"Obviously with Chapple's dual role and losing Kyle Hogg I think Siddle is a great replacement for that as well."ESPN was involved with a hard-hitting television series that delivered an unsavory depiction of professional football players. The N.F.L.’s commissioner was so perturbed that he complained to the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, ESPN’s parent company. Not long after, ESPN stopped promoting the show, then decided to end its run after one season.
The year was 2004, and the TV series was a fictional drama, “Playmakers,” which did not even include the words “National Football League.” Nearly a decade later, a strikingly similar set of circumstances — though this time with a more serious topic — has left ESPN, the multibillion dollar sports behemoth, again defending its dual existence as a sports platform and a news organization.
On Thursday, ESPN, which has spent heavily in recent years to build its investigative reporting team, abruptly ended its affiliation with “Frontline,” a public affairs television series that was weeks from showing a jointly produced two-part investigative project about the N.F.L.’s contentious handling of head injuries. The divorce came a week after the N.F.L. voiced its displeasure with the documentary at a lunch between league and ESPN executives, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The meeting took place at Patroon, near the league’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, according to the two people, who requested anonymity because they were prohibited by their superiors from discussing the matter publicly. It was a table for four: Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L.; Steve Bornstein, president of the NFL Network; John Skipper, ESPN’s president; and John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president for production.Jakhir Ahmed has a shop next to the gate on the Bijnor-Haridwar highway. (Source: Express photo by Oinam Anand)
A third of all “communal” incidents recorded by police in Uttar Pradesh in the 10 weeks following the Lok Sabha election results have occurred in — or on the fringes of — 12 assembly constituencies that are scheduled to go to polls over the next few months.
Advertising
If a larger circle is imagined — covering broadly the region around these constituencies — this proportion rises to two-thirds, police records scrutinised by The Indian Express show.
The records show a running strand of attempts made by an aggressive BJP, a desperate SP, and a flagging BSP to turn every clash involving individuals from the two largest religious communities into a communal issue.
There is also clear evidence of provocation in areas where Dalits and Muslims live together, leading to communal polarisation.
Advertising
Between May 16 — when UP delivered a spectacular tally to the BJP in the Lok Sabha — and July 25, 605 low-key clashes took place which police identified as “communal” in nature. Nearly 200 of these occurred in or around the 12 constituencies, and another 200 in the broader region.
MLAs at these 12 assembly seats contested the Lok Sabha elections and have become MPs. Polls to the vacant seats are due within six months.
Five of these seats — Saharanpur Nagar, Bijnor, Kairana, Thakurwada and Gautam Buddh Nagar — are in Western UP, where the largest number of 259 communal incidents were recorded. Fifty-three incidents took place in Awadh, where the Lucknow East assembly seat will go to polls.
In the Terai, Eastern UP and Bundelkhand regions, each of which is home to two of the 12 seats, 29, 16, and 6 incidents respectively were recorded.
Records of more than 400 communal incidents in and around the constituencies show that tensions arose out of broadly six issues. The most common were construction activities involving masjids, madrasas and kabristans (graveyards); and the use of loudspeakers for prayers (120 instances each).
Issues of land led to communal tensions in about 70 cases; alleged incidents of cow slaughter in 61 cases; and alleged incidents of elopement and eve-teasing or harassment involving men and women of different communities in 50-odd cases. Minor accidents triggered communal incidents in some 30 cases.
In mid-July, in Bijnor’s Keeratpur area, a delegation met the district administration to demand that the construction of a gate on the Bijnor-Haridwar highway be stopped because the top of the gate was beginning to resemble an Islamic “minar”. The administration has now stopped work on the gate, but at a local mandir barely 10 metres away, a practice has begun of weekly recitals of Hanuman Chalisa, at which the gathering is told of the construction.
Septuagenarian Jakhir Ahmed, who has kept a small shop next to the gate for three decades, said, “Construction had been on for months. Suddenly, a few weeks ago, protesters showed up, demanding its demolition.”
A senior official of the district administration, who didn’t want to be identified, said, “There is a constant pressure from one group to keep issues burning. We get daily complaints about issues, many of which are old. But they are being pursued on a day-to-day basis. And wherever possible, politics is being introduced.”
On June 20, in Rampur village of Bijnor’s Nagina region, Muslims objected to a DJ playing music in the community hall of the village. The music was turned off, but the following day, a clash broke out between Hindus and Muslims. Police and local people are still not sure how the trouble began.
Five days later, in Noorpur Chiperi village 50 km away in the Sherkot area of the same district, residents objected to music beign played at a birthday party for the nephew of pradhan Mahavir Singh. Here too, the music was turned off, but some local dailies reported that Hindus and Muslims had clashed. The following day, the police arrested a Muslim man for allegedly intruding into a temple and damaging the mandir’s property.
When The Indian Express visited Noorpur Chiperi, a Dalit-dominated village, the pradhan brushed aside the incident. “It was a misunderstanding based on wrong information. We have no problems.”
Not far away, in the Gulabbadi area of Moradabad town, where Dalits and Muslims live in almost equal numbers, police have begun to receive anonymous calls about the construction of a minar in a masjid. The masjid in question is deep inside a narrow street, lined by buildings standing cheek-by-jowl, and crisscrossed overhead by a thick jumble of hanging power cables.
On July 1, four loudspeakers on the second-floor roof of the mosque were raised to a height of three feet for Ramzan. The calls to the local police and district administration have, however, been complaining of “attempts to raise a new minar, leading to the setting of a precedent”.
Only a fortnight earlier, police and protesters had clashed in Kant, 35 km from the town, after the administration brought down a newly set up loudspeaker in a Dalit temple.
Advertising
According to a senior police official, the incidents “reveal how closely communities are keeping a watch on issues that have potential for communal clashes”. The loudspeakers of the Moradabad masjid have been returned to their original height. DIG, Moradabad Zone, Gulab Singh, said, “Even small issues like motorbike accidents involving Hindus and Muslims is leading to mobs gathering. No one seems willing to see reason.”SSL Blacklist 4.0
Intro
Update 12/31/2008
SSL Blacklist now detects and warns about certificate chains that use the MD5 algorithm for RSA signatures.
An pdf
The demonstrated attack has two notable prerequisites: the ability to predict information in the prefix blocks of the data, and the present existence of CAs that use MD5-RSA to sign CSRs.
Since RapidSSL quite quickly switched to SHA1, the latter prerequisite seems to be harder to come across. (They issued a certificate to me at 9am this morning, less than 24 hours after the attack has been publicized, and this certificate no longer uses MD5.)
There is, however, a large number of CAs out there, and it is certain that some of them will continue to use MD5 for one reason or another. As for predicting information in the prefix block: some CAs may make this harder than others, but some low-volume CAs may require even less of an effort than RapidSSL did.
The real issue is, however, that this current attack is just a sign of things to come. MD5 has been known to have been weak for years, and now a small team with relatively modest resources essentially gained the ability to spoof any secure website on the Internet. Things are likely to accelerate from here and newer, more devastating attacks on MD5 are likely to surface soon.
Therefore it may be prudent to avoid, or, at the very least, not place much trust in websites that authenticate themselves with the help of MD5. After all, there is no way to automatically distinguish between a chain with a genuine MD5-based certificate signature and a chain with a counterfeit certificate. This recent update to SSL Blacklist will help you do just that.
MD5 has been all but retired from daily use for years now. You're not very likely to come across an important website with a certificate that has been signed using MD5-RSA. If you do, however, tread carefully.
A quick note on root certificates signed with MD5-RSA: these exist in abundance, and they're quite notable, such as the "Thawte Premium Server CA" from 1996. Fortunately, nothing indicates that root CA certificates that are distributed with client software would be of any risk, even if they have been signed using MD5-RSA. It's certificates that your client software does not already have a copy of, such as certificates issued to servers or intermediate CAs, that you have to be careful with. SSL Blackist by default will ignore root certificates that are self-signed with MD5-RSA, but will check every other certificate in the chain. You can change this behavior on the Options dialog, accessible from the Add-ons menu.
SSL Blacklist now detects and warns about certificate chains that use the MD5 algorithm for RSA signatures.An attack has been demonstrated yesterday that highlights the practicality of the well-publicized weaknesses of the MD5 algorithm. Essentially, any certificate signed with the MD5 algorithm may be counterfeit.The demonstrated attack has two notable prerequisites: the ability to predict information in the prefix blocks of the data, and the present existence of CAs that use MD5-RSA to sign CSRs.Since RapidSSL quite quickly switched to SHA1, the latter prerequisite seems to be harder to come across. (They issued a certificate to me at 9am this morning, less than 24 hours after the attack has been publicized, and this certificate no longer uses MD5.)There is, however, a large number of CAs out there, and it is certain that some of them will continue to use MD5 for one reason or another. As for predicting information in the prefix block: some CAs may make this harder than others, but some low-volume CAs may require even less of an effort than RapidSSL did.The real issue is, however, that this current attack is just a sign of things to come. MD5 has been known to have been weak for years, and now a small team with relatively modest resources essentially gained the ability to spoof any secure website on the Internet. Things are likely to accelerate from here and newer, more devastating attacks on MD5 are likely to surface soon.Therefore it may be prudent to avoid, or, at the very least, not place much trust in websites that authenticate themselves with the help of MD5. After all, there is no way to automatically distinguish between a chain with a genuine MD5-based certificate signature and a chain with a counterfeit certificate. This recent update to SSL Blacklist will help you do just that.MD5 has been all but retired from daily use for years now. You're not very likely to come across an important website with a certificate that has been signed using MD5-RSA. If you do, however, tread carefully.A quick note on root certificates signed with MD5-RSA: these exist in abundance, and they're quite notable, such as the "Thawte Premium Server CA" from 1996. Fortunately, nothing indicates that root CA certificates that are distributed with client software would be of any risk, even if they have been signed using MD5-RSA. It's certificates that your client software does not already have a copy of, such as certificates issued to servers or intermediate CAs, that you have to be careful with. SSL Blackist by default will ignore root certificates that are self-signed with MD5-RSA, but will check every other certificate in the chain. You can change this behavior on the Options dialog, accessible from the Add-ons menu.
Overview
The FF Extension
SSL Blacklist in action
(click to enlarge)
Under The Hood
The Online Service
[need JS to reveal mailto link]
Revision History (SSL Blacklist)
4.0.32 (Jan-31, 2010)
Firefox 3.6 compatibility
4.0.31 (May-18, 2009)
Firefox 3.5 compatibility
4.0.30 (Dec-31, 2008)
Detect MD5 signature algorithms
3.0.25 (Nov-20, 2008)
Optional update: Firefox 3.1 compatibility
3.0.24 (Aug-12, 2008)
Parse and handle the odd-sized (1000-bit) RSA Data Security root certificate properly
3.0.22 (Jun-28, 2008)
Moved the blacklist database to a set of DNS servers for dynamic queries. Extension size reduction: 99.93%
FF3 compatibility: handle EV certificates properly
2.0.16 (Jun-23, 2008)
Expanded database covering x86, x64 and PPC platforms for key lengths 512, 1024, 2048 and 4096 bits (yes, this makes the extension ridiculously big at a 31MB download and 60+MB installation size)
1.3.15 (Jun-19, 2008)
UI fix for FF2 on Mandriva Linux (and possibly other distros)
1.2.13 (Jun-16, 2008)
Minor bugfixes
Icon in URL bar for secure sites
"Official" FF3 compatibility
1.1.10 (Jun-1, 2008)
Mac compatibility
Added one-click reporting capability
1.0.7 (May-28, 2008)
First release
Revision History (SSL Blacklist Local Database)
1.0.8 (Jan-31, 2010)
Firefox 3.6 compatibility
1.0.7 (May-18, 2009)
Optional update: Firefox 3.5 compatibility
1.0.6 (Nov-20, 2008)
Optional update: Firefox 3.1 compatibility
1.0.5 (Aug-12, 2008)
Optional update: added support for global install of the extension
1.0.3 (Jun-28, 2008)
First release
If you know why you're here and what the "SSL Blacklist" extension does, you can install it from here, or from the pretty link in the right column. Otherwise, read on for a description and some tech details.There's been quite a bit of reporting and discussion about the fix for Debian bug #363516 that's gone horribly bad. Some of it's really funny. Unfortunately, the problem is a big one.A quick, one paragraph rehash: all RSA & DSA keypairs generated with OpenSSL on affected systems (any Debian-based system between roughly Sep-17-2006 and May-13-2008) are trivial to guess. The fix is not so simple. After updating OpenSSL on an affected system, you need to figure out if any of your crypto keys are affected. Keys are affected if they have been generated on a system with the crippled OpenSSL stack (or, in the case of DSA keys, simply used to log in from an affected system to any other system). You need to regenerate all such keys and replace your SSL certificates as well.Why does this concern me? I'm not a big Linux user, neither at home nor at work. We patched the few Linux systems that we had to patch, we've regenerated the affected SSH host and user keypairs. We haven't generated any SSL CSRs on Debian, so we're cool, right? Well, not really.Debian is a pretty popular Linux distro, and rightly so. This means that there are many websites out there running on Debian - and visiting an SSL site running on a system that has been affected by the bug may mean that the SSL certificate in play is essentially worthless and does nothing to secure communications between my browser and the website I'm visiting. What's even worse, I have no way to tell if this is the case.Of course if the site's admin is doing his job well, then they're going to get their bad SSL cert reissued. Most CAs will do this for free. (If you run your own CA then this is even easier... just look here, these sites have really fresh certs with telltale timestamps, demonstrating that their sysadmins know what they're doing: alioth.debian.org and nm.debian.org.)But what about the rest of the world? How do I know that the next time I'm buying shoes or books or whatever online, entering my CC info, the information is really secure? Unfortunately the CAs aren't rushing to revoke bad SSL certs. What's more, for testing purposes, I've generated a CSR on an Ubuntu system which had a crippled RNG, and GoDaddy was quick to sign it for me. It's right here: https://bad.codefromthe70s.org. See? Looks perfectly fine, looks secure, but it's absolutely worthless.CAs should not be signing CSRs that are based on bad keys - and they should be revoking existing certificates too. Unfortunately this isn't happening.So I decided to put together a Firefox extension that can detect bad certificates for me. It only took a few hours after the release of SSL Blacklist for a user to find a website with a bad keypair.If you use SSL Blacklist and you're alerted of a site with a bad certificate, use the "Report" button. So far 445 bad certificates have been reported Here's what the extension looks like when it detects a problem:The Ubuntu folks have published an openssl-blacklist package that contains fingerprints for 1,179,648 known bad keys. My SSL Blacklist extension incorporates the openssl-blacklist databases, and will warn you when you're accessing a site that is not secure. This should go a long way towards giving you some peace of mind.To grab the extension (signed code with a signed updater mechanism), just click the link to the XPI in the right column. IE users should check out a similar utility published by Heise The blacklist database is positively huge: the nature of the OpenSSL bug was that it'd generate one of precisely 98,304 keypairs on any given architecture for any given key length. The number of possible keys per architecture per keylength is three times 32,768: first, 32,768 possible keys with the ~/.rnd file, 32,768 possible keys without one (first runs of OpenSSL), and finally, 32,768 possible keys with an unreadable ~/.rnd file (such as when OpenSSL is invoked with sudo and the file becomes unreadable). All in all, 32,768 x 3 x 3 x 4 = 1,179,648 keys, covering the most common platforms (x86, x64 and PPC) and most common key sizes (512, 1024, 2048 and 4096 bits). The current database format uses 51 bytes per key - there's some redundancy in there which is mitigated by compression but there's not much that can be done to make the files significantly smaller. The local database, however, is now purely optional:This new version of SSL Blacklist, by default, uses a DNS-based distributed online service to handle lookups. When you visit an SSL site, the modulus of the certificate's public key is hashed, and the hash is queried from the DNS database. If there's a hit, a warning is presented. Both positive and negative DNS responses are cached in the browser with a one-month expiration date. This ensures that the DNS requests are kept to a minimum. This is mainly done to mitigate any privacy-related concerns that users may have. Even if URLs are not sent to a 3rd party server, only the hash of the certificate's modulus, it's best to keep such traffic to a minimum.If you are very much concerned about privacy, you should install the "SSL Blacklist Local Database" extension alongside with "SSL Blacklist". This will put the entire 31MB download (60MB uncompressed) on your computer, and SSL Blacklist, when it detects this "sister extension", will only use the local database for modulus checks.If online installation does not work for you for some reason, you can download the XPI packages from here: sslblacklist-4.0.32.xpi and sslblacklist-localdb-1.0.8.xpi The DNS-based database is implemented via thedomain. This is a simple domain whose nameservers answer with a certain A record (127.0.0.2) when known-bad "hosts" are queried, such as. When it receives requests for modulus hashes that it does not know about, it responds with a different A record (127.0.0 |
. Purple!
We have also done quite a lot of work establishing the project framework for Kokua, e.g. rebranding the viewer, making it easier for people to compile “standalone”, revamping the way the viewer is packaged, and other such un-sexy chores that will help in the long run.
For a more thorough summary of the changes compared to Viewer 2.4, read the release notes. For a complete (but difficult to read) list of changes, you can (try to) read the full list of commits.
Downloads
Conclusion
Once again, I have to emphasize that this is a starting point, not a finished product. We will be making many changes and improvements in the following weeks and months. Feedback and involvement from the community (i.e. you!) is absolutely essential to shaping and refining Kokua. If you test this build, please provide feedback in any of the ways described above.If you’re looking for Evo 2018 results updated live all weekend long, you’ve come to the right place!
In a Street Fighter V bout, the difference between victory and defeat depends on knowing your character's moves and combos and precisely timing them against your opponent for maximum efficiency. Even if you know which strengths and weaknesses to exploit, fractions of a second can spell success or disaster for your match.
That's why the official guide to Street Fighter V contains all the data you need to gain the edge in combat and win matches! Here's a sneak peek inside the guide, with just a few pages of character info and data for Karin. Karin's character section continues in even more depth within the guide, and there are character sections for every fighter in the game for you to peruse. Complete character coverage includes:
Full Frame Data for Every Character—Every attack in the game and all the data at your fingertips. Learn the range, damage, advantage, and disadvantage of all the moves in Street Fighter V.
Reliable Combos for Every Character—Learn “go to” combos for every member of the cast to put opposing players on their heels and create a cornerstone for your offense.
Comprehensive Character Strategy—Research the strengths and weaknesses of every fighter. Learn tips, tactics, and tricks from our tournament veterans that will put your opponents under pressure and lead you to victory.
Updated Character Data—Stay up to date as character data changes post-launch with the FREE Mobile-Friendly eGuide. Enjoy all the content from our printed strategy guide in a convenient, easy-to-use, web-access companion. Plus, this eGuide will be updated to include frame rate data, game changes, and the first season of DLC. (Includes new modes and additional characters for up to one year (2/16/16-2/16/17) post game release).
Whether you have a preferred character already or want to expand your combat roster, we have you covered! Order your official guide to Street Fighter V now!If you’re after gory sounds, Jeremy Rogers from The Sound Keeper has just released an absolutely mean-sounding SFX library. It’s called Cinematic Gore, and comes with more than 600 sounds of blood, guts, breaking bones, stabbing, splatters, flesh tears, impacts and more – and it’s definitely not for the squeamish! I was curious to find out his approach to gore sound, and just how he got things sounding so brutal. Here’s the story:
A small example of what Cinematic Gore sounds like
Hi Jeremy, how did you come up with the idea for a gore SFX library? And what were some essential gory sounds you wanted to have in there?
I’ve wanted to do a gore recording session for a long time. I’m a big horror movie fan and I love adding in a bit of blood and guts to my projects at work. What I have noticed with most gore sound effects libraries, is that they don’t have a lot of designed sounds. I find they are mostly raw recordings.
What I have noticed with most gore sound effects libraries, is that they don’t have a lot of designed sounds.
I wanted those huge knife and sword stabs. I wanted really crispy bone breaks (bone breaks were a huge focus for me because I find most bone breaks aren’t really snappy, and I wanted to make them brutal)! I wanted really disgusting guts splashes and impacts. Also, I wanted some long blood drips and some punches with neck breaks. Those were the main ticket items.
Your gore sounds are extremely brutal. How did you accomplish this?
As always, I do a lot of research before I even start a recording session. I wanted to find out what is used normally for gore sounds in foley sessions. I had a good base knowledge of what elements to use for blood spurts and bone breaks, etc.
I’m lucky in that I have been on multiple foley recording sessions for past projects with the best in the business for film and tv.
Then, I critically listened to a long collection of TV and movies to see what style and sound is currently being implemented. After that, I then could get creative and experiment with new techniques and materials to record. I think it’s the variety of elements I used in combination with lots of experimentation that achieved some of the more brutal sounds.
What was a typical recording session like? And what were some of the objects and tools you used?
Typically, I have a master list of all the sounds I need and the materials that go with it. I then find a room that has the optimal acoustics and noise floor to record. With the gore sessions, I recorded in a few different locations. The gore recordings were really messy, so I had to buy a plastic tarp and lots of shammy’s to soak up all the gore.
I was also really trying to get a new and different bone break sound. So, I bought some lamb rib bones and I bought a whole chicken.
Most gore sounds are made up of a variety of fruits and vegetables. So, I went and bought all the fruit and veggies I could find. I was also really trying to get a new and different bone break sound. So, I bought some lamb rib bones and I bought a whole chicken. I wanted to hear what actually bone breaks sound like. I used my Sennheiser MKH8040 stereo rig to record with. You need a microphone that is extremely sensitive to pick up all the details on these gore sounds since they are normally very quiet sounds.
There are a number of designed sounds in there too – what was your approach for these?
This was the fun stuff! All the designed sounds were sounds I have always wanted to have in my library but could never find. Each designed sound fits a different purpose. For instance, the bone breaks in all my libraries and in a lot of tv and film don’t always have the clean snap and break sound that I want to hear.
All the designed sounds were sounds I have always wanted to have in my library but could never find.
I went to work to make a large variety of bone breaks that are extremely snappy and crisp (and brutal, haha).
Also, for the knife and sword stabs I wanted really gushy and impactful stabs that are hard to find in SFX libraries. I basically just came up with a list of designed sounds I wish I had in a gore library.
Need specific sound effects? Try a search below:
Any favorite sounds in the library?
My favorite sound is one of the designed bone breaks. The bone break starts out sounding like the bone is cracking and slowly giving way with stress. Then, at the end the bone breaks and gushes out with blood. When I played that for a friend, they made a face of disgust and said, “That’s so gross!” Success!
They made a face of disgust and said, “That’s so gross!” Success!
In your book, what’s the key to powerful gore sounds? And from a recording and sound design perspective, what’s your advice for others who are looking to do gory sounds?
I think the key to powerful gore sounds is layering. I find that you need a good amount of layers to create a really powerful gore sound. Also, you need to add in some character. When you can get a cool sounding blood spurt that makes an interesting squeeze sound, adding that onto an impact can really make the difference. My advice is to experiment and try new things! The best gore sounds I came up with were from experimenting and playing around. You will be hard pressed to find a sound designer that won’t encourage you to try something crazy. Those crazy ideas are usually the best ideas!
Please share this:
A big thanks to Jeremy Rogers for sharing the story behind Cinematic Gore!
You can grab the full library of 600+ sounds below:
FOLLOW OR SUBSCRIBE FOR THE LATEST IN FANTASTIC SOUND:HOLLYWOOD - FEBRUARY 20: TV personality Bill Nye attends the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures "The Astronaut Farmer" at the Cinerama Dome on February 20, 2007 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Bill Nye “the Science Guy” said his efforts to convince the public of the dangers of global warming have failed, largely due to a misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry.
“I am a failure,” Nye told Salon in an interview ahead of a documentary on the Science Guy’s rise to fame.
“The United States has now got the head of the EPA who wants to close the EPA,” Nye said, adding his decades-long effort to convince people of the dangers of man-made global warming has been “completely ineffective.”
Earlier this year, Nye aired a documentary series on Netflix aimed at adults. The series, however, has been panned by critics and being awkward and condescending, missing all the charm of his 1990s series.
Nye’s show did get an Emmy nomination for its “Sexual Spectrum” episode, which featured a song called “My Sex Junk” performed by actress Rachel Bloom. The song is about the fluidity of gender — contradicting Nye’s previous show on gender.
Nye began hosting a children’s science show in the 1990s. He did a few episodes on the topic of global warming, and Nye’s children’s book featured a chapter on this issue. His upcoming documentary focuses on his evolution from children’s TV host to global warming activist.
Nye can now be seen on TV railing against global warming skeptics, or on Twitter linking every extreme weather event to man-made climate change. Nye recently said on TV that skeptics would eventually all die out because they tend to be older.
“The problem has been the fossil fuel industry is so well-funded,” Nye told Salon, “even these guys … with kids and grandkids have lost sight of the consequences of introducing the idea that scientific uncertainty — plus or minus a couple percent — is somehow the same as doubt about the whole thing — plus or minus 100 percent.”
Nye said he and others have worked hard to raise awareness on global warming, but “we’ve done virtually nothing about it all this time.”
“What I tell everybody is vote,” Nye said. “We don’t want everybody to be a scientist; that would be unwieldy.”
“We need accountants and artists, filmmakers, journalists — but we want everybody to appreciate science,” Nye said.
Follow Michael on Facebook and Twitter
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.Did an alt-right fanboy group — supposedly unhappy with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” over its alleged “feminist agenda” — game Rotten Tomatoes’ user ratings to push down the score? The website says the claim is hogwash.
“The Last Jedi” currently has a 92% aggregate critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it “Certified Fresh” — but registers a score of just 54% among users. Out of nearly 135,000 ratings tabulated by the site as of Thursday, the average user rating was 3.2 out of 5. The marked discrepancy between critics and audiences was already apparent when the rankings first were released last week.
Now, someone affiliated with a Facebook group called “Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys” has claimed that he enlisted bots to spam Rotter Tomatoes with negative reviews of “Last Jedi,” according to a report by the Huffington Post. That’s allegedly because he was angry about “Star Wars” producers emasculating characters like Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac).
“I’m sick and tired of men being portrayed as idiots,” the unnamed alt-righter told HuffPost. “There was a time we ruled society and I want to see that again. That is why I voted for Donald Trump.”
Related Rotten Tomatoes Bans User Reviews Before Films' Release Rotten Tomatoes Donates $25K to Sundance Inclusion Initiative for Underrepresented Film Critics
But it’s far more likely that thousands of disgruntled “Star Wars” fans are actually responsible for the weak Rotten Tomatoes user score. Asked about the claims outlined in the HuffPost piece, Rotten Tomatoes said the security team tasked with managing the scores hasn’t seen any unusual user activity that would indicate its scores have been successfully tampered with.
“For ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi,’ we have seen an uptick in people posting written user reviews, as fans are very passionate about this movie and the franchise,” a Rotten Tomatoes rep said, but the number of written reviews being posted by fans is comparable to 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
“The authenticity of our critic and user scores is very important to Rotten Tomatoes and as a course of regular business, we have a team of security, network, social and database experts who closely monitor our platforms,” the rep added.
In any case, the low Rotten Tomatoes user rating hasn’t slowed down “The Last Jedi” at the box office: The Disney-Lucasfilm movie was poised to top $600 million worldwide Thursday, after just six days in wide release.
Rotten Tomatoes is part of NBCUniversal’s Fandango, which acquired the movie-ranking site in 2016 from Warner Bros.Some security guards in one of Sydney's most popular shopping centres have used surveillance cameras to spy on unsuspecting female shoppers, saving images of the women to a secret shared file.
A Current Affair has revealed hundreds of women who visited Westfield Sydney in the city's CBD in the past 18 months have been filmed, filed and shared among a small group of security guards surveying them from a control room.
The guards are employed by SecureCorp, one of Australia's biggest security companies, promoted for its reliability and professionalism.
"We ensure billions of dollars of assets and the millions of people who use them every day are under our care and in safe hands," the company's website states.
Lawyer David Galbally QC said the conduct goes beyond an invasion of privacy.
"Those cameras are protected under legislation and these individual security guards are clearly breaching that, apart from the fact that they are clearly breaching their employment conditions," Mr Galbally told A Current Affair.
It is understood there up to 1000 images on file which have been categorised in regards to race, body type or clothing attire, including "Asian", "white", "cute", "legs", "blonde" and "hourglass".
"It's disgusting and it's racist in its highest form," Mr Galbally said.
"Categorising and singling out individual persons as to the way in which they look because of their colour and their race; it's absolutely appalling."
A Current Affair aired blurred footage of the women captured on CCTV, including teenage girls, and even mothers and their daughters.
A small group of security guards at Westfield Sydney have been using surveillance cameras to film and share images of unsuspecting female shoppers. (A Current Affair) (A Current Affair)
It's believed there are up to 1000 images of women on file. (A Current Affair) (A Current Affair)
One woman is filmed on an escalator; the camera then follows her to another escalator, where it then appears a security guard could be following her.
A Current Affair was provided the images by an unidentified individual who says they want the behaviour exposed.
"My hands are shaking. It's disturbing to me as an individual to know that somebody would have the intent of wanting to see me for their own purposes and really only a lustful purpose," a female shopper told A Current Affair.
"It's not even as if it's a couple of guys glancing at them every now and then. It's actually premeditated," another shopper said.
Psychologist Kaylene Evers says such behaviour is about power.
"It's a power trip for these guys. It's a sense of power of the women, and there is a sense of power from just being in the group," Dr Evers told A Current Affair.
She says the conduct may have started off as a joke, but has escalated to a point that a group began to build.
"Does it come to a point where they accost these women … where they revert to the cameras on the outside of the shopping centre and get number plates, who knows?" she said.
Mr Galbally says it is more than concerning when security cameras are used outside of their intended surveillance purposes.
"We do need to make sure we have guards guarding the guards," he said.
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019We all want to get the max out of our drones, and sometimes there is a very good reason to upgrade your antenna since not every drone has a decent antenna.
But what antenna do you choose?
There is a lot to tell about antennas and radiation and such, here I just want to tell the bare basics to help you understand what all these things mean.
Apart from the model or shape of the antenna it’s important to know what you want with it.
There are directional antennas and omni directional antennas, and I have explained all of that here.
There is also another important thing to take in consideration as well:
DBI
This stands for: dB(isotropic) – the forward gain of an antenna compared with the hypothetical isotropic antenna, which uniformly distributes energy in all directions. Linear polarization of the EM field is assumed unless noted otherwise.
In simple words:
A higher dbi gives more range but less coverage. This means that the drone will fly further or higher from you, but the area that is covered by the signal is more narrow. You will get better results, but only of you keep the controller pointed to the drone.
The
A lower dbi gives less range, but the drone can be controlled over a wider area.
This means that you can control your drone without having the controller pointed to it.
Standard a drone has an omnidirectional antenna with a low dbi. this makes the drone safer to control as the chance that you loose connection is reduced due to the wide area it works in.
This image shows what I mean
As you can see, lower dbi has less range, but more coverage.
in a 3d view it looks like this
This is something you should take in consideration before upgrading your antenna.
a high gain antenna is nice, but it would be strange to lose signal when your drone is far away and out of reach of the antenna signals.
I would advise to choose something that has the best of both, a somewhat higher gain for distance, but not too much so you can still have room to control it in.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Tumblr
WhatsApp
Telegram
Skype
Reddit
EmailLiberals Attack Trump for Hamilton Tweets Standing Up for Pence
President-Elect Donald Trump stood up for Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence after Pence was lectured from the stage by the cast of the Broadway play Hamilton and was also booed (and cheered) by many in the audience Friday night.
Unreal scene here – Mike Pence walks in and there's a massive mix of cheers and boos. pic.twitter.com/GVZ5L67mA3 — Noah Coslov (@NoahCoslov) November 19, 2016
“Unreal scene here – Mike Pence walks in and there’s a massive mix of cheers and boos.”
Tonight, VP-Elect Mike Pence attended #HamiltonBway. After the show, @BrandonVDixon delivered the following statement on behalf of the show. pic.twitter.com/Jsg9Q1pMZs — Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) November 19, 2016
“Tonight, VP-Elect Mike Pence attended #HamiltonBway. After the show, @BrandonVDixon delivered the following statement on behalf of the show.”
Trump’s tweets defending Pence triggered a liberal backlash accusing Trump of attacking the First Amendment rights of critics.
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
“Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!”
The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
“The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”
CNN’s Brian Stelter:
"Harassed" by "the cast of Hamilton." "This should not happen!" THIS is why people fear that Trump will trample on free speech. https://t.co/P9aW8y4CGc — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 19, 2016
“”Harassed” by “the cast of Hamilton.” “This should not happen!” THIS is why people fear that Trump will trample on free speech.”
New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman:
Trump's Hamilton tweet is a terrifying glimpse of how he could attempt to suppress free speech. It should be openly condemned, esp by GOP — Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) November 19, 2016
“Trump’s Hamilton tweet is a terrifying glimpse of how he could attempt to suppress free speech. It should be openly condemned, esp by GOP”
Former Clinton administration secretary of Labor Robert Reich:
I'm with @BrandonVDixon. @realDonaldTrump must stop using tweets to criticize free speech he disagrees with. That's unAmerican. — Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 19, 2016
“I’m with @BrandonVDixon. @realDonaldTrump must stop using tweets to criticize free speech he disagrees with. That’s unAmerican.”
AFP’s Shaun Tanden:
Imagining the intl reaction if a head of state elsewhere (Turkey, China, etc) was lashing out at actors over public criticism — Shaun Tandon (@shauntandon) November 19, 2016
“Imagining the intl reaction if a head of state elsewhere (Turkey, China, etc) was lashing out at actors over public criticism”
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein warned his fellow journalists to move on:
Guys. We don't have to make this Pence/ Hamilton thing a big deal. We can just move on to other stuff. — Sam Stein (@samstein) November 19, 2016
“Guys. We don’t have to make this Pence/ Hamilton thing a big deal. We can just move on to other stuff.”
Stein’s warning for his fellow liberals to ‘move on’ looks to be prescient as the Hamilton incident is not playing well in the heartland according to reporter Salena Zito:
What happened to @mike_pence at Hamilton last night has resonated already out here on Main Street. Regular Democrats I interviewed appalled — SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) November 19, 2016
“What happened to @mike_pence at Hamilton last night has resonated already out here on Main Street. Regular Democrats I interviewed appalled”Exxon and Russian oil giant Rosneft entered a joint venture in 2012 to develop offshore reserves in the Arctic Kara Sea and the Black Sea, as well as onshore assets in Siberia. Those deals, which represent a big part of Exxon's potential future production growth, were halted by U.S. sanctions.
Exxon said in a filing after the sanctions were put in place that its "maximum before-tax exposure to loss from these joint ventures" totaled $1 billion through the end of 2015.
The U.S. energy giant is concerned that European competitors still operating in Russia will gain an advantage in the Black Sea, a source briefed on its waiver application told The Wall Street Journal this week. The company also faces a contractual deadline to make an oil discovery there by the end of the year, the paper reported.
Exxon said in a statement on Friday: "We understand the statement today by Secretary Mnuchin in consultation with President Trump. Our 2015 application for a license under the provisions outlined in the U.S. sanctions was made to enable our company to meet its contractual obligations under a joint venture agreement in Russia, where competitor companies are authorized to undertake such work under European sanctions."
The news of Exxon's effort to re-enter Russia drew swift criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Sen. John McCain, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, linked to the Journal story on Exxon's waiver application in a tweet and asked, "Are they crazy?"
In a statement to CNBC on Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio said, "While a waiver to allow business with prohibited Russian entities may be in Exxon-Mobil's interest, it would clearly not be in America's national security interest."
Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Friday said the deals that Exxon sought "would put money in the pockets of Russian oligarchs and the Russian treasury, guaranteed to be used against America, our interests, and our allies."A simple but highly critical vulnerability recently disclosed in the most widely used OpenSSH software allows attackers to try thousands of password login attempts per connection in a short period.
perform thousands of authentication requests remotely. OpenSSH is the most popular software widely used for secure remote access to Linux-based systems. Generally, the software allows 3 to 6 Password login attempts before closing a connection, but a new vulnerability lets attackers
keyboard-interactive authentication enabled, including FreeBSD Linux, can be exploited to carry out the brute force attack on OpenSSH protocol, a security researcher with online alias KingCope explained in a OpenSSH servers with, including FreeBSD Linux, can be exploited to carry out the brute force attack on OpenSSH protocol, a security researcher with online aliasexplained in a blog post
Exploit for the Vulnerability RELEASED
Hackers could widely exploit the vulnerability because the keyboard-interactive authentication is by default enabled on most of the systems.
Researcher has also released a proof-of-concept exploit code, which is just a command, as follows:
ssh -lusername -oKbdInteractiveDevices=`perl -e 'print "pam," x 10000'` targethost
This simple command effectively allows up to 10,000 password attempts within two minutes of login grace time.
"The crucial part is that if the attacker requests 10,000 keyboard-interactive devices OpenSSH will gracefully execute the request and will be inside a loop to accept passwords until the specified devices are exceeded," KingCope said.
However, depending on the connection and the victim's Linux machine, two minutes of 'grace period' and thousands of login attempts are enough to achieve successful login by using dictionary attack with a word-list of most commonly used passwords.
The vulnerability is present in the latest version of OpenSSH, which is Version 6.9.
How to Mitigate the Attack?
Administrators are advised to take following precautions until OpenSSH releases an official patch to address the issue:Kellie Brown and her son, Kai, 3, shop at Lucky's in Boulder on January 10, 2013. ( Cliff Grassmick / Staff Photographer )
Boulder-based natural foods grocer Lucky's Market announced Tuesday that it plans to open a flagship store in the 32,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by Savers at 695 S. Broadway in south Boulder.
"We are super excited," said Bo Sharon, who founded Lucky's Market in 2003 with his wife, Trish. "We were trying to secure a south Boulder location for the last few years, and the thought of 'bookending' Boulder was always kind of a dream."
The store, opening in early 2016, will give Lucky's three locations in Boulder County and bring the company's total store count to 14 nationwide.
The south Boulder locale will feature in-house cured and smoked bacon, fresh produce and seafood, a full bakery and a large selection of ready-to-eat meals made in-store.
The store will employ about 130 people. With this addition, Lucky's Market will employ approximately 500 people in Boulder County.
In a prepared statement, Bill Reynolds with W.W. Reynolds Companies, owner of the property, said, "Lucky's Market will bring to South Boulder many exciting new shopping options. We are very fortunate to have our homegrown grocer as an 'anchor' at Table Mesa."
W.W. Reynolds, which also owns the adjacent Table Mesa Shopping center, purchased the building in May for $4.6 million from a group of six owners that included the Joyce Family Charitable Lead Annuity Trust No. 2, for which the University of Colorado Foundation is trustee.
Advertisement
Tenants for the three still-vacant spaces in the building have not been announced, and officials for W.W. Reynolds could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
The announcement by Lucky's clears up months of mystery and speculation surrounding the property.
Savers, in the space since 1997, announced in mid-November that the sale of the building would force the thrift store to close. Tenants reported at the time that Whole Foods had purchased the property, an assertion that the Austin, Texas-based chain denied and that has since been proven untrue.
Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons had been subleasing the property to four tenants — Savers, Dollar Tree, Table Mesa Laundry and Theatrical Costumes, now relocated to 673 30th St. — but decided not to renew. That decision ultimately resulted in the ousting of the businesses, BizWest later reported.
Sharon said he had "no idea" what was going on at the 40,000-square-foot property until he got a call from Reynolds in May asking if he was "still interested" in a south Boulder space.
"That's the first I heard of it," Sharon said.
The announcement was greeted by enthusiasm by south Boulder residents and nearby businesses.
Jack Fisher, sales supervisor at Neptune Mountaineering, 633 S Broadway St., said it was a great opportunity for the area.
"Hearing that news, we are super excited to have another local business in the vicinity," Fisher said. "I think any presence of a local business is great for the community."
Also on Tuesday, Lucky's announced the launch of a new web site for Lucky's Community Project, the company's outreach initiative that partners with area nonprofits to funnel a portion of profits to local causes.
"We are thrilled to make even more of an impact in our hometown, and support more individuals and programs,' Sharon said.
Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com, @shayshinecastleDespite this, Pence clearly won the debate both in style and in content.
Elaine Quijano continued the Candy Crowley debate tradition of favoring the Democrat. She constantly interrupted Mike Pence while he was attempting to answer questions but never interrupted Kaine to have him focus on what had been asked of him. She failed to control the debate by allowing Kaine to constantly interrupt Pence.
Quijano allowed Kaine to constantly interrupt Pence, but when Pence tried to correct Kaine, then Quijano jumped in to tell Pence to let Kaine finish. When Kaine interrupted Pence, she also interrupted Pence, so both Kaine and Quijano were talking over Pence's answer.
Her attitude was evident during the discussion on illegal immigration, when she referred to illegal immigrants as "undocumented immigrants." It is basic law that if you do not have proper immigration documents to be in our country, then you are an illegal alien.
Kaine came out trying to get under Pence's skin as Hillary did with Trump. Pence ignored his barbs and outrageous statements, such as that Hillary and Obama stopped the Iran nuclear program.
Pence responded in a calm, measured tone to the questions despite Kaine's clear attempts to disrupt his answers. Pence looked and acted presidential. Kaine looked like and acted like a Hillary attack ad.
I do not know why the Republicans agree to these "moderators" like Crowley, Holt, and Quijano. They clearly are not neutral, nor do they act that way.
I can see why Hillary picked Kaine. He lies just as she does with a straight face. Kaine said Hillary went toe to toe with Putin, that Obama and Hillary stopped the Iran nuclear program, and that the world is more safe now with Obama and Hillary. He has worse manners than Hillary.
Pence did better as the debate went on because he ignored Kaine's childish behavior and answered the questions. At one point, Quijano stopped asking questions and let Pence and Kaine go at it. Pence pointed out that Putin has no respect for Obama and Hillary because they are weak, that the Middle East is a mess, and that Hillary endangered our security with her private email system.
Pence pointed out that the Clinton Foundation has paid out only 10% of contributions to charity, and we do not know how the rest is spent.
The bottom line is that Pence can step in to be president if necessary and that Kaine can step in to do the Hillary attack ads.
Kaine, like Hillary, has no shame. He touted his Catholic education and Catholic faith, yet he supports abortion. He tried to show his faith by saying he is against the death penalty, yet he enforced it as governor. But abortion is not the same as the death penalty. Abortion is the killing of innocents, and the Catholic Church condemns abortion as incompatible with Catholic theology. Kaine tried the tired and phony Mario Cuomo excuse of being personally against abortion but supporting it because the Supreme Court said abortion is a constitutional right.
Kaine had a few rehearsed attack lines but no content. Pence kept his cool and answered in a clear, substantive manner.BEIRUT (Reuters) - American films and TV dramas shot since the September 11 attacks have reinforced screen images of Arabs and Muslims as fanatics and villains, ingraining harmful stereotypes, argues an author on the subject.
Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in a scene from "24". REUTERS/FOX/Handout
In his book “Guilty — Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11”, Jack Shaheen praises some post-September 11 films for offering a more sympathetic image of Arabs and Muslims, who he argues have been castigated for decades by Hollywood.
But he says that too many have portrayed them in ever darker shades, criticizing films including “The Kingdom” (2007) and “The Four Feathers” (2002) and condemning the creation of a new “Arab-American bogeyman” in TV dramas such as “24”.
“In the United States, you can say anything you want about Islam and Arabs and get away with it. In other words, as someone said, ‘You can hit an Arab free’,” said Shaheen — also author of “Reel Bad Arabs — How Hollywood Vilifies a People”.
Shaheen, an American of Lebanese descent, has examined the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in some 1,000 films, including more than 100 shot since September 11.
From action movies such as “True Lies” (1994) to comedies including “Father of the Bride Part II” (1995) and Disney’s animated “Aladdin” (1992), Shaheen identifies films that have perpetuated damaging stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.
“The images have remained primarily fixed and have only been changed in the sense that they have become more vindictive and damaging,” he told Reuters in an interview in Beirut.
“What enables these images to persist and prevail? One of the primary reasons is silence,” said Shaheen, a retired professor of mass communications who worked as a consultant on “Syriana” (2005) and “Three Kings” (1999).
“There’s nobody in authority, no political leader, no Hollywood personality who has taken a stand and said that demonizing Arabs and Muslims is the same as demonizing Jews or blacks or Asians or any other racial or ethnic group.”
“SELECTIVE FRAMING OF RADICALS”
In “Guilty”, Shaheen credits films including “Babel” (2006) and “Rendition” (2007) for “more complex, even-handed Arab portraits”. But “very few people are listening”, he said.
“It’s been very difficult, it’s like being a salmon trying to swim upstream.
“What is done is selective framing of radicals: people saying ‘death to America’. You cannot deny the reality — there are people who really want to kill Americans. But those are basically the only images we see.”
He describes last year’s “The Kingdom” — an action movie about FBI agents hunting terrorists in Saudi Arabia — as one of the most damaging depictions of Arabs of recent times in which “even Arab children cannot be trusted”.
Shaheen also charts a new trend of turning American Arabs and Muslims into “the new bogey person” and criticizes the TV drama “24” for its “vicious images of loathsome Muslim Americans as well as Americans with Arab roots”.
Slideshow (2 Images)
Hollywood’s depiction of Arabs has eased the path for U.S. administration policy, he argues. Decades of portraying Arabs and Muslims as the enemy “made it that much easier for us to go into Iraq”, he said. “There were very few people protesting.
“The images help enforce policy,” he said. “As the policy becomes more even-handed, perhaps films will reflect that.
“Plato said: ‘Those who tell the stories rule society’. Nothing has changed, and the story tellers of today have a tremendous impact on the world as we perceive it.”Safety K.J. Dillon becomes first Texans draft pick to sign
Click through the gallery for the scouting reports on this year's draft class. West Virginia safety K.J. Dillon became the first Texans draft pick to sign this year.
Click through the gallery for the scouting reports on this year's draft class. West Virginia safety K.J. Dillon became the first Texans draft pick to sign this year. Photo: Getty Images Photo: Getty Images Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Safety K.J. Dillon becomes first Texans draft pick to sign 1 / 15 Back to Gallery
The Texans signed fifth-round safety K.J. Dillon to a four-year deal Thursday worth $2.574 million that includes a $234,936 signing bonus.
Dillon is the first of the Texans' six-player rookie draft class to agree to terms.
RELATED: Texans take K.J. Dillon in fifth round
His |
: The Farmer's Wife (in two parts). January 5, 1872 – September 26, 1873.
(in two parts). January 5, 1872 – September 26, 1873. Amie and Henry Lee: or, The Spheres of the Sexes. May 29 – November 13, 1874.
. May 29 – November 13, 1874. The Happy Home: or, The Husband's Triumph. November 20, 1874 – May 14, 1875.
. November 20, 1874 – May 14, 1875. One Woman's Sphere, or The Mystery of Eagle Cove. June 4 – December 3, 1875.
. June 4 – December 3, 1875. Madge Morrison, The Molalla Maid and Matron. December 10, 1875 – July 28, 1876.
. December 10, 1875 – July 28, 1876. Edna and John: A Romance of Idaho Flat. September 29, 1876 – June 15, 1877.
. September 29, 1876 – June 15, 1877. Martha Marblehead: The Maid and Matron of Chehalem. June 29, 1877 – February 8, 1878.
. June 29, 1877 – February 8, 1878. Her Lot, or How She Was Protected (later revised in manuscript form as Ethel Graeme's Destiny: A Story of Real Life ). February 1 – September 19, 1878.
(later revised in manuscript form as ). February 1 – September 19, 1878. Fact, Fate and Fancy: or, More Ways of Living Than One. September 26, 1878 – May 15, 1879.
. September 26, 1878 – May 15, 1879. Mrs. Hardine's Will. November 20, 1879 – August 26, 1880.
. November 20, 1879 – August 26, 1880. The Mystery of Castle Rock, A Story of the Pacific Northwest. March 2 – September 7, 1882.
. March 2 – September 7, 1882. Judge Dunson's Secret, An Oregon Story. March 15 – September 6, 1883.
. March 15 – September 6, 1883. Laban McShane, A Frontier Story. January 3 – March 6, 1884.
. January 3 – March 6, 1884. Dux: A Maiden Who Dared. September 11, 1884 – March 5, 1885
. September 11, 1884 – March 5, 1885 The De Launcey Curse: or, The Law of Heredity—A Tale of Three Generations. September 10, 1885 – March 4, 1886.
. September 10, 1885 – March 4, 1886. Blanche Le Clerq: A Tale of the Mountain Mines. September 2, 1886 – February 24, 1887.
Serialized novels written by Duniway and published in The Pacific Empire:[8]
Shack-Locks: A Story of the Times. October 3, 1895 – March 26, 1896.
. October 3, 1895 – March 26, 1896. Bijah's Surprises (later revised in manuscript form as Margaret Rudson, A Pioneer Story. Book one, April 2 – September 26, 1896; Book two, October 1 – December 31, 1896.
Margaret Rudson, A Pioneer Story The Old and the New. January 7 – December 30, 1897.
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]The Washington Post published the following op-ed by attorney and conservative commentator A.J. Delgado.
As a proud Latina, the daughter of two Cuban immigrants, who lives in a heavily Latino, blue-collar neighborhood, the question I’m asked all the time these days is: Wait, how is it you support Donald Trump?
It’s an occasionally amusing, sometimes tiresome, but never surprising line of inquiry. After all, among the many false narratives out there about Trump, the one pushed hardest is that he’s at odds with Latinos. But, like much of that rhetoric, it’s a deliberately simplistic assessment of the Latino electorate.
And, for the record, yes — I strongly support Trump.
Latinos aren’t monolithic in our beliefs and, of course, Trump isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But every Latino voter who’s thinking about his or her future should look no further than the GOP nominee. Here’s why…
Read the rest here.
Listen to Delgado discuss this op-ed on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM:Superior Court Judge Marybeth Dingledy’s blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.122 and 0.115 at the time of her arrest. It is illegal to drive in Washington with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 or greater.
EVERETT — A Snohomish County judge has pleaded guilty to drunken driving after being arrested when her car spun out, struck a concrete barrier and came to rest facing oncoming traffic along an interstate.
The (Everett) Herald reports Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Marybeth Dingledy pleaded guilty Sept. 14 to driving under the influence after being arrested Aug. 26.
Police reports indicate Dingledy’s blood-alcohol level reportedly tested at 0.122 and 0.115 at the time of arrest. It is illegal to drive in Washington with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 or greater.
No one was injured in the crash.
Dingledy’s attorney, Anna Goykhman, says Dingledy apologizes to the officer, to the court and to her community.
King County prosecutors are recommending Dingledy spend a day in jail and pay a $350 fine plus court costs. The proposed sentence would suspend about a year behind bars, and more than $4,600 in fines that could be imposed if she reoffends.
Sentencing is set for Nov. 1.Document purports he was executed by ISIS security for 'apostasy'
It is believed he left Tripoli in Lebanon to join ISIS more than a year ago
The British son of the hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed is reported to have been executed while fighting with the terror group ISIS in Syria.
Mohammed Omar Bakri Mohammed is said to have died in Aleppo province in the north of Syria, with it claimed he was executed by ISIS for apostasy.
His father is a notorious hate preacher and the founder of the al-Qaeda-supporting Al-Muhajiroun network of Islamic extremists in the UK.
Scroll down for video
Mohammed Omar Bakri Mohammed is said to have died in Aleppo province in the north of Syria. Here he purportedly is in an image published by Arabic language news websites
Pictured is a purported ISIS decree, dated August 29, stating Mohammed was sentenced to death for apostasy based on alleged links to the Turkish and Lebanese governments
Lebanon 24 claimed that his family have refused to confirm or deny the death of his son but said they believed he had been fighting in the province of Homs.
It also quoted a security source as saying that his death could not be confirmed. The source said it could not be ruled out that the reports may be a ruse in an attempt by him to return to Lebanon.
Bakri fled from the UK in the wake of the 5 July 2005 suicide bombings on the London Underground and re-surfaced in Lebanon.
Bakri's son is said to have left Tripoli in Lebanon to join ISIS over a year ago.
An picture of him said to have been taken in Syria has been circulating on social media accounts.
His father is currently in Roumieh prison after being convicted of supporting terrorism following his arrest in a raid by security forces in April 2014.
Yesterday, he was sentenced to serve an additional six years in prison with hard labour.
Imprisoned preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed, pictured with his sons Abdul (left) and Mohammed (right)
Here he is pictured with Mohammed (left), Abdul (centre) and his daughter Youssra (right)
The British son of the hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed (pictured) is reported to have been killed while fighting in Syria
One media report claimed that he was fighting under the name 'Abu Ahmed the Lebanese' and was executed by ISIS for 'cursing the prophet Mohammad'.
The article included an image of an Arabic document, dated 29 August, which it claimed was an ISIS statement announcing his execution.
This was due to apostasy - specifically, alleged links to the Turkish and Lebanese governments, which ISIS considers infidels.Non-GM successes: Introduction
Does mention of allergen-free peanuts, striga-resistant cowpeas, salt-resistant wheat, beta-carotene rich sweet potatoes, and virus-resistant cassavas make you think of GM?
If so, you've missed the great unpublished story – all the non-GM breakthroughs solving precisely the kind of problems (drought-resistance, salt-resistance, biofortification etc.) that GM proponents claim only genetic modification can provide the answer to.
While often speculative claims of potential GM "miracles" win vast amounts of column inches, the non-GM success stories generally get minimal if any reporting in the popular media. Without GM's often exaggerated crisis narratives and claimed silver bullet solutions, it seems there is no story!
The biotechnology industry and its PR people are keen to keep it that way, particularly because the non-GM solutions are often way ahead of the work on GM. They also bring none of the uncertainties that surround GM.
All of this makes keeping track of the many non-GM success stories especially important.
The GM breakthroughs that never were
Another reason it's important is because – thanks to the lack of success with GM "solutions" – non-GM success stories can end up being claimed as GM breakthroughs!
A classic instance is provided by the UK Government's former chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, who has repeatedly used non-GM breakthroughs as evidence of why we need to embrace GM. In one case, King claimed a big crop yield increase in Africa was due to GM, when it did not involve the use of any GM technology at all. On another occasion, King claimed a big success for GM flood resistant rice when what he was referring to was in reality a non-GM crop!
In both cases King was under pressure to provide compelling examples of why GM crops were needed. But far from King's examples showing why we need to embrace GM, they show the exact opposite, i.e. that we need to stop being distracted by GM and to get the funding and support behind the non-GM solutions to the problems we so badly need to address.
If you look at the menu on the top right it gives links to just some of the many non-GM successes we have come across. It's worth noting, incidentally, that some of this progress is being made with the help of biotechnological approaches, like marker assisted selection, that do not involve the same kind of risks and uncertainties as GM, and which are in fact making GM obsolete. You can read more about this here.
What the biotech industry doesn't want you to know about GM "improved" crops
There's another way in which crops touted as GM breakthroughs are not always what they seem – and it's the best-kept secret of the biotech industry. Most of the crops that are touted as GM breakthroughs are nothing of the sort.
In summer 2010 Monsanto bought out part of a West Australian cereal breeding company, Intergrain. An Intergrain spokesman explained Monsanto's interest like this: "A really important concept is that biotech traits by themselves are absolutely useless unless they can be put into the very best germplasm."
The process operates like this. The biotech company raids the germplasm of natural crop varieties that have been developed by farmers and breeders over centuries for the desired traits. It uses conventional breeding and sometimes marker assisted selection – not GM – to get the plant it wants. Its own proprietary genes are added primarily so that it can patent and own the seed and resulting crop.
This GM tweak often adds nothing to the agronomic performance of the crop but is usually either a Bt toxin to kill insects or a herbicide-resistance gene that allows it to be drenched in herbicide. But it has one magical effect – on the biotech company's profit margins.
This process is never disclosed in the industry's hyping of its new crop varieties to the media. The questions we should all be asking are these: which natural parent variety or varieties did the company pirate for its GM variety? How much improvement was made in the parent variety by conventional breeding and marker assisted breeding, aside from the GM tweak? How do the natural parent variety, the non-GM improved variety, and the final GM variety compare with each other with regard to the desired trait in side-by-side field trials?
In other words, how much value was added by the GM manipulation?
The answers would be educational. But we won't usually get to hear them because the information is commercially confidential. And so the biotech companies are able to maintain their seductive lie that GM is necessary for the future of plant breeding.
In late 2010 came news of an important breakthrough regarding a drought-tolerant variety of corn/maize. Syngenta, we were told, "is leading the charge on a new generation of corn designed by its scientists to withstand drought". Syngenta's Agrisure Artesian drought resistant corn will be a GM corn, but not because GM led to the breakthrough – it didn't. The drought resistance was obtained via conventional plant breeding and marker assisted selection. But unrelated herbicide tolerant and pesticidal transgenes were subsequently added to turn it into a GM variety. As one critic noted, "They could have released the non-GM variety without the added transgenes... This could have benefited many farmers in countries which are suffering from droughts but which do not allow GM crop production. So much for trying to solve global food security."
Although there has been a massive amount of hype about how GM is the way to deliver drought-resistant crops, non-GM plant breeding has been much more succesful. To date there is not a single GM-bred drought-tolerant variety on the market.
Go to the menu above right for links to many more non-GM successes.Mouse: Originally posted by
jansen.alexander: Originally posted by
The most dangerous toddler in the world.. By the time you guys have him impeached (and let's not forget the nr2 is smarter but has the same ideas, so maybe he's even more dangerous...) the whole world (not just the US( will need at least a decade to recover from the damage he's done to it...
You are a pathetic discrace to your nation. I'm going to move there, specifically because Trump is president, and just like the 63 million Americans who voted for him, I want to live. If you want to contribute to your own extinction, then get out of our country. You're not wanted here. Move to Canada, where they also have an electoral college, and you'll be dead in 4 years, just like you would be if Hillary was elected. The people chose life, and just you wait for Ivanka Trump to become the first Female President in 2024, following on from the greatest president in history, who saved your ingorant ♥♥♥.Please keep your igorant votes out of any electoral system. You are clearly too imature to take politics seriously, esapcially when you think jobs, life and liberty are a disaster. I'm sure you'd rather death, welfare and Isis conquoring the US when Hillary orders the millitary to stand down because it would be racist to attack Isis? Please get out of my current country and move to the Middle East where you belong.COLUMBUS — A new study out last week raised an intriguing question: How free is your state?
With state lawmakers in Ohio considering tougher seat-belt enforcement for civilians and shorter prison stays for criminals as two ways to balance the $54 billion, two-year state budget, the question seems both relevant and timely.
Ohio was ranked 38th out of 50 states on the index of personal and economic freedom developed by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. In other words, only 12 states are less free.
The study ranks New Hampshire, Colorado and South Dakota in a virtual tie for first place. It ranks New York and California among the least free.
The index is wide-ranging and comes from an individual rights perspective, which defies many philosophical boundaries of the mainstream Republican and Democratic party platforms.
For example, Ohio's prohibition against same-sex marriage is viewed as a wash in the study. Why? Because all marriage requirements amount to unnecessary government intervention. (As do blood test requirements and marriage license waiting periods, by their measure.)
Ohio's law allowing residents to carry concealed handguns? Good.
The state's relatively lax marijuana laws? Also good.
By the researchers' measure, seat belt laws and sobriety checkpoints "count as notable infringements on individual liberty." The index also issued freedom demerits for alcohol regulations, including "blue laws" against Sunday sales and taxes on beer, wine and spirits. Open-container laws and cell phone driving bans are viewed as minor nuisances.
Ohio's ranking in the study's so-called "paternalism" category would presumably only worsen if lawmakers pass legislation allowing primary enforcement of the state's seat belt requirement. As it is now, a driver can only be fined if pulled over for another offense.
State lawmakers in the past have been resistant to making the switch. But money talks, particularly in this historically bad economy, and Ohio can land $26 million in federal highway money if it complies.
A "yes" vote on primary seat belt enforcement might be offset on the freedom scale by allowing certain nonviolent offenders to do less time, earn early release credit faster, or serve time in community-based settings as opposed to prisons. These are among ways state prisons officials are proposing to cut costs and reduce overcrowding.
The Mercatus Center has a whole list of crimes that it views as "victimless" for which governments are penalized for imposing in the index. Those include many drug offenses for individuals over 18, violations of liquor laws, gambling and prostitution.
Also on their list of paternalistic government activities are: bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws, regulations requiring motorists to carry personal injury insurance, home- and private-school regulations, campaign finance rules and asset forfeiture laws that allow government to take property without a conviction of the owner.
Ohio is ranked 46th of 50 in the study's personal freedom ranking, above only Rhode Island, New York, Illinois and, the lowest, Maryland. Alaska, Maine, New Mexico, Arkansas and Texas offer residents the most liberties in this area, the study found.
Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit liberal think tank in Cleveland, said she finds the idea that New York is the nation's least free state absurd.
She said the study appears to give high marks to states with particularly low taxes, such as Colorado.
"You can talk about freedom broadly -- being able to practice the religion of your choice, speak the language you choose, dress the way you want. But to lump that in with the freedom from paying taxes is something I've always found troubling and not very persuasive," she said.
"The public sector is what enables us to pursue many other freedoms in our lives," she said, "by keeping us safe, keeping our water clean, and giving us the ability to know that we are not surrounded by people who are in desperate want, which can also affect our freedom."
State Sen. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, tended to agree with the study that Ohioans' freedom is suffering. He noted Ohio has sanctioned red-light cameras, restricted payday lenders, passed a statewide smoking ban, and voted down legalized gaming all in the past year or two.
"The Republican Party and the state Legislature as a whole would be well-advised to promote a widely accepting message of individual freedom and individuality if they want to attract people and jobs to this state," he said.
Ohio gets its highest marks -- 29th of the 50 states -- in the area of regulatory freedom. This category ranks states based on their labor and utility regulations, health insurance mandates, occupational licensing requirements, eminent domain laws, land and environmental regulations, and their systems for allowing residents to recoup legal damages.
Ohio ranks 40th for its fiscal freedom, which takes into account budget constraints and the size of a state's government related to its private sector. South Carolina, New Hampshire and Colorado are the top three. New Yorkers have the least amount of fiscal freedom.
A state's fiscal and regulatory freedom combine for an economic freedom score in the study. Ohio's was 32nd.
The researchers -- political scientists William Ruger of Texas State University and Jason Sorens of the State University of New York at Buffalo -- note that no one area of the country nor political party appears consistently to offer citizens more freedom. Much has to do with state politics, a state's social attitudes and ideological leanings and its institutional design.
Liberal states are more lenient on marijuana and same-sex partner laws, for example, but tougher on gun owners, home-schoolers, motorists and smokers. Conservative states also fell in the middle of the study's pack. Mississippi, for example, has marijuana laws that are "a study in contradictions," its taxes are high, and its liability system is one of the worst in the nation.
Moderate, centrist governments offer their residents the most freedoms, according to the study.
"As Americans grow richer in future years, quality of life will matter more to residence decisions, while the imperative of decent employment will decline by comparison," they wrote.Between two daughters and girlfriend Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling is easily outnumbered by the ladies in his house, and he likes it that way because women are “better than men” according to the actor.
EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Gosling Beams While Talking About Baby Number Two
Gosling explained his feminist rationale in an interview with the UK’s Evening Standard magazine. " I think women are better than men," he said. "They are stronger, more evolved. You can tell especially when you have daughter and you see their early stages, they are just leaps and bounds beyond boys immediately."
The 35-year-old star has been accustomed to a house full of women long before he became a father. Gosling’s mother raised him and his sister on her own after divorcing their father.
News: Ryan Gosling Defends Eva Mendes’ Sweatpants Comment
It’s safe to say that Gosling’s so adorable, even dogs love him.
Could he be more perfect?
Watch Gosling explain bringing “feminine energy” to his new film, The Nice Guys, in the video below.
Related GalleryMinimum Internet Banking Requirements
Operating System Windows 7 and 8 Mac OSX 10.5 and higher
Web Browser Microsoft Internet Explorer · Internet Explorer versions 9.0 and higher. · Download from www.microsoft.com Mozilla Firefox · Firefox versions 27 and 28. · Download from www.firefox.com Safari · Safari versions 5.0 and higher. · Download from www.apple.com/safari
***Only the above browsers are fully supported. Although other browsers may be used, they may not function properly. As we add new features and enhancements, older browser versions may not support these new standards. Upgrading to a new version will enhance your security and experience. If you are experiencing issues accessing online banking we recommend updating to one of the mentioned browsers above.
Browser Troubleshoot Steps
***In addition to upgrading, we also recommend going through the below browser troubleshooting steps. Click on the version of the browser to open the help document and follow all the steps.
Firefox Browser Settings Firefox 27 Firefox 28
Safari Browser Settings Safari 5 Safari 6
2.00 Firefox 27 Browser Settings
2.01 Opening the Options Menu
Step 1 Press <ALT> + <T> to activate the Tools dropdown and then open the Options menu. <ALT>+<T> works even if the toolbar is hidden and is not showing the “File – Edit – View” dropdown options.
Step 2 Select Options from the bottom of the list.
2.02 Pop-ups
Step 1 To create a pop-up exception and leave the pop-up blocker on click the Exceptions button to the right of “Block Pop-up windows.” Then add the following websites to the Exceptions list:
· https://www.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.ea.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.financial-net.com
[Click “Allow” after each entry]
Step 2 To completely turn off popup blocker on the Content tab, uncheck the box for “Block Pop-up windows.”
2.03 Enabling Cookies
Step 1 Go to the Privacy tab
Step 2 Under the History section make sure Firefox will Use Custom settings for history is selected.
Step 3 Verify Accept cookies from sites and
Accept third-party cookies are checked.
2.04 Clearing Cookies
Step 1 From the Privacy tab click on the button to Show Cookies.
Step 2 Select the option to Remove All Cookies
2.05 Clearing Cache
Step 1 Click on the Advanced tab.
Step 2 Go to the Network sub tab.
Step 3 Click on the button next to “Cached Web Content” that says Clear now.
Back to TOP
2.10 Firefox 28 Browser Settings
2.11 Opening the Options menu
Step 1 Press <ALT> + <T> to activate the Tools dropdown.
<ALT>+<T> works even if the toolbar is hidden and is not showing the “File – Edit – View” dropdown options.
Step 2 Select Options from the bottom of the list.
2.12 Pop-ups
Step 1 To create a pop-up exception and leave the pop-up blocker on, click the Exceptions button to the right of “Block Pop-up windows.” Then add the following websites to the Exceptions list:
· https://www.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.ea.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.financial-net.com
[Click “Allow” after each entry]
Step 2 To completely turn off popup blocker on the Content tab, uncheck the box for “Block Pop-up windows.”
.
2.13 Enabling Cookies
Step 1 Go to the Privacy tab
Step 2 Under the History section make sure Firefox will Use Custom settings for history is selected.
Step 3 Verify Accept cookies from sites and
Accept third-party cookies are checked.
2.14 Clearing Cookies
Step 1 From the Privacy tab click on the button to Show Cookies.
Step 2 Select the option to Remove All Cookies
2.15 Clearing Cache
Step 1 Click on the Advanced tab.
Step 2 Go to the Network sub tab.
Step 3 Click on the button next to “Cached Web Content” that says Clear now.
Back to TOP
3.00 Internet Explorer 9 Browser Settings
3.01 Open Tools Internet Options Menu
Step 1 Click on Tools at the top of the browser window or press <ALT>+<T>
Step 2 From the drop-down options choose Internet Options.
3.02 Delete Cache and Cookies
Step 1 Under the Browsing History section click Delete.
Step 2 Select the following
· Preserve Favorites website data
· Temporary Internet Files
· Cookies
· History and Form data
[Form data may be optional]
Step 3 Click Delete
**This may take some time. To the right is a screenshot of what you will see.
3.03 Update Navigation Settings
Step 1 From the Internet Options Window click on the Security tab.
Step 2 Click on the Earth icon.
Step 3 Click on Custom level.
Step 4 Make sure “reset custom settings” is set to Medium-High and if not, select it and press the reset button and then click Yes.
Step 5 Click Custom level.
Step 6 About 2/3 down in the list you will see an option that says Navigate windows and frames across different domains. Make sure it is enabled and click on OK.
*** A shortcut for this is to press the letter <N> on the keyboard and it should go directly to it.
Step 7 Click Yes at the next java prompt
Step 8 Stay on the Security tab and click on the Trusted Sites icon [green check mark].
Step 9 Follow steps 3-6 above.
Step 10 Click on the Sites button.
Step 11 Enter the following 2 sites in trusted sites [top box]
· https://www.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.ea.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.financial-net.com
Step 12 Click Close.
3.04 Update Cookie Handling
Step 1 Click on the Privacy tab.
Step 2 Click Advanced.
Step 3 Make sure Override automatic cookie handling and Always allow session cookies are checked.
Step 4 First and Third-Party Cookies should both say Accept.
Step 5 Click OK.
3.05 Update Compatibility View Settings
Step 1 Go to the Tools drop down menu.
Step 2 Click Compatibility View Settings.
Step 3 Make sure display all websites in Compatibility View is checked.
Step 4 Click Close.
Back to TOP
3.10 Internet Explorer 10 Browser Settings
3.11 Open Internet Options
Step 1 Click on Tools or press <ALT>+<T>
Step 2 From the drop-down options menu choose Internet Options.
3.12 Delete Browsing History
Step 1 Under the Browsing History section click Delete.
Step 2 Select the following
· Preserve Favorites website data
· Temporary Internet Files
· Cookies
· History and Form data
[Form data may be optional]
Step 3 Click Delete
**This may take some time. Below screenshot of what you will see.
3.13 Update Navigation Settings
Step 1 From the Internet Options Window click on the Security tab.
Step 2 Click on the Earth icon.
Step 3 Click on Custom level.
Step 4 Make sure “reset custom settings” is set to Medium-High and if not, select it and press the reset button and then click Yes.
Step 5 Click Custom level.
Step 6 About 2/3 down in the list you will see an option that says Navigate windows and frames across different domains. Make sure it is enabled and click on OK.
*** A shortcut for this is to press the letter <N> on the keyboard and it should go directly to it.
.
Step 7 Click Yes at the next java prompt
Step 8 Stay on the Security tab and click on the Trusted Sites icon [green check mark].
Step 9 Follow steps 3-6 above.
Step 10 Click on the Sites button.
Step 11 Enter the following 2 sites in trusted sites [top box]
· https://www.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.ea.netit.financial-net.com
· https://www.financial-net.com
Step 12 Click Close.
3.14 Update Cookie Handling
Step 1 Click on the Privacy tab.
Step 2 Click Advanced.
Step 3 Make sure Override automatic cookie handling and Always allow session cookies are checked.
Step 4 First and Third-Party Cookies should both say Accept.
Step 5 Click OK.
3.15 Update Compatibility View Settings
Step 1 Go to the Tools drop down menu.
Step 2 Click Compatibility View Settings.
.
Step 3 Make sure display all websites in Compatibility View is checked.
Step 4 Click Close.
Back to TOP
3.20 Internet Explorer 11 Browser Settings
3.21 Update Compatibility View Settings
Step 1 Check compatibility view settings to ensure pages display properly.
Step 2 To open the tools menu – press <ALT>+<T>
Step 3 If you are unable to see the tool menu at this point, you should try switching from Metro Mode to Desktop Mode on the browser. ** Windows 8 only**
a. Click on the wrench next to the address bar.
If the address bar is not showing press the <Windows Key> and the <Z> key on the keyboard at the same time. This should bring up the address bar.
b. Once the wrench is showing click on it and then choose the option to View on the desktop
c. Open the tools menu – press <ALT>+<T>
Step 4 Click on Compatibility View Settings.
Step 5 Check the box for Display all websites in compatibility view.
Step 6 Click Close.
***This should resolve issues with blank or white pages when clicking on links within Online Banking.
3.22 Delete Browsing History
Step 1 Open the Tools Menu and choose the option for Internet Options.
Step 2 Click on the Delete button under the Browsing History section.
Step 3 Make sure that the following are checked
a. Preserve Favorites Website Data
b. Temporary Internet files and website files
c. Cookies and website data
d. History
Step 4 Click Delete at the bottom of the page. It may take some time for the files to be deleted
3.23 Update Navigation Settings
Step 1 From the Internet Options window click on the Security tab at the top of the page.
Step 2 Click on Custom level.
Step 3 Make sure the setting for Navigate windows and frames across different domains is set to enable.
***A shortcut for this is to press the letter <N> on the keyboard and it goes right to it.
Step 4 Click on OK.
Step 5 Click on the green check mark for Trusted Sites and click on Sites
Step 6 Add the following websites to Trusted Sites
a. https://www.netit.financial-net.com
b. https://www.ea.netit.financial-net.com
c. https://www.financial-net.com
Step 7 Click on the Privacy tab.
Step 8 Click on Advanced.
Step 9 Make sure Override automatic cookie handling and Always allow session cookies are checked.
Step 10 First and Third-Party Cookies should both say Accept.
Step 11 Click OK to close.
Step 12 Click Apply and then OK to close the Internet Options window.
Back to TOP
4.00 Safari 5 Browser Settings
4.01 Clear Cache
Step 1 Click Safari
Step 2 Click Empty Cache.
Step 3 Click Empty on the confirmation screen.
4.02 Clear Cookies and Cookie handling
Step 1 Click Safari.
Step 2 Click Preferences.
Step 3 Click the Security tab.
Step 4 In the accept cookies section make sure only from sites I visit block cookies from third parties and advertisers are selected.
Step 5 Click on Show Cookies and delete all cookies.
4.03 Reset Safari
Step 1 Click Reset Safari from the Safari menu.
Step 2 Make sure the following are selected and click the Reset button.
Back to TOP
4.10 Safari 6 Browser Settings
4.11 Delete Cache and Cookies
Step 1 Open the Preferences menu press <CTRL> + <,> [Comma].
Step 2 Select the Privacy tab.
Step 3 Click on the button Remove all Website Data.
Step 4 Click on Remove now when the confirmation page appears.
4.12 Enable Cookies
Step 1 From the Privacy tab, under Block Cookies make sure Never is selected.
4.13 Check Popup Blocker, Java, and Plugins
Step 1 From the Security tab make sure all items are checked except Block pop-up windows.
Back to TOP
Commonly Asked Questions
Do I need to enable JavaScript?
You need a web browser that supports Java Scripting. Without it, some pages will not work as designed. We recommend you enable JavaScript for optimal interaction on our website.
Can I use browsers that are in beta testing to access Online Banking?
To ensure maximum security of information and proper operation of our product, beta software is not recommended for use with Online Banking. Beta software is experimental and is consistently undergoing changes. We are consistently monitoring and testing browsers and can only recommend final released versions of new browsers and operating systems.
I received a message saying the security certificate for this site has expired? How do I correct this?
Security certificates are valid for specific date ranges. If the month or year on your computer is not accurate, it may cause your browser to display a message that the security certificate has expired or is not yet valid. Check the date settings on your computer and make sure to adjust them to reflect the correct month and year.
Why does a link not work?
If you click on a link that does not work, the reason could be that you are blocking pop-up windows. You may need to disable pop-up blocker.
Why am I getting an exceptionally slow response?
The problem is evident when a page takes a long time to load, or your connection times out. This problem can affect anyone. Try clearing cache, cookies, and temporary files.
How do browser add-ons affect my browser experience?
When an add-on, such as a toolbar, is installed on your computer, it becomes part of your browser and operating system. If you have a mal-functioning add-on this can affect the performance of your computer. In addition, multiple add-ons can cause your internet to perform slower than normal.
Published on 4/24/2014
Back to TOPEarly impressions of the Apple wireless AirPods had us worried the little white earbuds wouldn't work with non-Apple sources, but the new W1 chip is actually device agnostic. In the company's own words, "AirPods do work with non-Apple devices via Bluetooth. You lose the magic as a result."
That means you can technically pair them to any Bluetooth source, but Apple certainly isn't the first company to come out with completely wireless earbuds. Starting back in January at CES, we've seen plenty of headphone companies cutting the cable this year, perhaps in anticipation of Apple's "courageous" move to rid the world of 3.5mm plugs.
Several of these brands got help from Kickstarter and Indiegogo funders to launch. As a result, we can't guarantee their long-term reliability aside from our initial impressions, but they have a few things in common: they all use Bluetooth to connect to a music source, and they include a battery case to hold a few extra charges.
Now playing: Watch this: What headphones, audio devices work without the headphone...
Most of the earbuds in this round-up are significantly more expensive than their wired counterparts, but some also offer additional features like active noise cancellation, fitness analysis and even augmented-reality access to find-tune your aural environment.
Sure, the sound quality of Bluetooth headphones doesn't measure up to that of wired headphones and it's another plug to add to your crowded power strip. But if you've never tried a pair of totally wireless earbuds, you're in for a truly liberating experience -- as long as you don't lose them along the way.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Samsung is now in the fitness earphone game with the Gear IconX -- they're small Bluetooth ear |
product (of labor)
The full amount to which a worker is entitled for her work—likely to be denied to her if forcibly secured privileges require her, in effect, to pay tribute to the holders of monopoly privileges.A few weeks ago Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who is no doubt a serious candidate for the 2016 presidential election, essentially said Obamacare would be very difficult at this point to repeal.
“I think it’s going to be difficult to turn the clock back. People get assumed and accustomed to receiving things, particularly things that they get for free,” he told a crowd of students at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on Friday
Writing in an op-ed for FoxNews.com today, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (also a possible 2016 presidential candidate) seems to be firing back at that notion by arguing not only can Obamacare be repealed, but the hard work to get it done must continue. (bolding is mine)
According to those in the elite salons of Washington, ObamaCare cannot be repealed. The conventional wisdom on the cocktail circuit contends that once you mandate health insurance for millions, you cannot unmandate it. This theoretical belief has become accepted in Washington as a dogmatic article of faith. And the Obamacrats and most of the press believe that repeating this mantra often enough will make it so.
Of course, many Beltway insiders claim that ObamaCare cannot be repealed because they wish to preserve the financial windfalls the law has brought them.
But even many conservative “thinkers” in Washington have given in to ObamaCare fatalism. They may not say so in public, but they fully believe that talk of the law’s repeal exists only in the land of unsophisticated rubes.
The country that won two world wars and put a man on the moon cannot, it is believed, repeal a disastrous public policy. Says who? Why not?
The idea that ObamaCare cannot be repealed defies both logic and real world justification, on multiple levels.
Shots fired? Jindal has never been shy about taking on Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle, but as we inch closer to 2016, anti-Washington talking points and arguments are sure to heat up outside the Beltway. Further, Obamacare won't only be a major issue for the 2014 midterms, but for the 2016 presidential election as well.
UPDATE: I should add Jindal has launched an organization, America Next, with a goal of promoting conservative based healthcare reform.Dallas Cowboys star Ezekiel Elliott, right, exits federal court after a hearing Monday, Oct. 30, 2017 in New York. Elliott is seeking to have his six game suspension by the NFL postponed. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
If the suspension stands, Elliott will miss the upcoming games against the Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Falcons, Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Chargers, Washington Redskins and New York Giants. He's due to return Dec. 17 for the final three games of the regular season, beginning with the Oakland Raiders.
Katherine Polk Failla rejected Elliott and the NFL Players Association's claims that the NFL conspired against Elliott to prevent him from receiving a fundamentally fair appeal. She granted a 24-hour stay on her ruling so that Elliott, who attended the hearing Monday evening in New York, can consider appellate options in the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But after fighting since the suspension was issued Aug. 11, Elliott has few speedy options left in this on-again, off-again battle.
NEW YORK -- Ezekiel Elliott's six-game suspension by the NFL is set to be reinstated Tuesday night after a federal district judge late Monday in New York denied the Cowboys running back's motion for a preliminary injunction after a two-hour hearing.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ruled more than two months ago that the NFL's year-long investigation found that Elliott used physical force against a former girlfriend on three occasions in July 2016 in Columbus, Ohio. Elliott strongly denied the charges.
The second-year star player was able to secure an injunction in the Eastern District of Texas on Sept. 8 and then a temporary restraining order in the Southern District of New York earlier this month while Failla was out of town.
But Failla's ruling dissolving the TRO and likely, finally, signals the end of the line for Elliott's fight. He had played in all seven of 4-3 Dallas' games so far this season. The Cowboys are built on his ability to run the football.
In her ruling, Failla concluded that Elliott and the union failed to demonstrate that it deserved the extraordinary relief of an injunction.
Jeffrey Kessler, lawyer for Elliott and the NFLPA, claimed Elliott didn't receive a fair appeal process because: The NFL's lead investigator found there wasn't enough evidence to support a suspension but the finding was not included in the final "Elliott Report"; the union wasn't allowed to examine Goodell about what he knew of the investigator's judgment; and Elliott's accuser, Tiffany Thompson, wasn't made to testify at the arbitration hearing. The NFL's notes about its interviews with Thompson were also not included.
'Them's Fighting Words'
But Elliott and the union had tried to fight this case in Texas instead of New York for a reason. Failla agreed with previous findings, notably the "Deflategate" case involving New England quarterback Tom Brady, that courts have very narrow room to interfere with arbitral decisions.
The judge ruled that the proceedings, in their totality, accorded with the collective bargaining agreement and NFL's personal conduct policy.
Essentially, Goodell and the NFL did enough, even if it could be viewed as minimal, to cover their requirements outlined in the CBA.
Kia Roberts, the lead investigator in question, was made to testify at Elliott's appeal hearing and co-authored the investigative report.
Failla quizzed Kessler about the claims of a conspiracy by the NFL, noting, "Them's Fighting Words."
"You don't willy-nilly vacate arbitration awards," NFL lawyer Paul Clement argued Monday. "There's no fundamental unfairness about holding parties to terms of the arbitration agreement."
Clement also warned that a ruling against the NFL here could signal that accusers always had to testify against alleged abusers, which could hurt the league's ability to root out domestic violence.
Hopeful fansSince putting up our original video of the Asahi Beerbot, we've had tons of requests to make it available. Well, now it is! You can now get the original beer-pouring robot for yourself, and most likely become the only person on your continent who has one.
Features:
• Stores and refrigerates 6 cans
• Programmable voice (male, female, or custom)
• Cleaning mode
• Child lock
Included in Delivery:
• 2 custom glass mugs
• 6 Foam cup bases
• Plastic floor protector
• Instructions in Japanese and English
Robocco is designed for Japanese size (350ml) cans, but we tested it with American-sized (355ml) cans and it worked just fine. Of course, we have no guarantee as to whether it will work with every foreign can, so keep this in mind before you buy. Having the proper can height is the most important factor in opening the can.
Also, please keep in mind that these robots are used, but in near-perfect condition. Returns are not accepted, but we do test every Robocco before they are sent out to ensure proper working order.Recently by Robert Wenzel: Fed Economist Who Called Ron Paul a Pinhead Isn’t Even an American
Stephen Williamson, another Fed economist from the same Fed branch, the St Louis branch where another economist, David Andolfatto, called Congressman Ron Paul a pinhead is out with a clarifying rant.
He starts his rant by telling us that:
I have worked full-time at the Minneapolis Fed (2 years), and have been a visiting academic at the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Atlanta, and New York. I currently spend an average of something less than one day per week at the St. Louis Fed, in my hometown, where my full-time job is at Washington University in St. Louis. My title at the St. Louis Fed is "Research Fellow," and I have an office over there (no window unfortunately) with my name on the door. I also know some powerful people. I went to graduate school with 2 Fed Presidents, know 4 Fed Presidents well (Narayana Kocherlakota is a rather aggressive poker player; Dean Corbae is not), and am an acquaintance of Ben Bernanke’s from back in the day (e.g. we both belonged to Glenn Hubbard’s NBER group for a time).
I am not trying to boast here.
He then goes on to attack some of Ron Paul’s specific points:
1. The Fed is immoral. The idea here has to do with what Paul calls "printing money out of thin air." We have a government, and the government is a tyrant. The tyrant must confiscate resources in order to keep itself alive….Is the Fed immoral? Ron Paul wants you to think that what the Fed is doing is mysterious, secretive, and underhanded. We have all been hoodwinked but, according to him, he has figured it out, and will proceed to enlighten us. You can forgive Paul somewhat for the "printing money out of thin air" idea, as this is part of what is conveyed in conventional money and banking undergraduate courses. Indeed, Paul’s exposure to formal economics training appears to be confined to a single undergraduate course, in which he seems to have been exposed to the money multiplier, probably the most misleading idea propagated in monetary economics
He then argues:
As discussed here, a central bank is best viewed as just another financial intermediary, the unique characteristic of which is that it has a monopoly on the issue of some class of liabilities. The Fed creates liabilities out of "thin air" to purchase the assets in its portfolio. A bank creates deposit liabilities out of thin air to purchase the assets in its portfolio. General Motors can create equity claims out of thin air to finance the purchase of new plant and equipment. Further, the fact that the liabilities of the Fed do not represent specific claims to anything in the future is neither here nor there. In private markets, in which Paul puts much trust, we have developed arrangements by which private firms issue claims (stock) which are not specific promises to pay anything specific in the future (dividends are discretionary). Further, private firms make no commitments about their future plans to issue more stock, or to buy back stocks, decisions which will affect the value of stock held by existing shareholders, just as decisions by the Fed affect the value of the existing stock of money outstanding. Nothing mysterious here at all
This is typical Fed bait and switch talk. By calling money "a liability," Williamson is removing it from a special class and arguing a point about Fed money because it falls into a larger class, also. It’s like calling Sports Illustrated cover girl Irina Shayk, a homo sapien. Well, yeah, she is a homos sapien, but being a homo sapien is not sufficient to get you on the Swim Suit issue cover of SI. Or maybe Williamson thinks this is going to happen.
Paper money as issued by the Fed can be, I guess, considered a liability, given their crazed Fed bookkeeping (which Ron Paul wants to audit). But the essence of money is that it is a medium of exchange. Gold, for example, has been used during various periods as money, but it is certainly not a liability. Debt issued by General Motors is a liability of GM, but it is not a medium of exchange. By confusing all these classes, of liabilities and mediums of exchange, it truly is worse than Williamson arguing that homo sapien is the only requirement to get on the cover of SI. But judging from his "powerful people" rant, I would not be surprised if he thinks Bernanke should be on the cover of SI.
Next, Williamson goes into a bizarre calculation of the impact of inflation, without once mentioning prices! Nothing about the price of food, energy or, even the iPad2. Don’t spend too much time on this crazed paragraph, but just know he reaches a conclusion on inflation based on this thinking:
Now, Paul seems very focused on inflation, and the resources extracted from the private sector by way of the inflation tax. It would help here to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to get an idea of the magnitude of resource extraction. From fourth-quarter 2010 NIPA numbers, GDP was about $14.9 trillion, and total expenditures (by all levels of government) were about $3 trillion, at annual rates (seasonally adjusted), so the tyrant was extracting about 20.1% of GDP (this is all levels of government). Now, inflation has been hovering around 1% per year recently, but suppose it were 2%, which is the Fed’s stated inflation target (not officially, but Bernanke says as much in public). What is seignorageNIPA numbers, GDP was about $14.9 trillion, and total expenditures (by all levels of government) were about $3 trillion, at annual rates (seasonally adjusted), so the tyrant was extracting about 20.1% of GDP (this is all levels of government). Now, inflation has been hovering around 1% per year recently, but suppose it were 2%, which is the Fed’s stated inflation target (not officially, but Bernanke says as much in public). What is seignorage, i.e. the implicit revenue the government collects, through the Fed, from the inflation tax? To calculate this, we need to know what the tax base is. Let’s think of the current stock of reserves as essentially T-bills, which the Fed plans to retire in good time (to take it at its word). Then, the remainder of outstanding Fed liabilities is essentially currency (which certainly corresponds to Paul’s language) which is just short of $1 trillion, so let’s call it $1 trillion just for argument’s sake. Then, with 2% inflation, the revenue from the inflation tax is about $20 billion per year, or 0.7% of government spending, or 0.14% of GDP. Small potatoes, and certainly not enough to justify an armed mob outside the Fed in Washington screaming "end the fed," as Paul seems to envision.
No not small potatoes, high priced potatoes!
As Lew Rockwell pointed out just today:
Not Hyperinflation Yet
But the 3.9% increase in food prices last month the most since Nixon is an alarming indicator.
Yet, in Williamson’s mind, and his equations, there is no problem. He ignores what people have to pay for food at the grocery store or for gasoline. As long as his equations tell him, inflation is under the Fed "target," there is nothing to worry about:
…with 2% inflation, the revenue from the inflation tax is about $20 billion per year, or 0.7% of government spending, or 0.14% of GDP. Small potatoes, and certainly not enough to justify an armed mob outside the Fed in Washington screaming "end the fed," as Paul seems to envision.
He then finally admits what the Fed is about, secretive taxation, but of course this secretive, underhanded tax, is superior in his mind to the "primitive" concept of honest, upfront taxation. I kid you not:
There is then a whole branch of economics public finance that deals with the issue of how those contributions can and should be made, and the consequences of alternative means of resource extraction for the government. In primitive economies, where the costs of collecting taxes are high and financial markets undeveloped, it can be economically efficient for the government to generate much of its revenue with the inflation tax. In modern economies, we think not.
He then bizarrely tells us that the Fed isn’t doing any significant inflation taxation:
We recognize that inflation is costly, and modern disciplined central banks keep inflation rates low.
He says this despite the trillion in assets that the Fed has bought since the crisis and the continued buying of assets (now Treasury securities via QE2). A lot has ended up as excess reserves not in the system, but the increase in prices to date makes one shudder, if like a Japanese nuclear reactor, significant amounts of funds start to leak from excess reserves into the system.
Read the rest of the article
2011 Economic Policy Journal
The Best of Robert WenzelNothing is worse for an author than opening a book and discovering passages from your own work used as if they were that author’s words.
This just happened to me with someone else's newly released book. After recognizing my own writing and research from one of my books in this new book, I immediately looked for the attribution giving my book credit. It's a compliment, after all, and my work has been quoted many times before; it's a regular occurrence for authors and journalists. When I did not find the attribution, my heart sank.
I continued searching, flipping to the acknowledgments page. Then I went to the back of the book looking for an addendum or a credit page. Not there. The writer had failed to attribute the words heavily lifted from my book. As I continued reading this book, I recognized even more chunks of my own work throughout the book – with not a single hint of attribution.
My emotions ranged from disappointment to anger. My in-depth research and hard work, including exclusive interviews, witness accounts, and documents that no other writers had gotten, were there in black and white – used as if it was his own work.
It’s not unusual for writers, when they’re unable to get a comment or information on their own, to lift a quote or a paragraph from a newspaper, magazine article or book. But when that is done, credit must be given by attributing the quote or information to the original source. It’s legal – and ethical – to do that, according to the fair-use law, but only if it’s not overdone and not too much text is used. Short of that, it’s flat-out plagiarism – passing off someone else’s words as your own, which violates U.S. copyright laws. It's the same as stealing.
Plagiarism, according to Wikipedia, “is defined in dictionaries as the ‘wrongful appropriation,’ ‘close imitation,’ or ‘purloining and publication’ of another author's ‘language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,’ and the representation of them as one's own original work.” (Notice I attributed the quote I used, which is how it’s done.)
I faced a quandary as to how to handle it. Plagiarism is a serious accusation. I jotted down the page numbers and paragraphs from just the first two chapters. I’d heard that this new book had been ghost-written, but I wanted to be sure about that. And I didn’t want to threaten legal action; it was a self-published book and maybe he didn't know what he was doing. Still, the book needed to give credit where credit was due.
I left the author a message and asked him to contact me. I also asked if he’d used a ghostwriter and who it was, because I wanted to confirm it.
The author contacted me the next day and told me the name of the ghostwriter. He immediately offered a mea culpa and said he would contact his ghostwriter. He called me back an hour later, said he’d spoken with the writer, he apologized again, and said they were making changes to the book for the next print run and would give credit to my book where the passages appear. He said the writer – who'd authored several other books, was experienced and knew better – had mentioned to him that my book was one of the first he’d read as he embarked on the book project.
I think I’ve been more than fair, considering the egregiousness of the act of plagiarism. I look forward to reading the revised edition, with credit given.
Follow me on Twitter. Follow me on Facebook.Straight out of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddessy, Amazon's popular Echo AI device has brought artifical intelligence right into our living rooms. If you have Alexa in your home, you know how convenient it is to get the weather or hear a random joke on command (she's actually pretty funny). Here's a DIY version that's as fun to make as it is to interact with after it's done.
Overview
In this project we will create an Amazon Echo clone based on the Intel Edison hardware and IBM Watson platform. Note that your "Alexa" may not be as fully capable as Amazon's but it will be a whole lot cheaper and a lot more fun to build.
During the project we will covering the following topics:
Capturing audio with a USB microphone.
Sending audio to a Bluetooth speaker.
Using Johnny-Five to interface with the Edison's IO.
Using IBM's Watson Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech services.
Getting Started
What you'll need to complete this project:
If you haven't already done so, you'll need to setup your Edison and get the latest firmware flashed. You can follow our quick article on Getting Started with the Intel Edison or check out Intel's Getting Started Guide.
NOTE: I'm using the Intel XDK IoT Edition because it makes debugging and uploading code to the board very easy. To learn more about the IDE and how to get started using it check out Getting Started with the Intel XDK IoT Edition. It is not required for this project though.
Connect Bluetooth Speaker
Establish a terminal to your Edison using either of the guides above.
Make your Bluetooth device discoverable. In my case I needed to push the pair button on the back of the speaker.
In the terminal to your board type the following:
root@edison:~# rfkill unblock bluetooth root@edison:~# bluetoothctl [bluetooth] scan on
This starts the Bluetooth Manager on the Edison and starts scanning for devices. The results should look something like:
Discovery started [CHG] Controller 98:4F:EE:06:06:05 Discovering: yes [NEW] Device A0:E9:DB:08:54:C4 OontZ Angle
Find your device in the list and pair to it.
[bluetooth] pair A0:E9:DB:08:54:C4
In some cases, the device may need to connect as well.
[bluetooth] connect A0:E9:DB:08:54:C4
Exit the Bluetooth Manager.
[bluetooth] quit
Let's verify that your device is recognized in pulse audio:
root@edison:~# pactl list sinks short
If all is good, you should see your device listed as a sink device and the name should start with bluez_sink like the example output below.
0 alsa_output.platform-merr_dpcm_dummy.0.analog-stereo module-alsa-card.c s16le 2ch 48000Hz SUSPENDED 1 alsa_output.0.analog-stereo module-alsa-card.c s16le 2ch 44100Hz SUSPENDED 2 bluez_sink.A0_E9_DB_08_54_C4 module-bluez5-device.c s16le 2ch 44100Hz SUSPENDED
Now let's set our Bluetooth device as the default sink for the pulse audio server:
root@edison:~# pactl set-default-sink bluez_sink.A0_E9_DB_08_54_C4
Connect USB Microphone
The Edison has two USB modes: host mode and device mode. To use a USB microphone you'll need to switch the Edison into host mode by flipping the microswitch, located between the standard sized USB port and the micro USB port, towards the large USB port. You will also need to power the Edison with an external DC power supply and not through the micro USB.
Then simply plug your microphone in the large USB port.
Let's make sure the Edison recognizes our microphone as an audio source by using the arecord command.
root@edison:~# arecord -l
The output contains all of the hardware capture devices available. Locate your USB Audio device and make note of its card number and device number. In the example output below my mic is device 0 on card 2.
... card 2: DSP [Plantronics.Audio 655 DSP], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Let's Get Coding
In less than 200 lines of code (including comments) we'll have a system that will:
Listen for a button press Play a sound to let the user know it's listening Capture 5 seconds of audio input Convert the audio input to text Perform a command or search on the input text Convert the text results to speech Play the speech audio to the user
I've broken the code up into easy to understand blocks. Let's walk through them and explain along the way.
Requires and Globals
Nothing special here. Just require the modules we need and declare some vars to use a little later.
Initialize Watson Services
Another simple block of code but this one requires a little pre-work. IBM Watson Cloud Services requires credentials for each specific service used. Follow the Obtaining credentials for Watson services guide to get credentials for both the Speech-To-Text and the Text-To-Speech services.
Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text Magic
First let's take a look at the Text-to-Speech (TTS) function. There are two parts to TTS: 1) Converting the text to audio and 2) Playing the audio.
For the first, we are obviously using the IBM Watson Cloud Services which couldn't make it any easier. All we need to do is pass the text we would like converted and the audio format we would like back into the synthesize method and it returns a Stream.
For the second, we are using GStreamer. More specifically gst-launch. We take the Stream returned from synthesize and pipe it directly into the stdin on the child process of gst-launch-1.0. GStreamer then processes it as a wav file and sends it to the default audio output.
Next let's look at the Speech-to-Text (STT) function. As with the TTS function, there are two main parts.
The first is capturing the audio. To capture the audio we are using arecord. arecord is fairly straightforward with the exception of the -D option. Earlier when we set up the USB microphone, we used arecord -l to confirm the system saw it. That also gave us the card and device numbers associated with the mic. In my case, the mic is device 0 on card 2. Therefor, the -D option is set to hw:2,0 (hardware device, card 2, device 0.) By not providing a file to record the audio to, we are telling arecord to send all data to its stdout.
Now we take the stdout from arecord and pass that into the recognize method on the STT service as the audio source. The arecord process will run forever unless will kill it. So we set a timeout for five seconds then kill the child process.
Once we get the STT result back, we grab the first transcript from the response, trim it and return it.
Play Local Wav File
We have already covered using GStreamer but to play a local the args are a little different.
Setup Johnny-Five
Here we setup the Edison IO in Johnny-Five and listen for the board to complete initialization. Then attach a button to GPIO pin 4 and an LED to GPIO 6. To do this I used a Grove Base Shield along with the Grove button and LED modules. You could attach a button and LED using a breadboard instead.
Last we add a listener on the button press event which will call the main function that we will look at next.
Main
We now have all the supporting pieces so let's put together the main application flow. When main is run, we first play a chime sound to let the user know we are listening by using the playWav defined earlier. You can download the wav file I used from the projects repo. We then listen for a command, perform the search, and play the results which we will all look at next.
Last we handle any errors that may have happened and get ready to do it all again.
The Bread-and-Butter
The listen function simply turns on the LED to show we are listening then calls stt to capture the command.
The search function uses the Duck Duck Go Instant Answer API to perform the search. Then returns the best answer.
Last we have the speak function that takes the search results and passes that into the tts function.
Wrap Up
Deploy the code to your Edison and run it. Wait a few seconds for the app to initialize then press the button. You'll hear a sound and the LED will light up. Speak your search phrase clearly into the mic then sit back and enjoy your new toy.
You'll find it's great at handling single words and simple phrases. You can also use it to do simple math problems by starting your phrase with "calculate", like "calculate five plus five."
Below you'll find a list of additional resources used while making this project but not linked to above. I encourage you to take a look at them to learn a little more about the technologies used. You can also find all the code for this project at https://github.com/Losant/example-edison-echo.
Enjoy!
Additional ResourcesLast week, Edward Price, a former CIA analyst, became a media darling after the Washington Post published Price’s op-ed announcing his resignation from the CIA because he was unable to serve the Trump administration in good faith because of President Trump’s policies and disregard for the U.S. Intelligence Community.
While several media outlets rushed to interview Price and depict him as an ethical, non-political CIA officer who rejected what he claimed was the “deceitful” and “delusional” Trump administration, a brief look at the facts suggest not only is this a blatant instance of fake news, but that Price is a “fake” CIA analyst.
OK, Price really did work for the CIA. But for the past several years he was a member of the Obama National Security Council staff, apparently on a detail assignment from the CIA. His NSC job was serving as a spokesman and helping deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes run the Obama NSC “echo chamber” that misled the news media, Congress and the American people about the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Price even bragged to New York Times writer David Samuels about how he manipulated and lied to the press to promote the Iran deal.
Price’s selective outrage over Trump administration’s polices – which are still being finalized – while he was part of the Obama Iran deal echo chamber is pretty galling. It’s also hard to square Price’s NSC position with his statements to the Post that his resignation had “nothing to do with politics” and said “as intelligence professionals, we’re taught to tune out politics.” Price also apparently had no problem with the CIA crafting politicized talking points on the Benghazi terrorist attacks in 2014 or the Obama administration pressuring CENTCOM intelligence analysts to slant their analysis of ISIS to favor Obama administration policy.
I also wonder why, if Price is really such a paragon of virtue and a champion of keeping politics out of intelligence, that he didn’t resign last summer after Senator Harry Reid called on intelligence analysts to give Candidate Trump fake intelligence briefings.
But the bigger question is why the CIA was paying Price to be an Obama administration political hack. Once Price assumed such an extremely partisan NSC job, he stopped being a bona fide intelligence officer. A CIA officer should never have been allowed to serve in a job like this or to participate in a scheme to mislead the American people and the U.S. Congress.
This also is fake news because the mainstream media left out crucial facts. For example, Price contributed a total of $5,000 to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party in 2016. This was a huge contribution for a government employee and suggests Price was angling for a senior job in a Clinton administration. None of the mainstream media press accounts I reviewed mentions this contribution, although the Washington Post added the following clarification to the Price story after it was criticized for omitting this information:
“Clarification: This column should have included a disclosure of donations made by author Edward Price in support of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In August, Price gave a total of $5,000 to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.”
All of the mainstream media accounts also omitted that Price is a fellow with the Truman Project, a leftwing think tank that served as a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, and that he worked for several Democratic political campaigns.
Price’s resignation had everything to do with politics. This is the story of a liberal political hack quitting a Republican administration. Price engineered a splashy resignation advertised on the opinion pages of the Washington Post as part of the Democratic Party’s effort to undermine President Trump and to secure himself a well-paid perch in a liberal think tank to bash the Trump administration. The media’s coverage of Price’s resignation is typical of its extremely biased coverage of President Trump.
The bottom line: this is fake news about a fake CIA officer.The Argentina defender has a rich background in the game, including at the World Cup, but he sees the Premier League as a chance to experience even more
Federico Fernández smiles as the photograph is passed across the table to him. There are rows of shirts with his name and number on the back, framed pictures, pennants and footballing memorabilia of every description, all from his early days in Argentina and displayed in what looks like a huge trophy cabinet.
“This picture was in my parents’ home,” Fernández says. “It’s a window, and the window was on the street because it’s a shop, which my father had for the school, selling books and things. There are a lot of shirts, my first for Argentina as an Under-20 … It’s impossible to see them all.
“At that time the people in my town came to the door and said: ‘Hey, can I see the museum?’ After a month my father said: ‘No, no, it’s closed. It’s not possible.’ The people would knock on the door but there were too many in the house.”
The Fernández family have moved from the small town of Tres Algarrobos, which is about 280 miles west of Buenos Aires, but it is tempting to wonder what the queue would be like if the “museum” was still open. After all, Fernández has gone on to win silverware with Napoli, make four appearances at the World Cup in Brazil, and since joining Swansea City 12 months ago has been sending back a steady supply of shirts bearing names such as Di María, Agüero and Rojo (he has also kept the one he wore on his debut, against Rotherham, in the League Cup).
Lionel Messi hat-trick leads Argentina to 4-3 win over Brazil Read more
There is a World Cup final shirt and runners-up medal to add to the collection – Fernández was on the bench for the 1-0 defeat to Germany – and a cherished photograph with Lionel Messi in the dressing room in New Jersey after Argentina beat Brazil in a classic in 2012. “Crazy,” Fernández says, smiling at the memory of the match and his second-half header. “Messi scored a hat-trick and we won 4-3. So I put on Twitter our two scorers.”
It is one of several football stories that Fernández could dine out on for years to come in Argentina but the 26-year-old seems just as likely to regale others with tales about travelling. The son of a geography teacher, he views his football career as a wonderful opportunity to embrace other cultures and visit the countries and cities that his mother brings alive in class in Argentina.
A little while back he was in Edinburgh, on board the Royal Yacht Britannia, making sure no time goes to waste. “Travelling the world, I think, is amazing,” Fernández says. “When we have two days off I try to go to somewhere like Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh or Dublin, because maybe I’ll never come back.”
Swansea hope he will stay as long as possible. A ball-playing centre-half with a scar or two to prove that he is up for the physical scrap as well, Fernández has slotted seamlessly into the Swansea defence following his arrival from Napoli and looks a class act.
Forget the mistake that led to Sunderland equalising in the 1-1 draw at the Stadium of Light last weekend – an incident so rare it is a collector’s item of a different kind – Fernández has made a big impression in a short time at the Liberty Stadium and it says much about his determination to adapt that his English is good enough to conduct an hour-long interview without a translator.
“Last year my English, one point. Now, maybe five,” he says, laughing. “I wanted to learn. I have lessons twice a week with my teacher in my house. Obviously, it’s important now for my time playing for Swansea, but it’s very important for life also. English is the first language in the world and I want to speak it very well. But it’s very important for my job on the pitch, because in my position I’m always speaking: ‘Ashley [Williams], back in, cover, mark’. That communication is important because as a defender you view the whole situation.”
Fernández has always had a clear picture in his mind. He grew up idolising Roberto Ayala – “I watched a lot of videos of him; I think he was the complete defender” – and dreamed of playing for Argentina. His big break came when his father called Estudiantes de La Plata to ask if his 14-year-old son could have a trial. Estudiantes saw enough in a week to know that the kid nicknamed “El Flaco” (Skinny) was worth signing.
Fernández uses the word “special” to describe the eight years he spent at Estudiantes and it is easy to see why. He was a promising youngster training with the first-team when Diego Simeone led the team to the Apertura (the Argentinian league title) in 2006 and that period also coincided with Juan Sebastián Verón’s fairytale return to the club where he had started his career.
Verón, who is now the president at Estudiantes, had a big influence on Fernández and the two remain close. Emotionally attached to Estudiantes through his father’s hugely successful time there as a player, Verón came back to the club after disappointing spells with Manchester United and Chelsea and inspired a turnaround on the pitch at the same time as investing his own money in the facilities and the academy.
“He changed the club,” Fernández says. “Verón, for the club, is a hero, and Estudiantes for him and his father is historic. I competed in the Copa Sudamericana final in 2008, I lost, but the next year I won the Copa Libertadores, which is the best tournament in South America, and the next year I won another tournament [the league title]. For me, it was the best experience in Argentina because Verón played a long time in Europe and he passed on a lot of things to the young players. I remember he said to |
of film schools in Israel and London, has always wanted to tell her parents’ story cinematically. Ultimately, she’d like to make a feature film, but for now is focused on getting a documentary off the ground.
“I’ve been trying to make the film for the past three years,” Kuznetzov-Zalmanson told The Times of Israel by phone from New York, where she‘s working to drum up financial support for the project, to be called “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
“Israelis don’t seem to be into backing historical documentaries right now,” she lamented.
With supporters including four-time Emmy nominee Julie Cohen, who will serve as a creative consultant, Kuznetzov-Zalmanson has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $100,000 by Jan. 5.
“We believe that if we can raise the seed money from Kickstarter, then we can go on to successfully raise more funds,” she said. “I really don’t have a Plan B. If we don’t raise the money, I’ll cry non-stop for a week.”
‘To older Russian Jews, my parents are rock stars, but most Israelis and Americans don’t know who they are’
The window for making the film, she says, is rapidly closing. “It needs to be made now because the people in the story are getting older,” she explained.
In addition to hunting down archival footage, she plans on filming in Israel, the US and Russia, interviewing all the would-be hijackers who are still living. She also hopes to record the testimony of leaders of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, American organizations galvanized by her parents‘ ill-fated escape effort.
“I also want to find and interview the KGB agents who were involved in the event,” she said. “I’m curious to hear their side of the story.”
As a girl, Kuznetzov-Zalmanson was shielded from politics and history by her parents. “I didn’t understand much as a child,” she recalled. “I knew there was something special about my parents because they were admired by so many people, but I didn’t really know what it was all about. But as I got older, I began to understand more, and became more emotionally attached to their story.”
Kuznetzov-Zalmanson was born in Israel in 1980, a year after her father reunited with her mother upon being released in an exchange of Operation Wedding prisoners for three Soviet spies in US custody. Her mother had been released in 1974 in a Soviet-American prisoner trade that took place in Berlin.
The couple had met in 1969, after Kuznetzov was released from seven years in prison for making public political statements and publishing samizdat, or dissident, material. Then 29, Kuznetzov moved from Moscow to Riga, Latvia, where he met Zalmanson, a 25-year-old student active in the dissident and Zionist underground. They married in January 1970, and soon connected with a secret group in Leningrad that wanted to hijack a plane.
Most members of the group eventually backed out, but Kuznetzov and Zalmanson pressed on as the leaders of the Riga contingent. Kuznetzov served as the operational leader, while Zalmanson, who recruited her two brothers to the operation, worked as the organizer and face of the movement. They knew the dangers, but saw no other way to bring their struggle to light.
“If they had not denied us the right to leave Russia, we would have just gone to Israel and not thought of hijacking a plane,” Zalmanson says in the film project’s promotional video.
“In any case, they will arrest you,” Kuznetzov remarks. “OK, so you receive 15 years... It’s better to continue and hope it will be a big scandal.”
In the end, the would-be hijackers never made it onto the plane. Some were arrested at Leningrad’s airport, and others were caught in the woods nearby. Zalmanson was the only woman to go on trial, receiving 10 years of hard labor, including six months in solitary confinement. Kuznetzov’s sentence was death, but in late 1970, it was commuted to life in a maximum-security prison. It was later shortened to 15 years.
Although the trials were closed, word got out, leading to international protests that influenced the Kremlin to commute the prisoners’ sentences.
By the time Zalmanson made aliya to great fanfare in September 1974, 56,000 Soviet Jews had already been allowed to immigrate to Israel. (A total of 163,000 made it out during the 1970s). She quickly became a central figure in the struggle for Soviet Jewry and prisoners of conscience, fighting for the release of her husband and all the other dissidents. In 1976, she carried out a 16-day, one-woman hunger strike outside the United Nations.
Ironically, Zalmanson did not remain married to Kuznetzov for long after his release and arrival in Israel in 1979. The couple divorced in 1981, just a year after their daughter was born.
“When you think about it, nine of the 10 years of their marriage, my father was in prison,” said their daughter. “Both of them had strong ideals and were strong warriors. They were good together when it came to that, but not so much when it came to actually living together.”
As Kuznetzov-Zalmanson grew up in Gan Yavne, her mother worked as an engineer. Her father served as the editor of Vesti, the largest Russian-language newspaper in Israel. Her parents remained involved politically, but on a much smaller scale than before. Now 68, Zalmanson still lives in Gan Yavne, and has become a successful artist. Kuznetzov, 73, is a successful author and lives in Motza Illit.
“To older Russian Jews, my parents are rock stars, but most Israelis and Americans don’t know who they are,” the filmmaker said. “They changed history, and I’m trying to preserve it.”Will Smith stars in the big-budget Netflix movie which launched on December 13.
Chance The Rapper has taken to Twitter to start a discussion about the portrayal of race in new Netflix movie Bright.
Directed by Suicide Squad‘s David Ayer and written by Chronicle‘s Max Landis, Bright is reportedly the most expensive Netflix movie yet. It takes place in a world whether mystical creatures live side by side with humans, and follows a human cop (Smith) who teams up with an orc on a mission to recover a deadly weapon.
On Twitter, Chance expressed reservations over a scene in which an orc is lynched, which he interpreted as a thinly-veiled and “shallow” metaphor for racism.
“I always feel a lil cheated when I see allegorical racism in movies cause that racism usually stems from human emotion or tolerance but not by law or systems the way it is in real life,” Chance explained. “The characters in #Bright live in a timeline where racism is gone… cause we hate ork now.”
Sharethrough (Mobile)
Asked by a fan if he thinks he could have misinterpreted the scene as a metaphor for racism, Chance replied: “I tried to look at it that way but a few minutes into the movie they make wills character say “Fairy Lives don’t Matter.”
Bright launched on Netflix on December 13 and the reviews haven’t been too positive for the streaming giant. However, the film’s soundtrack does contain some unmissable new tunes.
Alongside Will Smith, the film stars Joel Kinnaman, Naomi Rapace and Lucy Fry. It reportedly cost Netflix $90m (£67.5m) to make.A World Heritage-listed coral graveyard after bleaching earlier this year. Image via
New research from Melbourne-based scientists may provide a way to redesign the Great Barrier Reef around stress-tolerant corals to withstand warm ocean waters.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, has identified the unique sections of coral DNA that can indicate a higher tolerance to environmental stress factors like unusually warmer water, excess sunlight, poor water quality, and ocean acidification.
This year excessively high temperatures combined with still, clear conditions literally cooked large sections of the reef's coral, with only seven percent unaffected by bleaching. Bleaching occurs when the algae living within coral decides conditions are too warm and leave. The algae, known as zooxanthellae, are photosynthetic and provide the coral with chemical energy. Once this algae has left, corals are unable to grow and left vulnerable to damage.
Speaking to VICE, one of the leaders of the study Professor Madeleine van Oppen from the University of Melbourne explained how her team has discovered that some corals are better at withstanding harsh conditions than others.
"In this research we worked on colonies from the same species, where some were found to be hardier than others," she said. "And this was to a considerable extent related to the coral's genetic make-up."
The team's findings could act as a guide for futuristic reef restoration. Both selective breeding and assisted migration of genetically blessed stress-tolerant corals could help scientists completely redesign reefs to cope with dramatic weather events.
Potentially, reef managers could choose to move particular corals from one area to another, or breed certain strains of coral and release them into areas particularly affected by bleaching.
"The two markers we identified can be used for spatial mapping of relative bleaching tolerance across the reef, and they can also be used to identify relatively tolerant colonies which could be used for selective breeding or translocation of corals, if managers wished to implement such strategies," said van Oppen.
"We are developing what I call a biological tool box to try and make coral stock with enhanced environmental stress tolerance."
Is it depressing that we've come to this? A bit. So far the Australian Government's commitment to climate change policies has been non-committal at best, and Australia has reached a stage where, for now, damage control and a bit of biological creativity could be the only way forward.
And there is certainly something a bit tempting about redesigning a genetically advantaged reef that can withstand El Nino events. But while it looks like the technology might be there, actually implementing changes will still require government approval and funding.
"This work is in the early stages, so it's hard to say whether we will be able to achieve this on time," says van Oppen. "We have started a discussion about this with coral reef managers, and if we are successful, then of course we would need legislative approval to seed reefs with enhanced coral stock."
Follow Kat Gillespieon Twitter.Editor’s note: Among the self-protective claims you hear from Darwin defenders is that there’s no use engaging scientific Darwin doubters because evolutionary heretics are all motivated by religious conviction and the religiously faithful are impervious to reason. Strangely, this doesn’t prevent Darwin’s own faithful from tirelessly attacking Bible-based creationists. It only keeps them from marshaling genuine arguments against intelligent design. Anyway, in keeping with our mission here of gently encouraging Darwinists to confront and engage reality, we present this testimony from ENV contributor James Barham, a nearly lifelong atheist who tells an interesting story of how he came to question the adequacy of the mainstream neo-Darwinian account of life and evolution. We admire Barham’s writing and think you will too.
I was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1952, and was raised primarily in the Southern Baptist faith. However, my parents were not particularly observant and I was seldom taken to church as a child. My acquaintance with my religious tradition was pretty much limited to the Bible stories I heard at my grandmother’s knee.
I became an avid reader at an early age, and among my most vivid childhood memories are the simplified picture books I was given on various scientific subjects, from atomic physics to rocketry to dinosaurs. By the time I was eight, I used to say I wanted to be either an astronaut or a paleontologist when I grew up. So, my interest in science goes back practically as far as I can remember.
Sometime around the age of 11, if I remember correctly, Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian fell into my hands. I recall spending some bad moments worrying that my belief in God was slipping away. I even went so far as to pray to Him to forgive me in advance if that were to happen. After a few months, I considered myself a confirmed atheist.
I’m ashamed to report that I remained a militant village-atheist for many years. It was only in my thirties that I began to read seriously in the philosophy of religion, and to understand the complexities of theological questions. Today, I have come to recognize the cogency of the inference from the contingency of the world to a necessary being. But in saying that, I am, at best, affirming “the God of the philosophers,” as Pascal famously put it. I still cannot see my way to believing in “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Nevertheless, I find myself in greater personal sympathy with many religious believers than with most atheists.
The reason is this. In addition to my early interest in science, as a teenager I developed a very strong interest in the humanities. For many years, I fancied I would eventually become a novelist or some other sort of writer. In the end, I took the easier academic route. I obtained a BA in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972, and went on to complete all of the coursework for a PhD in the History of Science at Harvard University. Unfortunately — for personal reasons I won’t go into here — I never completed my dissertation, which consisted of translating and editing a late-Byzantine astronomical manuscript. By the time I officially dropped out in 1983, I was married and had a small son. For the next 20 years or so, I was essentially a househusband and faculty spouse, working at an array of minimum-wage jobs to help make ends meet. During this period, though, I continued reading and thinking about life, mind, and evolution.
By the 1980s, I had become conversant with the standard critiques of neo-Darwinism, such as Karl Popper’s. Also, from my classical studies, I was familiar with Aristotle. So, I knew there were problems with Darwinism as a metaphysical system, and that alternatives existed. Gradually, too, I became conscious of a growing cognitive dissonance between my Darwin-inspired philosophical materialism and reductionism, and my first-person experience of the fundamental importance of purpose, value, and meaning for human existence. I was familiar with various schemes that had been proposed for explaining away the latter, such as Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance,” but I could see they were just evading the issue. So, I was left with a contradiction between two aspects of my mental life that I had no idea how to resolve.
Then, one day while browsing in the stacks — this was around 1988 — I stumbled across an essay collection entitled Self-Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order (ed. F. Eugene Yates; Plenum Press, 1987). This volume was devoted to efforts that were then underway to use dynamical systems theory as a means of modeling the operation of various physiological systems. I immediately had the experience of the scales falling from my eyes. I saw in a flash that the concept of a nonlinear oscillator — and its associated “basin of attraction” — might be a way to model the end-directed, or teleological, feature of biological functions. (A basin of attraction — or “attractor,” for short — is a mathematical representation of dynamical behavior as a “trajectory” through an abstract multidimensional space.) And upon this foundation, I could already vaguely see that an emergentist metaphysics might be erected which might provide a robustly realist, yet rigorously scientific, account of the phenomena of purpose, value, and meaning.
I was aware of well-known criticisms of both of the then-current reductionist accounts of function: the “causal-role” theory and the Darwin-inspired “selected-effects” theory. In a nutshell, the problem is that neither theory can explain the normative character of biological processes in a coherent manner. (Biological processes are “normative” in the sense that they may either succeed or fail in fulfilling their functions.) With respect to the “causal-role” theory, there is no way to distinguish between functional and non-functional parts of a biological system without presupposing the normative character of the overall system as a whole — which begs the question at issue.
With respect to the “selected-effects” theory, the problem is that selection history is conceptually irrelevant to the identification of function. True, it has a role to play in explaining how present-day functions have come to exist. But selection history cannot possibly explain what it is about a biological process that constitutes it as a function. This is a logical point that Darwinists simply miss. The reason is that our concept of function in no way depends on evolutionary history. If it did, then biologists like Aristotle, Galen, Harvey, and innumerable others who lived long before Darwin would not have had the means to identify the functions of organs, which they of course did. Sometimes, they got it wrong, as when Aristotle placed the seat of perception and thought in the heart, instead of the brain (though some of his predecessors got it right). But Aristotle’s mistake was due to his inadequate knowledge of physiology, not to his ignorance of evolution.
What I realized that day in the stacks was that the mathematical concept of a high-dimensional, phase-space attractor gives us a way out of this dilemma. It does so by providing us with a mathematical representation of the end-directedness of physiological systems directly, without either begging the question of the normativity of the larger system of which the function is a part, or relying on irrelevant selection history. I wrote up my ideas, and published my first scholarly paper in 1990, at the ripe age of 38. I later discovered that I was not the first person to realize the value of dynamical systems theory for modeling the teleological character of biological functions, but I arrived at the idea independently, and I believe I can say that I have pursued it more doggedly than anyone else. I have now published some dozen papers on various aspects of this fundamental insight, and have recently completed a PhD dissertation at the University of Notre Dame on the topic.
To bring my story up to date, after graduating last year, I was fortunate enough to find employment with an education-oriented Internet startup called TheBestSchools.org, where I now work as General Editor. I also maintain a blog there, where I am able to comment on cultural matters, especially as they relate to education, philosophy, and the media. My special focus is the threat of scientism to morality and our commonsense understanding of the human person. It is very gratifying finally to have work that permits me to pursue my intellectual passions.
To return to my ideas on the conceptual foundations of biology, in recent years I have come to realize that the dynamical-systems approach, while helpful, cannot be the whole story. The reason is that a theory is still required in order to explain how physiological systems are capable of operating in an end-directed way, from the point of view of fundamental physics. Cybernetic control theory is useful as a description of such systems, of course, but considered as a master explanation, it too ends up begging the question of what causes a particular physical state of a living system to count as a goal state.
I now believe that living things are best understood as intelligent agents — not machines — and that we are missing something fundamental about the physical underpinnings of intelligent agency. Perhaps the way forward lies through an adequate quantum field theory of the living state of matter. But that is mere hand waving, at present.
What is certain is that the Darwinian explanatory framework is logically confused and scientifically superficial with respect to the phenomena of normativity, teleology, and agency. Darwinism is a gigantic obstacle obscuring these important problems from our view, and I doubt we will make much progress towards solving them so long as Darwinian dogma retains its death grip on the minds of so many.
James Barham has discussed his intellectual journey at greater length here.
Image credit: Gabri�l Metsu, “Man Writing a Letter“/Wikicommons.Saudi ministries have been given three years to fire all of their expatriate workers, local media reported, in the latest clampdown against foreign labor in the kingdom.
It comes as part of the kingdom’s ambitious national transformation program for 2020, which will see government positions filled by Saudis and a massively reduced public sector, Albawaba reported.
Heads of government departments were reportedly told by the ministry of civil service this week that only Saudi nationals would be able to work in public sector jobs by the end of 2020.
“There will be no expatriate workers in the government after 2020,” Abdullah al-Melfi, deputy minister for civil service, instructed ministry officials during a meeting.
“The complete nationalization of government jobs is an important objective of the national transformation program 2020 and the Saudi Vision 2030,” Melfi added. The workshop concentrated on the kingdom’s national transformation program for 2020, according to the Saudi Gazette.
Saudi Arabia is also pursuing an aggressive diversification plan known as Vision 2030, which looks at massively expanding the private sector. Continued low oil prices have put pressure on the public sector to cut jobs with foreigners the obvious target.
The government believes the job cuts will reduce capital outflows and create new positions for the some 700,000 Saudis looking for work. This should also limit the impact of a streamlined government on nationals.
Riyadh also announced that surgeries would not be able to hire any foreign dentists to make way for Saudis.
Meanwhile, the ministry of Interior has revealed that more than 32,000 illegal expatriates have left the country since the beginning of the government campaign “A Nation Without Illegal Expatriates” that was launched on March 29.
It said it has arrested 100,000 violators of the country’s residency laws since the launch of the campaign. The drive entailed an amnesty period of 90 days, during which illegal expatriates can leave the country without being subjected to any penalties. Deputy supervisor of the campaign in Riyadh, Col. Safar bin Dlaim, called on violators to make use of the grace period and leave before it ends. “Those (violators) who do not leave will be required to pay all fines and fees and will be considered a wanted person in the system. The goal of the campaign is for every resident to be legal.”
Less than 50 days remain before the amnesty period expires.NAIROBI, Kenya--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Nantucket Project and Azimyth Creation Studio were in Kenya on July 26th to film Barack Obama’s speech to his father's homeland with a 360° video camera, making him the first President to be filmed in virtual reality.
"Experiencing the President's speech in a fully immersive environment connects the public to historic moments in a way we've never known before,” said Stephanie Riggs, Founder of Azimyth Creation Studio. “Virtual reality has the potential to expand news coverage in a transformative way.“
Calvin Coolidge was the first President to address the country on the radio in 1923. F.D.R. made the first Presidential television appearance in 1939. These events altered the way leaders communicate with their citizens. The historic 360° footage of President Obama places him in elite company, ushering in a new way to impact change.
"The speech was a deeply personal reflection on the President's relationship to Kenya." said Tom Scott, Chairman of The Nantucket Project. "For the viewer to be immersed in this environment makes the subject matter all the more powerful. It creates an intimacy that simply can't be found in other mediums."
Obama’s speech is part of a series of immersive experiences the companies are working on together. “The project’s overarching goal is to reorient the viewer’s perspective on Africa in a radical way.” says co-director Daniel Honan.
This initiative is part of The Harbers Storytelling Project, a film series that marries the most important ideas of our time with groundbreaking storytelling techniques. The film will premiere September 25th, 2015 at The Nantucket Project’s annual event featuring keynote speaker Steve Wozniak, Founder of Apple.
About The Nantucket Project
The Nantucket Project is a media company best known for our annual gathering on Nantucket in September. The Project does three things. First, we are a convener of thinkers and ideas. Second, we create stories, largely through film. Third, we are a think tank and an academy of learners.
About Azimyth Creation Studio
New York City-based Azimyth Creation Studio, develops, produces, and distributes next-generation content. With over 20-years of experience in virtual reality, user interface and brand expertise, Azimyth sets the standard for immersive storytelling.QUESTIONS? Like where do I get my bottles? Please check my FAQ at the bottom of this journal for answers. If you do not see your answer please note me.
My son is having a Walk-A-Thon for bullying awareness and prevention. It is not a per mile or per distance donation but a one time thing. If you donate $10 or more to back my son for his walk (he is 7 and is a victim of bullying because of his size) you get some awesome octopus and Cute N Kitschy Fox Mascot stickers!Please send donation via PayPal to cutenkitschy@gmail.com then shoot me an email to the same email with your mailing address and I will put the stickers in the mail for you. <3 www.etsy.com/shop/egyptianruin (PayPal, Credit Card and Etsy Gift Cards) cutenkitschy.com/ (PayPal)--------------------------------------When it comes to business and the private sector, President Obama and top Democrats are all about accountability.
Banks: “When we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible,” President Obama says.
Oil companies: “The person who makes the mistake ought to be responsible,” according to Florida senator Ben Nelson.
Auto makers: “Manufacturers [are] on notice that they will be held accountable if they fail to quickly report and address safety-related defects,” said transportation secretary Anthony Foxx.
President Obama loves to hold the private sector accountable. Government? Not So much.
Food processors: “Anyone who knowingly and willingly put American families at risk should be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law,” declared Representative Rosa DeLauro, after a series of beef recalls.
Don’t get me wrong, accountability is a good thing. Especially when criminality or willful negligence is involved, there may well be a role for the government in holding business accountable. More important, when businesses screw up, the market itself extracts a price: Share prices drop. Market share shrinks. People lose their jobs. Just ask former Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel.
But when it comes to the government itself, there is precious little accountability.
Take the ongoing scandal in the VA health system. In Phoenix, where news of secret waiting lists first broke, up to 40 veterans reportedly died while awaiting care. There is now evidence of wrongdoing at 26 facilities in seven states. One can only imagine how outraged President Obama would be if some private company acted half so irresponsibly. Democrats would be lined up at the microphone to demand action; Harry Reid would probably blame the Koch brothers.
Yet, the VA scandal has generated no such response. No one has been fired. General Eric Shinseki, who has run the department for the last six years, but who — like the president himself — apparently learned about the scandal from the newspapers, is still in charge. When the House voted last week 330-33 for legislation that would make it easier for the VA secretary to fire people, Shinseki opposed it. Exactly one person, an undersecretary, has resigned so far, and he had already announced that he was leaving. Not only do the administrators in the Phoenix hospital where the whole thing began still have their jobs, they actually got bonuses this year — a move that was only reversed after the media raised an outcry.
This is hardly an isolated case. Who can forget the debacle that was — and continues to be — HealthCare.gov? The chief information officer at the bureaucracy that produced it, Tony Trenkle, resigned, but the administration repeatedly refused to say if he was asked to step down. Trenkle may or may not have served as a fall guy, but HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversaw the entire disastrous project, was kept on.
If the IRS targeting of tea-party groups wasn’t outright criminal, it was at least massively incompetent. But so far, the only IRS official to lose their job over the scandal has been Lois Lerner — and she had to plead the Fifth before she did. The woman who headed the tax-exempt groups office from 2009 to 2012, Sarah Hall Ingram, is still at the IRS. She now directs the part of the IRS that oversees compliance with Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
And one doesn’t have to indulge in conspiracy theories to recognize that something went seriously wrong in Benghazi. At the very least our diplomats were sent into harm’s way without proper security. Accountability? As Hilary Clinton would say, “What difference does it make now?” Very little, it appears, since the four diplomats put on temporary leave after an investigation have merely been “reassigned” elsewhere at State.
This is not just a partisan problem or the incompetence of a single presidency. After all, the Bush presidency was not exactly a model of accountability. (Who lost their job over “weapons of mass destruction?”) Rather, it is endemic to government.
Just consider government programs themselves. No matter how badly they fail or how much they exceed cost estimates, they are almost never terminated. In fact, failure is usually seen as a reason to increase funding.
Perhaps, before we put too much faith in government, we should have a little less talk about accountability … and a little bit more, well, accountability.Introducing the Ember Academy
The world’s first performance training institute for aspiring esports players
Jonathan Pan Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 1, 2016
The Ember Academy is the world’s first performance training institute for aspiring professional esports athletes. Esports is competitive video gaming and it’s huge (1, 2, 3). So huge that the most successful pro esports athletes are earning between six to seven figures annually — to play online video games!
The competition is so fierce that it is common for aspiring esports athletes to train up to eighty hours per week. These aspirants often put their entire life on hold — education, relationships, and other opportunities — for a slim chance at fame, glory, and money. Much like aspiring sports athletes and entertainers, most won’t make it despite thousands of hours of effort invested.
What if we could build on that investment to help young people develop transferable life skills? What if we could help our students apply lessons learned from the game to their personal life? What if we could turn esports into an engine for positive youth development?
That is what we are trying to do here at the Ember Academy. Yes, students will learn how to play games from a tactical and strategic level. But more importantly, we will help our students build discipline, mental toughness, self-awareness, and teamwork.
Weldon Green is the first Headmaster of Ember Academy. He will be leading a team of virtual and in-person trainers here in Santa Monica, California. We hired him because he is the world’s preeminent Esports Psychology Trainer. Weldon won’t like that statement because he is humble, but he has demonstrated results with some of the world’s best esports teams (CLG, TSM, FNATIC, and more). Weldon’s years of coaching and teaching is backed by academic rigor; he received a Master of Science in Sport and Exercise Psychology from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.
Last but not least, we are honored to have CYBERPOWERPC and Razer join us as valuable partners. The Ember Academy is fully equipped with systems from CYBERPOWERPC and peripherals from Razer.
Open enrollment for the public will start on April 1, 2016. We are accepting a limited number of students to enroll in our beta player development program starting now. Please email us at info@ember.gg for more details or check out our website."I am a BIG RIGS guy now..yeah" - Elon Musk
"I have a micropenis and I am proud" - bjorno
"I love to crap my pants and eat the crap." - ZIGS
"wtf the news section was bought out by a capitalism hater" LOL look at this chump!
SECURE yourewinner.com is
ANNOUNCEMENT! I bought all the announcements. EAT CAPITALISM, CHUMPS!
"Ow.... my balls!" - Cirus
Moving is underway, report here. SSL soon (hopefully)
yourewinner.com is moving soon! STAY TUNED
wun is back!
yourewinner.com respects your privacy once again.
yourewinner.com has been upgraded to Windows 10!
NOW: http://www.yourewinner.com/index.php?topic=16932.0 The Long Dark giveaway is live
SOMA giveaway is live NOW: http://www.yourewinner.com/index.php?topic=16925.0. Congrats SKRAG!. Congrats SKRAG!
The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.
BREAKING NEWS: Sergey Titov announces new project! Find out more here
BREAKING NEWS: Wisconsin to be declared "The WINNER State" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/weird-wisconsin/
News flash: Skrag has a massive cock
as soon as you're not a human be-ing, you're a human do-ing!!!!
He's a human being goddammit!
This just in: YOU'RE WINNER!
Happy Anniversary, Linux! Please join us in celebrating 23 years of the free OS that has changed the world. pic.twitter.com/mTVApV85gD
Happy Birthday, @ZIGS_ARE_WINNER!!
Gore33 your new password is "mlpfan69" m8
The Easter egg hunt is OVER! Congratulations to Svetlana the winner and thanks to all who participated. Expect more holiday fun in the future!
yourewinner.com mourns the passing of the Ultimate Warrior, who is even now gorilla press slamming angels in heaven, before dropping a big splash on HWSNBN. Godspeed, you Ultimate WINNER
Want 100k rigcoins? See here
Change the price then
Not expensive enough
b waz here
Here about our King Arthur's Gold servers? See this topic
Happy Halloween! Be sure to tune in for Spooky Movie Night with Cinema Cirus, starting at 6 PM PST.
DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE! Help our website stay afloat and get great Manga by donating to the yourewinner.com FUN-raiser. Also, please be safe this Halloween -
Happy new year! The planning for Rigcon 13 has begun and we are planning on early June in the SF Bay Area. Post in the topic to hammer out details!
The holidays are in full swing! Secret Santa registration is going on now so sign up today! In addition, the Great Banner Drive of 2012 is also going on now. Finally we'd like to welcome our newest admin, steev! He has already implemented many great features, with many more to come. YOU'RE WINNER!
yourequeer.com fabulous purple skin is now a SELECTABLE THEME!!! OMG
yourewinner.com is heterosexual again (but still welcoming of all sexualities naturally)
YW MEMBER AWARDS GO GO GO
SMF 2 IS HERE REJOICE
DATABASE PROBLEMS ARE FIXED GO ABOUT YOUR MERRY BUSINESS
Help the wiki become worth reading HERE there's some sort of incentive for you to contribute so you probably should
SMF 2 COMING SOON START GETTING READY TO GET EXCITED OMG
YOU'RE WINNER!Fast-forward some 20 years, and we have this: Subaru’s 2015 24 Hour NBR Endurance racer, which looks for all the world as though it were lifted straight from the game consoles of GT fanboys everywhere. There’s little doubt Subie’s making a statement with this one, considering the fact that they’ve unveiled it before releasing the car it’s based on for sale. Slated to race in NBR’s small-displacement/turbocharged SP3T class, the STI is a real contender for outright victory in Audi’s back yard. And you can bet that’s no game to them.
Gran Turismo introduced Americans (and indeed much of the world) to such names as "Skyline," "Evolution" and of course, "WRX." It also sparked a renaissance among the younger generation for road racing, touring car racing, and especially endurance racing. It’s probably no coincidence that almost immediately after the game’s release, the organizers of the Nurburgring 24 Hour race threw open the flood gates to every class and kind of car imaginable.
In "Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure," George Carlin told Keanu Reeves "One great rock song can change the world." Somebody at Sony must have been listening then, because it was only a few years later that Sony/Polyphony released what must be considered "The Dark Side of the Moon" of racing video games: Gran Turismo.
Exterior
The last generation WRX was, to put it bluntly, a guppy-faced tadpole in a market of sharks.
The biggest story with the STI racer is clearly the exterior. Not just for the way it looks, which I think is utterly fantastic in that bonkers, Dutch Touring Car sort of way. But more so for the fact that it’s our first real glimpse of what STi has planned for this newest-generation WRX.
The last-generation WRX was, to put it bluntly, a guppy-faced tadpole in a market of sharks. It’s true that Subie went out of its way to make the Impreza a bit happier and a bit more appealing to people who spend more than the acceptable five minutes shopping for shoes. And they succeeded, mostly in making a car that nobody could take seriously.
The new WRX, though, is much more Mako than goldfish. True, it does look a bit like the unholy union of a BMW M4 and a Volvo V70R — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in this market. And there is some family resemblance to the rear-drive BRZ jointly developed with Toyota, which isn’t a bad thing in any market.
From the front and side, you’ve got your normal touring-car assortment of carbon splitters, massive ducts, vents and gill slits. Wide fenders give this car a pleasantly muscular look, even if those rear flares are a bit stunted.
Speaking of |
EG in 2011.
Official Announcement:
+ Show Spoiler + MONSTER ENERGY® SPONSORS TEAM EVIL GENIUSES FOR 2011
LOS ANGELES, April, 2011 – North America’s premiere professional gaming team and a world leader in eSports - Evil Geniuses (EG) - announced today an official sponsorship with the U.S.’ leading by-volume energy drink sales brand, Monster Energy. This significant relationship marks the first time that Monster Energy has aligned its iconic action sports and hard driving music-associated brand with a professional gaming team.
Monster Energy will join the likes of Intel, SteelSeries, Kingston HyperX, Bigfoot Networks and many other well-known brands in supporting Evil Geniuses in 2011.
“As we continue to advance the growth of professional gaming, it’s essential for us to align with brands that are like-minded and passionate to our vision. We’ve found that in Monster Energy and we’re thrilled for what’s in store for 2011 and beyond,” said Scott Smith, Evil Geniuses’ Chief Executive Officer.
Monster Energy’s Gaming Marketing Manager, Joe Hagofsky, was equally pumped on the groundbreaking sponsorship: "Monster Energy is supportive of and enthusiastic about the growth of professional gaming on a global scale. That's why we've teamed with Evil Geniuses, one of the world's leading professional gaming brands. We're stoked to be a sponsor and help EG continue to stay on top as pro gaming continues its meteoric rise throughout the world."
You’ll be able to follow Evil Geniuses and Monster Energy throughout 2011 on Facebook at
About Monster Energy
Monster Energy supports the scene. Be it gaming, off-road, motocross, road racing, skate, surf, mountain, on the road with Warped Tour, the DUB Show, Ozzfest … or just kickin’ it local with the bros … wherever the action’s going off you’re sure to find the M-claw logo. Monster Import, Import Light and DUB join all the types - Original Monster Energy, Lo-Carb Monster, Monster Assault, Monster's fruit juice hybrids dubbed Monster Khaos, Monster M-80 and Monster MIXXD, the ground-breaking Java Monster and X-Presso Monster premium coffee & cream drink line supercharged with Monster Energy's blend, 3 oz. Monster Hitman Energy and the new Monster Energy “Rehab,” combining ice tea and lemonade with Monster Energy OG. Evil Geniuses dig ‘em – so will you. On the ‘Net at
About Evil Geniuses
Founded in 1999, Evil Geniuses (Team EG) is North America’s premier professional gaming team and one of the world’s top eSports brands. With the finest gaming talent in both North America and the world, EG’s players have brought championship trophies home from every major tournament circuit in pro gaming, including the CPL, ESWC, ESL/IEM, MLG and WCG. Home to internationally renowned teams and players such as Isaac “Azael” Cummings-Bentley, Greg “IdrA” Fields, Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert, Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, and Justin “JWong” Wong, EG’s professional gamers focus on such titles as Counter-Strike, Quake, StarCraft II, Super Street Fighter 4, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and World of Warcraft. North America’s premiere professional gaming team and a world leader in eSports -- announced today an official sponsorship with the U.S.’ leading by-volume energy drink sales brand,. This significant relationship marks the first time that Monster Energy has aligned its iconic action sports and hard driving music-associated brand with a professional gaming team.Monster Energy will join the likes of Intel, SteelSeries, Kingston HyperX, Bigfoot Networks and many other well-known brands in supporting Evil Geniuses in 2011.said Scott Smith, Evil Geniuses’ Chief Executive Officer.Monster Energy’s Gaming Marketing Manager, Joe Hagofsky, was equally pumped on the groundbreaking sponsorship:You’ll be able to follow Evil Geniuses and Monster Energy throughout 2011 on Facebook at facebook.com/EvilGeniuses as well as on Twitter at twitter.com/EvilGeniuses - For news regarding the team and their international travels, head to www.myeg.net – To learn about Monster Energy and their involvement in video gaming, head to their Facebook at and Twitter at twitter.com/MonsterGaming Monster Energy supports the scene. Be it gaming, off-road, motocross, road racing, skate, surf, mountain, on the road with Warped Tour, the DUB Show, Ozzfest … or just kickin’ it local with the bros … wherever the action’s going off you’re sure to find the M-claw logo. Monster Import, Import Light and DUB join all the types - Original Monster Energy, Lo-Carb Monster, Monster Assault, Monster's fruit juice hybrids dubbed Monster Khaos, Monster M-80 and Monster MIXXD, the ground-breaking Java Monster and X-Presso Monster premium coffee & cream drink line supercharged with Monster Energy's blend, 3 oz. Monster Hitman Energy and the new Monster Energy “Rehab,” combining ice tea and lemonade with Monster Energy OG. Evil Geniuses dig ‘em – so will you. On the ‘Net at www.monsterarmy.com and www.monsterenergy.com Founded in 1999, Evil Geniuses (Team EG) is North America’s premier professional gaming team and one of the world’s top eSports brands. With the finest gaming talent in both North America and the world, EG’s players have brought championship trophies home from every major tournament circuit in pro gaming, including the CPL, ESWC, ESL/IEM, MLG and WCG. Home to internationally renowned teams and players such as Isaac “Azael” Cummings-Bentley, Greg “IdrA” Fields, Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert, Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, and Justin “JWong” Wong, EG’s professional gamers focus on such titles as Counter-Strike, Quake, StarCraft II, Super Street Fighter 4, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and World of Warcraft. Team EG has announced an exclusive sponsorship with Monster Energy for 2011. This is very big news for StarCraft II and e-sports in general as this is the first time this company has partnered with a professional gaming team. You can read the official press release in the spoiler or visit myEG.net Also for those wondering whether or not this is the "Big Announcement" I can safely say that it's one of the big announcements coming for EG in 2011.Official Announcement: Editor-in-Chief for Team EG - http://www.twitter.com/LColbiFIFTEEN YEARS ago, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and President George W. Bush (R) came together to tackle one of the great civil rights issues facing the country: the failure to give poor — mainly minority — children a good education. They knew the problem wouldn't get solved unless it was measured, and the best way to measure was to test student achievement.
We recently revisited this history with Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) during a discussion of what he would do with public education if he were elected governor next month. Mr. Northam claimed to believe in accountability but was utterly unable to explain what he means by the word. The state's Standards of Learning (SOL), which establish minimum expectations for what students should know and be able to do, aren't working, he said, and should be tossed out. What would replace them? Astonishingly, after almost four years as lieutenant governor and a month away from the election, Mr. Northam had no answer.
Particularly concerning was Mr. Northam's view that because children are diverse, "coming from different backgrounds and different regions," he's "not sure that it's fair" to give them all the same test; they shouldn't be penalized, he said, for the environment they come from. The suggestion that some students should be required to pass one type of assessment, while others are given a different (presumably more rigorous) one, is disconcerting. There is no question that some children come to school handicapped by circumstances not experienced by their better-advantaged peers, but children do better when there are high expectations. Creating different expectations for children does them no favors; it just allows adults to escape responsibility. To borrow a phrase from the history we revisited with Mr. Northam, it is the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Once again, schools and the grown-ups who work in them will be excused and applauded as they graduate poor black students who are not prepared for work or college.
Mr. Northam's comments are part of an unfortunate trend in Virginia to pull back from rigor in assessments and accountability. Instead of adopting the muscular requirements of Common Core and its assessments, the state has stuck with assessments seen to be among the easiest in the nation. Some critical tests, such as the fifth-grade writing SOL, were recently jettisoned. And now state education officials are in the final stages of adopting regulations that would overhaul how schools are accredited. The board would widen a loophole to allow for "locally awarded verified credits" from the local school board in lieu of exam passage. Officials argue there is the need to broaden the lens by which schools are judged. We agree that student growth and closing the achievement gap should be recognized, but the proposal tilts too far toward letting schools off the hook for their failures. The emphasis appears to be not on actually improving schools but rather on approving how they appear.
Virginia once led the nation in recognizing the need for accountability and assessments; the Standards of Learning were established before annual standardized testing became a requirement of federal education law. The next governor of the state should strive to reestablish — not repudiate — that standing.Here’s the crazy thing about living in Hawaii: Even though the islands are home to more than 18,000 unique species that live nowhere else on Earth, the people of Hawaii rarely see those native plants and animals.
In no small part, that’s because Hawaii is the site of an ongoing extinction crisis. Thousands of species in the Hawaiian Islands risk extinction because of invasive species or habitat loss. Most of those native species evolved in extremely limited ranges, so it takes a lot of effort to see them—and it doesn’t take much to wipe them out.
In the meantime scientists throughout Hawaii are rushing to conserve the state’s native flora and fauna, the majority of which have never been fully studied. That effort often involves documenting where species live, what they need from their environment and what it will take to save them.
Sometimes, in the process of documenting these already endangered species, something novel pops into view. It happened in September 2012 when scientists were surveying the cold, mist-covered summit of Kōnāhua-nui Mountain on Oahu, seeking information about the endangered plant Cyanea humboldtiana, also known as the Oahu rollandia.
Instead they found something new: another species of Cyanea that had never been documented before. In a paper published this month in PhytoKeys the researchers dubbed it C. konahuanuiensis. The new species, whose common name of Hāhā mili‘ohu means “the Cyanea that is caressed by the mist,” has brilliant purple flowers and grows a little over half a meter in height.
Oh yeah, and it’s probably critically endangered. The researchers located fewer than 50 of the plants, all of which were growing in two subgulches of one stream drainage on the mountaintop.
Even if it is protected—which is likely because it grows on state-owned land—the new species isn’t expected to become any less rare in the wild. Most of the native birds that probably once pollinated the plants and spread their seeds are either extinct, extirpated or have highly reduced populations on Oahu, notes Sebastian Marquez, one of the researchers who discovered the plant and co-authored the paper. “Whatever ecological services those birds provided are not being met for the species,” he says, adding that the researchers observed almost no young plants, indicating that wild reproduction occurs very rarely. Many of the fruits produced by the plants had been chewed on by invasive rats, slugs or feral pigs. Other seeds failed to germinate or decomposed before maturity.
The scientists did manage to collect a small number of seeds as well as two fertile stems and flower heads. These successfully germinated without much effort in an arboretum at the University of Hawaii, so it may be possible to increase the population off the mountain. The researchers recommended collecting immature fruit from all of the known plants in order to build a genetic database that’s as complete as possible.
Saving the wild plants will pose more of a challenge. In their paper the researchers noted that it would only take a single landslide, hurricane or flash flood to wipe out every remaining plant.
Although he’s excited by it, Marquez fears that new discoveries such as C. konahuanuiensis will do little to inspire more work to preserve Hawaii’s native flora. “People don't get to emotionally connect with native Hawaiian terrestrial biota, let alone know what is native or not,” he says. That doesn’t stop him from trying, though. He works with an organization called Papahana Kuaola as well as the Mānoa Cliff Native Forestation Project and his Studia Mirabilium blog to try to educate people about the native species of Hawaii.
Marquez says this new discovery typifies the urgency facing both Hawaii’s endangered species and those that have yet to be discovered. “Without surveying and identifying, the environmental pressures facing these plants would have them go extinct without anyone knowing they were even there,” he says. At least for C. konahuanuiensis, this is one discovery that came just in time.
Photos by Tobias B. Koehler via PhytoKeys. Used under Creative Commons license
Previously in Extinction Countdown:From Team Fortress Wiki
“
— The Spy after solving a mystery The outcome was never really in doubt. ”
The Private Eye is a community-created multi-class cosmetic item for the Demoman, Medic and Spy. It is a deerstalker hat with the Mann Co. label stitched on the front and three team-colored matches sticking out of the right side, the top most's head being burnt off.
Item set
Note: The attributes are hidden until both items are equipped. This set does not affect gameplay, as its description is meant to be a joke. However, it does change a handful of item descriptions, as of June 20, 2012 Patch.
April 7, 2011 Patch (Third Community Contribution Update)
Added the Private Eye to the game.
July 9, 2011 [Item schema update]
The Private Eye can now be equipped by the Demoman.
July 12, 2011 [Item schema update]
The Private Eye can now be equipped by the Medic.
July 18, 2011 Patch
Updated The Private Eye so it can be equipped by the Medic and Demoman.
March 8, 2012 Patch
[Undocumented] Added the Private Eye to the Eliminating The Impossible set.
April 1, 2014 Patch
[Undocumented] Added Strange quality.
Trivia
The deerstalker is a hat generally worn for stalking deer, as its name implies. However, it's most commonly associated with fictional English private detective Sherlock Holmes, who is usually depicted as wearing one (although he was never officially described as doing so).
Private Eye is slang for Private Investigator. The term was made popular in detective movies.
The Private Eye was originally designed for the Demoman and the name "Private Eye" was in reference to his one good eye.
GalleryPEORIA, Ariz. -- The San Diego Padres blew out their international scouting budget in the current cycle, which started July 2, spending nearly $80 million so far in signing bonuses and penalties for going beyond their bonus pool figure of -- wait for it -- $3.348 million. Based on how some of their big-ticket prospects look so far in spring training, it was well worth it, especially given how hard the new collective bargaining agreement makes it for low-revenue teams like the Padres to acquire young talent any other way.
Law's 2017 Prospect Rankings Prospects
• Top 50 (July)
• Top 50 (April)
• Top 100 index (Jan.)
• Nos. 100-81
• Nos. 80-61
• Nos. 60-41
• Nos. 40-21
• Nos. 20-1
• Prospects who missed
• Top prospects by position
• Sleepers
• Top impact prospects for 2017 Top 10 Prospects by Team
• AL East and NL East
• AL Central and NL Central
• AL West and NL West Farm System Rankings
• Top 5 update (July 2017) • System rankings, 30-21
• System rankings, 20-11
• System rankings, 10-1 » Law's 2017 rankings
» Law's 2016 rankings
Their biggest bonus of the signing period went to Cuban left-hander Adrian Morejon (No. 80 in the top 100 prospects of 2017), who threw in a simulated game at the Padres’ complex in Peoria, Arizona, on Wednesday. Why a sim game? Because they have so many prospects they can’t get all of them into regularly scheduled minor league spring training games. Morejon just turned 18 a month ago, but the 6-foot lefty brought big-league stuff to his outing, showing three pitches that you could comfortably grade out as or project to plus.
Morejon’s fastball sat at an easy 92-95 mph and he got on top of the ball well. He showed good feel for his 80-83 mph changeup, throwing it to left- and right-handed batters, coming inside with it to lefties and relying on arm speed rather than action to make it effective. His breaking ball was short at 80-81 mph with tight spin. He was around the zone with all three pitches and extremely aggressive in attacking hitters -- some of whom, by the way, will be his teammates in a few weeks.Scrapping the controversial tax, which applies to all passengers flying from a UK airport, would deliver a 0.45pc boost to GDP within 12 months and could generate 60,000 jobs by 2020, according to a report commissioned by British Airways, easyJet, Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic.
APD adds £13 to the cost of a short-haul flight, up from £5 in 2007, and as much as £92 in the case of long-haul. Airlines argue it acts as a major barrier to both tourism and potential investment in Britain.
The UK is currently ranked 134th out of 138 countries by the World Economic Forum in terms of competitive aviation taxes and airport charges, ahead of only Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali and Chad.
A PwC study commissioned by the four major airlines estimates the economy would be £16bn better off by 2015 were APD to be scrapped.
Withdrawal of the tax would deliver an immediate increase of as much as 40pc in the number of foreign visitors to Britain, PwC estimates, and would encourage airlines to invest in new aircraft and develop routes to high-growth regions such as Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Over the medium term, PwC believes an increase in business travel as a result of lower fares and better connections would lead to growth in exports and greater investment from companies that trade with foreign countries.
The biggest boost would be in the first year of abolition, increasing UK GDP by 0.46pc.
“I know 0.46pc doesn’t sound a lot but that’s the difference of dragging Britain out of recession and into growth,” said easyJet spokesman Paul Moore.
The boost to UK GDP would average out at 0.3pc between 2013 and 2015 and would fall over the ensuing five years but would still add 0.11pc to economic output by 2020, the study claims.
Airlines have long campaigned against APD, which was first introduced in 1994. They believe this latest analysis brings new impetus to the debate as PwC’s research was carried out using economic modelling known as “computable general equilibrium”, also used by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Such modelling takes into account the overall effect on an economy of one tax change.
PwC acknowledges the Treasury’s tax take would be £3bn-£4bn lower a year as a result of scrapping APD. However, the report claims the policy change would pay for itself as the Exchequer would receive more in VAT, corporation and income taxes as a result of increased business activity. The Treasury would benefit from an average net positive gain of £250m a year, PwC suggests.
BA, easyJet, Ryanair and Virgin have submitted the research to the Treasury and hope to meet with ministers ahead of next month’s Budget.
In a joint statement, Willie Walsh, head of BA’s parent company; easyJet boss Carolyn McCall; Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair; and Craig Kreeger, the new head of Virgin Atlantic, said: “[The report] proves APD is one of the three most destructive taxes, alongside corporation tax and fuel duty.”
A Treasury spokesman said: “Despite current pressure on the public finances and the challenge of cutting the deficit, the Government has limited any rise in APD to inflation since 2010.
"We do not recognise the figures in this report or agree with the assumptions behind it.”If you’re like me, you like a good challenge. As a photographer, the most difficult subject is one without enough light on it! There are workarounds, though, so it IS possible to photograph dark rides at the Disney parks. This feature is all about how to get the best pictures on dark rides. To help us out, we’ve assembled tips and photos from some of the best theme park photographers out there. Hopefully, you’ll pick up some tricks on how to make your own photos even better!
Before going any further, let me remind you that these are dark rides, so TURN OFF YOUR FLASH. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a ride and being blinded by a bright light from another guest’s flash. It not only ruins the ride for others, but makes your photos look terrible.
Why are dark rides difficult to shoot?
Well, they’re dark, simple as that. Camera sensors can only be so sensitive to light! These attractions are carefully crafted by Imagineers to light only what they want you to see.
It also wouldn’t be so bad if you could set up a tripod with a long exposure, but these are rides with moving vehicles. Some move faster than others, some are more turbulent, but in any case, they make things difficult.
What equipment do I need to shoot dark rides?
Camera Body
Last week I posted about the contents of my camera bag. I use a Canon 70D, which is a mid-range DSLR. It has decent low-light performance, even at high ISOs, and has very sharp and quick focusing, even when lighting conditions aren’t superb.
If you’re looking for a nice camera, it will likely be a DSLR (popular ones are Canon and Nikon) or a mirrorless camera (Sony is leading in mirrorless). If you have anything comparable to my Canon 70D, you’ll probably do just fine shooting dark rides. Surprisingly, the Canon Rebel T6s and Nikon D5600 are pretty close but look for low-light performance and effective ISO when purchasing your next camera.
Point-and-shoots and phones are not good choices, even if you use manual settings. Their sensors are not sufficient to take low-light photos without a massive trade off in exposure, motion blur, and digital noise, among other things.
Lens
My main dark ride lens is the Canon 50mm f/1.8. The reason why you need a different lens than just the kit lens that came with your camera is that most kit lenses only stop the aperture down to f/3.5. I recommend the Canon 50mm one because it’s generally only about $100, the focus is tack sharp, and that f/1.8 aperture allows for extra exposure to light. The only issues are that it’s a prime lens so you can’t zoom and it doesn’t have a built-in image stabilizer so you need to have a steadier hand than usual.
I use the 11-16mm once in a while as the wide focal length can help with faster moving rides in masking the movement of the vehicle, but the exposure only stops to f/2.8 so the extra aperture is minimal.
Below, f/3.5 vs f/2.8
You can use whatever lens you want, f/2 or below is the range that works best. I’m personally looking at the Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART for the future, but be careful buying lenses that are made for full-frame sensors if you don’t own a full-frame camera (or visa-versa). Check your camera to see what kind of sensor it has before going too crazy with lenses (APS-C is cropped, Nikon calls it “DX” format). That 35mm lens I want will actually be the equivalent of a 56mm on my crop sensor.
Most Rebel-line DSLRs or comparable Nikons (like the D5500) aren’t going to focus as quickly as the 70D or 80D, and their low light performance will be less desirable. More expensive cameras (particularly full-frame ones) will work better in low-light, but they obviously cost more and are bigger and bulkier.
What gear do you use to photograph dark rides? Click To Tweet
What settings should I use?
Before you mess with any settings, you should probably make sure your camera is set to take RAW photos. The files are bigger and the camera can shoot less of them at a time compared to JPEGs, but I rarely see a dark ride photo that doesn’t need adjustment in post-production. RAW makes a huge difference in editing. You can even shoot RAW and JPEG at the same time if you feel like it.
Mode
I personally use Manual mode (“M” on the mode dial) for pretty much everything, so Manual is what I suggest. This mode gives you complete control over all the exposure settings. Full control is important, as it makes all your settings consistent while you’re shooting.
Photographers who are less comfortable with full Manual mode might find comfort in Shutter Priority (“Tv” on the mode dial). As per the name, this mode prioritizes shutter speed and that’s the only setting you get access to. The issue with shooting with shutter priority is that some camera models might decide to use less than ideal settings. Still, the main exposure setting you need to mess with on dark rides is the shutter, so in most cases, this mode will work fine.
Exposure Settings
Exposure settings are what tell the camera how much light to let into the picture; it’s basically everything having to do with taking a photo. I’m going to assume you’re shooting in Manual mode, but if you’re using shutter priority, then only pay attention to the shutter speed section below.
Aperture: This is a mechanical process in the lens that’s basically how big the hole is in the lens to let in light. Higher aperture is a smaller hole (for whatever reason), thus a lower aperture is desired for dark rides. My 50mm stops down to f/1.8, so I tend to set my aperture at f/1.8. Some people suggest f/2.0 to increase sharpness on prime lenses, but it’s up to you.
The caveat for a higher aperture is a denser depth of field. That’s not necessarily bad, as you can use that to create creative photos, but at f/1.8 the focus is tack sharp; one very small part of the entire photo is going to be in focus. Choose your focus point wisely!
Shutter speed: Another mechanical process, but in the camera itself (it’s what makes that recognizable “click-click-click” sound). The shutter is similar to a shutter on a window, it lets in light, but the “speed” of the shutter is how long that shutter remains open. In low-light, you need a slower shutter speed (so the shutter will stay open longer), and I usually shoot within a 1/100-1/30 range.
At 1/30, the sensor is exposed to light for 1/30 of a second. I’ve used shutter speeds that are even slower, but generally, there has to be a ride stop and a way to steady the camera; attractions tend to move too quickly to use slower shutter speeds while they’re in operation.1/60-1/80 seems to be a sweet spot for most people.
The caveat for a slower shutter speed is motion blur. Since you and your subject are moving, you have a higher likelihood of introducing motion blur from either your hand or ride vehicle moving the camera. If the subject is moving rapidly, you might get blur from the subject itself. In most cases, you’re just going to have a hard time keeping the camera still, so choose a comfortable shutter speed.
ISO: This setting is digital, in that it increases the sensitivity to light in the sensor. In low-light, you have no choice but to bump the ISO. Personally, I leave the camera on auto-ISO so I don’t have to deal with it. Most of the time, ISO 1600 or above is what you’re going to have to deal with, depending on your gear. ISO 3200 seems to be a sweet spot for most people. My camera has an option to choose what range of ISOs you want to use for auto-ISO, so that’s something you can use if your camera tends to use too high of an ISO.
The caveat for a higher ISO is higher digital noise, the grainy stuff that makes your pictures look like they were printed on old sandpaper. The only thing you can do to eliminate the noise is to shoot a lower ISO. It’s hard to deal with noise, especially if you’re like me and tend to “expose to the right” and use more exposure than technically needed. Some noise can be masked with the right settings in post-processing, but if you want sharp photos you don’t want to use noise reduction; just plan to shoot at a lower ISO.
Something else to note: Many newer attractions like the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Frozen Ever After, and Radiator Springs Racers (plus anything that’s been “plussed” with figures like the Hatbox Ghost on Haunted Mansion) have characters that use animated eyes and faces. The effects are actually screens and look really bright and wonderful, but they can wreak havoc on camera sensors. Part of it is shutter speed (which creates a sort of rolling shutter effect), part of it is being very bright compared to the rest of the scene. In most cases, you’re going to have to fix them in post and will have no other real options (and it may not be fixable in Lightroom only), but it’s something to be aware of.
Editing Dark Ride Photos
Unless you’re planning to get really nitty-gritty with editing in Photoshop, some basic settings in Lightroom or Camera RAW will work in most cases. These suggestions should get you started:
White Balance
When it comes to dark rides, this is a hard setting to work with, but it’s generally the make-or-break setting. Many of the lights that Disney uses in their attractions have dramatic color temperatures. Fire and lanterns are warm colored and most of the themed areas we visit use lanterns or fire for light. Every attraction is different though, as photos from the Haunted Mansion might be cooler in color, Pirates of the Caribbean might be very warm, and Fantasyland dark rides might have a lot of green tint from the blacklights.
I usually start off with selecting “auto” and seeing what it gives me. It generally gives me either too cool or warm, but it can be a starting point. The colors on dark rides are dramatic so I don’t suggest using the color picker to find what you think should be “white.” You’re really going to want to work with Temperature, as it controls the warm or coolness of the colors. When it comes to Tint, that’s up to the image if it needs more green or magenta. In the case of my Winnie-The-Pooh photo, it seriously needed both adjusted.
For any photo, it’s more of a personal taste of what you want your colors to look like. You can either choose to make the photo more attraction realistic or color realistic. For example, you might want to leave your Pirates photos warmer than you might other photos because the attraction to the naked eye is actually pretty warm anyway. I try to pick a good middle ground usually, but again, that middle ground is subjective to each person.
Tone
Tone is the panel where you’re going to fine tune your exposure. I tend to “expose to the right,” so my settings reflect that. Here are some suggestions for these settings:
Exposure: This adds more general exposure to the image. You can up this a bit if it will help, but beware of increasing the intensity of your digital noise. I have a couple tricks for using this without increasing that intensity, both in Tone and HSL (and sometimes you can actually get the slider to go negative and seriously decrease the intensity of the noise).
Contrast: This raises the highlights and darkens the shadows. I tend to bump this up a little bit to hide some of the noise in the shadows. It also helps make things a little more dramatic as well, so that’s a bonus.
Highlights: Raise or lower the brighter parts of the image. In general, your highlights are going to be overexposed and will need to be brought down. Adjust to your liking.
Shadows: Raise or lower the darker parts of the image. In general, you can raise this slightly, but not too much. I use a combination of raising this, contrast, and blacks to get some nicer shadows.
Whites: Adjusts the whites in the image. Adjust to your preference as this affects highlights usually.
Black: Adjusts the blacks in the image. I always bring the blacks down a bit to hide some of the darker parts of the image and create a more dramatic look.
Presence
Clarity: This setting plays with the contrast of the mid-tones of the image. I recommend being very careful with this setting as it creates strange artifacts and halos around objects in many cases. Only increase this by 10-20 if you feel like your image even needs it.
Vibrance and Saturation: How vibrant and saturated your colors are. I combined them because you don’t need much of either, especially with how saturated dark ride scenes are anyways. I usually set both to +10 and come back before the final export to play with them. Usually, I don’t even change afterward.
Hue, Saturation, Luminance (HSL)
This is how to fine tune colors without dropping the image into Photoshop. This panel uses eight channels of color that can be fine-tuned in their hue, saturation, and luminance. Here’s what to do with them:
Hue: Without explaining the basics of the color spectrum, this just changes the shade of each color channel. Not every image is going to have all of the colors of the spectrum, so just worry about the colors that are there.
My camera tends to saturate warmer colors on most dark rides towards the yellow-ish side, so I tend to make them a little bit more of a darker orange. Play with the sliders of the colors until you get the shade of colors you want.
Saturation: Color saturation for each channel. Say the predominant colors are warm so I would pull back on the warmer colors as they’re likely the ones that are oversaturated. I then would usually have a lot of blues in my shadows so I pull a lot of the cooler saturation out to help balance the colors.
Luminance: This changes the intensity of the exposure of each color. I generally use this in two ways (let’s assume the predominant colors are warm again). First, pull back the intensity of the blue in the shadows, and then second, brighten up some of my warmer colors. In brightening up the warmer colors, I can often pull my exposure slider from the tone panel down, which helps make the scene more dramatic looking and can eliminate the intensity of the noise and grain.
Lens Corrections
Correcting the distortion from the lens is something you should probably do every time you edit an image. This helps “flatten” the image so that everything looks the way we see it. A lens can distort portions of the captured image into a concave or convex shape. A lot of lenses create a natural vignette around the edge of the image as well. Most people don’t see it, but it makes a difference.
If you’re shooting in RAW, it’s as simple as clicking on “remove chromatic aberrations” and “enable profile corrections.” Lightroom should find the correct profile to fix the lens distortion and vignette. Luckily there’s very little distortion and vignetting on my 50mm lens since it’s a prime lens and has a long focal length so there’s not much adjustment to be done.
Something to note, though: Be careful with the vignette correction on dark rides. A lot of the time the correction will end up just correcting dark shadows and it will have no benefit. Just go ahead and slide the “Vignetting” slider down to “0” if you don’t want the dark corners brightened up.
It’s a lot of work and extra planning to shoot dark rides at Disney Parks, but how do yours look? Sharp and dramatic, hopefully. I hope these tips help you get started with shooting beautiful photos of your favorite attractions! Let me know in the comments what your dark ride shooting and editing workflows are! Also, in the future, I’ll plan on covering specific experiences (specific attractions, shows, etc) so let me know in the comments what you want me to cover!
If you enjoyed the photos in this article, make sure to follow @Dizfeed, @Disneylandpanda, @Disneyland_over_everything, and me (@ScottAttulaPhotography) on Instagram! Thanks to my friends who contributed their dark ride photos, you guys are amazing!
Save
Save
Save
SaveMario Balotelli's agent has told Sky Sports that the striker will not be leaving Liverpool this summer.
Balotelli, 24, joined Liverpool from AC Milan in a £16 million deal last summer, but scored just one Premier League goal as Brendan Rodgers' side finished sixth in the table.
The Italy international has struggled to win a starting role at Anfield this season and has been repeatedly linked with a move away from Merseyside.
But when asked whether Balotelli would be leaving this summer, his agent Mino Raiola told Sky Sports: "We have talks with Liverpool and he will stay. I spoke many times with the club and they were happy with his input as a professional.''
Asked whether the striker and manager Brendan Rodgers had adapted to each other over the course of the season, Raiola added: "I think Mario did, I cannot |
, D.C., this Memorial Day, I strongly recommend a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. There may be nowhere where American history is more highly concentrated in all its kooky cruel splendor — and so there’s also no better place to ask questions about it.
For instance, the grounds and the mansion at the entrance of Arlington once belonged to Robert E. Lee’s wife. Did we just seize it all during the Civil War, like a normal country? Not exactly: Instead we created a transparent sham where she was required to show up in person to pay her $92.07 in property taxes for 1864, and when she didn’t it was sold off at a public auction, with the U.S. government as the only bidder.
What about John F. Kennedy’s grave: Is all of him in there? No, his brain was removed during his autopsy and his body was buried without it. (The brain then spent some time at the National Archives before vanishing in 1966.)
And are there any Wiccans buried at Arlington? Presumably there always have been. But in 2007 the military added a pentacle to its official list of religious symbols that can be engraved on headstones, so it now can be publicly recognized.
But of course if you spend time with the dead from the Civil War and the Boxer Rebellion and Iwo Jima and Apollo 1, you’ll also find yourself asking larger questions. Every time I’ve gone there, as I’ve looked out from Lee’s hilltop mansion at the hundreds of thousands of soldiers quietly feeding the freshly-mown grass, I’ve wondered why human beings just can’t stop fighting wars.
The fervent pomp of Arlington to me always exudes desperation, as though we’re trying to suppress any acknowledgement that war’s the silliest thing people do. We sort ourselves into teams based on imaginary lines, dress up in costumes, pledge allegiance to pieces of cloth, and then mercilessly slaughter total strangers.
This reality — that waging war is both extremely unpleasant and fundamentally ridiculous, yet we keep doing it – indicates that it must serve some important purpose.
And all the history books I’ve ever read and all the history I’ve lived through suggests what that is: Wars are less about conflicts between societies than about conflicts within societies. Every country has a militaristic right-wing, and nothing helps that right-wing triumph over their domestic enemies more than a state of war. And just like a pharmaceutical company that doesn’t want to cure diseases when managing them is so profitable, their top priority is never bringing the war to an end, but maintaining and expanding their power within the country.
Amazing enough, Donald Trump recently told the National Governors Association exactly this, even if neither he nor they understood what he was saying. “We never win. And we don’t fight to win,” Trump declared. “$6 trillion we’ve spent in the Middle East … and we’re nowhere.”
But obviously Trump himself is somewhere: He’s in the White House. And lots of that $6 trillion is somewhere too, in the bank accounts of defense contractors. So if you understand who the real “we” are, we in fact have won the war on terror and are still winning. U.S. politics have been shoved hard to the right, making Trump possible, and since 2001 the value of Lockheed Martin stock has sextupled. The real we likewise have no interest in “fighting to win” in the sense Trump means — because that would require raising taxes on billionaires and drafting their children out of Stanford and Yale to go die in the sand, something that would quickly lead to the defeat of any president who tried it.
This perspective on the purpose of war was directly expressed by George W. Bush and his circle before he ever became president. Texas journalist and Bush family friend Mickey Herskowitz was hired to write a Bush biography for the 2000 campaign, and spent hours interviewing him. Herskowitz later said that Bush was already thinking about attacking Iraq — because, Bush said, “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander in chief.” According to Herskowitz, people around Bush, including Dick Cheney, hoped to “start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” Why? Because, Bush told Herskowitz, that would give him “political capital” that he could use to “get everything passed that I want to get passed.”
In other words, the actual country of Iraq had little to do with the Iraq War. Its main purpose wasn’t beating Saddam Hussein, it was beating Americans who wanted to stop Bush from privatizing Social Security.
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the motivations of our official enemies are the same: i.e., they’re consumed with gaining power in their own societies, and from their perspective we exist mainly as bit players in that drama. A key focus of Al Qaeda when planning its 2000 attack on the USS Cole was filming it so the footage could be used in a recruitment video — one needed, as the 9/11 Commission report put it, for “their struggle for pre-eminence among other Islamist and jihadist movements.” Unfortunately, the terrorist with the camera overslept and missed his compatriots blowing themselves up. So Al Qaeda then filmed a re-enactment and used that tape instead. Thus 17 Americans on the Cole were killed in real life, but zero Americans had to die to create what Al Qaeda truly wanted, a way to consolidate influence in their world.
The same dynamic was involved in the 9/11 operation itself. According to the commission’s report, part of Osama bin Laden’s motivation was that he believed the attack would benefit Al Qaeda “by attracting more suicide operatives, eliciting greater donations, and increasing the number of sympathizers willing to provide logistical assistance.” Just excise the word “suicide” and bin Laden sounds exactly like George W. Bush, planning to inflict spectacular ultra-violence thousands of miles away in hopes of getting bigger campaign contributions.
For Saddam Hussein’s part, all his foreign policy had one goal, keeping him in power for the next week. It’s true his 1990 invasion of Kuwait could easily have led to his overthrow and death in the medium term, and in fact it did in the long term. But that was irrelevant from his perspective, since the invasion eliminated the dire threats he faced in short term. As he explained after he was captured by the U.S., he had created an enormous military establishment during the Iran-Iraq War, something dangerous in a region with a long history of army coups. He went into Kuwait, he said, in part just to keep his generals busy.
What’s most surprising isn’t that politicians start wars to consolidate their own power, but that the people don’t always simply assume that leaders choose war for that reason. Of course, the main calculation for politicians when making decisions is whether or not those decisions will help tighten their grip on the levers of society. From prime ministers to dictators, anyone who doesn’t think about that first and foremost will be, evolutionarily speaking, selected against, and quickly find themselves outside the palace walls.
That’s why we need a Memorial Day, I believe, and so does seemingly every country on earth. At Arlington and at all the world’s solemn military cemeteries you can witness the endless ocean of young men and women who have been shot, gassed, incinerated, ripped limb from limb, shredded, driven to suicide. In the best of situations they died because of talented warmongers in other countries. In the worst it’s because we ourselves were so weak that we handed over power to killers who were delighted to see us die if it gave them a three week bump in their Gallup approval rating. We have to draw a veil of consecration across all of it, because looking at it directly is unbearable.Despite the implied transience of the mobile home lifestyle, Trailer Haven has a look of permanence about it. Among the cypress trees and the knee-high wooden fences separating one leafy lot from the next, residents of the San Leandro trailer park have tricked out their lots with all the trappings of home: windmills and goofy lawn signs and statuary painted a not-quite-convincing shade of gold. But not lot #190. No more than an asphalt parking space on the outer edge of the camp next to the pay phone and the exit gate, lot #190 is meant for people who don't plan to stick around for long.
Staking out the park on June 12, 2002, Brian Odell and Matt O'Brien were worried that the three inhabitants of that lot were about to leave town in a hurry. Both men work as investigators for Home Depot, the nation's second-largest retail chain. They believed that the people whose trailer was parked on lot #190 were engineering a massive bar-code scam that had defrauded their company of hundreds of thousands of dollars. For weeks, Home Depot's loss-prevention department had been tracking the trio's movements as they refunded their way through Texas, Arizona, and then California. By the time they'd swept through the Bay Area, they'd hit stores in Pittsburg, Concord, San Ramon, and Pleasanton. They'd been to El Cerrito, Emeryville, Union City, and Milpitas. They'd been as far north as Sacramento and as far south as Salinas.
But until now, Home Depot's investigators had always been at least a day behind the three. They'd pored over in-store surveillance tape of a large, balding, middle-aged man, later identified as John Patrick Hay, who apparently entered the store with pre-cut bar-code stickers, photocopied en masse at a copy shop. He affixed them over the existing bar codes on the items he wished to buy, selecting the same products every time: a kitchen faucet retailing at $169, which he would relabel with a sticker for a lower-end model worth only $39. He did the same with an outdoor lighting kit worth $249, which he would cover with the bar codes for a cheaper model worth $55. The sales for the more expensive items would then be rung up at the lower price.
Later the same day, the group would show up at a neighboring Home Depot and a second graying, middle-aged man later identified as Anthony Davenport would peel off the homemade sticker, then return the items for their original prices. With each exchange, he would pocket the difference between the two grades of home fixture. Since he usually exchanged several faucets and light kits at a time, each visit to the refund desk yielded between $1,000 and $1,500. When asked for identification, the men often presented English or Irish passports; later investigation would reveal that they had more than a dozen of these, each with a different serial number.
Davenport's wife, Linda Broderick, was the third member of the group. Although she had only been captured once on a Home Depot camera, the investigators believed that her name was on the multiple bank accounts into which the trio's profits were funneled. As part of the stakeout, O'Brien had trailed Broderick and Davenport to a San Leandro Bank of America, where Broderick transferred a $300,000 cashier's check to her account with the Bank of Ireland. Although the trio still had several days left on their rent at Trailer Haven, the banking transaction seemed like a sure sign that they were planning to split.
After weeks of surveillance, the Home Depot security officers knew they were onto something big, but they didn't quite know how big. They didn't know that the events of that day would unleash a bizarre yearlong investigation that will culminate in Oakland next week with the beginning of the sentencing process for Davenport, Hay, and Broderick on federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They didn't know that the trio's trail would lead through at least 24 states, and that the investigation's nationwide scope would draw in the FBI and the US Attorney's Office. They didn't know that the dent the three managed to make in Home Depot's pocketbook, originally estimated at $400,000, would soar toward an estimated $1 million. They didn't know that the scam artists' methodology would turn into a case study on how to beat the bar-code system with nothing more than a Xerox machine and a polite insistence that the customer is always right. And they didn't know that the three would be linked to the Irish Travelers, a shadowy ethnic subculture with a reputation among law enforcement officials for conducting home improvement and shoplifting scams. All they knew was that their suspects were in sight, and that they were getting away.
Nobody knows exactly when Davenport and Hay began switching bar codes, but by the summer of 2002 the drifters had created a well-honed system. "This is what they did for a living," says Cathy Pickard, the fraud detective who conducted the San Leandro Police Department's investigation. "They'd wake up in the morning, get in the car, and that was their job."
Their method was simple: they kept moving, never staying in one area for more than a few weeks. One guy would buy and another guy would return, making them less likely to be recognized. To a clerk not intimately familiar with the products in question, the packaging for the low-end and high-end faucets and light kits looked strikingly similar. The two men said they were contractors refurbishing hotels across the country who went to Home Depot to return unused parts. Both men looked unassuming and acted pleasantly; the only thing slightly odd about them was that they frequently used passports instead of driver's licenses when asked for identification. (Both Davenport and Broderick are Irish nationals; Hay is from Scotland.)
If a store employee demanded a receipt, Davenport would take out a folder containing hundreds of old receipts and haplessly thumb through them as though looking for the right one. Usually, the clerk would lose interest and just give him the refund. If anyone questioned either man too closely, they'd just walk away. After all, there was always another Home Depot just down the road. They'd conducted hundreds of returns, sometimes hitting as many as six stores a day, before Home Depot noticed something was amiss. "If you look at it in the big scale you'd go, 'How could you not have known?'" Pickard says. "But when you look at it on the day-to-day level, it's brilliant."
Then in late 2001, Home Depot stopped offering cash refunds without a receipt, instead reimbursing customers with gift cards. For Hay and Davenport, this had a downside: the cards weren't money. But there was a benefit, too: ID wasn't scrutinized very closely when a customer redeemed a gift card. So although sometimes the men simply used these gift cards to fund the next purchase, they often converted them back into cash by selling the cards at a discount to a handful of steady customers. Each card was usually worth around $1,200.
Just about everyone who has touched the Home Depot case agrees on two things: that the bar-code switching scheme was simple but clever, and that it might have gone on indefinitely if it hadn't been for Dennis Dees and his apparent love of cabinetry.
Dees, a Mesquite, Texas man in the process of building a new house, proved to be one of the scammers' best clients. After responding to a newspaper ad, he bought roughly $100,000 worth of cards for seventy cents on the dollar. But Dees wasn't canny enough to spend the cards in small quantities over a long period of time. Instead, he inadvertently set in motion Home Depot's internal investigation last year when he walked into his local store for a set of kitchen cabinets and plunked down more than $20,000 worth of gift cards that had originated in five different states. As Pickard puts it drily: "That's a lot of birthday presents."
The unusual transaction caught the eye of Darren Jackson, the Home Depot loss-prevention investigator for the retailer's southwest Texas region. Jackson says that after tracking the gift cards back to Davenport and Hay, then analyzing their transactions, he quickly realized that the two men were pulling a bar-code switch, and had cleverly chosen to purchase similar-looking home fixtures that had a substantial price differential between the high- and low-end versions. "What would be the value of making ten dollars on an item?" he asks
philosophically. "It's not even worth your time."
At that point, Home Depot was only able to track the group through thirteen states, but it was clear that they'd covered plenty of ground. Jackson found proof that they'd been doing refunds all the way from Georgia to California, and from as far north as Ohio down to the Gulf States.
Now the challenge was to catch up with them. Realizing that the group was moving up the California coast, Jackson began working with Odell, his East Bay counterpart, and the two put out the word to Bay Area stores. "I was on the phone every day with the stores, telling them the scenario: 'This is what the guy looks like, this is what he's returning, did he have a passport?'" Jackson recalls. He had Bay Area stores fax him their refund slips to check if the trio already had passed through; meanwhile, Odell began deactivating the gift cards that he knew had already been issued to them.
Odell admits that this move may have tipped his hand to the people he was pursuing. "They were realizing those last couple of days that something was going on," he remembers. "And then they were getting refused. They were getting questioned a little more." At one point, when a suspicious manager at the Sunnyvale Home Depot demanded receipts, they simply left the store. But still nobody had managed to catch them in action or figure out where they were headed next.
Then the agents got a lucky break. A shoplifting prevention agent in the Milpitas store recognized Davenport from one of the surveillance photos that the security officers had sent to Bay Area stores. Three years earlier, he'd arrested Davenport at a San Mateo Home Depot. Davenport's arrest report from that incident showed a history of petty theft, and listed his address as Trailer Haven. And in another stroke of luck, when Odell called the trailer park to see if anyone matching Davenport's description was staying there, it turned out that he was back, albeit under his frequently employed pseudonym, "Andrew Baguley." Better yet, as trailer park manager Robert Granada says, Davenport hadn't exactly been subtle about his ties to Home Depot. He had unsuccessfully offered to sell Granada and one of his neighbors thousands of dollars worth of the store's gift cards. "He had $5,000 worth of credit on it, and he said he'd give it to me for $3,500," he remembers. "That didn't hit me right. Nobody will give you something for nothing."
But although the Home Depot agents were certain they had the right guys, Odell was having trouble getting law enforcement interested. The FBI's white-collar-crime unit basically told him to call when he had a suspect ready to interview. The San Leandro Police Department initially resisted getting involved because there was no evidence that the trio had conducted any crimes in its city. Plus, San Leandro has a relatively small police force -- its fraud department employs only two detectives -- and the officers were well aware of the cascade of paperwork the case would require. "To tell the truth," Pickard says, "when Brian Odell came into the front counter we were praying they would do this in Hayward."
So imagine this: Odell and O'Brien are camped inside the manager's office at Trailer Haven, watching the action unfold from behind its tinted windows. They have no badges and no guns. And they have just watched their number-one suspect export $300,000 worth of what they believe to be their company's money out of the country.
But then Davenport and Hay did exactly what would bring them under local police jurisdiction: They headed for the San Leandro Home Depot. The two security officers tailed them to the store where, for reasons no one has yet figured out, Hay and Davenport conducted a totally legitimate transaction, returning three of the cheaper faucets for what they originally paid for them. Davenport even bought some lumber. But by this point, the Home Depot investigators felt they had collected enough evidence to justify an arrest. It was finally time to make a move.
The problem was, who would do the arresting? As it turned out, Pickard and her partner, Sgt. Greg Lemmon, were out collaring somebody else at that moment. The only other option was a citizen's arrest. "I'm on the phone with Pickard, basically saying, 'What do I do at this point?'" Odell remembers. "Just as they were getting into the car, she said, 'Take 'em.'"
Odell and two other investigators made their move. Although they didn't have guns, they did have handcuffs, so they announced who they were and informed Davenport and Hay that they were under arrest. "They were a little startled about it, but it was very calm, peaceful," Odell remembers.
According to a subsequent police report, as the Home Depot crew arrested the two men in the parking lot, Hay tried to shed some of the bar codes he was carrying with him. Otherwise, Odell says, the two seemed surprised to be confronted, especially since they hadn't done anything illegal that day. "I don't think that at that point Hay and Davenport knew what we actually knew," Odell muses. "We didn't tell them. We didn't say 'We've been following you all over the country, we know what's going on.' We didn't really say a heck of a lot." Two hours of awkward silence must have ensued, because Davenport invoked his Miranda rights and it took Pickard and Lemmon a couple of hours to show up and take custody of the men.
Leaving Odell behind to fill out paperwork, the San Leandro police officers headed back to Trailer Haven, where Pickard spotted Broderick, the third member of the group, getting into a van. Its engine was running, and it was packed floor to ceiling with the trio's belongings. The group owned three small pet dogs, all of which were in cages on the front seat. To Pickard, the whole thing looked like an escape in process, and she put an immediate stop to it. "I thought, because of the circumstances surrounding the whole deal that they probably had a plan in place like, 'If we're not back in two hours, pack up and leave,'" she says.
Perhaps because they didn't realize the extent of the investigation in process, Hay and Davenport gave the cops permission to search their vehicles. "I took everything out of the van," Pickard says. "If it was a piece of paper, I took it. I figured as soon as they figured out we got them, they're going to take back their consent." Her search gave the police their first insight into exactly how lucrative the scam had been and how well-organized the group was. "We found three separate CDs for $100,000," Pickard says. "The FBI found more later. They had five Wells Fargo accounts, three Bank of America accounts, three CDs with Affinity Bank, a Bank of Ireland account, a Royal Bank of Canada account."
The police also found sheaves of preprinted bar codes, a small handheld scanner, a laptop computer, and hundreds of Home Depot receipts dating back to October, 2001. They found a briefcase containing credit cards and drivers' licenses for several states in each person's name, as well as under aliases for both Davenport and Broderick. Once the police analyzed the computer's hard drive, they found that the group had been using the Internet to download documents for multiple Irish passports. Davenport and Broderick apparently often used aliases; Hay always used his own name.
"The bells start ringing; I'm thinking this is a big deal," Pickard says. "I couldn't figure out why these people were living in a trailer. They had over a million dollars in assets that we could find, and they were sending money back to Ireland, where they don't live. The only thing I could figure is they were sending money back for a bigger cause.... In my cop mind I'm thinking I need to get a hold of someone: Interpol, or Scotland Yard, or Homeland Defense."
The little case that nobody wanted to take had suddenly gotten a lot bigger.
John Hay, writing from the Camp Parks federal facility in Dublin where he awaits sentencing, seems bemused by the furor law enforcement's discovery of the money caused, and the sort of wild conclusions people were drawing from it. "When we were arrested on June 12, 2002, this was a relatively minor case," he writes. "When they found bank accounts totaling almost $1 million they thought at first we were involved with the IRA, even though I am Scottish."
Hay dismisses the conjecture about the Irish Republican Army as totally baseless, as do court-appointed attorneys for Davenport and Broderick. (Davenport did not respond to a written request for an interview, and Broderick's attorney would not allow his client to be interviewed.) Although the FBI declined to comment on its own investigation into the case, and the press spokesman for the US Attorney's Office confined his remarks to vague generalities, it seems clear that neither agency found proof that the trio was using their cash to bankroll any political factions.
But what were the con artists doing with all that money? They certainly weren't spending it on their lifestyle. They lived a spartan and highly mobile existence, crossing the nation in a small caravan consisting of a silver and green Ford Econoline van, a black Subaru station wagon, and a trailer. True, the vehicles were shiny and new, and the trailer was a snappy recent model equipped with comforts such as a TV and VCR, and a slide-out side panel that expanded the size of the interior. But the accommodations were cramped and less than luxurious. The three of them lived together in the trailer, and Hay even slept on the floor. "The van was really weighted down," Granada says. "I don't know what they had in there, but it seems like it had a lot of stuff in it. I'm surprised it even pulled the trailer, it was that full." And they certainly didn't wear any fancy clothes. The worn faces and hairstyles they present in their police mug shots are redolent of lives lived on the open road, not at the day spa.
Nor did they seem to be buying themselves a life of leisure. Granada remembers that their trailer was always bustling with activity. "They were always busy, in and out," he says. "One would stay and two would go, two would stay and one would go." Broderick earned a reputation for hogging the Internet connection in the Trailer Park's front office. "She was kind of a pest," Granada laughs. On the surface, the three didn't stand out from any of the European vacationers who often rent spots in Trailer Haven's overnight section as they pass through the East Bay on summer camping trips.
Except for one thing: These travelers were always on vacation. The three have been linked to the Irish Travelers, a nomadic ethnic minority population analogous, but unrelated to, the Rom, or Gypsy, people. Throughout the world, Irish Travelers have gained notoriety for blowing into town, pulling off home improvement-based scams, and then leaving before anyone is the wiser.
There are Welsh, Scottish, and English Travelers as well, and they share a somewhat blurry history of where they came from and why they took to the road. In Ireland, various legends trace their roots back to the dispossessed of all sorts -- pre-Celtic wandering minstrels and poets; Druid priests fleeing the spread of Catholicism; farmers displaced by Oliver Cromwell's campaigns in the seventeenth century; people with nowhere left to go when the Irish potato famine hit. Historically, many Irish Travelers supported themselves as musicians and through metalworking, although the resulting "Tinker" nickname is now considered something of a racial slur.
In the United Kingdom, the fate of the Travelers is an active social issue. They have their own lobbying groups pushing for better government-funded social programs, the establishment of permanent housing, investigations into ethnic discrimination, and camping sites for those who wish to take time off from the road. In general, Irish Travelers are strict Roman Catholics, and many speak a secret language loosely based on Gaelic and known as Shelta, Gammon, or Cant.
No one seems to have a very accurate count of how many Travelers currently live in the United States -- estimates range between 7,000 and 30,000 -- although it's generally believed that Travelers first began emigrating to the United States in the 1840s during the potato famine. In the United States, the Traveler population seems to be concentrated in South Carolina, Texas, and Arizona, and of those who still travel -- now often driving top-of-the-line SUVs and trailers -- many make their living doing home repair and contracting work.
But despite these tidbits, the lives of Irish Travelers remain mysterious to outsiders. "They are very closed societies and they marry within their own, they stay to their own," says Kevin Mullen, librarian for San Francisco's Irish Cultural Center. "A lot of people say that they are light-fingered and duplicitous, and others say they're not." Like most itinerants in a settled world, the Travelers aroused the suspicion of townspeople throughout their history and have been the subject of hyperbolic legends. "In historical times they used to say that they'd steal babies or children," Mullen says.
Even in modern times, their association with trickery and crime has not abated. Just ask the California Contractors State License Board. The board frequently puts out warnings about Traveler-related home repair scams, many of which are perpetrated against trailer park residents and the elderly. Stuart Rind, an investigator for the board, says that the number of Traveler cases his agency investigates annually is on the rise as law enforcement grows more familiar with the prototypical Traveler scams. Every year, he says, "There are probably in the neighborhood of 25 to 50 cases that we can clearly say are Traveler-related, but we may have reports for double that amount where for one reason or another we can't make that designation."
In one of the most common cons, a group of Travelers will approach a resident, claim that they've noticed a defect in his or her roof, and offer to repair it. For emphasis, sometimes they'll sneak a squirt-bottle or sponge inside the home and, when the owner isn't looking, create a wet mark on the ceiling or floor to convince him that he has a hitherto-unnoticed leak. Then they'll offer to spray the roof with a sealant. But a resident who agrees to let them do the repairs doesn't get very much in return. "Sometimes we can prove they've done no work, just walked around on the roof for a half hour," Rind says. "Or sometimes they've sprayed latex paint."
Realizing that one has been fooled can be difficult, especially if the homeowner is elderly and unlikely to scale the roof to check up on the work himself -- Rind says some people have unwittingly been swindled by the same con five or six times.
In a related scam, Travelers have been known to approach mobile home residents and offer to coat their homes with a sunlight-reflecting substance that will keep the trailer cooler, although in reality this may or may not work. Even when employing legitimate materials, such as using asphalt to pave driveways, the board says that Travelers sometimes do work that is so shoddy the homeowner has to pay someone else to redo it. Because the Travelers are usually long gone by the time anyone's noticed the damage, it's hard to track them down for a refund.
A new Traveler scam that Rind says is emerging in the South Bay is even more sinister: They show up offering to trim your trees, get you out in the backyard, and then have their cohorts burglarize your house while you're not looking.
While the home improvement scams are mostly performed by men, female Travelers have frequently been associated with shoplifting crimes. For example, Rind says, a common trick is to buy one set of clothes or cartful of items, steal a second identical one, and then return the legitimately purchased items for cash.
The bar-code-switching scheme perpetrated by Davenport, Hay, and Broderick appears to be a unique hybrid of the home repair and shoplifting cons. Perhaps its slight variance from a typical Traveler scam is part of the reason they were able to get away with it for so long.
Even though they were wily enough to con a major corporation out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the three never seem to have applied their energies to enjoying their ill-gotten gains. The specifics of their pre-Home Depot lives are hard to gather, but the details gleaned by their lawyers show that they were used to moving from place to place. Davenport grew up without parents and spent much of his adult life working as a civil engineer all over the world, according to his attorney, Daniel Horowitz. Although Davenport didn't have an extensive education, he reportedly did well for himself by taking on unpopular postings in Africa and the Middle East.
Broderick, meanwhile, was raised by foster parents. According to her attorney, James Giller, her foster father was in the military and moved the family back and forth between England and Ireland. As an adult, she worked as a hairdresser, accompanying Davenport around the globe. She also made money by crafting beaded jewelry, which she sold at fairs.
Davenport and Broderick's initial connection to Hay is unknown. He apparently knew them before he was deported from the United States in 2000, then met up with them again once he was allowed to re-enter the country. "Hay is somebody they took in to try to befriend because he's a nice man and he seemed lonely and they wanted to be friends with him," Horowitz says. "He's a very charming, smart man."
So if they didn't aspire to penthouse living, why collect all that cash? A possible explanation is that the three, all in their late fifties or early sixties and none in excellent health, planned to return to Ireland and retire on it. Davenport, for example, has a lung condition called sarcoidosis that requires him to take prednisone, a catabolic steroid often taken by lung cancer patients. Since his imprisonment, he has undertaken a series of hunger strikes because he feels he isn't being given proper medical care at the Santa Rita Jail. "He thinks it's an abysmal dungeon of a place," Horowitz says. "The last we knew he was really, really unhealthy.... His wife is terrified he's going to die." According to Hay, throughout his yearlong incarceration Davenport has spent several weeks in Oakland's Highland Hospital and has been on life support multiple times.
Hay had a different set of health problems, Pickard says. "Mr. Hay had at one point probably weighed 650 pounds, and he basically told us he owes his life to Linda for helping him lose weight," she says. "He's a shadow of himself, maybe 300 pounds. She would only let him eat certain things. He was in bad physical straits until she kind of took him under her wing and made him lose weight."
But while their motives may be obscure, what is clear is that the three charmed practically everyone they met, including lawyers and the police. "They're really the salt of the earth," Horowitz says. "They don't have a single incident of ever hurting an individual. You'll find nobody who's ever crossed their path who didn't come out richer. When they stayed with people, they'd leave them money."
When asked for examples of this kindness, people tend to bring up their highly doted-upon dogs. Davenport, Hay, and Broderick had three of them, which they reportedly treated like children. One was so elderly and blind that they would push it around in a baby carriage. Granada says he also sometimes spotted Davenport shuttling the dogs about the trailer park in a basket on the back of his bicycle. "They sure do love those dogs," Horowitz sighs. One of the obstacles to negotiating their eventual plea agreement was that Davenport wanted to release some money to the people who took care of his dogs because he appreciated their kindness, Horowitz says. "Literally, him and Linda spent more time in jail because they wanted to pay back these people."
People were also charmed by the group's close emotional bonds with one another. "They're very devoted to each other," Pickard says. "If you travel across the country in a trailer, a married couple and a three-hundred-pound man sleeping on the floor, you have to get along." Horowitz says that although Davenport was originally booked into Camp Parks, once he learned that he would not be allowed to send daily letters to his wife he asked to be transferred to the less accommodating Santa Rita Jail. The two of them are said to be equally fond of Hay, who also complains that they are not allowed to correspond with each other, despite having no other close friends in this country.
If the gift of the con artist is the ability to get strangers to sympathize with you, this group had it in spades. Even the investigating detectives found it hard to speak ill of them. There's a rather sweet postscript in Pickard's police report in which she notes that after arresting Davenport, San Leandro officers made an extra trip back to the trailer park to pick up his medication. "They were very kind, gentle people," Pickard remembers, and admits to being impressed by the scope of what they were able to pull off. "They found something that worked and they worked it.... Their thoughts were along the lines of 'We're not hurting anybody -- we found a flaw in the system and we're exploiting it.' It's true that in their minds they weren't doing anything wrong."
Not surprisingly, the federal government saw things differently. The prosecution against Davenport, Hay, and Broderick was transferred from state to federal court after the United States Attorney's Office argued that it should have jurisdiction because the case was essentially wire fraud, and not burglary and forgery. The government's reasoning: At the end of each sales day, individual Home Depot stores transmit their sales information via a T-1 line back to the retailer's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Authorization for returns also cross over the same line. Since the bar-code switch meant that false information about sales and returns moved over the T-1 line, the US Attorney's office claimed that this constituted deliberate use of interstate wires for fraudulent purposes.
It's a claim refuted by Hay, who calls the charge "completely bogus." He writes, "Any offences we committed were over and we had left the store before this transaction was transmitted to their head office at 9:00 each night -- and to be guilty of wire |
company may be too deeply invested to just walk away, given that it has already sunk a billion dollars into drilling the deepest mine shaft of its kind in the United States, on private land.
But Featherstone believes Resolution might do just that if Grijalva’s bill passes. “That’s a lot of money to you and me, but not to them. Their corporate culture is all about maximizing profits.” If Resolution doesn’t get what it wants, it could simply take a billion-dollar tax loss, says Featherstone. “It’s just not that big of a deal to them.”
Get our Tribal Affairs newsletter ↓All three: mscAlert, mscPrompt and mscConfirm support similar APIs as shown for mscConfirm
mscConfirm
Simplest mscConfirm(title, okCallback)
mscConfirm("Delete?",function(){ alert("Post deleted"); });
With subtitle mscConfirm(title, subtitle, okCallback)
mscConfirm("Delete", "Are you sure you want to delete this post?", function(){ alert("Post deleted"); });
All arguments mscConfirm(title, subtitle, okCallback, cancelCallback)
mscConfirm("Delete", "Are you sure you want to delete this post?", function(){ alert("Post deleted"); }, function() { alert('Cancelled'); });
As an object mscConfirm(object)
mscConfirm({ title: 'License', subtitle: 'Do you accept the licese agreement?', // default: '' okText: 'I Agree', // default: OK cancelText: 'I Dont', // default: Cancel, dismissOverlay: true, // default: false, closes dialog box when clicked on overlay. onOk: function() { alert('Awesome.'); }, onCancel: function() { alert('Sad face :(.'); } });
mscPrompt
As an object mscPrompt(object)
mscPrompt({ title: 'Subscribe', subtitle: 'Enter your email to subscribe to the newsletter', // default: '' okText: 'Subscribe', // default: OK cancelText: 'Cancel', // default: Cancel, placeholder: 'Your email here', // default: empty, placeholder for input text box onOk: function(val) { mscAlert("Your email: "+val+" has subscribed to the newsletter."); }, onCancel: function() { mscAlert(":( You cancelled on me."); } });
mscAlert
Simplest mscAlert(title)
mscAlert("Hello World");
As an object mscAlert(object)
mscAlert({ title: 'Done', subtitle: 'You have subscribed to the mailing list.', // default: '' okText: 'Close', // default: OK });
With new lines and carriage returns mscAlert(object)You must be registered to post comments. Login or Register
trailertrash writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 4:34:38 AM
Really can't make my mind up about this, Looks ok i guess..
Rambo writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 4:41:50 AM
robert zemeckis just had an orgasm
Burt_Reynolds writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 4:49:19 AM
Dont like these freaky looking render dudes! same as that chrismas train bollocks... there just souless!!!
The Derp Knight writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 5:16:32 AM
As I said before, the fact that Moffat and Wright wrote this is reason enough for me to see this.
ilovemovies82 writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 5:39:46 AM
Spielberg. I'll watch ANYTHING he's involved with. Looks pretty good. And the fact that Peter Jackson is a producer is a plus too.
masht7 writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 5:59:51 AM
Cast looks great, so does the live-animation. But I'm not so sure if it'll be great story-wise.
The Derp Knight writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 6:05:03 AM
@Masht7
Watch the 5th season of Doctor Who and tell me again it won't be great story-wise.
mustardayonnaise writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 6:07:22 AM
meh. tired of that cg doodoo
Freudian_Nightmare writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 6:15:14 AM
The CGI looked fine and the movie looked somewhat entertaining but then, in the end, hello uncanny valley. I don't get why they went the motion capture-way. This would've looked so much better in live-action.
Cinemaisdead writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 6:21:50 AM
Could be OK, don't think it will do too well in the box office though considering most younger generations probably don't know who Tin Tin is. There's something about CGI that normal films just can't beat visually. Maybe it's normal films trying to make sequences look too real and failing. I'll probably see it.
Kurskij writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 7:30:57 AM
When WETA takes care of the business - it shows.
Looks much better than Zemekis' features.
SACdaddy writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 7:35:59 AM
Creepy Polar Express CGI is not for me. This looks lame anyway.
boogiel writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 7:54:38 AM
Good live animation CGI. They should done the same thing with the Hulk.
trailertrash writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 8:21:45 AM
freud -
Agree, live action would have been more appealing. I Dont really see why they couldn't have made it that way.
Muelofthefenz writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 9:18:52 AM
Hm. Not sure...
bandolero999 writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 9:56:09 AM
and I thought Lou Diamond Phillips was dead
Guess he's still making movies thanks to Alex by putting out his latest movie Takedown.
BadChadB33 writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 10:27:49 AM
Looks ok, dvd watch.
trailertrash writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 11:00:42 AM
Schwarzenegger Admits to Fathering Child With Housekeeper
Go Arnold, You sly old dog you!!
bandolero999 writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 11:08:48 AM
yea Trailer Trash i saw the news on that one
ALEX SHOULD of posted that as well with the new Mortal Kombat episode is about RAIDEN
rocketman writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 1:47:09 PM
Looks crap,TinTin is for nobrashes
thomas deadison writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 1:50:15 PM
Loved the posters but this is underwhelming.
minkowski writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 2:34:28 PM
Jesus Christ, you people, you see a poster you like with some name you think means win and you cream your pants, but then five seconds later you see a trailer that sucks and your back to being negative.
I've heard of manic-depressive, but this is just crazy. Either love the damned thing, hate it, or the third option, just wait till the f*cker shows up on the screen.
Either stick to your guns or don't draw.
"I don't get why they went the motion capture-way."
Because hand-animated reality is expensive and time consuming and because these people think that with each MC advancement the results will provide a convincing appearance and yet they never do, usually because they're too lazy to painstakingly edit the keyframes to smooth out the 'uncanny' animation.
Thnik how real a Disney film like Sleeping Beauty looks compared to some sh*t like Polar Express. One uses hand-drawn animated frames, the other motion-capture. One technique is more than half a century old, the other is a cutting-edge and quickly-developing mature technology. One works well to convince the viewer the characters are real, the other does exactly the opposite.
Ranger writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 2:54:13 PM
I watched this with an open mind... no expectations. And it didn't show me enough to grab me.
So I'm just going to sit here and grab myself.
rocketman writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 3:54:02 PM
f*ck grabbing,i would rather fist myself than watch Tintin,bender comic for faggy frogs and Belgium types.
trailertrash writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 5:05:56 PM
Spoken like a true Brit Rocket, Bravo good sir!!
rocketman writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 5:38:50 PM
Lol cheers ;)
lewis2001 writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 6:25:04 PM
wow minkowski thanks for the thesus on Motion capture -your lame-
The reason they went Mo-Cap is because it was the only way to stay true to HERGE and his original Tintin books. And because hand-drawn Tintin would look like a kids movie
Ranger writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 7:54:50 PM
@rocket - lol.
numnut writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 9:15:36 PM
That trailer was a HUGE let down- if decent footage cant be released, dont release any
minkowski writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 9:22:00 PM
It seems to me like 99% of the people who post on WP are certified dipsh*ts, with the f*cking brown diploma and the plastic step-ladder and everything.
"The reason they went Mo-Cap is because it was the only way to stay true to HERGE and his original Tintin books."
Tintin is a static comic strip originating in 1926, so how the f*ck could it have used motion capture? Motion capture is for animation, not cartoon comics, and is a mathematical/camera technique to import captured real-life motion into virtual actors and props, making them move, supposedly, with much improved realism.
And yes, moron, you can hand animate some sh*tty film like Tintin, just like the Disney artists did and do, and they even have books for 3D artists on hand-animating CGI using manual techniques. Without motion capture, so please, shut the f*ck up.
"And because hand-drawn Tintin would look like a kids movie"
And this doesn't look like a kids film? I mean, I know you're 25 and all but you must think that because YOU like Tintin, that makes it an adult film, because you imagine 'your' an adult, and yet it looks like a f*cking CG film for children to me.
Or twenty-something year old fags.
"your lame"
No, 'your' lame.
minkowski writes:
on May 17th, 2011 at 9:25:56 PM
This is the sort of garbage self-loathing Spielberg's trying to sell to American audiences:
"The Shooting Star was nonetheless controversial. The story line involved a race between two crews trying to reach a meteorite which had landed in the Arctic. Herg� chose a subject that was as fantastic as possible to avoid issues related to the crisis of the times and to thereby avoid trouble with the censors. Nonetheless politics intruded. In the original version, the crew Tintin joined was composed of Europeans from Axis or neutral countries ("Europe") while their underhanded rivals were Americans, financed by a person with a Jewish name and what Nazi propagandists would dub "Jewish features";[14] later editions would substitute a fictitious country for the United States. Tintin himself uses a World War II Arado 196 German reconnaissance aircraft. In a scene which appeared when the story was being serialised in Le Soir, two Jews, depicted in classic anti-Semitic caricature, are shown watching Philippulus harassing Tintin. One actually looks forward to the end of the world, arguing that it would mean that he would not be obliged to settle with his creditors."
Heopfully, Tintin will fail and that's the last we will ever hear of Spielberg.
Scott Baiowulf writes:
on May 18th, 2011 at 12:48:22 AM
a movie for kids... based on a comic from our grandparents... yeah, seems legit.
DaveThePhotoGuy writes:
on May 18th, 2011 at 4:15:39 AM
Cinema- With you on "Doctor Who", Moffat writing is better than previous writer.
Will watch this just because Moffat and Wright are writing it.Late last week the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill 2016 (“Bill”) was passed by Parliament. The Bill amends the Narcotic Drugs Act 1967 to permit the cultivation of medicinal cannabis in Australia and the provision of same to patients in need of it for therapeutic purposes.
Prior to the passing of this legislation, Australia had laws to regulate the import, export and manufacture of cannabinoids and cannabis raw material, but such laws did not allow the cultivation in Australia of cannabis plants for any medicinal purposes whatsoever.
Under the new scheme, Australian cultivators and manufacturers will be granted licenses for the cultivation of cannabis for manufacture into medicinal cannabis products and/or for research into the cannabis plant that is to be used for medicinal purposes, provided they meet certain criteria including:
submitting to criminal history checks of themselves and associates, the results of which must be satisfactory to the Government department responsible for administering the above mentioned licences; demonstrating their ability to ensure the physical safety of crops; and providing proof of adequate financial resources to undertake such activities.
This will be known as the “fit and proper person test”, the overall aim of which is to divert criminal activity and ensure that Australia is complying with its international obligations in so far as the production of narcotics is concerned.
What this means for consumers
The intention of the Bill is to ensure that a legal and consistent supply of medicinal cannabis will be available to those requiring it for legitimate medical purposes.
What does this mean for potential growers
There is an opportunity for cannabis crops to be grown locally throughout Australia with a potential for the export of same in the future.
The medicinal cannabis industry will however be heavily regulated and largely governed by a series of licencing and other regulatory procedures.
If you are interested in the developments in this space or require advice as to how this legislation may affect you or your business, please contact our team today.Tyler Bridges, a Shorenstein Media Fellow at Harvard this fall, is a Louisiana-based reporter and co-author of a book on the 2015 governor’s race entitled: Long Shot: A Soldier, a Senator, a Serious Sin, an Epic Louisiana Election.
“Half of Louisiana is under indictment,” the old saw goes, “and the other half is under water.” Louisiana politicians haven’t been keeping up their end of the bargain lately. No major political figures are under indictment or in prison today. The devastating storms haven’t abated one bit, however, and that’s why Gov. John Bel Edwards in early August was in the suburban town of Youngsville, where two days of nonstop rains a year earlier had flooded 300 homes.
One of them belongs to Paul Hebert, a 29-year-old operations director at an equipment manufacturer. With federal and state aid, he and his pregnant wife have settled back into their refurbished home on Flanders Ridge Drive. “Wow!” the governor exclaimed while Hebert showed him photos of 14 inches of water covering the floor. “We had to replace everything but the washer and dryer,” Hebert explained.
Story Continued Below
As Edwards headed out to his next event, a man in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops buttonholed him on the street. Ryan Fontenot, a neighbor of the Heberts, badgered the governor about his inability to qualify for more federal recovery funds. (Louisiana has received $1.6 billion so far to assist homeowners and is seeking another $2 billion for them and to fix damaged infrastructure.) “The Republicans in Washington don’t want to help you because you’re a Democratic governor in the South,” Fontenot, a high school civics teacher, told him.
Edwards smiled at Fontenot but wouldn’t take the bait, saying he didn’t believe it was true. But Fontenot is right about Edwards’ outlier status: He’s the only Democratic governor of a Deep South state, and no Democratic governor holds office in a state where President Donald Trump got a higher percentage of the vote—58 percent. Edwards is also the only Democrat elected to statewide office in Louisiana, where Republicans hold healthy majorities in both houses of the legislature. John Bel Edwards is a blue dot in a sea of red.
And it’s not just the South: Republicans dominate the levers of power throughout the country these days. Trump is in the White House; Republicans control Congress and most state legislatures; there are twice as many Republican governors as there are Democratic ones; conservatives hold a majority on the Supreme Court. Ever since stark reality set in after Trump’s upset win last November, Democrats have held a raging, rollicking debate over how to move forward: Should the party double down on its socially and economically progressive agenda? Or widen the tent to lure back more socially conservative voters in places like Louisiana? For soul-searching progressives, Edwards might present an interesting case study: He is showing how a Democrat can succeed in a deep red, pro-Trump state. Governing in a mostly bipartisan fashion, not pushing hot-button cultural issues, he enjoys a solid approval rating of 55 to 60 percent.
Conservatives are doing their best to dent that number, of course, and his path to reelection in 2019 won’t be easy. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative issue advocacy organization funded by the Koch brothers, attacks Edwards regularly as a tax-and-spend liberal, and a Baton Rouge businessman with money to burn is pledging to spend $1 million this year and another $1 million next year to pound the governor and ensure that he doesn’t win reelection in 2019.
The Democratic Governors Association has pledged to support Edwards’ reelection campaign. But it’s quite possible that some national Democrats won’t rally to his defense because Edwards, a devout Catholic, opposes abortion at a time when powerful voices in the party, such as the California megadonor Tom Steyer, are pushing to make the issue a litmus test of progressive values. The governor, an avid hunter, is also strongly pro-Second Amendment, which puts him out of step with the anti-gun mood of Democrats nationally but fits a state whose official nickname is “the Sportsman’s Paradise.” (On a helicopter ride to the Youngsville event, Edwards pointed to a lodge surrounded by forest that served as the base for a recent turkey hunt.)
Edwards has also championed causes that wouldn’t be out of place in Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts. He has expanded Medicaid to the working poor, threatened to sue oil and gas companies for destroying coastal wetlands, pushed for a higher minimum wage and reformed his state’s criminal justice system.
In an interview in his office in the Governor’s Mansion, Edwards, 50, said Democrats could follow his lead if they want to take back the red-state areas they have lost in recent years. “I happen to believe that Democrats in a large part of the country, but particularly across the South, would do much better if we fielded more candidates who were pro-Second Amendment and pro-life such as myself,” he said. “I happen to believe we have a superior message in many regards that will resonate with people across this region, but they won’t hear it if you don’t check a couple of boxes first. They won’t hear the rest of your message.”
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, another Democrat who governs a state that Trump carried, agreed. “It’s dangerous to write off certain candidates wholesale because they don’t pass certain tests,” he said.
James Carville, a Louisiana native who has been a top adviser to President Bill Clinton and other Democrats, put it more bluntly. “The lesson [Edwards] offers is that these purists or ideological ayatollahs in the Democratic Party need to shut up and stand down,” Carville said. Democrats would be wiser, he added, to shift the conversation away from cultural issues to the core tasks of governing, where Republicans are much more vulnerable: “If Democrats have the right story and are smart, they can win elections in the South. Start running against the status quo in a lot of places. Start tagging them with the burdens of government.”
There’s also the possibility, though, that Edwards is a one-off, a blue anomaly in a region that’s likely to stay red for years to come. His military background and socially conservative cred might have had real appeal to voters in the state, but he also happened to run for governor in 2015 against a Republican opponent, Sen. David Vitter, who had admitted to patronizing a prostitution ring. The outgoing Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, became a millstone for Vitter. Jindal left office with a 25 percent approval rating. Admitted Carville: “You have to acknowledge that the circumstances here were unique, and he made the most of them.” So is Edwards really a model for the Democratic Party moving forward? Or is he a fluke?
***
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (right) confers with a flood refugee in the Lake Charles Civic Center shelter in Lake Charles, La., on Aug. 29, 2017. | Jeff Amy/AP
Edwards doesn’t rattle easily. He proved that over time when he ran for governor two years ago. For months, he attracted little attention as he crisscrossed the state in his 2010 GMC Sierra pickup, with “Willie’s Roadhouse” spinning country tunes on Sirius XM radio. If Edwards emerged as the top Democrat, by no means a given, he would likely face Vitter, who had never lost an election and was known to play rough. Even though Vitter was tainted by a sex scandal, he was still the heavy favorite.
Democratic Party leaders favored Mitch Landrieu, the popular mayor of New Orleans whose sister served three terms in the Senate before losing reelection in 2014. But Landrieu concluded that he couldn’t win and never entered the race. Edwards stayed in, and his personal biography steadily gained him adherents.
Edwards grew up as the great-grandson, grandson and son of sheriffs in Amite, a rural town in Tangipahoa Parish, an area east of Baton Rouge that has shifted Republican in recent years. The seventh of eight kids, he hunted and fished as a boy and starred as a quarterback and pitcher in high school. When he flew to New York state to enter West Point, it was only the second time he had been on an airplane. He survived the first day, when dozens of other would-be plebes couldn’t handle the hazing, graduated from the military academy and passed the brutal 65-day training course to become an Army Ranger. As an officer, he jumped out of airplanes numerous times at 2 a.m. during training missions.
After an eight-year career in the Army, Edwards retired as a captain to return to Louisiana. He became a small-town lawyer and was elected to the state House. There, he gained credibility by leading the opposition to Jindal, but he couldn’t stop Republicans in the legislature from allowing the governor to draw down the state’s reserve accounts and use a series of other tricks to balance the budget each year—in name only—without violating his pledge not to raise taxes. During his eight years in office, Jindal, considered at the time to be a rising star in the conservative movement, slashed spending on higher education and blew a massive hole in the state’s budget, turning a $1 billion surplus into a $2 billion budget deficit for the next governor.
A telling moment in the governor’s race came three weeks before the primary election when Edwards broadcast a 30-second TV spot featuring his wife, Donna, who had been his high school sweetheart. In it, Donna related how, when she was 20 weeks pregnant, a doctor told them that their daughter would have spina bifida, a serious problem of the spinal cord. The doctor encouraged Donna to get an abortion.
“But John Bel never flinched,” she told viewers. “He just said no.” The ad showed their daughter, Samantha, now grown up, holding hands with her fiancé. Donna noted that Samantha was going to get married in several months.
In a state in which Americans United for Life says is the most pro-life in the country, the ad neutralized a potential advantage for Vitter, a staunch social conservative. The ad also resonated with progressive female voters, perhaps because the Edwardses made it clear that the choice of whether to have the abortion was theirs, not the government’s.
Whenever possible, Edwards told voters on the campaign trail that he lived by the West Point Honor Code—he would not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. The mantra highlighted Vitter’s 2007 admission that he had made phone calls to the “D.C. Madam,” who was convicted of running a call-girl ring in Washington. Put on the defensive, Vitter sought to tie his opponent to President Barack Obama, who was unpopular in Louisiana. But Edwards smacked Vitter back. When Vitter in a televised debate said Edwards had voted with the state’s leading business group only 27 percent of the time as a state representative, Edwards went for the jugular: “I give 100 percent to my wife. That’s who I give 100 percent to.” Pointing at Vitter, he continued, “Senator, you ought to try it.” Vitter looked stunned.
Edwards also capitalized on his predecessor’s unpopularity. His campaign slogan to “Put Louisiana First” connected with voters turned off by Jindal’s frequent absences to campaign for president while the state’s finances deteriorated. In the end, Edwards defeated Vitter, 56 percent to 44 percent, an outcome no one could have predicted even three months earlier.
***
The unexpectedly large margin of victory left Edwards believing he could continue the tradition of all-powerful Louisiana governors by playing the decisive role in who would become the next speaker of the House and president of the state Senate, and who would be named as committee chairmen. He was in for a rude awakening: House Republicans chose one of their own as speaker instead, which has limited his leverage. (The state Senate did not buck the governor.)
Still, Edwards has notched several big progressive wins. In his first act as governor, in January 2016, he fulfilled a major campaign pledge when he expanded Medicaid for the working poor. It has meant coverage for 430,000 residents, dropping the state’s uninsured health rate from 24 percent to 10 percent.
Gov. John Bel Edwards speaks onstage at the 2017 Essence Festival in New Orleans on June 30, 2017. | Paras Griffin/Getty Images for 2017 ESSENCE Festival
Edwards has hired private attorneys to prepare a major lawsuit against oil and gas companies that will allege their drilling has eroded the state’s fragile coast. (Republicans say he’s a tool of trial lawyers.) He has sought to include language in legal services contracts that would forbid discrimination against gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender workers. (The state’s conservative attorney general has blocked that in court.) And, after eight years of budget cuts under Jindal, the state’s public colleges and universities saw a slight increase in funding this year. Edwards also pushed through a series of changes to Louisiana’s criminal justice system that will shorten some prison sentences, prevent certain nonviolent offenders from going to prison and expand eligibility for parole. The bipartisan package is aimed at ending Louisiana’s status as the country’s biggest jailer on a per capita basis.
Edwards plugged the budget deficit Jindal had bequeathed by winning legislative approval to raise the state sales tax temporarily by one percentage point—giving Louisiana the highest combined local and state sales tax rate in the country—and ending some business tax breaks. But conservative Republicans stymied his efforts to raise taxes to reduce traffic congestion and end the state’s budget problems. Things will come to a head next year when more than $1 billion in temporary taxes expire.
In July, Edwards was one of 11 governors who issued a bipartisan appeal to the Senate to reject the sharp cuts to Medicaid as part of the Republican effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Edwards, however, has preferred to focus on Louisiana issues. Asked about Trump, Edwards said, “He could be more disciplined in his messaging, not tweeting and saying the first things that come to his mind. They’re causing his administration an awful lot of turbulence.” Edwards added that he is doing what he can to work with Republicans in Washington “because I’m not doing the best thing that I can for my constituents if I take any other approach.” The governor accompanied Trump when the president on Saturday visited Lake Charles, Louisiana, which suffered some flooding.
Edwards enjoys relatively high approval ratings at a time when much of the state’s economy continues to suffer from low oil prices that have idled parts of Louisiana’s petrochemical industry. But the economic slowdown has limited tax revenue, which has contributed to the state’s budget problems, and Republicans are putting the blame on him. Edwards says his Republican critics have yet to show how they would balance the budget through spending cuts alone. But their obstinance also serves to weaken the governor politically because as long as the budget problem remains unresolved, the focus remains on his effort to raise more revenue.
“As he yaps about taxes, the Republicans and independents peel off of him,” said Roy Fletcher, a Republican political consultant. “A quarter of the Republicans are willing to give him the benefit of their doubt as long as he’s not messing with their money.”
Lane Grigsby charges that Edwards is indeed messing with their money. He’s the Baton Rouge businessman leading the effort to end Edwards’ career in two years. “‘Give me enough money, and I can solve other problems’—that’s what he’s saying,” Grigsby said. “Giving people more money does not solve problems. It prolongs problems.”
Edwards has scheduled a series of fundraisers for the coming months to make sure he gets his message across Louisiana against the coming Republican onslaught. He raised $3 million last year, collected $1.3 million at a sold-out event in New Orleans last month and is planning to have at least $9 million in hand for the 2019 campaign.
Edwards is about as well-positioned as possible for his reelection. He will have a substantial war chest, has earned a reputation as trying to serve the best interests of the state, not his personal ambitions, and has the profile a Democrat needs to win statewide in Louisiana. He’s seen as a strong leader, and a uniter. In July 2016, Baton Rouge police shot dead an armed black man who hadn't drawn his gun outside a convenience store. Amid community protests, a shooting rampage by a crazed black man left three police officers dead. Through it all, Edwards channeled his background as an Army company commander to help maintain the peace. Historic flooding a month later in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, including Youngsville, left Edwards reassuring an anxious public once again. He speaks in calm, measured tones, calling on Louisiana residents to pull together for the greater good. And he spent the past week making sure that Louisiana was prepared to handle whatever Hurricane Harvey would throw at the state.
But the budget issues could trip him up. One can almost write the coming attack ads that will slam him for having tried to raise billions of dollars in taxes. Without a doubt, national Republicans will spend heavily to send him back home to Amite.
Asked whether he was nervous, the governor laughed and said, “No. They’re coming. But why be nervous?” He added, “The fact that I am a Democrat is not a disqualifier. There are many people out there looking for Democrats whom they can support because the Republican Party is rushing to the far right.”
Replicable or not, Edward’s success has encouraged others in the South to look to him for advice. The Arkansas Democratic Party invited Edwards to be the keynote speaker at its annual dinner last month. Republicans have routed Democrats in Arkansas in recent years, winning both chambers of the Legislature and all statewide offices.
“He may not fit that ideological purity test that we’re putting on Dems now, but what he does is fight for people,” said Michael John Gray, a state representative in Arkansas who chairs the state party. “Even some of the staunchest left advocates in the party told me afterward that they understand we have to have a big tent. He created a sense of pride. If this guy can do it in Louisiana, we can do it here.”
Edwards outlined his philosophy to other Democratic governors at a recent gathering in Aspen. “If they insist on fielding candidates who toe the mark on the party platform from top to bottom, then they’re not going to have me as governor,” he said in an interview. “If we only field candidates like that, then that candidate is not going to win.”
“Then you don’t get things like Medicaid expansion,” he added. “You don’t get criminal justice reform. You don’t get somebody fighting for a higher minimum wage and the pay gap where women make so much less than men and a whole host of other things. The center of the political spectrum is up for grabs.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that in July 2016, Baton Rouge police shot dead an unarmed black man outside of a convenience store. The man was armed, though he hadn't drawn his weapon.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Americans for Prosperity as a super PAC.
This article tagged under: The POLITICO Mag ProfileFacebook has announced that it’s teaming up with four of the world’s largest corporate data brokers to “enhance” the ad experience for users. Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai obtain information gathered about users through online means (such as through cookies when users surf the web) as well as through offline means (such as through loyalty cards at supermarkets and product warranty cards). Through the new relationship with Facebook, companies will be able to display advertisements to Facebook users based on data that these data brokers have on individuals.
In practical terms, this means that limiting how much information you put on Facebook is not enough to limit how ads are targeted to you on Facebook. Your interests, age, shopping history (including offline), web browsing, location, and much more could be stored by these data brokers and utilized to market to you – even if you’ve been careful not to share this type of information with Facebook.
So, what can users do? If you’re concerned about this practice, you can opt out of the targeted advertisements by individually visiting each of the data broker partners currently working with Facebook. We've got directions below for opting out of each site.
We also have two general tips:
1. Install an add-on to protect your privacy online. Facebook is using "blind cookie-matching" to match up users of online marketer BlueKai with specific Facebook accounts. We'll explain the mechanics of this more in another post, but for now it's good to know that blocking trackers is a good general practice for stopping this type of tracking. We recommend you use a tool such as Ghostery (now available on Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer) or Abine's DoNotTrackMe (available in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer) or AdBlockPlus with EasyPrivacy Lists. See more comprehensive instructions in our 4 Simple Changes to Stop Online Tracking.
2. Avoid giving your phone number and email address to companies when possible. Facebook and these companies are primarily using hashed email addresses to match users between databases, though they may also use hashed phone numbers. If you’re filling out a survey or signing up to receive email updates from a website, consider creating and using a different email address than the one you associate with your Facebook account. Similarly, consider setting up an alternate phone number you can give to companies apart from the phone number you connect with your social media accounts.
Opt Out Instructions:
Note that in general, opting out of data brokers will not necessarily result in your data being removed from their lists. Instead, these companies will generally'suppress' your information from certain uses -- including, hopefully, in the batches of data sent to Facebook. The process below is rather Byzantine, but you really do need to opt out of all four data brokers separately to get out of this program.
Acxiom
1. To get started, visit Acxiom's Opt Out Form. Then scroll down until you see your "opt-out choices." Here there will be a list of the types of media you would like to opt out of (mail, telemarketing, email, and online advertising). You can check all four, though note that their online advertising opt-out is cookie-based, meaning it will disappear every time you clear your cookies.
2. Certify that you are just a single person.
3. Fill out the form with your personal information. In order to be sure that Acxiom doesn't target advertisements at you through Facebook, you'll want to provide Acxiom with the phone number and email address associated with your Facebook profile. Use the green + signs on the form to add information.
4. Click submit. After you hit submit (and get through a CAPTCHA), you'll be offered a chance to install Acxiom's opt out cookie. You can choose to do this or not, but remember that this is not a persistent method of protecting your privacy: the opt out cookie will disappear as soon as you clear your cookies. See instructions below for opting out of BlueKai for advice on dealing with web tracking.
5. You will then receive an email with a link in it from Acxiom. You can click on this link or else copy and paste it into a new browser window. Visiting this page will take you to another CAPTCHA. Fill this out. Congratulations - you've opted out of Acxiom!
Datalogix
1. To opt out of this program, visit the Datalogix.com privacy page. Scroll down to the word “Choice” and the last sentence in the first paragraph says:
If you wish to opt out of all Datalogix-enabled advertising across channels including direct mail, online, mobile and analytic products, click here.
2. Click there and a form will pop up that asks for your name, address, and email address. Fill this out and click submit.
Datalogix promises that the opt-out will take |
them with fake military insignia.
Bemba was convicted in March of crimes committed in the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) in 2002-2003. He was accused of failing to stop his rebel forces from killing and raping people.
He was jailed in June and is appealing against his conviction.
Who is Jean-Pierre Bemba?
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Bemba had good relations with some of Africa's leaders
A well-connected businessman and the son of prominent Congolese businessman Bemba Saolona
1998: Helped by Uganda to form MLC rebel group in Democratic Republic of Congo
2003: Becomes vice-president under peace deal
2006: Loses run-off election to President Joseph Kabila but gets most votes in western DR Congo, including Kinshasa
2007: Flees to Belgium after clashes in Kinshasa
2008: Arrested in Brussels and handed over to ICC
2010: Trial begins
2016: Found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity
Profile: Jean-Pierre Bemba
More about DR CongoAfter sustaining a life-threatening injury while out bouldering, most climbers would likely be inclined to take a little time off. They probably wouldn't head straight back out and try an unclimbed highball line, especially not if their injury prevented them from landing safely in the event of a fall! Nalle Hukkataival isn't most climbers and he certainly proves that in this impressive video. With his leg barely healed from his injury, Nalle hikes the long walk-in to 'The Mud Springs Project,' an unclimbed Red Rocks highball first attempted by Andy Raether. The line is tall and technical with hard climbing practically all the way the the top. Despite his concerns about what a bad fall could do to his leg, Nalle perseveres with the project, eventually managing to bump his way through the crux and top out the problem. Fittingly, having embraced the role his injury played in the ascent, Nalle named the line 'Kintsugi' in reference to the Japanese art of pottery repair which treats damage as part of an object's history rather than something to be hidden away and forgotten. Indeed, by establishing 'Kintsugi' (V15/8C), Nalle was able to create something beautiful out of an otherwise harsh and damaging experience. Nalle Hukkataival Slices Open Leg, Climbs V15 First Ascent Anyway | EpicTV Choice CutsWith advancements in the field of biometric technology, India has topped globally in adoption of biometrics techniques, says a report.
"On an average, people in India (9 per cent) are three times more likely than any other country (3 per cent) surveyed to have used 'iris recognition' to identify themselves," said the HSBC's recent 'Trust in Technology' report.
It said people in Asia and the Middle East are ahead of the West when it comes to the adoption of new technologies due to greater understanding and optimism leading to more trust.
The report was compiled from research representing views of 12,019 people from 11 countries and territories --- Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, UK and the USA.
The trust in technology and its adoption are driven not only by consumer trends, but can be encouraged by wider governmental support, it said.
The Indian government first launched the Aadhaar Project, a biometrics programme, in 2009, creating the world's largest biometric data set, said the report.
The accelerated adoption of fingerprint recognition in the East, a widespread consumer technology, highlights the contrasting perspectives, it added.
People in China (40 per cent) are the highest adopters of fingerprint technology, followed by India (31 per cent) and the UAE (25 per cent) among the countries surveyed.
On the other hand, just 9 per cent of people in France and Germany, and 14 per cent in Canada have used fingerprint technology to identify themselves, the report noted.
"Consumers living in countries in the East seem to have a better understanding and greater trust of emerging technology, and how it can benefit their lives. The speed of change and the insatiable rate of adoption put the likes of India, China and the UAE leaps ahead of most Western markets," HSBC India Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management Ramakrishnan S told PTI here.
In the case of India, a national mind set of openness coupled with government support for the roll out and promotion of new technology has had a transformative effect on the nation, he said.
The regular use of traditional technology like using password feature is most common in West, it said.
When it comes to money management, people in India (50 per cent) and China (48 per cent) agreed that computers can provide more accurate advice than humans, while it was just 18 per cent in Canada, and 21 per cent in the UK, it said.
Further, it revealed that Germany has the lowest adoption of smartphone or tablet banking with only 4 per cent claiming that phone banking is their preferred way of banking as compared to 9 per cent in Hong Kong and 15 per cent in the UAE.
However, the report said while there are clear reasons to be optimistic about the adoption and attitude of countries in the East to new technology, this is not the full story.
About 50 per cent of people in China own a fax machine and 39 per cent of people in India own a pager, the highest percentages of those countries surveyed.
While the East has overtaken the West in attitudes and adoption today, data, however, suggested that progress across the region is hugely uneven with the differences most likely between the rural and urban areas.WASHINGTON—The government’s just-approved budget deal takes $1.5 billion from a fund for crime victims and uses it instead to help pay for federal spending, drawing on a growing reserve collected from settlements with banks and major corporations.
The unprecedented transfer, part of closed-door negotiations between the Obama administration and congressional leaders, has raised the ire of advocates. They say it violates the integrity of a decades-old program that funds safe havens for domestic violence victims, counseling for abused children and financial aid for murder victims’ families, among other programs.
The administration and Republican congressional leaders averted a partial government shutdown by striking a two-year budget deal approved by Congress last week. As part of the pact the Crime Victims Fund will lose $1.5 billion to the general treasury, Obama administration officials said.
Since the fund’s creation in 1984 by the Victims of Crime Act, it has gathered money from fines imposed on criminals and set it aside to pay for services for crime victims.
But during the Obama administration, as major banks and corporations paid large sums to settle Justice Department investigations, the fund ballooned from about $3 billion to nearly $12 billion at the end of the 2014 budget year, according to the department.
The fund’s growing size has presented policy makers with a dilemma. When the fund began, the government paid out almost every dollar it received. But in 2000, Congress began capping the amount paid each year to ensure a steady stream of money for victims’ services.
From 2000 to 2008, the fund grew from $1 billion to $3 billion. As its balance kept rising, White House accountants were able to use the cash in an accounting move to offset government spending. Now, Congress and the White House have struck a deal to go further, by agreeing to withdraw some 10% of the money to directly fund the government.
Victims’ advocates say the move could set a dangerous precedent and encourage lawmakers to keep dipping into a pot of money intended to help crime victims, not to pay government bills.
Two years ago, the fund distributed about $745 million for victims services. That jumped last year to almost $2.4 billion, most in grants to state and local groups that provide counseling, aid or other services.
The proposed White House budget for fiscal 2016, which started Oct. 1, would give $1 billion to victim-services groups. Budget officials said it was a coincidence that the proposed reduction from last year’s $2.4 billion is about the same as the amount to be transferred out of the fund to general spending.ORLANDO, Fla. (August 25, 2017) - Orlando City B (7-6-11, 32 points) will visit Eastern Conference leader Louisville City FC (13-4-5, 44 points) on Saturday, Aug. 26. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET at Louisville Slugger Field.
The match will be streamed at www.OrlandoCitySC.com/LIVE.
“Louisville are a good side. They’ve always given us difficult games. [Louisville head coach] James O’Connor’s done a terrific job there,” OCB head coach Anthony Pulis said. “They play a very attractive style of football. Good movement, good rotation, they press well. It’ll be a real difficult test for us.”
OCB set a Club record 10-game unbeaten streak with its 1-1 draw against Charlotte on Saturday. Hadji Barry scored from the penalty spot in the fifth minute and Earl Edwards, Jr. made eight saves to earn a point. Barry’s performance earned him Player of the Week honors.
Barry’s goal was his fourth in three games and was his eighth of the season. Edwards is tied for second in the league with 74 saves and leads the Eastern Conference with nine saves. Pierre Da Silva leads the team with seven assists. OCB has six clean sheets in its current unbeaten run.
This weekend’s matchup will be the second meeting this season after Louisville’s 3-1 win on March 30. In OCB’s last visit to Louisville, the Lions erased a late deficit with a penalty kick goal from Tyler Turner in the 90th minute. Orlando City Development Academy product David Loera then assisted on Keegan Smith’s game-winner in stoppage time.
Luke Spencer leads Louisville City FC with eight goals this season. Oscar Jimenez is Louisville FC assist leader with eight this season. O’Connor played for Orlando City during its USL Pro days.
This will be the second consecutive visit to the Eastern Conference leader for OCB following last week’s draw at Charlotte. Louisville jumped into the top spot following its 5-0 win over Harrisburg on Wednesday. OCB enters the match in eighth in the East, one point behind seventh-place Bethlehem Steel FC.
The Lions return to Orlando City Stadium to host Bethlehem on Thursday, Aug. 31, at 7:30 p.m. ET.CLOSE As Tim Kaine spoke about Donald Trump's comments on Mexican immigrants at the Vice Presidential debate, Mike Pence said at one point, 'You whipped out that Mexican thing again.' USA TODAY
GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence at a debate in Farmville, Va., on Oct. 4, 2016. (Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)
If there is just one catchphrase to come out of Tuesday's vice presidential debate, it's probably "that Mexican thing again."
It started when Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, a U.S. senator from Virginia, pressured Republican nominee Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, to talk about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's controversial statements on immigration.
"Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again," Pence replied.
The phrase blew up on the internet immediately. The hashtag #ThatMexicanThing trended on Twitter, and someone claimed the domain ThatMexicanThing.com, which redirects to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's website.
By Wednesday afternoon, the statement was garnering comments from other politicians and many others.
U.S. House members respond
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.; Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.; and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Linda Sanchez of California held a press call Wednesday to respond to Pence’s comment.
Gallego said he was present at Tuesday’s debate and that the phrase was offensive, outrageous and flat-out wrong. He also said the comment shows what the Trump-Pence campaign is about.
MORE: Trump talks about immigration during visit to Prescott Valley
Former Gallego staffer Pili Tobar's tweet about #ThatMexicanThing was among the most viral of the night, earning more than 5,000 likes.
Becerra said Pence's comment was offensive and it shows his record is just as extreme as Trump's.
"I would have never believed that I'd be witnessing a candidate for president and now, last night, the vice presidential candidate, mainstreaming the same hurtful rhetoric," Becerra said.
Sanchez said Pence not only defended Trump but used the same "venomous rhetoric."
"' 'That Mexican thing' — it's gonna come back to bite them in November," she said.
Top tweets from #ThatMexicanThing
Actress Kerry Washington was among the many whose tweets on the topic went viral. She quoted a tweet referencing ThatMexicanThing.org, which redirects to a voter-registration website.
Many people used the hashtag to honor Latinos' contributions to American society, and many of the most-liked tweets came from Latinos themselves.
My dad served this country in the Army, attended @UTexasLaw, and became the first Latino judge elected in Travis County. #ThatMexicanThing — Bianca Garcia (@BZGarcia) October 5, 2016
Univision and Fusion TV anchor Jorge Ramos tweeted "First Trump calls Mexicans "rapists". Now Pence says #ThatMexicanThing Question: Is that a creative strategy to win the Latino vote?"
First Trump calls Mexicans "rapists". Now Pence says #ThatMexicanThing
Question: Is that a creative strategy to win the Latino vote? — JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) October 5, 2016
Gabe Ortiz, an online organizer for immigration-advocacy group America's Voice, tweeted "#ThatMexicanThing where my mom has worked as a housekeeper for 25 yrs because her dream is to see her family's dreams come true. #VPDebate."
#ThatMexicanThing where my mom has worked as a housekeeper for 25 yrs because her dream is to see her family's dreams come true. #VPDebate — Gabe Ortíz (@TUSK81) October 5, 2016
#thatmexicanthing where we work hard, play by the rules & continue to be discriminated. While.@realDonaldTrump cheats the system #VPDebate — Juan Altamirano (@altamirajuan) October 5, 2016
#ThatMexicanThing is when we vote... all 27.3 million eligible voters. — Victoria Villalpando (@vvillalp) October 5, 2016
#thatmexicanthing is my mom who immigrated to this country, pays her taxes and put two kids through college while managing a business ❤️💪🏾💪🏾 — Frank Ramirez (@frankemilio) October 5, 2016
READERS: Participate in our survey to improve azcentral’s comments
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2dLuyAYJames Martin/CNET
At least one Google executive acknowledges that using the company's interactive eyewear can be kind of odd.
Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spoke Thursday at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said that talking to Google Glass is the "weirdest thing," according to a report from Reuters.
He noted that people will need to develop new etiquette for the product, which can record video and relay information that only the wearer can see.
"There are obviously places where Google Glasses are inappropriate," he said, according to Reuters.
Schmidt also said apps offered to Glass users will need to get Google's approval beforehand. By contrast, anyone can create and distribute apps for Android smartphones and tablets.
"It's so new, we decided to be more cautious," Schmidt said, according to Reuters. "It's always easier to open it up more in the future."
Google unveiled the augmented reality product earlier this year and recently began distributing $1,500 prototypes to people in Google's Glass Explorer program. The device comes in the form of eyeglasses that can record videos, take photos, chat, get directions, search the Web, and more. Google Glass is expected to arrive on the market for the general public in 2014.
The New York Times has already released an app for Google Glass, the first installable third-party app made available to Glass owners. Features include breaking-news alerts and hourly news updates, and users can navigate stories and photos by tilting up their heads. They can also tap to have the app read article summaries to them.Just as London appears to be coming round to the idea that it will need a temporary transitional agreement with Brussels to smooth its exit from the European Union, it may find the position of European leaders has hardened.
For months the working assumption in Brussels has been that it would be impossible to manage Britain’s exit from the EU by a 2019 deadline without a temporary transitional deal to govern trade terms until a final arrangement can be hammered out.
UK seeks transitional EU trade deal to avoid Brexit ‘cliff edge’ The United Kingdom may need a transitional agreement to smooth its exit from the European Union but it should not “buy back” into too many of the bloc’s regulations, British trade minister Liam Fox said on Sunday (18 December).
The idea is favored by businesses on both sides of the channel who want to minimise uncertainty, and by the technocrats tasked with hammering out a deal, who say a final pact cannot be reached in time. The only people who didn’t seem to like it were hardliners in London who said they preferred a clean break.
But with Prime Minister Theresa May lately softening her “Brexit means Brexit” rhetoric to emphasise the need to avoid forcing businesses off a “cliff edge”, the positions of European leaders only seem to have hardened.
May raises possibility of Brexit transition deal British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday (20 December) said she was planning to negotiate both Brexit and Britain’s future relationship with the EU by 2019 but a transition period may be required after that.
Senior European officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity no longer sound convinced that a transitional deal is as inevitable as it once seemed.
“The technicians of course say it’s obvious. But frankly, politically it’s not at all,” a senior EU official told Reuters. “Do the Brits really want it? On the kind of terms we can offer?
“There’s a real danger they will just fall off the cliff.”
May denies UK heading for ‘hard Brexit’, as sterling falls Theresa May denied Monday (9 January) that the UK was heading for a ‘hard Brexit’, in the wake of the resignation of the UK ambassador to the EU, and her own core focus on controlling immigration.
London shift
May intends to set a two-year clock running on Britain’s exit negotiations by late March. She is due to give a speech on Tuesday (17 January), and any hint she gives that she will accept a transitional arrangement could make headlines.
While she has so far given few details of her negotiating position, Britain unmistakably softened its stance on a transitional arrangement last month. David Davis, the cabinet minister tasked with overseeing exit from the European Union, said in early December he was “not really interested” in a temporary deal. But a week later British newspapers carried reports that he had privately said he was not opposed to one.
UK puts hope in ‘pay as you go’ access to EU internal market Britain would consider making payments to the European Union in return for achieving the best possible access to the bloc’s markets for businesses, Brexit minister David Davis said today (1 December).
EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, in his only detailed public comments so far, stressed last month that a transitional deal was no certainty and would depend first on broad agreement on the long-term way ahead.
EU Brexit boss sets October 2018 deadline for end of UK divorce talks The European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator today (6 December) set an October 2018 deadline for the end of divorce talks with the UK, shortening the time for EU-British negotiations by five months.
But generally EU negotiators have spoken in private as if a transitional deal were inevitable. They have long described Brexit as a three-stage process of negotiation, transition and divorce, which cannot realistically be rushed.
That inevitability no longer seems to be the assumption in Brussels, even though the economic logic favours it. A second EU official closely involved in Brexit planning noted that Britain depends more on EU trade than vice versa, which means London needs a transition more than Brussels does.
“Economically, the EU has much less incentive than Britain to arrange a transitional deal,” the official said.
“Politically the logic of the talks will be to keep the Brits as close as possible even after the divorce,” the official added. The terms of a transition would depend on the long-term goal: if a free trade deal is the ultimate aim, it makes no sense to impose tariffs on British goods that are only going to be removed again, so a duty-free transition would be logical.
Britain threatens to undercut EU if Brexit plans fail Britain warned on Sunday (15 January) it might undercut the EU economically if it cannot obtain both single market access and immigration controls, as Prime Minister Theresa May prepared her big Brexit strategy speech.
Time is short
Time is tight even for a basic deal to settle issues on money, citizenship, law and so on next year, so any interim pact may need to be simple. “The divorce terms will be so difficult to negotiate that I think that it will be impossible to have a negotiation on the transitional arrangement,” the lead Brexit negotiator from one of the 27 other member states told Reuters.
“The timeframe is going to be really short.”
While all sides are still only hinting at their positions before formal negotiations start, continentals have been reminding British officials of the leverage given to them by the deadline specified in the EU treaty’s untried Article 50, which covers the withdrawal process. With or without negotiated terms, Britain will be out of the Union once two years are up.
One senior German official told Reuters that Britain should ask to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) for some years, which would require it to accept free movement from EU countries and pay into the EU budget in return for continuing free trade.
May promises UK will have 'control over borders' after Brexit UK Prime Minister Theresa May insisted on Sunday (8 January) that Britain will have “control over our borders” after Brexit, suggesting she would be prepared to quit Europe’s trading zone to achieve it.
May should start by asking for a transition deal to avoid running out of road in the negotiations: “The risk is that the two years run out with no agreement,” the German official said.
The other 27 national leaders have shown a determination to stick together, whatever the complaints of their own business leaders, to insist Britain pay the price of a hard Brexit rather than allow a soft option that could tempt other countries to follow Britain out of the door.
Last week, the Maltese prime minister, whose ministers will chair EU councils until June, called for a transition deal, notably because London remains Europe’s main financial center.
Malta bets on pragmatic idealism for its EU presidency As the EU enters a period of uncertainty with elections in France and Germany, and the UK initiating a process to leave the bloc, the prime minister of Malta, whose government holds the six-month presidency of the EU until June, promised on Wednesday (11 January) to align results with the concerns of EU citizens.
But Joseph Muscat also said that this would mean Britain accepting that EU courts would go on “dishing out judgments” – a scenario May might find a hard sell to impatient Brexiteers as she seeks re-election by 2020.
The second EU official said Brussels believed May could, however, try to sell a partial exit before the election that might even include continued payments into the EU budget.
“Maybe it is not as different from membership as some would want,” the official said. “But it is a step, and the direction for the next is clear too … May will remain hostage to the Brexit hardliners, but she will also have to deliver something.”20 years ago, 41 wild Rocky Mountain Wolves were released in Yellowstone National Park in a reintroduction effort. Dan MacNulty, a professor of wildland resources at Utah State University is studying the relationship between wolves and elk in the Park.
“What we really want to know is the extent to which wolves are an important driver in elk population dynamics,” MacNulty said. “We know that they’re a driver. The question is, how much of a driver are they and does the strength of that effect vary from one year to the next.”
MacNulty has studied the survival and reproduction rates of adult female elk to see the effect the wolves have on the population of the elk. According to MacNulty, some elk statistics haven’t changed since the wolf reintroduction.
“We’re getting a lot of insights on what the impact of wolves is on adult female elk survival and on their reproduction, pregnancy rates, as well as the survival rates of their calves over the winter,” MacNulty said. “One of the results that I think did surprise me to some degree, is that the average age of an adult female elk killed by wolves has changed very little in the 20 years that we’ve had wolves in Yellowstone.”
MacNulty said the number of wolves in the park is on the rise, but their future is still uncertain.
“What’s happened with the trajectory of the wolf population, it peaked about ten years ago and then it declined. In the last year or two it’s sort of pulled out of its decline,” MacNulty said. “Stay tuned to see what happens next. We don’t know if it’s going to change again, or is it going to continue to increase or decrease again.”
MacNulty’s research could contribute to future predator management decisions in Yellowstone National Park and worldwide.Campaign posters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles are seen on an apartment building in Caracas. While most polls indicate a clear win for Chavez, others have shown Capriles narrowing the gap. Chavez is seeking a new six-year term as he marks his 14th year in power.
Oct. 6. 2012 Campaign posters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles are seen on an apartment building in Caracas. While most polls indicate a clear win for Chavez, others have shown Capriles narrowing the gap. Chavez is seeking a new six-year term as he marks his 14th year in power. Jorge Silva/Reuters
On Sunday, the country will vote to reelect President Hugo Chavez or ring in a new era with opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
On Sunday, the country will vote to reelect President Hugo Chavez or ring in a new era with opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
On Sunday, the country will vote to reelect President Hugo Chavez or ring in a new era with opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Weakened from battling cancer and visibly bloated, President Hugo Chavez is fighting for his political life in Sunday’s presidential election, as he faces a charismatic challenger who has energized a once-disunited opposition in a way none of the populist leader’s foes ever has.
At stake is the president’s experiment to remake Venezuela, a 14-year transformation characterized by the expropriation of private companies, diplomatic initiatives to counter U.S. influence and a near-mystical bond with the country’s poor masses.
Two established pollsters show Chavez, 58, with a substantial advantage, underscoring the loyalty of millions he has commanded since sweeping into power in 1998. But two others have Chavez and Henrique Capriles, 40, a lawyer and former governor who has never lost an election, in a virtual dead heat.
“This is seriously competitive,” said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Americas program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “I would say it’s the first time since Chavez was elected that the accumulated learning experience of the opposition and the accumulated problems of the country have brought the race to a place where it’s almost too close to call.”
The election is almost certainly being watched closely by Iran, which has found an ally in Venezuela, and myriad small countries in Latin America that have received aid in return for opposing Washington.
1 of 22 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Youth could hold key to Venezuelan election View Photos Young people could be come decisive in an election that will determine whether if Hugo Chavez will rules until the end of the decade. Caption Young people could be come decisive in an election that will determine whether if Hugo Chavez will rules until the end of the decade. Sept. 24, 2012 Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez attend a campaign rally in Acarigua in the state of Portuguesa. Jorge Silva/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
The outcome is also expected to be tracked by energy markets. Venezuela recently surpassed Saudi Arabia as the country with the biggest certified oil reserves, and Chavez is considered a price hawk within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, an organization Venezuela helped found.
Capriles campaign officials said they believe that the large number of undecided voters identified in some polls will back the challenger at the ballot box, leading to Chavez’s defeat. That bold prediction is buttressed by the opposition’s revival after years of uninspired campaigning and the disenchantment many Venezuelans express to pollsters about decaying infrastructure, rampant violent crime and shoddy services.
But the president’s advantage is undeniable. State media have delivered fawning campaign coverage while the Chavez administration has doled out refrigerators, new apartments and other gifts to prospective voters.
“He has given love and made it easy for the people, the only president we have had who has had anything to do with the poor,” said Soleña Arcila, a nurse who came out Thursday for Chavez’s last pre-election speech. “Chavez will be here forever.”
Still, there are signs that things are not as rosy for the president as they have been in the past. Political analysts say Chavez’s campaign has been lackluster, and nagging questions remain about his health, which is a state secret.
That has many Venezuelans wondering whether the dashing former army paratrooper who stormed to prominence a generation ago as the leader of a failed coup has mustered the emotional appeal needed to get millions of voters to once more cast ballots for him.
Although the president still gives a resounding speech, the Chavez of this campaign has resorted to issuing the kinds of pleas expected from a candidate coming from behind.
“This government will be much better than all the governments of Chavez,” the president, who often speaks about himself in the third person, said in a recent speech. “I promise I will be a much better president than I have been.”
‘The country needs a change’
The Venezuela the two men are battling for is a country awash in historic oil earnings, but one that has the feel of having missed out on the democratic awakening and economic boom that is modernizing much of Latin America.
Bridges and highways are decrepit, patients are forced to bring their own medicine to public hospitals, vast state projects are unfinished, rolling blackouts affect much of the country and prison riots kill hundreds each year.
Polls show that voters are most concerned about a sharp rise in homicides, with 19,336 people killed last year, up from 4,550 in 1998 when Chavez was first elected president, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that tracks crime.
“How could they fail to read what the people were thinking after 14 years?” Capriles asked in a recent speech. “The people are tired of that.”
Chavez’s rhetorical flourishes against the United States and his warnings about the bourgeoisie may still electrify radicals. But they fall short for ordinary people whipsawed by problems, said Carlos Romero, a political scientist and co-author of the recent book “U.S.-Venezuela Relations Since the 1990s.”
“Most of the people in Venezuela are tired of Chavez’s political speeches, the speeches that are very radical, that try to divide Venezuelans and don’t take into account the most important problems that Venezuelans are facing every day,” Romero said.
Standing at the doorway of her home in the Petare hillside slum as the sun went down on a recent day, Maria Uribe, a public school teacher, said she has seen few improvements in the classrooms and worries about her son, Luis Martinez, 9, because of the violence in their neighborhood.
“The truth is that the country needs a change,” she said. “This country is completely deteriorated, forgotten, in need of maintenance and of leaders who will truly concern themselves with the country.”
As she spoke, others emerged from cinder-block homes to say that they, too, felt new leadership was needed.
Joel Hernandez, 26, recounted how gunmen stole his motorcycle on a recent afternoon. Barbara Rodriguez, 32, who benefits from a government job providing maintenance in a community center, said the economy provides her with no other job possibilities.
“The candidate Chavez has 14 years at this and hasn’t been able to handle it,” said Eder Granados, 44, who owns a small Internet cafe, ticking off problems in the country. “It’s time to give someone else the chance to see what they can do.”
Many here say the president’s campaign manifesto, which is partly focused on countering “savage capitalism” and guaranteeing “planetary peace,” is out of touch with people who have to contend with one of the world’s highest inflation rates.
‘The candidate of happiness’
Chavez has heaped endless insults on Capriles, calling him a chameleon who would usher in a right-wing government, controlled by Washington and intent on ending popular social programs. Capriles styles himself as a center-left candidate, much like Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and says he will make state-sponsored aid more efficient.
“Who’s the candidate of the Yankees, of the bourgeoisie, of big business, of the super-rich?” Chavez would ask throngs of supporters in speech after speech, with his followers shouting back a favorite put-down of Capriles.
“Who’s the candidate of happiness? Of the future, of the young people, of the fatherland?” he would continue, to shouts of his name. “That is why Chavez wins on October 7.”
For many, of course, that message still resonates.
Loyalists such as Ismar Mota, 54, who works in a state agency and campaigns for Chavez, said he wants to extend Chavez’s political life.
“There’s more to be done to consolidate socialism,” Mota said. “And though it has been 14 years, the president has the will and the desire to make Venezuela a great country, a power, a dignified country.”CLOSE Chicago police say a video broadcast live on Facebook captured a shooting that killed a man and a 2-year-old. The video was taken from inside a car driven by a pregnant woman who was injured in the shooting. (Feb. 15) AP
Nakeeia Williams speaks to supporters during a vigil in the Park Manor neighorhood to honor her 11-year-old daughter, Takiya Holmes, who died Tuesday after being shot in the head by a stray bullet while sitting in a car with her mother on Saturday. Police announced on Wednesday that they had charged Antwan Jones, 19, with first-degree murder for the killing. (Photo11: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
CHICAGO— Three children have been killed in shootings since Saturday in an ugly spasm of gun violence in the nation's third largest city that has befuddled even the most battle-hardened of Chicago Police Department officers.
The tragic killings— all three children were caught in gang-related gunfire that wasn't targeting them—come in the midst of a difficult moment for Chicago. The city is struggling to stem a surge in violence that left it with more than 760 murders last year and at least 70 homicides in the first six weeks of 2017.
As Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson announced the first-degree murder charges Wednesday against Antwan Jones, 19, for the shooting death of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes, he didn't mince words about his anguish over the unrelenting violence in this city. Authorities allege Jones, who police say is a gang member with a long rap sheet, inadvertently shot Takiya when he fired at some rivals who were selling marijuana near his apartment complex.
"For these families, my heart goes out to them, because there is nothing you can say to them that will ease that pain," Johnson said. "I can't imagine losing an 11-year-old child senselessly like this."
Takiya was sitting in a family van in front of a dry cleaners on Saturday evening, when she was struck in the back of the head by the stray bullet. She succumbed to her injuries on Tuesday.
Brendan Deenihan, the police commander of the detectives unit handling the investigation, said that gang investigators were able to help homicide detectives spot witnesses who could be seen in surveillance videos in the area at the time of the shooting. Detectives interviewed the witnesses, who identified Jones as the gunman.
Jones turned himself into police late Tuesday, and immediately asked for a lawyer. He appeared before a judge Wednesday afternoon, and was ordered held without bond.
Less than an hour before Takiya was shot, Kanari Gentry Bowers, 12, was inadvertently struck in the head by gunfire as she played basketball with friends on an elementary school playground. After four days on life support, Kanari died on Wednesday. Police have not apprehended a suspect in her shooting.
Hours after Takiya's death,another child Lavontay White, 2, was killed on Tuesday along with his 26-year-old uncle Lazarec Collins in what police said was a gang-related shooting. A pregnant woman, 20, was wounded when they were ambushed as they drove in an alley on the city’s West Side.
Antwan Jones, 19, Charged with Murder of 11 Year Old Girl- More details to Follow pic.twitter.com/VqyztCWlJ8 — Chicago Police (@Chicago_Police) February 15, 2017
In the fatal shooting of Lavontay, police believe the uncle Lazarec Collins, 26, a known gang member, was the intended targeted. Like the suspected gunman in Takiya's shooting, Collins had an extensive record, including convictions for armed robbery and burglary.
Anthony Guglielmi, a police department spokesman, said both Jones and Collins were spotted by the department's Strategic Subject Algorithm tool, a predictive list that the department generates to determine people who are at high risk of becoming victims or of perpetrators of a crime.
No one has been apprehended in that shooting, part of which was livestreamed on Facebook Live. Police, however, said they had promising leads in the double homicide.
Chicago has been in the spotlight over the roiling violence plaguing the city. President Trump has repeatedly suggested that he may order a federal intervention to try to stem the violence. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms confirmed that it was considering the addition of more agents to its Chicago field office.
|
iff...)
Thanks and may this be an amazing year for you & your loved ones!
Rohit
Bookings (deep/ soulful/ melodic house & progressive trance): [email protected]This is my review of the Casino in Blankenberge. For more information on this casino, please click here. On Sunday, July 1st, we visited three casinos, located in known summer resorts on the northern sea shore of Belgium: Knokke, Blankenberge and Ostend. Blankenberge was our second stop that day, after Knokke. I would like to start by saying that I liked the casino in Blankenberge very much. It combines a cozy Belgian pub atmosphere (lots of wood), neatness and traditional style. It is a classic casino for those Belgium folks that prefer traditional, informal style to the modern, snobbish style of the Casino Knokke.
The city of Blankenberge itself is very different from Knokke, our first stop that day, with its aristocratic and expensive atmosphere. In the streets surrounding the casino Blankenberge, you can find, traditional Flemish Pancakes houses, supermarkets and good old Belgian Frits stalls. On the seaside promenade there are typical Belgian cafés. These cafes offer the same selection as those in Knokke, and you can order a bottle of Champagne or Brut if you like, but at the same time they maintain their old style, traditional appearance and atmosphere. The Casino is located very near the beach. You can have a wonderful view of the sea from the restaurant area of the Casino.
The Casino Blankenberge is a real non-smoking Casino, which I liked personally especially since the Casino is located on the ground floor and cigarette smoke can easily spread around the room.
At the entrance we had to go through the normal entry procedure for Belgian casinos. A passport or valid ID is mandatory, the minimum age is 21 years and admission is free. I wouldn’t say the Casino Blankenberge enforces any real dress code. I was let in with my bright yellow Crocs sandals. However, I didn’t feel comfortable with my Crocs. Not because someone looked at me funny, simply because I was well aware that I wasn’t dressed to fit the occasion. I would say that jeans, dress shirt or polo shirt and closed shoes are ideal for a visit to the Casino Blankenberge.
Slots, Table Games, bar and restaurant on the same floor
At the Casino Blankenberge, slots, table games, bar and restaurant are located on the ground floor. Dark wood paneling dominates the atmosphere and makes the casino feel cozy and informal. The slots are spread around the Table Games area. We saw mostly 5 reel video slots, but also some traditional mechanical slots.
We entered the casino at around 19:00. Three roulette tables were open. The minimum is 10 € for simple chances and 2 € for plain / Carré / Cheval. The tables very crowded. If the casino had additional tables available, it would have been the time to open them. Each Roulette table also had the familiar electronic board showing the results of the last 20 spins in black and red.
There was also an open Casino Stud Poker (ante 5 €) table and a table of Blackjack with minimum 10 €. We played Blackjack for a while. Just like in Brussels, you can buy chips at the table. Next to us an elderly gentleman in a suit exchanged 500 € into chips. All very relaxed. We quickly realized that it was not our lucky day. Also, I made an embarrassing mistake. I thought I had a Blackjack, and told the dealer that he is yet to pay us. In fact it was the dealer who had the Blackjack and I had only 20. The dealer remained absolutely cool and did not get defensive at all. He simply corrected me and offered that we look at the video. I said that wouldn’t be necessary. I asked to cash out. We noted the professionalism with which all employees of the Casino Blankenberge handled the guests. From the wardrobe attendants, to the cashiers and dealers and the bar staff. Not over friendly, but professional and hospitable.
We then decided to sit at the bar for a while (I had a typical Flemish beer – Rodenbach – very tasty, a little sour), and observe. Next to the restaurant, we saw 5 Poker tables which were not yet in operation. The restaurant itself was open and offered a magnificent view of the beach, in addition to typical dishes such as carb or lobster.
We visited the casinos in Knokke and Ostend on the same day. The Casino of Blankenberge was definitely the most attended of all. But that may have been due the time of our visits.
Bottom line – Casino Blankenberge
Definitely my favorite Casino when it comes to comfort. The Casino is very well kept, the wall to wall carpet seemed to be brand new and, in my view, tastefully selected. The game tables were a bit aged and fit the “woody” atmosphere of the place. It is a completely different style from the modern, upscale style of the casino in Knokke. It is truly a traditional Belgian establishment.The big FPS rivalry of 1999 was fought between two games that decided to ditch single-player campaigns and focus on the future - on being multiplayer and competitive. They were Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.
The big FPS rivalry of 2011 was fought between Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 - modern war games with glitzy cinematic campaigns, as well as multiplayer.
What happened - why did the forward-looking competitive FPS games of yesteryear die out?
"This isn't going to be nice for console makers, but it's because consoles are giving so many opportunities to tell stories, and to be triple-A, monster games, that you had to have a lot of stuff to beat the competition all the time," Anne Blondel-Jouin told Eurogamer. She's the managing director of Nadeo Live!, the marketing half of Nadeo, developer of TrackMania and ShootMania.
"So, it was not about skills any more.
"I'm not saying that you're not skilled when you're playing such games, but it was more that they were competing against movies, so they had to put up all of the nice stuff, all of the production values, and it kept growing and growing and growing. And the consoles were enabling that.
Q3DM17, where Bertie is unstoppable.
"People kind of forgot a little bit about what FPS was all about at the beginning. I wouldn't say it's because of them [consoles], but it's one explanation, that the consoles were competing against movies and other forms of entertainment - that they had to entertain people rather than go back to the pure skills of playing."
:: The best graphics cards of 2018
ShootMania aims to distill and refine what Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament began, even though Nadeo wasn't apparently directly inspired by those titles.
"We are in a transition year, as you know, so we're all waiting for next consoles to get out. We don't know when they will be out, but we know they're coming. There's a tendency in the games industry when they know that's happening that people are returning, massively, to PC games." Anne Blondel-Jouin, managing director, Nadeo Live!
But those games died out for a reason - tastes changed, no? What makes Nadeo think people want a game like ShootMania now?
"Two reasons," answered Blondel-Jouin.
"First one is that we are in a transition year, as you know, so we're all waiting for next consoles to get out. We don't know when they will be out, but we know they're coming. There's a tendency in the games industry when they know that's happening that people are returning, massively, to PC games.
"We also looked at what was on the market, in terms of a pure skilled FPS, and I have to say that they used to have a lot of them, but they are quite old right now, and people are looking for some freshness.
"It's about being in the right place at the right time, and we are lucky enough to be there."
Whether ShootMania itself will ever be a console game will be a question for next-generation.
"So far we feel we cannot go on consoles," Blondel-Jouin said, "because we feel that they're not opened enough for the players to express their creativity, or the game the way we want it to be enjoyed.
"But if the next ones are more open, maybe - we don't know.
"So far, we want to make sure we're giving the PC players, who've been with us for so many years, what they deserve and what they want, and then we'll see what happens with the console. But there's no rush on our side on being on consoles at all."
ShootMania looks and play simply. You have the ability to fire rockets and a rail gun. It's a multiplayer FPS that's understandable at first glance. But depth comes with skill, and variety comes with game types. The other side to ShootMania is that players can make and share their own maps, as they can in TrackMania. This will be done via a central hub called ManiaPlanet, which all Nadeo's games will interact with.
ShootMania went in to closed beta earlier this month, and the plan is "definitely" for a full game launch this year. Nadeo doesn't want to spend less than three months in beta, but that could stretch out to six. The date's not yet set in stone.
"We're lucky enough that Ubisoft is letting us do that [take our time]. It's a luxury for us, but it's great that Ubisoft understand that, and is not rushing us anywhere," Blondel-Jouin said.
ShootMania: Storm will cost £15.99, like TrackMania 2: Canyon. Also, the "Storm" and "Canyon" parts of the respective game names refer to title packs, which are paid expansions. The next TrackMania 2 title pack is called Valley, and will be released this year.
Nadeo plans two other title packs for ShootMania, Blondel-Jouin told us.
Nadeo has a third game called QuestMania on the slate. TrackMania is the racing series, ShootMania is the FPS and QuestMania is the RPG. All three games use the same engine and also link to ManiaPlanet, therefore any work on any game usually benefits everything else.
"[QuestMania] is coming along very well, but it's obviously taking a lot of time to come, because it's an RPG, and it's true that right now we're focusing much more on ShootMania and making sure that TrackMania 2: Canyon is still bringing more stuff to the players."
It's "a little bit too early" to talk specifically about QuestMania but, broadly, Nadeo hopes that game will do for RPGs what TrackMania did for racing games and what ShootMania looks to be doing for FPSs - that is, whittling back features to get to the core experience.
TrackMania 2: Canyon, a racing game that involves puzzle solving, was awarded a humongous 9/10 by Eurogamer. Sales were "over expectations", Blondel-Jouin said, and it's enjoying a long shelf life through continued sales.
The 30-person Nadeo team, which was only 18 when TM2: Canyon was made, expects that ShootMania will sell in "much higher" numbers, and maybe even help Nadeo break into America.BILI can detect real-time small levels of complex organic materials from several hundred meters
Branimir Blagojevic says BILI would “sniff” for biosignatures in Martian dust
A sensing technique that the US military currently uses to remotely monitor the air to detect potentially life-threatening chemicals, toxins, and pathogens has inspired a new instrument that could "sniff" for life on Mars.The Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument, or BILI is a fluorescence-based lidar, a type of remote-sensing instrument similar to radar in principle and operation.Instead of using radio waves, however, lidar instruments use light to detect and ultimately analyse the composition of particles in the atmosphere.Although NASA has used fluorescence instruments to detect chemicals in Earth's atmosphere as part of its climate-studies research, the agency so far hasn't employed the technique in planetary studies."NASA has never used it before for planetary ground level exploration. If the agency develops it, it will be the first of a kind," said Branimir Blagojevic, a NASA technologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Blagojevic, who formerly worked for Science and Engineering Services, LLC, that developed the sensor, has applied the technology to create an instrument prototype, proving in testing that the same remote-sensing technology used to identify bio-hazards in public places also could be effective at detecting organic bio-signatures on Mars.The beauty of BILI is its ability to detect in real-time small levels of complex organic materials from a distance of several hundred meters, Blagojevic added in a NASA statement.Therefore, it could autonomously search for bio-signatures in plumes above recurring slopes -- areas not easily traversed by a rover carrying a variety of in-situ instruments for detailed chemical and biological analysis.Furthermore, because it could do a ground-level aerosol analysis from afar, BILI reduces the risk of sample contamination that could skew the results."This makes our instrument an excellent complementary organic-detection instrument, which we could use in tandem with more sensitive, point sensor-type mass spectrometers that can only measure a small amount of material at once," Blagojevic said."BILI's measurements do not require consumables other than electrical power and can be conducted quickly over a broad area. This is a survey instrument, with a nose for certain molecules," Blagojevic noted.With such a tool, which also could be installed on an orbiting spacecraft, NASA could dramatically increase the probability of finding bio-signatures in the solar system, he added. "We are ready to integrate and test this novel instrument, which would be capable of detecting a number organic bio-signatures," Blagojevic said.Get ready for a teeth-baring battle in the second Semifinal matchup of TV’s Ultimate Bad Boy Bracket Tournament.
Today’s bout finds Damon Salvatore of The Vampire Diaries and Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer heading into the ring.
On Thursday, the last two men standing will duke it out in the Finale of our single-elimination tourney. So make sure the right choice is made by heading down to our polls to vote for your favorites (Semifinal voting will be open for 48 hours), and hit the comments to justify your picks.
If you’re wondering what criteria we used to pick our players, we cast our net rather wide — including fellas who are dark and a little bit dangerous, truly good guys with naughty, maybe even promiscuous streaks, and actual evildoers who are nevertheless tough to root against.
And if you’re interested in the match-ups that have already finished, CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE ENTIRE 64-PLAYER BRACKET (then click again for a zoomed-in view) — and sign up to follow me on Twitter @MichaelSlezakTV. Now ready, set, vote!Since it was launched in 1973, NASA’s Pioneer 10 space probe has traveled over thirteen billion miles, and is now hurtling through a region of asteroids and comets known as the Kuiper Belt. Its last radio contact, barely detectable given the probe’s diminishing power levels, was received on 23 January 2003, about thirty-one years after it left the Earth.
During it’s long journey through the universe, should any intelligent beings come across Pioneer 10 (or Pioneer 11, which carries a copy of the same plaque), they’ll be greeted with a pictorial engraving from humanity in the form of a 6 by 9-inch gold anodized plaque bolted to the spacecraft’s frame. The plaque design attempts to convey as much data about humans and the Earth as possible using simple line diagrams, in the hope that whatever beings may find it can learn whence and from where the probe originated.
Among other things, it depicts a naked man and woman, with the right hand of the man raised as a sign of good will. It also indicates the layout of our solar system, as well as our sun’s position relative to a number of pulsars, so that our location can be triangulated from fixed points in space.
When the plaque’s design was revealed to the general public, a number of people were upset about it for various reasons. Because it depicts nudity, there was a huge uproar about NASA “wasting” taxpayer money to send “obscenities” into space. Clearly, the people voicing such pseudo-moral objections were “morons.” Or rather, they had the unfortunate character flaw of being unable to separate an obscene image from a benign, scientifically useful drawing.
There were also many who criticized the complexity of the message, indicating that it would not be immediately understandable to a completely alien civilization. This is certainly true, but the plaque’s designers did not intend for the message to be instantly detectable, only for it to be precise and informative. If found, its discoverers can spend as much time as necessary to decode its message, even if it takes generations.
Still other critics warned that showing a map to the probe’s planet of origin may invite a hostile race to find and attack the Earth. This risk does exist, but even in the extremely unlikely event that the first star a Pioneer probe encounters (two million years from now) is home to a hostile race bent on our destruction, they must first A) detect the fast-moving piece of space debris, B) capture it, C) decode the plaque’s message, D) locate our planet, and E) traverse the distance. This means that at the soonest, such aggressors would be arriving in about three million years.
In point of fact, the chances of the probe ever being discovered by any civilization— hostile or otherwise— are virtually non-existent, even if the universe is teeming with life. Something so tiny is just lost against the enormity of space. So why even bother including message? It seems that it was motivated by pure, unadulterated optimism. On the off chance that the someone, somewhere ever stumbles across our humble probe, it can’t hurt to tell them a little about ourselves.
The encoded information (color added for demonstration purposes, the original signal contained no color information)
NASA’s next attempt at making contact with aliens arrived in 1974, when the Arecibo radio telescope was remodeled. To mark the occasion, a high-powered message was beamed towards globular star cluster M13, some 25,100 light years away. This target was selected because it contains such a large number of stars, which might increase the message’s likelihood of being detected by intelligent races—were it not for the fact that M13 will no longer be there when the signal arrives. Be that as it may, the transmission will continue on its course through outer space indefinitely, one day encountering distant galaxies, so something or someone could conceivably receive it.
The graphic representation of the message (pictured) has color added to indicate the different sections. It was originally transmitted in binary, using prime digits to give clues on how to arrange the pixels.
Among other things, it attempts to depict a human, the structure of DNA, and our solar system, but clearly it can’t represent any of those things very clearly in the given space. However, if the message is ever received and decoded, it will certainly be clear to the recipients that it originated from an intelligent source. If nothing else, aliens should be able to deduce the existence of the Atari 2600 game console. If they have a reply, we can expect to receive it in about 50,200 years, assuming we’re still able to listen for it.
But the most ambitious information payloads that we’ve blasted into the cosmos are those attached to the sides of the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, launched in 1977. Each probe has a copy of the same gold gramophone record, which is encoded with sounds and images intended to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The probes also provide a cartridge and a needle for use in reading the records’ contents.
Each record’s data includes images, sounds from nature, recorded greetings in 55 languages, and a selection of music from around the world. Among the encoded photographs, it was originally planned to include a picture of a nude man and a nude pregnant woman, but after the uproar over the nude engravings on the Pioneer plaques, NASA decided against it.
Pictured is the gold-plated protective cover, which is engraved with diagrams describing how to extract the data from the disk, and the same pulsar diagram from the Pioneer probes indicating the record’s place of origin. NASA also had the cover electroplated with Uranium 238, so an advanced race might determine the record’s age by measuring the amount of radioactive decay.
President Carter included a spoken greeting on the record, which included the following:
“We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some – – perhaps many – – may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.”
Of course it is unlikely that any intelligent race will ever stumble across one of our derelict spacecraft, and even if they do, the time scales and distances involved are staggering. Moreover, it’s doubtful that a completely alien intelligence can discern the whole meaning of the diagrams for lack of a common frame of reference. But there would be little doubt that the object is the product of an intelligent race of people, which is perhaps the most important message to convey.
So it seems that the act of including these messages from humanity is really a symbolic statement rather than a serious attempt to communicate with other civilizations. But long after humanity has died off, and the Earth is burned to a crisp by her dying sun, these tiny messengers will continue to tote little pieces of our history throughout the universe. And maybe after drifting for millions of years, one of our messages-in-a-bottle will be discovered, and possibly mark the most exciting event in another civilization’s history.A torrent of “foiled” terror plots have recently undulated headlines across the Western World. In Rochester New York, the FBI netted a man they claimed was plotting a shooting spree targeting US service members. In Australia, over 800 security agents swooped in on 15 ISIS suspects whom the Australian government claimed were plotting to randomly behead a member of the public. In the UK, 4 suspects allegedly linked to ISIS were arrested before carrying out a plot Scotland Yards claims was aimed at the Queen of England herself.
According to Western security agencies, in addition to ISIS’ regional campaign of brutality stretching from Lebanon, across Syria, and into Iraq, it is also working ceaselessly to carry out attacks against targets within the US, across Europe, and even in the Pacific.
US Policymakers Claim ISIS is Neither a Threat Nor Necessary to Defeat
Considering the hysteria generated by ISIS’ alleged global exploits, it should then be infinitely curious to readers who happen across US policymakers claiming that ISIS may pose a threat, but constitutes by far a lesser threat than Iran or Syria – the two principle nations leading the real fight against ISIS and its international sponsors. Furthermore, US policymakers claim there is no urgency to defeat ISIS, and it should instead be “contained.” Of course, this “containment” will be within states targeted by US-backed regime change – serving as a convenient agent of destruction, destabilization, and perhaps even regime change itself.
There are other hard questions for even bigger threats in the Middle East, such as how to ensure a nuclear free Iran and how to deal with the Assad regime in Syria. For ISIS, though, we may have it right.More troubling still, such policymakers hail from the US-based Brookings Institution, a prominent corporate-financier funded policy think-tank that has helped direct American foreign policy for decades. Brookings “Federal Executive Fellow” Robert Hein, a career US Navy officer, has presented analysis under an article titled, “The Big Questions on ISIS.” After diminishing the threat ISIS actually poses to the US and suggesting that the battle against the terrorist organization will be perpetual.
It would have been interesting if Hein did qualify that final statement – explaining how an extraterritorial terrorist army armed and funded by some of the largest, most influential nation-states on Earth, currently ravaging three nations while allegedly plotting against the rest of the planet is somehow a lesser threat than Iran and Syria – both of which have not threatened the United States, and in fact, according to the Brookings Institution itself, have expressed a specific desire to avoid a confrontation with the West.
ISIS is a Lesser Threat – But a Lesser Threat to Whom?
As bizarre as Hein’s analysis may seem, it strikes at a troubling but undeniable truth. If by “US” Hein meant the American people, America’s service members, and victims of various staged attacks aimed at justifying foreign wars, then ISIS is a threat. For the many millions living in the Middle East or North Africa, ISIS is undoubtedly a threat. For corporate-financiers on Wall Street, the many corrupt politicians in Wall Street’s pocket in Washington, or corporate-financier funded policymakers like Hein himself, ISIS is not only not a threat, but an indispensable asset.
As such, prioritizing ISIS’ destruction is not part of Wall Street or Washington’s agenda – rather – perpetuating this threat for as long as possible is. Hein is unabashed about this notion, claiming:
Should we defeat ISIS? Rather than defeat, containing their activities within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the foreseeable future. The United States has no desire to build nations, and without a stable Middle East, terror groups will continue to find safe haven; if not in western Iraq or Afghanistan, then in Yemen or Somalia. The Middle East and Africa have no shortage of ungoverned or poorly governed territories. The current strategy of prolonged engagement, development and training of local militias, logistic support and air strikes against real targets may be the best solution after all.
Hein’s strategy also works exceedingly well if ISIS was intentionally created as a proxy mercenary force, deployed by the West against its enemies. Such a notion, while dismissed out of hand by many as a “conspiracy theory” is not only plausible, but in fact a documented fact. The use of terrorists and sectarian extremists is a reoccurring feature in Western foreign policy – including its most notorious use in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980’s where the US created Al Qaeda to begin with. As recently as 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh documented a conspiracy to once again use sectarian extremists aligned with Al Qaeda to target, undermine, and overthrow the government of Syria and wage a proxy war against Iran.
His report titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” stated (emphasis added):
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
It would be difficult to read Hersh’s 2007 report and attempt to deny that is not precisely what has unfolded, verbatim, beginning under the cover of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” up to and including the creation of “ISIS” and its growing fighting capabilities possible only through an immense, coordinated multinational effort.
The creation of ISIS and what appears to be concerted attempts to justify the slow burn prescribed to “stop it” are echoed in Hein’s proposal of “not stopping ISIS to stop it.”
Why Syria and Iran are Bigger “Threats”
Ironically, it was an extensive policy paper produced by the very think tank Hein belongs to – Brookings Institution – that noted Iran (and therefore Syria) not only did not want war with the West, but was willing to weather endless covert provocations to avoid giving the West an excuse to wage hegemonic war against the nations. Within the pages of Brookings’ “Which Path to Persia?” report published in 2009, it was stated:
With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never willingly provoked an American military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight.
Thus it is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion and it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.
The report would also state:
…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)
The entire report is a documented conspiracy to justify and provoke war with a nation actively seeking to avoid war even at the cost of suffering innumerable humiliations, covert attacks, assassinations, decades-spanning sanctions, and other forms of terroristic provocations. When Hein and other US policymakers refer to Iran and Syria as a “greater threat” than ISIS, they do not mean a threat to the national security of the American people or the territory of the United States itself – but rather a threat to their own hegemonic interests well beyond America’s borders and even interests that lie within the borders of Iran and Syria themselves.
Deciphering the deceptive, criminal language used by US policymakers illuminates the ongoing conspiracy in which ISIS plays a central part. ISIS is considered not a threat – not because the US can manage what they claim is an inherently “anti-Western” terrorist organization – but rather because the US itself created and controls it. Syria and Iran, while not actual threats to the West, are considered instead “threats” to US interests – more specifically – the interests of the corporate-financier elite on Wall Street and their lobbyists in Washington D.C.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.Parenthood isn't for everyone — including one of the stars of the NBC show by the same name.
Joy Bryant, who played a mother-of-three on the hit TV series until it wrapped in 2015, says she has no intention of becoming a mom herself, and feels quite comfortable with that decision. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to have a problem with it.
In an essay for Lenny Letter, the 41-year-old actress lists all of the nosy, not-their-business and definitely not-the-point opinions she's heard from friends and strangers alike, who have urged her to have a baby with arguments like 'you’ll be such a good mother' and 'you’ll have beautiful children' — and she breaks down just why comments like those are inappropriate.
Scroll down for video
Childless and loving it: Joy Bryant, 41, (pictured in May 2015) wrote in an essay for Lenny Letter that she doesn't want kids
Mind your own business: She said the decision to have a family is between her and her husband, Dave Pope — but plenty of people butt in anyway (pictured in September 2015)
It's not that Joy just isn't yet ready for children, or that she's trying to get pregnant and having trouble — both of which would also be good reasons for not asking her about her procreating plans — but rather that Joy simply doesn't want to be a mother and, as she explains, that's nobody's business but hers and her husband's.
But even though plenty of people don't think twice before 'being impolite, or insensitive, or invasive, or just straight-up rude' by asking her when she plans to have a baby, Joy notes that she always bites her tongue and answers back politely.
'I, as the recipient, must keep my cool and either explain myself or gracefully defend myself,' she wrote. 'They’re lucky I’m a classy broad. I know people don’t mean any harm, but this really shouldn’t be an issue at all, because what I choose to do or not do with my womb should be of no concern to anyone but my husband.'
It's make-believe, guys! Joy played a mom on the hit NBC show Parenthood (pictured) — and some people think that just because she was a good fictional mother, she'd make a good real mother
Exacerbating the problem is that fact that so many people don't just drop the issue when Joy tells them she doesn't 'have the need to breed' — they push, trying to convince her to change her mind about a major decision that she's given plenty of thought to.
And, Joy notes, their'reasons' why she should have a baby aren't even good ones.
Some tell her that she and her husband of eight years, stuntman Dave Pope, would have 'beautiful children' — as if knowing they'd be beautiful is alone a great justification for procreating.
'I should commit to one of the toughest jobs in the world, all for the sake of populating the planet with a super-human specimen of good breeding? No, thanks. I’m good,' she wrote.
Some insist that Joy would be'such a good mother', to which she retorts in the essay (but not in real life): 'I’d be a good competitive eater, too, doesn’t mean I should.'
Nosy: She rather focus her energies on other things, but people don't like to accept that decision (pictured in October 2015)
Others insist that motherhood is'so much fun', which Joy highlight doubts, while some implausibly link the fact that she played a 'good mom on Parenthood' to the probability that she'd be a good mom in real life.
As Joy so patiently points out, Parenthood was just a TV show — so if anyone thinks she seemed like a good mom, she'll take it as a compliment of her acting skills.
Then there are the people — whether they be close friends, acquaintances, or even strangers — who throw out sexist and outdated arguments, reminding her that her biological clock is ticking and she should 'just give [her husband] a baby already'.
As for the biological clock, she says, she's not concerned, since she 'rocks the clock for fashion, not function'.
Watch your words: Some even tell her that she should 'give [her husband] a baby already', as if it's something she's denying him (pictured in May 2013)
The pretty gene: Joy's also heard that she'd make 'beautiful children', which might be true — but isn't a good enough reason in and of itself to have them (pictured in July 2015)
And to those who imply that it's her duty to give her husband children? She says that this one'really hurts'.
'We are talking about a human being who should be wanted by the people who created her,' she wrote. 'When a married couple is thinking about bringing life into the world, both partners should be on board.
At the end of the day, she explains, whether or not she wants to be a parent is her choice, and nobody else's. She doesn't feel that she needs to be a mother to be 'fulfilled', and that's up to her.THERE WAS AN increase in racist incidents flagged with an NGO in the first six months of this year, with higher levels of violence, threats and discrimination in public spaces reported.
The European Network Against Racism Ireland (Enar) host a website, iReport.ie, which allows victims and members of the public who witness racism, to report it confidentially. Today the organisation said there was a significantly higher level of reporting in this six month period than all previously recorded periods.
A total of 190 reports were received during that period, with assault appearing in 22 cases, including ten with physical injury and two threats to kill or cause serious harm. Of the 22 assaults, three were against women and three were against mixed-gender groups, but the report shows men are significantly more likely to be targeted by violence.
Today’s report includes a number of examples of reported incidents:
I was on my way to work when a man swung a folded newspaper at me, hitting me and called me a ‘f***ing black woman’. I was in shock.
One of them stopped, leaned in front of the victims face and began racially abusing him. When the man failed to react, he pulled off his headphones and said something along the lines of ‘this is what I hate about this country, all the ‘blacks’ coming in here taking our jobs. After this it escalated into a violent racist attack.
Eighteen incidents required medical treatment or resulted in serious health problems for the victims.
One involved children experiencing bleach burns on eyes and skin after they were sprayed by other children in their neighbourhood.
Two involved severe beatings of the victim, with unknown extent of injuries at time of reporting.
Eight resulted in physical injuries not requiring immediate hospitalisation.
In two cases clothes were ripped from the bodies of victims during the assaults.
Verbal abuse
The largest proportion of incidents submitted concerned verbal abuse. In 43 cases, the incidents involved perpetrators who were known to the person targeted by the abuse. Ten of these perpetrators were staff members in public institutions and 12 were neighbours.
My nextdoor neighbour came onto my property shouting that his partner was going to kill me, calling me a ‘foreign bastard’ and a ‘dirty foreign bitch’.
He called me a ‘Filthy jew’ and a ‘baby killer’, and said that |
the universe. The enlarged PTOLEMY will count the number of electrons that neutrinos have bumped up in energy to determine whether this prediction is correct. Confirming it would validate current thought about the evolution of the cosmos since the Big Bang, while refuting it could overturn the model and lead to fresh insights.
The expanded experiment could have other far-reaching effects. It might detect so-called sterile neutrinos, hypothetical Big Bang particles that have no positive or negative charge and could be the source of invisible dark matter, which scientistsakes up 20 percent of the mass of the universe
Besides hunting for neutrinos, the area in which PTOLEMY sits houses equipment useful for furthering the central collaborative mission of the fusion energy lab. For example, developers of ITER, the international tokamak under construction in France, will test a diagnostic device on a powerful magnet next to the site. Work on PTOLEMY itself will attract graduate students and summer interns. Tully notes such opportunities as he looks ahead. “My dream is to prove that measuring neutrino mass can work,” he says, “and to have a beautiful picture of a major new facility that engineers can build.”
PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas — ultra-hot, charged gases — and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. Results of PPPL research have ranged from a portable nuclear materials detector for anti-terrorist use to universally employed computer codes for analyzing and predicting the outcome of fusion experiments. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the largest single supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.The Fire Emblem: Awakening Lucina Figma Is Being Rereleased
By Jenni. March 29, 2016. 9:00am
People who missed getting last year’s Fire Emblem: Awakening Lucina Figma will have a second chance to add the figure to their collection. The Good Smile Company will be rereleasing the character. In August 2016, Lucina will be back on store shelves.
The Lucina Figma is a Max Factory figure that’s about 140mm/5 and a half inches tall. She’s fully articulated, has two faces, two hair parts, a removable cape, and her Falchion can be held or sheathed. She also comes with the mask that helps her hide her identity. She’s identical to the original Lucina Figma, which was released in August 2015.
The Good Smile Online Shop is currently taking pre-orders for the Lucina Figma until April 20, 2016. She costs ¥6,800/$60. A more precise release date, beyond the August 2016 window, is not available.What the developers have to say:
Why Early Access? “Krieg is a competitive multiplayer based around turning the most fun and exciting VR interactions into intense gameplay. With months of work, we have succeeded with a roster of 5 extremely unique characters all with their own personality and feel.
We have found creating the best VR games requires feedback from as many players as possible. Because if this, a free demo will be available the entire Early Access period. This demo will have a limited character roster that will cycle through all the characters over time. The demo will connect with everyone who purchased the game. We want everyone with access to VR to be able to play Krieg.
With your feedback we can make this the best game it can be.” Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? “The length of the Early Access campaign depends on the reception of the game. The more feedback we get, the more extensive the updates will get. Probable duration is likely somewhere between 4 months to a year.
The planned additional content is new characters, maps, and game modes including cooperative missions.” How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version? “We have much more content planned for the future of Krieg.
Besides updating and balancing the 5 available characters, we will be adding new characters, maps, and game types. We also plan to add cooperative multiplayer missions. This will use all the available playable characters but instead of playing against other players you will be put up against complex AI. Progressing through increasing difficulty levels, and fighting a vast number of unique monsters, your skills will truly be put to the test.
In terms of priorities, we are undecided and flexible. We are extremely interested in the communities feedback. The opinions of all of you is a huge influence on how we dictate our roadmap.” What is the current state of the Early Access version? “Currently, Krieg is entirely a competitive multiplayer game built around what we find the most fun in VR. This created a unique experience with exciting interactions systems and locomotion abilities.
This includes:
5 playable characters each with unique abilities and play style
1 Map: Ancient Ruins
1 Game Type: Moving Capture Point” Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access? “We plan to gradually raise the price when large scale content and features updates are made.” How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? “Your feedback is extremely valuable.
The future development of Krieg is going to be directly influenced from community feedback.
We can also always be reached by email, facebook, or the steam community forums and encourage as much feedback as possible!
We will review all submissions and take everything into consideration as we continue development.
We are currently working on a new system build directly into the game that makes providing feedback easier than ever.
From the main menu once you click feedback there will be a record option. As soon as you click the button, the game will recording audio from the headset mic for the next 30 seconds. When you click send an audio clip will be sent directly to us.”A New York City man was arrested for plotting a terror attack on Times Square and attempting to join ISIS five times, according to a complaint that was unsealed Monday.
Mohamed Rafik Naji, 37 of Brooklyn, was charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization after traveling to Turkey and Yemen between March and September of last year in an attempt to join ISIS, the New York Post reported.
According to emails he exchanged with his girlfriend back in the U.S., he said he faced problems getting into ISIS-controlled areas and hit her up for money to fund his quest to become a terrorist.
“It’s very hard to get in I’m on my 5 try its difficult mad po po military and ppl here very scared,” he allegedly wrote to his girlfriend.
“Hunny 1 last favor $2 grand for plane ticket and to get back I promise I’ll pay u back when I get there,” he wrote her on April 4, 2015. “It’s hard then [sic] I thought m [sic] tired hiding n mountains for 3 weeks it’s very very hard wallah,” he added using the Arabic expression for “I promise by God.”
Naji was caught on wiretaps discussing with a confidential source on how to bomb Times Square shortly after the terror attacks in Nice, France in July.
“I was saying if there is a truck, I mean a garbage truck and one drives it there to Times-Square and crushes them shshshshshsh…Times-Square day,” he allegedly told the source on July 19.
“They want an operation in Times-Square, reconnaissance group already put out a scene, the Islamic State already put up scenes of Times-Square, you understand. I said that was an indication for whoever is smart to know,” he added.
Naji pledged his support for ISIS on Facebook, the complaint said.
Naji is expected to be in court on Monday.
The FBI has warned of potential terror threats on Thanksgiving, along with the Department of Homeland Security.
An Ohio man was arrested for attempting to join ISIS earlier this month.US advocacy organisation’s membership has doubled and it has received donations of nearly $80m since president was elected
The American Civil Liberties Union has said it is awash with donations and new members as it faces up to Donald Trump over the extent of his constitutional authority, having received nearly $80m (£64m) in online contributions since the election last November.
That number includes a record $24m surge over the two days after Trump issued an executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. The ACLU said its membership had more than doubled over the past three months to nearly 1.2 million, a record figure, while its Twitter following had tripled.
The ACLU executive director, Anthony Romero, said “it feels like we’re drinking from a fire hydrant”, adding that the election had brought immigration, refugee, reproductive, civil and voting rights “to a high boil”.
“What’s really heartening is people are paying attention. They’re aware of the crisis on the horizon,” he said. “There’s a real sense of urgency.”
After Trump was elected, the ACLU greeted his presidency on its website and magazine with the words “see you in court”, the same expression Trump used in response to a federal appeals court decision refusing to reinstate the travel ban.
The ACLU has won court orders in New York, Massachusetts and Maryland against the travel ban. It has also filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on the billionaire’s potential conflicts of interest.
The organisation intends to bring a legal challenge accusing the president of violating the US constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign governments at his hotels and other properties.
The boost to the ACLU’s $220m budget from donations will allow it to spend more on state operations, which Romero said became critical after some legislatures took Trump’s election as a licence to promote anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights and anti-abortion legislation.
The 1,150-employee ACLU plans to hire more lawyers and staff in New York and Washington, and spend an additional $13m on citizen engagement, including protests and lobbying, a new front for an organisation that has primarily been a policy and legal group to date.
Sheryl Douglas, a receptionist at ACLU’s New York City headquarters since 1972, has been collecting some of the recent emails, letters and postcards.
“We commend your heroic efforts,” one said. “You give me hope,” said another.
Among the new donors was Andrew Mcdonald, 52, of Odessa, Missouri. “I’m ashamed to say I haven’t donated to any organisations in the past,” he said. “But things haven’t felt so threatening before either... This time I felt like I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.”
Another donor, Steve Berke, 35, of Miami Beach, Florida, said: “I think the ACLU is going to be a huge thorn in the side of the Trump administration. Trump has already demonstrated that he has a thin skin when it comes to anyone challenging his authority or power, but I’m confident that the ACLU will fight to protect American civil liberties.”
The Guardian view on opposition to Trump: we can all do our bit | Editorial Read more
Over the years, the ACLU has been bitterly criticised for taking up unpopular causes, such as defending the rights of neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan to demonstrate. Geraldine Engel, the ACLU’s deputy development director, said the recent outpouring had been heartening. “We were always unpopular, misunderstood,” she said.
The ACLU was founded in 1920 when a small group of idealists challenged the then attorney general Mitchell Palmer’s order that thousands of people labelled foreign anarchists or communists should be arrested without warrants. Many were deported.
The organisation was soon defending people’s constitutional rights to due process, privacy, freedom of assembly, speech and religion, and supporting minorities, including women, gay and transgender people, immigrants and prisoners.
Esha Bhandari, an ACLU attorney in New York, said the recent public reaction was encouraging to those who gave up bigger salaries to work for the nonprofit organisation.
“This is why we’re here,” the Columbia Law School graduate said. “The importance comes into sharp relief. We exist for moments like this. Lives are on the line.”SEOUL, Sept. 8 (Korea Bizwire) – A recent study by the Korea Internet Advertising Foundation (KIAF) revealed that the use of sexual imagery in advertisements on web portals and social networking services is at a critical level, with officials calling for stronger regulations.
According to the survey, 94.5 percent of 200 middle and high school students in Korea were found to be exposed to sex-driven advertisements on the Internet.
The study also monitored ‘sex sells’ practices on 155 major web portals, SNS, and online news sites, and explored the perception of the practice among 500 adults.
Among the 302 sex-driven ads the KIAF discovered, 51.9 percent used provocative imagery, such as immoderate body exposure, 17.5 percent used sexual language or descriptions, 14.9 percent promoted prostitution, and 11.2 portrayed sexual acts, all of which were openly exposed to minors.
Among adult respondents, 83.4 percent said “online ads with sexual imagery have a negative influence on society,” while 91.2 percent said the prevalence of such ads is at a critical level.
“Although there are guidelines for the level of sexuality permitted in online advertising, they lack effectiveness since they tend to be too generic and ambiguous,” said the KIAF official. “Regulations that manage such advertisements are scattered across government departments, and they need to be revamped.”
“Businesses need to reinforce internal regulations, while the government should provide more comprehensive countermeasures.”
By Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
The day after Islamic terrorists struck England for the second time in a month, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman offered the prevailing liberal talking point of the day: Stop panicking. "I'm going to London later this week," he mocked on Twitter. "OMG! I might be stabbed! Or I might get hit by a drunk driver tonight, or run over by a cab tomorrow."
He might. And if any of those things were to happen, although tragic and sad, it would have little effect on the population of England -- for good reason. We are resigned to a certain level of random criminality and misfortune in Western society. In free societies, we do our best to mitigate the damage without trampling on civil rights, but it's part of modern life.
Certainly, for the victims of violence -- and their friends and family -- there's little difference. The consequences for the rest of society, though, can vastly differ. If an unarmed man were shot down by a police officer, would Krugman tell his three million followers: "Relax. You have a better chance of being run over by a taxi"? Of course not. Terrorism is about more than just risk assessment. There are broader societal implications to take into account.
Those who kill in the name of Islam are part of a unique worldwide political movement that includes, to various degrees, radicalized men and women from both great factions of the faith. They are on every continent, and they give no quarter. There is no dialoguing. There is no realistic political solution that might appease them. There is no legislative fix. Terrorism -- as well as the recruitment and propaganda tools by which terrorists survive -- is funded by Islamic regimes and the radicals in them, and applauded by adherents around the world. Every attack is about all of this.
Remember, as well, that the magnitude of the violence is alleviated only by the vigilance of the people fighting it. Comprehending the depravity of the jihadi makes people nervous in the way random criminal violence should not. Those who peddle Krugmanesque risk assessments also fail to take into consideration the number of terror plots that have been thwarted. The West spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year trying to avert another 9/11, although we obviously struggle to stop these low-tech attacks. The London metropolitan police reported, "There are 500 current terrorism investigations, involving 3,000 current subjects of interest." One of the London Bridge terrorists appeared in a documentary called "The Jihadis Next Door." This seems alarming.
Krugman went on to tweet: "I mean, seriously. Terrorism = bad. But panicking about this stuff -- or worse, inciting panic -- is unforgivable. Especially for POTUS." Wait. Terrorism is merely bad, but panicking is unforgivable? (Juxtapose this comment with the hysterical reaction to the United States' exit from the toothless Paris climate agreement.)
I'm not sure the president was "inciting panic," but let's concede that his tweets were foolish. No one is panicking now. No one has panicked in the past. By panic, liberals typically mean you've failed to discuss Islamic radicalism within the politically correct strictures they've prescribed. "That's exactly what the terrorists want!" goes the platitude. Don't get too mad. Don't be too blunt, or you might create new terrorists. And definitely don't overreact.
Shouldn't we, and the Brits, and everyone else, react to terror in the most appropriate way, rather than contemplating how jihadis want or don't want us to react? After all, this wouldn't be the first time we fought in a war others had decided to start.
Perhaps the only thing worse than overreacting is underreacting. It seems to me that one of the underlying reasons folks conflate terror and criminality is political. To admit that the Islamic world has a singular struggle with extremism, violence and illiberalism is an unwelcome intrusion into debates regarding immigration and multiculturalism, especially in Europe.
In the United States, it's a bit different: Let's not overreact because we also have an extremist problem. We also hate. We're also violent. Every time some deranged (genuine) lone wolf kills, the usual voices demand to know why we haven't treated the attack as we would an Islamic strike. Well, after the murderous Portland, Oregon, train attacker is subdued, there is no terror cell to dismantle, no funding to root out and no worldwide death cult to liberalize. It doesn't diminish the odiousness of the crime, but it necessitates a different response.
Needless to say, while it would be tragic if a Nobel laureate were accidentally run down by a lorry driver, girls who are blown up at an Ariana Grande concert -- or, for that matter, people who are forced to choose between jumping off a twin tower or burning in it -- are victims in a war that pits liberalism against despotism. No, it's not World War II, but it's dangerous enough. Treating its casualties as we would those who die in accidents will only normalize it.It’s a beautiful day in early summer. The scrub oak and aspen are fully green at last. Bees and butterflies move lazily among the purple nettles and sunflowers. Birds and squirrels are a constant distraction, but The Ivy Dog stays close. She is very intelligent, and she knows the rules about chasing wildlife.
However, she also knows she is WAY smarter than her humans. Humans only see half of what is going on, and sometimes she has to make her own decisions. For the good of everyone.
So when a trailside rustling catches her ears, she’s gone.
I stop running and start yelling, “Ivy no! Get back here! IVY NO! IIIVVVYYY NNNOOO!!”
Anyone watching this scene would probably make some (unfair) judgments about the relative intelligence of the two species involved.
But this time I’m vindicated.
A wild turkey crosses the trail, Ivy hot on its trail. My yelling increases in volume, but not effectiveness. I add some arm waving.
The turkey crosses back over the trail. Now I see that there is a baby turkey running with it, and Ivy closing in. Then the momma turkey turns. The next time they cross the trail, Ivy is the one being chased, ears flat against her head with fear and embarrassment.
The Ivy Dog has an incredibly efficient stride and the sleek conformation of a racehorse. She easily outruns the turkey, then veers back to the trail. She glances back casually, as if to say, “I’m just running along; nothing happened.”
The Ivy Dog is a complicated and multi-faceted creature. She will bark at cars right in front of me, even though that is a clear rule violation, then immediately put herself in the kennel as punishment. Sometimes I come home to find her in the kennel, ears flat with shame, and I’m left to guess what kind of crime spree she went on while I was gone. But maybe she did nothing. Sometimes I feel like she holds the guilt of the world on her small shoulders. She takes our guilt and shame for us, since she is stronger. Kafka might have written his longest volume on the guilt The Ivy Dog carries.
Or maybe she was just really naughty while I was gone.
The Ivy Dog is a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd. She uses her herding skills to keep me on the trail and to help me get to the barn in the backyard. She also helps me with cat herding, which is possible if you have the right dog. She was named when she was a tiny puppy after she disappeared into our English Ivy, then popped her little head up, just like Flower the skunk in the movie Bambi.
Ivy is a sweet little girl, except to Clayton the Malador. Clayton the Malador is easily twice her size, but The Ivy Dog attacks him mercilessly if he goes on a run without her. She also attacks him if SHE goes on a run without HIM. She attacks him if I pet him, if I look at him, if I say his name… But she also loves Clayton the Malador. When they run together, they forget about me. They are no longer shackled by the two-legs that hold them back, they run like they were meant to run, a pack of predators chasing down a squirrel, a chipmunk, a leaf. When Ivy comes across prey, ancient instincts kick in and she hops high into the air like a fox and dives nose first into the grass. Fortunately, ancient instinct has faded too much to make this move successful.
The Ivy Dog completed a 25k this spring. She refused to pay for her registration, so she was technically a bandit, but she put in the miles so I think it counts. She ran with my daughter, who is the fastest runner in the family, and we learned the following:
-Everyone loves The Ivy Dog and The Ivy Dog loves everyone. She was fawned over and petted by dozens of people, mostly women, and she loved them all in return. She was told she was pretty approximately 113 times.
-The Ivy Dog DOES wear out. Her previous long distance was 11ish miles. By the time she reached the end of the 25k she was exhausted. She stopped running up to greet all her new friends and just gave finishers a tail thump.
-The Ivy Dog takes too long at aid stations.
-The Ivy Dog doesn’t understand the whole competition thing. At the top of some switchbacks, she spotted my husband coming up. She sat down in the middle of the trail and refused to go on until he reached them.
-The Ivy Dog doesn’t like members of the herd to leave the trail. A runner left the trail to answer nature’s call and Ivy tried to go after him to bring him back to the trail. Fortunately she was leashed.
-The Ivy Dog sometimes causes falls, sometimes makes falls worse, and is terrible at first aid. Some of this was learned before the 25k when she tripped my husband and then crawled all over him in an effort to make it all okay. At the 25k my daughter tripped. It might have been one of those “almost falls” but Ivy kept running and the pull of the leash made her fall. Then The Ivy Dog crawled all over her in an effort to make it all okay. Crawling all over fresh injuries doesn’t really help.
If The Ivy Dog had thumbs and a little more language (she can say OIL,OIL,OIL but not much else) she might have been a microbiologist, a surgeon, or a nanotechnologist. Instead, she’s a dog. She is aware of her superior intelligence, but she’s seldom condescending. She loves me in spite of my relative blindness and deafness. She runs with me in spite of my slow and clumsy two-legged gait. She keeps me on the right trail and scouts out potential meals, just in case.
But she leaves the turkeys for the dumber dogs.Image caption Books, not the internet, were a key source for Harry and co
In a world that is overwhelmed with ways of accessing information, we must decide what to remember and what to forget, says historian Lisa Jardine.
In a recent article about the impact of the internet, New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik gives a particularly engaging example of the hurtling pace at which the speed of access to information is accelerating.
The first Harry Potter book - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - was, he observes, published in June 1997. At a crucial point in the plot, Harry, wrapped in his invisibility cloak, manages to get into the restricted section of the Hogwarts school library in order to scour the books it contains for vital information on the alchemical origins of the philosopher's stone.
Just one year later, in 1998, the founders of Google registered their internet and software company, and the global online search engine was born.
Today, any young reader of JK Rowling's The Philosopher's Stone would be bound to ask, turning the pages with bated-breath expectation as Harry Potter comes close to being discovered in the out-of-bounds section of the library: "Why didn't he just Google it?"
As so often, however, our sense of living in an age which is particularly vulnerable to being overwhelmed by too much information turns out to be misplaced.
Even before the invention of the printing press - when the distribution of information depended upon teams of scribes working with pen and ink in monastery libraries - the fear of too much to know, too much material too widely and swiftly disseminated, was already threatening to overwhelm our orderly sense of understanding.
Once books proliferated in printed form from the 16th Century onwards - "too many books, too little time" was the complaint of scholars like Erasmus and Descartes. Knowledge-gatherers scrambled to develop ever more-complicated ways of assembling, organising and distributing knowledge drawn from as wide as possible a range of erudite and unfamiliar sources for easy retrieval.
In 1689 a professor at the University of Hamburg with a passion for new technologies, unveiled a device for managing information overload - a purpose-built mahogany cabinet designed to hold and organise several thousand hand-written notes taken by an individual reader from the books they were reading.
Image caption A diagram of the cabinet favoured by the Hamburg professor
Along the back of the cabinet were narrow vertical posts, each headed by a letter of the alphabet. Running the length of each post was a sequence of brass plates engraved with alphabetised headings designed to capture topics of particular interest to the reader, each heading furnished with a metal hook, to which slips of paper containing information extracted from the owner's reading were to be attached, ready to be retrieved for re-use at a moment's notice.
It is not clear whether this rather cumbersome piece of equipment caught on (though apparently the philosopher Leibniz owned one) but the impetus behind it is obvious. Already by the 17th Century there was widespread anxiety that the sheer volume of available knowledge was getting out of hand - that an information avalanche was being compiled and disseminated in manuscript and print, which would overwhelm the human capacity to save and stockpile intellectual material.
The result was an explosion of instructions for note-taking, excerpting, indexing and classifying material derived from printed sources. Most of the bundles of notes, on fragments of paper and scraps of parchment, have crumbled into dust, but the printed reference volumes derived from them - running to hundreds of thousands of entries, and large, folio multi-volume editions - survive. Many of them, in their turn, carry the feverish hand-written marginal annotations made by anonymous 17th Century readers, marking items they especially valued and wanted to have permanently at their fingertips.
Under pressure to find shortcuts, it was not considered cheating to resort to compendia of knowledge in place of the sources themselves. Gabriel Naude, French intellectual and librarian, recommended frequent use of reference books - dictionaries, collections of proverbs, quotations from the classics, encyclopedias - as essential if anyone was to control the flood of information:
Image caption Internet use was in its infancy when Harry Potter first hit the shelves
"I esteem these collections extremely profitable and necessary," he wrote, "considering the brevity of our life and the multitude of things, which we are now obliged to know, before one can be reckoned among the number of learned men."
Of course I am labouring the point here to remind us that there has never been a time when mastering the sum of human knowledge has not been felt to be an impossible task. And historically there was the additional fear that the precious store of knowledge accumulating as the world grew in wisdom might be lost by natural or man-made disaster. Early modern compilers of information feared that without care for its safekeeping, information might run through their fingers like sand, lost forever.
A strong theme in the surprisingly large early modern literature bewailing the effect of too many books is not just worry at not being able to keep hold of everything a person is required to know, but this fear of loss. To 15th and 16th Century scholars, the period following antiquity - the so-called "dark ages"- had almost succeeded in obliterating classical learning forever. In the 17th Century, Europe-wide wars, civil wars and unrest had resulted in the destruction of entire archives of precious administrative documents.
Hence the potent theme of knowledge rescued from near-oblivion, which runs through early modern discussions of how to store and retrieve information reliably.
At the beginning of the 17th Century, the Palatinate Library in Heidelberg became the largest and most important collection of books and manuscripts north of the Alps. When the Catholic Habsburgs defeated the Protestant Palatine Elector Frederick V in 1620, they reduced Heidelberg Castle to ruins and carried off the contents of the library as spoils of war - by this time totalling over 3,500 manuscripts and 13,000 printed works - to the Vatican Library in Rome where they remain to this day.
Undeterred, at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, when the Palatine territories were partly restored to the heir, Charles Louis, the new Elector Palatine set about rebuilding the great library, which once again gained an international reputation for its depth and breadth. In 1693, however, the French king Louis XIV again sacked Heidelberg, blowing up its key buildings and burning the refurbished library and its contents to the ground.
Given the vulnerability of paper and print before the arrival of the internet, it is not surprising that those who valued the transmission of information over time included oral or experiential transmission of skills in all kinds of hands-on, practical settings among the sources of lasting knowledge to be treasured.
Image caption Online knitting communities keep the craft alive
I came across one of these myself last autumn. My sister, who was visiting, remarked that she and I both had an idiosyncratic way of casting on stitches to begin a piece of knitting. It is not a technique that figures in any of the many online knitting sites - modern repositories of practical knowledge preserved and transmitted via the internet. Of course we learned our way of casting on directly from our mother - I can still recall her hands on mine as a child, directing the needles and guiding the yarn. Here is a piece of data inadvertently preserved by our shared practice, to be continued, I feel sure, into the next generation.
Knowledge is actually hard to lose nowadays. In one of my early Point of View pieces in 2007, I reflected on the fact that my twenty-something son had asked me what "darning a sock" meant. He really didn't know. Nor, when I explained, could he quite see the point. Socks were on sale in packs of three or more pairs in every supermarket. Why would you bother to mend a sock when you could simply buy a new pair?
The genuine satisfaction of having been frugal - having made the sock 'as good as new' for another season's wear Lisa Jardine in 2007 Read Lisa's PoV on darning
But of course, in spite of my son's generation's incomprehension, the meaning of darning has not been lost. Googling this week, I find there is a comprehensive Wikipedia entry recording every aspect of this traditional repair method (the first version, as it happens, was posted online in 2007) with diagrams and tips for successful execution. And for the novice, there are several YouTube videos carefully explaining how to achieve the ideal darn.
The danger today is rather that we are reluctant to let go of any information garnered from however recondite a source. Every historian knows that no narrative will be intelligible to a reader if it includes all the detail the author amassed in the course of their research. A clear thread has to be teased from the mass of available evidence, to focus, direct and ultimately give meaning to what has been assembled for analysis. Daring to discard is as crucial as safe-guarding, for effective knowledge management and transmission today.
There is all too little danger of the knowledge currently accumulating in floods - multiply-owned, stored and captured - being lost. Rather, if we are going to make sense for posterity of today's information-saturated present, one of the things we will have to learn to do is decide how to prune the evidence, and ultimately, what to forget.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A gay Muslim man living in Australia was forced into telling his family that he had married a man, even though he had not, so that they would understand his sexuality.
Mohamed Al Abri grew up in Abu Dhabi in a strict Muslim family.
When he was 16, he moved to Australia to study and he has been in the country ever since.
Talking to Radio Australia, Al Abri explained that he always knew he was attracted to men.
However, he had not planned to come out because of persecution of homosexuality in the United Arab Emirates.
In fact, for a long time, he thought he would marry a woman despite his sexuality.
“I thought one day I’ll grow older, my parents will arrange my marriage and I’ll get married to a woman,” he quipped.
Related: What the hell is going on with same-sex marriage in Australia?
Since then, he met his partner Matt Gough in 2009 and the two have been together since.
Al Abri realised that as their relationship became more serious, he would have to come out to his family but he couldn’t find the words to do so without using homophobic slurs, especially when speaking in Arabic.
He said: “I was really finding it hard not [to] use derogatory terms.
“She [his mother] wouldn’t understand, so that’s when I told her, ‘I married a man’ — that’s how she understood.”
Al Abri resorted to telling his mother he had married a man, even though he had not because Australia is yet to have marriage equality because the concept was impossible for his family to grasp.
Related: Meet the gay couple who don’t want marriage equality
Talking about the upcoming postal survey on same-sex marriage, Al Abri said he was glad that people could have a say despite the hefty cost.
“It’s such an important statement to make — that the Government could say, ‘We believe you are equal citizens’.”
However, he hopes that the country votes in favour of marriage equality so he can actually marry his partner and no longer lie to his family.
He added that he understands why people might vote no, but that they should be allowed a platform on the issue.
He said: “There are plenty of people that don’t want it to go ahead.
“As much as I disagree with that, their voice is allowed to be heard just as much as mine.”EarthEasy sent me an EcoZoom Dura Rocket Stove. All opinions are my own.
This year Ryan has taken an interest in learning about sustainability, homesteading and emergency preparedness. Neither of us have any concern about civilization falling apart overnight or a zombie apocalypse or anything of that nature. Instead, Ryan’s interest in preparedness has come from an interest in becoming more self-sufficient and being prepared for a potential natural disaster, and so on.
I’ve worked with EarthEasy in the past to showcase some simple and natural gift ideas such as a wooden kids swing or gifts for gardeners. For this year’s gift guide I am recommending their EcoZoom Dura Rocket Stove to anyone interested in sustainability, emergency preparedness or even just camping.
The EcoZoom Dura Rocket Stove is small at less than 12 inches square. It is fueled off of wood or other dry biomass. It has been tested in developing countries and has proven to be durable for long-term use. It’s made with ceramic and metal with a cast iron top. The top of the stove is designed to hold a pot or pan of your choice for cooking just about anything you can think of. The Dura Rocket is energy-efficient and weighs about 13 pounds. The size and weight of the Dura Rocket make it reasonable to travel with while camping or even to keep in your vehicle for emergency situations.
From a campers perspective, having the Dura Rocket while camping can prevent you from being limited to just hot dogs on a stick each night, without having to use a camper to lose out on the more authentic camping experience.
I expect to use the Dura Rocket on our camping trips and to keep it on hand for emergency situations as well. Two summers ago we lost power for about five days and it was really tough to figure out how to eat without power to cook food, or power to keep food cold or frozen. The Dura Rocket would have been wonderful to have on hand that week!
If you know anyone interested in sustainable living, green living, gardening or emergency preparedness check out EarthEasy for a wide range of gift ideas!
Win it: An EcoZoom Dura Rocket Stove. $99.95 value!
To enter: Fill out the GT form below. This giveaway is open to the 48 lower US states only.
Entry Form
Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 25 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I am a calorie counter who loves soda. I budget to save money so I can spend it on my dogs. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister |
the local government financing vehicles, the SIVs, are insolvent. They cannot pay the interest on their loans and therefore have no hope of repaying the principle. Of course, Mr Green, being a proper banker, say this is no problem and advocates the elegant solution of the central government setting up a fund to ‘absorb’ – put on public’s tab – all the bad loans. Brilliant! They are so clever these bankers aren’t they!
Elegant solutions aside the situation is as fimiliar as it is grim and stupid.
To see why Mr Green thinks 80% of the loans made to local government funding vehicles will fail, we have to look at the detail of how unstable this vast pile of debt has become.
Another very good article in Caixin, on investment in China’s vast road building projects paints a very ugly picture.
Of the 10.7 trillion Yuan of local government debt, 1.12 trillion yuan of it is tied to road building projects and the article gives us a pretty good picture of the loan structures. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that lending for the road projects is in any way better or worse that the rest of the lending that has been done for other construction so I will take this as a good first approximation of the larger problem.
So how bad is the problem in road building? Well according to the article these loans were audited by the Central government and
The auditors also found that more than 54 percent of all new borrowing by government financing vehicles was being used to pay old debt.
Taking on new loans just to pay old off old ones is never a good sign, but it gets worse. It turns out that the old loans were from the China Development bank who at some point declined to lend further either because the government had told it to close off the taps on lending a bit, or because the bank itself came to recognize the project was unwise, unfinished and un-likely to ever make the return on its money that the local government bureaucrats and their friends the developers had said it would. The article suggests all three in various combinations.
So what did the local government and developers do? They turned to ‘alternative’ sources of funding often as not in Hong Kong.
At which point a unwise, failing project began its morph in to a successfully, fully armed financial time bomb. Where the government controlled development bank had belatedly said no. The private banks said – sure. Here we are talking of private banks in china and in Hong Kong. In both places, in place of longish term loans from the development banks, in the private banks and in Hong Kong the local governments were told of the soft caresses of short term liquidity in the private market. As the article says,
They [the local government financing vehicles] won loans, but with short-term payback agreements, because they apparently never expected liquidity risks and a nationwide credit crunch.
They never expected there could be a nation wide credit crunch?! Obviously news from the outside world really doesn’t get much play in rural China. And the private banks didn’t feel it necessary to enlighten them.
For example, short-term borrowing from banks rose from 1.5 billion yuan in 2006 to 5.7 billion yuan the next year and 11.4 billion yuan in 2008 at Hunan Expressway, a provincial construction financing platform.
So now we have a runaway train of debt rolling over and over on shorter and shorter time scales. Sound familiar? Time goes by debt increases, projects get further and further in to the red. But the banks kept lending from the short term wholesale funding markets (the same ones that used to fund such success stories as Northern Rock, Depfa and Lehmans) and at rates which undercut what government development loans were set at. The banks of course told the local government rubes that there were no risks, that in a global market money was always available, that someone will always want to pick up new business.
And the locals believed them. They turned their backs on the restrictions of government controlled loans and embraced the free market of issuing bonds which banks and investors would buy. Debt by another more modern name. But of course once you are hooked on short term debt you cannot easily get off it. Not only that but as credit conditions globally have deteriorated – as everyone outside the global elite knew it was doing – we have all watched it happen – the local government financing vehicles (SIVs) have been caught with high debts, low or no income, unfinished projects and short term loans\bonds from banks who are themselves often fighting for their own short term financing. Stop me when you think you’ve heard this before.
So now the pile of debt has become unstable as payback times become the enemy.
The Chongqing group could issue bonds to cover short-term liquidity needs. It’s already issued 2.8 billion yuan in corporate bonds and plans to issue about 1 billion yuan in medium-term notes.
“We told them commercial banks had erred, and that there were liquidity risks. They did not believe us then, but they do now: Commercial banks are chasing their debts.”
Few expected “that the present maturing of short-terms loans would arrive with the credit crunch,” said a source at a major bank. “Without a subsequent release of funds, liquidity risks emerged.”
And here we are caught up to today.
Since mid-June, nearly 10 provincial-level transportation platform companies have issued debt to repay bank loans, mainly short-term financing bills, mid-term notes and corporate bonds. Five highway platforms have issued short-term financing bills.
If even 50% rather than Mr Greens 80% of a trillion euros worth of unstable debt defaults then this is bigger than Americas sub prime. Of course the Chinese will buy it and bury it. And of course they can do it. But as I said I think this will somewhat eat in to their appetite for dodgy European bank debt.
And one more thing. Will the losses be confined to Chinese banks and Chinese investors? I don;t think it will. All the data out of Hong Kong is that Chinese bond issuance there has grown massively and it is not just Chinese banks and investors in Hong Kong. The number of Western banks continues to grow. Those banks are not just helping Chinese investors buy Chinese bonds. They are helping western money buy the returns on Chinese bonds. Risk assets!
In a world where banks want high returns and where risk is good (a variation on Greed is good) Chinese bonds might well have been marketed as a lucrative opportunity.
Which brings me to a final question and piece of speculation. What is up with Morgan Stanley?
What does some one in the market suspect about Morgan Stanley that the cost of insuring its debt has equally the cost of insuring Italian bank debt? That’s the question.
My speculation is I wonder if Morgan Stanley has been playing in in this Chinese bond/debt market? This article from ZeroHedge notes that the rapid ramp up in the cost of Morgan Stanley CDS (debt insurance) does not correlate with the rise in the cost of insuring French bank debt as it would if Morgan Stanley was exposed to them. But it does correlate with the huge increase in insuring Asian and Chinese debt which has happened on the Asian markets.
Of course it just a correlation. But perhaps it’s worth remembering that Morgan Stanley used to have large investments in Chinese property on which it lost very heavily. But I wonder if the bank decided to tap into its network of knowledge and connections in China to ride the last two years of bubble growth. If it did then it would now find itself horribly exposed to all these loans going bad and bonds not being repaid.
Just speculation.
…Sorry I forgot to add this..
IF and it is a big IF I am anywhere near correct on this and MS is badly exposed to the Chinese Sub Prime and IF it does get crushed …then I wonder if we might have the entertaining question of who would rescue it. Obvioulsy the US would be expected to. But with debt ceiling as it is would they…could they? If there was any doubt is it possible – I konw this is specualtion upon specualtion but it is so entertaining I can’t resist – might we see China suggesting it might rescue MS from its exposure to Chinese debt with direct recapitalization/new preferred shares? Giving us the wonderful notion of one of the BIG American Banks, one of the Primary Dealers no less, being owned by the Chinese state?
Utterly ridiculous? Certainly almost unthinkable. But you have to admit it’s entertaining just to think of the hyperventilating on Wall Street and in DC.Gimme Shelter
Picture this: a girl, 13 or 14 or 15, sold for sex by a pimp who calls himself her boyfriend. Somehow, finally, she manages to escape. She is taken to a safe place, a sanctuary in rural Oahu where she can live and heal, her damaged body and psyche treated by an understanding team of counselors, medical professionals and teachers.
This place, called Pearl Haven, doesn’t exist yet.
But it will.
Four women are making it happen, with the help of a whole lot of friends. They are the beating heart of Ho‘ola Na Pua, which means New Life for Our Children.
These four — Jessica Munoz, Tammy Bitanga, Kaleo Schneider and Jody Allione — have managed to steer Ho‘ola Na Pua from a tiny group of volunteers to a nonprofit on the brink of a huge accomplishment.
Pearl Haven will be a special treatment home for girls who are rescued from the trauma of sex trafficking.
They walked me through the rundown building on property recently acquired from the state. I took in the graffiti-ridden walls and broken windows. Shards of glass crunched under our feet. Weeds poked through cracks and water flooded the hallways through pukas in the ceiling. I saw an ancient, wrecked shell of a building.
They saw hope.
They described their vision for dining halls, kitchens, dormitories, treatment rooms, classrooms and gardens full of vegetables and flowers. Pearl Haven, they said, would be a sanctuary where girls can heal in safety and find their way back home to their families and communities.
THE FOUNDER
“I am a nurse practitioner,” Munoz says. “I was a former pediatric crisis nurse, so I had a lot of experience working with traumatized kids, as well as working in pretty intense environments.”
Munoz was working in a local emergency room when she became aware of the problem.
“Girls were being brought in,” she recalls. “Brought in by their pimps or by other girls that are within the ‘stable.’ Or they’d come in by themselves. You’re thinking, ‘something isn’t right here.’
“I’ve been trained in sexual assault and domestic violence and child abuse signs and symptoms, but I had no idea what I was seeing — that this was a situation of sexual exploitation of children.”
Munoz says she didn’t see it at first because, like most people in Hawaii, she didn’t think it was happening here.
“Oftentimes when we say the words ‘human trafficking’ people are thinking overseas.
They’re thinking of girls in Cambodia or Thailand or Korea,” Munoz explains. “But sexual exploitation and trafficking occur right here in Hawaii with our local children. It’s not just an international issue.”
Not only that, but the crime knows no boundaries or socioeconomic status.
” It could be a kid who lives in Section 8 housing or a kid who goes to private school,” she said. “We’re talking about a lot of kids.”
Munoz has a Master of Science in nursing, and in 2012 was the national awardee of the Emergency Medicine Physician Nurse Practitioner of the Year. She realized no one was identifying these child victims of sex trafficking in Hawaii.
“And once they’re in the health care setting, who do you call? What do you do? Where do they go? They seem like such basic questions.”
She set out to find answers. When she couldn’t find any, she decided to do something about it.
Munoz founded Ho‘ola Na Pua.
“I started in my living room with one other person,” she says.
She thought they were just going to be bringing awareness to the issue of trafficking. It’s become so much more.
THE MENTOR
For much of her life, Tammy Bitanga felt dirty. Useless. Good for one thing only: to be used by men.
Bitanga’s early life was marked by a series of betrayals by people she trusted.
The first happened when she was just 4 years old. A family member violated her and kept on raping her until she was 13.
The state moved her into a foster home. The family was wonderful, Bitanga says. But she had been damaged so badly that she couldn’t accept the safety of the home. She kept running away.
She took up with a girl who was working the streets in Waikiki. That’s how she met her “boyfriend.”
“He was pretty hot looking, pretty nice,” Bitanga says. “He gave me all the right words I wanted to hear. He scooped me up, took me to his apartment.”
She was 15.
The man “boyfriended” her. Told her he loved her. Gave her nice things. Filled the dark places inside her.
Now she knows what he actually was doing was recruiting another vulnerable young girl into what she calls “the lifestyle.”
She did not, at the time, think of it as a violent act — as rape — even though she was 15 and he was in his 30s.
“I was ready for the picking, and he picked me.”
She wanted to believe. So when he asked her to turn tricks she did it because she “loved” him. When he wanted her to go to Alaska to “work,” she did it because he made her feel safe. She did everything he asked because she knew in her heart she deserved no better. She was, after all, dirty.
“I was made to be used and abused,” she believed.
And nothing, she thought then, could wash away the stain.
Bitanga was able to escape from her pimp. She went back to high school and carved out a career for herself as an accountant. But she wasn’t healed. For years she led a double life — working in a law office during the day and going out on “dates” at night.
One day one of her friends said, “You know, you’re going to kill yourself if you keep doing this.”
Her friend was right and Bitanga knew it. She was tired of wearing a mask. She was tired of feeling dirty.
“I started going to church and I got healed. I had a different outlook.”
Ten years later she met Munoz, and found her life’s mission.
Bitanga is fully committed. She now heads Ho‘ola Na Pua’s Starfish Mentoring program for girls who have been trafficked.
“I’m passionate about it because when I meet these girls, I know how they feel. And so I’m able to say to them, know you’re valuable, know you’re beautiful, know you’re loved.”
THE EDUCATOR
Kaleo Schneider is responsible for spreading the word. Her official title is Education and Development Committee chairwoman.
She is very, very good at her job. I profiled her and her work a couple of years ago, and since then she’s spoken to thousands of kids.
“This year alone we did 2,000,” she says. “I go to do a one-hour presentation on what it looks like to be chosen as a trafficking victim in this state.”
Schneider says the response has grown dramatically, with educators now taking the initiative and having the entire school trained.
“The average age of kids we’re speaking to is between 15 and 17 years old. We also talk to parents. And I have principals and vice principals and administrators asking for presentations. In the past, it’s been students or teachers (doing the asking). So it’s gone from doing one or two classrooms here and there to doing full schools or whole grades.”
One of her most important messages? Watch what your kids are doing online. Everyone has a smartphone. The pimps will look for girls on social media. They’ll “like” their photos, tell them they’re beautiful, pretend they run a modeling or acting or music agency. Before the girls know it, they’re involved in something too big for them to handle.
Schneider, whose family owns Buzz’s Steak House in Lanikai, also is deeply involved in fundraising for the Ho‘ola Na Pua capital campaign.
THE ‘GO GET IT’ GAL
Jody Allione’s title is vice president of operations and site development.
“My responsibility was to get the site, and get it developed and permitted, and approved and designed and built. And I also run the operations of the organization, the finance and all the other stuff.”
Whew.
Allione’s day job was in energy development. She’s done large-scale energy projects throughout the state, so she was used to thinking big and getting things done.
Four years ago she went to a social justice conference in Australia.
“They were talking about social justice issues in the world, including sex trafficking on an international scale as well as on the domestic side. I had just vaguely heard about sex trafficking in Hawaii. I talked to some people there and they told me it was a big issue in Hawaii.” She came back wondering how she could get involved. She found Munoz, who told her, “We need a site.”
Allione replied, “That’s what I do.”
PEARL HAVEN
Allione got it done. The state granted a long-term lease and they now have all the required permits. She went to the community association to make sure they were OK with the project.
“They unanimously agreed to support it,” she says. And so did the neighborhood board.”
Allione is going from volunteer to full-time paid staff (she already was donating full-time hours) in order to oversee the Pearl Haven renovation project.
“Our goal,” said Allione, “is to raise $7.8 million. The hope is to start the renovations this year and (knock on wood) to open Pearl Haven in 2018.”
The sooner they complete the renovations, the sooner they will be able to offer children a place to shed their extreme anger, shame and resentment, and to heal in body, mind, spirit and emotion.
Before I left for the long drive back to town, I had become a convert. I no longer saw a rundown, decrepit structure; I saw the hope.
And these extraordinary women left me with some final thoughts.
Schneider: “Your kids are being chosen. Make a little time for a one-hour presentation about how they’re being chosen. Everybody is at risk.”
Bitanga (who no longer feels “dirty”): “As a community we can’t be thinking that the next person will do something. Everybody needs to take responsibility for our kids.”
Allione: Everybody can be involved with this effort because everyone has a skill we can use. I’m encouraging everybody to check our website. People can help in a small way or a large way with what they do best.”
Munoz: “Our community needs to care about restoring innocence to our children. We need to wrap our arms around these kids because, when we’re not there, they are falling through the gaps, being misidentified, being revictimized and continually being exploited.”
Right now the best way to “wrap your arms around these kids” is to get involved. You can start Oct. 8 with the third annual Pearl Gala. You can buy individual tickets or table sponsorships. Go to hoolanapua.org.
Be a part of a new life for our children.The plant would replace Hinkley Point B, which is due to be decommissioned
China has called for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant to go ahead despite the Government's eleventh hour decision to review the project.
The plan by French company EDF would see two reactors built at the site near Bridgwater, Somerset, with financial backing from Chinese state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp.
The project was championed by former prime minister David Cameron as a sign of Britain's openness to foreign investment.
But just hours before a signing ceremony on Friday, Theresa May's new government said it would review the project, raising concerns that the British approach to infrastructure deals, energy supply and foreign investment could be changing.
Hinkley C Delayed At Eleventh Hour
Mrs May expressed concerns about the security implications of Chinese investment in the nuclear plant and stepped in to delay the project.
The Government said it would make a final decision in the autumn.
In a statement to Reuters news agency, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said they had "noted" the decision.
Hinkley Delay 'Bewildering And Bonkers'
Ms Hua said: "I would like to stress that this project was agreed upon by China, Britain and France in the spirit of mutual benefit and co-operation, and win-win co-operation, and has always had the strong support of Britain and France."
She added that China "hopes that Britain can reach a decision as soon as possible, to ensure the project's smooth implementation".
Britain and EDF reached a broad commercial agreement on the plant in 2013.
China became involved last year when Downing Street hosted a state visit for President Xi Jinping.
The plant would become Britain's first new nuclear power station for 20 years, with a total cost of £18bn, and is expected to supply 7% of the UK's electricity needs and create 25,000 jobs.
There has been criticism of the guaranteed price EDF would be paid for power produced at Hinkley - £92.50 per unit of electricity.
Doubts have also been cast over EDF's ability to deliver the project, sparked by the resignation of board member Gerard Magnin on Thursday.New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed a package of election reforms passed by the state's Democrat-controlled legislature Monday, arguing the legislation was "thinly-veiled political gamesmanship."
The Democracy Act aimed to implement automatic voter registration when voters apply for driver's licenses. (Eligible voters have the option to opt out before they are automatically registered with Department of Motor Vehicles information.) Only two states -- California and Oregon -- have passed automatic registration bills.
The bill also included provisions creating two weeks of in-person early voting and enacting online voter registration. Voting rights advocates say such measures would help boost turnout, which was 30.4 percent in last year's midterm elections, ranking among the worst in the country. Roughly 1.6 million eligible New Jersey residents are not registered to vote.
Christie's veto wasn't a surprise, as he had said in June that he thought the bill would increase fraud and that he didn't think citizens should be registered automatically. On Monday, he further justified his opposition to the legislation by saying he thought it would be too cumbersome and costly.
“New Jersey taxpayers deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars spent on thinly-veiled political gamesmanship and the State must ensure that every eligible citizen’s vote counts and is not stolen by fraud,” the governor said in a statement.
The press release announcing his veto said the bill "represents a manifest attempt to use election reform for political gain rather than a genuine bipartisan effort to further improve the State’s election system."
Proponents of automatic registration have rejected Christie's fraud argument, saying that such methods have the potential to clean up the state's voter rolls by reducing data entry errors from paper forms. Democratic lawmakers in 17 states and the District of Columbia have introduced their own automatic registration laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
“Automatic registration is good for the country, and good for New Jersey,” said Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. “The Democracy Act would have made our registration lists more accurate and up to date, and voting more flexible and convenient. We are extremely disappointed Governor Christie chose to veto a bill with these kinds of proven benefits. Instead of passing laws that make it harder for Americans to vote, lawmakers must work to modernize our voting system for the 21st century.”
New Jersey Democrats had suggested they would try to put aspects of the package on the ballot as a proposed constitutional amendment in 2016 if Christie vetoed the legislation.
Also on HuffPost:Sean Hannity’s ratings have plummeted after the 2012 election, as the conservative television host saw his audience dwindle after GOP challenger Mitt Romney failed to unseat President Obama.
Hannity saw his audience fall by about 50 percent after the election ended. Though it was not entirely unexpected that Hannity’s ratings would drop after the biggest political event in the last four years, his decline was sharper than other conservative pundits, Salon noted. Bill O’Reilly saw his viewership drop by only about one-third.
Among the important demographic of viewers aged 25-54, Sean Hannity’s ratings were even worse. More than half of what is known as the “money demo” stopped watching.
Many believe that Sean Hannity’s ratings suffered as a result of his failed rhetoric. Throughout the election, he hyped up Mitt Romney’s chances to win the election, seizing on the Republican’s strong performance in the first presidential debate to all but call the election.
From the New York Daily News:
“So what happened to Hannity? “The going wisdom is that viewers who basked in his preelection anti-Obama rhetoric tuned him out when they were stunned to wake up on Nov. 7 and discover that the President had won a second term — a scenario that Hannity had all but promised could never happen. “Before the election, Hannity was riding high in the ratings and topped thought leaders on the right, like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan and talk radio bulldog Mark Levin, who predicted Obama would lose in a landslide.”
As his ratings dropped, Sean Hannity also saw himself the center of attack from the right and left alike. Outspoken actor Ed Asner in early December claimed that Hannity was “behind on his rabies medicine.”Two weeks ago I took down Manchester Regionals in the UK with a standard Replicating Perfection deck and a Valencia deck that I’d been working on since Order and Chaos was released. I’ve declined to write a tournament report about the event itself as, other than getting food poisoning, throwing up and being granted a time extension to buy a new shirt, the tournament itself wasn’t that interesting. You can consider this deck ‘sick tech’.
When Valencia was spoiled, my first thought was to build a deck that aimed to run four times in a turn, since doing so would make her ability worth a frankly absurd 4 credits. While Blackmail was obviously going to be good in any Valencia deck, the puzzle for me was figuring out what kind of shell would work best beyond that. Keyhole and Eater seemed like the obvious path, since Keyhole was the perfect card for my ‘run four times a turn’ plan. After several iterations and a lot of tweaking I eventually ended up with this list:
Grim Feast (50 cards)
Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe
Event (19)
3 Blackmail
2 Deja Vu
3 Dirty Laundry
3 Inject
3 I’ve Had Worse
3 Sure Gamble
2 Vamp
Hardware (6)
3 Clone Chip
3 Desperado
Resource (9)
3 Adjusted Chronotype
3 Kati Jones
3 Wyldside
Icebreaker (5)
1 Corroder
1 Crypsis
3 Eater
Program (11)
1 Clot
2 D4v1d
3 Datasucker
2 Keyhole
3 Parasite
This is the list that I took to Manchester with one change; I cut 1x Crypsis for 1x Knight. After the event I felt was a mistake, and have reverted for this list. This deck is a viable choice for Regionals and beyond because of the prevalence of Replicating Perfection in the current metagame. Desperado, Kati Jones, Vamp and Parasite are all very good against RP, and unless they pack Crisium Grid, this matchup is extremely favourable. I’ll talk about the various matchups in more detail later.
Notable Includes
While many of the cards in the list are obvious, some might not be as clear. I will address those here.
Clone Chip. I’m a fan of 3x Clone Chip in pretty much any Anarch deck, and that’s no exception here. Parasite is often a big part of your game plan, and you’re going to win a lot of games by recurring them. Add to that the synergy with Inject and I’m very happy to be spending 6 influence on 3 of these.
Desperado. Spending 9 of our influence on 3 copies of a unique card in a 50 card deck might look crazy. However it’s hard to convey just how fantastic Desperado is in this list. The card’s power level is obviously high, but it’s even better than usual in a Valencia deck that packs Eater. You can expect to be picking up credits from this 3 cost hardware several times a turn consistently. It incentivizes stacking Datasucker counters and makes Keyhole spamming even more viable. It helps to turn the Bad Publicity money into real money. The impact this card has on the game shouldn’t be underestimated, and every version of this deck that I’ve played has packed 3.
I’ve Had Worse, Inject, Wyldside. Spending click after click slowly drawing through your deck is a sure fire way to fall behind as Corps put more and more pressure on runners. This couldn’t be truer in Valencia, given that her 50 card deck size hurts consistency. This deck also includes cards like Blackmail, Kati Jones and Desperado, which have more of an impact than most of the other cards in the deck. Finding them quickly and consistently will be vital in a lot of our games. The Wyldside + Adjusted Chronotype combo was adopted from Joey Macmillan’s 2nd placing Valencia deck from the London Store Championships, and I’ve been happy with it so far. You want to be running and clicking up Kati on your turns, so clickless draw is valuable. Installing Wyldside on its own is also fine, especially since it helps you to find the Chronotype. If you’d rather durdle a little less, Wyldside and Chronotype could be replaced with Earthrise Hotel.
Datasucker. While hardly a fringe card, this isn’t the auto include that it used to be in Anarch. Given its synergy with Parasite and the fact that we want to run a lot, Datasucker more than justifies itself here. It’s fairly common to spend your clicks running archives to get a counter and Desperado money, and if we’re on the Keyhole plan in a game Datasucker makes running R&D over and over again more efficient.
Vamp. This card is very much a known quantity at this point, given how strong it is in Headlock Reina. It’s also great in this deck, turning a loaded Kati Jones into a huge problem for the corp and using Eater to make the Corp’s remote servers vulnerable. Desperado and Val’s Bad Publicity give it a little boost as well.
Notable Excludes
This is an attempt to pre-empt questions about why X or Y card isn’t in the deck.
Wanton Destruction. Given its obvious synergy with Eater, this card might seem like a slam dunk. Unsurprisingly I did test it in the first conception of this deck, but slowly reduced the numbers and then cut it altogether. I found that making the corp discard non Agenda cards barely achieved anything, and without that factor Wanton is just a Legwork that costs 4 clicks. Maybe I just suck with Wanton, but I’ve found Vamp to be all the HQ pressure we need.
Hades Shard. This is mostly an influence issue. I really like the 3x Desperado 3x Clone Chip spread and I dislike the thought of cutting any of them to make room for the Shard. It clearly synergises with Keyhole, but I tend to find that Blackmail and Crypsis will get you into an Iced up archives when the game winning agendas are in there. Jackson is an annoyance but in my experience he’s unlikely to be the difference between winning and losing when it comes to Keyhole.
Same Old Thing. This card is fairly common in Valencia lists, but I found that it didn’t do enough. It is extra copies of Blackmail but I’d rather use Déjà Vu given that it’s more versatile. Corps have ways to fight Blackmail so having lots of copies of it won’t necessarily win you the game. We’re not interested in recurring anything except Vamp, so SOT is too narrow here.
Knifed, Forked, Spooned. I don’t dispute that these cards synergise with Eater, and for me their exclusion is more of a deck slot issue than anything else. We’re already good at killing ice between Parasite, Clone Chip and Datasucker, so I chose to leave the Cutlery in the drawer. If you can find space for them I would respect their inclusion, and they may improve your HB matchup.
Paige Piper. I’m probably biased against this card because I think people tend to overrate effects like this, but I did test it and decided that it wasn’t worth the slot. It’s obviously great if you see it on turn 1 and proceed to thin a lot of cards, but testing revealed that finding it by turn 3 or 4 was too late, as several unique cards would have already been installed. I’d certainly never play her over a card that actually puts more cards into your hand like Inject and I’ve Had Worse. The art is rad so I can respect running this card in casual play.
How to Win
Given the presence of Keyhole and Blackmail it isn’t hard to guess how this deck wins games. However, there are several paths to victory and lines of play that I felt would be helpful to outline here.
The first order of business and the deck’s main strength, is grinding out the game by making your turns more efficient than your opponent’s. Getting Kati Jones, Desperado, Datasucker, Wyldside and Adjusted Chronotype on the board means that you’re probably generating more resources per turn than your opponent. With this in place you can proceed to just let the game go on as long as possible, getting further and further ahead as it continues. This kind of plan is much easier as Runner than it is as Corp because you can deal with a lot of Corp advantages by trashing their assets and killing their ice. Once this is achieved there are several ways that you can ensure that the game actually ends in your favour.
Keyhole. This is extremely obvious but it ought to be stated anyway. With Datasucker, Desperado and Bad Publicity your Keyhole runs will often fund themselves, and you can just spam it until you’ve scooped 7 points out of archives. This is your go to plan against non-RP Jinteki, and is often how you beat non-Blue Sun Weyland. This line has upside if you have shares in card sleeve manufacturers so bear that in mind.
Ice Destruction. While always a weapon in your arsenal, sometimes this is a plan in and of itself. You’ll want to run a lot to build up Datasucker counters and Desperado credits anyway, so at some point you may decide that your aim is just to Parasite every piece of relevant ice that gets rezzed. Clone Chip and Déjà vu give you a lot of ways to recur Parasite after all. At some point the corp will hopefully run out of relevant Ice or money to rez it, at which point you can run wherever you want. This plan is most likely to work against NEXT Ice HB and Blue Sun. Consider taking this approach if your opponent owns promo Eli 1.0s since you might be able to sneak them into your heap and sell them for food after the game.
Server Camping. Sometimes you may find that you don’t need to actually try and win yourself, and instead just wait for the corp to try to score something. At that point you can go in and get it. Blackmail is most obviously a part of this plan, but sometimes Vamp is even better, as it isn’t stopped by Caprice or Ash. Just keep acquiring resources and wait for the corp to try to end the game. This is your plan A against RP.
The HQ Power Turn. This isn’t all that common given that Jackson Howard exists, but if it’s been a while since the corp has overdrawn and discarded with Jackson you’ll probably find that agendas have built up in HQ. At that point you can often Parasite your way in and run 3-4 times, scooping up a decent helping of points. Desperado and Datasucker will reward you for creating an open central anyway, so even if you don’t get a significant number of points by doing this it still creates a problem for the Corp.
If the Corp has a better lategame than you, or if they’re just playing a quick deck, the grinding plan isn’t as viable. These are the tougher matchups but you can still compete. Against the former, you either need to fight harder to get on top, trashing whatever is giving the Corp the advantage, or just get aggressive. Against the latter, aggression is clearly the only option. Desperado still pulls its weight when you’re trying to be aggressive, so you do have some options. Additionally some of the quicker decks are vulnerable to Keyhole spam, so try to get that going quickly if the long game isn’t an option.
Matchups
I wanted to outline what playing against specific Corps is like, and how good or bad your matchup is. This list should help you to decide whether to run this list in your expected meta, and will give you a head start on any testing.
Replicating Perfection. As mentioned above, I consider this to be a very good matchup. Both of you are good at building advantage turn by turn, but the difference is that you can disrupt their plan while they can’t do much about yours. Get Desperado and Kati into play, take down their Sundews and Mental Health Clinics, and wait for them to go for an agenda before landing the Vamp. Feel free to use your Blackmails to take Sundews down, but if you’re confident that you can get past any ice that they can afford to rez over them run it normally. You can often leave Daily Business Show alone because unless they have Crisium Grid in their deck none of their cards bother you very much. If an upgrade is installed in HQ start running it until you find out what it is. If it’s anything that’s likely to interfere with the Vamp you need to trash it.
Non-RP Jinteki. You also have a good matchup against any other kind of Jinteki deck. Keyhole avoids Snare and PE’s ID ability, Parasite kills their low strength ice, and their fragile economy makes them vulnerable to Vamp.
Blue Sun. To be honest I haven’t played against this quite as much as I have against the other decks on this list, but I’ve faced it enough to have a good idea about how it plays out. Blue Sun doesn’t care about Parasite until you |
of employment in a country where only four out of every 10 workers are employed in formal-sector jobs. “It’s an informal business, [but] the government tolerates us,” Soto added. Up the block and around the corner, customers stood in front of white metal shacks, eating hamburgers, shrimp cocktails, and a wide variety of different tacos. Each shop has its own improvised electricity connection. The wires rise up into an elaborate tangle before connecting to the grid.
A few blocks down Orizaba, in the heart of the Roma neighborhood’s main strip of trendy gastropubs, Alexis Arce, a 27-year-old chef, sat down at a table near the sidewalk entrance to his seafood restaurant, Pacifico 7. As waiters shuttled plates laden with fried fish burritos and golden-brown fried shrimp tacos al gobernador, Arce eyed the torrents of rain crashing on the sidewalk outside. “You can make good money with a taco stand, but it’s not as glamorous as having a restaurant,” Arce said. As groups of young professionals hurried in from the storm -- a daily part of life during Mexico City’s rainy season -- Arce explained, “We could have made a food truck, but that doesn’t give you space to seat people when it rains.”Update 2 (June 9, 11:03 p.m. EST):
Mike Dean sent XXL the following statement:
The kid lost the stems to the beat. It had some samples in the original from a film. I recreated some of the stems enough to patch up the beat and remove the samples. I was gonna recreate the whole beat then I found a way to keep it. Major labels don't play with samples not being cleared The song would never have come out or cleared legal at Def Jam. If that's nothing, then he's right.
He should have better file management skills if he works at an electronics repair shop.
He should get facts straight before he speaks on my name. I let the claim go because I have better shit to do than fight with people over BS. Hope he enjoys the bread and appreciates what I did to help him make $$. That's about it. Menace, put some respek on my name.
And thank god Mike Dean removed your samples, youngin. Should throw me a few points from his pocket my way, but I am doing ok with or without the "Panda" bread.
P.S. He should also thank Plain Pat (the best A&R in the world and my favorite co-producer) who made us (G.O.O.D. Music) all aware of "Panda" in the first place.
Update (June 19, 9:00 p.m. EST):
A rep for Future's team tells XXL it's "not true" that Future put a claim on "Panda."
Original Story:
While Desiigner's "Panda" helped him explode onto the scene and eventually lead to signing with Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music, there seems to be more to the story behind the hit song. In a new interview, the producer for the song Menace revealed in an interview with DJ Booth that Future and Mike Dean have both put separate claims on the song over copyright infringement and production credits, respectively.
Since building up his own buzz after the release of "Panda," Menace has signed a seven-figure publishing deal with Tim Blacksmith’s Stellar Songs. This has allowed him to buy a new house away from his hometown of Manchester and focus full-time on producing. But he says he's still yet to collect a check for the profits made from the song.
"There was a situation with Future putting [an infringement] claim in because apparently, he said that ‘Panda’ sounded like " Fuck Up Some Commas,'" says Menace. "So we were just about to see the checks but there’s been a lot of delays so we won’t see anything until next year anyway."
As for Mike Dean, Menace says, "he put a claim in as well saying that he did something to the beat and he never did. I don’t think we’ll see a check until probably next year. Right now, it’s just going through negotiations. The problem is that once someone puts a claim in, it just stops everything.”
Menace went on to say that Kanye, who sampled "Panda" on "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2," may not be as punctual with splits payment as he should be for The Life of Pablo : “I doubt Kanye’s paid anyone, to be honest. Kanye’s a funny one when it comes to paying people money."
Menace says he's also given beats to ScHoolboy Q and Oliver El-Khatib of OVO, but hasn't heard anything back yet.
XXL has reached out to Mike Dean and Future's reps for comment.American singer
Alexander "Alex" Briley (born April 12, 1947) is an American singer who was the original "G.I." in the disco recording act Village People.[1] Briley was born and raised in Harlem, New York, and later Mount Vernon, New York. A minister's son,[2] he sang in church from an early age and studied voice at the University of Hartford.
Briley was introduced to producer/composer Jacques Morali by Village People member Victor Willis.[citation needed]. He originally performed in jeans and a T-shirt, but he took the role of a soldier for the album Cruisin' in 1978 and when the group recorded "In the Navy" in 1979 he appeared as a sailor.
In 2005, Briley's brother, Jonathan, was identified by several people as The Falling Man – the figure depicted in the iconic photo of a man falling from the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks.[3]David Sullivan admits West Ham were interested in signing Jamie Vardy (left)
West Ham have bids for five players currently on the table, but have been priced out of a move for Jamie Vardy, according to the club's co-chairman David Sullivan.
Sullivan told Sky Sports News HQ in May he was confident of securing a "top class forward" ahead of the club's move to the Olympic Stadium and confirmed on Monday West Ham were interested in signing the Leicester and England forward.
Sky sources understand Vardy has held talks with Arsenal over a move to the Emirates Stadium after the Gunners triggered a release clause in his contract with a £20m bid.
Vardy, who flew out with the rest of the England squad to France on Monday morning, is still yet to decide on his club future ahead of Euro 2016.
Vardy flew out with the rest of the England squad on Monday morning
"It was reported that one of our targets was Jamie Vardy, and while it is true that we would have loved to have had him, the numbers being talked about in a potential move to Arsenal show that the market is going potty," Sullivan told the club's website.
"It is safe to say that signing him would have smashed our current wage structure and we are determined to buy players with good value in this mad market."
West Ham have already had bids for Carlos Bacca, Alexandre Lacazette and Callum Wilson turned down, while Sky sources understand the Hammers remain interested in Michy Batshuayi and Christian Benteke.
Sullivan also reassured the club's supporters that he is working hard to secure new signings, revealing bids were currently on the table for five players.
Sullivan says the Hammers currently have bids for five players on the table
He added: "We're working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to make this happen, and with five bids in for players at the moment, we are hopeful that we can bring you some exciting news soon."
Norway international Havard Nordtveit became West Ham's first signing of the close season in May and Sullivan is hopeful any further new additions can prove as successful as some of his previous acquisitions.
"We have done that exceptionally well in recent years, with the likes of Winston Reid, Cheikhou Kouyate, Aaron Cresswell, Dimitri Payet and Manuel Lanzini vindicating this approach," Sullivan said.
"All of those players have gone on to become stars of our team and you can rest assured that we will be bringing players in this summer who will prove to be just as influential."FC Barcelona is the fourth most valuable sports club in the world according to the prestigious North American magazine Forbes, specialised in the world of business and finance. The publication has made its annual survey that analyses the economic worth of the biggest sports clubs in the world and creates a list of the 50 most valuable clubs. Barça are fourth on this list with a value of $3.64 billion, which is a 2% increase on the previous year. This leaves the Catalan club behind the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys and the MLB’s New York Yankees, with $4.2 billion and $3.7 billion respectively, and another football team, Manchester United. The English team has benefited from a new TV rights deal that has seen it grow 11% from 2016 to reach $3.69 billion. The difference between between Manchester United and Barça is only $50 million.
Forbes produces a list annualy and takes into account TV rights, player contracts and costs among other parameters. This year, the list features 29 teams from the NFL, eight from the MLB, seven from the NBA, and seven from European football. Manchester United is the third biggest sports club in the world and the biggest football team. They are followed by Barça in fourth and Real Madrid in fifth, who lost first place in 2016 to the Dallas Cowboys after having been top for three years running. The next football club is Bayern Munich in 15th place, followed by Manchester City in 35th, Arsenal in 43rd, and Chelsea in 46th.
The NFL’s Dallas Cowboys first place confirms that the American football league is the most profitable in the world. Further evidence of this is the fact that 29 of the 32 teams in the NFL are in Forbes’ top 50 ranking. In an international context, FC Barcelona are well ahead of all the NBA sides, with their top team, the New York Knicks, coming in in seventh place. Moreover, they are only behind one MLB club, the North-American baseball league’s historic franchise the New York Yankees.
Forbes reported that the cut-off point to be a part of this elite group of the most valuable clubs was higher than ever at $1.75 billion. There are 36 clubs who are worth over $1 billion and haven’t made it into this exclusive group. The main reason for the growth of sports club is due to TV rights deals, especially in the Premier League and the NBA.
L
List of the 20 most valuable clubs in the world:
1. Dallas Cowboys, $4.2 billion, 5% (NFL)
2. New York Yankees, $3.7 billion, 9% (MLB)
3. Manchester United, $3.69 billion, 11% (Soccer)
4. Barcelona, $3.64 billion, 2% (Soccer)
5. Real Madrid, $3.58 billion, -2% (Soccer)
6. New England Patriots, $3.4 billion, 6% (NFL)
7. New York Knicks, $3.3 billion, 10% (NBA)
8. New York Giants, $3.1 billion, 11% (NFL)
9. San Francisco 49ers, $3 billion, 11% (NFL)
9. Los Angeles Lakers, $3 billion, 11% (NBA)
11. Washington Redskins, $2.95 billion, 4% (NFL)
12. Los Angeles Rams, $2.9 billion, 100% (NFL)
13. New York Jets, $2.75 billion, 6% (NFL)
13. Los Angeles Dodgers, $2.75 billion, 10% (MLB)
15. Bayern Munich, $2.71 billion, 1% (Soccer)
16. Chicago Bears, $2.7 billion, 10% (NFL)
16. Boston Red Sox, $2.7 billion, 17% (MLB)
18. Chicago Cubs, $2.68 billion, 22% (MLB)
19. San Francisco Giants, $2.65 billion, 18% (MLB)
20. Houston Texans, $2.6 billion, 4% (NFL)
Vice President for Marketing and Communication Manel Arroyo’s statements:
“It is satisfying to be the fourth most valuable sports club in the world and the second most valuable football team with the ownership model we have. Barça belongs to its 140,000 members and we compete with the biggest clubs, economic giants. Those in the North-American professional sports leagues, the Permier League clubs who get more money from TV rights, and the new investors and new fortunes that are dominating the football world.”
“For this reason it is a big responsibility to manage a club and a brand like FC Barcelona, which is becoming more and more global. We invest not only in our football team but also in strategic areas that reinforce the different way we do things, like education, knowledge, social commitment and the Foundation. Moreover, we are the club with the highest budgeted income in the world and we have the largest following on our social media outlets with 285 million followers.”Four words programmers should know
arthur johnston Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 4, 2014
I like words, I subscribe to r/logophilia, own multiple dictionaries and am visibly delighted when I come across a word I have never heard. One of the things I love about words is that they take a concept or a pattern and make it easier to talk about by naming it[1]. Schadenfreude being the classic example. The word resonates with people because they have felt it and it gives them a way to talk about the emotion.
In programming we haven’t yet come up with names for all the concepts that we see on a regular basis. Since naming something helps define it and makes it easier to work with I’d like to propose some words for some concepts I have seen. Instead of coining new words though it’s easier to appropriate another profession’s words for our use. People may already know the words and if they don’t it’s easier to look up an already existing word than scour the internet for someone’s a made up word. So these are words from other professions that I find myself wishing other programmers knew.
Apophenia
Have you ever been looking at conversion rates, trying to make sense of why changing the landing page’s font size improved conversion rates by 23%. Or why the server’s memory utilization went up by 2GBs after you made the front page of Hacker News, but nothing else changed. Then you may have suffered from apophenia. It is “the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data” and is something programmers easily fall prey to.
Figuring out cause and effect is something we spend a lot of time doing (debugging) so it’s something we’re good at. But sometimes things just happen and none of the data we have can explain why. Admitting this fact is hard but can save you a lot of time over the long run. It’s important to note the difference here between not being able to explain why something happened and not being able to explain why something happened *with the data we have*. The former hurts our ego the latter is just saying we were given insufficient data to solve the problem. Sample sentence “We aren’t seeing any relationship between the two, are you sure we have enough data and aren’t suffering from apophenia”
Iatrogenesis
Have you ever just tweaked the layout and the user could no longer submit the form on IE9. Or have you ever said “Well the only thing that changed was Ted increased the monitoring so let’s see if that could have cause the slow down”[2]. Iatrogenesis is “any consequence of medical treatment or advice to a patient” with the implication that it was unintended. Chemo killing cancer is not iatrogenic. Chemo making you bald is.
When I use iatrogenesis I use it to encompasses “side affects”, new bugs, regressions, performance profile changes, surprises etc. Pretty much any changes that were unintended by the person who introduced them is describable as iatrogenic, but so are things that changes behavior that users were relying on. If I improve logging speed, but change the file name and that breaks a back up script the user was running they would describe that as a bug while I would describe it as working as intended.
Similarly if you are changing a core part of the system the system is more likely to suffer iatrogenisis than if you are changing a feature. This is especially true of ‘secondary’ systems like logging, monitoring and metrics which often get broken because people sometimes forget about how they are used when making changes. A useful question to ask is “What are the iatrogenic risks associated with this change”. This word is more useful as your system grow larger and has more users, while on greenfield projects you won’t use it as much.
Provenance
Figuring out the sequence of events that caused a particular problem to occur, especially since most problems are unexpected, is no fun. A ficticious example:”Our CC processor timed out for this one card so we locked the associated account. The client signed in, saw their account was locked for failure of payment and called customer service. That opened a help desk ticket but by then the account had unlocked because the CC authorization had finally gone through. But that meant the customer service representative couldn’t resolve the ticket.” That story involves at least three different systems. at least 8 states of those systems and how they interact. (It’s also a good example of why you should always build in some type of override but that’s a different essay). Without a full history of each of those systems states it would be nearly impossible to reconstruct the chain of events.
Talking about the full state history of an object is a pain so instead I’m co-opting the word provenance. It actually means
“The history of the ownership of an object, especially when documented or authenticated” but I’m using it to mean “the history of states of an object and how/why it transitioned from one state to the next” In the previous example the credit card charge transitioned from not charged to pending to timed out to successfully charged. You could easily imagine a system that only tracked the not charged and successfully charged state.
If you have this information it makes figuring out the full history of your system much easier, which may or may not be worth it to you. You may make the decision not to know the full provenance of everything in your system. Maybe it’s not worth tracking when each user got their first cookie from your system. But it’s worth having a word to describe what you are lacking.
Gadarene
if I co-opted the meaning of provenance, iatrogenic and apohphenia, gadarene can be used without changing an iota of meaning”involving or engaged in a headlong or potentially disastrous rush”. Everyone has been on a project that had to be finished “right now” no matter what technical debt was added. Or had someone tell them to switch everything over to the hot new language or they would fall behind. An element of the definition I want to highlight is that the decision’s rightness is irrelevant to using the word. It’s that you’re concentrating on the speed instead of the rightness of the choiceThe first time I heard about crypto currencies, specifically Bitcoin, was probably around 2011, and later in May 2012, I noticed a “micro-payments with Bitcoin digital currency” talk at a Barcamp. I did not think much of it at the time, but with hindsights, I should definitely have started to mine some Bitcoins considering the price was $5. Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies appear to be here to stay, and while most transactions occurs over the Internet, Opendime project has made a hardware USB dongle to store Bitcoins, and earlier this year, announced version 2 of their “Verified Bitcoin Credit Stick”.
Hardware specifications of OpenDime v2.0 / v2.1 USB stick:
MCU – Microchip / Atmel SAMD21 Cortex M0 MCU
Security Chip – Microchip / Atmel ATECC508A Crypto chip with support for SHA-256, TRNG, and public key signing (ECDSA)
USB 2.0 interface to connect to a computer
Bitcoin seal
The USB stick works like a piggy bank, you can add Bitcoins to it changing the status from new to sealed, but you can not use them until you “break the seal”, that is pushing through the Bitcoin hole that will remove a resistor and change the status to un-sealed.
Once connected to a computer, you can copy some of your files in order to create a randomly generated private-key. The drive won’t save your files, and become read-only. Once this is done, you should see an index.htm file in the stick that you can use to verify the stick, and add Bitcoins from your own wallet. You can then give your OpenDime to somebody to make a payment. More info can be found in the github repo, full instructions are also located inside the OpenDime, and the video below gives an overview of OpenDime, and shows how to use it.
I’m not sure I get the advantages of using such hardware key for Bitcoin payments, but the company explains it could be used for the following use cases in the FAQ:
Gift someone a Bitcoin. Put it on an Opendime and mail it to them. Simple! Deliver the payment for a car when you go to pick it up. Just put your payment on an Opendime and hand it over when you get the keys. Private key for car keys! Load a number of Opendimes with various denominations of Bitcoin. Keep them in your pocket to pay for things through-out your day. Sell Opendimes, preloaded with value, in exchange for gold or other precious metals. Use this instead of a paper wallet. Just as “compatible” but takes care of generating the private key safely.
If you are interesting you can purchase OpenDime keys starting at $37.50 for one pack of 3 boards, and to up to 8 packs of 3 boards for $300 plus shipping. That’s over $12 per board, so while it acts like “Bitcoin cash”, the hardware price only makes it suitable for larger amounts.Oversight, oversight. Now that we've seen the sweeping new powers in the government's anti-terrorism bill, everybody wants oversight.
But we already have it, says the government. Don't worry, the prime minister tells the House of Commons, SIRC is there and SIRC will do the job just fine. It "provides robust oversight," he says.
Of course, if you asked a hundred Canadians what "SIRC" means, you might not find many who know it's the Security Intelligence Review Committee, in charge of keeping tabs on CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
And, if you asked those knowledgeable Canadians to name a member of SIRC, chances are the only name they'd come up with is that of Dr. Arthur Porter — but only because SIRC's former chairman now stews in a Panamanian jail on charges of fraud.
Dr. Arthur Porter, left, seen giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper a tour of Montreal General Hospital in 2006, was later appointed as chair of SIRC. He now faces fraud charges in a Panama jail. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)
In truth, it's not fair to the distinguished Canadians who serve and have served on SIRC that Porter should have become shorthand for SIRC's lack of credibility. That problem really arises less from Porter's sordid story than from the fact that Canada's allies all make their spy agencies accountable to powerful parliamentary or congressional committees — not to small, understaffed appointed bodies whose expertise has often been in doubt.
SIRC itself does not entirely agree with the government about its suitability to just carry on doing what it's been doing. Instead, its latest annual report seems to beg the government to update the process, somehow, perhaps with a parliamentary committee.
"It seems reasonable," the SIRC report says, "for Canadians to ask whether the intelligence accountability framework that was designed 30 years ago is still appropriate to deal with the realities of contemporary intelligence work."
Despite this, the government insists that SIRC is all we need. So it's not too soon to take a look at its record. How does it perform when the chips are down?
No elephant here
It happens that we have seen exactly how SIRC performed in what was, until Sept. 11, the deadliest terrorist attack in history: the Air India bombing of 1985.
The bombing was planned and the bombs were placed, in Canada, by Canadian citizens. In its wake, stunning information emerged about the detailed knowledge CSIS had of the plot.
CSIS agents knew exactly who was involved and tailed them to a test bombing, three weeks before the real thing. CSIS had even wiretapped the leader of the plot for months beforehand — precisely because it knew he was a threat.
His name was Talwinder Singh Parmar, and, when the plane blew up, the CSIS agent watching him exclaimed instantly: "Parmar did it!"
Years later, a former head of CSIS, Reid Morden, summed it up bluntly. CSIS, he told the CBC, "dropped the ball." And, years after that, retired Supreme Court justice John Major's judicial inquiry concluded that Morden was correct. In fact, the failure of an array of government agencies to read the writing on the wall, Major said, was "inexcusable."
That was news to SIRC, though, which had taken a look at the evidence when it was much fresher — in 1992 — and decided it was all perfectly excusable — nothing to see here, move along.
That's astonishing, in retrospect, but even more so when you take a closer look at what SIRC knew.
Relatives of Daljit Singh Grewal, a victim of the Air India Flight 182 bombing, find his name on a monument to those who died during a memorial marking the 25th anniversary of the bombing in 2010. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)
It found that, yes, there was an abundance of known threats to Air India, rising to a crescendo in the days before the bombing.
SIRC also knew that hundreds of wiretaps had been inexplicably erased — and that the erasures continued even after the bombing, when CSIS knew that the man on the tapes was the prime suspect.
SIRC's report is heavily redacted, but its headlines alone convey the drumbeat of warnings: "More Threats to Air India." Then, "Air India Again Threatened." Then, "Something Big to Happen!"
But SIRC saw and reported all this and concluded that there was … no problem. Why? Because there was "no specific threat."
That became a familiar line, repeated by both Liberal and Conservative governments in the years that followed to excuse what Major later found inexcusable. "There was nothing specific." "We couldn't have known." "There was no threat naming Air India Flight 182." The threat was always just to an Air India plane in Canada.
Here's the problem that makes that whole refrain a farce: Air India had no other plane to bomb. It had only one weekly flight from Canada. It was Flight 182. Each week as the threats intensified, everyone knew which plane to watch.
Looking back, SIRC's report seems like an object lesson in how not to conduct a serious investigation. SIRC managed to find the trunk, the tusks, the tail and the massive body — but still missed the elephant in the room.
'Intolerable misrepresentation'
In more recent years, SIRC has clearly become less gullible and more willing to criticize the spies it oversees.
Even so, a stunning passage in its most recent annual report can only serve to vindicate concern about the powers CSIS will soon have to brand suspects as dangerous and to intervene in their lives.
The committee tore a strip off CSIS for outright deception over a complaint by a federal employee who lost his security clearance on fraudulent grounds. SIRC accused CSIS of "intolerable misrepresentation... SIRC had been seriously misled by CSIS... SIRC found CSIS's lack of candour most disturbing."
Candour, or the lack of it, also lay at the heart of a stinging court ruling in November 2013 by Justice Richard Mosley of the Federal Court. In that case, CSIS was found to have misled the court about a wiretap it pretended would take place in Canada, when it was actually going to be done overseas by a foreign government.
Mosley ruled that "the failure to disclose that information was the result of a deliberate decision to keep the court in the dark.… This was a breach of the duty of candour owed by the service and their legal advisers to the court."
(On Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the federal government's appeal of Mosley's ruling, although the government has tabled legislation that among other things clarifies the rules for CSIS.)
The ruling sent ripples far and wide, and the government moved to change the law. Now, it insists the courts will be a second line of defence to ensure CSIS plays by the rules. But the Mosley ruling suggests the agency was quite prepared — on the advice of the Department of Justice, mind — to try an end run around the courts.
It seems, then, that the growing concern about oversight is not just a nice way for the opposition to raise a fuss without actually opposing the government's crackdown on terror. And don't expect the inspector general of CSIS to help out here — that position was abolished by the government two years ago on the grounds that it duplicated the work of SIRC. Today, the government says that a parliamentary review committee would also duplicate the work of SIRC.
So, unless the government has a change of heart, SIRC will be on its own. Chaired by the redoubtable Deborah Grey, a motorcycle-riding former Reform and Conservative MP, it will have a much broader range of CSIS powers to consider.
But will it be the sleepy SIRC that gave CSIS a free pass on Air India? Or the one that raked CSIS over the coals for lying?
We may find out — or we may not. SIRC reports tend to have a lot of blank spaces where the secrets used to be.A genuinely difficult question is this: does the idea of a rigorous “social science” really make sense, given what we know of the nature of the social world, the nature of human agency, and the nature of historical change?
There are of course large areas of social inquiry that involve genuine observation and measurement: demography, population health statistics, survey research, economic activity, social statistics of various kinds. Part of science is careful observation of a domain and analysis of the statistical patterns that emerge; so it is reasonable to say that demography, public health, and opinion research admit of rigorous empirical treatment.
Second, it is possible to single out complex historical events or processes for detailed empirical and historical study: the outbreak of WWI, the occurrence and spread of the Spanish influenza epidemic, the rise of authoritarian populism in Europe. Complex historical events like these admit of careful evidence-based investigation, designed to allow us to better understand the sequence of events and circumstances that made them up. And we can attempt to make sense of the connections that exist within such sequences, whether causal, cultural, or semiotic.
Third, it is possible to identify causal connections among social events or processes: effective transportation networks facilitate the diffusion of ideas and germs; price rises in a commodity result in decreases in consumption of the commodity; the density of an individual’s social networks influences the likelihood of career success; etc. It is perfectly legitimate for social researchers to attempt to identify these causal connections and mechanisms, and further, to understand how these kinds of causal influence work in the social world. A key goal of science is explanation, and the kinds of inquiry mentioned here certainly admit of explanatory hypotheses. So explanation, a key goal of science, is indeed feasible in the social realm.
Fourth, there are “system” effects in the social world: transportation, communication, labor markets, electoral systems — all these networks of interaction and influence can be seen to have effects on the pattern of social activity that emerge in the societies in which they exist. These kinds of effects can be studied from various points of view — empirical, formal, simulations, etc. These kinds of investigation once again can serve as a basis for explanation of puzzling social phenomena.
This list of legitimate objects of empirical study in the social world, resulting in legitimate and evidence-based knowledge and explanation, can certainly be extended. And if being scientific means no more than conducting analysis of empirical phenomena based on observation, evidence, and causal inquiry, then we can reasonably say that it is possible to take a scientific attitude towards empirical problems like these.
But the hard question is whether there is more to social science than a fairly miscellaneous set of results that have emerged through study of questions like these. In particular, the natural sciences have aspired to formulating fundamental general theories that serve to systematize wide ranges of natural phenomena — the theory of universal gravitation or the theory of evolution through natural selection, for example. The goal is to reduce the heterogeneity and diversity of natural phenomena to a few general theoretical hypotheses about the underlying reality of the natural world.
Are general theories like these possible in the social realm?
Some theorists have wanted to answer this question in the affirmative. Karl Marx, for example, believed that his theory of the capitalist mode of production provided a basis for systematizing and explaining a very wide range of social data about the modern social world. It was this supposed capacity for systematizing the data of the modern world that led Marx to claim that he was providing a “science of society”.
But it is profoundly dubious that this theory, or any similarly general theory, can play the role of a fundamental theory of the social world, in the way that perhaps electromagnetic theory or quantum mechanics play a fundamental role in understanding the natural world.
The question may seem unimportant. But in fact, to call an area of inquiry “science” brings some associations that may not be at all justified in the case of study of the social world. In particular, science is often thought to be comprehensive, predictive, and verifiable. But knowledge of the social world falls short in each of these ways. There is no such thing as a comprehensive or foundational social theory, much as theorists like Marx have thought otherwise. Predictions in the social realm are highly uncertain and contingent. And it is rare to have a broad range of social data that serves to “confirm” or “verify” a general social theory.
Here is one possible answer to the question posed above, consistent with the points made here. Yes, social science is possible. But what social science consists in is an irreducible and pluralistic family of research methods, observations, explanatory hypotheses, and mid-level theories that permit only limited prediction and that cannot in principle serve to unify the social realm under a single set of theoretical hypotheses. There are no grand unifying theories in the social realm, only an open-ended set of theories of the middle range that can be used to probe and explain the social facts we can uncover through social and historical research.
In fact, to the extent that the ideas of contingency, heterogeneity, plasticity, and conjuncturality play the important role in the social world that I believe they do, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there are very narrow limits to the degree to which we can aspire to systematic or theoretical explanation in the social realm. And this in turn suggests that we might better describe social inquiry as a set of discrete and diverse social studies rather than unified “social science“. We might think of the domain of social knowledge better in analogy to the contents of a large and diverse tool box than in analogy to an orrery that predicts the “motions” of social structures over time.Kelly Slater has been on a constant path of reinvention. Last year he parted ways with long-time sponsor Quiksilver, announced he was launching his own brand (Outerknown), co-founded an organic drink company (Purps), and most recently is rumoured to have purchased a large stake in Firewire surfboards.
It’s also no secret that Kelly Slater isn’t one for the status quo. An advocate of alternative media, health and philosophy, you just need to plug into his Instagram feed to see how. “I think the reason I’m doing that a lot of the time is to keep myself on a path as opposed to preach to someone,” says Kelly.
Tracks sat down with Kelly and picked his brain for five things he believes everyone could do to make a better world.
Read.
Kelly: The Prophet by Kahill Gibran was one of the first books I read that opened my mind up to philosophy and deeper meanings on stuff. I think my Mum gave it to me as a kid and she wasn’t into those sorts of things but I thought it was just the most beautiful book I’ve ever read.
Search out alternative media.
I don’t know if it’s super important for surfing because there’s not like there’s life-changing events going on – that’s just entertainment. But as so far as world events go and stuff I’m often surprised when I find an awareness about something that is thought to be sort of dogmatically correct in mainstream media and the press and in the world.
Challenge your views.
Sometimes things that are totally challenging or you find totally ridiculous or couldn’t be true, at the honest ground zero level they are. So I love to read alternative sites about health and politics and that sort of thing and at least question everything in your life.
We all have an effect on what’s going on around us.
We all have an effect on all situations in our life on some level whether passively you didn’t do something or planted a seed somewhere back in the day that either had a positive or negative effect it’s really hard to tell.
Look at your relationships.
Question all your relationships, all your desires and your reasons for doing things. That’s the only way to really grow. There are a lot of terrible things happening out there in the world that we are all exposed to now through media or social media – whether it’s murders or school shootings or war, innocent people being bombed and it’s really overwhelming to think you can make a difference on any of that in the world. But it all comes down to personal relationships with people and who you know and how you affect that relationship and help them make good or bad decisions. You might know the guy that could literally change the world.The new trailer for the film – starring The Help’s Octavia Spencer as real-life Nasa physicist Katherine Johnson – plots a course between civil-rights drama and workplace comedy
Three, two, one... liftoff on the trailer for Hidden Figures, Theodore Melfi’s biopic of the black female mathematicians whose work at Nasa helped the US win the space race.
Starring Octavia Spencer, Taraji P Henson and |
Mandarin in schools, but has encountered resistance in some places where it is seen as an attempt to suppress native culture. In southern Xinjiang, where most Uighurs live, many schools do not teach it.
But discrimination is a big factor, too. Even some of the best-educated Uighur and Tibetan migrants struggle to find work. Reza Hasmath of Oxford University found that minority candidates in Beijing, for example, were better educated on average than their Han counterparts, but got worse-paying jobs. A separate study found that CVs of Uighurs and Tibetans, whose ethnicities are clearly identifiable from their names (most Uighurs also look physically very different from Han Chinese), generated far fewer calls for interviews.
Government programmes help some Uighurs, Tibetans and other minorities get a better education; affirmative-action policies can boost their chances of going to university. One scheme, known as the Xinjiang Class, sends thousands of Uighurs as well as Han Chinese from Xinjiang every year to other parts of China to complete their schooling. But it also encourages them to return to Xinjiang to work among Uighurs. Official figures suggest that 50% end up going back to Xinjiang. Timothy Grose of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana found that most he interviewed would have preferred not to.
One 25-year-old university graduate from the Xinjiang Class describes her months of difficulty in getting a job in Beijing, before landing one at a foreign-owned company. A large Chinese IT firm rescinded a job offer without explanation on the Friday before she was to start work. Another job interviewer then told her she should go back to Xinjiang. Mr Grose reports that some Xinjiang Class members are put off jobs by being told that they cannot be provided with halal meals.
A rash of terrorist incidents involving Uighurs has not helped. In September the central government stressed the importance of “urban ethnic work”, telling city officials not to adopt a “closed-door” policy to minorities, but also not to take a “laissez-faire attitude”. James Leibold of La Trobe University writes that such confused instructions reflect “a growing realisation that mingling might increase ethnic tensions and conflict”.
The government has made token efforts to create job opportunities for Uighurs on the coast, sending busloads of them to work in factories. But employers are wary. In June 2009 in the southern city of Shaoguan in Guangdong province, a brawl between Uighur and Han Chinese workers at a toy factory left two Uighurs dead and dozens injured. This fuelled ethnically charged riots that erupted a few days later in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in which about 200 died.
Just being a Uighur can draw police attention. In November, while President Barack Obama and other world leaders were in Beijing for a summit, police tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade the landlord of the Xinjiang Class graduate to evict her, saying Uighurs were not welcome. “Sometimes I feel alone,” says the former student. “I feel like I don’t know who I am; where I belong.”At an EGM earlier today, Football League clubs voted to increase the parachute payments made to clubs relegated to the National League from the beginning of the 2016/17 season.
At an EGM earlier today, Football League clubs voted to increase the parachute payments made to clubs relegated to the National League from the beginning of the 2016/17 season.The two clubs relegated from Sky Bet League 2 currently receive 50% of the equivalent Basic Award payment to League 2 clubs for one season, but from next season onwards will be paid:- 100% of the equivalent Basic Award payment made to League 2 clubs in the first year following relegation.- 50% of the equivalent Basic Award payment made to League 2 clubs in the second year following relegation (unless a club achieves promotion back to The Football League at the first attempt).The Football League's Chief Executive, Shaun Harvey said: “In recent seasons we’ve seen a number of clubs suffer severe financial trauma following relegation from The Football League and in some cases fold altogether. As a result, it became increasingly clear that we needed to review existing arrangements and address our approach to managing the financial transition for clubs in these circumstances."I would like to pay tribute to our clubs for taking this decision which is testament to their collective solidarity, given that the League's financial distribution formula means that the bulk of this money will come from funds that would otherwise be provided to Championship clubs, who are ultimately the least likely to benefit from it."Clubs also voted to amend the existing parachute payment regulations within The Football League which will see:- Clubs relegated from the Sky Bet Championship receive 11.1% of the Basic Award payment to Championship clubs for one season.- Clubs relegated from Sky Bet League 1 receive 12.6% of the Basic Award payment to League 1 clubs for one season.This change will ensure that clubs receive an enhanced figure that is proportionate to the wider increase in financial distributions to clubs emanating from the League’s new broadcasting agreement. For illustrative purposes, this would have equated to £230,000 and £85,000 respectively for the current season (whereas relegated clubs actually received £120,000 and £50,000 respectively under the previous regulations).Clubs have also introduced a new regulation requiring them to ensure that their ground and playing squad are available for a period of 4 days following the end of the regular league season to play or complete any previously postponed or abandoned matches. Additionally, existing regulations relating to clubs that default on transfer payments to their fellow clubs were strengthened.Missing Person: Peter Jackson. NPS image.
Name: Peter Jackson
Missing from: Yosemite National Park
Date Missing: September 17, 2016
Description: Jackson was 74 years old at the time he went missing. White male, 5'10" tall, 155 pounds, blue eyes, gray hair and beard. Excellent physical condition. Carrying a royal blue Outdoor Products daypack.
Case Info: Jackson is believed to have gone for a day hike from his campsite at White Wolf Campground, but he did not return. He had sent a text message to his son saying that he was on his way to the park on Septebmer 17, 2016. His vehicle was found at the campground, and camping fees were paid through September 21, 2016. As of October 2, 2016, the search for Jackson was placed in continuous, limited mode.Having a business is one of the top goals for many young professionals nowadays. After university studies and a few years in the corporate or small/medium business world as an employee, they are eager to organize themselves and get their hands dirty on their own business.
However, although the passion is there, it’s difficult sometimes to come up with a great business idea. This can be achieved by brainstorming, of course. However, sometimes it’s quite difficult to even do that.
That’s why today we’ll look at the best ways you can brainstorm for your new business ideas.
Get some quiet
Although this is possibly the easiest concept to grasp, it rarely turns into reality for many brainstormers. In order to give your brain the right amount of space to come up with some fantastic business ideas, you need a space that is free from distractions.
We know, the coffee shop is your favorite place to work, or that park in the center of town. However, those can be quite busy and there are so many distractions.
You need to get to a quiet place where your brain has room to breathe and create. This does not mean, of course, that you have to be alone. You and your team can work together on this, but you must find a quiet, distraction-free place to work.
Find problems to solve
The whole point of a business is that you solve someone’s problem for a price. That’s why it’s important when you brainstorm to think of people’s problems in your niche.
What do they want? What’s hard for them to do or to find? What do they do now, but can do better? Or what thing will solve their problem that hasn’t been created yet?
There’s also one problem you should consider in this session: your own. What problems do you have in your own niche, as a customer? What is difficult or frustrating for you that you wish had better options?
Chances are, if you are experiencing frustration, then others may be as well. And that’s a good place to start.
Keep your ear to the ground
While you should be following the advice above about people’s current problems to solve, you should also try to keep your ears to the ground and your eyes further on down the road. You need to try to figure out what’s coming up that isn’t here yet.
For example, before Facebook, there really wasn’t social media or social media marketing. If you could have predicted it (lucky you!) and you were in advertising, you could have set up yourself as an early expert in social media marketing and advertising.
Similarly, the market is moving so quickly and there are so many innovations, that it is almost certain that the next big thing in your niche is being developed right now. What are those things?
It isn’t just guessing. There are rumors, rumbles, discussions going on right now that will give you enough information to estimate a potential big entry in the future.
For example, Bitcoin started off as a discussion in a forum. If you had been there, and been an early believer and adopter (and bought 7500 of them), you could be rich right now.
Find out what’s trending, what’s coming up and being developed, and that could help you figure out what your business idea should be.
The best brainstorm tip
Of course, out of all of these, the best brainstorming tip would be not to worry too much about starting and just start. Just brainstorm. Let your brain explode and throw out hundreds of silly ideas, uninhibited.
You never know, one of those could be your next great business idea.Mickey Rooney as a Japanese guy. Chew on that.
Asian Men, Steve Harvey, and the Media: A History Albert Qian Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 16, 2017 Steve Harvey, known better as the one who announced the wrong Miss Universe winner and for a daytime television show that covers a variety of topics, is back in the news. Earlier in January 2017, he made a series of comments on his show that disparaged Asian men. Have a look: In the video, he’s seen ridiculing Asian men in referencing a few obscure books he found online. For what seems like awkward taste, the camera pans around to show a laughing audience with Harvey keeping the line of joking going. Many media outlets, including the New York Daily News, The Hollywood Reporter, and Fox News have reported on his comments, which have even angered lawmakers around the United States. As far as the backlash is concerned, Harvey is definitely uninterested in walking back his comments or apologizing, instead claiming to be a victim of what he considers to be unjustified anger (UPDATE 1/17/17: Harvey did apologize on his Facebook page.) Harvey definitely wasn’t the first and he most definitely won’t be the last. Would he — or any TV personality for that matter, have responded the same had the insults been levied at Caucasian Americans? Hispanic Americans? How about African American men? Probably — but not in this case, because Asian Americans — and men especially, have served as the media’s punching bag for a significant amount of time now. Since I’m tired of explaining this over and over again to friends and strangers on the Internet why these insults Asians (and Asian men in particular) receive is nothing new and needs to stop happening, I decided that I would finally write out what I know, and invite others to share what they know too. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.
Early cartoons rejected Asians.
Tough Beginnings Asians didn’t become part of the collective consciousness of American life until the mid-19th century, when many immigrated to the United States to seek the riches promised by the California Gold Rush. As California increased in population, so did immigrants from China who not only were efficient in their work, but also healthier due to their brewing of tea as opposed to disease-laden water that other miners found themselves drinking. The health issues of the day brought on an immigration problem that draws stark parallels to contemporary issues, characterized by cheap and available labor. Threatened by the importing of “coolies,” Chinese men were subject to the enactment of harmful legislation including that of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first ever piece of legislation passed under President Chester A. Arthur to prevent an ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. Not only did this legislation prevent Chinese nationals from making their way to the United States, it also hamstrung Chinese men currently in the country who couldn’t bring over their wives and families, and did so until the law’s repeal in 1943 through the Magnuson Act. The societal implications of the Chinese Exclusion Act were wide-ranging. Stripped of their masculinity and torn away from their families, many men found themselves forced to seek other areas of employment, some opting for more femininely-driven professions including restaurant and laundry work. With such an identity, Chinese men had to settle for a much more feminized role, reducing their statuses as males in American society. But that wasn’t their only issue — Hollywood was growing at the time too, and also had ideas of their own.
The Concurrence of Culture The 19th Century saw great upheaval in the Asian Pacific Theater. We all recall the story of Matthew Perry — not to be confused with the man of the same name of Friends fame — and his forced opening of Japan, followed by the Opium Wars of China that eventually forced the Qing Dynasty to hand off Hong Kong on a 99-year lease to the British in 1896. While these displays of military and economic might brought about a western influence to a largely independent region, the invasion and subsequent conquering also influenced a century’s worth of sexual frustration, denigration, insults, and misappropriation that still continues with the language of Steve Harvey. Case in point: The successful takeovers of major Eastern ports by Western powers invited the mixing of races — which itself is not a bad thing. What was bad was the fetish-laden intentions of those who were a part of the economic upheaval, led none other by Madame Butterfly, the famed 1898 novel by Frenchman Jon Luther Long that described the Japanese women he met as “graceful”, “dainty”, “little women” with a “natural skin of deep yellow”. Reduced to mere descriptions, this was enough to set off enormous romantic interest — and to this day, Long’s work is still romanticized in the play Madama Butterfly, a fixture in many playhouses across the world.
novel by Frenchman Jon Luther Long that described the Japanese women he met as “graceful”, “dainty”, “little women” with a “natural skin of deep yellow”. Reduced to mere descriptions, this was enough to set off enormous romantic interest — and to this day, Long’s work is still romanticized in the play Madama Butterfly, a fixture in many playhouses across the world. Of course, Madame Butterfly is updated a little less than a century later in 1989 to reflect changing attitudes. With the Vietnam War coming to a close, you get Miss Saigon, complete with modern racism, misogyny, and cultural appropriations. Oh and guess what — it’s Broadway’s 13th longest running show too so if you wanted, you could reinforce Asian male-female stereotypes literally this weekend if you were so inclined.
to reflect changing attitudes. With the Vietnam War coming to a close, you get Miss Saigon, complete with modern racism, misogyny, and cultural appropriations. Oh and guess what — it’s Broadway’s 13th longest running show too so if you wanted, you could reinforce Asian male-female stereotypes literally this weekend if you were so inclined. But back to the timeline. Just three decades after Madame Butterfly hit our conciousness, came the movie portrayal of The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck’s seminal work concerning the struggles of post-revolution China. While the book itself did justice in explaining the struggles faced by the Chinese, the movie insulted Asians directly by casting Caucasian actors including Luise Rainer as O-Lan, the lead female character. Despite the blatant whitewashing (a theme that we’re going to cover a lot here), the film went on to be a commercial success, winning for Best Cinematography at the 1937 Academy Awards. Rainer herself would also win Best Actress that year. This is ridiculous, you might be thinking by now. Or you might disagree. It gets crazier. In 1956, everyone’s favorite Hollywood badass John Wayne gets cast in a historical action film. Andrew Jackson you might hope? Nope. Abraham Lincoln fighting slavery? Guess again. How about George Washington leading the soldiers of the revolution against the British? You wish. Instead, Wayne gets cast in Genghis Khan, a film about the Mongolian invader of the 13th century who managed to extend an empire all the way from China to Eastern Europe. While the film was a flop and generally known more for it’s cancer controversy having been shot downwind from nuclear tests, Wayne’s whitewashing was yet another example of Asians (and Asian men) being tossed under the bus for star power (which didn’t really end up helping anyway).
, everyone’s favorite Hollywood badass John Wayne gets cast in a historical action film. Andrew Jackson you might hope? Nope. Abraham Lincoln fighting slavery? Guess again. How about George Washington leading the soldiers of the revolution against the British? You wish. Instead, Wayne gets cast in Genghis Khan, a film about the Mongolian invader of the who managed to extend an empire all the way from China to Eastern Europe. While the film was a flop and generally known more for it’s cancer controversy having been shot downwind from nuclear tests, Wayne’s whitewashing was yet another example of Asians (and Asian men) being tossed under the bus for star power (which didn’t really end up helping anyway). 5 years later in 1961, whitewashing happens again in one of Hollywood’s more iconic films, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Though Audrey Hepburn steals the show with her fantastic performance, Asians are once again thrown under the bus with Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed impression of a Mr. Yunioshi (seen in the above cover photo). Though he expressed regret for the role nearly 40 years later, it’s mere portrayal is an insulting representation. Apart from representative, historical, and sexual themes, Hollywood has also characterized Asians as needing saving, including films like Tom Cruise saving the Japanese empire in The Last Samurai. Furthermore, lazy casting also permeates modern Hollywood with films like The Last Airbender, The Social Network, 21, Doctor Strange, Ghost in the Shell, and Aloha. I wish I could say that was it but there’s still a much longer list.
The Murder of Vincent Chin The late 1970s and early 1980s were a tough time in America, particularly for the auto industry. Detroit, beset by increased competition from Japanese auto manufacturers, saw stalwarts like Chrysler go through massive layoffs. Socially, Asian-Americans faced increased racism and discrimination as many sought to lay out their frustrations on someone. The face of what became a casualty of that frustration was Vincent Chin, a Chinese man celebrating his bachelor party in the Spring of 1982. Mistaken for being Japanese, Chin was severely beaten to death by Chrysler plant superintendent Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz. Chin would die of his injuries just four days later. The subsequent events of the Vincent Chin murder would be considered disturbing and ridiculous, even in 2017 as Americans navigate the discussion surrounding Black Lives Matter and allegations of police brutality. Let me count some of them out for you: While the crime was clearly inspired by hate, local civil rights organizations including the ACLU passed on litigation, preferring to not focus on someone of “model minority” status.
Though Ebens and Nitz were found beyond a shadow of a doubt to be guilty, their sentences hardly fit the billing. Neither were served any jail time, instead given 3 years probation, fined $3,000, and ordered to pay $780 in court costs.
A civil rights case was then held in 1984 found Ebens guilty and sentenced to 25 years, while Nitz was acquitted. However, an appeal overturned the verdict in 1986 after it was found that prosecution witnesses were improperly coached.
found Ebens guilty and sentenced to 25 years, while Nitz was acquitted. However, an appeal overturned the verdict in after it was found that prosecution witnesses were improperly coached. A retrial in 1987 cleared Ebens of all charges. Done. Gone.
cleared Ebens of all charges. Done. Gone. If there was any solace however, Ebens and Nitz were asked to pay in the civil suit the damages for Chin’s death to the tune of $1.5 million (Ebens) and Nitz ($50,000), which would have been Chin’s earnings had he survived to complete his engineering career. Though considered the beginnings of the Pan Asian movement and the notion of “Asian Pride”, the story of Vincent Chin continues to impact and influence even to the modern day. Though Ebens, who never served an iota of jail time, decided that he would apologize in 2013, he still has yet to pay out the civil damages and in 2015, even tried to have the lien on his home removed. While numerous other races get the attention and respect, this has fallen by the wayside. Are you outraged yet? They don’t even teach this in school, much less cover it on the news. I learned about Vincent Chin because I follow some specific Facebook pages that honor its anniversary every June. Why is that, and why aren’t we angrier about this? The media again does not deliver. Crazy. (And there are other stories too.)Considering that the current philosophy of UI design is “less is more,” the expected rise in popularity of minimalism has reached an all-time high amongst web designers, especially in the last couple of years. But, perhaps unknowingly, its appeal to users has also grown.
The principles of minimalism in web design are that a website (and other mediums as well) should be stripped down to their bare bones, while carefully making use of whitespace and improving readability with clearer typography. When implemented correctly, the result will allow users to focus on what’s truly important without being distracted by non-essential elements.
Your Web Designer Toolbox
Unlimited Downloads: 500,000+ Web Templates, Icon Sets, Themes & Design Assets
DOWNLOAD NOW
While this may sound easy, it can be difficult deciding what the truly important elements are and what’s little more than decoration. It can also be risky. Accidentally removing a seemingly innocuous element could be deemed critical by the user and could result in the wrong message (or worse, no message at all) being delivered to your target audience.
If you think about the logistics, it makes sense that minimalism appeals to users: the less fluff on the site, the less you have to think about. When there are just a few links or blocks of text, and the point of interest is directly in front of you, you can let your mind rest for a bit – relax, and the website will spoon feed you just what you need.
This collection features fifteen websites that have been designed using the minimalistic principles mentioned above. Some of the sites have also been influenced by many of the popular web design trends we have seen over that past year or so, like flat design, yet still retain a look and feel that can only be described as minimal. Here are the beautifully designed sites:
Finshed
Minimalism isn’t the miracle solution that you can slap on every single project. There’s a time and place for everything; the time is now, but you need to carefully decide the place.Self-similar waves, i.e., the special wave envelopes, maintain their overall shapes but with their parameters such as amplitudes and widths changing with the modulation of system parameters. In nonlinear optics, fiber optics and waveguide optics are used in most of the important applications, and there has been increased interest in the studies of optical similaritons, where the governing equation is the famous nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE). Generally speaking, optical similaritons can be divided into two categories. The first category is the asymptotic optical similaritons. The second category is the exact optical similaritons, which are mainly described by exact soliton solutions. In view of the inhomogeneous media, generalised NLS equations with variable coefficients have aroused extensive attention to reflect the inhomogeneities of media, nonuniformities of boundaries, and external forces. This kind of optical similariton has more attractive properties than those of the soliton because of its reduced interaction and smaller peak power than the soliton and allows an effective pulse compression. Furthermore, width of the similariton pairs is controlled for the various choices of width function. The results in this paper could be useful for the design of experiments in the study of optical similariton management in nonlinear waveguides.
However, to our knowledge, similariton propagation in the tapered graded index diffraction decreasinghas not been discussed. In Section III, explicit analyticalfor bright similariton pair is presented. Section IV will provide the pulse width management of similariton pairs for various width functions. Our conclusions will be addressed in Sec. V
However, infiber optics, it is well known that in addition to dispersion/diffraction management, there exist the nonlinearity and amplification management. But, the prime aspect of this paper is to pursue the exact optical bright similaritons in diffraction decreasingunder the diffraction, nonlinearity, and pulse width management (PWM). The core of thishas athat decreases with increasing radial distance from the optical axis. It bends the rays inward and also allows them to travel faster in the lowerregion. A good approximation to the truedistribution is the quadratic variation of thein transverse direction, which is often known as lens-like medium. Suchhave applications in image-transmitting processes because they possess a very wide bandwidth. The shape of a taper of refraction can be modeled suitably depending upon the practical requirements. The most commonprofile for a graded-index medium is very nearly parabolic. Very recently, nonautonomous cnoidalandwith parity-time symmetric potential in diffraction decreasinghave been reported.
As the optical similaritons can be used to obtain increased bandwidth, so we are interested to investigate their properties such as compression in the context offiber optics. Various authors investigated exact optical self-similarincluding the bright and darkand quasi-solitonA spatial analog of similaritons has also been discovered in graded-indexMoreover, similaritons can be generated from a laser resonatoror by use of a dispersion-decreasing fiber.Further, Daidiscussed similaritonby reducing the inhomogeneous NLSE into the standard NLSE. Femtosecond pulse amplification has been investigated in dispersion decreasing fiber via bilinear method.Recently, self-similarin a tapered graded index fiber with external source has been investigated in Ref.. Very recently,tunneling of similariton in tapered graded indexhas been discussed.Moreover, the compression problem of the laser pulse in a diffraction decreasing(DDW) was also been investigated.Very recently, nonautonomousin diffraction decreasingwithsymmetric potential has been studied in Ref.
Recently, self-similarity transformation technique has been widely applied to study thepulse propagation inThese pulses are referred as self-similar pulse and have been asymptotically generated in theand are independent of the shape or noise of the input pulse.Nowadays, optical similaritons have become an intense topic of research in the field ofoptics,due to their capability of tolerating strong nonlinearity withoutbreaking and enhanced linearity of chirp in contrast toSimilaritons maintain their overall shape, but the field amplitude, the width, and a phase chirp evolve on propagation insidemedia with the modulation of system parameters such as dispersion, nonlinearity, and inhomogeneity. The propagation of similaritons in differentmedia is governed by generalized NLSE (GNLSE). Various studies have been reported which deal with GNLSE. Zhongand Belićpresented the exact spatialfor the (2 + 1)-dimensional and (3 + 1)-dimensional NLSE by using theexpansion technique. Additionally, Darboux transformation (DT) method has been used to study the roguein tapered fiber system.Recently, spatialin 2D graded indexhave been reported.It has been shown that adiabaticcan be achieved using a dispersion-decreasing fiber (DDF). DDF's, in particular, have been recognized to be very useful for high-quality, pedestal free, polarization-insensitive, adiabaticandtrain generation. Furthermore, input power required is significantly less and short fiber lengths are required.Moores suggested that chirped solitary pulses can be compressed more efficiently if the dispersion decreases approximately exponentially.These attractive features lead the self-similar pulse to a wide range of practical significance.
By setting the seed= 0 into Eq. (11), we can obtain one similaritonof Eq. (1) and by using one similaritonas a seedin Eq. (11), we can derive two similaritonNote that the tapered function(Z) is vanishing for the choice of constant width function). For the choice of) = 0, with) =) = 1, Eq. (1) reduced to system which is investigated in Ref.
We are considering tapered graded-indexwhoseis) =(Z)), whereandstand for the dimensionless spatial coordinate and the propagation distance, respectively. The first two terms represent the linear contribution towards the linearand the third term is intensity dependent ()) which arises due to the Kerr type nonlinearity. Here, we have assumed> 0 and the dimensionless tapering function) can be positive or negative, depending on whether the graded-index medium acts as a defocusing () < 0) or focusing () > 0) linear lens. The parametercan be positive or negative characterizingself-focusing or self- defocusing nature, and) is a dimensionless function which signifies the inhomogeneity of Kerr nonlinearity along the medium. To examine the similariton behavior in a tapered index fiber, we consider the generalized inhomogeneous NLSE (GINLSE)where/|| = ±1 corresponds to self-focusing (+) and self-defocusing (−) nonlinearity of therespectively.) represents the amplification (G(Z) > 0) or absorption (G(Z) < 0), and the term(Z) is inversely proportional to the group velocity. To the best of our knowledge, analysis of similariton in DDW for Eq. (1) has not been discussed before. These analyses might have potential applications, e.g., it may provide an effective approach to compress or amplify optical pulse. In order to obtain the exact analyticalfor Eq. (1), we introduce the following gauge and similarity transformation:with the similarity variable) readsHere),),),), and) are all real functions and represent the amplitude, effective propagation distance, phase, width, and the central position of the beam, respectively. We are taking the following form of the quadratically chirped phase:where(Z),(Z), and(Z) are parameters related to the phase offset, frequency shift, and phase-front curvature, respectively. We need to determine all these parameters. To do so, we are substituting Eqs. (2)–(4) in Eq. (1), collecting similar terms, and demanding the coefficients of real and imaginary parts of each term to be separately equal to zero, we obtain the following relations among the various parameters:Here,andare constants. The tapering and the gain functions are given asEquations (7) and (8) interpret that if(Z),(Z), and(Z) are chosen to be the free parameters, then(Z) and) will be determined accordingly. Hence, by suitably choosing the free parameters, the desired form of the tapering and the gain can be obtained. After substituting the transformation (2) with (3) and (4) in Eq. (1), it reduces to standard NLSE as follows:where the effective propagation distance(Z) is given byfor the conditions given by Eqs. (5)–(8). The multi similaritonof Eq. (1) can be acquired from theof Eq. (9) by using a one-to-one correspondence. By using the transformation given by Eq. (2) and the DT,multi-similaritonof Eq. (1) can be obtained aswhere= 1, 2, …,and= 1, 2. The spectral parameter can be written as
As mentioned earlier,) and) are the free parameters and can take any well defined functional form. Therefore, by choosing the different functional forms of these parameters which correspond to differentsystems, one can study the similariton propagations through differentsystems. Equations (5)–(8) predict that these free parameters influence the form of the amplitude, the position, and the phase of the optical similaritons. In Section IV, we will design the optimal system by appropriately choosing the particular form of the distributed parameters and will discuss the conditions under which similaritons can propagate through thesystem under study. Considering the potential applications of the DDW in realizing thewe are interested to investigate the dynamical behavior of similaritons in DDW.
IV. PULSE WIDTH MANAGEMENT OF SIMILARITON PAIRS IN DDW
soliton via dispersion management has been studied in Ref. 30 44, 383 (2008). 30. R. Ganapathy, K. Porsezian, and A. Hasegawa, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., 383 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1109/JQE.2007.914778 W(z) on the similaritons pairs as they propagate through DDW. This has been done by choosing the various profiles of width for a given nonlinearity and diffraction parameter. 31,32 59, 457 (2010). 31. C. Q. Dai, Y. J. Xu, R. P. Chen, and S. Q. Zhu, Eur. Phys. J. D, 457 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2010-00193-5 77, 1133 (2014). 32. C. Q. Dai and X. G. Wang, Nonlinear Dyn., 1133 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-014-1365-6 33 311, 216 (2013). 33. C. Q. Dai and Y. J. Xu, Opt. Commun., 216 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2013.08.032 D ( Z ) = exp ( − g Z ), (13) R ( Z ) = exp ( − k Z ), where g is related to diffraction parameter and k is associated with the nonlinearity. For g < 0, solitons are compressed exponentially during the propagation. Now we exemplify the dynamical behavior of similariton pairs for the different choices of the width function W(Z). Pulse width management is an important technique in optical communication system as by tuning width we can control the overlapping of bits of information. Recently, pulse width management ofvia dispersion management has been studied in Ref.. Here, we discuss the role of pulse width function(z) on the similaritons pairs as they propagate through DDW. This has been done by choosing the various profiles of width for a given nonlinearity and diffraction parameter.We are interested to investigate the similariton pairs properties through DDW, so we are choosing the following form of diffraction and nonlinearity parameters:whereis related to diffraction parameter andis associated with the nonlinearity. For< 0,are compressed exponentially during the propagation. Now we exemplify the dynamical behavior of similariton pairs for the different choices of the width function).
Case I: To demonstrate the interesting features of similaritons pairs, we are choosing pulse width W(Z) = Sech(0.1)Z. For the choices of D(Z), R(Z), and W(Z), the corresponding form of tapering function F(Z) and gain G(Z) can be worked out by using Eqs. G ( Z ) = − 0.0075 + 0.15 Tanh ( 0.1 Z ), (14) F ( Z ) = 0.003 e − 0.03 Z Tanh ( 0.1 Z ) + e − 0.03 Z Cosh ( 0.1 Z ) ( − 0.01 Sech ( 0.1 Z ) 3 + 0.01 Sech ( 0.1 Z ) Tanh ( 0.1 Z ) 2. To demonstrate the interesting features of similaritons pairs, we are choosing pulse width) = Sech(0.1). For the choices of(Z),(Z), and(Z), the corresponding form of tapering function(Z) and gain(Z) can be worked out by using Eqs. (7) and (8). Here, for the specific choice of Eq. (13), tapering (7) and gain (8) profiles have a new form as given below
G(Z) and F(Z) profiles have been plotted in Figs. 1(a) 1(b) G(Z) is initially minimum and tends toward maximum value asymptotically for large Z. This means that for the gain case, the intensity of bright similaritons increases with Z. Such a gain distribution can be realized practically through erbium doped waveguide by suitably adjusting the density of the dopants. The tapering function F(Z) changes its sign from negative to positive with increasing Z. Thus, it changes its nature from focusing to defocusing. To understand the role of these parametric conditions on the similaritons, we have plotted the intensity profiles in Figs. 1(c) 1(d) 1(d) Z. Moreover, the similariton pairs do not interact with each other as the separation between them remains same even after propagating a long distance. It is an interesting feature as it can be useful to increase the bit rate of optical communication when bright similaritons are used as information carriers. The) and) profiles have been plotted in Figs.and, respectively. Clearly, it depicts that the value of gain) is initially minimum and tends toward maximum value asymptotically for large. This means that for the gain case, the intensity of bright similaritons increases with Z. Such a gain distribution can be realized practically through erbium dopedby suitably adjusting the density of the dopants. The tapering function) changes its sign from negative to positive with increasing. Thus, it changes its nature from focusing to defocusing. To understand the role of these parametric conditions on the similaritons, we have plotted the intensity profiles in Figs.and. |
are, and what we relate to each other about. The bioregion comes in as a common vista -- this is what we can talk about! Let�s talk about the restoration of the natural systems that we live in as a long-term goal, with all of these various perspectives -- the social perspective, the gender perspective, the diet perspective, the cosmological perspective -- having something to contribute. Words such as �bioregion� and �reinhabitation� shouldn�t be seen as the property of some narrow theoretical perspective but as public language. Evanoff: What�s your interest in Japan? Berg: The Sacramento River goes into San Francisco Bay and into the California Current and the North Pacific. Salmon which swim in our rivers also swim past Hokkaido Island. We�re on the same latitudinal lines as Japan. So it�s no longer possible for me to have a �United Statesian� identity. I have to have both a Shasta Bioregion identity and a North Pacific Rim identity in planetary terms. On the one hand, I can say that I�m a citizen of the city of San Francisco, in the county of San Francisco, in the state of California, in the United States of America, in the so-called �free world.� Or I can say that I live in the Islais Creek Watershed, of the San Francisco Bay Estuary, of the Shasta Bioregion, of the North Pacific Rim, of the Pacific Basin, in the planetary biosphere of the universe. In this latter way of thinking, which I much prefer, Japan and America are transpacific relatives. Evanoff: How would bioregionalism apply to Japan? Berg: Well, historically Japan has this great nature philosophy that I can be inspired by. But since the war Japan has had a productivist, modern, competitive system that functions only at the cost of personal freedom, ecological damage, and a really nasty attitude outside the boundaries of the country towards other people�s resources and bioregions. There are many segments of Japanese society, however, that are aware of this on numerous levels -- of the need for greater personal freedom, greater ecological responsibility, and a harmonious interaction with other people on the planet. Attitudes about peace, nonviolence, and spirituality among the Japanese people are extremely strong. I gave a bioregional tour of Hakuba Valley to local residents and we stood up on a cliff about a thousand feet high looking down on the whole watershed. We had just seen the springs and were observing native plants vs. exotic, water coming into the rice fields, the damage of the Olympics construction, and the power of the watershed. It�s a very steep valley, you know. You could tell what the forces are by looking at the flood plain of the river. It�s ten times the width of the river on both sides and it�s pure rock and gravel. That means that when the snow melts, the water is just roaring through there because of the gravitational pull. That�s one of the reasons why Hakuba Valley is so delicate--all the water ends up in the river. There�s no place for it to go, no seepage. So here is the natural template of this watershed that was given by natural forces and that people adapted to, and now we�re looking at a phenomenon -- the Nagano Olympics-- that will rewrite the ecological history of this area. This is the historic episode, the modern history-making event of that area. After the Olympics leaves, people will count the future in terms of this event. We can either live harmoniously with this natural area or we can allow it to be degraded and destroyed. It really is a spiritual question. After the tour a woman came up to me and said that she was a teacher but had lost her purpose in teaching. Now, however, she had something to believe in and something to teach the children. �In everything I do I�m going to make this a part of their life,� she said. Japanese people have this spiritual dimension which I find absolutely astonishing. Evanoff: What exactly do you hope to achieve with respect to the Olympics? Berg: We�re going to try to assess the damage using socio- cultural rather than natural-scientific tools. What I�m hoping personally is that some basis for reparations can be established. The upshot is that this kind of large-scale sporting spectacle promotes a �society of the spectacle� that lasts for a very short time but has a devastating effect on the long-term prospects of natural landscapes. This can�t go on. This is an important instance of globalism vs. bioregional sustainability and it has to be opposed. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
JAPAN ENVIRONMENT MONITOR | | E-Mail Edition| Issue #97 (4) June 1998 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ JEM web site: http://www.yin.or.jp/user/rdavis/ Address questions about content to either of the co-editors.
Maggie Suzuki: BYG05310@niftyserve.or.jp
Rick Davis: greenstar@yin.or.jp rick.davis@nifty.ne.jp Address questions about subscriptions to Ms. Pat Ormsby, Fax: +81-3-3951-1084 (c/o Friends of the Earth - Japan), email: JZA01150@niftyserve.or.jp Order of Japanese personal names follows East Asian practice: Family name followed by given name. Reprints/retransmissions: Except for copyrighted items (which require specific permission), the articles herein may be freely reprinted or retransmitted in whatever form to other parties providing that Japan Environment Monitor and authors are properly credited, and JEM is notified.No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that, said the Pope, condemning the legalisation of marijuana. He might once have been a tool of the brutally oppressive Argentinean junta, but he moved on, and now he’s a kindly old pontiff, with a deep concern for the poor and the drug-addicted.
Now, the good Father Bergoglio, as we all know, is a Jesuit and therefore a man with a strong adherence to logic and consistency. How odd, therefore that Pope Francis would begin his onslaught with an attack on a drug that is legal in many first-world countries, a drug that is not addictive, while at the same time overlooking the presence of a deadly dangerous addictive chemical at the heart of the ritual that forms the basis for his entire church.
I speak, of course, of ethanol, C 2 H 5 OH, commonly referred to as alcohol and perhaps the most destructive drug known to mankind.
Why isn’t the Pope insisting on non-alcoholic wine in the Mass? Wouldn’t it make sense and wouldn’t it be consistent with his stated opposition to the use of drugs?
No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that.
It’s hard to work this out, unless the Pope has decided that the ethyl alcohol is essential to the business of creating Jesus from nothing. Maybe the whole thing is a chemical process, and you can’t have the full Jesus unless you have the full-on liquor first.
For clarification, let me just remind collapsed non-believers what the central belief of Catholicism is: during the sacrament of the Eucharist, the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
That’s the teaching. They don’t symbolise the body and blood of Jesus. They actually are those things. And what’s more, the bread isn’t the body while the wine is the blood. Each of them is the body and blood.
It actually is Jesus right there, that you’re eating, or drinking.
I didn’t make this up. That’s the teaching, and if you don’t believe it, you can’t be a Catholic.
Clearly, therefore, Father Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, believes that when his priests wave their hands at the wine, turning it into the body and blood of Jesus, somehow the C 2 H 5 OH becomes neutralised by the words and the hand-waving, leaving nothing but Jesus in the chalice. If you swallow this stuff, you don’t get drunk, because it’s not alcoholic.
Now, it’s not often you’ll hear me supporting the Catholic church, but I had an idea.
Pope Francis would never say anything unless he had already thought out his position, because after all, Pope Francis is a clever fellow. When he says No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that, he’d be well aware that a commoner such as I might point out the problem with the wine, and therefore the only obvious answer is that he already knows the alcohol is gone once the priest waves his hands at the drink. Nothing left but Jesus.
There are many sceptics in the world. Many disbelievers. It’s a fact of life, sadly. Belief isn’t what it used to be.
And therefore, maybe some enterprising bishop might form an alliance with the local senior police officer to prove that transsubstantiation really does work.
Give ten volunteers a bottle each of consecrated wine to drink and ten more a bottle of normal plonk. Then have the cops breathalyse them. If the consecrated drinkers pass the test that’s your proof right there in front of you.
Of course, obviously, there will be problems. Rogue priests and defrocked clerics will set up a mobile service outside pubs and clubs to bless the liquor as it ferments in your belly, but that’s ok too. It means you’ll be driving home with no alcohol in your system, though you will have an awful lot of Jesus, praise the Lord.
If we extended this nationwide, we could have a consecrating satellite in geo-stationery orbit above the country, turning all the alcohol in the land into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, wiping out the scourge of drunken driving at a single stroke.
All praise to Pope Francis for coming up with the idea, bless him.How many tourists in Times Square does it take to light up the “2009” sign on New Year’s Eve?
137,228.
That’s how many people it took to generate enough electricity to light up the numerical display that will blaze after the clock strikes midnight and the ball drops over Times Square in Manhattan on Wednesday night.
Beginning Dec. 2, holiday visitors stopping by the Charmin public restrooms on Broadway and 45th Street could ride the escalator two flights up and hop on one of six stationary bicycles that looked like snowmobiles and were rigged to electric generators. The generators charged a set of four large batteries that will light the sign and help green the annual event.
Duracell, the battery manufacturing company that set up the “power lodge,” said the electricity was generated using rotary technology — pedal power and spinning wheels, similar to systems used on wind farms.
By Dec. 27, the original goal of 230 pedaled hours had been surpassed by more than 20 percent. On Sunday, the batteries were transported to a new location for safekeeping until Wednesday night.
Some visitors to the power lodge Monday, like Megan Coakley, 13, were disappointed they were too late to help fuel Wednesday’s festivities. “It would’ve been awesome to try the bikes,” said Miss Coakley, who traveled from Tinton Falls, N.J., with her twin sister and parents, Beth and John, to visit New York for the day.
Although the bikes are no longer in use and now available for viewing only, visitors to Duracell’s hub can still recharge gadgets at power terminals, hang out in front of an artificial fireplace or play one of several Nintendo Wiis stationed in the lodge. Ms. Coakley and her family declined to linger, saying they had game consoles at home.
Jeremy French, 21, a field manager for Gigunda, the marketing team staffing Duracell’s lodge, said that the facilities were even popular with local Manhattanites. “A group of elderly women came in several times to ride the bike,” said Mr. French. “They brought water bottles and would go at it for 20 minutes or so a day.”
The “2009” sign is made up of 608 halogen bulbs that will require 7.25 kilowatt-hours of electricity to light up after the famous ball drop. By comparison, in 2006, the average residence in the United States consumed 920 kilowatt-hours per month.
The human-generated electricity will deliver enough juice to keep the bulbs blazing during the televised portion of the evening’s broadcast, or about 15 minutes. Afterward, the sign will revert to the utility grid for power for the remainder of the night.
The numerical display isn’t the only New Year’s Eve sign in Times Square getting a green makeover: This year’s dropping ball, made of crystal triangles and illuminated by 32,256 LED bulbs, is 20 percent more energy-efficient than last year’s glowing sphere.
Human-powered innovation has been popular throughout 2008: Dance clubs in London and the Netherlands installed piezoelectric flooring to generate power from the motion of dancing revelers, and the East Japan Railway Company recently announced plans to update the platforms of its Tokyo Station with similar materials to harvest kinetic energy generated by crowds to power ticket gates.Brian Cox.
A University of Otago cancer-screening authority has been sacked from a national committee for going public with concerns about a change to the cervical screening programme.
Associate Prof Brian Cox was sacked from the National Screening Advisory Committee two weeks ago after co-writing an editorial published in the New Zealand Medical Journal in March.
"I held my position [after the editorial was published]. [The committee] then felt that was untenable for whatever reason," Prof Cox said.
The editorial said the decision to change the test for cervical cancer was taken without proper consideration and was a potential risk to women’s health.
"The lack of wide consultation and haste in which this major change in policy is to be introduced is cause for disquiet," the editorial said.
In 2018, the test will change from liquid-based cytology to human papillomavirus (HPV) screening.
Prof Cox was unhappy the committee endorsed the change last November.
He had not agreed, and the committee was supposed to operate by consensus, he said.
New Zealand should consider a phased approach to the new test, he said.
"We’ve decided to go the whole hog and go to a completely different test and do it five-yearly, instead of three-yearly.
"Though that may prove to be not a bad way to go in the future, my initial look at it suggests that it’s got rather large risks.
"I don’t think the Ministry [of Health] have been as interested in differing views as they should have been."
He had been a committee member for one year.
Prof Cox spoke at the annual Cartwright Forum in Auckland yesterday.
The theme this year was the cervical screening change.
Keynote speaker Prof Marshall Austin, a pathology specialist from the University of Pittsburgh, US, travelled to New Zealand for the forum.
He told the Otago Daily Times the new test used relatively unproven technology.
Clinical trial data suggested it was less sensitive than the cytology-based system, he said. New Zealand should be cautious about changing a proven cervical screening programme, Prof Austin said.
"There are some countries that are thinking about going in this direction. None of them have actually started doing it yet.
"The irony, in a way, is that they are really proposing an experiment, and that has special meaning in New Zealand because everybody knows that there was another experiment in New Zealand," Prof Austin said, referring to the Cartwright Inquiry into the treatment of cervical cancer at National Women’s Hospital.
National Screening Advisory Committee chairman Prof Ross Lawrenson said in a statement the committee "collectively agreed" to endorse the HPV decision last November.
"The committee expects and promotes robust debate in reaching its decisions, but once decided, the committee expects its members to publicly support them."
"Unfortunately, Associate Prof Brian Cox has been unable to abide by the terms of reference, despite the committee seeking an assurance from him in May. In light of that, the committee agreed unanimously to replace Prof Cox."
National Screening Unit clinical director Jane O’Hallahan said HPV primary screening would save lives.
Other countries were moving to HPV primary screening, as it was safer and more sensitive at detecting cancer.
eileen.goodwin@odt.co.nzOn Saturday, there was a lot of outrage over the viral video of a Kashmiri man who had been tied to a jeep. Army Chief General Bipin Rawat called on Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti this evening amid a controversial video showing a man tied to an army vehicle during polling for the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat on April 9. Gen Rawat apprised Mehbooba about the situation in the Valley and assured her of timely action against its personnel who were responsible for the act of tying the man to the vehicle at Budgam. According to the sources, the army officials told a probe team that they had received a call from ITBP and local police guarding a polling station to save them from a mob which was out to lynch them.
While the debate raged on, General GD Bakshi, who is often seen on TV panels, said that the army officer responsible saved lives on both sides.
He wrote on Facebook: “They are screaming for the scalp of that young Major Gogoi who tied a stone pelter on his jeep. I think in retrospect that the boy did some out-of-the-box thinking and saved lives on both sides. The standard military solution would have been to shoot the pelters dead. He was authorised to but for some reason our boys seem hesitant to shoot- what with this constant Human rights tamasha. An operation is judged by its end results. He was able to rescue the ITBP boys who were surrounded by a blood thirsty mob.
He seized the stone pelter used him as hostage to get safe passage for his column. The Israelis do it routinely. Why can’t we do it? This way no military or civilian personnel was killed. You can always apprehend a stone pelter for interrogation about his links and take him to your post.”
The 26-year-old Farooq Ahmad Dar told DNA that he was paraded for 26 km allegedly to keep stone-pelters at bay. He said: "I cannot believe that I am alive. They first thrashed me and then tied me to the bonnet of the jeep and zoomed past several villages.”
Dar, who ekes out a living by working as a Sozni (handmade embroidery) craftsman, was on his way to Gampora when he was allegedly picked up by the army troopers near Putligam and tied to the bonnet of a jeep before being paraded around dozens of villages.
His brother Fayaz Ahmad added that Dar had even cast his vote before he left to attend the condolence meeting of a relative when he was allegedly caught by the army and tied to the bonnet of their jeep to keep stone throwers at bay.
Anger spread across Kashmir after the video went viral. Former CM Omar Abdullah tweeted Dar's picture, and demanded an investigation into the case. Later he posted a 19 second-video on his Twitter handle sparking an outrage on the social media. "Here's the video as well. A warning can be heard saying stone pelters will meet this fate. This requires an urgent inquiry & follow up NOW!!" Omar said.
According to a report in the Indian Express, the incident occurred on April 19 and he was paraded for nearly for four hours and driven nearly 25 km. Dar was quoted saying by the newspaper: “Gareeb log hain, kya karengey complain (We are poor people, what will we complain?). I live alone with my asthmatic mother who is 75 years old. I am scared. Anything can happen to me. I am not a stone-pelter.”
Dar told The Wire: “They damaged my bike, thrashed me severely with gun butts and wooden sticks and in an almost unconscious state tied me to the front of the jeep and paraded me through 10 to 20 villages.”It was a dark and stormy night in the winter of 1954 and the Billings family was throwing a dinner party when a murderer strikes — and all the guests are trapped inside.
That’s the premise of Deadly Manners, a new 10-episode podcast in the style of a classic radio drama from Alex Aldea and Ali Garfinkel of the podcast production company The Paragon Collective.
The series, which will premiere exclusively on AMC Networks’ streaming platforms Sundance Now and Shudder starting Oct. 3, features Kristen Bell, LeVar Burton, Denis O’Hare, RuPaul, Timothy Simons, and Anna Chlumsky.
“When I was kid, I was obsessed with books on tape,” said Alex Aldea, the director, producer, and composer of Deadly Manners. “I lived for The Odyssey, The Little Prince, and anything narrated by the father of horror movies, Vincent Price. That’s really what laid the foundation for me to get into the audio medium. For Deadly Manners though, we wanted to do an old school audio drama that was pure entertainment, where the audience can get out of their heads for a minute, relax and enjoy themselves. It’s a crazy world we are living in right now, and people are reacting in extremes. Deadly Manners is like classic Clue fun.”
Take a listen to the podcast trailer, below.According to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (via the Chronicle), the most recent show on White Oak Music Hall's outdoor stage, featuring Explosions In the Sky, did not violate the city's noise ordinance.
White Oak Music Hall’s outdoor stage, a source of contention between the venue and its neighbors since it opened in April, is again in the headlines after Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner denied the owners’ plan to continue operating the stage indefinitely via temporary permit during Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the mayor rejected the owners’ plan to dismantle and then rebuild its stage out of hand, saying, “It is important that they be good neighbors.” Several City Council members were also critical, both of the developers’ plan and of White Oak itself.
“It continues to baffle me that in a city that is profoundly reasonable with business opportunities, it puzzles me why business operators choose particular operations,” Councilman Mike Laster said. “Anyone with half a wit of common sense would know this would cause a problem.”Intel is buying Saffron AI, a startup in Cary, North Carolina that makes a cognitive computing platform that is reminiscent of IBM’s Watson technology. The chip giant announced the deal Monday but did not disclose a price.
Saffron’s software takes in a variety of data on a topic provided by the client and then parses similarities and relationships to “learn” about that topic. Saffron has purportedly created software that mimics human reasoning and memory that it applies to problems for clients as well as its own natural language processing that augments whatever vocabulary the client submits, since many professions have their own industry jargon. The result is a system that helps take in a lot of data and generates insight for clients.
So how does a cloud-based software product that teaches computers to “think” relate to Intel, a chip company?
The future of computing is pretty clear to those who know where to look. With everything from our homes to our factories connected and generating more information than can be stored in a single data center, let alone be processed by a human being, the race is on to build computers that can help people make sense of the digital information that threatens to overwhelm them.
Intel’s (INTC) role in this digital overload is threefold. First it wants to put as many chips as it can into what are called the edge devices—the laptops, watches, gateways or any devices that we may interact with or that gathers information from the world and feeds it back to the network. In many ways, because Intel missed out on mobile, it lost out on much of this opportunity. However, it is still trying to play here with its Curie platform for wearables and its acquisition of the Basis watch.
The second opportunity is where Intel feels at home, which is in making general purpose chips for the servers that process all of this information and generally power the data centers that comprise “the cloud.”
But the third opportunity is a mix of both of those things and is where the Saffron acquisition enters the picture. As the computer industry demands more from processors, it’s trying to turn what were general-purpose chips into something that’s designed to do a very specific job. This is akin to expecting a short order cook to be a great pastry chef.
At a certain level, an industry demands dedication, and that is happening in computing when it comes to artificial intelligence. That’s one reason Intel is spending $16.7 billion to buy Altera. Altera makes a type of programmable chip that lets a company tweak its silicon whenever it changes its software so the hardware is optimized for the specific code the company is running.
Microsoft uses such chips for its search algorithm today, but another popularly suggested use case for these programmable ships is the algorithms used for artificial intelligence. Thus Intel’s Altera buy is a big bet on dedicated processors for artificial intelligence and that third opportunity. Monday’s Saffron announcement is another investment in artificial intelligence that will fit on both the server side with Altera and also on the device side.
From the blog post announcing the deal:
Saffron offers a fresh look at big data analytics. We see an opportunity to apply cognitive computing not only to high-powered servers crunching enterprise data, but also to new consumer devices that need to see, sense and interpret complex information in real time. Big data can happen on small devices, as long as they’re smart enough and connected. Saffron’s technology, deployed on small devices, can make intelligent local analytics possible in the Internet of Things.
What’s also worth noting is that Saffron’s technology is software, which again drives home the importance of software, even for the maker of a product that underlies pretty much all tech hardware out there.
For information on Intel’s plans to become more diverse check out this Fortune video:
Subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.A dog will do anything for a biscuit—over and over again. Most people will, too, because when sugar touches the taste buds it excites reward regions in the brain. A new study shows that people with eating disorders do not react to sweet flavors the way healthy people do, however, lending evidence to the hypothesis that brain differences predispose people toward bulimia and anorexia.
A team of psychiatrists at U.C. San Diego studied 14 recovered anorexic women, 14 recovered bulimic women (who used to binge and purge) and 14 women who had never had an eating disorder, matched by age and weight. None of the women had had any pathological eating-related behaviors in the 12 months preceding the study. After fasting overnight, subjects received a modest breakfast to ensure similar levels of satiety. They were then fed small tastes of sugar every 20 seconds through a syringe pump while their brains were scanned.
The women who had recovered from anorexia—those who formerly starved themselves—showed less activity than the healthy women in a reward center in the brain known as the primary gustatory cortex. The participants who were no longer bulimic showed more activity than the healthy women did. The results were published in October 2013 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
The researchers believe these abnormal responses to sugar predispose people to eating disorders, adding to a growing body of work suggesting that genetic and biological risk factors underlie most cases, according to study co-author Walter Kaye, director of U.C.S.D.'s Eating Disorders Research and Treatment Program. Kaye acknowledges that the finding could instead reflect a consequence of an eating disorder that persists after recovery, but he thinks it is less likely. Given our culture's fixation on body image and thinness, if nonbiological factors such as social pressure were enough to trigger eating disorders, anorexia would be rampant, Kaye says. Yet only 0.5 percent of women in the U.S. are anorexic, a figure that has held steady for decades.
Whether a cause or effect of eating disorders, the abnormal brain activity has important implications for how we treat patients, according to physician Laura Hill, chief clinical officer of the Center for Balanced Living, a clinic specializing in eating disorders in Columbus, Ohio. “People will say [to anorexics] just be mindful of your eating. They can't be mindful. There is no response in the brain to say, ‘Let me get a sense of how I should eat and when I should eat.’ It's just not firing,” she says. Instead successful therapies use experiential activities that teach patients how to compensate for their brain's irregular responses.Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab has confirmed the unauthorized online availability of its intellectual property in the form of source code and warned that it will launch legal action against people who downloaded and shared it.
In a statement sent to Softpedia, the company says that partial source code for its 2008 range of consumer products was stolen almost three years ago by a former employee.
The person responsible was quickly arrested and received a three-year suspended prison sentence for violations under Article 183 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code.
Kaspersky further confirms that it had knowledge of the source code being distributed on underground forums since as early as November 2010 and that the same files made their way onto more public websites recently.
The company continues to maintain that the leak does not affect the security of its users or products, because all critical protection technologies have been radically changed since then.
The little code that is still present verbatim is not related to any security features. Fragments of the Kaspersky antivirus engine, the most important asset of any AV business, were present in the leaked sources, but it has since been redesigned and updated.
The company warned that it is working with law enforcement authorities regarding recent developments in the case.
"The source code of Kaspersky Lab’s products is copyrighted and protected under trade secret laws. Therefore, actions including posting, downloading, using or distributing this code without the Company’s consent are illegal," the vendor said in its statement.
"Kaspersky Lab will take all appropriate legal measures against those who violate these intellectual property laws by possessing or seeking to possess, or sharing the illegally disclosed source code," it stressed.
One popular bittorrent website lists 95 active seeders (users who share) and 15 leechers (users who download) for the stolen Kaspersky source code at the moment of writing this article.
Our initial coverage of the leak is available here.Content notice: guns, death, white supremacy, suicide.
Awareness of the number of Black people who die at the hands of police is rising, and more questions are being asked about what can be done to prevent these unnecessary, unjust deaths — and what can be done to deal with officers who inappropriately use force, including deadly force.
We are being called to deal with the racism that underlies so much of this, and the fact that oversight of the police is often left to the police themselves, and to the prosecutors who depend on the police to get their convictions.
Groups like Black Lives Matter and Campaign Zero are working tirelessly to deal with these issues (and to remind white people that it’s our responsibility to dismantle racism).
A major barrier is the persistent argument that the police shouldn’t ever be questioned.
Instead, we are told, any and all police actions should be considered right and just, or at the very least excused because it’s a difficult job.
Anyone who dares question the actions of an officer will find themselves accused of ”not supporting the police” by people who seem to believe that “supporting the police” no matter what is more important than preventing Black people from dying in the streets.
This takes many forms: Often it’s comments on social media like “being a police officer is a difficult job,” and “police officers have to make difficult split-second decisions,” and “we need to support police officers” (and those are the comments that don’t suggest that racism and stereotypes are justification enough for police brutality).
To read these comments, you would think that it’s reasonable for every other job in the world to be subject to review and disciplinary action — except the job in which employees are issued firearms with authorization to use them to kill people.
Let’s use a recent example from Miami.
Arnaldo Rios, a man with autism, was about 600 feet from the group home where he lives, sitting on the ground and playing with a truck. Charles Kinsey, his behavioral therapist, was trying to bring him back to the group home.
Police were on the scene and cell phone video shows Charles comply with their requests — lying on the ground on his back with his arms up and yelling to officers, “All he has is a toy truck in his hand. A toy truck. I am a behavioral therapist at a group home… That’s all it is. That’s all it is. There is no need for guns.”
At that point, SWAT officer Jonathan Aledda opened fire with his assault rifle. He shot three times and one of the bullets hit Charles in the leg.
According to Charles, when he asked Aledda why he shot him, the officer replied “I don’t know.”
Officers then flipped both men onto their stomachs and handcuffed them, letting Charles lie in the street, bleeding, for about 20 minutes in the Miami heat until emergency help arrived, and further traumatizing Arnaldo.
The story the police told after the fact was that they received a 911 call about a man threatening to commit suicide with a gun pointed at his head (the actual transcript reveals that the caller alerted the dispatcher that the man might be mentally ill and that he might not have a gun).
Despite Charles yelling at them that Arnaldo had a truck and not a gun, the shooting officer claims he believed that Arnaldo had a gun and was threatening Charles’ life; so he attempted to shoot Arnaldo but missed and shot Charles.
At that point, I saw some of the same people who would demand that their barista be fired for giving them two pumps of hazelnut syrup instead of three trying to justify or excuse this all over social media.
We need to admit that there is a problem and put as much effort into solving it as we do into making excuses and making up stories about how Black people and people with disabilities are at fault when they end up injured or dead at the hands of police.
One person said that, even though the officer was SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) trained, he couldn’t be blamed for being a bad shot because the police department doesn’t pay for ammunition to allow officers to practice shooting.
But often the comments were even more generalizing: some version of, "well, being a police officer is hard, and they have to make split second decisions."
Now, I believe there are many good police officers, and I have tremendous respect for them — it is a very difficult and dangerous job, and it does require officers to have the ability to make good split second decisions.
None of that should mean that it’s OK to be incompetent, or that we should all rush to justify, ignore, or excuse incompetence, racism, ableism, and the inappropriate use of force.
Even if you believe the police version of the story, it doesn’t mean that the issues with this situation shouldn't be addressed. In the most “flattering” version of the story — the version that suggests that somehow racism and ableism were not an issue in this situation — a specially trained SWAT officer was not able to tell the difference between a toy truck and a firearm, was not able to process the information being given to him that the man had a toy truck and not a firearm, and couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with his assault rifle — missing a fairly stationary target three times and shooting the person whose life he claims he was trying to save (not fatally, which would seem to be out of pure luck).
So even if someone refuses to see how issues of racism and ableism affected this situation and must be addressed, they should at the very least be able to admit that there are other problems with this situation.
We can't just give this guy some paid time off, then shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, what are you gonna do?" and send him back out there with an assault rifle and a prayer.
Of course, that's if you believe this story — and I emphatically do not — especially considering that the shooting officer told both Charles and another officer at the scene that he "did not know" why he shot, and that Police Commander Emile Hollant has been suspended without pay for giving conflicting statements to an investigator.
Also, this story just makes no damn sense.
Just a reminder that the officer who did the shooting is a SWAT team member who claims that, despite the fact that there is a video in which Charles was lying on the ground with his hands up yelling that Arnaldo was a patient of his who had a toy truck and not a gun, and that no guns were necessary, he determined that Charles' life was in danger and opened fire with his assault rifle.
This SWAT officer proceeded to miss a fairly stationary target three times, instead shooting the man whose life he claims he was trying to save. And after this, police handcuffed both men (yes, including the guy whose life the officer claims he thought was in mortal danger just seconds before), leaving a shooting victim bleeding in the street for 20 minutes.
Again, there are many good, brave police officers and they should be commended and supported. Unfortunately, there are also police officers who aren’t good at their jobs, and that needs to be addressed.
Also, all police officers, no matter how well intentioned, live in — and are affected by — a society rife with racism and ableism, and that must be addressed, too.
Police officers need to start admitting their mistakes, and asking for additional training (and money for ammunition if need be). We all need to be honest that racism and ableism among the police (whether they are intentional or the byproduct of living in a racist and ableist society) are problems that lead to tragic, needless, unjust loss of life and that they can and should be addressed.
We need to admit that there is a problem and put as much effort into solving it as we do into making excuses and making up stories about how Black people and people with disabilities are at fault when they end up injured or dead at the hands of police.
Here is some suggested reading to get educated and get involved:In Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro, signs of ethnic tension are on the rise again
A familiar billboard face looms large over the shabby streets and squares of the Balkan city of North Mitrovica.
“The Serbs stood by him all along!” says the slogan in English beneath the giant image of Donald Trump staring out passersby.
Many in this Serb-dominated city in Kosovo would agree. Serbs were generally delighted with Trump’s election victory, if only because he defeated the wife of their 1990s nemesis Bill Clinton, who led the Nato bombing campaigns against Serb forces in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Now, the Balkans are once again dicing with crisis. Borders are being questioned, ethnic tensions are bubbling up, and land swaps are being mooted as a last resort to prevent a slide back towards violence. Forget China and the Middle East: the former Yugoslavia |
The report also cited a 2005 Transportation Department Inspector General’s finding that the FRA investigated less than two-tenths of 1 percent of reported accidents and incidents. “It’s absurd,” says a West Coast rail yard worker who was fired over what he says were trumped-up charges after reporting a safety hazard. Since his case is pending, he didn’t want his name used.
“Are all accidents preventable?” he asks. “Look it up in the dictionary, pal! That’s nuts. Human beings will be involved in accidents, especially in an industry as dangerous as railroads.”
Seattle-based attorney George Thornton frequently represents railroad workers. He says the companies are especially likely to fire or discipline “people who are vocal about safety complaints, who won’t just go along and get along.” Instead of blaming workers for their injuries, he says, companies should actually spend money to address safety problems that lead to accidents.
The Association of American Railroads, an industry group, did not respond to interview requests for this story. An OSHA spokesperson did not respond to questions or provide requested statistics on trends in railroad workplace injuries and whistleblower complaints.
Witness protection
The case of New Jersey railroad worker Anthony Araujo exhibits both the systemic problems with the industry and the hope offered by Congressional amendments made to the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA) in 2007.
On February 25, 2008, Araujo was working as a conductor and flagman on a commuter rail track when he saw something that would change his life. A construction worker was fatally electrocuted: “a human being in flames, burning to his death,” as Araujo describes it today. Araujo went to a counselor employed by the railroad company, he said, and was referred to a trauma specialist who found he was suffering post-traumatic stress symptoms and would need time off from work.
After receiving the specialist’s report, New Jersey Transit Rail Operations charged Araujo with violating company electrical rules, according to Araujo, and to documents from OSHA and the federal court proceedings that resulted. (A spokesperson for New Jersey Transit declined to comment for this story.)
The company ceased paying Araujo’s wages, and he subsequently fell into debt, losing his car and his home to foreclosure and having his credit ruined. And more importantly, Araujo said, “I lost my job, my respect, my relationships.”
Araujo felt—and OSHA agreed—that he was blamed and punished for his own injury. He also sees himself as a whistleblower, since in the investigation of the construction worker’s death he described what he saw as safety hazards and problems with company process.
Araujo filed a complaint against New Jersey Transit with OSHA’s whistleblower protection office, saying that he had not been investigated or charged with a rules violation until after reporting his own work-related injury. OSHA ruled in Araujo’s favor and granted him more than half a million dollars, including attorneys’ fees and lost wages for the year he was out of work. He now works for New Jersey Transit again.
New Jersey Transit appealed OSHA’s decision. But Araujo had additional recourse, thanks to the 2007 FRSA amendments.
That legislation expands protections for railroad workers under the 1926 Railway Labor Act and grants the government much greater power to intervene in railroad whistleblower cases. Individual workers like Araujo are now allowed to bring lawsuits in federal court if they have not gotten results through the administrative process.
Since the 2007 FRSA, whistleblower complaints filed under the act have risen steadily, from 45 in 2008 to 353 in 2012. The number of settlements has accordingly gone up, although the great majority of claims (more than 80 percent in 2012) are either dismissed by the agency or withdrawn by the employee.
The 2007 FRSA also created other new protections for workers, including an explicit demand that railroad companies “may not discharge, demote, suspend, reprimand, or in any other way discriminate against an employee” for protected activities, including reporting safety hazards or a workplace injury or illness. The 2007 FRSA allows OSHA and federal courts to award workers compensatory damages, lost wages, job reinstatement, attorneys’ fees and punitive damages of up to $250,000 for violations.
So Araujo appealed to federal court and, this February, received a ruling that legal advocates see as clarifying and strengthening the 2007 FRSA. The court cited the long history of retaliation in the railroad industry: “The legislative history shows that Congress was concerned that some railroad supervisors intimidated employees from reporting injuries to the FRA, in part, because their compensation depended on low numbers of FRA reportable injuries within their supervisory area.”
Noting that people in Araujo’s position were never disciplined for the infraction of which he was accused, the appeals court overturned the lower court’s verdict that the company’s actions against Araujo were not retaliatory. But the higher court didn’t decide explicitly in Araujo’s favor, instead kicking the case back to federal district court.
However, since the appeals court emphasized Congress’s intent in strengthening railroad worker protections with the 2007 FRSA amendments, it was seen as an important victory for railroad workers.
Araujo’s attorney, Goetsch, wrote on his blog: “All railroad employees should take heart knowing that Congress and now the federal courts have declared that the FRSA must be liberally interpreted and applied so as to fully protect all employees who report injuries.”
The federal government had already sent signals that OSHA was taking the law seriously. In July 2012, the Federal Railroad Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation signed a memorandum of agreement with OSHA elaborating on how the law would be enforced. The agreement laid the groundwork for increased cooperation between the rail administration and OSHA, which railroad workers think will mean more pro-active enforcement of the FRSA.
Meanwhile, in January OSHA announced that BNSF, the railroad majority-owned by Warren Buffett, had signed a voluntary agreement regarding alleged retaliation against workers injured on the job. The agreement included settlement offers (of undisclosed amounts) to 36 workers with pending whistleblower claims and the revision of BNSF policies regarding injuries and whistleblower complaints.
In a statement provided by BNSF, Mark Schulze, vice president for safety, training and operations support, said: “We are pleased to have voluntarily worked with OSHA in a cooperative and constructive manner to have clarified issues and look forward to continuing to work with our employees and the appropriate safety regulators to achieve our goal of a workplace free of accidents and injuries.
“These policies will continue to be valuable tools to hold employees accountable for rules compliance, focused on reducing exposure and eliminating at-risk behaviors.”
Endless appeals
Despite the 2007 FRSA and other positive developments, railroad workers and attorneys say there are still obstacles to workers feeling safe from retaliation when they report injuries or safety hazards. For one thing, a worker has only 180 days (six months) from the incident to file a complaint with OSHA’s whistleblower office. Some workers and attorneys say this time period is too short, since it often takes longer for workers to realize that they have legal recourse.
Railroad companies also have a right to appeal OSHA decisions to a federal administrative law judge. Attorneys and workers say major railroad companies make it a practice to do so. “The [2007] law is good and the Department of Labor is starting to do something about it,” said Thornton. “But the companies are engaging in scorched-earth litigation tactics—they refuse to pay anything, delay as much as possible, appeal everything, they fight every step of the way.”
“The railroads starve people out—there is an arbitration system to go through, but it works in such a slow way that no worker in a normal situation can afford to wait until the whole thing is over,” said the West Coast railroad worker who didn’t want his name used.
Steve Desavouret, a Chicago-area railroad worker fired by Canadian National Railway Company in relation to an incident involving a workplace injury, feels like the railroad “tried to take my life away” by appealing an OSHA ruling that he should get his job back.
“I’ve had some Teamster union activists sitting with their mouths open at some of the things rail bosses do,” he says, “things that UPS”—which has been targeted by a national Teamsters campaign around alleged blame-the-worker policies—“would not dare try to pull off.”
Public outrage
Since the 2007 FRSA was passed, increasing numbers of railroad safety cases have begun to reach the federal courts. Attorney Goetsch says that jurors in these cases are often aghast at the railroad industry’s practices.
“Within the industry this is a given, it’s the way it’s always been,” said Goetsch. “But people outside the railroad industry—the public—come in off the street, sit down in a jury, start learning about the railroad culture of retaliation and ignoring their own safety standards, and they become outraged. They don’t understand how any employer could fire someone for reporting an injury that results from a hazardous condition. Members of the public get that immediately, because it seems so bizarre and so wrong.”
Andrew Barati worked as a trackman for Metro-North, a New York/Connecticut commuter rail, when in April 2008 his left big toe was crushed as he lowered the load from a jack. The company disciplined and then fired him, saying the accident was his fault. Barati took his case to federal court and in March 2012 a jury decided that negligence by the company was in part responsible for Barati’s injury. The jury awarded him $1 million in punitive damages for his retaliatory firing—more than the amount actually allowed under the FRSA. (A spokesperson for Metro-North declined to comment.)
Goetsch said that the jury’s outsized award was an example of just how outraged many regular Americans are when they get a window into the inner workings of the railroad industry.
Many Americans see railroad safety—and by extension, labor issues—as affecting the larger society, too, since rail accidents and spills can be devastating for large numbers of people.
Goetsch hopes that growing public awareness will contribute to the willingness of federal officials to stand up for railroad workers, of Congress to support legislative protections and of workers themselves to come forward.
“I like to think of it as a battleship,” said Goetsch. “A battleship doesn’t turn on a dime. We’re in the middle-early stages of taking the wheel and turning it and holding it down. The railroads are starting to change course, the battleship is starting to move, but it’s not there yet by any stretch.”
Araujo knows that he still has a long road ahead.
“Even if I have a jury trial next year, it could still be 10 years before I have a final resolution,” Araujo said. “A lot of people see what happened to me and think, ‘I don’t want to go through that.’ But I’m proud to be standing up. It’s not about me. It’s about changing this culture of retaliation … so we can survive, stand up, make a difference, so it’s not just business as usual anymore.”Editor's note: Peter Bergen is the director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation in Washington; a fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security; and CNN's national security analyst. He is the author of the new book, "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda."
(CNN) -- A critique of the U.S. involvement in the military intervention in Libya that will no doubt be common in coming days is that the Obama administration is making a large error by embarking on a war with a third Muslim country, as if reversing Moammar Gadhafi's momentum against the rebels will be a rerun of the debacle of the war against Saddam Hussein.
A further element of this view is that -- whatever the outcome of the Libyan intervention -- the United States' standing in the Islamic world will once again be severely damaged by an attack on a Muslim nation.
There are, of course, some real similarities between Hussein and Gadhafi -- both ruthless and erratic dictators of oil-rich regimes who fought bloody wars with their neighbors, brutalized their own populations, sought weapons of mass destruction, and sired some equally unattractive sons and heirs.
The déjà vu quality of the Libyan situation may help account for recent polls taken before the intervention which found that while Americans were either split or slightly in favor of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, most were opposed to stronger U.S. military action.
But the military intervention that President Obama authorized against Libya on Saturday -- eight years to the day after President George W. Bush announced the commencement of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- is a quite different operation than the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Beyond the obvious difference that Obama has not authorized the use of U.S. ground forces in Libya, there are several other differences to consider:
First, the Obama administration was handed a gift by the Arab League, which in its more than six-decade history has garnered a well-earned reputation as a feckless talking shop, but unusually took a stand one week ago by endorsing a no-fly zone over Libya.
That endorsement put the Arab League way out in front of the Obama administration, which was then dithering about whether to do anything of substance to help the rebels fighting Gadhafi.
The unexpected action by the Arab League gave the administration the impetus and diplomatic cover to then go to the United Nations Security Council to secure a broad resolution endorsing not only a no-fly zone, but also allowing member states to "take all necessary measures" to protect civilians in Libya.
This U.N. resolution is reminiscent of the one that President George H.W. Bush secured in November 1990, which gave Iraq six weeks to withdraw from Kuwait following Hussein's invasion of that country. The U.N. resolution in 1990 similarly empowered states to use "all necessary means" to force Iraq out of Kuwait if Hussein ignored the deadline.
The similarities do not end there. The coalition that massed to drive Hussein out of Kuwait involved significant forces from major Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. So too the Libyan no-fly zone will be enforced by Qatar, along with western powers such as France and the U.K.
This is all quite in contrast to George W. Bush's ineffectual attempts to gather international support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There was no U.N. resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force against Hussein, and no Muslim countries participated in the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Indeed, before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Turkish parliament voted against allowing American troops passage across Turkey to invade northern Iraq, which put a wrench in U.S. military planning.
Underlining the fact that the Iraq War was widely viewed as illegitimate by Muslim countries, the same year that Turkey voted against allowing American soldiers to use its soil to attack Iraq, Turkish soldiers were also leading the International Security Assistance Force helping to keep the peace in post-Taliban Afghanistan, a military operation that was also authorized by the United Nations and was not seen as illegitimate by much of the Muslim world.
The Bush administration's largely unilateral decision to go to war in Iraq (the U.K. and a few other nations provided troops) undermined America's standing in Islamic countries. A poll taken a few months after the 2003 invasion found that Indonesians, Jordanians, Turks, and Moroccans all expressed more "confidence" that Osama bin Laden would "do the right thing" than that Bush would.
According to a poll four years later, America's favorability rating stood at 9% in Turkey (down from 52% before September 11, 2001) and 29% in Indonesia (down from 75% before September 11).
Finally, another key difference between the Iraq war and the Libyan operation is that the casus belli for Iraq was based on highly classified intelligence accessible to few people -- later proved to be wrong -- that Saddam Hussein continued to maintain a weapons of mass destruction program. By contrast, the Libyan intervention was caused by the real time evidence provided by the world's leading media organizations -- including, of course, Al Jazeera -- that Gadhafi is massacring his own people.
The high level of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world that was generated by the Iraq War is unlikely to be replicated by U.S. military action against Libya, because Gadhafi is widely reviled in the Arab world. His antics on the world stage have earned him the enmity of even his fellow autocrats -- who will not be welcoming him if he chooses to "retire" to Saudi Arabia as other murderous dictators of his ilk have in the past (think Idi Amin).
And the fact that both the Arab League and the United Nations have endorsed a military action against Gadhafi strongly suggests that the Libyan intervention will not generate a renewed wave of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.
Instead, it underlines a striking feature of the protests that have roiled the Middle East in the past several weeks: Strikingly absent from those protests has been the ritualized burning of American flags, something that hitherto was largely pro forma in that part of the world. That's because Arabs have finally been able to express publicly that their biggest enemy is not the United States, but their own rulers.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bergen.When Guillermo Scott Herren first moved to New York City in the 1990s, he ended up inside a tiny apartment on Suffolk street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Fresh from high school and in town to begin his college education, he was also focused on another kind of learning. Making beats had been an interest of Herren’s for a few years, and even though by his own admission his early attempts at instrumental music sucked, he was intent on making creativity his life. 20 years later and Herren’s discography includes over 15 solo albums, more than 20 EPs and singles and a vast body of collaborations all released under a string of aliases, the most famous of which remains Prefuse 73. Herren’s hip-hop alias, Prefuse is how he made his mark on the world. It’s also the reason why I’m meeting with him.
It’s a cold February afternoon when I meet Herren for the second time outside his flat in the Bowery, between Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The chill of one of New York’s harshest winters to date bites through our layers of clothing. We take a brisk walk to a nearby basement bar on Allen Street, four blocks over from Suffolk Street where Herren’s NYC tale began. Inside the bar he keeps his grey wooly hat on, framing his face into the portrait most people know him by with its thin, delicate beard and nerdy glasses. Behind him, Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel is playing on a loop against a wall, the bar’s cheesy music selection acting as soundtrack to its surrealist plot. We’re here to discuss Herren’s return as Prefuse 73 with a new album and a new label after a four-year hiatus, but to fully understand what Prefuse 73 is today, I also had to make sense of Herren’s tangled past; in the process I discovered an artist who remains somewhat misunderstood.
In 1999 Herren signed to British label Warp Records. In 2001 he released a debut album as Prefuse 73, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, which announced his arrival with a loud bang unlike any that had been heard coming from an MPC, the drum sampler that was hip-hop’s sonic architect in the 1990s. Both Vocal Studies… and its 2003 follow-up One Word Extinguisher established Prefuse as a unique voice, an artist capable of giving hip-hop what it thought it didn’t need. At times, the early 2000s hip-hop underground felt like a strange musical wilderness. Parts of it were uncharted ground where artists like Herren could thrive even the music was often too hip-hop for electronic heads and too electronic for hip-hop heads. Warp, which had snapped up other hip-hop mavericks of the time such as Antipop Consortium, would remain Prefuse’s home for 11 years.
“I couldn’t even release a 10-year anniversary of my debut, even though that changed the face of what kids are doing now.”
Sometime in 2011, having delivered his eighth album for Warp, The Only She Chapters, the label informed Herren that it would not be taking the next option, thereby ending the relationship. “I didn’t know what to do. If I’m not on Warp who the fuck else is going to fuck with me?” The question was rhetorical. Four years on, Herren still seems a little shocked about how it all went down. The relationship had clearly soured, and someone at Warp – Herren still isn’t sure who or why – decided to end it. Such a sudden split would have perhaps been okay had it not been for a particularly painful twist: legally, the label retained control of his masters. “I couldn’t even release a 10-year anniversary of my debut, even though that changed the face of what kids are doing now.”
Business and art are like oil and water, and Herren knows this. He says he felt himself slipping into a darkness after it all went down. He got legal advice and had to face the reality that what had been his job, his whole being in a sense, was finished. Not only did Herren turn in an impressive body of work for the label – eight albums over 11 years – he also helped bring onboard some of its best known acts, including math-rockers Battles and beat scene prodigy Flying Lotus. He doesn’t seem bitter about the split, but saddened it had to be this way, pointing out that being on Warp opened him up to a whole world of music he would have never had a chance to encounter and put him on bills with the likes of Björk and Fennesz, experiences that helped shape both the man and his artistic personas.
Over the course of multiple meetings in the winter and spring, I came to realise that Herren is a lot like his music: multi-layered, unpredictable and complex. He might still be dismayed by the Warp debacle but he’s just as quick to point out how he shot himself in the foot a few times over during his career, passing on opportunities that could have made his life easier because he was too scared. “Do I look back on it and say I fucked up? Yes, yes I do,” he says with a laugh. One of the most important sides to Herren’s artistry, and a key part of his complexity, is identity. He regularly returns to the fact that people, especially critics, never got who he really was; that they never understood the man behind the music.
When Warp picked up Herren in 1999, licensing his first album under the Savath & Savalas name as well as signing him for the Prefuse material, they got more than just a wunderkind about to reinvent hip-hop. They got a young man whose identity and links to hip-hop weren’t easily definable. “It would have been easier to package if I’d been from the Bronx,” Herren laments during our last meeting. “Instead I was from Miami, and lived in Decatur.” Over the next few years he found himself subjected to questions and assumptions about his cultural background that felt like they were trying to box him into something he wasn’t. What was a white kid from the suburbs of Atlanta doing recording rap joints with MF Doom? Within those questions lay misunderstandings about both Herren’s upbringing and racial identity.
For much of his early career he was framed as an outsider to hip-hop culture, appropriating rap and transforming it through an electronic lens when in fact it was rap, not electronic music, that he came from. It still makes him a little angry when he casts his mind back to the promotion surrounding his first records. “I couldn’t understand why they were treating me like I was 10. They were ignoring all the cultural references that were to be found throughout that first record.”
The son of Catalan and Cuban parents – a tattoo of the Cuban flag adorns the inside of his right wrist – Herren was born in Miami and immediately adopted by a Jewish woman and her husband, who later also left. His adoptive mother brought him to Decatur, a commuter town east of Atlanta. Today the city is painted as a trendsetting suburb, but back then it wasn’t always a pleasant place. Atlanta’s notorious Zone 6, the central point of the city’s current rap dominance, is nearby. In the 1970s and 1980s, Decatur was the kind of area where a young kid could easily go the wrong way. Herren remembers his adoptive mother as someone who embraced his heritage and supported him through thick and thin despite the bad hands she was dealt. While she would open Herren’s mind to new possibilities, she was also keen to keep him out of trouble. To that effect she instilled a regimen of musical and sports practices. Every year he had to learn an instrument and a sport, and Herren developed a growing interest in music. He learnt the violin and the piano and discovered hip-hop at the local roller rink and indie rock through his sister. He went through the motions year in, year out, following the rules from his mother until eighth grade, when he learnt the drums.
The drums proved to be the first instrument that allowed Herren to venture outside of the rules his mother had set down. A few years later, towards the end of high school, he met some kids from New York. By then he had learnt to fade his own hair, a neat trick to ensure high school survival. He invited the New York kids back to his house for free fades and games of basketball. In exchange one of them introduced him to sampling, bringing over an SP–1200, one of the early workhorses of hip-hop. Flicking through his mom’s record collection, Herren learnt the ropes of looping and sampling. They would run the SP’s outputs through the stereo and the kids would rap in a way that Herren remembers as being typical of the New York sound that still dominated hip-hop at the time. This was all in contrast to the music they would be subjected to coming out of the jeeps in and around Decatur: a bass-heavy mix of early Miami and Southern records. An organic connection between New York City, Atlanta and Miami would become central to Herren’s early years.
Herren finished high school a year early and instantly escaped to New York. He got a bulky Emu Emax 2 keyboard sampler from a pawn shop in Decatur and along with a four-track recorder set about making more beats in his apartment. In New York he soaked up the vibe of a city in the throes of sweeping gentrification. This was a time when the so-called illbient movement was thriving in downtown, with shows at The Cooler in Hell’s Kitchen and Max Fish in the Lower East Side that explored the sweet spot between instrumental hip-hop, ambient and dub. Herren recognised some of himself in that sonic soup, especially in the early experimentations of DJ Spooky, seeing links to his own attempts at making sense of different musical strains. One day while reading Grand Royal magazine Herren found out about Tortoise, the Chicago experimental rock band. He went looking for their music and was blown away. He wrote to the band and sent a tape of his own musical dabblings, leading to a connection with Tortoise’s drummer, John Herndon, and their engineer, Casey Rice. In 1995 he released his first ever 12″ record, Fluid Ounce, alongside Herndon (as A Grape Dope) and Rice (as Designer). Released on a subsidiary of German label Source, Fluid Ounce is a relic that not even the internet seems to know about. Herren’s credit was under Delarosa. Two years later, he released his first album as Delarosa & Asora, the hypnotic Sleep Method Suite.
During the second half of the 1990s, Herren split his time between New York City and Atlanta, finishing his college degree in spurts while bartending and refining his craft. From the money he made working he would collect second-hand instruments, trying to get to the essence of the music. Back in Decatur, he found himself in a local recording studio helping his friend’s band mix their record. He gave the studio owner a copy of his first record and struck up a relationship. The owner made him a deal: come work for him and handle the hip-hop clients and in return he’d buy Herren an MPC, which the young producer would have to pay back.
For the next couple of years, Herren found himself dealing with local artists that the owner, a man who idolised The Beatles as the pinnacle of modern music, couldn’t handle. He worked the boards and early Pro Tools system, bouncing tracks down to cassette tapes so they could be played in cars. All the while the local Dirty South sound was beginning to rise to national prominence through the work of acts like Outkast and their crew the Dungeon Family. At work Herren was neck deep in the South’s rise, but at home he was busy working the MPC to find ways to make it say things it never had. As such his early work was partly a direct response to the overbearing aesthetics of Dirty South beats. His cut-ups and syncopated beats were a reaction to the relentless machine gun rhythm of hi-hats that characterised the Dirty South production template.
During this period of college and studio work Herren reconnected with his Miami roots. While working at the studio he met Joshua Kay and Romulo del Castillo, two Miami-based producers who in 1997 had founded the Schematic Music Company label. That same year the pair had released an EP on Warp under the Phoenecia moniker, four tracks of intricate, chopped-up electronic music that fit neatly under the umbrella of Intelligent Dance Music (IDM), a term Warp had inadvertently helped popularise a few years earlier through their Artificial Intelligence compilations. If Warp was the home of IDM in Europe, then Schematic was its equivalent in the US, with early releases by influential artists like Richard Devine, Push Button Objects and Herren under his Delarosa & Asora name. Herren’s work for Schematic emulated the computer-driven cut-ups and electro vibes of Phoenicia and Devine on the MPC.
Recording and composing by himself before sampling and chopping up the results, Herren delivered something that fit the Schematic aesthetic but was somewhat more organic. He recalls it as trying to fake what they did on computers with the MPC, a process through which he convinced himself that he was, in fact, making hip-hop and not electronic or dance music, much less the intelligent kind. “Simplifying things was the only way I could come out as Prefuse,” he says. “It was my reaction to the Miami guys saying it’s not hip-hop.” Herren decided to prove them wrong by making his beats unique but still, somehow, rapper friendly. His Warp debut, despite being primarily an instrumental album, made the point with vocal contributions from Freestyle Fellowship’s Mikah 9 and New York wordsmiths MF Doom and Aesop Rock.
In the mid to late 1990s, when Herren was working at the studio and first releasing his take on IDM, he also began to immerse himself in DJing thanks to another local music nerd. Late 1990s Atlanta was still small enough that if you were into a specific kind of music you’d soon come to meet most anyone else who was also on the circuit; that’s how Herren met Josh Winkler, aka DJ Klever. Winkler was a turntable prodigy, a local kid that Herren recalls would show up at local DJ competitions wearing Misfits T-shirts and sporting dreads. Appearances can of course be deceiving, and despite his look Winkler would clean up at these local competitions thanks to dazzling skills that would later earn him the US championship title at the DMC turntablist competitions. When Herren first saw Winkler’s dexterity on the turntables, he recalls thinking that there was a new era approaching, a change in the air for hip-hop. He wasn’t wrong. The turntablist movement of the late 1990s was a direct reaction to the DJs being pushed out of the music earlier in the decade as the MC rose to prominence and rendered the original hip-hop music makers economically irrelevant. Despite its insularity, over the following decades turntablism would prove just as influential an experimental force for hip-hop as Herren’s work.
Winkler and Herren struck up a friendship that led the young producer to teach the turntable prodigy about more abstract ways of producing hip-hop. In turn Winkler taught Herren about DJing through osmosis. Herren points out that on his debut you can hear that there are two turntables plugged into his MPC. The sonic cut-ups that characterise Vocal Studies have often been linked to the IDM scene, but they can just as well be understood within the context of scratching and turntablism, where snatching small elements of records and re-contextualising them was key. Most of the cut-ups in Vocal Studies are pilfered from hip-hop records, from Nas and Ol’ Dirty Bastard to Erykah Badu, suggesting that turntablism was perhaps more of a direct influence on his debut’s aesthetic than the electronic cut-ups of the IDM crowd.
“Simplifying things was the only way I could come out as Prefuse.”
At the basement bar on the Lower East Side, Herren tells me he’s thought of a different angle on the multiculturalism that has informed his life and work. The reason people don’t get him, his upbringing and background, is because he didn’t see his own roots growing up, he says. It feels like an important admission on his part, an acceptance that no matter how tangled his roots might have been, making sense of them was an important and necessary rite of passage, as it is for most multicultural kids. It’s why, following the release of his debut, Herren moved to Barcelona in the early 2000s to try and understand the Catalan heritage his father had bestowed upon him. A side effect of this learning process was a return to his original name. His early publicity refers to Scott Herren only, but sometime after his return to America he began to be referred to as Guillermo Scott Herren. Guillermo is in fact his birth and legal name, while Scott comes from his adoptive grandmother, a historian and photographer in Decatur. Guillermo, however, wasn’t very practical growing up in the South. Once in Barcelona he found out that, in turn, most people couldn’t pronounce Scott that well. He reverted to Guillermo and stuck with it “instead of living a duality.” He also points to Miami and the friendships he made there growing up as another place where multiculturalism is a norm rather than an exception. He calls it a fractured view of the world, kids inheriting curious cultural mixes from their parents and being left to deal with them as adults. All of which underscores the frustration he felt when the first Prefuse records came out and his racial and cultural entity was mischaracterised.
In the years that followed his split from Warp, Herren kept musically quiet, referring to his output as minimal upkeep. By this point his early work as Prefuse had become one of the foundations of what has been referred to as the late 2000s beat scene, a worldwide movement with focus points in Los Angeles, Montreal and Glasgow. One of the figureheads of this new movement was Flying Lotus, the LA producer that Herren had helped bring to Warp. Even if the kids didn’t know it, Herren was integral to their scene coming into existence in more ways than one. In early 2012 Herren announced that he was collaborating with Teebs (real name Mtendere Mandowa), another LA-based producer connected to the beat scene and signed to Lotus’ Brainfeeder label.
Together Mandowa and Herren formed Sons of the Morning, a duo that would be the central piece of Herren’s first post-Warp return. They officially debuted the act with a session for the Boiler Room and an appearance at Low End Theory, the weekly nightclub which still acts as a site of pilgrimage for artists and fans alike. In early 2013, a tweet let slip that Herren was collaborating with another beat scene progeny, Jason Chung aka Nosaj Thing. He then launched new label called Yellow Year alongside photographer Angel Ceballos. The plan was ambitious: over the course of 12 months the label would release Speak Soon, a string of collaborations between Herren and a who’s who of underground mavericks old and new. These included Mandowa and Chung as well as the reclusive Swiss musician Dimitri Grimm, aka Dimlite. Herren had helped Grimm connect with Stones Throw a few years before and refers to him as another kindred spirit, someone who was intent on using his own voice at a time when most people weren’t necessarily interested in hearing something honest.
The announcement of Yellow Year sent Herren’s fans into an excitable state. The first volume of the Speak Soon series, featuring Sons of the Morning, was released shortly after in the autumn. Other releases were still nowhere to be found when Herren embarked on a month-long US tour in January of 2014 under the Yellow Year banner alongside Chung and New York’s Drew Lustman, aka FaltyDL, another artist attached to the project. And then nothing. Yellow Year seemingly vanished. Herren regrets leaving the project’s collapse unexplained, but he’s not one to publicise business matters on a whim. As it turns out, the end of Yellow Year was down to creative and operational differences scuppering their ambitious plan, despite everything being in place to fulfil it. As with the Warp debacle, Herren is saddened by its demise, more so because he was left to look foolish. He still has hopes of reviving it, though how realistic that is remains to be seen.
And so Herren found himself back at square one, with no home through which to channel his creative output. For most of 2014 he again went quiet; in reality he was busy finding a new label. Fresh from two acrimonious splits, he talks about that period as akin to soul searching. More than anything he says he didn’t want to deal with drama, but wanted to leave those experiences behind and find a smaller label that would easily accommodate his output and vision without the stress that can arise when creativity and business clash on a larger scale. He seemingly found it in the Brooklyn-based Temporary Residence Limited, a label founded by Jeremy deVine that originally focused on rock-related bands and today houses the likes of William Basinski, the experimental modern classical composer. Herren found Temporary Residence through recommendations from Nigel Godrich, who releases as part of Ultraista on the label, and Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, who uses Temporary Residence for American distribution of his Text Records label. Both artists are old friends of Herren’s and made him feel comfortable with the move.
Herren first met deVine when he was still living in Brooklyn and found him to be down to earth and receptive to his creative ideas. Despite interest from other trendy labels, Herren signed with Temporary Residence for an album. In the months during which we |
world, not in the rich, liberal Northeast," Quinn Kepes told the Boston Globe, which estimated that Massachusetts had as many domestic workers as Boston has finance professionals. Ms. Kepes is program director at Verite, a nonprofit that investigates worker abuse. "These women, and it’s mostly women, have nowhere to go. They’re socially and culturally isolated, and they have nowhere to turn."
This report includes material from Reuters and the Associated Press.British journalist and comedian Shaista Aziz travels to France to find out why the country has become so divided, with many young Muslims feeling alienated from mainstream society.
When gunmen shot dead 12 people in the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine, the hashtag 'Je Suis Charlie' seemed to unify France. But for many young Muslims it was a symbol of their growing alienation from mainstream French society, where the right-wing Front Nationale are now the leading party for the under-35s.
British journalist and comedian Shaista Aziz travels to our nearest neighbour to find out why the country has become so divided. As France reels from attacks carried out by French Muslim extremists, she meets the ordinary young Muslims who feel rejected by their country, with some even hiding their Muslim identity to get work.
Shaista confronts the far-right youth organisations who believe foreigners should be repatriated. In a rare interview, she speaks to Dieudonne, the controversial comedian who talks about what he calls the double standards over free speech that exist in France today.After much debate, the New Hampshire Senate Thursday postponed voting on a bill that would ban conversion therapy for minors. This controversial practice aims to convert people from being gay.
If passed, licensed counselors in the state would be prohibited from providing such services to anyone under 18.
Sen. David Pierce, a Democrat from Lebanon, told his colleagues about his personal struggles with coming out. Pierce said allowing this practice in New Hampshire tells minors who question their sexuality that they need to be fixed.
“The evidence of success of these therapies is non-existent. People can change their behavior, they can change how they speak about it, but they cannot change their orientation, and why should we?," Pierce asked. "Why should anyone be asked to change who they are?”
Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, a Democrat from Portsmouth, who's son is gay, agreed.
"We do not need to take a step backward to that time when people and young people were ashamed when their orientation was either homosexual or lesbian," Clark told her colleagues before the vote was delayed.
Opponents of the ban question whether the practice exists in New Hampshire and argue a ban takes away parental rights.
Currently four states have similar laws on the books: Illinois, California, Oregon and New Jersey, as well as D.C.GM canola is herbicide-resistant weed in California
By Ken Roseboro
Published: May 1, 2011
Category: GMO Food Environmental Risks
To access all the articles in this month's issue of The Organic & Non-GMO Report, SUBSCRIBE NOW.
Genetically modified Roundup Ready canola is not widely grown in California, but it is growing widely as an herbicide-resistant weed.
A recent article in Western Farm Press described how GM canola escaped field trials in 2007 and farmers’ fields and spread to farms, roadsides, and highways.
The GM canola is genetically altered to withstand sprays of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. An estimated 90% of canola, grown mostly grown in the Midwestern United States and Canada, is Roundup Ready.
University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisors, Douglas Munier and Kent Brittan, conducted field trials of GM canola in 2007 in several California counties to study the potential of growing the crop to produce biofuels. But they found that yields were too low to be a viable crop in California. “It’s not a cost-effective crop to grow,” Brittan said.
The experiment ended but GM canola kept growing. In 2009, over 500 GM canola plants emerged on a one-tenth acre plot in Butte County where a field trial was grown in 2007. Munier also found it growing along a 100-mile stretch of highway from Chico to Davis, California, resulting from seed that had fallen from farm equipment transported to the 2007 field trials.
Canola produces a large amount of seed, some of which is dormant, but can grow into plants up to 10 years later.
“This secondary seed dormancy in combination with its glyphosate resistance makes canola a new difficult California weed,” wrote Munier and Brittan.
The researchers also say that GM canola is a challenging weed for areas where glyphosate is used—roadsides, orchards, vineyards, fallow fields, and Roundup Ready crop fields—because glyphosate won’t kill it.
Brittain said one roadway was treated with a half gallon of Roundup, which killed other vegetation but the GM canola survived. (See photo above.)
“This is not just a weed, but one totally resistant to Roundup, an herbicide that is intensely used in a wide variety of high value crops in California,” Munier said.
Brittan also expressed concerns that seeds from GM canola growing on roadsides could spread into fields of organic rapeseed where the canola could cross-pollinate the rapeseed, which like canola is a member of the brassica plant family. While emphasizing that organic fields are not close to where GM canola is growing, Brittan said: “We are watching that closely; we don’t want that to become a problem.”
This isn’t the first time that GM canola has been found growing as a weed. In 2010, scientists found GM canola growing wild in many areas of North Dakota, in some cases far from farm fields.
(Source: Western Farm Press)Two days ago, Google made a huge change to its social network. You may not have noticed it if you're not a regular visitor to Google "Ghost-town" Plus. But if you do pop in, you'll see that your profile and almost everyone else's now include narcissism stats. You can see how many times your profile has been viewed as well as each of your photos. So if you want to know how many people actually click on that bikini pic or food porn you share online, you should upload it to Google Plus rather than Facebook or Instagram. Google is tapping into extreme quantification to compete with other social sharing sites out there.
No longer do you have to wait for pluses (or likes or hearts) to know if your digital detritus is being consumed by other souls on the Internet. Google has quantified it for you. The number you'll see on yours and others' profiles "is the composite number of how many times others have viewed your profile, photos and posts, based off of information since October of 2012," says a Google spokesperson. So now the big question is whether Google feeding our navel-gazing data addiction will actually make the network more popular with users.
In my quick review of the network, the highest views were racked up by those posting compelling photos, such as popular photographer Trey Ratcliff, whose cityscapes regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. It's an interesting move by Google, setting it apart from Facebook, by providing analytics to normal users, not just those operating product pages. It subtly puts the pressure on users, if they care about stats, to post more stuff there to improve their numbers.
In a short Google+ blog post about the update, Googler Eddie Kessler explains how users can undo having their popularity quantified publicly. You go to your Google Plus settings page and unclick the "Show how many times your profile and content have been viewed" box. Unfortunately, restricting others from seeing this means you can't see it either.ATLANTA — A group of teenagers attacked and terrorized a young couple and their children — in the couple’s own home, WSBTV reported.
The family heard a knock on their door at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
Four teenagers asked to borrow a jack for their car, then tried to force their way inside.
When Michael Lash tried to close the door, the teens shot him in the legs.
Lash’s wife, Whitney, heard the shots, and grabbed their infant daughter and ran toward the back door. One of the men fired two shots at her, but missed.
She escaped through the back door and ran for help. One of the teens followed her. “Please don’t shoot me, I have a little baby,” she told him.
The couple’s 2-year-old son was upstairs asleep and was not harmed.
One of the teens told Whitney to give him her cellphone as several others ransacked the home, running off before police arrived.
Michael Lash had surgery and is expected to be OK.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help out the family.This extract from a new book - Silicon Docks: The Rise of Dublin as a Global Tech Hub - details how one of the area’s landmark tenants was lured to these shores.
One of the many elements of David Denby’s job is spotting plot holes. Narrative problems are exposed and ill-conceived character decisions highlighted to his readers. This is perhaps one of the main reasons the New Yorker film critic can barely comprehend the logic he employed within his dot-com bubble diary, American Sucker.
Denby, a sometimes investor, wanted to make $1 million on the stock market to buy his soon-to-be ex-wife out of their Manhattan condo in 1999. To do so, he invested heavily in tech shares. He lost out. Badly. Denby, though, was far from the only sucker in town.
The end of the 1990s and the start of the next decade was a time littered with tales of investments gone wrong. Another man whose name is almost always thrown into the mix when discussion turns to dot-com-era mistakes is George Bell, the former chief executive of the online news source and search engine Excite. In 1999, he decided to decline an offer to buy a company by the name of Google for $750,000. Moreover, this was after the asking price had been brought down from $1 million.
Google, as a large portion of the globe knows by now, was founded by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. It was their second stab at creating a search engine after another – which went by the moniker BackRub – suffered bandwidth issues.
Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (a company which played a bizarrely large part in getting Google to Ireland), was their first investor, writing Google a cheque for $100,000 before the company was even incorporated.
At the time, very few people seemed sure of which web companies had potential for growth and which were built on sand. A number of European countries decided to withdraw foreign development offices from Silicon Valley, wary of getting involved with another dot-com-type blowout.
The IDA stayed though, with the agency’s director of operations in California, Dermot Tuohy, insisting there were still plenty of potential partners for Ireland in the area.
He kept knocking on the doors of PayPal, eBay, Overture (which would later become part of Yahoo!) and, of course, Google. By mid-2002 Tuohy – described, in a complimentary sense, by one person who met him at the time, as a ‘grizzled veteran’– had taken several meetings with the company, which has since become a verb for web searches, never mind one of the biggest names in Silicon Valley.
The IDA’s Gus Jones also worked on the Google “account” in California at the time, while back in Dublin, with the development agency now convinced it wanted to get the company to the Irish capital, John Bolton acted as project manager for the operation.
The Google they were trying to woo at the time had 500 employees and relatively modest (compared to now) revenue of $40 million per annum. The efforts of the three men, alongside recommendations from senior Google staff members who had previously done business in Ireland, convinced the company to take Dublin seriously as a potential location for its European headquarters.
In October 2002 Google sent to Dublin a trio comprising chief financial officer George Reyes, corporate controller Pietro Dova, and Ian Cunningham, a consultant the company employed for its site-selection committee. The itinerary that followed was, according to the IDA’s Jones, “typical” of the kind that had attracted previous technology companies to Ireland.
They went to visit the Dublin bases of companies such as HP, Symantec, SAP, Oracle, and Citibank, as well as a number of data centres in south Dublin, which, for the most part, had been mothballed in the wake of the dot-com crash.
The visit focused mainly on suburban office parks as, up to this point, all major technology brands that had set up shop in Ireland had done so on the outskirts of cities. Bolton remembers that after that visit, Reyes was positive about the idea of coming to Ireland. Both Reyes and the company’s chief executive Eric Schmidt were among the senior Google figures with Irish business experience from their time with Sun Microsystems, which had an engineering base in Dublin.
Two-city race
However, this was a two-city race for Google and for Dova, the company’s corporate controller, the preferred destination was the Canton de Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Contact continued between Google and the IDA over the weeks that followed but eventually the news filtered though that the company had chosen to go with Switzerland. In addition to Dova’s support for the decision, several of Google’s backers had eastern European heritage and liked the idea of the company’s European headquarters being closer to that region. That’s what they told the IDA anyway.
Nonetheless, the agency’s representatives in Dublin and California decided they weren’t going to accept the decision. They continued to press Ireland’s case on several fronts, with those mothballed data centres and Ireland’s favourable corporate tax regime front and centre in their arguments.
At the time, a data centre to meet Google’s needs would have cost in the region of €50 million to build anywhere in Europe. Those gathering dust in Dublin were available for somewhere in the region of €5 million. Considering Google’s relatively limited financial muscle at that time, it was a facet of the Swiss decision that didn’t make sense to some within the company, as there were apparently no available data centre facilities in Neuchâtel.
Google thought about it, but still decided that the best they could do was promise that, when they were setting up their next site in Europe, Dublin would be at the top of the list. Again it was a viewpoint the IDA couldn’t agree with. Previous experience with companies that settled in Ireland such as IBM, Microsoft and Intel indicated that once a company set up in a country, it expanded there. They doubted that, if Google ploughed funds into an operation in Neuchâtel, it would choose to start afresh in Ireland a few years down the line, rather than building on its investment in Switzerland.
Jones continued with requests to meet some of Google’s top executives and eventually got to sit down with some of the decision-makers in the company’s Mountain View offices in California. He put Ireland’s “clear, up-front” tax regime on the table as a positive against the possibility of having to negotiate rates in Switzerland. He introduced them to a US company with offices in Ireland that were thriving, while a larger Swiss arm of the company struggled to justify its existence. With enough doubts planted in the minds of the people opposite him in the boardroom, Jones would soon get confirmation that Google was to revisit the decision.
On January 8th, 2003, an Austrian by the name of Gerald Aigner arrived to inspect those near-vacant data centres in detail.
Aigner’s employers required persistent questioning and almost clinical examination of the facilities, and one data-centre manager apparently communicated to the IDA complaints about the Austrian’s behaviour. But dealing with Aigner – a man described by I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 author Douglas Edwards as Google’s “flaming sword of frugality” – was more than worth it. By the time Aigner left Ireland on January 10th, the company had all but decided it should take space in three of the available data centres.
Top brass
Then, on January 19th, some of Google’s top brass arrived in town. The visiting party included Reyes, Cunningham, George Salah, who was vice-president for facilities, board member David Drummond, vice-president of global online sales and operations, Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Freed, who headed up the company’s international product-management team.
Jones picked up Sandberg and Freed from Dublin Airport, as the pair had arrived on a later flight than the rest of the group. He finds it funny to look back now and see the influence the pair would have in bringing more employment to Dublin years later in their subsequent roles with Facebook and Etsy respectively.
The group from Google looked at business parks in Cherrywood, Parkwest and Citywest in the south of Dublin, as well as Eastpoint and Blanchardstown in the north. Back in the city, they viewed the Digital Hub, a modern workspace close to the city centre which now houses 900 people and is the location for the European headquarters of companies such as Eventbrite and Etsy.
Google’s property advisors at the time also alerted them to an alternative location, identifying the potential of a number of buildings on Barrow Street owned by developer Liam Carroll.
Within walking distance from the city centre, the location was seen by the company as having the right mix of factors to attract the type of employee they wanted in Dublin. In their California offices Brin and Page had encouraged a college campus-style atmosphere, something that was alien to Irish offices at a time when a foosball table in the canteen was about as leftfield as companies were willing to go.
The visitors decided that, once the building – which was still under construction – was complete, they would rent 60,000sq ft of Gordon House on Barrow Street. It’s a choice still seen by those in the IDA as a seismic shift for investment in Dublin. The agency – and many others, including senior Google employees – feel the decision was directly responsible for many other Silicon Valley names, such as Twitter and Facebook, choosing to set up shop nearby.
To bookend this particular scouting mission, the then president of Dublin City University, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, hosted a dinner on January 21st, 2003 for the visitors, and the decision was virtually confirmed that night to IDA officials. Nine days later, The Irish Times reported that the delegation’s visit indicated a deal was close for the company to set up a European sales, marketing and technical-support centre in Dublin.
This wouldn’t be confirmed for another six weeks though, and estimates suggested the company could employ just over 200 people once it moved into Barrow Street. Now the hard work began.
For anyone who has taken a stroll through the company’s current docklands base, viewing the facilities that greet the 2,500 or so Googlers (yes, the term is used in the office alongside ‘Googliness’ and other variants), it’s hard to imagine the initially tiny remit of the company’s operations here.
Today, as you go from floor to floor, you’ll pass a restaurant serving food from around the world, you’ll see all manner of games – from chess to pool – being played, and you’ll notice a gym, a swimming pool, gaming consoles, toy cars rumbling along the floor, wonderful views of the city and a glass skybridge that connects three of the company’s four buildings in the area.
In the Dublin office more than 65 languages are spoken by employees from 60 countries. They’re having to speak about all types of Google innovations too. These days, the company is involved in areas as varied as modular mobile phones, intelligent home heating, wearable devices and gesture recognition.
Although its tax position raises eyebrows in many quarters, the company has been a hugely positive presence in Ireland and, in particular, the docklands. Aside from the time Google wiped Co Limerick off the map, things have actually been relatively controversy free.
To be fair, they didn’t actually annihilate an entire county. They were simply accused by a local politician, Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins, of denying Limerick’s existence on Google Maps. It was, however, just a technical hitch with the tool’s zoom function. Google’s expansion plans for Ireland aren’t quite that drastic.
This is an edited extract from Silicon Docks: The Rise of Dublin as a Global Tech Hub, edited by Pamela Newenham and published by Liberties Press in paperback and as an ebook. The book is in bookshops nationwide, priced €17.99A Plan to Save the Republican Party
The United States no longer has a two-party political system. As the events of the past few weeks have shown, the Republican Party has split into at least two groups that are no longer just factions. Though it may be hard to believe, this division has created an enormous opportunity for the GOP’s leadership. But don’t worry — they’ll probably blow it.
A common narrative holds that the rift in the GOP had its roots in the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin and the subsequent blossoming of the Tea Party. The archconservative, ideological wing of the party finally coalesced, posing a threat to the more pragmatic and centrist elements. The first big symptom of this change was a bulge in primary challenges against apparently safe Republican incumbents by far-right members of their own party.
In the midst of this infighting, the Republican establishment was slowly losing control of its congressional caucus. In the fight against fiscal stimulus after the 2010 election, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and their cohorts were happy to exploit the energy of the Tea Party, since they shared its goals. Now, however, the two factions have come into open conflict over legislative issues, namely funding the government and the debt ceiling. Boehner’s colleagues say he may even abandon the Hastert Rule by putting a bill to a vote in the House without the support of a Republican majority.
Unofficially, the GOP today is a coalition of two parties. One party constitutes a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate, but not a majority of votes in either chamber. The other party includes perhaps 50 or more members of the House and a handful of senators. Despite its much smaller size, this second party appears to wield just as much power as the first.
Why is that? As anyone who follows politics in Israel, Italy, or more recently the United Kingdom can tell you, the votes at the margin make all the difference to a coalition; they can tip the balance when bigger parties lack majorities but still vote uniformly. When a fringe party does decide to join a coalition, it’s usually for reasons of power: positions on committees and in the ruling cabinet. This is particularly prevalent in parliamentary systems, where a legislative majority comes with executive powers as well.
Yet this is not the case in the United States. On the contrary, far-right Republicans have little to gain by kowtowing to the party’s official leadership. Seats on committees might allow the far-right members to bring more pork to their states and districts, but open opposition to the Republican establishment grants them the spotlight of the national media and a chance at even higher office. Ted Cruz may not have won over his colleagues with his recent grandstanding in the Senate, but his name recognition across the country has certainly grown.
In fact, Boehner and other Republican leaders in the House now have to worry about their own posts, thanks to the rising threat of a revolt by Cruz’s allies. If the far-right group had their own official party, they would have little hope of forcing Boehner to resign before the next Congress begins in January 2015. But because they are still nominally Republicans, the far-right group still has a say over who holds the gavel.
Herein lies the first hint of a counterintuitive conclusion: In the long term, establishment Republicans in Congress might wield more power if they expelled the far-right group from the party. This would be especially true if, after doing so, they seized the opportunity to move their party closer to the center.
Democrats have long dreamed of just such a schism in the GOP, on the assumption that it would cement their own party’s domination of the national electorate. But they could easily be wrong. The expulsions would be a political earthquake, a dramatic move whose repercussions would capture the attention of Americans for weeks on end. A reinvigorated Republican Party, under the banner of centrists like Chris Christie and Rob Portman, would no longer have its low-tax and small-government messages polluted by anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-poor rhetoric. Such a party might even gain enough seats in swing and Democrat-held districts to replace the far-right votes it had lost.
Yet none of this is likely to happen, because Boehner, McConnell, and the rest of the formal Republican leadership are far too concerned about their own power. Their narrow focus on maintaining their posts in the current Congress has made them incapable of taking a long-term view of the strategies that might benefit their party. And an official split would almost certainly put them in a weaker position for the remainder of the Obama presidency.
That’s too bad, because the moment is now. The distorting and extorting tactics of the far right are on display for all Americans to see. Approval ratings for Congress and the Tea Party are at all-time lows, and the public is desperate for an end to the logjam in Washington. There’s still a year before the next midterm election, and there are three years to plan for the presidency. For all of these reasons, the showdown that should be happening today is not between Republicans and Democrats, but between Republicans and Republicans.The first American diplomat to defy his boss—the secretary of state—to give sanctuary to a dissident, and who endured the siege of his home as thanks for championing human rights, was born to care about freedom intensely: he was America’s first African-American ambassador, too.
Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett had not been a slave. He never fought in the Civil War. He was bookish not macho. But he was tough.
The defining episode of his diplomatic career occurred in 1875 as he represented the United States to Haiti (the term ambassador came into use in 1893). Haiti, the first black republic and the Americas’ second free republic, was in chaos. While assuring Bassett he was a “lover of justice,” the country’s new leader Michel Domingue was hunting down opponents.
Bassett was already enduring a hard spring. During one crackdown, he saw troops murder a boy who had run errands for the neighboring British legation. State Department investigators were grilling him because a former aide he had fired for dereliction of duty was pinning his failures on Bassett. And although not yet 42, Bassett suffered from gallbladder problems and nerve pain misfiring along his spinal cord.
His real troubles began however, with a terrifying 3 a.m. knock on the door. After fighting off government hit squads for 36 hours, General Pierre Boisrond Canal and two young relatives were desperate. “We are fleeing for our lives before merciless pursuers acting outside the law,” Canal declared. “We seek the protection of your flag.”
Embassies have long been independent legal islands within proud nations. Hindu, Greek, and Roman tales denigrate brutes who violated this principle. Genghis Khan took particular offense if foreigners disrespected his emissaries. The Congress of Vienna legalized diplomatic immunity in 1815, consecrating this building block of international order. Since the Palestinian Black September terrorist group raided the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum in 1973 and Iranian Islamists took American diplomats hostage in Tehran six years later, it’s hard to appreciate just how sacred this notion once was.
Bassett had no one to consult, no time to contemplate. His wife and five children were sleeping inside. Troops were circling the building. And Bassett knew his boss, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, considered giving asylum “contrary to all sound policy.”
Still, Ebenezer Bassett didn’t dither and allowed the asylum-seekers in. “It may be that the instinct for humanity got the better of me,” he reported to a steamed Fish. The secretary of state sneered: “It is regretted that you deemed yourself justified by an impulse of humanity to grant such an asylum…” In fact, Bassett had done this before. Usually, he delayed the report. With mail so slow, most situations ended before Fish’s disapproval reached Port-au-Prince.
But this move was different—higher profile, more dangerous. Bassett wavered as the soldiers banged metal drums day and night to rattle everyone’s nerves. “I must confess, that the presence of a thousand armed men around my country residence… with discontent stamped on their faces and Henry rifles in their hands does not quite give the best possible ground to my hope,” he told his unsupportive boss.
But Bassett’s courage should not be surprising—his life had been primed for that moment. Born in Derby, Connecticut, in 1833, he was the grandson of a slave whose service in the American Revolution secured the family’s freedom. In 1853, he became the first black student to attend Connecticut’s Normal School. Despite suffering discrimination, he appreciated his advantages as an educated free black person in the North. “My success in life,” he later recalled, “I owe greatly to that American sense of fairness which was tendered me in old Derby, and which exacts that every man whether white or black, shall have a fair chance to run his race in life and make the most of himself.”
During the Civil War, living in Philadelphia, administering the Institute for Colored Youth, Bassett urged black Americans to seize the moment, fighting honorably, learning rigorously, living freely. “ This is our golden moment,” he proclaimed at a rally in 1863 recruiting black troops. “A new era is open for us… let us rather die as freedmen than live to be slaves. What is life without liberty.”
In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant, seeking powerful living symbols, appointed Bassett Minister Resident to Haiti. “Your appointment is a grand achievement for yourself and for our whole people,” his friend Frederick Douglass wrote—putting the pressure on. “As you shall acquit yourself in it—wisely or otherwise, we shall be affected favorably or unfavorably.”
Bassett wrote to Douglass—who was first offered the job, then later envied Bassett’s $7500 annual salary—that his duties were “not so onerous as delicate. Common sense and some little knowledge of law… will carry me through.”
Bassett needed guts too. The Canal controversy was just the most dramatic confrontation in a long and chaotic posting. Violent coups, terrifying hurricanes, and State Department sniping buffeted Bassett for nine years.
Finally, on Oct. 5, 1875, after five months, the Haitian government blinked. General Canal sailed to exile in Jamaica. He—and Bassett—were now popular heroes.
Diplomats live through adventures when abroad and often suffer comedowns when they come home. Bassett later served as Haiti’s consul general in New York for nine years. He returned to Haiti for two years—this time in the frustrating role of Frederick Douglass’ secretary. He continued teaching and lecturing until his death in 1893. Still, he never recaptured the grandeur of his Haitian adventure.
Human-rights superheroes often share one of three different origin stories. Some, like Martin Luther King and Betty Friedan, are born oppressed and Moses-like fight for their own freedom. Others—like Raoul Wallenberg, the aristocratic Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi massacres—defend their fellow humans on principle. And some, like Ebenezer Bassett, learn from their own suffering to help others.
Regardless, all, like Bassett, constantly ask “What is life without liberty?” They understand that human rights, like the universe, must constantly expand. Anytime anyone tries polluting the atmosphere with “human rights for me yet not thee,” the poison of hypocrisy spreads and the cause is diminished.
Bassett didn’t let niceties or hierarchies or fear deter him from defending liberty. And he proved that a good ambassador understands that compromise is only one arrow in the diplomatic quiver. Sometimes American ambassadors must stand for principle to represent the United States faithfully, accurately, and honorably.
For Further Reading
Christopher Teal, Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett, 2008.
Roger Lane, William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America, 1991.
John H. Jordan, Black Americans 17th Century to 21st Century, 2013.
Elizabeth J. Norman, African American Connecticut Explored, 2016.You better brace yourselves, Potter fans, because J.K. Rowling just issued a full-blown threat to the series canon. The mastermind behind the universe of witchcraft and wizardry just took to Twitter to announce that she will write a short story where Harry Potter drowns in a septic tank at Woodstock ’99 if fans don’t do something big for her birthday this year.
Wow. J.K. Rowling is NOT messing around on this one.
While the acclaimed author has certainly cultivated a special relationship with her fans over the years, it looks like she expects an unforgettable birthday bash and has no problem using the fate of her universally beloved characters as leverage. In a series of tweets sent out early this morning, Rowling made it clear that if her birthday isn’t spectacular, she will not hesitate to do some serious damage to Harry Potter’s legacy by having The Boy Who Lived die an embarrassing, meaningless death at a music festival:
Advertisement
Yikes. If you’re a true Potterhead, you can’t be feeling too good about this.
Fans have been frantically tweeting at Rowling all morning to ask for details about what she wants her birthday to be like, but she’s not responding to any questions, so it looks like they’re on their own for now. On the bright side, there are still a few months before the author’s birthday, so fans have some time to put their heads together and make sure it’s one to remember.
Here’s to hoping all the Potter buffs out there can step up and save Harry and his friends from an absolutely humiliating fate.If, God forbid, some crazy Muslim were to shoot and kill a security guard outside a synagogue in Sherman Oaks, would you pack up and move to Israel?
No, of course not. One crazed gunman does not a pogrom make.
Unless you’re Benjamin Netanyahu.
That seemed to be the logic behind the Israeli prime minister’s statement the day after Saturday’s terror attacks in Denmark. When a Muslim man shot up a free-speech gathering and then a synagogue, killing a Danish film director at the first and a Jewish security guard at the second site, Netanyahu immediately called on the Jews of Europe to immigrate en masse to Israel.
“Jews were killed on European land just because they were Jewish,” he said. “This wave of attacks will continue. I say to the Jews of Europe — Israel is your home.”
His analysis is mostly right — victims in Toulouse, Paris and Denmark were singled out because they were Jewish. The scourge of Islamic violence isn’t going away anytime soon — attacks like these most likely will happen again. And Israel is the Jewish home.
So, if Bibi got all his facts right, why have so many people — from the prime minister of Denmark, to the country’s chief rabbi, to American Jewish leader Malcolm Hoenlein, to former Israeli President Shimon Peres, to just about every European and American Jew I’ve spoken with — lambasted his conclusion?
Because it’s cowardly.
I’m not saying that choosing to immigrate to Israel in the face of what is certainly increased anti-Semitism in Europe shows a lack of spine. For many people, it’s simply a better choice.
But the idea that when trouble comes, we run to Israel just doesn’t sit right for many reasons.
First, Israel is not safer for Jews. I can think of many good, positive reasons to immigrate to Israel, but avoiding terrorism isn’t one of them. Statistically, you are far less likely to die violently from war or terror in Denmark, Paris or London than in Israel. That goes for your children as well.
If Bibi were concerned solely with the safety of Europe’s Jews, he would urge them to go to the United States, where anti-Semitism is negligible, and where, since 1948, some 330,000 Israelis have found safe, comfortable homes. It surely doesn’t help Bibi’s cause to be spending half his time telling Jews to run to Israel, and the other half warning that any day now, an Iranian nuke could obliterate Tel Aviv.
The idea that when trouble comes, we run to Israel just doesn’t sit right for many reasons. Tweet
And, by the way, has Bibi looked at a map lately? Those ISIS maniacs are within eyesight of the Golan Heights. They are swarming Iraq; surrounding Egypt; taking over Libya; and cultivating followers in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. If you want to stay far away from ISIS, stay far away from the Middle East, period.
Second, Jews cannot let hundreds of years of European Jewish history, tradition and culture come to a screeching halt because of some Islamic thugs. The popular narrative — or at least the one in Bibi’s brain — is that this is 1938, and Jews had better get out while they can. But the reality is quite different: Jews have the backing of Europe’s governments and its leaders, as well as public opinion. The mass rally this past weekend in Denmark was yet another sign of that. I know it’s hard for us to comprehend, but this time, all Shushan has risen up against Haman.
“There is a real threat to life and limb,” University of London history professor David Cesarani wrote in the Huffington Post, “however from a tiny number of Jihadists and extreme Islamists. But they are a threat to every liberal democratic society, and they target the state, the police, the military and, as we saw in France, organisations that practice and symbolize freedom of expression. Hence, Jews are not isolated, as they were in the 1930s and 1940s, but find themselves enjoying unprecedented solidarity. This comes, too, from Muslims who are struggling against the extremism in their own faith communities. We need to celebrate and build on this solidarity, not sow seeds of alarm.”
Cesarani’s last point may be the most important reason Bibi is wrong. Bibi’s comments undermine the larger truth about Islamic extremism in Europe: This is not just a Jewish fight. To say it’s the Jews who must run away is to say we are not part of humanity’s struggle against an ideology that has claimed more Muslim and Christian victims in recent years than Jewish ones.
“Raising the spectre of ‘anti-Semitism’ will not help anyone cope with the threat posed by Jihadists and extreme Islamists,” Cesarani wrote. “We |
. Beck and Genis said Cotledge rang up only a few thousand dollars in medical bills as a result of the incident, which limited the amount they could seek. “When you have $4,000 in actual damages, it’s pretty unrealistic to expect a jury to give you $1 million,” Genis said.
Genis said neither Denunzio nor Cotledge wanted to speak to the media regarding the settlements.
For Cotledge, her legal battles are over. By contrast, trouble seems to stalk Denunzio or perhaps vice versa. This May he was arrested by city police for trespassing and resisting arrest. He and his brother reportedly got so loud and unruly they were asked to leave a waterfront restaurant. At that point, they snuck past the security gate of one of the marinas and boarded a boat moored there, which they said they thought belonged to a friend of theirs. (It did not.) When Denunzio was confronted by Harbor Patrol security officers, Genis said, the officers were fingering their tasers during the encounter. Denunzio asked if they planned to use then. When they answered they might, Genis said, Denunzio — suffering post traumatic stress syndrome — took off. In the ensuing chase, a veteran Habor Patrol officer slipped and fell. Worse, when attempting to apprehend Denunzio, he ripped his bicep muscle, a painful and debilitating injury.
This time, the DA filed resisting arrest charges against Denunzio. Genis has filed a conflict of interest motion to have the case reassigned to the California Attorney General. It turns out the injured Harbor Patrol officer is married to a senior deputy in the District Attorney’s Office. That matter is still pending. In the meantime, Genis is claiming that law enforcement was out to get his client. And he’s showing no inclination to tone down his commentary. “My client is allegedly the inebriated one, and he’s being chased by an experienced, sober Harbor Patrol officer,” he said. “Yet, it’s the sober and experienced Harbor Patrol officer who slips over his own two feet while my client, allegedly inebriated, gets away. How does that make sense?”You’ve probably heard about slow cookers, and how they can save you time and money in the kitchen. Most people use them for slowly simmered soups, stews, and broths, which is great—but did you know you can make cheesecake in your slow cooker? What about barbecue ribs? Let's talk about some unexpected, delicious meals that are surprisingly slow cooker-friendly.
Why Slow Cookers are Amazing
A slow cooker is an incredible kitchen investment. They can save you time by cooking dinner while you’re at the office. They can save you money by turning cheap cuts of meat into delicious roasts, huge pots of chili, and more. A slow cooker can turn your bones and old veggies into stock or broth in a few hours, saving you even more money and adding flavor to anything else you make.
Advertisement
The money you'll spend on a slow cooker—even an expensive one with timers and multiple power settings—will easily come back to you in time, energy, and money. This article from The Simple Dollar offers up a few more specific details on how the math works out. However, even the staunchest supporters of slow cookers associate them mostly with soups, stews, roasts, and chili. They're great for those things, but there's so much more. In this guide, we'll look at some other interesting things you can make with your slow cooker—things you may never have thought that a slow cooker was capable of making. Let's get started.
"Roast" Chicken
Advertisement
Most people don't realize you can use a slow cooker to cook a whole bird, but there's nothing stopping you. In fact, if you have a slow cooker big enough, "roasting" a whole bird is easier than using the oven, and results in delicious, spice-rubbed, slow-cooked, juicy meat.
America's Test Kitchen has a full recipe here, but here’s the gist: rub down the chicken with the spice mixture of your choice, over and under the skin (the recipe even has a spice mix suggestion for you), and then pop the chicken into the slow cooker on low, breast-side down. That's the important part: cooking the chicken upside down lets the fat render from the underside of the and then drip down over the breast and white meat, making sure the end result is deliciously juicy. Four to five hours later, (or whenever the chicken is up to minimum safe cooking temp) you'll have a delicious meal, ready to serve.
Congee (aka Juk, or Rice Porridge)
Advertisement
Congee, also known as Jook or Juk, is a simple rice porridge made with water and rice (and a few other ingredients). The beauty of congee is that it's so simple to make, and cooking it in a slow cooker gives you the flexibility to start it at night and have a hot pot in the morning, or start in the morning before you go to work and have tons waiting for you when you get home. It's comfort food-y, and because it's a pretty blank slate, it can appeal to any palate, and even soothe upset stomachs if you're not in the mood for strong flavors.
Making congee is easy, but if you asked a dozen different people who love it how they make it, they'd probably have a dozen different methods. I've found that this recipe from CHOW is a good start if you want something that's hearty and meant to be a flavorful dinner. It has ginger, chicken, and some herbs and spices to really make it special.
Of course, you don't have to go all out like this—the first time I made crock pot congee, it was much simpler, like this recipe from Foodie with Family. Ultimately, all you need is about 10 cups of water (she uses chicken broth, but if you're not sure if you want it to be so savory, I'd suggest using a mix of water and broth) to a cup or so of rice, and a nice long cooking time (7-8 hours on low) to let the porridge thicken up. From there you can add whatever sauces and spices you want on top or mixed in. I have a good friend who loves plain congee with a little soy sauce on top. I toss in some shredded leftover chicken or ham and add some scallions on top. The sky's the limit—congee can take on any flavor you give it.
Advertisement
Cheesecake
Desserts aren't something you’d expect be made in a slow cooker, but they're actually not difficult at all. The even, relatively low heating of a slow cooker makes for a moist and creamy cheesecake that you can cook for a while without worrying about it drying out. Plus, it takes much less effort than making one in the oven would. The recipe that really got us thinking about this is the one in America's Test Kitchen's Slow Cooker Revolution: Volume 2 (where some of the other recipes we've highlighted here can also be found.) There's an amazing recipe inside for chocolate cheesecake that I've tried, works as advertised, and tastes fantastic.
Advertisement
If you don't have the book, this recipe from Mommy's Kitchen is a great one start with. It cooks in a few hours, and uses ingredients you may already have. If you want an alternative, check out this sour cream cheesecake from Food and Wine that'll step things up a little bit. It'll take a little practice to get quite right, but we can think of worse things to do than practice making delicious cheesecake.
Alton Brown's Overnight Oatmeal
Advertisement
Alton Brown turned me on to this method of cooking overnight oatmeal a long time ago (See Season 5, Episode 2: "Oat Cuisine"), and not only is it more delicious and nutritious than the powdered instant packet stuff you'll inevitably pay more for, it's also easy to make and walk away from. I love this recipe so much I've mentioned it before, and often tweak it by adding some dried fruit or other goodies to cook overnight with the oatmeal in the crock pot while I sleep. When I wake up, I have a hot, delicious breakfast ready to go. It's not the only way to make oatmeal in advance and flavor it to your liking (and the last time we mentioned it, some people were concerned about power/leaving a crock pot on overnight/etc), but it's definitely one of the easiest, and it becomes its own serving dish so your family can help themselves to breakfast, or you can help yourself to breakfast, turn the slow cooker off, go to work, and deal with the cleanup when you get home (or just pop some water and soap in and leave it on while you get ready and let it clean itself.)
Carrot Cake
Advertisement
We mentioned this one a while back, but it works just as advertised. The key to a really good carrot cake is to make sure it has a deliciously moist crumb; and while that can be difficult (and necessitates a lot of oil or butter in the process), cooking a carrot cake in a slow cooker doesn't require quite so much time, effort, and butter or oil (not that health should really be a consideration when you're baking a cake, right?)
The folks at America's Test Kitchen managed to make a recipe that's just as tasty, just as moist as an oven-baked cake, and is a bit easier to prepare, thanks to the slow, gentle cooking process you get from a crock pot. Plus, the time you save with the cake in the crock pot can go towards making their delicious cream cheese frosting to go on top of the cake when it's ready. Head over here for the full recipe.
Advertisement
Enchiladas and Tacos
Making a roast in a slow cooker isn't difficult. It can turn those big cuts of meat that cost pennies on the pound into delicious, tender roasts that will feed your family for a week, with plenty of leftovers to save afterwards. Once you've mastered the slow cooker roast, take it up a notch and turn it into pulled pork or shredded beef tacos or enchiladas.
Advertisement
It might sound tricky, but it's easy enough to do on a weeknight. Just pop in your pork butt roast or beef round into the slow cooker before you leave for work, season with salt and pepper (and other spices if you like), cover, and cook on low for about nine to ten hours on low. By the time you get home, the pork will have rendered a good bit of its own fat and juices, and it should be pretty much cooked. Take it out and set it to the side, then shred it with a pair of forks. You want bite-size chunks of meat that you'd want in a taco or filling a tortilla.
Then make your enchilada or taco sauce. You can grab a packet of taco sauce mix from the grocery store (they're usually a dollar), or you can mix your own spices (I suggest cumin, garlic, maybe adobo) together with a little water or stock, tomato paste and tomato sauce, and any herbs you want. Toss the shredded meat with it, and serve it up in some tortillas. Top your tacos with your favorite toppings (guacamole, sour cream, you know, the works), and you're ready to eat. If you prefer enchiladas, fill your tortillas with the meat and some cheese, then put them back into the slow cooker with your sauce and let them come up to temp, then serve. Check out this Food Network recipe, this recipe from Gimme Some Oven, or this black bean enchilada recipe from The Kitchn for inspiration.
Ribs
Advertisement
I love a good rack of barbecued ribs, and while cooking them on the grill is the best way to go, you can stay warm in your house and use the slow cooker instead. It's pretty surprising, but the slow, even heat of a slow cooker means you'll get evenly-cooked, moist, and tender ribs without having to do a lot of flipping, brushing, or mopping—it'll just take a little longer.
This is another one we have to give credit to America's Test Kitchen for; they came up with the idea, and it's probably easier than trying to cook the same racks of ribs in the oven. You'll need a pair of St. Louis style spareribs, a slow cooker of about seven quarts (maybe a little less), some spices, and your favorite barbecue sauce. Rub the ribs with your favorite spices (and yes, ATK has suggestions there too), then pop them upright, meaty-sides out, in the slow cooker on low for about 4-5 hours. That's all there is to it.
The recipe suggests you take them out, brush them down with barbeque sauce, and then finish them in the oven under the broiler to get that sauce nice and sticky, but we'll leave that part up to you. The best part of this recipe is it's great for a weekend or day at home where you don't feel like cooking, but you can give yourself about 15 minutes of free time to prep a dinner that'll be ready later in the day. Head here for the full recipe.
Advertisement
"Baked" Potatoes, Beets, and Other Veggies
We've talked about making baked potatoes in a slow cooker, but the method doesn't just apply to potatoes. Sweet potatoes, beets, even artichokes can all be "roasted" or steamed in a crock pot using a similar method. For basic baked potatoes, wash and dry your potatoes, wrap them in aluminum foil, and put them right into the slow cooker for about eight to nine hours on low. I like to just moisten the skin of mine with a little oil or cooking spray a little bit before I put them in the aluminum foil so some spices—namely salt—will stick to the skin while they cook inside the foil. When they come out, they'll be hot, fluffy, and ready to top with whatever you like.
Advertisement
If you're not into potatoes, try artichokes. Trim off the stems and the top of the leaves, toss them with a little oil, and put them stem-side up into the slow cooker in a little water (about a half-cup). Let them braise for about eight to nine hours on low, or until a sharp knife into the stem end goes in and comes out with no resistance. Serve with a little melted butter and freshly minced garlic for dipping, and you're good to go.
You can take the same approach with beets. Just clean them, spray them with cooking spray (or rub them down with a little oil) and season with salt and pepper. Wrap them in foil, pop them in the slow cooker with a little water (again, about a half-cup), and let them cook about eight to nine hours on low. When they come out, remove the skins, slice them up, season again, and serve (The Slow Cooker Revolution: Volume 2 cookbook I mentioned has a great recipe for beets with blue cheese and walnuts that's good, good for you, and uses this method.)
Advertisement
All in all, "braising" or "roasting" veggies in a slow cooker is just as easy—if not easier—than meats and desserts. You have the option to cook slowly using water to transfer and maintain heat, or use the water to add a little gentle steam over long periods of time, turning what's normally difficult to cook or tough vegetables into soft and fluffy ones by the end of the cooking time.
Creme Brulee
Advertisement
Creme Brulee is usually associated with delicate cooking techniques, but this method is easy and uses some of the principles behind the dishes we've mentioned already. You'll make the creme brulee like you would for the oven: mix egg yolks, vanilla, cream, and sugar, and pour the mixture into heat-resistant ramekins. Put them in the bottom of your slow cooker and add just enough water to get up around the sides of the ramekins. Cook about two to three hours on high, and then remove them and let them cool. The custard you made should be set but not too firm. When they're cooled, let them chill in the fridge for a few hours. Then, if you have a cooking torch (and I suggest you grab one, they're fun to use), sprinkle some sugar over the top and brown the sugar with the cooking torch.
It's all pretty simple for such an elegant dessert, and the slow cooker makes it even easier. Serious Eats has a great recipe here, as goes Stephanie Dea's Year of Slow Cooking. Either one will serve you well, and impress your family (or your guests, if you plan to do this for a small gathering!)
More Reading and Additional Resources
Advertisement
The dishes we've mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg. Like we mentioned, America's Test Kitchen's two books, Slow Cooker Revolution and Slow Cooker Revolution: Volume 2 were the source for some of these recipes, and contain hundreds more that are worth considering if you really want to get into crock pot cooking. Some of the recipes are the standard soups, stews, chilis, and hearty dinners that you probably already associated with the slow cooker (and that we specifically tried to avoid this time around), but there are plenty of surprises too.
Beyond that, A Year of Slow Cooking has recipes for the slow cooker every week that range from glazed ham to inedibles like crock pot candles and soap. Also, don't forget that we've shared a good number of slow cooker tips of our own, including how to make bulk coffee in the slow cooker, a quick way to bake bread, and even how to hack your slow cooker into a temperature controlled sous vide water oven. Don't leave your slow cooker in the cabinet until the next office chili cookoff—it can be much more useful to you than that, and it can save you a ton of time and money.
AdvertisementCuts to the Bank of Canada overnight lending rate appear to be the driver behind consumers ratcheting up their debt, which Statistics Canada said Thursday reached record levels in the four quarter of 2014.
[np_storybar title=”Four myths about Canadian household debt — and a few unpleasant truths” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/2015/03/03/four-myths-about-canadian-household-debt-and-a-few-unpleasant-truths/”%5D
Few financial issues create as much angst in this country as household debt. So how bad is it? BMO crunches the numbers
[/np_storybar]
Household debt to disposable income was 163.3% at the end of the last quarter but the increase comes as household net worth increased 7.5%.
Doug Porter, chief economist with Bank of Montreal, predicts the debt to income number will push higher in the coming months albeit not as much in Alberta where low oil prices continue to threaten the economy.
“It’s partly fuelled by the Bank of Canada’s rate cut and party fuelled by the strength in the Toronto and Vancouver housing market,” said Mr. Porter.
New data from the Teranet-National Bank House Price Index, also released Thursday, show prices continue to increase in those two cities, with Vancouver existing home prices up 5.7% in February from a year ago and Toronto up 7.3% during the same period.
But most of the 11 markets across the country surveyed in the index have slowed or declined in value with the national index up only 4.4% from a year ago.
Mr. Porter noted that with interest rates still very low — below 3% for long-term mortgages fixed for five years — the current debt is mostly manageable.
“The concern is where do we go from here. Longer term, where is the room for the consumer to lead the way?” said Mr. Porter. “It’s not a clear and present danger.”
He also emphasized in a note to clients that consumer debt is still not at the high reached in the United States because the way we calculate the ratio is different in Canada. Using the American formula, Canada’s household debt is 153% of disposable income compared to the 165% the U.S. reached at its peak.
The net worth part of the Statistics Canada release also shows that many Canadians who are not in debt continue to grow wealthier with the federal agency noting that household net worth on a per capital basis was $233,000 in the fourth quarter.
“Those who are not in debt are doing quite well and, if anything, household assets are at at an all-time high,” said Mr. Porter.
Marc Pinsonneault, an economist with National Bank of Canada, said while house prices have pulled back in most parts of the country, sales continue to climb and that has helped push up debt levels.
“The debt to income ratio was not increasing in the last few quarters [until] the last one and I assume it is because residential [debt] has increased more than revenues,” said Mr. Pinsonneault.
Diana Petramala, an economist with Toronto-Dominion Bank, expects that debt will continue to rise until housing activity starts to slow.
“The modest pick-up in household borrowing over the second half of 2014 is largely consistent with accelerating consumer spending and a robust turnaround in the Canadian housing market in the summer of last year. Looking forward, a combination of lower interest rates and weak income gains are expected to translate into a further increase in the debt-to-income ratio in the first half of 2015,” she said.
She added that credit card delinquency rates are at record low levels, while only 0.28% of Canadian mortgages were in arrears 90 days or more in October.Home Daily News Did devotion to work play role in Sidley…
Legal Ethics
Did devotion to work play role in Sidley partner's faked fares? Suspension, treatment recommended
Image from Shutterstock.
A Sidley Austin partner who earned $3.5 million in his final year at the law firm is facing a possible one-year suspension for faking more than $69,000 in cab expenses.
The Hearing Board of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission recommended the one-year suspension, along with one year of psychiatric treatment, for Lee Smolen, who is now a partner in the Chicago office of DLA Piper. The Am Law Daily (sub. req.), the Legal Profession Blog and Crain’s Chicago Business have stories; the Jan. 7 report and recommendation are here.
Sidley’s general counsel, William Conlon, investigated the cab fares after a request by the firm’s executive committee. Conlon said he found the fares unusual because Smolen had told him he drove to work. Conlon found that Smolen parked his car in the parking garage nearly every day that he charged $70 to $80 for cab fare. Conlon said that, as far as he can recall, Smolen admitted his conduct was wrong, but said he felt entitled to the money because he came in early, stayed late and did a lot of practice development, the hearing report said.
An audit by KPMG identified about $69,800 in unacceptable cab expenses submitted by Smolen, and questioned $379,000 in additional reimbursed expenses, according to the hearing report. Smolen agreed the firm could withdraw $400,000 from his account to cover the expenses and the cost of the KPMG investigation.
Smolen testified he used the cab money to pay for client entertainment when he used cash without having to take time to make out the expense reports. He wanted more time to spend with family, he said, after his mother became seriously ill.
Psychiatrists testifying on Smolen’s behalf said he had generalized anxiety disorder, depressive disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder while at Sidley. Both found some link between the psychiatric problems and his conduct; one said the OCD made Smolen excessively devoted to work.
Smolen slept only three or four hours a night and typically spent 12 to 15 hours a day at work, according to testimony before the hearing board.
The hearing board also noted that Smolen did not charge his false expenses to his clients, he admitted wrongdoing, and he was remorseful.
DLA Piper submitted a statement to the Am Law Daily about the case. “The ARDC decision does not come as a surprise to us, and we stand by our original statement that, after our own due diligence and a thorough review of the facts, we decided to give great weight to the total body of Lee’s work over his 25-plus years as a lawyer,” the statement said. “We believe he has taken the right steps to move forward, and we support him as he continues in this process.”
DLA previously said it is closely monitoring Smolen’s billable hours and expenses.
Related articles:
ABAJournal.com: “DLA says it keeps a tight rein on partner who admits faking $69K in cab receipts at prior firm”
ABAJournal.com: “Ex-Sidley partner says $69K cab-fare reimbursement was used for firm-related purposes”
ABAJournal.com: “Ethics case launched over $69K in cab fare reimbursement for former partner”Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Morning Show with John Richards, is "Wartime" by Charms from their 2013 self-released EP Hillary.
Charms - Wartime (MP3)
Charms bring a brightness to the Seattle garage rock scene. Their fuzzy tunes have a uniquely jangling nature to them, keeping things upbeat and depending more on complex melody and bright energy than grit and gristle like many of their garage counterparts. Their Hillary EP, released January of this year, is chalk full of sunny, euphonic garage goodness that would compliment any summer playlist.
"Wartime" is the cream of the crop here, though. A bright guitar hook drives the tune forward, only ever building momentum over the track's two and a half minutes. The harmony between guitar and bass echoes the intricacies of Seattle indie rock kings Minus the Bear, while the forward energy and garage tendencies put the track alongside contemporaries on their scene. Despite the brightness of the backing track, Eleazer Tolentino's lyrics are pretty dark. "Your days are numbered" he sings with intensity, documenting some sort of unseen omen coming towards those that go about their daily American lives in naive bliss. The contrast between light and dark here makes for a more intense emotional experience. All around, it's a great track.
You can check out the rest of Hillary at the Charms Bandcamp page and look for future tour dates on their Facebook page. Also, check out the video for "Wartime" below, featuring some footage of the band at Columbia City Theater:Research Frontiers Press Release Dated January 7, 2016 CONTINENTAL CORPORATION SHOWCASES ITS INTELLIGENT GLASS CONTROL SYSTEM USING SPD-SMARTGLASS TECHNOLOGY AT CES 2016
Get notified next time REFR.US makes a similar move!
The following excerpt is from the company's SEC filing.
SPD-SmartGlass Automotive Windows offer Comfort, Efficiency, Safety and Security Benefits
Las Vegas, NV – January 7, 2016.
Research Frontiers (Nasdaq: REFR) confirmed today that Continental Corporation, one of the world’s top five automotive suppliers, is showcasing its “Intelligent Glass Control” system on a demonstration vehicle at a special event at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas from January 6-9, 2016. This vehicle, a Ford Mondeo station wagon, uses Research Frontiers’ patented SPD-SmartGlass technology to enable the glass in all eleven side and rear windows and in the top sunv isor portion of the windshield to change its transparency and darken instantly through electric control signals. This increases passenger comfort, energy efficiency, safety and security.
Continental's “Intelligent Glass Control” system on a Demonstration Vehicle
at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada
Joseph M. Harary, President and CEO of Research Frontiers, the company which invented SPD-SmartGlass technology and has licensed it throughout the world for use in the automotive, aircraft, architectural, marine and museum industries noted: “Here at CES we are seeing a heightened presence of smart homes, and now with Continental’s Intelligent Glass Control system, truly smart vehicles using SPD-SmartGlass.”
Continental indicated that its Intelligent Glass Control system increases passenger comfort and lowers CO2 emissions by keeping the interior of the vehicle cooler. As a result, smaller, more efficient and lighter air conditioning units could be used. Calculations showed a reduction in CO2 emissions of four grams per kilometer. Continental also estimates that their Intelligent Glass Control system can increase the driving range of electric vehicles by 5.5%. When compared to conventional automotive glass, Mercedes-Benz reported that the use of SPD-SmartGlass significantly reduces the temperature inside the vehicle by up to 18ºF/10ºC.
Continental also highlighted the safety benefits of its Intelligent Glass Control system in typical driving situations such as when the sun is low on the horizon. Normally the driver's hand instinctively goes from the steering wheel to the sun visor, resulting in both impaired visibility and a brief decrease in control of the vehicle. Continentals Intelligent Glass Control system can detect this in advance and darken the car windows automatically before the event even occurs.
Continentals Intelligent Glass Control system also enhances security and privacy. For example, when the vehicle is parked, the windows darken automatically so the inside of the vehicle cannot be seen from the outside. This also protects the interior of vehicles and their occupants from heat, light and UV radiation.
Continental noted that up until now, this kind of variable tinting technology has only been available in the roof area of high-end cars, such as Mercedes-Benzs Magic Sky Control system offered on the SLK and SL roadsters, the S-Class Coupe, the Maybach, and most recently the popular S-Class sedan. Now, Continental says it is ready to be used on all windows in a vehicle.
For more information about the Intelligent Glass Control system, please read the press release from Continental Corporation. More information about SPD-SmartGlass can be found at SmartGlass.com and in this video.
About Continental Corporation
Continental ranks among the top five automotive suppliers worldwide. As a supplier of brake systems, systems and components for powertrains and chassis, instrumentation, infotainment solutions, vehicle electronics, tires and technical elastomers, Continental contributes to enhanced driving safety and global climate protection. Continental is also a supply partner in networked automobile communication. The Continental Corporation is divided into the Automotive Group and the Rubber Group, and consists of five divisions. Chassis & Safety, Powertrain, Interior, Tires and ContiTech.
About Research Frontiers Inc.
Research Frontiers (Nasdaq: REFR) is the developer of SPD-Smart light-control technology which allows users to instantly, precisely and uniformly control the shading of glass or plastic, either manually or automatically. Research Frontiers has built an infrastructure of over 40 licensed companies that collectively are capable of serving the growing global demand for smart glass products in automobiles, homes, buildings, museums, aircraft and boats. For more information, please visit our website at www.SmartGlass.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
For further information about SPD-Smart light-control technology, please contact:
Joseph M. Harary
+1-516-364-1902
info@SmartGlass.com
Note: From time to time Research Frontiers may issue forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ and are not guaranteed. Any forward-looking statements should be considered accordingly. "SPD-Smart" and SPD-SmartGlass are trademarks of Research Frontiers Inc. MAGIC SKY CONTROL, Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-Maybach, and model designations SLC, SLK, SL and S-Class are trademarks of Daimler A.G.
The above information was disclosed in a filing to the SEC. To see the filing, click here.
To receive a free e-mail notification whenever Research Frontiers Incorporated makes a similar move, sign up!
Other recent filings from the company include the following:
Research Frontiers: Material Science Company Gauzy Announces Second Factory In STUTTGART GERMANY TO PRODUCE RESEARCH FRONTIERS’ SPD-SMART LIGHT CONTROL FILM FOR THE SMART GLASS INDUSTRY - Feb. 4, 2019Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey wants to bring back the iconic Eisenhower jacket, and he needs your help. In a new survey to the force, Dailey wants to hear if soldiers like the idea of the waist-length jacket made popular by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower during World War II.
The proposed jacket would "add one layer of etiquette" for soldiers who may need to go from the Class Bs to a more formal appearance without transitioning to the full Army Service Uniform jacket, Dailey said.
"I like it from a historical standpoint, history and honor," Dailey said. "Eisenhower introduced the khaki version, and even though we're in the blues today, it ties back to it."
In addition to the Eisenhower jacket, the survey being sent to the force also will seek soldier feedback on several other uniform changes, including gender-neutral head gear and black socks with the new PT uniform.
"We want to make sure soldiers get a chance to express their opinion," Dailey said. "It was very important to the [Army chief of staff] and myself for soldiers to know we're listening to them."
The survey will go out to soldiers' military email addresses in batches beginning this week, and it will likely be up for at least two weeks, or until a large enough portion of the force has responded, Dailey said.
Even though Dailey has said he is "not going to be the uniform Sergeant Major," he is pushing these potential changes to uniform items and wear in response to soldier feedback.
"I think we need an era of stabilization," Dailey has said, even as the Army rolls out a new PT uniform and a new camouflage pattern for the Army Combat Uniform.
× Fear of missing out? Fear no longer. Be the first to hear about breaking news, as it happens. You'll get alerts delivered directly to your inbox each time something noteworthy happens in the Military community. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to our Newsletter: Sign up for the Army Times Daily News Roundup
However, Dailey also is looking at how these changes also could boost morale across the force.
"If you can raise motivation by fixing things that don't really have a negative effect on the standards and discipline of the Army, why not?" Dailey said.
A closer look:
Eisenhower jacket
The original "Eisenhower" or "Ike jacket" was patterned after the British battle jacket.
This new version, which already has a prototype, is a wind-proof blue jacket meant to be worn in a workplace setting.
In the survey, soldiers will be asked: "Should the Eisenhower jacket be adopted as an optional wear item, for males and females, in addition to the black windbreaker?"
When the Army got rid of its green Class A uniforms, "we got rid of a layer of etiquette," Dailey explained.
The Class Bs are meant to be the Army's day-to-day business uniform, while the Army Service Uniform is considered formal dinner wear, he said. The phasing out of the Class A green uniform meant there was no longer an in-between uniform.
SFC Matthew MacRoberts models a prototype of the revamped Eisenhower jacket at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, on Thursday, July 16, 2015.
The Eisenhower jacket is meant to be worn in the workplace "in lieu of the black windbreaker."
Photo Credit: Mike Morones/Staff
The Eisenhower jacket is meant to be worn in the workplace "in lieu of the black windbreaker," said Command Sgt. Maj. David Davenport, the senior enlisted soldier for Training and Doctrine Command, which is administering the soldier survey.
"When you think about enhancing professionalism in the workplace, I think this jacket does that," he said. "More importantly, it ties us to the history of our institution."
If the jacket is approved, it would be an optional item just like the black sweater, black windbreaker and blue mess uniforms, Dailey said.
"It's critical that this would not be an issue item," Dailey said. "We can't afford to add any money to the clothing bag right now."
If soldiers like the Eisenhower jacket, it will have to go through the usual Army process for getting uniform items approved.
"There's a long process this has to go through," Dailey said.
Drill sergeant hats
Based on feedback from female drill sergeants, Army leaders want to know if soldiers support a single campaign hat for both male and female drill sergeants.
Male and female drill sergeants now have their own distinct hats.
The Army is considering ditching the female drill sergeant hat. Women and men could both wear the same "Smokey" hat instead.
Photo Credit: Army
The female drill sergeant hat came into being in 1972. It was designed by Brig. Gen. Mildred Bailey, according to the Army. The original design was taken from the Australian bush hat and was beige in color.
The hat color was changed to green in 1983.
Female drill instructors in the Marine Corps have been wearing the previously male-only "Smokey" field hat since 1996, according to the Corps.
Blue service caps
Also known as "the bus driver cap," the Army wants to know if there should be a single cap for both male and female soldiers to wear with the Army Service Uniform.
This question also stems from feedback that senior enlisted leaders, including Dailey and Davenport, have received from female soldiers.
From left, Sgts. Justin and Jason Gensler, 23, of Dallas, pose for a portrait, April 9, 2015. The two Soldiers served together at The Old Guard's Company D; both also served on the same casket team. Both are wearing the Army service cap. photo by Damien Salas/Joint Base Myer Henderson Hall PAO
Should the "bus driver cap" be worn by both men and women? A majority of soldiers surveyed believe so.
Photo Credit: Army
The Navy and Marine Corps have been experimenting with gender-neutral uniforms for some time. In May, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said that for the first time ever, female midshipmen attending graduation that month will wear collared dress coats, including those receiving Navy and Marine Corps commissions.
The US Army has approved the new service uniform that will replace the Class-A uniform for all officers, NCO's and junior enlisted. This is the Female NCO version of the Army Service Uniform, with cap. (US Army Photos/SGM Phil Prater)
The Army could soon ditch the female version of the Service Uniform cap
Photo Credit: SGM Phil Prater, US Army
|
. It happened during a time when there was a lot of psychic stuff going on, and I had trouble keeping up. My brother may have been inclined to the supernatural before he started making movies, but now that he was making money from filming these phenomena, they were all around him. Every few days I got a new dispatch from the front lines.
My brother, (Aaron): “This guy materializes small bits of material just by concentrating on a religious icon.”
Me: “Is that so?”
Aaron (some time later): “I contacted Mom through these three different mediums.” (Our mother had been dead about eight years.)
Me: “No kidding? Shouldn’t that be media, if it’s plural?”
Aaron (some time later): “I have this photograph in a safe deposit box. No one has access to this box but me; but every time I look at the picture, there is another figure in the picture. I showed this photograph to a member of the family that had it originally; and they usually recognize the person. It’s usually an uncle or a cousin.”
Me: “Really.”
Aaron (some time later): “Twenty thousand people in Brazil saw a flying saucer.”
I was struck dumb by this bulletin. In the first place, I did not really see this as a psychic event—which was my brother’s specialty. And then I was distracted from the main point—whatever that might have been—by stray thoughts: Who was counting all these people? What were they doing before the U.F.O. showed up? Were they singing and dancing? I recognize that this was a silly thought, but all I knew about Brazil was that they liked to dance there.
One day Aaron told me about the skull. I remember him telling me It was discovered by the daughter of an archeologist; so I assume it was the same skull referred to in the article above. There can’t be too many young women wandering around the jungles digging up crystal skulls. This skull—and the other one—had psychic powers. I do not remember what they were, except that this skull had one remarkable power. According to Aaron, the skull could predict macroeconomic trends. Since I had other things to think about back then—trying to support a family, for instance, on three thousand dollars a year—I did not think twice about this skull’s particular skills. But now I wonder. First of all, I womder how it was discovered that this skull had such a sophisticated understanding of economics. After all, the skull was carved—so the story goes– by the Mayans, who knew something about astronomy but not much about the movement of large sums of money across national boundaries. For one thing, they had no national boundaries. These are the issues that strike me now:
For purposes of thinking about it, let’s grant that this skull had psychic powers. That would mean that the Mayans, who knew so little of the world that there are no Mayans left, nevertheless knew how to impregnate a lump of glass with powers unknown to the world today. You can see the thinking behind this idea. Mayans=ancient civilization=arcane knowledge. Also skull-shaped object=something spooky=mysterious powers. But, then—
How exactly does one communicate with an inanimate object? Does it light up in the dark when it wants to say something? Does it use a spirit guide like the ones dead people use in séances? Does some gifted person stare at the skull and announce to everyone else what the skull is thinking? (I find myself once again distracted here by stray thoughts. I can see straight through the skull. It has no brains. It is a somewhat amateurishly carved piece of glass. Does that make it hard for the skull to think truly wise thoughts? Probably not. I have become too cynical listening to my brother tell tales from the crypt.) Assume for the sake of argument that we have devised a way to communicate with the crystal skull. Assume, for the sake of argument, that the skull is inhabited by a wise spirit, as opposed to most of the talking heads we listen to on cable television. What do we want to ask the skull first? Surely we would want to learn answers to our basic questions:
“Is George going to be fired from his job?”
“Does Shirley really love me?”
“How can I get my son to stay away from Marijuana?”
“Is this mole going to turn into cancer?”
Or the Big questions:
“What is the meaning of life?”
“Does God exist? Which God is best?”
“Does love really rule the world?”
If the crystal skull answered any/all of these questions, it would not be regarded as a specialist in economics. It would be regarded as an all-around expert, like most psychics. That means these questions were not answered properly. That means that after not answering the basic questions, and not answering the Big questions, the questioner (truth-seeker?) had to keep asking more and more questions until he finally came to an area, economics, where the crystal skulll was on the ball—so to speak. I regard this as not credible. The questioner would have had to work his way through a dozen subjects—politics, pediatrics, cooking, agriculture, etc.—before getting to economics. If the skull showed no special expertise in any of these fields, the questioner would have given up his enquiries long before finally getting to economics. And, if I understand my brother correctly, the skull was not even expert in all of economics, but solely in macroeconomics. Imagine that conversation:
“Tell me, skull, do you have an opinion about the relevance of gross domestic product to the exchange rate? Or vice-versa?” Or, “Do you think E.T.F,s are a good investment at a time of world-wide rising unemployment?” (At the time of which I am speaking, there were no exchange traded funds, so this conversation is entirely imaginary.)
Actually, I cannot imagine this conversation. I know that if I were talking to a crystal skull and it made a foolish response, (or, possibly no response at all) I would no longer interrogate it. Certainly, it would not occur to me to ask it about macroeconomic trends.
I think it is possible that my brother made the whole thing up.
On the other hand, it is true that this archeologist from Belize is suing Indiana Jones and his friends for removal of the crystal skull from South America—where it never was. Apparently.
I don’t know what happened to the other Crystal Skull, the good-looking one. I like to think that wherever it is, it is using its immense mystical powers to do good. (c) Fredric Neuman 2013A couple of days after we found the GFXbench listing, the Razer Phone is now spotted in a leaked image. On the rear of the device, we can spot the dual camera sensors along with a LED flash. The rear camera bumps out of the body which looks to be a metal surface. Just like the Nextbit Robin, the Razer Phone also looks to come in a rectangular slab design without any curved or rounded edges. While the Nextbit Robin came with a rounded volume rocker and power buttons, the Razer Phones also features similar buttons on the left edge.
There is a huge Razer logo in green color on the rear and we expect the company to make it backlit. Based on the GFXbench listing, the Razer Phone might feature dual 12MP sensors on the rear. However, there is no confirmation whether the company will be opting for the RGB + monochrome or the wide-angle + telephoto camera setup. Stay tuned on PhoneRadar for more details, as we expect more leaks to follow soon.
Razer Phone, Company’s First Smartphone to Sport 2K Display, SD835 SoC & 8GB RAM
(October 12th, 2017)
Earlier today, Razer has confirmed to unveil its first smartphone on November 1st. While there are several smartphone brands playing to their strengths, Razer with its gaming DNA might offer a true gaming smartphone that can easily handle the graphic intensive games. Though the upcoming Razer Phone will be the first smartphone with Razer branding, the company has earlier acquired the smartphone maker Nextbit which has already launched a successful smartphone called as Nextbit Robin.
Along with all the assets of Nextbit, Razer also brought its core management and employees. We will be knowing more information about the involvement of the Nextbit team in developing the Razer Phone on the launch day. Now, let’s talk about the specifications of the gaming-centric, Razer Phone. While there are no official details, the GFXbench listing revealed the key specifications of the Razer’s first ever smartphone. The name of the smartphone is mentioned as Razer Phone and will be running on Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box.
Instead of the stock UI, the Android OS on the Razer Phone will be coming with a customized UI. On the front, we will be looking at a 5.7-inch display with Quad HD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution and regular 16:9 aspect ratio. Under the hood, the Razer Phone comes powered by 10nm Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor clocked at 2.4GHz and Adreno 540 GPU. Talking about the GPU, it now fully supports DirectX 12 & Vulkan APIs. The device also packs 8GB of RAM which should be good enough for offering seamless gaming experience.
It also includes 64GB of internal storage and there is no information about the presence of MicroSD card slot. In terms of optics, the Razer Phone sports a 12MP sensor on the rear and an 8MP sensor on the front. It comes with a single SIM card slot and offers connectivity options like Bluetooth, GPS, and NFC. There is also a bunch of sensors including accelerometer, barometer, compass, gyroscope and light sensor. We will be knowing the official details along with the complete features of the device on the launch day i.e. November 1st.
Latest: Razer Phone Listed Online with 120Hz Display & Dual Cameras
The Razer Phone is now accidentally listed by an affiliate website of the Three UK. Razer has already teased to launch its first ever smartphone on November 1st. The newly revealed specifications coincide with the GFXbench listing of the Razer Phone. As we mentioned earlier, the design of the device looks similar to the Nextbit Robin. Just like Apple iPhone 8 and Google Pixel 2, the Razer Phone also features thick bezels on the top and bottom of the display.
The smartphone is mentioned to sport 5.72-inch IGZO display with 120Hz refresh rate and Wide Color Gamut (WCG) support. Earlier this month, Sharp announced the Aquos R Compact with the same 120Hz refresh rate. It will be offering Quad HD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution. With higher resolution and refresh rate, the Razer Phone should be the best choice for smartphone gamers. As it includes Snapdragon 835 SoC and 8GB of RAM, the smartphone will be offering seamless gameplay.
Talking about the dual rear camera, the smartphone sports 12MP wide-angle sensor with f/1.75 aperture and 13MP zoom sensor with f/2.6 aperture. There are also THX-certified dual front-facing speakers and amplifiers with Dolby Atmos support. With all these powerful specifications, the device is backed by a 4,000mAh battery, which also supports Quick Charge 4.0 fast charging technology.
ViaThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has declared war on Catholic hospitals for refusing to provide abortions.
The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to get access to all documents related to complaints against Catholic hospitals refusing to perform abortions. The suit is part of a plan to either force Catholic hospitals to do abortions, or shut them down.
“Upon information and belief, these complaints describe serious harm – including major blood loss and life-threatening infection – that women experienced after being denied appropriate care by Catholic hospitals,” the lawsuit reads.
Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU Brigitte Amiri accused Catholic hospitals in a blog post on the ACLU website of nearly killing women for refusing to provide abortions. She cited one woman who needed emergency surgery after a Catholic hospital would not give her an abortion:
We assume there are other complaints that we don’t know about yet. As our recent report documents, the number of Catholic hospitals continues to climb, along with the number of women coming forward to tell their story of being denied care at a Catholic hospital. In 2016, one in six hospital beds in the U.S. are in a facility that complies with Catholic directives, which prohibit a range of reproductive health care, even when a woman’s life or health is in jeopardy.
We know that the government knows there is a problem. The government’s answer to today’s lawsuit will tell us precisely what they know. And we expect them to help fix this problem and use federal law to protect women.
Hospitals violate the law when they refuse to provide emergency medical care or provide information about a patient’s condition. The federal government should systematically investigate Catholic hospitals and hold them accountable. No woman should rush to the hospital and fear for her life because of religious rules that force hospitals to turn patients away without providing the proper care.
The ACLU pointed to an investigation from The Guardian that alleged several women had their lives endangered because Michigan doctors would not abort their fetuses. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, defended the hospitals saying, “courts have consistently upheld the right of Catholic hospitals to abide by the Church’s moral and ethical guidelines, which, of course, prohibit abortion.”
“Their obsession with Catholic hospitals, as they make clear again today on their website, is driven by the fact that ‘the number of Catholic hospitals continues to climb,'” Donohue said in a statement. “Most people would see that as a good thing—extending the excellent care provided by Catholic hospitals to more people and more communities. But to the ACLU it is a problem, and that is because Catholic healthcare is based on respect for every human life.”
Send tips to casey@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Follow Casey on Twitter and like him on Facebook.
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.ARLINGTON, Texas – Bracket experts, media analysts and office pool juggernauts certainly didn’t expect these two teams to be in the national championship game. The players and coaches at Kentucky and UConn aren’t surprised much, go figure.
“I don’t think we were a No. 8 seed and I don’t think Connecticut was a No. 7 seed,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said.
These teams have had their inconsistencies, but their routes to Monday’s title game highlight the unexpectedness of the NCAA tournament and the maturation of two fiery teams. This game will come down to Xs and Os, sure, but the key to understanding these teams is simple: Resiliency and togetherness have got them here.
“I know we are fighters,” UConn coach Kevin Ollie said. “Dark times is what promotes you.”
Game Time: 9:10 p.m. ET
Location: Arlington, Texas
TV: CBS
Analysis: Who has the edge? Here’s a video breakdown and key factors for UConn and Kentucky.
How the Wildcats (29-10, 12-6) got here: Beat Kansas State, Wichita State, Louisville, Michigan, Wisconsin.
How the Huskies (21-8, 12-6) got here: Beat Saint Joseph’s, Villanova, Iowa State, Michigan State, Florida.
BACKCOURT
Key Kentucky players: Andrew Harrison, Aaron Harrison, James Young
Key UConn players: Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, Niels Giffey
Advantage goes to: UConn. Napier and Boatright are arguably the best backcourt tandem in the country, and they undoubtedly have been the best in this NCAA tournament. Napier has ability to take over games offensively, but it was the duo’s defense that made the difference in the Huskies’ victory against top-ranked Florida. They held SEC Player of the Year Scottie Wilbekin to four points — which caused the Gators to completely unravel offensively. If they can put a similar defensive lockdown on Andrew and Aaron Harrison — forcing turnovers and bad shots— that can be the ultimate edge. Young, who paced Kentucky with 17 points against Wisconsin, could be the X-Factor. His length and athleticism will be tough for even Napier and Boatright to guard. And Aaron Harrison obviously wins the clutch award for his back-to-back game-winners, but Napier has been the definition of clutch this season. Giffey is a big-time glue guy to keep an eye on for Connecticut.
FRONTCOURT
Key Kentucky players: Julius Randle, Dakari Johnson, Alex Poythress
Key UConn players: Phillip Nolan, DeAndre Daniels, Amida Brimah
Advantage goes to: Kentucky. For all of the love Aaron Harrison and James Young have been getting for their backcourt heroics, it’s important to remember Kentucky wouldn’t be positioned to win if it weren’t for Randle, the Wildcats’ most consistent offensive force all season. His pitbull-like aggressiveness could be tough for Connecticut to handle. Daniels was the Huskies’ best player against Florida, finishing with a double-double (20 points and 10 rebounds). He’ll need a similar performance to keep UConn in the mix. Nolan and Brimah both had four fouls against Florida, and they’ll need to stay out of foul trouble against an athletically gifted, deep Kentucky frontcourt that got huge contributions from Johnson and Poythress vs. Wisconsin.
BENCH
Advantage goes to: Kentucky. The Wildcats got a much-needed boost from Marcus Lee in the win against Michigan, but the freshman wasn’t as effective in 10 minutes against Wisconsin. Poythress is a great sixth man who plays starter minutes, doing the little things to help win games — evidenced by his eight points and seven boards in 29 minutes vs. Wisconsin. Terrence Samuel had some big buckets for UConn against Florida, but the Huskies aren’t particularly deep. That could be an area that gets exposed.
COACHING
Advantage goes to: Ollie. Surprised by that answer? Calipari has a ring and has done perhaps his best coaching job in getting this initially undisciplined team to the title game. But Ollie’s leadership is the reason this Connecticut team has defied even bigger odds in beating national title favorites Florida and Michigan State en route to the championship game. He’s instilled the same chip-on-the-shoulder mentality he had as a player within his players.
“A lot of it has come from coach,” Boatright said of the team’s extra gear. “He played 13 years in the NBA, and he’s worked extremely hard for everything that he has. He’d be the first one to tell you that he wasn’t the most talented player. He just worked extremely hard and took a lot of pride in himself, and he instills that in us every day.”
(Graphics by Tim McGarry.)basedgodrayquaza:
hexbun:
niangniquan: lilfruta: goalsetc: killbenedictcumberbatch: allkindsoffuck: what would u do if u just ordered some pizza from papa johns and after 30 minutes the door bell rings and u open the door only to be greeted by this person holding the sign staring into your eyes not saying a word not making any movement what would you do. what can you do. someone put actual time and effort into this cosplay like why. stay in school This is the corniest shit I’ve ever seen omg this is so fucking embarrassing On today’s episode of White People Making Fools of Themselves… i woulda shaved this sandy cheeks lookin bitch head she probably got dragged recently. if i saw her at a con i would berate the shit outta her.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? Do you really have to resort to threats and insults of someone you don’t even fucking know? That is so incredibly immature. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t take sj movements seriously. Holy shit I cannot believe this websiteI have divided this into two sections. The first includes steps that you yourself may take, this very evening, by which to attack the online infrastructure of the criminal regime. The second includes tools that we have been distributing to Iranians (as well as Tunisians, Egyptians, and others who need them) for several months now but which must reach more of them. Note that you need not have any direct relationship with any Persian either in country or abroad to get these to them; you merely need take a few moments to locate some online venue where an Iranian may potentially see it, or even where it may be seen by those who can then get these tools to Iranians by any number of other means. This is not nearly as difficult as it may sound; simply put some thought into it. At the very least, these tools may in the process reach others living under similarly tyrannical regimes, as they should.
Also, for an explanation as to how such methods work and for examples of how anyone may assist others in fighting for their freedom, see my al-Jazeera article Anonymous and the Global Correction.
I should also note that citizens of Iran should NOT use TOR; the regime has long been using work-arounds by which to identify TOR users and will target those identified as employing it. I2P is probably the best option for Iranians (and is one of the best options available for anyone who is seeking to keep their communications safe from interception).
Online Warfare as Conducted from Abroad:
Anonymous press release on #OpIran, our campaign by which to assist the citizenry against the regime: http://bit.ly/...
Frequenly Asked Questions about #OpIran at irc.Anonops.ru, our main organizing platform for this campaign: http://bit.ly/...
Video announcing intent and charter of #OpIran: http://youtu.be/...
Starter guide for those who either wish to work with Anonymous or launch their own efforts against various dictatorships. This includes instructions on using the LOIC for use in DDOS attacks against propaganda and government websites, as well as getting on Anonymous' IRC network for the purposes of coordinating various campaigns: http://goo.gl/...
Tools for Those Combating Their Own Government:
You can use the link to this post in order to distribute these tools to Iranians or copy and paste the text to a particular venue.
Software "care package" for use by Iranians who wish to conceal their activities from government surveillance while also attacking websites used by secret police forces and other regime targets (includes instructions in Farsi):
http://www.peoplesliberationfront.org/...
Instructions on hiding one's USB key: http://cryptome.org/...
A long list of free software tools by which to conceal one's identity even in the face of government surveillance; obtain and compile information on government agents, secret police, and other regime-associated entities; present that information in a useful and actionable manner; conduct advanced investigations by which to identify and expose instances of corruption, brutality, and the like; organize dissidents into secure, effective cells by which to strike back at a given regime; distribute evidence of government wrongdoing to the international media as well as locals; and otherwise go about the business of revolution using the most effective and little-known techniques available: http://pastebin.com/...
Additional Notes
Anonymous has either pioneered or improved upon a variety of methods by which to fight corruption, tyranny, and assaults on freedom of information. If you wish to join us, the starter guide linked above (http://goo.gl/...) should be more than sufficient to instruct you on getting onto our IRC network, from which much of our work is carried out. Despite much disinformation to the contrary, one does not have to be a hacker or even technically proficient to join up with Anonymous in carrying out our mission; you need only have the desire to prompt fundamental change and protect the rights of all, as well as the discipline to actually do so (as opposed to spending one's time complaining about how change is impossible and otherwise making demonstrably untrue excuses as to why one chooses to do nothing). The ranks of Anonymous includes students, lawyers, doctors, activists of every sort, IT professionals, writers, journalists, blue-collar workers; we come from dozens of countries and hold differing views on any number of subjects while maintaining a common dedication to freedom and the duty to help others obtain that freedom. Many who once gave up on fighting for change due to the mediocrity of the political process or the difficulties of working within a system that is forever corrupted by the machinations of powerful interests and even simple inertia have had their dedication rekindled upon seeing what is now possible due to the radically different environment that the internet has brought about. It has only been fifteen years since the information age began to make its presence felt, and we are only beginning to explore what is now possible in a world in which any individual may now theoretically collaborate with any other individual on the planet. Anonymous is not in the business of fighting for justice simply for the sake of the fight; we are in the business of winning. Ask the folks at HBGary about that.
If, for some reason, you would prefer not to work under the auspices of Anonymous - or even if you do, but would like to coordinate your efforts on your own - consider consulting this guide on the launching and development of autonomous online entities. If you do so, the distributed think-tank Project PM will provide you with various forms of assistance; e-mail me at barriticus@gmail.com for more details.
Finally, remember that this is 2011, not 1987. What was possible in the past is no longer a reliable indicator of what is possible today. The internet has changed the nature of the game. Recognize this and proceed accordingly. And do not leave this work to others; it is yours as much as it is ours. Thank you.A former Israeli soldier was convicted under a plea bargain for a crime highlighted in the Goldstone report on the Gaza war.
The plea bargain for the unnamed Givati Brigade soldier, who was convicted in 2010, was approved by the Jaffa military court on Sunday.
In the incident, Staff -Sgt S. shot and killed a Palestinian woman, 64, and her daughter, 35, part of a group of Palestinians approaching him waving a white flag. He was not ordered by his superiors to shoot.
The incident was highlighted in the Goldstone report on the month-long 2008-2009 Gaza war. The controversial report, written by a United Nations-appointed committee led by Judge Richard Goldstone of South Africa, accused both Israel and Hamas fighters in Gaza of war crimes.
Under the plea bargain, the soldier will be jailed for 45 days. The charges were reduced from manslaughter to illegal use of a weapon.
This story "Soldier Gets 45 Days for Killing Gaza Woman" was written by JTA.I’ve written extensively about my intrigue as to what the Indians would do with their gluttony of middle infield depth. Well, part of that answer has now come with the announcement that Tony Wolters will now primarily be a catcher starting in 2013.
Wolters was my No. 10 prospect in the Indians system after his slightly disappointing 2012. But the former third-round pick is highly athletic, meaning that the move to catcher makes some sense. Wolters played some catcher in high school, so the position isn’t entirely foreign to him. Still, this pushes his development behind about a year now that he needs to focus on calling games and deal with the rigors of catching.
The Indians say that he will still play second base and shortstop at High-A Carolina this year, which tells me that Wolters is being groomed into a super-utility type. While primarily serving as the backup catcher on a Major League roster, Wolters could fill in around the infield while hitting enough to merit a spot in the lineup, giving the manager a lot of flexibility.
The Wolters move also shines some light on the development paths for the rest of the Tribe’s middle infield prospects. Its already been announced that Jose Ramirez will skip High-A and join the Double-A Akron Aeros as only a 20-year-old; Ronny Rodriguez will join him there at shortstop. While Wolters primarily catches, he will still play some second base and give Francisco Lindor the occasional off day in Kinston. Dorssys Paulino will take the reins at shortstop at Low-A Lake County, which means everything looks to shape out nicely.
In terms of eventual promotions, its hard to say how those will shake out. The most likely to move up are Lindor and Paulino. I can’t see Rodriguez getting significant time at Triple-A this year, but he now blocks Lindor. Paulino could move up and play some second and possibly third base alongside Lindor at High-A, but he’ll see most of his time in Lake County in 2013. Jose Ramirez won’t see Columbus until 2014, as he’s already skipping a level and there’s no reason to rush him. With Wolters needing to learn how to catch again, a promotion to Double-A is likely, but it won’t be until much later in 2013.
With Mike Aviles and Ryan Raburn in Cleveland, Cord Phelps will need an injury to see playing time, so he will take up a spot in Columbus’ lineup for the time being. If Ronny Rodriguez is pushed to Triple-A, expect it to come at the expense of Juan Diaz, who is nothing more than organizational depth.
Rodriguez is the linchpin in all of this. When he’s promoted to Columbus—which I don’t even believe is all that likely in 2013—it could lead to the promotions of Lindor and eventually Paulino. Ramirez and Wolters are now on separate tracks, as they will not primarily play shortstop like Rodriguez, Lindor and Paulino.
Overall, I like the move of Wolters to catcher. He needs to play every day, and giving him as much defensive flexibility as possible helps with that. Can he be an impact player behind the plate? Probably not, but he can be a solid option there. I can’t see him as an everyday option behind the dish, but as a super-utility type, I like his chances.Image caption Banks has just returned to the UK following a short honeymoon in Venice and Paris with his wife Adele
Scottish author Iain Banks has said the messages of support he has received from fans since announcing he has terminal cancer have been "astounding".
On 3 April, the writer announced he was suffering from gall bladder cancer, saying it was "extremely unlikely I'll live beyond a year".
Writing on Banksophilia, a website set up by a friend, he said: "Good grief! - what an outpouring of love, affection and respect. I honestly had no idea.
"I feel treasured," he added.
"I am deeply flattered and touched, and I can't deny I've been made to feel very special indeed."
Banks' first novel The Wasp Factory was published in 1984 and was ranked as one of the best 100 books of the 20th Century in a 1997 poll conducted by book chain Waterstone's and Channel 4.
"It's only the fact that I've been able to pre-announce my own demise that has allowed me to realise my portion of that love in full while I'm still around to appreciate it," he wrote.
"Which has got me thinking; I need to tell other writers how much their work has meant to me while they are (and I am) still alive."
"I think I'll start with the amazing Mr Alasdair Gray."
Medical trials
The 59-year-old wrote that he had recently returned to the UK following a short honeymoon in Venice and Paris with his wife Adele.
His proposal, he revealed with trademark black humour, ended with the words: "Will you do me the honour of becoming my widow?"
Banks cancelled public engagements following his diagnosis and asked his publishers to bring forward the release of his new book The Quarry.
The writer also writes sci-fi titles under the name Iain M Banks. His latest book The Hydrogen Sonata was released last year.
In his latest post, he praised his fans as "bright, clever, highly informed and sometimes worryingly more intelligent than me".
He added that he was, "of course, deeply happy that I have attracted the attentions of a few of our - how can I put this politely? - more rationality-challenged friends".
The author had said there was little chance of surgeons being able to remove the tumours in his liver because of how far they had spread, but had since been offered health advice and links to medical trials that "will be looked at seriously".
He signed off the message by saying he would continue to write updates "for as long as I'm able".The former paediatric registrar says he doesn’t intend to return to Australia and has no qualms about the cancellation of his medical registration
An Australian doctor who left the country to join Isis and is now wanted by the federal police on several terrorism-related charges, has stated he has “no concerns” if he is stripped of his citizenship and medical registration, and that he no longer considers himself an Australian.
Tareq Kamleh, 29, came to the attention of authorities when he appeared in an Islamic State propaganda video in April, urging other medical professionals to join him. Kamleh has worked as a doctor in several Australian states and is believed to have left for Syria in March.
He is wanted by the Australian federal police (AFP) on several charges, including joining a terrorist organisation, recruiting for a terrorist organisation, and being in a “declared area” under government legislation recently introduced to target people travelling overseas to fight alongside Islamic State.
Police have stated that under the warrant Kamleh would be immediately arrested if he returned to Australia.
In a post on his Facebook page on Sunday, Kamleh wrote an open letter to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), which recently began moves to strip Kamleh of his medical registration.
Dear AHPRA, 1. I have no concern if you cancel my registration 2. I have no concern if you cancel my passport 3. I knew where I was coming 4. I intend to stay here 5. I anticipated an arrest warrant, hence why I left in secret 6. None of the case you put forward has indicated to me a malicious character on my behalf and it is this injustice within the Australian judicial system that was a catalyst for me to leave. Do as you please, I no longer consider myself an Australian, The continuous bombing of civillian targets here by the coalition has done nothing but disappoint me of the country I once loved so much Regards, Tareq Kamleh
Kamleh, a former paediatric registrar, has spoken publicly since joining Isis, responding to media reports that he had been a drinker and a womaniser and denying he had “ever taken part in unprofessional conduct which would have jeopardised my doctor-patient relationship”.
“I made a very well-educated and calculated decision to come here, it did not involve any brainwashing,” he said.
“I have come here as there are locals suffering from normal medical conditions despite being surrounded by war, with an overt lack of qualified medical care.”
A spokeswoman for AHPRA and the Medical Board of Australia confirmed the board has proposed to suspend Kamleh, whose registration expires in August this year.
“The board has the power to take immediate action to manage serious risk to public health and safety,” she said in a statement.
“By law, taking ‘immediate action’ is a three-step process. It involves a board decision to propose to restrict registration in some way, an opportunity for the practitioner to respond, and then a final decision by the board.”
Kamleh was the fourth Australian subject to an arrest warrant over their involvement in the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, are both alleged to be involved in combat, but Mohammad Baryalei, an alleged senior recruiter for Isis, is believed to have been killed in October.
Matthew Gardiner, the former president of the Northern Territory Labor party who left Australia in January and is alleged to have joined Kurdish forces fighting against Isis, was detained by the AFP upon his return to Darwin in April, but released without charge.Reality TV is by no means a new endeavour, but the latest offering in the form of PAQ puts a new spin on the fashion world… streetwear to be precise. Created by four friends, skater Danny Lomas, musician Dexter Black, art student Shaquille Keith and model Elias Riadi, PAQ has set out to put a spotlight on the style and culture that surrounds streetwear, also adding quite an entertaining twist to it. Episodes will see the four buds clay pigeon shooting, scaling mountains, horse riding and high-wire walking. Challenges are also include in the episodes, such as finding a hyped outfit with only £50 GBP (approximately $62 USD).
The first two episodes can be seen below with new episodes set to stream every week on KYRA YouTube channel. Lomas states:I Am Not A Super Star Roller Derby Athlete
Prime Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 15, 2017
Although my game face is on point.
I am not a super star roller derby athlete.
The truth is that I hang out somewhere in the middle of my team’s roster of awesomeness. In my league’s last rankings cycle, I was #11.
I’m not the fastest. Or the slowest.
I’m not the hardest hitting. Or a pushover.
I’m not the most wiley veteran. But I’m definitely not a freshie either.
The phrase “The World’s Okayest Skater” might have been coined just for me.
And while there was a time when that might have bothered me; when I would have raged and screamed and cried about not being the best, I’m pretty happy there. And that feeling is a long time coming.
WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK
The impetus for writing this at all is because my team is about to play at the Wild West Showdown. It’s a small tournament for teams that are trying to claw their way up the lower-middle ranks of D2s. The games are sanctioned. The rankings matter.
It will be live streamed.
I think.
Which means that skaters that know me only from Iron Octopus Fitness will finally get to see the truth: I am not a super star roller derby athlete.
For a long time, I worried about this.
What will people think when they see that I’m not Bonnie Thunders in a significantly taller, slightly fluffier body?
What would people say if they knew that my apex jumps succeed only on occasion?
Would anyone care what I had to say about training or roller derby if they knew The Truth?
WHOA. That’s a hell of story that I’m telling myself, right?
The real truth, irrespective of the fact that I’m just okay at roller derby, is that it doesn’t really matter what other people think about me when I play. I don’t play for them.
Letting your worries about what other people will think keep you |
manipulate matter such as lava, soil, and water. Players can help the tribespeople to overcome challenges including finding different totems and overcoming natural disasters. In addition to the story mode, the game features a Challenge mode which offers a shorter, but harder experience.
Originally starting its life as a strategy game, From Dust marked the return of Éric Chahi to the video game industry following an extended sabbatical after the completion of his last game, Heart of Darkness. The project was created as a result of his fascination with volcanos, and his desire to combine the ambivalence and violent characteristics of their nature in a new video game. The team was further inspired by African and New Guinean tribes, Conway's Game of Life, works of Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, and Koyaanisqatsi. Some features, such as the biological life cycle of the tribespeople, were left out of the game because of the huge amount of work they would require. Ubisoft was originally doubtful about the project but was later convinced by Chahi. The game was made by a small team within the Montpellier studio, so was considered an independent game produced by a large publisher. The game was announced at E3 2010 as Project Dust.
The game received a generally positive reception on release, with critics praising the game's physics, simulation, openness and graphics, while criticizing the game's artificial intelligence and camera angles. Opinions on the game's Challenge mode and mission design were polarizing. The PC version of the game fared worse than other platforms for its technical issues and digital rights management. The game was a commercial success for Ubisoft, selling over half a million copies and became Ubisoft's fastest-selling digital game. Despite its success, Chahi confirmed that he will not return to develop a sequel.
Gameplay [ edit ]
From Dust, the tribe can learn songs from ancient relics, in this case "repel water" allows a village to survive a In, the tribe can learn songs from ancient relics, in this case "repel water" allows a village to survive a tsunami unharmed.
In From Dust, players assume a god-like, first-person perspective from which they manipulate an archipelago environment in an effort to save and enlighten a nomadic tribe and help them to seek their lost knowledge.[1] With a spherical cursor, the user controls certain types of matter in real time. Lava cools to form solid rock, vegetation propagates in soil and spreads naturally once a village is built, and moving water quickly erodes the terrain. Physical changes to the world occur extremely rapidly, allowing players to restructure islands within minutes.[2]
Campaigns in From Dust are structured as a sequence of missions, whereby completing certain objectives expedites the tribe's progress and bestows additional powers, such as the capacity to jellify water.[1] Tribal shamans alert the player to natural disasters, notably tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, shortly before they occur. These disasters can be inhibited through creative, physical manipulation of the environment: a tsunami can be jellified, wildfires extinguished, and lava flows diverted.[3][4][5][6] Although there is no 'explicit sandbox' mode, Chahi stated that each mission features a distinct map, which the player can return to and manipulate further.[7]
From Dust has the option of two main game modes, one being the Story mode, the other a Challenge mode. The former consists of a sequence of missions which play through the story of a lost tribe who are using the player (who controls "The Breath") to travel to different levels in an attempt to discover what happened to their old tribe. By helping the tribe to find the different totems scattered on a map, they can begin constructing their village next to the totem. Players can also send tribespeople to look for magical stones, which will grant them the ability to manipulate the world, by repelling water and fire for example.[8] When the tribe successfully builds villages next to every totem, a portal will open and the player can proceed into the next map.[9] These maps become more and more challenging as players progress. New elements, such as trees that erupt in fire, and plants that explode, are introduced in later levels.[8]
Challenge mode employs similar gameplay to that of the Story mode. The difference is that the gameplay for Challenge mode is faster-paced, offers more puzzles, and sacrifices any storyline in this mode. It consists of 30 levels and players must fulfill certain conditions before succeeding. Each level lasts only a few minutes, offering more exciting, yet harder, gameplay. The time needed for players to complete a level is recorded in an online leaderboard which can be viewed by other players.[10]
Story [ edit ]
From Dust's story revolves around a tribe which has lost the knowledge of their ancestors - The Ancients. They find themselves located in unknown territory. To solve this problem, the tribe gathers and summons "The Breath", controlled by the player, hoping that it will help them to communicate with nature. However, after the summoning, the tribe desperately want answers to their questions, and have a strong desire to recover the lost knowledge. The Breath then guides the tribe to different totems allowing them to perform rituals and to construct villages and settlements. A passage will unlock and allow the tribe to discover new lands and places.
After discovering and journeying through islands of different characteristics, the tribe, with the help of The Breath, have overcome numerous natural disasters including tsunami and volcanic eruption. The tribe follows the path of The Ancients, yet their lands are nowhere to be found. By the last island, the players are given the chance to place the totem around the island and create and form their own island. After placing the final totem, the tribe reaches the place for the final ritual. After the ritual is completed, the entire island collapses and reshapes and sinks into the sea, leaving only the passageway above sea level. After the tribespeople pass the gateway, they realize that they have returned to the first island where they began their journey. The story ends with the narrator saying "And here we are, as on the first day."
Development [ edit ]
On 14 June 2010, Ubisoft announced the development of From Dust at E3, and the appointment of Éric Chahi as the Creative Designer. Codenamed Project Dust, it was marketed as a spiritual successor to Populous, a game developed by Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog Productions in 1989.[11] Chahi described the game as playing like a sandcastle game, but with elements like lava.[12] On 16 August 2010, during Gamescom and the European Game Developers Conference in Cologne, Ubisoft unveiled technical footage showing the game's physics engine in detail. In the technical sequence, a narrator explains the user's interactions with the environment, and the effects of each physical element upon the other. During the conference, Chahi presented a lecture entitled "Creating a High-Performance Simulation: A Dynamic Natural World to Play With", demonstrating the world editor that underlies the environment simulation.[13][14][15]
Ubisoft's decision to release the game via the Internet was taken partly to avoid distribution and manufacturing costs, but also to enable creative options for the team and to allow for future features, such as a world editor, multiplayer, or other enhanced content later in the development cycle.[16][17] Guillaume Bunier, Ubisoft's producer, acknowledged that "some people would not be able to play it", but argued that the majority of individuals interested in the game would be using PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and Steam.[5] In the event that From Dust became a "huge success", Bunier suggested that the company could do another, disc-based version.[5] When questioned about the suitability of the game for the console market, he responded by observing that other atypical games were successful on such platforms, notably Flower on the PlayStation 3 (PS3). The OnLive game system, the PS3, and the Xbox 360 were "powerful machines", and From Dust would utilise their superior capacity to operate the simulation.[5] From Dust was released for the Xbox 360 on 27 July 2011.[18][19][20] It was later released for Microsoft Windows in August 2011,[21] the PlayStation Network in September 2011, and Google Chrome in May 2012.[22][23]
Influences [ edit ]
Mount Yasur's eruption inspired Chahi to develop a game based on nature.
Following the completion of Heart of Darkness in 1998, Chahi left the video games industry to explore other interests, and subsequently developed a passion for volcanology.[14][24] In the past, Chahi self-produced video games, as the PC market was independent games-orientated. However, the independent game's importance diminished by 2006, so Chahi decided to work with a publisher instead. He presented the concept to Ubisoft in 2006. According to Chahi, it was not difficult to convince Ubisoft to fund the project, though initially there was hesitation and the proposal was rejected. After the company reversed its decision, the team spent approximately two years meeting with the key people within Ubisoft; development properly began in January 2008. The team initially only had three people,[25] but it was expanded to about 15 to 20 people, which was considered a small team for Ubisoft.[26]
According to Chahi, he was inspired by his 1999 trip to Mount Yasur's crater in Vanuatu. The scenery, and the power of the volcano, which was extremely active at the time, fascinated and scared him. Chahi, still intending to make another video game "before [he] died", hoped that his next project could convey the: "ambivalence of Nature, beautiful and potentially violent at the same time".[24] Becoming more and more interested in the world's natural forces, Chahi went on to visit different volcanoes, including Dolomieu crater on Reunion Island, and a volcano in the Indian Ocean. Once the development was underway, Montpellier even recorded audio from a real volcano for inclusion in the game.[1][27] Nature and cycle were some of the most important key elements of the game. The team intended to create different cycles and loops that would result in different kinds of interaction between the environments. For example, the tide cycle and eruption cycle changes dynamically, and it impacts the growth of plants and the lives of the villagers. According to Chahi, the cycle allows players to anticipate what will happen next.[28]
While discussing the game's visual elements and art direction, developers revealed that they used several locations on Earth, such as the Yemeni islands of Socotra, lagoon archipelagos of Polynesia, and central Sahara as sources of inspiration. The team also worked with science fiction novelist Laurent Genefort to create the game's world.[29] Bruno Gentile, Art Director of From Dust, stated that the world possessed strong visual contrasts, with "rich and swarming life full of weird shapes and colors".[30] Inhabitants of From Dust wear masks, which serve as a motif representing mystery and uniqueness. Gentile commented that after the developers researched African and New Guinean tribes, one of Ubisoft Montpellier's concept artists developed the idea of a large mask, constructed from nacre.[30] Chahi remarked that the team had drawn inspiration from various musical instruments, especially slit drums used on the Vanuatu islands, and indicated that music was "a key part in the gameplay and design".[30] While tribes do not develop technologically, the team decided that their culture would evolve as they discovered "their world and their past". The game utilizes a rich color palette, which allowed the team to create strong color contrast and to "express the beauty of nature".[30]
In an interview with Eurogamer, Chahi emphasised that the developers tried initially to avoid including overt religious elements in the game.[1] Tribal worship, totems, and animal-shaped monuments are examples of the quasi-religious characters of From Dust. Chahi explained that, during one mission, the player would physically divide an ocean in order to assist their tribe in crossing it and so forth. He indicated that Ubisoft Montpellier were reluctant: "we didn't want to take it in this direction", but the "game kept pushing us back to it".[1] When asked the meaning of the game's title, Bunier remarked that "it's just another universe, another place, something people create from dust".[5] Separately, Chahi commented that the game centered on the fragility of life and brevity of humankind.[5]
It's like the simulation was... you see the wall behind this window? Imagine that, maybe, there is a beautiful painting, and you can only see part of it. That was before the directed interaction. Then you break this wall, it makes a big window on this place for the picture. — Eric Chahi, director of From Dust
According to Chahi, the game began its life as a strategy game. The core of the game is that players are "giving powers to [their] people". However, the team later shifted the format to a god game hoping players would interact with the environment and simulation, and not treat those elements as a background. Many original concepts, such as natural disasters, remained intact in the final game.[28] Other influences for the game include Conway's Game of Life, a mathematical model of the 1970s, plant propagations, the works of Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, and Koyaanisqatsi, a film directed by Godfrey Reggio which shows slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States.[24][31]
Mechanics [ edit ]
A crucial aspect of the user interface is the sphere, which players use to manipulate aspects of the environment, such as water.
An essential aspect of From Dust is the environment simulation, which underlies the player's interactions with the world. Developers intended that the world appear as a 'living thing', a dynamic and spontaneous entity, irrespective of the player's actions upon it.[14] Chahi emphasised the difficulty of balancing this technical simulation with individual enjoyment, commenting that sometimes: "it would take days to find the right value for gameplay that's also aesthetically pleasing".[14] Montpellier accommodated this dynamism through a system of rules which govern the elements of the simulation: flowing water and moving soil result in the emergence of rivers; lakes at the base of a volcano accumulate sediment, which increases their viscosity; and similar rules govern volcanic eruptions, lava flow, and the spread of vegetation.[13][14] With each rule, the layers accumulate to the point at which the developers are able to create an entire landscape.[14] According to Chahi, simulation is the most challenging part of the game, as it requires developers to put lots of effort into optimisation because of its high computation demands. Chahi added that the game's programme is similar to that of VS Assembly, where the computation will be stored in the cache memory, allowing for fast computing. The team intentionally avoided developing any algorithms for objects like rivers and volcanoes, as they hoped that it would flow dynamically and naturally.[32]
Regarding physics in the world of Dust, Chahi commented that the developers had: "worked hard to translate a vision of the power of the Earth moving and exploding in the game".[30] Volcanic eruptions, explosions, and lava flows, function in a way similar to actual volcanoes, such as Mount Etna.[33] However, the developers opted for more theatrical, "visually impressive" tsunamis. Dynamic textures were used to represent water transparency, moving lava, and the real time adaptation of rock and soil to fluids.[30]
A central aspect of the user interface is the Breath, with which players interact with the world and manipulate events. When a user selects a material, such as water, the appearance of the Breath changes accordingly and the fluid can be placed directly onto the surface of the world.[34] Chahi stated that the developers abandoned the traditional head-up display (HUD), and instead chose an abstract form, the Breath, which they then "fully integrated in the storyline". Elaborating further, he stated that a tribe's music would also affect the appearance of the breath.[30] The game originally featured a biological life cycle system for the villagers, where players could witness their births, growth, and their eventual death. The system was dropped as it required accurate animation that the system was too sophisticated to handle. The team also had more wildlife planned for the game but it was dropped. Despite having to omit these features, Chahi claimed that he was pleased with the final product. He believed that the team had done a tremendous job expressing the relationship between humans and nature with the simulation features included in the final game.[32]
Expansion [ edit ]
In August and September 2010, Montpellier designers indicated that a variety of expansions were under consideration, including a weather simulation, world editor, and multiplayer capacity. During an interview with Gamasutra, Chahi posted that the developers would eventually add a real-time weather simulation feature to the game, although the developers may not package it with the initial release.[14] In September 2010, Chahi stated that From Dust was a "solo experience", although if the game's sales were promising, he indicated that the team would consider introducing an editor or a multiplayer mode.[16] He stated that he had "many ideas" regarding new features, and a possible franchise, though he was more inclined working on video games without the support of a big publisher in the future.[16][26]
Reception [ edit ]
While watching an Xbox 360 demonstration at Gamescom 2010, Kotaku's Mike Fahey stated that the physics were "incredibly impressive".[3] In response to a demonstration of the camera controls and sphere interactions, he remarked that it was "an amazing sight".[3] In a GameSpot preview, Giancarlo Varanini stated that it was great fun "just messing around with the world", which "roused fond memories of games like Populous".[2] Looking forward, he said that GameSpot would be interested in the extent of these non-linear mechanics.[2]
In March 2011, Eurogamer's Christian Donlan suggested that the simulation might be the "most fascinating part" of the entire project, in that it presented a "convincing environment".[1] Agreeing with one of Fahey's points, he noted that details are observable with a "good range of camera options".[1] Far from being an "endless grind of escort missions", Donlan argued that From Dust appeared to be "quick-witted, entertaining stuff".[1] Scripted path finding was "surprisingly good"; tribes attempted to navigate obstacles and search for alternative routes, with their intended paths highlighted in different colours.[1] In his conclusion, Donlan noted that once the campaign ended, the game offered "a wonderful digital fish tank to peer into".[1]
From Dust received generally favourable reviews. Metacritic ranks the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions of the game with scores of 76, 80, and 81, respectively.[35][36][37] The creator of Populous, Peter Molyneux, also had a good impression of the game.[32]
The game's gameplay was commented on positively by critics. Its controls were praised for being simple, intuitive, accessible,[41] and smooth, though some critics noted that the cursor sometimes suffers from fidgeting and lacks precision.[8][10][45] Liam Martin of Digital Spy added that such controls made the game relatively relaxing to play.[48] The game's simulation received critical acclaim. As it allows players to modify the terrain freely, and there are multiple solutions to a problem, many reviewers believed that the game encourages creativity,[44] and that it is a "true sandbox game", with some even calling it more open than typical open world games.[40][42][48] However, Ryan Winterhalter from 1UP.com criticized the game for its lack of a free sandbox mode, and Jim Sterling from Destructoid called the manipulation mechanic "boring".[39]
The game's visuals were also praised. The natural disaster scenes were described as breathtaking and stunning, with critics being impressed by the game's sense of scale.[46][48] Eurogamer's Oli Welsh echoed this comment as he further described the game's visuals as "strange" and "organic", comparing it to the work of French cartoonist Jean Giraud.[40] Annette Gonzalez of Game Informer similarly appreciated the visuals and the morphing effects,[41] while Keza MacDonald of IGN described the game's overall presentation as "gorgeous, ethereal, occasionally menacing".[8]
The game's mission design received mixed reviews. Martin criticized the limited geographical variety of each level,[48] but Welsh applauded the map variety, adding that each level feels different, as ideas were never identical. He further praised the game's portrayal of nature, describing it as "elegantly expressed".[40] Gonzalez added that the game's variety was sufficient, and is successful in keeping the game interesting.[41] Some critics criticized the game's difficulty curve, and added that the later levels can be frustrating as they are significantly more challenging and demand high levels of time management.[8][49] Winterhalter however, criticized the first half of the game, calling it a "tutorial" that must be endured before reaching the better missions, while describing the latter half as addictive.[38] Justin McElroy from Joystiq added that the natural disasters featured are way too unpredictable, and lamented that the game had failed to provide players enough clues when the player failed and destroyed the entire tribe.[46] Tom Francis of PC Gamer echoed similar statements, that the game seldom notified players of their mistakes, and that levels are excessively trial-and-error and feel too stressful for players to play.[47]
Opinions regarding the game's Challenge Mode were mixed. Some critics considered the mode a gratifying and challenging experience,[48] whereas others praised the mode for successfully extending the game's longevity, providing great puzzles, and adding more content to the game.[10][45] Welsh, however, criticized the mode, and considered it a forced mode added to satisfy the use of Xbox Live leaderboards.[40] Gonzalez added that most players are likely going to focus their time on the main story mode, though the challenge mode succeeds in giving players "light" entertainment.[41]
Criticisms were generally directed at the game's artificial intelligence, where the tribespeople have trouble pathfinding and are often stuck in places, leading to players' frustration.[10][41][46][48] The problem worsened significantly by the end of the game, as the later levels are particularly challenging.[50] The game was also criticized for its camera angles, which were described as "limited".[44][45]
The PC version received less favorable reviews overall. Critics of it noted the unrefined controls, limited framerate to 30 FPS, and a lack of anti-aliasing or other advanced graphics options. Ubisoft's DRM for the game, in particular, received many complaints since a constant Internet connection is required when launching the game, even though it was initially reported that the game would simply require a one-time-only activation.[47][51] There were also a large number of reports that the PC version had crashing issues, glitches, and a small bracket of supported graphics cards, rendering the game unplayable for some.[52] Ubisoft later announced that it was developing a patch that would enable offline authentication; players who were unwilling to wait could ask for a refund.[53]
From Dust became Ubisoft's fastest-selling digital game upon release, with sales exceeding the previous record holder by 45%.[54] As of December 2011, the game had sold over 500,000 copies across platforms since its initial release. Ubisoft was satisfied with the game's sales.[55] Despite the game's success, no sequel was planned.[56]Scott Reid is an owner-principal at Feschuk Reid and was the Director of Communications to former Prime Minister Paul Martin
Donald Trump is going to the mattresses.
The hiring of the immodest, inexperienced and uncompromising Wall Street money man Anthony Scaramucci as White House director of communications means one thing, and one thing only: Donald Trump is going to war.
Story continues below advertisement
He's going to war against special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation. He's going to war against the so-called "fake news," "lame-stream" media who have the nerve to report Mr. Trump's troubles and systematically conceal his many soaring triumphs. He's going to war against the FBI, the Department of Justice, his own Attorney and Deputy Attorney General. He's going to war with his critics and his Twitter trolls. With the very idea of objective truth, the American system of checks and balances and any plane of existence that fails to conform to the self-aggrandizing, pocket-lining, gravity-defying orgy of fantasticalism that is the Oval Office as long as Mr. Trump occupies it.
And just like Tom Hagen, Sean Spicer has learned that, in times of war, leaders only make room for hardcore loyalists.
Read more: Scaramucci named Trump's new communications director; Spicer abruptly resigns
John Doyle: Trump replaces eyesore Sean Spicer with eye-candy Scaramucci
Opinion: Goodbye, Spicey. Was there a basic rule of PR you didn't break?
Mr. Scaramucci is in his new post not because he will offer superior counsel or elevated strategic skills. He is not in because he will better manage a frothing, manic press gallery. Or shape a stronger, more coherent defence of Mr. Trump's agenda.
He is in because he will fight to his last breath – without question or contest and without quarrel or quit. He will fight dirty and he will fight desperately. He will use his hands and his feet and his teeth and his elbows and the nearest, sharpest thing he can find. Best of all, he will fight on command. He will not argue with the boss. He will not tell the President what he doesn't want to hear – that is, that Mr. Trump should keep his mouth shut and phone locked. Mr. Scaramucci will tell Mr. Trump to go and go hard. He will encourage aggression in all its forms, at all times and directed against all comers.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
And that's the kind of communications director the President wants.
To a certain degree, it's the kind of communications director they all want – all presidents and prime ministers. None of them truly love the media. They all feel that they're given the business by these know-it-alls. And they want their communications staff to set journalists right and convince reporters to write nothing but praise. But most leaders know that they must be sheltered from their own instincts. They know that the media exist – whether they're friendly or not – to serve a publicly interested function. And so responsible and right-thinking leaders hire communications staff who can establish professional relations, shape a professional narrative and, when needed, offer professional push back to the big boss.
Mr. Trump is interested in none of that – as we know from his New York Times rant against Jeff Sessions' decision to recuse. Whether it's just plain narcissism or knowledge of what Mr. Mueller might one day find, the President has no desire to operate according to accepted norms. He wants to attack and undermine the Russian probe, including those who so enthusiastically report on the subject. He wants war and so he has purchased himself a man who brandishes a bayonet.
By conventional standards, Mr. Scaramucci is unqualified for the position. By Trump's standards, his resume is unmatched. Two months ago, Mr. Scaramucci was the subject of a CNN report that the network was not only forced to retract but which became so discounted that three journalists were let go. To Mr. Trump, there could be no finer set of credentials – a consigliere with kills to his credit.
In the aftermath of his resignation it will be tempting to treat Mr. Spicer with pity and understanding, to view him as a principled dissenter. That impulse should be rejected. Mr. Spicer's mistake was not that he had too much integrity for the position he held. It was that he had too little. He had too little integrity to turn down a job that he knew – because as a professional he had to have known – would require him to debase himself routinely. A job that would have him lie to the country on his first full day with penis-envy preposterousness about the size of Mr. Trump's inaugural audience. After that, it was just a variation on a failed, illegitimate theme.
The Scaramucci era will offer none of Mr. Spicer's failed pretense. It is only a matter of time until Mr. Mueller is fired and this drama enters its third act – which promises more twists, betrayals and indignity. Don't be shocked that Mr. Trump has hired a new communications director without professional experience. No one with professional experience would be willing to do the job that's coming.For our roughly one-month trip through Peru and Bolivia, we took along a Drone, or to be more precise, a DJI Phantom 4. The fact that the legal situation is different in every country and that we in Switzerland are lucky in this way didn’t exactly facilitate our plans. In this posting, I’ve written about our experiences and the steps we took in Peru and Bolivia, but you should still be aware that the laws in each country can change and that things can become easier or even harder. If you’ve had similar experiences in other countries, you can of course feel free to let us know.
Preparation
Am I even allowed to fly a drone in Peru and Bolivia? Do I need a certificate or a permit? What airline and airport regulations do I need to know to be in compliance when transporting a drone? We asked ourselves these questions at the very start and got going on finding the answers.
Taking Your Drone on the Airplane
If you use these exact words in a Google search, you get all kinds of answers from the drone forums and blogs. Some people will tell you that you can take the drone along in your carry-on baggage. Others claim that it has to go with your checked luggage. Taking a closer look at the luggage situation, we can see that frequent flyers and diligent news readers will already know that since April 2016, the battery can only go along in your carry-on luggage, which means that a part of the drone cargo is already consigned to your hand luggage.
Watch out—Propellers!
Since drone propellers are considered stabbing weapons, they’re not allowed to go in your carry-on luggage and belong with your checked baggage.
Every Airline Has Its Own Rules
As Schiphol Airport already informed us on Twitter, it’s best to ask the airline, which I did for our flight with Swiss from Zurich to Amsterdam, and again for our KLM flight from Lima to Amsterdam.
Swiss
After checking with Swiss International Airlines on Twitter, I was told that you’re not allowed to transport drones in your carry-on luggage. I consequently paid on extra 55 francs online to be able to transport another piece of luggage one way.
Be sure to do this online before the flight so that you can save money, because an additional piece of luggage often costs twice as much if you pay at the airport.
KLM
Royal Dutch Airlines is a bit more open and lets you transport them in your carry-on luggage. But their answer still mentions the transport of batteries.
Drone Case
Since I had to check the drone with Swiss, I obviously also had to find a real drone case. Brack.ch offers several packs, and I decided on the Lowepro DroneGuard BP 450 AW. (Warning: the backpack diverges in two places from the permitted carry-on dimensions by about a 1 cm.
When the bag is transported as checked baggage, you need to ask at the counter if there’s an option for having the bag handled with extra care when being brought onto the plane. According to Swiss on Twitter, the Zurich airport has “Fragile—Handle with Care” labels, but the people at the counter had no idea about this. Next time, I’ll check the bag and carry it to the gate (it doesn’t contain any prohibited items, and they’ll screen it at the security checkpoint). Once at the gate, I’ll ask a Swiss employee nicely if he could still add the case to the checked baggage, as they’ll often do for other carry-one luggage.
Drones in Peru
Through my research on drone laws in South America at, I found out that bringing a drone along to Peru is not that easy. A couple of people even suggested that you’d be better off leaving the drone at home. After several lengthy discussions with Daria, in which we were uncertain whether we’d be able to use the drone at all in the end and consequently be lugging it around for no reason, I decided to take the drone along. Worst case, I would just have to leave it at the airport for 27 days.
Peruvian Law
On inquiring at Peru.Travel, I was informed that a drone in Peru would be no problem. You just had to obtain a permit and do a temporary import at the airport so that you have to deposit the sales tax.
Order of Events
On the airplane, you indicate the drone on the entry form, including its approximate value in dollars.
On arriving at the airport, you go directly to customs and hand in the form. Smuggling won’t work, since the case will be scanned on leaving the airport (watch out, or you’ll be fined). We had a competent, English-speaking official on site who knew exactly the best way to deal with a drone in Peru.
Once the serial number and model of the drone were recorded, my pack, which I handed over, was weighed and I left it there.
The next day, we made our way to the Ministry of Transport and Communications to get a permit. Be aware that here they really do speak only Spanish, so it’s very helpful to take along a Google Translator or Spanish-speaking colleague.
After going from counter to counter, we were told that we could pick up our permit five hours from then.
Five hours later, we had our permit and drove back to the airport. At the airport, you show your permit and pay the sales tax. Once you’ve paid, you get your drone back and are notified that you need to be at the counter three hours prior to your flight to get back the sales tax money. This is where it’s important to bring the same drone with you, since the serial number is rechecked.
Tips:
Be sure to include one day in your plan for dealing with the authorities and the airport.
Mention to the authorities that you’re in Lima for only one day. Otherwise, it can take 3–5 days to get your permit.
If you want to save time, fill out the form at home: Download Drone Form Peru.
Bring along the receipt for the drone, since you have to prove that the drone is from your native country (or that you got it there).
ALWAYS carry your permit with you.
In Peru, we met quite a lot of locals who had never seen a drone before and would studiously watch us, but we never had any difficulties with the police or whatever. You should still be careful to not fly it around airports, military installations, or religious sites (Machu Picchu).
Drones in Bolivia
Figuring out drone laws for Bolivia was a bit difficult, since according to the Internet, there aren’t any. When I asked at the embassy and the Bolivian tourism office and got no answer, I decided to risk it for our trip, during which we’d only be spending seven days in Bolivia, and I just took the drone along across the border.
After we’d flown around on the Isla del Sol and then later arrived by boat at a police checkpoint, where everyone had to empty their pockets and show their contents, we quickly lost our fear when the policeman said nothing on seeing our drone. Later, we also flew in Copacabana, Salar de Uyuni, and La Paz with no problem.
Summary
Drones are not yet that well known in either country, which is why there are often no laws or regulations. In Peru, we were really surprised at how well informed the officials were about drones and the local laws, which made the process relatively easy for us. In Bolivia, either the police may just not have cared at that moment or there aren’t any laws in Bolivia.
Our Tips for Traveling and Flying with Drones:
Check the Internet for individual experiences and laws.
Ask the airlines and airport about drone regulations.
Inquire at the embassy and tourism office, or check with colleagues who live locally.
Always be sure to be present when starting and loading your drone so that it doesn’t get stolen.
Don’t fly around airports, religious sites, government buildings, and military installations unless the local law states something else.
Wie hat euch der Beitrag gefallen? Schreibt eure Meinung doch in die Kommentare und folgt uns auch gleich auf Facebook, Instagram, Twitter und Pinterest. So verpasst ihr nie wieder etwas von uns!Please enable Javascript to watch this video
The NBA is a league driven by star power. It’s what many fans care about. That’s how it’s marketed to the masses, and usually fans are more interested in teams with one or more established superstars.
But that’s not how basketball is played. While only five guys are on the court at a time, each team is afforded 15 roster spots for a reason. Basketball is a team game, and it’s important that teammates work together in a cohesive and effective way. It is true that superstars can take a team to the next level and even play more as the playoffs roll around, but depth is very important too. In a 48-minute game, the starters usually play around 32 minutes each (with superstars sometimes averaging a bit more) and that even bumps up a few minutes by the postseason. But those 16 extra minutes can easily be the difference in a game, and can have a cumulative effect throughout the grueling 82-game regular season..
What if your star players get hurt or have a bad game? That’s when a bench needs to pick up the slack. Needless to say, a team isn’t going anywhere in the NBA without a top-20 player or two, but it similarly won’t go far without an effective bench. The NBA season is a grind and when the stars aren’t feeling up to the task, the reserves needs to provide a spark.
In this article, we rank the Western Conference’s second units. The teams will be divided up into three tiers. The top tier includes teams that are deep and can rely on production from their reserves. The second tier features teams with reserves that are inconsistent or just average. The third tier consists of teams whose benches are a major weakness and will likely be a liability throughout the upcoming season. The following list ranks the West teams from worst to first.
Third Tier
Dallas Mavericks
The Mavericks’ bench is a disaster. When DeAndre Jordan made his U-turn, things started going downhill for Mark Cuban and his team. They were able to re-sign J.J. Barea, but lost Richard Jefferson. The rest of their back |
in this project and I think that together we can do something really special out here.
Now I must say goodbye, or alavida, to this amazing place.
Thanks for having me Delhi.
JonasSALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Lawmakers moved quickly Friday to place a ban on affirmative action in the Utah Constitution, despite little evidence the practice is being used or has caused problems.
A resolution that would prevent local governments, state agencies and public colleges from discriminating or providing preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin sailed through a legislative committee only two days after it was made public.
To amend the constitution, the resolution would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote in the state House and Senate and be signed by Republican Gov. Gary Herbert. Voters also would have to approve the measure this fall.
The proposal is likely to have little trouble getting the necessary votes for passage in the GOP-dominated Legislature.
Rep. Curtis Oda, R-Clearfield
A House committee approved the measure known as House Joint Resolution 24 with a 10-4 vote Friday. The full House will likely vote on it next week.
The legislator proposing this measure is Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, a Japanese American. He is part of a national movement who feels it's time to nullify affirmative action.
Shortly after most in this House committee voted to advance a ban on affirmative action, the head of the Hispanic caucus asked Oda how he could, quote, "shove this down our throats."
Tony Yapias of the Hispanic caucus told Oda, "Your family has been discriminated against just as mine has."
Oda's reply: "But I don't go looking for it."
Oda is adamant that reverse discrimination is worsening the very racial divide affirmative action was meant to address. This measure evens the playing field, he says.
"If we could just make it equal all the way across so everyone is treated fairly, it will start diminishing a lot faster," he said.
Opponents said there was little time to seek public input about the proposal.
"To pull this bill out two days ago, and ram it down the throats of this community, is awful. I can't explain how disappointed I am," said Rep. Jackie Biskupski, D-Salt Lake City. "This is big, and it deserves public input."
What is... affirmative action? Affirmative action is the set of public policies and initiatives designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
"We need to have a discussion among grassroots community of individuals who would be most affected by this constitutional amendment before it comes to our committee," said Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City. "This is not an adequate fact-finding context."
Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP Salt Lake Branch, said she wasn't made aware of the proposal until Thursday night.
"He's trying to kind of do it in a backdoor approach, which I find very offensive," Williams said.
Democrats tried unsuccessfully to delay the measure by suggesting it undergo study during the summer.
Republicans said they want to pass the measure while Ward Connerly, a former member of the University of California Board of Regents who has worked to pass similar legislation in other states, was in town to testify for the bill.
"The implication is that those of us who are... minorities cannot compete and therefore society has to bestow its benevolence," Connerly, who is black, told lawmakers. "Sometimes we don't realize that's a double-edge sword. We demean people."
Connerly was joined by Jennifer Gratz, who successfully sued the University of Michigan for denying her admission, saying she was put at a disadvantage because she wasn't a minority.
14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
"Many of our universities, many of our government agencies use these similar policies for college admissions, public contracting, and employment. And I think that's wrong. People should be judged by their merit and character, not their skin color or sex," said Gratz.
Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, said the measure will help ensure Utah colleges don't discriminate.
"We're not getting necessarily the most qualified students there because of the quota system," Waddoups said.
Kay Harward, University of Utah senior associate vice president for enrollment management, said minorities don't get any preferential treatment when it comes to admission.
State agencies also have policies in place that prevent them from giving preferential treatment when it comes to hiring or promotions.
------
Story compiled with contributions from Richard Piatt and the Associated Press.
×
Related Linksculture Toronto Added Jobs in 2016, But Most of Them Were Part-time
Office jobs dominated, and manufacturing continues to do poorly.
Driven by growth downtown and in the city’s offices, Toronto continued to adds jobs in 2016.
The mandatory annual Toronto Employment Survey [PDF], which the City has administered to local businesses since 1983, showed 2.6 per cent overall growth in local jobs over 2015. However, 74 per cent of the job growth came in the form of part-time work; 28,000 part-time jobs were added, while 10,000 were full-time. Over the past 10 years, 35 per cent more part-time jobs were added in Toronto, as well as nine per cent more full-time jobs.
The office sector dominated Toronto’s job growth, with almost half of all new jobs coming in that area. Manufacturing, on the other hand, continues to struggle. The sector remained flat and has experienced a 20 per cent decline over the past decade. By contrast, Toronto’s office sector, institutional sector, service sector, and community and entertainment sector each grew by 20 to 30 per cent over the same time period.
All of this is to say Toronto is experiencing broader economic trends. There’s a move towards more part-time work, and some relatively low-skilled and high-paying manufacturing jobs are gradually going away.
Council grapples with this conflict on a regular basis. There’s a frequent genre of City Council motion where a local councillor wants to convert employment lands—zoned for industrial use—into something that might support big box retail or a new residential development. These sites might often be vacant for a while—after all, there’s not much local manufacturing growth—and so there’s pressure to turn nothing into something, even if it means compromising the principles in the City’s Official Plan.
While the growth in Toronto’s office sector is good—those are jobs that any city would welcome, and start-up numbers continue to be strong—what grows a city is achieving a sustainable balance in its development so that different sectors can complement one another.The frosty dungeon hides a dark secret. At least a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere's landmass is frozen and, like a vault, it holds 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon. This unimaginably high quantity of carbon comes from countless generations of creatures that have lived and died in the area over millions of years.
A portion of those dead plants and animals weren't decomposed by microorganisms because, at a certain point, it was simply too cold for that. But the permafrost is slowly melting. If large areas of ground underneath were to thaw one day, the bacterial decomposition process would pick up where it left off, releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases. In total, permafrost contains twice as much carbon as what is currently billowing through the Earth's atmosphere.
If major portions of that carbon become released, the world's climate would suffer fatal consequences. For this reason, scientists have for some time now been asking the frightening question of just how strongly global warming affects permafrost areas. Using ingenious measuring methods, they are meticulously monitoring the fate of the planet. A new study, published in the professional journal Science on Thursday, suggests that it's possible that even slightly higher temperatures could thaw out significant portions of the region's permafrost areas.
A team of researchers led by Anton Vaks at the University of Oxford examined calcareous deposits from a total of six Siberian caves. Specifically, they looked at so called speleothems, which are mineral deposits -- including stalactites and stalagmites -- that form in limestone and other caves. "Speleothems only grow when rain and meltwater can seep through cracks into the caves," Vaks told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "And that process only occurs when temperatures are above the freezing point."
Precise Climate Records
Since water from the frozen earth can't reach cracks deep within the caves, the mineral deposits are precise records of the climate. In warmer times, the so-called interglacial periods, stalactites and stalagmites form. In colder phases, so called glacial periods, they don't. So there is a pattern similar to how tree rings can be used to tell their age.
A total of 36 speleothems were dated using the uranium-thorium method. Over time, uranium decays into thorium. The uranium isotopes dissolve in water that penetrates into the speleothems, while thorium does not and thus remains in the deposits.
Researchers can look back about 500,000 years in the past using this method. Speleothems in today's permafrost areas must have come from a significantly warmer period in which water was flowing. Vaks and his colleagues have been able to show that stalactites in the northern-most Lenskaya Ledyanaya Cave only grew in a very warm part of an interglacial period about 400,000 years ago.
At that time, average temperatures were about 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than they are today. Traces of this particularly warm period were also proven with pollen deposits and residue of algae found in the sediment of Elgygytgyn Lake, in northeastern Siberia, as well as from other sources of evidence. During this time, there were probably even numerous trees in southern Greenland.
On the Border
In periods with higher tempatures, the permafrost retreats further north. The Lenskaya Ledyanaya Cave lies at 40 degrees north latitude, in an area currently on the border of continuous permafrost. If the temperatures rise another one or two degrees, to approach something like what they were in the interglacial period 400,000 years ago, the situation would most likely look differently. "That is probably the threshold where continuous permafrost becomes vulnerable," says Vaks.
The research is "well-argued and conclusive, the data is great, and it's very diligent," says Hanno Meyer, at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam, outside Berlin. It was the first time that speleothems have been used to prove the changing areas of southern permafrost borders, he says.
Meyer also said the is currently little information about older warm periods in this region. However, he adds, the research method used by the Oxford University team is not appropriate for other permafrost landscapes because these areas have been frozen for longer than 500,000 years and are therefore too old for the dating method to measure.
The frozen earth varies in thickness from a couple of meters to 1.5 kilometers, depending on the area. And a large portion of the permafrost areas lie farther north than Vaks and his team have studied until now, with pieces even in the ocean floor. So what does this newly released research now mean for these areas in the high Arctic? "We understand that we must go further to the North," admits Vaks. Over the next two years, Vaks and his team will look for more northern caves -- and for speleothems that can be dated.Meet Premier, Newegg’s $49 answer to Amazon Prime. With free three-day shipping, discounted expedited shipping, and free returns, it’s a legitimate competitor to Amazon’s proven customer loyalty program.
Premier of course lacks the video streaming library found on Prime.
Newegg is the second largest e-retailer in the U.S., with 25 million registered users. Second only to Amazon, of course. This launch comes just days after Amazon speculated on its quarterly earnings call that the retailer could raise the price of prime from $80 to $100 or even $120.
“We always seek ways to improve the customer experience and implementing a benefit program is the latest example of how we’re making it easier and more rewarding to shop at Newegg.com,” Soren Mills, Chief Marketing Officer of Newegg North America said in a released statement. “Free expedited shipping is in itself a great benefit, but beyond that we’re including many other perks to enhance the shopping experience.”
Newegg packed other trivial features into its Premier program. Pricing alerts, member-only pricing, dedicated customer service telephone number. And, if that’s not enough, it features “Member-only shopping experience with custom backgrounds and information panel.” Take that, Amazon. Backgrounds.SK Gaming and Ninjas in Pyjamas are the latest two teams confirmed for the SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 finals, Starladder has announced.
SK and NiP join Astralis and Virtus.pro as the teams invited so far, with four more sides due to be revealed by Starladder in the coming weeks.
NiP won the last edition of SL i-League StarSeries after beating G2 in the grand final of the event, which took place in September at the National Palace of Arts, in Kiev. SK were initially invited to the tournament but ended up withdrawing due to Fernando "fer" Alvarenga's ear injury.
NiP are the defending SL i-League champions
SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 will kick off on February 10 and will culminate with the offline finals, in Kiev, from April 4-9. Sixteen teams will be taking part in this $300,000 competition, with the final eight participants being determined by online qualifiers, held in Europe, North America and China.
Below you can find a provisional list of participants for the event:Abstract Background Acne vulgaris is a chronic skin disease with a high prevalence. Left untreated or inadequately treated, acne vulgaris can lead to psychological and physical scarring, as well as to unnecessary medical expenses. Oral isotretinoin is an effective treatment for severe resistant nodular and conglobate acne vulgaris. A regimen consisting of a fixed-dose combination of adapalene and benzoyl peroxide gel, 0.1%/2.5% (A-BPO) with oral doxycycline 100 mg (A-BPO/D) has been demonstrated to be efficacious and well tolerated in patients with severe acne and may be an alternative to oral isotretinoin for some patients with severe acne. Objective The objective of this analysis was to compare the relative efficacy and associated costs of A-BPO/D versus oral isotretinoin. Methods In this analysis, comparisons of relative efficacy were made using previously published studies involving similar patient populations with severe acne that warrant the use of oral isotretinoin. The pricing for oral doxycycline and oral isotretinoin was estimated based on the maximum allowable cost from 9 states, and the pricing for A-BPO was calculated as the range between the average wholesale price and the wholesale acquisition cost. For this analysis, 2 treatment models were generated to compare costs: (1) a basic treatment model that examined the costs of an initial regimen of either A-BPO/D or oral isotretinoin without considering probable outcomes, and (2) a long-term model that factored in likely treatment outcomes and subsequent treatments into associated costs. The basic treatment model assumed that patients would be prescribed a single regimen of A-BPO/D for 12 weeks or oral isotretinoin for 20 weeks. The long-term model considered the probability of each treatment successfully managing patients' acne, as well as likely additional regimens of A-BPO monotherapy or an additional regimen of oral isotretinoin. As a result of different treatment durations, the costs for each treatment were normalized to weekly cost of treatment. Results Based on evidence from the published literature, patients treated with A-BPO/D would be expected to have an initial 72% reduction in inflammatory lesions, and patients treated with oral isotretinoin would have an 80% to 90% reduction of these lesions. The median weekly cost for the basic treatment model was $44 for A-BPO/D and $62 for oral isotretinoin. The weekly median costs for the long-term model were $44 for patients initially receiving a regimen of A-BPO/D followed by a maintenance regimen of A-BPO monotherapy and $50 for patients receiving an initial regimen of A-BPO/D who required a subsequent regimen of oral isotretinoin. The weekly cost for oral isotretinoin in the long-term model was $62. Conclusions The comparison of these 2 treatments demonstrated that they are both effective in treating severe acne, and that A-BPO/D was less expensive weekly than oral isotretinoin. These models show that A-BPO/D is safer than and is a more cost-effective alternative to oral isotretinoin for treating patients with severe acne vulgaris.
Acne vulgaris is a chronic skin disease predominantly affecting the face, trunk, and back.1 The prevalence of acne vulgaris is high in many countries: acne afflicts up to 87% of adolescents and up to 54% of adults.2,3 Skin diseases, including acne, are often dismissed as being trivial or not as important as diseases of other organ systems.4 However, acne can negatively affect the patient's quality of life (QOL).4 Responses to the 36-Item Short Form Survey, a generic QOL questionnaire, demonstrate that patients with acne report social, psychological, and emotional problems at levels as great as patients with epilepsy, diabetes, back pain, disabling asthma, or arthritis.4 Patients with acne also have fewer feelings of pride, lower self-esteem, lower body image satisfaction, more depressive symptoms, and more feelings of uselessness than people without acne.5 Adolescents with severe acne have suicidal thoughts more frequently than those with less severe acne.6 If left untreated, acne can result in significant psychosocial morbidity.7 Treatment improves the QOL of patients with acne and can prevent scarring.8–10 KEY POINTS ▸ Acne vulgaris is a chronic, prevalent skin disease that can affect a patient's quality of life and lead to unnecessary medical expenses.
▸ Oral isotretinoin is indicated for the treatment of severe resistant nodular and conglobate acne vulgaris and is the only therapy that targets all 4 causitive factors.
▸ However, oral isotretinoin is a teratogenic drug that is associated with significant side effects and carries a REMS program; and although it is indicated for severe recalcitrant acne, it is often prescribed for mild or moderate acne.
▸ A fixed-dose combination of adapalene and benzoyl peroxide gel, 0.1%/2.5% (A-BPO) is efficacious and well tolerated in patients with severe acne.
▸ This new analysis of previously published data shows that although oral isotretinoin and A-BPO plus oral doxycycline 100 mg (A-BPO/D) are both effective for treating severe acne, A-BPO/D is less expensive per patient per week.
▸ Because the 2 treatment regimens are different in nature, a weekly cost analysis was used for comparison, showing that the median weekly cost for A-BPO/D is $44 compared with $62 for oral isotretinoin.
▸ In addition to being safer than oral isotretinoin for the management of patients with severe acne vulgaris, A-BPO/D is a cost-effective alternative to oral isotretinoin, which is associated with potential serious side effects that may further increase the indirect costs of treatment. The pathophysiology of acne is multifactorial, involving 4 causative factors, including inflammation, hyperkeratinization, Propionibacterium acnes proliferation, and excess sebum production.11 Several topical and oral treatment options target the various causative mechanisms. The Global Alliance to Improve Outcomes in Acne has published recommended guidelines for the treatment of acne.12 Topical treatment is recommended for milder forms of acne. Oral isotretinoin is indicated for the most severe forms of nodular and conglobate acne and is the only available therapy that targets all 4 causative factors. Although indicated for severe recalcitrant acne, oral isotretinoin is frequently prescribed for the treatment of mild or moderate acne.13 However, oral isotretinoin is a pregnancy category × teratogen and is associated with significant side effects.14 The reported side effects associated with the use of oral isotretinoin include depression, attempted suicide, cheilitis, dermatitis, myalgia, dry eyes, nonspecific gastrointestinal symptoms, and arthralgia, among others.14 Patients who are prescribed oral isotretinoin must enroll in the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program iPLEDGE.15 Patients also require laboratory tests to monitor liver function and serum lipid levels.14 For patients with severe acne with less nodular involvement, an oral antibiotic with a topical retinoid and benzoyl peroxide is recommended.12 Doxycycline 100 mg once daily is efficacious against acne and is relatively well tolerated.16 Adapalene, a third-generation retinoid with an established safety profile, has anticomedogenic and anti-inflammatory properties that are effective against acne.17–21 Benzoyl peroxide is an antimicrobial agent with demonstrated efficacy in treating acne.22 Benzoyl peroxide is more advantageous than other topical antibiotics, because it does not induce bacterial resistance and because it is effective against resistant P acnes strains.23 A fixed-dose combination of adapalene and benzoyl peroxide gel, 0.1%/2.5% (A-BPO; Epiduo Gel) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2008. This is the only fixed-dose drug combination that is formulated with a topical retinoid and benzoyl peroxide. The safety and efficacy of A-BPO for the treatment of acne have been established in clinical trials.24,25 Two related clinical trials investigated the use of A-BPO with oral doxycycline 100 mg once daily (A-BPO/D) for 12 weeks,26 followed by a maintenance therapy of A-BPO in patients with severe acne for an additional 24 weeks.27 Severe acne vulgaris in these studies was defined as up to 3 nodules or cysts, 30 to 120 noninflammatory lesions, and at least 20 inflammatory lesions.26,27 In the study by Gold and colleagues, patients who were treated with A-BPO/D had significantly better improvement in acne symptoms and in the acne symptom portion of the Acne-QOL questionnaire than patients given vehicle gel and doxycycline 100 mg.9,26 Patients with at least a “good” improvement in the first study, whether they were in the A-BPO/D group or in the vehicle gel plus doxycycline group, were eligible for the second study and were randomized to a maintenance regimen of A-BPO or to vehicle gel. Symptoms of acne and the QOL of patients using A-BPO continued to improve, whereas in patients using vehicle gel, QOL and acne symptoms worsened during the 24-week period.9,27 The majority of adverse events were mild and included erythema, scaling, dryness, and stinging and burning.26,27 In addition to treating severe acne, A-BPO is also recommended for the treatment of mild and moderate acne, making it a versatile topical medication that can treat a spectrum of disease severity.12 A model was developed to compare the efficacy and related costs of A-BPO/D versus oral isotretinoin in treating severe acne vulgaris.
Methods Efficacy Efficacy estimates used for the present comparison were based on the percent in reduction of inflammatory lesions from previously reported data.26–30 These data were pulled from independent studies with different study populations. However, all patients in these studies had severe acne, for which a specialist would likely prescribe oral isotretinoin. Efficacy data for oral isotretinoin were pulled from 3 clinical studies using different doses28–30 so that an accurate range of the drug's efficacy could be calculated and used for this analysis rather than selecting an individual study for our comparison. The treatment period for A-BPO/D is 12 weeks and for oral isotretinoin it is 20 weeks. Therefore, comparisons of efficacy were made between A-BPO/D and oral isotretinoin after 12 weeks and 20 weeks of treatment, respectively. However, because the treatment regimens are different, the percent reduction in lesions was also determined after 20 weeks for A-BPO/D by combining the 12 weeks of A-BPO/D treatment with the 8 subsequent weeks of A-BPO maintenance therapy. This additional efficacy measurement was determined to facilitate a relative comparison between A-BPO/D and oral isotretinoin after 20 weeks of treatment. Pricing Pricing for oral doxycycline and oral isotretinoin was estimated from the maximum allowable cost from 9 states, including Texas, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Georgia, Iowa, and Wyoming. The maximum allowable cost pricing data were downloaded from these states' respective Medicaid agencies on June 7, 2012, and May 15, 2012, for oral doxycycline (100 mg) and for oral isotretinoin (10–40 mg), respectively. Currently only generic forms of oral isotretinoin are available in the United States. Maximum allowable cost pricing was unavailable for A-BPO. Pricing was set to be the range between the average wholesale price (AWP) and the wholesale acquisition cost (WAC). Because the duration of treatment differs between the 2 regimens, pricing was calculated as cost per week of treatment. Treatment Models Two treatment models were generated. The basic treatment model examined the cost of drugs in the treatment regimen of A-BPO/D or of oral isotretinoin and did not take into account the likely outcomes or costs of the follow-up treatments. A long-term model was developed that factored in likely treatment outcomes and subsequent treatments. This model also considered in the cost of drugs the probability that a certain treatment would be required. Basic treatment model A basic decision tree was constructed in which patients could only receive either a regimen of A-BPO/D for 12 weeks or a regimen of oral isotretinoin for 20 weeks. Two tubes of A-BPO were distributed to patients during the 12-week regimen; the second tube was given between weeks 8 and 12 to ensure that patients had sufficient study drug to complete the 12-week regimen (unpublished data). Therefore, it was assumed that 2 tubes of A-BPO would be distributed in a 12-week period. It was also assumed that 1 dose of doxycycline or of oral isotretinoin would be used daily during the treatment period. The weekly cost of treatment for both regimens was then calculated and compared, using the pricing details previously described. Long-term treatment model This latter decision tree begins with an initial 12-week treatment with A-BPO/D or a 20-week treatment with oral isotretinoin. The long-term treatment model considered the probability of each treatment being successful in managing acne. This model did not assess likely reductions in acne lesions. The percentages of patients with symptoms under control or those with relapsed disease were obtained from previously published data.26,27,31 The long-term treatment model assumed that patients whose symptoms were not controlled or whose disease relapsed, regardless of the initial treatment regimen, would receive a 20-week regimen of oral isotretinoin. All patients who were enrolled in the clinical study that investigated A-BPO/D had an investigator's global assessment (IGA) score of 4 (severe) on a 6-point scale from 0 (clear) to 5 (very severe).26 Patients were considered to have their symptoms controlled if they improved at least 1 score on the IGA at the end of the 12-week regimen, which indicated that the patient no longer had severe acne. Patients who had a 1-score improvement after the 12-week regimen of A-BPO/D would be eligible for a follow-up regimen of 24 weeks of A-BPO maintenance monotherapy. Patients whose symptoms regressed to an IGA score of 4 at the end of the maintenance regimen would have regressed back to having severe acne and would have been considered to have relapsed disease. These patients would be eligible for a 20-week regimen of oral isotretinoin. For patients who were initially treated with oral isotretinoin and did not respond to treatment, it was assumed that they would use an additional regimen of oral isotretinoin. Additional treatment was not considered for patients whose disease responded to oral isotretinoin at any point. To calculate costs, it was assumed that 2 tubes of A-BPO would be required for the initial 12-week regimen and 4 tubes would be required for the 24-week follow-up regimen, and patients would take 1 dose of doxycycline or oral isotretinoin daily. Costs that did not account for the probability of treatment outcomes were calculated and compared using pricing described above. The expected cost of each treatment, factoring in the probability of success of each treatment, was calculated based on the following formula: (Probability of success × cost of success) + (probability of failure × cost of failure) Ancillary costs for office visits, laboratory tests, and the iPLEDGE program were not considered.
Discussion The current cost analysis shows that an initial regimen of A-BPO/D is less expensive per patient per week than an initial regimen of oral isotretinoin in treating severe acne vulgaris. Both regimens have been shown to be effective in improving severe acne.26–30 The basic treatment model compared the efficacy and costs of a single regimen of either treatment. Although no head-to-head data exist comparing the 2 treatments, patients using oral isotretinoin could expect to have the number of inflammatory lesions reduced by an additional 8% to 18% over the A-BPO/D regimen. However, such a reduction would require an additional 8 weeks of treatment and would cost an additional $24.24 per patient weekly, on average, during 12 weeks of treatment with A-BPO/D. Patients with severe acne vulgaris frequently require additional therapy, depending on the initial treatment outcomes. A second model was developed that incorporated the probability of possible treatment outcomes on either regimen. That model assumed that patients who failed treatment with the initial A-BPO/D regimen or the A-BPO maintenance therapy would receive a 20-week regimen of oral isotretinoin. Even when the probability of receiving oral isotretinoin at some point after the initial A-BPO/D therapy was factored into the treatment costs, an initial regimen of A-BPO/D was still less expensive per patient weekly than an initial regimen of oral isotretinoin. The goal of the A-BPO/D regimen is to get acne under control so that topical medications may be used to avoid the side effects of additional oral antibiotics or oral isotretinoin. Oral isotretinoin is recommended only for severe forms of resistant nodular/conglobate acne vulgaris.12 For less severe forms of severe acne, an oral antibiotic with a topical retinoid and a benzoyl peroxide regimen are recommended. However, oral isotretinoin is frequently prescribed for less severe acne than is indicated, in patients in whom A-BPO/D would be a more appropriate initial therapy.13 Oral isotretinoin is also associated with several severe side effects.14 It has a pregnancy category × label, indicating that it is a teratogenic drug that can cause severe birth defects. The use of oral isotretinoin also requires enrollment in the iPLEDGE program and healthcare provider visits and laboratory tests for liver function and lipid testing.33 A-BPO/D is efficacious in improving severe acne vulgaris.26,27 This regimen is well tolerated, with side effects that were comparable with vehicle gel plus doxycycline 100 mg, and it does not require enrollment in a REMS program. A-BPO is currently the only available fixed-dose combination topical therapy formulated with a retinoid and benzoyl peroxide. Other available fixed-dose combination therapies combine retinoids with antibiotics, such as clindamycin.34 However, the antibiotic resistance of patients with P acnes to clindamycin and other antibiotics has been reported,23,35 whereas resistance to benzoyl peroxide has not. In addition, A-BPO is suitable and is recommended for mild-to-severe acne, demonstrating its versatility in treating the disease.12 Therefore, A-BPO is a logical choice for a topical fixed-dose combination therapy, thanks to its efficacy, tolerability, and lack of antibiotic resistance. Because of its efficacy and safety in treating severe acne, a regimen of A-BPO/D provides an alternative to oral isotretinoin, especially in patients with medical histories or conditions for which oral isotretinoin is contraindicated. Although patients receiving oral isotretinoin may see better reductions in inflammatory lesions, that improvement comes at a higher cost, requires longer initial treatment duration, and is associated with more side effects than A-BPO/D. Oral isotretinoin should only be used in severe cases of nodular acne vulgaris, as is recommended by the Global Alliance to Improve Outcomes in Acne.12 An initial regimen of A-BPO/D is a more suitable choice for severe cases of acne vulgaris that do not warrant treatment with oral isotretinoin.
Limitations This analysis has several limitations. The efficacy data were extracted from independent studies with various study populations. Although comparisons in efficacy were made for descriptive purposes, they may not be relevant, because patients using oral isotretinoin may have more severe acne than patients in the A-BPO/D study group. A controlled study that investigated oral isotretinoin and A-BPO/D in similar populations would allow a valid comparison of efficacy. It would also allow costs to be modeled according to the degree of symptomatic improvement rather than by week. However, although the patient populations were different and were not directly comparable, patients in the A-BPO/D studies had severe acne, for which a specialist would likely prescribe oral isotretinoin for treatment. Therefore, although the groups are not identical, they are comparable, because the patients' acne in both groups is severe enough to warrant consideration for treatment with oral isotretinoin. Another limitation is that maximum allowable cost pricing was used for doxycycline 100 mg and for oral isotretinoin, whereas the average of AWP and WAC pricing was used for A-BPO. No maximum allowable cost pricing is available for A-BPO, because it is unavailable as a generic, so the average of AWP and WAC is a realistic price. An average of the AWP and WAC pricing could have been used for doxycycline 100 mg and for oral isotretinoin; however, it is unlikely that this pricing is what would be used in a real-world situation. Because doxycycline 100 mg and oral isotretinoin are available as generics, the maximum allowable cost pricing would be used to determine the costs of these 2 drugs in a managed care setting. Furthermore, the true costs of oral isotretinoin may have been underestimated in this analysis, because this analysis only considered drug costs, and not ancillary costs. Oral isotretinoin requires enrollment in the iPLEDGE program. No REMS program is required for A-BPO/D therapy. Oral isotretinoin also requires healthcare provider visits to monitor liver function and serum lipids, and women of child-bearing potential must use 2 forms of contraception. These additional costs are not accrued for A-BPO/D.
Conclusions Severe acne is a serious skin disease that affects the QOL in affected individuals. A regimen of A-BPO/D is suitable for most cases of severe acne vulgaris and may be considered for use as a first-line therapy. Oral isotretinoin should only be used in severe recalcitrant cases of nodular acne, because it is associated with severe side effects; however, it is frequently prescribed for less severe and even moderate cases of acne. A comparison of these 2 treatments using previously published data to evaluate efficacy and costs, modeled on a recent clinical study, demonstrates that both treatments are effective in managing severe acne and that a weekly treatment with A-BPO/D is less expensive than a weekly treatment of oral isotretinoin. Even when probable rates of success are considered, A-BPO/D is still less expensive per week than oral isotretinoin. Furthermore, ancillary medical costs, such as required laboratory tests, birth control, and the iPLEDGE program, were not considered in this analysis; those additional costs are only associated with oral isotretinoin. Therefore, the total costs of A-BPO/D are even likely less expensive than what is presented here. As is shown in the current analysis, A-BPO/D is well tolerated, efficacious, and less expensive than oral isotretinoin; for these reasons it may be considered for first-line use for severe acne with up to 3 nodules or cysts.
Stakeholder Perspective Evaluating Treatments for Acne: It's Time to “Sweat” the Smaller Things By Gary M. Owens, MD President, Gary Owens Associates, Ocean View, DE PHARMACY/MEDICAL DIRECTORS: Pharmacy management is changing. Our previous focus on large populations and on the small-molecule “block-buster” drugs that are used to treat them is being de-emphasized and replaced with the world of specialty pharmaceuticals that are typically used to treat small patient populations. Although specialty drugs will be the major drivers of pharmacy cost increases in 2014 and beyond, they still account for less than 25% of most pharmacy budgets.1 The majority of pharmacy cost is associated with small-molecule drugs. In 2012, the generic prescribing rate was 84% and is currently helping to hold the cost of small-molecule drugs relatively flat, but there is still a need to actively manage the cost of small-molecule drugs.2 However, it is sometimes easy to overlook savings opportunities for less-costly disease categories—“the small things.” Dermatologic conditions account for 12.4% of all diseases that are treated by family physicians.3 This high prevalence is largely driven by a relatively small number of common dermatologic conditions. Acne is the most common skin disorder in the United States, affecting 40 million to 50 million Americans, with nearly 85% of all people having acne at some point in their lives.4 The cost of treating acne in |
donned black adidas, he cost the school $3 million USD for not honoring their exclusivity contract.
Converse’s Loaded Weapon
In 2003, Converse attempted to resurrect its fledgling basketball shoe sector with sponsorships with the likes of Chris Bosh, Kirk Hinrich and Michael Sweetney. However, the timing of the introduction of the “Loaded Weapon” release is what really fanned the proverbial flames. Former NBA All-Star Jayson Williams had been charged with manslaughter in the shooting of a limo driver, Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas was charged in the summer with carrying a concealed weapon and Patrick Dennehy of Baylor had been fatally shot. Dave Maddocks of Converse said, “We have no second thoughts about the name, whatsoever. Sports is loaded with battlefield terminology. This is merely the name of a shoe.” Although valid points were made by both sides concerning the controversy, the fact that Converse pointed to “The Weapon” which was worn by Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the ’80s as a source of inspiration for the shoe and its revamped technology, many understood that the name derived from heritage rather than violence.
The Reissue of the Reebok “Big Hurt”
Looking to capitalize on the retro appeal of sneakers of yesteryear as well as his impending trip to Cooperstown this summer, Reebok decided to reintroduce the “Big Hurt” to the marketplace. The only problem is that they did so without Frank Thomas’s input, didn’t pay him to use his likeness and his Reebok deal had expired in 1998.
Bill Gleason’s Sweatshop Question
As Michael Jordan sat in front of a pool of veteran reporters following the Bulls fourth championship, Daily Southtown reporter and Chicago media legend Bill Gleason diverted from softball questions pertaining to the game and instead lobbed a grenade of a question at His Airness. Asking about the sweatshops and conditions related to where his Nike products were made in the Far East, Michael politely shrugged it off but it was truly a moment for those who thought Michael was untouchable – especially in his hometown.
Kobe Bryant’s Decision to go for a Low Top
When it was announced that Kobe Bryant would be lacing up a pair of low-tops, ESPN wrote, “They are the unwritten but widely accepted bylaws of sports footwear. Here, we hold these truths to be self-evident: Golf is to be played in spikes. Ice hockey is to be played on skates. Baseball and football are to be played in cleats. And basketball? Basketball is to be played in a pair of high-tops.” Although a 1993 University of Oklahoma study that appeared in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found no relationship between shoe height and ankle injury, five years later a study in the Journal of Sport Sciences found that increased ankle support did reduce the likelihood of a sprained ankle. At the time of Kobe’s announcement that he had enlisted Nike designers to produce the lowest, lightest basketball shoe of all-time, 13% of the games players missed were attributed to ankle injuries – more than double the injury rate of any other part of the body.
Rick Ross’s Fallout with Reebok
Rick Ross’s controversial lyric on his song “U.O.E.N.O,” where he raps: “Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it. I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it” caused quite the controversy given that he seemed to be alluding to the sexual assault of a woman. While Ross ultimately apologized, Reebok ultimately cut ties with him after feeling he hadn’t shown the “appropriate level of remorse.”
Kanye West Leaving Nike
In a surprise move that caught most sneaker aficionados off guard, Nike unexpectedly released the Air Yeezy 2 “Red October” online back in February and ultimately liquidated their entire stock in only 11 minutes. Was it a move by the sneaker juggernaut as a subtle slap to the ego of West who had decided to leave for adidas in November? What makes this dissolution of retail marriage so interesting is that we have yet to see if it was Nike’s influence on West that made the Air Yeezy so sought after, or if the entertainer added a cultural infusion to the sporting giant. Regardless, this feud played out publicly as if producers for Keeping Up with the Kardashians had a hand in it.
The Detroit Pistons Ban Nike Hyperize
Arnie Kander, the Detroit Pistons’ longtime strength and conditioning coach, said in 2010 that he had never seen as many ankle, knee and groin injuries his team faced during that season. What did he attribute that to: The lightweight Nike Hyperize which was.8 pounds versus other basketball shoes that at the time weighed between 1.4-1.7 pounds. “Since we’ve banned the shoe, knock on wood, we haven’t had any ankle sprains,” Kander said. “Hopefully, the good Lord willing, we won’t have any more and we can finish the season healthy and see what these guys can really do.”
Nike’s global creative director, Tracy Teague, responded later that summer as the Swoosh began rolling out the Hyperdunk. “For us, the Hyperize was a shoe that we tested extensively, as were the Hyperdunk 2010s as well. That’s something I don’t think a lot of folks have a lot of visibility to is the amount of testing that goes on. Something like the Hyperize — we didn’t see those kind of problems. If you just look at the total number of products that were out there, it was a very small percentage that actually had issues with it. But, I mean, we worry about anytime somebody has some issues. But for us, what we’ve been able to do, again, is find that fine edge of lightweight but yet still strong enough to perform…So that’s the challenge, and that’s the brunt of it, but I think it’s good.”
Nike’s Flyknit vs. adidas’s Primeknit
At the heart of the battle between Nike and adidas was simply the ability to employ a one-piece fused yarn upper – with the former calling it Flyknit and the latter calling it Primeknit. Nike ultimately beat their competitors to the punch when they launched in April of 2012 with Mark Parker saying, “We took machines that were designed for something else, we altered the machines dramatically and then we created new software to do something that’s never been done before in footwear. And that is actually going to change the whole formula for how footwear is made. I think you’re going to see that on a larger and larger scale.” When adidas ultimately caught up, it was no surprise that Nike filed suit – but it was Mark Parker’s initial words that proved important. adidas’s legal approach centered on the fact that both shoes boasted intertwined yarns in the construction and it’s a technique that has been employed since the 1940s.
The PUMA “Bonnie & Clyde”
While everyone is familiar with the iconic PUMA Clyde that honors Walt Frazier, their attempt to add a feminine alternative dubbed “The Bonnie” – an homage to the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – didn’t come without its detractors. Featuring a golden pistol or Thompson machine gun on the heel, as well as the famous words “I steal for a living,” many anti-gun lobbyists were of the opinion that the shoes were more “irresponsible” than homages to a cinematic classic.
Subscribe
Words by Alec Banks Features Editor Alec Banks is a Los Angeles-based long-form writer with over a decade of experience covering fashion, music, sports, and culture.Pedestrian deaths tie with 2002 for lowest since at least 1931
The District logged the lowest number of traffic-related fatalities since at least the 1920s last year, and tied for the lowest numbers of pedestrians killed on record as well.
Only 19 people died in traffic-related crashes in the city in 2012, besting the previous record set three years ago, according to city statistics. Eight of the cases involved pedestrians, six were vehicle occupants and five rode motorcycles or scooters when killed. Not one was a bicyclist.
Despite two high-profile pedestrian deaths last month, including a 16-year-old killed in a hit-and-run, the number of pedestrians killed was tied with 2002 for the lowest number since the city started keeping such records in 1931.
The numbers are especially low compared with the peak set in 1934, when 135 people died in traffic crashes in the city, 95 of them pedestrians as trolleys and cars proliferated. But the statistics have declined markedly in recent years, dropping to a quarter of the 71 traffic deaths reported in 2001.
"We're moving in the direction we want to go," said District Department of Transportation spokesman John Lisle.
John Townsend, a spokesman for the AAA Mid-Atlantic motorist club, noted that the city appears to be bucking the national trends, as well. Nationally, vehicle fatalities had been dropping, he said, but preliminary data from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety indicate traffic deaths may have risen last year.
Still, the share of pedestrians getting killed in traffic-related crashes in the District remains high, representing 42 percent of all traffic-related fatalities last year. George Branyan, who coordinates DDOT's pedestrian program, said that ratio is similar to other large cities', noting that more than half of residents are walking, biking or taking transit to their jobs each day in the city. "It's an urbanized area," Branyan said. "That's what happens when you have one million people on the streets each day."
Additionally the drop comes as the city's population grows.
Branyan credits the proliferation of traffic cameras around the city with helping reduce the deaths. The District has 46 speed cameras and 47 red light cameras but plans to add 134 more this year.
"We still have a lot of crashes, but when two cars hit each other at 25 mph, it's a lot different than cars going 45 mph," he said. "It really matters for pedestrians. They don't have air bags and steel safety cages."
Townsend would like the numbers to drop even lower, though. "They can take pride in the fact that the city is becoming a lot safer. We all can," Townsend said. "But still we cannot rest on our laurels."
kweir@washingtonexaminer.comPaul Joseph Watson joined me to break down the news that Twitter has established a "Trust and Safety Council."
Who is on this council and who isn't?
In an effort to transform their platform into a "safe space," Twitter is now in the business of censoring free speech and they've picked out an army of SJWs to get the job done!
JOIN TheRebel.media FREE for more fearless news and commentary you won’t find anywhere else.
We demand that Milo Yiannopoulos -- a.k.a., @Nero -- be verified on Twitter again, and not be punished for his politics.
SIGN OUR PETITION to Verify Milo!
READ Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights --
Ezra Levant’s book about the Canadian Human Rights Commissions, censorship and the Mohammed cartoons was voted "the best political book of the last 25 years."GETTY Marine Le Pen was ‘surprised’ by President Donald Trump’s decision to launch an airstrike on Syria
The Front National leader was speaking after the US leader retaliated to Tuesday’s deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians in the Middle East nation, which was widely blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The US fired cruise missiles early on Friday morning at an airbase near the city of Homs from which it was said the gas attack in Idlib province was launched, leaving more than 80 people dead, including scores of children. She said: “I am a little bit surprised because Mr Trump has said on numerous occasions that the US would no longer be policing the world, and yet, that is exactly what he is doing right now.
Celebrities and Politicians React to Trump's Missile Attack on Syria Fri, April 7, 2017 Following news of the attack, celebrities and politicians expressed their thoughts on social media Play slideshow REUTERS 1 of 6 Trump ordered a massive military strike against a Syria
GETTY Her comments came after the US leader retaliated to Tuesday’s deadly chemical attack on civilians
“Is it too much to ask that we wait for the chemical weapons attack inquiry findings before launching such airstrikes?”
Could we not wait to hear the results of an international inquiry? Marine Le Pen
Mrs Le Pen also said that she did not want for the war-torn country to spiral into chaos and lawlessness as a result of Friday’s US-led attack on the Syrian regime. She said: “I would like for us to avoid a repetition of the situation in Iraq and Libya in Syria, because what happened there (the US-led military interventions) led to chaos, and both countries have since become hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism.
GETTY The US fired missiles on Friday morning after an airbase from which the gas attack was launchedImage copyright AP Image caption Emile Hirsch will spend 15 days in jail as part of a plea bargain
US actor Emile Hirsch has pleaded guilty to assaulting a female film executive during the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January.
The Into The Wild and Milk star was given a 15-day jail term and 50 hours of community service as part of a plea deal agreed with the prosecutors.
He was also fined $4,750 (£3,048).
Daniele Bernfeld, an executive for Insurge Pictures, told police Hirsch grabbed her in a chokehold at a nightclub in Park City.
The plea deal agreed on Monday means Hirsch managed to avoid the maximum jail sentence of five years. He was told the charges would be dropped from his record if he completed his sentence.
He was slurring his words and struggling to balance after having three or four drinks at the time of the assault, according to public court documents seen by the Associated Press news agency.
But county attorney Robert Hilder said on Monday he had been sober since the incident on 25 January and showed remorse on a number of occasions.
Ms Bernfeld, for her part, said the plea deal did not go far enough, saying the attack had caused her long-term damage. In a statement read out in court, she said she thought she "was going to die" when Hirsch was choking her.
She said the actor grabbed her from behind, put her in a chokehold, pulled her across the table and landed on top of her on the floor, putting his hands around her throat.
Mr Hirsch is best known for his work with Sean Penn. He took the lead role in Penn's 2007 film Into the Wild and starred alongside him in Milk. He also appeared in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock in 2009.
He was at Sundance for the premiere of the drama Ten Thousand Saints, in which he appears alongside Ethan Hawke and Asa Butterfield.The Coolidge effect is the resumption of copulatory behavior induced by a novel sexual partner that has been reported in several species. The term is also used in males when they resume mating when exposed to an unknown receptive female after they have reached sexual exhaustion. Only few studies have evaluated the Coolidge effect in females. In the present study we further evaluated this possibility using the sexual incentive motivation (SIM) and the partner preference (PP) tests. Ovariectomized rats were hormonally primed and allowed to mate for 1h controlling the sexual interaction (paced mating) or in a condition where they were unable to pace the sexual encounters. In the SIM and PP tests, females were exposed to the male with whom they had mated before (known male) or with an unknown, sexually experienced one (unknown male). Regardless whether they paced the sexual interaction, all females showed clear preference for the unknown male but females that paced the sexual contacts spent more time in the incentive zone of the unknown male than females that could not pace the sexual interaction. Similar results were observed in the PP test. Both groups of females spent more time in the compartment of the previously unknown male than in that of the known one, but received the same amount of sexual stimulation, i.e., mounts, intromissions and ejaculations from both males. No preference was found when the females were tested in the SIM test between an unknown male and a sexually receptive female. The results further support the existence of a Coolidge effect in female rats that is more apparent if they pace the sexual interaction.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A retooled classic hitting bookstores this week will raise new questions for millions of Christians about the nature of sin, whether women can exert authority over men and what the word "booty" really means.
That book is the Bible.
On Wednesday, as many Christians begin observing Lent, American publishers will release new translations of two of the most widely read English language Bibles - the official Catholic version and the most popular evangelical version - that together have been printed more than 415 million times.
These are the first new translations of the New American Bible (Catholic version) and the New International Version (the one more popular with evangelicals) in decades, and are being introduced into a radically changed scripture marketplace.
As late as the 1950s, a few translations dominated English-speaking Christianity. Today there are dozens, and even more niche-marketed Bible study guides: for women, youths, cartoon lovers, golfers, people who only want to carry a thin volume. The new NIV alone has 33 different study guides coming out by this summer.
Far from relying on one book and a pastor, American Christians today can sit in the pew during a Sunday sermon and use their phone to flip through 50 interpretations of any particular passage of the New or Old Testatment and compare wording.
With the Bible business growing more crowded, publishers want to stay fresh with the way young people use words and with the latest scholarly research.
Although most of the changes in the new versions are subtle language tweaks meant to make it more readable, the books reflect stepped-up debate about how to understand Christianity's holy scriptures.
The most controversial part of the new NIV is its removal of some of the gender-neutral language that publishers inserted in a version that was half-released in 2005, but then quashed because of criticism by conservatives. The new version, for example, replaces in Genesis God's call to make "human beings in our image" with "mankind."
The new NIV also tries to make wording less rigid in certain places, said Doug Moo, chairman of the 15-member translation committee. For example, it replaces the ban on women "exercising" authority over men in church from the 1984 version - the last official NIV - with the potentially softer "assuming" of authority.
"Whether that referred to all forms of authority over men in church or only certain forms in certain contexts is up to the individual interpreter to decide," read translation notes for the new version.
It replaces multiple uses of "sinful nature" with "flesh," which Moo said is meant to leave to the reader the question of whether sin is a core human element or one of many outside forces to which we yield.One hot pepper list to rule them all…
Just like grapes grown for wine, hot peppers are incredibly complex. There are multiple varieties that come in unique shapes, flavors, and, of course, heat. It’s our goal to help you traverse this wide world of spiciness, and it all starts with the Scoville scale through which the heat is measured. Our hot pepper list brings that famous pepper scale to life in many ways.
It allows you to see the heat from mild to hot, as well as get an idea of what that heat is like via our jalapeño reference point. We show you how much hotter (or milder) a hot pepper could be from the jalapeño – a chili most everyone has tried. We find it to be a great way to bring the big numbers on the Scoville scale into perspective.
To read more about a chili pepper, click on its name to view PepperScale’s full profile on the pepper. Use the advanced search to filter chilies by name (for instance, type “habanero” to see a list of habaneros currently covered by PepperScale.) You can also filter by region to see where chilies hail from (it’s literally around the globe.)
Scroll to the bottom of our hot pepper list to view a glossary of key terms.
Hot Pepper List Glossary:
SHU: Scoville heat units. The units by which the Scoville scale is measured (read more about them here). It is the key numerical value of our (or any) hot pepper list.
Min/Max SHU: Even individual hot peppers have a range of heat, depending on where they are grown, how long they’ve matured, and even the amount of sun they’ve received. The minimum SHU is the mildest a pepper could be, the maximum SHU is the hottest possible for the variety.
Heat: Mild, Medium, Hot, or Scorching-Hot. You get the picture. This is the simplest way to explore our hot pepper list and get an idea of where things sit. Note – “Medium” is plenty hot here. It contains the likes of jalapeños and cayenne peppers which many with milder tastes find very spicy.
JalRP: Jalapeño reference point. Built to give you a perspective of how hot these peppers really are by comparing them against a reference point most everyone has tried. A negative number (like -50) means the number of times the pepper is milder. A zero (0) means equal heat. Any positive numbers show the number of times that the pepper is hotter than a jalapeño.
Origin: Where the chili pepper has its roots. Try typing an origin into the search filter to see all chilies from that region.FORT WORTH -- After nine months of being nearly invisible -- a big outing has been to a Dallas hardware store for flashlights -- George W. Bush made his debut Monday in his latest incarnation: motivational speaker.
Nearly 15,000 people heard the former president, known more for mangling the English language than for his eloquence, reminisce about his White House days. Bush, who is writing a book about the dozen toughest decisions he had to make, used much of his 28 minutes onstage to talk about lighter topics such as picking out a rug design for the Oval Office that reflected his "optimism."
Perhaps in a nod to his dismal 22 percent approval ratings when he left office, Bush noted that "popularity is fleeting.... It's not real."
He beamed at the standing ovations from the friendly hometown crowd -- he now lives in nearby Dallas.
Looking younger than his 63 years and relaxed, Bush did not appear to have an overarching theme, but strung anecdotes and jokes together and frequently mentioned his faith in God.
"I don't see how you can be president without relying on the Almighty. Now when I was 21, I wouldn't have told you that, but at age 63, I can tell you that one of the most amazing surprises of the presidency was the fact that people's prayers affected me. I can't prove it to you. But I can tell you some days were great, some days not so great. But every day was joyous." That, he attributed, to the prayers of others.
His speech came after the crowd at the "GET MOTIVATED!" seminar stood up and danced to the Beach Boys' song "Surfin' USA" and batted around beach balls tossed into the audience.
The well-publicized event appears to mark the beginning of a higher profile for Bush.
Just last week he gave three speeches in Canada, and he has joined the Washington Speakers Bureau. He is scheduled to give another motivational speech next month in San Antonio. Former presidential adviser Karen Hughes said he has "quite a few speeches planned" during the fall.
Along with his book, due out next year, Bush is planning his new presidential library and policy institute at Southern Methodist University -- the alma mater of Laura Bush. He also has been spotted riding his mountain bike on local trails.
Many people interviewed afterward said they liked Bush, perhaps even because he wasn't the best speaker of the day. He could have said a thesaurus was a big scaly creature that roamed the planet millions of years ago and they would have applauded.
His most memorable story, one after another said, was about Barney, his Scottie:UPDATE: Netflix UK Saves ‘Suits’! Season 7 Available In The UK From Today!
I arrive with some very solemn news. I’ve just been informed by the UKTV Channel Dave that they will NOT be picking up Season 7 of ‘Suits‘…
This news will come as a massive blow to UK fans, as the legal drama has developed a dedicated following this side of the Atlantic. But unfortunately, it seems, not a large enough one for the channel to justify the expense of buying the new season.
The official statement reads “Suits has been an important and much-loved part of Dave’s schedule for a number of years, but as the channel evolves so must its programme offering. We can confirm that Dave will not be renewing its licensing deal for Suits following the sixth season of the show.”
Starring Patrick J. Adams & Gabriel Macht the show’s 6th season shook things up, with Jessica (Gina Torres) leaving Pearson Specter Litt, and Harvey being upped as head of the firm. Mike has completed his jail sentence and is now back with the company, taking over Harvey’s old office. Rachel (Meghan Markle) is now a full-blown lawyer, and this season she might finally get to walk down the aisle with Mike.
It’s a really unfortunate time for ‘Suits’ to be in limbo in the UK. The 7th Season will include the show’s 100th episode, and there is a lot of additional interest in the series due to Meghan Markle’s relationship with Prince Harry.
As yet, we don’t know if ‘Suits‘ will land anywhere else, but as soon as we have news, we’ll let you know.Australia’s government says Vegemite sales should be limited in some communities to prevent the yeast-based spread being used to make home-made alcohol.
Nigel Scullion, the indigenous affairs minister, said the spread – which is considered something of a national culinary staple – was a "precursor to misery" in communities suffering from alcohol abuse.
He said he was not proposing a ban but wanted to restrict excessive sales of high-yeast products such as Vegemite in “dry” communities – typically remote Aboriginal townships where alcohol sales are banned.
“Addiction of any type is a concern but communities, especially where alcohol is banned, must work to ensure home brewing of this type does not occur,” he said.
"The government is not seeking to place any restrictions on Vegemite or any other yeast product that may be used in home brew in remote communities... Businesses in these communities also have a responsibility to report any purchase that may raise their own suspicions."
Vegemite, from the same family of spreads as Marmite, has been produced in Australia since 1923 and its advertising jingles have sometimes been said to be more widely known than the national anthem.
But the spread has been reportedly been linked to at least one death in 2010 involving excessive consumption of a Vegemite-based home-brew.
Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, said he did not support a “Vegemite watch” and wanted to avoid excessive regulation of people’s lives.
“The last thing I want to do is have a Vegemite watch,” he said.
“Vegemite, quite properly, is for most people a reasonably nutritious spread on your morning toast or on your sandwiches.”
Aboriginal health organisations and police representatives have warned that residents of dry communities have used Vegemite to make home-brew alcohol. Young children have reportedly been consuming home brew alcohol with orange juice and have been too hung over to attend school.
“In indigenous communities I have seen alcohol brewed from many things such as Vegemite,” Ian Leavers, from the police union, told the Courier-Mail newspaper.
“While we cannot just go out and ban everything that could possibly be used to make illegal alcohol, at the same time common sense needs to take place and if people are purchasing large quantities of an item that could be used for brewing illegal alcohol, questions should always be asked.”
Mr Scullion said he has begun consulting with community leaders and local stores about efforts to restrict sales of precursors to the production of alcohol.While it seems most youngsters these days are more enthralled with the likes of Lady Gaga, Lil’ Wayne, and Britney Spears than with guitar legends like B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Eric Clapton, there are still millions of young guitarists around the world taking guitar lessons and trying to learn how to play guitar. And with the advent of YouTube, we now have the ability to watch these young kids grow as guitar players and as musicians as they share their performances online. Every now and then, a prodigy emerges from the abyss of average talent on the Internet and an international phenomenon is born. Justin Bieber. Greyson Chance. Who’s next? No one knows for sure, but we have our hopes set on one of the following outstanding guitar prodigies.
Introducing the 7 Most Talented Guitar Prodigies in the World (in our humble opinion, of course):
7. “Mojo” Myles Mancuso
Myles Mancuso is a gifted 14 year old performer / multi-instrumentalist, he has been fronting his own band on stages in and around the New York City and Hudson Valley area since he was 9 years old (his back up band consists of professional musicians 4 and 5 times his age). His advanced musical abilities have allowed him to perform live on some of New York’s top stages; BB Kings, The Cutting Room, The Iridium Jazz Club, Madison Square Garden and others. In Myles’ relatively short musical career he has already been recognized by many music and entertainment professionals, this has allowed him the opportunity to perform with a number of well known artists. He’s appeared live as a special guest performer with Les Paul (Guitar Legend), Levon Helm (Legendary Drummer), Jimmy Vivino (Conan O’Brien Show), Kate Taylor (Sister of James Taylor) and many others. Visit his official website.
6. Sungha Jung
Seongha Jeong (정성하) (colloquially: Sungha Jung) (born September 2, 1996) is a South Korean prodigy guitarist who has risen to fame on YouTube and other sites, mainly through the South Korean audience. Seongha typically takes three days to learn and practice a new song, and video-record it for upload onto YouTube. His genre selection is rather broad, as he learns and plays many songs that are playable on guitar, therefore consequently spread across numerous genres. Seongha has won 13 awards on YouTube, including 6 “#1” awards. Also on YouTube, Seongha has 24 videos with over one million views. He also just released his first album. Visit his official website.
5. Lucciano Pizzichini
Lucciano Pizzichini was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on May 14, 2000. During the months of gestation, his father would place speakers near his wife’s belly every day so that the unborn child could listen to Paul McCartney, John Scofield, George Benson and of course the Beatles. By the tender age of 2, Lucchy was already playing short melodies on a small one-string guitar specially built for him by his father. A year later, Lucciano was already reading challenging classical pieces by Carcassi. At the age of 4, he began formally reading specific guitar methods. By 6, Lucchy had completed the first method of guitar from the Berklee School of Music, as well as other classical guitar books. Lucchy has just turned 8. He understands harmony and theory of music, harmonizes all musical scales, accords and ciphers. Visit his official Facebook page.
4. Quinn Sullivan
Quinn Sullivan is an 11 year-old from New Bedford, MA who plays the guitar like he’s 60. Sullivan began taking guitar lessons at age three. He has studied with Brian Cass of The Overclock Orchestra and the Toe Jam Puppet Band as well as Stan Belmarce. The first original song he wrote with Chris Waters was titled “Sing, Dance, Clap Your Hands”. Sullivan first gained national media attention at age six when he appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show. Sullivan gained more notoriety when Buddy Guy asked him to come on stage and play during a performance at the Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 2007 (video below). Quinn has since performed on stage with Guy as well as with B.B. King and has played in venues such as the Beacon Theatre in New York City, the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, and Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago. Visit his official website.
3. Yuto Miyazawa
Yuto Miyazawa (Japanese: 宮澤佑門 Miyazawa Yūto) was born on February 21, 2000, in Tokyo, Japan and currently lives there with his parents. Miyazawa has been named “The Youngest Professional Guitarist” by Guinness Book of World Records in August, 2008. Since his discovery, Miyazawa has had the opportunity to play with numerous music legends over the past year such as, G. E. Smith, Les Paul, Galactic, Deep Banana Blackout, Ozzy Osbourne and many more. He has appeared at Madison Square Garden, the famous B. B. Kings, Chris Noth and Steve Walter’s The Cutting Room, and Rodeo Bar in New York City. Yuto has also had the opportunity to perform at the Gathering of the Vibes festival this past summer. In May 2009, Miyazawa appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where he performed Crazy Train playing guitar and singing lead vocals. Visit his official website.
2. Tallan “T-Man” Latz
Tallan Latz was born on September 22, 1999 in Wisconsin. He received his first musical instrument, a drum kit, at the age of three and began playing acoustic guitar at age four. By the time he was five, a video of Joe Satriani had a major impact on the boy and he declared “That’s what I want to do.” At the age of eight, he has played on-stage with performers the likes of Jackson Browne and Les Paul. Latz’s musical influences include Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout, BB King, Buddy Guy, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Steve Miller, Eric Johnson, Led Zeppelin, Derek Trucks, Rush, Slash, Keith Urban, Craig Young, Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. In 2008, there was much controversy about the legality of Tallan’s performances, but he continues to rock on today. Visit his official MySpace page.
1. Andreas Varady
Born in Slovakia, into a Hungarian Gypsy family, Andreas Varady has been playing the guitar since the age of four. Although only twelve years old, he is already an accomplished and imaginative musician, inspired by his favourite guitarists George Benson, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass. Andreas plays completely by ear and is taught by his guitarist father, Bandi. He has lived in Ireland since 2008 and gained his first experiences from busking and attending Limerick’s weekly jazz workshop. Visit his official website.
Wow. Just wow.With Christian Ramirez still flying high at the front of the Minnesota United attack, the team has signed an impressive insurance policy, bringing in El Salvador international Rafael Burgos on loan for the remainder of the NASL season. Burgos, who was with Austrian side SV Reid, was loaned to Hungarian champions Gyor in 2013. The 26-year-old has made 31 appearances for El Salvador's national team, scoring ten times, and while El Salvador is a second-tier CONCACAF team, it's still a good pedigree for a second-division striker.
Perhaps more importantly, the signing is an indication that United is no longer counting on striker Pablo Campos to return in 2014. When Campos tore his ACL and MCL in preseason training, the team said he would return for the fall season - an impressive timetable, to say the least. Vikings running back Adrian Peterson took nine months to return from the same injury, and while Germany international Sami Khedira made his return from the dual ligament tear even more quickly - going from his injury last November to starring in the World Cup this summer - it always seemed unlikely that Campos could do the same.
The NASL season stretches into November this year, so it's always possible that Campos - with three more months ahead of him - could still come back. But with Burgos now in the fold, it would appear that Minnesota no longer expects that return anytime soon.
While Burgos should be a good weapon, it also seems unlikely that the Loons would break up the partnership between Ramirez and Miguel Ibarra, one that's produced three goals in three games this fall. It's more likely that United simply wanted another goal scorer on the roster that has a little more experience than Nate Polak, should the team need a second striker late in a game, or to spell Ramirez.
Burgos will arrive in the Twin Cities tomorrow, meaning that he's unlikely to be available as soon as Saturday's game at TCF Bank Stadium. The rest of the team is healthy, however, as United looks to continue a seven-match unbeaten streak.New Final Fantasy Smartphone Game By Chrono Trigger And Parasite Eve Director Teased
By Sato. October 28, 2016. 2:00am
Square Enix launched a teaser site for a new Final Fantasy smartphone game by Takashi Tokita, known for his work as director of Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve, and more. The website also features an illustration by Yoshitaka Amano as seen in the above image.
The title has yet to be revealed, but it’ll be announced in 5 days. WE can hear the Final Fantasy interlude track in the teaser website, along with a message by Takashi Tokita saying “Final Fantasy is about characters overflowing with personality, dramatic battles about anger and sorrow, and more than anything, fantasy, which we mustn’t forget.”
In addition to working as the director for Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve, Square Enix’s Business Division 9 head Takashi Tokita has worked as the lead designer for Final Fantasy IV, as well as director for Live A live and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light.Officially, Raptors small forward C.J. Miles became a dad last Thursday night shortly after 10 p.m.
Daughter Ava Reneé Miles arrived just as Miles’ Raptor teammates were putting the finishing touches on a Thanksgiving meal in Indianapolis.
Miles |
agent -- decides to return to Oakland, along with Suzuki.
"I think the fans in Japan are really looking forward to it. There's a lot of Major League Baseball fans over there, and with what happened in March with the earthquake, it's even more encouraging to be able to watch the games live in person," Matsui said through an interpreter. "Obviously I don't know if I'm going to be there."
After Wednesday night's season finale, Suzuki declined to go in depth about the games in Japan.
"We just heard about that today. It's hard to think about how to look forward to that because we just finished our season now and we have a lot of time till that day so you want to prepare," Suzuki said through his interpreter. "I'm not ready to say anything about Japan at this point."
Asked if the games would potentially lead the A's to make a stronger push to re-sign him, Matsui was realistic about the possible reaction in Japan.
"I think there's going to be a lot of fans who would look forward to that kind of matchup -- Ichiro vs. Matsui," he said.
This will be the fourth Japan opener, following the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs (2000), the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay (2004), and Boston and Oakland (2008).
MLB and the players' association said the series will be dedicated to assisting rebuilding in Japan following this year's earthquake.
The Mariners were first briefed about the trip a week ago. Seattle player representative Chris Gimenez said there were a few concerns raised, but for the most part everyone was supportive of the chance to visit Japan.
"I love it. Personally I think it's a great opportunity," Gimenez said. "I don't know how many other opportunities I'll have to go to Japan and for us to be doing it for a charitable cause is always another good thing."
The one oddity with the trip is that both teams will return to Arizona for more of spring training when they return on March 30. The Mariners and A's play on April 6 in Oakland in the previously scheduled season opener.
The two games in Japan will come out of Oakland's home schedule. The Mariners and A's will now have off days on April 8 and July 5.
"That'll be more travel than I've ever experienced in a short amount of time," Seattle second baseman Dustin Ackley said. "Definitely trying to get your rest after those plane flights and coming back will probably be harder with the spring training games and the season about to start. It'll be a challenge."
For Bob Melvin, it brings him full circle. He was the Mariners' manager back in 2003 and was disappointed when the trip was scrapped at the last minute.
"I want them to look forward and enjoy the experience. You don't often get to do something like that," Melvin said. "I hope some of what baseball, the way it's played in Japan, the attitude rubs off on our guys because I know that Japanese players take it very seriously and baseball fields are sacred ground there and respect the game very much and I'd like our guys to be a part of that and feel it first hand."Before Paul Krugman joined the New York Times op-ed page, it was a genteel place. The classic pattern was to promote distinguished reporters to cushy sinecures as columnists. Because they were trained as reporters, not polemicists, they tended to avoid the work of argumentation and simply tell readers what to think. Why believe him? Because he is a famous newspaperman. Maintaining the columnist’s dignity was the whole point. Accordingly, columnists were told not to debate each other, for roughly the same reason that parents refrain from arguing in front of the children. Krugman, by contrast, came from academia, where the arguments are fierce, and you either bring the data or you go home. As one of the most acclaimed economists of his generation, he arrived at his Times post in 1999 boasting stronger credentials to hold forth on his chosen topic than possibly any other op-ed columnist in history. But Krugman does not rely on his authority. He crafts arguments.
The most remarkable attribute Krugman has brought to the Times is rudeness. The social niceties that accompany his exalted position are utterly lost on him. He does not seek out the company of famous politicians and cannot be courted with flattery or access. He understands that you can’t arrive at truth without explaining why mistaken beliefs are wrong.
Krugman makes a mockery of the prohibition against arguing with his fellow columnists, larding his columns with rebuttals to unnamed subjects who happen to believe things that were advocated on the Times op-ed page earlier in the week. Thomas Friedman writes a column complaining, Does anyone know what President Obama’s preferred outcome is? Exactly which taxes does he want raised, and which spending does he want cut? And the next day, Krugman writes: Oh, and let me give a special shout-out to centrist’ pundits who won’t admit that President Obama has already given them what they want. The dialogue seems to go like this. Pundit: Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?’ Mr. Obama: I support a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes.’ Pundit: Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?’
Krugman’s favorite in-house target is David Brooks, a vessel for the respectable and generally mushy-headed conventional wisdom Krugman loathes. Last spring, Brooks wrote a column bemoaning the lack of civility in Washington, citing President Obama’s failure to invite arch-nemesis Paul Ryan for lunch. Krugman wrote mockingly in response, The president, we were told, was being too partisan; he needs to treat his opponents with respect; he should have lunch with them, and work out a consensus. The headline of Krugman’s columnLet’s Not Be Civilneatly summarized his ethos. He is the man who was invited into the club and refused to be clubby.U.N. Investigator Says Administration Refuses to Deliver a guest Dec 3rd, 2011 187 Never a guest187Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 3.46 KB Bradley Manning Support Network http://bradleymanning.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- December 3, 2011 Contact: Zack Pesavento press (at) bradleymanning.org U.N. Investigator Says Administration Refuses to Deliver "Day of Reckoning" on Torture of Bradley Manning Juan Mendez: "Justice, even if it comes late, will come" Speaking today at an online book discussion, Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, admonished the Obama administration for its lack of a response to requests for a meeting with Bradley Manning. Responding to questions posed from bloggers and readers at an online forum hosted by FireDogLake, Mr. Mendez emphasized that "issues of accountability do not go away" -- despite the fact that the administration has stopped exchanging information with him. The full text of the discussion is available at FireDogLake: http://fdlbooksalon.com/2011/12/03/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-juan-e-mendez-and-marjory-wentworth/ As part of a discussion on Mendez's new book on the issue of torture, the following selected remarks pertain directly to PFC Manning: Jason Leopold: "Juan has spoken about this previously, and its one issue that is a matter of controversy here, and that is the treatment of Bradley Manning. Do you believe his treatment rose to the level of abuse? Additionally, Juan, have you had any further communication with US government officials about Mr. Manning?" Juan Mendez: "I engaged the US Govt as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture because of the allegation that he was being held in solitary confinement. I have to say that I had frank conversation with the Dept of Defense about the conditions of his incarceration. I was allowed to see him but with no guarantees of confidentiality, terms that I could not accept. I offered to see Manning nonetheless, through his lawyer, if he wanted to see me, but he prefered not to waive his right to a truly private conversation. In the meantime, when he was moved from Quantico to Fort Leavenworth, his conditions changed and since last April he is no longer in solitary confinement. I am still insiting [sic] on seeing him. In a few weeks I will release my views on the case, since the exchange of information with the USG is essentially over." Jane Hamsher: "...what do you feel about Bradley Manning’s situation? And what does it say about the system that won’t let you see him?" Mr. Mendez: "None of us can really hold our breath while we wait for the USG to live up to its obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish every act of torture committed by its agents. The lack of delivery on the promise to have a day of reckoning is truly disappointing. But again, experience shows that issues of accountability do not go away. Of course, it is preferable to have accountability in real time. But justice, even if it comes late, will come and be welcome." The comments by the United Nations' chief torture investigator follow a release of additional information from PFC Manning's lead counsel, David Coombs, about the witnesses the defense team plans to call. He posted a partially redacted witness list on his blog: http://www.armycourtmartialdefense.info/2011/12/defense-witness-list.html In recent days, Manning's defense team has emphasized that prosecution officials have withheld evidence that would support his case. These materials include assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House that the leaked documents never posed a threat to national security.
RAW Paste Data
Bradley Manning Support Network http://bradleymanning.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- December 3, 2011 Contact: Zack Pesavento press (at) bradleymanning.org U.N. Investigator Says Administration Refuses to Deliver "Day of Reckoning" on Torture of Bradley Manning Juan Mendez: "Justice, even if it comes late, will come" Speaking today at an online book discussion, Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, admonished the Obama administration for its lack of a response to requests for a meeting with Bradley Manning. Responding to questions posed from bloggers and readers at an online forum hosted by FireDogLake, Mr. Mendez emphasized that "issues of accountability do not go away" -- despite the fact that the administration has stopped exchanging information with him. The full text of the discussion is available at FireDogLake: http://fdlbooksalon.com/2011/12/03/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-juan-e-mendez-and-marjory-wentworth/ As part of a discussion on Mendez's new book on the issue of torture, the following selected remarks pertain directly to PFC Manning: Jason Leopold: "Juan has spoken about this previously, and its one issue that is a matter of controversy here, and that is the treatment of Bradley Manning. Do you believe his treatment rose to the level of abuse? Additionally, Juan, have you had any further communication with US government officials about Mr. Manning?" Juan Mendez: "I engaged the US Govt as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture because of the allegation that he was being held in solitary confinement. I have to say that I had frank conversation with the Dept of Defense about the conditions of his incarceration. I was allowed to see him but with no guarantees of confidentiality, terms that I could not accept. I offered to see Manning nonetheless, through his lawyer, if he wanted to see me, but he prefered not to waive his right to a truly private conversation. In the meantime, when he was moved from Quantico to Fort Leavenworth, his conditions changed and since last April he is no longer in solitary confinement. I am still insiting [sic] on seeing him. In a few weeks I will release my views on the case, since the exchange of information with the USG is essentially over." Jane Hamsher: "...what do you feel about Bradley Manning’s situation? And what does it say about the system that won’t let you see him?" Mr. Mendez: "None of us can really hold our breath while we wait for the USG to live up to its obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish every act of torture committed by its agents. The lack of delivery on the promise to have a day of reckoning is truly disappointing. But again, experience shows that issues of accountability do not go away. Of course, it is preferable to have accountability in real time. But justice, even if it comes late, will come and be welcome." The comments by the United Nations' chief torture investigator follow a release of additional information from PFC Manning's lead counsel, David Coombs, about the witnesses the defense team plans to call. He posted a partially redacted witness list on his blog: http://www.armycourtmartialdefense.info/2011/12/defense-witness-list.html In recent days, Manning's defense team has emphasized that prosecution officials have withheld evidence that would support his case. These materials include assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House that the leaked documents never posed a threat to national security.Christopher Hitchens has begun canceling in-person events, from Raleigh to San Jose to Los Angeles to Seattle to Portland, regularly citing 'personal reasons.' | Photo by AP Photo Close
As soon as Christopher Hitchens' memoir, "Hitch-22," hit bookstores, the Vanity Fair writer was just about everywhere promoting it: "The Daily Show," "Real Time," C-SPAN, "Hardball," the BBC and so on.
Over the past few weeks, however, Hitchens has begun canceling in-person events, from Raleigh to San Jose to Los Angeles to Seattle to Portland, regularly citing "personal reasons."
A spokesman for Twelve books, which published "Hitch-22," tells POLITICO that, "Unfortunately travel is impossible right now for personal reasons, but obviously Christopher is eager to get back on the circuit and will be doing so soon."
A poster on the website Reddit.com wrote that Hitchens was spotted leaving a plane on a stretcher. I've written Twelve Books regarding that rumor and will update this post when I hear back.It has been a long held belief that tumors arising from exposure to asbestos are caused by mutations in one cell, which then produces multiple clones. This hypothesis is challenged by new research published in the open access Journal of Translational Medicine, which suggests it is caused by mutations in multiple cells.
Malignant mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that affects the mesothelium -- the protective lining that covers the internal organs, such as the lungs, the heart and the abdominal cavity. It is estimated that malignant mesothelioma affects up to 3,200 people in the USA each year, most of whom die within a year of diagnosis. The primary cause of this cancer is exposure to asbestos, which used to be used in building construction. The inhalation of asbestos fibers causes inflammation that can cause mutations in cells even after 30-50 years of dormancy.
Most cancers are thought to be monoclonal, where all the cells in a tumor can be traced back to a mutation in a single cell. Researchers from University of Hawaii Cancer Center set out to investigate whether this was the case with malignant mesothelioma, or if it was polyclonal in which the tumor is the result of the growth of two or more mutant distinct cells.
During early development of the female embryo one of the two X chromosomes becomes inactivated and this inactivation is passed on to all subsequent cells. By tracing this inactivated X using a process called HUMARA assay it is possible to determine whether or not a cancer is monoclonal.
In this study, 16 samples from 14 tumor biopsies from women with mesothelioma had a HUMARA assay performed on them. These were compared to control DNA samples from a healthy male and female, and a known monoclonal cell line. The samples provided insight into the origin of the tumors and they were found to be polyclonal.
Lead researcher, Michele Carbone from University of Hawaii, says: "Our study indicates that malignant mesothelioma is the result of polyclonal tumors, a finding that has implications for our understanding of the disease and the clinic. For example, patients that have their tumors removed at the early stages of this type of cancer will most often go on to have a recurrence in spite of the appearance of the eradication of malignant mesothelioma. This new insight helps us understand why that may be."
These findings have implications for future research, especially with the advent of genomic medicine in the treatment of tumors. These results suggest that future approaches should target polyclonal cancerous cells with different types of mutations rather than a single monoclonal cell.
Michele Carbone says: "Our findings underscore the need to attack simultaneously several different molecular targets to try to eliminate the different malignant mesothelioma cell clones, as each clone may carry its own distinct set of molecular alterations."Wrigley Field has turned into Chicago's newest hot spot for big-time concerts, and it also hosted the NHL's Winter Classic, so what's next for the legendary stadium? According to Illinois football coach Ron Zook, it could be an Illinois-Northwestern matchup.
Zook, appearing on the "Waddle and Silvy" show on ESPN 1000 on Monday morning, said he would love the chance for the two Big Ten rivals to square off in the "Friendly Confines."
"Well, to be honest with you, we were there last night and walking around with the people there and I just think it would be an awesome venue," Zook said. "Obviously, until just a couple years ago, there had been more NFL games played in that stadium than any other stadium, and there hasn't been a game played there since 1970.
"And can you imagine the national media? I think it would be great to have that opportunity. I'm probably speaking out of turn, the higher-ups make the decisions, obviously."
According to recent reports, Northwestern has been trying to schedule a game at Wrigley Field, but such issues as potential opponent, finances and field dimensions could derail the plan. The Illinois-Northwestern game would take place in 2010.
"There is enough room [to accommodate safety concerns]," Zook said. "One of the end zones is going to be very, very tight. But I think they're excited about the opportunity, and I think it would be great for the city of Chicago, I think it would be great for Northwestern and great for the University of Illinois."
The Chicago Bears played at Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970 before moving to Soldier Field.
"As you can tell, I would be very, very excited about having that opportunity," Zook said. "And once again, it's such a great atmosphere, and gosh, I know the hockey match with the attention that it drew, and I think it would be a great thing for all of us."South Side bar owners try to keep the peace
Weary of complaints about their patrons, Adam DeSimone said he and other South Side bar owners are "taking matters into our own hands" by pooling money for extra cleanup crews and police patrols starting this fall.
But the owners' new group, South Side Responsible Hospitality Partnership, aims to do far more than that.
Mr. DeSimone, owner of Diesel Club Lounge at 1601 E. Carson St., said it will provide annual training for the clubs' employees, sponsor community service projects and give bars a voice in matters affecting the entertainment district.
So far, he said, 11 establishments along East Carson from 14th to 19th streets have pledged a total of about $60,000 for weekend cleanup crews, to be hired from the private sector, and city police patrols.
Mr. DeSimone announced the effort amid a continuing stream of complaints about young revelers who litter, yell and urinate on private property during late-night or early-morning outings. A nasty exchange of Internet posts between party-goers and residents last week deteriorated into threats of violence, although there were no disturbances last weekend.
"There are problems," Mr. DeSimone acknowledged. "I think there are fewer problems than what has been reported."
The group-financed cleanups and police patrols would cover not only East Carson but the side streets where homeowners have reported disturbances.
Mr. DeSimone said group members already hire about 15 officers for security details at their establishments on Friday and Saturday nights. He said the neighborhood patrols, involving two to four officers per night, would be in addition to the security details.
While Mr. DeSimone hopes to bridge the divide between bar owners and residents, he also sees the group's work as a way to arrest bad publicity and protect his investment.
"If the neighborhood isn't safe, no one's going to come," he said.
With an occupancy limit of about 600, Diesel is the one of the South Side's bigger establishments. Mr. DeSimone also is seeking state Liquor Control Board approval to operate Local Bar and Kitchen, a new entertainment venue with a proposed occupancy limit of 175, adjacent to Diesel.
Mr. DeSimone said the other establishments committed to the initiative so far are Carson City Saloon, Mario's South Side Saloon, Nakama Japanese Steak House, Jimmy D's, Finn McCool's Irish Pub, Elixir Ultra Lounge, S Bar, The Rex Theatre, Folino's/Tom's Diner and Villa Southside.
He estimated a pair of four-officer patrols each week would cost about $1,200. He said the commitment of $60,000 would be supplemented with additional donations from group members and with contributions he's seeking from alcohol manufacturers and distributors.
Monthly service projects would be another effort to foster better relations with residents.
Mr. DeSimone said club employees could paint, plant flowers or work with the Brashear Association, a community group, on other projects. He said he would consider asking District Judge Eugene Riccardi to order anyone convicted of alcohol-related crimes on the South Side to participate in service projects.
The group also will host Responsible Alcohol Management Program classes in a bid to interest more South Side bars in the program.
The Liquor Control Board program -- voluntary except for troubled establishments -- teaches bar employees and managers how to shut off inebriated patrons, recognize fake IDs and address other behavior problems. Only about 2,500 of the state's 17,000 alcohol licensees are certified through the program, although some establishments offer a certain amount of employee training without completing the certification process, Leslie Coombe, director of the LCB Bureau of Alcohol Education, said.
The bars' initiative drew support from Nancy Eshelman, president of South Side Chamber of Commerce, and Rick Belloli, executive director of South Side Local Development Co.
"I think what they're talking about doing today is exactly what the South Side needs for the long run," Mr. Belloli said.
The South Side Local Development Co. employs a cleanup crew that covers East Carson seven days a week. Mr. Belloli said the bar owners' cleanup campaign might be incorporated into the existing effort.
Jim Peters, president of the Responsible Hospitality Institute, a California-based nonprofit group, said establishments in a growing number of cities are forming "nightlife associations" to help address problems and set policy in entertainment districts.
"I think it's noble that the bars are coming together to hire the police, but some cities look at bars paying the police as a potential conflict," Mr. Peters said.
It might be better, he said, for the bars to make contributions to a third party, such as a business group, which would hire the officers.
City Councilman Bruce Kraus, who represents the South Side, echoed Mr. Peters' comments but said he's pleased with the bar owners' willingness to help.
Mr. Peters and Mr. Kraus said additional police officers alone wouldn't be enough to cure the South Side's ills. With input from the institute, Mr. Kraus last year released a comprehensive management plan that called for dozens of improvements, ranging from creation of a business improvement district to a code of conduct for student visitors.
Mr. DeSimone said he would like his group to help market the South Side, perhaps through a quarterly publication distributed citywide, and he wants the bar owners to have a voice in addressing neighborhood problems, such as the lack of nighttime parking.
He proposed making the hospitality partnership part of the South Side Planning Forum, now composed of representatives of six community groups, including the chamber and South Side Local Development.
While Mr. DeSimone said he wants to be a good neighbor, he doesn't accept all of the blame placed on bars and their patrons.
For example, he said it's unclear how much trouble is caused by bar patrons and how much is caused by students attending weekend house parties on the South Side.
And he said he'll oppose harsh occupancy restrictions or other efforts to stifle bar owners' business rights.
"You're talking to a capitalist," he said.
First published on August 1, 2010 at 12:00 amBy Andrea Germanos, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – –
Group including Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire aimed ‘to highlight the vital role women play not only in the resistance movement, but in the survival of the Palestinian people as a whole’.
The Israeli navy on Wednesday stopped a boat carrying international female activists, preventing them from breaking the blockade of Gaza.
Among the 13 people on board the Women’s Boat to Gaza, a mission of the international Freedom Flotilla Coalition, were Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire of Ireland, retired U.S. army colonel Ann Wright, New Zealand politician Marama Davidson, and Malaysian doctor Fauziah Hasan.
“In accordance with government directives and after exhausting all diplomatic channels, the Israeli navy redirected the vessel in order to prevent breach of the lawful maritime blockade,” the military said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse.
“The visit and search of the vessel was uneventful,” it stated.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition posted on its Facebook page that the boat was “attacked by Israeli Occupation Forces in International Waters.” The U.N. Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone states that territorial waters can extend out to 12 nautical miles.
The Women’s Boat to Gaza tweeted on Wednesday: “Pls contact your Govt to demand their release and an end to the illegal blockade!” The tweet links to another page that encourages supporters to contact the Israeli military and international officials including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to “Demand that the women and the boat be freed!”
In contrast to Israel’s depiction of blockade, U.N. officials have denounced it as illegal.
The female flotilla posted an update earlier on Wednesday that the boat was roughly 100 nautical miles away from Gaza, and that it planned on arriving within 24 hours. The Israeli military reportedly boarded the boat when it was roughly 35 nautical miles from the coast.
The female initiative was undertaken, the organizers’ website states, “because we believe that it is essential to highlight the vital role women play not only in the resistance movement, but in the survival of the Palestinian people as a whole. We intend to raise awareness about the ongoing struggle that women in Gaza, in the West Bank, inside the Green Line, and in the diaspora, have waged and continue to wage against the Occupation.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Via Commondreams.orgWhat happens when people in positions of power make bold statements?
Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ was the first encyclical written entirely about the environment and it is also the first to identify global climate change in such a high manner from the church’s highest leader.
Laudato Si’ is shaping the current and future conversation about ecology nationally all around the world, but most importantly it is bringing forth action. It is calling for a shift in mindsets, morals, attitudes, and values.
Catholic organizations such as St. Michael’s Parish in Poway, California is starting to notice change in the conversations of their parish attendees. ““People are buying into this,” Father Dolan said, explaining how topics on the environment and sustainability come up in parish conversations, even during coffee-and-doughnut gatherings after Sunday Mass. “We have to think on a global level. This is no longer just a regional thing. We have to reach into this call to stewardship.”“
All parishes in San Diego installed solar power due to a “push” by Pope Francis. According to CatholicPhilly, the diocese reported that out of 98 parishes and 89 schools, more than 50% of them had agreed to install solar panel systems.
The Archdiocese of Atlanta has adopted a wide-ranging action plan that included stopping the use of plastic foam cups and bowls, teaching their attendants about the encyclical, organizing retreats based on ideas of sustainability, providing workshops for the development of a parish garden and helping people become aware that their buying habits matter.
Catholic organizations all around the world are making Pope Francis’s vision a reality.
“A Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate poll conducted in May 16-26 found that Catholic adults are more likely to be concerned about climate change than other Christians. The poll discovered that 68 percent of Catholics felt they have a moral responsibility to act to mitigate climate change. In contrast, 65 percent of other Christians and 59 percent of evangelicals held a similar view.” Perhaps Laudato Si’ has provided people with the willingness to interact with a solution to global climate change.
Pope Francis is calling for an interreligious dialogue to share stewardship for our common home.
The church’s highest leader places a emphasis on stewardship for the environment and Catholics listen more carefully. Pope Francis’s encyclical alone might not have a huge impact, but if it is followed up by people of all faiths then the world will experience a global response and coming to action.
Pope Francis’s calling of the earth “Our Common Home” was not accepted with open arms from all religious communities. How much does his encyclical push the opposition? This is what I will be exploring in my next post.
Ashley
P.S. I am interested in the reason as to why people recycle, if they do why? And if they don’t recycle, why don’t they? I have created a quick survey that will only take a few minutes of your time to answer this very question.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3GTHQJY
AdvertisementsHey there, time traveller!
This article was published 5/12/2014 (1544 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
What began as a hit multimedia series in the Free Press topped the local bestseller list Thursday night, even before its formal launch.
Local architects, journalists and Mayor Brian Bowman gathered at McNally Robinson Booksellers Thursday evening for the unveiling of City Beautiful, the exploration of Winnipeg's largely hidden architectural history, development and recent renaissance.
Reporter Randy Turner, who penned the original three-part series this fall, said Winnipeg's history of beautiful buildings, its grandiose beginnings at the turn of the century and the lean decades that followed, are a testament to the strength of local architects.
"Just the fact that we're still here is a testament to that resilience," said Turner. "The renaissance of today is based on the fact that they went through such hard times. They had to be innovative, they had to be creative, because they had to compete with less."A Russian woman died of a heart attack at her own funeral, after waking up to find praying mourners filing past her coffin.
According to the Daily Mail, Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, had been declared dead after suffering chest pains and collapsing at home in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan.
Doctors had failed to spot she was actually very much alive, and Mrs Mukhametzyanov unsuprisingly began screaming when she regained consciousness to find she was being prematurely dispatched to the hereafter.
Her husband, 51-year-old Fagili Mukhametzyanov, said: "Her eyes fluttered and we immediately rushed her back to the hospital but she only lived for another 12 minutes in intensive care before she died again, this time for good."
He added: "I am very angry and want answers. She wasn’t dead when they said she was and they could have saved her."
Hospital spokesman Minsalih Sahapov assured an investigation into the matter was under way. ®The company that wants to deliver journalism from a decade of digital bloodletting is perched like a physical metaphor in an office six stories above the Strand—a century-old monument to paper.
Housed in the airy, light-filled remnants of a yoga studio, Chartbeat, a Web analytics company, bears the usual startup trappings. There are free snacks, a fridge full of beer, and offices named after superhero lairs: The Hall of Justice, The Bat Cave. Such grandiosity is usually a sign of a company angling for a foothold, but in this case the ego is earned. In the six years since its creation, Chartbeat has become the arbiter of audience in the digital age. Roughly 80 percent of the top 100 publishers, as measured by traffic, use Chartbeat to track their online readership—places like Al Jazeera, The New York Times, Forbes, Gawker and Gannett. Yet the company’s mission has expanded exponentially beyond tracking Web traffic. Instead of simply monitoring journalism, Chartbeat wants to save it.
Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile says he conveys the company’s “singular purpose” to every employee who goes through orientation: “Twenty years from now, the journalist that wants to investigate the corrupt politician actually has the means to do so. As in: There is enough money to invest in that person to do that job.”
Chartbeat at first seems an unlikely candidate to keep quality journalism profitable, since its product helped spur the era of quick hits and clickbait. Launched in 2009, it was the first Web analytics service to show a website’s audience in real time, allowing an editor to see how many people are reading a story, right this minute. A separate display organizes the most popular pages by size in a colorful mosaic that re-arranges itself as readership grows or drops. Using Chartbeat, an editor can see with a glance which stories are popular and which are not, a service that’s proven lucrative for the company. Though launched during a time when most analytics services were free, Chartbeat has cultivated over 50,000 subscribers who pay monthly rates ranging from $9.95 to tens of thousands, depending on traffic.
A story mosaic automatically re-arranges itself to show which stories are most popular at that moment.
It has also birthed a new age, in which journalists and editors can react rapidly to their audiences. During a 2012 interview with NBC, Gawker founder Nick Denton showed off the giant wall-mounted monitor that prominently displayed Chartbeat’s ranking of popular stories to his staff. “This is the most terrifying thing we have to show you, for traditional journalists,” he boasted. “It’s as if every single day, every single week is sweeps and the numbers tell the whole story.” This “big board,” now standard décor for many digital publications, translated the value of a piece of journalism into a simple round figure—the number of people who’d clicked on it.
The problem, of course, is that there are all kinds of ways to garner a click that have nothing to do with quality: slideshows, provocative headlines, uber-short pieces on timely topics. Some sites, like Gawker, directly incentivized the chase for clicks by paying writers based on traffic. But the onset of real-time data has increased the myriad pressures facing journalists, regardless of salary scheme. If a reporter’s efficacy hinges on her ability to deliver readers what they want when they want it, then Chartbeat seemed to provide a tantalizing way of assessing demand.
Sign up for CJR's daily email
But catering to clicks hasn’t encouraged editors to worry about the larger, more noble tasks that drove many to journalism in the first place, and that make it a valuable tool for the common good. “Chartbeat’s machines don’t track abstract notions like truth or accuracy,” read a cutting Gothamist post skewering the service for encouraging sensationalism by design. Lou Ferrara, the vice president and managing editor of the Associated Press, told me that he worries deeply about the effects analytics have on his reporters’ instincts. “Imagine if Woodward and Bernstein had access to this kind of data and they said, ‘I’m sorry, this break-in is not really trending.’”
If tools like Chartbeat have quickened journalism’s slow dive, Haile believes that’s due to a misuse of his product, catalyzed by the economics of the Web. There is a single villain: the click. The click is a poor measure of audience, applying the same value to an attentive reader and a drive-by visitor. They’re also easy to fake. At one point, corrupt marketers hired armies of humans to increase impressions with their mouse, but now the process has been outsourced to robots. These “fraudulent bots” are responsible for about 36 percent of online traffic, according to data cited by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Yet, since the advent of digital advertising, CPMs, a measure of cost per thousand impressions, has been the industry standard for selling digital advertising, which sets the measure of Web traffic. Which means that, like it or not, analytics companies like Chartbeat have to measure impressions.
Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile says he conveys the company’s “singular purpose” to every employee who goes through orientation: “Twenty years from now, the journalist that wants to investigate the corrupt politician actually has the means to do so.”(Photo courtesy of Chartbeat)
That’s what Chartbeat is out to change. Over the last year, Haile has increased his public stature to become one of the most visible proponents of a metric that he believes can realign advertising dollars to the content most worthy of them: attention. “Time is finite for each of us,” says Haile, which makes it a scarce and therefore valuable unit for advertisers. He and his colleagues at Chartbeat have been pushing the media establishment to adopt attention, or the amount of time spent on a landing page, as the universal measurement of Web traffic.
This switch, Haile believes, will increase the value of the kind of content people are actually reading–the kind of content that has taken a beating in recent years. “We’re in crisis because we chose the wrong metrics,” says Haile. “And that has kind of screwed everything.”
Haile, 37, is tall, soft-spoken, and an avid thinker. He chronicles his yearly book consumption in an oft-updated personal blog. In 2014, Haile read 54 volumes |
he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."
The first independent confirmation of Libi's whereabouts came two weeks ago. Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said she and a colleague met him briefly in a courtyard at the Abu Salim prison on April 27. The two were there to examine the treatment of prisoners in Libya, including other detainees once held by the United States.
Libi angrily rejected speaking to the researchers, saying, "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" according to Morayef, who described the encounter in a phone interview.
The Libyan newspaper Oed reported Sunday that Libi was found dead in his cell after killing himself, but added that friends of the 46-year-old former preacher, who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, questioned the alleged cause of death.
The Libyan government has not confirmed the death, and the Libyan Embassy in Washington said it had no information. The CIA also declined to comment.
Human Rights Watch called for an independent investigation of the death.
Libi was among dozens of former "ghost prisoners" who were in American custody overseas but whose disposition has never been officially released, according to human rights groups and a recently leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Most of these former detainees are believed to have been returned to their home countries, including to states such as Syria.
The Obama administration recently announced that it was decommissioning the CIA's global network of secret prisons, which have been mothballed since 2006, but human rights activists say the U.S. government should still provide the ICRC with an accounting of where it sent every prisoner it once held.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.The Canadian Press
HALIFAX -- No charges are expected against a woman who scaled a barbed-wire fence surrounding Halifax's airport and ran onto the tarmac Sunday in an attempt to prevent a plane from taking off, RCMP in Nova Scotia said.
The 37-year-old woman reportedly believed her partner was onboard an aircraft and was trying to stop its departure, said RCMP Sgt. Al LeBlanc.
"It's very unusual. I've never seen such an incident in my many years of policing," said LeBlanc in an interview. "Thankfully this lady was apprehended very quickly."
Officers discovered through their investigation that the woman's partner was not on any plane, Leblanc added.
Peter Spurway, a spokesman for the Halifax Stanfield International Airport, said control tower officials spotted the woman almost immediately after she jumped the three-metre fence and made it onto the airfield, around 8:30 a.m on Sunday.
She was on the tarmac for a few minutes, he said.
"I've been there eight years and this is a first for me," said Spurway, describing the incident as rare. "It is not an easy thing to scale that fence."
She may have sustained some minor injuries on the barbed wire, he added.
While the woman did not come into contact with any aircraft, air traffic controllers did reroute a small plane taxiing nearby as a safety precaution.
The woman was detained by an airport employee before RCMP officers arrived on the scene.
Spurway said the incident had virtually no effect on airport operations.
Besides a three-metre, barbed-wire fence, the airport's perimeter is protected by video cameras, infrared sensors and motion detectors.
However, the situation did give airport officials cause for reflection.
"We'll take a look at this incident and see if there's anything we need to adjust to maintain the security of the airfield," said Spurway.
LeBlanc said the woman was taken to hospital for a medical assessment.It’s been a battle of wills at the Florida State Capitol this week -- the last of the legislative session -- as House Democrats staged a parliamentarian protest against the Republican leadership that's refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
As bills were brought to the floor Tuesday and Wednesday, Democratic Minority Leader Perry Thurston pushed for each piece of legislation to be read in full. It was a blatant attempt to draw out the final few days of the session, Thurston acknowledged after Tuesday’s hearing. On Wednesday, Thurston and Rep. Jim Waldman, a Democrat, sometimes read from the state constitution to take up the full three minutes allowed for debate on every bill. In debates on issues ranging from the state’s water supply to its organ donor registry, Democratic lawmakers took every opportunity to plead for action on Medicaid.
Asked by reporters about the possibility that the stall tactic could prevent Democratic bills from being passed before the session ends, Thurston said that was a price his caucus was willing to pay.
“We could extend medical coverage to 1.2 million people. We could save 5,700 lives per year,” he said. “So the loss of legislation or perks for some of our friends, we compare that with the saving of lives. It’s a no-brainer. It’s a non-decision.”
Florida Democrats see this as their only option to force a debate on Medicaid expansion. Though the state Senate has passed and Gov. Rick Scott has endorsed a plan to use federal Medicaid dollars to pay for people to get private coverage through the upcoming online insurance marketplace created by the ACA (as Arkansas has done), House Republicans have refused to do the same. Instead, they passed Wednesday a much more limited plan that would use only state dollars and cover far fewer people.
Republicans had a trick of their own up their sleeves, too. To speed up the reading of each bill, House Speaker Will Weatherford brought an electronic auto-reader nicknamed "Mother Mary" to go through every piece of legislation faster than humanly possible -- though it still took more than 20 minutes for some of the longer bills to be read.
More than 1 million people could be covered by the privatized Medicaid expansion approved by the Senate, and as much as $50 billion in federal money could come into the state over the next decade, a legislative analysis has found. But the House GOP leadership has steadfastly insisted that the state cannot depend on the federal dollars to be there in the future. Their plan would rely on about $300 million in state dollars and cover up to 130,000 residents.
At least one House Republican -- Rep. Mike Fasano, who introduced the Senate’s Medicaid expansion plan in the House last week that was voted down -- is on the Democrats' side.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not the first time this has happened,” Fasano told Governing in an interview. It was the fourth time he could recall the minority party using this particular parliamentarian trick in his 19 years as a legislator. “The minority party has to do what they have to do in order to get the attention of the majority party, in order to do what they think is good policy.”
Despite the demonstration, Weatherford showed no sign that House Republicans would relent on their opposition to the Medicaid expansion. Instead, he dismissed their protest as a futile effort to avoid the inevitable.
“It’s a little disappointing and frankly unbecoming of some members who want to try to slow down the process,” Weatherford said after Tuesday’s session. “The citizens of Florida sent us here to get work done … so we’re focused on that. They can’t stop the process, but they can slow it down. We’re okay with taking our time. We’re in no rush.”Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
It was the day after Liverpool’s Europa League victory in Kazan last month, as the squad and staff recovered after a gruelling 4,000 mile plus round trip to Russia which had delivered a 1-0 Europa League victory.
Jurgen Klopp’s scheduled meeting at Melwood though was all about matters off the pitch, rather than on it.
He sat down to chat with Andrea Cooper, head of the LFC Foundation, which delivers the club’s community programmes both across Merseyside and indeed around the world.
Ms Cooper explained the challenges in Liverpool in health and other areas which the Foundation’s work seeks to help and found a willing ally in the Reds’ new manager.
And he not only promised to get involved himself but brought her in front of the whole Liverpool squad as he stressed the importance of the players’ responsibilities to the whole city.
Ms Cooper told the ECHO: “I spoke with Jurgen about the work we do as the LFC Foundation and he said he would do all he could to help us which was fantastic to hear.
“But then he also gathered all the players together to hear about our work and spoke to them himself first.
“He told them that their first responsibility as Liverpool players would always be to win games and win trophies. But he told them that after that they also had a responsibility to the community and city as a whole.
“We were hoping that maybe half the players might get involved in our LFC Foundation day but the whole squad ended up wanting to be involved which is just great.”
It has resulted in an incredible selection of “money can’t buy” auction experiences involving the Liverpool players and their manager which bids are now being submitted for.
Klopp was as good as his word and a special raffle is being held (tickets £5) to win the chance for an “ultimate match day experience and dinner” with the manager for up to six people at either your own home or at the London Carriage Works restaurant.
Yiou can bid to have a traditional Brazilian meal with Reds trio Lucas, Coutinho and Firmino or dine with Emre Can and Dejan Lovren at Liverpool’s highest restaurant, Panoramic 34.
James Milner is offering to play a round of golf with two fans, while Lucas Leiva and Martin Skrtel will come and give training tips to your team or you cna watch Home Alone at Liverpool Philharmonic with Nathaniel Clyne, Jordon Ibe and Joe Gomez.
Fans can bid to watch a match in Jordan Henderson and Adam Lallana’s private box, or play table tennis with Alberto Moreno and Joao Teixeira.
There are loads more special events to bid for and all the money raised will go to support the work of the Foundation which has its own day at Anfield for the West Brom game on December 13, which is also when the auction ends.
All the money raised will support the Foundation’s community programmes, including its men’s health programme, military veterans programme, and football development programmes such as Respect 4 All, which provides sporting activity for young people and adults with severe physical and neurological impairments.
Klopp was typically effusive after his team’s 6-1 Capital One Cup demolition of Southampton on Wednesday night.
“We have no magic ideas or anything like this, we are hard workers that’s all. We know a bit about football and we’re working for a fantastic football club, we all love this club because you cannot be in Liverpool because of the weather, it must be the club”.
The club, yes, but also the city it seems.
Read more on the charity auction hereHere’s a statistic that ought to concern Millennials and those who care about their financial well-being, including their Baby Boomer parents. At the end of 2013, 65% of 20-somethings had more than 80% of their 401(k)s invested in stocks, up from the 48% who were so stock heavy at the end of 2007. That number comes from a report released this week by the Investment Company Institute and Employee Benefit Research Institute, which jointly maintain a database covering 26.4 million workers’ 401(k)s.
So what’s the problem? Maybe smart young investors saw the last stock market crash coming, but are bullish on equities now? Nope. According to the same report, at the end of last year 70% of 20-somethings owned no stock funds directly in their 401(k)s. Indeed, a raft of recent surveys, such as this one from UBS AG, show the Great Recession scared generation born after 1980 is actually more risk averse and leerier of stocks than their elders.
Instead, the big shift to high stock concentration in Millennials’ 401(k)s has come because the Pension Protection Act of 2006, as interpreted by the Department of Labor, encourages employers to automatically enroll new employees in 401(k)s and put their money in “target date” funds as the default option---the place where a worker’s money goes unless he actively chooses something else. Target dates hold a mix of stock and bond funds with that mix dependent, as the name suggests, on a worker’s target date for retirement. As they’re currently constructed, target dates put 80% to 100% of younger workers’ money in stocks, then, at some point begin a “glide path” that reduces the stock allocation to anywhere from 25% to 78%, for those expecting to retire next year, fund tracker Morningstar Inc. reports in its most recent target date survey.
That high stock start is based on the notion that with decades to go until retirement, young folks can ride out the dramatic ups and downs of the stock market in return for a higher long term payoff.
It sounds great in theory. But it ignores the way people actually behave and is setting Millennials up for an expensive shock when stocks do fall, some savvy investment advisors say. One of the naysayers is finance geek Rob Arnott, founder and CEO of Research Affiliates, which manages or advises on $177 billion in assets and is a leader in designing a new generation of “fundamental” index funds. While Arnott likes the notion of managed asset allocation, his analysis shows the common design of today’s target date funds would historically have produced worse results than simply holding one balanced fund which is 50% stocks and 50% bonds for your entire career.
But Arnott’s more urgent point relates to young workers, who he argues are lured by employer matches and lulled by automatic enrollment into having money deducted from their paychecks for their 401(k)s. Between those deductions and paying off student loans, many don’t have enough left to build up other emergency funds, he says, and end up treating their retirement savings as an emergency kitty. That gives them, if anything, a shorter investing time horizon, than mid-career employees. In a recent research brief titled What Are We Doing to Our Young Investors? he pointed to a recent Fidelity Investments analysis showing that 44% of workers in their 20s and 38% of those in their 30s cash out their 401(k)s when they lose or leave their jobs, rather than leaving it in the plan or rolling it to an IRA, even though this means paying not only normal income taxes on any pre-tax money in the 401(k), but also a 10% “early distribution” penalty. (Eleven ways to tap retirement funds early without paying that penalty are detailed here.)
“We might lecture them and wag a finger and say you shouldn’t do this, but they will,’’ Arnott said of these early withdrawals. “If you’re given a chance to set money aside tax deferred with the prospect for a company match, gosh, why wouldn’t you? And then two years into the process you get laid off in a recession and bear market and your asset values are down 25% and the vesting (of your employer’s contributions) hasn’t even kicked in.” When target date strategies were designed he adds, “this sort of consequence wasn’t considered and shame on us as an industry for not thinking of this unintended consequence.”
Arnott makes another sensible point, which Rick Ferri, an investment advisor and author of eight investing books, has been making for years: if young investors suffer too big a loss early in their investing years, they’re likely to be scared off stocks for years, if not decades. As the father of three Millennials, he knows from talking to their friends how unusually risk averse the generation which came of age during the Great Recession can be, Ferri says. And even if that weren’t the case, he adds, “It takes living through a couple of bear markets before you become comfortable that the market always comes back.”
He points to his own experience to show the dangers of setting young investors up for a large loss which sends them fleeing from the market. As Ferri recounted in a Forbes blog post last year, he was in the Marines and had just graduated from jet pilot school in November 1981, when he decided to put his $3,000 of savings into a high flying growth stock fund. The fund promptly fell and he panicked and took his remaining $2,500 out. Worse, he stayed out of the market for several more years, missing out on 100% stock market gain. Ferri has proposed a different “flight path” asset allocation model which would start young investors with a low stock allocation, gradually reach a high cruising speed stock allocation, and then gradually descend.
Arnott, too, thinks a lower initial allocation to stocks makes sense. “People say you might as well start them with high risk, because the downside isn’t that great in the grand scheme of things,” since they don’t have that much in their 401(k)s, he says. “But if that’s all the money you’ve got, the downside is great.” (Note that according to the Department of Labor's regulations, employers can also use a balanced fund as a default 401(k) investment, and both Ferri and Arnott believe that would be the wiser choice.)
Both Ferri and Arnott worry that not only are target date funds putting young investors into high stock allocations too early, but that this is happening at a time when valuations in the market are historically high, making the market ripe for a fall. With Uncle Sam, employers and the financial industry, all pushing them, the assets in target date funds have grown from $160 billion at the end of 2008, to more than $700 billion today. The newest and youngest investors in target dates---the ones who are being put into 80% to 100% stock portfolios—have never had their own money at risk during a crash, even if they did hear their parent's wails of pain. “If the market comes down 20% or 30%, a lot of them are going to jump ship,’’ Ferri predicts, adding that some of those who panic and sell may not realize now how exposed to the stock market and short term market losses, they currently are.
Consider this: back in 2010, when a study done for the SEC asked target date holders why they had chosen these funds, 38% of investors 34 or younger said because they seemed like a “safe investment,” and another 36% said because it was easy.
Follow Janet Novack on Twitter.Last updated: X.28.0
In order to save his Realm from the incoming hordes of adventurers, Oryx must create a horde of his own. With this purpose in mind he turns to Skuld, who has taken the souls of brave departed heroes and corrupted them to fight for the Mad God. For years, Skuld has been slowly building an army, and this Halloween he will finally be ready to release his creations into the world. Will you be ready to fend off legions of the undead? Or will you be the next to join their ranks? (Official Announcement)
The Zombie Horde Halloween event during which a large amount of zombies spawn, which can happen a few times per realm. The zombies spawn at a seemingly random location on the map - as sometimes they end up as far as the beach or as far into the realm as the Godlands. Watch out for Oryx threatening to send his ‘zombie horde’ to know when the horde is coming.
As of Release 27.7.X7 (Halloween 2016), the Zombie Horde spawned in realms again as an event that appears usually once or twice a realm. Also, it has a new boss, Bonegrind the Undead Butcher.
Zombie Samurai began arising from the Horde in Halloween 2018.
The drops from each zombie include all T11 Halloween reskin weapons, Candy Corn, and the Infected skin. The soulbound threshold seems quite low. The zombies that the Zombie Horde spawns are exactly the same as when a player with Cursed Amulet of Zombification dies (note that this does not happen anymore and the item is now the Amulet of Dispersion).
Enemies
Boss
Bonegrind the Undead Butcher
Drops
Tips
Bring piercing weapons to hit the boss and to get soulbound on more enemies. High DPS is always encouraged because often these zombies die as soon as you turn your fire upon them nowadays.San Diego Padres Going Back 30 Years For an Entire Weekend
The San Diego Padres announced last night via Twitter that they will wear their 1984 uniforms for an entire weekend series against the Chicago Cubs next season.
The Tweet indicated that the 4-game series at home vs. Chicago would be in June, the series is actually May 22-25th:
A little vague on the details but from that Tweet it seems the team will wear both their home whites and road brown jerseys during the series. The 1984 season is the only one in which the Padres wore this style of jersey as a button-up. They had worn it as a pullover from 1980-83.
San Diego wore this style of throwback just this past season for a game on May 17th against the Washington Nationals, odds are they’ll just wear these exact same jerseys and caps come next May:
Nothing on further throwback games for the Padres who routinely hold several different retro games per season, Padres CEO Mike Dee dropped this Tweet on us all over the weekend:
This may, however, have just been in reference to the news the team announced today.On Sunday, an MI-14 military helicopter crashed during an emergency landing after a technical malfunction in Deir Sunbul area in the countryside of the northern Idleb province.
The majority of the crew were reportedly killed during their ejection from the helicopter, while three others were captured by the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” (Victory Front).
Upon their apprehension by the Jabhat Al-Nusra militants, two of the Syrian Arab Air Force (SAAF) officers were summarily executed on a video that was posted by the terrorist group – the other SAAF officer is being ransomed by Jabhat Al-Nusra.
The following SAAF officers were confirmed dead during the helicopter’s crash landing: Sergeant Farhan Al-‘Ali, Sergeant Yousif Al-Najar, Sergeant Zaki Al-‘Ali, Sergeant Nasser Mohammad, 1st Lietenant ‘Issam ‘Issa, 1st Assistant Hussein Noufal, Sergeant Aymen Dahman, and Sergeant Mohammad Halaaq.
AdvertisementsGerald Clarke Jr. ( Cahuilla ) partly based his design for Continuum Basket: Flora on designs like those in this early-20th-century basket by a Luiseno, Cupeno, or Mountain Cahuilla weaver. | Photo: The Autry Museum
Watch our documentary Tending The Wild on KCET TV, February 7 at 9:00 p.m.
In several places in the “California Continued” galleries at the Autry Museum of the American West, the exhibition that accompanies this web series on KCET, mundane present-day artifacts sit next to historic objects from the museum’s Native California collections. A hundred-year-old iris-twine fishing net pairs with a monofilament drift net weighted by a garden hose. A willow seed beater made by an Owens Valley Paiute weaver in the early twentieth century with a fly swatter. A pre-17th-century Chumash mortar and pestle with a Magic Bullet blender.
Our exhibition team, in conversation with various Native advisors, decided on this method as a way of reinforcing the exhibition’s main message: that the traditional ecological knowledge of California Indian people remains as vital and relevant as ever, if not more than ever. Hopefully it also conveys the way the types of objects in the historic Southwest Museum collections were, and still are, fully embedded in everyday life for Native people.
As Terria Smith (Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla), editor of News from Native California, said recently: “We, as indigenous peoples of California, are part of a living culture and are far more than historical figures of the past. Many of us live in modern houses, drive cars, and use an array of contemporary tools while carrying on the ways of our ancestors.” She added, “Showing our lifestyles in this way is something many museums still have not yet completely tackled.”
Smith raises a few related issues worth discussing: popular expectations about Native people and the modern world; expectations about Indians and technology; and the ways museums have collected and displayed Indigenous materials over the past century (and longer). Of particular concern in “California Continued” and “Tending the Wild” are the ways those expectations and histories may affect Indigenous influence on environmental policy.
American Progress (1872), a painting by John Gast, depicts American Indians repelled magically westward by the technology of the telegraph. | Photo: The Autry Museum
Portraying American Indians solely as “historical figures of the past” is an old trick. In other galleries, the Autry Museum displays numerous artworks and artifacts that reinforced the myth that Indians “vanished,” one of the most iconic being a cast of James Earle Frazier’s sculpture The End of the Trail, from 1896. There would be no real Indians left in the twentieth century, this bronze declared. (Today, when they see this juxtaposed with works by contemporary Native artists, visitors can view it differently.) Another of the Autry’s most iconic paintings is John Gast’s American Progress, from 1872. This image spread the more specific fiction that technology would bring the end of the trail: a goddess strings telegraph wires across the continent, repelling Indians as she flies west.
Versions of this trope—“representations of untutored primitives looking on in astonishment at the wonders of the West,” as historian Philip J. Deloria describes them in his book Indians in Unexpected Places—appear with trains, guns, cameras, cars, phonographs, and other technologies. Deloria combats these images by presenting the stories of “unexpected” Native people in the early twentieth century: professional baseball players, opera singers, silent film directors, and automobile enthusiasts, from the era of The End of the Trail. The new exhibitions at the Autry aim for a similar kind of unexpectedness through objects.
Watch Tending the Wild: Weaving Community
As Terria Smith suggests, museums have contributed substantially to the invisibility of contemporary Native people. (To be fair, generations of non-Native politicians, scholars, movie-makers, and artists like Frazier and Gast are equally culpable.) Until recently, many museums with Native holdings collected those artifacts that non-Indian curators deemed to represent pure, pre-modern forms of Indigenous cultures. Exhibit labels referred to Native people and practices exclusively in the past tense. Nowhere visible was the notion that a tribal person might, say, eat acorn mush at a family gathering one day and a hamburger at a drive-in movie the next. When we are not careful we can still slip, more subtly, into these patterns.
But, like many of our peer institutions, our museum now looks for ways to display stellar historical collections so that they speak to Indigenous resilience. One technique was to use the fly swatter, the blender, the fishing net, and so on.
A Gabrielino/Tongva cooking basket and a Paiute cooking stick (just visible at the lower right), both from the early 20th century, and a Gabrielino/Tongva cooking bowl, sit beside a stainless steel cooking pot. Photo: The Autry Museum
It turns out that a fly swatter is a useful tool for harvesting small seeds such as chia. Some Native people beat the seeds into a bucket, others into a woven basket. As shown in the “Tending the Wild” video on the Chia Cafe Collective, these seeds can be deliciously toasted on the stovetop. A blender works well for grinding acorn flour, which can then be leached of its bitter tannins in a kitchen sink. Yurok, Hupa, and Karuk fishermen continue to steward the Klamath River and feed themselves using a monofilament net and a motorboat. Native land managers continue to conduct cultural burns, sometimes using steel drip torches to ignite them.
Parallel examples appear in expressive culture, where Native artists carry on the ways of their ancestors with new media. Contemporary artist Gerald Clarke Jr. (Cahuilla) “wove” a five-foot basket made of crushed aluminum cans for “California Continued.” “We come from a long line of basket makers,” Clarke explains. “I wanted to recognize that tradition, the beauty, the complexity of the tradition, but I’m an artist, I’m a sculptor, and I wanted to do it my own way.” The piece, Continuum Basket: Flora honors his ancestors, those historical figures of the past, and at the same time situates Cahuilla people in the here and now, with a dose of old-fashioned Indian humor. Juxtaposing Clarke’s piece with some of the stellar historic baskets that inspired it emphasizes the “continuum,” to borrow his title, that joins what we too often discuss as opposites: natural-unnatural, tradition-innovation, or historic-modern.
Accurate representations of Native people past and present can help form the basis for a society that consults its Indigenous peoples on land use, landscape histories, sacred sites, and best practices. If we see Native people as experts, colleagues, and neighbors, we all stand a greater chance of working together for environmental justice and survival.
Banner: An Owens Valley Paiute seed beater and a Pomo burden basket, both from the early 20th century, share a case with a fly swatter, which can be used as a seed beater as well. Image: The Autry Museum
Co-produced by KCETLink and the Autry Museum of the American West, the Tending the Wild series is presented in association with the Autry's groundbreaking California Continued exhibition.The Food and Drug Administration must address the use of antibiotics in livestock, a federal judge in New York has ruled in a lawsuit, a signal that the FDA may soon ban the practice due to longstanding public health concerns.
The ruling favors a coalition of plaintiffs including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed suit last May in a bid to push the FDA to exert more control over agricultural use of penicillin and tetracycline, two popular antibiotics used in feed to protect chickens, pigs and cattle from disease and speed their growth.
It’s a practice that goes back decades – even though, back in 1977, the FDA raised concerns that giving healthy animals these constant low doses promotes antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could potentially infect people.
"In the intervening years, the scientific evidence of the risks to human health from the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock has grown," the court decision noted.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A screening of Harvey Milk biopic ‘Milk’ has been cancelled at the Catholic University of America after those in charge said a rainbow flag on the flyers for the event violated campus policy.
Students at the college, based in Washington DC, complained that the ‘Milk and Cookies’ event had been cancelled, reports Crux.
It was set to be hosted by the College Democrats, which included a talk by Kevin Walling, alumnus and chair of the Montgomery County Democrats, as well as a screening of the film and free milk and cookies, was cancelled.
Event organisers said the university’s administrators had approved the event, as well as flyers and posters for it, but that yesterday they were told that a rainbow flag on the flyer was too big, and that the description: “Kick off LGBT Awareness Month!”, the university does not recognise.
Crux reports that this week’s event was actually based on a similar one which took place three years ago in 2011.
The university does not allow events to be held by student groups which advocate for policies which go against Catholic teachings.
The College Democrats have said they hope to reschedule the event.
The American Family Association earlier this year refused a $10 donation, because it was sent in an envelope with a commemorative Harvey Milk stamp on.
The group announced they were boycotting the postal service in May, over the unveiling of a stamp in memory of gay rights hero Harvey Milk.Australia’s Treasurer Joe Hockey barely missed a beat when challenged to justify the country’s massive fossil fuel export industry and bottom-dwelling record for domestic greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are exporting coal so that nations can lift their people out of poverty,” the Liberal Treasurer told the journalist Stephen Sackur on the BBC‘s HARDTalk interview program.
Hockey’s argument should be recognised for what it is – a line straight out of the coal industry’s newest campaign playbook.
As I wrote earlier this week on The Guardian, the coal industry is attempting to hijack the issue of “energy poverty” by claiming the only way that the world’s poorest can prosper is by purchasing and then burning more of their product.
UNEP says: “In Africa and other developing regions of the world, climate change is a threat to economic growth (due to changes in natural systems and resources), long-term prosperity, as well as the survival of already vulnerable populations.” The United Nations Environment Programme wouldn’t agree. In a summary report of climate change impacts says: “In Africa and other developing regions of the world, climate change is a threat to economic growth (due to changes in natural systems and resources), long-term prosperity, as well as the survival of already vulnerable populations.”
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the impacts of climate change found climate change would “exacerbate multidimensional poverty” in most developing countries and create “new poverty pockets” in both rich and poor countries.
The World Bank says: “Climate change is a fundamental threat to development in our lifetime. If we do not confront climate change, we will not end poverty.”
PR campaign with America’s biggest coal company, Peabody Energy, has been leading the public relations push on “energy poverty” with its “Advanced Energy for Life”campaign with press advertising and online video campaigns.
The company even managed to secure a presentation to a G20 meeting in Brisbane in August. One academic who witnessed the Peabody Energy G20 presentation, Dr Matthew Dornan, of the Australian National University, described it is as “self serving”, “disingenuous” and “not backed by evidence”. Dornan told me:
“I was not impressed. The presentation conflated the issue of energy poverty – on which the workshop was focused – with promotion of the coal industry.”
Speaking of “promotion of the coal industry” Joe Hockey becomes the third high profile Australian politician to use the coal industry’s supposed concern for the world’s poor in an interview in recent days.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott opened a coal mine in Queensland earlier this week, where he told reporters that “coal is good for humanity” while enthusing that the opening was “a great day for the world”.
Environment minister Greg Hunt was a little more circumspect, telling ABC Radio National that the world had “two enormous challenges” – one was to bring down emissions, but the other was to “bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty” with “electricity and gas” being fundamental.
Hunt has previously claimed that if he had refused to approve coal export projects in Queensland this would be “condemning people to poverty”.
During the HARDTalk interview, Hockey rebuffed Sackur’s use of OECD statistics which show Australia is the worst emitter of greenhouse gases per person among the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Hockey said the statistics (showing Australians emit 24 tonnes of greenhouse gases per person ahead of Luxembourg’s 22.3t and the US at 20.6t), were a “falsehood” because they did “not properly reflect” Australia’s role as a major exporter of coal and gas.
The OECD statistics reflect emissions caused within country borders and for Australia, the bulk of this comes from the fossil fuels burned in power stations (52 per cent) and fossil fuels burned in vehicles (16 per cent).
The other major contributor is agriculture (16 per cent). Regardless of whether Australia exports lots of coal and gas, its own emissions footprint is high mainly because of a continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy.
So what about all the fossil fuels Australia exports? A 2013 study in the journalBiogeosciences found that the emissions from Australia’s exported coal and gas are roughly double the emissions from the fossil fuels Australia burns at home.
What Treasurer Hockey is actually demonstrating is that Australia is not only a greenhouse gas glutton domestically, but also a major contributor internationally. Thanks for clearing that up, Joe.
First published at DeSmog Blog. Reproduced with permission.Smash Up is AEG’s best-selling, super fun flagship game.
Smash Up, designed by Paul Peterson, is the Shufflebuilding game from Alderac Entertainment Group. In Smash Up players draft two faction decks, such as pirates, ninja, robots, zombies, and more, and combine them into a force to be reckoned with!
When the game begins, players take turns drafting one of several faction decks.
Once each player has two decks, they shuffle them together, combining their distinct abilities into a unique 40-card deck.
A random selection of Base cards are dealt to the table, and players use their decks to attempt to have the most power on a base when it is scored.
It may sound simple, but how simple is it when the Zombie-Ninja deck Assassinates your minions then creates an Outbreak, loading the Base with minions from their discard pile?
Or when the Pirate-Dinosaurs Full Sail onto the base with the mighty King Rex, whose massive power dwarfs that of other minions?
Each combination gives a different experience, Pirate-Aliens play very different than Pirate-Zombies, and with 8 factions in the base set there are 64 combinations to try out and every expansion set increases the options exponentially!President Trump’s new border wall is supposed to be 30 feet high and should look imposing to potential illegal immigrants, Homeland Security officials said in documents Friday that officially requested the first bids to begin building the barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.
But U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency overseeing the project, hasn’t yet decided on whether it will be concrete or some other type of construction, instead soliciting bids for various prototypes.
“The wall design shall be physically imposing in height,” CBP officials said in contracting documents.
They said their goal is a 30-foot barrier, and they would outright reject any plans that didn’t at least run 18 feet high. The wall must also run at least six feet underground to stop anyone easily tunneling underneath it.
And it must take at least an hour, and ideally more than four hours, for someone to puncture a hole in the wall — presumably enough time for agents to discover and chase away anyone attempting it.
The side that faces the U.S. must be easy on the eyes, too, the documents say.
The requests for proposals for both concrete and |
stopped for a private viewing of a statue for basketball hall of fame player Bill Russell at City Hall Plaza with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick before heading to Faneuil Hall to bolster support for his national health care law in Boston, Mass. on Wednesday, October 30, 2013. (Photo by Yoon S. Byun/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) BOSTON, MA - NOVEMBER 01: (L-R) Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Bill Russell attend the unveiling of the statue in honor of Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell by artist Ann Hirsch at Boston City Hall Plaza on November 1, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images) BOSTON - NOVEMBER 4: Gov. Deval Patrick is the first of five to light the Diwali diya at the State House, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2013. The ceremony is held by the South Asian Arts Council. Standing from left are State Treasurer Steve Grossman and MassMutual executive vice president Mike Fanning. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick (L), of the US shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe prior to their talks at Abe's office in Tokyo on December 11, 2013. Patrick is visiting with his economy mission members as part of his Asian tour. AFP PHOTO / POOL / Yoshikazu TSUNO (Photo credit should read YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images) BOSTON - JANUARY 6: Left to right, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Gov. Deval Patrick, Michael Joseph Donovan, Suffolk County Clerk of the Civil Court, and Roderick L. Irelend, Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice applaud at the inauguration ceremony for Mayor-elect Marty Walsh at Boston College's Conte Forum on January 6, 2014. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) US President Barack Obama looks over the lunch menu at Cafe Beauregard in New Britain, Connecticut, March 5, 2014, alongside Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy (2nd R), Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (2nd L) and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (L). AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) BOSTON - JANUARY 28: Gov. Deval Patrick delivers his eighth State of the Commonwealth speech after a week's delay due to snow. (Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) BOSTON - MARCH 5: President Barack Obama arrives at Logan Airport with Governor Deval Patrick as they depart Air Force One in Boston, Mass. on March 5, 2014. (Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) BOSTON - MARCH 5: President Barak Obama arrives at Logan Airport with Governor Deval Patrick as they depart Air Force One in Boston, Mass. on March 5, 2014. (Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) CAMBRIDGE, MA - MARCH 13: Officials unveil extended MBTA service at Kendall T station in Cambridge in hopes to encourage safe and vibrant late-night culture. Left to right, Mayor Martin Walsh, Governor Deval Patrick speaks, State Transportation Secretary Richard A. Davey, and mascots Red Sox's Wally and the Charlie Card mascot.(Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
As one former White House source told Politico, "If you were to poll 100 notable Obama alumni, the only two people who would win that 2020 straw poll right now are [Joe] Biden and Patrick."
While the former vice president is often listed as a top contender in the next presidential race, Patrick appears to face a more uphill battle.
In a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll from late December, more than half the Democrats and Independents who were surveyed had never heard of Patrick, but, of those who had, "10% would be excited; 15% against the idea."
RELATED: People who might run against Trump in 2020
45 PHOTOS People who might run against Trump in 2020 See Gallery People who might run against Trump in 2020 Former Vice President Joe Biden (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images) Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) Sen. Kamala Davis (D-Calif.) (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) (Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images) Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg (Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) (Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic) Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (D) (Photo by: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes) Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (Photo credit MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images) Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (Photo credit NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (Photo by Pete Marovich/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) (Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) (Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images) Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) (Photo credit ZACH GIBSON/AFP/Getty Images) Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Photo by James Keivom/NY Daily News via Getty Images) Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Environmental activist Tom Steyer (Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez (Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic) Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (Photo by Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (Photo credit FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images) Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (Photo credit should read JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (Photo by Donna Ward/Getty Images) Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) (Photo credit TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images) Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y) (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) California Gov. Jerry Brown (Photo by Tiffany Rose/Getty Images for Caruso ) Media mogul Oprah Winfrey (Photo by Moeletsi Mabe/Sunday Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images) Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Former Vice President Al Gore (Photo credit DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images) Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) (Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) (Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images,) Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu Albin Lohr-Jones/Pool via Bloomberg Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images) Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke (AP Photo/Eric Gay) Michael Bloomberg (Christopher Smith/Invision/AP) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
Meanwhile, a Business Insider list in May of 16 potential Democratic candidates included a range of people from politicians like Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren to entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg but not Patrick.
A recent op-ed in Slate also questioned the principle of having Patrick, currently a managing director at Bain Capital, representing Democrats when parts of the party have increasingly become skeptical of wealthy people in finance.
In response to the speculation, Patrick said in a Politico podcast, "I'm trying to think about how to be helpful, because I care about the country, and I'm a patriot first. It's way, way too soon to be making plans for 2020. So I'll just leave it at that."
More from :
The first Democratic candidate has entered the 2020 presidential election
'What Happened': Hillary Clinton announces title for book recounting her loss to Trump
Hackers plan to break into voting machines to test election meddlingThe University System of Georgia has settled two lawsuits by Georgia Tech students who claimed they were expelled unfairly after being wrongly accused of sexual assault.
The settlements, released through an open-records request, were completed in June and July.
In the first case, system officials agreed to pay a male student $125,000 to settle a case in which he had been accused by another male student of sexual assault. In January, the school was ordered to reinstate the student after it had found him responsible for non-consensual sexual intercourse.
The reinstatement was the only time in the past five years the state Board of Regents had overturned any public college in a sexual assault case, records showed.
In the second suit, filed by a male student accused by a female student of rape, system officials agreed to allow him to receive his diploma from Georgia Tech but prevent him from attending Tech or any other school in the University System. The settlement upholds his expulsion, but modifies his disciplinary record to include only the code number and name of each charge against him. Those charges included non-consensual sexual contact, non-consensual sexual intercourse and coercion. His record will also include a notation that he sued Georgia Tech and the Board of Regents alleging he was denied due process and had been wrongfully found responsible for the alleged offenses. The document also notes that nothing in the settlement agreement should be deemed as an admission of guilt or liability.
The settlements follow complaints about issues the AJC reported on earlier this year, when Georgia Tech came under fire by state lawmakers, particularly Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who criticized school leaders for their treatment of students accused of wrongdoing in sexual assault and other misconduct cases. An analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found Georgia Tech had been one of the most aggressive schools in its handling of accused students. Tech had expelled or suspended nearly every student it investigated for sexual misconduct allegations in the past five years, and also handed down stiff penalties to fraternities.
The accused student who was reinstated at Georgia Tech, and his attorney, New York-based Andrew Miltenberg, talked to the AJC previously. At that time, Miltenberg called Tech’s process for adjudicating sex assault cases “out of date and broken.”
Since then, the University System has enacted uniform policies outlining how all public colleges in the state will handle sexual violence and other student-conduct violations. Those new rules took effect July 1.A quick no-strings amnesty for younger illegal immigrants would invite more illegals, disadvantage Americans, cripple the GOP and wound President Donald Trump, say immigration reformers.
Amnesty Without Reform Means More Illegals
Sen. Tom Cotton told CBS that any extension of the DACA amnesty would encourage another wave of illegal immigrants, and also benefit the illegal-immigrant parents who brought their young children across the border. He said:
It is going to open up a whole new category of people who could get legal status, namely their parents who violated the law by bringing them here, and it’s going to encourage other people to bring their children across the border in the future, which is a very dangerous thing to do … You really can’t dispute, just as a logical matter if we give legal status to these people in their 20s and 30s, that it is going to encourage more illegal immigration and it wil open up legal status for the very people that violated the law … we should have an open, common sense discussion about that.”
The nation of 320 million Americans already includes a population of at least 11 million illegals, many of whom are former temporary workers and tourists who overstay their visas.
The same amnesty-invites-illegals point was made by Dan Horowitz, the editor of Conservative Review:
The 2014 border surge as a result of #DACA should have ended any debate for amnesty https://t.co/5PjPzzaJVj pic.twitter.com/2ox1580nfI — Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) September 5, 2017
Mickey Kaus, a left-winger who oppose cheap-labor immigration, makes the same point:
Green cards 4 children who've been smuggled is "surest way to guarantee a never-ending supply" of smuggled children https://t.co/hK6Lz7lTbW — Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) September 5, 2017
Cotton told CBS that he’s working with President Donald Trump to combine his RAISE Act merit immigration reform, plus tighter border enforcement, to any revival of the DACA amnesty which now provides work permits to 800,000 younger illegals. Cotton also wants to include some form of mandatory “employment verification” legislation to deter companies from hiring illegal immigrants.
The RAISE Act, in cooperation with improved border enforcement and better oversight of employers’ hiring, is intended to offset the economic damage caused by mass immigration of low-skilled foreigners into U.S. society. Unsurprisingly, polls show the public strongly favors the provisions in the RAISE Act.
Amnesty Will Cost Americans Hundreds of Billions of Dollars
Former President Barack Obama’s DACA amnesty covers 800,000 younger illegals, but there are another 1.1 million younger illegals who might try to claim the same DACA status, as they grow older or return to school to get a High School qualification.
Add in their illegal-immigrant parents, and the number of people who gain from a formal DACA amnesty could reach 2.5 million. Once the 2.5 million gain citizenship, they can petition to bring in yet more relatives, most of whom will be unskilled and also dependent on the Democratic party’s welfare policies.
The direct cost of mass immigration has been gauged by Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation. For example, he recently calculated a $1 trillion taxpayer-saving for cutting the annual inflow of unskilled migrants by roughly 50 percent or by 5 million people per decade.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation based on Rector’s data suggests that the cost of providing an amnesty to Obama’s young illegals — plus their lower-skilled peers and parents — will add up to $500 billion over the next 75 years.
Unskilled immigrants – both illegal and legal — cost taxpayers much money because the taxes that they can pay into the state, local and federal treasuries are far below the benefits they do receive in the form of education, health care, retirement and income support. The details are included in the September 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences, which also showed that recent immigrants are failing to integrate into the United States’ society.
That Washington-imposed policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families.
Those problems are echoed in nation’s increasingly turbulent politics, which featured the unprecedented election of a New York real-estate developer to the White House in 2016 because of his popular opposition to the mass-immigration policies favored by the business and political establishment.
Rector’s calculations do not include the hidden cost of companies’ continued reliance on cheap imported labor instead of new, labor-saving machinery. In contrast to the United States, both Japan and China have national economic policies that oppose immigration and instead favor increased automation and robotics — and they have growing economies and rising per-person productivity and income.
Under current rules, 4 million young Americans enter the workforce each year to search for decent jobs. But each year, the government also hands out 1 million green cards to new immigrants who compete against Americans for good jobs.
The government also hands out almost 3 million short-term work permits to foreign workers. These permits include roughly 330,000 one-year OPT permits for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, roughly 200,000 three-year H-1B visas for foreign white-collar professionals, and 400,000 two-year permits to DACA illegals.
Understandably, business groups strongly favor high levels of immigration because the taxpayers’ huge costs become business revenues once the immigrants buy food, lodging, transport services, and education services. The immigrants also provide federally subsidized labor for new business operations, so reducing pressure on companies to hire labor-saving, American-made machinery, such as crop-picking robots.
Amnesty Will Push the GOP Towards Extinction
Any amnesty for the younger illegals damages the GOP’s support among the millions of ordinary Americans voters who backed Trump in 2016 because he promised a reform that would benefit Americans, not illegal immigrants.
Ending DACA now gives chance 2 restore Rule of Law. Delaying so R Leadership can push Amnesty is Republican suicide. https://t.co/iYOLxFWp7V — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) September 4, 2017
The damage would be greater if the GOP also failed to push through other GOP priorities, such as a reform of the failing Obamacare government-run medical system.
If GOP congress fixes DACA but doesn't repeal/replace Obamacare… hoo boy. Big chunk of GOP voters are going to be mad as hell. https://t.co/DTMBOekYty — Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) September 4, 2017
It would also contradict Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” inauguration slogan, damaging his influence in 2018 and his reelections chances in 2020.
If President Trump wants to put America first… he will end DACA and work for the passage of the #RAISEAct https://t.co/QhRn0PflrP — NumbersUSA (@NumbersUSA) September 5, 2017
The public wants to be nice to the young illegals, but polls show that voters strongly prefer immigration policies that help Americans and their children earn a good living in an increasingly turbulent, globalizing economy. That preferences deeply shaped the GOP primaries and the 2016 election, much to the advantage of Donald Trump.
Already, multiple business groups admit that Trump’s popular RAISE Act immigration and economic reform would raise Americans’ salaries. Higher salaries allow people to buy houses, get married and create families — all of which tend to nudge them towards voting GOP.
The mass immigration of mostly unskilled government-dependent migrants is also gradually expanding Democratic power throughout the nation. This process is most clear in California, where pro-immigration Democrats now hold all state-wide elected offices. That huge advantage is also helping Democrats move step-by-step towards federal dominance. Democrats now hope to use expanding Latino populations in Florida and Texas to gain political dominance in those two states, so ending GOP hopes of winning presidential elections.
There is little or no evidence that the DACA illegals — or their future children — will vote Republican. In contrast, there is much evidence that some DACA youths are more loyal to their foreign families than they are to the Americans whom they want to live with.
Late in the game, and only after the rise of Donald Trump, GOP leaders now seem to be slowly recognizing how their decades-long deference to their cheap-labor business allies is wrecking their party’s future. This week, multiple GOP leaders have said they oppose a no-strings DACA and prefer some sort of package deal that helps Americans — perhaps the RAISE act which is being pushed by Trump, Cotton, and Georgia Sen. David Perdue.
“We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past with a comprehensive immigration bill that does not work,” Perdue said. “The RAISE Act’s changes to our legal immigration system should be part of the solution.”
Georgia’s other GOP Senator, Sen. Johnny Isackson, added: “Congress should protect these young people while also working toward stronger measures to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws going forward.”
“The bottom line of it is, I don’t think DACA as a clean bill can get through the Congress by itself,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the judiciary committee. The dispute is an “opportunity for compromise between people that want DACA plus a lot of other things dealing with legal immigration, and I suppose even some things dealing with illegal immigration, that can probably be packaged together.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP’s leader in the Senate, pushed the same package approach; “President Obama wrongly believed he had the authority to re-write our immigration law. Today’s action by President Trump corrects that fundamental mistake … This Congress will continue working on securing our border and ensuring a lawful system of immigration that works.”
“We will not be advancing legislation that doesn’t have the support of President Trump because we are going to work with the president on how to do this legislation,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday. “The president also gave us the time and space we’re going to need to find where that [immigration] compromise is,” said Ryan who has a long history of pushing business-boosting cheap-labor immigration policies.Did you know that Detroit had a serious proposal to construct a subway? According to a 1915 report at the New York Public Library and on the Internet Archive titled, “On Detroit Street Railway Traffic and Proposed Subway,” we were pretty darn close to joining other major cities with this amenity.
At the time, cars were just beginning to be a thing. The city had not only streetcars, but there was an interurban rail system to reach faraway places like Northville, Mt. Clemens and Pontiac.
It was a very different Detroit. This plan is audacious and fanciful. We dug through the three hundred plus pages by Barclay, Parsons & Klapp and pulled out some interesting tidbits.
1. The Woodward line would run from downtown to Ford’s Highland Park Plant
2. You would have been able to take the train to Belle Isle
3. They expected 28,000,000 passenger subway trips per year
3. Factory workers were the focus of these plans
It’s fascinating to see the diagram of the Woodward line downtown, connecting to all of the streetcars. Imagine if Campus Martius instead was a bustling transit hub for the entire region — because at one time it was, and this would have made it on the level of say The Loop in Chicago. And the address of a recently built (1910), giant Ford factory in Highland Park? 91 Manchester. Ford’s famous $5 a day wage was unveiled the year before in 1914.Yes, that would have been a thing. The plan talks about a subway but also details a terminus station that would be set back, almost invisible as to not disturb the beautiful view. You’d hop off your Shoreline Interurban (that ran all the way to Mt. Clemens) and onto a connector train that’d take you onto the island. Back then, most of the island was walking paths (including that big road in the middle that has that horseman statue — that was a brick walkway).
Page after page mentions factory and industrial workers — this subway wasn’t designed for the east coast “Wall Street” types, but as a functional and important tool for the working people of Detroit. At the time, Detroit had a variety of industries based on turning ores and resources from the rest of Michigan into objects. Detroit was known as the Stove Capital of the world. The plans go down to the detail of what companies most people worked for, and where they lived.
4. They’re well thought out
This wasn’t some slapdash meme. This 300 page plus document accounted for everything from sewer lines and dealing with buried creeks to significant trees. There are elevations from downtown all the way to Manchester street. It would have been something Detroit could have been very proud of.
5. Downtown Detroit was way more dense than it is now
So much so that the energy of our city would be totally unrecognizable. Imagine if roughly 20,000 people lived in the combined area where Comerica Park, Ford Field and their parking lots and that slice of I-75 are now like they did in 1915. For comparison there are only 5,269 people living in the entire Central Business District now – an area many times larger.
6. The Woodward line would have cost about $385,400,000 a hundred years later
On page 25 of the report it outlines the costs, and for the Woodward Line that was estimated to be $16,300,000. Using an inflation conversion tool to estimate what those dollars would be worth 100 years later, in 2015, you get approximately $385,400,000. Of course, in modern times, there may be additional costs – labor rules were different, environmental rules, etc. But by raw comparison, estimates peg the new Little Caesars Arena complex at somewhere around $627 million. The new Q-Line Woodward streetcar running almost exactly half the distance, according the M1-Rail website, is coming in at around $140 million.
It’s important to remember that these plans served a very different city. There was no such thing as freeways, less than 10 percent of Americans owned cars, and they were planning for Detroit to hit a million souls by 1920.
The future of Detroit isn’t written in stone. Back then, city planners could have never imagined the changes coming after World War II. There’s no rule that Detroit has to decline, stay the same, or rise in population. The future is up to us.ES Lifestyle Newsletter Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
It’s the equivalent of poking Morrissey in the eye with a lamb chop. Jack Link’s, “the world’s fastest growing manufacturer of meat snacks” — and owner since 2014 of the dense pork horror-fodder Peperami and its bovine German equivalent BiFi — chose National Vegetarian Week to publish a survey supposedly revealing the many things men would rather give up than meat. These included the internet, alcohol, cigarettes, contact with their families, their Sky Sports subscriptions and sex. Men also said they’d rather shave their head, streak through town, swim with sharks, dump their best friend, get waxed, leave the UK and...
Whoa, wait a minute? Sex? Some men would rather have a lamb shank than a shag? Really? This is the most surprising expression of a masculine either/or preference since 1984 when Boy George said he’d rather have a nice hot cup of tea than sex, leading all of us to worry about him inflicting serious burns on “little George”.
Anyway, after a shocked sit-down and a restorative bacon sandwich, I masticated for a while over the question of whether I would rather give up sex or meat and realised that meat might have the edge.
I do not say this lightly, or without having considered and even probed all the options. Some of my best friends are vegetarians, many more of them pescetarian or flexitarian, which enables me to trot out a favourite joke quite a bit: “What’s the ideal Christmas present for a vegetarian who eats fish?”
“A f***ing dictionary.”
Unlike almost 70 per cent of the men interviewed by Peperami I do not have meat at every meal. Indeed, I try to eat red meat only occasionally, like a rich peasant. Once, on a train trip from Mangalore through the Western Ghats to Goa, I went wholly flesh-free for nine days, and didn’t miss meat in the slightest — although I admit I might have felt differently if that trip had entirely marked the end of my career as a carnivore.
So I am not scared of vegetables, and I try not to dodge salads. I’m partial to pulses, lugubrious about legumes. And yet...and yet... some of my most vivid experiences in life have revolved around meat.
That skewer of melting duck hearts at Club Gascon in Smithfield all those years ago. Buttery Wagyu beef in a brasserie in New York’s meatpacking district — the restaurant name forgotten, the taste indelible in the memory. A succulent rotisserie chicken from the village butcher in Bargemon in the upper Var, eaten with salad and a Provençal rosé. Any bacon sandwich, ever.
My job as a journalist has given me the opportunity to taste lamb’s brains and bull’s testicles, horsemeat and the flesh of the giant African snail, camel, alpaca and guinea pig. I once got to order a crocodile sandwich and yes, of course I asked the chef to make it snappy.
Of the five basic flavour groups it is meaty umami that gets my gastric juices in a roil. I know that intensive meat farming is harmful for the environment and the animals concerned, and that too much animal protein can cause cancers and harden arteries. But overpopulation is a problem too: maybe it’s better if some of us pop off with an impacted colon or a heart attack having had a shorter life enjoying all the hooved and clawed foodstuffs that our teeth and our minds were designed to devour.
Sex, though... It’s a hard thing to give up. But it’s also a hard thing to get right and I can see the benefits of just letting it go. In the past, pursuit of a skirt caused me anxiety, embarrassment and squirts of hot shame in a way that a skirt steak never has. People bang on about the infinite variety of sex — the Perfumed Garden, the Kama Sutra, blah blah — but apart from those tedious, preening individuals who regard it as a competitive contact sport, I’d wager most of us are still stuck with a set of pretty rudimentary rudenesses.
And if, like me, the parameters of your sexual preferences were set early on, with very little chance of you suddenly deciding to bat for the other team, and you then find yourself in a long, happy relationship as your attractiveness to the opposite sex declines, the chances — how shall I put this? — of you being surprised by sex in a way that I was by that bull’s testicle (flambéed in Crown Royal whiskey to mark Prince William’s visit to Canada, since you ask) are drastically diminished.
You may, indeed, end up having sex rather less often than you have hot, meat-based dinners, and finding that the latter is a more agreeable use of your time together. After all, when eating, you both finish at about the same time.
Sex is awkward and untidy, emotionally messy — you can’t just wipe down the countertop and set the dishwasher going afterwards. Sex starts fights. Sex wrecks lives. Sex is at the root of food-based shame, such as eating disorders, rather than vice-versa.
There is truth in Sophocles’s quote that the diminution of his libido with age made him feel “as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master”. And in Mrs Patrick Campbell’s feeling of relief at reaching “the deep peace of the double bed after the hurly burly of the chaise longue”. We need sex to keep the species going but after that it’s a diversion that becomes an obligation, a chore and a bore. In the old people’s home, I’d rather find myself craving a cottage pie than still persecuted by the angrily rampant sexual urge. I’m sure my carers would prefer it too.
So goodbye, duvet action. Hello, Tournedos Rossini. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get down the shops. I’d better have a pretty decent bit of fillet waiting when my missus comes home after reading this.
Follow us on Twitter @ESLifeandStyleI finished my lunch that consisted of 3 day old pepperoni pizza and a crisp red apple. Having already read several pages of my book and wanting to preserve data on my phone my eyes started to wonder. Peering from left to right the panoramic view of the partially-filled lunchroom involved fellow company employees staring at their iPhones. My eyes suddenly shifted to the half-eaten fruit in my hand. “Apples are interesting,” I told myself. I went on to reflect on the amazing fact that apples exist and the differences on the crispness and sweetness each variety contains.
G.K. Chesterton once stated, “One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” This quote did not make sense to me until recently. Not until despair entered into my life again. See when I am succeeding [at least according to worldly standards] I do not stop to “smell the roses”—or to look at the wonder of the world. Rather, I am on to the next project, the next goal, the next challenge to overcome!
When I go through long periods of consolation I tend to take the blessing in my life for granted. Only through the school of suffering do I learn to focus my worldly preoccupations on God. Suffering does not discriminate. It does not recognize differences in age, race, financial background, or religious belief. Recently, my wife and I suffered another miscarriage. I struggle with reason for why God allows these horrific events to continue to hound us.
Both my wife and I went to the sacrament of Confession to help us heal from our doubting in God’s Providence. Did this completely eradicate my feelings of desolation? No, however, through recognizing suffering as a learning opportunity and trusting in God’s ultimate providence helps me start the healing process—albeit may be a long path for us.
I notice the greatness of God in the moments of suffering. Oftentimes during my mountain climb toward success I succumb to pride and lose sight of my reliance of Him. Because God is love, he allows things to happen to me. Saint John Paul II summed it up best, “Freedom exists for the sake of love.” This will be a constant struggle for me as I deal with the aftermath of our miscarriage. While I may not always feel the embrace of God’s consolation, I have learned from my past suffering that I will always be able to trust in His total Providence!Jose Mourinho has admitted Diego Costa’s injury gripes are becoming a concern for Chelsea ahead of what the Blues boss believes could be the tightest Premier League season yet.
Costa was forced to miss Sunday’s Community Shield 1-0 defeat by Arsenal after feeling his hamstring against Barcelona the week before.
Mourinho revealed tests showed there were no genuine medical issues and is troubled about another stop-start year for Costa, who missed the friendly against Fiorentina on Wednesday night and is unlikely to feature on Saturday when Swansea travel to west London.
Diego Costa waves to Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge but did not play against Fiorentina on Wednesday
Costa, pictured in May, has suffered a number of injuries since joining Chelsea from Atletico Madrid
Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho admits the striker's injury problems are becoming a concern for Chelsea
The Spain international may have scored 20 goals in his debut campaign at Stamford Bridge but made only 24 starts - including just one in the final nine games.
Costa’s persistent niggles represent a real problem for Mourinho, whose only other recognised strikers are Loic Remy and Radamel Falcao.
The Chelsea manager said: ‘I have to be honest and say that it is a bit of a concern. A player that didn’t finish the season and doesn’t start the season obviously doesn’t make me happy.
‘It was a surprise for me he did not play on the weekend. I don’t risk my reputation again. Before the last weekend I told you he’s ready to play. He wasn’t. I don’t know. I don’t risk to say yes but I also don’t risk to say no.
Costa scored 20 goals in his debut Premier League season last term but managed just 24 starts for the club
Chelsea's only other recognised attackers are Loic Remy (right) and Radamel Falcao signed this summer
‘The boy is trying hard but he has a problem against Barcelona, the next day the scans show there is no injury so the next day he trains but the next day he is not comfortable and 24 hours before the game we don’t know if he plays or doesn’t play.
‘It is not a good feeling for him, it is not a good feeling for me.
‘You have a minimum of five title contenders and the other teams get stronger and stronger. I think nobody can complain because everyone is investing – you go to Watford, you go to Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Stoke, every club.’
Costa enters the pitch as team-mates watch on ahead of Wednesday's International Champions Cup clash
Mourinho claimed the transfer window should shut before the season begins and denied Chelsea would make a fresh bid for John Stones.
Everton are insistent their central defender will not leave, while Rio Ferdinand stated the 21-year-old would be a ‘lunatic’ to join Chelsea, opting instead for a move to Manchester United.
‘I don’t speak about players from other clubs, especially when the competition starts in two days,’ Mourinho added before joking: ‘I don’t know, but maybe Rio has a contract with Man United.
‘For me, the transfer window is over. I don’t like transfer window when competition starts. I don’t like transfer window during the competition. I know it is open and my club is able to buy or sell, but I don’t like that feeling.’
Stones would not be an automatic choice in the heart of Chelsea’s back four, particularly given John Terry played every minute of the title-winning season, and Mourinho has again fired a warning to those waiting for a first-team chance - notably Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Everton have rejected two offers from Chelsea for John Stones with speculation refusing to go away
The Portuguese cited Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne, Andre Schurrle and Mohamed Salah as individuals who previously did not have the drive to fight for their places and |
a girl someday. His loner mask makes me really think it is so natural to everyone to see he is a loner. However, if he wants to has genuine relationships like that, then I don’t think his expectation is evil at all.
– He is a loner who says many times he is fine to be the loner. But in deep depth, he mentioned he wants the real friend(s) and expects to reach love relationship with a girl someday. His loner mask makes me really think it is so natural to everyone to see he is a loner. However, if he wants to has genuine relationships like that, then I don’t think his expectation is evil at all. Hiratsuka-sensei – In manga -Monologue-, I see she needs to wear her mask on many occasions. I’m not surprised since she is an adult and has the career that needs to talk with many people, and she has her own social (among friends). Moreover, there are many times she gets it off her chest (especially while she is drinking). And when she did that, she vents her own stress like the shotgun fire. If people see her in two versions clearly like this, I need to count her out. sorry, sensei.
– In manga -Monologue-, I see she needs to wear her mask on many occasions. I’m not surprised since she is an adult and has the career that needs to talk with many people, and she has her own social (among friends). Moreover, there are many times she gets it off her chest (especially while she is drinking). And when she did that, she vents her own stress like the shotgun fire. If people see her in two versions clearly like this, I need to count her out. sorry, sensei. Komachi – I think she has her own Imouto & cute masks so she can be friendly to everyone. When she needs Hachiman’s help, she will wear the Imouto mask to make him do everything for her. But when she needs to rely on other people, she will switch with the cute mask so they will be kind to her. And I feel she likes switching those masks too. So I don’t think she will suffer from wearing masks.
– I think she has her own Imouto & cute masks so she can be friendly to everyone. When she needs Hachiman’s help, she will wear the Imouto mask to make him do everything for her. But when she needs to rely on other people, she will switch with the cute mask so they will be kind to her. And I feel she likes switching those masks too. So I don’t think she will suffer from wearing masks. Kawasaki – I think she has her own mask too. She acts like a cool, loner girl, creates AT-field and everyone don’t want to come near her. But when she is with her family, her mask drops to the floor and the kind sister was revealed. With this, it means she doesn’t wear that image all time. So she will not survive to the next round.
Who will be the last survivor?
“Genuine” can give us the answer.
Watari-sensei presents her to appear at the end of summer camp as the true answer of “Y”. Nice Guy Aura
I think Hayama and Haruno have a lot in common. Both of them have the perfect/nice mask so their shinning outer appearance makes other people around them believe they are nice, perfect and sociable. Moreover, …
Hayama lives up to his own everyone’s expectation.
Haruno is expected to be the perfect daughter for the sake of family/her mother’s expectation.
Who will be fit to be the owner of this monologue? Actually, if I bring the result of the owner of the second monologue, I would decide the last survival immediately. But just because I think that character is the owner of the second memorandum, doesn’t mean I can exclude that character.
The next thought bubble I will pick to look for the last survival should be this!
Do genuine things really exist?
When I read this speech, I remember immediately who said this. And I read from a comment in my blog that Yukino ever doubts what Hachiman means (genuine) too. However, Yukino is out from the list, so this person should be the owner of this monologue. This person ever doubts about what Hachiman mentioned before about the genuine, and s/he doubt about it more than anyone because of this person mentioned about this two times (LN v10 last ch – v11). If I need to count this time in this memorandum too, this would be the third time.
The Evil Tyrant King
Along the way, I began to sympathize with the evil tyrant king.
I will conclude this person’s thoughts when s/he thinks while picking a character in Run Mel*s. Evil tyrant king never trusts people because he thinks that the main character in this story will sacrifice his friend in order to survive definitely. But the ending he witnesses is different from what he believes. The owner of this monologue had already known the ending of this story, however, this person has been doubting that “the actual end”.
And this character said that…
“The heart of man is not to be relied on.”
Before I will write this analysis, I and some readers agreed that the evil tyrant king would be Hachiman, because his point of view about humans is not so positively. And we will see this tyrant king was written near these sentences.
That’s why, perhaps, I had been waiting for that person who could surely see right through me. Along the way, I began to sympathize with the evil tyrant king.
These sentences were written like this and made I misunderstood that
that person who could surely see blah blah blah = the evil tyrant king = Hachiman.
But it is not like I think. This person doesn’t compare the evil tyrant king to anyone after all. This person inserts her/his own thoughts to this character because s/he realizes some truth in her/his own life. That’s why this person agrees with the king.
Why am I so sure? OK. I will explain.
This person doubts how the final end of that story should be, but it’s not like that. This person doesn’t doubt how the ending of the evil tyrant king of Run Mel*s should be. S/He just use this character (who is similar to this person because this person and the tyrant king can’t trust people’s hearts) and mixes her/his own doubt to this character. Moreover, if you read Run Mel*s, you will know the conclusion of the evil tyrant king. So I assume this person is doubting so much if the heart of people can be relied on or not because s/he thinks it is changeable.
And if you read her/his thoughts more beyond this, you will see this person’s doubt looks like the whirlpool, or s/he gets lost in the labyrinth. So it’s this person her/himself, who doubts the heart of man has the potential to be relied on or not, not the evil tyrant king or Hachiman.
I wrote earlier that this person doubts about “genuine” two times. I will explain how this person talks about this topic.
V10, this person appoints Hachiman to “check answer” about Yukino’s career path. After s/he done talking about this, this person started to talk about Yukino trusts him so much, but that is not the trust. Something even this person tries to look for the suitable word but doesn’t know what it is. And later, this person looks at the sky and doubts that genuine things really exist or not.
V11, since this person realizes that Hachiman, Yukino, and Yui are “doing”, s/he decides to talk with them about this and asks him that this is “genuine” he mentioned. This person realizes what they are doing right now and results that will occur in the future, that have no genuine or the sincerity. That’s why this person is angry at Hachiman who betrays her expectation (who said genuine to her/him but do the opposite). can’t let Yukino “change” more than that so this person needs to restore Yukino by her/himself. and Yui (who promised before that she will never abandon Yukino.- LN v6).
This person realizes what they are doing right now and results that will occur in the future, that have no genuine or the sincerity. That’s why this person is
Her perfect observant skill is an ability that reflects how this person believes that the heart of people can’t be relied on but s/he still relies on Hachiman to save Yukino. So the truth in front of this character makes her/him can’t believe in anyone anymore.
It is not anyone’s fault, she is the one who believes in things that can be changeable at the first place. Just like Hachiman’s case in LN v5-6 and Yukino’s case in v7-8. If someone adheres to changeable things, that person will suffer. You can see how this person “changes” after this incident that is not different from some characters in the story.
This person doubts the genuine is really exist or not. But I am the one who doubts more the reasons why this person doubts about this. And it seems this person doubt this issue, more than other characters. You can see from this third memorandum, this person thinks about this question after s/he finishes reviewing her/his own miserable life.
A clue outside memorandum
In LN v10 last ch (it’s the ch after the third memorandum), a person mutters that s/he wonders if genuine things really exist… Hachiman who heard this person’s words thinks that the person before him had doubts, doubts as to whether truth or sincerity really existed.
Hidden Keyword – “The sun”
With these two events above, I will let you decide Haruno or Hayama is the one who doubts “genuine”, in this memorandum and other scenes. However, in my opinion, with all analyses about memorandums above, I am sure who is the owner of this monologue. Because Watari-sensei gave hidden keywords that can indicate who is the owner of each memorandum. In this memorandum, after this person shuts the book, s/he looks outside the window.
This person’s name has the same meaning as that keyword. You can search for the meaning of Hayama and Haruno’s name. Yes, the final result of this analysis is…
Yukinoshita Haruno (雪ノ下 陽乃)!
WHAT!!
Haruno’s the way of life until now?
Well, I got “the last survivor” but why I need to end this analysis immediately if I still have more stuff to write? You can skip this, but I will analyze Haruno’s profile via many characters and place of Run Mel*s. If it’s not her, the detail in this memorandum would not be consistent. But if it’s her, everything in this memorandum will explain about “her true profile”. My explanation might not absolutely clear, but we will almost reach her real life just a little bit. And I will write this to test the final result, this is another challenge for myself.
You can skip this, you know.
Shepherd
Long ago, I felt I had a connection with the shepherd of the village. Justice, sincerity, and love. But when I think about them, they’re worthless. Everything about them was absolutely laughable.
ps. Shepherd in Run Mel*s is people who own and take care sheep. Mel*s is a shepherd from an outlying village.
This is what I have thought earlier.
When I read these lines above, I agreed with many readers in communities and sites, that Haruno is talking about Hayama Hayato (Shepherd), who is like her younger brother. He had been a nice kid. Never even once, he has done something bad to her and her sister. But she realized later that everything about him was not like she believed or trusted (maybe she realizes when she realized that he couldn’t help Yukino from bullying in the school). Hayama would not do anything (or do his usual way, convince everyone to befriend) until the bullying reached the end. His decision to save himself to the safe place, too scared to save her sister and watched her falls down in the darkness, is enough for Haruno to not trust him and establish hate toward him. Justice, sincerity, and love in him are worthless and absolutely laughable.
does Haruno hate Hayama?
You can read Haruno’s operation fire doughnut part 3, because what she did to Hayama in the doughnut cafe, explains her true feeling toward him very well.
The conversation between Haruno and Hayama (that happened in the past)
Oregairu Analysis – The Conclusion of Yukinoshita Haruno’s Plan (Operation Fire Doughnut) & The TRUTH(s) behind Hayama Hayato’s Sacrifice for Hikigaya Hachiman (The Last Part).
Another evidence that guarantees that what I wrote above about what happened between Haruno and Hayama is his own confession during the double date (??). In that cafe, he said it for real but he said in a form that we can’t notice the true meaning so easily. So I “decoded” his words so you can read The conversation between Haruno and Hayama (that happened in the past). Use this bold words and ctrl+F to find it instantly in this link.
Actually, the conversation between both of them in LN v13 can confirm how Haruno still hurts from forcing one-side expectation her own misunderstanding, from what happened in the past. But Haruno’s endless suffering is not because she saw her sister get hurt, their relationship shattered and left from her life only, it is because “she clings to things that can be changed, one of those is Hayama”. So when she witnessed the fake things from people she trusts, how will she feel at that time and until now? I hope I can explain about this more in the future.
However, despite I guarantee that the past between both of them is like that, it’s possible that maybe, what I thought above (Shepherd is Hayama), is just misunderstanding. I misunderstood the word “Shepherd” and thinks this is him because the only one who betrayed her trust is him. When I reviewed this memorandum over and over, I started to think that I am wrong. The person who made her has been suffering until now might be close to her more than I ever expected. Guess who?
My new assumption!
So I will re-analyze again! I took my time to read Run Me*s to look for the meaning of Shepherd that Haruno means. In Mel*s’s thought, he always thinks that his life as the shepherd is the symbol of family/home. He owns sheep and takes care of them with his family (his sister) and lives together with good villagers. When he gives up to keep his promise, he hopes his sister and her husband will not throw him away if he can’t keep the promise with his friend who is captured because of him.
This place will always be your home, baa~.
So let me conclude about “Shepherd” Haruno feels that she ever had the connection with the shepherd, she might mean either “her family” or “a family member (that can be her mother, her little sister or even anyone she thinks that person is like the family)”. I will not consider the shepherd is her father because the author hardly mentioned about him.
If Shepherd in Haruno’s mind means her family or a family member she feels she has the connection with, I really don’t know it’s family or just one person who had connection with her, but I feel that when she was a girl, the relationship between her and this person or family was full of good things (Justice, sincerity, and love) in her opinion. It’s not surprising if she will think positively toward her family or mother, her little sister or even a certain boy she “might” include him as the family (since I don’t know if she thinks about Hayama to that point.
The kid loves parents, older sister loves younger sister, onee-san likes cute little brother and wants love/sincerity/justice from them in return. I never doubt if Haruno loves her mother and sister, wants to be a good daughter and an older sister who her mother can be proud, who her sister can admire, answer their expectations while what she hoped is their love. In her eyes back then, she would see her family or the one she loves/respects/is nice (her mother, her sister and her brother) are everything for her.
If her mother is the shepherd. Since Haruno mentioned about justice, sincerity, and love, I think I can’t imagine thinking the institution called “the family” will have justice or sincerity. But if “Shepherd” in Haruno’s thought, is someone/people she was close, it will be more consistent. I mean… if it means a person who has justice and sincerity, this should be more right than a family has justice and sincerity. So I think that shepherd of Haruno is the individual(s).
The true meaning of Haruno’s Shepherd.
But!!
After I had written analysis that relates Haruno’s story and Yukino’s problems in LN v10 and checked LN v10 again, I found out something that is unbelievable.
I started to consider that it’s possible that her little sister might be the shepherd of Haruno too.
Actually, I never thought that she can be the shepherd because she is the one who never wanted to get close to her big sister, except she wanted something from her (such as ask for help or ask some question). And Yukino tells Hachiman (in LN v9, anime Yahari Zoku ep9) that how she suffers because people said her good points but they also said she was unsociable and lacking in charm while her big sister was not. That’s why I “was informed” Yukino’s suffering in just a few perspectives (Yukino and other people). So I ever concluded that…
One of the reasons why Yukino is suffering because of opinions of other people (that other people always compare between both of them), so she thinks she is the only one who is suffering.
In the past, I concluded this so easily and blindly because I knew her suffering via point of view of the main characters (Yukino and others) only. Things Yukino says at this scene must be the truth but this is just only “one truth” among other truths. That’s why I didn’t realize she is hurting her big sister.
Another reason is I know about the past between Yukinoshita sisters partly, or what happened before the story of Oregairu. We knew the story during Yukino doesn’t live with her family only. And hints WW gave to us are encrypted or unclear, it needs huge effort to collect them.
But when I reviewed Haruno’s words after she teases Hachiman during coffee time (in anime Yahari season 2 ep12), I realized that she can tell him about what Yukino is doing to him is not trust, but something much more awful, because she compares what her little sister [has done in the past] and [has been doing at present]. If Haruno never experienced something awful and understands about it clearly before, I think it’s impossible she can notice what her little sister is doing in just one glance. I can conclude that Haruno tasted the evil of this relationship (codependency) already.
Codependency is not a bad thing because everyone need to rely on someone to continue to live. I will say that an certain abstract in this codependency is something that Haruno witnessed in the past, and when she witnessed the codependency between him and her sister again in the Oregairu story, she …can’t let it continue. I really hope each characters will reveal their real intentions. Revealing their intentions is the way to accept their mistakes, if they accept their mistakes sincerely, they will do something that I will call “to end this abstract permanently”. If they can end their own abstracts, I believe that their codependency will be something that we can call “the true relationship” because their impure intentions were stopped and the new abstract that is the sincerely will be the basic/root/foundation of their codependency instead. Understanding the nature of that impure intention and the result is the main key to stopping them, stopping them is building the sincerity and the best codependency. So the codependency is not bad or good thing, it is like an element among elements. Whoa, this is oot already.
If Haruno experienced what her little sister had done to her, the first idol, the third memorandum might be the next stop. This memorandum was written after Haruno asked Hachiman to question her sister about the career path, and before she will tell him later about what her sister has been doing.
Another reason why I consider that Yukino might be the shepherd of Haruno because when Haruno is absorbed in thought while reading the book (in this memorandum), this scene happened after she realized what her little sister has been doing to Hachiman and she needs his help (that explains her actions in ep10-11). I think that she is doubting if the different things from what she ever experienced because of other close people, really possible or not, the past that she suffered because her sister did to her, the first idol. And how her sister left her shows us to know that to be the idol for someone is not the good thing since the follower might leave the idol someday. Idol’s effort is nothing but there is a good thing, at least the idol is relieved from that pressure (although Haruno realizes later that her sister still sees her as her idol in LN v6).
Until LN v12, my thought about the shepherd might be her family members still doesn’t change because I believe that her suffering occurred for a long time and I looked for who she loves/trusts. However, in LN v13, the conversation between her and Hayama who “was” like her little brother, it is the first time I saw how she expresses to him and us, the readers clearly that she hates the fake things so much that is the codependency between Hachiman and her sister. But it is not only that state at present she dislikes, it connects to the codependency in the past too.
This moment makes review again because I begun to suspect that what Hayama did left the deep scar to her and that scar is not healed completely. The disaster because of that certain abstract that I mentioned before will happen to Hachiman and Yukino someday if they continue and it will end like the shattered pieces like what happened to her, Yukino and Hayama in the past. That’s why the deep scar of Haruno is enlarged.
If Hayama is another person who hurt her because she trusts and likes him and expected that he will be someone who will be by her side (I mean protect or help) when her and her sister are in danger but the the bullying incident is the natural disaster that she realized the true Hayama. I will not think he is like the shepherd of the village because his outer appearance and Mel*s are alike but it is up to Haruno in the past if she saw him as the part of the family.
However, the slim evidences that shows it “was” like that is the moment in…
LN v6, she tells Hachiman that Hayama is like her little brother. LN v10, when she tells Hachiman and Yuigahama that she took care of her sister and Hayama and they went out together. Her sister tells their little nightmare (how Haruno teased them). And LN v13, that conversation between both of them shows that she tries so hard to tell him that she do like “it”. I hope I can explain what “it” is in the future. This can judge if she still thinks him as the family too.
Although I can’t find any solid evidence if Haruno saw him as the part of the family, these slim hints are what I collected that reflects her thought toward this boy. For my opinion toward these hints, I feel that it is high possible.
With these reasons, I assumed again that her mother or/and her sister or/and her little brother might be the shepherd(s) of Haruno.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Since I can’t decide that who is the shepherd, what I can do is just analyzing with three points of views (her mother, her little sister, and her little brother).
If “Haruno’s mother” is the shepherd of the village.
If I think her mother is the shepherd of Haruno, I will analyze more that Haruno would see her mother has justice, sincerity, and love for her. She wishes well for her daughters and that’s why Haruno feels the connection with this person. I will not be surprised if Haruno believed and trusted her mother, who she thought that this person is the justice, sincerity, and love for her completely.
But right now, when she looks back to her own past, she feels depressed or disappointed when she thinks about her mother. The word “worthless” she refers, might be “everything she tried for her mother” and “absolutely laughable” would be her feeling toward her faith and effort for her mother.
So it means everything she believed or trusted in this person, is different completely from the reality. I don’t know until now Haruno still loves her mother or not, but what I am sure is, she would not feel she has the connection (the parent-child relationship) with her mother anymore, or still feels she has connection, but the connection would be something different (not something like justice, sincerity, and love).
I just want your love, just that…
That’s why Haruno thinks it’s laughable because what she ever trusted/believed, since she was still a kid (she said “long ago”), is not true. Therefore, this can explain that why she can’t rely on the heart of man. Because she already relied on her mother and found the conclusion of this action. I suspect that her mother would be strict, scary (In LN v10, Yukino tells Hachiman and Yui that her sister teased her and Hayama so much when they played outside so I will imagine that Haruno was naughty kid.), her naughty actions is the result from her loneliness. Her sister and Hayama back then are like her refuge, gaining their attention help her to forget the certain pressure.
If “her sister” is the shepherd of the village.
If I think her sister is the shepherd of Haruno, I will analyze more that Haruno would see herself and her little sister were close and shared justice, sincerity, and love each other. But I can’t see how her little sister can be justice for her. I mean, if her mother is like the justice, correctness for her, the daughter, I can understand and see how it can be, while I …can’t see how sister who is younger than her can be her model. Her mother is like the model for her, herself is like the model for her little sister.
If “Her Brother” is the shepherd of the village.
As I mentioned before, if Haruno saw him as the family for real, she would think that he is a nice/good boy who is nice to her and others sincerely. But something happened that we would know what it is, it changed her attitude toward him completely. In LN v8, the conversation between Hachiman and him that I decoded them, shows “how Haruno urged Hayama to do something for her precious”. However, whatever he did after that, destroyed the relationship between Haruno and him, also her trust toward him is absolutely laughable.
I don’t know if Hayama shows that he is reliable boy but I can dare say that Haruno really rely on him to save her little sister from malice of other people definitely because he is the only one who she can rely on. His nice personality can make people who believe it, believe that this is his true nature. The only thing that can prove if that person is reliable is when he deals with the danger/disaster.
In LN v4,Hachiman’s quotes that makes Hayama upset about [it is unbelievable for the close people (in this case, friend) to betray us and how more scary s/he will do at the moment we don’t expect.] and [sacrificing the victim to survive from danger, if the victim realizes this truth, their relationship will be shattered]. The reason he feels upset (but control his manner) can’t be others except he is the one who did all of that (Yukino confirms by her eyes since she witnessed all of this because of someone nearby).
Meanwhile, Haruno is another person who witnessed Hayama’s actions that showed his intentions to escape from danger by sacrificing the close person, by trying to be the good friend who wanted them to be good friends (the same method he uses during the summer camp in LN v4). Convincing them to be good friends so he will not choose Yukino’s side. Choosing to be by her side will make him confront the malice. When he couldn’t do it and sacrificing his friend, Haruno who expected he will save her sister, that would be how her trust toward him shattered.
I am not sure again if she loved him as the romantic type or not but I don’t see even a single sign that shows me she had feeling toward him. But I can say that she liked him as a little brother, how she was happy spent time with her little sister and him and teased him in the past.
So this is the first notice that makes me begin to think her mother is the shepherd. But this is just the beginning only. I will analyze until the end.
The birth of the monster of reliance
Every time I had that feeling, there were sudden echoes.
I’m being relied on. I’m being relied on.
Lending my ears to those words that I thought to be the sweet whispers of a devil brought my gradual transformation into a monster of reliance.
If “Haruno’s mother” is the one who relied on her.
As I wrote earlier that, Haruno would love her mother, and I believe that her mother would love her too. So Haruno would try to do as her mother said, such as to be a good kid. I think she is the type that will respond to dear people’ expectations. And her mother who has daughters would wish Haruno will have good future. That’s why her mother would plan or even control her and her surroundings so she will reach that goal. And the elite family like Yukinoshita, that has wealth and power more than any families in Chiba, every family members would live in high status.
So Haruno, as the oldest daughter of the elite family, must learn how to be a good/perfect/kid so she will grow up to be the ideal daughter and to be the heir of the family as her mother planned. In her mother’s opinion, this route is the best path she can design for her beloved daughter.
To be the perfect heir of the elite family means her family would give the precedence to that person. In the case of Haruno, her mother would overemphasize her too much, while another one will not get that much. This is an unbalanced situation that makes Yukinoshita sisters suffer until now. To read more detail, see in Oregairu Analysis – ” “When” Yukinoshita Haruno Decides to Help Yukino.”
For the sake of my daughters, I will do anything! (Clench fist)
That’s why when I wrote that Haruno doesn’t think her mother ever gave any justice, sincerity, and love for her, and for this section, I assume Haruno was learned to be the perfect kid, at first, she would do as her mother said, because she loves her mother (although her mother is really scary!). But later, when she grows up enough, she started to doubt that her mother just wants to use her for the sake of their family.
That’s why this is how Haruno lends her ears to those words that she thought to be the sweet whispers of a devil (her mother), this happened over and over (I’m being relied on. I’m being relied on.) changed even her true self until she gradual transformation into a monster of reliance (marionette of her mother despite she doesn’t want). Pull strings that connect with her body parts and moves as her mother’s fingers move. You can see Haruno admits the reality and end up following her mother’s policy.
Do you remember when Haruno meets Hachiman and Yui in the firework festival? (LN v5, ss1 ep9, manga monologue v4) She tells them that she, the older sister should attend events and mentioned that her mother is scarier than her. She tells more that her mother will be the one who decides people to do what she wants, so her daughters “intends” to follow her. But if I interpret her positive words, they obey her mother because of a certain negative emotion.
I assume that the reason her mother tries to manipulate everyone to do as she expects is that the controlling the environment around her and her family gives her the peaceful feeling. If she can control everyone, she can control everything.
And maybe even her mother lives in the environment that is similar to Yukinoshita sister’ environment. Adults around her might be the main reason that made her become a strong, strict and scary Mrs.Yukinoshita until this day.
I already wrote about the manipulation within Yukinoshita family in this Oregairu analysis – And Then, Yukinoshita Haruno Launched Operation Fire Doughnut! (Part 5). I will not explain more than this. However, in this monologue, whenever Haruno thinks about this bitter memories within her family (or in her case, her mother).
“The sudden echo” would be Haruno’s memories about her mother’s manipulation toward her. And that is how she is being relied on. She needs to do as her mother’s expectation until she concludes that her mother would not love or care for her because she controls her like the marionette. I am sure that Haruno hates how her mother controls her like that but can’t disobey her.
If “her sister” is the one who relied on her.
As her big sister, it’s normal that her cute little sister wanted to rely on her because of many reasons (one of the reasons Yukino has relied on her big sister, because the world around both of them are people who expect they should be sociable and charming (as Yukino told Hachiman in anime Yahari ss2 ep9). When Yukino can’t answer their expectations and hid behind her big sister, Haruno (who always loves her) would protect her by answering all expectations, other people, and her sister’s expectations instead.) that made Haruno become more perfect daughter/sister, the monster of reliance.
Yukino is the one who is adorable in Haruno’s opinion (I realized she is siscon for a long time, but I realized that the fascination with her sister of Haruno is beyond the boundary in Drama CD v7, ), so I think she made scores to her big sister because she admired her and wanted to rely on her. It’s not different from when she makes scores to Hachiman to make a favorable impression on him because she admires him and wants to rely on him.
Hachiman who never had any good friend or positive relationship with anyone, is treated well by her, tries to answer her (or his own) expectation by working hard for the club (except one thing he can’t do it – answering her expectation so she can escape from her mother). This is the description of “the sweet whispers of a devil” of Haruno in “another point of view”. It doesn’t mean the whisper directly, but it means words and actions that make receiver trust easily.
Relying on someone is normal, so Haruno who loves, wishes well for her sister and is admired by her little sister, would answer her expectation although she must go through more hardship, that’s why she endured it, all for her sister (and their mother). But when she realized that she hated it and didn’t want to do it because every time she protected her sister from the cruel world and to be her perfect sister, she took the burden and became something she didn’t like.
If “Her Brother” is the one who relied on her.
For Hayama’s case, I am not sure how he relied on her so I will consider two issues since all of them might be the reason he did that.
From Yukino’s opinion, she tells Hachiman and Yuigahama in LN v10 that Hayama admires her older sister. His impression might be like Yukino’s impression toward her perfect sister, the factor that made him establish the same personality (and even some hobby such as playing music while playing soccer is the hobby he focuses since the middle school because it helps him forget the bitter past and he can’t spend time with closer people anymore because of what happened at that time).
Nice Guy Aura If my assumption that the first codependency Haruno witnessed is the relationship between her, her sister and her brother is true, the next question is how did he rely on her?
So I collect [their lives in the past] that Haruno told to Hachiman and Yuigahama, [the second memorandum] in LN v10 and [Haruno’s explanation how Yuigahama rely on Hachiman] in LN v13 to this consideration, all of these help me imagine how Hayama relied on Haruno. Since she likes to get attention from him and her sister by teasing and spending time together, he too, wants her attention. This is the source of his happiness so he is nice to her and even might felt like he can do anything for her. However, the bullying incident is too much for him to deal with for Haruno (there is an evidence that Haruno asked for him to save her sister in LN v8. You can read more in the link I pasted above – The conclusion of Haruno’s operation & Hayama’s multidimensional plan (the last part) ⇑ Do anything for Haruno is not something in my imagination only since we can see how he “responds” Haruno’s summoning in LN v8 or anything she wants such as Hachiman’s number.
[ps. I will not say that he did the same as Yuigahama did to Hachiman only because each character did the similar thing to other character in the circle but Haruno’s explanation in LN v13 about Yuigahama’s action is very clear so I use this to explain how Hayama relied on Haruno. I can say that everyone in the codependency did the similar thing.]
All of these are how he relied on her.
Why can Haruno not refuse?
Haruno can’t refuse “her mother” because…
I am not sure either, but if I need to say, I think it’s because of “the fear“. When Haruno tells that her mother is scary over and over in LN v6, I began to think that she tells us the truth. She is a marionette of her mother, and she understands that her mother is manipulating her until now. Haruno is an ordinary human who has emotions, so her |
ped up on testosterone, ready to challenge any perceived competitor and often travel in sibling groups that include a few males. A bird gobbling in the back yard is “gobbling to establish dominance,” Hatfield said. A turkey that charges a car — or crashes through the window of a Rhode Island orthodontics office — might be charging its own reflection.
“I would say, to get into a turkey’s brain, you’ve got to think very simple,” Hatfield said. “More than likely, these birds are trying to biologically exist, and we are somehow in their way.”
It's not everyday a turkey flies through the window in your reception room. But, it does happen. And no, we do not accept turkeys as new patients! (please pardon our appearance while we replace the window) Posted by Pezza Orthodontics on Monday, October 16, 2017
So if you’re a turkey hunter concerned about the overall population, you might consider advocating for more large wild spaces. If you’re a suburbanite worried about rogue turkeys on your turf, make sure you’re not feeding them — remove or clean up bird feeders, and definitely do not offer handouts. (Montana recently passed a statewide ban on feeding turkeys.) The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, which receives many calls about problem turkeys, also suggests removing shiny objects in which birds might spot their reflections, and scaring turkeys with yelling, brooms, hoses and even leashed dogs.
“Don’t let turkeys intimidate you,” a Massachusetts Wildlife handout says. “You can harass turkeys searching for food in your gardens.”
Not that everyone would be willing to do so. Wild turkeys, for the record, do have some fans.
Nicolas Gonzalez, a National Audubon Society spokesman, insists that birdwatchers enjoy spotting them and “submit lots of photos of gorgeous displaying males and groups doing interesting things like roosting together” during the society’s annual Great Backyard Bird Count. The traffic-stopping turkey in western New York has his own Facebook page, as does Kevin, a Colorado turkey who hung out in the parking lot of a King Soopers grocery store until recently.
Turkey Relocation In late October 2017, a turkey was reported residing in a heavily trafficked parking lot in Highlands Ranch. Although turkey relocations are rare, the bird was moved after our team realized it was being fed and becoming habituated. The turkey was relocated to appropriate nearby habitat.This is another example why it's imperative not to feed wildlife. Posted by Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Kevin, it seems, was being fed, and he was in danger of becoming more nuisance bird than wild bird. Earlier this month, wildlife officials trapped him and released him in the woods, adding one more turkey to the rural population.
Read more:
Watch a bunch of turkeys play ring-around-the-roadkill. What the gobble is going on?
Trump puts hold on decision to again allow trophies from elephant hunts in Zimbabwe
Missing: Four cats. Reward: $100,000
Birds might be evolving to eat from bird feeders, study says
Disney knew its property had alligators. It caught hundreds before a boy was killed.Since their feted 2009 remix of The Streets’ Blinded by the Lights, London dance duo Nero have built themselves a steady reputation as producers operating at the commercial end of dubstep and drum’n’bass. Now, some six years after their first release, the pair of Daniel Stephens and Joe Ray have finally realised their own album. The time, therefore, is right to evaluate where they stand amongst the genuine stars and almost-there also-rans of their assigned genre.
And the verdict? Judging by Welcome Reality, Nero’s work is more likely to be heard alongside the rest of the chart-dance canon on commercial radio, rather than stations like Rinse or at scene-driving club nights like the capital’s ever-influential FWD>>. On one hand, this is no bad thing – only the worst kind of snob equates commercial success with lesser-quality material. But there are times here where the sheer mindlessness of Nero’s music makes Pendulum sound like Squarepusher.
Doomsday, for example, rumbles away like a forgotten hard house tune crossed with a facsimile of The Prodigy’s Breathe. Elsewhere, there’s My Eyes – My Ears (And What Are They Doing to Them?) might have been a better title – features synth sounds probably last used by a 1980s keytar-wielding Eurovision hopeful. Breakthrough track Me and You, which topped the UK Indie Chart in January 2011, includes a riff that apes The Human League’s Love Action, but still suffers from the bombastic beats and hammered keys present everywhere else.
But Welcome Reality isn’t purely one-dimensional, and is saved by glimpses of the talent that’s guided the pivotal pair this far. Their first number one single, Promises, includes a La Roux-like vocal from regular collaborator turned third member proper Alana Watson, and is sensible enough to highlight instant-hit catchiness amidst the trademark (and somewhat tired) wobbles. Fugue State, meanwhile, is a valiant attempt at creating the sort of towering electro-house that French duo Justice are known to churn out. It’s a slice of variety that, alas, is served up all too rarely.
Welcome Reality lacks the finesse and creativity being made at the more interesting end of dance music in 2011 – by the likes of SBTRKT, for example. Ultimately, despite its makers’ impressive credentials, this debut long-player is destined for the homes of listeners with more Basshunter in their collection than Burial.Miami Dolphins players and team staff joined NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday in meeting with Miami-area police as part of team's Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, the team announced.
Players, Dolphins staff and Goodell met with North Miami Police Dept. and Broward County Sheriff officers as part of the program, which included a ride along. The collaboration resulted from a town hall meeting in Sept. 2016.
Dolphins players Kenny Stills, Julius Thomas and Michael Thomas, along with Dolphins president and CEO Tom Garfinkle were among those who joined Goodell in meeting with police. The group visited North Miami Middle School and Arch Creek Elementary School as part of their community outreach efforts, according to the Dolphins.
Dolphins players Kenyan Drake and Davon Godchaux visited a middle school with Broward County Sheriff's deputies and conducted football drills with kids.
The Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE) is an alliance of professional sports leagues, organizations, athletes, educators, media networks and sports professionals using sports to bring people together to promote understanding, respect and equality. Through public awareness campaigns and educational programming, RISE aims to improve race relations.
Here are some highlights from the day:
THREAD: I want to thank N. Miami PD, & all police departments, who put their lives on the line everyday to protect our communities. (1/5) pic.twitter.com/KdCubhiaZm â Kenny Stills (@KSTiLLS) October 11, 2017
Today we spoke in the community about accountability as a two way street. (2/5) pic.twitter.com/4Ck8CDSQ4T â Kenny Stills (@KSTiLLS) October 11, 2017Persona PSP Sounds Like a Great Deal
The ever popular role playing game from Atlus that made its debut on the original PlayStation, Revelations: Persona, is making a comeback on the PSP. However, the PSOne remake, named Shin Megami Tensai: Persona this time around, looks like a steal for any RPG fan.Avid fans of the Persona series will be glad to know that every copy of the game will come with a two-disk soundtrack of the game, a deal that sounds too great to pass up. On top of this, American JRPG fans will be happy to know that the ‘Snow Queen’ quest that was not available in the Japanese version of the game is coming to the US. According to Atlus:
“We are able to confirm to series fans that in addition to the all-new localization, the ‘Snow Queen’ quest, game content never before available in North America, will be included in this new release.”
Persona for the PSP will hit store shelves September 22, 2009.
[Source]Friday Dev Update: Player Feedback and Future Content
8:26 AM Will Sterling 12 Comments
"What are you looking at with those soul piercing eyes?"
Quick Update on Development
We've currently pushed our next update to the testing branch to squash out any last minute bugs, and we'll be pushing to the default branch for everyone to experience really soon. This update features brand new humanoid models, a new structure to find throughout the word, and other changes. You can read more in depth details here:
This update will act as a sort of "in-between" patch before our next major update. Our next major patch will feature a brand new island type with a ton of content to experience. I can't go into the details just quite yet, but it will feature new enemies, bosses, a slew of new items, resources, quests, and secrets. We are very excited about it and will give more details soon!
With all that said, let's move on to player suggestions and future content.
Our Vision and Your Feedback
With Salt, we have an overall vision for the game in mind. This includes the type of game we want it to be, what aspects we want to focus on, and what kind of content will be in the game. Since Salt is a huge game with a near infinite amount of possibilities, we have to pick and choose what content to focus on and what we have to leave on the drawing board. With limited manpower and time, we can only focus on so much. This is where your feedback comes in.
We get a lot of feedback for Salt, both good and bad, but almost always helpful. You guys have always been very open about what you love and what you don't love, which helps us to steer the course of development in the right direction, within the vision of the game. This is one of the huge perks of doing Early Access. Having your feedback with every update in development helps us to ensure we are guiding the game in the right direction.
Future content
this blog post, which answers a lot of common player questions about the game and the future of development. I want to now go over some of the content we plan on working on as the game develops. Before I do this, you may want to read, which answers a lot of common player questions about the game and the future of development.
Finishing the Story
A few months back we implemented the first portion of the main story. In the upcoming months, we will be working on implementing the next portion which in and of itself includes a lot of content. I won't go into too many details so as not to spoil anything, but as the story gets implemented so will a new expansion of content such as island types, enemies, items, and things of that nature. As always, the main story is completely optional but there if you want to experience it.
Weather
Weather is probably one of our most requested features and it will be coming soon! I'm personally very excited about weather as it will add a sense of dynamics to the game that isn't there currently. As we implement weather we will also be adding in clouds and stars which will breathe new life aesthetically to the world.
Armor and Weapon Stat Rebalancing
We realized recently that our current armor and weapons stats are in desperate need of rebalancing. Since we've thrown new items in every month or so, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture and for things to get off balance. We will be rebuilding from the ground up the armor and weapons statistics as well as adding new statistics. We plan on adding stats such as dexterity, agility, strength, defense, and things of that nature that will allow you to really tailor your gear to your playstyle, and even see overall damage and dps. I love this aspect of games because it encourages you to try out different armor sets to suit your own unique needs.
Ocean Content
We get a lot of suggestions for more ocean content, and rightly so. This is something we are still brainstorming and coming up with ideas for, but we will definitely be expanding upon it. Let us know your ideas for what kind of content you'd like to see in the deep sea!
Multiplayer
By and large the most requested feature is multiplayer, which will definitely be happening. Multiplayer will be a very fun aspect of Salt, but also optional. We've had a lot of questions concerning whether or not multiplayer will be required and the answer to that is no. Multiplayer will be more of a cooperative mode that you can play with your friends. We don't have all the design details worked out yet, but we will let you know as soon as we start working on this.
As always, we would love to continue to hear your feedback on what type of content you'd like to see in Salt as the game develops!
This is something we constantly strive to do because we believe that the community built around a game and player feedback is crucial to creating a game worth playing.Today I just wanted to talk about some of the feedback we get from you all and discuss some of the future content we plan on working on. Before I do that though, let me give you a quick update on our current stage of development and what we'll be working on next.Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images
The Chicago Bulls took a 2-1 series lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday night thanks to a clutch, buzzer-beating three from Derrick Rose. Cavs forward Tristan Thompson had another description for the shot: lucky.
Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group passed along comments from Thompson after the crushing loss in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. He clearly wasn't impressed with the game-winning shot:
I contested. It wasn't like he just walked in and took a three. That's all you can really ask for. It was a lucky shot. He hit it off the glass. It's tough.
Although Rose probably didn't intend to bank the shot in, creating enough space to get the attempt up before the buzzer was a challenge. He showed some vintage quickness to run along the perimeter before pulling up for the long-range effort.
His overall play in Game 3 was just as important as the shot. He finished with 30 points, seven assists and seven rebounds. The point guard, who's fought through numerous injury setbacks in recent years, looks like he's finally returning to top form.
That's troublesome news for the Cavaliers. They lost Kevin Love to a shoulder injury and are now stuck trying to defend a reinvigorated Rose.
Thompson wasn't happy with how Friday's game ended. Perhaps his comments will add a little extra intensity to an already-terrific series. Game 4 is set for Sunday afternoon.CTVNews.ca Staff
Joshua Boyle and his family have been in Canada for nearly two weeks since being rescued from kidnappers in Pakistan and on Tuesday, he offered an explanation why he travelled to Afghanistan in the first place.
In a letter sent exclusively to CTV Ottawa, Boyle writes that people who aren’t devoutly religious will never understand why he and his wife, Caitlan Coleman, went to Afghanistan in 2012.
“The simple truth is that no pious Muslim and no pious Christian and no pious Jew has actually questioned our actions at all,” Boyle wrote.
“To those who strive to devote their life to acting as a servant of God, no explanation is necessary. To those who don't strive to devote their life to acting as a servant of God, no explanation is possible. Unfortunately, it's really that simple.”
Boyle and Coleman were kidnapped while travelling in a mountainous region near the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Since returning to Canada, the couple and their three young children, all of whom were born in captivity, have been staying with Boyle’s parents in Smiths Falls, Ont., about an hour’s drive from Ottawa.
Boyle says one of the boys, Jonah, has been adjusting “incredibly” to his new life in Canada, adding the boy has gone from complaining about one of the captains who used to beat him to “complaining that he doesn't think Tim Hortons should be allowed to put plain Timbits in his box.”
Boyle writes that another son, Noah, is still terrified a lot of the time. Noah has been going through medical evaluations and Boyle says the boy is fine as long as both his parents are at his side.
“That's at least progress in the right direction, and God-willing, he'll continue to improve.”
With a report from CTV OttawaReady 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.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each 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 we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Don’t be ridiculous: There is every good reason to point fingers for the political mess in which America finds itself. And, yes, some of those fingers of blame must be pointed at the circle of insiders that—for lack of a more appropriate term—“leads” the Democratic Party. How, in a year when the Republicans nominated a scandal-plagued grifter for president and then became a party divided against itself, was it possible to lose everything to the four horsemen of the electoral apocalypse: Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan? The Republicans don’t even like one another, yet for the first time since 1928, they have won an open presidential contest, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. They also control the vast majority of governorships and state legislatures, which have the power to deny democracy (and screw the opposition party) via the corrupt process of redistricting. Ad Policy
In a two-party system of the sort that the United States is stuck with, what we just witnessed is the political equivalent of a baseball shutout. And because the Democratic Party has, since the days of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, assumed a growing measure of responsibility for defending America’s tired, its poor, its huddled masses yearning to breathe free—however miserably particular Democrats may have met that responsibility at critical junctures in our history—the Democratic establishment’s failure in the 2016 election has left tens of millions of our most vulnerable fellow citizens at the mercy of Republican plutocrats who imagine that a nation of immigrants can close its borders, that food stamps are too costly while tax breaks for corporations are a necessity, that senior citizens don’t work long or hard enough, and that the essential work of government is the redistribution of wealth upward to billionaire oligarchs. Americans with a conscience must be morally outraged at Trump and the cruel hoax that is contemporary “conservativism,” but they should be equally outraged at a Democratic establishment that is so disengaged, so incompetent, and so indebted to elite campaign funders that it is incapable of guarding against crisis.
WikiLeaks e-mail dumps revealing that Democratic National Committee insiders and the permanent party establishment tended to favor Hillary Clinton offered little more than a reminder of how elites in both parties operate. What was new was the revelation of the extent to which Democratic careerists rejected warnings about the anger over inequality and injustice that were advanced not just by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but by Clinton-aligned progressives like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Party leaders were slow to speak to the disenchantment and desperation that develop with expanding inequality and contracting opportunity; they resisted a full embrace of an economic-justice politics that might have maintained or even expanded the majority coalition established by Barack Obama. At too many turns, they settled for the narrow promise that “we’ll never be as nasty as the Republicans.” (The Clinton campaign’s closing motto, “Love Trumps Hate,” offered a creative play on the GOP candidate’s name rather than a what-we’re fighting-for message.)
Hillary Clinton finished with around 48 percent of the vote—three points less than Obama in 2012 and five points less than Obama in 2008. And in a year when Democrats should have taken the Senate and erased much of their disadvantage in the House, the party made no meaningful progress.
There are structural realities that provided Republicans with advantages in 2016: an Electoral College that allows the loser of the popular vote to win the presidency; the extreme gerrymandering of congressional districts, which eliminates meaningful competition; a corrupt campaign-finance system that encourages billionaires to buy elections; assaults on voting rights; a news media that has abandoned journalism in the chase for clicks and ratings. But the point of a political party is to recognize the challenges posed by a dysfunctional system, strategize about how to overcome them, and implement those strategies at election time. If a party cannot do this, what possible point is there for its continued existence? The Democratic establishment was so incompetent it couldn’t even defeat a scandal-plagued grifter like Trump.
The answer should be obvious: There is no point to the continued existence of this Democratic Party. It must change, or be replaced. And since no major party has been replaced since Henry Clay’s Whigs, it is time to recognize the need for a reformation of the Democratic Party—one that transforms it every bit as thoroughly as in the 1930s (when FDR aligned with a burgeoning labor movement and the independent progressive movements that had left the Republican fold in states like Wisconsin and Minnesota), and in the period from the late 1940s to the early ’60s (when the party finally acknowledged a duty to follow Hubert Humphrey’s call, at the 1948 Democratic convention, “to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights”).
The next Democratic Party should bear no more resemblance to its current self than FDR’s New Deal party did to the party that nominated corporate lawyer John Davis in 1924. This doesn’t mean that the next Democratic Party can abandon its best self, as a party that has evolved into an ardent champion of LGBTQ and voting rights—and it is now evolving as a party that supports immigrants’ rights and questions mass incarceration. But the Democrats must abandon the “Third Way” compromises with the corporate class that cause voters to believe Democrats and Republicans swim in the same Washington swamp of crony capitalism.
* * *
Interim DNC chair Donna Brazile, who did her best to steer the party following the mid-campaign meltdown of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, says Democrats must now “begin a long and arduous task of rebuilding.” If the party tries to rebuild itself along all-too-familiar lines, that effort could well fail.
Gallup polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans want a third party because the current two don’t do an adequate job of representing them. The Democrats have an opportunity to fill that void, to become the new party that Americans want. “This is a watershed moment for us, not for the Republicans,” says Jim Hightower, the former Texas secretary of agriculture, who once won elections in a red state as a progressive populist. “We have the opportunity. We can’t squander it with more of the same.” “This is a watershed moment for us.… We can’t squander it with more of the same.” —Jim Hightower
So how do the Democrats get it right?
§ Recognize what just happened. A reality-TV star making his first run for office took over the Republican Party and then won the presidency by attacking corporate corruption and race-to-the-bottom trade deals. Trump’s final two-minute television ad adopted the language of the left, decrying “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.” Of course, Trump is a political con artist whose populism embraces crude nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. But he has illustrated the potential of an economic populist message. The next Democratic Party must grab that language back, align it with policies designed to achieve economic and social justice, and amplify the message so that it’s heard by Americans eager for change. “Progressives warned repeatedly that Republicans could outflank Democrats on trade, jobs, Wall Street, and corporate greed—and they did,” explains Stephanie Taylor, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “This race should not have been so close, and Democrats will lose in the future—over and over—if they don’t go through a serious ideological shift and follow Elizabeth Warren’s lead, fighting against the rigged economy in a truly authentic and real way.”
§ Become the party of structural reform. For the second time in 16 years, the Democratic nominee for president has won the popular vote and lost the presidency to an Electoral College that was created to thwart democracy. The Senate remained under Republican control because billionaires flooded key races with money. Democrats gained no traction in House races due to gerrymandering. Voter-suppression schemes made it harder for people to vote. Former White House counselor Bill Curry argues that voters are hungry for “a mass movement for public integrity and democracy.” He’s right, and Democrats have every reason to lead that movement—even, or especially, if it requires them to abandon the practices and associations tied to the current corrupt system. The party has to make reform of the political process central to its mission. Ready to Fight Back? Sign Up For Take Action Now
§ Pick a side and stand your ground. The party of FDR cannot lie to itself any longer. It must become an explicit and effective anti-austerity party. On the morning after the election, former New Hampshire legislator Deborah “Arnie” Arnesen observed that “Bill Clinton’s New Democrats were incinerated last night.” She’s right when she says that the party must abandon its current bankrupt strategy: “sleeping with Wall Street, multinational corporations, [and] insurance companies” while imagining that “wage-starved workers with enormous bills and debts, evaporating opportunities, disappearing pensions, [decaying] schools and deteriorating infrastructure wouldn’t notice they were overlooked and forgotten.” The DNC must overcome its centrist caution, its addiction to big-dollar fund-raising, and an obsession with data that invariably leads the party to fight the last election rather than prepare for the next one. The DNC must become a source of fresh ideas, with strong research and policy departments, and it must campaign on behalf of the party’s progressive platform. To do that, it must embrace dynamic leadership with an intersectional vision like that of Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison, one of the contenders for the DNC chair. The Democratic National Committee must be connected to the party’s congressional caucuses, which cannot merely oppose Trump; Democrats in Congress must join in communicating a clear alternative vision not just about economics, but about the society that is to come.
§ Get out of town. While the DNC and congressional leaders must oppose Trump and Trumpism in Washington, they must also do so across America. The party must renew its commitment to a 50-state strategy, like that of former DNC chair and Vermont governor Howard Dean. Look at the maps not just from this presidential election, but from the Senate races: The party lost hundreds of rural counties that once voted Democratic. There are many reasons for this, including Trump’s awful appeals to xenophobia and racism. But the fact is that the Democrats neglected farm country, small towns, and small cities, which have been devastated by the deindustrialization that resulted from the trade policies ushered in by Bill Clinton and his New Democrat cohort. The party must appeal to the whole of America, with a vision that tells voters how their circumstances will improve when Democrats are elected. If a political party cannot do this, then it has no reason for being. But if it can, then it is no longer merely a party: It is a movement that, by transforming itself, will have every opportunity to transform America.India is much more progressive than the US when it comes to the third sex, says activist Amruta Alpesh Soni. She is only the second to get an Indian passport in the "T" (transgender) category and the first such to get a US visa, albiet under the "female" category.
"We think America is more progressive than India on many counts. Now, I have realised that they are far behind us when it comes to transgenders," Soni told IANS before heading for the US on Tuesday to attend a Trans-Health Conference at Pennsylvania, and deliver a speech on "HIV transgenders living in India".
experience with her visa only affirms that the picture isn't rosy as it seems.
"There is a huge gap between the transgender community and society. The stigma will continue unless mindsets change," she said.
Her journey from the streets of Pune to an advocacy afficer, with HLFPPT, an NGO working on reproductive and child health, was never an easy one. Being an HIV person is a double whammy, she felt.
Like every parent, hers too initially tried everything to make her lead a "normal" life. Raped by her uncle, Soni also had to go through the phase of self-realization and struggle through her teenage years.
However, disowned by her family at the age of 16, she joined a gharana in Pune, where her initiation into the community was performed through rituals and "surgery".
Not to be bogged down by fate, Soni completed cleared her class XII examination through the open school system in-between begging on the streets.
"A shopkeeper helped me complete my studies. He used to help me with money, which I gave to the gharana," she said.
Her urge for higher studies led Soni in Delhi after fleeing the gharana. Though she managed to get admitted to the Jamia Milia Islamia through an acquaintance for a bachelor's course through correspondence, survival in the city was a nightmare. Joining a Delhi gharana was out of question as her Pune gharana had sounded an alert against her. "I did sex work for money. Sometimes I would do it for Rs 50," she said.
Landing a job in a call centre opened a new world for her, though it was unfriendly.
Four years into the job, Soni was tired of hiding her identity. "I used to dress up as a male in office and my colleagues took me as a gay. It was frustrating to use the men's washroom and hiding one's sexuality,'' she said.
Unable to endure this, she went back to Pune. However, things changed when she was diagnosed as HIV positive in 2012. "The stigma doubled as an HIV person. I had to fight it inside the community and outside," Soni said. Her association with the NGO prompted her to take up social work for HIV positive people.
There was no looking back since. As an advocacy officer with HLFPPT, she is the face of the campaign for the HIV positive. However, the wait for a father figure for her eight-year-old adopted son continues. She hopes simplymarry.com, where she has posted an ad last week, will help her find a partner.Blair Staddon's six-year-old daughter was left with 12 puncture wounds to her right leg and buttock after they were attacked by a pack of dogs while out walking on a North Taranaki beach.
A Taranaki father watched in horror and felt helpless as he and his daughter were set upon by a pack of dogs at a North Taranaki beach.
Blair Staddon and his six-year-old daughter had been out walking along Otaraoa Rd beach, north of Waitara, on September 2, when they were approached by five dogs as they returned to the car.
Staddon said he put his arm around his little girl and tried to keep her moving but the pack began circling them.
He said the dogs' owner was well off in the distance and not in a position to keep them under control.
READ MORE: Man and dog attacked in Invercargill
"My daughter is freaking out, the dogs are darting in and out and I can't watch them all," Staddon said.
Stuff New Plymouth's Blair Staddon with a photo on his lap top of the puncture wounds on his six-year-old daughter's leg after they were attacked by a pack of five dogs at a North Taranaki beach.
"Then my daughter started screaming, 'dad they are biting me, dad they are biting me' I looked down and there was this face latched on to her leg and and it's not pulling her clothes, it was right around her leg."
He said he began bellowing and lunging at the dogs to try and scare them off and while the owner had arrived he wasn't able to control his animals either.
"They were fully still getting around him to get to us.
"They bailed us and went around encircling us and nipping in and nipping out and biting and pulling on clothes."
He said the owner told him the dogs usually wore shock collars but they were at home charging.
In desperation Staddon, who was also bitten on the back of his right leg above the knee, picked up his daughter and held her above his shoulders but it didn't end the unprovoked attack.
"They were jumping up at her, looking to leap up at her.
"We had the full pig dog attack on humans."
Eventually the owner was able to get his dogs back to his truck but wouldn't give Staddon his name before driving off.
"That was just the worst, the lowest moral fibre, that you could've come across.
"Who leaves a six-year-old bleeding on the beach, when it was your dogs that did it."
Staddon's daughter required medical treatment for 12 puncture wounds to her right leg and buttock.
He felt he had let his daughter down.
"I felt guilty as a dad because I couldn't stop it.
"I couldn't protect my kid from getting bitten by a pack of hunting dogs."
He also believed the owner should apologise to his daughter for what she had been through.
"At the very least he could man up and ring up and apologise."
NPDC compliance lead Cheryl McGrath confirmed a seven-year-old Catahoula Leopard, a breed traditionally used to hunt wild boar, would be euthanised because it was the pack leader while two others involved would be classified as dangerous and would be required to wear muzzles in public.
"The owner does hunt but the dogs are not classified as pig dogs," she said.
The owner had also received a $300 infringement notice for owning a dog that caused injury to a person.
McGrath said dogs didn't need to be on leads unless in an area where it was specified but owners should be close enough so they could control their animals using voice commands.
Staddon said he and his daughter were bitten by three of the dogs while the other two helped bail them up, and he believed action should've been taken against all five.
"I thought that the minimum would have been the three of them would go (be put down) because the three of them bit us."Getty Images
Bills wide receiver Sammy Watkins has spent the offseason recovering from surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip, something that allowed him to slow down after a whirlwind first year in the NFL.
Watkins thinks that’s a positive, saying that his body “feels great” heading into training camp and that he was able to spend time focusing on the coaching he was getting from new receivers coach Sanjay Lal over the last few months. Watkins says the wideouts were “kind of limited” by the coaching last season, but that Lal’s coaching has given him a greater understanding about how to succeed in the NFL.
Watkins’s individual success is going to be tied to quarterback play and that may not work out well for him statistically unless someone wildly overperforms the meager expectations for the Bills signal callers. Watkins isn’t letting it limit his expectations for the team, though.
“Winning, playoffs, championship,” Watkins said, via the Buffalo News. “We’ve got a great team and great coaches. I mean, there’s just no way we shouldn’t be in the playoffs or win a championship. I mean, with the team and coaches and staff that we have, and what they’re doing to bring us together, I think that there’s no doubt that we should win our division and be in the playoffs. It’s a problem if we don’t.”
The defense and collection of skill position players definitely look ready to make a run at a playoff spot in Buffalo. It’s tough to win with the offensive line and quarterback play playing at a low level, however, and the Bills have to get more from those spots before they can mount a serious playoff push.Graham Parker talks with his MLS MVP nominee Robbie Keane about his excellent season, telling Gyasi Zardes to watch Lionel Messi, why the CONCACAF Champions League is only good if you win it, why he hates artificial turf and what keeps him hungry.
"I'd strained my hamstring."
There's an exasperated pause. From being relaxed company, if occasionally sounding slightly puzzled as to why anybody would want to ask questions about the game when they could just go out and kick a ball, Robbie Keane suddenly sounds terse.
We're halfway through what until this point has been a free-flowing conversation about what I see as his MVP-worthy season, when I stumble into problematic territory while asking him about the last game of the regular season against the Seattle Sounders, when the Supporters Shield was on the line and Keane did not play.
"I'd strained my hamstring," repeats Keane, as if daring me to claim otherwise.
I'm not fishing, I tell him. We'd been talking about turf and his experience of it in the league and Keane has been so vehement about how much he "hates" the surface that I've wondered if it was even a small factor in the decision for him not to play.
"I think you know me better than that. I'm a player who plays every game. I'd played every other game I was asked to play on turf, so why would I miss a game on a decider to win a cup?"
That's actually the marginally more |
men kissed on BBC soap EastEnders have been told by the corporation that they treat gay and straight relationships in the same way.
The BBC’s robust response to criticism mirrors the row over the first gay kiss on the soap back in 1987.
Christian Clarke (John Partridge) and his new boyfriend Lee Thompson (Carl Ferguson) kissed on bench in Albert Square’s gardens during Tuesday night’s episode.
They were spotted by Christian character Dot Cotton (June Brown) who commented: “the Lord’s not the only one with eyes.”
“I am appalled by the display of homosexual kissing before the watershed shown on EastEnders,” one person wrote on a BBC messageboard.
In response to 145 complaints, some about the fact that the kiss had been shown before the watershed, the BBC said:
“EastEnders aims to reflect real life, and this means including and telling stories about characters from many different backgrounds, faiths, religions and sexualities.
“We approach our portrayal of homosexual relationships in the same way as we do heterosexual relationships.
“In this instance, Christian is enjoying the first flush of romance and we’ve shown him being affectionate with his new boyfriend in the same way any couple would.
“We also aim to ensure that depictions of affection or sexuality between couples are suitable for pre-watershed viewing.
“We believe that the general tone and content of EastEnders is now widely recognised, meaning that parents can make an informed decision as to whether they want their children to watch.”
Michael Cashman, chair of the European Parliament Intergroup on LGBT Rights and an MEP representing the West Midlands, played EastEnder’s first gay character, Colin Russell, between 1986 and 1989.
His character was groundbreaking, the first to have a gay kiss on a UK soap.
17 million people saw it, The Sun was outraged, questions were asked in Parliament and another small victory for gay visibility had been won.This revolver has a long and proud history in the World of Small Arms. Known for its rugged dependability and consistency; depend on the Windicator for your revolver needs.
This EAA Windicator Revolver in.357 Mag features a 2"barrel and 6 round cylinder capacity. It comes with fixed sights, rubber grips and a blued finish. It is reliable, durable and surprisingly accurate for a stub nose revolver. no matter the shooters skill level. With a rubber target grip, the European American Armory (EAA) Windicator Pistol gives you comfort and control at the time of fire. Great for concealed carry, home defense and as a duty backup weapon.
It’s not the sleekest, or the lightest, or even the prettiest, but the Windicator is ready when you need it! With its six shot, double/single action, the Windicator gets the job done! This one comes in.357 Magnum.... Did you know that you can fire.38 spl rounds through a.357 Mag... Many do so to save money on ammo, particularly when target shooting, and save the heavy duty stuff strictly for defensive carry... Don't try to fire.357 mag through a.38 spl though... It don't work that way.The Conservative government is examining a whole new business model to effectively buy, sell and use the time and skills of federal employees: Meet the BURO-crat.
The government has been planning a pilot project at some federal agencies that would apply “market principles” to more efficiently use federal bureaucrats and help smooth out busy and slow work periods, according to government records.
The three-year pilot project is based on a model called “The Buro,” which the government explains is “like the Euro for bureaucrats,” according to a presentation deck prepared for the federal government’s deputy ministers’ committee on policy innovation. (The Euro is the currency used by many European Union countries.)
The Buro concept, which would face its first test at the government’s regional economic agencies, would “establish an electronic market and currency (the Buro) to allow bureaucrats to ‘sell’ their time to each other in a pinch,” say the documents, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen using the access to information law.
The government hopes to address a problem in the bureaucracy of “stretched and stressed resources” during busy periods, and “sub-optimal resource use” during slow times.
Under the model, federal directors general would get an allotment of Buros each year, with an electronic marketplace website established in which Buro-crats “can be traded.”
Busy work groups within the federal government could post micro-contracts on a website, according to the presentation, which is titled “The Buro: Using Market Principles for Efficient Human Resource Allocation.”
Employees working in other areas or departments who have some extra time could accept the additional work, and their section could earn some Buros back from that group.
Some of the advantages of the Buro, according to the presentation, are that it’s more flexible than current human resources tools, because secondments, co-ops, new hires and casual employees “are impractical for short-term needs.”
Also, because the Buros use market forces and have value, “people respond to incentives,” say the documents, which were prepared between August, 2013 and February, 2014.
The documents say that, depending on rollout, there would be “variable costs” for the government, including incentives, oversight and maintenance.
But there would also be significant overtime savings, as well as “fewer stressed-out employees,” better work and more deadlines met. Buros would also mitigate the effects of temporary employee absences, according to the presentation. The government would then reinvest the savings, the documents say.
The Conservative government has been planning the pilot project as it cuts billions of dollars and thousands of federal employees in an effort to balance the books by 2015-16.
The Buro market would largely be self-policing, with ratings for all parties in transactions, ‘like eBay,’ and dispute resolution ‘as last resort’
The government’s three-year pilot project is proposed first for policy analysts at regional development agencies, such as the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, Western Economic Diversification Canada and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
The skills, knowledge and economic analysis required at the various regional agencies are all similar, says the government.
However, other potential target groups include administrative services, communications, IT services, finance, legal and human resources staff.
The pilot project, as envisioned, would see a working group spend six months on research, consultations and business-case development.
If the initial work confirms that the pilot project is feasible, the government would then take one year to design the system for the pilot (including develop software, rules of use), followed by a one-year trial run, then a post-mortem to measure its effectiveness.
The pilot project would then inform the government on “potential wider deployment.”
The system could potentially be modelled after blueprints such as eBay, InnoCentive (a company that crowdsources innovative solutions) and Google Answers (a former online knowledge market), the documents say.
The Buro market, while requiring rules, would largely be self-policing, with ratings for all parties in transactions, “like eBay,” and dispute resolution “as last resort.”
Buro transactions would be transparent under the planned model, to allow monitoring for misuse via a “panopticon effect: visibility keeps people honest.”
The deputy ministers’ committee on policy innovation that is examining the changes was created in November 2012. It was initially mandated to consider links between social media and policy-making, including new models for policy development and public engagement.
As of December 2013, the committee was asked to move beyond social media to examine trends and new technologies to help improve policy development.
Postmedia NewsGet the biggest What's On 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
Today is the start of World Breastfeeding Week and here on Merseyside we have a community of mums who are proud to share the special moments they have had, nursing their young children.
Liverpool mums took to Facebook to post their 'breastfeeding selfies' after one mum’s photo was reported for nudity violations.
Kaya Wright, 32, posted a picture of her nursing her then 16-month-old son Kayden in the bath, on a closed breastfeeding group, Liverpool Community BAMBIS, on the social network, back in 2015.
The mum-of-two from Litherland said that she received a notification from Facebook saying that they were ‘reviewing’ the image.
Kaya, who works as a nurse, told the ECHO: “At first I thought it was a joke. Facebook said the image had been reported for nudity but you really couldn’t see anything.
"Then I was a bit disappointed at the thought that someone in the group had reported the image.
“It’s a breastfeeding group, so what do you expect? Some of my friends thought that maybe it had been reported by mistake.”
But after Kaya told the group what had happened, dozens of other mums started to post their breastfeeding selfies in solidarity.
Kaya who also has an older son Daniel, five, added: “I tried to breastfeed Daniel but it didn’t work out. But it was completely different with Kayden.
“Breastfeeding is amazing, everyone should try it. But in this country I’ve noticed there is a different attitude to breastfeeding.
"Ever since Kayden was born, people have kept asking me when are you going to bottle feed.
"Breastfeeding is hard and it’s made ever harder by other people’s perceptions. I think breastfeeding should be taught in schools to raise more awareness.
“In the Western world breasts are sexualised, you see celebrities with their boobs out so people associate them with sex. But people need to remember that first and foremost breasts are for feeding babies.”
Facebook later contacted Kaya to say they would not be removing the picture as it did not violate their rules on nudity.
Why our ECHO mums are proud to breastfeed
Becci Morris
“Breastfeeding is the way nature and evolution intended us to feed babies. The sooner people realise this and stop getting so offended, the sooner we can normalise breastfeeding.”
Nikeita Cameron
“I hope if future mummies see these photos it makes them see look it’s normal this is what we do everyday all day and it couldn’t be better knowing our babies are getting everything they need.”
Aimee Davies
“This is my son just minutes old following a traumatic birth. Was the best feeling in the world to breast feed my baby boy.”
Chantelle Findlay
“My little girl Esme often ‘breastfeeds’ her dolls. They should be taught that breastfeeding is normal maybe schooling kids on breastfeeding could help?”
Suz Scholefield
“I never thought I wanted children but after falling pregnant with my gorgeous girl unexpectedly I knew I wanted to breastfeed. I had been breastfed myself so it was the obvious thing to do in my mind, yet I was the first of my friends to try.
“I had planned to stop breastfeeding at six weeks but my little lady had other ideas and now at six months we’re still going. I feel that breastfeeding has helped me build a close bond with my daughter, I can instantly soothe her cries, help her fall asleep, comfort and adore her all at the same time as providing essential antibodies, nutrition and aiding her development. It’s not always been easy and I’ve wanted to give up on more than one occasion but when I look down and see those eyes, breastfeeding mummies will know ‘those eyes’, I wouldn’t change a single minute of it.”
Caia Ribeiro
“We are making a better word for our kids! Breastfeeding is natural, get over it!”
Beckie Emily Alexander
“With every feed my little boy gets bigger, stronger, healthier and more secure. I’m proud because I did that. I reckon the reason so many of us struggle to breastfeed is because we don’t see it enough in our society. Before breastfeeding myself, the only time I’d seen it was aged eight, my mum feeding my baby sister. I hope my daughter grows up seeing it more than I did so she can one day breastfeed with confidence, should she chose to do so.”
Rachel Murphy
“It’s nothing but love, nurture and nourishment all in one!”
Becky Mbagwu
“I wouldn’t say I am proud to breastfeed as that implies that it was something I did only by myself, when really my breastfeeding journey has made it this far due to the amazing support and information from my family, friends and BAMBIS.”
Paula Louise Weaver
“When I fell pregnant with Georgia I thought I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed because of the antidepressants I was on but I was lucky enough to be referred to the mental health team at The Women’s who set me straight. I’m so grateful to them that I got to have this wonderful experience and I’m so proud of my little girl #poweredbyboobies.”
Carlea Walker
“My Isla’s first ever feed! Still going at nearly seven months and could not be prouder! I love our milky cuddles!”
Beccie French
“I’m proud to breastfeed as it’s so natural and gives us lots of mummy and baba time! We will feed wherever, whenever and however he chooses to feed! Outside the mens changing rooms in TK Maxx was our most recent public place of note!”
Hannah Chapman
“Breastfeeding isn’t something I feel ‘proud’ to have done. Humans are mammals and mammal mothers are designed to breastfeed their babies. I just did what nature designed me to do.”
Kara Balmer
“I’m proud to breastfeed, because I love the strong bond it has given me and my children.”
Jessica Harman
“It took ten days before my little boy could breast feed. I was so upset at first that it wasn’t working and nearly gave up, then all of a sudden he latched on and has been going strong ever since. I had such incredible support from my midwives, friends and family and am so glad I was determined to keep going as it is such a wonderful, incredible special feeling to know my little boy is so content and happy to be feeding from his mummy!”
Natalie Royden
“I really enjoy feeding my nine-month-old little girl. Breast milk is good for many reasons but I also find it so comforting and relaxing for us both.”
Ruadhán Barlow
“I love getting that time to sit with my gorgeous girl and give her something that no one else can. I have watched her grow purely on what I have made for her and those cheeky smiles half way through a feed just melt me! It’s our thing, just her and me and no one else and that makes it so special. When she was born I thought I’d maybe manage to feed her until she was a few months old, but now at eight months she is so entertaining with it, laughing and pulling at my top, it’s like her first way of communicating exactly what she wants and it can be so funny some times I don’t know when I will be ready for it to end!”– One of the best parts of the CBS4 Sports show The 19th Hole is the interesting conversation that takes place between CBS4’s Vic Lombardi and his special guests in a moving golf cart.
This week the golf course where it all goes down is Bear Creek Golf Course in Denver, and the guest is Cody McLeod of the Colorado Avalanche.
The main topic of conversation? Hockey fights, of course. (McLeod is a bit of a specialist.)
The following are six things overheard in McCleod’s discussions with Lombardi in the golf cart:
No NHL player got in more fights than he did this season.
McLeod, who wore his fake front teeth for the show, said he got in “19 or 20 I think. Too many!” Over the court of his eight year career as a pro, he has gotten in more than 100 fights.
He studies how other players fight.
In March McLeod had a good idea that he would be getting in a fight with the Minnesota Wild’s Chris Stewart, a former Avs teammate who is also a little bit larger than McLeod. “He’d been with the team three or four days and he hadn’t had a fight. I knew he was coming after me. … So I was watching his fights the night before.” McLeod told Lombardi he just likes to get a sense for what other players might do in a fight if it just so happens that he and that player were to get in a brawl.
Learning how to fight helped vault McLeod into the pros.
McLeod was 16 when he went to Portland, Oregon, to play at the Major-Junior level in the Western Hockey League, which is a route he says many players take to get to the pros. “I just wanted to play hockey so bad and I wanted it so bad. … Players that I played with were getting drafted and going to the pros and I had played with them for two or three years. And I always thought that I was just as good as them. So once I started scrapping and learning how to fight (things changed).”
He thinks he owes his on-ice temper partially to his red hair.
“I want to win, and I get pissed off easily. It’s the red hair. I’ve got a temper a little bit.” Lombardi then added “Don’t mess with the gingers!”
He’s not too worried about getting hurt in a fight.
“I do my job and I know who I’m fighting and what I have to do to protect myself. That’s the biggest thing — I’ve had 100 some fights and I’ve never been hurt in them. I’ve banged up my hands a couple of times but never been knocked out, or had a concussion.”
He’s full of great hockey quips.
An example: “If you’re going to do something stupid on the ice you’d better be ready for the consequences.”
Learn more about McLeod and his fights, including the surprising fact that he didn’t lose his first tooth during a hockey game, on The 19th Hole Saturday afternoon following the CBS PGA Tour broadcast of the third round of the FedEx St. Jude Classic. (And don’t worry, Lombardi and McLeod do eventually talk about something besides fighting.)
See episodes of The 19th Hole on a special section of CBSDenver.com.It was Australia's worst ever gun massacre and prompted a crackdown: a gun 'buy back' followed by strict new gun-control laws.
It was the sort of political action that seems inconceivable in the United States. But it was action that seemed to work.
Australia hasn't had a gun massacre since. As gun crime experts pointed out to me when I did a report on it for Al Jazeera, the chance of being murdered by someone with a gun in Australia is now one thirtieth that of in the US.
The Tasmania massacre though, put to bed any ideas that Australian police shouldn't be armed.
They've carried guns, routinely, since the early 1980s.
Australian police though, use their weapons far less frequently than their American counterparts.
Reliable figures are hard to find, but it's generally accepted about 400 people are shot dead by police in the US each year. Figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology suggest the average number killed annually by Australia's police is about six.
Why? It may have something to do with the policing culture.
Take this last year in Brisbane. A disturbed man, in a busy shopping street, waving around a gun. But, for 90 minutes, the police didn't shoot.
When they finally did, they shot with rubber bullets bringing their target down but keeping him alive.
Lee Matthew Hillier was imprisoned for his behaviour, not killed. There may be all sorts of reasons for the Australians' restraint: it's worth pointing out that the whole incident was filmed.
Even so, things seem to be done differently in Missouri.Since January to September 2017, Forbes has published 110 articles dedicated to bitcoin, which is five times more than during the whole previous year. It shows a great interest of the blockchain community to cryptocurrency and blockchain. As of today, every major investor has already consider possible investments in this sector, and some of them have poured cash into decentralized technologies. According to the experience of market players, there are a lot of ways to invest in the blockchain.
Investments in ICO
Cryptocurrency crowdsales are a way of investing and fund raising that has become popular in the last few years. Thinking of blockchain investments, fund holders initially investigate the ICO market and a possibility to buy cryptocurrency tokens.
The mechanism of such investments is similar to both an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and venture financing. However, an ICO suggests selling an idea or advantages of future goods and services instead of the efficient business.
When a crowdsale is over, project tokens can be traded on exchanges. Their price depends on the project evolution and market volatility in general.
Buying tokens, you put money in the project without obtaining any guarantees and serving as a voluntary bitcoin sponsor. Dishonest companies take advantage of such a credibility and pocket sponsor’s cash. Besides, some of projects make light of funds, unreasonably distributing them and preventing the project from the commercial success. Therefore, there are certain rules of investing in the blockchain with a high return. The main one is to analyze thoroughly the company before buying tokens.
ICO can gain confidence due to the following aspects:
It is conducted on the platform, selecting projects (Wawes and similar ones).
The project engages independent agents acting as guarantors.
The ICO involves co-organizers with a sufficient experience in other blockchain projects.
The project description is transparent and easily understood, specifying certain development stages.
The project has already had an active version or prototype.
Find as much ICO information as possible in order to realize whether it deserves confidence or not. It is also important to remember that the most prospective projects can sometimes fail. Therefore, you should definitely diversify your token wallet, adding various types of coins.
Venture financing in blockchain
Several blockchain startups attract venture financing as well. Thus, capital owners aimed at investing in the blockchain in the conventional way can cooperate with such projects. It is a common practice: for example, there is the ConsenSys Ventures foundation that puts money in blockchain projects at the early stage.
Other types of investments
Besides token purchase, there are other ways to earn on decentralized technologies:
Cryptocurrency mining. You invest in mining equipment that brings you income in virtual coins. Cryptocurrency purchase. As well as securities, bitcoins and altcoins can be bought profitably during a price drop and sold during the height of a price increase.
May to September 2017, the bitcoin exchange rate has shown dramatic ups and downs. (Source: coinmarketcap.com.)
Subscribe to the news of Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Malta on Facebook and Twitter!Pietersen has come down heavily on young bowler Amir who was banned for 5 years for bowling no-balls during a Test match at Lord's in 2010 against England, in exchange for money.
The 24-year-old Amir is set to play his first Test this Thursday (July 14) at the same venue since returning from the ban. (Amir won't get hostile reception: Imran Khan)
"Any sportsman or woman caught match fixing, spot fixing or taking drugs should be banned for life. They have broken the rules, should pay the price and not be given a second chance," Pietersen wrote in his column for "The Telegraph" on Monday (July 11).
According to Pietersen, those who cheat the game were also "mugging" their team-mates and the spectators.
"If you cheat the system either by taking drugs or money to under-perform then you are mugging the spectators, your team-mates and a sport that has been around a lot longer than you.
"People always deserve a second chance in life but sport is different. We are paid to play a sport we love and are damn lucky to lead the life of a professional cricketer. To try and gain an advantage by taking drugs or devaluing your sport by being bribed is breaking the 11th and 12th commandments. There can be no way back," he wrote.
Talking about poverty among sub-continent players, Pietersen said bowling no-balls for money was "just greed" on the part of Amir and his team-mate Mohammad Asif.
"I understand that in the sub-continent cricketers come from villages where there is poverty and deprivation. The chance to escape the village and give their family a better life is something they will do anything for. They get the chance to play international cricket and earn massive sums of money and are exposed to temptation. But to bowl a no ball for £50,000 to earn more money is just greed.
"This is not just about Mohammad Amir, who will play for Pakistan against England at Lord's this week, but all cheats. Amir is one of many that has been caught and there are probably plenty of others who have got away with it and are still playing the sport," he explained.
Pietersen played in that Test where Amir, Asif and capatain Salman Butt were involved in spot-fixing. Asif and Butt were also penalised as the International Cricket Council (ICC) handed them bans.
OneIndia NewsThe application process for schools, fellowships, and jobs always came with a ritual: a person who had a role in choosing me—an admissions officer, an interviewer—would mention in his congratulations that I was “different” from the other Asians. When I won a scholarship that paid for part of my education, a selection panelist told me that I got it because I had moving qualities of heart and originality that Asian applicants generally lacked. Asian applicants were all so alike, and I stood out. In truth, I wasn’t much different from other Asians I knew. I was shy and reticent, played a musical instrument, spent summers drilling math, and had strict parents to whom I was dutiful. But I got the message: to be allowed through a narrow door, an Asian should cultivate not just a sense of individuality but also ways to project “Not like other Asians!”
In a federal lawsuit filed in Massachusetts in 2014, a group representing Asian-Americans is claiming that Harvard University’s undergraduate-admissions practices unlawfully discriminate against Asians. (Disclosure: Harvard is my employer, and I attended and teach at the university’s law school.) The suit poses questions about what a truly diverse college class might look like, spotlighting a group that is often perceived as lacking internal diversity. The court complaint quotes a college counsellor at the highly selective Hunter College High School (which I happened to attend), who was reporting a Harvard admissions officer’s feedback to the school: certain of its Asian students weren’t admitted, the officer said, because “so many” of them “looked just like” each other on paper.
The lawsuit alleges that Harvard effectively employs quotas on the number of Asians admitted and holds them to a higher standard than whites. At selective colleges, Asians are demographically overrepresented minorities, but they are underrepresented relative to the applicant pool. Since the nineteen-nineties, the share of Asians in Harvard’s freshman class has remained stable, at between sixteen and nineteen per cent, while the percentage of Asians in the U.S. population more than doubled. A 2009 Princeton study showed that Asians had to score a hundred and forty points higher on the S.A.T. than whites to have the same chance of admission to top universities. The discrimination suit survived Harvard’s motion to dismiss last month and is currently pending.
When the New York Times reported, last week, that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was internally seeking lawyers to investigate or litigate “intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions,” many people immediately assumed that the Trump Administration was hoping to benefit whites by assailing affirmative action. The Department soon insisted that it specifically intends to revive a 2015 complaint against Harvard filed with the Education and Justice Departments by sixty-four Asian-American groups, making the same claim as the current court case: that Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asians in admissions, giving whites an advantage. (The complaint had previously been dismissed in light of the already-pending lawsuit.) The combination of the lawsuit and the potential federal civil-rights inquiry signals that the treatment of Asians will frame the next phase of the legal debate over race-conscious admissions programs.
Just last year, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the University of Texas at Austin’s affirmative-action program, which, like Harvard’s, aims to build a diverse class along multiple dimensions and considers race as one factor in a holistic review of each applicant. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, approved of a university’s ability to define “intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission.” Incidentally, the phrase “intangible characteristics” echoes the sort of language that often describes the individualizing or leadership qualities that many Asian-American applicants, perceived as grinds with high test scores, are deemed to lack. The complaint against Harvard highlights the school’s history of using similar language to describe Jewish students nearly a century ago, which led to a “diversity” rationale designed to limit Jewish enrollment in favor of applicants from regions with fewer Jews, such as the Midwest. If diversity of various kinds is central to an élite school’s mission, an Asian may have to swim upstream to be admitted.
The U.T. affirmative-action case was brought by a white student and financed by Edward Blum, a white Jewish conservative who is also financing the lawsuit against Harvard. Justice Alito’s dissent in the U.T. case said that, in failing to note that U.T.’s admissions practices discriminated against Asians, the Court’s majority acted “almost as if Asian-American students do not exist.” For Asian-Americans—the majority of whom support affirmative action—being cast in the foreground of the affirmative-action debate can be awkward and painful. Affirmative action has consistently been a “wedge” issue, and groups such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice have opposed attempts to use Asian students as the wedge in conservative attacks on affirmative action that may harm black and Latino students. Some simply deny that race-conscious admissions procedures are disadvantaging Asians at all, which avoids confronting a complicated dilemma.
The Harvard lawsuit does raise uncomfortable questions, especially in a time when it is also becoming less comfortable to be an immigrant. Is an admissions process that disadvantages a minority group benign, or even desirable, if that minority group is demographically overrepresented in higher education? Should colleges pursue their interest in a diverse class by limiting admissions of a minority group whose numbers may otherwise overwhelm the class?
Because our legal doctrine prohibits racial quotas, it is currently impossible to have an honest discussion of these questions. The truth is that, in addition to a holistic review of each applicant that considers race as one factor, colleges undertake some amount of balancing so that they do not end up with a class that is swamped by members of any particular race—or with too many scientists, poets, or dancers, for that matter. But admissions offices cannot admit to efforts at racial balancing or anything that sounds remotely like quotas. Hence, Harvard’s litigation position must attribute the resulting race composition and the percentage of Asians in its class solely to the holistic method, admitting to no racial balancing. This account is plausible if, in fact, despite disproportionately strong academic credentials, Asian applicants are severely less likely than white ones to have the special personal qualities that colleges seek. That is the inevitable implication of Harvard’s position, which would be in line with long-standing perceptions of Asians as indistinguishable from one another. The lawsuit may well entail an inquiry into whether Asian applicants’ non-academic qualifications were disproportionately un-special compared to those of white applicants. (In addition to Harvard submitting comprehensive admissions data for discovery in the case, several competitive high schools with large numbers of Asian students are also being asked to provide information about their students’ applications to Harvard.)
But this lawsuit, and much of the discussion of affirmative action that surrounds it, makes a serious error in assuming that, in order to stop discrimination against Asian applicants, race-conscious affirmative action must end. The argument simply proves too much. Continued use of affirmative action of the kind upheld by the Supreme Court is perfectly compatible with tackling the discrimination at issue. The problem is not race-conscious holistic review; rather, it is the added, sub-rosa deployment of racial balancing in a manner that keeps the number of Asians so artificially low relative to whites who are less strong on academic measures. It is also time to look seriously at the impact on Asians (many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants) of the advantage enjoyed by legacy admissions and wealthy families who are likely to give significant donations. It distorts and confuses the debate to lay the preferential treatment for whites over Asians at the feet of affirmative action—or, on the other side, to deny that Asians are disadvantaged in admissions today.
In the pursuit of diversity, some amount of racial balancing seems unavoidable, however taboo. We should not want the composition of our élite universities to be wildly out of proportion to the racial composition of our country. Such lopsided access to gateways of opportunity and power—say, with whites being severely underrepresented at schools like Harvard—has the potential to fuel dangerous resentment and disturb social peace, at least if the change occurs too far ahead of demographic changes that are projected to make whites a minority in this country in less than three decades. I would not relish seeing the nation’s most élite colleges become majority Asian, which is what has resulted at selective high schools, such as Stuyvesant, that do not consider race in admissions at all. It is also extremely troubling when solely test-based admissions such as Stuyvesant’s reflect the failure to remedy structural disadvantages suffered by black and Latino students. What is needed instead, then, is race-conscious affirmative action, to address the historic discrimination and underrepresentation of blacks and Latinos, in combination with far less severity in the favoring of whites relative to Asians.
Harvard and other schools will vigorously defend their use of race-conscious affirmative action along the lines previously upheld by the Supreme Court. Outside of court, the Asian-discrimination claim may move colleges to refine their admissions procedures and better calibrate for diversity and fairness. It is unrealistic to think that universities like Harvard can immediately stop privileging white applicants, given the current whiteness of their donors, but that picture will change over time. It was as Jews gained more political power and became more likely to be donors that élite schools’ discrimination against them waned. And, for the first time, racial minorities are a majority of this year’s entering class at Harvard. The enrollment of Asians is the highest ever, at more than twenty-two per cent, with their increased share cutting into white, rather than black or Latino, enrollment. Those trends will be hard to reverse, and other schools will follow suit. For Asian-American students, the imperative to show originality will continue. But I hope that we can soon say goodbye to the admissions ritual whereby an Asian student is paradoxically expected to represent other Asians by proving she is different from them.EXPLANATION OF THE RATING SYSTEM:
"SF&F Reading Experience" is part of "Dark Roasted Blend / Thrilling Wonder" family of sites. We try to highlight the most entertaining and rewarding science fiction and fantasy, with emphasis on memorable reader experience, not necessarily general acceptance by the critics. Have fun, and delve into our extensive ratings and reviews!
Most reviews are written by Avi Abrams, unless otherwise noted. Reviews also appear on our unique historical retrospective page Wonder Timeline of Science Fiction. Feel free to submit your own review, if a particular story is not listed here.
All major OFFICIAL AWARDS are highlighted in BLUE
("winner" has a letter "W" by it, otherwise it is a runner-up only)
Our PERSONAL AWARDS (ratings) are highlighted in RED and PURPLE:
--/ first place :
--/ second place :
--/ third place :
--/ fourth place :
--/ cool : (equal to fifth place)
ALL "BEST OF" LISTS ARE LOCATED HERE
These awards are given in the following categories:
- novel :
- series :
- novella :
- story :
- collection :
Also, there are our personal STYLE / GENRE SPECIFIC AWARDS. These reflect the story's content and the lasting impression on the reader:
--/ wonder award
sense-of-wonder, "visual intensity" and inventiveness
--/ idea award
originality of idea / concept
--/ adventure award
exhilarating plot, excitement / action
--/ style award
outstanding literary qualities, inimitable style
--/ romance award
intense and beautiful love / relationships
--/ humour award
funny and cool
--/ emotion award
touching, lasting impression, sensitivity
--/ shock value
altogether wild
--/ awesome scale
mind-boggling; further enhances sense-of-wonder
--/ rare find
very hard to locate, mostly from old pulps, never reprinted, etc.
Again, please feel free to leave your own review or comment under every writer's entry; also recommend us other stories you liked.In a recent study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Kelly MacDonald surveyed individuals from the U.S. to investigate whether or not they believed common misconceptions about brain research. These misconceptions, referred to as neuromyths, are particularly popular among educators who seek to apply information about cognitive functioning to pedagogy. Their findings show that neuromyth beliefs are very common in the U.S., but that they may be dispelled through training and education in neuroscience.
“The global proliferation of neuromyths among educators is concerning as many of the neuromyths are directly related to student learning and development, and misconceptions among educators could be deleterious for student outcomes.”
Previous research has demonstrated that educators across countries and cultures hold inaccurate beliefs about learning and the brain. Such beliefs may lead to approaches or decisions that are at best ineffective, and at worst, harmful for learning.
In this study, three groups were surveyed in order to investigate beliefs of neuromyths in the United States and to compare beliefs across groups. These groups included self-identified educators, individuals who have been exposed to university-level neuroscience courses, and the general public. The survey featured 32 True or False sentences related to learning and the brain.
The findings indicated that overall, beliefs in neuromyths are very common. Educators were less likely than the general population to endorse these misconceptions, and individuals who had been exposed to neuroscience were the least likely of all.
The most commonly endorsed neuromyths included:
“Individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style (e.g. auditory, visual, kinesthic)” (general public M= 93%, educators M = 76%, high neuroscience exposure M = 78%).
“Children have learning styles that are dominated by particular senses (i.e. seeing, hearing, touch)” (general public M= 88%, educators M = 71%, high neuroscience exposure M = 68%).
“A common sign of dyslexia is seeing letters backwards” (general public M= 76%, educators M = 59%, high neuroscience exposure M = 50%).
“It was interesting to note the very high rates of endorsement of these neuromyths even amongst individuals with high neuroscience exposure, though we note that these items are more closely related to the learning and special education fields than to neuroscience,” the authors write.
Importantly, over half of the educators endorsed these items. The authors |
Brown University is standing against bigotry by implementing a policy that allows prospective students to call themselves persons of color in their application forms.
According to the Brown Daily Herald, the policy comes following complaints made by graduate students on the Graduate School advisory board that international and Asian American students were not being treated as members of historically underrepresented ethnicities.
The College Fix reports that a graduate student named Lydia Kelow-Bennett told the Herald that the university’s preexisting policies caused “institutional invisibility” for students who don’t fit into the narrow definitions of what it means to be a person of color.
Presently, Brown University defines historically underrepresented groups as “American Indian, Alaskan Native, African American, Hispanic or Latinx and Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander.” It does not count Asian Americans among them–much less historically marginalized Caucasians, like those from Roma, Slavic, and Irish backgrounds.
The Herald reports that the school’s criteria for historical underrepresentation “caused some students to not receive invitations to certain events, such as a multicultural student dinner.”
The College Fix was contacted by campus spokesman Brian Clark, who linked the publication to an article from the school’s online news department celebrating the school’s “most diverse class to date.”
DANGEROUS has reached out to Brown University’s admission team to inquire how the school plans to roll out the changes, and provide white students who self-identify as members of marginalized groups with the same benefits afforded to members of groups traditionally identified as “persons of color.”
Sources: Brown Daily Herald, DANGEROUS, The College Fix
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, BITCH? BECOME A DANGEROUS VIP FOR AS LITTLE AS $3.95 A MONTH You get all our best writing, MILO’S VIP-ONLY podcast and a bunch of other decent stuff. SIGN ME UP!Star Wars Cantina Band Gifts
It’s been a while since I did a post of gift ideas for Star Wars fans so today we have a post dedicated to the Cantina Band from Mos Eisley on Tatooine. I remember queueing around the block to see the first Star Wars movie (now labelled as IV A New Hope) and although I haven’t watched the movie more than about 5 times over the years, I do remember the Cantina Band and their music.
Star Wars Cantina Band Collectibles
This box set of 5 Cantina Band members is part of a Bust Ups series – finely detailed half figures which make great gifts for Star Wars memorabilia collectors. The Cantina Band Keepsake ornament is a Hallmark product and shows four of the band members mounted on a base. It also plays the Cantina Band’s most famous song if you remember to keep charged batteries in it! It would look great as part of a Star Wars display. My favorite is the art print though – it shows the heads of the Cantina Band on the bodies of the Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. I’d guess that reference is possibly lost on a younger generation though!
Bust-Ups: Cantina Band Boxed SetCheck Price Cantina Band Art PrintCheck Price Cantina Band Keepsake OrnamentCheck Price
Star Wars: Tedn Dahai Mini-BustCheck Price Star Wars Cantina Band Talking PlushCheck Price Star Wars: Figrin D’an Mini BustCheck Price
The two mini-busts are limited edition 1:6 scale collector’s pieces which are about 6 inches tall and as you can imagine, are pretty rare finds. They are numbered and come with a certificate of authenticity so don’t let your little ones play with them ok? lol The talking Cantina Band member plushie doesn’t actually talk – it plays the theme song which I think is probably better than talking.
Star Wars Cantina Band T-shirts
Lastly we have some clever t-shirt designs to show you. The first one is designed to look like a poster advertising the band live at the Cantina which I think is a brilliant idea. I also like the middle t-shirt – it uses the common phrase ‘I’m with the band’ and shows the Cantina Band playing their weird instruments. My favorite though is the Cantina Road design – another Cantina Band/Beatles mash-up – this time from the Beatles album Abbey Road.
Star Wars The Cantina Band T-shirtCheck Price Star Wars: With the Band T-ShirtCheck Price Star Wars/Beatles mash Up Cantina Road T-shirtCheck Price
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s brief look at gifts for fans of the Star Wars Cantina Band. There are quite a few posters and other memorabilia available too but I didn’t feel qualified to talk about the really rare stuff! The Cantina Band is also available as part of the Lego Cantina Set though so if you are a Lego fan as well as a Star wars fan, don’t forget to check it out!
If you’re looking for more general Star Wars gift ideas, you can check out our growing list of Star Wars gifts posts.
If you would like us to find a perfect gift for someone, just leave us some details in a comment on any post or you can contact us via Twitter @giftsgamersgeek or our Gifts for Gamers and Geeks Facebook page. If you’d just like to keep up to date with our posts, you can sign up for our mailing list too. We don’t spam and we won’t sell your details to anyone else either.President Trump has learned plenty in his first 100 days in office. He has told us so.
Mr. Trump has learned that health-care reform and North Korea are complicated, that NATO and the Export-Import Bank are worth preserving after all, and that China, in fact, is not manipulating its currency. He’s also learned the enormous unilateral power American presidents enjoy as commander in chief – though he hasn't fully tested the limits of that power, or experienced the consequences of doing so.
But the education of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States, is about so much more than learning the vast array of issues that cross his desk in the Oval Office – and rethinking some positions along the way. It’s about discovering that running a business and being president of the United States are dramatically different enterprises. And that campaigning isn’t the same as governing, even as he does both simultaneously.
Still, if there’s one point about Trump that both supporters and critics agree on, it’s that he’s a listener. He’s not a reader or a details guy. “I’m an intuitive person,” he has said. As president, that intuition is informed by exposing himself to differing views, both among his famously clashing advisers, in his cable-news viewing, and in his dealings with Congress.
“I’ve had long discussions with the president in the Oval Office,” says Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah, who, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is a central player in enacting Trump’s agenda. “He listens.”
Trump is clearly learning something, says Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.
“The question is whether he’s learning enough things quickly enough,” says Mr. Schnur, who served as communications director for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.
Beyond the froth of headlines, deeper truths
The firing of Michael Flynn as national security adviser and his replacement with H.R. McMaster represents progress in the latter’s “more conventional and less disruptive approach to security issues,” Schnur says. “The influence of people like [economic adviser] Gary Cohn demonstrates the same type of realization, that you can change Washington in some ways, but not in every way all at once.”
Indeed, some Trump skeptics on the Republican side have expressed relief that, over time, the president has amassed a team that includes respected figures from the world of national security and finance, and has declined to name some of the campaign gadflies (think Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich) to formal positions in the administration.
For anti-Trump forces, the president’s loose, unorthodox style has made him hard to counter, especially amid the daily barrage of tweets and pivots. One day he’s ready to terminate NAFTA – the agreement that governs the $3.5 billion in daily trade among the US, Mexico, and Canada – and the next, he’s dialing back to a less-disruptive “renegotiation.”
But beneath the froth of daily news coverage, there are deeper truths that have dominated Trump’s first 100 days in office: Foremost is the grand political science experiment of having a political novice in the Oval Office, surrounded by an inner circle of advisers who are also new to governing. It has been a bungee jump for everyone – Congress, the political parties, world leaders, and the American people.
Also central is Trump’s decision to start campaigning for reelection essentially from Day One of his presidency. Trump filed for the 2020 election on Inauguration Day of 2017, a move he says was not a “formal announcement of candidacy,” but he has in fact been holding campaign events. His rally in Harrisburg, Pa., on Saturday night – counter-programming to the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner – is being organized by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc, not the White House.
All presidential actions have a political dimension, but Trump’s manifestation of that is unique.
“He is the first president in our history who did not believe that it was necessary to expand his base of support in order to succeed,” says Schnur. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’d rather be more popular than he is, but I suspect Trump believes he probably couldn’t unify the country even if he wanted to.”
Consider the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Trump is the least popular president in modern history at this stage in office, at 42 percent job approval, and yet 96 percent of those who say they voted for him last November say they’d vote for him again today. The poll also indicates the possibility that Trump could win the popular vote – which he did not get last November – if a rerun of the 2016 election were held today. For those tired of the intense polarization gripping Washington, these results do not bode well.
Why it's hard for CEOs to run democracies
Another unique dimension of the Trump presidency is his background in business. There’s a longstanding trope that a businessman could do better in governing the country than a career politician, and Trump, in theory, provides an opportunity to test that proposition.
The test has only begun, but Gautam Mukunda, a professor at Harvard Business School, offers some early caveats.
“No doubt there is some overlap in the skills required to be president and the skills it takes to be a really good CEO,” Mr. Mukunda says. “Large organizations, even businesses and government ones, do have some commonalities.”
But there’s a fundamental difference between a business and a government. “From the very simplest thing, most corporate CEOs have a power and control over their organization that’s a lot more akin to an absolute dictator than it is to the president of the United States,” he says.
The goal of a business is to make a profit, whereas the goals of government are much more contentious, he adds. “Should the United States government guarantee health insurance to all American citizens or not? That is a matter of great debate. The question of how we should do that is secondary to the question of if we should do that.”
Then there’s Trump himself – and his particular way of doing business. Trump is known for being litigious, and for constantly trying to get a better deal, even after a deal has been signed. When a deal falls apart, he can move on to another deal, with another set of people.
“His entire career he has played in a series of one-shot games,” says Mukunda. As president, “he’s still handling every interaction like they’re one-shot interactions. So he can get into a fight with the prime minister of Australia… but he can’t go elsewhere for a better deal. Australia’s not going away.”
Ever the performer
Author Gwenda Blair has interviewed and interacted with Trump many times in her work on a biography of the businessman and reality TV performer, long before he announced for president.
Today, nothing about Trump’s presidency surprises her.
“It really is the same MO that we saw in his career up until the campaign, then throughout the whole campaign,” says Ms. Blair. “He’s a performer: Always keep people distracted, keep changing the subject. Really, he has spent 40 years honing his ability to keep all the attention on him, and it still works.”
Blair calls him the framer-in-chief. “He keeps framing what success means,” she says. “He ran on the idea that he would have the most successful first 100 days ever.”
Every new president makes mistakes, and goes through a learning curve. Trump’s first 100 days have been tougher than the norm, however. Trump failed on his first pass at health-care reform, and executive orders targeting illegal immigrants are stuck in court. But in his press releases and public statements, he’s projecting an image of success.
“Undergirding everything, really, is the ongoing delegitimization of traditional news, of the primacy of facts, the importance of accuracy in replacing that with a kind of ever-shifting narrative that accepts contradictions, zig-zags, 180-degree pivots,” Blair says. “And on all of those things, there is no fixed point except him.”
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
The experiment has only just begun.
Staff writer Francine Kiefer contributed reporting.Lorry, which had travelled from Calais, was stopped at Watford Gap services after people were heard banging and calling for help
A three-week-old baby was among a group of 10 people discovered in the back of a lorry at a motorway service station on Tuesday.
The Sun reported that the group, mostly from Iraq, had travelled from Calais and spent 10 hours in the Spanish-registered lorry.
The alarm was raised at Watford Gap services on the M1 in Northamptonshire after people could be heard banging from inside the vehicle and shouting “no air”.
Police who opened the lorry’s doors found the group struggling to breathe in the stifling heat along with the infant. A toddler was also among the group.
Richard Glover from Wellingborough told the Sun: “I could see no food or water in the lorry. It had been a muggy night and it was a warm day, so conditions would have been stifling. They could all have suffocated in there – including the baby.”
A Home Office spokesperson said the incident was concerning and was being investigated: “Would-be migrants need to be aware that they are putting their lives, and those of their loved ones, at risk by attempting to reach the UK illegally.
“That is why we have increased security and boosted technology used at border controls and are working with law enforcement at home and abroad to target the criminal gangs who are often behind such attempts.”
The Home Office said Northamptonshire police had alerted immigration enforcement officers. Nine of the migrants said they were from Iraq, with another from Iran.
They all had medical checks and the infant was said to be healthy.
According to the Sun, the parents of the infant paid a people-smuggler to travel from Turkey to Greece before making their way to France. Their six-year-old son, who was not travelling with them, reportedly drowned when the boat he was in sank, killing a further 21 people.
The baby was born last month in “the Jungle” refugee camp that is home to about 10,000 people. It sparked protests from Calais residents earlier this week who want it to be shut down.
Immigration minister Robert Goodwill told MPs on Tuesday that work was about to begin on a four-metre high wall in Calais in the latest attempt to prevent refugees and migrants getting on to lorries heading for the Channel port.
It will be part of a £17m package of joint Anglo-French security measures to tighten precautions at the port. Construction of the 1km-long wall along the ferry port’s main dual carriageway approach road, known as the Rocade, is due to start this month.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
[UPDATE] Following the publication of this story, a 2K representative clarified to GameSpot that, "access to Wraith and the new Hunters is exclusive to those who pre-purchase digitally on Xbox One."
The original story is below.
2K Games and Turtle Rock Studios on Friday announced new details about the upcoming Xbox One open beta for highly anticipated monster-hunting game Evolve, which will take place January 15-19.
The first piece of news is that Evolve's most recently announced Monster, the terrifying Wraith, will be playable in the beta. On top of that, Turtle Rock revealed that the third tier of Hunters--Parnell, Caira, Abe, and Cabot--will also be playable.
Anyone who pre-purchases Evolve on Xbox One or does so during the open beta will unlock instant access to Wraith and the new Hunters. Pre-purchases are not yet available, but Turtle Rock says information about when you can start pre-buying the game will be shared soon.
It is unclear if the Wraith and new Hunters will be available in the Xbox One beta for players who do not pre-purchase Evolve. Last month, Turtle Rock said players will be able to unlock new monsters and hunters throughout the beta, suggesting that you may be able to acquire the new characters through gameplay alone. We have followed up with Turtle Rock/2K for clarification.
There are even more incentives to pre-purchasing Evolve on Xbox One. Turtle Rock adds that doing so will give you free access to the Monster Expansion Pack, which includes the game's unannounced fourth monster and will normally sell for $15. This expansion also includes the Savage Goliath skin.
The Xbox One is the only platform for Evolve's upcoming open beta, though a select few PlayStation 4 and PC players will also get to the play the unreleased game this month, provided they meet certain qualifications.
The release date for Evolve is February 10, 2015. The game was originally expected to launch in fall 2014, but was delayed to 2015 in August so that Turtle Rock could "fully realize their creative vision."Australia's worst bushfire disaster
Updated
The death toll from horrific bushfires across Victoria this weekend has reached 93, surpassing the number of people who perished in the 1983 Ash Wednesday blazes.
Police revised the official toll down from 96, however the number is expected to rise throughout the day.
More than 700 homes have been lost in what is being described as 'Hell on Earth', and it is feared the death toll will pass 100.
Former television newsreader Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree are among the victims; their house at Kinglake, north of Melbourne, was engulfed by fire yesterday.
Twenty-six fires continue to burn across Victoria; 12 of those are out of control. Authorities suspect arsonists are responsible for some fires.
The Kinglake Complex blaze continues to burn out of control and so far has burnt through more than 220,000 hectares. Communities around Glenburn, Taggerty and Rubicon are being urged to remain alert for any threats to their homes.
The federal and Victorian governments have set up a Bushfire Relief Fund and $10 million in Centrelink payments for victims.
"Tonight our resolve as Victorians is being tested," Victorian Premier John Brumby said in an address to the state.
"We know that tragically many lives have been lost... and we have grave concerns for many more. We know that hundreds of Victorians have lost their houses. Out there it has been Hell on Earth.
"It is one of the most tragic events in Victoria's history. I am personally devastated by the tragedy. The scale of the tragedy defies comprehension.
"We all grieve with you. So many families, families like yours and mine, now have to rebuild. I can promise that we will not stop until you are safe and your lives and communities have been rebuilt."
The worst-hit areas are Kinglake, where at least 18 have died, St Andrews (12 lives lost), and Steeles Creek (seven dead).
Five people are dead in Callignee and Flowervale, three in Hazelwood, Whittlesea and Taggerty, and one in Jeeralang. More bodies have been found at Marysville, Humevale, Bendigo, Long Gully, Strathewan and Arthurs Creek.
Seventy-five people died in Victoria and New South Wales during the February 1983 Ash Wednesday fires.
'Shock and desperation'
The Kinglake area has been the hardest hit in terms of both lives lost and property damaged.
Most of the residents whose homes burnt down are sheltering at the Whittlesea Emergency Relief Centre, and the ABC's Matt O'Sullivan has described the scene there this evening.
"There are people arriving on buses with literally only the clothes they stand up in, that's all they have, many who have lost friends and neighbours and loved ones and just this enormous sense of shock and desperation," he said.
"If you can imagine your street and all of your neighbours' houses and your house just gone and you're not sure if those neighbours are still there.
"There are people coming here looking for emergency accommodation, they're trying to register with the Red Cross so they can let people know they're all right, they're just looking for some support, some counselling support, anything, just the support of each other."
The reporter spoke to a schoolteacher from Kinglake who said that in the afternoon, Kinglake had not been mentioned on the radio.
"So he went for a walk up the street - there was a bit of smoke around but it didn't really smell like a fire - and he asked the firies if things were going to be all right; they said yes," Mr O'Sullivan said.
"By the time he got back down the street to his house, five minutes later, it was pitch black and five minutes later his house was in flames. He says if he was 10 minutes later he wouldn't be here today.
"So he's lost his house, his school's gone up; obviously he's very worried about the kids that attend that school."
No warning
Jay Cherie from Kinglake Central said her family had no warning of what was to come.
"When the power went out I madly started to try and pack some things and in doing so it was like night-time all of a sudden. My husband came running into the house and said, 'grab the kids, grab the cat, we've got to get out'," she said.
"We got in the car and went to go down towards Yea and the flames were coming up over the paddocks towards our place and we could just only settle in the township; we knew straight away our home was gone.
"A lot of people made that same decision; there were probably about 100 cars in the same area that we were in at the time and we had gas bottles exploding around us.
"At one stage there my husband said to my children, 'get down on the floor', because we didn't know what was going to happen.
"We had fire coming in on the right-hand side of us on a paddock and we had houses to the left of us on fire; no-one knew what was going to happen.
"My little girl was saying to me, 'Mum am I going to see my friends again?', she also said to me, 'Mum am I going to live tomorrow?'."
Bracing for 'bad news'
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visited bushfire ravaged regions today and warned the nation to brace itself for the likelihood of more deaths.
"We've come through bad times before and we'll come through this one," he said
"This Government will be behind these communities. I fear in the days ahead, though, the news is going to be bad and I believe the nation needs to prepare itself as the full facts become known."
Mr Rudd announced a $10-million relief fund as well as a multi-million-dollar appeal.
He said the Army and other Defence assets such as bulldozers and bedding would be available to help communities begin to rebuild in the aftermath of the destruction.
Interstate support
More than 4,000 local firefighters are battling blazes across Victoria, backed up by volunteers from New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT.
Country Fire Authority (CFA) Deputy Chief Fire Officer Steve Warrington says the interstate reinforcements are much appreciated.
"It's interesting in this part of the world, and I'm talking about Australia, that sense of mateship and camaraderie, we all stick together," he said.
"Victoria's gone to NSW and it's great to have NSW down with us, and that goes for every state, Western Australia, Queensland, they've all rung up and offered support to us today.
"From that point of view, it's quite heartwarming that we have this sense of culture and can-do in this country."
About 250 of the extra firefighters are from NSW, with that state also sending 25 search and rescue experts, nine identification experts and five paramedics.
The Northern Territory is sending a Disaster Victim Identification team, much like the one sent to Bali after the bombings.
Topics: bushfire, disasters-and-accidents, emergency-incidents, fires, kinglake-3763, australia, vic, marysville-3779
First postedA series of blasts killed at least nine people and wounded seven in the Hezbollah-controlled Beqaa Valley of eastern Lebanon on Wednesday, a security official told AFP.
The Shiite terror group announced that three of its members were killed and a few others were injured in the blasts, which hit an arms stockpile in a building under construction in an uninhabited area between the villages of Nabishit and Khodr.
"Sources from the resistance (Hezbollah) reported that a blast took place in an arms depot of shells, ammunition and remnants of Israel's shelling in the area," said Hezbollah.
"This unfortunate blast led to the martyrdom of three fighters," the Lebanese terror group said in a statement carried by its television channel, Al-Manar.
"Work is continuing in order to deal with the accident, in coordination with the relevant agencies," the Hezbollah statement added.
Among the wounded were four Syrian workers, the security official added.
Related articles:
Residents said the building collapsed as a result of the blasts. Dozens of ambulances arrived at the scene as members of Hezbollah surrounded the area, the residents told AFP.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that three explosions were heard in the Lebanese mountainous area between the Baalbek towns of Al-Nabi Sheet and Al-Kharybeh.
It also said that a house belonging to a man named Mohammad Ali Rida al-Moussawi "was completely destroyed" by the explosion and that a number of residents in the surrounding area were injured and admitted into hospitals in the Baalbek region.
Hezbollah MP Kamel Rifai told The Daily Star that his group does not store arms in towns. "The area where the reported blast took place is an industrial and agricultural area, so it could have been anything," said the MP.
Rifai told the Lebanese newspaper that he had earlier toured near the region and that nothing was amiss in the area. "Civil and social centers run by Hezbollah were not on alert and everything was operating smoothly," the MP said.
Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel, has a huge arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets, which it says it needs to retain in case of any new conflict with the Jewish state.
Hezbollah and its allies, which lead Lebanon's governing coalition, support Syrian President Bashar Assad in his 18-month battle against rebels seeking to oust him. The Lebanese opposition is bitterly opposed to the Damascus regime.The owners of the New York Mets are accused of making over $300 million from Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme in a lawsuit that was unsealed Friday. The lawsuit was filed by Irving Picard, the trustee who is seeking restitution on behalf the victims of Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme.
According to the lawsuit, which runs 365 pages long and can be viewed in full here, Sterling Equities, a firm headed by Mets owner Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, had 16 Madoff accounts, from which they withdrew $90 million to help fund the team's day-to-day operations. The suit alleges that Sterling Equities was in too deep with the scheme to not know that it was a sham and chose not to investigate legitimate questions surrounding Madoff.
Wilpon responded to these allegations Friday, calling them lies and accusing Picard of an abuse of power. He stands by his assertion that he was unaware of Madoff's fraud. The conclusions in the complaint are not supported by the facts. While they may make for good headlines, they are abusive, unfair and untrue. We categorically reject them. We should not be made victims twice over-the first time by Madoff, and again by the Trustee's actions.
According to Reuters, Katz, who is Wilpon's brother-in-law, said the suit amounted to little more than character assassination.
This lawsuit comes a day after Picard filed a similar suit against JP Morgan Chase for $6.5 billion.
The litigation has cast doubt on the immediate financial future of the Mets who currently have one of the highest payrolls in Major League baseball and is seen as the principal reason behind Wilpon's recent announcement that he would attempt to sell a 25% portion of the franchise.[np_storybar title=”Watch video from the crash” link=”#1″]
[/np_storybar]
Sandy Blair doesn’t know how she got off the bus. What she remembers, looking back at it now almost three years later, is the chaos of the crash. Metal crumpling. Glass shattering. Flying bodies. Broken bones. People screaming. There was blood. There were flames and there was Sandy Blair, standing on a New York State thruway, watching as her fellow passengers dove out of the windows, hearing their screams while knowing that her husband, Willie, was still trapped inside, in the middle of a fiery mess.
And you know what, she never saw the man who saved him, at least not at first. She didn’t see him park his pick-up truck by the side of the road. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know that he was a soldier, on leave, on his way home to visit his Mom in Mountain Grove, Mo., when he happened upon the accident scene and happened into Sandy Blair’s life and wound up holding it all together, keeping her family intact.
“That bus was a ball of black smoke and I was standing there, screaming, and screaming, and I don’t know how long it was, but I lost a brother years ago and, true to God, I looked up and I said, ‘Please, don’t let it end this way.’ And, sure enough, somehow, some way, Sgt. Jacob Perkins arrived on that scene.
“I didn’t know where he came from. I didn’t see him show up. All I know is he got there and thought nothing of throwing his truck in park and running onto a burning bus. It was an inferno, an absolute inferno, and he got my husband out.”
Staff Sgt. Jacob [Jake] Perkins, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, United States Army, is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a decorated soldier and a hero to the Blair family, Sandy, her husband, Willie, and their daughter, Michelle.
On Thursday morning the London, Ont., residents will attend a ceremony at the Governor General’s mansion in Ottawa and watch as the Right Honourable David Johnston presents the American army sergeant with a Canadian medal of bravery for his actions “in hazardous circumstances.”
Willie Blair was in a bad way on the night of July 22, 2011. This was it, or it was supposed to be: The Blair’s big family trip to New York City — the Big Apple — for the first time. They had planned to do it all, see everything — until a tractor trailer loaded with ball bearings rammed into the back of the overnight bus they were traveling on with a group of Canadians. Sandy got out. Michelle got out, at Willie’s urging. He told her he was right behind her. But he wasn’t. His back was broken. One of his legs had a nasty gash. He was pinned, unable to move, bleeding to death.
Sgt. Perkins was just heading home to Missouri when his plans changed. He pulled Willie off the bus and then went right back inside and got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the choking smoke. Feeling the seats in the dark, searching for others. Miraculously, all 52 passengers would survive. (The truck driver was pronounced dead at the scene.)
But out on the thruway, at 1:30 a.m., Willie Blair’s chances weren’t looking so good. Michelle, a security guard in London, used her mother’s bra as a tourniquet for his leg. A helicopter evacuated him from the scene. Mother and daughter, with no money and no ID, were left standing there in blood-soaked clothes, desperate to be by Willie’s side.
“I didn’t think Willie was going to make it,” Sandy says. “And I had to get to the hospital. That’s when Jacob spoke up. He said, ‘Ma’am, I’ll take you wherever you need to go.’”
They piled in the pick-up truck and drove 45 minutes to the hospital in Rochester, N.Y., where they had been told he would be — but wasn’t — before driving another two-plus hours to Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. The soldier spoke quietly as they drove, keeping Sandy and Michelle calm. He bought them cold drinks at a gas station and asked them if they smoked, because he did. When they said they didn’t, he wouldn’t light up.
“And he probably needed two cigarettes after being on that bus,” Sandy says, chuckling. “When we got to the hospital he stayed with us. He sat by my husband’s bed. Jacob did not leave our side until my son and daughter-in-law arrived the next morning.”
At one point Sgt. Perkins phoned home. He didn’t mention the accident to his mother. He only said that he was going to be later than expected, and that he was pretty tired. Sandy offered him money, a coffee. Anything. He said no thanks. They exchanged email addresses, phone numbers and, after a long, hard night, hugged goodbye.
“We were family after what Jacob did for us,” Sandy says “He will tell you that he did what anybody else what do. But it is not true, because 99% of people wouldn’t have done what he did.
“My daughter is getting married this summer. Jacob’s invited. Without him, Michelle’s Dad wouldn’t be there to walk her down the aisle. Without Jacob, our lives would look totally different.
“He is our hero.”
National Post
• Email: joconnor@nationalpost.com | Twitter: oconnorwritesCLEVELAND, Ohio -- This was a neighborhood dispute that I just had to investigate.
On the one side, a deaf couple that cleans houses for a living. On the other, a guy whose credentials once included protecting U.S. presidents and the Cleveland Browns.
They fought over pets, trespassing, dirty looks and surveillance cameras in an otherwise peaceful cluster of townhouses in Beachwood, one of the region's more wealthy suburbs.
The dispute -- which played out over several years -- sparked numerous calls to the police, and ultimately criminal charges against both of the deaf people.
An advocate for the deaf alerted me to the story. The couple was initially apprehensive about the potential repercussions of speaking out against their neighbor. But, in the end, they say they decided to talk to offer insight into their world, one in which neither husband nor wife has ever heard a spoken word.
Here is the couple's story, based on interviews with the couple (conducted through interpreters) and their advocates as well as a review of court and police records. The other neighbor did not respond to numerous requests to talk about the dispute.
**
Judy and Neal Arsham, who were born deaf, moved to Beachwood in 2004 to put their children, who have no hearing impairments, into the suburb's top-rated schools.
Getting there wasn't easy. The Arshams said their house-cleaning business is hardly lucrative. But with savings and profits from the sale of their previous home, they made it work. They decided on a new condominium so they could live without the burden of an aging home and yard work, they said.
Judy and Neal said they saw themselves fitting in. They had a pet cat named Dinosaur. They played badminton. The children's friends hung out at their house. They loved the Cleveland Browns and staying fit.
Advocates for Judy and Neal suggest that some of the problem could be that they are deaf. Deaf people can be misunderstood by the hearing world. The advocates say that because the deaf rely so heavily on their eyes, they constantly look around -- behavior that can be interpreted as paranoid.
Neal, 59, is more accustomed to interacting with the hearing world than Judy. His family not only pushed Neal to read and write at a young age, but fought to get him into the Shaker Heights school system alongside hearing children. His parents also fostered his interest in swimming. When he was young, Neal won three gold medals in swimming events at two Deaf Olympics, one in Serbia, and one in Sweden.
Neal also reads lips, so he locks on a person's face to try to catch their greeting. But even the best lip readers can miss a lot, and his own communications can be difficult to follow. He speaks in a raspy and hushed tone, pushing out incomplete sentences. He can't understand nuance or pick up on verbal cues.
Judy, 58, who is from New York, was sent as a child to a residential home for the deaf, which left her much more sheltered. She uses American Sign Language to communicate, which makes it nearly impossible for her to talk to people who don't sign. When Judy tries to speak, she can manage some words. When she gets excited, she delivers bursts of sounds and displays animated facial expressions and hand gestures - a reaction common among the deaf. Neal, who also learned to sign, is often her sole link to the hearing world.
**
The couple's neighbor, Lewis Merletti, spent nearly 25 years in the U.S. Secret Service, including three tours in the White House. President Bill Clinton appointed him director in June 1997.
Lewis, 66, left the Secret Service nearly a year and half later, when then-Browns owner Al Lerner asked him to head the team's security. The job came with a fancy title and an annual salary of more than $350,000, not including additional money he was paid for security duties with credit-card giant MBNA, which Lerner also owned. (He does not currently work for the Browns, and the team is now owned by businessman Jimmy Haslam.)
Lewis moved into his Beachwood condominium around 2005 with his wife, Josette. His condominium is separated from his deaf neighbors |
The Playboy of the Western World:
Once when midnight smote the air
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
On every crowded street to stare
Upon great Juan riding by;
Even like these to rail and sweat,
Staring upon his sinewy thigh.
The power which Yeats has within himself gives him the analogy ready made and produces the tremendous scorn of the last line, but even in this short poem there are six or seven unnecessary words. It would probably have been deadlier if it had been neater.
Mr Menon's book is incidentally a short biography of Yeats, but he is above all interested in Yeats's philosophical “system”, which in his opinion supplies the subject-matter of more of Yeats's poems than is generally recognised. This system is set forth fragmentarily in various places, and at full length in a vision, a privately printed book which I have never read but which Mr Menon quotes from extensively. Yeats gave conflicting accounts of its origin, and Mr Menon hints pretty broadly that the “documents” on which it was ostensibly founded were imaginary. Yeats's philosophical system, says Mr Menon, “was at the back of his intellectual life almost from the beginning. His poetry is full of it. Without it his later poetry becomes almost completely unintelligible.” As soon as we begin to read about the so-called system we are in the middle of a hocus-pocus of Great Wheels, gyres, cycles of the moon, reincarnation, disembodied spirits, astrology and what not. Yeats hedges as to the literalness with which he believed in all this, but he certainly dabbled in spiritualism and astrology, and in earlier life had made experiments in alchemy. Although almost buried under explanations, very difficult to understand, about the phases of the moon, the central idea of his philosophical system seems to be our old friend, the cyclical universe, in which everything happens over and over again. One has not, perhaps, the right to laugh at Yeats for his mystical beliefs — for I believe it could be shown that some degree of belief in magic is almost universal — but neither ought one to write such things off as mere unimportant eccentricities. It is Mr Menon's perception of this that gives his book its deepest interest. “In the first flush of admiration and enthusiasm,” he says, “most people dismissed the fantastical philosophy as the price we have to pay for a great and curious intellect. One did not quite realise where he was heading. And those who did, like Pound and perhaps Eliot, approved the stand that he finally took. The first reaction to this did not come, as one might have expected, from the politically-minded young English poets. They were puzzled because a less rigid or artificial system than that of a vision might not have produced the great poetry of Yeats's last days.” It might not, and yet Yeats's philosophy has some very sinister implications, as Mr Menon points out.
Translated into political terms, Yeats's tendency is Fascist. Throughout most of his life, and long before Fascism was ever heard of, he had had the outlook of those who reach Fascism by the aristocratic route. He is a great hater of democracy, of the modern world, science, machinery, the concept of progress — above all, of the idea of human equality. Much of the imagery of his work is feudal, and it is clear that he was not altogether free from ordinary snobbishness. Later these tendencies took clearer shape and led him to “the exultant acceptance of authoritarianism as the only solution. Even violence and tyranny are not necessarily evil because the people, knowing not evil and good, would become perfectly acquiescent to tyranny.... Everything must come from the top. Nothing can come from the masses.” Not much interested in politics, and no doubt disgusted by his brief incursions into public life, Yeats nevertheless makes political pronouncements. He is too big a man to share the illusions of Liberalism, and as early as 1920 he foretells in a justly famous passage (”The Second Coming”) the kind of world that we have actually moved into. But he appears to welcome the coming age, which is to be “hierarchical, masculine, harsh, surgical”, and is influenced both by Ezra Pound and by various Italian Fascist writers. He describes the new civilisation which he hopes and believes will arrive: “an aristocratic civilisation in its most completed form, every detail of life hierarchical, every great man's door crowded at dawn by petitioners, great wealth everywhere in a few men's hands, all dependent upon a few, up to the Emperor himself, who is a God dependent on a greater God, and everywhere, in Court, in the family, an inequality made law.” The innocence of this statement is as interesting as its snobbishness. To begin with, in a single phrase, “great wealth in a few men's hands”, Yeats lays bare the central reality of Fascism, which the whole of its propaganda is designed to cover up. The merely political Fascist claims always to be fighting for justice: Yeats, the poet, sees at a glance that Fascism means injustice, and acclaims it for that very reason. But at the same time he fails to see that the new authoritarian civilisation, if it arrives, will not be aristocratic, or what he means by aristocratic. It will not be ruled by noblemen with Van Dyck faces, but by anonymous millionaires, shiny-bottomed bureaucrats and murdering gangsters. Others who have made the same mistake have afterwards changed their views and one ought not to assume that Yeats, if he had lived longer, would necessarily have followed his friend Pound, even in sympathy. But the tendency of the passage I have quoted above is obvious, and its complete throwing overboard of whatever good the past two thousand years have achieved is a disquieting symptom.
How do Yeat's political ideas link up with his leaning towards occultism? It is not clear at first glance why hatred of democracy and a tendency to believe in crystal-gazing should go together. Mr Menon only discusses this rather shortly, but it is possible to make two guesses. To begin with, the theory that civilisation moves in recurring cycles is one way out for people who hate the concept of human equality. If it is true that “all this”, or something like it, “has happened before”, then science and the modern world are debunked at one stroke and progress becomes for ever impossible. It does not much matter if the lower orders are getting above themselves, for, after all, we shall soon be returning to an age of tyranny. Yeats is by no means alone in this outlook. If the universe is moving round on a wheel, the future must be foreseeable, perhaps even in some detail. It is merely a question of discovering the laws of its motion, as the early astronomers discovered the solar year. Believe that, and it becomes difficult not to believe in astrology or some similar system. A year before the war, examining a copy of Gringoire, the French Fascist weekly, much read by army officers, I found in it no less than thirty-eight advertisements of clairvoyants. Secondly, the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of initiates. But the same idea is integral to Fascism. Those who dread the prospect of universal suffrage, popular education, freedom of thought, emancipation of women, will start off with a predilection towards secret cults. There is another link between Fascism and magic in the profound hostility of both to the Christian ethical code.
No doubt Yeats wavered in his beliefs and held at different times many different opinions, some enlightened, some not. Mr Menon repeats for him Eliot's claim that he had the longest period of development of any poet who has ever lived. But there is one thing that seems constant, at least in all of his work that I can remember, and that is his hatred of modern western civilisation and desire to return to the Bronze Age, or perhaps to the Middle Ages. Like all such thinkers, he tends to write in praise of ignorance. The Fool in his remarkable play, The Hour-Glass, is a Chestertonian figure, “God's fool”, the “natural born innocent”, who is always wiser than the wise man. The philosopher in the play dies on the knowledge that all his lifetime of thought has been wasted (I am quoting from memory again):
The stream of the world has changed its course,
And with the stream my thoughts have run
Into some cloudly, thunderous spring
That is its mountain-source;
Ay, to a frenzy of the mind,
That all that we have done's undone
Our speculation but as the wind.
Beautiful words, but by implication profoundly obscurantist and reactionary; for if it is really true that a village idiot, as such, is wiser than a philosopher, then it would be better if the alphabet had never been invented. Of course, all praise of the past is partly sentimental, because we do not live in the past. The poor do not praise poverty. Before you can despise the machine, the machine must set you free from brute labour. But that is not to say that Yeats's yearning for a more primitive and more hierarchical age was not sincere. How much of all this is traceable to mere snobbishness, product of Yeats's own position as an impoverished offshoot of the aristocracy, is a different question. And the connection between his obscurantist opinions and his tendency towards “quaintness” of language remains to be worked out; Mr Menon hardly touches upon it.
This is a very short book, and I would greatly like to see Mr Menon go ahead and write another book on Yeats, starting where this one leaves off. “If the greatest poet of our times is exultantly ringing in an era of Fascism, it seems a somewhat disturbing symptom,” he says on the last page, and leaves it at that. It is a disturbing symptom, because it is not an isolated one. By and large the best writers of our time have been reactionary in tendency, and though Fascism does not offer any real return to the past, those who yearn for the past will accept Fascism sooner than its probable alternatives. But there are other lines of approach, as we have seen during the past two or three years. The relationship between Fascism and the literary intelligentsia badly needs investigating, and Yeats might well be the starting-point. He is best studied by someone like Mr Menon, who can approach a poet primarily as a poet, but who also knows that a writer's political and religious beliefs are not excrescences to be laughed away, but something that will leave their mark even on the smallest detail of his work.
1943Czech President Milos Zeman holds a mock assault rifle, with the inscription “At Journalists” and a bottle of Becherovka liqueur instead of the magazine, that was presented to him on Oct. 20, 2017. (Miroslav Chaloupka/CTK via AP)
After President Trump's announcement that the United States would view Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and work toward moving its embassy there, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expects other nations to follow America's lead.
As Netanyahu visited Brussels on Monday, it looked as if only a motley crew was offering support for Trump's move — consisting mostly of anti-Islam European leaders holding little political power.
Czech President Milos Zeman, who is known for his affinity with Trump and his anti-Muslim populist rhetoric, was perhaps the highest-profile international leader to support Trump's decision.
Speaking this weekend at a meeting of the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, Zeman assailed Europe's “cowardly” response to Trump's announcement and accused the European Union of letting “the pro-Palestinian terror movement” dominate the discussion about Israel, according to the CTK news agency.
Another European leader with links to the far right, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, tweeted support last week for the view that Jerusalem was the “undivided, eternal capital of Israel.” Wilders, leader of the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV), added that “all freedom loving countries should move their embassy to Jerusalem” and suggested that the Jordanian capital, Amman, was the Palestinian capital.
Austrian far-right leader Hans-Christian Strache also expressed understanding for Israel's position that Jerusalem is its capital. “It would be our wish too that our embassy would be located there, as is common in the world,” Strache, leader of the Freedom Party (FPO), said in an interview with the newspaper Kurier published Saturday.
Strache wrote a letter to Netanyahu after visiting Israel in June, saying he would do “all in my power, be it legislative or eventually executive, to move the Austrian Embassy” to Jerusalem. In his interview with Kurier, however, he seemed less certain of his ability to help move the embassy and said Austria, “as a neutral country,” should be cautious about moving unilaterally without E.U. support.
Either way, Strache's ability to influence the location of the Austrian Embassy in Israel may be limited. Though the FPO is in talks to form a coalition government with Sebastian Kurz of the center-right Austrian People's Party, Kurz said last week that its policy on Jerusalem has not changed.
Wilders is shut out of government, with mainstream Dutch parties refusing to consider a coalition with him after March's legislative elections. Zeman, meanwhile, occupies a largely ceremonial head-of-state position. The Czech president said Saturday he supports the position of far-right politician Tomio Okamura, leader of the SPD and another critic of Muslim immigration, who said he hoped the Czech Republic would follow Trump's lead.
However, the Czech Foreign Ministry has said it “considers Jerusalem to be future capital of both states, meaning the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine.”
Despite speculation, no sitting government has publicly said it would follow the United States and move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Though Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban last week blocked a planned E.U. statement criticizing Trump's decision, he said Monday that Hungary would not move its embassy.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported last week that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had sent a message to Israel saying he wanted to move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, but a spokesman for Duterte and representatives of the Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Last week, Netanyahu said Israel was “in contact with other countries that will declare similar recognition” and that some countries may end up moving their embassies before the United States. E.U. foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told him Monday that no European leader was planning such a move.
Tel Aviv hosts all the 86 embassies in Israel, while Jerusalem is home to a smaller number of consulates. Though Trump administration officials have said they hope the relocation of the embassy might be accomplished in three to four years, Daniel Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, has said logistical problems may mean a five- to 10-year timeline.
More on WorldViews
Where would a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem actually go?A Brief Background
The stated mission of this site is to try and build recipes from the bottom up in order to reflect the terroir of the place they come from. In order to do this, I feel it necessary to examine the history of brewing in the United States to see what beer culture was like before Prohibition. First, it is important to recognise that beer did not have nearly the mindshare in the hearts of drinkers that it has today. Distilled spirits were the beverage of choice among Colonialists for multiple reasons. They didn’t spoil and they were easy to transport being the primary ones. Gentlemen drank Madeira, port, sherry, and fine brandies. More common men drank rum pre-Revolution and whiskey post-Revolution. Another reason you saw beer in short supply compared to spirits was the fact that for several decades after colonization started, all malt had to be imported. Barley didn’t grow well in New England and what malt was produced or imported was saved to help in distilling.
Although barley didn’t take well at first, a crop that did take off in the New World was apples. Since the notion that it was considered unhealthy to drink water was brought over from England, production of hard cider took off and consumption skyrocketed. So whiskey or cider were extremely popular … what about beer? There were breweries in the big cities on the East Coast, but as previously stated, most of the malt had to be imported and most beer they brewed was done in the style of the English until about the mid 1800’s. So, does that mean America had no original brewing style and everything that was made was merely “clone” beers? Not at all! Although there were some breweries, the majority of beer that was produced was produced at home. With traditional brewing ingredients in short supply, homebrewers had to get creative.
“Beer” & “Ale”
So what did homebrewers use and what kind of beer did they make? First, let’s talk about what they didn’t make. The mentions you see of Thomas Jefferson’s beer in The Homebrewer’s Recipe Guide and Radical Brewing are completely wrong assuming Jefferson was brewing in a manner simliar to contemporary homebrewers. How do I know that? I sifted through over 100 pre-Prohibitions beer recipes. You know what’s not in a single one of them? Malt. I know that sounds odd, but consider the information in the background. Malt was in short supply and what malt there was had to be used for its diastatic power to help transform the abundance of corn and grains into whiskey. There were occasional mentions to be found of “adding a handful of malt should it be handy” or whatnot, but as you will see, malt wasn’t the main ingredient in beer. The supposed Jefferson beers are comparatively high in ABV and make use of modern pale malts. In all the recipes I’ve examined, there was only one beer that came in over 5% ABV and all the malts of the day were closer to Munich or amber malt.
So what were people using to make beer? By and large, they used wheat bran and molasses. Wheat bran is the hard outer coat of the wheat kernel. Being the outer shell, it has many of the enzymes and therefore, a high diastatic power. Although I couldn’t find hard data the extration rate of wheat bran, it seems to have 1/5th the nutritional value of regular wheat, so from here forward, it will be assumed to have 1/5th the potential of flaked wheat until experimental data can confirm this. All estimates below assumed the yeast to be approximately as attenuative as American Ale Yeast (1056) and the hops to be compariable to East Kent Goldings which would have been in style for the time. Molasses was also not typically the same as the black strap molasses of today. Most molasses was of a light to mid grade and there was occasion mention of substitution with equal measures of honey. Technically, that makes the drink mead or metheglin, but considering how loosely beer is being defined already, I don’t think many cared. So let’s take a look at some actual beer recipes that most resemble beer as we think of it today scaled to the typical 5gal homebrew batch.
*agricultural conversions
First interesting thing I’d like to point out here is that the publication dates of these recipes is a bit deceptive. With the exception of George Washington’s recipe, I found several duplicates of each recipe published in other collections. I’ve only listed the earliest copy of the recipe I could find, but that does not guarantee that this is listing is the origin of the recipe. For instance, I found reference that “Beer is a good family drink” was first published in another collection of The Frugal Housewife in 1833, but it was repeated as late 1887 in Good Housekeeping. Most recipes seem to be collections of favorite recipes from previously published recipes or collections of home recipes compiled by a church as part of a cookbook being sold for charity.
That acknowledgement aside, let’s look at the beers we have here. The average ABV is only 2.6% and the average IBU is 20.6 if you pull out the obvious odd outlier. The average batch size of the day seemed to be around 15-16 gals and the average length of boil was 3 hours. There was no mention of mashing and lautering in some recipes that included wheat bran but when it was mentioned, it seems that hops and bran were usually boiled together. This was a bit confusing when I first encountered it, but if you consider the average home at the time, it makes a bit more sense. They didn’t have giant propane burners to bring a 15 gallon batch up to boil in 30 or 40 minutes as we do today. The fire was an open wood fireplace or a wood/coal burning cast iron stove. This meant large batches heated more slowly. Given the high diastatic power of the bran and the relatively low conversion potential, I would think the pot would be in the beta and alpha amylase zones long enough to get a decent conversion. Any addition starches liberated in the boil or tannins extracted would provide some measure of body and flavor to what was seemingly a fairly weak drink. The yeast used would have been whatever was being used by the household to make bread. Although it’s impossible to know the exact pitching rate, the average addition seemed to be “a pint of yeast” to a 15 gallon batch once the beer was cool or “blood warm”, so it would at least seem somewhat in line with modern pitching practices. The other oddity that you see commonly is fermentation time. Most recipes indicate that the beer would be ready to consume the next day or within two days. Some make mention of sealing the bung at this time while others give no indication, so it seems the beer was either flat or very low in carbonation. While there’s no direct mention of it in the given recipes, other supplementary materials I read stated that most homes had a dedicated ale making room separate from the house and the further south one went, the need to do so in a cellar was key. That would indicate that they had some grasp that fermentation temperature needed to be mediated.
So what do I make of this? Low ABV, lots of wheat character, moderate hopping, possibly blended or funky yeast … the average “hop beer” of the day was closer to a traditional saison than anything else. It’s odd to think the common place beer was more like DuPont than Budweiser. Does that mean this was the preferred beer of choice? Not really. As I mentioned earlier, this post just represents some statistics and analysis around what we’d recognize as the most average ales. America had it’s version of the IPA craze long before Cascadia made it cool. People were into all kinds of crazy flavor combinations centuries before Dogfishhead thought to bottle something off the wall. That will have to wait until next time though...
A few other resources utilized for this series of posts:Medical cannabis use is highly under-researched, according to UNM professors Jacob Vigil and Sara Stith — and their recent findings suggest that it could actually help to battle addiction.
The pair, along with pain specialist Dr. Anthony Reeve, presented their research on how enrollment in the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program has affected prescription opioid use in patients with chronic pain on Friday at UNM.
Vigil said the Medical Cannabis Program is unprecedented because patients manage their own care, since doctors can’t prescribe doses of cannabis, only authorize patients to obtain it.
He said it’s difficult to obtain federal funding for research on medical cannabis use and New Mexico is a great place to do research on it now, because recreational use is not currently legal.
The study compared prescription opioid use in Reeve’s patients who were enrolled in the medical cannabis program and his patients who were not enrolled over an 18 month period, Stith said.
New Mexico keeps track of prescription opioid use, allowing them to check whether patients who reported a reduction in opioid use were telling the truth, she said.
Their research found a 31 percent reduction in opioid use after 18 months in the medical cannabis patients and a slight increase in opioid use in the control group, she said.
The trend for cannabis users was clear, while the control group’s trend was less definite. But their research defies the popular gateway hypothesis, that cannabis use will lead to the use of more dangerous drugs, Vigil said.
Stith said it was difficult to even begin the study as Vigil spent two years getting the “little pilot study” approved through the institutional review board.
“I don’t have tenure yet. I wouldn’t have been able to spend those two years,” Stith said. “Basically (Vigil) got tenure and was able to invest the time and so it really is restrictive, especially when you don’t have tenure to even begin to start on these types of studies because it’s just too long of a timeline.”
One of the other challenges is quality assurance, Stith said.
“You can go to one dispensary and buy something called “purple firefly” or something and you go to another dispensary, it’s called the same thing but it’s actually a totally different plant,” she said. “There’s a lot of inconsistencies and that makes it hard to study in a medical sense.”
Stith said the biggest challenge to doing research is cannabis’ status as a Schedule 1 drug.
“We cannot give patients cannabis or we’re drug dealers — so we have to figure out how to observe them in a way so that we’re not intervening with them,” she said. “We couldn’t say, ‘take this before you go to bed and tell us how it works.’ We can’t do that. So that’s the biggest hurdle, the Schedule 1 aspect of it, and Schedule 1 means literally no therapeutic potential for the medication or substance.”
But despite all of the challenges, they are excited to continue in this “really exciting” area of research, she said.
“One benefit of the fact they haven’t allowed us to do research for so long, is there’s a lot of questions waiting to be answered,” Stith said. “It’s not hard to find research to do in this area — especially now that we’ve been able to develop this more observational approach as opposed to an interventionist approach.”
The two plan to continue their research on medical cannabis use and expand the scope of their research, she said.
“We want to look across different states. Different types of cannabis programs, how those work,” Stith said, adding that one of the next things they will look at is the indirect effect of cannibis on sedatives.
“It appears that these patients are not just reducing their opioid use, they’re also reducing their sedative use,” she said. “We’re going to look at some of the polypharmaceutical aspects. We want to get into some of the economic questions, cost effectiveness.”
Now that they have completed the pilot study, Stith said she believes future studies will be easier to begin, especially after going “back and forth and back and forth” with the IRB to get everything approved.
“So all that’s been worked out,” she said. “How the patients consent, when they consent, all that stuff. So a lot of legwork’s been done on that.”
Medical cannabis patient and community advocate Jason Barker said he thought the presentation was excellent and is excited to see research being done on medical cannabis.
“This is research that should have started back in 2014 when they first initially tried to do this,” he said. “Now they’ve got it under way, this is exciting because opioids kill more people in the state than any other thing we have.”
Cathy Cook is a news reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Cathy_Daily.Image caption Merchant's work also includes An Idiot Abroad and Extras
West End play The Mentalists, starring comedian and The Office writer Stephen Merchant, is to close one month earlier than planned on 29 August.
Producers said the decision to close was due to "a challenging post-summer period," The Stage reported.
The play, which opened on 13 July at Wyndham's Theatre, was due to run until 26 September.
It was written by Richard Bean, whose hit farce One Man, Two Guvnors transferred to Broadway in 2012.
Merchant stars opposite Steffan Rhodri in the darkly comic two-hander as an angry, frustrated middle-manager, Ted, who wants to create his own utopian society.
In a statement about the early closure, producers told The Stage: "It has been a great joy bringing The Mentalists into the West End this summer, however we have had to take the very difficult but prudent decision, based on a challenging post-summer period, to reduce the run to nine weeks.
Mixed reviews
"We wish to thank the cast, creative team and crew for all of their dedication, humour and hard work in creating a production which we are immensely proud of."
When asked by the BBC earlier this month if this role could lead to more stage acting, Merchant said: "I think my experience of this is going to feed back into my writing.
"But at the moment I'm so tired. It's exhausting. It's basically people on stage shouting. So I won't be able to tell you that until I've finished the run.
"Don't expect my Macbeth anytime soon."
The play, which first played at the National Theatre 13 years ago, received mixed reviews from theatre critics.
Writing in The Observer, Susannah Clapp wrote: "Neither Stephen Merchant nor Steffan Rhodri can elevate Richard Bean's two-hander above the level of whimsy."
But the Guardian's Michael Billington gave the play three stars, as did Dominic Cavendish, writing in The Telegraph, who said the play was "well worth a look".
But Cavendish also took aim at the ticket prices: "I hate to carp about West End ticket prices but £96.75 to see Stephen Merchant making his theatrical debut in a revival of a 2002 two-hander by Richard ('One Man, Two Guvnors') Bean? Are they out of their minds?!"
The Independent's Paul Taylor gave the production four stars and wrote that Merchant had made an "impressive West End debut".Lance Page / Truthout; Adapted: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, dog ma)” width=”637″ height=”440″ /> (Image: Lance Page / Truthout; Adapted: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, dog ma)
The recent torturous execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma has propelled the death penalty into the national discourse. The secret three-drug cocktail that prison authorities administered to Lockett – the first to render him unconscious, the second to paralyze him, and the third to stop his heart and kill him – didn’t work as planned. After writhing in pain for 43 minutes, he finally died of a heart attack. Madeline Cohen, a lawyer who witnessed the botched execution, said Lockett had been “tortured to death.” Seasoned reporters, also witnesses, called it “horrific.” President Obama found it “deeply disturbing” and promised a review of how the death penalty is administered.
But the issue is not simply the most “painless,” fair and efficient method the 32 death penalty states should use to put someone to death. It is not just a problem of executing innocent people, or the dubious constitutionality of the death penalty, or racism in its application and imposition, or that the death penalty does not deter homicide, or the higher cost of keeping someone on death row, or that nearly all industrialized countries have abolished capital punishment. The premeditated killing of a human being by the state is just plain wrong, and the United States should abolish it.
A week after Lockett’s execution, the Constitution Project released its report after one of the most comprehensive examinations of capital punishment in the United States. Calling the administration of the death penalty “deeply flawed,” the report focused on procedural deficiencies. It recommended that death penalty states use one drug instead of three to kill their citizens. It called for fewer constraints on post-conviction review of exonerating evidence and videotaping of interrogations to identify false confessions, concluding that over 80 percent of 125 documented false confessions occurred in homicide cases; 20 percent of the defendants in those cases were sentenced to death. It recommended the abolition of the death penalty for “felony murder,” in which a person participates in, but does not commit, the homicidal act. It expressed concern about inconsistent application of the ultimate penalty since the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that intellectually disabled individuals should not be executed. It criticized states such as Texas, Alabama and Pennsylvania for compensating capital defense lawyers so poorly that it is “nearly impossible” to receive a proper defense. And it urged death penalty states to determine whether there are racial disparities in the application of the death penalty. The bipartisan panel did not, however, recommend abolition of capital punishment.
Innocents on Death Row
A new study just released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that 1 in every 25, or 4.1 percent, of people on death row, are innocent. But the innocence rate is more than twice the rate of exoneration. That means an unknown number of innocent people have been put to death. “Every time we have an execution, there is a risk of executing an innocent. The risk may be small, but it’s unacceptable,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution outlaws “cruel and unusual punishments.” Although the Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty, some justices have concluded it violates the Eighth Amendment. In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the high court imposed a moratorium on the death penalty because it was arbitrarily imposed. Justice Potter Stewart wrote for the majority that executions were “so wantonly and so freakishly imposed” that they are “cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.” But Stewart was only opposed to capital punishment as a matter of policy. States revised their death penalty statutes to eliminate arbitrariness, and four years later the Court upheld Georgia’s new and improved death penalty law in Gregg v. Georgia. Unlike Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, Stewart did not believe the death penalty was unconstitutional.
Marshall noted in his concurrence in Furman, “Perhaps the most important principle in analyzing ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment questions is [that]... the cruel and unusual language ‘must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society’... Assuming knowledge of all the facts presently available regarding capital punishment, the average citizen would, in my opinion, find it shocking to his conscience and sense of justice. For this reason alone, capital punishment cannot stand.”
Brennan also concurred in Furman. He wrote, “When examined by the principles applicable under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, death stands condemned as fatally offensive to human dignity. The punishment of death is therefore ‘cruel and unusual,’ and the States may no longer inflict it as a punishment for crimes. Rather than kill an arbitrary handful of criminals each year, the States will confine them in prison.”
Eighteen years after Furman, Justice Harry Blackmun came to the conclusion that the death penalty was unconstitutional. In 1994, his last year on the Court, Blackmun famously wrote, “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.”
Most recently, in 2008, Justice John Paul Stevens decided the death penalty amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Stevens concluded, “[T]he imposition of the death penalty represents ‘the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the State [is] patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.'” [quoting Justice Byron White’s Furman concurrence]. In his new book, Six Amendments, Stevens proposes the Eighth Amendment be changed to read, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted.”
Racism in Imposition
According to Death Penalty Focus, the race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major determinants in who is sentenced to death in the United States. A 1990 report by the General Accounting Office found “in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.” The Innocence Project reports that of the 316 post-conviction DNA exonerations, 198 involved African-Americans.
Think Progress reports that African-American defendants convicted of killing whites are much more likely to receive a sentence of death than white defendants convicted of killing African-Americans. Since 1976, only 20 white people have been have been executed in the United States for killing a black person. But 269 black defendants were executed for killing a white person. Death sentences in Louisiana are 97 percent more likely in murder cases when the victim is white. Florida has never executed a white person for killing a black person.
Not a Deterrent
Capital punishment does not deter people from committing homicide. Dartmouth University statistician John Lamperti notes “an overwhelming majority among America’s leading criminologists [have concluded that] capital punishment does not contribute to lower rates of homicide.” In fact, murder rates in non-death penalty states are lower than murder rates in states with the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Life Without Parole Saves Money
The alternative to the death penalty is life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Arthur Alarcon and professor Paula Mitchell concluded that the cost of the death penalty in California has totaled over $4 billion since 1978. They calculated that a gubernatorial commutation of those sentences would result in an immediate savings of $170 million per year, a savings of $5 billion over the next 20 years. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found in 2008: “The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate.”
International Consensus
International treaties and customary norms forbid capital punishment. They include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its Second Optional Protocol, and Protocol No. 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Concerning the Abolition of the Death Penalty. Last year, only 22 countries not involved in military conflict carried out executions. The United Nations Human Rights Committee found the United States to be in noncompliance with its obligations under the |
Accept responsibility. You caused this and only you can fix it. Take action. Get shit done.
Unsuccessful people are always talking about what they deserve. Successful people look around for opportunities to earn it.
Every time you overcome something difficult, the next challenge is that much easier.
When you're 80 you're going to wish you had spent more time naked when you were 30.
If your biggest critics are toxic assholes, then you're on the right track.
You know what's worse than a critic? People who tell you to be average – well-meaning folks who enable mediocrity. Be passionate. Be a freak.
The truly dedicated lifter doesn't need constant motivation to hit the weights. Motivation is for newbies. Veteran lifters grind. The motivation comes after a set or two.
Strive to be more than "the big guy," the "strong guy," or the "lean girl." Be an ambassador for fitness and muscle. Lead by example. Help others when you can.
Build your willpower muscle, but use it wisely. Anorexics have great willpower, but it is misapplied.
Train at your worst. Go to the gym even if you feel fat. Worrying about what other people think about you is the route to inconsistency. And it means you're sacrificing your fitness for the worthless opinions of other schlubs.
Practice violence in the gym. Practice kindness everywhere else.
The best way to transform your body is to increase your appetite – for health, energy, strength, self-discipline, resilience – and muscle too if you want to look good naked.
Get off your high horse. You don't have all the answers. There are stronger people with better bodies than you – and they probably don't do things the way you think everyone ought to.
Train and sweat when you have a difficult decision to make. The zone-like nature of training can take your mind off the problem just long enough to give you a better perspective when the workout is finished.
Brief gym conversations are fine, but only with those who are there to actually train. Don't get cornered by someone looking for a therapist. You're at the gym to better yourself, not solve other people's problems.
The more consistent and experienced you become with your fitness, the more "extreme" your regimen will appear to outsiders. Realize that if you're healthy and strong and proud of your accomplishments, then it's not extreme. It's progress. And other people won't understand it if they haven't seen all you've done to build it.
Don't let social pressure undo what you've built with your dedication.
There are many examples of successful physique competitors with three kids and two jobs. So let's cut the crap about you "not having time" to train, shall we?
The bodybuilding tradition of off-season chubby and in-season shredded is outdated. Build muscle year round. Don't get fat on purpose. Be smart about it and you'll stay lean without the pressure of getting in a bikini or posing trunks.
The easiest person for you to fool is yourself. Be brutally honest. If you think you're strong, test that strength regularly. If you train to look good, take regular pics – front, side, and back. Photos tell the truth, whether your ego wants to hear it or not.
Sometimes the best person to ask for advice is the big, strong or ripped person in your gym. And sometimes they don't actually know shit because they rely on great genetics or drugs or both. You're going to have to be a thinker and a tester. Your body is your laboratory. Try stuff, evaluate that stuff, adjust the stuff, try stuff again.
Building the body you want will take longer than you think it will and it will be harder than you think. The results are worth it.
Realize that the moment you decide to better yourself, other people will often try to stop you. This is sometimes disguised as subtle behavior. Don't worry, after they try to sabotage you, dissuade you, or politely get you to stop getting better, they'll come to you for advice. Give it to them kindly. People are weird.
There are some people in this world who have decided to destroy themselves, often with inactivity and food. When you reach down to help them up, they'll often try to drag you down with them. Don't let them.
Be your own worst critic. Set high standards. Push yourself. But don't live in a constant state of self-criticism. You'll hopefully be 90 years old some day. Take some pride now.
With any diet or training plan, ask yourself this question often: "How's it working for me?" Now, honestly answer that question. This will be harder than you think.
Sometimes when you think life is kicking you in the ass, it's actually just moving you quickly to a better place.
Get professional pictures taken if that appeals to you. Why the hell not? Celebrate the way your body looks if you're proud of those changes. And screw the prudes who say working out is only about what your body can do. We all know that the appearance of an athletic body is an achievement to be celebrated.
Instead of wearing a T-shirt that says how hard you work out, why not just build a body that reflects it? Show, don't tell.
Brush off all stupid compliments and criticisms about your body from people who aren't into fitness or building muscle. They'll never get it unless they're into it.Intel is retiring its Atom x5-Z8100P SoC that is used inside Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality headset. With the last units shipped in late October, it looks like the software giant is on track with its next-generation HoloLens that is due to arrive in the coming quarters.
Intel asks its customers to place their final orders on the Atom x5-Z8100P SoC (belonging to the Cherry Trail family) by September 30 and says that the final shipments will be made on October 30. Given the fact that Intel seems to have only one customer using the microprocessor, the short amount of time between the announcement of the product discontinuance and the actual EOL was probably negotiated before. Moreover, since we are talking about a semi-custom chip, Microsoft was probably the initiator of the EOL, which indicates that the company is on track with its next-gen HoloLens.
The current-generation Microsoft HoloLens wearable augmented reality PC was released in 2016 and is based on Intel’s Atom x5-Z8100P SoC as well as a custom-designed Microsoft holographic processing unit (HPU) that processes data from various sensors. The HoloLens is equipped with over a dozen of sensors, including a 2 MP video camera, an inertial measurement unit (which means, a set of accelerometers, gyroscopes and maybe even a magnetometer), one depth camera, four environment understanding cameras, four microphones, an ambient light sensor as well as mixed reality capture IC.
The next-generation Microsoft HoloLens will be different compared to the existing augmented reality platform, Microsoft revealed recently. While the device will run Windows 10 and will be equipped with an HPU, it will also feature an AI co-processor integrated into the latter that will use neural networks to enable object and voice recognition skills without the need for an Internet connection. The HPU 2.0 with the programmable AI co-processor will be a self-sufficient device that will run on battery power of the next HoloLens (hence, its power consumption will not be too high). The HPU 2.0 and the AI co-processor were designed entirely in-house and therefore are tailored for usage model of the HoloLens. Given the differences in architecture of the HoloLens Next compared to the existing model, it remains to be seen what kind of CPU Microsoft decides to use for it.
Microsoft demonstrated “an early spin of the second version of the HPU” running live code implementing hand segmentation at CVPR in late July. Therefore, while the chip is functional, it does not seem that the HoloLens Next is just around the corner and it is logical to expect it sometimes in 2018 or even in 2019.
Related Reading:NEW YORK—Raking in campaign cash, President Barack Obama blitzed through Manhattan Thursday night, offering donors at ritzy fundraisers a vigorous defense of his foreign policy record, saying his administration's successes abroad would weaken one line of Republican attack in the presidential election.
"The other side traditionally seems to feel that the Democrats are somehow weak on defense. They're having a little trouble making that argument this year," Obama told supporters at a $35,800-a-person dinner.
From ending the war in Iraq to ordering the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the president said his approach to foreign policy was based on the belief that "there's no contradiction between being tough and strong and protecting the American people, but also abiding by those values that make America great."
Despite Obama's assertions, Republican presidential candidates have hardly backed away from criticizing his foreign policy record. GOP front-runner Mitt Romney has said Obama's foreign policy is based on saying "pretty please" to overseas foes. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich repeatedly criticized Obama for apologizing to Afghan authorities for burned Qurans on a military base, saying the apology was "astonishing" and undeserved.
At a separate fundraiser earlier Thursday -- a $5,000-a-person reception -- Obama defended his commitment to Israel's security, particularly amid the turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa, where some long-time leaders having been pushed from power over the past year.
The sweeping changes, he said, make foreign policy in the region more complex. "It used to be easier to deal with one person who was an autocrat when it came to knowing who you could strike a deal with," Obama said.
With the region's leadership structure changing, Obama said the U.S. would have to take into account the "politics and the attitudes of people in the region," some of which he acknowledged were anti-Israel.
Further underscoring tensions in the Middle East, a supporter at yet another fundraiser urged the president to avoid a war with Iran over its disputed nuclear program.
"Nobody has announced a war," Obama cautioned. "You're jumping the gun a little bit."
The president also sought to cast the Republican Party as having moved to the far right and compared it with his 2008 general election opponent, Sen. John McCain. The senator from Arizona, Obama said, "could never get a nomination in the Republican Party this time around, would be considered too liberal."
Before raising money in New York, Obama focused his political sights on snowy New Hampshire, where he demanded that Congress eliminate oil and gas company subsidies that he called an outrageous government giveaway. Though politically a long shot, the White House believes the idea resonates at a time of high gasoline prices.GCHQ director Robert Hannigan is stepping down after only two years as chief of the cyber spy agency for “personal reasons,” the intelligence service has announced.
Hannigan took over GCHQ in 2014, just a year after National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed the vast extent of surveillance carried out by US and British intelligence services.
In a letter to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Hannigan said a 20-year career in public service roles had “demanded a great deal of my ever patient and understanding family.”
“Now is the time for a change in direction,” he added.
The spymaster said he was proud of the work he had done at the agency and “how many lives have been saved in this country and overseas by the work of GCHQ.”
According to the latest @Snowden leaks, GCHQ spied on former colonies & African leaders, including UK allies. https://t.co/vRE1yIksfK — RT UK (@RTUKnews) December 9, 2016
Hannigan took over GCHQ in November 2014 at a time when the agency, and broader intelligence community, was under intense scrutiny following the Snowden revelations.
In a bid to appear more open, the spy chief made a series of public speeches both in Britain and the US.
The agency even launched a phone app for teenagers which teaches them encryption techniques and message security to ensure protection from surveillance. The application is called Cryptoy, and is aimed at getting teens more involved in science.
In his resignation letter to the foreign secretary, Hannigan wrote: “As you know, I have also initiated the greatest internal change within GCHQ for 30 years, and I feel that we are now well on the way to being fit for the next generation of security challenges to the UK in the digital age.
GCHQ to build ‘great firewall’ to protect against cyber threatshttps://t.co/Uhh2uimsz5pic.twitter.com/raB1MR12u1 — RT UK (@RTUKnews) September 14, 2016
“After a good deal of thought I have decided that this is the right time to move on and to allow someone else to lead GCHQ through its next phase. I am, like you, a great enthusiast for our history and I think it is right that a new director should be firmly embedded by our centenary in 2019. I am very committed to GCHQ’s future and will of course be happy to stay in post until you have been able to appoint a successor.”
In his reply, Johnson said: “You have led the renewal of some of our most important national security capabilities, which we continue to depend on every day to save lives from terrorism and to protect our interests and values. You also set the groundwork for a major transformation of our cyber defences, and put GCHQ on a path to meet the challenges of the future with your focus on technology and skills."
GCHQ has come under fire in recent years for its role in the surveillance state.
Documents leaked by Snowden last June revealed the agency regularly intercepts the emails of British MPs and peers, including privileged correspondence between parliamentarians and constituents.
GCHQ is known to play a key role in running the formerly secret Tempora computer system, which ‘bulk collects’ large amounts of Internet users’ personal data.2018 is a year for traditional rivalries at the home of football, with Collingwood taking on old foes Richmond, Essendon and Carlton twice in the 2018 home and away season.
In addition, Collingwood is proud to again be part of its traditional matches of significance on ANZAC Day against Essendon (Round 5) and Queen’s Birthday against Melbourne (Round 12).
The favourable draw will see the club play at the MCG on 14 occasions, including five of its first six matches. The team will travel just five times, the equal least of any club, with no back-to-back interstate matches and only two of these clashes against 2017 finalists.
With home matches scheduled against Victorian clubs Carlton, Essendon, Geelong, North Melbourne, Richmond and the Western Bulldogs, Collingwood members will enjoy big matches in Melbourne.
Collingwood Interim CEO Peter Murphy welcomed the fixture.
“As a total package it is a favourable draw: on-field, broadcast and most importantly for our fans,” Murphy said.
“The fixture presents great opportunities from a team performance perspective. We think the balance is right, we play ten of our first 12 games in Melbourne and our travel is well spaced across the year.”
“It’s a draw that delivers plenty of marquee games for our supporters in timeslots that will enable them to enjoy the footy with family and friends.”
“You can’t understate the magic of a Collingwood-Carlton or a Collingwood-Essendon clash at the heartland of footy, the MCG. In 2018 there will be a number of these big footy occasions that the club will share with the Collingwood Army.”
“We are pleased to play in all five of the main football states, enabling our interstate fans to connect with the club and players.”
“With the fixtures for all three of our elite teams now released we have well and truly turned our focus to 2018 and can’t wait to get back out on the field and court in front of the Collingwood Army.”
The team will play eight games in the prime time night slots, with three Friday night and five Saturday night matches. The club also has 11 day and two twilight matches across the season
The Round 5 ANZAC Day clash falls on a Wednesday, resulting in both Collingwood and Essendon going into their Round 6 matches off a four-day break.
Supporters can purchase a 2018 membership at membership.collingwoodfc.com.au.
2018 HOME AND AWAY FIXTURE
Round One
Hawthorn v Collingwood
Saturday 24 March
MCG, 7.25pm
Round Two
Collingwood v Greater Western Sydney
Saturday 31 March
MCG, 4.35pm
Round Three
Carlton v Collingwood
Friday 6 April
MCG, 7.50pm
Round Four
Adelaide v Collingwood
Friday 13 April
Adelaide Oval, 7.20pm
Round Five
Collingwood v Essendon
Wednesday 25 April
MCG, 3.20pm
Round Six
Collingwood v Richmond
Sunday 29 April
MCG, 3.20pm
Round Seven
Brisbane v Collingwood
Sunday 6 May
Gabba, 4.40pm
Round Eight
Collingwood v Geelong
Sunday 13 May
MCG, 3.20pm
Round Nine
St Kilda v Collingwood
Saturday 19 May
Etihad Stadium, 7.25pm
Round 10
Collingwood v Western Bulldogs
Friday 25 May
Etihad Stadium, 7.50pm
Round 11
Collingwood v Fremantle
Sunday 3 June
MCG, 3.20pm
Round 12
Melbourne v Collingwood
Monday 11 June
MCG, 3.20pm
Round 13
BYE
Round 14
Collingwood v Carlton
Sunday 24 June
MCG, 3.20pm
Round 15
Gold Coast v Collingwood
Saturday 30 June
Metricon Stadium, 7.25pm
Round 16
Essendon v Collingwood
Sunday 8 July
MCG, 3.20pm
Round 17
Collingwood v West Coast
Sunday 15 July
MCG, 1.10pm
Round 18
Collingwood v North Melbourne
Saturday 21 July
MCG, 1.45pm
Round 19
Richmond v Collingwood
Saturday 28 July
MCG, 1.45pm
Round 20
Sydney v Collingwood
Saturday 4 August
SCG, 7.25pm
Round 21
Collingwood v Brisbane
Saturday 11 August
Etihad Stadium, 7.25pm
Round 22
Collingwood v Port Adelaide
Saturday 18 August
MCG, 1.45pm
Round 23
Fremantle v Collingwood
Perth Stadium
(Date and time to be confirmed by the AFL in the weeks leading up to the match)Comment: As we have emphasized, the globalists are now attempting to hijack the protests and make lemonade out of lemons. Having become aware that regime change was inevitable, the US military-industrial complex is trying to ensure it controls the outcome by infiltrating and steering the protest movement.
Egypt protests: America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising
Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swinford
London Telegraph
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police. (ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. The secret document in full A d v e r t i s e m e n t
He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.
Full story here.
This article was posted: Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 6:08 am
Print this page.
Infowars.com Videos:
Comment on this articleA team of medical researchers has some good news for those who cook with butter but consider it a guilty pleasure: It might actually be good for you.
While the findings, published this week in the British Medical Journal, are not conclusive, they are compelling: researchers with the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine (UNC) analyzed a 50-year-old unpublished study out of Minnesota and found reason to believe that cooking with corn oil instead of butter may actually be worse for heart health. It’s an idea that, if one day proven, would upend the conventional nutrition wisdom of the last several decades.
In the last year, a growing number of voices within the nutrition community have been making the case that low-processed fatty foods aren’t as bad for you as once thought. It’s an argument that has shown up in studies from around the world and also in articles challenging national policy decisions based on the idea that fat should be avoided.
In the case of butter versus vegetable oil, the UNC team analyzed unpublished nutritional data gathered between 1968 and 1973 in a controlled study that included more than 9,400 men and women in one nursing home and six state mental hospitals in Minnesota.
The subjects were broken into two groups. One was given a diet in which liquid corn oil was used in place of usual hospital cooking fats (including butter and hydrogenated oils) during meal preparation. The other group received meals cooked with common margarines and shortening. Roughly 57% of the 517 subjects that died during the course of the study underwent post-mortem examinations of their hearts, aortas, and brains. But no analysis of the data had been published until now.
After a review of available data, the UNC researchers determined that, overall, there was a 22% higher risk of death for participants on the vegetable oil diet. They argue that because an analysis of the study was never published, nutrition experts have over-emphasized the health benefits of substituting vegetable oils for butter.
To be sure, debate within the nutrition science community over the pros and cons of cooking with and consuming fats has been robust. Many studies have found cutting out butter and using more vegetable oil to be beneficial, but very few of those have included data from controlled trials—nutrition science can be difficult to carry out because of ethical considerations of testing diets on humans.
“Altogether, this research leads us to conclude that incomplete publication of important data has contributed to the overestimation of benefits—and the underestimation of potential risks—of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid,” said Daisy Zamora, one of the UNC researchers.Taurus 85 "No View" Snubnose, Revolver,.38 Special, 2850019NV
Availability: Out of stock
| Item #: HGN-TAU-M85NV-SNUB
UPC: 253276119505 | MPN: 2850019NV
Taurus 85 "No View".38 Special Snubnose Revolver. Law enforcement-grade concealed carry performance. Ultra fast. Ultra reliable. Ultra lightweight. It's no wonder the 85 is Taurus's most popular series! Taurus designed the 85 Snubby with all the customer-requested features they could-then built it around the.38 Special +P round, making it a powerful, easy to carry, and lightning-fast to use.
Note: Please read manufacturer's note below. These revolvers are no longer covered under Taurus' cosmetic warranty, however we have been through several of the boxes and have yet to see any noticeable exterior blemishes.
Note From The Manufacturer - This Taurus has been factory reconditioned. It continues to carry the exclusive Taurus functional lifetime repair policy; however, this unit is no longer under warranty for any cosmetic blemishes or defects.This article originally appeared on Baseball Prospectus Wrigleyville.
By Sahadev Sharma
There are plenty of buzzwords in baseball. We've all heard them, and in all likelihood, we all use some of them. One that I hear more than almost any other when talking to players and coaches in the clubhouse is "adjustments." Whether it's a guy like Andrew McCutchen weathering an early season slump, Jason Kipnis bouncing back from a rough 2014 with an insane hot streak, or a rookie like Addison Russell changing his mechanics, adjustments appear to be a key. It's more than just some word that's thrown around in baseball conversations; it's a reality, something that's essential for a player to achieve sustained success at the highest level.
Currently, Kris Bryant appears to be in the process of making one of those key adjustments. After wrapping up the first three months of the season with a.275/.381/.466 line, Bryant struggled in July, posting a.639 OPS and 33.3 percent strikeout rate (both were his worst for any month). If you're familiar with Bryant, you know that he's a student of the game, especially hitting, and prides himself on his ability to make these important adjustments.
But making those adjustments in the big leagues is a bit different than in the Minor Leagues and college, where Bryant was able to quickly fix any issues that popped up. As the calendar approached August, I asked Bryant what the biggest difference he'd noticed between the majors and other levels.
"I just think the pitchers are less likely to make a mistake," Bryant responded. "They hit their spots pretty good -- working the corners, making it hard on us. When you do get that pitch just over the plate, you really have to do damage on it. You can't really foul it off and then expect another one later in the at-bat like you could maybe at the lower levels. There've been times where I've gotten that pitch and I've crushed it and there have been times where I've missed it. It's just a battle with myself to realize that you have to take each at-bat, stay focused and really have that sense of awareness that that mistake pitch may be coming at any time."
I then followed up by asking if Bryant had noticed a different strike zone compared to what he saw in the minors.
"It's hard to say. Maybe a little bit," Bryant said, but quickly followed up, being sure not to rip umpires in the process. "But everybody makes mistakes, we're all human. We swing at pitches in the dirt, umpires miss calls; I think that's what makes the game so great sometimes."
And while Bryant said he's only noticed "a little" difference in the zone, the fact is, it expanded significantly last year, and in the season's first two months, that trend continued. According to some scouts I talked to, the low strike that we're seeing in the majors isn't being called in the Minors. Front office members from around the league confirmed to me that they have data to back up this assertion. Many with whom I've spoken pointed to elite framers -- who mostly reside in the big leagues -- giving rise to the low strike.
When I pointed this out to Bryant, he quickly agreed.
"I definitely have noticed that," Bryant said. "For myself, just being a tall guy, I'd like to see the higher strike called instead of the low one, because you have more of a chance to hit it. Just the angles of the ball coming down lower in the zone with my bat having to get down low too, it's just makes it really difficult for the taller guys and the bigger guys. But I don't really follow along with that stuff, I just go out there and try to get a sense of what the umpire calls and establish and approach based on that and who's on the mound, stuff like that."
He's clearly not about to make any excuses for his struggles, but Bryant is certainly aware that this is where the next adjustment in his career must take place. What makes this adjustment a little more difficult for him is that he's already had to make it. In college, Bryant had a more upright stance, but eventually he noticed that at 6-foot-5, he was having trouble handling pitches low in the zone. Bryant adjusted by widening his stance and the change worked wonders. But now, pitches he's never seen called strikes before are forcing him to change the way he perceives the strike zone, not only leading him to have to try and correct a weakness he already thought he'd fixed, but apparently change his definition of a strike.
"It's making things a little harder, maybe I need to widen up even more," Bryant said with a smile. "It just makes it a little tougher on me just to get to that low pitch. The pitcher can't throw it there every time, so I have to be ready for the ones that are up a little bit more. But that low pitch is really hard to hit right now and I think everybody in this clubhouse will tell you the same thing."
The difference between Bryant and others in the clubhouse is that none of them are 6-foot-5 rookies who are seeing the low strike called for the first time in their career. Below, we see how often Bryant has either swung at or had a pitch in the lower sixth of the zone or below (which would technically be outside of the zone and a ball) called a strike.
Month Percent Called Strike Percent Swung April 12.7% 36.3% May 11.1% 33.3% June 11.5% 35.4% July 14.8% 31.7%
What's interesting is that Bryant laid off the low pitch at his highest rate in July and it was called a strike at the highest rate, by far, of any month of his young career. He's attempting to learn this new zone, but of late he's struggling. And the trend for opposing pitchers is clear.
After April, pitchers are clearly pounding the lower part of the zone against Bryant with regularity.
"It's tough because maybe early in the at-bat you see a low strike called that you think is not there," Bryant said. "And then later in the at-bat you have to swing at that because you don't want to put it in the umpire's hands. So, for myself, it might have led to some chasing down in the zone, but that's something I've got to live with and I need to learn how to deal with it and learn how to make the adjustments accordingly."
As Bryant points out, he's seeing pitches he thinks are low called a strike and that's leading him to swing at pitches that may be even lower in the zone later in the those at-bats. The numbers bear that out. Let's look at the same table from above, but add two more columns: after Bryant sees a pitch in the lower sixth of the zone or below called a strike, how often does he swing in a) that same at-bat? b) that same game?
Month Percent Called Strike Percent Swung Percent Swung In Same AB Percent Swung In Same Game April 12.7% 36.3% 33.3% 33.3% May 11.1% 33.3% 32.3% 33.6% June 11.5% 35.4% 33.3% 36.9% July 14.8% 31.7% 38.2% 34.7%
When we look at this table, we see that the low strike doesn't appear to have much of an impact on Bryant in the first three months of the season. However, in July, it seems to have confounded him. He's attempting to (and more often than not, succeeding) lay off the pitch. However, when it's called a strike (which has happened at the highest rate for him in July), he's swinging at it more often -- both in the same game and in the same at-bat.
One of the skills that Bryant has earned the most praise for is his knowledge of the strike zone. Now that the strike zone has physically been changed for him, he's being presented with the biggest test thus far in his career. However, his manager, Joe Maddon, is hardly concerned that Bryant would be unable take this challenge head on and overcome it. Related Articles Wrigley Field Has Gone Electric Over the past three days, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs have played four games at Wrigley Field.… More»
Under Playoff Race Pressure Now that we've gotten past both the real and the fictitious discussion that defines the Trade Deadline season, the… More»
The Best MLB midseason callups Promoting a prospect in the middle of a successful season is a massive decision, but, as evidenced by the recent… More»
"This whole game is about making adjustments," Maddon said. "That's what we do here daily. You have to make adjustments based on umpires on a daily basis, on how well you feel, on everything. It literally is a game of adjustments."
Maddon said he wasn't worried about Bryant figuring things out quickly, all he needed to do was determine where that bottom of the zone is for umpires in the big leagues and things would quickly click for the talented third baseman. Bryant's uncanny ability to properly perceive the strike zone was elite before and not many doubt he'll be able to get to that level again. But even Bryant knows it won't be an easy task.
"Baseball's a tough game, it's really hard," Bryant stated plainly. "But I think whether it's a low strike or whatever, you might not get the results you want all the time, but that time you do get it makes up for all the times that you didn't. I think it's just a process, a cycle that all of us go through and deal with."
Dealing with the low strike isn't a challenge that's unique to Bryant, but his height, inexperience at the highest level, and the fact that he's already had to adjust to the issue once before in his career does make this a little more complex. Whether Bryant can overcome this latest trial is yet to be determined, but there are few who would bet against him. It really can't be said enough, it's just another adjustment that must be made in a game filled with them.
Thanks to Rob McQuown with assistance on research for this piece.
***
Sahadev Sharma is lead writer/editor at BP Wrigleyville and associate editor for Baseball Prospectus.Sen. Schumer: Give back the money
Chuck Schumer is the lead Senate Democrat working on immigration reform--he gets to decide whether millions of undocumented immigrants will be imprisoned or legalized. Yet he’s also taken over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry. Is it any surprise he’s pushing for billions more dollars spent on increased enforcement and detention of immigrants?
We can’t trust Sen. Schumer to push for fair legislation when he’s accepting money from private prison companies that have a strong interest in jailing as many immigrants as possible. How much of an interest? The two corporations from which Sen. Schumer took money, GEO Group and CCA, made $296.9 million in profits from the jailing of immigrants last year.
Tell Sen. Schumer to return this money immediately.
If 15,000 people sign, we'll personally deliver your petitions to Sen. Schumer and demand a response.
UPDATE: We blew past our goal of 15,000 can you sign and share this to help us get to 30,000?Auburn vs. Arkansas State
Arkansas State defensive end Chris Stone (42) tackles Auburn running back Corey Grant Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013, during the third quarter at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)
(JULIE BENNETT)
-- Auburn is making its first moves to schedule non-conference opponents following the SEC's decision to stick with an eight-game conference schedule in 2016 and beyond.
The Tigers will host Arkansas State in 2016, athletics director
Jay Jacobs
confirmed to AL.com on Wednesday. The news was first reported by
Jeff Reed
of AStateNation.com.
The trip will be the Red Wolves' fourth to the Plains. Auburn knocked off Arkansas State 38-9 in 2013 in a match-up that pitted coach Gus Malzahn against his former team from the Sun Belt.
A date for the game has not been set. Auburn is 3-0 against the Red Wolves.
Jacobs told the
Montgomery Advertiser
on Wednesday the school is close to scheduling more schools and is
.
The SEC decided this month to stick with a 6-1-1 scheduling format for conference games and will require its schools to play at least one opponent from a Power 5 conference starting in 2016.
Auburn is scheduled to travel to Kansas State in September and will face Louisville at the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic in Atlanta in 2015.The classic TV sitcom, Friends, is iconic for its long run, humor, and relatable characters that made everyone feel they were part of the “gang.” Friends also pushed the envelope, dealing with themes that America was just beginning to delve into in the 1990s. Taking a supportive and liberal approach to topics such as hook up culture, marriage and divorce, “alternative” families, and homosexual relationships, Friends dealt openly with themes previously considered taboo.
Yet, in the 10 seasons Friends ruled TV, the show made a compelling argument against all the social changes it tried so hard to support. Homosexual relationships, hook-up culture, and the redefinition of the family played prominent roles in each of the characters’ lives, yet, it is apparent that each of these elements were inherently bad for the characters on multiple levels. This ironic social commentary opens the door for a rich engagement with Pope Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, the themes of which play out in many of Friends’ characters and episodes. The relationships of the six characters provide an in depth social commentary as their friendships help one another to grow in maturity throughout the show. In the interest of time, I want to focus on the experience of one of the main characters: Chandler.
We learn early on that Chandler’s parents divorced and his father left to become a drag queen in Vegas. This, understandably, sows many issues in Chandler that are most obviously noticed in Chandler’s inability to celebrate Thanksgiving. Since that was the day he learned of his parent’s separation, it has been irreparably ruined for him. Indeed, we see that Thanksgiving brings up enormous emotional scarring in Chandler that is hard for him to handle at best and completely debilitating at worst.
Chandler’s issues with his parents become more apparent as |
developing nations is the competition for scarce funds and government guarantees. Therefore, capital-intensive investments in low-carbon energy tend not to be prioritized when competing with needs that are more urgent. On the other hand, governments in wealthy countries, pension funds and sovereign funds should look at renewable infrastructure assets in emerging markets as an opportunity to attract higher returns than they can get in mature markets while at the same time enabling the low-carbon transformation.
The challenges described here highlight the importance of the ongoing discussions on improved climate finance in the context of the international climate negotiations. In addition to the financing mechanisms at UN level (Green Fund, CDM+, etc.), national development banks and export credit agencies can play a vital role in this area.
The potential can be illustrated by an example: If for example the Norwegian Export Credit Guarantee Agency (GIEK) were enabled to underwrite the financing of hydropower, solar and wind plants in Sub-Saharan Africa countries with an exposure of up to say 50 Billion NOK, this could lead to more than 100 Billion NOK in total additional investment in renewables in those countries. Such financing could result in an additional generation capacity of 8-10 GW of green power, resulting in annual reductions of CO2 emissions in the range of 7-8 million tons.
In other words, the message to governments and negotiators on the road to the Paris climate summit should be simple and straightforward: Give Africa access to green financing, and Africa will help green the world.
Editor’s Note
Terje Osmundsen is Senior Vice President of Scatec Solar, a globally leading independent solar power provider listed on the Norwegian stock exchange. Scatec Solar is active in several countries in Africa. An earlier version of this article was first published on the Norwegian website Energi og Klima in December 2014. This updated version is published simultaneously with Energi og Klima.
See also Osmundsen’s comments on why the 2014 IEA Africa Energy Outlook underestimates the true potential of African renewable energy generation and overestimates the potential of alternative sources.Demographic changes in West Bengal and Assam have actually been going on for years.
Mass infiltration and settlement of Bangladeshi Muslims coming in search of lebensraum into these regions had been taking place for decades.
into these regions had been taking place for decades. Neither does mainstream media in India report violence against Hindus, especially when it is committed by Muslims.
Defeating the Islamist forces and their allies like the TMC will require tremendous will and tremendous Hindu unity within Bengal.
West Bengal, a land of sages like Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Srila Prabhupada, Sri Aurobindo, and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and the birth place of reformers, philosophers, and freedom fighters like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Chittaranjan Das, and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (thanks to whose efforts West Bengal became a part of India and not Pakistan in 1947) is today a land where, even in areas not too far from Calcutta, a silent jihad and a surreptitious ethnic cleansing are taking place.
Demographic changes in West Bengal and Assam have actually been going on for years. It’s nothing new. Mass infiltration and settlement of Bangladeshi Muslims coming in search of lebensraum into these regions had been taking place for decades. India knew this but had always been complacent. After Independence, Muslim migrations into India was even encouraged due to vote-bank politics and the hunger of the Congress Party and CPI-M for Muslim votes.
Designs for a Greater Bangla Islamic Caliphate
According to Dr. Mohit Roy, an expert on Indo-Bangladesh relations and demographic changes, Muslim Bangladeshi infiltrators now make up 4 percent of India’s population, but in vast areas of Bengal and Assam, the situation has now reached a tipping point. In her article published in American Thinker, Janet Levy reports that-
At partitioning, the Muslim population of West Bengal stood at 12% and the Hindu population of East Bengal 30%. Today, with massive Muslim immigration, Hindu persecution and forced conversions, West Bengal’s Muslim population has increased to 27% (up to 63% in some districts), as per the 2011 census and Bangladesh’s Hindu population has decreased to 8%. While the situation for Hindus in Bangladesh is certainly dire, life has become increasingly difficult for Hindus in West Bengal, home to a Muslim-appeasing government and a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists. For several years, West Bengal has suffered under apparent Muslim-planned riots designed to implement shariah, extract government concessions and grab more territory.
The demographic changes in West Bengal have reached a point where the consequence has been a wave of aggressive Islamization, a jihadi consolidation, and a suicidal politics that harks back to the genocidal era of 1946 -1947. The congruence of all of these is resulting in a fresh Hindu Bengali exodus from what have traditionally been Hindu lands.
Remote, and thus vulnerable and mostly poor villages are being targeted under a greater project to merge West Bengal and Assam with Bangladesh by driving out non-Muslims. According to a report titled ‘Greater Islamic Bangladesh’ – A Serious Threat to Indian Integrity, Sovereignty and Hindu Majority published on the Pamela Geller website which monitors global jihad-
The NIA (National Investigation Agency) has smelled a deeper conspiracy of the establishment of a Greater Islamic Bangladesh hatched by the ISI (Inter service Intelligence) of Pakistan and DGFI (Director General of Foreign Intelligence) of Bangladesh with other terror modules engaged in Burdwan Blast. As per revelation through recovered documents by the NIA suggest that a bigger conspiracy was being materialized in different parts of Burdwan, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia, Jalpaiguri and in different madrasas stretched out in the border areas of West Bengal. The documents reflect that the terror modules working on brain-wash of the Bengal Jihadis to establish a ‘Greater Islamic Bangladesh’ considering the territory of the last nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-daulah (1733-1757), as on 1750 AD, who was infamous for his anti-Hindu cruelty and debauchery. The proposed Greater Islamic Bangladesh includes whole of present Bangladesh, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Tripura and parts of Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
Bangladeshi authorities also acknowledge jihadist plans for an eastern Islamic caliphate. Reporting on the killing of a Hindu priest of the Deviganj temple who was beheaded on 21st February 2016 near Panchagar, 494 km north of Dhaka, by militants suspected to belong to Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), Pakistani newspaper Dawn quotes deputy director general of police, Humayun Kabir, as saying that “The motive for the killing was probably to create an unstable situation in the country and ultimately establish a caliphate.”
This side of the border, in West Bengal, vote bank politics of the communist CPI-M government earlier and the pro-Islamist stance of the TMC government subsequently have facilitated the Mughalistan project by emboldening the jihadi forces in the state. State patronage under TMC rule has rendered Islamists untouchable even by Central Government security forces.
Mamata Bannerji’s policies have resulted in a rapid Islamization of West Bengal and the concomitant creation of a sociopolitical climate in which Hindus are attacked, killed and prevented from practicing their religion, Hindu homesteads and properties are looted and destroyed, and young Hindu girls are kidnapped, raped, and forcibly converted to Islam and then often sold into prostitution or killed.
In areas where there is a substantial Muslim presence, entire villages are being targeted where the Hindus are terrorized, demoralized and displaced. As Anirban Banerjee reports in his comprehensive piece on the growth of jihadi culture in West Bengal, West Bengal as a Jihadi Playground, the Hindu population is losing land and livelihood and is migrating as laborers to safer places.
In this silent war on Bengali Hindus, Hindu temples have been reportedly destroyed or vandalized, confirmed rapes by Bangladeshis have taken place, state money worth crores of rupees of has been disbursed to mosques, and Hindu leaders have been murdered in West Bengal.
Marxist Islamist Nexus in the Garb of Secularism
Human rights abuses against the Hindus of West and East Bengal have been going on for years, yet the elite, leftist, intellectual class and the “secular” media and journalists in Calcutta and Delhi choose to be blind to it. None of the secular Bengali writers, journalists and intellectuals who try to dominate public discourse in India and constantly attack the Hindu civilizational foundations of India have questioned Mamata on Muslim appeasement like Taslima Nasreen did recently.
While Islamist forces prepare the ground for the inclusion of West Bengal in an Islamic Caliphate, mainstream media in Bengal and rest of India seems to be completely disinterested and disconnected, and does not cover any of this stuff. Calcutta’s two leading English dailies, The Statesman and The Telegraph, mouthpieces of Bengal’s entrenched communist ideology, for example, routinely black out such news. With reference to The Telegraph, this is what Shefali Vaidya writes in the context of l’affaire JNU:
This is the front page of an ‘Indian’ newspaper. The biggest and most prominent headline that covers 75% of the space is dedicated to a 30 year freeloader who shouted anti-India slogans and organised a march to protest against the hanging of a terrorist after a full trial. This is the same man who hid like a sewer rat for one week only to resurface now to play the ‘minority’ card. A 22 year old man made the supreme sacrifice to defend that VERY freedom that Umar Khalid abused with such impunity, and the Telegraph dedicates the bottom corner of the front page to him.
On social media, one encounters throngs of leftist Bengali “intellectuals,” who have now fanned out all over India. Many of them are themselves from refugee families who fled East Bengal (former name of Bangladesh) during one of the many cyclical periods Hindu mass killings there, and who were completely unable to resist Islamic fundamentalism there in any meaningful way. They all seem to be cut from the same cloth – that of Marxist ideology – who now bemoan the new awakening of Indian Hindu political and social consciousness as evil or communal, and are unable or unwilling to see reality of jihad in their own backyard. Their ostrich like attitude seems very puzzling until one reads an exposé like West Bengal: the Enemy Within to understand why Marxists and radical Islam are natural allies in India and how Marxists and radical Islamists collaborate to nurture hate and violence towards mainstream society.
It is also a fact that politically correct Western media does not tell the story of Muslim persecution of Hindus in India. Neither does mainstream media in India report violence against Hindus, especially when it is committed by Muslims.
The Sorry Condition of Hindu Bengal
One thus feels compelled to signal Tapan Ghosh, founder of Hindu Samhati, as one lone brave soul who has been documenting and raising awareness about the atrocities on the simple and helpless Hindu victims of Islamic jihad, who up until the very recent Malda riots that began on 4th January 2016, tended to be mostly poor, rural agrarians with very low educational attainment levels.
His organization, Hindu Samhati, courageously investigates, documents, and reports on the Islamic persecution of Hindus in West Bengal, often times at great risk to the lives of the investigators. According to Ghosh, there are about 32,000 villages in West Bengal that are sites of active ethnic cleansing. There are multiple acts of violence against Hindus in many places daily and only some get noticed. In many villages and towns, the Hindu population has dropped to below 50 percent due to an earlier exodus of middle-class Hindus, and now only the poor Hindu segment is left to bear the brunt of ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Hindu girls disappear in the state every year.
If all this situation does not change, the story of East Bengal will soon be repeated in West Bengal. Hindus, just a few decades ago, were 40 percent of the population of East Bengal. Today they make up just 8 percent of the population there.
While the disenfranchised rural Hindu segment has been enduring soft jihad for years now and their victimization was never reported in mainstream media, the recent Malda attacks show how the organizers of micro-level jihad in Bengal have upped the ante by expanding the magnitude and the focus of their operations. A mob of 2,50,000 Muslims wreaked havoc in Malda district, West Bengal, ostensibly over a blasphemous remark. After Malda, the violence also spread to Birbhum and to Purnea in Bihar state.
The events in Malda, which secularists have tried to pass off as a simple law and order related disturbance, are a warning signal that West Bengal may be heading towards a Kosovo-like situation with the rise of Islamism which poses a great danger to India’s security and territorial integrity by creating a civil-war like situation. One can read more about Malda in the context of the Greater Bangladesh project here. To know more about the background context to the 2016 Malda riots, one may read another interesting piece: Everything You Wanted To read About Malda Violence, But Were too Secular to Ask.
The greatest irony of India’s blood soaked partition – which was carried out for the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims – is that today, both Bengals are reeling under Islamic fanaticism. Sheikh Hasina has done more to combat Islamic fundamentalism in her country than Mamta Banerjee, who has actually encouraged it in her state.
It must be remembered that “West Bengal was created by negotiating about 35% area from erstwhile Bengal as a safe sanctuary for the Hindus.” Given the demographic changes that have already taken place and the damage that has already been done, feasible options to correct the situation seem very few.
How do you integrate a large, powerful, and aggressive minority that has an exponential growth rate, looks upon the Mughal Empire and past Caliphates as Utopia, considers national borders as irrelevant, demonstrates a strong will to not assimilate, overwhelms a meek majority, and bides its time as it waits for the day it can fully impose its sharia on the rest of the population?
Noting that “The land was partitioned on basis of religious demography alone but unfortunately unlike Punjab (both east-Indian and west-Pakistani) population exchange was not done,” and that “crores of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim invaders have captured major parts of the state with the help of local Muslims who were not sent to Bangladesh as Punjabi Muslims from Indian Punjab to Pakistan,” Subarno Pande suggests a Kashmir-like Article 370 constitutional arrangement for West Bengal that would give only Hindu Bengalis voting and permanent civic rights in West Bengal. He also advocates the completion of the unfinished business of the exchange of the Muslim and non-Muslim populations of West Bengal and Bangladesh, and the formation of a Bengal Regiment comprising solely Bengali Hindu youths for the protection of the border in lieu of the BSF guards, some of whom reportedly allow Bangladeshis to cross into for a few hundred rupees.
While this may be the new dream of many a Hindu Bengali who now clearly sees the writing on the wall, and while this may not be very different from Malaysia’s Bhumiputra (sons of the soil) policies designed to ensure the domination of Malay Muslims, it might already be too late for such measures in Bengal. One can only imagine the violence that will erupt all over India if the first two ideas were even broached in the public political sphere. At any rate, the time has come to oust Mamata Banerjee from power so that further ethnic cleansing of Hindus can at least be stopped.
Why the 2016 Election is Critical for an Indian Future
In 2014, a serious allegation was “leveled against Mamata Banerjee and her closest aides for helping Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh to promote a political Jihad in West Bengal with Saradha cheat fund money,” was not pursued to its logical conclusion by her political opponents. The Central investigative agencies also dropped the ball in this regard. Nevertheless, public discontent against Mamata is at an all-time high, state assembly elections will take place in May this year, and Mamata will be more than ever dependent on the Muslim vote to stay in power.
As Bengal gears up for elections, a shocking front page news item published in The Telegraph (of all places!) on Feb 17, 2016, indicates how Mamata Banerjee plans to increase the number of Muslim voters to augment her share of votes. The Telegraph has reported that Mamata Banerjee has declared that “the Bengal government will urge the Centre to give citizenship to all Bangladeshis living in the state for five years or more, a move that will impact Assembly poll results as 10 districts share borders with the neighboring country.”
According to the news item, state officials themselves admit that there are “huge” numbers of undocumented Bangladeshis in the 10 districts bordering Bangladesh. The piece also quotes an unnamed TMC minister as saying “People who have identity documents but want citizenship certificates can decide the electoral outcome in at least 50 Assembly seats in the 10 districts. They are mainly from the minority community. We want to get their votes.”
This brazen anti-people and anti-national strategy that TMC is plotting to add more Bangladeshi Muslims to the electoral rolls should be of grave concern to all right minded people, and especially to all Bengalis.
Nationalist forces in the state should not hesitate to vocalize and propagate the truth to raise the political consciousness of the majority Hindu population. This will be a difficult process given the previous long-term communist indoctrination of Bengal’s masses, the anti-Hindu bias of the state’s administrative apparatus, and the stoic silence of the state’s Marxist controlled media outlets who have a long tradition of censoring all information relating to anti-Hindu violence and jihad. Even with Modi at the Centre, a BJP government at the state level might just be the only way to keep Bengal from slipping away from its Hindu identity and from India.
The stakes are very high. If nationalists do not come to power now, jihad-propelled demographic changes will only accelerate and it is certain that we will see a violent, “democratically” orchestrated movement for the secession of Bengal from India in our own lifetime. The Islamist demonstrations and riots in Malda, and the recent call for breaking up India emanating from JNU, an influential university with heavy leftist and Islamist leanings situated in the very heart of the national capital, are clear indications where things are headed.
Given TMC’s nefarious plans to court the Islamist lobby further, perhaps the biggest challenge and the ultimate obstacle for the BJP this time will not be how to awaken or win the confidence of the Hindu voters, but rather the usual rigging of elections and booth capturing by the TMC goons who will be inside and outside the polling stations when the elections take place this summer.
Defeating the Islamist forces and their allies like the TMC will require tremendous will and tremendous Hindu unity within Bengal. In another century, Vivekananda and Tagore had urged India to awaken. Today, India needs to urge Bengal to wake up.
Disclaimer: The facts and opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201608/242/1155968404_5083523596001_5083506458001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Gingrich: Clinton lies about lying
Newt Gingrich is unsure what would be revealed if the FBI released notes from its interview with Hillary Clinton. But the former House speaker has no doubt that the Democratic presidential nominee is a liar.
“This is a person who has lied repeatedly,” Gingrich said of the former secretary of state Monday during an interview with Fox News. “I mean, she lies about lying and now she lies about having lied about lying.”
Story Continued Below
Gingrich suggested it’s the “Clinton model” to “drag it out, to lawyer it up, to say whatever you need to to get through the next interview.”
The FBI interviewed Clinton for 3½ hours in July over her use of a private email server during her tenure as head of the State Department before recommending no charges against her to the Justice Department. And the Obama administration is debating whether to accede to congressional demands for the bureau's official report.
“Let’s see what she did say to the FBI,” Gingrich said. “I think she wasn't under oath. I think it's kind of weird with a figure who's this important nationally to do — it's a multihour interview in their home without taking exact notes, the exact transcript, and without having her under oath makes me wonder.”
Gingrich questioned what the advantage was of interviewing her “like that” after a yearlong probe. “I mean, it's one thing to have a casual, general conversation going into the investigation,” he said. “But this stage of the investigation, I would have thought they would have wanted to put her in the position where if she lied it was perjury. And so I'm puzzled by what the FBI's decision was. But it will be interesting to see, I mean, just as somebody who is curious about how the country works — interesting to see what her explanations are for things she did that I think were clearly illegal.”This is old news, but it keeps coming up, and I never got around to blogging about it in detail, so…
The popular narrative of East West Link (from those who wanted it built) is that the Andrews Government paid $1 billion for nothing.
As you might expect, there’s a little more to it than that.
The Victorian Auditor General found:
The EWL project was terminated in June 2015 with more than $1.1 billion paid, or expected to be paid, by the state for little tangible benefit.
There’s your headline figure.
But VAGO also found that the cost will be:
partially offset by future proceeds from the sale of properties acquired for the project which the Department of Treasury & Finance estimates at $320 million.
So that makes it $780 million. Which is still a lot of money.
Before supporters of the road (and the 2010-2014 Liberal National Coalition) get too cocky, VAGO points out how badly the project was managed ahead of the 2014 election:
The audit found that the EWL business case did not provide a sound basis for the government’s decision to commit to the investment and that key decisions during the project planning, development and procurement phases were driven by an overriding sense of urgency to sign the contract before the November 2014 state election. Advice to government in the lead up to signing the contract did not sufficiently assess the benefits of delaying contract signing to mitigate risks posed by the unresolved legal challenge to the project planning approval decision. Signing the contract in these circumstances was imprudent and exposed the state to significant cost and risk.
You’d expect the politicians involved to ignore the findings, but what’s unbelievable is that the government departments involved ignored VAGO’s recommendations. From the VAGO report introductory letter:
The report makes recommendations to DTF to provide guidance for development and delivery of major projects and for the Department of Premier & Cabinet to clarify requirements for frank and fearless advice from the public sector. Disappointingly, these departments have rejected the recommendations.
Benefits of the project
Would it have brought benefits? Yes, but as we know from the Benefit Cost Ratio of only 0.8, benefits of less value than the money spent.
The BCR only crept higher than 1 if vague wibbly-wobbly Wider Economic Benefits were added.
VAGO had this to say on WEBs (in section 3.4.1), and it’s fair to say they weren’t supportive of the approach:
The EWL business case relied heavily on the inclusion of estimated WEBs to support the assertion that the project was of net benefit. Without these WEBs, which were unusually high as a proportion of total benefits, the project cost was clearly higher than the expected benefits. WEBs relate to economic benefits that are not typically captured in traditional cost-benefit analysis. Commonly considered WEBs include: ‘agglomeration’ impact (an increase in productivity due to improved proximity to suppliers and labour markets)
the impact of transport on increasing competition
competition related user benefits. The DTF guidelines indicate that WEBs are most relevant to transport and other large infrastructure projects. However, guidance materials from DTF and Infrastructure Australia indicate caution should be exercised when estimating and considering WEBs as part of the economic assessment of projects.
In other words, Department of Treasury and Finance were only too happy to rely strongly on WEBs, even though their own guidance materials said you need to be very careful with them, and not rely on them too much.
DTF’s guidelines note that the extent to which WEBs exist over and above benefits counted in the standard economic evaluation is not yet clear, and will depend on the nature of the project under consideration. The June 2013 business case does not provide sufficient information to explain the basis for the significant change in WEBs from the March 2013 business case. This was important, because an external peer review of the March 2013 business case raised significant issues with the plausibility of the level of WEBs claimed for the project in terms of their ratio to total benefits.
So after the March 2013 business case showed the project was very shaky economically, a revision just two months later showed it to be stronger, but contained no justification for the change.
For VAGO to have “significant issues with the plausibility of the level of WEBs claimed” is really damning stuff.
The cost if it had been built
But back to the cost. $780 million went out the door. But what would it have cost if the project had gone ahead? VAGO spells it out in section 2.4: $12.8 billion (nominal terms), with $3.3 billion of that being State funds, $1.5 billion from the Commonwealth, and $8 billion from tolls.
So while some would argue that scrapping the project wasted $780 million, another way to look at it is that it saved $4 billion of taxpayer funds, plus billions more in motorist tolls.
Despite the best efforts of the outgoing government, the incoming government fulfilled one of its major promises in scrapping the road.
Scrapping it, apart from saving money overall, also prevented the trashing of Royal Park, covering Clifton Hill in massive flyovers, further entrenching car dependency and producing more traffic — and long term, it would have made little difference to congestion on a corridor where traffic wasn’t increasing anyway.
* * *
Further reading:Intercepted militant radio communications indicate the leader of the Pakistani Taliban may have been killed in a recent U.S. drone strike, Pakistani intelligence officials said Sunday. A Taliban official denied that.
The report coincided with sectarian violence — a bomb blast in eastern Pakistan that killed 14 people in a Shiite religious procession.
The claim that the Pakistani Taliban chief was killed came from officials who said they intercepted a number of Taliban radio conversations. In about a half a dozen intercepts, the militants discussed whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed on Jan. 12 in the North Waziristan tribal area. Some militants confirmed Mehsud was dead, and one criticized others for talking about the issue over the radio.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Asimullah Mehsud denied the group's leader was killed and said he was not in the area where the drone strike occurred.
In early 2010, both Pakistani and American officials said they believed a missile strike had killed Hakimullah Mehsud along the border of North and South Waziristan. They were proved wrong when videos appeared showing him still alive.
The Pakistani Taliban is linked to attacks against U.S. targets. They trained the Pakistani-American who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City's Times Square in 2010 and is tied to a suicide bombing that killed seven CIA agents at an Afghan base in 2009.
There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday's bombing that killed 14 people during a Shiite observance in Punjab province in the east — the latest of a series of sectarian attacks in volatile Pakistan.
Hundreds of Pakistani Shiites gathered in the town of Khanpur in Punjab province for a traditional procession to mark the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, a revered seventh-century figure.
The explosion went off as the mourners left a mosque, said District Police Chief Sohail Chatta. The bomb appeared to have been planted ahead of time in the path of the procession, he said.
The Pakistani Taliban and other Sunni extremist groups have in the past claimed responsibility for the bombings of Shiite religious sites and ceremonies. Many Sunni extremists in Pakistan regard Shiites as heretics.
The Taliban and other groups have carried out hundreds of bombings over the last five years that have killed thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians as part of a campaign to install a hard-line Islamist government.
The attacks are so common that the country's interior minister in December actually thanked the Taliban for acting on what he said was a "request" not to stage attacks during the Shiite rituals of Ashoura that month.
Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah said police investigators were still examining the area of Sunday's bombing for clues. Security was provided for the procession, but it was breached, Sanaullah said.
The continuing strikes by presumed religious extremists come during a political crisis that pits the Pakistani civilian government against the military, sparking rumors of an impending coup.
Last week the military warned the government of possible "grievous consequences" ahead, and President Asif Ali Zardari took a one-day trip to Dubai that renewed speculation that he might flee the country.
Analysts say the military may be looking for the Supreme Court to push out Zardari rather than risk an outright takeover.When the spirit is distilled it is completely colourless. The colour of the whisky when you see it in the bottle (and the glass) is a result of the maturation process. To be classified as a whisky, the spirit must have spent at least 3 years in Oak barrels, and fulfil varying other requirements depending on sub-category (Scotch, Bourbon, Tennessee, Rye, etc.). The colour comes from these Oak Barrels, and the intensity of the colour in the whisky is dependent on the prior usages of the barrels. Due to the intensity of fresh oak, Scotch whisky distillers use oak barrels which have previously been used to mature other drinks, predominantely either Bourbon or Sherry, as these drinks can take out much of the harsh richness of the oak which would otherwise overpower the delicate flavours of the whisky. Whisky matured in "First Fill" sherry barrels extract the deepest, richest, darkest colour from the oak accompanied by lots of sweet, fruity tannins. When this first fill has been removed from the barrel after 10years or so and bottled for sale, the barrel may be reused for maturing more whiskies. This is then called "Refill" or "Second (/Third) Fill" and the whiskies that are matured in these barrels will extract less rich colours and flavours through their respective usages. Whisky matured in first fill Bourbon barrels however, naturally draw less colour from the oak, generally resulting in a yellowish, straw-like colour; while the flavours extracted are likely to be more vanillin, citrusy, and floral spices. The reason for the difference in colour extraction between Sherry and Bourbon barrels is in the way that the sherry and bourbon themselves were matured. Sherry matures in an open cask to encourage oxidation, whereas whiskies mature in closed casks to avoid unwanted air contact. It is exactly this oxidation which turns sherry into it's dark colour, and which permeates into, and settles in the oak - which is in turn extracted by the maturing "whisky" spirit.
11 people found this usefulIn case you don’t know me and are not familiar with my store and blog, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Chrystal and I own the 2nd ever Plus Size lingerie store and my store is in San Jose, CA. (Also known as Silicon Valley.) My store, Curvy Girl, is in the middle of high tech heaven and home to companies like EBay, Adobe, Facebook and Twitter. Not exactly known for SEXY here in San Jose. Sexy technology yes, but not really known for sexy time.
Last October, on 10/11/12, my baby “Curvy Girl Lingerie” was born. Curvy Girl is the only plus size lingerie store on the West Coast and as far as I know, there is only one other plus size lingerie store in the entire U.S. and they are in Philly. (Called Lovelies.) We have been open for 13 months and the past 13 months have been so amazing and way more successful then I forecasted or predicted. I figure it would take me a good three years to get the word out and find my tribe. It happened in about 6 months. Pretty amazing. It’s been so humbling, amazing, fulfilling, rewarding, exciting and about a million other adjectives. Just other worldly satisfying and so much fun.
(Share your pic on our Facebook on our page at www.Facebook.com/CurvyGirlInc )
About a week ago, one of my favorite customers sent me a private message asking if I was comfortable with her posting a picture of herself in her panties and bra on our Curvy Girl secret group. (We have a “secret” Curvy Girl group on Facebook in addition to our “public” Curvy Girl page on Facebook. Our public page is www.facebook.com/curvygirlinc). Her exact question/statement:
“There are so many pics of models in lingerie, what about one of us regular chicks??”
Of course, I said YES! For one thing, my customers and Facebook followers ask me all of the time for pics of our lingerie on larger bodies. Many of the lingerie designers show their plus size goodies on thinner models. They are all beautiful, but most of them are a size 12/14 typically. (In the fashion world, anything over a size 4 is considered plus size. I know. It is a big joke.)
My customer’s (we will call her Ms. K) goal was to show “regular” people what a “regular” woman looks like in lingerie. She wanted to connect with the “regular” people out there in the internet world and show them that for most of us Curvies, we will have rolls, bumps, lumps, scars, stretch marks, surgery scars, breasts that are natural and that have breast fed our babies. And we can still be STUNNING and BEAUTIFUL.
No PHOTOSHOP. No AIRBRUSHING. No SPRAY ON TAN. Just a woman who is 39 years old. A woman who is a Mom. (A very devoted Mom, I might ad.) A woman who is a daughter. A friend. A woman who works full time while raising her daughter. A woman how has LIVED and LOVED and is still kicking ass and taking names.
Is that the most generous gift you have ever heard of? Not to mention brave and bold and just crazy sexy and full of confidence. So meet Ms. K. Since she has a regular job and a daughter and a life – we are not tagging her or naming her in this blog. But, I have permission from her and my other Curvy customer to show you all what “regular” women look like in lingerie. (There are 2 unique customers pictured here in this blog.)
We all know some people will HATE on these beautiful Curvy Girls. We know people will say mean, nasty things about these beautiful bodies and they still agreed to let me add them to my blog and share on Facebook. And they all signed up to be a part of this campaign. (And you may notice these pics of another one of my favorite customers who participated in our Curvy Girl Fashion Show. Another “regular” woman in lingerie, not photoshopped!)
So here is the challenge. Share your picture of YOU in sexy clothes or lingerie. The only requirement is that you be a size 14 or up. No photoshop. No professional pictures. No nipples. No bush. 🙂 SHOW THE WORLD what regular women look like when they step into all of their beauty and sexy. You never know who you might touch. Who you might help. Whose life you may change when they see they are NOT the only woman with cellulite, rolls, scars, saggy breasts or stretch marks.
Life is NOT photoshopped.
Thanks you CURVIES! From the bottom of my big, fat, Curvy heart.
Love, Chrystal Bougon
Owner and Resident of Curvy Girl Lingerie
Tel: 408-264-4227
Comments
commentsNewsFamily
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, May 10, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Disgusted by the growing trend on university campuses of holding an annual “Sex Week” one student at the University of New Mexico decided to respond proactively this year.
UNM Students For Life president Sade Patterson was outraged after two years of watching UNM’s “SexUality Week” glorify self-destructive promiscuity and other perversions.
"The pattern of objectification and a lack of responsibility became evident," Patterson wrote in The College Fix. "It was clear organizers had an agenda: teach my peers that anything goes, and there are no consequences."
She wasn’t the only one outraged. There were many, decent students upset by it. The difference with Patterson is, she took matters into her own hands. This March, she ran "The REAL Sex Week," with positivity and honesty about sex from a moral perspective.
Sexual biology was discussed. How sex affects our minds and relationships. The chemical links that sex literally creates in the brain of the participant. Abstinence. The various means of Natural Family Planning, the facts of artificial contraception failure rates, and how hormonal contraception negatively affects a woman's body. CareNet gave free pregnancy and STD tests, and counseled confused, driven-by-the-world weary women, too young for their own tragic experiences.
Additionally, sessions were held for pregnant women and parenting students, offering hope and help and information on where to find support. Nearly 4.8 million undergraduate students are parents. Sade herself gave birth as a junior to her son Daniel. Other women who gave birth while going to college shared their stories.
Other topics included healing from rape and sexual assault, and sessions where post-abortive women shared their stories of regret, and of forgiveness |
the Big Ten, but whose 32-point loss to Iowa may be too much to overcome.
Our model shows a number of more remote possibilities that would provide Alabama avenues into the playoff. Wisconsin could lose to Minnesota, then go on to beat Ohio State for the Big Ten title (2.5-percent chance of this occurring). Georgia could lose to Georgia Tech before winning the SEC title game (5.5 percent). Clemson could lose to South Carolina, then beat Miami for the ACC title (7.8%), or Miami could lose to Pitt and win the ACC (4.4 percent). Plus, the eventual Big 12 champion could still lose its regular season finale (4.7 percent). None offer slam dunks for the Tide, but collectively they significantly bump up their chances.
In our mid-season review, posted just after Auburn took its second loss against LSU, we suggested the Tigers were still nationally relevant. But we didn’t quite expect them to do what they’ve done since. Can they keep it up? Whether or not they do, the SEC’s top three teams will hold the country’s attention the next two weeks.
— Bob Tedeschi contributed.NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar rose on Monday after the FBI decided that U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will not face criminal charges, which was seen as a boost to her chances of winning Tuesday’s contest with Republican rival Donald Trump.
Four thousand U.S. dollars are counted out by a banker counting currency at a bank in Westminster, Colorado November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo
The greenback gained 0.75 percent against a basket of currencies.DXY after getting hammered last week when FBI Director James Comey said the agency was looking at another large batch of Clinton emails, strengthening chances of a Trump victory, an outcome that was seen as likely to send shock waves through financial markets.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said late Sunday it stood by its earlier finding that no criminal charges were warranted against Clinton for her email practices. The announcement sent the dollar surging against the yen JPY=, euro EUR= and pound, and gave a jolt to the Mexican peso MXN=.
“It’s all the election. It’s all the Comey letter,” said Joseph Trevisani, chief market strategist at Worldwide Markets in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, referring to the currency moves.
“Markets want continuity and essentially they want what they have priced in and both point towards Clinton. That’s why markets are reacting to anything that boosts Clinton’s chances by taking back some of the selloff from the past week or so.”
Despite wide-ranging political worries from a Trump victory to the possibility of a Democratic sweep of the U.S. presidency, Senate and House of Representatives, markets now look confident the U.S. will continue with the status quo, analysts said.
“It’s going to be a tight race, but the market appears to be pricing in a Clinton victory,” with the Republicans likely to control the House and the Democrats likely in control of the Senate, said Peter Ng, senior FX trader at Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California.
Trump’s stance on immigration, foreign policy and trade have made the Mexican peso a proxy for his election chances.
Boosted by the FBI’s decision, the peso rose as much as 2.5 percent on Monday, on pace for its largest one-day percentage gain since Sept. 27, to hit a 12-day high of 18.55 per dollar.
The dollar rose 1.4 percent to 104.58 yen JPY=. It declined to 102.550 against the safe-haven Japanese currency last week as polls showed the U.S. presidential race tightening.
The euro EUR= fell 0.9 percent against the dollar to $1.1035. Sterling GBP= also slipped against the dollar, falling 1 percent to $1.2390.Year in Review: Top Posts of 2016
Thank you for your continued support and here’s to more percussion education in the coming year. It would be great to hear from you. Please leave a comment below and say hi. Happy New Year! Here are the top 5 posts from 2016.
1) On Student Attendance at Faculty Performances: Dr. Tracy Wiggins wrote a great article on the importance of students attending recitals. Read it and share it with your students.
2) Jeff Porcaro plays Rosanna: One of my all time favorite drummers playing the classic groove to Rosanna. Even if you are not a drumset player, you will appreciate this amazing video. Last year this was #1 and it remains in the top 5 again this year.
3) The Greatest Snare Drum Tuning Trick: Every time I watch this video, I always wonder how long the counterhoop will remain flat and round?
4) Snare Drum Head Showdown: A showdown of 14 drum heads in one video.
5) Episode 026: Composing using the Rudiments: Rounding out the top 5, this post continues to be popular. In the coming year, I hope to create more videos about composing.Amazon Web Services senior vice president Andy Jassy Business Insider Amazon Web Services chief Andy Jassy has a message for Oracle customers: we're offering you an easy way to leave Oracle.
Jassy says he's giving such customers "freedom from bad database relationships."
"It's extremely rare when I meet with an enterprise customer that isn't looking to flee their database provider. They don't feel they are treated in the right way," he during his keynote speech on Wednesday at Amazon's AWS re:Invent conference being held this week in Las Vegas.
He was introducing a new service called AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) that helps companies move their data out of an Oracle database and into any number of Amazon's Oracle competitors like its homegrown database called Aurora.
DMS also lets a company keep its Oracle database, but move it from their own data center to AWS.
While moving Oracle into AWS won't let the company ditch its licensing contract with Oracle, it could be a step in that direction.
To be sure, Jassy's jibes didn't mention Oracle by name, but he showed two news articles about Oracle, both of them based on reporting by Business Insider. Oracle's name and founder Larry Ellison's photo were blurred but still recognizable.
Showing these articles got a big laugh from the audience.
Jassy noted that "old guard database" vendors are "very expensive" and that they have been known to audit their customers in order to find reasons to charge them more, and sometimes use that audit as a sales negotiation chip.
As Business Insider has previously reported, Oracle has been increasingly been using such hardball tactics with its customers to encourage them to buy more stuff from Oracle, most especially its all-important cloud computing services.
Business Insider Oracle has a really strong hold on its database customers. They love the product (even if some of them hate how Oracle sells and charges for it), and they use it to run their most important applications. It's very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to move from one database to another.
Plus, the classic database alternatives come from Microsoft, IBM, SAP — all companies who have also have complicated customer contracts.
If Amazon nails this one, and can truly become an easy alternative for database customers, it may have struck gold.
Database services is clearly one of the hot areas that Amazon is now focusing on.
Amazon introduced its direct competitor to Oracle, Aurora, a year ago and said that in that time, it has become "the fastest-growing service on AWS" saying it has grown 127% year over year from Q2 2104 vs 2015.On August 1, The Toledo Blade published a story about Gordon Gee, Ohio State's president, and likely the most prominent university president in the country right now. The article says that Gee's enthusiasm for the Buckeyes extends to hands-on football recruiting:
Gordon Gee, the charismatic bow-tied chief executive of Ohio State, met with Bosa, his younger brother, and their parents for a half hour. "If you come here, you have to go to a frat party with me," Gee playfully told the recruit, recalled Bosa's mother, Cheryl.
The story quotes an e-mail exchange between Urban Meyer and Gee (Gee asks, "How can I help get [the recruitment effort] across the goal line?") and finishes with a back-and-forth from those exchanges:
"I know how hectic your schedule was for all of the Spring Game activities," Meyer wrote to Gee on April 23. "But you taking time to personally meet with our key recruits will go a long way in establishing and building relationships with the recruits and their parents." "You, your coaches, and team are on fire," Gee replied. "Thanks for letting me be part of the effort."
Advertisement
Nice, right? It's not unpleasant to think of a goofy bow-tied fellow clapping the back of some 18-year-old recruit and telling him that Columbus is the place to be. Until you realize how much that bow tie cost, where the money came from, and where none of that money is going. The Dayton Daily News looked into Gee's expense reports and published their findings last week. Some highlights:
Those records show Gee stays in luxury hotels, dines at country clubs and swank restaurants, throws lavish parties, flies on private jets and hands out thousands of gifts — all at public expense.
The university spends tens of thousands of dollars alone branding Gee around his signature bow ties. Since 2007, Ohio State has spent more than $64,000 on bow ties, bow tie cookies and O-H and bow tie pins for Gee and others to distribute, the newspaper found.
The university picks up the tab for thousands of dollars for flowers Gee sends to politicians and staff members, annual airline club memberships for the president to work in quiet when he travels, and concert, basketball and football tickets that he can use as he sees fit. His contract and university policy provide him with up to $20,000 a year in financial planning and tax preparation, a car for business and personal use, a fully staffed residence, and authority to charge to the university the cost of business breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
Gee, divorced from his second wife and widowed from his first, lives alone in the university-owned Pizzuti House in Bexley, a 9,600-square-foot mansion that the university remodeled for $1.3 million and then stocked with $673,000 in artwork, decorations and furnishings. European antiques, Persian rugs and a $532 shower curtain for the guest bath were among the amenities purchased for the house.
Advertisement
Where do you even buy a $532 shower curtain? There's a whole bunch of other stuff—how about 16 limo rides over two years at $600 per? $813,000 on tailgating, somehow?—but in fairness, the signs aren't all bad: Gee often donates his bonuses back to the university, his (huge) salary is not paid with student tuition, and it's easy to argue that his expenditures have come back to the school many times over in funds raised by Gee himself.
But that stipend proposal from this summer—the one that would give $2000 per year to student athletes for miscellaneous expenses and which "came out of the [NCAA] retreat last August" that included Gee—hasn't come to fruition, and may have been tabled permanently. Gee plays a large part in recruiting student-athletes, and he also plays a huge part in spending university money on pointless crap. NCAA bylaws insist that money doesn't go to the athletes, and so in some sense, Gee's spending does what it can to bolster the program. But until the rules against compensating student-athletes change, there will be some disconcerting juxtapositions between, for example, football players expelled after trading gear for tattoos, and the well-heeled, seemingly frivolous exploits of the president that helped recruit them.
Ohio State's Gee Whiz In Recruiting [The Toledo Blade]
OSU President Expenses In The Millions [The Dayton Daily News]Professor David Sear from the University of Southampton took sonar readings of the ruins of an old city destroyed by climate change off the coast of Dunwich, England. (David Sear/University of Southampton)
There was an entire city out there, David Sear knew.
Beyond the faded town and crumbling cliffside, past the skeleton of a long-abandoned church that was itself just one strong storm away from tumbling into the water, through the sand and scrubby sea grass and under the waves, lay the remains of a British Atlantis. There were shipyards and guild halls, mansions and market squares, two friaries, six or seven churches, an untold number of homes.
Sear, a small child on vacation with his family, would perch on the ruins of the old church and listen for the bells that people said could still be heard tolling from the city’s submerged steeples.
He never heard them. But he never gave up trying to imagine the marine metropolis just off shore.
Several decades later, Sear is a professor of physical geography at the University of Southampton and the lead researcher on an effort to reconstruct what happened to the sunken city of Dunwich, England, where he spent so many childhood vacations. The venture has involved poring over 900-year-old tax records from dusty old archives, examining marsh cores in florescent-lit labs, diving into the murky waters of the North Sea to map with sound ruins that can’t be seen. It’s part science project, part historical investigation, part archaeology dig, Sear said.
Put the pieces all together, “and you get this 900-year story of a coastal settlement being affected by climate change,” he told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
Once among the most important cities in England, Dunwich was the victim of ferocious storms that lashed Britain’s eastern coast as Europe’s climate cooled going into the period now known as “the Little Ice Age.” Sonar maps, sediment samples and contemporary accounts revealed how the successive storms eroded the cliff the city once stood on, destroyed its economy and ultimately demoralized its inhabitants so thoroughly they all moved away.
All Saints Church crumbled into the North Sea over the course of two centuries. (Images courtesy of the J. C. Docwra Collection and the EA Shoreline Management Group via the Dunwich Project)
Dunwich’s decline offers a fascinating history lesson, Sear said, but it’s also something of a cautionary tale. What happened to Dunwich may presage the fate of coastal communities being affected by climate change today.
But that’s where the story of Dunwich ends. It begins some 2,300 years ago, on the cliffs 115 miles northeast of London, overlooking the chilly North Sea.
A neolithic scraper and shards of Anglo-Saxon pottery uncovered during a dig last year revealed that Dunwich (pronounced “dun-itch”) was settled well before its medieval heyday. The dig was organized by the same Touching the Tide project that has helped fund the last three years of Sear’s research. Sear puts the start date for the settlement around 300 B.C., during the Iron Age.
For centuries after that, Dunwich remained more or less a sleepy seaside town. A 1086 accounting in William the Conqueror’s “Domesday Book” put the city at just one church, Sear said — in those days, the number of churches was more or less a direct reflection of a place’s cosmopolitanism.
But a few decades later, the city took off. By the 13th century, Dunwich was among the top six biggest ports in Britain. Its fishing fleet practically circumnavigated the country, its harbor sent ships around the continent. The city was to medieval Britain what the port of New Orleans is to the United States today — a hub of activity, culture and commerce.
“But around 1250, things started to go a bit wrong,” Sear said.
He can tell from requests for tax relief sent by town officials to the British crown. Year after year, Dunwich seemed unable to pay its usual amount — a storm had damaged the harbor, the letters said, or battered its ships.
A New Year’s tempest in 1287 shifted the city’s coastline, sending water pouring into the town and buildings plummeting into the sea. Another huge storm hit a few decades later, in 1347. Water and waves eroded the cliff face and demolished at least 20 percent of the town, Sear said. Hundreds of houses were lost, as were several churches. And the storm surge was so dramatic that it shifted a huge mass of sand until it blocked the harbor entrance. Dunwich had just been pulverized, and it had lost the means to recover.
As storms battered Dunwich’s shore, the coastline moved progressively inward, and buildings that once stood on dry land fell into the sea. (The Dunwich Project)
These were the worst storms to hit during Dunwich’s trouble years, but they were not the only ones. As the decades went on and as Europe transitioned out of a relatively warm period known as the “medieval climactic anomaly” and into the cooler times of “the Little Ice Age,” unstable conditions in the North Atlantic contributed to increasingly severe and increasingly common storms.
With each century, more and more of the Dunwich coastline was swept into the sea. In 1740, “inundations” from a particularly bad storm ripped open the Dunwich cliff where one of the medieval city’s many churches stood, tossing the chapel, the churchyard and its buried inhabitants into the waves.
“The sea raged with such fury that Cock and Hen hills which the preceding summer were upwards of 40-ft high had their heads leveled … and the ground all about them rent and torn,” the city’s mayor, Thomas Gardner, observed. “The foundations of St Francis chapel, which had lain between the hills, and the secret repositories of the dead were exposed to open view, several skeletons on the ooze, divested of their coverings, some keeping in pretty good order, others scattered as the surges carried them.”
“Imagine something like a hurricane hitting the coast and removing 20 percent of an international port including iconic buildings,” Sear explained. “That would be a shocking thing to happen, wouldn’t it?”
“Now imagine getting another storm the next year. And the next one. And the next one.”
Eventually, the community began to give up. Fishermen moved elsewhere, traders sought new ports, the monks abandoned their ruined monasteries.
“And they leave, and so Dunwich dwindles,” Sear said. “Eventually, it’s a collection of ruins.”
Historians knew the basic outline of this story even in the 1960s, when Sear visited with his family. But they didn’t know why it happened, or the extent of what was lost.
Dunwich in 1914 (Fisk Collection, Dunwich Museum via Dunwich Project)
Sear and his colleagues have been working to give detail to the saga of Dunwich’s decline, filling in the holes in the narrative he’d been told as a boy. For example, what caused the terrible storms that started in the 13th century? How do we know that they were really so severe? How did the people of Dunwich respond? What’s left of the city they once inhabited? Is there anything those ruins can still tell us?
They made the connection between Europe’s cooling climate and the increased intensity of Dunwich’s storms at the end of the medieval era. They also corroborated the contemporary accounts of the storms with soil samples from the nearby marshes: for every year in which Dunwich residents described particularly bad weather, Sear said, he and his colleagues found excess sand in the cores that had clearly been blown in by the storm.
Biggest of all was their extensive, underwater map of Dunwich’s ruins, which they published in 2013. Using acoustic imaging — technology not so different from the kind used in an ultrasound — they found the ruins of the city’s churches, markets and shipyards, all of it exactly where medieval accounts said it should be.
Meanwhile, pollen analysis revealed how people “gave up on Dunwich,” Sear said — showing a decline in food production as the city’s population dwindled.
It’s a lesson in how communities respond when their environment is irrevocably altered. Sear compared Dunwich to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“What would happen if the city got hit by another hurricane, and then another?” he said. “Communities respond well to one-off big events. They pull together, and the nation can help and the region can help.”
“But when a community is faced by an increased frequency, that’s when it has to make a difficult decision,” he continued. “It’s hard to keep saying, ‘We’re going to stick this out.'”
Most of Dunwich didn’t. Now just 100 or so people leave in the tiny community, which is so small it doesn’t even have a parish council — just a town meeting any resident can attend.
And the town is still taking a lashing. The ruins of All Saints Church, where Sear once sat as a boy and listened for phantom bells, have since been buried in a sand bank just off the beach.
Now a single tombstone from the building’s churchyard is all that remains.
More from Morning Mix
Donald Trump on protester: ‘I’d like to punch him in the face’, should be ‘carried out on a stretcher’This story was brought to you by our friends at The Tech Report. You can visit the original story here
In the great game of one-upsmanship played by the two major graphics chip makers, one of the most prized goals is being first to market with a new generation of technology. AMD captured that waypoint late last year when it introduced the first 28-nm GPU, the Radeon HD 7970.
However, there are advantages to being later to market, because the competition has already played its hand. Nvidia smartly took advantage of that dynamic when it unveiled the GeForce GTX 680 several months ago. The new GeForce managed—just barely—to outperform the 7970, while consuming less power and bearing a price tag $50 lower than the Radeon's. Nvidia couldn't have pulled off that trifecta if not for the efficiency of its Kepler architecture, of course, but knowing the target surely helped in selecting clock speeds and pricing for the final product. The first reviews of the GTX 680 were uniformly positive, and the narrative was set: Kepler was a winner. Despite being second to market—or, heck, because of it—Nvidia had captured the mojo.
Then an interesting thing happened. Finding a GeForce GTX 680 card in stock at an online retailer became difficult—and the situation still hasn't eased. Meanwhile, Radeon HD 7900-series cards appear to be plentiful. AMD's spin on this situation is simply to point out that its cards are more readily available for purchase, which is undeniably true. Nvidia's take is that it's selling through GTX 680s as fast as it can get them—and that the problem is raging demand for its products, not just iffy supply. Since both companies rely on the same foundry (TSMC) for their chips, we suspect there's some truth in Nvidia's assertions. These things are hard to know for sure, but quite likely, the GTX 680 is outselling the 7970—perhaps by quite a bit.
If so, that's just a tad insane, given how closely matched the two cards have been in our assessments. Evidently, capturing the mojo is very important indeed.
AMD's answer to this dilemma is a new variant of the Radeon HD 7970 intended to reclaim the single-GPU performance crown, the awkwardly named Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. Compared to the original 7970, the GHz Edition has higher core (1GHz vs. 925MHz) and memory (1500MHz vs. 1375MHz) clock speeds, and it has a new "boost" feature similar to Kepler's GPU Boost.
To understand the "boost" issue, we have to take a quick detour into dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) schemes, such as the Turbo Boost feature in Intel's desktop processors. AMD was the first GPU maker to introduce a DVFS scheme for graphics cards, known as PowerTune. PowerTune allows AMD to set higher stock GPU clock frequencies than would otherwise be possible within a given thermal envelope. The GPU then scales back clock speeds occasionally for workloads with unusually high demands, to enforce its power limits. Unlike the various Turbo and Boost schemes on other chips, though, PowerTune doesn't raise clock speeds opportunistically in order to take advantage of any extra thermal headroom—at least, it hasn't until now.
Like the Turbo Core feature in AMD's FX processors, PowerTune works by monitoring digital activity counters distributed around the chip and using those inputs to estimate power consumption. These power estimates are based on profiles developed through extensive qualification testing of multiple chips. Somewhat uniquely, AMD claims the behavior of its DVFS schemes is deterministic—that is, each and every chip of the same model should perform the same. Intel and Nvidia don't make such guarantees. If you get a sweetheart of a Core i5, it may outperform your neighbor's; better cooling and lower ambient temperatures can affect performance, as well.
For the 7970 GHz Edition, AMD has refined its PowerTune algorithm to improve its accuracy. By eliminating some cases of overestimation, AMD claims, this revamped algorithm both increases the GPU's clock speed headroom and allows the GPU to spend more time resident at its peak frequency. Furthermore, the 7970 GHz Edition adds an additional P-state that takes the GPU clock beyond its stock speed, to 1050MHz, when the thermal envelope permits. It ain't much in the grand scheme, but this ability to reach for an additional 50MHz is the 7970 GHz Edition's "boost" feature—and it is fairly comparable to the GPU Boost capability built into Nvidia's Kepler.
The higher default clock speeds and the PowerTune wizardry are the sum total of the changes to the GHz Edition compared to the original Radeon HD 7970. GHz Edition cards should still have the same ~250W max power rating, with six- and eight- pin aux power connectors. Above is a picture of our 7970 GHz Edition review unit, which came to us directly from AMD. However, there is a bit of a catch. The card above is based on AMD's reference design, but we understand retail cards from AMD's various partners will have custom coolers and possibly custom PCB designs. You won't likely see a 7970 GHz Edition that looks like that picture.
We'd like to show you a retail card, but those aren't here yet. AMD tells us the first products should begin showing up at online retailers next week, with "wide availability" to follow the week after that.
Here's a look at how the 7970 GHz Edition compares to a couple of Radeon HD 7900 cards already on the market. As you can see, the GHz Edition's higher core and memory clock speeds separate it pretty clearly from the stock 7970 in key rates like pixel fill, texture filtering, shader flops, and memory bandwidth.
In fact, although it's not listed in the table above, the 7970 GHz Edition is the first GPU to reach the 1 teraflop milestone for theoretical peak double-precision floating-point math throughput. Double-precision throughput is irrelevant for real-time graphics and probably mostly useless for consumer GPU-computing applications as well. Still, this card hits a target recently mentioned by both Nvidia and Intel as goals for data-parallel computing products coming later this year.
AMD says the GHz Edition will list for $499.99, placing it directly opposite the GeForce GTX 680. We've taken the prices for the other two Radeons above from Newegg. Street prices for the Radeon HD 7970 have recently dropped to $449.99, 100 bucks below its introductory price, perhaps in part to make room for the GHz Edition.
We've included all three of these cards in this review because they illustrate the current state of the high-end Radeon lineup. Video card makers have more leeway than ever to offer higher-clocked variants of their products, and that means alert enthusiasts can snag some deals by ignoring branding and focusing on specs instead. For example, XFX's "Black Edition" version of the Radeon HD 7950 is so aggressively clocked that it essentially matches the stock 7970 in pixel throughput rate and memory bandwidth. The XFX 7950 does give up a bit of texel fill rate and shader processing oomph to the stock 7970, but we probably wouldn't pay the extra 40 bucks for the 7970, given everything.By Joshua Molina
In 2005, Spike TV took a gamble of epic proportions by bringing Mixed Martial Arts programming on board its cable television network. Prior to their crap shoot, the TV industry wouldn’t dare touch the sport that was still widely perceived as “human cockfighting” thanks to the 1990’s crusade of Senator John McCain to outlaw it, and despite the tireless efforts made by Zuffa, LLC to clean up MMA’s image since it purchased the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in 2000 from creators.
With cameras documenting 16 fighters’ every move over the course of 12 weeks while they lived together in a Las Vegas house a la MTV’s “The Real World,” MMA, with UFC as its face, hit the big time, making substantial inroads to mainstream American households. A classic battle between Forrest Griffin and Stephen Bonnar on the finale of The Ultimate Fighter on April 9, 2005 was just icing on the cake.
Six years later, though, the magical matrimony between UFC and Spike TV, is in jeopardy. The television contract between the two expires at the end of 2011 and there’s major buzz behind the scenes at both companies as well as amongst MMA insiders that the UFC and Spike which, together, help create an MMA revolution and transform the public’s perception of MMA, will part ways.
A break-up between the two would be the latest seismic shift in the world of MMA, at a time when UFC has at least temporarily eliminated all of its competition by purchasing it.
In 2005, the first season of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV was a landmark stride for MMA and the UFC
Spike TV is not revealing any specifics about the contract negotiations between the two organizations. Company officials said they are focused on Season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter, which premieres this fall and is headlined by UFC stars Michael Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller, who will coach opposing teams of fighters.
After that, they aren’t making any promises about future UFC programming. Spike is committed, however, to staying in the MMA business.
“Spike TV sees the value of the sport as a growing sport and as a sport with a tremendous fan base,” said David Schwarz, a spokesman for Spike TV. “This sport is on the rise.”
Schwarz said Spike TV believed in MMA in 2005 and will continue to support the sport.
“We have a great deal of respect for our fans and we will do our best to put on the best programming for them,” Schwarz said.
The Ultimate Fighter: Ratings On The Decline
The television landscape has certainly changed. In 2005, the traditional reality series style programming which, in this case, documents the drama and emotion of young men living in close quarters, made for good television. But after 13 seasons, two a year, the appeal of watching fighters get drunk and act out amongst each other has worn thin.
Even a season headlined by former WWE champion and UFC champion Brock Lesnar couldn’t revive sagging ratings for the show. The show peaked with 2.9 million average viewers in Season 10, when famed Internet brawler Kimbo Slice was a contestant. Season 13, with Lesnar as the headliner, dropped to season 8 levels. (see below chart: The Ultimate Fighter –Average viewership, season-by-season, on Spike TV)
Despite his lack of professional fighting experience, “Kimbo Slice” (center) was a driving force behind record ratings for The Ultimate Fighter Season 10. As a result of his star power, Slice was promoted just as heavily by Spike as UFC superstars and Season 10 coaches “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans
In 2005, then-unknown fighters such as Chris Leben and Josh Koscheck didn’t fear how they came across on television. They had little idea what they were getting into and that MMA was about to take off. Now, the new fighters on the show typically play it safe and avoid the immature behavior that often makes for good television.
Could Bellator replace UFC on Spike?
At the same time that the UFC’s signature show has fizzled, a different MMA organization, Bellator Fighting Championships, has experienced a respectable rise in popularity thanks, in part, to a three-year live event programming deal with MTV2 that began earlier this year.
Last Wednesday, MTV announced in a press release that MTV2, established in 1996, posted its highest-rated quarter in the channel’s history, thanks in part to the viewership impact of the 11 Bellator events that have aired on the network thus far. According to the press release, MTV2, which is available in approximately 80 million homes, experienced a 14 percent increase in total viewership from second quarter 2010 as well as an 11 percent increase in the key 12-34 year old demographic during the same time period.
Still, the promotion, which launched in 2008, is light years behind the UFC machine in terms of being an established, recognizable brand. Its live event viewership on MTV2 is a fraction of that generated by any UFC live event telecast or episode of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike as well as the top rated UFC Pay-Per-Views. (see below chart: Bellator Fighting Championships – Average viewership, event-by-event, on MTV2) It’s highest rated show to date, Bellator 44 on May 14, generated an average of 325,000 viewers.
Bellator suffers from a lack of household names on its fighter roster and, thus, cannot realistically be considered a legitimate number two promotion as Strikeforce was before UFC acquired it in March.
There is talk that if Spike and UFC aren’t able to agree to terms, though, that Spike is poised to bring Bellator on board its ship. Viacom, which owns Spike and MTV2, would simply move the show over from one cable station to another.
“Our sister network has experienced great success with Bellator on MTV2,” Schwarz said.
UFC has, for some time, been rumored to want to start its own cable channel. Recently, news broke out about a possible UFC equity stake purchase in G4, a cable and satellite network owned by Comcast.
Jumping networks or staying on Spike isn’t as simple as it seems.
A Stalemate
Although the UFC has experienced a rapid growth in popularity similar to the WWE in the mid 1980s, UFC has turned away television deals if it felt they weren’t good company.
UFC isn’t going to give up its production rights to its television shows or negotiate a contract that doesn’t offer a maximum financial benefit to the company.
Spike TV, likewise, isn’t going to give up its foothold in the sport, or underestimate its own value in the sport’s rise.
There is a proven appetite for MMA fighting other than UFC. Strikeforce was soaring on Showtime and about to move into the world of Pay-Per-View, before UFC purchased the company.
“We were the first television network in North America to air live mixed martial arts fights,” Schwarz said. “We took a chance on the UFC. The last 13 seasons have been beneficial to both brands.”
The Statistics:
The Ultimate Fighter –Average viewership, season-by-season, on Spike TV
Season 1 – 1.42 million viewers
Season 2 – 1.8
Season 3- 1.95
Season 4 – 1.7
Season 5 – 1.4
Season 6 – 1.5
Season 7 – 1.3
Season 8 – 1.2
Season 9 – 1.34
Season 10 – 2.9
Season 11 – 1.5
Season 12 – 1.3
Season 13 – 1.2
* ratings compiled from Spike TV and MMA websites.
Bellator Fighting Championships – Average viewership, event-by-event, on MTV2
Bellator 35 (March 5, 2011): 200,000 viewers
Bellator 36 (March 12, 2011): 230,000
Bellator 37 (March 19, 2011): 173,000
Bellator 38 (March 26, 2011) : 150,000
Bellator 39 (April 2, 2011): 174,000
Bellator 40 (April 9, 2011): 218,000
Bellator 41 (April 16, 2011): 132,000
Bellator 42 (April 23, 2011): 199,000
Bellator 43 (May 7, 2011): 182,000
Bellator 44 (May 14, 2011): 325,000
Bellator 45 (May 21, 2011): 264,000
*ratings compiled from The Nielsen CompanyMan raped 8-month-old dog on porch, Daytona Beach police allege
James Guy Bull, 61, remained in the Volusia County Branch Jail today, charged with two counts of animal cruelty, after his arrest Tuesday.
The suspect, James Guy Bull, 61, remained in the Volusia County Branch Jail today, charged with two counts of animal cruelty, after his arrest Tuesday.
Witnesses called police, alleging their neighbor was raping his 8-month-old female dog on his porch.
They heard the puppy yelping through the walls of their Daytona Beach apartment.
James Guy Bull, 61, was booked into the Volusia County Branch… (Volusia County Branch Jail )
Two neighbors told police they saw Bull attacking the dog on several occasions.
"They heard the animal yelp and cry but [Bull] continued with the conduct," police said in a report.
One of the witnesses told police about hearing a "dog in distress" at Bull's residence on Magnolia Drive.
The witness told police Bull was attacking the dog.
When Bull saw the neighbor, he "pulled up his pants and put the dog down," the report said.
"Both witnesses claim that they can hear the animal crying and yelping through the walls of the apartment but not when she is chained up on the porch," the report added.
The dog was described as "a small light brown mix dog nearly 8 months old."
It was chained to a post on the front porch.
"The chain was rather large and it was stuck in... the wood slats. She had about 8 inches of space from the post. There was no water or food, the report said. The dog was "clearly emaciated" and suffering from abuse, the report said |
& Cie.: On the Occasion of the 150th Birthday of Karl Benz
Seherr-Thoss, Hans Christoph, Graf von (1988). Zwei Männer – ein Stern : Gottlieb Daimler und Karl Benz in Bildern, Daten und Dokumenten (in German). Düsseldorf: VDI-Verlag. ISBN 3-18-400851-7. [2]
Two men – one star: Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz in pictures, data and documents
Carl Benz: a Baden history; the vision of the "horseless car" changes the world
Siebertz, Paul (1950). Karl Benz : Ein Pionier der Motorisierung (in German). Stuttgart: Reclam. [4]The landing was threatened if an Iranian scientist who had received a U.S. professional exchange visa was allowed on board | Clement Sabourin/AFP via Getty Images US threatened to deny landing to Swiss flight if Trump travel ban passenger aboard: suit Papers filed show Justice Department taking narrow view of federal court order limiting impact of executive decree.
WASHINGTON — U.S. officials implementing President Donald Trump's travel ban executive order threatened to deny landing to a Swiss Airlines flight earlier this week if an Iranian scientist who had received a U.S. professional exchange visa was allowed on board, a federal lawsuit contends.
Papers filed in connection with the suit filed by Iranian genetic researcher Samira Asgari also show the Justice Department is taking a narrow view of a federal court order limiting the impact of Trump's executive decree, rebuffing immigrant lawyers' position that the judicial order issued early Sunday in another case requires the government to tell airlines to allow some travelers onto flights bound for Boston.
An email a Justice Department attorney sent earlier this week rejected the notion that the order compelled U.S. authorities to allow Asgari to board a flight in Zurich with a J-1 exchange visa issued to her on Jan. 27— the same day Trump moved to limit travel by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, including Iran.
"We do not read the Court's order to require such action, but we have passed the information along to CBP [Customs & Border Protection]," Justice Civil Division attorney Katie Shinners wrote Tuesday afternoon in a message to Asgari's attorney, Sabin Willett.
A U.S. consular official personally blocked Asgari from boarding a flight from Frankfurt to Boston on Saturday, Jan. 28, according to the suit Asgari filed in U.S. District Court in Boston. She tried again from Zurich on Tuesday, but the airline said it was told by CBP to deny her boarding. The suit says CBP also threatened to deny landing rights to the Swiss International Air Lines flight and to fine the company $50,000 if it allowed Asgari to board.
"Swiss needs your assurance that the flight has permission to land and is advising us that, after the Court's order entered on Sunday, and in contravention of the order, it has been advised by CPB [sic] that she is not permitted to board," Willett wrote to Shinners and other DOJ lawyers Tuesday morning. "Please ASAP contact Swiss in Zurich to confirm that Ms. Asgari may board as the aircraft will be given permission to land at Logan without penalty."
Shinners did not specify exactly how or why the Justice Department disagreed with Willett's view of the order issued by Judge Allison Burroughs and Magistrate Judith Dein following an unusual hearing in the wee hours of Sunday morning at the federal courthouse in Boston.
"Customs and Border Protection shall notify airlines that have flights arriving at Logan Airport of this order and the fact that individuals on these flights will not be detained or returned based solely on the basis of the Executive Order,” Burroughs and Dein wrote in the order.
Asgari is now seeking a temporary restraining order to allow her return to the U.S. The original lawsuit that led to the Sunday order has now been reassigned to Judge Nathaniel Gorton, a George W. Bush appointee. However, Asgari's case was assigned to Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee and one of the judges who issued the Friday order.
Gorton has set a hearing Friday afternoon on the original suit in Boston, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union's local chapter. No hearing was immediately set on Asgari's case.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said lawyers are reviewing the complaint. Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection division did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The Boston cases are just two of dozens of suits and habeas corpus petitions filed in federal court around the country in the wake of Trump's order Friday. Many of the individual cases have been resolved after the Trump administration eased and then eliminated the impact of the order on green-card holders. However, suits or motions mounting broad challenges to the order remain pending in Brooklyn, N.Y., Alexandria, Va., Seattle, Portland, Ore., San Francisco and Los Angeles, in addition to Boston.
Authors:Officially, Edith Garrud is not a character in the forthcoming film about the British suffragette movement named, appropriately, Suffragette. But the activist, self-defense proponent and trainer of Emmeline Pankhurst’s 25-woman strong Bodyguard collective is certainly there in spirit.
Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Edith Ellyn in the film, lobbied for her fictionalized character’s name to be changed to pay tribute to her. “Originally the character I was asked [to play] was somebody called Caroline, and then I found out about this character called Edith [Margaret] Garrud, who was 4'11" and taught the suffragettes jiu jitsu—basically self-defense—against the police,” the actress told Interview Magazine in August. “I based a lot of this character on Edith, but having said that, for story reasons, a lot of the jiu-jitsu has been cut. But no, I didn't feel pressure, because no one knows about her anyway. She's a real inspiration and I thought an amazing story; this woman who is literally 5'1" or even 4'11" and could defend herself against these men twice her weight and twice her size. One of the big arguments against women getting the vote, which was such a stupid one, was that they couldn't fight for their country. They can fight.”
Garrud can also be found in a lot of Suffragette-inspired media. She’s one of the women profiled in the recent BBC News Magazine article “Suffrajitsu: How the suffragettes fought back using martial arts.” She’s also makes a brief appearance in Suffrajitsu, a trilogy of graphic novels inspired by the jiu jitsu-trained women who protected the leaders of the movement from the police and public, which is receiving newfound interest thanks to the film.
The interest is understandable. Edith Garrud’s life and involvement are so fascinating that they could easily merit a biopic of their own. While she wasn’t the first woman to practice jiu jitsu in England—self defense parties among the more privileged women in the country were already quite popular by the time she arrived on the scene—she was the first to officially bring martial arts to the suffragette movement.
Born in Somerset in 1872, Garrud first discovered jiu jitsu when she and her husband, a gymnastics, boxing and wrestling instructor named William, took a class with Bartitsu founder Edward William Barton-Wright. From there, the pair began to study the art under Sadakazu Uyenishi, one of the first Japanese instructors to teach the art outside of Japan.
When Uyenishi returned to Japan in 1908, William and Edith took over instruction duties at his dojo, Golden Square, which was located in the posh Soho area of London. The pair became associated with the suffragette movement when the Women’s Social and Political Union booked them for a jiu jitsu demonstration. When William fell ill, Edith went to the meeting alone.
“Edith normally did the demonstrating, while William did the speaking,” Suffrajitsu writer Tony Wolf told the BBC. “But the story goes that the WSPU’s leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, encouraged Edith to do the talking for once, which she did.”
After that, Edith began to hold self-defense classes for suffragettes, teaching them how to deal with hecklers at their protests at a dance school on Argyll Street. When those protests began to face increasingly violent opposition from the police, though, she began to teach them how to fight back.
According to her great nephew Martin Williams, Garrud sometimes used Uyenishi’s former dojo as a hiding place for her fellow female activists. “She didn’t want people to know Golden Square was a dojo, so she was very pleased to have it in the posh end of town because people were less likely to suspect,” Williams told the Islington Tribune in 2012. “The suffragettes would create a disturbance in Oxford Street, but then they’d run back to the dojo and hide their clubs and bats under the floor. By the time the police arrived they’d be pretending they were in the middle of their exercise class.”
The tiny but mighty Garrud also appeared in films about jiu jitsu, wrote articles on the topic, and gave demonstrations at a number of meetings for the suffragettes, and would take on any curious man who doubted her skills. She was also immortalized in a Punch magazine cartoon as “The Suffragette That Knew Jiu-Jitsu.”
When a Canadian-born activist named Gertrude Harding began to assemble a team of women to protect Emmeline Pankhurst from re-arrest under the infamous Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act of 1913—better known as “The Cat and Mouse Act”—Garrud became their instructor, helping the women learn the skills that they would need to fight back against much larger—and armed—police officers and opportunistic male bystanders.
Armed with their jiu jitsu training, Indian clubs (and whatever else they could get their hands on, like flower pots), and protected by homemade armor made out of cotton and cardboard, these women—who became known as the Bodyguard—defended Pankhurst through a mix of skill and distraction until their disbandment shortly after the beginning of World War I.
Edith and William continued to teach martial arts until they sold their dojo and retired in 1925. Although she mostly retired from public life as well, she did sit down with journalist Godfrey Winn for an interview in 1965, on the event of her 94th birthday. She even put the writer in a wrist hold for old time’s sake. Edith held on for another five years after that, passing away at the age of 99 in 1971.
For more information on Garrud, we recommend checking out the following sources:
Edith Garrud: The Suffragette Who Knew Jujutsu
Before Tony Wolf tackled the Suffrajitsu graphic novels, he wrote this book on Garrud. It’s geared toward teen audiences, but contains valuable information for all ages. A free download is available from the Online Library here.
Femininity, Crime and Self-Defense in Victorian Literature and Society
Emelyne Godfrey offers a detailed, nuanced and thoughtful exploration of Edith Garrud and her role in the suffragette movement in her examination of the role that self-defense for women played in the Victorian era.
Damsel vs Desperado
“Woman is exposed to many perils nowadays, because so many who call themselves men are not worthy of that exalted title, and it is her duty to learn how to defend herself, because ju-jutsu has over and over again been proved to be the most effective means, in moments of emergency for repelling the attack of a ruffian; because it is easy to learn, and because it is, quite apart from its combative value, a splendid exercise; it is the very thing for women as well as men to take up thoroughly.” - Edith Garrud herself writes about self-defense and suffragettes in this 1910 article for Health & Strength.
The Year of the Bodyguard
The Bartitsu Society provides an in-depth summary of a 1982 documentary on Pankhurt’s Garrud-trained posse.
Ju-Jutsu as a husband-Tamer: A Suffragette Play With a Moral
A photo series based on “What Every Woman Ought To Know,” a sketch that the suffragettes practiced and staged at Garrud’s Argyll Street dojo.
Check out these related stories:
The Mixed Martial Arts of Victorian London
Bartitsu Makes Its Major Music Festival Debut This WeekendJohn Edward Douglas (born June 18, 1945) is a retired special agent and unit chief in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was one of the first criminal profilers and has written books on criminal psychology.
Early life [ edit ]
John Edward Douglas was born in Brooklyn, New York. A veteran of four years in the United States Air Force (1966–1970), he holds several degrees: a B.S. in sociology/physical education/recreation from Eastern New Mexico University; an M.S. in education psychology/guidance and counseling from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; an Ed.S. in Administration and Supervision/Adult Education from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; and a PhD in comparing techniques for teaching police officers how to classify homicides from Nova Southeastern University.
Career [ edit ]
Douglas joined the FBI in 1970 and his first assignment was in Detroit, Michigan. In the field, he served as a sniper on the local FBI SWAT team and later became a hostage negotiator. He transferred to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) in 1977 where he taught hostage negotiation and applied criminal psychology at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia to new FBI special agents, field agents, and police officers from all over the United States. He created and managed the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and was later promoted to unit chief of the Investigative Support Unit, a division of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).[1][2][3]
While traveling around the country providing instruction to police, Douglas began interviewing serial killers and other violent sex offenders at various prisons. He interviewed some of the most notable violent criminals in recent history as part of the study, including David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Lynette Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, Edmund Kemper, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Richard Speck, Donald Harvey, Gary Ridgway and Joseph Paul Franklin. He used the information gleaned from these interviews in the book Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, followed by the Crime Classification Manual (CCM). Douglas later received two Thomas Jefferson Awards for academic excellence from the University of Virginia for his work on the study.[1][2][3]
Profiling [ edit ]
Douglas examined crime scenes and created profiles of the perpetrators, describing their habits and attempting to predict their next moves. In cases where his work helped to capture the criminals, he built strategies for interrogating and prosecuting them as well. At the time of criminal profiling's conception, Douglas claimed to have been doubted and criticized by his own colleagues until both police and the FBI realized that he had developed an extremely useful tool for the capture of criminals.[4]
Since his retirement from the FBI in 1996, Douglas has gained international fame as the author of a series of books detailing his life tracking serial killers, and has appeared numerous times on television.[1] Douglas has also written textbooks for criminal profiling classes. He is the author, along with Mark Olshaker, of several books.
Individual cases [ edit ]
Douglas first made a public name for himself with his involvement in the Atlanta murders of 1979–81, initially through an interview he did with People Magazine about his profiling of the as yet unidentified killer as a young black man. When Wayne Williams was arrested, Douglas was widely reported as stating that Williams was "looking pretty good for a good percentage of the killings." Douglas received an official letter of censure from the FBI Director for this. However, he attended the subsequent legal proceedings and helped the prosecution trap Williams into showing anger, which was key in showing the jury that Williams was the murderer.[5]
Douglas was consulted in another controversial case known as the "West Memphis Three". In 1993, three eight-year-old boys were murdered and police and the prosecutor's office claimed the children died as a result of a Satanic ritual sacrifice. Three teens were later tried and convicted. Douglas was consulted by the defense in 2006-7, by which time there was new evidence of the three's innocence, and his report concluded that the killings were not related to Satanism but rather were unplanned homicides by a lone adult who knew the victims and felt rage against them.[6] In 2011, the three men were released under an Alford plea.[7]
Douglas has written extensively in support of Amanda Knox, presenting evidence supporting her innocence in his book The Forgotten Killer.
Model for fictional characters [ edit ]
Jack Crawford, a major character in the Thomas Harris novels Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, was directly based on Douglas.[3] Crawford was played by Dennis Farina in the film Manhunter, by Scott Glenn in the film The Silence of the Lambs, by Harvey Keitel in the 2002 Red Dragon, and by Laurence Fishburne in the 2013 NBC series Hannibal.
According to Bryan Fuller, creator of Hannibal, the series' version of Will Graham is based in part on Douglas, namely in the character suffering a severe case of autoimmune encephalitis throughout the first season.
In January 2015, creators of the TV show Criminal Minds confirmed that the characters of FBI profilers Jason Gideon and David Rossi were based on Douglas.[8]
A screenplay adapted from the book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit was picked up by Netflix.[9] Mindhunter stars Jonathan Groff, who plays the character Special Agent Holden Ford, a lead character based on Douglas.[10]
Publications [ edit ]
Fiction [ edit ]
Douglas, John E., Mark Olshaker. Broken Wings (Mindhunters). Atria. 1999. ISBN 978-0-671-02391-1
Atria. 1999. ISBN 978-0-671-02391-1 Douglas, John E. Man Down: A Broken Wings Thriller. (alternate title: Man Down, Vol. 2) Atria. 2002. ISBN 978-0-671-02392-8
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian businessman, joined with five other colleagues to put up $5 million in 1997 to acquire a struggling Nigerian bank. Five years later, the bank merged with another to become the largest in West Africa, employing about 25,000 people.
Mr. Elumelu, who has become one of Africa’s most prominent philanthropists, likes to contrast the results of that $5 million investment – the jobs it helped create and the tax revenue it generated for governments – with what he sees as the disappointing track record of foreign-aid money showered on Africa each year.
The Nigerian businessman thinks it’s time for a new approach to Africa’s problems, and he has been pitching the idea in speeches to donors and businessmen, and to the news media.
QUIZ: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.
He calls his idea “Africacapitalism,” a business-led, African-run approach to fighting poverty.
In 2010, he started the Tony Elumelu Foundation to finance nonprofit work that supports economic growth.
Led by a former Rockefeller Foundation official, Wiebe Boer, the Lagos, Nigeria, foundation seeks to groom business leaders, change government policies that discourage the creation of new enterprises, spread research on entrepreneurship in Africa, and provide capital to businesses that have a social purpose.
Jane Wales, founder of the Global Philanthropy Forum, says Mr. Elumelu stands out as a philanthropist because he doesn’t just rely on grantmaking. He also ties his investments to businesses that bring about social change and uses his own voice and influence to sway policymakers.
“He employs all the tools of strategic philanthropy, and he does so deftly,” she says.
Mr. Elumelu also wants to improve philanthropy in Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent. His organization is pushing legislation in his home country that would seek to organize nonprofits by requiring them to disclose more information about their work.
But Mr. Elumelu is tight-lipped about his own giving, declining to say how much he’s donated to the foundation. Mr. Boer says the foundation will start providing that information soon, most likely in the next year.
Mr. Elumelu is part of a small but growing cadre of philanthropists in Africa, say experts. Some of the most prominent African donors, like Sudanese-born Mo Ibrahim, run their philanthropic foundations from outside of the continent. (Mr. Ibrahim’s fund, which focuses on good governance in Africa, is based in London.)
Ms. Wales says she sees the African philanthropists following in the footsteps of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and others who want to use their wealth to solve social problems in their lifetimes.
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
“In Africa, you’re seeing the same thing: Folks who were very successful in business and who are very quickly moving into philanthropy and doing so in a very generous way,” she says.
• This article originally appeared at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.Media playback is not supported on this device FA Cup: Blackburn 3-1 Swansea highlights
Swansea finish game with nine men
Blackburn start with Gestede and Rhodes on bench
Swans take lead despite Bartley red card
Gestede and Conway secure Rovers win
Blackburn Rovers scored two late goals to knock Premier League Swansea out of the FA Cup at the fourth-round stage.
The visitors had Kyle Bartley sent off for fouling Josh King after just seven minutes but took the lead when Gylfi Sigurdsson powered in a 25-yard strike.
Rovers equalised quickly when Chris Taylor sent in a shot on the turn.
Rudy Gestede bundled the ball in and Craig Conway added a third for Blackburn before Sigurdsson was the second Swansea player to be red carded.
Gestede has been linked with a move to the Premier League in January and he will have enhanced his reputation after coming on to help turn the tie in his side's favour.
He had surprisingly started the match on the bench alongside fellow forward Jordan Rhodes, but both ended the match on the pitch as the Championship side capitalised on their numerical advantage to secure their progress.
The only shame for Rovers was that only 5,928 fans, of which 590 were visiting supporters, turned up to watch the match at Ewood Park.
Swansea had been keen to put the 5-0 thrashing by Chelsea last week behind them as quickly as possible but their predicament has only got worse with this loss as they now have just one win from their last six games.
The visitors suffered an early setback with Bartley's dismissal. Rovers striker King looked set to overtake the defender to a ball over the top from Matt Kilgallon before Bartley put an arm across the forward and brought him down.
Blackburn striker Joshua King (left) was a constant threat with his pace
Referee Craig Pawson ruled that centre-back Bartley was the last man and sent him off, leading to Swans manager Garry Monk bringing on defender Federico Fernandez for midfielder Tom Carroll.
A rattled Swansea almost found themselves behind when Tom Cairney had a free-kick parried by keeper Lukasz Fabianski and King put the rebound wide.
However, the visitors took the lead against the run of play when Sigurdsson was not closed down and he scored with an impressive long-range effort.
Swansea had barely finished celebrating when Blackburn equalised. Marcus Olsson crossed to the far post where Cairney headed the ball across goal for Taylor, who controlled before volleying in on the turn.
Swansea were comfortably soaking up Blackburn's pressure in the second half but that changed with the introduction of Gestede and Rhodes.
Olsson was again Blackburn's provider as his cross was headed down by Gestede before he fired in from close range.
Conway's 20-yard shot found its way in after Fabianski clumsily failed to deal with an effort which bounced in front of him, before Swansea's misery was compounded with Sigurdsson's dismissal for a crude challenge on Taylor late on.
Blackburn manager Gary Bowyer: "I thought the sending off [Bartley's] was a bit harsh but the referee has to follow the letter of the law. Was it really that much of a foul? I'm not so sure.
"It was always going to be a tough challenge but I thought we showed good character in the way we responded to going 1-0 down so quickly."
Blackburn scorer Craig Conway: "I thought we played really well today and matched their work rate. It was a great win against a very good team, a great display all round."
Swansea manager Garry Monk: "We were always up against it going down to 10 so early. It makes it more difficult.
"I spoke to the team at half-time, we regrouped and I didn't think Blackburn were too much of a threat. The plan was to get to the last 10 minutes and we were containing them - but to concede a second goal as we did from a set-piece, it was poor defending from us. The goals we conceded, we could have defended a lot better."
Bartley's sending off was Swansea's seventh red card this season in all competitions
Sigurdsson's strike could not stop Swansea exiting the cup to a lower division side for the first time since 2011
Blackburn midfielder Chris Taylor has scored three goals in two FA Cup outings so far this seasonThe Trudeau government should consider increasing its contribution to the ongoing peacekeeping operation in the world's youngest nation as it faces catastrophic famine, says Canada's ambassador to South Sudan.
"It's a very important mission and something worth considering," Alan Hamson told CBC News in an interview in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Hamson also said the famine that is expected to threaten the lives of 5.5 million South Sudanese by July is "man-made."
Canada has a contingent of 10 soldiers serving on the ground as advisers to the UN mission to South Sudan (UNMISS), which was established in 2011 after the country voted to break away from Sudan after decades of deadly conflict.
Canada's ruling Liberals announced in 2016 they would commit $450 million to peace operations and up to 600 troops and 150 police officers to various peace support missions worldwide, including a mission to Africa. A decision about exactly where those troops would go was expected in January, but hasn't yet been announced.
The blue sacks dropping from the plane contain a fortified cereal mix that helps stave off acute malnutrition in kids under five. (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)
The ambassador's comments come as the representatives of three of Canada's largest religious denominations issued a public letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, urging the government to increase humanitarian assistance funding to South Sudan.
Famine follows conflict
Conflict broke out in South Sudan in 2013 between rival forces backing the country's new President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar, prompting the United Nations to ramp up its peacekeeping mission.
Years of escalating conflict followed, plunging the country into a state of civil war and economic collapse, prompting nearly two million people to flee their homes. Severe food insecurity spread.
The CBC's Margaret Evans reports on the poor conditions inside camps of displaced South Sudanese 1:27
In February, the United Nations formally declared famine in parts of the country, calling the conflict-driven crisis in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and northeastern Nigeria the "largest humanitarian crises since the end of the Second World War."
But it warned at the time that "there is only so much that humanitarian assistance can achieve in absence of meaningful peace and security."
A woman waits to be registered for food distribution by the UN World Food Programme earlier this year. (Siegfried Modola/Reuters)
Global Affairs Canada announced in March it would provide $36.9 million in humanitarian assistance to South Sudan.
International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said Tuesday the government is monitoring the situation in South Sudan closely. It's expected to worsen in the upcoming rainy season, she said, and Canada may increase funding if conditions deteriorate further.
Aid groups, calling the situation in South Sudan "unprecedented," say Canada must do more immediately.
Canada should not only ramp up funding, but use the upcoming G7 meeting in Italy as an opportunity to press other world leaders to commit to greater humanitarian funding for the region, said Oxfam Canada.
More Canadian troops needed
In addition, Canada should consider playing a greater role in conflict resolution in South Sudan, including possibly more peacekeepers on the ground.
"Ultimately, the only thing that will allow South Sudanese people to go home and resume their lives is peace. We need to see an end to the conflict," said Melanie Gallant, head of media for Oxfam Canada.
More troops would be especially welcome, Gallant said, given the scale of the conflict and the horrendous level of rape and sexual violence women and girls are facing in camps for internally displaced people within South Sudan.
Bibeau referred peacekeeping mission questions to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, but said that in addition to humanitarian funding, Canada is actively supporting the peace process in South Sudan.
Juba’s children’s hospital has so many critically malnourished patients, it packs more than 20 beds to a tiny ward, for mothers and their kids to share. (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)
A background document provided to CBC by Bibeau's office said Canada is participating in the peace process by imposing targeted sanctions against individuals seen as supporting hostilities, raising concerns directly with parties on both sides of the conflict and providing a small contribution of Canadian Armed Forces members to UNMISS.
Hamson said that small contingent of Canadians has made a difference on the ground in South Sudan.
"They've [UNMISS] taken long distance patrols because there was a Canadian with the team, [the Canadians] have helped to troubleshoot and find a way forward, pushing for a robust response to a protection challenge, so I've seen what kind of impact Canadian officers can have on a mission."BOTTOM OF THE FIFTH: CUBS 8 (3) – 0 PIRATES
David Wade Ross turned thirty-nine years old on March 13th. He’s played in over 800 games. He has over 100 gray hairs bespeckling his beard. And in a sunny, afternoon game against the Pirates, in the fifth inning, he hit career home run number 99—into the reaching hands of a dozen Cubs fans, shirtless and drunk with the dream of a winning team at Wrigley finally alive.
He’s found the fountain of youth in 2016, living the failed dream of Ponce de León, living the plot of “Cocoon” daily, rejuvenated back to early 20’s form in indoor pools filled with extraterrestrial pods, blending in like a peer and not a father figure, alongside a youth movement now in full bloom on the north side.
And the Cubs, his team, have been on a season-opening streak of historic proportions. They’ve won eight in a row in recent days, sweeping the Pirates a week earlier. Now they’ve got the Pirates again. At home. A 3-0 lead. A 25-8 record. Jason Heyward up against Francisco Liriano.
A line-drive single to center, a man on first to open the inning.
Then, I hear something, like a dog listening to a garage door open, its owner coming home, dashing around the house for a full round of routine joy.
Out of the speakers around Wrigley Field, out through my TV speakers at home, comes the daily sound of a budding legend walking to the plate, the soundtrack to the best young Cub on this team.
Say toniiiight… we gon’ get going, going gone….
Kris Bryant comes up to the plate. Liriano leaves a fastball up in the zone, on the third pitch. There’s a quick, unfurling swing, sweeping upward. And the ball lands for a two-run home run, in the short porch of left-center field, just beyond the basket, into the sun-baked crowds celebrating a 5-0 lead, into the spot Ryne Sandberg made so familiar over the years.
Now, out of the speakers it’s “Sweet Home Chicago,” Bryant rounding the bases, a group of fans taking panoramic shots on smartphones, singing, dancing, the Pirates stuck in a collective grimace, Liriano digging into the mound dirt, at a new low, another win on the horizon for Chicago.
“Bad Blood” up next on the PA system, Taylor Swift, walk-up choice for Anthony Rizzo, the tune the theme for two teams in an increasingly fired-up rivalry.
Sudden success for both. A benches-clearing fight in last year’s NL Wild Card game. Sean Rodriguez and a destroyed, battered Gatorade cooler. And now, the Cubs with another win, maybe another sweep, on the table.
Rizzo drives a pitch deep to center, the deepest park of the park, either into the basket or wedged into the thick ivy, flying straight at the yellow 400-feet sign painted on the outfield bricks. Andrew McCutchen jumps into the wall, his yellow-striped socks crashing into the ivy, and the ball’s off his glove, onto the warning-track dirt.
Rizzo jogs in to second base. Double. Still no outs. Still 5-0.
The music changes, still pop, Christian pop, coming out loud around Wrigley Field. “Alive,” the single from Julianna Zobrist, wife of Ben—the song he’s promised (forced?) to play each home at-bat of the season.
Post-homer Kris Bryant is in the dugout chatting with Ryan Kalish, both in sunglasses, both all smiles. Pirates’ pitching coach Ray Searage comes out of the away dugout, his white mustache curling into a slight frown, out to talk to Francisco Liriano.
He jogs back, Liriano chews some gum and stares dread-fully at Zobrist, coming off NL player-of-the-week honors. A slider from Liriano for a low, first-pitch strike.
Zobrist’s hands quiver, as they always do, his tense, curled up, hunch-backed stance awaiting the next pitch from Liriano. Moments later it’s a walk. Liriano digs into the mound with his cleats, exhales, wipes his forehead.
Jorge Soler comes up, strikes out on a slider down the middle. One out. Liriano up to almost 90 pitches. And it’s Addison Russell next, coming off a three-run homer in the 4th. “Shoop,” by Salt N Pepa, on the ballpark speakers. What a coincidence…
Around the stadium, fans are whistling. Cheering. Then it quiets down. The old-school organ playing, “hot dogs!!” yelled from the vendors, and the sound of a fastball hitting the mitt of Francisco Cervelli. Francisco to Francisco. A strikeout looking. Two outs.
And then, out from the speakers: Jay-Z’s “Forever Young,” a 39-year-old stepping to the plate. A 2-0 count. A fastball down the middle.
And then it’s home run number 99, a three-run shot into the left-field bleachers, way back, into the hands of a group of fans leaping up for it. A guy takes his shirt off, prays to the heavens, chugs a beer, a dozen arms sticking up together like logs in a bonfire.
Liriano is done. “Hit the Road, Jack” on the speakers, Grandpa Rossy rounding third, touching home, the fifth run of a five-run fifth inning, the score 8-0.
The Cubs haven’t won it all since 1908. But how long is 108 years, anyway? How old is a losing streak that bad? Forever young.
Follow @big_inning
Previously:
7th Inning: CHC vs. SDP
7th Inning: CHC vs. WSH
4th Inning: STL vs. CHC
8th Inning: CHC vs. CIN
7th Inning: TOR vs. CHW
11th Inning: PIT vs. STL
7th Inning: BAL vs. BOSIf you’ve followed the blog for a while, you know that I precook most of my meals for the week using what I call 5-day recipes. These are recipes that yield a significant volume of food and can last for the entire week. The idea is that you only chose to follow the diet once a week, when you plan your meals and cook your food. It is also more economical to cook in bulk than to make many individual meals. These meals generally turn out to be some sort of casserole so that is simple to prepare. The Kitchen Sink Keto Casserole is my latest addition to our weekly lunch rotations and I’ve got to say, this is by far my favorite! It combines all of my favorite things, pork, chicken, cheese and veggies!
Here’s the finished casserole! You can almost smell its yumminess through the computer screen!!
This recipe starts with the chicken. I used chicken thighs because they are super cheap and also have a good fat to protein ratio. Also, they come in these super convenient packages at BJs.
The thighs should look like this. All we’re going to do is chop them up into cubes.
After they are chopped up, throw them in a large pan like my wok and cook away! This is a massive amount of meat so you really do need a large pan. You could also cook them in batches or cook the meat in the oven as done on the chicken thighs and spinach recipe.
While the chicken is cooking, throw some bacon in the oven.
The key to this recipe is multitasking. If you do all of the work in parallel it can go quite quickly. At this point we have the bacon in the oven, the chicken is cooking, and now we’re going to cook the sausage.
After a bit the sausage should look like this! Make sure to break it up as you are going and to cook it until no longer red.
Now if you’ve read any of my other casserole recipes, you know that I’m a big fan of the “big bowl”. It makes it much easier to cook these large meals if you get catering or professional size equipment. You |
: Mario lashed on Urban Decay Perversion Mascara on the morning of her third wedding and used Perversion Ink for Eyes eyeliner, also by Urban Decay, to create the winged look
Mario also stuck with Urban Decay when it came to creating Kim's winged eyeliner that emphasised her deep brown eyes.
Also retailing for around US$20 (AU$21.50, £13.50), the Perversion Ink for Eyes Waterproof by Urban Decay promises to create 'envy-inducing cat eyes that last all day.'
'For her eyeliner I went with Perversion Ink for Eyes by Urban Decay,' he said.
For lash beauty, the bride opted for her own Kardashian Beauty Individual Eyelashes that retail for just US$9.99 (AU$10.79, £7.99).
Cheeky! Mario applied Urban Decay Naked Flushed Highlighter, Bronzer and Blush for US$30 (AU$32, £22) to her cheekbones
All that glitters! L'Oréal Paris Infallible Eyeshadow in Eternal Sunshine helped add sparkle to Kim's eyes for a bargain at just US$7.99 (AU$19.95, £6.99) and to make sure it lasted all day, Mario applied Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion
Picture perfect: To ensure she was flawless, Urban Decay Naked Skin Liquid Foundation was used on Kim's face and she stuck with her own brand gloss, Kardashian Beauty Honey Stick Lipgloss in Natural Honey
Perfect brows: Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade gel was applied to Kim's sculpted eyebrows For her complexion, Mario told E! he applied Urban Decay Naked Skin Liquid Foundation, which costs US$39 (AU$41.80, £27) and Urban Decay Naked Flushed Highlighter, Bronzer and Blush for US$30 (AU$32, £22) to her cheekbones.
L'Oréal Paris Infallible Eyeshadow in Eternal Sunshine helped add sparkle to her eyes for a bargain buy of just US$7.99 (AU$19.95, £6.99).
To make sure the gold shadow lasted all day he applied Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion in Original at US$20 (AU$21, £16)
To her perfectly sculpted brows, Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade gel was applied for just US$18 (around AU$19, £15).
To ensure her lips were kissable for Kanye and little baby North, she wore Kardashian Beauty Honey Stick Lipgloss in Natural Honey, which retails at US$15.60 (around AU$17.90, £9).
Kim seems to adore L'Oreal Paris lipstick, and wore the Colour Riche version to take her from day to night that cost the brunette beauty just US$7.99 (AU$19.95, £6.99).
Flawless: Kim's makeup artist Mario shared this snap on his Instagram page of the pair pouting in Kim and Kanye's wedding photo booth"River City Panic is a film about six underachieving friends stuck in the monotony of small town life. One particular evening, the friends have had it with their boring routine and decide to leave their basement to have a night on the town. Rumors begin circulating surrounding a recent missing persons case and panic sweeps over the townsfolk. What was just a quiet, peaceful town suddenly transforms overnight into an epidemic of all-out hysteria and chaos, leaving the group wishing they had never left the basement!"
River City Panic Kickstarter Article: by BJ Colangelo
http://iconsoffright.com/2014/06/11/crowd-funding-spotlight-river-city-panic/
Walt Willey - of All My Childen - River City Panic Promo
Illinois Valley Podcast interview w/writer & director Tyler Amm
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/illinois-valley-alternative-podcast?refid=stpr
Objective: To achieve a unique, cinematic look of 80s cult films while depicting small town life and romanticizing the feel of a group of friends on their adventure.
I want to tell a story about friendship, the struggles of growing up in a small town, and learning to live with who you are and where you are from. Being from a small town myself, I felt this was a story I could tell and had plenty of experiences to pull from. Having a catalyst like a rumor be the center-point for the script's development, and contributing to the character growth, seemed perfect. With a strong story to tell, and a busload of talented actors to pull from, I began to raise funds and search for my crew.
We have already raised $8,000 and have almost assembled our whole crew, most of which are award winners in their field. Our team wants to make this movie because we all believe it is a fun and compelling project to take on, and that is why we should make this movie!
The tone of River City Panic is an homage to 80's cult films; think Goonies meets The Thing. We're embracing the dirtier anamorphic look of these types of films and lighting with a moodier, less contemporary aesthetic that accompanies this style. Along with the lensing and lighting, we're also paying close attention to the wardrobe and art departments, using a unified primary color wardrobe for our heroes and consciously applying darker, more drab tones for the backgrounds when possible. All of these things help attribute to this look and will hopefully feel like something straight out of the 80's.
Every dollar raised goes towards improving the quality of the production. Most of our gear and equipment has already been assembled, so your money would go towards paying our crew, production costs such as food, props, and costumes, and insurance.
We are doing everything possible to make the best use of your dollars. As stated previously, we have already raised half of the funds necessary for making River City Panic. We're also looking for ways to cut costs, and when shooting in the hometown you came from, that can be as easy as asking your neighbor!
Lodging for the entire cast and crew has been donated for free. The whole cast is also donating their time because they believe in the project. Use of every location in the film is costing us nothing and we've also had some essential props donated: cars, emergency vehicles, prop guns, and more.
Kickstarter is an amazing platform that will let us connect directly to the people who want to see River City Panic. In order to make the film our team is imagining, we need the support of the online community. At its core, our film is a community made production. We've been able to raise half the budget within the confines of the Illinois Valley through events, fundraisers, and local sponsorship. We believe that a strong online campaign is just what our project needs to meet, and maybe even exceed, its goal!
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ARTISTS
Egon's Unicat: http://egonsunicat.bandcamp.com/album/egons-unicat-2
Ahymnsa: http://ahymnsa.bandcamp.com/
Aterra Tale: https://soundcloud.com/aterratale
Zack Buckley
Zach Demkovich
Matthew Pittman
Billy Niebuhr: Composer for River City Panic
OFFICIAL RCP SITES
https://www.facebook.com/rivercitypanic
https://twitter.com/RiverCityPanic
http://rivercitypanic.tumblr.com/Since some days, rumours about Coinbase listing new cryptocurrencies have grown substantially. This online wallet that offers a cryptocurrency exchange (GDAX) is listing Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Other virtual currencies may be listed in the coming months.
Coinbase Exponential Growth
We have witnessed in the last weeks a bullish market that increased the price of the different cryptocurrencies exponentially. Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum have all reached new all time highs. Mainstream media has covered with more interest the cryptocurrency market and what’s going on there. That created a huge number of accounts to be opened in Coinbase, some days more than 150,000.
“We have been seeing a lot of account growth as has been reported. Our trade volumes are up about 30 times over the course of this year, and we have days when we have opened thousands of accounts. We were the number one app in the app store, which is surprising,” told Asiff Hirji, Coinbase president to CNBC.
New Currencies Arriving at Coinbase?
There are different currencies that are campaigning in order to be listed in Coinbase, Ripple and Dash are some of them. About the possibility of adding new cryptocurrencies to the platform, Mr Hirji commented that they have a framework that any cryptocurrency that would be listed must follow.
“We have published a digital asset framework which outlines the criteria we look at for any particular asset before we list it. You need to pass those exams before we would ever list the asset. Suffice to say that we have a framework out there and we have a lot of people campaigning for new assets,” he said.
During the interview, he said that according to the framework that they have, people can realize which assets are more likely or not to be listed. Besides that, he didn’t give any suggestion whether this year or the next one new currencies at Coinbase would be listed. He confirmed that they are working in order to give support to new virtual currencies and that this is the direction that they are going to take.Photo
Senator Bernie Sanders addressed the hot-button topic of immigration for the second day in a row on Thursday, saying at a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event that lower wages were tethered to an influx of immigrants.
Mr. Sanders, the Vermont independent who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, repeated the tenor of comments he made in an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein that was released on Monday about how wage stagnation was linked to a porous immigration policy.
At the Chamber of Commerce event in Washington, Mr. Sanders said in response to a reporter’s question, “You’ve got to be careful about defining the word, ‘immigrants.’”
The question is whether there should be “a completely open border, so that anybody can come into the United States of America,” the senator said. “If that were to happen, which I strongly disagree with, there is no question in my mind that that would substantially lower wages in this country.”
Mr. Sanders voted against an immigration overhaul bill in 2007. Since then, the issue has gained support among Democrats, who see Hispanics as a fast-growing voting bloc and a key part of President Obama’s coalition. The topic is one of the few areas where Democrats can position themselves to Mr. Sanders’s left.
“I don’t think there’s any presidential candidate, none, who thinks we should open up the borders,” Mr. Sanders said, adding that the percentages of black and Hispanic people searching for work would only become worse in that case.
Mr. Sanders told another reporter that an increase in worker visas, an issue in the most recent efforts at comprehensive change in the immigration system, was not necessary to revamp the nation’s policies. Mr. Sanders favors a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are currently in the country.Dr. Warren Hern, shown at the Boulder Abortion Clinic last month, has run the clinic on Alpine Avenue for the past 40 years. ( Mark Leffingwell / Staff Photographer )
Warren Hern in 1975, the year he opened the Boulder Abortion Clinic. (Camera file photo)
In the 35th week of her second pregnancy, Kate drove to a clinic near her Boston home for what was supposed to be a routine final ultrasound before the arrival of a baby girl she and her husband desperately wanted and had continued trying for despite three miscarriages.
Kate — who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used — went alone and, during the scan, tried to read the technician's body language, to no avail. Two obstetricians specializing in high-risk pregnancy walked in.
"Your baby has problems with its brain," she recalls them telling her.
An MRI two days later confirmed Kate's darkest fear: a constellation of major disorders, including Dandy-Walker syndrome and hydrocephalus, among others. The child, she learned, would never walk, talk, eat or even be able to fall asleep comfortably.
"The whole thing shifted," Kate says. "I had been imagining special-ed classes. Now, I had to face the fact that school was not in this child's future. She wouldn't even be able to support the weight of her head. She couldn't swallow, and she'd be at major risk of drowning in her own vomit every day that she lived."
The couple left the doctor's office and drove home in Friday rush-hour traffic, devastated, terrified and mostly silent. Kate wanted to propose abortion but couldn't utter the word.
"I was so ashamed of that," she says. "I mean, who has an abortion when they're eight months pregnant?"
Advertisement
Her husband was the first to say it aloud, and Kate felt enormous relief. Once home, she phoned her OB, who offered the number to the Boulder Abortion Clinic and instructed her to dial it immediately, before the workday ended two time zones away.
"I was like, 'What do you mean I have to call before the end of the work week in mountain time?'" Kate says. "It didn't occur to me that I was going to have to leave."
Among very few of his kind
Pro- and anti-abortion activists demonstrate at Central Park in Boulder in June 1991. Since 1991, police have been called to the Boulder Abortion Clinic more than 60 times, and most of those responses have concerned anti-abortion protesters. (Camera file photo)
Dr. Warren Hern, the man Kate was going to see, has run the Boulder Abortion Clinic on Alpine Avenue for the past 40 years. He sees women at all stages of pregnancy but remains one of the world's only doctors who will treat patients facing extreme or serious fetal abnormality late in pregnancy.
He doesn't share his clinic's statistics and rarely speaks of individual cases, but Hern has said he also performs late abortions for women who are not facing any grave medical outcome.
Now 76, he's revered by colleagues and the pro-choice community at large, and mostly despised by anti-abortion advocates who hold him in even lower esteem than they do other doctors in the field.
In 1988, a gunman fired five shots through the window of the Boulder Abortion Clinic, prompting the installation of bulletproof glass. (Camera file photo)
"I didn't do this to pick a fight. I don't think it's controversial," Hern says. "Every woman who is pregnant is at risk of dying from the pregnancy. What is the justification for making a woman carry the pregnancy to term if she doesn't want to be pregnant? There's none."
That's a minority opinion, though. A Quinnipiac University poll in November revealed that only 23 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all cases.
"Nothing new," Hern says. "Whether it's the anti-abortion folks or the people who think they're pro-choice but aren't, the intention is to control women. That's their goal. This has got nothing to do with babies and motherhood, and everything to do with control."
In 21 U.S. states, abortion is illegal either at or before the 25-week mark. In another 21, it's illegal after "viability," the point at which the fetus is considered able to survive outside the womb, which differs by case but generally falls between 22 and 24 weeks. In Colorado and seven other states, there are no restrictions on the point at which a woman can obtain an abortion.
But for those in Kate's position, it's not as simple as finding a doctor in the closest of those eight states. In fact, there are only a few physicians who perform late abortions, and none is more respected by peers than Hern.
40 years in Boulder
His interest in the work began in the early 1960s, as a medical student at the University of Colorado. On the gynecology rotation, he often stayed up all night taking care of women who'd become injured or infected by unsafe abortions.
"I didn't really understand what was going on, or anything about the subject, but I became aware of the desperate measures women were taking," Hern says.
As a medical student, Hern read about a woman who was five months pregnant being denied an abortion at Denver General hospital.
"So she went and shot herself in the uterus," he says.
He witnessed firsthand the kind of measures desperate women can take when they cannot access safe abortion. He saw it in Colorado, then as a Peace Corps physician in South America. In Peruvian Amazon clinics, he saw women die almost daily of illegal abortion, which, he recalls, sometimes made use of household items such as lye and metal rods in lieu of actual medical care.
In 1973, he was enlisted by Dr. Bob McFarland to help open the Boulder Valley Clinic, Colorado's first abortion clinic. But he soon grew frustrated with BVC, highlighted by a series of disagreements over how much to charge patients and whether to pay nurses, among other things.
"They were people who hated professionalism and the trappings of authority," Hern says. "There was this spirit of altruism, but there were also issues like, where do you put the files? You need a steel filing cabinet. That costs money. You have to buy instruments. You have to have certain procedures. You have to be able to pay people."
So he quit, opening the Boulder Abortion Clinic in 1975.
In 1984, about a decade after the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision, Hern literally wrote the book on abortion: "Abortion Practice" was the first — and, for 20 years, the definitive — medical textbook on the subject.
Today, there are only a few doctors in the country who openly advertise the fact that they perform late abortions, and there's at least one reason for that: Abortion doctors, and particularly those treating women late in pregnancy, are a hunted bunch.
"I assume that when I walk out of my office or home, that I'll be shot," Hern says. "I assume that the threat of violence and of death is constant. And I assume it's not going to change — ever."
In 1988, a gunman fired five shots through the window of Hern's clinic, prompting his installation of bulletproof glass.
In 1994, Hern's good friend and colleague Gary Romalis, a Canadian abortion doctor, was shot through his kitchen window while making toast for his wife in their Vancouver home. Weeks after that attack, two receptionists at separate Planned Parenthood clinics were shot and killed in Massachusetts. In 1998, a police officer working as a security guard at a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic was killed in a bombing. Ten months later, the man who shot Romalis murdered Barnett Slepian, an abortion doctor in Buffalo, N.Y.
On the morning of May 31, 2009, Hern and his family sat down to breakfast, having just returned from a rafting trip. His phone rang, and it was Jeanne Tiller. Her husband, George, a doctor who, like Hern, specialized in late abortion, had been shot and killed in a Wichita, Kan., church. Hern was among the first people she called.
"It was one of the worst things that happened in my entire life," Hern says. "George and I were friends, colleagues. We skied together, we...."
He pauses there and exhales deeply. His very thin lips begin to quiver. Hern is typically expressive with his hands, but at the moment they're clenched. He lifts up his head, spiky silver hair having replaced the fringed, semi-tousled top and beard of a younger version of himself, and he begins to wail.
Hern collects himself and, with cutting, dead-serious eyes, says, "You see why I hate these people? I hate them." He repeats that twice more under his breath.
"I hate them. I hate them."
'It's a civil war'
The feeling is quite mutual.
Bob Enyart — radio host, Denver Bible Church pastor and spokesman for Colorado Right to Life — roundly condemns the killing of abortion doctors but says there is "no justification" for their role in "the long war against God."
Even in cases of fetal anomaly, he says, "It's never a thorny issue whether to love a child.
"You don't love the child by killing it, and you don't love the mother by turning her into an accomplice," Enyart says. "Warren Hern is not motivated by a desire of freedom for the woman and her family. As with the left generally, his is a world view of killing the innocent and protecting the guilty."
Kay Lenn, a Boulder woman who says she has participated in numerous anti-abortion rallies despite having no religious ties, describes Hern as "someone who would not only do something reprehensible, but then would treat it like an accomplishment.
"The fact that he calls it Boulder Abortion Clinic says a lot. You can't call it something else? It's like he wants to advertise this. Doing it isn't enough, I guess."
Indeed, that's exactly what Hern is doing. The word choice was intentionally plain.
"Better than some euphemism," he says.
But there are certain terms you don't use around him.
"Abortionist," he says, "is an epithet. It's a highly objectionable, pejorative term, and it reeks."
The "pro-life" movement, he says, is "an absolute, total lie."
"If the Nazis wanted to be called the bringers of mother's milk, love and honey, would the headlines call them that? It states that I'm anti-life and pro-death, which isn't true. I'm saving women's lives, and they don't value the lives of women."
They've got their terms, and he's got his. He calls his opponents "terrorists."
"It's a civil war," he says. "There is no abortion debate. You don't have a debate when people want to kill you. This is a fascist movement."
Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the U.S., but it hasn't necessarily legitimized the procedure, which Hern says has more accumulated stigma today than ever before.
In 1974, incumbent U.S. Sen. Bob Dole was caught in what was then the fight of his political career, against an upstart Democrat named Bill Roy, who was, among other things, a doctor who had performed a small number of abortions.
At a state fair debate that was to center on agricultural policy, Dole made a desperate play.
"You heard him stand here today and say he's for abortion on demand," Dole said of Roy, whom he then called out for having actually performed them. Dole won that race, and the issue has been a campaign focal point ever since.
"They decided early that they were going to use the abortion issue to get power," Hern says. "And it works. It absolutely works. Not all the time, completely, but it works."
Boulder's buffer law
Since 1991, Boulder police have been called to the Boulder Abortion Clinic more than 60 times, and most of those responses have concerned anti-abortion protesters, who often set up outside Hern's building, as they do at countless other abortion clinics around the country. Sometimes they pray, sometimes they sing and, on many of the occasions when police have gotten involved, they confront patients.
Fred Hopkins, an OB/GYN who performs abortions in Santa Clara, Calif., and sits on the clinical faculty at Stanford University, says that even those protesters who quietly pray and wave rosary beads must be considered threats — an opinion Hern wholeheartedly echoes.
"Take that woman going into the clinic, and have her walk through a hate speech," Hopkins says. "To me, it's parallel to a young black man being walked into segregated schools where they're having terms thrown at them. I don't see a difference.
"They're not saying, 'Please change your mind.' They're saying, 'Don't kill your baby. You're a murderer.'"
In the 1980s, Hern used to talk with the demonstrators, taking down names for harassment reports he intended to file with police. He doesn't do that anymore.
"Their purpose is not to express opinion," he says. "We know what they think. This is about harassment and intimidation, not free speech. As far as I'm concerned, they can go to the city park or a street corner... and they can say anything they want, but it's completely inappropriate for them to harass someone having a private medical procedure, particularly one like this.
"The mere presence of the anti-abortion demonstrators is threatening to my patients and to us. I can't use the front door to my office, and I haven't for a long time. Because if I walk out there, they're gonna kill me."
However, he's found about as supportive a community in Boulder as there is in the country. In 1986, it became the first city in the U.S. to pass an ordinance that protected people going into health care clinics from harassment, harm and hostility. The law enforces an 8-foot buffer of protection for any patient who steps within 100 feet of a medical facility, and it was created with Hern's clinic in mind.
Though it was novel at the time, then-Mayor Linda Jourgensen said the City Council, which passed the ordinance unanimously before a capacity audience, saw it as an "obligation," not a favor.
"These women have rights," says Jourgensen, who served from 1985 to 1990, "and I think the community strongly believed then and believes now in that. It stepped up, and for that I am very proud.
"What it meant is that women could take care of this need in the city of Boulder. They didn't have to go elsewhere. It was right here, and that is really important."
'Pregnancy is not a benign condition'
The fact remains, though, that in many places neither the service itself nor the protective buffer law exists. For that reason, only a slim percentage of the several hundred patients Hern sees every year come from Colorado. This year alone, he'll see women from across the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.
During a recent interview, he paused the conversation to take a call from Spain, making arrangements in fluent Spanish with a woman facing fetal abnormality and seeking his help.
But even in Boulder, a place Hern says he loves and feels fortunate to work in, the anti-abortion protests, plus threats he fears but cannot see, have turned his clinic into more of a bunker than a traditional doctor's office. Five security cameras hang off the front of the building. To get into the waiting room, you have to pass through four layers of bulletproof glass. Hern has even been known to don body armor.
"I've worn a vest in the past," he says, "but then I get letters in the mail saying, 'Don't bother, we're gonna go for a head shot.'"
"You learn early on to make sure somebody's not following you from the clinic," Hopkins adds. "If you're not looking over your shoulder, then you're naïve. There are plenty of doctors who won't do it because of that."
Though late-term abortion doctors say they and their patients are still endangered, the procedure itself is safer than ever. And while the mortality rate of pregnant woman has steeply declined — from about seven per every 1,000 live births in 1920 to less than 0.1 per 1,000 today — the relative safety of termination over going to term, especially in cases of fetal anomaly, remains a footnote in the national controversy over abortion.
Many of the women who see Dr. Hern for late abortion due to anomaly would be facing cesarean sections, which are more likely than abortion to kill the mother and put women at elevated risk for complicated pregnancies in the future.
"Pregnancy," Hern is fond of saying, "is not a benign condition."
Recently, Hern performed an abortion on a 28-year-old woman after she learned her baby had trisomy 13, also known as Patau syndrome. For both mother and child, death during delivery was a strong possibility.
But the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, works as a nurse in several Catholic hospitals in a conservative Midwest state where the mere mention of birth control or abortion to a patient could get her fired.
She says that, before she found Hern, her OB intentionally veered from the topic of abortion and asked her to return for a later consultation, even though her mind was already made.
"He was like, 'We can meet in a couple weeks and review your options.' I was like, 'What options?'" she says.
Earlier this month, she and her husband buried the ashes of what would have been their first child. She's been telling inquiring colleagues that she miscarried because of stigma and the fear of losing her job.
"I don't want to get judged," she says. "I don't want to hear the sermon."
Her primary concern, however, isn't the judgment, but rather what she perceives as a deliberate withholding of pertinent information.
"It's very frustrating," she says. "I'm in the medical field, I'm educated, and I had a hell of a time finding all of this out, while still going through the emotional roller-coaster of the most horrible thing I've ever had to go through. So what the heck happens to other people, who do what the doctor says, who assume they're trained, who trust them? That really, really scares me."
Stories like hers, Hern says, underscore the importance of his work. He often thinks back to the first abortion he performed, many years ago, on a 17-year-old girl.
"I was terrified of causing an injury to her," he says. "Afterward, she was very relieved, and she cried. And I cried, because I was relieved that she was OK."
After 40 years at the Boulder Abortion Clinic, Hern stills feels attached to his patients and has vowed to defend them, and the practice of late abortion, to the end. He has no plan to retire.
The stigma he and many of his patients have experienced is "stupid and cruel," Hern says.
"It means that women are still second-class citizens in this society," Hern says. "This woman is like many women, fearing for her livelihood, and she cannot even speak about this. There's no excuse."
Alex Burness: 303-473-1389, burnessa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/alex_burnessWith Dynamite's recent run of comics featuring Gold Key Comics winding itself down this month, here's something coming out of the Valiant Entertainment creative summit that's as baffling as it is potentially exciting.
Turok, Dinosaur Hunter from writer Greg Pak at Dynamite Comics may have ended in February, but the character is currently featured, with creator Jeff Lemire and Valiant editor Warren Simons tagged, in a tweet from Valiant CEO and Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani:
Turok was, of course, a major player in the Valiant Comics universe of the 1990s, as were the rest of the Gold Key characters including Magnus, Robot Fighter, a character whose just-ended series was written by Valiant Summit attendee Fred Van Lente. What's interesting is that there was, earlier this weekend, a list of story ideas that was tweeted by the official Valiant account, including the cryptic word "Homecoming" -- an easy enough guess to associate with any attempts to bring back the Gold Key characters.
For his part, Lemire didn't seem too keen to deny it when fans started to get excited on Twitter. While he stopped well short of confirming that he was working on anything, his comment could certainly be construed as stoking the flames...
Lemire is currently working on The Valiant for the publisher, and also writing the forthcoming Bloodshot Reborn, coming from the publisher in April following the events of that series. He's also one of four writers DC Comics' weekly The New 52: Futures End, although he hasn't got any DC work lined up post-Convergence so it appears he's done there in March for the time being.UN Censors Go Trolling Even on Thanksgiving, Pam Falk Sycophant to Power
By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 29 -- Amid the UN's humanitarian work there is ugliness: bringing cholera to Haiti then refusing to be accountable, turning a blind eye during the slaughter of 40,000 in Sri Lanka, allowing impunity for mass rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, so far, by its own peacekeepers in Mali.
Inside the UN's own headquarters, even among those ostensibly covering the UN, there is ugliness too. For example: insiders among the UN Correspondents Association's executive committee, past, present and future, have not only tried to get other journalists thrown out of the UN -- in 2013 under the leadership of Pamela Falk of CBS, they began anonymous trolling social media campaigns, UNacccountable.
And on November 27, 2013, the day before US Thanksgiving, they've been at it again.
It began in late 2011, when UNCA's executive committee or whose who control it decided to demand the deletion from the Internet of an on-the-record factual article about financial background relevant to UNCA's screening of a Sri Lanka government film denying war crimes, they became the UN's Censorship Alliance.
When a 2013 UNCA executive committee member filed a stealth complaint with UN Security leading with how Inner City Press posed a question to UN Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous, who refused Press questions (video here, UK coverage here), the UN's Censorship Alliance slipped lower, under 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS.
As reported by Media Bistro, two UNCA board members began false Inner City Press twitter accounts. Exposed, neither of these two are listed as running -- usually there is no competition -- for re-election in 2014. But one is simply to be replaced by another Reuters scribe, endorsed by Falk; the other, the earliest Ladsous fan, has become an endorser too.
On November 27, 2013, the UNCA trolls were at it again, anonymously, online. Those who partner with UNCA and prop it up, informed, have not stopped it, nor has UNCA's "leadership." When what began as a press organization descends into trying to censor or get other journalists thrown out, it calls out for scrutiny and coverage. This Press coverage is on the record, just as Inner City Press also covers the UN Staff Union, its budget committees, "Ethics" Office and other arcania. Unlike the UNCA counterfeiters and trolls, it is on the record, by name, for attribution.
Inner City Press for now makes a single, sample observation, publicly: the 2013 and one-party system style presumptive 2014 UNCA chief Pamela Falk, who demands first questions at the UN on topics she does not write or broadcast on, cravenly directed alongside her UNCA's troll campaign a red white and blue American photo to US Ambassador Power. That is called: being a sycophant to P/power.A surprisingly popular guy at CPAC.
Wearing a giant fat suit or a Captain America costume is one way to get attention at CPAC. Wearing a cowboy hat and a T-shirt that reads “COPS SAY LEGALIZE POT. ASK ME WHY” is another.
Howard Wooldridge is a retired police detective who now lobbies Capitol Hill for his group “Citizens Opposing Prohibition” — the prohibition on marijuana. He made the New York Times in October of 2005 for riding a horse for seven months from Los Angeles to Times Square as a way to bring publicity to the absurdity of anti-marijuana laws. This weekend he’s pleading his case at CPAC, and it’s going better than you might expect.
“The reactions have been almost 100 percent in favor of what I’m doing,” Wooldridge, who claims he hasn’t smoked marijuana in thirty years, tells me. “I’ve had about three people in the last two days out of about 200 who do not like it.” Particularly with this conservative crowd, Wooldridge debates his naysayers in terms of conservative principles. “Personal freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government are what conservatives believe in,” he says. “And that’s what I believe in. And thats what we should do with marijuana policy. I say, ‘Give me a conservative reason to keep it going,’ and they dont have any.”
Progress is slow for Wooldridge, but rewarding. He’s been coming to CPAC for the past six years, and says that four or five people have approached him over the past couple of days to tell them that, after mulling over his arguments from past CPACs, they now oppose marijuana prohibition as well. “I know from the feedback I’m getting that I’m making small gains every time I come here,” he says. “If nothing else, I create a bone that people chew on after they leave.”
I vastly underestimate Wooldridge’s optimism when I ask the 60-year-old whether he thinks he’ll see marijuana legalized in his lifetime. “I have medium confidence, if the economics stay roughly the same, five-to-eight years.” And “if the economy gets worse,” he suggests, and people start to realize how much revenue could be generated from regulating and taxing marijuana, “we might reduce that to three-to-five.”
Not that Wooldridge wants the economy to get worse. But the end of Pot Prohibition wouldn’t be a bad silver lining.Libertarianism is not conservatism. Libertarianism is not anarchism.
Libertarianism stands for small government, low taxes, and the whole Bill of Rights. Libertarianism rejects race hatred, homophobic bigotry, religious persecution, and anti-intellectualism, not to mention the tyranny of the powerful unchecked by obedience to just law.
Real Libertarianism is Libertarian Centrism.
How are we to tell Libertarian Centrism apart from radical anarchism, Republican-lite conservatism, or conspiracy theorism? I offer a few thoughts.
Libertarian centrism is about real politics. We libertarian centrists do not agree about everything. Here are litmus questions. Litmus questions are not questions that define libertarianism. Litmus questions are questions that let you separate the sheep from the goats, the solid libertarians from the hangers-on who are not libertarian at all. An issue can be a good litmus test even though it is not an important issue. An important issue may not be a litmus test.
Warning: Like any other group of libertarians, Libertarian Centrists do not march in lockstep on every issue.
What do Libertarian Centrists on the whole believe?
We are 100% pro-choice, because government has no valid business running women's lives for them. That means we reject government bans on abortion.
We are confident: All Americans are entitled to equality in marriage, adoption, divorce, and access to military service.
We state with certainty: Slavery was the American Holocaust. Confederate apologists are rightly grouped with Holocaust deniers, and are shunned by all decent people. People who claim that |
November 2015 changes to HP Enterprise
What you can do
So basically you can add in the HP Drivers repository into your VMware Update Manager configuration, meaning you can pull down the drivers specific to your HP ESXi hosts for installation.
Keeping your environment happy and up-to-date.
How to set it up
1. Open up the admin view of VUM, go to Configuration, Download Settings, Add download source.
2. Add the following sources;
http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/index.xml (this downloads the HP Management tools)
http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/index-drv.xml (this downloads the drivers)
3. On the configuration page, click download now, and you should see in your patch repository HP files.
4. So now, lets create a baseline just for these HP updates, so you can attach them to your HP hosts, click on Baselines and Groups, and then Create;
5. Add your name and click next
6. Select the Dynamic Option, as this means any new HP downloaded updates will be added to the baseline automatically.
7.Select the vendor as, you guessed it, HP, then set your severity level and category level, click next.
8. Select any patches currently downloaded to exclude, you probably wont have any now, but in the future you may, and click next.
9. Add any additional updates outside of the dynamic selection to the baseline.
10. The final screen shows you the patches currently downloaded that match the baseline settings you have entered.
11. Now this baseline to your cluster or individual hosts, scan your environment and apply the patches. the below screenshots show this, but I’m not going to write any detail on it, if you’ve come this far you should be able to do the other bits yourself.
Regards
Dean (Linkedin)
Found this useful? Then share: LinkedIn
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Google
Reddit
Pinterest
Print
Like this: Like Loading...SamKnows Analysis of Broadband Performance in Canada – October & November 2015
Download this report in PDF.
Dated: March 17th, 2016
Revised: April 7th, 2016
Contents
About The Project
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has commissioned SamKnows to conduct a study of the performance of broadband services sold to Canadian consumers. SamKnows is a global leader in broadband measurement and has been working with governments, ISPs, content service providers, application developers, consumer groups, and academics to accurately measure Internet performance since 2009. In doing so, SamKnows has built a global Internet measurement platform, which now spans five continents and conducts many millions of measurements each day.
Data presented in this report was collected between 1st October 2015 and 30th November 2015.
4,486 Whiteboxes were deployed to Canadian volunteers as a part of this study. Data from 3,471 of these Whiteboxes was used in this report. Data from 1,015 Whiteboxes were omitted from this report either due to issues that arose with a third party carrying measurement traffic or due to the Whiteboxes being on ISPs not included in the collaborative group stated above. For purposes of reporting, the data was split into four speed tier “buckets”: 5-9Mbps, 10-15Mbps, 16-39Mbps, and 40Mbps+. The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) participating in this project included all the major wireline service providers in Canada other than Sasktel. Specifically Bell, Bell Aliant, Cogeco, Eastlink, MTS, Northwestel, Rogers, Shaw, TELUS and Videotron all participated on a voluntary basis and measurements covered all geographic regions of Canada in a mix of urban and rural settings. These ISPs use technologies such as digital subscriber line (DSL)Footnote 1, hybrid-fibre co-axial cable (Cable / HFC)Footnote 2 and fibre to the home (FTTH)Footnote 3. Testing has not included any ISPs using satellite or fixed wireless technologies nor did it include resellers of these ISPs’ networks.
The test methodology employed is the same as the one SamKnows uses around the globe with other regulators and ISPs. A full description of the test methodology can be found here: https://www.samknows.com/broadband/uploads/methodology/SQ301-005-EN-Test-Suite-Whitepaper-4.pdf
SamKnows typically recommends that a minimum sample of 40 measurement probes should be reporting data per strata in order to provide sufficient statistical accuracy in the results. This is the approach taken in this report. Additional information on sample size methodology can be found here: https://www.samknows.com/broadband/uploads/methodology/SamKnows_Sample_Size_Whitepaper_20150610.pdf.
Any comments on the analysis in this document should be directed to Roxanne Robinson (roxanne@samknows.com).
Executive Summary
This report presents the preliminary findings of the measurement study that SamKnows is conducting in Canada on behalf of the CRTC. 4,486 SamKnows Whiteboxes have been deployed in Canadian homes across a range of ISPs and products. Each Whitebox conducts end-to-end performance measurements 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to destinations representative of Canadian consumers’ Internet usage.
In this preliminary report, results are reported by technology, speed bucket and region. Technologies have been identified as DSLFootnote 4, Cable/HFC (including all DOCSIS variants)Footnote 5 and FTTHFootnote 6. The three regions represented are: (1) West & North (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Manitoba), (2) Central (Ontario and Quebec) and (3) East/Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador).
We have experienced some issues during testing with a third party that carried some of the measurement traffic. This affected the reliability of some measurement results. All such data was excluded from this report and the underlying issues have since been resolved. As a result of these difficulties we are providing this preliminary report on an aggregate basis and intend to issue another report later this year which will identify particular ISP’s results based on more recent data. This preliminary report demonstrates that:
Almost all broadband services met or exceeded their advertised speeds, regardless of the access technology in use.
Even the highest latencies and packet loss exhibited during testing would be more than adequate for any common Internet application at present and latency and web-browsing in Canada compares favourably to those measured in other jurisdictions including the United States.
Unless otherwise stated, all results presented in this report are taken from the peak period, which is defined as 7-11pm local time on weeknights. Moreover, all reported figures are subject to a minimum sample size of 40 Whiteboxes. These provisions are consistent with those used in the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America study.
The key findings contained in this preliminary report are as follows:
The majority of broadband products sold in Canada met or exceeded their advertised download speeds. Cable/HFC and FTTH services delivered download speeds in excess of the rates advertised by ISPs. FTTH services delivered 119% of advertised download speed on average, whilst Cable/HFC services delivered 103%. Most DSL services met or exceeded the advertised rates too.
Performance was largely consistent across all regions, with the vast majority achieving between 104% and 110% of advertised download speed.
Upload speeds also generally met or exceeded advertised rates. All Cable/HFC and FTTH services exceeded 100% of advertised upload rates. DSL services exhibited more volatility. DSL services in the 5-9Mbps bucket delivered 83% of advertised upload speeds.
DSL services yielded the highest latency, with results ranging between 29.6ms in the 5-9Mbps bucket to 16.7ms in the 40Mbps+ bucket. Higher latencies with certain DSL products is an expected by-product of the access technology, coupled with the fact that they are often used to deliver broadband services to customers using longer lengths of copper lines. Cable/HFC services were more consistent, with all speed buckets delivering between 17.2ms and 21.7ms. FTTH services yielded the lowest latency at 11.5ms to 11.7ms.
Latency varied significantly in Canada, with the central regions yielding the lowest latency at 15.2ms on average. The highest round-trip latency was observed in the eastern regions, which averaged 27.1ms. This variation was driven largely by the length of the network path between the client and the test server and the access technologies that were most commonly deployed in those regions.
Packet loss, which describes how likely it is that a data packet sent from point A will not reach point B, was generally very low across all speed buckets, technologies and regions, although there were exceptions. FTTH services yielded the lowest levels of packet loss, at 0.04% on average. DSL services showed the highest levels of packet loss, with an average of 0.23%. Cable/HFC services averaged 0.11% packet loss. These levels of packet loss are extremely small and would be unnoticeable to any common Internet application.
Web page loading times to a selection of websites popular in Canada improved as download speeds increased. However, this improvement is not linear. Certain DSL services (those in the 5-9Mbps bucket) loaded web pages in 2.2 seconds on average. The fastest services in the 40Mbps+ bucket load pages in just 0.7 seconds. As has been found in studies in other markets, improvements in page loading time tail off after 10Mbps (at which point latency becomes the dominant factor). There was minimal difference between access technologies when similar speed tiers are compared.
Figure 1 below shows the fastest product included in this report for each technology, region and speed bucket. FTTH and Cable/HFC services offered the highest speeds, at 300Mbps and 250Mbps respectively. Tested DSL peaked at 50Mbps. The sample plan and deployment of Whiteboxes were designed to reflect the most popular products in each region. The values in Figure 1 are not necessarily reflective of the products available to Canadians in each region; they merely reflect the maximum advertised speeds obtained in the sample.
Region DSL Cable / HFC FTTH Central 50 250 300 5M-9M 6 7.5 n/a 10M-15M 15 15 15 16M-39M 25 35 25 40M+ 50 250 300 East n/a 250 300 40M+ n/a 250 300 West & North 50 150 150 5M-9M 7 7.5 n/a 10M-15M 15 15 10 16M-39M 25 30 25 40M+ 50 150 150
Figure 1: Maximum advertised speed of tiers included in the test results by region and technology
Key Performance Indicators
Download Throughput
Download throughput is the measure of the capacity of the user’s broadband connection. Higher speeds are more desirable, as it allows the user to retrieve data (be it a web page, music file, or anything else) more quickly.
To characterize the user’s maximum access link capacity, measurements were conducted between panelists’ homes and the nearest test server. Test servers were deployed in multiple major metro areas throughout Canada.
It is common for broadband providers around the world to differentiate their product offerings by a headline access speed, and this is a key part of their advertising. Speeds are typically expressed in megabits per second (commonly abbreviated to ‘Mbps’ or ‘Mbit/s’). To enable comparability between different products and technologies which may feature vastly different speeds, most regulators conducting measurement studies around the world report on the percentage of advertised speed that products and technologies achieve. In this study, multiple speed tiers are grouped together into ‘buckets’.
Figure 2 shows the peak period speeds as a percentage of advertised, broken down by speed bucket and access technology. The vast majority of technologies and speed buckets met or exceeded advertised rates. Cable/HFC and FTTH services all exceeded the advertised rates. FTTH services delivered at least 116% of advertised, with Cable/HFC services ranging between 100% and 106%. DSL services showed more variance, with the 5-9Mbps bucket achieving 85% on average, whilst other DSL buckets met or exceeded the advertised rates. Variance for DSL is not surprising given the effect copper loop lengths (i.e. how far a customer is from the nearest central office or node) has on line performance.
Figure 2: Download speed as a percentage of advertised speed by technology and speed bucket
Figure 3 depicts the average speed as a percentage of advertised achieved across the different regions in Canada. There is minimal variation between the majority of regions, with most achieving between 104% and 110% of advertised. The only exception is the 5-9Mbps bucket in the West & North region, where an average speed of 85% of advertised was reached.
Figure 3: Download speed as a percentage of advertised speed by region and speed bucket
Performance can vary significantly by time of day, as Internet usage increases heavily amongst consumers during peak hours. Figures 4, 5 and 6 depict performance by time of day for DSL, Cable/HFC and FTTH services respectively.
The vast majority of speed buckets on all access technologies showed very stable throughput during all hours of the day. In general, the difference between peak and off-peak performance varied by less than 3 percentage points. However, there are some exceptions. DSL services in the 5-9Mbps bucket fell by 6 percentage points during peak hours. Cable/HFC services in the 40Mbps+ bucket fell from 108% off-peak to 99% during peak hours. In practical terms this fall is minimal, but it is indicative of possible congestion taking place during peak times. FTTH delivered the most consistent speeds, with typically less than 1% variation between peak and off-peak hours.
Figure 4: Hourly DSL download speed as a percentage of advertised speed
Figure 5: Hourly Cable/HFC download speed as a percentage of advertised speed
Figure 6: Hourly FTTH download speed as a percentage of advertised speed
Upload Throughput
Upload throughput is the measure of how fast data can be transmitted from the home to the Internet. Higher speeds allow for pictures, music and documents to be uploaded and shared more quickly.
To characterize the user’s maximum access link capacity, measurements were conducted between a nearby test server and panellists’ homes.
Historically, the amount of data that users download has vastly outweighed the amount of data that users upload. This has led technologies to be engineered to be asymmetric; i.e. they offer faster download rates than upload rates. As can be seen by comparing the download speeds to upload speeds, this level of asymmetry is falling for new services, such as those delivered using FTTH.
As with the download throughput, results in this section are presented as a percentage of the ISP’s advertised product in addition to results for the absolute level of upload speed. This enables comparability between products of vastly different speeds.
Figure 7 depicts upload speed as a percentage of advertised speed for each technology and speed bucket. As with the download measurements, the vast majority of services and technologies met or exceeded the advertised rate. However, the 5-9Mbps DSL, delivered 83% of advertised upload speed.
The 10-15M DSL and 10-15M FTTH results also stand out for the fact that they exceed the advertised rate at 171% and 149% respectively. This is caused by some ISPs choosing to overprovision their upstream speeds, far beyond the advertised upstream rate.
Figure 7: Upload speed as a percentage advertised speed by technology and speed bucket
Advertised upload speeds are far lower than advertised download speeds, reflecting the asymmetric nature of most broadband services.
Figure 8 demonstrates that upload speeds were generally consistent across the regions, with all but one area receiving in excess of the advertised rate. In the West & North, 10-15Mbps services achieved 156% of advertised (again due to certain ISPs overprovisioning upstream rates significantly). However, 5-9Mbps services in the same region only delivered 83% of advertised upstream speed.
Figure 8: Upload speed as a percentage of advertised speed by region and speed bucket
Upload speeds were very consistent all hours of the day, as shown in the figures 9, 10 and 11 below. Only the 10-15Mbps bucket in DSL technology showed an insignificant decline in throughput during peak hours, with speed falling by three percentage points during peak hours. In all other cases, upload throughput varied by less than 1% throughout the day.
Figure 9: Hourly DSL upload speed as a percentage of advertised speed
Figure 10: Hourly Cable/HFC upload speed as a percentage of advertised speed
Figure 11: Hourly FTTH upload speed as a percentage of advertised speed
Latency
Latency is a measure of how long it takes a data packet to travel between point A and point B. It is a significant factor in Internet performance, as latency is a fundamental property of the infrastructure upon which everything else must build. If you have a high latency link, then it does not matter how much capacity your broadband connection has; you will be limited by latency.
The results presented in this section show ‘round-trip’ latency (i.e. how long it takes for a data packet to travel between point A and point B and then back to point A). While round-trip latency is the most common latency measurement taken (for example, the ‘ping’ utility captures round-trip latency), the ‘round-trip’ qualifier is very often omitted. For the remainder of this document ‘latency’ should be taken to mean ‘round-trip latency’. Please note that the proximity of the servers to the end user will affect latency results as these are a measure of distance. The servers that were used for the purpose of testing are located in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg.
Latency is almost always expressed in milliseconds. Lower results are better. Latency itself has a lower bound governed by the speed of light in a vacuum, and often there are technological limitations which raise that lower bound. For example, DSL services typically have higher latencies than FTTH services.
Whilst latency is unrelated to capacity (the amount of data that can be transmitted over a broadband connection), increases in latency can have a detrimental effect on achievable speed. Moreover, an increase in latency during peak hours is an early indicator of congestion somewhere on the network path, as routers are taking longer to receive data packets and pass them on. It is worth noting that even the highest latencies exhibited here would more than be adequate for any common Internet application at present. For the majority of use cases, the approximately 20ms latency difference between the best and worst service, as shown in Figure 15 below, would be indistinguishable.
Figure 12 below shows peak period latency by technology and speed bucket. FTTH services delivered the lowest latencies, with this varying between 11.5ms and 11.7ms. Cable/HFC services demonstrated a similar level of consistency, with all speed buckets delivering between 17.2ms and 21.7ms. DSL services showed the widest variance. DSL services in the 5-9Mbps bucket yielded a round-trip latency of 29.6ms. These latency results improved with the faster DSL services, with the fastest services in the 40Mbps+ bucket yielding 16.7ms. This largely reflects the underlying characteristics of the access technology. The fastest DSL services will be VDSL based, meaning that the copper loop length will be very short and interleaving (a mechanism that reduces errors, but at the expense of latency) will typically be disabled. These two factors have the effect of significantly reducing round-trip latency.
Figure 12: Latency by technology and speed bucket
Figure 13 shows that there is a wide variation in latency between regions. Results from the East showed the highest latencies, at 27.1ms, and Central with the lowest, ranging between 12.2ms and 25.6ms. As latency is largely dependent on the length of the physical network path being measured, plus the access technology in use, it is to be expected that Whiteboxes located in more rural areas (with both longer paths and a higher concentration of DSL) will have higher latencies.
Figure 13: Latency by region and speed bucket
The hourly charts seen in Figures 14, 15 and 16 show that latency across all speed buckets and technologies was generally stable throughput the day. FTTH services typically show less than 0.2ms variation, demonstrating a very consistent performance.
All Cable/HFC services and the 5-9Mbps DSL services showed higher latency during peak hours. However, these increases in latency during peak hours were typically only in the range of 1-3ms, and would be imperceptible to the vast majority of applications.
Figure 14: Hourly DSL latency
Figure 15: Hourly Cable / HFC latency
Figure 16: Hourly FTTH latency
Packet Loss
The rate of packet loss describes how likely it is that a data packet sent from point A will not reach point B. Packet loss is closely related to the latency and is also a fundamental metric in determining how applications perform on a broadband connection. A high rate of packet loss will prevent many applications from working to a satisfactory level. A small increase in packet loss during peak hours is to be expected, as networks are busier and congestion at even one point in a network path may lead to a packet being dropped. Packet loss is generally measured and expressed as a percentage of the overall data packets sent.
Figure 17 below shows that packet loss was extremely low across almost all speed buckets and technologies. Only one speed bucket was shown to exceed packet loss of 0.13%. This was the 5-9Mbps bucket in DSL, which reached 0.51% packet loss. FTTH services delivered the lowest levels of packet loss, with a range of just 0.03% - 0.05%.
Figure 17: Packet loss by technology and speed bucket
Figure 18 below shows packet loss by region. Packet loss proved very low across all regions, with all but one region delivering 0.12% or lower. Packet loss of the 5-9Mbps bucket in West & North proved high at 0.48%, but only during peak hours. During off-peak hours packet loss is far lower.
Figure 18: Packet loss by region and speed bucket
Figures 19, 20 and 21 show the variation in packet loss by hour of day across the different access technologies. DSL showed the highest level of variation in packet loss, particularly for the 5-9Mbps bucket. Packet loss increased from 0. 2% off-peak to 0.54% for this service. Packet loss on FTTH varied by less than 0.05% during the course of the day, and showed no noticeable rise during peak hours. Cable/HFC services showed a more visible rise in packet loss during peak hours, but still remained less than 0.06%.
Packet loss at these levels, across virtually all technologies, speed buckets and regions would be imperceptible to almost all modern Internet applications.
Figure 19: Hourly DSL packet loss
Figure 20: Hourly Cable/HFC packet loss
Figure 21: Hourly FTTH packet loss
Web page loading time
The web page loading time test captures how long it takes for all of the elements of a web page to be received by an end user. Unlike other measurements, this test is conducted against real websites on the Internet, rather than dedicated test servers. The websites tested against were:
Web page loading time is heavily influenced by both download speed and latency. Studies in other markets have shown that throughput dominates web browsing performance up to approximately 10Mbps, after which latency becomes the dominant factor.
Cable/HFC, FTTH and other DSL services all showed extremely consistent web page loading times between peak and off-peak hours.
Figure 22 depicts average web page loading time by technology and speed bucket. As expected, web page loading time improved as download speed increased, although this improvement tails off rapidly above 10Mbps. DSL services in the 5-9Mbps speed bucket delivered web pages in the longest time, at 2.2 seconds. This improved to 1.1 seconds in the 10-15Mbps bucket. Once testing moved to the 40Mbps+ bucket, this improved further still to 0.7 seconds. Similar behaviour is observed on Cable/HFC services as well, although the 5-9Mbps Cable/HFC services delivered faster performance than DSL at 1.3 seconds.
All 40Mbps+ services load web pages in 0.9 seconds or faster.
Figure 22: Web page loading time for websites studied across all of the ISPs in question
Figure 23 shows web page loading time by region and speed bucket. In all regions, web page loading times of the 5-9Mbps bucket was slower than the loading times of all other speed buckets.
The faster services in the Central region all delivered the best web page loading times. This is likely due to the prevalence of FTTH deployments in these areas, yielding both high, consistent speeds and low latencies. These conditions deliver the optimum web page loading times.
Figure 23: Web page loading time during peak hours
Figures 24, 25 and 26 show web page loading times by hour of day.
All technologies and speed buckets showed an interesting rise in page loading time outside of the night time hours (after 8am). This increase is typically between 50-100ms. Given that this affects all access technologies and speed buckets, and is not observed in the throughput or latency charts, it suggests that the cause of this rise might be the websites themselves. Load on the websites will likely increase during daylight hours, which is exactly the period where the loading time increases are observed here.
Figure 24: Hourly DSL web page loading time
Figure 25: Hourly Cable/HFC web page loading time
Figure 26: Hourly FTTH web page loading time
Conclusion
This report represents the first step in the CRTC’s efforts to measure and report on the performance of Canadian broadband networks.
Almost all broadband services met or exceeded their advertised speeds, regardless of the access technology in use. FTTH and Cable/HFC services in particular delivered reliable download and upload speeds at all hours of the day. FTTH services achieved 119% of advertised download speeds on average, and Cable/HFC services achieved 103%. DSL showed more variance. DSL’s overall average was 97% of advertised speeds with the majority of DSL services exceeding advertised rates.
Throughput (as a percentage of advertised) does not vary significantly by regions, with all regions averaging between 101% and 108% of advertised download speed. However, some services such as those in the 5-9M bucket in West & North fall slightly below advertised speeds during peak hours.
In the latency, packet loss and web browsing metrics, Cable/HFC and FTTH services delivered the most consistent results. DSL services exhibited more variance. Even the highest latencies exhibited during testing would be more than adequate for any common Internet application at present and latency and web-browsing in Canada compares favourably to those measured in other jurisdictions including the United States.
Later in 2016 the CRTC will publish a second report that will expand upon this study to focus on individual ISPs. This report represents the first in an ongoing effort by the CRTC to better understand the true state and performance of broadband Internet access services available to Canadians.
Revisions made on April 7, 2016
This updated report addresses five transcription errors made by SamKnows in preparation of the report. Also, it includes additional data that further supports the observations made in the original version of the report. The edits to the report are as follows:
Removal of the term “Confidential” in the footer of each page. Upon public release of the report, the contents were no longer deemed confidential
Updated ‘5-90Mbps’ on page 17 to reflect correct speed of ‘5-9Mbps’
Replacement of Figure 3 with a new version The data used by SamKnows to generate the original chart used results from the 99th percentile, rather than mean average data results. Throughout the report, all other charts relied on the mean average data results, making the original chart inconsistent. Therefore this chart has been updated to be consistent with the other charts in this report.
Updating of wording in the paragraph above Figure 3, as well as one paragraph in the conclusion, in order to reflect the revised results presented in Figure 3
Replacement of Figure 23 with a new version The data used by SamKnows to generate the original chart used off-peak data rather than peak period data. Throughout the report, all other charts relied on the peak period data. Therefore this chart has been updated to be consistent with the other charts in this report.
Inclusion of additional 5M-9M DSL and 40M+ East regional data In the drafting phase, by removing a single chart that would have otherwise allowed for the identification of a specific ISP, it was determined that it is now possible to add more data to the aggregated dataset. This addition has increased the sample size for 5M-9M DSL and 40M+ East region and applicable charts have been updated accordingly (Figures 2,3,4,7,8,9,12,13,14,17,18,19,22,23,24)
Footnote 1 This category comprises the technologies used to deliver digital data over copper lines. This includes fibre to the node (FTTN), which refers to the use of optical fibre to the neighbourhood and then a copper line to the customer’s home. Return to footnote 1 referrer Footnote 2 This category comprises the technologies used to deliver digital data over a hybrid-fibre co-axial network through DOCSIS platforms. This technology uses an optical fibre to the neighbourhood and then co-axial cable/HFC to the customer’s home. Return to footnote 2 referrer Footnote 3 This category comprises the technologies used to deliver digital data through an optical fibre directly to the customer’s home. Return to footnote 3 referrer Footnote 4 This category comprises the technologies used to deliver digital data over copper lines. This includes fibre to the node (FTTN), which refers to the use of optical fibre to the neighbourhood and then a copper line to the customer’s home. Return to footnote 4 referrer Footnote 5 This category comprises the technologies used to deliver digital data over a hybrid-fibre co-axial network through DOCSIS platforms. This technology uses an optical fibre to the neighbourhood and then co-axial cable/HFC to the customer’s home. Return to footnote 5 referrer Footnote 6 This category comprises the technologies used to deliver digital data through an optical fibre directly to the customer’s home. Return to footnote 6 referrerREUTERS/Brendan McDermid Nelson Mandela, mourned by millions globally this week, is only rated as the 356th most important person in history by a new internet based programme which ranks the most important 2,000 people of all time.
The first black South African president did not make the historical top 50 which was topped by Jesus, followed by Napoleon at two, Prophet Mohammed at three and Shakespeare coming in fourth.
As reported by the Sunday Times, co-author of this programme, Steven Skiena, professor of computer science at Stony Brook University in New York, backed Mr Mandela's low entry as he is only four slots ahead of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey:
"In the long term that is probably a fair ranking.
"Both men could be viewed as founders of their respective nations and therefore of similar significance in the long term."
The software programme collates millions of opinions in a similar manner to Google's ranking of web pages.
The innovative step is a "reputation decay algorithm" which attempts to chart how the significance of a person changes after 200 years.
This formula is the brainchild of Google engineer and computer scientist Charles Ward and aims to prevent less impacting personages such as Britney Spears being positioned too highly.
Ms Spears, who holds a current significance rating of 27th but after the decay algorithm is applied drops to a lowly 689th after the passage of 200 years, is taken into account in regards to her stardom.
Long-term fame is calculated by the programme by an equal measure of celebrity and gravitas.
Ward and his colleagues decided that it does not matter whether they are notable for contribution is to mankind or because of their stardom but simply that their fame has a long-lasting quality.
Baroness Thatcher is ranks above Mr Mandela at 271 with current UK Prime Minister, David Cameron languishing at 1,483.
The software has been attacked by historians such as Anthony Beevor.
"The idea that you can create an algorithm that is somehow going to give you a scientific approach to history is preposterous."Charlie Bolden’s moment of triumph finally arrived on a warm December morning about 18 months ago. As he spoke of things to come, the Florida sunshine seemed to rejuvenate the decorated Marine and four-time astronaut. He’d survived five difficult years at NASA’s helm, taking knives from Congress, frustrating his former astronaut colleagues, and perhaps most painfully, watching helplessly as America became reliant on Russia for getting its own people into space.
But those difficulties were past. That morning at Kennedy Space Center, Bolden proudly said NASA was taking its first step on a “Journey to Mars.” As a buttress to these words, the mighty Delta IV rocket loomed behind Bolden with the shiny Orion spacecraft perched at its apex. In just two days, Orion would soar upward, completing a nearly flawless maiden flight. Bolden, 69, acknowledged that he may not live to see it, but his kids and grandkids would watch humans walk on Mars in the 2030s.
This moment captured the essence of Bolden’s leadership of NASA during the presidency of Barack Obama. Aspiration. Emotion. And, at times, a softening of reality. For while Bolden has spoken often about leading NASA to Mars, he rarely talks of the costs. NASA will spend $20 billion alone just to develop the Orion spacecraft. And Orion isn’t going to Mars. It’s a capsule to come back from the Moon.
Bolden hasn’t really leveled about two basic truths regarding Mars: it will cost a hell of a lot of money to do it NASA’s way, and it’s going to take a commitment like the nation hasn’t seen since the Apollo program. NASA presently has neither the money nor the commitment from Washington. Many who grasp the challenges of actually going to Mars, including those on the inside, realize this. “I can tell you that my colleagues, at least 90 percent if not more, don’t really think we have a good plan,” one veteran astronaut, who hopes to fly again and therefore sought anonymity, told Ars. Inside the astronaut office they joke about the Journey to Mars. “I think we’ve almost done negative work in the last seven years,” this flier said.
Not everyone feels that way about NASA’s human spaceflight program during Obama’s presidency, but there are few who offer unqualified praise for the president. He just never really showed much interest in space. While Obama did propose bold changes early on to NASA, seeking to more closely align the agency's goals to funding levels, Congress objected and the president retreated almost immediately. He chose to invest his limited political capital in other areas, effectively ceding most power over NASA’s human spaceflight programs to a Congress largely driven by parochial interests. And when an agency needs a unified purpose and the means to achieve it, this is rarely a formula for success.
Obama’s policy
Barack Obama is pro-science. The Spock-like president has opened the White House lawn to science fairs and stargazing parties, and he made evidence-based policy decisions such as pushing for climate action. He has also occasionally given passing nods to space, such as when he invited astronaut Scott Kelly to his 2015 State of the Union speech.
Yet Obama campaigned to become president in 2008 on much more down-to-earth issues, like the end of US involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, healthcare, and education. Most pertinent to space buffs, to pay for his ambitious K-12 education plan, Obama proposed “delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years.” This was George W. Bush’s plan to build a large rocket, the Orion space capsule, and return to the Moon as a waypoint to Mars. At $4 billion a year, it constituted nearly a fourth of NASA’s budget. When the space shuttle retired, its funding was to double.
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
NASA
One year into his presidency, Obama was as good as his word. After convening a blue-ribbon panel led by former Lockheed Martin Chairman Norm Augustine, Obama concluded NASA was on an unsustainable course. Constellation had run badly over budget and behind schedule as NASA attempted to exceed the ambitions of Apollo with a comparatively smaller budget. When Bolden released NASA’s new budget in February 2010, it ended funding for Constellation. Instead, NASA would spend five years investing in advanced technology before choosing what systems to build for deep space exploration. Also to replace the shuttle, NASA would rely on private companies like SpaceX to develop less costly transport to low-Earth orbit.
Congress hated the plan, which removed power and money from NASA’s principal human spaceflight centers in Florida, Texas, and Alabama. Already wary of the space shuttle’s looming retirement, senators from those states fought back. They wanted a big rocket, and they wanted it built by contractors who would lose contracts after the shuttle ended. So Boeing, which managed the shuttle orbiters, got a contract to build the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s core stage. ATK, which made solid rocket boosters for the shuttle, would continue making them for the SLS. Aerojet Rocketdyne, which made the shuttle’s main engines, would continue doing so for the SLS. NASA has sold this rocket design as sensible, because it relies on proven hardware. But the principal motivation in Congress seems to have been turf protection and taking care of large contractors.
President Obama caved pretty quickly. Six years ago this Friday, just two months after his budget release, he flew to Kennedy Space Center and delivered his first and only space policy speech. He agreed to keep the Orion spacecraft, speed up development of a heavy lift rocket, and send humans to Mars (at least on flybys) in the mid-2030s. And, in a rhetorical flourish that dismayed much of the space community, he removed the Moon as a possible destination. “We’ve been there before,” Obama said.
Not all were happy to see his original plan go. In some ways it anticipated the development of lower-cost reusable rockets by SpaceX and Blue Origin. NASA almost certainly could have bought launch capability for a much lower price off the shelf. “The president’s original plan was a well conceived plan,” said John Logsdon, a |
led to Democratic victories down the ballot.
For that, the VAN is the unsung hero.
Every contact with voters, from a door-knock that found someone has moved to a phone call that reveals a specific political issue of top concern for a particular household, is fed into the same database. Volunteers and staff for virtually all Democratic candidates from president to dog catcher add whatever they learn as they learn it, building out comprehensive and constantly refined files on millions of voters.If you were to take a more in depth look around your house, you’d be shocked to find what corporations have a major impact on your daily life. Despite the variety of brands adorning your shelves, a surprisingly small number of corporations are responsible for these entities, which act as nothing more than subsidiaries of the larger corporations.
These corporations have found their way into every aspect of daily activities – often venturing into multiple avenues in which to target their potential clients. Each element of your life is impacted by these major corporations.
While flipping through your Super Mega Ultra TV package of hundreds of channels, you may be shocked to find out that the same companies own most of these channels. In fact, these companies control a whopping 90 percent of all media played across the United States (1).
Media monopoly is so strong that the powers in charge have been nicknamed “The Big Six.” These six corporations include Comcast, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.
Not only do these companies control every major entertainment channel, but they also control the news and are responsible for providing information to the masses in video format.
Media
To make this matter worse, these same businesses are also responsible for media that is heard or read. CBS is only second to iHeartMedia (formally Clear Channel Communications) who owns 1200 radio stations to CBS’s 117 stations (2)(3). This is contrary to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 created by the FCC that states a company may own no more than 20 AM and 20 FM stations, which has since been revised to be handled on a case-by-case basis (4).
Food & Health
Go to your pantry and rotate the bottles and boxes so you see the backside. You’re bound to see the likes of Kraft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Johnson & Johnson, and Unilever (5). You may be shocked to find that many of these same names are also in your medicine cabinet. These ten companies own hundreds of subsidiaries that brand everything from shampoo to ice cream to toilet paper.
Many of the companies even own their competitors. Procter & Gamble owns Dawn, Ivory, Joy, and Cascade dish soaps, as well as Tide, Cheer, and Gain laundry soaps.
Beverages are no different. While PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have an expectedly large roll in the beverage industry, Kraft and Nestle aren’t far behind. Even the beer industry has been monopolized. Outside of the booming craft beer world, corporate giant InBev owns 200 brands worldwide (6).19th century gray wolf hunt. Image: Public domain
More Wolves = More Birds (Who Knew?)
Hunted to extinction in Scotland about 250 years ago, the gray wolf might make a comeback. Scientists have been studying the impact of the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, and they found that not only was it good for the wolves themselves (the initial goal), but it was also good for the local flora and fauna.
Studying Yellowstone Wolves
Indeed, the disappearance of the wolves in Yellowstone allowed deers to graze more than they otherwise would have if predators had been present. They basically grazed many parts of the park bare, and that's what is happening in the Scottish hills too ("The red deer have been nipping Scots pines in the bud, so now the pine population has some trees as old as 300 years but no young trees. The deer have also laid waste to the birch population.").
But when the wolves came back "there was an unforeseen bonus: Not only did the elk population go down, but there have been'major ecological effects,' [William Ripple, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University in Corvallis,] says. The elk now steer clear of areas where they perceive risk from wolves, leading to the regrowth of aspens, willows, cottonwood trees, and berry-producing shrubs. That in turn has supported the resurgence of beaver and bird populations."
So using that information from the Yellowstone experiment (which has the same species of deer and wolves as Scotland), scientists are trying to steer the discussion in Scotland. People should not only take into account the intrinsic value of the wolves, they argue, but also consider the broader ecological effects.
The Web of Life
This is a very good illustration of how interconnected everything inside ecosystems is. People who think "so what?" when they hear about some species being threatened with extinction, or when a whole ecosystem is on the brink (like coral reefs ) need to understand that none of these things exist in a vacuum. If you push the first domino, who knows how many are going to fall...
Via Science
More Animals
Conservation Failure: Panna Tiger Reserve in India No Longer Has Any Tigers
15 Baby Chinese Alligators Born in the Wild: New Hope for the Most Threatened of All Crocodilians
Biomimicry FTW: Leaf-Eating Ants, Fungi and Bacteria Can Teach Us How to Make Better BiofuelsNASA is building a jumbo rocket. It’s called the Space Launch System, or simply the SLS. The core stage of the SLS is slowly materializing in a sprawling facility on the outskirts of the city. Technicians are welding up a storm and have completed the largest component — a liquid hydrogen fuel tank that’s 133 feet from nose to tail and looks like a shiny metallic zeppelin.
“This is our big boy,” said NASA engineer Stephen C. Doering, dwarfed by the tank resting on cradles in a high bay.
NASA has a complicated way of building rockets that funnels money to multiple states in the southeastern United States. The SLS program is based in Alabama, at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Engine tests will be done in Mississippi, at the Stennis Space Center. The final stacking of the rocket and the launch will be from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the Kennedy Space Center.
Technicians have completed the largest component of NASA’s Space Launch System — a liquid hydrogen fuel tank that’s 133 feet from nose to tail and looks like a shiny metallic zeppelin — at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. (Steven Seipel/NASA)
Construction of the core stage is handled here in Louisiana, at the Michoud Assembly Facility, which covers the equivalent of 31 football fields. The vast structure survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and then a direct hit from a tornado earlier this year.
But the new rocket will have to survive the unpredictable crosswinds of Washington.
President Trump is now in charge of the space program, and no one in Washington seems to have a clear idea what’s going to happen next. Trump has expressed interest in President John F. Kennedy’s vow in 1961 to put American astronauts on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Thus everyone expects Trump to try to create a “Kennedy moment.”
The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing is coming up in two years. For NASA, and the entire space industry, that’s a huge anniversary — and suddenly everyone seems to be talking about moon missions.
President George W. Bush wanted U.S. boots on the moon by 2020. President Barack Obama killed the Bush program, saying we’d been there and done that. But with Republicans in control of both Congress and the White House, the moon looms larger in the sky.
Last month, in his address to Congress, Trump made a single, enigmatic comment about space: “American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.”
Did that mean the moon? Mars?
Trump hasn’t nominated anyone yet to lead NASA, nor has he picked a science adviser. He is expected to issue an executive order re-forming the long-disbanded National Space Council, which would be headed by Vice President Pence and oversee civilian and military space programs.
In the meantime, civil servants at NASA headquarters are reexamining the current human spaceflight schedule to see whether there’s a way to do something dramatic before the end of Trump’s term.
The first SLS launch, penciled in for late next year, will also be the first time it is paired with the new Orion crew capsule. No one will be aboard. It’s a shakedown cruise to test the hardware and life support equipment. Instead of live astronauts, mannequins will serve as the crew.
But last month, NASA’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, asked his team to look at the feasibility of adding astronauts to the first test flight. The feasibility study should be complete within weeks.
And then there’s Elon Musk.
Musk, the founder and chief engineer of SpaceX, has met at least four times with Trump or his aides recently. Last month, in what appeared to be a hastily called teleconference with reporters, Musk announced that he intends to send two tourists next year on a figure-eight joy ride past the moon and back to Earth.
He did not identify the tourists, saying only that they were wealthy people who know each other and have already put down deposits. Musk said that he could do the moon flyby with his own new rocket, still under development, called the Falcon Heavy.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lands at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb. 19. SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced that he intends to send two tourists next year on a figure-eight joy ride past the moon and back to Earth. (SpaceX /European Pressphoto Agency)
Another wrinkle: Musk told reporters that SpaceX would be willing to bump the rich tourists from that first flight and let NASA astronauts take their place.
There are reasons to view such a scenario as extremely unlikely. Powerful people in the space world would be unhappy to see Musk and SpaceX steal any thunder from the SLS and Orion. Huge aerospace corporations, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, have contracts for this hardware.
The Alabama factor comes into play. The SLS is based at NASA Marshall, in Huntsville, the historic center of American rocketry. The Trump administration has a number of influential Alabamians, starting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Two former Sessions senate staffers, Stephen Miller and Rick Dearborn, work in the White House.
There are practical issues, too: Musk has a reputation for overpromising on timelines. SpaceX has never launched anyone into space. The Falcon Heavy has never flown. Moreover, NASA officials would be unlikely to embrace a SpaceX moon flyby unless it clearly fit into the agency’s long-term plans for deep-space exploration.
“What does Elon want to do with this — is it just a one-off tourist flight?” said NASA’s top official for human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, in an interview with The Washington Post. “I don’t see it as advancing human presence in the solar system.”
At the annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium this week in Greenbelt, Md., a student from Purdue University asked a panel of space experts a pointed question: What’s harder in spaceflight, the technical engineering or the political engineering?
Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, which represents aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, found that one easy to answer:
“Political engineering is always more challenging.”
* * *
Things were so much simpler in the 1960s. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War and racing to the moon in government-owned rockets. The United States won that race, planted a flag, left bootprints.
NASA today is faced with basic questions of destination, hardware and motivation. China has a growing space program but does not seem in a hurry to put astronauts on the moon, so there’s no indication that a space race is heating up. NASA and Russia work shoulder to shoulder on the International Space Station.
Six years after NASA retired the space shuttle, the agency relies on Russian spacecraft to ferry American astronauts to and from orbit. SpaceX and Boeing have contracts to take astronauts to the International Space Station, but the first flights are probably a couple years away. In the meantime, NASA is building the SLS and Orion for “deep space exploration.”
In the 2020s, that would mean astronauts orbiting the moon but not going to the lunar surface. The most ambitious such mission would last a full year and function as a trial run for the much more daunting trip to Mars. Gerstenmaier, questioned this week by an audience member at the Goddard Symposium, said he would not rule out a landing on the moon but did not think it was necessary for NASA’s long-term Mars ambitions.
Gerstenmaier is a civil servant who has survived many strategic pivots at NASA. In his brief remarks at the rostrum this week, he said the SLS will only launch about once a year, which he said is not often enough for a compelling space program. He showed a graphic with government-owned rockets like the SLS lined up next to private rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. “I love every one of these rockets,” he said.
But NASA’s steady-as-she-goes, methodical way of operating has been criticized by outsiders as overly slow and cautious. The current manifest for the SLS envisions several years between the first two flights.
Newt Gingrich, for one, has seen enough. Gingrich is a space buff who has consulted with Trump in an unofficial capacity. When Gingrich ran for president in 2012, he spoke of his dream of a moon base. He even cited one of his old ideas: that Americans in a moon colony could achieve statehood.
“The answer is to open the system up to competition, establish prizes, take risk, and dream big,” Gingrich said in an email to The Post.
He added, “The key is to liberate space from government monopoly and maximize the inventive entrepreneurial spirit of the Wright brothers, Edison, Ford and other classic Americans.”
The SLS is an old-fashioned rocket in many ways. NASA fully owns the rocket. It oversees every aspect of the rocket’s design and operation. It’s being built by the prime contractor, Boeing, under a traditional cost-plus contract that offers little incentive to do hold down the cost. The booster is also disposable.
All that exquisitely welded metal in the giant tank at Michoud will wind up at the bottom of the ocean. That’s an expensive way to do business. The cost of a single launch of the SLS could be in the vicinity of $1 billion.
SpaceX and Blue Origin — the space start-up owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos (who also owns The Post) — have emphasized reusability. The two companies have built boosters that can land softly back on land or on a platform at sea.
The Blue Origins New Shepard booster executes a controlled vertical landing on April 2, 2016, near Van Horn, Tex. (Blue Origin/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
Musk has said he wants to launch the first humans to the surface of Mars in 2024. He envisions gigantic spaceships that could carry 100 people at a time. The goal is to create cities on Mars so that the Martian civilization can be independent and self-sustaining, and humanity will be a multi-planet species.
Humans are Earthlings, however: Any mission to Mars would take many months and human bones deteriorate in weightless environments. Space is shot through with radiation, particularly beyond the Earth’s protective magnetic field. No country has ever landed anything on Mars heavier than a rover. The atmosphere is too thin to be of much help in slowing down a vehicle deploying parachutes, but it’s thick enough to cause turbulence and overheating.
Bezos is less focused on Mars, but he has repeatedly said he wants to see millions of people living and working in space. He would like industrial activity moved off-planet to help protect Earth’s natural environment. Blue Origin has circulated a white paper describing how it would like to provide cargo delivery service as soon as 2020 for a (still hypothetical) NASA lunar base.
“We should make American Space Great Again,” Gingrich said in the email to The Post. “Done properly we can be on the moon in President Trump’s first term and orbiting Mars by the end of his second term.”
Gerstenmaier is preaching cooperation: “None of us can do it alone,” he said at the Greenbelt symposium.
“It is not a race to the moon” between NASA and the private sector, said Dittmar, whose coalition is funded by the big aerospace companies.
But it feels like a race, somehow. At the very least, everyone is suddenly in a hurry. Gerstenmaier talked about “an urgency” to NASA’s activities. That’s because, even without Trump channeling Kennedy, NASA has a serious plan to blast people back to the vicinity of the moon — “sometime in 2021, 2022,” Gerstenmaier said. “That’s not that far away.”
If the plan holds, the big fuel tank at Michoud, plus another, smaller tank for liquid oxygen, and some other Michoud-created hardware, will wind up in Florida, at the Cape, as part of a stack of components forming a complete, full-fledged rocket that’s taller than the Statue of Liberty.
At that point it will simply need a destination.Some of the grids have already been archived, and more will be as maintenance is needed. If you are still playing the game, click here for : polecat42's bookmark list for clues on the archived grids.
GC31D5H Aircraft Carrier (5 hits will sink it)
GC3137M Battleship (4)
GC31D5K Destroyer (3)
GC31D5N Submarine (3)
GC31D5P Patrol Boat (2)
Game Grid (pdf)
Please do not indicate in your log when you find a hit!!
Battleship History:
Historically, Battleship has been a guessing game played by two people. It is known throughout the world as a pencil and paper game and predates World War I in this form. It was invented by Clifford Von Wickler in the early 1900s, but he never patented the game and it was soon published by Milton Bradley Company in 1943 as the pad-and-pencil game "Broadsides, the Game of Naval Strategy". Later, the game became known simply as, "Battleship". In 1977 Milton Bradley released a computerized Electronic Battleship, followed in 1989 by Electronic Talking Battleship. Battleship is still being played today on pen/paper, board games, cell phone Apps and even geocaching!
Battleship Geocaching Game:
In Battleship, there are 5 ships of various sizes (listed above) hidden on a 10 x 10 grid (100 total grid locations). Each grid location is identified by a letter (A-J) and a number (1-10). Similar to the Battleship board game - you are seeking to find geocaches at each grid location but also discovering HITS and ultimately collecting coordinates to solve each ship's puzzle cache. There are only 17 HITS in the entire game grid. Game grid caches are all traditional, small in size and will be 1-2 difficulty and 1-2 terrain. HIT & coordinate information will be within the cache container. All the caches (including the puzzles) are hidden in the south central Pennsylvania area. Prizes will be awarded to all the FTF of each puzzle cache. Please be stealthy, use proper geocaching etiquette, and BE SAFE!
Don't forget to write down the partial coordinates!!Shares
Having written about pseudoscience and quackery continuously for over a decade and having engaged in conversations about it online for over 15 years, I’ve come to recognize a number of traits that are virtually the sine qua non of quacks and pseudoscientists and their believers. Obviously, one of them is a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a tendency of those with low expertise in a topic to overestimate their expertise and express far more confidence in their conclusions than warranted while those with high expertise know enough to know how much they don’t know about a topic and thus tend to express more uncertainty and caveats. Basically, the Dunning-Kruger effect describes how unskilled individuals express an illusory superiority, mistakenly believing their knowledge, competence, and ability to be much higher than it really is.
As a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect, coupled with other cognitive shortcomings suffered by all human beings (but seemingly amplified in believers in quackery and pseudoscience) that lead them to believe in pseudoscience, such as confusing correlation with causation, motivated reasoning, and the like, believers in pseudoscience are often so absolutely rock-solid in their beliefs that they are virtually impossible to reason with. It is incredibly difficult to change their minds, and disconfirming evidence often causes them to dig in all the more deeply to defend their beliefs. Not uncommonly, this leads them to commission studies designed to support their beliefs. But what happens when such a study does not actually support their belief? What happens when such a study backfires spectacularly and not only fails to support their belief, but emphatically so? Skeptics were re-treated to just such a spectacle last week when SafeMinds and other antivaccinationists were burned by a study they funded (subscription required):
Between 2003 and 2013, SafeMinds provided scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, the University of Washington, the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development and other research institutions with approximately $250,000 to conduct a long-term investigation evaluating behavioral and brain changes of baby rhesus macaques that were administered a standard course of childhood vaccines. (The National Autism Association, another organization that has questioned vaccine safety, also provided financial support for this research.) The latest paper in the multiyear project was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In it, the researchers concluded that vaccines did not cause any brain or behavioral changes in the primates.
Astute readers will recognize that I’ve written about similar papers before reporting that pediatric vaccines cause changes in behavior and/or brain structure in macaque monkeys. Specifically, way back in 2008, I noted the initial report of this ongoing study, first when preliminary results were reported as a poster presentation and then later another publication from the same group published in 2009. Steve Novella and a certain well-known friend of the blog have also described how poor experiments published from these studies in 2010 were, the latter of whom cited several other major criticisms of the study, not the least of which was some reporting of changes in the size of a part of the brain known as the amygdala that were…hard to believe. There were also a lot of issues with the control group chosen.
Basically, these abstracts and papers reported the results of an ongoing study looking at infant vaccines in macaque monkeys to see if there was an effect on socialization or changes in brain anatomy, the key hypothesis seeming to be that thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism. (The investigators even added thimerosal to some of the vaccines because they weren’t being made with thimerosal anymore!) You can read the links I cited just now if you want the gory details; suffice to say that these were not good studies and not particularly good evidence that vaccines cause autism, as shown by the fact that homeopaths loved the study, and ultimately the paper examining hepatitis B specifically was withdrawn. Yet these reports were flogged for quite a while by the antivaccine movement as proof positive primate data that vaccines are Evil.
Fast forward to 2015. Now we have a much larger, much better study. It’s even by the same people. And guess what? It’s as negative as negative can be. No wonder SafeMinds and other antivaccinationists are unhappy. Let’s take a look.
Three dozen dead monkeys later, vaccines still don’t cause autism
One of the limitations constraining those of us who do human subjects research is that ethical considerations often prevent us from designing our clinical trials in what would be, from a strictly scientific standpoint that ignores all other considerations, in the most methodologically rigorous way. For example, we can’t intentionally infect human beings with known inocula of deadly bacteria in order to cause a reproducible severity of disease to be treated with a new antibiotic. Also, leaving aside that such a study would be impractical from a purely practical standpoint given that it would take decades, we can’t ethically do a randomized, controlled study of smoking versus no smoking and then assess differences in the incidence of heart disease, lung cancer. Yet, from epidemiological studies, we do know that tobacco smoke does cause lung cancer, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and other cancers.
Similarly, from an ethical standpoint we can’t do a randomized, controlled clinical trial of a “vaxed versus unvaxed” group because it would leave the control group of children unprotected against vaccine-preventable diseases. There would be no clinical equipoise. Some antivaccinationists have begun to accept this reality—grudgingly—and started to propose epidemiological “vaxed-unvaxed” studies, of course without realizing how difficult it would be to control for confounders and how many subjects would be needed. (Hint: More unvaccinated children than probably exist in the US.)
One way to try to get answers when you can’t use humans is to use animals. Indeed, that is traditionally how drug and toxicity studies have been done. However, this approach has problems as well, because, depending on the animal model and the disease, the relevance of such experiments can be questioned. One way to try to maximize the relevance to human physiology is to use nonhuman primates, but such experiments are incredibly expensive to do and must be held to very high ethical standards given how human-like they are.
Here’s where the monkey study by Gadad et al. in PNAS, that has so riled antivaccinationists, comes in. Entitled “Administration of thimerosal-containing vaccines to infant rhesus macaques does not result in autism-like behavior or neuropathology“, it examines the effect of the infant vaccine schedule on macaque monkeys. Oddly enough, Laura Hewitson is one of the authors. Remember that Hewitson was a key player in doing the previous awful studies, one of which listed Andrew Wakefield as a co-author. She is now the Research Director of the Johnson Center for Child Health and Development, which is what Andrew Wakefield’s old quack clinic, the Thoughtful House Center for Children, became after he was given the boot by its board of directors in the aftermath of his losing his UK medical license and seeing his 1998 Lancet paper implicating the MMR vaccine retracted. Her history and current position just make the results of this study even more delicious.
Unfortunately, part of the justification for the current study were the previous monkey studies that purported to show a link between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. Indeed, so bad were those previous studies that personally I consider this study to be highly unethical, given that there is no compelling evidence to justify subjecting 79 macaque monkeys to a bunch of injections and killing 36 of them to dissect their brains, all in the service of testing the long discredited hypothesis that vaccines cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. The University of Washington IACUC, which approved this study, should be ashamed of itself. Ethically, the study is a travesty. It was also a waste of a lot of money, again, because this question did not need to be studied yet again. Despite the lack of a compelling scientific rationale for the study, it was nonetheless done, and done competently; so we have to consider its results which—surprise! surprise!—were completely negative. Let’s take a look at the details.
The design was quite simple. There were 79 infant macaque monkeys subjected to six different vaccination schedules: (i) Control (n = 16), in which animals received saline injections in place of vaccines; (ii) 1990s Pediatric schedule (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines following the pediatric schedule recommended in the 1990s; (iii) 1990s Primate (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines recommended in the 1990s but on an accelerated schedule; (iv) thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCV, n = 12), in which animals received all TCVs but no MMR vaccines following the accelerated schedule; (v) MMR (n = 15), in which animals only received the MMR vaccine but no TCVs following the accelerated schedule; and (vi) 2008 (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines recommended in 2008 but on an accelerated schedule. Infants were assigned to a peer group of four animals, with multiple study groups being tested each year for neurodevelopmental outcomes.
The investigators then assessed social behavior, with testing being carried out by a social tester blinded to the experimental group. The testers were well-trained and experienced; they were also tested for reliability and used standard testing methods:
Infants underwent testing as follows: from birth to 20 d, infants were assessed for the development of neonatal reflexes and perceptual and motor skills; from postnatal day 14 to ∼3.5 mo of age, infants were examined for the development of OCP; from ∼3 to 6 mo of age, animals underwent discrimination learning assessments; from ∼5 to 8 mo of age, animals were assessed for learning set development; and from 30 d to 12 mo of age, animals underwent assessments of behavior before group living. These developmentally appropriate tests are measures of neurodevelopment, learning, cognitive abilities, and social behavior in young macaques (45). At ∼13 mo of age, animals were transferred to juvenile caging where they were group housed (n = 4 males per group) with animals from within their peer group for the duration of the study. All subsequent behavioral data were collected while animals were in their home cage.
Behaviors were defined as passive, exploring, playing, sex, aggression, withdrawal, fear-disturbed, rock-huddle-stop-clasp (strong clasping/grasping of another monkey without play behavior, or self-clasping with arms, legs, hands, or feet, without locomotion and no active inspection of own or other’s body), and stereotypy (repetitive body movements, with or without locomotion, requiring three or more consecutive, repetitive movements). It might be a cliché, but there were no statistically significant differences detected in any of the behaviors measured in any of the experimental groups.
Then, at the conclusion of the experiment, brains from monkeys in the control (N=12), 1990s (N=12), and 2008 groups (N=8) were sectioned for histological and immunohistological examination. The authors examined the brains for neuropathology in parts of the brain previously shown in humans to have changes in autism: the cerebellum, hippocampus, and amygdala. Try as they might to find differences, Gadad et al. failed to find any differences between controls and either of the two vaccinated groups examined. There were no changes in the neurons in these regions. There were no changes in protein levels. Basically, there were no differences from control in the two experimental groups in the volume of the cerebellar hemispheres, the number or density of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum. There was no difference in the size of the Purkinje cells. Western blots (a means of detecting proteins with antibodies) failed to find differences in certain Purkinje-cell associated proteins calbindin, GAD-67, and proteins that are markers for different cell types, such as Iba1 (a microglial marker) and GFAP (astrocyte marker). Again, these were all negative. Gadad et al. measured these proteins up, down, right, left, and sideways (so to speak), but failed to find any differences.
Why, you might ask, didn’t Gadad et al examine the brains from the monkeys in the other experimental groups? The authors justify this decision thusly:
The neuroanatomical analyses were first performed in brains from the 1990s Primate and 2008 groups, as animals in these groups received the highest amount of EtHg exposure (1990s Primate) or the most extensive vaccine exposure (2008). Because no neuronal differences were found in either of these vaccine groups compared with the control group, no additional vaccine groups were fully studied.
This is a reasonable compromise to keep the number of monkeys euthanized as low as possible. If the groups that received the most extensive thimerosal exposure and the highest vaccine exposure showed no detectable differences in brain structure in regions relevant to autism pathophysiology, then there really isn’t a good reason to kill the rest of the monkeys to look at their brains. Even with that compromise, 36 monkeys paid for this information with their lives (16 control + 12-1990s schedule, and 8-2008 schedule) and brains while the rest received at least unnecessary injections and other interventions. Basically, this study’s results are inconsistent with the three main “hypotheses”—though after all the disconfirming data calling them “hypotheses” really is doing them too much honor—that thimerosal-containing vaccines, MMR vaccines, or “too many [vaccines] too soon” cause autism. Each hypothesis is represented by an experimental group.
It’s utterly ironic that so many antivaccinationists funded this study, as noted in the acknowledgements:
We thank the following for their generous financial support: The Ted Lindsay Foundation, SafeMinds, National Autism Association, and the Johnson and Vernick families. This work was also supported by WaNPRC Core Grant RR00166 and CHDD Core Grant HD02274.
It’s depressing to see that the Washington National Primate Research Center, the Center on Human Development and Disability, and the University of Washington contributed wasted funds to this unethical study.
SafeMinds is, of course, highly antivaccine. It’s particularly amusing to see SafeMinds get burned funding a study to show that vaccines cause autism when they’ve been burned before for being involved with such a study. I’m referring, of course, to the study published in 2007 in the New England Journal of Medicine by Thompson et al. (yes, that William Thompson) that failed to find a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. As you might recall, Sallie Bernard of SafeMinds was on the advisory committee for the study. Why invite an antivaccine activist to be on such a committee? I don’t know. Perhaps the misguided idea that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. (That didn’t work out so well for Jon Snow.) Be that as it may, when Thompson et al. didn’t show what SafeMinds and antivaccinationists wanted it to show, she immediately pulled criticisms out of her nether regions to try to discredit it, to be followed by other antivaccine groups.
Here we go again, same as it ever was.
Antivaccinationists respond
So how did antivaccine activists react to the study they had helped fund? Did they accept the results and start to wonder whether they might have to start rethinking their previous views about vaccines and autism? (That’s what real scientists and those who are science-based in their outlook would do.) Come on, this is SafeMinds we’re talking about! Of course it did nothing of the sort! Predictably, SafeMinds did exactly what it did in 2007 when Thompson et al. didn’t turn out the way it had hoped going in. It immediately went on the attack:
SafeMinds, the nonprofit that funded the research, is not happy with the results. Representatives from the group say the findings contradict both an earlier pilot study and interim progress reports the organization received from the researchers.
Naturally, no such attack would be complete without insinuations of scientific fraud:
SafeMinds also believes that the research team behind the new PNAS study may have cherry-picked their data. SafeMinds Director Lyn Redwood, a registered nurse, says she received an email in 2013 from the researchers reporting a “statistically significant” 11 percent reduction in certain types of hippocampal cells in the vaccine groups. But she says the authors did not include these findings in the new paper.
Redwood, of course, is not a scientist, and it shows. Many are the times that preliminary analyses in a scientific study look as though they will find a positive result. Many are the times that the positive result disappears as more and more of the subjects are analyzed and more measurements completed. Many are the times that scientists have been disappointed because of this phenomenon, so tantalized by a seemingly positive result only to see it disappear. Redwood seems not to understand this; she seems not to understand that a two year old progress report describing promising preliminary analyses does not matter one whit if those preliminary analyses didn’t pan out. In this case they didn’t. Laura Hewitson, who by working with Andrew Wakefield on one of the preliminary studies used to justify this study showed that at that time she was very much leaning antivaccine, appears to have pulled back from the pseudoscience and become much more scientific. She even tries to school Redwood in the very point I just made:
Dr. Laura Hewitson, director of research for the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, a lead researcher on project and co-author on all four papers, says that at the time that email was sent, it was also made clear to SafeMinds “that the data should be treated as preliminary until all of the animals had completed the study.” She added that none of the study’s procedures changed once her team moved from the pilot program to a larger sample.
And to explain to Redwood basic things like blinding to experimental group so important in studies where humans are making measurements:
She added that all of the researchers, technicians and behaviorists involved in collection and analysis of data did not know which of the monkeys were in the vaccine groups or the control group. The researchers also implemented a “chain of custody” protocol once the data were collected, in which they reviewed chronological documentation that shows the control, transfer and analysis of all data sets. Hewitson says that her team used an independent statistical consultant for all data analysis, and that two additional outside investigators from two other academic institutions confirmed their findings. “As you can see, we have done everything possible to ensure the integrity of the data. My co-authors and I stand by our published findings,” she says. “The comprehensive nature of the current study underscores why the findings from the pilot study should be interpreted with an abundance of caution, given the small number of |
a bunch of new train lines yeah, maybe in fifty years when we’re digging metro tunnels and electric driverless buses zip up every street every couple of minutes? No. I mean soon, real soon, in a couple of years at most.
There’s all sorts of myths about Auckland and how public transport won’t work, that it’s too spread out, too low density, too this, too that. They are actually quite wrong, common truisms with little basis in reality, post hoc justifications for the current road centric transport outcomes we’ve been planning and implementing for decades.
Here’s the thing. Auckland is incredibly well suited to passenger transit. It’s just screaming out for it. It’s also not particularly well suited to road transport. But more importantly, Auckland now has the means to deliver the world class public transport to which it is ideally suited. So let’s try and take an objective look at the qualities and nature of Auckland, and how those relate to the efficiency and efficacy of passenger transit.
Geography and Topography
Auckland was first called Tamaki Makaurau, which translates roughly as “The Bride with a Thousand Suitors”. The name reflects the fact that Auckland has favourable geography that has been contested for hundreds of years.
The reasons the British colonists set up here are exactly the same reasons pre-european Maori did: a strategic pinch point on the land between north and south, blessed with two harbour giving sea access to both coasts, and a variety of bays, inlets and rivers giving cheap bulk transport access (i.e. waka and skiff) deep into the hinterland.
So Auckland’s geography is a geography of pinch points. At a macro level, Auckland is centred on a pinch of the upper North Island. The Isthmus means all transport and trade from Northland to Waikato has to pass through Auckland, a position equally ideal for an ambitious tribal chief or a nascent colonial administrator.
But it also means the same for travel within the city, any trip from the North Shore to South Auckland, or from Westieland to the Eastern Bays, it all has to pass through the same narrow strip of land. There are pinch points everywhere, some bridged, some natural. From the North Shore there are only two ways to access the rest of the city without getting your feet wet, the Harbour Bridge to central Auckland, and the Upper Harbour bridge to West Auckland. That means all traffic leaving the North Shore, be it car, bus, bicycle or llama caravan, has to pass along one of those points. The scenario is repeated to the west, to leave West Auckland you have the choice of the one bridge to the North Shore, the Northwestern Motorway causeway, or the thin strip of land straddled by New Lynn. Out south we see it again, all travel of any kind, except ferry, must pass across one of three narrow points: the Mangere Bridge, the Otahuhu isthmus, or the set of bridges at Panmure.
So what does this mean for public transport? As it turns out, a lot. At a very simple level transport networks are networks of geometry, and the geometry of traffic and PT are somewhat opposite. Road networks are least efficient when all traffic is forced into one place, we call that a traffic jam, a bottleneck. The tendency of traffic is to spread out. The great roadbuilders of Americas Midwest do everything they can to avoid a confluence of freeways. Public transport on the other hand work very well when you already have plenty of people all travelling the same way, it makes it easy and efficient to fill up buses and trains. Natural pinch points are perfect for PT.
Auckland is a city that is fundamentally and naturally perfect for public transport, and fundamentally ill-suited to mass road networks. Despite what the man on the street may claim about Auckland’s unsuitability, the opposite is a simple geometric fact.
The geography of Auckland means the natural success of our rapid transit system is just sitting there waiting for us to realise its potential. Going back to those pinch points let’s consider the opportunity of some examples. Every single trip from East Auckland to the central isthmus and onward to the west or north has to pass over one of two bridges, so everyone making the trip passes through Panmure or Silvia Park, where we already have rail stations with lines heading inbound and out. Over at Otahuhu it’s the same situation, anyone driving, cycling or walking on the motorway, Great South Road or a local street ends up within a few hundred metres of the rail station. At Mangere Bridge it is the same, all trips pass Onehunga station. Likewise from the north, all those trips over the Harbour Bridge run parallel to the busway, in the west they are all funnelled past the rail station at New Lynn. The two missing bits are the Upper Harbour and Northwestern motorway bridges, both corridors where AT have busways planned.
The geography of our city already funnels all long distance trips down to just seven pinch points. Five of those pinch points already have rapid transit lines running through them, while the remaining two have them on the horizon. We really couldn’t have asked for a better place to build rapid transit!
Density, urban form, population
For a new world city Auckland is dense, compact and constrained. Again people will tell you how we’re so spread out, so low density, so this and that. The myths are just that, myths, and the reality of the situation is quite the opposite. Auckland is hemmed in by two harbour, two mountain ranges and a series of hills. It just doesn’t sprawl the way the likes of Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth can, our urban form in contained and contiguous. In fact if you look at the population density of the non-rural area of the city we are tied equal with Sydney for the densest metropolis in Australasia. For sure we are no Hong Kong or Manhattan, but nor do we need to be. The density of our suburbs is more than enough to support very efficient bus and train routes. We might not be able to justify a tube station on every corner, but nor do we need that to have excellent public transport. We can have an exemplary transit system with the existing density and shape of our city.
Despite our density, or perhaps because of it, our population is growing strongly. Our people are breeding and migrants keep arriving. The economy is steady and strong, not so boom and bust as constant burn. If there is one constant we can rely upon it is that Auckland will grow. Our growth begets growth, our good city attracts people, which creates bigger markets, bigger labour pools and more of the things that make our city good, which in turn attracts more. The more urban we become, the more urbane. The more it grows the greater it becomes, literally and figuratively. We need housing, we need development, we need transport, and we can’t do it with sprawl and motoways. As Auckland grows it will grow into its boots. Back in the 1950s we might have been a large town, but now we are a dense and thriving metropolis where driving is simply not desirable in many cases, let alone a possibility.
Governance
This is the kicker for Auckland, not an exciting topic, but a very important one. Since the super city amalgamations we now have all our transport planning, land use planning, operations and infrastructure development under one roof. Well NZTA still hold the purse strings and the State Highway Network, but everything else falls under the Auckland Council family.
This is critical, it means Auckland has the remit to make good plans, and the means to deliver. All of what we see now, the New Network, the rail upgrades, Hop Ticketing, these all floundered for decades until Auckland Council and its subsidiary Auckland Transport were formed.
Head over to Australia and it is surprising anything gets done at all. The mix of federal, state and local government fractures their capital cities and makes implementation a chore. To change a bus route means dealing with an operator who delivers the route, dealing with the state who plans the route, dealing with the federal organisation that funds it, dealing with three or four little councils to move bus stops, all of whom have different ideas on how their streets should look, and what value they place on transit. Here we have just central government and Auckland. While they may not agree, there are only two parties at the arbitration table.
But what about the roads?
It is oft said that what you don’t build is just as important as what you do. This is true, it is hard to achieve a sustainable well-functioning transport system when you spend 90% of the budget expanding the road network. Even if we spent millions more on transit and active transport that would only go so far while we spend so much more on projects that undermine them.
So in the roadbuilders paradise of Auckland what hope have we for the future? Well plenty actually. The simple fact is we’ve already built all the big roads and motorways that we can do cheaply. The isthmus and suburbs are full, all that is left is built out neighbourhoods, harbour and inlets. There are no easy motorways left to build, no roads that it’s easy to widen.
The future of road building in Auckland is a choice of small, localised and efficient improvements, or massive economy-crippling expense. We are already seeing this: a million dollars a metre to widen the motorway through Victoria Park, $1.8 billion for the last few kilometres of the Waterview motorway, proposals for $5.5 billion (with a B) to duplicate the Northern Motorway across the harbour for the net benefit of a few thousand peak time car commuters heading downtown.
For sure the powers that be will continue to double down on motorways, but not for long. The bottom line will bite and we simply will not be able to fund any more. We simply must get smarter with our money. I’m actually confident we will not see a third harbour motorway crossing, if only because the cost is just so extreme.
The age of cheap and impactful road projects is done and gone. From now on we will need cheaper but more effective ways to retrofit transport into our city. This may sound like the fanciful wishes of a sustainable transport advocate, but the pure fiscal reality backs this up. Auckland has built its strategic roading network and needs to move on to cheaper and more effective ways to move people. The only question is whether we can make this shift proactively, or if we need one last gasp with an economic disaster like a harbour motorway tunnel to force our hand.
Auckland’s transit renaissance
We are in the middle of a revolution the likes our city has not seen since the mid 20th century. It may not feel like a revolution, because it’s fairly slow and we’re wading through the middle of it, but it is happening. Road use per capita is dropping while transit use is exploding, albeit the former from a very high level and the latter from a tiny base… but the winds of change are blowing.
Consider what we have now, an unintegrated legacy bus network focussed on moving workaday commuters to the CBD with a little welfare coverage on the side, a crippled lumbering rail system, separate fare products for everything, unreliability, poor service span, little frequency on the weekend, etc, etc. To be blunt what we are used to in Auckland is the textbook of what not to do, worlds worst practice public transport.
But consider what is coming up. An entirely redesigned transit network, rebuilt from the ground up to provide an integrated grid of connecting routes that run frequently all day and most of the evening, seven days a week. A completely overhauled rail system with brand new trains, directly integrated with the buses to form one region wide network of fast rapid transit stretching out into the suburbs. We will have a single simple fare structure with no penalty for transferring, with the liberating connectivity that brings, and we will have frequency and reliability gains. In short we are shifting rapidly to the world’s best practice transit network.
Sure, we won’t have an underground metro system or skytrains, or whatever. But we will have a transit network that gets within five minutes walk of every house in the city, that never requires you to check a timetable or wait, and that allows you to easily connect to rapid transit for a fast trip across the region any time or day of the week, or to another local route to easily get between any two suburbs around. It hardly matters if you are getting on a street level bus or a tube train, if they both come frequently, connect readily, and provide a fast and useful trip.
We may not have quite the same high profile infrastructure, but we will have the network, the service, the outcome, the usability.
But what of the Australian cities? Surely they have better PT?
In some case and some aspects yes, but none of the Australian capitals will have the perfect storm of conditions we will. I only have a passing understanding of the situations across the ditch, but as I see it none of the aussie cities are as well placed for excellent transit as we are:
Melbourne is perhaps the most railed city in the new world. It is thick with transit infrastructure, sixteen rail lines, a four track underground city loop, plus the world’s largest tram network at street level. And the worst bus system I have ever seen, the poorest integration. It is a city the rests on the rusting laurels of the previous generation. In my old neighbourhood the tram line stopped on a corner in the suburbs about 1500m from the train station in the town centre. Why? Because they were built around a hundred years ago by competing companies that didn’t want to cooperate. Ten decades later they still don’t. Two major rail routes just far enough apart that they might have been on other sides of the planet. It’s fine if you live inside the tram network or along the fingers of railway, but for the other two thirds of the city the situation is dire. Because of their masses of infrastructure, they can’t look at their network overall, the operation, the usability, falls to the wayside. Melbourne has huge potential but it also has huge inertia to overcome. They might get there, but not before Auckland.
Brisbane is a city with a very strong CBD and some rail lines and gold medal busways feeding to it… but they generally just take commuters on weekdays and little else. It’s a much less useful system overall. The reason for that is the shape and form of Brisbane, it is very spread out and suburbanised in a way Auckland could never be, it’s just that much harder to make non-commuter PT work there, even if the demand cropped up. They have battles between buses and trains, they don’t have the structures to integrate their network. The fact that they are proposing to build a double decked metro tunnel with trains underneath and buses on top underlines their inability to coordinate. They are soaked with roads and freeways, and have plenty of room for more.
Sydney is perhaps a big mature example of what Auckland should avoid. They also have lots of trains, multiple underground stations, plus dozens of ferry lines and a lot of buses. They spend their money on billion dollar train links and light rail schemes but can’t get the basics of their local buses right. Try getting around the suburbs on a weekday evening without a car. Sydney could also be a great transit city if they went back to the fundamentals and started from the ground up, but from what I understand of NSW politics that is unlikely to happen.
So what of Auckland in comparison. We shall become the leapfrog city. As they say when you are at rock bottom you can only go up. By virtue of starting low, without inertia or expectation, and with a fundamental base of qualities that support transit, we will surpass our Australian peers. I predict that within the next ten years Auckland will have the highest number of PT trips per capita of any city in Australasia. It saddens me to see reports coming out that can’t see the coming confluence of ideal factors, and Auckland Transport responding by lowering their targets.
So what do we need to do to make it reality?
Well, not much actually. We are blessed by natural and intrinsic conditions that support transit, we have a robust economy and strong population growth. Most of all we don’t have much choice but to shift to a more economically and socially sustainable transport system. The conditions are there, the groundwork done. All we have to do is implement the plans that we have right now. It’s about that simple.
The Regional Public Transport Plan, with its totally revised network design, will set the snowball rolling. It’s actually exactly what Auckland needs, no more no less. And that is the crux, we have plans that are realistic, implementable, affordable and most importantly, will be very effective. The RPTP draws on all of Auckland’s strengths of geography, topography, governance, planning and operations and does wonders within that context. Most importantly, it doesn’t rely on major new projects or significant changes to funding, travel culture or a huge shift in travel patterns.
Ok sure, it’s not slam dunk in its own. We need to make sure the supporting things like integrated fares on HOP and a range of fairly minor infrastructure and interchange upgrades can happen. Oh and more bus lanes. Plenty more bus lanes. Bus lanes on every frequent transit route. In my opinion that is the one missing aspect that needs to be brought forward, but luckily they are actually very cheap and incredibly effective, as long as we can get over the political hurdles. Slowly but surely we should be buslaning our main arterials all over.
Longer term, we just need to complete the CRL based upgrade of the rail system, and follow through with the provisions of the Unitary Plan. Maybe a new busway or two, or light rail, on a couple of extra corridors as suggested by the Auckland Plan and the City Centre Masterplan. I actually think all these things will accelerate once the RPTP network is deployed. I’m not sure if anyone is anticipating quite how revolutionary it will be, how much demand for PT use will be realised in such a short time. But in general we don’t need mega infrastructure to get world class transit, Good planning, network integration and governance will do it. If we can implement that we will have a transit system that is more efficient and more useful for daily travel than any other system in Australasia. If we follow that up with the CRL and other such projects we will blow them out of the water.
Share thisGov. Rick Scott is in Argentina this week as part of a trade mission. Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz confirmed Thursday that the governor will be in Buenos Aires through April 27.
After spending much of the weekend monitoring wildfires in Southwest Florida and other parts of the state, Scott is slated to hold a series of meetings Monday in Argentina as part of an Enterprise Florida trade mission.
Among the events, Scott is scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. in Buenos Aires with Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri, according to information released by the governor's office.
Scott was scheduled to fly Saturday night to Argentina but postponed the trip for a day because of wildfires in Collier County and other areas of the state.
This is Scott's first international trip on behalf of the state since he touched down in London last July for the Farnborough International Air Show.
Scott took a number of international trips during his first term, with excursions to Panama, Canada, Brazil, Israel, Spain, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Chile, France and Japan.
Travel in his second term has mostly been related to job recruitment from other states.
Manny Mencia, senior vice president of international trade and development for the public-private Enterprise Florida, said Wednesday that Scott had been considering the Argentina trip.
“This is a market that for 10 years has been dead for American companies and is just opening up significantly,” Mencia said.
©2017 The News Service of Florida. All rights reserved. Posting or forwarding this material without permission is prohibited. You can view the Terms of Use on our website.Oakland Just Voted To Explore Public Banking
Above Photo: For publicbankinginstitute.org
The City of Oakland, California joins a host of other communities exploring public banking.
In response to long-term economic instability and disappointment with the mainstream banking system, the Oakland City Council voted Tuesday to investigate a public banking feasibility study funded by money left over from the Goldman Sachs Debarment Proceedings.
The resolution, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Kaplan, Kalb, and Guillen, also directs city staff to solicit input from community stakeholders about the feasibility study, including suggestions of potential contractors and funding sources. Additionally, it instructs city staff to consider the feasibility of an Oakland-specific public bank and proposes the possibility of partnering with other jurisdictions to form a regional bank.
According to Sheng Thao, Chief of Staff for Councilmember Kaplan, the creation of a public bank offers the possibility of achieving multiple policy objectives, including stimulating economic development, spurring job creation, reducing municipal debt service, and expanding the tax base through direct, long-term local lending at below-market rates.
The members of the Finance Committee unanimously passed Councilmember Kaplan’s resolution calling for the city administrator to look into the process of establishing a public bank.
“I was thrilled to see the outpouring of support for public banking,” Kaplan says.“Passing this resolution at the next City Council meeting marks an important first step in the process of investigating public banking for the City of Oakland or larger region, including its benefits for our budget and its wider societal impacts.”
Kaplan’s resolution will be considered at the Tuesday, November 29th City Council meeting, which begins at 5:30PM at Oakland City Hall.While Randall Stephenson gushes about holiday bonuses and creating jobs, he’s been busy swinging the ax.
The AT&T boss — citing a mountain of cash the telecom giant will keep because of Trump’s tax cuts — said this week that AT&T will pay out $200 million to employees by awarding 200,000 of its rank-and-file year-end bonuses of $1,000 each.
That’s on the heels of last month, when CEO Stephenson pledged to create 7,000 jobs with $1 billion AT&T it expects to save on taxes.
“These are 7,000 jobs of people putting fiber in ground, hard hat jobs that make $70,000 to $80,000 per year,” Stephenson said at an event hosted by The Economic Club of New York.
Meanwhile, however, a slew of AT&T layoffs nationwide looks poised to claim casualties running into the thousands. As The Post reported this week, AT&T fired more than 700 cable installers earlier this month.
Elsewhere, sources said AT&T has lately laid off 215 high-skilled technician jobs in nine Southern states. Those jobs, many paying $36 an hour, will be eliminated in the first quarter, sources said.
“It just seems funny that if they are going to create 7,000 jobs, why it is necessary to lay off 215 Southeast workers?” one of the skilled technicians griped to The Post.
Add to that 280 jobs that will be cut beginning Feb. 17 at AT&T’s Dallas credit and collections center, a source to AT&T confirmed. Also in February, 278 jobs will be cut at AT&T’s El Paso, Texas call center. Yet another 87 positions will be scaled back at the company’s Kansas City, Mo. credit and collections center, according to the source.
AT&T also fired an undisclosed number of workers in November at its Atlanta-based entertainment wireless group, a worker said.
This smattering of layoffs alone — likely only part of the looming bloodbath, according to sources — could save AT&T as much as $100 million.
As such, the total layoffs could save AT&T enough cash to offset the $200 million in bonuses it’s planning — and which earned praise from President Trump earlier this week.
“That’s because of what we did,” Trump said, celebrating AT&T’s bonus plan. “So that’s pretty good.”
Labor lawyer Stephen Console, whose firm Console Mattiacci is representing workers suing AT&T in Trenton, NJ for age discrimination, alleges AT&T came up with a plan to replace its aging workforce with a younger one by the year 2020.
“We are very committed to showing exactly what AT&T is doing in connection with laying off older workers,” Console told The Post.
From Jan. 31, 2016 to Jan. 31, 2017 AT&T employment fell by 5 percent from 281,000 to 268,000, according to public filings.
A New York Times profile of Stephenson in February 2016 said senior executives believed eliminating 30 percent of AT&T’s workforce by 2020 was not out of the question.
“It’s not uncommon for our employment levels to fluctuate over the course of time,” an AT&T spokesman said, saying company is “adding people in many parts of our business that are experiencing higher customer demand.”
But the spokesman also admitted that “technology improvements are driving higher efficiencies and there are some areas where demand for our legacy services continues to decline. Our employment figures reflect all of these factors.”
AT&T last year showed its financial support for the Trump administration donating $2.1 million to his inauguration, according to public records.
Stephenson also is president of the Boy Scouts of America and arranged for Trump this year to speak in front of the scouts.
Still, Trump’s Department of Justice last month sued to block AT&T’s $85 billion deal to buy the Time Warner deal. Some speculate this week’s announcements about bonuses and jobs are a bid to curry favor with the White House.Michele Bachmann was among those who voted against the bill. 2014 GOP Senate contenders oppose VAWA
Eighty-seven House Republicans joined 199 Democrats in voting for the Violence Against Women Act Thursday, but a chunk of the 138 “no” votes came from potential 2014 GOP Senate candidates.
Among those who voted against the bill: Tom Cotton (Ark.), Steve King (Iowa), Bill Cassidy and John Fleming (La.), Justin Amash (Mich.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Kristi Noem (S.D.).
Story Continued Below
Six Republican members of Georgia’s delegation who might run statewide also opposed the measure: Paul Broun, Tom Price, Phil Gingrey, Jack Kingston, Austin Scott and Tim Graves.
Opponents mainly worry that the measure would deprive non-natives of due process when they are charged with abuse on tribal lands.
The bill, which cleared the Senate on a 78-22 vote earlier this month, will be signed by President Barack Obama.
Before passing the Senate version, the House voted on a Republican substitute bill that would reauthorize the portions that their members can get behind, including support for victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault. It failed on a 166-257 vote, but many who voted against the final bill supported it so that they could say they backed a version of the act.
King, for example, noted that he voted in support of the House version.
“I supported VAWA in 2005, 2012, and today I voted in support of the House version to see that victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have access to the resources and protection when they need it the most,” he said in a statement.
Democrats are unlikely next year to make the distinction King and others Republicans are using to justify their vote against the final compromise.At HelloFresh, we want to change the way people eat. Over the past 5 years we've seen this mission spread beyond our wildest dreams. So, how did we do it? Our weekly recipe boxes full of exciting recipes and lovingly sourced, fresh ingredients have blossomed into a community of inspired, energised home cooks that expands across the globe. Now we're the fastest growing company in Europe, active and growing in 9 different countries across 3 continents.
Our story started in Berlin. As Europe’s tech hub, and the home of our global headquarters, it’s a dynamic, progressive environment where innovation is nurtured and promoted. Since we started, we’ve worked exceptionally hard and we’ve more than US$ 350 million in investment which together have allowed us to create an award winning product and become one of the top 3 largest companies to come out of Europe over the past 4 years.
As a member of HelloTech you’ll be exposed to a modern technology stack and a slick cross-functional agile team setup. We have developed a refined product and provide scalability on a global level. Join our HelloTech team and help us to build a fresh food global champion!
About the job
You will be joining the Platform Tribe at HelloTech. Platform forms a stable and fresh environment for our talented teams of developers to thrive. As well as building a great foundation, Platform is also responsible for spreading their knowledge throughout the other tribes, they make sure everyone is taking advantage of the easy to use infrastructure, and applying the best practices when it comes to Continuous Delivery, Containerisation, Performance, Security etc.
Deliver solid Infrastructure as Code by using automation tools such as Terraform and Ansible
Build and maintain container clusters with Kubernetes
Optimize and improve our CI/CD workflow
Develop and support tools for infrastructure to be used by other engineers
Design blueprints and support engineers to implement them
Mentoring/supporting engineers regarding tools, concepts and best practices
Check out some of the amazing open-source tools that we're building here at Platform:
Janus - An API Gateway written in Go
Klepto - Tool for copying and anonymising data
Kandalf - RabbitMQ to Kafka bridge
You can get a taste of what we've been working on by checking out our engineering blog.
Who we’re looking for
Experience as a software developer [Python, Go, or Ruby]
Experience with system administration or infrastructure maintenance
Good knowledge of design patterns, system architecture, and best practices
Practical cloud experience, preferably Amazon Web Services, Kubernetes and Terraform
Enthusiasm for open source contribution
You are passionate about mentoring and sharing knowledge
Loves to automate things
It’s a bonus if you have:
Experience with immutable infrastructure
Previous experience working in an environment with microservices
Knowledge of different deployment patterns (canary, zero-downtime)
What we offer
The opportunity to get into one of the most intellectually demanding roles at one of the largest technology companies in Europe
Cutting edge technology, allowing you to work with state-of-the-art tools and software solutions
Freedom to innovate and test new tools
Competitive compensation and plenty of room for personal growth
Great international exposure and team atmosphere
Work in a modern office in the heart of Berlin with excellent transport links and employee perks
Are you up for a challenge?
Please submit your complete application below including your earliest starting date and your salary expectations.
We’re committed to making HelloFresh as inclusive as we can be. As part of that commitment, we chose to be transparent about our diversity data. To enable us to build an accurate picture of our workforce, we ask some optional questions in our application process.Fwd: Thank you
From:cheryl.mills@gmail.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2013-12-13 19:55 Subject: Fwd: Thank you
John David's in. See below. I asked if I could share this with you so you and I both could send back collective thoughts on this and then use the revised draft as a basis for a meeting with him and HRC. I will send another email looping all three of us together with just his document. best. cdm ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Well, against my better judgement and perhaps because of your directness, count me in. It's too important not to help. Attached are just some quick thoughts on some of the components of the project. Rough and just meant as a starting place. The conversation we discussed would be useful as well as your feedback on what's missing here. I intend to be pretty quiet over the holidays but will have time next week for any discussions. I'd like to run a list by you of who i would ideally enlist to assist in some parts of this. Small number, but without that will be an inferior product. No knowledge of who the project is for of course. On Dec 13, 2013, at 12:44 PM, Cheryl Mills <cheryl.mills@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear David > > I appreciate your willingness to entertain the request I made in our conversation this week - and your graciousness in meeting. Thank you. > > I have shared that we met with HRC and JP; and with no others. Both are eager to learn if the template/bible/plan for action is something you will undertake. > > I shared that you needed to consider your time, priorities including family, and you own thoughts about what you could contribute. I said you would not likely get back to me until 23 Dec so you have plenty of time to reflect and outline what, if anything, you think might be possible. > > They are committed to maintaining our confidences. > > I hope you have a great weekend. > > Best. > > cdmIt is a known fact that computer keyboards and mice are home to more germs on average than toilet seats. Why that is the case? Two things come together here to build this fatal combo. First, toilets are cleaned more often than computer keyboards or mice on average. I have seen my fair share of keyboards that have not been cleaned once, and things like smoking or eating while working usually turn a brand new keyboard into something that you would not want to sit on, if it were a toilet.
The second factor that plays a role is that keyboards are often used by several users. This is especially true in work places without fixed seating order, public locations like Internet cafes or libraries, and maybe even at home when a family shares a computer system.
What you can do about it? Cleaning comes to mind of course, but you can also prevent your keyboard from getting dirtier by making sure you do not eat at your workplace, especially not if you eat something with your hands, and to wash or sanitize your hands regularly, especially after using them for other activities.
I usually come up with the idea to clean my keyboard or mouse when I'm working on a computer which does not work out that well for obvious reasons. Since it is necessary to give the keyboard and mouse a thorough cleaning, it usually interferes with what is going on on the system at that time.
On some systems, it is possible to simply disconnect the mouse or keyboard from the PC but if the connectors are not easily reachable, it may not be an optimal solution on all systems.
Software like Keyboard and Mouse Cleaner, or the previously reviewed Toddler Keys, add another option. You can use those programs to lock the keyboard and mouse so that accidental clicks and taps do not have any effect on the computer.
To use the portable software simply download and unpack it to your system. Once done, run the program, set a cleaning time in seconds, and click on the clean button to start the cleaning.
Once done, keyboard and mouse input are locked so that you can clean them thoroughly.
AdvertisementFigure 1 shows the clusters of suckers on the tentacles of an octopus; the tentacles are used to catch prey and for locomotion. The diameters of the chambers within the suction cups vary from 300 μm to a few centimetres, and higher pressure differentials are known to be applied by suction cups with radii of less than a centimetre, for reasons that are unclear at present15. Among the various species of octopus, the suckers of Octopus vulgaris have an unusual anatomical architecture, comprising an orifice and a protuberance (see Fig. 1a inset and Fig. 1b; the base of the orifice is a chamber known as the acetabulum and has a diameter of about 2 mm)12. The structure of the dome-shaped protuberances has attracted substantial academic interest from researchers aiming to understand their functionality. Beyond the active actuations of muscular hydrostatic pressure, which are well known, a passive mechanism for the attachment of suckers has been suggested12,14. According to this hypothesis, the sucker remains fastened to the substrate via a void created by its structural collapse, which enhances wet adhesion14. This hypothesis has not yet been experimentally proven.
Figure 1: A meniscus-controlled adhesive patch inspired by protuberances in the suction cups of octopi. a, O. vulgaris tentacles. Inset, a transverse-section image showing the anatomical architecture. b, Detailed illustrations of the sucker structure of O. vulgaris. c, Fabrication of OIAs. (i) A simple partial-wetting technique for creating a polymeric master. (ii) The detailed mechanism underlying this technique. The cross-sectional optical image shows a perforated-cylinder structure. γ is the surface tension; θ is the contact angle between the liquid precursor and the solid mould (Supplementary Fig. 14); R a is the radius of curvature of trapped air. (iii) Using an as-fabricated polymeric master mould to create an OIA. d, Schematic illustration showing how our OIA adhesive can easily attach to and detach from wet, non-flat surfaces that perspire and have fine, irregular topology. e, Photographs of a large area of hierarchical OIAs (around 3 cm × 3 cm). f, SEM image of a dense array of microcavities with protuberance-like dome-shaped structures. The scale bar in the inset represents 15 μm. Full size image Download PowerPoint slide
To elucidate the underlying mechanism, we made an artificial, reversible, water-tolerant adhesive that was inspired by the dome-like protuberances, mimicking the unique geometry of the suckers through a technique that involves fabricating a polymeric master and then moulding it (Fig. 1c). More specifically, we created the polymeric master by partially filling a liquid precursor composed of polyurethane-acrylate-based polymer (s-PUA) into the micrometre-scale holes of a silicon mould, which had previously been treated with a solution of a fluorinated self-assembled monolayer. By replicating this polymeric master, we obtained octopus-inspired architectures (OIAs) that were also made of s-PUA, which has low air permeability and thereby enhances suction behaviour in wet and dry conditions. The method requires no complicated chemical syntheses or surface modifications. The partial-filling technique is based on the force balance among phase interfaces that results from the capillary rise of a liquid precursor and trapped air bubbles in solid hole-patterns, controlled by a pump connected to a process chamber (see Methods and Extended Data Fig. 1). We thereby developed a robust and highly reversible adhesive, which can easily attach to and detach from wet, non-flat surfaces that show fine irregular topology and perspiration (Fig. 1d)—an achievement that was known to be challenging16. Figure 1e presents a photograph of our flexible, artificial adhesive (area 3 cm × 3 cm), which comprises densely populated suckers with octopus-inspired architectures (OIAs), each sucker having with a radius of 50 μm, and with about 5 103 suckers per cm2. Figure 1f shows a tilted scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the replicated OIAs, demonstrating that the structures have high structural fidelity and integrity |
has tendinitis, there was an illness, they were unable to do it. And that's what I thought. So I didn't even ask [why]." He said the TSO didn't tell him until Monday that it had been Lisitsa who was scheduled to play: "It didn't even dawn on me to ask who the [other] pianist was." And he says that his manager at Columbia Artists Management, Mark Alpert, was also not told the reason for the cancellation.
Goodyear's contract was signed over the past weekend. "Monday morning," Goodyear said, "I get a call from the CEO [Melanson] telling me what I'd gotten myself into." Goodyear added that Melanson seemed surprised Goodyear hadn't been told about the situation with Lisitsa. "Even then, I still didn't have an understanding," Goodyear said. "I knew only that they released her of [her] contract, and they were telling me, 'There might be a [public] response.' I didn't know a thing. I was in blissful ignorance."
The Rachmaninoff Concerto
The 37-year-old Goodyear also pointed out that he has enjoyed a very long history with the Toronto orchestra, stretching back to his first appearance with it at age 12. He adds that among his appearances with the ensemble, he stepped in when the orchestra was in very bad shape: "I replaced a pianist when the Toronto Symphony was going bankrupt, and they needed help. I was there for them."
"The Rachmaninoff Second was a piece that meant a lot to me," Goodyear continued. "A lot of chapters in my life began with Rachmaninoff Second. It was always my dream to play this piece with the musicians of the Toronto Symphony. The rehearsal I had with them on Tuesday was one of the most beautiful musical moments of my life. I knew this was a moment to be savored, this was a moment to be kept."
After that rehearsal, Goodyear said, he, Fallis and Saraste decided the Rachmaninoff Second was going to be dropped. The concerts were held with Mahler's Fifth Symphony, originally planned as the concert's second half, as the only work on the program.
"I have absolutely no feelings but warm feelings towards Valentina," Goodyear said. "We are all musicians. We are all artists. We are all here to communicate our love of music. There are people on Twitter who are telling me that as I was replacing Valentina Lisitsa, suddenly I was an ambassador for censorship, that I was supporting censorship, which is utter nonsense."
"I believe in free speech," Goodyear added, "and most importantly, I believe in free reactions to free speech. There was a reaction to what Valentina wrote. But they thought they earned the right to respond, they thought they were in their right to call me inferior, they thought they were in the right to say awful, awful words of hatred in my direction. They thought they were in their right to attack me personally and artistically, without knowing who I am."
Lisitsa said she has no regrets in the aftermath of this firestorm. "Just like with YouTube," she said, "in a way, it's a strange parallel. When I started on YouTube, I believed in it, and I kept doing what I was doing, even with lots of negative feedback from the musical establishment, even now. I think the same has happened right now. My case got completely out of my hands."WASHINGTON (CBS/AP) — Children’s clothing retailer Gymboree Corp. is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the latest sign of traditional retailers’ struggles as shoppers shun stores and buy online.
The San Francisco-based company says it is seeking to reduce its debt by $900 million. It expects to operate its business and majority of its 1,300 stores during the restructuring.
Gymboree is the latest retailer to file Chapter 11, close stores or go out of business entirely in 2017. Shoe chain Payless ShoeSource filed for bankruptcy protection in April and The Limited closed all 250 of its remaining stores early this year. Teen retailer Wet Seal in January said it would close its 171 stores.
Gymboree says it secured $35 million in new financing to keep the company operating through the Chapter 11 process.
© Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Get the biggest Weekly Politics 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
Theresa May is to give a speech at 10am today amid reports she will resign.
May's future as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservatives was being openly questioned after her decision to hold a snap election disastrously backfired.
As the June 8 poll ended in a hung parliament, with no party holding an absolute majority in the House of Commons, Mrs May pledged to offer "stability" if the Tories end up as the largest party with the most votes.
Conservative former minister Anna Soubry said she should "consider her position" and take personal responsibility for a "dreadful" campaign and a "deeply flawed" manifesto after choosing to go to the country three years early in the hope of extending her majority.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should "go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country".
Former chancellor George Osborne, sacked from the Cabinet by Mrs May and now editor of the Evening Standard, told ITV: "Clearly if she's got a worse result than two years ago and is almost unable to form a government then she I doubt will survive in the long term as Conservative party leader."
With 630 out of 650 constituencies declared, a Press Association forecast predicted that Tories would end up with 320 seats, 10 fewer than when the election was called and six short of an absolute majority.
(Image: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire)
Labour was heading for 260 seats, the Liberal Democrats for 14, the Scottish National Party 34, Plaid Cymru three and Greens one, according to the PA analysis.
A BBC projection put the Tories on 43% overall, about six points up on David Cameron's result in 2015, and Labour on 40%, spectacularly outpolling Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown's results and even racking up more votes than Tony Blair did when he won power in 2005.
The Democratic Unionist Party, which increased its representation at Westminster from eight to 10, signalled it was ready to discuss working with Tories on issues such as Brexit and keeping the UK together.
With the party in a position to hold the balance of power at Westminster, senior MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the DUP would be "serious players" in the hung parliament, telling the BBC: "This is perfect territory for the DUP because obviously if the Conservatives are just short of an overall majority it puts us in a very strong negotiating position and certainly that is one we would take up with relish."
Three gains by Sinn Fein, which does not take up seats in Westminster, made it slightly easier for a combination of parties to achieve a working majority.
The pound plummeted as the shock figures set the scene for political turmoil at Westminster, disruption to upcoming Brexit negotiations and the possibility of a second election later in the year.
The night was marked by a collapse in Ukip support and a rash of high-profile losses for the SNP, as British politics returned to a two-party system on the greatest scale since the 1970s.
The Tories lost seven frontbenchers, with ministers Jane Ellison, Simon Kirby, Gavin Barwell, James Wharton, Nicola Blackwood and Rob Wilson going down to defeat, along with Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer, the author of the widely criticised Tory manifesto.
Ukip leader Paul Nuttall faced humiliation in Boston & Skegness, where he came in a distant third, and the eurosceptic party lost its only Westminster seat in Clacton.
As Ukip voters switched to Labour and the Tories across the country, Mr Nuttall said Mrs May had put the Brexit process in "jeopardy" just 10 days before talks were due to begin in Brussels.
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
High-profile casualties of a night of shock defeats included Liberal Democrat former leader and ex-deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Scotland's former first minister Alex Salmond in Banff & Buchan and the SNP's leader in Westminster Angus Robertson in Moray.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Education Secretary Justine Greening hung onto their seats by the skin of their teeth with much reduced majorities.
Accepting victory in Islington North, Mr Corbyn said voters had opted for hope and "turned their backs on the politics of austerity".
In an attack on Mrs May he said: "The Prime Minister called the election because she wanted a mandate.
"Well the mandate she has got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence.
"I would have thought that's enough to go, actually, and make way for a government that will be truly representative of all the people of this country."
Speaking as she was re-elected MP for Maidenhead, Mrs May said: "At this time, more than anything else, this country needs a period of stability.
"If, as the indications have shown and if this is correct, the Conservative Party has won the most seats and probably the most votes, then it will be incumbent on us to ensure that we have that period of stability and that is exactly what we will do."
Asked if Mrs May could remain as Tory leader, Ms Soubry told the BBC: "That is a matter for her. It is bad. She is in a very difficult place.
"She's a remarkable and very talented woman and she doesn't shy away from difficult decisions, but she now has to obviously consider her position."
Mrs May drove direct from the Maidenhead count to Conservative HQ in London, where she was hunkered down in talks with aides as dawn broke before moving on to 10 Downing Street.
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said: "Theresa May's authority has been undermined by this election. She is a damaged Prime Minister whose reputation may never recover."
Mr Osborne said there would be "a very big post mortem coming"
Brexit Secretary David Davis said he would "fight tooth and nail" to keep Mrs May in post, and dismissed suggestions he might be a contender to replace her.
"The simple truth is we have a Prime Minister, she is a very good leader, I'm a big supporter of hers," Mr Davis told the Press Association.
"I'll fight tooth and nail to keep her in place."
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, often tipped as a potential successor to Mrs May as Tory leader, said: "We've got to listen to our constituents and listen to their concerns."
Liberal Democrats were celebrating the return of former ministers Sir Vince Cable, Sir Ed Davey and Jo Swinson two years after they lost their parliamentary seats.
And Tim Farron's party took Bath back from the Conservatives and regained Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross and Edinburgh West, which were lost to the SNP in 2015.
Mr Farron held on to his Westmorland & Lonsdale seat in Cumbria on a much-reduced majority, down from 8,949 in 2015 to just 777 now.
Labour took Canterbury, a seat which had been held by Conservatives since 1918, and claimed Tory scalps in a string of seats including Bristol North West, Stroud, Warwick & Leamington, Stockton South and Vale of Clwyd.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said Labour "could form the next government" and would attempt to do so as a minority government if results allowed, rather than seeking to form a coalition with other progressive parties like the Lib Dems.YPF’s shares have fallen in recent days as investors considered the likelihood of a government takeover. Its stock plunged again on Monday after Mrs. Kirchner delivered her remarks and was down about 11 percent when trading was halted. The current stock-market value of the entire company is about $7.7 billion.
Mrs. Kirchner said that the expropriation of YPF, a company founded by Argentina’s government in the 1920s and privatized in the 1990s, was a “recovery of sovereignty and control.” She said the move would allow Argentina to raise production, after the country recently became an energy importer.
For months, the central government and provincial officials have pressured YPF to raise its investments in Argentine production. The government’s tactics had included revoking concessions for coveted fields.
Antonio Brufau, the chief executive of Repsol, Spain’s largest company, had been trying for days to meet personally in Buenos Aires with Mrs. Kirchner but was rebuffed.
Seizing YPF appears to be a popular move in Argentina, where caps on residential energy prices and a growing economy have helped push energy demand to new highs. Argentina’s oil production has declined in the last decade as regulatory uncertainty persisted over price caps and the policies over profit remittances. Many Argentines still resent the privatization of state-owned companies in the 1990s, so taking on YPF gives Mrs. Kirchner the opportunity to go after a symbol of that time.
Photo
“This is Malvinas two,” said Federico Thomsen, an independent economist in Buenos Aires, referring to Argentina’s claims of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which are controlled by Britain and called the Malvinas in Spanish. “Everything that was done in the 1990s is viewed with suspicion. For most people, it is easier to blame the decline in oil and gas production on YPF than on the government’s policies and low prices.”
Mrs. Kirchner has already nationalized Argentine Airlines and pension funds, while also pressuring companies here to repatriate export proceeds in an effort to slow capital flight. Seizing control of YPF sends a new signal about Argentina’s policies toward foreign investment, especially in the energy sector.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Huge discoveries of shale oil resources were made in the last year in Argentina. The French oil giant Total and the American companies Exxon Mobil and Apache are among those making investments in Argentine shale fields.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Energy experts warned that the expropriation of YPF could curb the activities of companies seeking to replicate in Argentina the rapid increase in shale oil production that is happening in the United States.
Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company in New York, said the perception of financial risk associated with Argentina had increased considerably after Mrs. Kirchner’s move to take over YPF, particularly in comparison with other countries where companies are pursuing shale deposits.
“I worry less about Apache’s operations in Egypt than in Argentina,” Mr. Gheit said. “The oil industry in Argentina is just getting ready to take off, but this may be a way to kill it in its infancy.”
The takeover of YPF in 1999 by Repsol, Spain’s former national oil company, helped turn Repsol into a sizable international player. While Repsol subsequently made investments in other emerging markets, it also sold part of its Brazilian business to Sinopec of China in 2010. Over all, YPF accounts for about two-fifths of Repsol’s estimated reserves of crude oil and one-third of the company’s profits.
The tussle with Buenos Aires comes at a bad economic time for Repsol and Spain more broadly. The Madrid government is already desperately fighting to blunt the impact of Spain’s second recession in three years and it faces soaring borrowing costs amid investor concerns about whether Spain will be the next euro economy to require a bailout.
Any attack on Repsol is also likely to raise alarm bells for Telefónica, the telecommunications operator, and other Spanish companies that have invested significantly in Argentina and rely on their Latin American assets to offset dwindling revenue at home.
Beyond Spain’s concerns, analysts tried to gauge how the expropriation will affect private investment in general. Despite the move against YPF and more government intervention, Argentina still has a diversified market economy with far fewer nationalizations than in Venezuela, where authorities have also expropriated energy concerns.
“You have to be clever to do business in Argentina,” said Federico MacDougall, an economist at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires. “It was hard to do business in Argentina before. Now it is even harder.”
Still, the street-level appeal of the move by Mrs. Kirchner, who sailed to re-election last October, was clear. “This is a company that has been incredibly profitable and yet none of the profits have stayed in this country,” said Gustavo Vásquez, a 31-year-old metalworker in Buenos Aires. “Now they will.”America and France weren’t officially at war between 1798 and 1800. But it sure looked like they were.
This period, the result of a diplomatic faux pas, is known as the Quasi War. Its contemporaries knew it as “The Undeclared War with France,” the “Pirate Wars” and the “Half War,” according to Katie Uva, writing on the website of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s historic estate. John Adams was president during the Quasi War, which is not well-remembered today but which helped to shape American foreign policy. It forced the United States to reassess its Revolutionary relationship with France and helped the fledgling U.S.Navy gain experience, helpful in the War of 1812.
In the late 1700s, writes the State Department's Office of the Historian, the new post-Revolutionary French government, known as the Directory, was having money troubles. And France and the United States were in conflict over the States’ decision to sign a peace-establishing treaty with England. “While largely a commercial agreement,” writes Kennedy Hickman for ThoughtCo., the French saw this treaty as violating a previous treaty made with them during the American Revolution–the 1778 Treaty of Alliance.
At the same time, the States were refusing to make debt payments to the French government, arguing that the government they made the deal with during the Revolution was a different government than the current one and so the States weren’t obligated to pay.
This presented multiple problems for the French. So, writes the State Department's history office, the French government decided to kill two birds with one stone and seize a bunch of American merchant ships. Ready cash and a statement of force all rolled into one.
Adams sent three envoys to France in an attempt to cool things off, but at the time the French government was a post-Revolutionary den of intrigue and tense politics, and they found it hard going. In the end, France made a series of demands that the Americans were not willing to meet, and the two countries reached an impasse. Congress officially rescinded the Treaty of Alliance on this day in 1798.
It was a complicated situation. “The Quasi War was the first time that American neutrality, which had been championed by Washington as president, found itself under attack,” writes Mount Vernon. Adams was angered by the French demands, and after Congress read the letters he’d received from the American diplomats detailing their treatment, many other lawmakers were angry too.
The United States had an interest in preserving peace with both France and Britain, two superpowers who were at war with one another and had been for a long time. Both of those countries had historic interests in the States. At the same time, the young country was still establishing its foreign policy.
In his 1798 State of the Union address, Adams spent some time speaking about the Quasi War. Although both parties seemed to be interested in reconciliation, he said, “hitherto… nothing is discoverable in the conduct of France which ought to change or relax our measures of defense. On the contrary, to extend and invigorate them is our true policy.”
Among the other measures Adams took during the two years of the Quasi War was to bring George Washington out of retirement and reinstate him as Commander-in-Chief. Skirmishes at sea were fought between French warships and American sailors, according to Spencer Tucker in the Almanac of American Military History, and the States re-mobilized the Navy.
Despite this tension, cooler heads prevailed and the United States renegotiated the 1778 treaty with France, producing the Convention of 1800. Unlike the Treaty of Alliance, the Convention contained no declarations of alliance, and because it replaced the Treaty, the United States was no longer allied (on paper or otherwise) with France. “It would be nearly a century and a half before the United States entered into another formal alliance,” writes the Historian.
Of course, by 1800, Napoleon had overthrown the Directory and the United States was negotiating with yet another French government.The Los Angeles Clippers will hold their 2017 training camp at the University of Hawaii, where the team will play two preseason games, the Hawaii Tourism Authority announced today.
SHARE
ADVERTISING
The Los Angeles Clippers will hold their 2017 training camp at the University of Hawaii, where the team will play two preseason games, the Hawaii Tourism Authority announced today.
The Toronto Raptors are expected to provide the opposition in games at the Stan Sheriff Center, according to Leslie Dance, HTA Vice President of Marketing and Product Development.
Included in the stay will be a “Fan Fest” featuring players and coaches, the HTA said.
The agreement can be extended for up to three additional years in single-year increments to run through 2020, Dance said.
“This marketing partnership is ideal for both of our futures,” Dance said in a release. “The Clippers are one of the NBA’s hottest teams with a growing fan base in Hawaii and across the Pacific, and the Hawaiian Islands is a favorite destination for travelers from southern California.”
Gillian Zucker, Clippers president of business operations said in a statement, “We already are looking forward to the Clippers training camp in Hawaii and working closely with the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority to showcase the beauty of the state. This unique partnership is another step in Steve Ballmer’s vision of expanding the Clippers brand, while also providing our fans in Hawaii with the opportunity to see NBA basketball in person.”Leo’s on the Alley is set to become the newest addition to the Gateway district when it opens its doors in late August.
The new bar will occupy the former Eddie George’s private event space, a part of the restaurant that wasn’t taken up by TRISM, at 25 Chittenden Ave.
Leo’s will focus on an old-school concept which comes from Ohio State alumnus and Oldfield’s North Fourth Tavern owner Dan Starek, who said the neighborhood bar environment is lacking near campus.
Christiana Moffa, property manager at Gateway, said the new bar is a great way to mix up the variety of concepts that Gateway offers the public.
“It’s a perfect compliment to our existing bars, taverns and lounges,” Moffa said in an email. “It will appeal to everyone from students to neighborhood residents who love the corner watering hole concept, the kind of bar where the bartender will know your name as well as your favorite drink.”
Starek said students can expect cheap prices at the new bar, which will only serve cans of beer.
“While most will be Local Ohio Breweries, we will have very cost conscious options as well,” he said in an email. “We want to bring value to the students.”
In terms of style, Starek said Leo’s hopes to embody the old dive bar that used to be on campus in the 90s, with music coming strictly from a jukebox.
“Just a small place to get more than a few drinks and relax with your friends,” he said. “If you want glimmer and glitz, we’re probably not going to be the place for you.”
Now adding a second bar to his collection, Starek also said Leo’s and Oldfield’s will be linked. Though staff members will only be working at one location, customers will be encouraged to go to either bar depending on the weekend’s activity, whether it be a sporting event or a live music event.
Leo’s will host weekly karaoke nights, but on Sunday’s during the NFL season, when it comes to NFL Sunday’s, Oldfield’s will be the only place to go. However, Leo’s will be a hotspot on Ohio State game days with 15 TVs in the space.
If you’re wondering who the bar was named after, Starek also added that anyone who can figure out Leo’s identity will receive free drinks for the rest of their college career.
Leo’s on the Alley will open before the end of the month and prior to the first Buckeyes game on Aug. 31, though its first semester on campus will be a test period for the new bar.
“We’ll take all the feedback from Autumn Semester, good and bad, and make Leo’s on the Alley the bar that students helped develop,” he said. “So if you have ideas, let us hear them.”Your country needs your vote. Here's how to register in Indiana.
*Your voting rights are restored upon your release. You will need to re-register to vote.
If you want a say in how your local, state, and federal government is managed, you need to register to vote in Indiana. Read below to find out how.
Voter information and identification requirements may change prior to an election. Please check with the Election Division website to make sure you have the most current information.
Register to Vote in Indiana
You can register to vote online, in person, or by mail.
Online
To register online, visit the state's Online Voter Registration page. Be prepared to:
Verify your voter eligibility.
Provide information such as your IN driver's license or state identification card number.
Verify all information you've entered and confirm the application.
In Person or By Mail
To register in person or by mail:
Complete the Indiana Voter Registration Application (Form VRG-7) or County Voter Registration Application (Form VRG-11)
Deliver or mail it to your county voter registration office or the Indiana Election Division. Contact information and addresses are listed on the application.
Alternatively, you can apply through the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Simply visit your local BMV license branch to register.
Once received, your county's voter registration office will review your registration application and determine whether you're eligible. If you are, you'll receive your voter registration acknowledgement card by mail.
If you don't receive your card within 30 days, contact the county voter registration office.
Want to check your voter registration or polling location? You can do so online or by phone at (866) IN-1-VOTE.
Just Moved? Find all the information you need to finish your moving requirements with the DMV.
ID Requirements for Voting in IN
Once you receive your voter registration acknowledgement card and head to the polls, you must present photo identification to vote.
In addition to your photo, your form of ID must:
Show your name as it is listed in the voter registry. For example, it won't work if you registered to vote as “Joe Smith" and your ID reads “Joseph R. Smith."
as it is listed in the voter registry. Be current (not expired) OR expired AFTER the date of the last General Election.
(not expired) expired the date of the last General Election. Be issued by the federal or Indiana state government.
Valid IN driver's licenses and identification cards, as well as U.S. passports, are good examples of accepted IDs.
Military & Out-of-State Voter Registration
Indiana makes it easy for military, overseas, and out-of-state residents (such as college students) to register to vote.
Military & Overseas Voters
If you are a military member or dependent stationed out of the state, or you're an IN resident currently overseas, you can use the Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request Federal Post Card Application (Form 76). This form serves as a temporary registration as well as a request for an absentee ballot.
You can complete the FPCA:
NOTE : Indiana provides a detailed Military and Overseas Voters' Guide to help with completing registration and absentee application forms.
Late Registration for Military Members and Overseas Voters
Generally, residents must register no later than 29 days before the election. This means mail-in registrations must be postmarked 29 days before the election (see below).
However, military members, their dependents and overseas voters have an extended timeframe to register and to vote. Please see the section for Military and Overseas Voters on the Election Division website.
Out-of-State IN Residents
If you're currently out-of-state (for example, to attend college), you can register to vote in Indiana by mail. See Register to Vote in Indiana above to learn how. Visit the Election Division website for information on requesting an absentee ballot.
IN Voter Registration Deadlines
Unless you're a member of the military or a military member dependent, you must register to vote no later than 29 days before the Primary or General Election.
If you're registering by mail, your application must be postmarked 29 days before the election date.
This applies to registered voters applying to change their names, addresses, or precincts, too (see below).
Change Your Name, Address, or Precinct
You can change your name, address, or voting precinct by completing the Registration by Mail Application (Form VRG-7) or County Voter Registration Application (Form VRG-11) again with your new information, and delivering it to your county voter registration office (this means the office in your new county, if you've moved), or mailing it to the office's address as it is listed on the form.
Replacing an IN Voter Registration Card
Report your lost Indiana voter registration card to your county voter registration office.
An agent will instruct you on whether to expect a new card by mail, or to apply for voter registration again.The US government violated the Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches when it demanded that Lavabit, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s email provider, hand over the encryption keys to its service, lawyers said in court filings on Thursday.
Lavabit founder Ladar Levison closed his secure email service in August after the US authorities demanded he hand over the encryption keys – a move he said would have compromised the personal details of all his 40,000 clients. He is currently fighting the subpoenas and charges of contempt.
“General rummaging through all of an innocent business’ communications with all of its customers is at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits,” Jesse Binnall, Lavabit’s lawyer, said in the court filing made in the eastern district of Virginia.
“The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant to be founded on probable cause that a search will uncover fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of a crime. But Lavabit’s private keys are none of those things: they are lawful to possess and use, they were known only to Lavabit and never used by the company to commit a crime, and they do not prove that any crime occurred,” he said.
Levison was subject to a “blizzard of dubious court orders”, the court documents claim, as the FBI tried to force it to hand over the keys to its service. Lavabit proposed a compromise – the company would collect the “metadata” about the target (whose name is redacted) for the government, including “login and subsequent logout date and time, the IP address used to connect” and “non-content headers … from any future emails sent or received using the subject account”.
The court documents state: “This solution — though more than Lavabit thought the law obligated it to do, and one with which the company felt profound discomfort — would have given the government the information to which it was entitled without requiring the company to turn over its private keys, thereby protecting the privacy of its other customers.”
But the government refused, wanting “real-time access” to the target customer’s data. The government then secured a warrant under the Stored Communications Act and ordered Lavabit to hand over its private keys while gagging the company from telling anyone the government had done so.
“Mr Levison made it clear that he had no objection to the government’s lawful installation of the pen-trap device [to record the IP address and the email metadata]— only to the provision of his company’s private keys, 'because that would compromise all of the secure communications in and out of my network',” the documents state.
He did hand over the keys – at first as a printout that the government said was illegible. He closed the service shortly after.
Lavabit’s lawyers claim the government overreached in its use of the Stored Communications Act and the Pen Register Act, which allows it to install monitoring equipment on a company’s service.
Lawyers also argue that the grand jury subpoena also overreached, leading to the closure of his business.
“To commercially ruin a third-party small business using a grand jury subpoena is per se oppressive— indeed is close to the Platonic ideal of an unreasonable demand that ought to have been promptly quashed, especially in light of Lavabit’s ability to provide the government with the information to which it was entitled by other, far less intrusive, means,” Lavabit contends.
Lavabit has raised about $88,000 in an online fundraising drive to finance its appeal.A man was negligent for not stopping his live-in girlfriend from beating her 7-year-old daughter, even though he told her she could get in trouble, the state Supreme Court ruled in upholding the Hudson County man's conviction.
The mother, identified as Yvette, admitted in March 2012 that she hit the girl on the arms, legs and thighs with her fists and struck her stomach with a metal spatula because the girl had been eating too slowly, according to court documents.
A Hudson County Family Court judge found that Yvette had physically abused the girl and her boyfriend had also abused or neglected the girl by allowing the beating in what was described as "excessive corporal punishment," court documents said.
On March 29, 2012, the girl, who was identified as Mary in court documents, arrived at school with a bruise on her right cheek after being out two days.
A caseworker from the state Division of Child Protection and Permanency took her to a hospital where bruises were found on her legs, thighs and back, as well as bruises on her stomach with red dots, court documents said.
The woman's boyfriend was present at the time and told Yvette to stop hitting the girl because she would get in trouble, court documents said. The man said he witnessed the abuse, but did not see the girl struck with the spatula.
The man said he was holding his infant son at the time and he walked away because he didn't want his son to see the violence.
The man argued both those points before the state's highest court last month, but the judge agreed with the appellate ruling that found he was considered a "guardian" for the girl under the law and he had an obligation to protect Mary from Yvette's abuse.
Judges toss drug evidence because cops didn't have search warrant The state argued a search warrant was not needed because the drugs were in plain view.
The state Supreme Court also affirmed the appellate court's finding that even if the man didn't see the beating with the spatula, he was well aware the girl was being abused. The panel also found that the boyfriend's concern for his son was not an excuse because the beating went on for a period of time, giving him sufficient time to intervene.An election endorsement from Don Cherry, it seems, carries a lot of weight. Days after the CBC/Sportsnet pundit lobbied during the Stanley Cup final for fans to get behind the all-star candidacy of Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson, he made the biggest jump when current American League voting results were announced on Monday.
[np_storybar title=”Blue Jays call up Todd Redmond, Rob Rasmussen to bolster bullpen” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/mlb/toronto-blue-jays-call-up-todd-redmond-rob-rasmussen-to-bolster-bullpen”%5D
[/np_storybar]
Donaldson, easily the best candidate at the position by any measurement selected, received 4.12 million votes since last week’s tallies were released. That represented nearly an 85% increase in a week to just over 9 million votes. He is now trailing Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas by fewer than 33,000 votes, a margin of less than half a percentage point.
Toronto-born actor Stephen Amell, best known for his role in the television show Arrow, has also been campaigning for the Jays third baseman, leveraging his widely followed Twitter and Facebook accounts to petition fans to vote for Donaldson.
All-star voting had reached deeper into the public consciousness than usual because of the concerted push by Royals fans to vote for their own players. As many as eight Royals led the positional races with only the Angels’ Mike Trout occupying one of the three outfield spots. But fans in other markets mobilized. Donaldson is poised to overtake Moustakas and Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera passed the Royals’ Eric Hosmer in this week’s tally to reduce the Royals’ starters by one, for now.
Cabrera received the second most votes in the last period, garnering just over 4 million. Trout received 3.2 million to take over top spot among outfielders from Kansas City’s Lorenzo Cain.
Two other Blue Jays surged in last week’s voting. Outfielder Jose Bautista and catcher Russell Martin both got more than 2.5 million votes. Bautista is now sixth among outfielders with 5.3 million votes; Martin moved into second among catchers with more than 4.7 million votes but trails overall vote leader Salvador Perez of the Royals by nearly 5.5 million votes. Perez passed the 10-million mark this week.
The hegemony by the Royals has served to goose voting throughout the American League. Washington’s Bryce Harper leads NL voting with 6,059,827 votes, which would place him 12th among all AL players.Data released from SuperDataResearch shows that Blizzard's collectible card game Hearthstone has been on an absolute tear since launching on mobile. In fact, the mobile version of Hearthstone just surpassed the desktop client in terms of monthly revenue. The only reason it looks like it took so long is that for most of the game's early release, it was only available on tablets and 6+ inch smartphones. That all changed when it launched on iOS and Android for all smart phones on April 14, 2015.
Hearthstone has been tremendously successful on the PC and brought in over $114M in revenue in 2014. With the game's successful mobile launch, it'll likely increase revenue significantly in 2015. Hearthstone's mobile success can be attributed to the game's excellent port to mobile |
task is considered a reliable measure of impulsivity (25, 39). In the present study, the “cool” version of the go/nogo task did not differentiate the low- and high-delay groups. Only in the presence of positive social (“hot”) cues did the go/nogo task reveal differences between the two delay groups. These findings are consistent with our previous study showing associations between performance on the delay of gratification task and the go/nogo task, which were particularly apparent in certain contexts (5). In that study, the differences between groups were most pronounced on difficult trials, “nogo” trials preceded by several “go” trials, such that the “go” response became more compelling (28). Thus, the behavioral correlates of delay ability are a function not only of impulse control but also of the salience of the stimulus one has to resist. Two neurocognitive systems that rely on distinct neural systems have been proposed to enable self-control (2). Whereas the “cool” system involves cortical control regions, including the prefrontal cortex, the “hot” system involves deep brain structures such as the ventral striatum that are implicated in the processing of desires and rewards. Resisting temptation, as measured by the “hot” go/nogo task in the present study, supports this view, with the prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum differentiating low- and high-delay participants. The difference in inferior frontal gyrus recruitment for “nogo” relative to “go” trials was reduced in low delaying participants, potentially reflecting reduced ability in these individuals to invoke cognitive control in the context of emotional or “hot” cues. The ventral striatum has been implicated in reward and in immediate, as opposed to delayed, choice behavior (20, 21, 26, 40). Thus, sensitivity to environmental cues influences an individual's ability to suppress thoughts and actions, such that control systems may be “hijacked” by a primitive limbic system, rendering control systems unable to appropriately modulate behavior. Similar analogies of imbalances between these neural systems in the literature suggest that addiction (41) and adolescence (13, 42, 43) may be contexts when cognitive control may be particularly vulnerable to alluring environmental cues. Resisting temptation in favor of long-term goals is important for individual, societal, and economic functioning. Our findings provide a neurobiological basis for differences in this ability. Together the behavioral and imaging findings provide evidence that the ability to delay gratification assessed early in life predicts how well individuals can regulate behavior years later, particularly when they are required to suppress thoughts and actions toward alluring social cues.
Materials and Methods We contacted 117 individuals from more than 500 original participants who completed the delay-of-gratification task at age 4 y at Stanford's Bing Nursery School during the late 1960s and early 1970s and were above or below average in their original delay-of-gratification performance as well as in self-report measures of self-control administered in their 20s and 30s (44). More than half of these individuals agreed to participate in a longitudinal behavioral study (experiment 1), and of these 59 subjects, nearly half agreed to be part of a functional neuroimaging study (experiment 2). Both the behavioral and imaging experiments received institutional review board approval, and all participants provided consent before testing and scanning. Experiment 1. Participants. Participants were selected on the basis of their scores on two types of self-control measures: (i) the length of time they waited for the more desirable but delayed reward at age 4 y, and (ii) their score(s) on a self-control scale in adulthood. The time spent delaying a reward at age 4 y (see ref. 1 for review) was recorded in seconds and normalized by calculating a difference score of the participant's delay time relative to the average delay time of children in the same experimental condition (see ref. 33 for details). The self-control scale used in the adulthood assessments consisted of eight items [e.g., “Unable to delay gratifications; cannot wait for satisfactions” (reverse coded); “Is attentive and able to concentrate”] from the modified shortened version of the California Child Q-set (45). This self-report measure was administered in 1993 (when participants were in their 20s) and in 2003 (when participants were in their 30s). Internal consistency of this scale was relatively high (α = 0.74 in 1993 and 0.82 in 2003). Of the 562 participants for whom we had preschool delay scores at age 4 y, 155 completed the 1993 follow-up and 135 completed the 2003 follow-up. For the present study, we targeted individuals who obtained consistently high or consistently low scores on measures of self-control. The high-delay group was composed of individuals who scored above the mean in their preschool delay time as well as in their subsequent self-control assessments in adulthood (whichever was available, or the average of the two when both were available), whereas the low-delay group was composed of individuals who scored consistently below the mean on these measures. Sixty participants met the criterion for the high-delay group, and 57 participants met the criterion for the low-delay group; all of these individual were sent invitation letters. The final sample (n = 59) consists of those who accepted our invitation to participate in the present follow-up. As expected, high- and low-delay groups differed significantly in delay score [t(57) = 16.1, P < 0.001] and reported self-control as adults [t(57) = 8.06, P < 0.001]; they did not differ in age [t(50) = 0.69, P > 0.49] (age information was not obtained from four high delayers and three low delayers, but all participants are known to have been born between 1964 and 1970) or sex distribution [χ2(1) = 0.07, P > 0.8; Table 1]. Behavioral tasks. Participants completed two versions of a go/nogo task (4, 46, 47). The “cool” version of the go/nogo task consisted of male and female stimuli with neutral expressions. Within a single run, both male and female stimuli were presented, one sex as a “go” (i.e., target) stimulus to which participants were instructed to press a button, and the other sex as a “nogo” (i.e., nontarget) stimulus to which participants were instructed to withhold a button press. Before the onset of each run, a screen appeared indicating which stimulus category served as the target. Participants were instructed to respond as quickly and accurately as possible. During the task, a face appeared for 500 ms, followed by a 1-s interstimulus interval. A total of 160 trials were presented per run in pseudorandomized order (120 go, 40 nogo). Thus, the task was a 2 (trial type: go, nogo) × 2 (stimulus sex: male, female) factorial design. Accuracy and response latency data were acquired in four runs representing each combination of stimulus sex (male, female) and trial type (go, nogo). The “hot” version of the go/nogo task was identical to the “cool” version, except that for this task fearful and happy facial expressions served as stimuli. Both expressions were used as targets (go) and nontargets (nogo) in a 2 (trial type: go, nogo) × 2 (emotion: fear, happy) factorial design. Stimuli and apparatus. Stimuli consisted of happy, fearful, and neutral faces of unique identities from the NimStim set of facial expressions (48). The tasks were presented using Inquisit software on laptop computers that were sent to participants’ homes. Data analysis. Behavioral data were analyzed for two accuracy measures on the go/nogo tasks: hit rate for “go” trials (correctly pressing) and correct suppression rate for “nogo” trials (correctly withholding press). Because delay score was nonnormally (bimodally) distributed (Table 1), delay score was treated as a categorical rather than a continuous variable. Analyses of response accuracy (correct “go,” correct “nogo”) were performed with 2 (task: “hot,” “cool”) × group (low delayer, high delayer) ANOVAs. Reaction times for correct “go” trials were trimmed for outlying responses within each participant (±3 SDs from the mean, resulting in a mean 1.23% data excluded). Mean reaction time data were analyzed at the group level with a 2 (task: “hot,” “cool”) × group (low delayer, high delayer) ANOVA. Behavioral effects relevant to “nogo” trials are presented graphically as false alarm rates, the mathematical inverse of correct suppression. For significant effects, effect sizes were calculated using the η2 partial metric for ANOVA and Cohen's d for t test results (correcting for shared variance in the case of paired t tests). Experiment 2. Participants. Of the 59 individuals who completed experiment 1, 27 agreed to complete the imaging study. One 41-y-old man, a low delayer on the original delay-of-gratification task, was excluded from all analyses because of poor performance (59% hit rate). The high- and low-delay groups differed significantly in delay score [t(24) = 9.1, P < 0.001] but did not differ in age [t(21) = 0.87, P > 0.390] (age information was not obtained from one high delayer and two low delayers, but all participants are known to have been born between 1964 and 1970), sex distribution [χ2(1) = 2.3, P > 0.1], or their scores on Raven's progressive matrices [t(22) = 1.26, P > 0.2]. Behavioral paradigm. The “hot” version of the go/nogo task was similar to the task described in experiment 1. Differences were in the timing, number of trials, and apparatus. The timing of the task included the presentation of the face stimulus for 500 ms, followed by a jittered intertrial interval ranging from 2 to 14.5 s in duration (mean, 5.2 s), during which participants rested while viewing a fixation crosshair. A total of 48 trials were presented per run in pseudorandomized order (35 “go,” 13 “nogo”). In total, imaging data were acquired for 26 nogo trials and 70 go trials for each expression. The stimuli and instructions were identical to those used in experiment 1. E-Prime software was used to display the task (viewable by a rear projection screen) and to record button responses and reaction times on a Neuroscan five-button response pad. Image acquisition. Participants were scanned with a General Electric Signa 3.0-T fMRI scanner (General Electric Medical Systems) with an eight-channel head coil. A high-resolution, T1-weighted anatomical spoiled gradient sequence (256 × 256 in-plane resolution, 240-mm field of view, 136 × 1.2-mm axial slices) was used to acquire an anatomical scan for each subject for transformation and localization of data to Talairach grid space. A spiral in-and-out T2*-weighted sequence (49) was used to acquire four runs of functional data (repetition time 2,500 ms, echo time 30 ms, flip angle 90°, skip 0, 64 × 64 matrix) with 34 4-mm slices per volume. Behavioral data analysis. Behavioral differences between the low- and high-delay groups were analyzed on two accuracy measures on the go/nogo tasks: hit rate for “go” trials (correctly pressing) and correct suppression rate for “nogo” trials (correctly withholding press). Group behavioral analysis was conducted as described in experiment 1. Mean reaction times for correct “go” trials were calculated and analyzed as described in experiment 1 (mean 1.24% responses trimmed). Imaging data processing. The fMRI data analysis was performed using Analysis of Functional Neuroimages software (50). Functional datasets were corrected for slice acquisition time and realigned within and across runs to correct for head motion. All subjects moved less than 2.5 mm in all planes, with the exception of one participant who had 3.8% of their functional data excluded for motion during scan runs. Functional datasets were coregistered to each participant's high-resolution anatomical scan, converted to percentage signal change, transformed into the standard coordinate space of Talairach and Tournoux (51), and smoothed with a 6-mm FWHM Gaussian kernel. Imaging data analysis. A voxelwise general linear model analysis was conducted for each participant by convolving task regressors of interest (happy-go, happy-nogo, fear-go, fear-nogo, and errors) with a γ-variate hemodynamic response function. Motion parameters, linear and quadratic trends were modeled as regressors of noninterest. To identify regions of interest of further analysis, parameter estimate (β) maps for the conditions happy-go, happy-nogo, fear-go, and fear-nogo were carried to a random-effects group analysis. As described earlier, one participant was excluded for excessively poor behavioral performance on the fMRI version of the task, leaving 26 participants for group analyses. A 2 × 2 × 2 group linear mixed-effects model was conducted with factors of trial type (within subjects: go, no-go), emotion (within subjects: happy, fearful), and group (between subjects: high-delayer, low-delayer). Candidate regions of interest were identified by the main effect of response map and by the trial type × emotion × group interaction map. Resulting clusters considered statistically significant exceeded whole-brain correction for multiple comparisons using a P value and cluster combination identified by Monte Carlo simulations to preserve a corrected α < 0.05 (53 voxels at P < 0.005 thresholding). On the basis of our prior work (13), the striatum was targeted as an a priori structure of interest for voxelwise analysis. Task effects in the striatum from the present experiment were queried within an anatomically masked area (1,060 voxels) including the dorsal and ventral striatum and achieved P < 0.05 corrected thresholding on the basis of this search volume (13 voxels at P < 0.005, uncorrected). Regions of interest were created as spheres around peak voxels with a radius of 4 mm, each containing 10 3 × 3 × 3 voxels. Parameter estimates were extracted for the four conditions for each participant and plotted for descriptive purposes.
Acknowledgments This work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grants R01 DA018879 (to B.J.C.), R01 HD069178 (to B.J.C. and W.M.), and by National Science Foundation Grant 06-509 (to Y.S.).
Footnotes Author contributions: B.J.C., O.A., J.J., M.G.B., N.L.W., G.G., V.Z., W.M., and Y.S. designed research; I.H.G., O.A., M.K.A., J.J., M.G.B., N.L.W., W.M., and Y.S. performed research; B.J.C., N.L.W., T.T., G.G., V.Z., W.M., and Y.S. contributed new reagents/experimental tools; B.J.C., L.H.S., N.T.F., N.L.W., T.T., W.M., and Y.S. analyzed data; and B.J.C., L.H.S., I.H.G., O.A., J.J., M.G.B., N.L.W., V.Z., W.M., and Y.S. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.– Stimulus funds aimed at jump starting the economy paid for about 4,000 trees in Denver, with many ending up at million dollar homes in Denver’s priciest neighborhoods where residents acknowledge they could have paid for their own trees, but the government was giving them out for free, so why bother?
“This fella said, ‘How would you like to have a tree in your yard?’ And I said, ‘Really?,’ “ said John Backlund, who lives in Denver’s Cherry Creek North neighborhood in a home worth more than $700,000.
Backlund said he could afford to buy his own trees but a government worker was going door-to-door trying to give away trees, so Backlund agreed to take a tree.
“Too good of a deal to say no to. I was happy to get the free tree,” he said.
A CBS4 investigation found that the tree program had no income guidelines, so trees ended up being planted at homes in Denver’s Country Club neighborhood, Hilltop, Belcaro and Washington Park neighborhoods — all considered upscale areas of the city.
“It’s open to anybody,” said city forester Rob Davis. “It’s basically if you live in Denver, you want to reduce your energy costs, you want to have a tree that can raise your property value, go to the web page to sign up.”
Davis said the program spent about $600,000 in funds from the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as stimulus funds, to buy and plant the trees. Davis says the theory was that using government funds to plant the trees helped stimulate the economy by creating jobs planting trees.
The trees cost about $150 apiece. Davis says the long term benefit is in energy savings for the homeowner as fully grown trees will provide shade and reduce energy costs.
“Everyone having lower monthly bills in the summer, I think they appreciate that in the long run,” said Davis.
But Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, challenges the idea of stimulus dollars subsidizing trees for people with high net worth.
“It’s good to know that the rich people in Denver can finally get some of their stimulus money back by getting a free tree,” joked Caldara. “What this shows is how much waste there is in government. Let me make it clear, people invest in trees themselves. There is not a need for government to do that for them. What government needs to do is take care of the core functions of government and let people buy their own damn trees.”
While some of the trees ended up at high-end homes, many were planted at homes in middle and lower income neighborhoods scattered around Denver. Davis maintains that the urban tree canopy benefits everyone in the city and creates nicer neighborhoods.
The program has now closed and no more new trees will be planted using stimulus funds.
Jeff Green, a spokesman for Denver’s Parks and Recreation department, says the city initially wanted the trees only going to homes in middle and lower income communities
“The program was turned down by the government as their interest was in funding programs that created jobs and helped citizens reduce overall energy costs,” said Green.
Green said the city recognizes that many trees ended up with homeowners who could afford them and did not need a government handout, and more work needs to be done to remedy that imbalance.
“While we plant a number of trees in the middle or lower income neighborhoods over the past few years, we want to have a better understanding of why residents in these areas don’t take advantage of the free tree programs. Our forestry group will be studying this and making changes to the program so that we can focus on those areas that need trees the most,” Green said.
Reporter’s note: the government planted one of the trees at this reporter’s home. When the reporter learned federal stimulus dollars paid for the tree, he reimbursed the city $150 for his tree.
– Written by Brian Maass for CBSDenver.comIt seems like an annual rite: to usher in the new year, cable providers and networks squabble over programming fees. This time around, the tussles involved Time Warner Cable and Fox, and Cablevision and Scripps, which owns the Food Network and HGTV. These fights, unlike most corporate standoffs, are waged in public, with both sides running TV spots and newspaper ads pleading their cause. This might seem like an obvious strategy, but it’s also a dangerous one. These ads may remind some viewers of how much they love Bobby Flay. But they also remind those who’ve never glanced at “Iron Chef” how much of their cable bill goes to channels that they don’t watch.
That’s a problem, because while cable TV has always relied on “bundling”—you have to buy a package of channels rather than picking only those you want—in recent years the practice has come under fire, in no small part because the price of those bundles keeps rising. The bundles do, of course, include many more channels than they did a decade ago. But, as Kevin Martin, the former head of the F.C.C., was fond of pointing out, if you’re watching only sixteen channels why should you pay for eighty-five? So consumer advocates have been pushing for a system of so-called “à la carte” programming, expecting that this would drive down prices for consumers.
In fact, it probably wouldn’t. The simple argument for unbundling is: “If I pay sixty dollars for a hundred channels, I’d pay a fraction of that for sixteen channels.” But that’s not how à-la-carte pricing would work. Instead, the prices for individual channels would soar, and the providers, who wouldn’t be facing any more competition than before, would tweak prices, perhaps on a customer-by-customer basis, to maintain their revenue. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Bravo would suddenly cost fifteen dollars a month, but there’s little evidence to suggest that à-la-carte packages would be generally cheaper than the current bundles. One recent paper on the subject, in fact, estimated the best-case gain to consumers at thirty-five cents a month. But even if it wasn’t a boon to consumers an à-la-carte system would inject huge uncertainty into the cable business, and many cable networks wouldn’t get enough subscribers to survive. That’s a future that the industry would like to avoid.
So far, the task hasn’t been too difficult, in part because consumers haven’t shown much unbundling fervor. If there were sizable demand for à la carte, you’d expect at least one of cable’s competitors, like DirecTV, Dish Network, or Verizon’s FiOS, to offer it, but none do. You’d also think that, as bundles have grown more expensive, and as building your own TV experience has become easier—by watching online, downloading from iTunes, and getting high-definition network broadcasts via antenna—cable and satellite would have got less popular. But subscriptions continue to grow.
Some of this, presumably, is just inertia. But it’s also true that consumers often find bundles appealing. Many popular consumer products, like the iPhone, are bundles, as are newspapers and magazines: you buy the whole thing, not only the articles you want to read. TV networks themselves are bundles: if you subscribe to HBO (a channel that cable systems do offer à la carte), you pay for all its shows. Consumers also seem to like another form of bundling; namely, flat-rate pricing. At Disneyland, people used to pay an admission fee and then buy tickets for individual rides. But in 1982 Disney introduced all-in-one pricing, and attendance rose. Likewise, people buy gym memberships instead of paying by the visit, prefer all-in-one calling plans, and vehemently oppose the idea of metered Internet access.
The appeal of bundling is partly that it reduces transaction costs: instead of having to figure out how much each part of a package is worth to you, you can make a blanket judgment. Bundling eliminates the problem of fretting about small expenditures, which may be one reason that flat-rate pricing is very common in the vacation industry (cruise ships, all-inclusive travel packages, and so on). It also offers what economists call option value: you may never watch those sixty other channels, but the fact that you could if you wanted to is worth something. Many consumers also perceive bundles as bargains; getting a bunch of things for one price feels like a deal, even when it’s not.
This ought to mean that cable providers and TV networks have little to worry about. But their reasonably stable world could easily be upended. Successful bundling depends on the idea that what you’re paying for is “cable television,” rather than merely a collection of channels. Public fights over programming costs disrupt that idea. When HGTV says it wants more money for its programming, it makes people who don’t watch HGTV wonder why they should pay anything for it at all. And, as these fights raise the cost of programming, the bundle looks less like a bargain, and the appeal of à la carte grows.
Both the providers and the networks, then, would benefit from dialling down the volume and the price increases. But, while it’s in the long-term interest of the industry to keep consumers happy with bundling, it’s in the short-term interest of the individual players to maximize profits, even if that means alienating viewers and making alternatives to bundling look better. In the past decade, media businesses, from music to newspapers, have suffered from the impact of unbundling. Civil wars in the cable business make it likely that it’ll be next. ♦The International Surfing Association welcomed more than 30 nations to the Billabong ISA World Surfing Games Presented by Amarok by Volkswagen today in Lima, Peru. The official program started with a press conference hosted by a panel of participants and organizers at the magnificent Municipalidad de Lima in the heart of the city today.
Peru’s Sofía Mulanovich, 2004 ISA gold medalist and ASP World Champion, ranked 3rd in the world, Gabriel Villarán, a bronze medalist of last year’s edition of the event, and Antoine Delpero, defending World Champion were the surfing stars leading the press conference. They all spoke of Peru’s rich surf heritage, and the excitement they felt competing in such a prestigious event. Attending along side them was the President of the ISA, and the President of the Peruvian Surfing Federation.
“I thank the Peruvian people, for welcoming us with open arms. This is a special moment not only for the ISA but for Peru,” said Fernando Aguerre, the ISA President, "It has been 45 years since our last Open event here.” Aguerre was referring to the 1965 World Championships in Peru where local hero Felipe Pomar won the World Title.
The rich culture of Peruvian surfing was one of the prime reasons for Billabong’s enthusiastic support of the contest: “Due to the surfing history and tradition of Peru,” said Graham Stapelberg, VP of Marketing at Billabong USA. “It was important for Billabong be a part of this global surf gathering. We support the ISA because it develops surf around the world.”
"It’s an honor to have an event of this magnitude in Peru and more even at Punta Hermosa, my home break”, commented Sofía Mulanovich, the 2004 ISA and ASP World Champion. “I hope we can have a good time and hope Peru can win the title.”
”It is a real pleasure to be able to host this championship, since they are considered the “Olympics of the Surfing,” said Guillermo Fernandez, Mayor of Punta Hermosa. “Punta Hermosa has 4 kilometers of coast where we have 10 top quality waves.”
“I want to publicly thank Billabong and the ISA, since without them it had been really impossible to even dream of this event.” Artur Woodman, president of the IPD (Peruvian Sports Institute) said, “This is a World championship with more than 200 competitors, so we will reward the any Peruvian surfers that are winners of medals.”
The competitors are as excited as anyone for the chance to show their national pride: “At the World Surfing Games you compete for your flag, for your country, and that outweighs all,” said Gabriel Villarán who won a bronze medal at Costa Rica 2009. “Winning a medal at last year World Surfing Games has been the most beautiful achievement on my career.”
“This is the best opportunity to see the best competitors from each country surfing for their flag, purely for the honor of their nation,” Concluded Fernando Aguerre as the conference closed. “There’s one thing that we can’t do, controlling the waves. And the wave forecast shows excellent waves for the whole week. That’s part of the aura of the ISA events wherever they are held”.
The Opening Ceremonies and Parade of Nations will take place at Lima’s main square (the Plaza De Armas) at 9:30AM, Peruvian time on Tuesday. The opening event will be attended by 31 nations and Peru’s President Alan Garcia will be in attendance.Philadelphia Eagles training camp 2017 is almost here. The first practice starts on July 24. The Eagles' entire training camp schedule, including information on practices open to the public, can be found by clicking here. As we count down the days together, Bleeding Green Nation will be previewing every position on the Eagles roster. We continue today by taking a look at the linebacker corps.
The players
Jordan Hicks, Nigel Bradham, Mychal Kendricks, Najee Goode, Joe Walker, Kamu Grugier-Hill, Don Cherry, Nathan Gerry
Hicks is one of the most underrated players in the NFL. Eagles fans (and Cowboys fans) know just how good he is, but Hicks hasn’t fully received the respect he deserves from a national audience. That changes this year. This is the year where people realize that Hicks is one of the best players at his position in the league. Hicks should have an easy time finding the spotlight because he’s shown a penchant for making big plays at a Hall of Fame pace. He’s excellent in coverage which makes life harder on quarterbacks who love to throw over the middle of the field.
After an impressive 2016 campaign, will Jordan Hicks be an elite linebacker in 2017? pic.twitter.com/ii3RMCPicV — Pro Football Focus (@PFF) June 16, 2017
I was a little concerned about how Hicks would fit into the Eagles’ new defensive scheme under Jim Schwartz last year. That change didn’t turn out to be a problem, however. The only concern with Hicks moving forward is his health. He played all 16 games last season, which is good. Thankfully the hand injury he suffered on his honeymoon wasn’t too serious.
Bradham was quietly a really good addition for the Eagles last year. The 27-year-old linebacker finished the 2016 season with 67 tackles, five passes defensed, two forced fumbles, two sacks, and one interception. PFF graded him out as their ninth best linebacker (Hicks was fifth).
The Eagles defense was noticeably worse when Bradham missed some snaps in the Detroit game last year. Philadelphia will hope Bradham doesn’t get hit with a suspension after some off-field issues last year.
Kendricks is the “third linebacker” on this team but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. He only played 26.8% of the Eagles’ defensive snaps in 2016. It seems unlikely that Kendricks’ playing time will suddenly increase, although the Eagles might want to hold on to him if they feel like Bradham might miss a few games.
Goode is a goode veteran backup who can play all three linebacker spots and also contribute on special teams. He finished second on the team in ST tackles in 2016 with nine.
Walker is kind of an intriguing guy as far as depth players go. The 2016 seventh-round pick showed some promise last preseason before going down with an ACL injury. It’ll be interesting to see if he can bounce back and stand out this summer. Walker could be a nice backup MLB to have behind the injury-prone Hicks.
After being drafted by the Patriots in the sixth round of the 2016 NFL Draft, Grugier-Hill was cut by New England last summer. The Eagles picked him up on waivers and kept him on the roster as a special teams contributor. KGH finished third on the team in ST tackles last year with six. He could stick around yet again.
Cherry spent the entire 2016 season on the practice squad. The Villanova alumnus could end up there again in 2017.
Gerry’s situation is interesting since he’s converting from safety to linebacker. He definitely showed some potential in coverage during spring practices this offseason. Now he needs to prove he can handle the physicality of the game.
How will it play out?
The Eagles rostered six linebackers last year. Hicks and Bradham are locks as the main starters. Kendricks might stick around if he’s not traded. Goode, Walker, and Grugier-Hill could all make the team due to their special team contributions. Plus the Eagles need depth anyway. Philadelphia could try to stash Gerry on injured reserve if he gets hurt this summer. The 2017 fifth-round pick is on the roster bubble.
Who could be a surprise cut?
Kendricks likely won’t be cut but there’s still the possibility he gets traded.
The Eagles could cut Goode if he doesn’t have a great summer and the young guys step up. I think he stays, though.
Gerry isn’t necessarily a lock to make the final roster despite being selected in the fifth round.Last fall when I visited Canada, I met a Toronto doctor named Gary Bloch who has developed a poverty tool for medical practitioners. The tool assesses what patients might need other than prescriptions for the newest drugs. Bloch's idea was to zoom in on the social determinants of health -- food, housing, transportation -- all poverty markers linked to bad health and poor health outcomes.
The tool, a four-page brochure, notes that poverty accounts for 24 per cent of a person's years of life lost in Canada and offers three steps for doctors to address poverty. The first step is to screen every patient by asking them, "Do you ever have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month?" The next two steps urge clinicians to factor poverty into clinical decisions like other risk factors and to ask questions about income support by age/family status, such as whether seniors have applied for supplemental income benefits they may be entitled to.
"We've created an advocacy or interventional initiative aimed at changing the conversation about poverty and how doctors think about poverty as a health issue," Bloch explained. "It's one of those cultural shift things."
The first blog post I wrote about Bloch and his "diagnosing poverty" tool received more than 3,000 hits on the Prepared Patient blog. Clearly, his message resonated in the U.S. and Canada. I wanted to circle back to Bloch and see whether a cultural shift in Canada was really taking place. Indeed it is. I was wowed by the acceptance of an intervention that seems so simple and could maybe lead to better health. "It's been a wildfire effect," Bloch told me.
Bloch ticked off a laundry list of provinces and organizations that were using or about to use the tool. He described a "pretty amazing" and broad coalition that came together to promote the tool, including public health leaders, pediatric and family doctors, community health centers and regional health authorities. A doctor in British Columbia has developed a version for his region. Manitoba is about to roll out its own adaptation. A public health officer in Nova Scotia is pushing for the tool in that province. The tool is getting attention is Saskatchewan, too.
Physician groups have signed on, like the College of Family Physicians Canada and the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has developed a continuing education module based on these poverty interventions. On his website, CMA president Dr. Chris Simpson says, "Dr. Gary Bloch is one of those guys who walks the talk and speaks about 'prescribing money' as a way to help patients who are economically disadvantaged."
Simpson told me that Bloch's approach is the first clinically relevant tool to address social determinants of health. To support Bloch's work, the CMA's conversations and advocacy about the tool are heightening awareness among Canadian physicians that they need to address these risk factors. Simpson added that Bloch and his team also conduct trainings to help doctors learn how to use the tool.
In a phone interview last week, Bloch observed that adding the steps in the tool to clinical practice is just a beginning. "It was never an end unto itself. It was a stepping stone to other interventions." Bloch described what his family health group in central Toronto is doing. They hired an income security health promoter who meets with patients about their financial situations and works with them on becoming more financially literate. She works with the rest of medical team to acquaint doctors with patients' needs. For example, a person with diabetes without adequate housing will have trouble storing healthy food and insulin supplies.
Bloch and his team are beginning to study the tool's impact with a randomized trial and collecting data on the social determinants of health for people in central Toronto. "This will allow doctors, health planners and epidemiologists to draw out data and learn about who they are serving," he said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Academic Pediatric Association are considering adopting some aspects of Bloch's tool and are studying the development of a poverty curriculum for physicians. There are also a few programs like "Health Begins," which is a group of doctors working on treating social and economic causes of poor health. But the U.S. has a long way to go to match the progress of Canada.
Differences in our two health insurance and payment systems may account for lack of interest or movement in the U.S. "We feel rooted in the communities we serve," says Bloch. "We're not worried about insurance for the patients we provide care to."
In the U.S., even with the Affordable Care Act offering access to care to more people, doctors should pause to consider how high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs affect low income patients. "Will patients be able to afford the care they need?" is still very much an open question.
In the U.S., we don't like to talk about any aspect of the Canadian health system unless it's waiting lists. It would be great if next year I could report there was real progress in the U.S. towards embracing the poverty tool that Gary Bloch has moved his profession to adopt across Canada.
This first appeared in the Prepared Patient Blog.
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:I’ve often sung the praises of blockchain technology, which I truly believe has the potential to create great efficiencies across many industries.
Probably the most visible application of blockchains right now isthe virtual currency Bitcoin – which has often hit the news for rapid gains in value – but in fact there are over 2,000 other tokens and currencies based on distributed, cryptographical technology.
Collectively they are known as cryptocoins or cryptocurrency, and each one claims to fill a role or solve a problem in some way, better than other solutions which have come before it. The unifying factor among them all is the concept of blockchain, and its ability to establish identity and ownership, |
To have a family — to have a black family in America today — I’m ready to die every day,” Ferreira says. “My son, my wife … man, if something happened to them … I’m not from a school of thought that’s: survival. There’s a lot of things I’d never live through.” After a beat of consideration: “I’m going to war, dog.”
But for the moment, things are still. There are no more panic attacks. Rory Ferreira and his family live on an island with a year-round population of about 800 people. “No bridge, bro,” he says, cackling. “You’ve gotta take a boat out to me.” His mother and sister each live on the island, too, and will come by the house to play with Rory’s 1-year-old son. “We’re about five or six miles across the harbor from America,” he says. “And we just look at the continent.”Dozens of other passengers made similar remarks as they walked by my seat, and many more probably inquired with a flight attendant or aired their complaints on Facebook or Twitter. I had a similar experience while flying the same route last week. I was seated next to a corporate executive who normally travels on United's better-equipped international fleet -- he was clearly unhappy about the entertainment situation, and, like the mother I heard earlier in the year, assumed that our brand-spankin'-new 737 predated the 21st century. It's reasonable to assume a new plane would be delivered with the latest technology, but unfortunately that isn't the case.
That new plane smell
The Newark-to-San Diego flight, scheduled for more than six hours from gate to gate, is a prime candidate for airline-provided entertainment. If you don't come prepared, those raggedy catalogs and magazines in the seat-back pocket can occupy an hour or two at best. Unfortunately, airlines don't make it easy to figure out whether you'll have on-demand content, live video or absolutely nothing at all on board. Our flight was equipped with Exede, the fastest WiFi in the sky, provided by the speedy ViaSat-1 satellite and installed by LiveTV, the same company responsible for outfitting United's 737 fleet with seat-back DirecTV. But leisure travelers seem to be most interested in video, as low quality as it may be.
Instead of the DirecTV logo that occasionally appears in the entertainment section of United's flight status page, the flight only listed onboard WiFi, along with a promise from the airline: "Personal device entertainment is coming soon," which will enable you to view content streaming from the plane using your own laptop, smartphone or tablet. Boeing delivers all of United's 737s without entertainment or WiFi -- instead, a third party handles the installation. But since airlines want to get their new planes into service immediately, they usually schedule installations, which take an aircraft out of commission for several days, for a few weeks or months down the line. That means hundreds of bored passengers every day, and a negative perception of the plane and the airline.
Streaming video, like the version United's planning to launch, is very attractive to airlines. Seat-back displays cost carriers thousands of dollars a pop, and outfitting an entire aircraft is very expensive, even before you factor in maintenance and costs to upgrade once a better solution becomes available. Displays at each seat also add significant weight, which causes each plane to burn pricey fuel more quickly. So, instead of installing TVs, many carriers are opting to let passengers use the tablets and laptops they already have to access content on a server in the aircraft's belly.
Bring your own Device
It's a means to the same end. You get to be entertained, and the airline can collect that coveted ancillary revenue. Even though it's rarely in HD, the content you watch on your tablet or laptop will often look much better than what you'd get with an aging seat-back screen, and passengers on red-eye flights won't have to deal with the light from unused displays filling the cabin and keeping them awake. You will be on the hook for power (many planes now have outlets installed at every seat), and your device will likely get in the way during the meal service, if there is one, but the trade-offs are worthwhile, for airlines and passengers alike.
Gogo, the most prolific in-flight internet provider, also leads the market when it comes to streaming-entertainment service. More than 1,500 American, Delta, US Airways and Scoot (an Asian low-cost carrier) planes have Gogo Vision installed, and Aeromexico, Alaska and JAL are scheduled to carry it, too. Most of the planes with Gogo's WiFi have Vision available as well -- the company can use the existing WiFi infrastructure, adding only a content loader in the cabin for maintenance to refresh movies and television shows using a USB flash drive. Alaska Airlines is planning to install a unique version of the system that excludes internet access, so passengers can still stream content on routes without coverage.
A USB flash duplicator copies streaming content onto loader drives at Gogo's Chicago headquarters.
Global Eagle, the company behind the Row 44 satellite internet installed on Southwest's fleet, takes streaming content one step further with live TV. If your plane is connected to the web, you'll also have access to streaming television content. Dish provides that service on Southwest's 737s, where you can choose from 19 live channels and up to 75 recorded TV episodes on each flight. You can also purchase movies for $5 each, with more than 25 titles available on each plane. Like Gogo, Global Eagle can stream content to customers on planes that aren't connected to the web. That product, called WISE, is already installed on some of Philippine Airlines' planes, and it's scheduled to launch with a second Asian carrier soon.
LiveTV is another major in-flight WiFi player in the US. That company was formerly a JetBlue subsidiary, but was recently acquired by Thales Group, a French aerospace conglomerate. Unfortunately, LiveTV executives, who now report to Thales, were unable to detail their future offerings, but we do know the company has been hard at work installing speedy Ka-band satellite WiFi on JetBlue's A320s and United's 737s.
The airlines play a big part in how you use this technology, too. While Global Eagle, Gogo and LiveTV install the systems used to provide content, each carrier sets pricing. Most movies and TV shows available through Delta Studio, a Gogo service, are free for international, First Class and Economy Comfort passengers, for example, though other airlines can charge anywhere from $1 to $7 per program, depending on pricing models and studio arrangements. If you're able to stream content from a third-party site, such as Hulu, you'll likely pay an upcharge for faster in-flight service, so even if you don't purchase programming from the airline, it'll still collect a fee.
Streaming from the web
JetBlue's trying something different with its Fly-Fi in-flight internet. Instead of blocking access to bandwidth-heavy streaming sites, the airline's allowing you to view content (even in HD) from a variety of websites, assuming you're willing to pay a relatively high fee. ViaSat provides the satellite service, which is capable of supporting many passengers streaming video simultaneously. Even if you watch several movies over the course of a flight, however, it probably isn't worthwhile to pay the $9-per-hour fee (that adds up to $45 for a single five-hour flight) -- you'll end up spending less if you download rentals while you're still on the ground.
As for Gogo, Chief Commercial Officer Ash ElDifrawi expects future generations of its service to enable streaming content from outside the plane, be that live television or media already available over the internet, through sites like Hulu and Netflix. Gogo's current air-to-ground service isn't fast enough for HD streaming, but the company's next-generation GTO (ground-to-air) product should support it. That satellite system could also enable the company to offer live TV, like the Global Eagle service you'll find on Southwest's planes, but Gogo's next-generation infrastructure is still a few years out.
"At some point, we see an opportunity for products like IPTV, music and other media content," ElDifrawi said. "We also see an opportunity for streaming through connectivity as more bandwidth becomes available."
Of course, a TV-less future impacts the flight crew, especially just before takeoff -- without seat-back or overhead displays, crews will need to do a live safety demo before each flight. That means reading a script over the PA as flight attendants throughout the cabin show you how to fasten your seatbelt, use an oxygen mask and put on a life vest. It's a time-consuming task and removes flight attendants from other duties, such as checking the cabin thoroughly before takeoff.
While inconvenient for the crew, the pros still outweigh the cons for airlines that barely break even on any given flight. Revenue from streaming services could impact a route's profitability, while a screen-free cabin helps the carrier trim some fat, resulting in a lighter aircraft that burns less fuel. As with in-flight WiFi, it may take a while for streaming services to become a compelling option for all passengers, but the next time you board a plane that doesn't have TVs, know that the future looks very bright.
[Photo credit: Boeing (empty cabin and flight attendant)]Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow on Feb. 23. (Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press)
“The Russian regime has made a very concerted effort at cultivating the global political right.”
This is one of the signs that undergird the thesis of James Kirchick’s new book, “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age.” And in the latest episode of “Cape Up,” the veteran foreign policy reporter argues that the rise of that global right (hello, Brexit? The French elections?) can be laid at Russia’s doorstep.
LISTEN HERE
For more conversations like this, subscribe to “Cape UP” on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
“What they’re doing is … they’re basically setting themselves up as the last defenders of sovereignty,” Kirchick said, “national sovereignty and traditional values in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized for super-national institutions.” Kind of ironic for a nation that annexed Crimea and threatens the sovereignty of neighbors such as Ukraine and the Baltic states.
As I learned from President Kersti Kaljulaid of Estonia, having a strong faith in NATO is a job requirement for the leader of a Baltic nation. But Kirchick worries whether the North Atlantic alliance can survive a Russia that is destabilizing Europe “on every front” and a U.S. president that is to the liking of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. “We’ve never had an American president who, at least by his rhetoric, is anti-European,” Kirchick told me. “We have a president who seems, at best, apathetic, if not actively hostile, to the two most critical institutions that have kept Europe together and free since 1945, which is NATO and the E.U.”
James Kirchick, author of “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age,” talks with The Post’s Jonathan Capehart on the “Cape Up” podcast on April 17. (Carol Alderman/The Washington Post)
And that got us to a bigger discussion about Trump’s foreign policy. “It’s still a little unnerving that so much of our foreign policy is gonna be dependent on the whims of a man who has no core whatsoever,” Kirchick said bluntly.
Another harbinger of the coming dark age of Europe is the rise of anti-Semitism, which he calls “Europe’s deadliest tradition.” He notes that in Hungary, the “right-wing nationalist government is basically rewriting the history of the Holocaust and trying to write out Hungary’s complicity.” Is Kirchick concerned that the problems with anti-Semitism out the Trump White House mean anything more sinister? “I don’t think he has the intellectual patience or interest to be a fascist,” Kirchick told me. “It’s not that he’s an anti-Semite. He doesn’t care enough about other people to be an anti-Semite.”
[Listen: “No, I’m not afraid….I trust NATO.”]
So, can Europe and democracy in particular survive the aggressiveness of Putin and the Trump presidency? Kirchick seems to think so.
“I’m much less concerned about democracy dying in darkness in the United States,” he said. “If we’re gonna find sort of a rebirth of the European spirit, it’ll be in places like Ukraine or Estonia, in Central and Eastern Europe, where they cherish these things much more deeply than I think we do here.”
“Cape Up” is Jonathan’s weekly podcast talking to key figures behind the news and our culture. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever else you listen to podcasts.
With just four weeks to go before voting gets underway in France, Ivor Bennett reports on the political divisions in Europe and how they threaten to shake up the E.U. (Reuters)When the nation began mourning King Bhumibol after his death late last year, several dozen robed women entered the long queue to pay their respects at the Dusit Maha Prasat Throne Hall where his body lay in state.
They were led by Dhammananda, who was granted permission by officials on the afternoon of Dec. 9 for 70 monks and novices from several provinces to enter the Grand Palace. After waiting two hours inside the gate, they were turned away. The reason? Officials said women wearing the saffron robe was illegal under Thai Buddhism.
They weren’t the first. In November, 22 bhikkhunis (female monks) and samaneris (female novices), left in disappointment after being told the only way they would be allowed in to offer their respects to their revered king was to remove their robes and wear regular black clothing as laypeople.
A few thousand kilometers away across the South China Sea, the fight for religious and secular equality for female monks in Taiwan has long been led by Shih Chao-hwei, a progressive who has campaigned for the rights of all living things, from female monks to marriage equality.
“I love the Buddha’s dharma, but not exactly the Buddhist system, which is very complicated,” the 60-year-old Taiwanese bhikkhuni said late last month through a translator as she visited Thailand, where such rights for women are scarce.
After planting the seeds of social and religious revolution for almost two decades, Chao-hwei shared her experiences and motivations to inspire others at a three-day meeting at an ashram north of Bangkok as a patron of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, which was founded by renowned Thai Buddhist reformer and scholar Sulak Sivaraksa.
“The most essential dharma for me is ‘dependent arising’ which explains all existence and cessation. That’s why a middle path should be taken to balance the two extremes,” she said at the Wongsanit Ashram in Nakhon Nayok province.
Thai Struggle
In Thailand, where over 90 percent of the population is Theravada Buddhist, religion and politics mix freely, as the government has a role in overseeing the religion the king is its appointed defender.
The law barring bhikkhunis from being fully ordained is the 1928 Sangha Act, which predated Thailand’s move to democracy in 1932. Under the law, the closest women could get was to become Mae Chi, the white-robed nuns who hold to the 10 basic precepts.
But that hasn’t stopped some from pursuing their spiritual calling.
“You have excellent bhikkhunis such as Dhammananda, who’s done so many good works in society that people have trust and faith in her actions,” Chao-Hwei said.
In 2003, Dhammananda Bhikkhuni became the first Thai woman of the modern era to be fully ordained. She’s currently abbess of the Songdhammakalyani Monastery in Nakhon Pathom.
It’s estimated that there are 100 fully ordained bhikkhunis across the country. Still, the government and some people marginalize them as illegal impersonators.
“We’re as close as Buddha’s teaching,” Dhammananda said in February at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand. “The status of Bhikkhuni in Thailand is improving and our existence is already a step ahead. We also reach out to people and educate them.”
In February, a group of bhikkhunis and Paiboon Nititawan, a former chairman of the committee for the National Reform Council’s protection of Buddhism, petitioned the National Human Rights Commission to submit a 2015 report on human rights violations against bhikkhunis to the prime minister. Calls have been made to update the Sangha Act so women can be fully ordained.
The Saffron Ceiling
For Chao-hwei, Buddhist institutions remain problematic for their patriarchy and gender discrimination, something she’s spent 16 years fighting.
Underpinning the problem are the so-called Eight Heavy Rules, or The Eight Garudhammas. These are additional – and disputed – precepts for female monks which religious authorities say were established by the Buddha when he allowed his aunt to become the first bhikkhuni.
The controversial rules subordinate female monks to male monks (bhikkhus) by only allowing them to be fully ordained under bhikkhus. The rules also bar them from criticizing male monks, no matter how much seniority a bhikkhuni may have.
“Bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, laymen and laywomen, who are the four members of the Buddhist community, should be equal to one another,” said Chao-hwei, who first called for the rules to be abolished in 2001.
That was also the year she urged the Dalai Lama at a conference in Taipei to allow the revival of bhikkhunis in Tibet, where women are prohibited from being fully ordained.
She acknowledges that there are laypeople and monks who disagree with her, and whether the Buddha really established the rules – their only source of legitimacy – remains an unsettled historical argument.
“It doesn’t mean that bhikkhunis are less respectful of bhikkhus,” Chao-hwei said, as a fluffy feline inserted itself into the conversation for stomach-scratching and as a reminder that her fight for equality extends beyond the realm of religion.
She’s successfully campaigned for laws against animal abuse, horse racing, gambling, nuclear power, gender inequality and other issues.
She went outside the law in 2012 to be the first to preside over a same-sex Buddhist wedding in Taiwan, where it is illegal. The provocative event sparked optimism there that Taiwan may be the first Asian country to make marriage equality the law.
Bhikkhunis in Thailand & Taiwan
Buddhism has flourished in Taiwan in recent decades, with numbers of practicing Buddhists increasing fourfold. Chao-hwei estimated the numbers of bhikkhuni has also increased to outnumber male monks three times over.
Chao-Hwei recounted the big change in Taiwanese bhikkhuni circle stemmed in 1966 when Cheng Yen Bhikkhuni found Tzu Chi Foundation as a compassion relief that uses Buddhist Precepts to help people throughout almost 50 countries.
Education, society’s acceptance and economic independence of bhikkhunis also help in the growing number of female monks.
Also, the success comes from the fact that Taiwan adopted Mahayana rather than Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka and China, where women have been fully ordained for the past 2,000 years, combined with its implementation of Humanistic Buddhism that better fits the modern world.
Born in Yangon in Myanmar in 1957, Ven Chao-Hwei chose to ordain when she was 21 before graduating from National Taiwan Normal University a year later. For her, Buddhism was more reasonable and a way she could be free from traditional gender roles and have her own agency.
Now, she’s chairwoman of the Department of Religious Studies and dean of the College of Social Science at Hsuan Chuang University, a private Buddhist university and never ceased to voice her opinion on social issues through Buddhist point of view with more than 20 books and 70 research papers published.
“With the freedom to be bhikkhuni, I look at things and phenomena more openly,” she said. “Some people might be afraid to take action, but I don’t doubt that I’m doing the right thing by following Buddha’s will.”
She said the many schools and traditions in Taiwanese Buddhism are open-minded and resolve disputes by an elected Chinese Buddhist Association in processes women are allowed to participate.
There, the government does not interfere in spiritual matters.
“To identify whether it’s legal can’t be decided only by government legislation,” she said.Dutch inventors have unveiled what they called the world’s first giant outside air vacuum cleaner – a large purifying system intended to filter out toxic tiny particles from the atmosphere surrounding the machine.
“It’s a large industrial filter about eight metres long, made of steel... placed basically on top of buildings and it works like a big vacuum cleaner,” said Henk Boersen, a spokesman for the Envinity Group which unveiled the system in Amsterdam.
Air pollution more deadly in Africa than malnutrition or dirty water, study warns Read more
The system is said to be able to suck in air from a 300-metre radius – and from up to seven kilometres (more than four miles) upwards. It could treat some 800,000 cubic metres of air an hour, filtering out 100% of fine particles and 95% percent of ultra-fine particles, the company said, referring to tests carried out by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) on its prototype.
“A large column of air will pass through the filter and come out clear,” Boersen told AFP on Tuesday, speaking on the sidelines of a major two-day offshore energy conference in Amsterdam.
Fine particles are caused by emissions from burning wood and other fuels as well as industrial combustion, and have “adverse effects on health”, according to the European Environment Agency.
About 90% of EU residents are exposed to levels of such particles – which can be carcinogenic – above those recommended by the World Health Organisation.
As for ultra-fine particles, they are released by emissions from vehicles as well as aeroplanes, according to Envinity, and can “damage the nervous system, including brain cells, and also cause infections”.
China tops WHO list for deadly outdoor air pollution Read more
Governments, businesses and airports were already interested in the project, Boersen said.
Another air-purifying system called the Smog Free Tower was installed in Beijing in September and launched by the Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde.
Using patented ozone-free ion technology, it is said to clean up to 30,000 cubic metres of air an hour as it blows past the tower, collecting more than 75% of the harmful particles, according to Studio Roosegaarde.By Mark Dunlea
Green Education and Legal Fund
While COP21 is a flawed agreement, the refusal of the Trump administration to abide by even these limited goals locks us into catastrophic climate change. Congress should – but won’t – rise up and take legislative and oversight action to save the planet.
It is up to average Americans to force elected officials to take effective and timely action on climate disruption.
The path to a safer planet that creates jobs, improves health and strengthens local communities has long existed. The oil and gas barons use their enormous wealth to subvert the popular need and will – to buy politicians and protect their profits.
Yet we already have far more jobs in renewables than in fossil and nuclear fuels, and renewables are the cheaper alternative.
We need to charge corporate polluters for the damage they caused by enacting a greenhouse gas tax, starting at the state level as a model that hopefully leads to national action. We must immediately halt the use of fossil fuels, which means stopping to build out – and invest in – its infrastructure. We need to eliminate fossil-fueled vehicles within a decade, and rapidly transition to buildings with net-zero carbon emissions, including mandatory energy retrofits. We need to adopt regenerative agriculture to build soil and capture carbon. We need solar and wind everywhere. Energy efficiency remains the best investment.
We need a WWII-level mobilization of resources to move the economy to 100% clean energy as soon as possible – within a decade or two. We have seen such rapid transitions before, such as with the automobile replacing horses within a decade.
The longer we delay action, the more catastrophic climate change will be. Water and temperature levels will soar in the next decades. The sixth mass extinction of species will accelerate, which holds great potential harm for humans.
The issue is how many people will needlessly be forced to deal with – to die from – the ravages of extreme weather, droughts, famine, forced migrations, spread of diseases, and wars over access to land and water. And in Trump’s world, it will be the poor and vulnerable communities that most bear the pain, starting with the developing nations that will cross the threshold to catastrophe within the next 5 years.
We need to demand a Just Transition that supports impacted workers and communities, and energy democracy to ensure democratic control of our energy system and future.
We need to demand faster and more comprehensive action from state and local officials such as Governor Cuomo, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptrollers DiNapoli and Stringer, state legislators and municipal officials.Despite remaining neutral on his personal religious beliefs, Freud’s commitment to empiricism and his determination in relegating psychoanalysis to a scientifically valid position has had a lasting impact. In some sense, its created a taboo against theological considerations. This taboo, Earl Bland and Brad Strawn, the editors of Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation (IntraVarsity Press, 2014) argue, has been to the detriment of psychoanalysis as a clinical form of treatment and a philosophical system of meaning. Like religion, psychoanalysis attempts to ask what it means to live in the face of death. Psychoanalysis, in its traditions as vast and nuanced as those within the Christian faith, like religion, has moral imperatives about how subjectivity ought to be structured.
Bland and Strawn observe that the culture is ripe for a new conversation, in that the turn toward rationalitywithin Christianity can be understood as a philosophical parallel to the turn in psychoanalytic theory toward understanding the human subject as being in relationship. To initiate this conversation, they have gathered a group of practitioners and people of faith from across the spectrum, to engage in this exchange: one that breaks the taboo that has prevented these two domains of knowledge from sharing the same conversational space.
Speaking from perspectives across both disciplines, this book features authors ranging from contemporary Freudian psychoanalysis to Attachment-Based psychoanalytic therapy on the psychoanalytic spectrum and from traditional Catholicism to faiths rooted in the Charismatic tradition across the Christian spectrum. In each chapter, the authors mutually invoke a theoretical consideration together with a clinical demonstration. Their voices are informed, critical, and personal in equal measure. Together with the editors, they candidly and humbly demonstrate not just the value of, but also the necessity of, acknowledging the dialogical influence of religious beliefs in the clinical setting, both on the side of the patient, as someone who may organize his or her subjectivity in relationship to faith, as well as on the side of the clinician, whose religious beliefs may consciously or unconsciously mediate the treatment.
Claire-Madeline’s interests lie at the intersection of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Catholic theology, which are often at the fore of her discussions with the authors she is privileged to interview for the New Books Network. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and holds a BA in Psychology from Eugene Lang College, The New School for liberal arts.Recent experience sampling and diary studies have shown that spending time on creative goals during a day is associated with higher activated positive affect (PA) on that day. Based on models of creativity as a tool for promoting well-being, the present study examined cross-day relationships between creative activity, affect, and flourishing. A large sample of young adults (n = 658) took part in a 13-day daily diary study. Each day, they reported how much time they spent on creative activities, daily positive and negative affect, and daily flourishing. Lagged multilevel models revealed that people felt higher activated PA and flourishing following days when they reported more creative activity than usual. The other direction – PA predicting next-day creative activity – was not supported, suggesting that the cross-day effect was specific to creative activity predicting well-being. Overall, these findings support the emerging emphasis on everyday creativity as a means of cultivating positive psychological functioning.TF.TV TF2 CS:GO Dota2
yight weh?
29
TempusTV TempusTV 24/7 Jump Speedruns!servers
20
eXtelevision 2Forks: Team Building
18
leth testing
6
sheepy_dogs_hand PCWs later with new demoman
4
cuby pug
3
papi couple pugs!lan!donate
2
truktruk Me Game Me Surf -!surfsup!marketplace
81
Ma3la AJ Yam (47pts Pop Up Record, 24 Solo KR) @AscentEsports
28
Wolf Machina co-op farming with the other half :O |!twitter
23
Dikker Охотник
11
Atomicus [2400+ Kills][7.9 K/G][Mostly Bangalore] Leggoooo!video!discord
10
Kegaman Haircut part 2 - first time cutting with no experience [ALWAYS UNFILTERED]
8
Clorg {4485 peak} brig abusing to t500 today
5
rtyugamer 1 FOLLOW = 1 FREE SKIN! SoloQ Matchmaking (TTS,!sr,!stats)
4
Collide Prolly a short stream, Im still bad
3
Izzy Cry Me A River Izzy Let's try the new hero!
3
GrumpyKoi Hype For Copenhagen Games Is Real!
3
Alona Sick and sad / my 144hz monitor broke. sad sad
2
Dendocror midweek apex innit
2
Billysaurus [Jenova -PC] I'm a Manderville Man!
2
aim- losing mmr
2
jorski pecks
1
DyerTF learning how to play this game again kappa (1000+ wins many kd)
1
SpeedyKunTF2 Na/Maewha Finally mostly recovered from being sick
1When it comes to searching for the best Android tablet, there are fewer options compared to a few years ago where Google's operating system was popping up on slates from almost every major manufacturer.
The tablet market slowed down since, and those still producing Android tablets have reduced the frequency of launches, but that means quality has improved as new devices are no longer being rushed out.
While the selection of new Android tablets isn't as large as it once was, and nowhere near as large as the selection of Android phones, there's still some great ones to choose from.
Android is one of the main rivals to Apple's tablet range which includes the new iPad Pro 11 (2018), iPad Pro 12.9 (2018) and iPad (2018).
Some Android tablets have 10-inch screens, others seven, some land somewhere in between and a handful even push the boundaries past 10 inches. There are also big differences in battery life, processing power, RAM and even the software each slate is running.
And even once you know what specs you're after there are plenty of not so great options, so to help you avoid buying a dud we've put together this list of the best Android tablets around.
They cover a range of options and we've included a rundown of the specs, the pros and the cons, so you can see at a glance what's right for you.
However, if none of these taking your fancy you can always look towards new tablet launches in 2019.
Amazon is likely to give its Fire tablet range another reboot, Samsung will continue to try and provide an Android answer to the iPad and a few surprising launches for other firms could spice up our best Android tablets list in the next 12 months.
Best Android tablets: which should you buy?
1. Samsung Galaxy Tab S4
The'money's no object' best Android tablet
Weight: 482g | Dimensions: 249.3 x 164.3 x 7.1mm | OS: Android 8.1 | Screen size: 10.5-inch | Resolution: 1600 x 2560 | CPU: Snapdragon 835 | RAM: 6GB | Storage: 64/256GB | Battery: 7,300mAh | Rear camera: 13MP | Front camera: 8MP
PC desktop-like Dex interface
S Pen stylus included in box
Poor keyboard design
Desktop interface needs work
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 is the best Android tablet available right now. It's not exactly cheap, but it comes packing a whole hosts of features to ensure you're getting plenty of bang for your buck.
Unlike Apple's iPad Pro range, the Galaxy Tab S4 comes with Samsung's S Pen stylus included in the box, while under the hood you get the powerful Snapdragon 835 chipset alongside 6GB of RAM ensuring Android runs super-smoothly on screen.
That's only half the story though. Pair the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 with a keyboard and mouse and it'll transfer from Android into a desktop-like experience as it attempts to replace your laptop as well as your tablet.
The desktop aspect of the tablet is limited for the time being, but we fully expect it to improve with future software updates. In short, the Galaxy Tab S4 is the most versatile Android tablet around.
Read our Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 review
2. Samsung Galaxy Tab S3
Samsung's former flagship Android slate is super
Weight: 429g | Dimensions: 237.3 x 169 x 6mm | OS: Android 7 | Screen size: 9.7-inch | Resolution: 1536 x 2048 | CPU: Snapdragon 820 | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 32GB | Battery: 6,000mAh | Rear camera: 13MP | Front camera: 5MP
Great premium design
HDR-ready display is excellent
Keyboard is a costly extra
High price tag
Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3 is our favorite Android tablet in the world right now.
This tablet is the second best Android slate in the world thanks to a powerful processor and an excellent display that's prepped to show you HDR content.
There's an S-Pen stylus in the box and you'll also have the option of buying a keyboard too, but that will cost quite a bit extra.
The price of the Galaxy Tab S3 is high, but it's worth it when you look at all of the power and amazing features you'll get for that amount of money.
Read our Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 review
3. Asus ZenPad 3S 10
One of the best Android tablets out
Weight: 430g | Dimensions: 240.5 x 163.7 x 7.2 mm | OS: Android Marshmallow | Screen size: 9.7-inch | Resolution: 1536 x 2048 | CPU: Mediatek MT8176 | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 32GB/64GB | Battery: up to 10 hours | Rear camera: 8MP | Front camera: 5MP
Today's best Asus Zenpad 3S 10 deals $335.02 View at eBay 1 Amazon customer reviews ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Strong, hi-res display
Swift response
Mediocre battery life
Not great build quality
Nope, that's not an iPad you can see just above. That's the Asus ZenPad 3S 10 - and it's our third favourite Android tablet you're able to buy right now.
There's decent power inside this slate as well as a super bright and beautiful display to look at on the front.
The battery life and build quality aren't the best on the market, but considering the lower price point than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 and Tab S3 above, we'd recommend picking this up if you're looking for something a touch cheaper.
Read our Asus ZenPad 3S 10 review
4. Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4
A great Android alternative to the iPad Mini 4
Weight: 316g | Dimensions: 212.6 x 124.8 x 7.3mm | OS: Android Oreo | Screen size: 8.4-inch | Resolution: 1600 x 2560 | CPU: HiSilicon Kirin 960 | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 32GB/64GB/128GB | Battery: 5,100mAh | Rear camera: 13MP | Front camera: 8MP
Excellent speakers
Sharp screen and design
No headphone jack
Slightly dated chipset
The Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4 is a strong Android slate and the combination of its small size and metal shell makes it a real alternative to the iPad Mini 4.
This has more than just good looks though, as the MediaPad M5 8.4 also has impressive stereo speakers, and coupled with its sharp 1600 x 2560 screen that ensures it lives up to its name as a media machine.
It’s less good for gaming, and there’s no 3.5mm headphone port – so you probably will be relying on those internal speakers a lot, but if you want a very portable slate that’s great for movies and music then the Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4 is a top option.
Read our Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4 review
5. Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro
Taking 'Netflix and chill' to the next level
Weight: 665g | Dimensions: 246.9 x 179.1 x 4.6mm | OS: Android 5.1.1 | Screen size: 10.1-inch | Resolution: 2560 x 1600 | CPU: Intel Atom quad-core | RAM: 2GB | Storage: 16GB/32GB | Battery: 10,200mAh | Rear camera: 13MP | Front camera: 5MP
Integrated projector
Great audio
Heavy
Glitchy interface
The Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro is packed full of media-focused features and sports a unique, distinctive design.
There's a built in stand to take the heft off your hands, while the integrated projector means you can enjoy big screen entertainment away from your TV, though the screen is sharp enough that you won't always feel the need to use a projector anyway.
All that tech does make it less portable than most tablets on this list and the UI could be better, but it's a fairly unique option.
Read our Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro review
6. Huawei MediaPad M3 8
The best cheap |
of Vanity Fair wearing a strategically modest white blouse. The message was clear, and The Times’ style correspondent picked it up: Jolie wanted to be taken seriously as a director and U.N. goodwill ambassador, and wasn’t interested in being regarded as merely a sexy starlet. Similarly, when TV journalist Megyn Kelly — no stranger to provocative clothing in the past — interviewed Vladimir Putin, she wore a completely body-covering outfit. She sent the message that she was not there to be someone’s eye candy, but to grill an autocratic ruler on his despotic policies.
The reality is that all of us, whether we like it or not, engage in sartorial diplomacy on a regular basis. Wearing clothing that emphasizes qualities that are revealing of our character, intellect, sense of humor and personality, as opposed to our body parts, can inspire us to be inwardly focused and drive us to continuously cultivate and enrich ourselves in the way that matters most.
Sarah Felsenthal is a government advocacy and business development consultant to numerous organizations, and has years of experience as a lobbyist responsible for millions of dollars in government funding.
This story "Jewish Women Should Dress Modestly To Succeed" was written by Sarah Felsenthal.ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Detroit Lions center Dominic Raiola apologized to Wisconsin's marching band Tuesday for inappropriate comments made to band members before Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers.
Raiola also is said to have made a "significant" donation to the band's fund.
"My interaction with the Wisconsin Marching Band was inappropriate," Raiola said. "I apologize to those I offended along with all of the members of Wisconsin's marching band. I also apologize to the Lions' organization and my teammates.
"I understand the standards to which we should conduct ourselves, and my actions Sunday fell dramatically short of those standards."
In a statement, Lions president Tom Lewand said Raiola will not face further disciplinary action. Lewand apologized to the Wisconsin band Monday.
"After investigating the matter and discussing Sunday's events with Dominic, we are pleased that he has taken ownership of his actions and admitted those actions were wrong and unacceptable," Lewand said. "As we said yesterday, his actions were not reflective of the standard of behavior that we expect from any player or any member of our organization."
Raiola preferred not to rehash the matter when he met with reporters Wednesday.
"I said what I needed to say yesterday and my mind has shifted to Cleveland already," he said. "I don't know how accurate all those reports were but I'm not going to go on and bring it back up again and make it fresh. It's behind us and we're moving on to Cleveland."
On Monday, coach Jim Schwartz said if the then-reports of Raiola's conduct were true, he would be "very disappointed if that was the case, because that's certainly not the character we want to display."
Raiola has had other incidents with fans in stadiums.
In 2008, he was fined $7,500 after making a gesture at Lions fans after a loss that dropped the team to 0-13. In 2010, he was fined $15,000 for a verbal altercation in Miami with a fan, including an obscene gesture.
Sunday's incident occurred just before the Wisconsin band played the national anthem.
"Basically, they were verbally assaulted by a member of the Detroit Lions team," Wisconsin director of bands Michael Leckrone told ESPN.com on Monday. "To their credit, they just stood there and did what they were supposed to do, which is focus on their performance.
"I think they were a little bit shaken by it, and they reported it to me after the conclusion of the pregame show and we were back in our seats."
Detroit lost at Green Bay for the 23rd straight time Sunday.Admit it, you've done the New Jersey liquor run. At least once, you've turned warily into the lot at the Bourbon Street Wine & Spirits, or perhaps Norton's Cork n' Bottle in Phillipsburg, N.J. On the way back over the Route 22 bridge, you looked over your shoulder for a police car.
It's illegal, of course, to transport alcohol purchased in other states across the border into Pennsylvania — a remnant of laws designed to stop bootlegging. But it turns out you probably have nothing to worry about. Pennsylvania State Police stopped their liquor law stakeouts two years ago.
"It was determined that the time and resources could be better allocated elsewhere," state police spokesman Adam Reed said.
What exactly had authorities been doing? The Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement website says: "Investigations are generally conducted through undercover surveillance of liquor and beer retail outlets in neighboring states."
In the last two years, only one person has been criminally charged by the bureau over an alleged violation of the ban on cross-border purchases, Reed said. That arrest, made in October, was of someone who bought 22 cases of Heineken beer to sell at his Philadelphia speakeasy, an unlicensed bar.
That didn't stop House lawmakers from voting last week to decriminalize the act of bringing wine, beer and liquor across the border into Pennsylvania from other states, just in case. Buyers must only agree to pay Pennsylvania taxes on their purchases. The bill doesn't spell out how that would work.
It's about the only progress lawmakers made last week toward liquor law reform.
"It fits into the privatization argument," said state Rep. John Taylor, R-Philadelphia, who sponsored the bill.
Taylor said arrests for cross-border liquor purchases are rare, but they are occasionally made, sometimes by local police departments.
"You have a law on the books that can technically be very damaging to someone," Taylor said. "Every blue moon they decide to make an example out of someone and put it in the paper."
The penalty, incidentally, is $25 for a bottle of wine or liquor and $10 for every container of beer. There's also up to 90 days in jail.
Taylor mentioned the case of Arthur C. Goldman, a Chester County attorney who was arrested in 2014 and charged with illegally buying rare wines in New Jersey that couldn't be found in Pennsylvania Wine and Spirits Stores, and then selling them to a close network of connoisseurs in Pennsylvania.
His attorneys argued Goldman, of Malvern, made no profit on the sales and was acting more as a procurer of bottles than anything else. He was admitted to the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for first-time nonviolent offenders, did not enter a plea and can have his record expunged within two years.
A legal settlement reached this summer allowed Goldman and his wife to keep about 1,100 of 2,400 bottles of wine that were confiscated at the time of the raid, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The rest were destroyed.
With the lack of progress on liquor reform in Pennsylvania over the last few years, Taylor said he'll take whatever small wins he can get. And you never know, he said, the cross-border bill could be a vehicle for wider liquor reform down the road.
But even this minor victory could be short-lived. The bill still needs Senate approval and might have to survive Gov. Tom Wolf's veto pen. Neither is assured.
"We continue to review the bill to understand revenue impacts that may be a concern," Wolf spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan said. "No final decision has been made."
A spokeswoman for Senate majority Leader Jake Corman did not return emails seeking comment.
scott.kraus@mcall.com
Twitter @skraus
610-820-6745Michelle Lee, formerly Google's chief patent lawyer and currently acting director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, has been nominated by the Obama administration to be the next permanent USPTO director. Lee will be the first head of the patent office to have a background at an Internet company.
Lee's nomination comes months after the administration floated the name of Philip Johnson, a lawyer at Johnson & Johnson who was an outspoken opponent of patent reform. The idea of nominating Johnson evaporated after a negative response from tech companies.
Choosing Lee has won praise all around, although the pro-reform forces are likely happier than the anti-reform forces given her background at Google. Lee was one of the first corporate lawyers to be vocal about the problem posed by "non-practicing entities," also known as patent trolls.
The Innovation Alliance, which pushed against the patent reform bill, said "she has demonstrated a nuanced appreciation of the complexity of the innovation ecosystem in the United States," according to statements gathered by Politico. The pro-reform Coalition for Patent Fairness, which gives voice to the pro-reform efforts of other big tech companies including Google and Cisco, called her an "outstanding leader." The group added, "The President could not have made a better choice and we urge the Senate to quickly confirm this nomination."
"Michelle is a proven leader with strong management skills, having ably led the PTO since January," US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said to Reuters. "She brings decades of legal, technical and business experience in delivering real results for our nation’s innovators."
While Lee is the first nominee from an Internet company, she's not the first to come from tech. The last director was David Kappos, head of IP at IBM, a company that routinely gets more patents than any other. At its peak, IBM had a $2 billion patent-licensing operation.
Lee was tapped to head the USPTO Silicon Valley office in 2012. The USPTO hasn't had a permanent director since Kappos left in February 2013.An unnamed Australian club has made an offer for outgoing AC Milan captain Massimo Ambrosini, though they face stern competition from the likes of West Ham
The agent of AC Milan captain Massimo Ambrosini claims the former Italy international has received an offer from Australia.
The 36-year-old midfielder is set to depart Milan after 18 years at the Serie A club, with interest in his signature from the likes of West Ham, Fiorentina or MLS outfit Los Angeles.
A move to the latter duo seems unlikely, but it seems an A-League club has also made a play for the veteran.
"Massimo did expect this decision [to be released from Milan], but he was still a bit upset. At this moment, seeing as he feels in good shape physically, we will evaluate offers", Ambrosini's agent Moreno Roggi said.
"The situation is we turned down an offer from Los Angeles. We have negotiations going on with West Ham, but nothing with Fiorentina, as they have not made us any proposals. Having said that, I do hear Ambrosini is on the list for the Viola if David Pizarro leaves.
"We received another offer this morning from Australia."
Ambrosini is likely to command a hefty wage should he accept a move to Australia, with Adelaide United, Melbourne Heart, the Central Coast Mariners, Perth Glory and the Wellington Phoenix without an international marquee.
Melbourne Victory have been in talks with Greece international Giorgios Karagounis, placing doubt on the status of current international marquee Marcos Flores.Relegated!
Generally, that word would suffice as a summary of any team suffering the burden of having it associated with the results of a season’s work.
Yet, it hardly does justice to just how large a disaster the 2011-12 campaign was for 1. FC Köln both on and off the field. Long-time club president Wolfgang Overath resigned in mid-November, only two months before sporting director Volker Finke and the club decided to sever ties. That left the axe wanting just one more name, which was that of head coach Stale Solbakken, who’d been on shaky ground almost immediately once his new-look squad surrendered eight goals in the first two matches under his direction.
All the while, the worst-kept secret in the Cathedral City was that home-town hero Lukas Podolski was considering leaving his beloved club for the bright lights of London to join Arsenal.
And if you don’t know about the love held by the fans of the Billy Goats for “Prinz Poldi,” watch and see how his season at Arsenal is covered concurrently with the coming Bundesliga 2 campaign. Poldi has already hinted he would consider returning to Köln in the future and saying that it “will always be my club,” the result of which is that he remains the most-popular player among the fan base of a team for which he no longer plays.
Podolski may be the most-popular player departing, but he’s far from the only regular player departing.
Pedro Geromel, who had risen to prominence as a top-flight central defender since joining Köln in 2008, has gone from being the team captain a year ago to being left out of the team’s plans altogether. Same for Milivoje Novakovic, who scored 82 times and appeared in 176 games for the Billy Goats, keeper Michael Rensing, and wing midfielder Slawomir Peszko. Though, as July nears its end and the August 5 season opener approaches, none of those former regulars have secured transfer to a new club.
Top it all off with some run-ins with the law by a few players during the heights of the relegation battle and the smoke bombs and the ugly publicity that came with it when the final whistle blew on a season which saw Köln surrender the most goals, suffer the most losses, own the worst goal differential, and ultimately settle into a direct relegation spot and you have the understatement of the year when interim head coach Frank Schaefer said, “It’s a dark hour.”
The New Signings
Perhaps the most-significant change is the arrival of new head coach Holger Stanislawski, who made his reputation as a coach exclusively on helping pull FC St. Pauli from among the third-tier leagues in 2006-07 to the Bundesliga in 2010-11. Having spent 18 years with the club as player, vice-president, and coach, it was an emotional announcement when “Stani” said he was leaving, reportedly for Hoffenheim.
His stay with Hoffenheim, however, lasted less than one full season; middling results by the squad in the Bundesliga campaign had put Stanislawski on the hot seat by the winter break, but bowing out in the Pokal quarterfinals to second-league SpVgg Greuther Fürth and rumblings of displeasure among players seemed to mean a quick end to the Stanislawski era in Hoffenheim.
A pair of Austrians join the club: Midfielder Daniel Royer comes on loan from Hannover after appearing in only three matches for the Reds, and defender Kevin Wimmer from Austrian side LASK Linz where he scored four goals in 28 matches as a regular in central defense.
Defenders Dominic Maroh from Nürnburg (21 appearances), Konstantinos Giannoulis from Greek side Atrimotos Athens (25 appearances), Bienvenue Basala-Mazana from SV Ried (20 appearances) all come to Köln with the knowledge there could be job opportunities in a unit that yielded 75 goals in 34 matches last year. Maroh seems a sure-fire entry to the starting eleven from week one.
Whether the defense improves or not, the FC will need to, at minimum, replace the production of Podolski who had 18 of Köln’s 39 goals. To that end, Frank Schaefer snagged Thomas Bröker, who scored 8 goals in 31 matches during Fortuna Düsseldorf’s season, helping his team reach the promotion/relegation playoff spot and scoring a goal at Hertha Berlin to help seal the promotion for Düsseldorf.
The only other newcomer with much in the way of experience is Matthias Lehmann, who appeared in 26 games last season for Eintracht Frankfurt in their quick single-season 2. Bundesliga visit.
Strengths
The most positive aspects for the EffZeh coming into the season have less to do with the talent on the field than with the overall commitment to rebuilding the team entirely rather than just try to patch the (oh, so many) holes in an effort to quickly boomerang themselves back into the Bundesliga.
The message from management is to rebuild through youth, which is something for which many among the Billy Goats’ faithful fan base have been clamoring for a while now.
20-year-old Christian Clemens will be the most-familiar young face on the field. By the end of last season, Clemens had become a regular player, alternating between attack and midfield positions out on the flanks. Adil Chihi seems ready to return to action after recovering from an ACL rupture that sidelined him since October and could play regularly across the field from Clemens.
While Chong Tese was the lone starting striker in a recent test match with Dukla Prague, many believe 19-year-old Mikael Ishak will emerge as the more lethal offensive threat and hope he will find a regular place in the squad. Those thoughts were bolstered in the match with the Czech side when Ishak entered after halftime and accounted for both Köln goals in a 2:0 victory. Though Bröker has been inserted on the wing, he should also see some time as a central striker.
Stanislawski likes to play with two holding midfielders. The pairing of Adam Matuschyk and Matthias Lehmann in the defensive midfield has the potential to be a large step toward reducing the numbers of goals allowed, though Mato Jajalo is versatile enough to be asked to occasionally man one of the defensive-midfield positions.
Weaknesses
Surrendering 75 goals in 34 matches is all the information you need to know that keeping the ball out of their own net will need to be priority number one in the rebuilding process.
The back line could look disturbingly similar to last year’s struggling bunch. Miso Brecko, Christian Eichner, and Kevin McKenna were all regular players in the defense last season and remain. The only real added experience appears to be the arrival of Dominic Maroh, who appeared in 21 matches last year for 1. FC Nürnberg. Youngsters Kevin Wimmer and Lukas Kübler will likely be given opportunity to supplant their elder (and more-expsenive) teammates in the squad, but not at the expense of improving the defensive performance of the team.
This will be particularly important as the Billy Goats appear ready to test their talented 19-year-old keeper Timo Horn to see whether he can become the sort of young star their rivals Borussia Mönchengladbach found in Marc-André ter Stegen, when their young keeper became a key element in helping the Fohlen move from sure-fire relegation squad to Champions League qualifier. There is a very good chance this potential weakness reveals itself to be among the team’s biggest strengths by the mid-season break; Horn is a highly-regarded prospect.
How will Stani’s team look on the pitch?
In training camp test matches with Dukla Prague and Jahn Regensburg, Stani sent his squad out in a 4-2-3-1 formation, which is the formation he seemed to prefer in his brief time at Hoffenheim. The two holding midfielders are certainly meant to address defensive inefficiencies seen under the Stale Solbakken regime and potentially help offset the lack of a proven scoring threat in the squad.
Occasionally, Stani will put a more offensive-minded game plan into play and go with a 4-3-3. The flexibility of midfielders performing on the flanks (Clemens, Chihi, Royer, and Bröker) on the flanks will go a long way in determining what will be the more-effective strategy as the season progresses.
Typically, the Köln starting eleven could look like this:
Prediction
Certainly, the expectations of the fans of 1. FC Köln would be an immediate return to Bundesliga competition after a season in which the Billy Goats finish among the top two in 2. Bundesliga.
Stanislawski has been very deliberate in tempering those expectations while not ruling them out. His focus is on getting the most out of a team that will see a lot of playing time for a lot of younger players. The second league is as strong and deep as it has ever been, which could prove a challenge for a squad laden with so many untested players.
Ultimately, the team’s fortunes will largely rest on how well the extra defense in the midfield keeps Horn from being overwhelmed in goal. Additionally, someone is going to have to emerge as a true scoring threat for Köln to be a serious contender to do what Eintracht Frankfurt managed last year and comfortably secure a direct promotion spot weeks before season’s end.
Still, there is enough talent and experience left in this team where they should be challenging for one of those top three slots well after the winter break. Stanislawski has show proficiency in guiding young clubs up through the ranks of the Bundesliga system, and this team is arguably at least as talented as the St. Pauli team he delivered to the Bundesliga just a few years ago.
As an unabashed fan, I’d like to say they’ll simply run through competition to a first-place finish, but I will try to be less completely blinded by allegiance and say:
3rd place with 63 points
Köln fans…..check out the selection of vintage shirts here and rep your Billy Goats in style!!!The video will start in 8 Cancel
Get the biggest daily 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
A man threatened a taxi driver with a machete after an argument about parking on the day Justin Bieber played in Cardiff, a court heard.
Shaun Murray, 27, who travelled from Newcastle upon Tyne with his brother for the concert at the Principality Stadium, also admitted directing racist language towards the victim.
Sentencing at Cardiff Crown Court, Judge Jeremy Jenkins described the weapon as “fearsome”.
The court heard the incident occurred on Saunders Road around 3pm on Friday, June 30.
Ian Kolvin, prosecuting, said Murray drove to the concert with his brother Edward Graham and parked in an area reserved for taxis.
When he returned to his car, he found he had been “boxed in”.
Prosecutors said a taxi driver asked him to move his vehicle and his behaviour became “extremely aggressive”.
The court heard Murray called the taxi driver a “mother f***er” and told him: “F***ing move your car.
Mr Kolvin said other taxi drivers tried to reason with him, but he continued to be abusive.
The defendant then told the victim: “You shouldn’t be in this country. F***ing go back to your own country.”
(Image: Video grab from Uni lad)
Prosecutors said he told him he had a knife, went back to his car and tried to drive off, but was stopped by the other drivers and door staff from a nearby premises.
Mr Kolvin told the court: “He was seen to have a machete.”
He added: “In the course of his behaviour, he also made comments demonstrating religious hostility.”
The court heard Murray said: “Muslims are baby killers. They carry nail bombs. They shouldn’t be in this country.”
Murray then told the taxi driver: “If you don’t move your car, I’m going to chop you guys.”
Prosecutors said door staff managed to detain the defendant until police arrived. He was arrested and the machete was seized from his car.
The defendant was taken to the police station, where he accepted he was visiting Cardiff for the concert, but denied having a machete or making threats.
Prosecutors said he had been before the courts for 41 previous offences, including possessing weapons, as well as battery, burglary and theft.
(Image: South Wales Police)
Murray, from Brandon Grove in Newcastle -upon-Tyne, admitted possessing a blade in a public place and racially aggravated threatening behaviour.
He denied one count of affray, which will lie on file.
Kevin Seal, defending, said his client had shown remorse through his guilty plea.
He said: “He accepts he used racial comments against those who were there and he regrets those.
“He is not a person who considers himself to be racist. He has friends of different ethnic minorities where he lives, but he accepts the comments he used on that day were racist.”
Mr Seal stressed the machete did not leave its sheath during the incident.
He added: “The red mist came down and he behaved in a way he accepts was inappropriate.”
The defence barrister said his client had been attacked in prison due to the nature of the charges and had to be kept separate from other prisoners for his own safety.
Prosecutors offered no evidence against his 19-year-old brother Edward Graham, also from Newcastle upon Tyne, who denied affray and the public order offence.
Judge Jenkins noted Murray had “an extremely poor record”.
He told the defendant: “Quite why you embarked upon this rant, only you know. Mr Seal says you are not inherently racist. I reject that. Those words are deeply offensive.”
Murray was jailed for 10 months and an order was made for the machete to be destroyed.Atlanta wide receiver Julio Jones has 82 receptions for 1,169 yards and five touchdowns this season. Credit: Associated Press
Green Bay — Just because the standings show a pair of NFC division leaders meeting Monday night at Lambeau Field doesn't mean both teams deserve to be called contenders.
"If the Falcons win the division, it will be unbelievable," a personnel director for an NFL team said Tuesday. "That would be a joke. If Green Bay doesn't torch them for 40, I'll be shocked."
Atlanta finds itself an 11½-point underdog against the Packers. The scout predicted a 48-17 triumph for Green Bay, another scout called it, 38-21, for the Packers and an assistant coach for a recent Falcons' opponent sees Green Bay rolling, 35-13.
"Atlanta's secondary is as bad as Philadelphia's secondary," one of the scouts said. "If the Packers don't blow this team out, I'll be disappointed."
The Falcons (5-7) share the NFC South lead with New Orleans. However, Atlanta's last four opponents have a 24-23-1 record whereas the Saints' foes are just 15-32-1.
Atlanta, a 4-12 team last season, is coming off what easily ranks as its finest victory of the season. On Sunday, they crushed Arizona, the team with the NFC's best record, 29-18.
It was the Falcons' first victory over a team with a winning record since the 2012 playoffs.
"I don't believe the Packers have thrown an interception at home this season," coach Mike Smith said Monday. "And I don't even want to talk about how many points they've scored in the last three games at Lambeau Field.
"(But) that field's 531/3 yards wide and 100 yards long. They're playing for the same thing we're playing for. They're in first place in their division, and we're in first place in our division."
Under Smith, the Falcons' regular-season records are 39-15 (.722) at the Georgia Dome and 26-28 (.482) on the road.
"I'd have a different impression if the Packers were going inside," another scout said. "I just think the Falcons have notoriously struggled outside. They're a different team in the dome.
"The only way for them to beat the Packers is (Matt) Ryan's hot and they get some turnovers. If it's a clean game, I just don't think they have enough firepower."
Hold the phone. A third personnel man picked Atlanta, 20-17.
"I see this as a trap game for Green Bay," the scout said. "I'm expecting an emotional letdown on offense as the Packers come off the New England game.
"This is my upset of the week. Gulp!"
OFFENSE
SCHEME
Third-year coordinator Dirk Koetter, a former head coach at Boise State and Arizona State, likes pre-snap shifting, a controlled no-huddle as a change of pace and screens of all kind. Mike Tice, the new line coach, installed the Bears' type run game featuring traps, power plays and pulling. Koetter will use T-G Gabe Carimi as a sixth O-lineman. The Falcons rank ninth in yards (374.0), 12th in scoring (24.3) and tied for 15th in giveaways (18).
RECEIVERS
WR Julio Jones (6-2½, 220) ranks among the game's premier perimeter threats. On Sunday, he demonstrated his might by dominating Arizona CB Patrick Peterson. With his 4.39 speed, size, power and tremendous leaping ability, Jones does his best work deep on the sideline. He's somewhat stiff and less of a threat on third down. WR Roddy White (6-1½, 211) should return after a one-game absence (ankle). At 33, he isn't the spectacular player that he was from 2007-'12. Although he isn't as sudden, he remains extremely competitive. Slot Henry Douglas (5-11½, 183), with 237 catches in seven seasons, uses his terrific hands and underrated route-running to do business in clutch time. Former Bear Devin Hester (5-10½, 190) fits Koetter's screen game. Replacing retired TE Tony Gonzalez is Levine Toilolo (6-8, 265), a fourth-round pick in '13. He's a plodder (4.82) with inconsistent hands but his blocking hasn't been bad. Former Giant Bear Pascoe (6-5½, 265) is just a blocker.
OFFENSIVE LINE
Season-ending injuries suffered by LT Sam Baker, C Joe Hawley, No. 2 C Peter Konz and No. 2 RT Lamar Holmes left the Falcons high and dry looking for a lineman until mid-season. The best that can be said about the current unit is it has been intact since Game 8. LG Justin Blalock (6-3, 326), an eight-year starter, is brilliant (37 on the 50-question Wonderlic intelligence test), powerful and steady. RG Jon Asamoah (6-4, 305) got $8 million guaranteed to depart Kansas City March 11. He's assignment-sound (Wonderlic of 36), and tough, but has obvious athletic shortcomings. Rookie LT Jake Matthews (6-5½,309), the sixth pick, has played every game but one after suffering a high ankle sprain in the opener. He's intense and athletic. He's also had growing pains as he tries to add some power to his finesse game. RT Ryan Schraeder (6-7, 300) was eaten up by Green Bay's Nick Perry last December. He tries to compensate for so-so talent and strength with a tough-guy temperament. C James Stone (6-3½, 300), an undrafted rookie from Tennessee, will make his sixth start. He's plays smart and has long arms (337/8 inches). He's also on the stiff side and isn't overly strong.
QUARTERBACKS
Matt Ryan (6-4½, 217), the third pick in '08, ranks 12th in passer rating at 93.7. His career rating is 90.5, and his record is 65-41 (.613). Ryan has absorbed a ton of punishment behind a porous line for 1½ seasons but is healthy and keeps coming back for more. The object is to force Ryan from his preferred throwing spot. He's much more effective and accurate from the pocket than trying to extend. His 4.89 speed and average athletic ability limit his running dimension. Ryan is a tough guy with a fiery disposition and leadership skills. His arm strength is good, certainly not great. It's a catchable ball without a tight spiral. Even with that much experience, he's still guilty of the killer interception. Backup T.J. Yates (6-3½, 217) started six games in '11 for Houston.
RUNNING BACKS
Steven Jackson (6-1½, 240), a magnificent player for the Rams from 2004-'12, is washed up. The burst and power that made him special have dissipated. Still a gifted receiver, he plays about two-thirds of the time. Rookie Devonta Freeman (5-8, 206), a fourth-round pick, and Jacquizz Rodgers (5-6. 196), a fifth-round pick in '11, split the rest. Despite his size, Freeman runs strong inside and has been compared to the 49ers' Frank Gore. Rodgers is about the same size as the Eagles' Darren Sproles but lacks that type of speed. FB Patrick DiMarco (6-0½, 234) is OK in a limited role.
DEFENSE
SCHEME
Mike Nolan, Mike McCarthy's boss in 2005 at San Francisco, has been an NFL coordinator for seven teams over 17 seasons. His flexible base is more 3-4 than 4-3. According to STATS, his blitz rate (26.5%) ranks 20th. The safety blitz is a favored tactic. Nolan has always been big on deception if not trickery. The Falcons rank third in takeaways (24), 22nd in scoring (24.9) and 32nd in yards (403.2).
DEFENSIVE LINE
In an effort to stop getting pushed around, the Falcons opened free agency by giving Miami NT Paul Soliai (6-4, 345) $14 million guaranteed and Kansas City DE Tyson Jackson (6-4, 305) $11 million guaranteed. The average allowed per rush has dropped from 4.8 to 4.1. Strong as an ox, Soliai doesn't buckle against double-teams. He finds the ball occasionally but offers little rush. Jackson is another strict two-gapper. DE Jonathan Babineaux (6-2, 300), a longtime starter, is the best of the interior players. At 33, he still can get off a block and threaten the passer with craftiness and quickness. Corey Peters (6-3, 305), a third-round pick in '10, has a respectable power rush but isn't real stout at the point. Rookie DT Ra'Shede Hageman (6-6, 318), a second-round pick from Minnesota, has a world of talent but remains inconsistent. Underutilized DT Cliff Matthews (6-3½, 275) showed surprising interior rush Sunday. Nolan mixes and matches four other "hybrid" players from two- and three-point stances. Kroy Biermann (6-3, 255), with 19 sacks in seven years, qualifies as the club's No. 1 rusher. He lacks the speed to complete his frequent edge rushes but goes all-out trying. Former Giant standout Osi Umenyiora (6-3, 255) plays RE on passing downs. He has a ton of moves but seldom finishes anymore. Jonathan Massaquoi (6-2, 264) is playing on a bad foot and has lost some quickness. Malliciah Goodman (6-3½, 276) has enormous arms (363/8) and hands (11) but lacks instincts.
LINEBACKERS
Sean Weatherspoon, probably the team's best defender, suffered a season-ending Achilles injury in the off-season. Thus, Paul Worrilow (6-2, 234), signed as a free agent, plays every down. He has 111 tackles, 43 more than anyone else. Worrilow runs well (4.65), takes on lead blockers and strikes a blow. He has been fooled less often and isn't making as many of his stops downfield. Joining him in the 4-2 defense is Joplo Bartu (6-1½, 230), another undrafted second-year man from a small school (Texas State). He can cover because of superb athleticism and more than adequate speed. Bartu has split time with rookie Prince Shembo (6-1½, 253), a fourth-round pick who was moved inside after Weatherspoon's injury. He's strong and physical but looks lost at times in coverage.
SECONDARY
The best player by far is LC Desmond Trufant (5-11½, 190), the 22nd pick in '13. He can run (4.43), plays with confidence and poise, tackles adequately and has been used frequently to match up against No. 1 WRs. His hands are tiny (85/8), which may explain why he's dropped half a dozen picks. RC Robert Alford (5-10, 186), a second-round pick in '13, probably will play with a broken wrist. He's smaller than Trufant but even faster (4.36) and equally competitive. Veteran nickel backs Robert McClain (5-9½, 195) and former Raven-Redskin Josh Wilson (5-9, 188) are shaky. SS William Moore (6-0, 221), an old-fashioned enforcer, returned Sunday after a seven-game absence (shoulder). He'll tackle and blitz well from the box but must be hidden in coverage. FS Dwight Lowery (5-11, 212) moves to LB in the dime. He's a stopgap. Kemal Ishmael (5-10½, 206), who has assumed the dime safety job from ex-Badger rookie Dezmen Southward, plays the run better than the pass.
SPECIAL TEAMS
K Matt Bryant, 39, is 22 of 22 inside 54 with misses from 57 and 59. He beat New Orleans Sept. 7 from 52 in overtime. His career mark is 85.3%. P Matt Bosher, who also kicks off, ranks 11th in net (40.3). Hester, 32, had a 70-yard punt TD Sunday called back. His 15.4 average leads the NFL. WR Eric Weems and LB Nate Stupar lead coach Keith Armstrong's solid core units.
GAME-BREAKER
Patrick Peterson, the Cardinals' all-pro cornerback, issued a verbal challenge to WR Julio Jones last week. He demanded that the Arizona coaching staff permit him to cover Jones one-on-one Sunday. Well, Peterson got his wish all right, but he probably would have preferred that he didn't. Jones broke loose from a bit of a slump, catching 10 passes for a career-high 189 yards. Peterson was in coverage most of the time. Jones tied for third in receptions (82) and yards (1,169). In his only appearance (October 2011) against the Packers, he caught one pass for 16 yards before departing with a pulled hamstring early in the fourth quarter.
WEAKEST LINK
If the Falcons had their druthers, their starting offensive line would consist of LT Sam Baker, LG Justin Blalock, C Joe Hawley, RG Jon Asamoah and RT Jake Matthews. Baker blew out his knee in training camp, prompting the move of Matthews to the left side. Hawley blew out his knee in Game 4. The Falcons didn't arrive at their current configuration until Game 8. |
association for the protection of animals in an effort to improve life for animals used for food. The term made the top 10 in earlier polls, as did ‘me’ (as in ‘me moeder’ instead of ‘mijn moeder’), ‘kids’ and ‘oudjes’ (oldies).
‘Groentjes’, apparently a term used for vegetables in Flanders, came in fourth place. 6% of the Belgian voters found the diminutive use of the word extremely annoying.Disney worried Twitter wouldn't chime with its image
Twitter's reputation as a haven for trolls was one of the key reasons both Disney and Salesforce declined to make bids for Twitter, according to reports from Bloomberg and CNBC host Jim Cramer. Citing people familiar with Disney's management, Bloomberg says the family-friendly animation giant had even hired two investment banks to work out a bid for the service, but eventually decided not to put a deal on the table, fearing that Twitter's sexist, racist, and otherwise unpleasant abusers would sully Disney's image.
While not necessarily as family-oriented as Disney, Salesforce reportedly reached a similar decision on a Twitter bid for much the same reasons. Mad Money host Jim Cramer said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had expressed concerns about Twitter's problems with user abuse directly to him. "What's happened is, a lot of the bidders are looking at people with lots of followers and seeing the hatred," Cramer said, claiming that Salesforce was "very concerned about this notion." While not necessarily as family-oriented as Disney, Salesforce reportedly reached a similar decision on a Twitter bid for much the same reasons. Speaking on CNBC's Squawk on the Street host Jim Cramer said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had expressed concerns about Twitter's problems with user abuse directly to him. "What's happened is, a lot of the bidders are looking at people with lots of followers and seeing the hatred," Cramer said, claiming that Salesforce was "very concerned about this notion."
Salesforce was "very concerned" about Twitter's "haters"
Trolls weren't the only reason Disney decided against a bid for the service, Bloomberg says. Major Disney investors reportedly expressed doubts to the company about a potential purchase, with Twitter's $12 billion price tag looking a little too steep, even for an entity as huge as Disney. The two companies' CEOs share a connection — Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has said he sees Disney head Bob Iger as a Trolls weren't the only reason Disney decided against a bid for the service, Bloomberg says. Major Disney investors reportedly expressed doubts to the company about a potential purchase, with Twitter's $12 billion price tag looking a little too steep, even for an entity as huge as Disney. The two companies' CEOs share a connection — Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has said he sees Disney head Bob Iger as a mentor after he recruited him to Disney's board — but that still wasn't enough for Disney to look past Twitter's problems."Since 2013 alone, the Obama administration has allowed 300,000 criminal aliens to return back into United States communities. These are individuals encountered or identified by (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but who were not detained or processed for deportation because it wouldn't have been politically correct."
A number of the statements Donald Trump made in his high-profile immigration speech in Phoenix were ones we’d checked before. But one was new to us.
"Since 2013 alone, the Obama administration has allowed 300,000 criminal aliens to return back into United States communities," Trump said. "These are individuals encountered or identified by (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but who were not detained or processed for deportation because it wouldn't have been politically correct."
As it turns out, the numbers are a lot more complicated than Trump indicated. Let’s take a closer look.
Where does the 300,000 figure come from?
Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Trump, directed us to Jessica M. Vaughan, the director of policy studies with the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors stricter immigration policies. (Officially, the center’s website says the group’s research has convinced many of its staff to be "animated by a ‘low-immigration, pro-immigrant’ vision of an America that admits fewer immigrants but affords a warmer welcome for those who are admitted.")
Vaughan said that the 300,000 estimate comes from three distinct numbers.
• In fiscal years 2013, 2014 and 2015, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a cumulative 86,288 criminal aliens from custody pending removal proceedings. (That number has actually fallen year by year, from 36,007 to 30,558 to 19,723.) This number was announced by Sarah R. Saldana, ICE’s director, at a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 28, 2016. According to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, these 86,288 criminal aliens collectively were convicted of more than 231,000 crimes.
• From Jan 1, 2014, to Sept. 30, 2015, state and local law enforcement agencies turned down 18,646 requests by ICE to hold deportable aliens arrested for non-immigration-related crimes until ICE could take them into custody. This figure was verified by ICE during an investigation by the Texas Tribune.
• Vaughan has calculated that between 2013 and 2015, ICE officers, due to prosecutorial discretion, "let off more than 200,000 criminal aliens they encountered, instead of initiating deportation. Most of these were in local custody at the time. The encounters were hands-on, usually interviews at a jail – not just reviewing a list or getting a hit in a database."
Vaughan said this number comes from internal ICE reports on enforcement activity -- the Weekly Report on Departures and Detention. The original documents are cited in the footnotes of Vaughan’s work here, here and here.
If you put these three figures together, they add up to roughly 300,000.
How solid is the 300,000 number?
On purely numerical grounds, the experts we checked with didn’t express much concern about the first two categories, which collectively add up to about 105,000 individuals. The 200,000 figure is more controversial, however.
Part of the concern stems from relying heavily on Vaughan’s calculations of ICE data, made necessary in part because the numbers from ICE are often opaque, hard to obtain, or both.
Adam Cox, a law professor at New York University who has studied the issue, said that Vaughn offers "no evidence about whether there was actually probable cause under the law to arrest most of those who were not arrested. The report treats every encounter by an ICE agent as one in which we know there could have been an arrest. But as we know from many studies in lots of policing contexts, many police encounters end without an arrest because there is no basis for an arrest to be made."
Other experts also urged caution about the number. "We cannot confirm that ICE has released 300,000 criminal immigrants and not placed them in removal proceedings," said Sarah Pierce, an associate policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that believes that well-managed immigration brings "benefits to immigrants and their families, communities of origin and destination, and sending and receiving countries."
Meanwhile, another concern stems from differences of opinion about what "prosecutorial discretion" means.
The Obama administration has enacted a policy of "prosecutorial discretion" to prioritize removal proceedings. The guidelines place a lower priority for removal on those who came to the United States before age 16, are currently below age 30, have resided in the U.S. consistently for five years, are in school or have graduated or are serving in the military or have been honorably discharged -- and have "not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, or multiple misdemeanor offenses."
To supporters, this simply makes sense: In a world of limited resources, ICE should be putting the most dangerous or disruptive deportable individuals at the top of the list.
To critics, however, this policy is a smokescreen for failing to uphold the law.
Current law, Vaughan said, states that all aliens who are here illegally "are potentially subject to deportation regardless of whether they have other criminal convictions." Prioritization hasn’t been driven by resource constraints or public-safety considerations, she said, but rather "by political considerations."
There’s a related question of whether it’s reasonable to call the Obama policy "political correctness," but that’s an opinion, so we’ll set that aside.
At the very least, we can say that there is a professional dispute about whether the 200,000 figure is accurate. And since this category accounts for two-thirds of the total number referenced by Trump, this at least raises a question about whether his 300,000 figure is credible.
How accurately did Trump describe Vaughan’s statistic?
Beyond the question of whether the number is accurate, experts told us that Trump cut a few corners in how he described the number in his speech.
• The three categories are a mixture of different statistics, and there may be some overlap. Vaughan acknowledges this, though she suspects the impact would be small. "There may be a few duplicates in the mix, if an individual was encountered or released more than once during the time period, but these are not enough to throw off the estimate by a lot," she said.
• Trump is loose with his terminology. He uses the term "criminal aliens," even though the widely accepted definition of that term refers only to the first category of the three -- the one that counted 86,288 over the three-year period. As for the third category -- the cases where a local law enforcement agency declined to hold a deportable individual in custody for ICE -- it counts arrests, not convictions, making the term "criminal alien" inappropriate in at least some instances. Cox cited research showing that nearly one-third of all noncitizens taken into federal custody this way between 2008 and 2012 had no criminal convictions.
• It’s an overreach to lay all of this at the Obama administration’s feet. For starters, Saldana in her congressional testimony said that between one-third and two-thirds of the criminal releases -- the first category -- were required by law, not by ICE’s choice, depending on the year. "These folks would also have to be released by ICE even if Trump were president, unless the agency was planning to flout court orders and ignore the detention rules written into law by Congress," Cox said.
One problem, as we’ve noted previously, is that in some cases, the individual’s home country -- notably Cuba and Vietnam -- refused to accept them. We found that in fiscal year 2013, home country refusal led to the release of 3,746 people. (Critics, including Trump, say the U.S. should work harder to punish those recalcitrant countries.)
Meanwhile, the primary actor in the third category are state and local law enforcement agencies, not the Obama administration, meaning it is "flatly incorrect to say that these are ‘criminal aliens’ that the Obama administration has allowed... to return back into United States communities," Cox said. In fact, he added, "ICE has been extremely unhappy about this resistance and has worked hard to get local governments to comply with detainer requests, so it is misleading to say ICE is ‘responsible’ for any such releases." (Vaughan countered that these releases "could have been prevented if the Obama administration had taken action against" sanctuary cities, or jurisdictions that do not routinely turn over deportable aliens in their custody. "Instead, the administration has facilitated them," she said.)
Our ruling
Trump said that "since 2013 alone, the Obama administration has allowed 300,000 criminal aliens to return back into United States communities. These are individuals encountered or identified by ICE, but who were not detained or processed for deportation because it wouldn't have been politically correct."
One can make a reasonably strong -- though not foolproof -- case for 100,000. But immigration professions are divided over how credible the next 200,000 is. Meanwhile, Trump’s description of the number in his speech is not entirely accurate. On balance, we rate the Half True.Channel 10/screenshot A Belarusian-Israeli man was arrested as he attempted to join the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, after expressing support for the group over the past year and a half, according to an indictment filed against him on Wednesday.
The suspect, Valentin Vladmir Mazlevski, was arrested in a joint operation by police and the Shin Bet security service earlier this month, though details of the case were kept under a court-issued gag order until the charges were filed.
As he was brought into the courtroom, Mazlevski told reporters in poor, heavily accented Arabic that "God will vindicate me."
According to the indictment, he purchased a one-way ticket to Turkey in January, with the goal of crossing the border into Syria and joining the terrorist group.
He is from the Arab Israeli town of Shibli-Umm al-Ghanam, his wife's hometown. The 39-year-old father of five moved to Israel from Belarus in 1996 at age 18 and converted to Islam four years later, while he was serving in the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet said.
"The investigation revealed that Mazlevski, who was active in IS-supporting groups on the internet, shared details of his intentions to travel to Syria and even coordinated his arrival with [the groups]," the Shin Bet said.
Mazlevski allegedly used a number of methods to communicate with fellow Islamic State supporters, including the Telegram encrypted messaging application.
According to police, the suspect was in contact with Sheikh Assad al-Tawhid, also known as Abu Huthaifah, who previously fought in Syria.
Police were aware of Mazlevski's support for the Islamic State since at least July 2016. That month he was brought in for a "debriefing, in which it was clarified to him that the Islamic State is an illegal organization and that he has been ordered to stop his security activities."
A video released by the Islamic State-affiliated Amaq news agency, said to be in Palmyra on December 11, purports to show IS fighters in front of silos on fire and said to have been taken over by them. Reuters via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Despite the police warning, Mazlevski began looking into joining the fighting in Syria in October 2016. He contacted a purported Islamic State fighter in Syria who identified himself as "Abu Abdullah." But before he could set out, Abu Abdullah broke off contact and scuttled Mazlevski's plans, according to police.
A month later, he reached out to an alleged Islamic State member in the Sinai Peninsula and considered joining the fight against Egyptian troops there, police said.
Apparently undeterred, Mazlevski contacted a Russian-born IS fighter in Syria in January and began making preparations to travel there through Turkey, according to the indictment.
He purchased his plane ticket to Turkey and saved NIS 3,650 ($1,000) ahead of his trip.
Mazlevski never told his family of his plans to travel to Syria, according to police.
On January 16, 2017, he went to Ben Gurion International Airport to catch his flight to Turkey, but was stopped at the gate and prevented from traveling. The Shin Bet said it had received advanced intelligence about Mazlevski's plans.
He was interrogated, but not arrested, at the airport. In the days that followed, Mazlevski attempted to remove any trace of Islamic State support from his cellphone, deleting accounts and conversations, according to the indictment.
Mazlevski was arrested on February 7. During his interrogation, he admitted to investigators that he had planned to join the Islamic State in order to "fulfill the commandment placed on every true Muslim to live under an Islamic State and hold fast to his belief," police said.
The Shin Bet estimates that approximately 50 Arab citizens of Israel have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join the group in recent years.
"The Shin Bet sees the phenomenon of Israelis traveling to Syria and Iraq as most dangerous," the agency said.
The security service said many of those people were lured to the Islamic State with lies and promises of "religious and military adventure," but have been deeply disappointed by the reality.
"Interrogations of Israelis who returned from Syria and Iraq paint the opposite picture, of harsh living conditions and life under constant threat," the Shin Bet said.
On Wednesday, Mazlevski was charged in the Nazareth District Court with contacting a foreign agent, attempting to travel to an enemy nation and obstruction of justice, for deleting the information from his phone.
The state prosecutor requested Mazlevski be kept in police custody until the end of his trial.The British and Irish Lions today unveiled Standard Life Investments as the shirt sponsor for the 2017 tour of New Zealand, when they will attempt to register a test series win over the double World Cup champions.
Standard Life Investments have taken over as the name on the front of the most famous touring team kit in the sport from HSBC. British & Irish Lions CEO John Feehan said “Standard Life Investments is a perfect fit for the British & Irish Lions, who represent the best of the best in the Home Nations.
“We wanted a partner who shared the same values of respect, integrity, discipline and friendship, we have found that partner in Standard Life Investments. We are looking forward to working with Standard Life Investments a brand that is synonymous with excellence as we head into the ultimate challenge against the double World Champions.”
Standard Life Investments, is also the first and only Worldwide Partner of the Ryder Cup. Keith Skeoch, Chief Executive Officer, said “I believe that teams which work together succeed together. For me, the Lions personify this. Being part of their tour to New Zealand in 2017, the first in 12 years, presents us with an opportunity to raise awareness of our business globally and to inspire both our people and our clients.”
“At Standard Life Investments we believe our commitment to excellence, our depth of expertise and our team of talented people gives our clients confidence for the long term. “Associating our brand with partners who share our values and ambition will help us to strengthen our business and build our brand around the world”.LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Subtlety may not be in Kevin Smith's vocabulary, but a lot of off-color words are. They're sprinkled liberally throughout the writer-director's new movie, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
Kevin Smith can't understand why the word "porno" is still a hot button for some people.
The comedy stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as roommates and longtime friends who decide that the solution to their money problems is to make a porn film.
Strong language is nothing new for Smith, whose first film, "Clerks," put him on the map with its merrily scatological musings. Though the film had little violence or exposed skin, it was initially given an NC-17 rating by the MPAA based on the language.
"Zack and Miri" was also a possibility for an NC-17, considered the kiss of death by studios because of distributing and marketing challenges, until Smith argued its merits to the ratings board and received an R.
Since "Clerks," Smith's films have been almost wistfully romantic ("Chasing Amy," "Jersey Girl") or as joyfully profane as "Clerks" ("Dogma," "Clerks II"). "Zack and Miri," which opens Friday, is a blend of the two Smiths: full of sex and colorful language, but with a sweet side.
Indeed, Banks told CNN not to be fooled by the film's tawdry talk.
"Kevin Smith is a huge romantic," she said. "He likes to wrap up the romance in profanity, but the guy is more sweet than spicy." Watch why "Zack and Miri" is so controversial »
In an interview with CNN, Smith, 38, cheerfully acknowledged that this is not a film for prudes. The following is an edited version of the conversation.
Kevin Smith: There's a bit of language in this picture. I'm not going to lie to you.... I don't even think of it as salty. To me, it's just like part of a lexicon.
CNN: Well, you do hear it a lot.
Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt. We're raising our kid in a household where people curse, as an experiment. And I think our experiment is working, because I don't tame my language around the kid. I don't run up to her and yell [expletive] in her face, but I don't go out of my way to like not curse in front of her. And honestly, ironically, she doesn't curse. And I've tried to get her to curse for like friends and family, because it's always entertaining to hear a child curse, and she doesn't do it.
CNN: Well... I almost hesitate to ask, but tell me what the genesis was of the film.
Smith: It's a movie I've been researching since I was like 12 years old, to be honest with you. And sometimes three or four times a day.... But it only really came together when I saw Seth Rogen in "40-Year-Old Virgin" and instantly fell in love with him and was like, "I got to work with this guy."...
So I started thinking about this movie, and immediately it kind of crystallized. Seeing Seth and thinking about porn, I was like, boom, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno." I wrote the script with him in mind. And by the time I finished with it, "Knocked Up" was about to open, and the word was it was going to be huge, so I was like, we missed our window. This guy's going to be famous, and he'll want nothing to do with this movie.
But I sent him an e-mail anyway where I said, "Look, man, I wrote this flick with you in mind. Please give it a read."... And I got an e-mail back within five minutes that said, "When I first came to Los Angeles, an agent asked me what I wanted to do with my career. I said I wanted to be in a Kevin Smith movie. That has not changed. Please send me the script; I would be honored to read it."
And I was, I was like cha-ching! You know, my God, it worked out.
CNN: You're working with some professionals here, and by that I don't mean Seth and Elizabeth. I mean working with actual people with porn experience.
Smith: We got ourselves a former pro.... Traci Lords, man. Who, for the last 20 years, has not made an adult film. Has been keeping that industry at arm's length as she concentrates on a mainstream career and her musical career and stuff like that. But you know, it just seemed like if we're going to make this movie, Traci Lords would just fit into it so well.
We approached her agent, and her agent was like, I don't know, it's got "porno" in the title, she ain't going to want to do it. Then she heard that Seth was in it, and she heard that I was making it, and so she was like, well, I'll at least read it. She came over to my house and read it.
And I remember, I was sitting downstairs while she was upstairs reading it, and I was like, if I could go back in time and tell the 16-year-old version of me that Traci Lords is going to be hanging out in your living room... my 16-year-old head would explode. First, the 16-year-old would be like, where'd you get a time machine, and then the 16-year-old would be like, does she want to have sex with us, and then I'd have to break it to the 16-year-old that, no, Traci Lords -- even many years from now -- [is] still not interested in your fat ass.
So, she loved the material.... Maybe it's time to embrace it and make fun of it. I said yeah, please do it.
Katie Morgan is still active in the adult film industry, and she brought a kind of a current vision to it. She was able to kind of tell me where to put the camera to make things look as convincing as possible. So I was like, wow, man, this chick who most people know from porn has taught me how to direct. So if the movie looks any better than my normal stuff, it's probably because of Katie Morgan. iReport.com: Will you see 'Zach and Miri'?
CNN: The title has created some challenges in terms of the marketing, that some newspapers are not taking ads for it and some buses and what have you. What do you make of that?
Smith: I think it's strange that in this day and age, the 21st century, that people are hung up on a word, and the word is "porno." It's not like we put salacious posters out there.... The poster is literally stick figures....
People are afraid like, what if my kid asks what porno is? Just tell them. Tell your kid that the porno's not for you. My kid asked me what a porno is, I'm going to be like, guess what? Hannah Montana is not in it. Not yet. Are you still interested? Of course she's not interested in it, because it has nothing to do with her world.
So I just think its kind of sad that like some people lobby against it. Like, based on the dude who called in, or the many people that called in after the Dodgers ran a spot.... Just tell your kid, man; just be honest with them. It's like, look, [the] movie's not for you....
It's crazy to me, because it's like, some people think that it's real porn that's being advertised. Can you tell me the last porno that you saw that had the word "porno" in the title? Like, it doesn't exist. I don't think it's ever existed.
CNN: I understand that you were able to convince the MPAA to give you an R rating. Did that require any cuts? And if not, were you surprised?
Smith: Initially, I was kind of surprised that they gave us the NC-17. Especially because the two areas they focused on were easily addressed: one... they felt [was] gratuitous thrusting in the first porno sequence between Katie Morgan and Jason Mewes, and the other was what we'll call the egregious bodily fluid shot....
I was able to go to the appeals process with the film, where you show it to a different audience.... [You] screen it for [theater owners], and then you get up and do 15 minutes on why you feel it should be an R. Joan Graves [of] the MPAA gets up and does 15 minutes on why she feels it's an NC-17, then you get 10 minutes to rebut, she gets 10 minutes to rebut. You leave the room, and that audience makes the vote.... You have to win by a two-thirds majority [to have the rating changed].
And they changed the rating. [The] appeals group that we screened for... flipped it, gave us an R. And I didn't have to make a single cut, so everything I wanted in the movie is in the movie. That's kind of cool as a filmmaker.
CNN: Your own presidential debate.
Smith: A little bit.... It was kind of like "Inherit the Wind," but about porn, not the Scopes Monkey Trial.
All About Movies • Kevin SmithThe “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia left most Americans shocked, upset, and looking for answers. The most pressing issue at hand was certainly what is the correct response to neo-Nazis. While President Trump’s inability to condemn the white supremacists was clearly not the right response, another suggestion emerged from these pages suggesting that we should be making friends with neo-Nazis. This second response was equally wrong.
Written by Bethany Mandel, the piece marshals three examples of people who successfully convinced people out of their white supremacist views. Let there be no doubt—leading people away from racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of bigotry is a moral good. Mandel’s proposal, however, is not.
For starters, befriending bigots provides those who do not self-describe as neo-Nazis with political cover: “How can I be anti-Semitic when I have Jewish friends?” Furthermore, friendship requires mutual respect. When we befriend someone who believes that we are worth less than they are, the resulting relationship is a one-way street. In this case, making friends to white supremacists means making friends with people who could never respect us, because they believe we are subhuman. It follows that reaching out to neo-Nazis in this way entails a sacrifice of our own dignity.
But the work of activists that Mandel describes in her column is not actually friendship; it is an effort to debunk bigoted beliefs by speaking with those who hold them on an individualized basis. This approach, though perhaps rewarding for some, is ineffective: what Mandel fails to mention is that these efforts are necessarily limited in their impact, as they require far more resources, including emotional energy and time, than other forms of outreach, and those who actually subscribe to these beliefs are vastly outnumbered by those on the fence. For example, it took David Abitbol of Jewlicious“months” of engaging Megan Phelps-Roper on Twitter before she began to rethink her ideas. Spending this amount of time on each member of the far-right is simply unfeasible.
In addition, not all the examples Mandel provides support her position. In one of cases she cites, widespread social exclusion was the only reason that a neo-Nazi reconsidered his beliefs at all. When Derek Black, the godson of notorious white nationalist David Duke, was “outed” as a white nationalist at his university, he was ostracized. Eventually, a Jewish student invited him to his weekly Shabbat dinners. Black accepted only because it was “the only social invitation” he had received.
Moreover, there are far more people to convince with less effort elsewhere on the political spectrum. Though the rising tide of white nationalism and neo-Nazism is terrifying, its supporters constitute a small minority of Americans. A recent poll revealed that only nine percent of Americans feel that holding neo-Nazi or white supremacist views is “acceptable”; 83 percent say it is “unacceptable.” Likewise, only 10 percent of those surveyed said that they support the “alt-Right” movement; fifty percent oppose the alt-Right. However, 41 percent say they have “no opinion” on the alt-Right. What this reveals is not an imperative to reach out in good faith to those whose beliefs deny our dignity or right to exist, but rather a need to engage with those who have yet to be convinced either way.
Any number of neo-Nazis—no matter how few—is too many, and a threat to all minorities. We must oppose them effectively and with confidence. Attempting to make them our friends is not the way to do this. We should instead direct our limited resources elsewhere: excluding them from political power, convincing the “Do Not Knows,” and protecting the vulnerable, by force if necessary, when bigots dare to show themselves.
Noah Baron is a civil rights attorney who lives in San Francisco, CA.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled David Abitbol’s name.
This story "No, We Absolutely Should Not Make Friends With Nazis" was written by Noah Baron.The security services successfully foiled more than 12 UK terror attacks last year, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has revealed.
In the aftermath of the Westminster attack, however, the Defence Secretary also admitted that Britain now faced a new type of lone-wolf, low-tech terror threat that was “much more difficult” to prevent.
Speaking the day after a terrorist used a car to mow down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing a policeman outside Parliament, Sir Michael told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This kind of attack, this lone wolf attack, using things from daily life – a vehicle, a knife – is much more difficult to forestall.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
“We are also dealing with a terrorist enemy that is not making demands or holding people hostage, but simply wants to kill as many people as possible – so this is a new element to international terrorism.
“This is a new type of attack where somebody gets hold of a vehicle and drives it into innocent people – that also shows the moral vacuity of these terrorists.”
But he insisted that the security services were successfully foiling terror plots, saying: “The police and agencies that we rely on for our security have forestalled a large number of attacks in recent years – over a dozen last year.”
This seems a significant increase on some previously disclosed figures.
In October, Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police and the senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, said the security services had “successfully foiled at least 10 attacks in the last two years.”
Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: Westminster attack Show all 9 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: Westminster attack 1/9 An air ambulance lands after gunfire sounds were heard close to the Palace of Westminster in London PA wire 2/9 MPs wait until the situation is under control in Westminster. 'The alleged assailant was shot by armed police,' David Lidington, leader of the House of Commons, told the house. BBC News 3/9 Crowds gather in Westminster after shooting incident, which police are treating as terror attack BBC News 4/9 Police were also called to an incident on Westminster Bridge nearby AP 5/9 Early reports indicate the car, which mounted the pavement on Westminster Bridge and mowed into around a dozen people, was the same vehicle which then rammed into the railings of the Palace of Westminster, just around the corner Reuters 6/9 Security sources described the suspected assailant as a middle-aged Asian man, who is understood to have left the car before attacking a police officer with a seven-to-eight inch knife PA wire 7/9 Police have asked people to avoid the immediate area to allow emergency services to deal with the ongoing incident AP 8/9 One woman has died and a number of others, including the police officer, have been hurt, according to a junior doctor at St Thomas' Hospital Reuters 9/9 At least three gun shots were heard by those inside Westminster, and proceedings in the House of Commons have been suspended AP 1/9 An air ambulance lands after gunfire sounds were heard close to the Palace of Westminster in London PA wire 2/9 MPs wait until the situation is under control in Westminster. 'The alleged assailant was shot by armed police,' David Lidington, leader of the House of Commons, told the house. BBC News 3/9 Crowds gather in Westminster after shooting incident, which police are treating as terror attack BBC News 4/9 Police were also called to an incident on Westminster Bridge nearby AP 5/9 Early reports indicate the car, which mounted the pavement on Westminster Bridge and mowed into around a dozen people, was the same vehicle which then rammed into the railings of the Palace of Westminster, just around the corner Reuters 6/9 Security sources described the suspected assailant as a middle-aged Asian man, who is understood to have left the car before attacking a police officer with a seven-to-eight inch knife PA wire 7/9 Police have asked people to avoid the immediate area to allow emergency services to deal with the ongoing incident AP 8/9 One woman has died and a number of others, including the police officer, have been hurt, according to a junior doctor at St Thomas' Hospital Reuters 9/9 At least three gun shots were heard by those inside Westminster, and proceedings in the House of Commons have been suspended AP
Suggesting the scale of the threat faced by the UK, Mr Basu added: “We continue to work at a relentless pace with our key partners, currently dealing with around 550 live cases at any one time.”
One attempted plot, it was revealed last August, had been thwarted “in the final hours before the planned attack” on a UK target.
An operation run by GCHQ, the British intelligence and security organisation, used interception warrants to monitor phones owned by individuals linked to the 2015 plot, it was reported.
According to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, agents were then able to identify and intercept a would-be terrorist cell that was close to carrying out its plan.
Answering questions about whether the security services had enough resources to deal with such levels of threat, Sir Michael Fallon revealed this had been “reviewed” at an emergency COBRA meeting chaired by Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday night.
He said: “We reviewed whether the Met had all the resources they need – including military back up – to deal with situations like this.
“That is something we always review at the time.
“There have been increases in the budgets of the security services over the last few years. We will continue to keep that under review. The police and the security agencies will have the resources they need.”
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowSalk Institute scientists have found preliminary evidence that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other compounds found in marijuana can promote the cellular removal of amyloid beta, a toxic protein associated with Alzheimer's disease.
While these exploratory studies were conducted in neurons grown in the laboratory, they may offer insight into the role of inflammation in Alzheimer's disease and could provide clues to developing novel therapeutics for the disorder.
"Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimer's, we believe our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid beta accumulation in nerve cells," says Salk Professor David Schubert, the senior author of the paper.
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive brain disorder that leads to memory loss and can seriously impair a person's ability to carry out daily tasks. It affects more than five million Americans according to the National Institutes of Health, and is a leading cause of death. It is also the most common cause of dementia and its incidence is expected to triple during the next 50 years.
It has long been known that amyloid beta accumulates within the nerve cells of the aging brain well before the appearance of Alzheimer's disease symptoms and plaques. Amyloid beta is a major component of the plaque deposits that are a hallmark of the disease. But the precise role of amyloid beta and the plaques it forms in the disease process remains unclear.
In a |
Sun, which is famous for its Page Three girls, also couldn't resist:
NOW THAT'S A FLASH MOB! Dozens of women in racy lingerie storm the streets of Sydney to campaign for same-sex marriage before landmark vote — The Sun, 14 August, 2017
But let's take a look at those posters. Because they're not all about the upcoming postal plebiscite.
Those initials stand for Honey Birdette, a high-street lingerie chain who organised the so-called "campaign" which just happens to reveal their products.
And how do we know? Well, they told us in the press release:
HONEY BIRDETTE'S 'EQUALITY' FLASH MOB TAKE TO THE STREETS OF SYDNEY — Honey Birdette Press Release, 14 August, 2017
And the Daily Mail dutifully reproduced bits of it word for word, proclaiming their goal:
To empower women and celebrate women's equality. — Honey Birdette Press Release, 14 August, 2017
And their strategy:
... supporting the fight for equality across the board and hoping to engage and mobilise thousands of women and their allies in the political process. — Honey Birdette Press Release, 14 August, 2017
Snap.
And what about the video?
Yes, that too was shot and supplied by the company!
But strangely no mention of the demonstration being a shameless marketing campaign for undies.
Or, indeed, recent protests by employees against the company.
Former Honey Birdette workers call out alleged exploitation and harassment "Spank me if I'm wrong" is recommended sales "banter" in the customer service manifesto, and daily selfies must be sent to managers so they can determine whether their retail workers are exposing three items of branded lingerie. — The Age, 9 December, 2016
Empowering women? Hmmm.
But the corset company isn't the only one cashing in with same-sex marriage campaigns.
The issue's also being used to flog ice cream.
SYLVIA JEFFREYS: Ben & Jerry's has banned customers from ordering two scoops of the same flavour until Australia legalises gay marriage — Channel Nine, Today, 25 May, 2017
Clever. Yes, the ice-cream giant, owned by Unilever, isn't letting customers marry two scoops of the same flavour.
While Streets, also owned by Unilever, showed what bliss is in store once gay couples are allowed to tie the knot and can.
... share a Magnum
A campaign which met mixed reactions.
Centre for Independent Studies senior research fellow Jeremy Sammut said... "It's a pretty obvious attempt to hijack an issue for commercial reasons." — The Australian, 6 April, 2017
Honey Birdette's customers were also not so sure about the company using same-sex marriage to sell suspenders and stockings.
This is worse than the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad.... the marriage equality message is just a promo video with no real discussion or message. This whole thing is a money grab. — Facebook, Honey Birdette, Hillary Williams, commentator, 15 August, 2017
But as always, some in the media like The Sun and Daily Mail, what a surprise were only too happy to help.WP Candy was an incredible source of inspiration for what we’re doing here at WP Daily – in fact, all of the staff here have the pleasure of watching the property grow into a positive force of information, community, and all-around fun.
But if you’ve been around for some time now you’ve seen what appears now to the be rise and fall of such a great site with the last post now dating back more than a month ago. With recent conversation surrounding editorial burnout, Bermuda Triangles, and business models, there’s a lot of healthy reasoning of why an editorial news site can and may fail.
I put my two cents into the ring via the comments (which you should definitely read) as well as explained my position in the beginning of this past weekend’s roundup and why we even began entertaining such an idea as WP Daily. As positive as I am about our beginning (which has been very positive) the fact remains that it will eventually have to return a dollar so that we can keep the lights on.
Thankfully we haven’t bet the farm (or any farm for that matter) on this being the lifeblood of a staff’s livelihood. But it would be really neat to hear what became of WPCandy and why it ultimately has stopped posting.
Sure, there’s moments where you need to take a break and there are moments where life gets in the way or new adventures appear, but there’s been very little notice except this cryptic tweet the other day about “evolution”:
@sdenike WPCandy isn’t going anywhere, but perhaps evolving. — WPCandy (@wpcandy) January 10, 2013
I’d love to know how it’s going to evolve! I remember when it was first purchased by Ryan Imel a few years back and we all had high hopes. It grew like a weed and tons of people contributed amazing content to it.
And it’s not that I don’t completely understand – I mean, from what I gather Ryan’s been involved in some big things as of late, like launching a new brick-and-mortar coworking spots, Founders.
After watching my father-in-law launch 3 or 4 odd brick-and-mortars I know how difficult and how time consuming that really is. It’s not even in the same universe as launching an online-based business!
And what about WPCandy Quarterly? It’s one thing to abandon a blog since Ryan doesn’t really owe anyone an explanation for abandonment, but this changes a tad when you involved ecommerce and a financial transaction:
Order an issue and it will be sent your way within 24 hours. Or, subscribe for a year to receive the next four issues of the Quarterly before anyone else can order it.
I interpreted this to mean that I’d get a total of four issues within the next 12 calendar months after purchase. Technically I suppose he could launch the next 3 sometime before I die and the deal would be honored, but most people won’t see it that way, right?
I’m not going to ask Ryan for my money back as I did enjoy the first release, but I would like an explanation. We were promised one a week or so ago but I never got any word:
@awdl2011 tomorrow we’ll be sending out an email to those who ordered a magazine about what happened and the newest dates. — WPCandy (@wpcandy) January 10, 2013
Did anyone get any more info? I’d love to know. Finally, what about Pressed Ads, the advertising network that was powering a lot of WP Candy’s monetary strategy as well as being a network for independent publishers?
The domain is now completely broken:
It was a beautiful site at one point:
But even that site seemed to quickly die out. To be completely transparent, I signed up for the service and even made a few dollars from it but I’m still waiting for the a few months of back-payment which still haven’t shown up (I’m not in desperate pain though, so I’m not complaining.). But, I can’t imagine that I’m the only one still waiting for business to be cleared.
I got this email from Ryan in late November of last year:
Hello John, I hope this finds you well. I’m writing to inform you that for now, Pressed Ads will be scaled back to allow for some restructuring. The system Pressed Ads was built upon was far from ideal, and has proven unable to grow with the network. I apologize for the inconvenience, and for not getting word out sooner about the change. All unpaid revenue shares will be paid out as soon as possible. Please allow up to 60 days for the remaining payments to be sent; I appreciate your patience while we get the outstanding payments taken care of. Thank you for trying out Pressed Ads during its first iteration. It didn’t quite scale as well as I hoped it would — due to my own failures, as well as scaling issues. I’m just sorry it didn’t work out this time, but hopefully we’ll still be able to work together in various ways in the future. Thanks John, Ryan Imel Editor, WPCandy.com @wpcandy
Perhaps they are still restructuring and it’s great to see Ryan acknowledge that the struggles of running a business are legit and very, very real. The 60 day window ends in a few days so perhaps I just have a wait a few days more.
To be sure, this isn’t a witch hunt by any stretch of the imagination but I’m genuinely curious as to what the hell happened to such a glorious start. With Quarterly, the blog, the great editorial and interviews, and an advertising network, it seemed to have it all. Where did it go wrong and where will it go from here?
Ryan, much of this community is anxiously waiting with bated breath to hear from you. We support you 100%.
***EDIT***
Just to give some more credence to my voice of support for Ryan and WPCandy, I wanted to provide additional proof that myself and our staff here at WP Daily has been supporters for a while, even participating in the monthly giving program:
There’s no reason why WPCandy can’t rise from the ashes to be amazing once again.Anakin called him the best Tekken player of all-time. That is a compliment of the highest order. Attempting to comprise a list of players who would also be worthy enough to receive such a title would prove almost futile. And guess what? No-one batted an eye when Anakin said it. Knee is that good.
There’s possibly only one other player that could be mentioned in the same breath as Knee, and that is Jang Iksu. While Jang Iksu has moved on, Knee is still here – still hungry, still playing professionally, and still playing at the highest level.
Hailing from Korea, where some of the world’s greatest Tekken players are born – Knee is a legend. He is a champion. He is more times than not the standard by which others measure greatness. But more than any of that, he is humble, and a man of character. When I contacted Bae Jae min, better known as ‘Knee,’ and asked if he’d be willing to do an interview with us, he said “Yeah sure. Sorry for the late reply.” Because he hardly ever reads his direct messages, he said. But he read ours, and then apologized for not getting back to us in time. Again, character.
I wanted to catch up with Knee because who better to gain insight into a new Tekken game from? He’s played it more than anyone. I also wanted to learn more about his trip to EVO, as well as learn about his past, present and future. I hope you enjoy.
Knee, thanks so much for consenting to an interview with us. You’ve been playing Tekken for a long time. When did you first begin to play?
The first moment I played Tekken was when I was in elementary school. It was Tekken 1.
Tekken 1? You’re the first person I’ve heard say that.
At that time, in my memory, I just recognized it as a fighting game without knowing it was Tekken, as I was so young.
I can imagine. Your real name is Bae Jae min. It’s cool that you already have “bae” in it. (laughs) Everyone calls you ‘Knee’ though. What’s the meaning behind that?
It came from Tekken Tag 1 when I used Bryan and Bruce as tag partners. As you know, these characters have many skills using their knees. I started to use the internet when I went to middle school. As I accessed a Tekken commnity site, I thought about my nickname when I saw a blank for writing it. And then, it came to mind that my tag team had a lot of skills with their knees. That’s how my nickname ‘Knee’ is made.
You just learned something folks. I’m surprised I never figured that out. You seem to play Tekken for hours on end. Your YouTube videos are sometimes 3-4 hours or more long. Why do you love Tekken so much?
I like games, and fighting games are the most favorite ones among them. So I’ve played most of the fighting games. In the past, there were plenty of famous fighting games in arcades. In my late teens to early twenties, the most amount of games was Tekken in arcades. So, it was natural that I played it for a long time. Moreover, Tekken was the most famous game in my school days so I played with my friends a lot. Therefore, I think this is why my main playing game becomes Tekken.
How did you become so good at playing Tekken?
From the end of Tekken 4, I began to know many Tekken master players. I took and learned their Tekken knowledge while I played Tekken with them. From that time, I started to play Tekken professionally, differently from the time I was just casually playing. Since then I’ve done numerous of competitions and practices. I think that’s what makes me professional.
Have you always been good at Tekken?
There was one occasion during the times of Tekken 4, I lost 30 times against a player! (laughs) At that moment I realized that there are lots of skillful players. Also, I knew my ability was far less than the Tekken masters.
And when did you decide that you would start playing Tekken professionally?
It was during Tekken 5. National tournaments and events at arcades began to increase as Tekken got its popularity again. When I participated in these kinds of tournaments, as well as international tournaments for the first time, I decided to go pro in Tekken.
Knee playing Tekken 4
Tournament in 2007 with Tekken 5 DR, held at Green Arcade. Many
teams participated. After this tournament, Knee entered into the army.
Okay, so during Tekken 4, that’s when you realized you needed to get better, and with Tekken 5 that’s when you actually started playing more professionally. The arcade scene was a huge influence in your career early on, but I am hearing that the arcade scene in Korea is now dying. Is that true? Why is that?
I think it’s the current state of the times. PC gaming is so strong, not only in Korea but all over the world. Because of this, many of the arcades disappeared, and internet cafes have increased in Korea. I think this is why arcades began decreasing because people don’t have to come to the arcade and prefer to play computer games in their home or internet cafe.
That actually relieves me, because it lets me know that gaming hasn’t decreased, but only transitioned to a different platform. Tekken 7 is coming out on PC, so I’m glad you said that. It’s not that Tekken is dying or anything. Just the arcades. Now, I know that Tekken 7 isn’t out everywhere, but you were still the first person in the world to reach True Tekken God in Tekken 7. Why did it take so long?
Nowadays, since there are few players in Korea, it isn’t easy to do high rank matches. Especially when the number of players in high rank is too small to be matched, so I waited a little. Another reason for my waiting is that there are some players who don’t want to play rank matches with me. So, I had to wait. (laughs)
Well, duh! That’s an automatic demotion! (laughs) Is it true that you have a Tekken 7: Fated Retribution arcade cabinet to practice with at home?
The answer is no (laughs). It was last summer that a Tekken 7 cabinet had been in my house for about two months. After then, I’ve played in Green Arcade.
Let’s talk about EVO. How did you like it this year?
Actually, I didn’t intend to enter EVO in this year. This is because, although it’s so exciting and flattering to go to EVO, the expense was a lot more than I had imagined.
Oh wow. You aren’t sponsored?
I don’t have any sponsors. Therefore, it isn’t easy to make a decision of my entry in a U.S. tournament. However, when Bandai Namco announced providing seed tickets for The King of Iron Fist Tournament 2016 which will be held at the end of this year for two players in first and second place at EVO. I decided to go in spite of paying my cost.
Hopefully a team will sponsor you soon. I’d pick you up in a heartbeat! Once Tekken 7 is out on console, this could change. So then no thoughts on EVO next year?
I haven’t thought about the next year yet.
When you played JDCR, why did you pick Akuma and not Bryan?
There are three reasons. First, at that time, Akuma was a very powerful character. Second, I anticipated that JDCR would be unfamiliar with how to deal with Akuma. Finally, it is hard for Heihachi to handle Akuma. That’s why I used Akuma in the tournament instead of Bryan.
EVO 2016 Semifinals: JDCR (Heihachi) vs Knee (Akuma)
Now that Akuma is getting nerfed, do you think he will still be good?
Yes, I do. Even though Akuma gets nerfed, he’ll be still be powerful. What’s the matter is difficulty of managing him. I think he will be changed like this – to be powerful only if skillful players play from any players do.
Everyone thought you would win EVO, but as we know you lost to Saint. What happened?
I had no chance to practice Fated Retribution hard in this EVO, mainly because at the time I was moving my house, and other businesses. So, I could concentrate on practicing only about two days. In other words, I couldn’t prepare enough for EVO. Moreover, I didn’t know Jack-7 became so powerful like that. And lastly, I lost Saint’s daring, which means his attack was so aggressive despite the frame loss of his character.
EVO 2016 Grand Finals: Knee (Bryan) vs Saint (Jack-7)
That confirms an article I wrote about how Fated Retribution changed the game at EVO. It evened the playing field by introducing a lot of unfamiliarity and randomness. Next EVO will be very interesting since everyone will have had the game.
Korea got first, second and third place this year, and out of the last four EVO’s, Korea has won all but one. Does Korea have the best Tekken players in the world?
It’s true that there are plenty of the best players in Korea. But I don’t think they are only in Korea. What’s more, it’s also natural that both Korea and Japan have an advantage comparing other foreign players to win championship in EVO, since console version of Tekken 7 isn’t released yet.
I don’t know if you heard, but in an interview with Anakin he said that you were the best Tekken player of all-time. What do you think when you hear something like that?
I think that’s such a great compliment (smiles). Anakin is also an outstanding player, as he has been one of the best players for a long time.
Final Round 16 Top 8: Anakin (Jack-6/P.Jack) vs Knee (Lars/Devil Jin)
Throughout your Tekken career, which player has always given you the hardest time?
It’s difficult for me to pick up the particular one because those players have always existed. Since I’ve never met easy players to win, I didn’t think about the hardest one to me from the time I started to play Tekken.
I interpret that as you saying “Hard Tekken player? What’s that?” (laughs) Why is Bryan your favorite character?
Personally, I think Bryan has the best hitting impact among Tekken characters. Also, he set my identity and made me famous in Tekken. Moreover, I like insane characters in fighting games such as Yamazaki in King of Fighters.
Very true. Now, you are very good with a lot of characters. How do you choose which one’s to use in a match? For example, when you participated in the Kuro Kuro cup, you used Heihachi instead of Bryan. And at EVO, you used Akuma against JDCR. How do you choose?
Usually, I choose characters either using incompatibility among them. Or, in case of characters for tournament, I choose them after I have enough discussion with CHANEL. In another case, I choose characters who opponents are likely to find it difficult to win. Lastly, I choose characters after I check whether he or she fits to me at that day in the tournament.
EVO 2013 TTT2 Grand Finals: CafeId|Knee vs Eightarc|Bronson Tran
Master Raven was announced at EVO. Do you think you will use her?
Once she is released, I will. This is because ninja’s are splendid!
What characters do you hope returns to Tekken 7?
I hope that Zafina returns.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have guessed that. What kind of things does Knee do for fun? Any hobbies?
I play PC games a lot, such as the Starcraft series, Diablo series, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Overwatch, etc. Also, I like to read comic books since I like cartoons.
Right now everyone is talking about tier lists. Our website visitors would be very pleased if you could give us your character tier list for Tekken 7FR.
Although I’m not absolutely sure to make my tier list since I haven’t played every character, I would choose these characters as the characters with the highest rank:
Steve
Heihachi
Hwoarang
Feng
Paul
Especially, Steve. He is too strong.
You heard him people. Steve players, where you at? (laughs) I wondered why you didn’t pick Bryan against JDCR in the VSL finals. Now I know. Lastly, as you stated earlier, you’ve been playing this game you love so much since it first came out. That’s 20 years. Will Knee ever retire from Tekken?
I have considered that more times than I can think, but eventually, I always come back to Tekken. Because of that, I don’t think about it anymore.
Thank you, Knee.In recent conversations with Tracy Hurley from the Sarah Darkmagic blog and other internet fame, Samuel Dillon of RPG Musings and Radall Walker of Init or What, the subject of adding detail to the game world was broached. This is something I have always encouraged way back in my first DMing 101 article I designed a really simple, and some what ugly, room record sheet. A simple document DMs could use to fill in flavor text about rooms and different environments. This would allow DMs to add more descriptive text to their games thus creating more captivating stories.
I have decided to continue down that path with these simple Day Progression Trackers. Another simple document DMs can use to track the progression of time and how the characters surroundings change as the day goes on.
Devils in the Details: Giving detail about characters surroundings can be helpful in setting a mood for any RPG, as well as a good way to help the players get into the story. As the DM is the main source of descriptive imformation for the players its always a good idea to spend some time designing the world with some significant details. Details such as time of day, the current weather, any unusual surroundinds the players might be interested in, what NPCs might be lingering about. These can all add to the level of submersion your players experience in your game. If you give them enough detail to begin painting a broad picture of their surroundings players can more easily fill in the rst of the details themselves.
Too Much: Too much detail can easily derail the momentum of many games, but just enough can make all the difference. Players may not remember the weather in the last game, or the scent you described lingering in the air, but they will remember how into the game they got and how exciting it was to be so immersed in the story.
Simple and Clean: Using these Day progression sheets is easy, for each location your players travel to write a simple descriptive text for each of the listed items. Describe in two or three sentences what the weather looks and feels like. Is it raining? Is it a light rain, a heavy rain, a bitterly cold rain? How light is it out side? If it’s midday are there heavy clouds making it somewhat dark out? Is the sun blazing down making standing out of the shade almost unbearable? A few brief lines to describe each of the key points in the boxes will really help your players understand the area they are interacting with, and it may make their interactions more meaningful.
Perhaps knowing that the sun is scorching hot and the temperature is in the low hundreds might make the players think to offer some water to an NPC they are trying to win over with diplomacy gaining a bonus in the process. Giving your players more details about the world around them gives them more tools with which to expand their interaction options.
Open Source: As always I’m no designer so if any of you out there feel like making this tracking sheet a little easier on the eyes please feel free to do so. I’m also open to suggestions as to what detail should or could be added to enhance your game.
Download: PDF/Word
Thadeous can't think of anything interesting about him self right now. Know this though if he could it would be creative and funny as well as thought provoking.Ted Koppel on Sunday said he thinks Fox News host Sean Hannity is "bad for America."
During a segment on CBS's "Sunday Morning," Hannity defended himself and told Koppel the American people need to be given some credit.
"We have to give some credit to the American people, that they're somewhat intelligent and that they know the difference between an opinion show and a news show," Hannity said.
ADVERTISEMENT
"You're cynical," he added.
Koppel conceded he was cynical, to which Hannity responded:"Do you think we're bad for America? You think I'm bad for America?"
"Yeah," Koppel responded. "In the long haul, I think you and all these opinion shows" are.
Hannity told Koppel it was "sad" he felt that way.
“No, you know why? Because you’re very good at what you do," Koppel said, adding, "You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”
Hannity is a strong supporter of President Trump and often defends the president's actions on his weeknight Fox News show.
On Friday, Hannity denied the president was to blame for Republicans' failure to pass their plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.Here is a great opportunity for Indian space enthusiasts and students to learn how to build a small satellite. Dr Sharan Asundi (Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Science Engineering at Tuskegee University and Visiting Researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) is offering a course on Pico/Nano/Micro-Satellites Design in Bangalore.
The objective of the course is to engage in learning the methods & processes for designing and experience hands-on training in assembling, testing of PNMSat (Pico/Nano/Micro-Satellites) systems/subsystems. The broad aims include
An understanding systems engineering approach to the design & development of PNMSats.
Review principles of Orbital Mechanics relevant to the design of PNMSats.
Understand the functions of various subsystems of a PNMSat and engage in their preliminary design.
Design, simulate & analyse PNMSat subsystems using one or more of the following tools: MATLAB and/or Octave CAD Tools Satellite/System Tool Kit and/or GMAT
Understand the development, integration and testing of PNMSats.
As part of the hands-on training, the course will be taught using a classroom satellite kit from EyasSat, which has all the subsystems of a satellite. The students will also learn to use satellite tracking, telemetry communication (analog & digital) and conceptual understanding of telecommand operation.
Course Location: PES University, Bangalore
Dates: 29th May – 23rd June 2017
Full Course Description: CLICK HERE
Course Cost: Rs. 4000/ (More details)
Course Registration Link: CLICK HERE (Registration between 13th-28th May, 2017)
You can reach out to Prof. Sharan Asundi for more information at asundi@mytu.tuskegee.eduKuwait City: Noted industrialist, Mathunny Mathews, popularly known as Toyota Sunny, who had donned a pivotal role in helping Indians to repatriate during the Iraq occupation of Kuwait, passed away on Saturday. He was 81. Mathews had been ailing.
During the Iraq occupation of Kuwait in 1990, when the government authorities pleaded helpless in supporting the Non-Resident Indians, Mathews reached to their rescue and helped them return to India safely. It was his constant communication with the United Nations and the central government that ensured the safe return of Indians.
Mathews' mission inspired filmmaker, Raja Krishna Menon, to make the film, Airlift. Mathews was also in the forefront to lend support and confidence to the Indian community in Kuwait during the Gulf war in 2003.
Mathews, son of the late A.C.Mathew and Aachiamma of Kumbanad in Pathanamthitta, reached Kuwait in search of a job in 1956 and joined the Nazar Mohammed Al-Sayer and Company in 1957. He retired from service as general manager in 1989.
Following a surge in the marketing and sales of Toyota cars under the tutelage of Mathews, he came to be known as Toyota Sunny. He formed Safeena Car Rental Company and Safeena General Trading Company in 1990.
He was the chairman of the Jabria Indian School and one of the main founders of the Indian Art Circle in Kuwait. Mathews had also officiated as chairman of the Indian Business Council. He had played a main role in the constitution of the Malayali Christian Congregation too.
He is survived by wife Mary Mathew and children James M. Mathews, Annnie M. Mathew (Delhi) and Susan M. Mathews (lawyer, United Nations Human Rights Commission, Geneva).Life's two great certainties are emerging as election issues: taxes, because of the technical recession, and death, because the population is aging. The economy will affect more people, but old people vote and they want to know where the warring political parties stand on implementing the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling on physician-assisted death (PAD).
A Forum poll released on Aug. 28 pegged support for PAD for terminally ill patients at 77 per cent, across all political affiliations; Compass ranked PAD as 10 out of 30 on a list of election questions and Ipsos marked it as a top-five election issue in a poll in late July.
Quebec, which will roll out its medical-aid-in-dying program before the end of the year, is the only part of the country that has an action plan. Last month, the rest of the provinces and territories joined an Ontario-driven commission to explore options, but the federal government has been reluctant, to put it mildly, to engage the implications of the Supreme Court's February ruling in Regina v. Carter, which will decriminalize assisted suicide in less than six months.
Story continues below advertisement
The Conservatives did appoint a three-member consultative panel in the middle of July – two of whom were government witnesses opposed to PAD at the B.C. Supreme Court in the Carter challenge – but, after the election was called on Aug. 2, suspended the panel's ability to engage with stakeholders until after the votes are counted in the Oct. 19 election.
So where do the four federal parties stand? Here's a synopsis, along with a grading by Wanda Morris, CEO of Dying with Dignity (DWD), the country's leading lobby group to promote choice in dying. DWD asked each of the four parties for their policy statements. Only the NDP and the Liberals replied, but Ms. Morris gives the Green Party credit for having posted its policy on its website. "Nobody has committed to making the February deadline," Ms. Morris noted in an interview, "which leaves patients and doctors in limbo."
Conservatives (D-)
The party gets minus points for moving from "inaction to obstruction." It does not have a position on its website and it didn't respond to the DWD's request for a position. The closest the Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper have come to a legislative response to the Supreme Court ruling is a blanket statement, repeated again last week in response to a CTV request, following the release of the Forum poll. "This is a sensitive issue for many Canadians, with deeply held beliefs on both sides. We will study the decision and consult widely with all perspectives on this difficult issue."
The Conservatives have released an online Issues Book from its recently announced consultative panel seeking responses to a series of scenarios, many of which don't accord with the Court's ruling. Morris calls them alarmist and fear mongering.
The Conservatives need only look to its own back bench for a legislative response. Manitoba MP Steven Fletcher has introduced at least two private-member's bills calling for amendments to the Criminal Code, the establishment of a national oversight commission and strict safeguards to protect the vulnerable while allowing competent adults to seek a doctor's help in dying. The bills have died on the order paper, but Mr. Fletcher, a quadriplegic, this summer published Master of My Fate, a book about his own life choices after a catastrophic collision with a moose on a remote highway in 1996. He thinks Canadians should quiz candidates on their positions on PAD before making ballot decisions. "They'll talk about it if people ask, and the best time to ask is during an election," he told The Canadian Press late last month.
NDP (A-)
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Ms. Morris gives the party top marks for "respecting the Court's decision, embedding assisted dying into the health-care system and considering access issues across the country," and awards bonus points for identifying the Conservative's inaction in Parliament and its "flawed consultation process." If elected, the NDP says it will make access to palliative care a "priority," take "immediate steps to implement" the Court's decision "swiftly with balance, respect and sensitivity," and "draw upon" the "highly effective, consensual and broadly supported process undertaken by the Quebec government." While it doesn't commit to making the Court's deadline, the NDP does say that Parliament needs to hear from all Canadians to "ensure that rights and safeguards are applied equally across Canada" in order to "protect the vulnerable without creating unreasonable barriers for individuals seeking access to dying with dignity."
Liberals (B+)
Leader Justin Trudeau publicly affirmed the Court's decision in February as "the right thing to do," so Ms. Morris gives him points for his "personal support" and his respect for the Charter, but the party statement isn't as strong as the NDP's, in her view. "Good for the Liberals," she says in promising "an all-party special committee" to consult experts and gather the views of Canadians in order to come up with recommendations for a legislative framework. The process seems long-term and she can't see how it can result in timely legislation.
Greens (B)
The party didn't respond to the DWD request for a position, but Leader Elizabeth May gets points for being proactive on the issue, for endorsing Conservative MP Steven Fletcher's two private-member's bills and for posting the party's policy on its website. It supports amendments to the Criminal Code to allow "adults with full mental capacity" who are "in situations of terminal illness and who find their situation intolerable," to ask doctors for help in dying. The party will "remain vigilant" against allowing anybody to make "such a decision" for anybody else. The party loses points, however, for not updating its position in accord with the Court's decision, which didn't stipulate "terminally ill" in its list of conditions.
Follow me on Twitter: @semartin71next Image 1 of 3
prev next Image 2 of 3
prev Image 3 of 3
One year after a huge landslide killed at least 280 people near Guatemala's capital, the neighborhood once known as Cambray II remains a grim wasteland.
The wrecked walls and foundations of homes are half-buried in the mud. Abandoned shoes, toys, appliances and clothing litter what is, literally, a graveyard.
Despite two weeks of digging following the Oct. 1, 2015, disaster, when an unstable hillside collapsed on the squatter community, at least 70 people still remain missing, presumably buried forever under soil considered too unstable for further digging.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: You can watch survivors of the mudslide recount the fateful day on the Associated Press photo blog.
___
Officials estimate there are 8,000 places in Guatemala where the threat of floods, mudslides and other disasters make it too risky to live. Yet none of those communities has been successfully relocated in the year since the disaster.
The government budgeted about $2.6 million to build new homes for the survivors of Cambray II on land that was seized from a drug trafficker. But only about 30 of 181 planned homes have been constructed so far.
Despite a mandatory evacuation order, a half dozen families remain. They scattered when journalists approached, apparently fearful of losing the only place they could afford.
Sonia Ramos lives only about 50 yards (meters) from the edge of the mudslide, and has been told her house is unsafe.
"We have no place else to go," Ramos said. One year ago, the yard of her home became an impromptu morgue. Now it's a patch of dust or a pit of mud, depending on the rains.
"Sometimes, I'm afraid," she said, but shrugged, as if to say there is nothing to be done.
Human solidarity seems to have replaced official response.
Ramos took in 18-year-old Carlos Cac Pedroza, whose mother and siblings died in the mudslide. She'd seen him go to the barren spot where his family's house once stood, lie down and toss dirt on himself, saying he wanted to die.
Cac Pedroza could have stayed with other relatives, but didn't want to leave. He stared at the ground when asked why.
"I would be lost if I left," he said. "I don't know how to live anywhere else."
Officials blamed a current and former mayor for diverting a river that runs along the base of the hillside, saying it eroded the slope. Both have denied responsibility and are out on bail.
For survivors, the psychological scars have not faded.
Samuel Morales, 43, lost his wife and |
of an isolated life on a new planet. And as their mental bond grew, so did a fervent, passionate physical urge for each other. Now they face an obstacle for which they never trained: sex on the Red Planet.
Jane and John are fictional characters. But if a handful of Mars colonization projects have their way, their lives could be a reality in just 10 years.
SEE ALSO: Are We Meant to Live on Mars?
On the surface, this story sounds like the beginning of a wonderful extraterrestrial romance. However, there's a dark side — having sex on Mars is unexplored and could potentially be life-threatening.
Space Sex: Too Taboo for Study
When it comes to sex in space, federal agencies' lips are sealed. NASA claims that no sexual experiments have ever been carried out, and former astronauts play coy when asked about the topic. But this is partly because sex hasn't been an issue on short-term missions.
However, putting a human on Mars is in our future. If NASA does it first, it will require an extended period of space flight that could stretch two years. If a private colonization venture sends humans to the Red Planet, it will be on a one-way flight without the possibility of return to Earth.
In either case, sex will have to be addressed, especially for a mission with a mixed-gender crew. Yet even in 2013, both federal agencies and private ventures shy away from the topic like a 1950s sitcom couple that sleeps in separate beds.
This is a huge problem for our future in space.
"There are basic human drives to have shelter, eat and procreate, so to negate not thinking about one of them, you're doing a disservice to space exploration," says Dr. Saralyn Mark, a women's health specialist who consults with agencies including NASA.
The biggest question mark is how our bodies will react to prolonged exposure to 40% gravity on Mars.
The Mars Society, an organization that grew out of the Mars to Stay concept from the early 1990s, advocates for a one-way manned mission to colonize Mars. While members of the group differ on when that will happen, Mars Society regularly carries out mock missions in its Mars Desert Research Station, a structure in Utah that was built to simulate a Martian environment.
Every two weeks, five or six people run through routine tasks similar to the job functions that future members of a Mars colony would conduct every day in order to be self-sufficient, such as growing their own food. Dr. Kris Lehnhardt, chief flight surgeon for MDRS, believes that procreation and women's health should also take top priority when it it comes to preparing for a mission like this.
"If you think about colonies historically, they are at some point supposed to become self-sufficient," he says. "If you didn't allow mating, you are not setting up a colony that would populate over time. And, in theory, they would die on Mars because there wouldn't be a propagation of species."
How Do You 'Do It' on Mars?
MDRS hasn't conducted any sex experiments to account for the gravity on Mars. However, Lehnhardt, who also teaches a class on human health and space flight at George Washington University, has an idea about what sex on Mars would be like, based on what we've learned about our bodies in microgravity from missions on the International Space Station.
We've all seen videos of astronauts spinning in microgravity on the ISS, but Mars will be a little different, where there is some gravity. If you're speaking purely in terms of physical pleasure, sex on Mars wouldn't be that different than what we're used to. It would just be a little bumpy at first.
"You could probably just do it like you do it on Earth," says Lehnhardt. "The reality is that you would have to deal with physics."
Just like astronauts on the ISS, colonists wouldn't need to wear space suits inside their stations because the atmosphere would be as it is on Earth. The trickiest part of having sex in low gravity would be finding the most optimal way to remain in contact because the two bodies would repel.
"It's kind of a misnomer in space because there is no down, Lehnhardt says, noting that astronauts on the ISS sleep in bags attached to the wall. "In terms of positions it would be more about staying in contact with each other. It isn't impossible, but it would be awkward."
Keeping that close connection would be easier on Mars than in orbit because of the 40% gravity. "It's not like the moon where you are bouncing up and down, but it will be lower than Earth," Lehnhardt says.
Birth Control on Another Planet
When it comes to sex on Mars, the bigger issue here is procreation. If the goal is to truly find another planet on which humans can live, sex and pregnancy have to be heavily reviewed.
"Most people will say that it is something we will have to figure out once we permanently live off the planet," says Lehnhardt. "But it is obviously essential. If you're talking about sending a group to Mars and setting up a colony, you have to have procreation."
However, some Mars colonization advocates don't feel that pregnancy will be an issue for the first group of settlers on the Red Planet.
In January, Mashable interviewed Norbert Kraft, medical director for Mars One, a private venture that wants to send a group of colonists — who will be chosen by the public via national television — to Mars in 2023. When asked about how Mars One will prepare its astronauts for sex or possible pregnancy on Mars, Kraft didn't see it as a problem, noting that the organization would try to "make colonists aware of the risks associated with having sex."
In Mars One's ideal situation, the first few waves of colonists — a new group of about 30 people will be sent to the planet every two years — won't procreate at all. Kraft says once the team on Earth has more information about the environment on Mars, "perhaps they will then try sending animals to the planet to breed."
Kraft says the team would pack contraceptive supplies. However, the birth control methods used on Earth may not work on Mars. We have very little knowledge about how a woman's body will adapt to a lower gravity environment, particularly how her hormone levels will be affected. Therefore, it would be hard to develop a contraceptive prior to going to Mars that would actually prevent pregnancy while there.
Some medical experts have proposed inserting an intrauterine device (IUD) before launch. But the problem with even a non-hormonal IUD is the increased risk of movement once in lower gravity, which could puncture the uterus.
"With an IUD, there's a foreign object in your body, and now you're going into a foreign environment. It would be hard to extract in an emergency," says Dr. Mark. "Keeping things as simple as possible is the best way to go."
There is, however, a highly controversial proposed solution to an unexpected pregnancy on Mars: female sterilization.
Mars colony advocates discuss removing inessential organs — such as appendices and tonsils — before flight in order to avoid a very dangerous emergency surgery once on Mars. But when it comes to removing the uterus, the ethical issues divide health experts.
"When you're going to a new world, the last thing you want to think about is bringing an offspring until you're settled," says Mark. "But what's considered an organ that you need? To what extreme do we go? When you remove a uterus, some women have problems because of blood flow. So unless you really have to, I wouldn't recommend it."
The First Human Martian
Perhaps talking about pregnancy prevention on Mars is putting the cart before the horse. Is it even possible for a woman to get pregnant in low gravity?
Before you can discuss a pregnancy on Mars, you have to start with menstruation. "On Earth we have a 28-day cycle, how will you shift to Martian moon cycle with a longer orbit? One day is 24.65 hours," Mark points out. You would have to find some way to account for the extra 40 minutes per day.
Another issue is the gravity's effects on bones. In space, astronaut bone loss varies from 1% to 5% per month. Hormonal milieu impacts bone health and lower sex hormone levels, which would affect menstruation and, therefore, ovulation. Mark cites eating disorders as an example — women who suffer from extreme cases of bulimia or anorexia experience bone loss and lower hormone levels, eventually halting their periods.
However, on previous short-term missions to the ISS, women were able to have their periods while in orbit.
"In theory, if a woman menstruates and ovulates, there's the possibility of getting pregnant in space," Lehnhardt says. "If you're able to [physically have sex], then the issue is sperm motility. Will it function in order for fertilization to occur? If it does, can an egg implant properly in the uterus, and can the embryo develop normally?"
The best example we have to draw from is a study that sent rodent embryos into space. When they came back down to Earth's gravity, they were born as normal. A 2009 study that examined mice's embryo fertilization found that implantation at normal gravity yielded healthy mice, but fertilization rates were lower for the embryos fertilized in microgravity.
However, no mice or rats have fully developed while in microgravity throughout the entire developmental cycle. Lehnhardt says there hasn't been a stronger push for rodent birth in space because of a lack of support and rules allowing that research to happen.
"It's triaged as a lower priority research topic compared to other risks astronauts face right now," he says. "But if we truly want to become more than a one-planet species, we are going to have start doing more research into every step along the way."
So will Jane and John's love story ever find its happy ending? Marital bliss isn't a guarantee, but one thing is for sure — sex on Mars will eventually happen.
"We are biological creatures. We are animals," says Lehnhardt. "We try to fight [the urge to have sex] all the time. But most of the time, biology wins."
Illustration by Bob Al-Greene/Mashable.Bobby will see 1956 Greyhound serve as lounge
In what likely ranks as among the most unusual design moves in Nashville hotel building history, a restored 1956 Greyhound Bus will serve as a rooftop bar/lounge for the future Bobby hotel downtown.
Castlerock Asset Management, which is undertaking the adaptive reuse of the Wells Fargo Plaza building, enlisted Hemphill Brothers to redesign the bus. The Nashville-based company is a creator of custom tour buses.
The hoisting of the bus via crane will take place Saturday, June 3, at 10 a.m. at 230 Fourth Ave. N.
According to a release, the bus will offer “a glimpse into the overall ‘gritty chic’ design and aesthetic” of the boutique hotel, slated to open in spring 2018.
Castlerock envisions the Bobby “to create an immersive hotel that feels like the quintessential Nashville experience and mirrors the musician's life on the road,” the release adds.
Castlerock is not disclosing the cost to purchase and retrofit the approximately 20,000-pound bus nor the cost to install it.
Opened in 1975, the Wells Fargo Plaza rises eight stories. As such, the bus bar will offer its visitors views of downtown from about 100 feet above street level.
Janet Kurtz, president of downtown Nashville-based Kurtz Hospitality Marketing, said the rooftop bus bar can be a distinctive marketing tool.
“As hotel supply in the Nashville market continues to grow at a meteoric rate, and with many of the new hotels offering rooftop dining and entertainment options, it will be crucial for new properties to include newer and more unique options,” she said. “Including elements — like this tour bus — that speak to the fabric of the Music City personality will not only be a fun design feature but will offer something different for the property to market, and ultimately help Bobby stand out.”
The building to accommodate Bobby, the back of which addresses historic Printers Alley, will include 144 guest rooms, a music room and four food and beverage outlets including a café, a restaurant, a bar facing Fourth Avenue and the bus-themed rooftop lounge/bar.
New York-based David Mexico Design Group is the architect for the project. DF Chase of Nashville is the construction manager.
Other companies involved include Bullock Smith and Partners, Structural Design Group, I.C. Thomasson Associates and Civil Site Design Group.Bitcoin isn’t money, but similar and in many ways superior. This is repeatedly to be said, because the blockchain is a new technology and we don't yet understand perfectly its full reach and usefulness.The biggest argument over whether Bitcoin has value or is just some kind of fraud lies in people’s understanding of money. Its current price is over $7000, but what's the use if it can't pay for your meal? In fact, many more places, such as Papa John's Pizza, are now accepting it. A homeowner in the UK has even just put up his house for sale in bitcoin (at current rates you would need 14). Microsoft has also already seen the light, and Sir Richard Branson will let you pay for a spaceflight with Bitcoin.But leaving that aside, the point is you can already use Bitcoin anywhere to pay for anything. Critics complain you can’t if an establishment only accepts local currency. Yet a credit card lets you pay anywhere, and ownership of a cryptocurrency is no different. It doesn’t matter if Bitcoin isn’t accepted at a bar in Iceland or a barbershop in Mali. The amount of Bitcoin needed to settle your bill can simply be converted into the local currency via the blockchain before you pay, in much the same way that a credit card’s central agency enables the same card anywhere and charges the purchase back to you later, including interest on any outstanding amounts. With Bitcoin you pay immediately, and there is only a tiny nominal charge - instead of the hefty fee based off whatever your credit provider decides the forex valuation is at a date of its choosing. The key is that you can pay in Bitcoin even if it says you can’t. It’s seamlessly convertible. We expect even more businesses and individuals will soon see the benefits of Bitcoin.Abstract In order to contribute to reduce the stigma related to schizophrenia and to improve clinical practice in the management of the disorder, the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology changed in 2002 the old term for the disorder, "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" ("mind-split-disease"), into the new term of "Togo Shitcho Sho" ("integration disorder"). The renaming was triggered by the request of a patients' families group. The main reasons for the renaming were the ambiguity of the old term, the recent advances in schizophrenia research, and the deep-rooted negative image of schizophrenia, in part related to the long-term inhumane treatment of most people with the disorder in the past. The renaming was associated with the shift from the Kraepelinian disease concept to the vulnerability-stress model. A survey carried out seven months after renaming in all prefectures of Japan found that the old term had been replaced by the new one in about 78% of cases. The renaming increased the percentage of cases in which patients were informed of the diagnosis from 36.7% to 69.7% in three years. Eighty-six percent of psychiatrists in the Miyagi prefecture found the new term more suitable to inform patients of the diagnosis as well as to explain the modern concept of the disorder. The Japanese treatment guideline for "Togo Shitcho Sho" was developed in 2004 under the framework of the vulnerability-stress model. Keywords: Schizophrenia, stigma, renaming, vulnerability-stress model
Schizophrenia is one of the leading causes of disabilityadjusted life years (DALYs) lost and years of life lived with disability in 15-44-years-olds in the world (1). In Japan, 260,000 patients with schizophrenia were treated every day in 1999, and 202,012 were admitted to a mental hospital in 2002. Patients with schizophrenia represented 53% of all inpatients with mental disorders in 2002, and their mean duration of hospitalization was 363.7 days in the same year. After the 2001 World Health Day, a series of initiatives have been implemented in Japan to promote a community- based care instead of hospital-centered care. While the WPA Global Programme against Stigma and Discrimination because of Schizophrenia (2) was initiated in 1996, the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology (JSPN) had started its efforts to tackle the misunderstandings and deep-rooted prejudices about schizophrenia already in 1993. Part of these efforts has been the replacement of the old Japanese term for schizophrenia - "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" (i.e., "mind-split-disease") - by the new term "Togo Shitcho Sho" ("integration disorder"). The new term was approved by the JSPN General Assembly in August 2002. This paper reviews the impact of the renaming on psychiatric practice in Japan.
BACKGROUND OF THE RENAMING OF THE JAPANESE TERM FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA In 1993, the National Federation of Families with Mentally Ill in Japan (NFFMIJ) requested the JSPN to replace the term "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" by a less stigmatizing one. The JSPN Committee on Concept and Terminology started to examine the request in 1995. After a series of questionnaire surveys, symposia and workshops at the annual JSPN meeting, it was decided to change the old term into a new one, provided that: a) the change did not result in any disadvantage to the patients, and b) the term conveyed the concept that schizophrenia is a disorder defined by a clinically significant syndrome, but not a disease defined by a specific etiology, symptomatology, clinical course and pathological findings. The Committee examined several alternatives, and finally selected the term "Togo Shitcho Sho" ("integration disorder"). After surveys involving the NFFMIJ, the citizens and JSPN members on the appropriateness of the new term and a public hearing, the JSPN Board accepted the new term, which was finally approved by the JSPN General Assembly in August 2002.
REASONS FOR THE RENAMING The first reason for the renaming was the need to remove the harmful impact of the diagnosis with the old term on the patients and their families. In Japan, many psychiatrists hesitated to inform the patients of the diagnosis of schizophrenia using the old term, because of the possible negative consequences on treatment adherence and outcome. For instance, Ono et al (3) reported in 1999 that 52% of JSPN Council members informed their patients of the diagnosis of schizophrenia only occasionally on a case-by-case basis, and only 7% of them informed all their patients of the diagnosis. Thirty-seven percent of the members informed only the patients' families. On the other hand, Koishikawa (4) reported in 1997 that only 16.6% of the patients and 33.9% of their families were able to report correctly the diagnosis. This means that approximately 167,000 patients with schizophrenia in Japan spent in a psychiatric ward more than one year (on average) without knowing what their diagnosis was. These findings indicate a serious communication gap among psychiatrists, patients and their families, which makes collaborative treatment and psychoeducation more difficult. The old term identified the patient as a person with a disorganized personality even after recovery or full remission. That is, once the diagnosis of "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" was made, the patient was usually regarded as an essentially ill person throughout his or her life. This was the main reason why the NFFMIJ required the JSPN to change the old term. Moreover, in many Japanese textbooks of psychiatry up to the 1970s, "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" was essentially described following the concept of dementia praecox. It was characterized by a poor prognosis and a chronic process of deterioration, eventually leading to decay of personality. It required the physician to evaluate how the process of deterioration was progressing. Not surprisingly, according to a survey carried out in 1996 (5), 77.3% of JSPN Council members thought that the general image of schizophrenia in the community was that of an untreatable disease. However, since the 1970s, Bleuler (6), Harding et al (7), Ciompi (8) and others reported in long-term outcome studies of schizophrenia that a majority of patients may recover. Ciompi proposed a complex bio-psychosocial view of schizophrenia (9) based upon the vulnerabilitystress model (10). Thus, schizophrenia is currently conceptualized as a clinically significant syndrome, whose etiology and pathophysiology are not yet firmly established. Along with the modern advances in neurosciences and the development of pharmacological and psychosocial interventions, the investigation of the biological risk factors for schizophrenia and the achievement of social integration of the patients are two main themes of schizophrenia research in Japan. These recent research advances also contributed to convince the JSPN to abandon the old name as well as the old concept of the disorder. A further reason for the stigmatization attached to the old term is the history of inhumane treatment of patients with "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" in the first half of the 20th century. In those days, families were obliged to take custody of these patients by a special legislation ("Seishin Byo Sha Kango Ho"). Several patients were confined to a small isolated room or a hut under restraints. This law was replaced in 1950 by a Mental Hygiene Law, subsequently revised in 1965. A Mental Health Law and a Mental Health and Welfare Law were then implemented in 1987 and 1995, respectively. After this continuing effort, psychiatric treatment and care in today's Japan has improved remarkably. Contrary to this, the stigma caused by this long history of exclusion and inhumane treatment remains deeply rooted even now. The new term for schizophrenia ("Togo Shitcho Sho") refers to the vulnerability-stress model, and implies that the disorder may be treated and that recovery is possible if a combination of advanced pharmacotherapy with appropriate psychosocial intervention is used. In Japan, we use this model for the investigation of biological vulnerability for schizophrenia and in clinical practice.
SPREAD OF THE NEW TERM AFTER RENAMING After the official approval of the new term, the frequency of appearance of the old and new term in reports from mental hospitals was examined monthly in the Miyagi Prefecture and Sendai City (n = 1,944). Six months after the renaming, the new term was used in 85.5% of cases in Sendai City and 74.5% of cases in the Miyagi Prefecture. A similar survey was carried out in all prefectures of Japan seven months after renaming. The new term was used in an average of about 78% of cases in these reports (n = 17,108) (11). Nishimura and Ono (12) reported that the percentage of cases in which patients were informed of the diagnosis increased from 36.7% in 2002 to 65.0% in 2003 and eventually to 69.7% in 2004. They also reported that 98.0% of those who usually informed the patient of the diagnosis used the new term in 2004, compared to 68.0% and 86.0%, respectively, in 2002 and 2003. However, 35.9% of them also used the old term concomitantly. Thus, the use of the new term clearly increased the frequency with which patients were informed of the diagnosis. In our survey of 136 members of the Miyagi College of Psychiatrists carried out 13 months after the renaming (11), 86% of the respondents found the new term easier to inform patients of the diagnosis as well as to explain the concept of the disorder. Eighty-two percent of them found the new term more suitable to obtain consent to treatment from patients, useful to improve treatment compliance, effective to reduce stigma, and promising for achievement of social integration. The College of Chairman Psychiatrists of Japan published in 2004 the Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Schizophrenia (13) using the new term and the vulnerability-stress model. This guideline recommends: a) a community-based care instead of hospital-centered care; b) a multi-axial assessment based on the DSM-IV-TR for the formulation of a treatment plan including medication and psychosocial intervention; c) a treatment plan adequately formulated for acute, remission and stable phases; d) the establishment of a therapeutic alliance including psychiatric social workers. The above process is to be regarded as part of the WPA Global Programme against Stigma and Discrimination because of Schizophrenia. It kindled a series of anti-stigma activities in many areas of Japan (14) and contributed to new policies implemented by the government (15). It may represent a useful model for other countries worldwide.
Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by a grant from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan. The author would like to thank Drs. K. Asai, T. Iwadate, S. Ushijima, Y. Ono, K. Okagami, Y. Kim, T. Sakai, Y. Satsumi (Nishimura), T. Someya, S. Takagi, Y. Nakane, K. Moriyama for their excellent collaboration in the JSPN Committee for Re-labeling the Term Schizophrenia (1994- 2000), the JSPN Special Committee for Renaming Schizophrenia (2001-2003) and the Japanese Society against Stigma for Mental Disorders.Former Hawkeye player Tyler Sash entered a plea of not guilty Wednesday to charges from a scooter chase in Oskaloosa Saturday.Watch video of this storyOskaloosa police said the incident started about 1:27 a.m.Sash, 25, took off on a scooter and was followed by police. At one point, Sash ditched the scooter and ran away on foot.He was found hiding behind a tree in a backyard before running away again. He refused repeated orders to stop, police said.At 1:56 a.m., Sash was shot with a Taser by officers and taken into custody after resisting getting handcuffs on.Police said he had a strong smell of alcohol, watery and bloodshot eyes. He refused a field sobriety test, but admitted to having six drinks in one hour, police said.Sash was charged with public intoxication and interference with official acts.Wednesday, he entered a written plea of not guilty to the charges. His next hearing was scheduled for June 17.A legal expert tells KCCI that the county attorney has up to 45 days to decide whether to add more chases to the case.Sash was a member of the Hawkeye football team from 2008-2010. Sash then played for the New York Giants from 2011-2013. Sash was cut from the Giants on Aug. 31, 2013.
Former Hawkeye player Tyler Sash entered a plea of not guilty Wednesday to charges from a scooter chase in Oskaloosa Saturday.
Watch video of this story
Advertisement
Oskaloosa police said the incident started about 1:27 a.m.
Sash, 25, took off on a scooter and was followed by police. At one point, Sash ditched the scooter and ran away on foot.
He was found hiding behind a tree in a backyard before running away again. He refused repeated orders to stop, police said.
At 1:56 a.m., Sash was shot with a Taser by officers and taken into custody after resisting getting handcuffs on.
Police said he had a strong smell of alcohol, watery and bloodshot eyes. He refused a field sobriety test, but admitted to having six drinks in one hour, police said.
Sash was charged with public intoxication and interference with official acts.
Wednesday, he entered a written plea of not guilty to the charges. His next hearing was scheduled for June 17.
A legal expert tells KCCI that the county attorney has up to 45 days to decide whether to add more chases to the case.
Sash was a member of the Hawkeye football team from 2008-2010. Sash then played for the New York Giants from 2011-2013. Sash was cut from the Giants on Aug. 31, 2013.
AlertMeYesterday was strange. I opened Twitter and saw a remarkable juxtaposition of story links. In the first, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was characterizing Apple as a "luxury goods manufacturer" and telling reporters on iPads that they "need to get a real computer." In the second, Apple released a new iPad spot asking, "What's a computer?"
As [Nadella] walked into the room along with Microsoft India head Anant Maheshwari, Nadella spots that I and a colleague have iPads and cheerfully says, "You need to get a real computer, my friend."
"In a way, I don't want to take away from whatever success Apple or Google are having. We are very different companies. We are not some middleman in the marketplace. We are a tool creator, we are not a luxury good manufacturer. That's not who we are. We are about creating technologies so that others can build."
The old new Microsoft
I have mixed feelings about Nadella's Microsoft.
On one hand, he's been able to look beyond Windows in a way his predecessor, Steve Ballmer never could.
One of Apple's greatest strengths has always been understanding that products aren't businesses. Apple happily pushed iPhone even though it killed iPod, and iPad even though it cut into Mac. iPhone is the biggest product in the history of tech and yet Apple would cannibalize it in a heartbeat if the company was confident it had found its successor. Meanwhile, Balmer rode a collapsing Windows brand nearly into irrelevancy.
It's impossible to say that if Nadella had taken over earlier, we'd have had Xphones, with Office and Halo at launch, competing for shelf space in every carrier store, and Xtabs, running one of the post-Windows operating systems Balmer allowed to die on the vine, in the hands of many more creators, much sooner, than Surface.
But on the other hand, Nadella doesn't seem to really know or be able to focus on what Microsoft is post-Windows. Even our own Windows Central, brand champions all, have been left deflated by the demise of Microsoft on mobile, the strategy around mixed reality as a platform, and the continued end-of-lifing of services like Groove Music.
So, while it's literally Nadella's job to be publicly, loudly critical of competitors like Google or coopetitors like Apple, it's hard to look at the achievements of Sundar Pachai and Tim Cook and find them so easily dismissed, least of all by Microsoft.
I say "coopetitors" because, just like Gates shipped Excel for Mac and Balmer licensed Exchange to iPhone, Nadella knocked iPad long after his company shipped a full-on mobile version of Office for iPad — long before making one for its own hardware. (You can see it, perhaps not coincidentally, in Apple's ad — and the still above.)
And that brings me back to "What's a computer?"
Bringing Windows to an iPad fightA man fatally shot by deputies after he reportedly kicked in the front door of a home near Perris appeared to be mentally ill and sat at the family’s dinner table while they waited for deputies to arrive, a resident said.
Riverside County sheriff’s officials said deputies shot the man while responding to a reported burglary in progress about 10 p.m. Saturday at a home near Highway 74 and Taylor Road in the unincorporated Good Hope area. He died later at a hospital.
Sheriff’s officials identified him as Charles Gluchacki, 65, whose last known address was in Jurupa Valley.
They have not said why deputies opened fire.
The deputies involved in the shooting have not been identified. They Sheriff’s Department typically conducts a risk assessment before releasing names. They have been placed on administrative leave, a standard practice in shootings involving officers.
The 90-year-old resident, Margaret Fouroux, cried Monday as she described what happened, standing in the still-damaged doorway of the small, aging home she shares with her 69-year-old son. A few steps away, the stucco on the front of her house was riddled with bullet holes near a shattered planter.
Fouroux said she didn’t believe deputies should have shot the man.
“They didn’t have to do that,” she said. “He was no harm.”
Fouroux said she was still up Saturday night when Gluchacki broke into her house. He was already inside before she realized what was going on.
“I just hollered at my son, ‘There’s a man in the house,’ ” she said.
She said it was wet and muddy outside from the rain and Gluchacki’s face was dirty. It looked as if he had fallen. She said the man, who was wearing a thin shirt and thin cotton pants, behaved as if he had mental problems.
“I said, ‘What are you doing in here?’ ” Fouroux recalled. “He said, ‘I’m cold.’ ”
Fouroux wondered why he had come all the way to her house, which sits on a large lot well off Highway 74. She said the man didn’t know where he was and appeared confused.
Her son ordered Gluchacki out of the house, but he wouldn’t go. He grabbed the intruder and sat him down at the table to talk while she called 911. Gluchacki fell asleep while they were waiting for deputies to arrive.
Fouroux said she told the dispatcher that the man appeared to be suffering from mental problems.
Now, Fouroux said, she can’t stop thinking about the shooting and regrets having called the police at all.
“Worst thing I ever did in my life,” she said. “We were just trying to get him help.”
Fouroux said her son noticed the police pulling up and told Gluchacki, “Oh, here’s the police. It’s gonna be alright.”
She said Gluchacki replied, “No, it won’t.”
Fouroux stayed inside but her son was standing with Gluchacki on their front walk as the deputies approached with guns drawn, she said.
“The policeman kept telling him, ‘Get down! Get down!’ ” she said.
Gluchacki didn’t follow orders and he wouldn’t take his hand out of his pocket, she said. As her son headed back up the front porch steps, the deputies opened fire.
Fouroux, who wore a Christian icon on a pendant around her neck, shook her head as tears welled up in her eyes.
“The devil got him,” she said.There is certainly no shortage of advice being given to the Chancellor in the lead up to this year’s Budget. The question still remains though, what should he do?It is clear that our economy faces major structural problems. The government is failing to close the deficit and a national debt of around £700bn when the coalition took office will have increased to around £1.5 trillion by the end of the Parliament. Including offbalance-sheet liabilities, such as public sector pensions, the figure rises to an eye-watering £5 trillion.Debt repayments this year total a heady £48bn (a similar sum to the budget of the Department for Education and around half that of the Department for Health). This gives some indication of just what a burden this debt places on us.Read the full article here.The 2016 presidential race insisted that it — not President Obama's State of the Union address — be the primary topic of conversation in politics Tuesday. A slew of new polls in the race to be the next standard-bearer of the Democratic Party showed Hillary Clinton trailing (to various degrees) in New Hampshire and — in a stunner — also falling behind in Iowa.
That Iowa poll was the latest from Quinnipiac University, which has been polling in the state regularly. In fact, Quinnipiac polled Iowa in December, too, at which point Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders by 11 points. That poll was completed Dec. 13. The poll out Tuesday showed a five-point advantage — for Sanders. That's a 16-point swing over the course of a month. (The new survey was completed Jan. 10.)
It's true that Quinnipiac's polling has been more favorable to Sanders over the past few months than others. Plotting polls against the Real Clear Politics average, Quinnipiac's surveys usually fall under the line of Hillary's lead — meaning it tends to show less of a lead than the current trend. But that's in part because Clinton's generally been trending downward, and the polling average necessarily follows from polls like Quinnipiac's.
This also wasn't the only poll to show Sanders with a lead. A survey from American Research Group this week has him up three points.
So what happened to Clinton? Well, part of it is that her favorability slipped. Among all voters, she dropped seven points in the head-to-head matchup (Sanders gained nine), but the percentage of people viewing her favorably fell from 81 to 74.
Among groups that have preferred Sanders (like men), Sanders's lead increased.
Among groups that have preferred Clinton (like moderates), her lead narrowed — usually in concert with shifts in favorability.
On a number of other measures, Clinton held fairly steady. Sanders did gain ground in one important metric: The percentage of people who think he can beat the Republican in a general election jumped from 57 percent to 68 percent. Clinton still dominates here, though, with 4 in 5 Democrats thinking she'll win in November.
Trends matter in polling. While it's possible that the December Quinnipiac poll overestimated Clinton's support and this one underestimated it, it's clear that the race in that state is close. (Which it has been before, as you can see in September on the graph above.) One bright spot in the poll is that Clinton's support is more committed to sticking with her (84 percent to 73 percent for Sanders). One more bit of bad news is that her support is stronger among people who've never been through the unusual caucus process before.
In 2008 — you knew this was coming — Clinton's lead in Iowa was smaller than it has been this year. She was locked in a three-way race in the state, eventually finishing third. She'll do better than third this year, thanks to Martin O'Malley's fervent ownership of that position. But "better than third" is probably not much consolation to the former secretary of state.A former director at Deloitte Australia |
demand. Moon Express envisions a future in lunar mining, repairing satellites and clearing space junk, co-founder Naveen Jain told Time in August. Blue Origin wants to "seed an enduring human presence in space," according to its website. That could range from moving heavy industry off-planet, as Bezos said in June, to colonizing other worlds.
And Musk wants to get to Mars.
It's not empty talk. Working with NASA, SpaceX expects to launch an unmanned Red Dragon space capsule to Mars in May 2018. In June, Silicon Valley's best-known visionary said he intends to land a human-carrying spacecraft on Mars by 2025, followed every 26 months with fresh supplies and additional colonists.
"That's what it takes to sustain a civilization," Musk said.
Matt Murphy
That's assuming SpaceX doesn't have any more major setbacks. It's already had two: In June 2015, a Falcon 9 carrying cargo to the International Space Station broke up midflight. And in September, explosions destroyed a Falcon 9 and its satellite payload during a routine test two days before its scheduled launch. The "incident -- while it was not a NASA launch -- is a reminder that spaceflight is an incredible challenge, but our partners learn from each success and setback," NASA said in a statement the day of the explosion.
Facebook had planned to use the destroyed satellite to beam internet service to rural Africa.
Following an investigation into the Falcon 9 explosion, SpaceX expects to make its return to orbit as soon as January 14.
Rinse and repeat
Reaching these ambitious goals requires a series of advances.
For both SpaceX and Blue Origin, it comes down to making spaceflight cheaper by reusing rockets to launch people and cargo into orbit. It's going to take a lot of tries for that to become routine.
According to SpaceX's published price list, a Falcon 9 rocket costs about $62 million to launch. For comparison, United Launch Alliance says it costs about $225 million to launch one of its rockets. French competitor Airbus Safran Launchers claims its new Ariane 6 rocket will cost about $77 million.
Robyn Beck/Getty Images
While SpaceX already has the cheapest prices in space, the cost of launching a previously used Falcon 9 will be 30 percent less, according to company President Gwynne Shotwell. As of this writing, SpaceX expects to resume spaceflights in January.
And Blue Origin? Refurbishing its New Shepard spacecraft costs "in the small tens of thousands of dollars," Bezos told Ars Technica this year. Blue Origin's "reusable launch system" is much smaller than the Falcon 9 and is capable only of suborbital flight.
"The focus on reusability is a service that no one else offers," says Casey Dreier, director of space policy for The Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes the exploration of space.
"NASA pioneered reusability with the space shuttle, but that came at a high cost."
The space agency has awarded SpaceX at least three contracts, worth more than $5 billion, to resupply the International Space Station. So far, private supply missions have ferried more than 59,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS, says NASA's communications officer, Tabatha Thompson.
"NASA's vision of commercial human spaceflight is of vibrant, profit-making enterprises enabling exploration," she says.
Where no one has gone before
It's hard to tell if SpaceX or Blue Origin is making any money from their efforts, since neither is saying. We do have a pretty good idea that SpaceX has agreed to spend about $300 million on just the 2018 Mars lander mission.
SpaceX "did talk to us about a 10-to-1 arrangement in terms of cost: theirs 10, ours one," NASA's Jim Reuter told a NASA Advisory Council meeting in July, after estimating the agency's cost at $32 million. "I think that's in the ballpark."
Why would Musk agree to such an uneven arrangement?
Mark Mann
"Elon will be the first person they land on Mars," says Jim Cantrell, one of the founders of SpaceX and now CEO of Vector Space Systems. "It was pretty clear to me from the first day I dealt with him that's what he wanted to do."
Musk has a history of pushing established players in new directions. Many consider Tesla Motors the world's most influential automaker, pressuring nearly the entire industry to develop electric vehicles.
We're starting to see that same dynamic in space as SpaceX and other "private companies push NASA to act and plan faster, to be more aggressive in their timelines," says Dreier.
The last time a human broke free from Earth's orbit was the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. We're about to reach out even farther, thanks in large part to the commercialization of spaceflight.
"We're going to Mars together," says Thompson.
This story appears in the winter 2016 edition of CNET Magazine. For other magazine stories, click here.
First published online December 11, 2016.
Updated January 11, 2017: Added information on when SpaceX expects to resume launches.But wait, there’s more!
Just when you thought HBO’s Game of Thrones had finished announcing its season 4 cast, there is one more role left: Styr, the Magnar of Thenn.
He will be played by Russian actor Yuri Kolokolnikov. You’ve probably seen him in V tvoikh glazakh and Schastlivyy konets. Or perhaps Obrechyonnye na voynu? Okay, so Kolokolnikov may not be well known in the States. But he’s a longtime actor in his homeland, having appeared in more than a couple dozen features.
As for his character, Styr leads the Thenn, the most warlike tribe from beyond the Wall. At the end of the third season, the tribes are readying to potentially invade Westeros under the leadership of Mance Rayder (Ciarán Hinds) while spy-among-the-Wildlings Jon Snow (Kit Harington) was returned injured to Castle Black with news of their movements.
There was some previous online speculation that actor Joseph Gatt was playing Styr. All I can say about that is: Nope.
The fantasy hit returns next spring. Previous Thrones season 4 news: Dany’s Meereen contact cast, season 4 directors chosen, Sigur Ros cast, ‘Rome’ actress cast, ‘Sherlock’ actor cast, Oberyn the Red Viper cast.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
March 8, 2016, 11:30 PM GMT / Updated March 9, 2016, 8:46 AM GMT By Frank Thorp V
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the organization responsible for helping to elect Republicans to the Senate, is coming under fire for a now-deleted tweet that said Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth “has a sad record of not standing up for our veterans.” Duckworth, who is challenging Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), is a double amputee Iraq war veteran.
“Tasteless and dishonest, just like everything else to do with Mark Kirk’s flailing campaign,” Duckworth’s campaign spokesman Matt McGrath said in a statement regarding the tweet. “Tammy has made fighting for Veterans her life’s work, and will continue to so in the Senate,” he added.
While fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004, Duckworth lost both her legs and partial use of one arm when her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Duckworth was awarded the Purple Heart, and was elected to Congress in 2012.
The NRSC deleted the tweet within minutes, but did not apologize, saying instead, “It would be great if reporters would pay as much attention to a deleted tweet as they should to Tammy Duckworth being sued by VA whistleblowers for ignoring claims of mistreatment and corruption.”
Senate Republicans head into November having to defend 24 Republican seats, and Senator Kirk is considered one of the most vulnerable incumbents. President Obama won his home state of Illinois with 57.6 percent of the vote in 2012, and 61.9 percent of the vote in 2008.UPDATE: The reports were true — Toys ‘R’ Us has indeed filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and says it hopes to keep its stores running through this holiday season.
===Original Story===
Do you have a Toys ‘R’ Us or Babies ‘R’ Us gift card sitting around? It might be time to use that up, just in case: The toys and kids’ chain is expected to file for bankruptcy basically any day now.
The rumor mill, via CNBC (warning: auto-play video at that link), says that a bankruptcy filing could come as early as this week, to reassure toy suppliers that the company won’t be buried in debt for the holiday season.
It’s all about Christmas
Last week, Bloomberg News reported that suppliers had cut back on shipments to Toys ‘R’ Us at the most important time of year. The chain is even more dependent than the rest of the retail industry on the holiday season because, for any precocious children reading this article, Santa shops there.
The company didn’t do well during the 2016 holiday season. A repeat of that performance is a scary thought, since the chain normally takes in 40% of its earnings during the last 25% of the year.
Toys ‘R’ Us is owned by two private equity firms and a real estate company, and it has $400 million in debt coming due in 2018. Filing for bankruptcy or finding another way to organize that debt would be a good way to show suppliers that everything is under control, and that they can keep on shipping toys through the holiday season and beyond.
Gift cards: Use ’em up now
The reason why we urge readers to use their gift cards up when a retailer may file for bankruptcy soon is that a Chapter 11 filing often voids the company’s past gift cards. That’s bad when a chain shutters all of its stores and there aren’t any stores left where you can spend the cards, but it’s especially annoying for consumers when the store stays in business, yet you can’t use the card there since a new owner purchased the retailer out of bankruptcy.
The first bankruptcy of RadioShack in 2015 changed how some retailers deal with gift cards after a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Attorney General of the company’s home state, Texas, was outraged that a company could reorganize and void millions of dollars’ worth of gift cards. He arranged a settlement where gift card holders would be paid first, before the company’s creditors, with the remaining balance of gift card funds going to the offices of states’ attorneys general.
Since then, there’s been a trend to keep on accepting gift cards. Payless ShoeSource filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to unmanageable debt, just like Toys ‘R’ Us, but still accepts pre-bankruptcy gift cards. While forcing a retailer to pay out millions of dollars in cash refunds to gift card holders is a pro-consumer move, it’s easier for a retailer to just keep accepting its old cards rather than risk being forced into a settlement like RadioShack’s.Meteor is a full-stack JavaScript platform for developing modern web and mobile applications. It includes developer tools, websockets, MongoDB integration, and a package manager. Atmosphere.js is the Meteor package manager. Unfortunately, it doesn’t list many Meteor monitoring solutions. Luckily, thanks to the Meteor npm integration, it is possible to use npm packages for monitoring Meteor apps with npm based monitoring solutions, such as SPM for Node.js monitoring. SPM for Node.js collects key Node.js metrics such as Event Loop, Garbage Collection, CPU, Memory and web services metrics. All metrics are organized in out-of-the-box charts, which can be put on additional dashboards and placed next to performance charts for other parts of the application stack and their logs for doing metric-logs correlations.
Let’s see how to use SPM for Node.js with the Meteor framework.
Step 1: Create SPM App of type „Node.js“
Step 2: Install npm packages
# install SPM agent with meteor npm integration meteor npm i spm-agent-nodejs --save
Step 3: Configure SPM for Node.js agent
# preload spm-agent-nodejs module by setting NODE_OPTIONS environment variable export NODE_OPTIONS="-r spm-agent-nodejs“ # configure SPM agent for the SPM app by setting SPM_TOKEN environment variable export SPM_TOKEN=YOUR_SPM_TOKEN
Step 4: Run your Meteor app
# run the meteor app as usual.. meteor run
Step 5: Check Meteor Monitoring Dashboard
After a minute or so you should see the performance metrics such as EventLoop Latencies, Memory Usage, Garbage Collection details, and HTTP statistics of your Meteor app in SPM.
Meteor metrics in SPM for Node.js
Once you have all your Node.js metrics you can start to define alert rules and configure ChatOps integrations to be alerted about anomalies in your Meteor app.
Need a Meteor monitoring solution? Try SPM for Node.js! Get key Node.js metrics in your Meteor app, transaction tracing, and more. SIGN UP
The Meteor framework typically uses MongoDB as the database, while caching and SSL termination is often off-loaded to Nginx. If you use Meteor, MongoDB, and Nginx in your stack you may want to have MongoDB monitoring and Nginx monitoring together with Meteor monitoring to cover monitoring for your whole application stack.
Share Twitter
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Reddit
EmailSignup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A wrestling league in a Texas university has had a lawsuit launched against it because a transgender teen won the competition.
17-year-old Mack Beggs began his transition in 2015, but because of university rules he had to compete in the female championship.
The rules of the University Interscholastic League dictates that Beggs must compete as the gender listed on his birth certificate.
He won the competition in the 110-pound category, but a group of parents have banded together to launch a lawsuit against the league.
They claim that the league is putting girls at “imminent threat of bodily harm” by allowing the teen to stay in the same weight category.
The parents claim that he has an “unfair” advantage against the others competing, but the teens actually competing have said that they do not have a problem competing with Beggs.
Begg’s grandmother, Nancy, called the situation “hatred” and confirmed that the wrestlers were happy to go head-to-head prior to parents becoming involved.
“Today was about bias, hatred and ignorance. These kids have wrestled each other before, they know each other and they were not happy with this,” she said.
Mack wrote on Facebook that he was “disgusted” by the discrimination.
“The thing is, we want to wrestle each other. I feel so sick and disgusted by the discrimination not by the kids, the parents and coaches,” he wrote. “These kids don’t care who you put in front of them to wrestle. We just want to wrestle.
“They are taking that away from me and from the people I’m competing with,” he added.On Sunday Portugal declared three days of national mourning for the many victims claimed by the forest fires in the mountainous regions of Pedrógão Grande, central Portugal, northeast of the capital Lisbon.
Without knowing yet the total number of victims, Prime Minister António Costs offered his condolences to the families of the victims, describing the deadly blaze as “the worst tragedy in terms of human lives lost that we’ve known in recent years” in the country in recent years.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also expressed condolences for the loss of life and sent a message of “gratitude, comfort and support to all those who have been doing the best that they can.” He also paid tribute to the firefighters who, as he said, were facing the toughest weather conditions possible, including “temperature, wind and zero humidity.”
To help survivors, a helpline was created at Caixa Geral de Depósitos, under the title “Unidos por Pedrógão”. The account can be accessed using:
Conta Solidária Caixa 0001 100000 330
IBAN PT50 0035 0001 00100000330 42
Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) is a Portuguese state-owned banking corporation, and the second largest bank in Portugal, established in Lisbon in 1876.
The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, but officials have said that hot weather, combined with no rain fall and thunderstorms, may have cause the calamity. Currently the country is undergoing a heat wave with temperatures climbing above 104 Fahrenheit.
According to Portuguese officials, the fire has claimed scored of lives as it went spreading, while people were abandoning their homes. Not all made it with many perishing inside cars as they fled. Scores of houses were destroyed by the flames.
The Secretary of State for Internal Administration, Jorge Gomes, said that at least 30 people had died in their cars. The official number of dead already confirmed by noon on Sunday was 62, but the tally is expected to climb further.
The deadly blaze in Pedrógão Grande started on Saturday while about 1,600 firefighters were already battling five fires in the area. About 900 firefighters were concentrating on the Pedrógão Grande area when the fire spread out of control. Firefighting planes, units of the police and the military were called to join the effort. Pedrógão Grande, population 3,915, is a municipality in the district of Leiria in Portugal.
Other accounts set up to receive donations:
Portuguese Red Cross Emergency Fund
IBAN: PT50 0010 0000 36319110001 74
Volunteer Firefighters Association/Associação Portuguesa Dos Bombeiros Voluntários
Cartão de Identificação de Pessoa Colectiva Nº: 507552520
IBAN Milennium BCP: PT50-0033-0000-45479781423-05
SWIFT: BCOMPTPL
PayPal Link: http://apbv.pt/site/wordpress/solideriedade
Other ways to help: provide food and drink to different stations and organizations who will distribute the much needed supplies: https://www.publico.pt/2017/06/18/sociedade/noticia/o-que-fazer-para-ajudar-bombeiros-e-vitimas-1776067
Carolina Matos/Editor/updatedBorn in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1928, singer and pianist Fats Domino channeled his roots in the city's thriving music scene to become a pioneering rock 'n' roll star. He made a splash with his first release, “The Fat Man” (1949), and later earned widespread fame with tracks like "Ain't That a Shame" (1955) and "Blueberry Hill" (1956). Although his string of hits largely dried up by the early 1960s, Domino continued to record and tour, and he was among the charter members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The music icon died of natural causes in his beloved hometown of New Orleans on October 24, 2017.
Music Prodigy
Legendary musician Antoine "Fats" Domino Jr. was born on February 26, 1928, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The youngest of eight children in a musical family, he spoke Creole French before learning English. When Domino was 7, his brother-in-law Harrison Verret taught him to play the piano and introduced him to the vibrant New Orleans music scene; by age 10, the talented boy was already performing as a singer and pianist.
At 14, Domino dropped out of high school to pursue his musical dreams, taking on odd jobs like factory work and hauling ice to make ends meet. He was inspired by the likes of boogie-woogie piano players like Meade Lux Lewis and singers like Louis Jordan. In 1946, Domino started playing piano for the well-known New Orleans bass player and band leader Billy Diamond, who gave Domino the nickname "Fats." Domino's rare musical talents quickly made him a sensation, and by 1949 he was drawing substantial crowds on his own.
“I knew Fats from hanging out at a grocery store. He reminded me of Fats Waller and Fats Pichon. Those guys were big names and Antoine—that’s what everybody called him then—had just got married and gained weight. I started calling him ‘Fats’ and it stuck.” - Billy Diamond
Rock 'N' Roll Pioneer
In 1949, Fats Domino met collaborator Dave Bartholomew and signed to Imperial Records, where he would stay until 1963. Domino's first release was "The Fat Man" (1949), based on his nickname, a song co-written with Bartholomew. It became the first rock 'n' roll record to sell 1 million copies, peaking at No. 2 on the R&B charts. The two continued to churn out R&B hits and Top 100 records for years, with Domino's distinctive style of piano playing, accompanied by simple saxophone riffs, drum afterbeats and his mellow baritone voice, making him stand out in the sea of 1950s R&B singers.
Fats Domino found mainstream success in 1955 with his song "Ain't It a Shame," covered by Pat Boone as "Ain't That a Shame"; Boone's version hit No. 1 on the pop charts, while Domino's original reached No. 10. The hit record increased Domino's visibility and record sales, and he soon re-recorded it under the revised name, which remains the popular title/version today. (It also happened to be the first song John Lennon learned to play on guitar.)
In 1956, Domino had five Top 40 hits, including “My Blue Heaven” and his cover of Glenn Miller's "Blueberry Hill," which hit No. 2 on the pop charts, Domino's top charting record ever. He cemented this popularity with appearances in two 1956 films, Shake, Rattle & Rock and The Girl Can't Help It, and his hit "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's television show American Bandstand in 1957.
Despite his enormous popularity among both white and black fans, when touring the country in the 1950s, Domino and his band were often denied lodging and had to utilize segregated facilities, at times driving miles away from the venue. Still, Domino continued to ride high on his success through the end of the decade, churning out more rocking hits like “Whole Lotta Loving" (1958), “I’m Ready" (1959) and “I Want to Walk You Home" (1959).
Domino described his songwriting process as taking inspiration from everyday events: "Something that happened to someone, that's how I write all my songs," he explained. "I used to listen to people talk every day, things would happen in real life. I used to go around different places, hear people talk. Sometimes I wasn't expecting to hear nothin', and my mind was very much on my music. Next thing I'd hear, I would either write it down or remember it good." Domino believed the success of his music came from the rhythm: "You got to keep a good beat. The rhythm we play is from Dixieland — New Orleans."
After recording an impressive 37 different Top 40 hits for the label, Fats Domino left Imperial Records in 1963 — later claiming "I stuck with them until they sold out" — and joined ABC-Paramount Records, this time without his longtime sidekick, Dave Bartholomew. Whether due to the change in sound or because of changing popular tastes, Domino found his music less commercially popular than before. By the time American pop music was revolutionized by the 1964 British Invasion, Domino's reign at the top of the charts had reached its end.
Still Rockin'
Domino left ABC-Paramount in 1965 and returned to New Orleans to collaborate once again with Dave Bartholomew. The pair recorded steadily until 1970, but only charted with one more single: "Lady Madonna," a cover of a Beatles song that, ironically, had been inspired by Domino's own musical style. Still, Domino's songs and New Orleans sound would continue to influence a generation of rock 'n' rollers as well as the growing ska music genre in Jamaica.
“There wouldn’t have been a Beatles without Fats Domino.” - John Lennon
Domino continued to tour for the next two decades, but after a health scare experienced during tour dates in Europe in 1995, he rarely left New Orleans, preferring to live comfortably at home with his wife, Rosemary, and eight children off the royalties from his earlier recordings. A quiet and private man, he occasionally performed at local concerts and at the famed New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival from time to time, but generally shunned publicity of all kinds.
Domino was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, but refused to attend the ceremony; likewise, he turned down an invitation to perform at the White House, though he accepted the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1998.May 13, 2016 - News Post
Hey, why aren't you reading the webcomic MollyBeans right now?!? Today, there's a very special cameo of a very handsome, very bearded dude in a very red shirt. I've mentioned this comic before. Dan Sacharow writes twice weekly tales of development and engineering through the eyes of Molly Beans. If you're reading DHS, you'd probably like it. Did I mention today has a very special cameo?
And speaking of special things that I should mention: Is that a donate button at the top right of the page?
Why yes it is, thank you so much for asking about that! I threw up that button about a week ago as an attempt to give you, the readers, a super awesome opportunity to support this comic. Isn't that thoughtful?
Okay, so look... I know it's obnoxious, but hardware isn't cheap, my computer's on its last leg, and I'm finding myself in need of a hosting upgrade to accommodate the recent jump in traffic. My current solution is to take on contract work to cover these expenses, but this is a time vortex that directly impacts how much time I can invest in Don't Hit Save. I'm not looking to completely do away with the contract work, but even reducing that work by a few hours a week would give me significantly more time to devote to the comic, this website, and reaching out to readers. Any little bit helps, even USB cords don't buy themselves.
You are absolutely under no obligation to send me anything, I do this for fun and I won't be stopping anytime soon. But if I intend for this to grow, then I need time, and your donations would help buy me that time.
I figured I would try asking. Worst case scenario, I alienate all my readers and my comic problems go away. Ah, it's good to dream...
-JeffIt is very hard for the average person in the street to come to a sensible conclusion on peak oil. It's a subject that prompts a passionate polarisation of views. The peak oilists sometimes sound like those extraordinary Christians with sandwich boards proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh. In contrast, the the international economic establishment – including the International Energy Agency (IEA) – has one very clear purpose in mind at all times: don't panic. Their mission seems to be focused on keeping jittery markets calm.
Faced with these options the majority of people shrug their shoulders in confusion and ignore the trickle of whistleblowers, industry insiders and careful analysts who have been warning of the imminent decline in oil for over a decade now.
Remember the Queen's question – that uncannily accurate and strikingly obvious question she put to economists at the London School of Economics a year ago after the financial crisis: did no one see it coming? Apply that question to peak oil and the answer is that many people did see it coming but they were marginalised, bullied into silence and the evidence was buried in the small print.
Take the 2008 edition of World Energy Outlook, the annual report on which the entire energy industry and governments depend. It included the table also published by the Guardian today, and the version I saw had shorter intervals on the horizontal axis. What it made blindingly clear was that peak oil was somewhere in 2008/9 and that production from currently producing fields was about to drop off a cliff. Fields yet to be developed and yet to be found enabled a plateau of production and it was only "non-conventional oil" which enabled a small rise. Think tar sands of Canada, think some of the most climate polluting oil extraction methods available. Think catastrophe.
What made this little graph so devastating was that it estimated energy resources by 2030 that were woefully inadequate for the energy-hungry economies of India and China. Business as usual in oil production threatens massive conflict over sharing it.
Now, this all seemed pretty gigantic news to me but guess where the World Energy Outlook chose to put this graph? Was it in the front, was it prominently discussed in the foreword? Did it cause headlines around the world. No, no, no. It was buried deep into the report and no reference was made to it in the press conference a year ago.
The fear is that panicky markets can cause enormous damage – panic-buying that prompts fights over resources, which in turn could lead to power cuts in some places and other such mayhem. But so far in facing this huge challenge, our political/economic system seems unable to cope with reality. We are forced to carry on living in an illusion that we have so much time to adapt to post-oil that we don't even need to be talking or thinking much about what a world without plentiful oil would look like. Reality has become too dangerous.
So in reply to the Queen's question of a few years hence, we did see it coming but we chose to ignore it.Whilst traversing the dense, darkened thickets of Tin Can Forest‘s midnight woodlands, one may become disoriented by the bizarre, bestial, visions they encounter: shadowy, hircine cabals solemnly roaming about in ornate, traditional dress; nocturnal gatherings wherein witches, demons, and villagers skulk and cavort with all manner of talking beasts; families taking tea with raccoons and suffering the philosophical ramblings of an oddly articulate house cat.
The vivid imagery of these tangled tales and illustrated texts tugs at the memory, recalling vague, dreamy bedtime stories read to a younger you, still too green to understand the metaphors and allegories, yet on the verge of glimmering a deeper truth– for these darker narratives trigger memories more ancestral and arcane, reviving fears and beliefs borne in the blood, not learned during a child’s story time.
In Tin Can Forest’s We Are Going To Be Musicians In Bremen, a cock-sure rooster declares, “I am prepared to accept that what you are telling me is true,” and by the time one is thoroughly ensconced in the shifting, ectoplasmic threads of these stories, one has learned that there is no other choice but to make that acceptance as well. These are truths– fantastical, terrifying–that we have forgotten, but which have always lurked in the corners of our subconscious, awaiting a revelatory awakening once more. Tin Can Forest’s lovingly-crafted illuminated manuscripts are a stunning (though, on many levels, utterly mystifying) vehicle for these fluid truths and lost mythologies.
Tackling “ancient narratives from the perspective of the shadows,” Tin Can Forest is the collaborative duo comprised of Pat Shewchuk and Marek Colek, Canadian artists based in Toronto Ontario who create sequential art, film and books.
Illustrated with moody, fog-saturated colors in Tin Can Forest’s distinctive style, and drawing inspiration from the forests of Canada, Slavic art, and occult folklore, each of their offerings is presented in a beautifully lush, full-color beautiful comics format, every page interwoven with secretive symbolism, esoteric emblems, and magical motifs.
Like poetry, or half-remembered dreams, or writing poems about half-remembered dreams while under the influence of something strong and strange, these fables meander and twist, a miscellany of deep folklore and nonsensical cautionary tales, and populated by an nightmarish menagerie of creatures, spirits, and familiars.
Amongst Tin Can Forest’s offerings you will find a number of surreal and enigmatic tales :
Cabbage in A Nutshell, “…the first installment of an anthrotheological mystery set in a bygone future as told from the vantage point of an occulttastically informed super-future.”
Wax Cross which debuted at the 2012 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, is “an alchemical folk-tale set in the twilight of the modern age, when the moon has devoured the sun, the mechanical ocean has evaporated into silence, and the decaying corpse of electric current sleeps eternally in a casket of orange lichen.”
We Are Going To Bremen To Be Musicians, a collaboration with accordionist and novelist Geoff Berner, is a of a” dark, strange German folk tale about four animals running away from their masters to become town musicians in the city of Bremen.”
Baba Yaga and the Wolf is, in true representation of oral tradition, a story told to a young woman by her great mother, who “…lived in a time when the wilderness was everywhere, vampires roamed the treetops, and devils traded opium and vodka for human souls by the roadside.” Baba Yaga and the Wolf tells the story of Katerina and the journey she takes to the edge of the Underworld and its gatekeeper, Baba Yaga, in order to save her husband Ivan from a terrible fate.
What Is A Witch, written in collaboration with Pam Grossman, is parts storybook, grimoire, and comic book, and is a “an illuminated incantation, a crystalline invocation, a lovingly-crafted celebration of the world’s most magical icon.” The book’s lyrical language of night-song and half-rhymes, when given voice (and it absolutely must be read aloud), becomes a wild, witty, wondrous invocation, threaded throughout with fanciful visions, whimsical allegory, and magical truths.
Find Tin Can Forest: website // facebook // TumblrThe Cobourg, Ont., family of a 12-year-old boy who took his own life two years ago is appalled that a coroner's report has concluded the mental health care he received was "good."
"We were quite disappointed, and somewhat bewildered and shocked would be the best three words to describe the decision from the coroner … they decided that the care that Chazz received was good, when clearly we've determined that it wasn't," says Frank Petrella from his home in the southern Ontario community.
Chazz Petrella, the youngest of five children, started to show attention and aggression problems when he started school, Frank Petrella says.
Chazz's mother, Janet Ashby-Petrella, told the fifth estate in March 2015: "He would say he can't shut his brain off."
As the boy got older, his behaviour escalated: His family says he would fly into a rage, break things and threaten to hurt himself and others.
The 12-year-old's family says Chazz Petrella never received a thorough psychiatric evaluation or diagnosis. (the fifth estate )
The Petrellas say almost a dozen agencies were involved with Chazz in the last few years of his life. They include Highland Shores Children's Aid Society, Kinark Child and Family Services, and the local school board. But the family says the child never received a thorough psychiatric evaluation or diagnosis.
They decided that the care that Chazz received was good when clearly we've determined that it wasn't. - Frank Petrella, Chazz's father
By the time he was 11½, Chazz had been in and out of three schools, two residential facilities and a psychiatric crisis centre.
He was diagnosed with a mental illness and doctors tried several medications, but they never pinpointed an exact diagnosis or treatment plan.
In the winter of 2014, Chazz was placed at the privately run school Bayfield, which specializes in working with children with behavioural issues.
Chazz Petrella's mother, Janet, says the number of children committing suicide in the province and the country is not dropping. She says an inquest into the gaps in her son's care could help improve access to services for other families. (the fifth estate)
His family says he thrived at Bayfield; he was getting A and B grades on his report card, and teachers described him as a "pleasure" in the classroom.
But it didn't last. The Petrellas were told they would have to cover the annual tuition of $21,000, which they couldn't afford.
One night that August, Chazz flew into another rage at home. In the morning, Petrella found his son hanging from a tree outside the family home.
Chazz had turned 12 the month before.
"There's so many different aspects of Chazz's story … that really highlight each gap in each part of the system whether it be education, whether it be health care, whether it be mental health, psychiatric, physical health; every aspect we dealt with, every individual part of his case had big failures that they couldn't connect to each other or they couldn't connect Chazz to those services," says Ashby-Petrella.
Call for inquest rejected
Ashby-Petrella has been calling for an inquest since the day the boy died two years ago.
Late last month, Dr. Paul Dungey, a regional supervising coroner in Kingston, informed the family there would be no inquest. He said the Pediatric Death Review Committee (PDRC) had reviewed Chazz's death and made recommendations to prevent future deaths.
The PDRC answers to Ontario's Office of the Chief Coroner, which reviews the deaths of children and youth who have a file with a Children's Aid Society within 12 months of their death.
The
Ashby-Petrella, who along with her husband met with Dungey about the case in the fall of 2015, says she's disappointed that no inquest will be held.
"We're the ones who were experiencing it. We're the ones that went to all the different agencies trying to seek help for him when nobody could help him, or agencies didn't have the doctors on hand, didn't have the services on hand."
The Petrellas say they're not the only family that has found significant gaps in the system that's supposed to help their kids.
"We are still getting people contacting us: What should they do? Where should they go? They can't get the help they need. All these questions that are still unanswered, so we felt an inquest would help bring awareness to |
National, Canada's sixth largest bank, has reported that profits grew three per cent to $453 million in the third quarter on $1.51 billion of revenues.Hint Eponymous item Person named after Hair curling method to get regular waves. Marcel Graeau (c. 1852-1936) French hairdresser who pioneered the use of hair irons. Athletic shoe with a canvas upper and rubber sole, developed as beachwear. Samuel Plimsoll (1824 – 1898) Named because the colored horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull (devised by Plimsoll to protect passengers and crews); just as with the line on a ship, if water got above the line of the rubber sole, the wearer would get wet. Couch or sofa, deep buttoning, upholstered in leather by hand. Phillip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) He was thought to have commissioned the first one, the sofa we now know by his name was inspired much later. Inflatable life jacket. Mary Jane 'Mae' West (1893 – 1980) World War II Allied soldiers called their inflatable life jackets 'Mae West' in honor of West's famously buxom figure. Women's loose trousers gathered at the knee, worn under a short skirt. Amelia Bloomer (1818 – 1894) Advocated as part of women's rights agenda; Saint in the Episcopal Church. Olive-drab military shortened coat, terminating in a waistband. Dwight Eisenhower (1890 – 1969) Ike requested the waist-cropped style; based on British battle jacket, 'but with more distinctive style'; Eisenhower was a partisan advocate of the British jacket’s functional sensibilities. Mustache and goatee with hair on the cheeks shaven. Anthony Van Dyke (1599 – 1641) Popular in 17th century Europe; died out in Britain with Restoration, as French style became popular; some, called 'vow-beards', vowed to wear them until the King did so again. Standing collar with the points pressed to stick out horizontally at the side-fronts, worn with a scarf or ascot. William Ewart Gladstone (1809 – 1898) British Prime Minister that popularized the style.
Hint Eponymous item Person named after Man's facial hair in front of the ears. Ambrose Burnside (1824 – 1881) Original name of the hair style was Burnsides, named after the Civil War general. Skintight, one-piece garment. Jules Léotard (1842–1870) French acrobatic performer; developed art of trapeze; popularized the one-piece gym-wear; he was the inspiration for the 1867 song 'The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze'. A race for 3-year-old horses; two types of hats have this name as well, including one type worn by women at the 1st leg of the Triple Crown. Edward Smith-Stanley,12th Earl of Derby (1752 – 1834) Derby tossed a coin with Sir Charles Bunbury for the honour of naming a race they sponsored; Derby won; the race became known as the Derby Stakes. A raincoat. Charles Macintosh (1766 – 1843) Scottish chemist and inventor of waterproof fabrics. Hard derby hat. Originally called Coke Hat. William Bowler (1849) Designed (by William or Edward Coke) and produced (by the Bowler brothers) to protect gamekeepers' heads from low-hanging branches while on horseback; had previously worn top hats. Lightweight all-weather broad-brimmed cowboy hat, made of fur-felt. John Batterson Stetson (1830 - 1906) On a tour of the West taken (1860s) after being diagnosed with TB, invented hat as an improvement over flea-infested coonskin caps in use. Denim work pants. Levi Strauss (1829 – 1902) German-born American businessman founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans developed by Jacob Davis.While Obamacare was under consideration, McConnell had strong words for the Democratic majority's tactics, criticizing them for going 'the partisan route.' Now, he seems to be using them. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
Here's what we know right now about the health-care plan Senate Republicans are working on: They want to pass it next week.
That's just about it, and all we can say for sure. While there have been some leaks and rumors about what might be in it, that's all they are. There haven't been any hearings or legislative text for anyone to analyze. It's been a backroom process that, whether there's any cigar smoke or not, has been more secretive, according to the Senate's historian emeritus, than any other in the past 100 years.
If you think this is a good way to restructure 18 percent of the American economy, well, then you must be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the exclusive group of Republicans he's letting in on the project — because it's hard to see how anyone else could. There's been no input from anyone who has anything to do with any part of the health-care system. Why, it's almost as if Republicans weren't acting in good faith when they complained that Obamacare, which actually did go through months of hearings and amendments, had, as the Senate's now-No. 2 Republican John Cornyn put it at the time, happened “behind closed doors with secret [health-care] negotiations.”
Despite this lack of transparency, there are still a few things we can guess about. Whatever else it does, it seems like a good bet that the Senate GOP's bill will have the same basic structure as the House GOP's: a trillion-dollar tax cut for wealthy investors that's paid for by slashing Medicaid for the poor and Obamacare subsidies for the middle class. Indeed, Cornyn has gone so far as to say that the two could be as much as 70 to 80 percent the same. And that, as Mother Jones's Kevin Drum points out, is all we really need to know.
Now, that's not to say that any differences between the two wouldn't matter. They might. One that would is if the Senate bill really does cut Medicaid the way it's been reported. Like the House bill, you see, it would reportedly turn Medicaid from an open-ended program that grows as needed to one that's capped on a per capita basis and only grows according to inflation. Unlike the House bill, though, it would, starting in 2025, pick a much, much lower rate of inflation for Medicaid to grow by, eventually cutting the program by far more than even the 25 percent the House would.
The question, then, is how much money Republicans want to put in — or, more to the point, take out — of the health-care system? And the answer is it depends on how big a tax cut they want. That's because they are required by rule to cut more in spending than they cut in taxes as a result of the way they're trying to pass their plan with just 51 votes in the Senate. So as long as the GOP's top priority is getting rid of the taxes on the rich that paid for Obamacare — and it is — then they're going to end up having to get rid of an equal amount of health-care spending for everybody else. They can claim that cutting $1 trillion isn't really cutting anything, since, as Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price put it, states would have “greater flexibility” to find efficiencies; they can attack the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for saying that spending $1 trillion less on health insurance means a lot fewer people will have health insurance; they can even say it isn't a big deal if these $1 trillion of cuts mean fewer people are covered because they're just exercising their new freedom to go uninsured.
But they know that these aren't convincing arguments. You can tell by the fact that they're trying to avoid having to make them by keeping their bill hidden from view until the last possible moment.
After all, you don't have to know a lot about policy to know that cutting health care by $1 trillion means a lot more people won't have it. Even President Trump seems to have noticed that. He went from defending the plan with some of his trademark stream-of-consciousness braggadocio — it's “getting better and better and better, and it's gotten really good, and a lot of people are liking it a lot,” he told reporters in April — to now deciding that it was actually “mean” all along.
You just can't cut taxes the way Republicans want and have “insurance for everybody” like Trump promised. Heck, you can't even have cheaper insurance. On an apples-to-apples basis, the House Republican plan, at least, would probably increase premiums and deductibles, according to the center-left Brookings Institution and the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. To the extent that people would pay less, it would only be because they were getting less and people who needed more had been priced out of the market. None of this is going to change in the Senate version unless the GOP changes its commitment to cutting taxes for the rich.
So I guess that makes it two things we know about the Senate GOP's health-care plan: they want to pass it next week, and it will be something Trump thinks is mean.
Terrific!NEW YORK—In a stunning reversal of their long-stated reluctance to take it, members of heavy-metal band Twisted Sister announced Monday that, after 24 years of fervent refusal, they are now willing to take it. "I acknowledge that we promised not to take it anymore, but things change. The world is a different place today, and with that in mind, we would like to go on record as saying that, starting right now, we are going to take it," read a statement released by the band's lead singer, Dee Snider. "To clarify, we would still prefer not to take it, but as of now, taking it is an option that we would be open to. That is all." Bassist Mark "the Animal" Mendoza also stated that, in regards to what he wants to do with his life, he no longer solely wants to rock, but would instead prefer doing other things, such as raising a family and working as a claims adjuster in Rye, NY.
AdvertisementThe speech on inequality that President Obama delivered just now will mostly pass unnoticed by the political world, with Republicans dismissing it as “class warfare” and an effort to distract from Obamacare, and pundits describing it more delicately as a “pivot” away from the law.
But experts who see inequality as one of the most urgent moral, political and economic long term challenges facing the country will see it as one of the most important speeches of the Obama presidency — more ambitious than his similar 2011 speech in Kansas.
“This is a major speech on a topic that American presidents normally stay away from,” Tim Smeeding, an expert on inequality at the University of Wisconsin, tells me, adding that it compares in some ways to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s addresses. “The fact that a sitting president faced with a crowded agenda had the courage to discuss this overarching problem is historic.”
A few key takeaways from the speech: Obama described the decline in economic mobility as a direct consequence of inequality — as opposed to arguing that lack of mobility is itself the problem — and as the product of trends that are decades in the making. He cast the need to ensure that “opportunity is real” for our children as “the defining issue of our time.”
Obama also argued that current levels of inequality and lack of opportunity as out of sync with the country’s founding values, noting that “the premise that we’re all created equal is the opening line in the American story,” and that the way to preserve that promise is to ensure that “success doesn’t depend on being born into wealth or privilege, it depends on effort and merit.”
And, crucially, Obama described the overall problem as the result of the rich pulling away from the rest. He noted that the share of the country’s wealth is increasingly going to the top while tax cuts for the wealthiest have cut into investments that benefit the rest, emphasizing that this has made it harder for poor children to escape poverty. Meanwhile middle class incomes have stagnated thanks to technological advances and declining unions. Result: The “basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed.”
“The speech was not just about the top one percent, or about the middle class, or about the poor,” Smeeding says. “It was about the three of them together. It was about all three parts of the distribution — the whole thing.”
Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz have written that we face a crossroads. Either the country figures out how to address these problems with a sense of common purpose, or, as Stiglitz has put it, we risk going the way of “developing countries” that are marked by “two societies living side by side, but hardly knowing each other.” Obama didn’t go quite that far, but he did note that inequality poses a “fundamental threat” to “our way of life.”
Obama discussed the need to prioritize growth; for universal pre-K education; to raise the minimum wage; tax and trade policies that encourage companies to grow here; more investments in worker retraining; proposals to reduce the cost of going to college; and other ideas.
Of course, all of the usual caveats apply: This was just a speech; it must be matched by action and policy; we still don’t know whether Dems will agree to more austerity in coming budget talks; the Obama administration has been too cozy with Wall Street; Congressional Republicans won’t agree to any of Obama’s suggested prescriptions; etc.
But it was good to have this speech laid down as a marker. It will likely serve as another touchstone in an evolving argument among Democrats over the need for the party to embody a truly progressive economic agenda, one that will likely continue resonating through at least 2016 and beyond.Louis C.K. is in the process of finishing a deal to purchase the rights to his film I Love You, Daddy from the distribution company the Orchard, according to Deadline. While exact figures are unknown, Deadline reports that C.K. is paying $5 million (the cost that the Orchard paid for the film) as well as any marketing costs incurred in the lead-up to the film’s cancellation. I Love You, Daddy was slated for a November premiere but was cancelled following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against C.K. It is yet unclear if C.K. plans to self-release the film or find another distributor once he has ownership of the rights.
In the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations, Louis C.K. issued a statement confirming the women’s claims. Multiple companies that previously worked with C.K., including FX, Netflix, and HBO, all distanced themselves from him. FX dropped their production deal with his company Pig Newton, while Netflix cancelled an upcoming stand-up special and HBO removed him from their benefit special “A Night of Too Many Stars.” C.K. was also dropped by his management company and publicist.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) defended the Senate Gang of Eight's immigration bill on the Andrea Tantaros Show today. Rubio on Thursday voted with most Republicans to add a security amendment offered by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). But that amendment went down on a mostly party-line vote. Cornyn's amendment would have given border security a higher priority in the bill, and made it easier to deport illegal-alien criminals who drunk drive and are caught in domestic abuse cases, among other crimes.
Sen. Rubio claimed that the Corker-Hoeven amendment, which would beef up border security, is a "dramatic improvement" over the bill. Tantaros fired: "If this amendment is so good, why wasn't it in the original bill?"
Rubio answered that he is listening to input to try to improve the bill, and that the amendment in his judgement improves the bill.
Tantaros asked Rubio if the Democrats are using the bill to change the demographics in states like Texas to give them a lock on power. Rubio admitted that some "political operatives" are hoping to use the bill that his Gang of Eight is offering to do just that.
In fact, the Texas Democratic Party explicitly bases its long-term strategy on current demographic changes underway in the Lone Star State. Those changes would be accelerated if the Rubio-Schumer immigration bill becomes law. "There's no doubt that politics are involved in this," Rubio admitted as he criticized groups on the left that continue to push for less border enforcement and more government benefits for illegal aliens.
Tantaros asked Rubio about the FAIR chart showing a how a litany of crimes committed by illegal aliens would be treated. Rubio agreed that "that should be fixed." He said that he would support amendments to close off those waivers, and hopes those amendments are offered in the Senate. Rubio's defensive response raised the questions of whether Sen. Rubio knows what is in the bill bearing his name, and why he tells Americans that it is "95% perfect."
The Andrea Tantaros Show is produced by the Fox and Rice Experience for Talk Radio Network.
Update: Listen to the entire interview here.
[jwplayer config="pjm_tatler" mediaid="129737"]A Vermont man died of an apparent drug overdose after receiving two doses of an antidote.
Man dies of apparent overdose after receiving 2 doses of Narcan
A Vermont man died of an apparent drug overdose after receiving two doses of an antidote.The Lamoille County Sheriff's Office said rescue crews responded to a home on West Highland Road in Johnson for a report of an unconscious man.The suspected overdose was reported July 12, but officials did not release information about it until Wednesday afternoon.First responders gave the man two 4-milligram doses of the overdose reversal drug Narcan.Crews said the antidote had no effect on the victim. He was pronounced dead at the scene.Deputies identified the man as 35-year-old Patrick Daniels.A toxicology report was expected to determine Daniels' cause of death. Those results have not been released.Anyone with information on the incident was asked to call the Lamoille County Sheriff.
A Vermont man died of an apparent drug overdose after receiving two doses of an antidote.
The Lamoille County Sheriff's Office said rescue crews responded to a home on West Highland Road in Johnson for a report of an unconscious man.
Advertisement
The suspected overdose was reported July 12, but officials did not release information about it until Wednesday afternoon.
First responders gave the man two 4-milligram doses of the overdose reversal drug Narcan.
Crews said the antidote had no effect on the victim. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Deputies identified the man as 35-year-old Patrick Daniels.
A toxicology report was expected to determine Daniels' cause of death. Those results have not been released.
Anyone with information on the incident was asked to call the Lamoille County Sheriff.
AlertMeThe writer, a Republican, represents Maine in the Senate.
I will not be voting for Donald Trump for president. This is not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican. But Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country.
When the primary season started, it soon became apparent that, much like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mr. Trump was connecting with many Americans who felt that their voices were not being heard in Washington and who were tired of political correctness. But rejecting the conventions of political correctness is different from showing complete disregard for common decency. Mr. Trump did not stop with shedding the stilted campaign dialogue that often frustrates voters. Instead, he opted for a constant stream of denigrating comments, including demeaning Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) heroic military service and repeatedly insulting Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
With the passage of time, I have become increasingly dismayed by his constant stream of cruel comments and his inability to admit error or apologize. But it was his attacks directed at people who could not respond on an equal footing — either because they do not share his power or stature or because professional responsibility precluded them from engaging at such a level — that revealed Mr. Trump as unworthy of being our president.
[When it comes to Trump, a Republican Treasury secretary says: Choose country over party]
The number of influential Republican officials saying that they can't vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is growing as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) pledges she won't vote for Trump. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
My conclusion about Mr. Trump’s unsuitability for office is based on his disregard for the precept of treating others with respect, an idea that should transcend politics. Instead, he opts to mock the vulnerable and inflame prejudices by attacking ethnic and religious minorities. Three incidents in particular have led me to the inescapable conclusion that Mr. Trump lacks the temperament, self-discipline and judgment required to be president.
The first was his mocking of a reporter with disabilities, a shocking display that did not receive the scrutiny it deserved. I kept expecting Mr. Trump to apologize, at least privately, but he did not, instead denying that he had done what seemed undeniable to anyone who watched the video. At the time, I hoped that this was a terrible lapse, not a pattern of abuse.
The second was Mr. Trump’s repeated insistence that Gonzalo Curiel, a federal judge born and raised in Indiana, could not rule fairly in a case involving Trump University because of his Mexican heritage. For Mr. Trump to insist that Judge Curiel would be biased because of his ethnicity demonstrated a profound lack of respect not only for the judge but also for our constitutional separation of powers, the very foundation of our form of government. Again, I waited in vain for Mr. Trump to retract his words.
Third was Donald Trump’s criticism of the grieving parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq. It is inconceivable that anyone, much less a presidential candidate, would attack two Gold Star parents. Rather than honoring their sacrifice and recognizing their pain, Mr. Trump disparaged the religion of the family of an American hero. And once again, he proved incapable of apologizing, of saying he was wrong.
I am also deeply concerned that Mr. Trump’s lack of self-restraint and his barrage of ill-informed comments would make an already perilous world even more so. It is reckless for a presidential candidate to publicly raise doubts about honoring treaty commitments with our allies. Mr. Trump’s tendency to lash out when challenged further escalates the possibility of disputes spinning dangerously out of control.
[Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice.]
I had hoped that we would see a “new” Donald Trump as a general-election candidate — one who would focus on jobs and the economy, tone down his rhetoric, develop more thoughtful policies and, yes, apologize for ill-tempered rants. But the unpleasant reality that I have had to accept is that there will be no “new” Donald Trump, just the same candidate who will slash and burn and trample anything and anyone he perceives as being in his way or an easy scapegoat. Regrettably, his essential character appears to be fixed, and he seems incapable of change or growth.
1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × These Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump View Photos And they’ll tell you why. Caption And they’ll tell you why. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell “General Powell said at a meeting of the Long Island Association that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton,” a spokeswoman confirmed Oct. 25. Powell added in an interview that he picked Clinton “because I think she’s qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified.” Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
At the same time, I realize that Mr. Trump’s success reflects profound discontent in this country, particularly among those who feel left behind by an unbalanced economy and who wonder whether their children will have a better life than their parents. As we have seen with the dissatisfaction with both major- party nominees — neither of whom I support — these passions are real and the public will demand action.
Some will say that as a Republican I have an obligation to support my party’s nominee. I have thought long and hard about that, for being a Republican is part of what defines me as a person. I revere the history of my party, most particularly the value it has always placed on the worth and dignity of the individual, and I will continue to work across the country for Republican candidates. It is because of Mr. Trump’s inability and unwillingness to honor that legacy that I am unable to support his candidacy.Why Alaska Thunderfuck Titled Her New Album Anus
The Advocate had some probing questions for Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 about her first album.
When Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 sat down to title her first album, one word came to mind: anus.
“It was the only thing I could call it. There’s nothing else. There’s simply no other title,” says the drag performer, who rose to fame on season 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race and has gone on to create a popular YouTube channel of music and commentary videos.
“People are going to think … I’m going to need to go to a proctologist after I drop this album,” the 30-year-old performer adds with a laugh, after considering headlines like “Alaska Thunderfuck Drops Anus.”
It’s a provocative name, but Alaska (née Justin Andrew Honard), is a provocative drag queen. In music videos for several of the Anus tracks, including “Hieeee” and “Your Makeup Is Terrible,” Alaska is unafraid to show drag “untucked.”
Scenes from these videos include a wigless and maquillaged Bianca Del Rio, the winner of season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, laughing and playing poker. In the latter video, Alaska herself is naked, her eyes are bleeding, and she’s being cradled by "wig whisperer" Mathu Andersen, RuPaul’s creative producer and makeup artist.
It’s not for everyone, Alaska admits. But then again, that’s the point.
“At the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, I am a man who dresses up like a lady who is from outer space. Not everyone is going to get that. Not everyone is going to be on board with that. And not everyone is going to be able to swallow that,” says Alaska, who, to clarify, claims her drag persona “beamed herself into my brain from outer space or from another dimension.”
Ultimately, Alaska knows her fan base: “really cute boys and really cute girls” who are unafraid of taking a comedic look at a clinical term used to describe the nether regions of anatomy.
“If I tried to make [Anus] something for everybody, than I feel like I would alienate the people that it’s actually for,” the drag star says. “It’s for the people who get it. It’s for people who aren’t afraid of swear words and who aren’t afraid of poop and dicks. Because these are a part of who we are, you know?”
There is a long history in drag and the broader LGBT movement of taking terms that are offensive and repurposing them as words of empowerment. Anus is perhaps the latest product of that movement. Here, Alaska has given an oft-maligned body part — one that is, after all, central to queer culture — its time in the sun.
Moreover, Alaska has taken a lot of the ugliness thrown at drag performers and herself and refashioned it into song material. The track “Hieeee”— a modification of the salutation “Hi” that has become ubiquitous with Alaska and a common term of greeting among Drag Race fans — is a relevant manifesto for any performer.
“If you see a flaw, squint. … The more you drink, the prettier we look,” are just a few of the rules Alaska lays down in the spoken-word track. Alaska calls it “Drag 101,” a list of rules of engagement for her critics in the crowd as well as Anus itself.
“It’s like the table of contents to the album,” Alaska says. “These are all lines that drag queens have been using in their speaking to audiences since the beginning of drag.”
The video of “Hieeee” also serves as a who’s who of the drag scene. In addition to Del Rio, Sharon Needles, Jinkx Monsoon, Ivy Winters, Detox, and Adore Delano all make appearances in what is in essence a mini-documentary of Battle of the Seasons, an international tour of popular Drag Race alumni.
Alaska calls BOTS “a life-changing experience,” in which the queens had the opportunity to perform in world-class venues across the globe. She says one of the goals of video is to “take a snapshot of that time period in my life, because it’s really special to me.”
What else did she take away from the tour? “Michelle Visage is vegan and gluten-free. And Ivy Winters loves smoking American Spirit cigarettes. And Adore Delano loves hot Cheetos,” she says.
Another of Anus’s tentpole tracks is inspired by judgment. “Your Makeup Is Terrible” can trace its origins to RuPaul’s Drag Race pit crew member Jason Carter, who said those words to Alaska during one of the show's challenges. The phrase caught fire on Twitter among Drag Race fans, which inspired Alaska to make a T-shirt and eventually a dance track. It’s a commodification of criticism that would make RuPaul proud.
The process is now par for the course for Alaska, who often faces negativity online in response to her creativity.
“I usually get upset at first,” Alaska says, describing her process of dealing with Internet attacks. “And then I … take it, and turn it into something... that’s a trademark.”
“I used to get called a horse face. And so I decided to embrace the horse and make it my spirit animal,” she cites as an example. “And now … the horse is a huge part of my symbolism. I gain a lot of power and strength from the horse.”
Alaska has also seen the fallout of criticism from both sides of the fence. In May 2014 the drag performer came under fire for releasing a YouTube video that depicted a futuristic RuPaul shooting a “word-policing” transgender blogger in the head.
The video dropped in the midst of a public debate involving the use of transphobic language on RuPaul’s Drag Race, which was spearheaded in part by a transgender contributor to The Advocate, Parker Marie Molloy.
Alaska later apologized for the video after taking to heart the critiques she heard from those who said they were hurt by the attempt to "parody" the all-too-real and systemic violence against transgender women. Shortly afterward, she discussed the incident with Molloy in a podcast.
"I realized that it was hurting people's feelings," she said. "I feel like I want to be in a world and in a community where we can be kinder to one another… And that should start with myself."
Today, Alaska reflects on how the experience was a wake-up call to the power of media to create change that can be both positive and negative, as well as a lesson in responding to issues that may be upsetting.
“It’s best to not respond to things from a place of anger, because then you end up perpetuating the cycle of violence, and the cycle of anger,” she said. “That video that I posted — I was pissed off when I made it — it came from a place of anger. And I feel like that’s why it wasn’t good, and that’s why I took it down. It hurt people’s feelings. And that’s never my intention.”
It has been a long journey of self-discovery since Alaska appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2013. Initially, she was swept up in “the party,” a whirlwind of drugs and alcohol that did not include a plan of success.
“Now my work is my drug of choice,” she says. “I like to take whatever work opportunities I can. I like to work with as many people as I can. I like to show up on time, and I like to have a good time.”
And she hopes Anus and the music therein will have the kind of positive impact that she has worked so hard to create.
“Music was always something really personal to me,” says Alaska, referencing albums she loved when she was younger like No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom and Jewel’s Pieces of You that “became a part of me.”
“I hope that people have a personal relationship with this album,” she says of Anus. “Because I’ve made it with a lot of love, and I hope that everybody likes it.”
Anus is now available on iTunes. Watch the new music video for "This Is My Hair" below.Beleaguered tech giant Sony is taking steps to right the ship this week, with its Sony Mobile division announcing a move back to Tokyo and a 15 percent reduction in its global workforce.
Sony Mobile's headquarters in Lund, Sweden will be closed, with the company notifying Swedish authorities that 650 jobs will be lost as a result.
Another 350 jobs will also go on the chopping block over the next year, which Electronista is reporting will be primarily made up of Swedish consultants.
And, Sony Mobile isn't the only casualty of the parent company's reorganization following a $312 million Q1 loss. Britain's Sony Liverpool software studios are also being closed.
U.K. reorganization
Senior Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Michael Denny told staffers the Liverpool studio was being "reorganized." But the WWSE Team Liverpool studio where the company's legendary WipEout was created is definitely closed, Sony confirmed.
The Liverpool studios were opened in 1984 by Psygnosis, who was purchased by Sony in 1993 and rebranded as Sony Liverpool six years later.
The Sony Liverpool campus will continue to host FQA, GFPQA, XDev, CSG-Video, Localisation services and WWSE Finance, with some WWSE Team Liverpool staffers relocated to other departments, while others will become victims of further cuts.
Sony plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide as part of its "One Sony" restructuring efforts.
Via Electronista, TechEyeGlass Animals, the UK four piece signed to super-producer Paul Epworth’s label Wolf Tone, have racked up 100m streams worldwide on Spotify – as their manager credits streaming with providing the band with the longevity they needed to make an impact on the global market.
According to Spotify’s publicly stated $0.007 per-stream rate, the band will have generated somewhere in the region of $700,000 for themselves and other rightsholders on the platform.
Glass Animals debut album Zaba was released in June last year via Universal’s Harvest Records in the US and on the major’s label services division, Caroline International, in all other territories.
The LP has sold over 190,000 units in the US, and finally peaked at No.1 on the Alternative New Artist Chart last week after 64 weeks.
“Without the word-of-mouth excitement that came via the streaming platforms – first spotify and now apple music – we would never have managed to sustain a campaign that took the band from unknowns to headlining sold out shows.” Amy Morgan, Manager
The band are currently on a sold-out US tour, which includes shows atT5 and the Wiltern in LA.
On Spotify, the band have over 187,000 followers. 35m of their 100m plays have been accrued by Gooey, the lead single from Zaba which is currently featuring in the new iPhone 6S ‘reveal’ commercial.
The ad attracted 20,000 views in the first 45 minutes of launching, and is already at over 1.7million views within it’s first week.
Amy Morgan, Manager, Glass Animals said: “Streaming allowed us to put music at the centre of this campaign. We have been incredibly lucky, there was no novelty or hype with Glass Animals; initially there was a band who made a record they believed in and a grass roots audience that connected with it.
“The audience grew as people shared the album and play listed tracks thanks to the platform and support Spotify gave us. Tickets sold to shows sold globally and the world around Zaba and Glass Animals began to grow. The campaign built around that buzz and pushed things to another level as radio and press kicked in.
“But without that initial connection between band and audience and the word of mouth excitement that came via the streaming platforms – first Spotify and now Apple Music as well – we would never have managed to sustain a campaign that took the band from unknowns at SXSW 2014 to headlining sold out shows at The Wiltern in LA, T5 in NYC, Shepherds Bush in London and gathering huge crowds at major international festivals all round the world just over 15 months later.”
“The power of streaming, helped significantly by Spotify’s early support, has rarely been more evident than in the campaign for zaba.” Emma Greengrass, caroline international
Zaba was produced by frontman Dave Bayley under executive production of Paul Epworth, who has previously worked with the likes of Adele, Florence & The Machine, Lana Del Rey and Lorde.
Emma Greengrass, Head of UK Label at Caroline International, said:
“The power of streaming helped significantly by Spotify’s early support of Glass Animals has rarely been more evident than in the campaign for ‘Zaba’.
“Having a no 1 album on the US Alternative chart over a year after the albums release is astonishing.
“Now we also have Apple Music on the playing field, we are looking forward to the rest of this year with the album continuing to do great business in many markets”Music Business WorldwideIn the Chhapra part of Bihar, the agony of losing 23 young children who were fed a poisoned lunch at their school exactly a week ago has shaken a village and its surrounding areas.But the government, which has alleged that the free mid-day meal may have been deliberately laced with insecticide, says it cannot guarantee that the disaster will not repeat.P K Shahi, the Education Minister, said today, "As a minister, how can I guarantee that in 72,000 schools across the state, there won't be any poison in the food if somebody is hell bent on doing so."Over the weekend, a forensic report based on the food samples and cooking oil used for the fatal meal showed traces of insecticide called monocrotophos. The World Heath Organisation in a statement today said it had asked India to ban the toxic substance as early as in 2009. ( Read The headmistress of the school and her husband, who allegedly supplied the groceries used for the meal, have been missing since the children began throwing up last week. A court today issued a warrant for principal Meena Devi in whose home five empty packets of the insecticide were found on Sunday.The children who were killed were between the ages of 4 and 10. Some of them were buried in a mark of protest by their parents near the entrance of their school.The magnitude of the tragedy has provoked a national debate |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.