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will EVE University. We’ll remain committed to helping players thrive and have fun in the game. Perhaps we’ll be doing classes with our Oculus Rift headsets in virtual reality classrooms by that time! Regardless, I’m supremely confident that E-UNI will always be a part of the community, as long as the game continues – and I expect to be teaching some of those E-UNI classes myself in another decade.
So, much like EVE has evolved over the past 10 years, the communities most well known teaching institution has done so as well. In my opinion it is this ongoing evolution that has allowed it to thrive and grow along with EVE, which has enabled it to reach this milestone. And to continue providing the environment they do for players looking for a solid grounding in the what, why & how of EVE when they first join. Indeed a considerable number of the people I know in game would not have stuck with the game were it not for EVE University, be it former students or members of RvB who enjoy shooting them so much, that they stick around in the hope of doing it again!When Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins won the Vezina Trophy in 2011, it was a bit of a rarity because he appeared in 57 games that season. It had been 21 years since a goaltender played in fewer games and won the Vezina, dating to when Patrick Roy played 54 games in 1989-90 and captured the trophy.
Thomas made 55 starts in 2011, which constitutes 67.1 percent of his team’s games that season. There’s an above-average chance the Vezina winner in 2013 will play an even lower percentage of games on his way to the award.
Some of this season’s best goaltenders find themselves in an even time share. Corey Crawford of the Chicago Blackhawks has started 14 games and is second in the National Hockey League with a 1.41 goals-against average and.940 save percentage. Viktor Fasth of the Anaheim Ducks has come on strong in place of Jonas Hiller, posting a 9-1-1 record and 2.08 GAA with 11 starts.
Other goaltending leaders have dealt with injuries and haven’t played as many games as the season reaches the halfway point. Craig Anderson of the Ottawa Senators leads the League with a 1.49 GAA and.952 save percentage, but an ankle injury has limited him to 15 games. Kari Lehtonen has carried the Dallas Stars this season with a 2.26 GAA and.930 save percentage, but has started 13 games because of a groin injury.
How will general managers decide on this year’s Vezina winner if the trend continues? As of now, Crawford, Fasth, Anderson and Lehtonen have played less than 65 percent of their teams’ games. Will GMs reward the flashy numbers, or the goaltenders who carry a far heavier load in this shortened season and have less-impressive numbers?
At this point, we at NHL.com are awarding the Vezina to Anderson, who has been the best goaltender during the first half of the season. Anderson banked a lot of his numbers before getting hurt -- he's been out since Feb. 21 -- but he’s still been the most impressive to this point.
FINALISTS
Antti Niemi, San Jose Sharks – The Sharks have been brutal offensively. They stand 28th in the League in goals per game at 2.19, barely ahead of the Ottawa Senators and Nashville Predators. San Jose also has been below average defensively, giving up nearly 29 shots per game. Despite it all, Niemi has a 1.83 GAA and.935 save percentage, good for third in the League.
Corey Crawford, Chicago Blackhawks -- He has allowed two goals or fewer in 12 of his 14 starts (although he was injured in the first period of one start) and has stopped fewer than 91 percent of shots in an individual game once this season. Yes, the Blackhawks are scoring better than three goals per game, but Crawford has six one-goal victories and he allowed two goals or fewer in all of them.
---Update by Rose Gomez, Associate Producer
Hello backers! After a successful week at GDC everyone is back in the office energized and inspired. This week we'll be taking a look at what the life of an animator is like on Pillars of Eternity, from what an average day looks like to how an animation goes from concept to being in the game.
In our next update, look forward to an update all about the audio design on Pillars of Eternity, featuring Justin Bell, our Audio Director.
As a reminder, the survey deadline has passed. If you still need to fill out your surveys, we encourage you to do so by going to the backer portal and completing your order. We will attempt to accommodate as many late surveys as we can, but we can't promise that the content will make it in to Pillars of Eternity. Late survey entries may have to go into a future Eternity product instead.
The animators gathering reference for a wild Xaurip attack.
Average Day
Each day, our animators gather together in the lead animator's office to give an update on what they're working on. Any road blocks or challenges that an animator is running into can be brought up and the entire animation team can help to figure out a way around it. Everyone on the team tends to work very closely together. It's very rare for an animator to be working alone for the entire day. Most animators will collaborate and look for critique and feedback as they work so that they can make sure their animations look as good as possible.
Once everyone has been brought up to date with what the team is doing, the animators head back to their offices and begin to work. Many of our animators like to take reference of themselves acting out certain attacks, and it's not unusual to walk by an animators office and see them growling, snarling, and stalking around while they try to work something out. You can usually recognize an animator's office by the mountains of toy swords, shields, staffs, and guns they have lying around for any impromptu reference sessions that may come up. Once they've figured out how they want the animation to feel and look, they can sit down and really start animating.
Animators acting out Xaurip animations.
The amount of time spent animating is smaller than one might think when compared to the time spent in iterations, adjustments, and actually successfully implementing the animations into the engine. When an animator feels like they have something ready for the game, the animations go into the game engine and off to the lead for review.
Challenges
For Pillars of Eternity, there have been a variety of challenges our animators have come across. To begin with, this is the first project at Obsidian to use the Unity engine. It's always a challenge to learn a new engine for a project and to adjust to a new set of tools. While animating is animating regardless of the project, the availability of different tools can really make a difference to an animator's process.
Since Pillars of Eternity is designed from an isometric view, the animators need to stay aware of the locked camera at all times when animating. Characters are also relatively smaller on the screen than they would be in another type of game. This means that animators need to focus on stronger poses and broader movements than they would use on a game with a first person or third person camera. The motions of the animations have to have a strong silhouette from as many angles as possible so that they can be read clearly at a distance.
From Concept to Completion
A lot of work has to go into a creature or NPC before the animating even begins. Using the Druid Cat Form as an example, the pipeline begins with taking a look at the design documents to see what the designers have come up with as to how the creature should look and feel. What kind of attacks should he have? What mood should his walk and run animations portray? Once those things are decided, it moves onto the concept stage. When it comes to creatures, it's usually Polina who will take a crack at fleshing out what they are going to look like. You may remember the Cat Druid Form concept from a few updates ago, shown here again:
Druid Cat Form Concept.
Once the concept is finished, that's when animation team comes in. The animator will consult with the designer and the concept artist in order to break down what specific animations need to be made for every creature. An animation list gets written up and saved while the creature is sent off to the character team to get modeled and skinned.
The character artist will block out and hook up the model in the engine so that we can take a look and see if any new systems need to be implemented for this creature. Maybe we want him to have a special ability that hasn't been designed yet, like a transformation between one form to another. That's when a programmer would step in to help design a way to make those special systems work.
With the systems in place, the animators can finally begin to animate! Animating for a video game is a bit different than animating for a feature. Each action a character is going to use has to be broken into a separate animation so that the game engine can call on them when different criteria are met. Even simple things like a character's run and walk need to be planned out and separated into small individual animations. A typical full animation set can take up to a month (and for more difficult creatures, sometimes even two months) to implement. During the animation process, animators will work very closely with design to make sure that every creature looks and moves just like they envisioned.
Once all of the animations for the creature are blocked in, the animator can bring them into the engine and start seeing how they fit together in the actual game. There is a lot of back and forth between the animation package and the engine at this point in order to fine tune each animation. If the lead is happy with how an animation looks then the animator is done and can move on to the next creature on the list.
In-engine creature animations.
GameCrate
We have a bunch of new interviews and articles out on Newegg's new gaming site, GameCrate! GameCrate visited our offices in February for a behind the scenes tour of the studio and got to take a firsthand look at Pillars of Eternity. Take a look at their article, The Factory Level: Obsidian Entertainment to see what they experienced.
Check out what Josh had to say about the game in his interview here then take a look at an interview with Feargus here about the business side of Pillars of Eternity.
If you're in a hurry and want to get down to the quick details, check out their article 10 Pillars of Eternity Details We Picked Up During Our Tour of Obsidian Entertainment.
You can also check out their twitter account, @GameCrate, for updated news and articles about gaming.
Kickin' It Forward
We love tabletop games at Obsidian, and what better way to bring your campaigns to life than with some awesome modular cavern sets? The guys over at Dwarven Forge are releasing a brand new set of modular cavern tiles crafted from their new unbreakable Dwarvenite material. They've got some really cool stretch goals to add even cooler pieces, including a Lava Cavern Add-On Pack. Check out their Kickstarter campaign here!
ARMing the Masses
Hey, guys. Brandon here.
Here at Obsidian, we know that DRM can be a touchy subject so we got together with our friends at Paradox to think of a better solution, because you know, rights need to be managed. What came out of those discussions is... the Pillars of Eternity A.R.M.
Pillars of Eternity A.R.M. (Analog Rights Management)
Much like the code wheels of old, players will be greeted with a large, glowing question rune on the title screen. In addition to the question rune, ten smaller runes will also be displayed. Players will then have to use the Pillars of Eternity A.R.M. code wheel to decode the question rune and select the properly revealed rune. It's fast and (somewhat) easy.
Be careful, though, because two incorrect selections in a row and your copy of Pillars of Eternity will become locked down for 72 hours while our customer service department investigates possible fraud.
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April Fools'! As we said from the very beginning, Pillars of Eternity is, and always will be, DRM, and ARM, free.
That's it for now. Head over to our forums and let us know what you think of the update.With growing demand for power in the neighborhoods around South Lake Union, utility department Seattle City Light (SCL) is preparing to build a new electrical substation nearby. It won’t be like the city’s other 11 facilities with cold chain-link fences, as it will invite residents to play outside and peer inside from perimeter ramps and translucent walls. SCL decided to implement this project in an unusual way because of the concerns expressed at community outreach events; the local NBBJ architectural office, who is consulting on the design, is also only a block from the site.
Two substations currently serve the area, one on Broad Street near Seattle Center and another just southwest of Safeco Field. Increasing density in the area from new residential and commercial buildings, along with future extensions of electrical-based transportation, has led to the need for a finer distribution network. The project is also significant because it will be the first new substation in 32 years. The city purchased three adjacent parcels, with Pontius Avenue between two of them, in 2009. One parcel, 1250 Denny Way, is a former Greyhound bus station and is undergoing cleanup; automotive fluids and leaks from underground diesel tanks were found as deep as 35 feet, requiring extensive earth removal. The operation experienced an accident just today, when a backhoe knocked a power pole onto occupied construction vehicles. No one was injured.
Because much of the site is already being excavated, early design concepts looked at occupying just the Greyhound parcel with equipment going several stories underground and up. However, it was found that option would be prohibitively expensive because of complex transmission line rerouting. A second alternative lowered the height by expanding across Pontius, but the third and preferred alternative is even more spread out in order to limit the facility’s height and impact on the neighborhood.
At an AIA Seattle Urban Design Forum at NBBJ’s office, lead architects Jon Savo and John Hoffman explained the preferred design. The west side’s diagonal shape was derived from existing pedestrian flows from a #8 bus stop at Minor Avenue and Denny Way and across a parking lot. Neighbors were actually interested in seeing inside the substation, and so with similar ambitions as the Olympic Sculpture Park and plans for the downtown waterfront, each side has ramps that elevate visitors and allow them to peer in through openings or glass; the metallic wall material hasn’t been defined yet. There won’t be too much to see; recent technological advances allow the electrical equipment to be stored in metal boxes that are gas- rather than air-cooled. Blast walls direct an improbable explosion upwards, which negated the idea of a green roof, overhead photovoltaic (PV) array, or walkways over the interior.
Other arrangements of PVs, perhaps included in the exterior wall itself, wouldn’t be feasible because of planned 200′ buildings just south of the site. However SLC and NBBJ are interested in incorporating educational features in the project, which could include not just plaques and signs but also demonstrative PV arrays and rain gardens, in addition to a small dog park or recreational field. Part of the impetus for such public amenities is the code requirements for vacating Pontius, a public right-of-way.
Other considerations will be art and light that symbolize the facility’s energy. At some level the architects imagine the Denny Substation as a destination, though no parking or land uses like retail are on the table. Many Seattlites have opted to pay higher rates for electricity from renewable sources, so there is certainly interest in power infrastructure.
The project has received its share of criticism, including an apparent favoritism for the well-to-do area neighborhoods while other residents are left with older substations that have no aesthetic considerations. 30 years ago, citizens were not as concerned or consulted on public utility projects. Earlier in the design process SLC analyzed the feasibility of putting the substation under a high-rise to blend with the area’s future trends, but developer’s weren’t too interested. A recent example of the idea is a substation under a tower at the redeveloped World Trade Center site in New York. Capitol Hill residents are also wary of a distribution alternative that would place tall transmission towers on residential streets, and the lack of public discourse beyond the affected areas.
The Denny Substation is expected to be energized by 2016 and initially cost $164 million, with ongoing improvements in the following years. The project will go before the Seattle Design Commission on November 7 for approval. A slideshow from a design open house earlier this month, with many more details, is available online here (23MB PDF).Ron Paul’s campaign (and his fans) had hoped to make the Republican presidential nomination race a Romney vs. Paul one by now. In this wished-for scenario, Paul could use his Tea Party, small government, Christian conservative bonafides to be a legitimate contender on the delegate-collection path toward Tampa.
Alas, the former joke candidate Rick Santorum not only refuses to go away, he’s been winning states, is still running pretty strong despite his losses to Romney in Michigan and Arizona this week, and will likely rack up some more victories on Super Tuesday.
Paul and Santorum couldn’t be farther apart in the same political party. Paul wants to bring home the troops and cease all non-defensive wars; Santorum is itching for war with Iran. Paul wants to end the federal drug war; Santorum is for toughening both the domestic and international drug wars. The Paul of today doesn’t want the government to have anything in particular to say or do with one’s personal religious beliefs or rituals, including marriage, while Rick Santorum is made sick to even hear that there should be a strict separation of church and state.
Paul has been consistently tough on government spending, while Santorum has not, with the Club for Growth (a GOP pressure group advocating low taxing and spending) concluding that, “On spending, Santorum has a mixed record and showed clear signs of varying his votes based on the election calendar bailout…. His record is plagued by the big-spending habits that Republicans adopted during the Bush years of 2001-2006. Some of those high profile votes include his support for No Child Left Behind in 2001….the massive new Medicare drug entitlement in 2003 that now costs taxpayers over $60 billion a year and has almost $16 trillion in unfunded liabilities [and] the 2005 highway bill that included thousands of wasteful earmarks, including the Bridge to Nowhere.”
Explaining the other differences, Paul thinks government’s purpose should be limited pretty much to protecting life and property from force and fraud, and that even most of that should be left to the states. Santorum’s more totalist vision of government’s role in shaping virtue and the social order makes him actively and vocally hostile to the very idea of libertarian governance, and to the notion that we should be free if we wish to choose our own purposes and even to just accumulate property and “stuff,” of which Santorum is contemptuous.
Santorum may be, as Politico wrote, now the “the race’s unambiguous conservative alternative,” but that’s by a particularly ugly and narrow vision of conservatism. As that same Politico piece notes, Santorum "did himself no favors with loyal GOP activists by launching a robocall attempting to lure Democrats to play in the Republican primary” in Michigan—his position is assailable, heartwarming appeals to his mom and daughter notwithstanding.
Paul fan and best-selling author Charles Goyette offers some good reasons that the standard GOP conservative should be able to see the value for his party in Paul:
Establishment Republicans are a breed unto themselves. If you go to their long-term planning meetings, if you listen to them talk about their Party’s future…It’s all about broadening the base, getting more young people involved, becoming relevant, how to capture enthusiasm, more young people, using the internet, reaching out to young people, figuring out how to fundraise in the digital age, getting more young people. Now, along comes Ron Paul, who offers them exactly what they want: young people, enthusiasm, an unbeatable social media campaign, devoted volunteers, better demographics, new fundraising success, a campaign worthy of the digital age, relevance, money, excitement, and (did I mention?) young people. It’s exactly what they have wished for. Exactly what they need. And they turn their back on it.
Indeed they have, for the most part. As Ron Paul has tried to carve himself a usable space among the GOP primary electorate as the real conservative who should be anointed as frontrunner Romney’s main insurgent foe, Paul and his campaign have also not wanted you to forget their oppostiion to Santorum, running ads slamming the ex-senator as a bogus fiscal conservative and a mere “corporate lobbyist…with a record of betrayal” on spending, right to work, and “fighting special interests.” (Despite the endless repetition of groundless accusations of a “Paul/Romney alliance,” Paul’s done more than one TV ad attacking Romney as well.)
If the two politicians are so opposed, and they are, why would Paul’s campaign imagine they could pick up voters who might otherwise lean Santorum? As becomes clear if you spend any time talking to undecided Republican voters on the campaign trail, or even asking decideds to explain why they favor the candidate they do, many voters don’t approach their political choices as rationalistically as a libertarian might guess, or want. There isn’t always policy logic behind a voter’s choices. Often it’s merely an attitude, a stance, or even an alternative that voters are looking for, and Paul, a Protestant and traditionalist, might have reasonably thought that some members of the classic “religious right” could see some merit in him. Paul certainly thought that those who rallied under the Tea Party banner of opposition to government overreach, overtaxing, and overspending should see him and his deliberately lean vision of government, as well as his trillion-dollar one year spending cut plan, as a reasonable option.
The duel between Paul and Santorum, then, looks like it’s one for the soul of the party's future, if it is to have a future at all beyond dull centrism. Jack Hunter, who works with the Paul campaign and co-wrote Rand Paul’s book The Tea Party Goes to Washington, argues that even diehard social cons need to realize their only hope for even small-scale success is via federalism, on the state level; that America is too diverse and pluralistic now for them to be able to impose their values via the federal government.
It has to be especially vexing to Paul’s people that Santorum has gotten as far as he has in a totally shoestring insurgent campaign, apparently winning hearts and minds with the sheer power of his message, such as it is. Now, while Paul’s electoral position isn’t nearly as encouraging as I hoped it might be in the wake of his strong second in New Hampshire (and apparently he’s down to just one national reporter, from NBC, regularly on the Paul beat), Paul does continue to rack up delegates, and no one yet knows how the delegates in unbound caucus states will end up falling out. There is reason to believe Paul will have more delegates than a straight look at his caucus straw poll vote percentages would indicate in states from Iowa to Maine to Colorado.
As long as no one racks up the clear-victory majority of 1,144 delegates needed to win early, this will continue to be a live campaign (and probably continue to be the very sloppy one it has been, with often ambiguous results) in which all living candidates can thrive, and Paul still shows every sign of being able and willing to fight out until the end. This has fortunately for Paul so far been a campaign where momentum is meaningless, and tomorrow’s results are often weird and seemingly unrelated to last week’s results or polls. Southern California congressional candidate and Paul fan Christopher David has laid out a longshot, but possible, scenario for Paul victory in the case of a (still possible) brokered convention.
Quin Hillyer at American Spectator presents a realistic-sounding scenario of Santorum and Romney fighting it out until the end, each with many victories and many defeats, and makes the telling—and encouraging to Paul fans—observation that in this process, GOP voters seen “very willing to change their minds about candidates as the process wears on.”
It’s true the Tea Party has forsaken Paul, with him winning only 6 percent of that self-identified vote in Arizona, and only 7 in Michigan—a state where Paul’s fans showed a willingness to come rally for him in the multiple thousands that was not reflected in vote totals, if one assumed they were representative of their brethren. (Given Paul’s willingness to contemplate the collapsed and apocalyptic economy we might be heading for because of government mismanagement of the economy and money, it’s only fitting that he did win Detroit, a city that is almost already living out his nightmare vision.)
With Romney as the GOP nominee, libertarians could take comfort in the excuses of his momentum, it’s his turn, he’s been presented in the media as the anointed, and all that. With the over a million votes cast so far for Santorum, it’s hard to avoid the dreadful thought that those people really might want Rick Santorum to be president, with all the sanctimony, warmongering, and religious culture wars that would imply. It’s a hard fact for a libertarian, particularly one who in the age of Paul saw the Republican Party as a possible vehicle for state-shrinking, to face up to. But it’s there.Security researchers at Check Point have claimed that a single adware malware is infecting as many as 250 million PCs worldwide.
Dubbed ‘Fireball’, the adware campaign is based on hijacking browsers to manipulate web traffic, effectively changing the default search engine and track their web traffic. If that seemed tame, the malware also has means to run any code on a victim’s machine. Such capability also enables the malware to download new malicious malware.
According to Wired, Maya Horowitz, head of the research team at Check Point stated:
A quarter-billion computers could very easily become victims of real malware. It installs a backdoor in to all these computers that can be very, very easily exploited in the hands of the Chinese people behind this campaign.
Upon monitoring the malware, the researchers discovered that the malware was tracking victim PC’s web traffic on behalf of Rafotech, a digital marketing firm based in Beijing.
The adware is typically distributed with freeware software where additional programs can be packed in unbeknownst to the user.
When installed on a machine, Fireball compromises the browser to redirect traffic from users’ search engines and home pages to a different search engine, a faux overlay of Google. This raises the theory of the developers behind the adware were intent on collecting ad revenue from web searches through their search engine.
The adware also notably employs tracking pixels, a tiny, pixel-sized image in the browser to track users’ web activity.
Fireball, researchers say, has compromised 25 million PCs in India, 24 million in Brazil and 16 million in Mexico. In the US, Fireball has infected 5.5 million PCs with 10 percent of US corporations affected. A similar percentage of corporations in France, Germany and the UK are thought to have at least one Fireball infected machine amongst their infrastructure, leaving it ajar for the possibility of a more destructive malware attack.
A simple way to uninstall the program is by heading to ‘Programs and Features’ in the Windows Control Panel. A general rule of thumb is to pay attention to any search engine redirects and uninstalling the extension, add-on or software causing it, before a complete antivirus scan.
Image credit: Pexels.The U.S. military used Apache helicopter gunships for the first time in the war against ISIS Monday in northern Iraq when one of the U.S. Army helicopters fired a hellfire missile at an ISIS armored vehicle rigged with explosives, a senior defense official told Fox News.
A pair of Apaches were flying together, and one of them took the shot, the official said.
There was no immediate word how many ISIS fighters were killed in the U.S. strike.
The U.S. attack happened near the Iraqi city of Qayyarah, roughly 50 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and an ISIS stronghold where the majority of ISIS fighters reside inside Iraq, according to defense officials.
Mosul fell to ISIS two years ago in June 2014.
In April, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter authorized Apache helicopters to support the Iraqi Army in the fight against ISIS in a sign of increasing involvement of U.S. forces against the Islamic terror group.
Defense officials have said recently that the U.S. Apache gunships would be used in the Mosul operation against ISIS, but not elsewhere in the country.UBS to divulge 4,000 account names, more expected
"We will be receiving an unprecedented amount of information," IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said. "This agreement represents a major step forward with the IRS' efforts to pierce the veil of bank secrecy and combat offshore tax evasion."
The announcement follows a long-running U.S. effort to penetrate Swiss bank secrecy, focusing first on UBS. The federal government had been seeking a U.S. court order demanding that UBS identify the holders of 52,000 accounts. The Swiss government had promised to block such a disclosure, leading to weeks of negotiations followed by Wednesday's announcement of a settlement.
The Swiss government will turn over names of suspected U.S. tax dodgers who have held 4,450 secret accounts at banking giant UBS -- accounts that at one point together contained as much as $18 billion, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Furthermore, the Swiss government promised to assist Washington in similar investigations at other Swiss banks, the IRS said.
Time is running out for wealthy Americans with secret Swiss bank accounts as they weigh whether to hand themselves in to the Internal Revenue Service or gamble that their names are not among the thousands set to be exposed in one of the U.S. government's most aggressive efforts to hunt down international tax cheats.
The U.S.-Swiss deal is a blow to rich Americans who have enjoyed Switzerland's legendary banking secrecy. Some UBS customers have taken advantage of a leniency program that allows them to come forward to the IRS in exchange for reduced penalties. That program, which began in March, expires Sept. 23.
But others may want to take the chance that their accounts won't be uncovered.
It isn't clear how the names will be chosen.
"You really have to think about whether you want to stick your head out and do this, or make the calculated judgment that your name is not going to be disclosed," said Robert W. Ray, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer at Pryor Cashman. He said some of his clients had taken advantage of the leniency program, but others were waiting on the sidelines to see what they should do.
IRS officials offered no estimate of how much the agency might recoup in back taxes and penalties.
Shulman said the deal sent an "unmistakable message" to tax dodgers: "Wealthy Americans who have hidden their money offshore will find themselves in a jam," he said.
But Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who held hearings on UBS last year, called the U.S.-Swiss deal "at most a modest advance" toward ending abuses of bank secrecy.
The Swiss government has agreed to work with the U.S. on similar requests for disclosure involving other Swiss banks, Shulman said on a conference call with reporters.
UBS Chairman Kaspar Villiger said in a statement that the settlement "helps resolve one of UBS's most pressing issues."
UBS will pay no penalties under the deal, the bank said.
In February, to avoid criminal prosecution, UBS agreed to pay the U.S. government $780 million and admitted that it had schemed to defraud the U.S. by helping Americans hide money from the IRS. At that time, the Swiss provided the names of 200 to 300 American depositors, and UBS said Swiss law prohibited it from disclosing any more.
Switzerland was fighting to preserve the reputation for privacy that has made its banking industry a global powerhouse and a pillar of the Swiss economy.
The settlement announced Wednesday includes potentially face-saving concessions for Switzerland, as it argues that its tradition of secrecy survived the battle. The U.S. agreed to narrow its request for names to those considered most likely to have engaged in tax evasion.
Swiss law already allowed the release of client information under certain egregious circumstances, such as fraud. But the threshold for disclosing the information has been a point of contention.Story highlights Vaping accident was due to battery, mom says
Expert says such explosions can be prevented
(CNN) Kenneth Barbero of Albany, NY was enjoying a nice millennial vaping session when the hand-held device he was using blew up in his face; knocking out teeth, ripping a hole in his tongue and leaving his hands covered in burns.
Kenneth Barbero shows injuries sustained in a vaping accident.
Barbero's tongue was ripped open.
"[It was] like an M80 bomb went off in my mouth," Barbero told CNN affiliate WTEN through understandably muffled speech.
Barbero's mother told WTEN she thinks the vaporizer's battery exploded. "The battery had exploded inside and everything shot out...went into his mouth and burned everything," she said.
When it comes to vaping accidents, these explosions seem to be a common thread: Earlier in May, an Alabama teen was burned after a classmate's e-cigarette exploded and sent a hot battery flying into his face. In February 2016, dramatic gas station security footage showed a man's leg being engulfed by flames, an apparent result of another e-cigarette explosion.
JUST WATCHED E-cigarette explodes in man's pocket Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH E-cigarette explodes in man's pocket 01:14
The list goes on and on, but according to a representative from the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, the occurrence is both rare and preventable.
Read MoreThat's the perimeter of Plastorm, the moniker that local artist and film editor Robert B. Fortney gave to his backyard studio along a North Skidmore Street alleyway between Kerby and Borthwick avenues. Less tendentiously, it's a converted shed where he toils at his graffiti-inspired paintings and multimedia works. But if you were to wander into the yard—don't do that!—you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a command center. The area is decked out with computer monitors, some of which feature images from the alley thanks to cameras mounted on the various sci-fi warriors. Two stormtroopers, Kylo Ren, a metallic owl named Bubbo, and a Darth Vader donated by a neighborhood fan guard the area, calling out to passersby either by automated motion-activated recordings or a delighted Fortney speaking through a mic.Typhoon Noru is barrelling northwest across the Pacific Ocean and taking aim at Japan, and possibly Korea or China, this weekend.
Forecasters are intently tracking the storm. As of Sunday, it was a category 5 super typhoon with 160 mph (257 km/h) winds - equivalent to a category 2 hurricane and currently the most powerful storm on Earth, according to the Weather Channel.
"Damaging winds, storm-surge flooding and rainfall flooding all appear to be likely impacts in at least some part of southern Japan by this weekend. Preparations for a destructive typhoon should be made in the days ahead," the site wrote on Tuesday.
However, astronauts and cosmonauts currently aboard the International Space Station are also keeping a close eye on Noru - and the images they're sending back to Earth over Twitter are quite stunning.
Cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky was among the first to post an image to his feed from the ISS. "Super #Typhoon #Noru swirling in the Pacific Ocean," Ryazansky wrote.
Sergey Ryazansky / Roscosmos / Twitter
NASA astronaut Jack Fischer also pressed his camera up to a window, posting the following image a few hours after his Russian colleague. It shows the counterclockwise-spinning storm from a wider, more top-down angle.
"When Mother Nature gets to spinning, it can be an awesome but scary sight. Looks like super Typhoon #Noru is gaining momentum," Fischer wrote.
Jack Fischer / NASA / Twitter
But easily the best and most recent images came from NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik.
"Super Typhoon #Noru, amazing the size of this weather phenomenon, you can almost sense its power from 250 miles [400 km] above," Bresnik wrote.
Randy Bresnik / NASA / Twitter
The first showed Noru through the Cupola: a domed, multi-window-pane viewing port attached to the Earth-facing side of ISS. (And, no surprise, a favourite hangout spot for space flyers.)
Bresnik also captured this view, which shows part of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft - currently the only (and very expensive) way to get to or from the ISS - attached to the orbital laboratory.
Randy Bresnik / NASA / Twitter
The ultra-wide-angle shot captures the storm bending across the curvature of Earth. And it makes us all feel very tiny and helpless.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
More from Business Insider:Showers of Hats Robert Baird
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Bloomsbury, 343 pp, £18.99, March 2017, ISBN 978 1 4088 7174 4
George Saunders has long had a thing for ghosts, especially ghosts who haven’t figured out that they’re dead. The title story of his first collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996), concerned a down-on-its-luck theme park with a Blacksmith Shoppe, a ninety-foot section of the Erie Canal, and a holographic projection of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States. It also featured a family of dead homesteaders who carry on reading and doing their laundry as though it were still 1865. In ‘CommComm’, published in the New Yorker in 2003, a murdered couple unwittingly haunt their surviving son. No longer hungry, unable to pick up a fork or pee, they are baffled by their posthumous condition. ‘Something’s off but I don’t know what,’ the father says. That line could stand as a shorthand description of much of Saunders’s fiction, which, over twenty years and four collections, has often revelled in a sense of uncanny disorientation. But it seems especially fitting for Lincoln in the Bardo, his first novel |
a complex infrastructure, and we’ve done that in 30 minutes or less, and by no means are we claiming we’re the first people to do that. We just know, to meet the simplicity score expected by HCI, [00:20:30] that’s going to be required. We did deploy VMware, our all flash array, as well as all the VM’s and it took us the better part of a day. We consider ourselves experts in deploying that and through automation and everything that we’ve included in the HCI project with 30 inputs, you’re going to deploy the entire infrastructure.
That’s really easy and that reduces the intimidation factor for a customer going from [00:21:00] the bespoke infrastructure or a traditional 3 tier, buy storage from vendor A, compute from vendor B, will get networking off of Ebay, and let’s make it work. It makes them really comfortable that, “man, I just saw that this is simple, I don’t have to worry about getting this thing up and running and having my boss breathe down my neck. I bought that, where is it, when can I start using it?” Speed of time to value. How long does it take for me to get value out of what I purchased [00:21:30] and that just has to be really fast for HCI.
Justin: So, is that 30 minutes of unboxing, racking and then all the way down to provisioning the storage, or is that like, you know, the cabling, is involved with that? What’s involved with the overall 30 minute guideline there?
Derek: Great question. Just because racking and cabling skills vary, we’ve all heard the stories of people racking gear and tipping over the entire row or a portion of that row. We like to not include that in our statements. [00:22:00] The portions that we as a product, when we’re delivering that HCI control, which is meaning after we’re cabled and powered on. So, from the time we’re cabled up and powered on, you can have the infrastructure up and running in 30 minutes.
Glenn: That’s the standard we use for everything. That’s the same measurement we use for Flexpod with infrastructure automation; it goes from power on to usability.
Derek: Yeah.
Andrew: So, I was thinking something more along the lines, when I think of something along the lines of, I don’t know Cluster and OnTap, I think [00:22:30] of all the shelf cables and all the stuff that’s involved behind the scenes there. How does the hardware look from an ACI perspective? Is it looking similar to what we do with the OnTap cluster, or is it the Sol Por cluster, what’s it looking like?
Derek: Great question. It more similarly represents the architecture of solid fire, so we have nodes. Obviously, we all know the ESX has nodes as well, so they’re both scale out systems, so it’s a really good match. What we’ve done is we’ve taken a generic chassis, a blade [00:23:00] chassis that fits four of these nodes or server blades, and like we said in the beginning, in acquisition, you can put either a small storage or a large compute in any one of those empty blade spots. The hardware in the front is 24 SD drives, so you put those in. Six are assigned per storage node. We don’t use any local storage for the ESX nodes. [00:23:30] As you scale out, you just add six drives in the front for storage and one sled in the back and add it to your cluster. It’s really simple from a hardware perspective.
On networking, we’ve chosen to go with 25 gig, and that’s an interesting choice because a lot of people initially give us the feedback of, “hey, we’re just not there yet in our data center”. What do you guys think of going straight for 25 gig?
Glenn: 25 makes a ton of sense man. The [00:24:00] networking world, they doubled and quadded up ten gig and we got forty gig lines, but then they needed 100 gig for the back halls and then in developing the 100 gig, they discovered it was cheaper to build 25 gig and bond four of them together, so they’ve just skipped an entire generation which is on its way out anyways and they’re on the future bandwagon.
Derek: Yeah. I agree. The little known fact about 25 gig that unless you really look into it, it’s an SFP 28 connector. What that [00:24:30] means is that an SFP plus, meaning, reuse your word, bespoke infrastructure, when you’re plugging in your existing 10 gig stick into our systems, it works, but as soon as you upgrade to 100 gig or 25 gig, because there are 25 gig data switches coming out, there’s a couple out already, it just works. You don’t have to, we’ve given you essentially dual port. It’s 10 or 25. We think that’ll be really good for the future of our customer’s data [00:25:00] center. Like I said, as they’re going towards the next generation data center, redesigning, deciding, “hey, we skipped 40 gig, what’s next? What are we going to deploy in our infrastructure now?”, we think that’ll be a very popular choice with customer base.
Gabe: I was going to shoot for the fiber channel overtook rings, but I got shot down.
Justin: I am the lord of the tooken rings.
Derek: We killed your Bluetooth idea too, Gabe, sorry.
Andrew: Oh, that’d be pretty sweet.
Glenn: I was mainly commenting on the 32 gig versus forty gig because 25 gig is not [00:25:30] something you hear about a lot.
Derek: Its become the new ten gig. People are going from figuring out what’s next. I think I’ve just seen people who have, again, chosen to just skip 40 gig all together because maybe it was too much, too expensive, too proprietary, are settling on 25 gig, and the switch vendors, you’ll see, the major ones are following suit, and that’s the real indicator, I think.
Gabe: One of the things behind it is simplification of land on motherboard, so ten gig parts are the predominant defacto ones that go on there now along [00:26:00] with the one gigs. It’s easier to take that form factor and uplift it, and also it doesn’t require a huge amount of shift in the optics that a customer has to use, whereas, if you wanted to go 40 gigs, sometimes, you had to go to a very, not a cheap set of optics to go pure 40 gig with one cable, or you had to break out into the four, so that caused some challenges, some headaches as well. It really kind of depended on how the implementation was brought to fold, and forty gig didn’t get quite the adoption I think we were looking [00:26:30] at getting. But the ability of the server manufacturers to get design wins with the common people who make these technologies, it was easier to go with something that customers had already been fairly comfortable with and didn’t require a lot of physical and significant changes to their infrastructure.
Justin: It also sounds like it may have been an economics decision, like keeping the price point of this particular product at a place where we don’t have to seem like the most expensive [00:27:00] option by adding something like 40 gig, which is, what I’m hearing, is largely unnecessary.
Gabe: 40 gig in my view, is no longer necessary now that there are the cheap 100 gig and 25 gig options. As I talk to all of our switch vendors and partners, they’re exactly that. There’s just not the huge price delta. Originally a couple of years ago, if you wanted to go after 40 gig, or we pitched 40 gig as a storage company, the total cost of ownership, ripping out your existing [00:27:30] infrastructure’s a little too high. They were really too high. This is a much easier, no brainer acquisition. Customers that don’t even want to think about 25 gig, they just don’t have to. They can continue to use their 10 gig infrastructure. They can be fully supported, and that’s not an additional set of skews or something different we have to support.
That’s another thing, no customer, as they’re moving towards their next generation data center, wants to be the special customer or the only [00:28:00] one running in a certain config, so the fact that we’re helping the entire broad set of our customer base standardize, is really helpful. Even from a networking perspective.
We are choosing to target from a hypervised perspective on what we’re deploying at first and automatically setting up for them to be VMware. We’re setting up with VMware 6.0 with a fast follow of 6.5, and that’s largely because huge part of our customer base and a very large part of the HCI customer base is still at VMware. [00:28:30] That’s not the limit of what we support, and this is a really important detail, our HCI storage can be externally mounted by openstack, through Cinder, on KBM, HyperV, Zen, or even another ESX environment can also mount our storage, so it’s not a proprietary closed storage system. So, we are deploying and automatically set up VMware, but we do support far more than that. So, for that user, what we’ve done is we’ve greatly [00:29:00] expanded our Vcenter plugin and you can do 100% of the operations that you’re going to need to on a day to day basis inside of Vsphere, so that’s really convenient.
We talked to a lot of our early customers and prospects on this, got some feedback from our strategic partners, and if you’re running a VMware environment and you have those tools set up and you have that automation, you’re not necessarily looking to change that all at once. We’re not saying it’s all in their vision to go to hyperV or [00:29:30] try some other hypervisor like Openstack on KBM, but for the VMware environment, they want to stay within Vcenter. Do you guys have any comments or feedback on that?
Glenn: No, I think it’s the only sensible approach in 2017. The vast majority of the market is still VMware, so, obviously, if you want to be able to address the largest portion of the problem, you need to service those customers, and what comes after that, that’ll be interesting, but we’ll all wait and see.
Gabe: [00:30:00] Yeah, but here’s the unfortunate thing. We’re going to get knocked a little bit about not having support for a vast amount of hyper visors, but we have to realize that our work definitely a quality based company and we listen to our customer base and what they want. We could build our own customer hypervisor, or do something completely proprietary. That’s not to say the customer base is going. I kind of hinted our direction of, “we’re not going to close you in and lock you [00:30:30] in, we’re going to remain very open minded and focus on migrating workload and really getting into the data fabric on being able to migrate your data and manage your data versus lock you into a big long contract”. That’ll be more of our focus.
Inside of Vcenter, you can integrate it into Vcenter alarm, so, typically, administrators will have at least a few Vcenter alarms set, so when they’re in there they’ll know what to be alerted on. All of our system reports in through [00:31:00] Vcenter alarms, so you don’t have to go look to a third party site, or go log into something new, and if you already have a monitoring or network operations center that is integrated to Vcenter alarms, it’s automatically integrated with NetApp HCI. So it’ll all just work.
Justin: The decision to use VMware, because like you said, they’re the largest, is good. I mean, you have to let the market drive that decision, especially for initial product rollout because if you don’t, you’re just basically playing guesswork, and I [00:31:30] don’t think that’s a good strategy to use for a product you’re trying to make successful. You want to base it on real data, real usage and real feedback from your customers as opposed to just trying to tell them what they’re going to want.
Gabe: One of the real important things we’re focusing on is the workload. We look at the market today, they’ve simply said, “I love the simplicity and the ease of use, and how well this HCI infrastructure works together, [00:32:00] but what happens when I try to migrate my database workload? I’ve heard that it can handle databases. I’ve also heard HCI is really good for BDI or end user computing, and I’ll do a little bit of virtualization. What about when I migrate that all into the same infrastructure? And not over provision?”. That today, is where today’s HCI falls down. They simply can’t handle that.
When we talk to analysts, there’s tons of east west [00:32:30] traffic altercations, where you try to do basically, old school tiering which is labeled data locality, meaning I try to move it to the tier which is closest to the VM to get a local read. That’s not even SAN technology. That’s just attempted local storage at all time technology which is kind of stepping back in time. We’ve combined the guaranteed quality of service that you set up with a single click, with HCI so that you can confidently migrate your workloads and get all of the simplicity [00:33:00] onto NetApp HCI. That will yield great results for our customer base because you wouldn’t imagine how many people are saying, “hey, I know the answer is HCI, let’s go find a problem for it”. We can handle a lot of problems with that storage technology. Being able to give per tenant isolation and guaranteed performance.
Andrew: A couple of questions for you. The primary interface for the administrator is going to be Vcenter, is that also the user [00:33:30] interface, and does that surface up things like hardware failures, I had a hardware drive fail on the storage system. Those types of things. Are they all through that one interface?
Gabe: Yes, everything will come through there, so you can get all the information on logging, current status, any faults within the system, and through Vcenter alarms, that’s going to combine both from VSX host side, from the VSX server side as well as from anything going on from the NetApp [00:34:00] AFA that is powering that underneath there. AFA from those of you who don’t know is all flash array.
Derek: That’ll be a pretty seamless transition for Vcenter administrators already because they’re familiar with the interface so they’ll be able to use it pretty seamlessly when they’re trying to integrate our stuff.
Gabe: Yeah, and when you’re trying to sell a guy new technology, that is definitely a win to say, “and it will work exactly like your other things, except you won’t be getting calls in the middle of the night for performance problems because we’ll handle and automate that for [00:34:30] you, but you can manage it the exact same way you manage your other infrastructure”. What we see the market wanting is to make the IT problems go away or make the IT department go away. “Don’t make me put in a ticket to make this change, just make me capable of making this change. Make it easy to understand and be informed on how and why I need to do this”. That’s really resonated well with our early partners and customers.
Glenn: Are we going to be using [00:35:00] Vwalls in order to assign those policies to the virtual machines?
Derek: Great question. So, a lot of customers will ask us, “do you rely on Vwalls? Is that required?”. The answer is no. You can do both. You can use data stores and Vwalls or just Vwalls or just data source. We’re compatible with both technologies, and that really is up to your style of infrastructure management and what you want to do, so, if you use Vwalls today, you’re going to have storage policy based management on a [00:35:30] per VM basis, and one VM has three to four, typically, three or four, virtual volumes on our side, so that’s a dream. That’s almost too easy, it’s like giving a MLB player a T and just saying, “swing”, and that’s exactly what we want.
With the data store, we had a few more challenges, and we solved that by partnering with VMware, with storage IO control, so it assigns shares on a per diem [00:36:00] bases. We take those shares, those get interpreted as Min I-ops, so no matter where that VM goes, no matter where that data store goes to, it always has the minimal amount of I-ops it has, and we’ll do a multiplier for max, and then the storage IO control, it assumes that the underlying storage is consistent, always there and has the I-ops it expects and it can enforce the fairness. Without that, it can’t really enforce the fairness. We’re able to do this per tenant, guaranteed Q-OS, [00:36:30] or per application Q-OS either way. It’s good to have options and you can try both if you’re a new customer looking at which option’s best for you.
Glenn: For sure man. I love the fact that we’re not forcing customers down a particular path. Would it be safe for me to assume that Vwalls is a strong preference and we would be looking for customers to try that?
Derek: I can’t say that with confidence because I’m not seeing the market evidence. I see the anecdotal [00:37:00] evidence of “wow, this sounds great, really meets our architecture needs”. I wish people would do it. We do have some very large customers that are using Vwalls, but I’m consistently surprised when I do hear some of our largest partners and customers saying, “you know what, it’s just not for us, we’re just not going to do it”. That could be two reasons. One, “this is the way I’m always used to doing it and I don’t see the advantages of changing”, and it’s a new [00:37:30] way, how many years have we been provisioning our applications on data stores? I don’t think people are just going to switch to Vwalls immediately.
There’s gonna be some fear there. Fear of not knowing whether this will work in my environment, and then the other thing is, especially in VDI, that’s just too many volumes. So, 10,000 VDI seats times, let’s say, an average of four volumes per VDI instance. No one wants that many volumes to manage [00:38:00] if you’re a VDI administrator. I’d much rather go back to Horizon and have, “hey, here’s my few dozen data stores and I know how to manage it, I know where it is”, so, for a couple reasons, I don’t know how you guys feel about those, but I’m just not seeing it. There’s still a strong push from VMware to make it happen.
Glenn: None of those, I would imagine, with our ACI offering, [00:38:30] none of those challenges are there, right? They’re not having to think about or manage the storage, that’s what the platform itself is taking care of, and the Vwalls provider is just going to extract away, so who cares? Yeah, 10,000 volumes, that’s a lot for a person to take care of, but computers don’t care how big the numbers get.
Derek: I think we’ll see that mindset come to light more and more with HCI. Because, typically the feedback that we’re hearing [00:39:00] is a storage guy knows that there’s going to be this many volumes and he knows that he’s not going to be in control of it, so as you see the next generation data center coming, I think that’ll be there, but largely people are just a little scared to change I think. I would love to see us be more successful with Vwalls on the market, because, again, we should want that. We have storage technologies that can take advantage of that like no one else on the market can.
Gabe: I think it kind of boils down to customer preference and their comfort level. [00:39:30] You go look and survey the market, there are not a lot of arrays today that really service Vwalls properly or very well, so I think that people have been kind of gun shy about it because it hasn’t gotten the same level of adoption, but if you look at VMR VSAN technology, you start to see a lot of adoption to it, and it’s built on the same premises of simplifying automation, storage based policy management, software data defined constructs, leveraging [00:40:00] the software infrastructure to provision and mange those things and abstract away the complexity of having to deal with 7,000 volumes.
You can go in there and create tiers, precious metal tiers and you can align them any way you want and you can kind of automate that process. We saw a lot of that in the open stack world being now applied to the traditional VMR based world where I look at it from the standpoint, as a former VM administrator myself, I would have loved to go in and set per VM level Q-OS to segment [00:40:30] performance between disparate virtu machines and make sure that there was no competition of resource, period.
I think a lot of people would love to have that contact, but they definitely need to test it out to see how it works in practice, and in theory, it sounds great, but in practice it may be a different thing. The beauty of our platform because it’s based on the solid fire technology, is we already have about six years worth of proof points around multi-tendency disparate workloads leveraging Q-OS technologies. Now we have about, with [00:41:00] the release of the Vwall technology and the last software release, now we have customers at points where we can go back and say, “hey, here in an HCI solution, here’s the first one that actually provides fully functioning Vwall support and on top of it we’re going to let you segment workload based on performance characteristics and then we’ll do 100% of it automated as it integrates with the common tools and practices in use today”. I think that’s a compelling argument for a lot of customers to start to take a serious look at it.
Justin: I look at it a lot like the NFS V-3 versus V-4. So, [00:41:30] V-4’s been out for awhile, but there isn’t a huge amount of adoption, and again, it goes back to Derek’s point, “why would I replace something that’s already working for me very well with something that isn’t necessarily compelling for me to move off of and hasn’t been vetted thoroughly by everyone else”. You have to wait for the fear of missing out to overcome the fear of being the first adopter.
Derek: Dude, I suffer from FOMO for sure, fear of missing out, and conventional wisdom tells me, go to Vwalls, but again, like I said, conventional wisdom [00:42:00] is often wrong where you just don’t see, you don’t see the benefits. I think that’s something we’ve been trying to work on with our partnership with VMware is really compelling our customers to understand the value and force them to have a reason to pivot. They need a something, like, “my life will be better because” statement for their individual business to see why it’s worth the effort. Also, migrating from the underlying storage technology, how many customers that [00:42:30] you guys have talked to has that always gone 100% perfectly when you changed something about storage?
Glenn: Yeah, I mean, any time you touch the storage, that’s the most terrifying thing you can do in IT every single time, but
Derek: Exactly
Glenn: I’m a little more bullish than you are. I feel perfectly confident saying, “you guys should try Vwalls, that should be your first swing. I get it, there is a lot of anxiety and fear associated with change, but [00:43:00] choosing to manually have to micromanage an aspect that has been fully automated is just silly in my opinion”.
Derek: Yeah. It is.
Glenn: In my professional opinion, you need to make those transitions, they need to be safe, you need to make sure that we test it and all that fun stuff, but with the solid fire Vwalls provider, we don’t have fear there. It’s a great platform. I would go into it broadly.
Derek: The nice part about us is that we don’t have to make a choice, [00:43:30] we can support both options. It’s a really cool place to enter the market, especially if it’s not decided, A versus B. I think it’s really cool to give them both, run them simultaneously, pick one or the other. It really doesn’t matter to us because we can deliver a similar quality and similar value proposition customer base.
Gabe: Fundamentally, if we look at this, to bring it back to what HCI is, it’s not a complex technology. Yes, the most complex [00:44:00] and hard to lick problems are in the storage layer for hyper converged infrastructure, but it’s the most simple to manage and administer. It’s, how big, how fast, and who should access it? That’s it. That’s really the three points you should actually have to determine when you’re provisioning storage products within a hyper conversioning environment. The value is in the packaging, simplification and rapid deployment and scalability of the solution is a common building block approach, and [00:44:30] then additionally to that, how you can scale the resources independently of each other. It’s moving away from just the pure storage talk points of it, it really is a more of a comprehensive infrastructure stack solution that we’re providing, and while the storage is important and it’s definitely part of all the decisions you’re going to make, there are a whole bunch of additional decisions that need to be made on top of that.
Andrew: So, if I’m an application guy, I’m a consumer of HCI, how does this [00:45:00] look to me? When I define things like, I need X number with VM’s with Y amount of CPU and RAM, and Z amount of storage with whatever policies, how does that, how do I express my requirements, how do I get to that end result after its been provisioned?
Derek: For us, we do have a VRO plugin coming out soon, so hopefully, you automate that through one of those workflows, but if not, it’s [00:45:30] kind of the same, so you go and say, “create VM”, and obviously, modeling this after what would you do in the gooey, create a VM, storage, select the policies, say you did gold, silver, bronze. Say this one needs gold storage because it’s really fast storage, and you say provisions.
It kind of fits into our goals of really making the complexity hide so you just create the VM and then select in the drop down box what you want. We’ve also extended [00:46:00] our [inaudible 00:46:01] capabilities of, again, if you’re not using Vwalls, you can define inline, “I want a min, max, and [inaudible 00:46:09] of what and which size”. It’s really, really simple. There’s nothing to go through with what type of rate groups, that’s gone, we don’t use that. What type of disk? We’ve separated the media and the performance; you just have a pool of performance and a pool of capacity. It’s really how you would [00:46:30] want it to be if you’re an administrator. You simply decide, “I need CPU, RAM, and storage of X with performance of Y and go”. Hopefully that answered your question.
Andrew: Yeah, thank you, I think it makes a lot of sense, and particular, as you said, using the realize orchestrator, using the tools inside of the VMR ecosystem, allowing teams that already have existing VMware automation in place to simply leverage that as it stands today. [00:47:00] We’re not doing anything fancy, we’re not going, or leveraging, or putting on top a bunch of different requirements.
Derek: Yep. People want simple.
Gabe: Also, you don’t have a lot of the caveats associated with some of those first gen technologies around data locality and how does it effect my DRS and how do I, am I able to scale significantly past six or eight nodes because a lot of those early systems had a challenge with metadata and how do they track all those informational [00:47:30] changes. We’ve solved those problems quite some time ago. I think that’s one of the bigger issues of bringing a very mature scale out storage platform into hyper converged infrastructure that doesn’t have any of the caveats associated with some of those first generation packaging exercises.
Derek: As we’re starting to close, one thing that we haven’t touched on is scaling, so, as you scale, a lot of the customers that you talk to, especially, I just talked to a huge financial services [00:48:00] firm that they have to buy still, and they buy, you know these are $3 – $4 million a piece, so they’re spending a lot of money, but they’re buying compute when all they need is storage. They don’t, they thinly provision, know compute, right, that everyone gets full access, dedicated compute, but they’re always running out of hardware for storage.
Obviously, you’d think if we are approaching this market, we definitely designed this for independently scalable resources, so, at a node at a time, you can buy one node of any type of storage. [00:48:30] One node of any type of compute, and that speaks to the financial side of this, that you don’t have to waste the money and there is no tax or overhead because what you’ve seen the competitors do is they’re like, “oh, yeah, well, if you’re running a VMware environment, you need to employ …” Their own, it’s a virtualized storage, and it works. They’re trying to adjust, but they’re never going to be as strong as our architecture is for getting you the best [00:49:00] bang for your buck and not having to use compute resources to run storage and having that overhead.
Andrew: Do the day 365 operations, do they follow the same principles of a Core Solid Fire product where I Can add and remove nodes at will?
Derek: Yeah, you can. I think the only people that are not excited about that are the people within NetApp who have to keep track of where the nodes are and who has support where because we’ve talked to them about, “yeah, [00:49:30] we’ve had customers with two nine node sites and they needed a six node cluster at site C and they took three nodes from each cluster and sent them to site C”. Customers love that, they love scale up, scale down, because then you not only get the protection of, I can go any size, but then if I overshot, I can move it. That’s fantastic. So, absolutely, we’re going to support that 100% with NetApp HCI.
Andrew: Awesome, [00:50:00] and anything else we should touch on this first episode? I’m sure we’ll get a lot of questions from the listeners and maybe even have to get you guys back on here.
Derek: No, I just think that we’re really excited to bring this out and get our feet wet in HCI. We know we’re not the first to market but we’d like to say we’re coming to market correctly and really listening to our customer base and looking at the market and seeing what it needs so we hope you guys are as excited about it as we are.
Andrew: Is your slogan, “HCI, we come correct”?
Derek: [00:50:30] It should be, it should be. It’s a cool advantage to be able to learn from the market and learn from what’s out there existing and not have to spin the cycles of release a feature, pivot or persevere, so it’s really cool to just start with a really clear vision on what we should do. We have a good advantage here.
Justin: Gabe, got anything to add?
Gabe: Live long and prosper.
Justin: Okay. Works for me.
Gabe: [00:51:00] No, I’m just really excited about getting a chance to bring this product to market with NetApp logo on it. I think it’s a long time coming, I think it’s the NetApp organization that have been chomping at the bit to get a product to go out to market with and we’re listening to our customers and we’ve surveyed the market place and we’ve seen what’s come before us, and we’ve made some purposeful design decisions that will allow us to bring this product into the enterprise, core enterprise customer base.
Justin: All right Gabe, thanks. [00:51:30] If we wanted to get in touch with you or Derek on social media, how would we go about doing that?
Gabe: For me, I’m on the twitters, I am @baconisking, some of you may follow me. That’s the best way to reach me. Obviously Linkdin, Ello, whatever, there’s about 50 different ways to stalk people online right now but the twitter is probably best.
Justin: Wait, did you just say Ello?
Gabe: Yeah.
Justin: Are you like the one of five users on that? That’s fantastic.
Gabe: No, I signed up for it and I still get the e-mail alerts but I’ve never been on it.
Justin: I do too, and I’ve never been there. Excellent. [00:52:00] We should add each other on Ello and that’ll be one of our three.
Gabe: Hello.
Justin: Derek? How do we contact you?
Derek: I’m mostly on AOL instant messenger these days, so that’s derekjleslie, just kidding. It’s Twitter @derekjleslie as well as Linkdin and happy to extend the conversation and happy to interact with you guys. Thanks so much for the time today. Thanks for having us.
Justin: All right. Thanks guys.
All right. Thank music tells me it’s time to go. If you’d like to get [00:52:30] in touch with us, send us an e-mail to podcast@netapp.com or send us a tweet @netapp. As always, if you’d like to subscribe, find us on iTunes, sound play and stitcher, or via techontapodcast.com. Also we have a YouTube channel. If you liked the show today, give us a review. On behalf of the entire tech on tap team, I’d like to thank Gabe Chapman and Derek Leslie for talking to us about NetApp HCI. As always, thanks for listening.
Andrew: What do we put on YouTube?
Justin: I take the audio from the podcasts and put a tech [00:53:00] on tap logo there so people can listen to it without having to download it. Pretty nifty, huh? Somebody asked for that on the podcast.
Andrew: I think it’s brilliant. Is it just me that’s [crosstalk 00:53:11]
Justin: We’ve also got transcripts that are coming, so if you want text transcripts, we’ll have those as well. We’re stepping into the 20th century here.
Andrew: Fantastic.
Justin: What we don’t tell you is we have a little monkey that actually transcribes the entire episode.
Andrew: Can I get the episode on vinyl?
Glenn: They’ll figure that out once they read it.
Justin: Yeah, [00:53:30] I know, right?The 49ers decided to draft a cornerback at the tail end of round four, a corner of the Seattle Seahawks variety, tall and quick. NC State cornerback Dontae Johnson had an impressive combine, having numbers that popped out, be it in drills or just his measurables alone. While he had a good combine and did well in drills, his tape leaves a lot to be desired. Potential is there, but he's quite raw with a lot to work on. The good news is he was drafted by a great San Francisco 49ers organization that has coaches that will put him in the best situation to improve.
The Basics
Name: Dontae Johnson
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 200 lbs
Arm Length: 31.5"
Vertical: 38.5"
Broad Jump: 124.0 inches
Forty Yard Dash: 4.45
Bench Reps: 12
Pros:
Tackling: Johnson is a willing tackler who doesn't shy away from contact as some cornerbacks do. He's still not completely fundamentally sound in this regard but where he lacks in tackling ability he makes up for in effort and shear strength.
Downhill speed: Johnson can close in on a defender in a hurry when he's able to get his long legs moving with a little green pasture in front of him. This will bode well if he's converted to Safety full time or will be an asset to have in stopping the run at cornerback.
Frame: Johnson has room to get stronger, and with that he could become a better press-corner. He didn't play much press in college and when he did his technique was mediocre and he didn't extend his long arms and use his strength. When evaluating a player it's important to look at potential, which is why I consider this a pro.
Loose Hips: Turning his body is not a problem, and for a man who is 6'2" with speed it's impressive that they aren't stiff |
or taxes of your country could be added, please ask about it to the represent in your country of origin before to place your order.
Thank you.This week’s Torchwood episode gave us more buzz words than we could handle, a geographical impossibility in the shape of a cliffhanger and lastly, a very annoying Rhys. This was what RTD had to offer as the penultimate episode of this 10 episode story arc. And judging by the looks of it, the series finale should be jampacked like a Tokyo subway, as there’s a hell lotta stuff ;eft to be resolved. Episode 9 – The Gathering, was also about more new characters (and we thought we already had enough of them). There’s the family heads, who look as cold as Arnie’s Mr. Freeze, and speak in idioms. Then there’s the annoying Category 1 collecting man, who is hell-bent on collecting Geraint Cooper, even when Overflow Camps are filled to the brim. And oh, I forgot to mention, this is now set 2 months after Episode 8. So, we are no longer in a world where people are dealing with the miracle, and its multi-faceted consequences. Instead, this is a world where recession has transformed into depression, China has closed down its borders and US is considering to do the same, insurance companies have gone bust, CIA rations fuel and the world has just accepted its fucked up state. Quite a bold move no doubt, but does the rest of the episode take advantage of this move? Let’s found out on the other side of the jump.
Join the discussion and we have a long list of speculations about the finalé ; SPOILERS
1. Back in Britain:
Esther and Jack were on the run, and turns out they chose cold and discreet Scotland as their hideout. Gwen, being sent back home, is trying hard to make ends meet by putting on her Ninja gear and looting drugs store. She’s just not doing it all for her dad, but she’s also selling them to the needy. There are power cuts, and Rhys wants to do the naughty. Go on then, add to the exploding population of the world. And oh, the Coopers have a secret basement, where there’s no good heating presumably, coz Papa Cooper looks all cold. There’s an unnecessary “thrilling” scenes involving an annoying patrol officer who wants to collect all Category 1 people. And there’s another one, which involves a heat sensing iPhone app. Pfft. So, I guess Apple is still making a profit!!
And then, Oswald Danes shows up. Remember? He punched Jilly Kitzinger in the face and buggered off. So he made it to Britain without getting caught, even after having the most recognisable face on the planet (Jilly’s words, not mine). And he turns up at the Cooper’s residence, dressed as a grocery delivery guy.
Now, does that mean ASDA, Tesco and the like still exist? Also, since everyone is talking on the phone and having power / power cuts, so power-stations and telecom operators are still operating. Just needed to point that out.
Back to Oswald; he says that he can tell who’s behind the miracle if he gets Jack. Quite conveniently, Jack is called in, and we get to know that Esther has been siphoning his blood all this while. There’s plenty of blood bags in the fridge and the suitcase. All that hints how important Jack’s blood is going to be in the season finalé, even though Jack keeps shouting that there’s nothing special about his blood. That bugger, what does he know?
2. CIA HQ:
So, by the end of the last episode, we got to know about that Charlotte girl in the CIA being a “Family” insider. Now she’s been doing all kinda shit to prevent Rex’s investigations to reach at anything substantial. That bitch is surely gonna get it in the final episode. She even gets to show the finger to Rex. On the other hand, Rex and his boss have been scraping through every single evidence to track down the Families. The explosion in Episode 1 in the library in DC was to destroy all evidence, and they also destroyed the Manhattan Central Repository. With every move they make, they find themselves at a dead end. Rex suspects the involvement of a mole in their team, and hence, wants to keep matters between the two of them. Fucking Sherlock stuff mate!
3. Harry Bosco:
Finally, Bill Pullman’s paycheck translates into meaningful screentime. Oswald Danes, on the surface is a pedo and a monster, but he knows his stuff well. How on earth he managed to escape the US borders and enter Wales; the man can pull it off. He steals Jilly’s laptop and keeps following her online (so he must be some techie guru too). Also, he reveals about “Harry Bosco”, an old intelligence term which is used to censor / manipulate news by means of mistranslating foreign sources. He also reveals about Jilly Kitzinger disappearing from the face of the internet. And in between, he gets smashed in his own face by Gwen, and then some more by Rhys. Was it just me or did you guys find Rhys totally obnoxious as well?
Esther comes in handy by elaborating on “Harry Bosco” and also tries to link two bomb blasts which happened just before the miracle started – both in blood banks, one in Buenos Aires, and the other in Shanghai. And then Rhys, being the Watson that he is, points out that these are antipodes, one point exactly opposite to the other on the Earth’s diameter. And all this while, it has been staring right into our face in the form of the Phicorp logo.
Now did I feel like tearing my hair apart coz I couldn’t figure it out before? No, not exactly, coz that whole concept of explosions in Buenos Aires and Shanghai came just 10 minutes earlier. Frankly, I am a bit tired with the last minute revelations, rather than placing clues from Episode 1 onwards. Ok, Phicorp Logo, I’ll give THAT to RTD.
3. Jilly meets The Family:
The family are a weird bunch. The suited dude ships Jilly to Shanghai, and instructs her that her identity has been changed to Lucy Statten Meredith (ooh, a middle name, must be legit). And then, he says something funny – “We won’t meet again”. This phrase is repeated by the other dude that Jilly, excuse me – Lucy meets in Shanghai. This bloke seems like a programmer (stereotypically, we’ll call him the geeky hipster dude), who cannot live without his touchscreen tablet, and spends at least 4 hours on tumblr and reddit. The geeky hipster dude also answers why Jilly was chosen in the first place. She is a story teller (that’s what people in PR do innit), and they want her to write history.
Judging by those lines, whatever the Families have planned, is going to be something big that they want the world to remember. Yeah, I deduced that 😛 And Jilly is then taken to meet the Family, where apparently she’ll be given the “Blessing”.
5. Houston, we’ve got a problem – The Blessing, its a big Muthaf***in’ planet Vag!
So what’s the Blessing. As the Phicorp logo shows, it is a hole that runs through the diameter of the planet – from Shanghai to Buenos Aires. Seems like a Or at least, that’s what we think the Blessing to be. Jilly is made to stare at this giant red thing, and she murmurs – I see, that I am right. What does that mean? Is the Blessing supposed to show what you are? And that earlier footage of the Chinese person getting burnt when he blew up the blood bank, he was shouting – The Blessing saved me. How does this Blessing fit into the worldwide immortality theory? By the looks of it, the Blessing is not just something deep underground, but it is something alive, which communicates with anyone who looks at it. But again, what does the blood bank explosion link to this?
6. Loose ends and Final Speculations:
There are way too many that I can think of, and I’ll try to list them down here.
a) The Chinese liaison of Phicorp’s CEO, who committed suicide – why did he do so? Did he see the Blessing, I mean the deep underground?
b) What does Jack’s blood got to do with it? He is just a fixed point in time and space, and that is how is immortal. So, what’s in his blood?
c) Even though Jack denies it, the final episode is called “The Blood Line”, and there has to be something about the blood. There’s the two blood bank explosions as well.
d) What happened to the nullifying Alpha plate that was the main part of the morphic field? Seriously, wtf happened to it?
e) Jilly arranged the Miracle Day rally, and the whole “Revelation” speech was all organised to publicise Phicorp. Then why did she deny from working for Phicorp in one of the early episodes?
f) Does the alien that Jack and Angelo killed in episode 7 have a more major role to play? Maybe its back to life again and its pissed.
g) Gwen, as well as the guy in the datacenter (Rex shot him in the throat), kept on asking Jack about what did he give them in the past. Exactly, what?
h) No answers yet about how Angelo hacked into Torchwood tech, the lenses etc. Will we get any info on that?
i) So the Blessing goes right through the Earth’s core, from one end to the other. Since that is geographically not possible, there must be some Alien tech involved. Has to be! My question is, why is all left for Episode 10?
j) I still don’t get why Oswald Danes is treated so specially, other than the fact that it is Bill Pullman portraying the role. He could’ve easily given a dose of RETCON and done with. Just leave him on the streets, he’s a fucking Category Zero.
k)When the miracle gets resolved (in some way, I’m hoping it does), will Rex die?
l) As I pointed out earlier, Miracle Day is at this point, with only one episode to spare. I really hope that RTD has played his cards right, and the final episode melts my face with all the awesome answers. And I certainly, don’t hope that it is left hanging out with a cliffhanger of Jack dying. Ugh! that would stink!
That’s plenty of questions I think for the mo. We’ll see if our questions are answered, and if yes, how. Our eyes are almost dry with anticipation. Episode 10.. here we come.
9E3K rating for Episode 9: 4.5 Frying Pan Smashes out of 5!Photoshop CS6: Create Smoke Text
Using only one set of brushes and some elementary Photoshop skills, you can create your own cool, semi-realistic smoke text effect. Follow along closely to achieve this spooky effect for yourself in under ten minutes.
You have probably seen some pretty cool text effects done in Photoshop or elsewhere. There are tons of different ways in which you can manipulate your text and make it fit into the theme of the project you are creating. This Photoshop tutorial will show you a great way to create a spooky smoke text effect using very basic methods.
This tutorial was performed on Photoshop CS6, but similar steps will work on older versions as well.
1.First, you have to create a new project. I have made mine to be 1920 x 1200 pixels. When your project is created, you must add a Gradient Overlay. This can be done by following this path: Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay….
2.From the Layer Style window, select the drop-down box next to Style and select Radial. Now, change the gradient color to a blue, very close to black as I have in the image below. Once you have adjusted your settings, click OK to save them.
3.Once you have your background prepared, go ahead and enter your text. Make sure to make it white. With the text layer selected, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur…
4.Under the Motion Blur option, change the angle to 90 degrees, and the distance of the blur to 40 pixels. Once you are happy with your settings click OK to save them.
5.Now, we will make our text a bit wavy. To do this, we need to apply another filter. Go to Filter > Distort > Wave…
6.Under the Wave options, set your Generators to 3, the Wavelength from 10 to 35, and the Amplitude from 5 to 35. Once you have entered the appropriate values, hit OK.
7.Now, we have to add yet another filter to help bring this effect to life. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur….
8.Under the Gaussian Blur options, set the radius to 10 pixels, and hit OK.
9.Now, we will place the text layer into a group. Then change the Overlay Mode of the group to Color Dodge.
10.Create a new layer above the grouped folder, and go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Make sure you have your foreground/background colors reset to defaults when you do this.
11.As you have already noticed, you cannot see your text. We will change that. Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.
12.Now, select a very soft, black brush, and brush away the parts of the clouds that you do not need. Below is what I have now, but your project may look a bit different from mine. Play around with it until you find something you like.
13.Now, in order to be more efficient, I will use some smoke brushes that you can download here:
http://qbrushes.net/photoshop-abstract-brushes/smoke-brushes/
When you have imported the brushes into Photoshop, select one of them, and change the foreground color to white. Now, using some of the brushes included in the smoke group, paint over some of the letters until you have achieved the desired effect.
14.Now, select Curves under the Add an adjustment option, and play around with the curve until you are satisfied with the results. Below is the setting which I have found to work best for me.
15.Next, we have to invert our current project in order to have more realistic smoke. To do this follow Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Invert…
16.We will add another Curves adjustment layer, and mess around with it until the smoke effect is outlined most.
Below is the final image. As you can see, it looks pretty good for the amount of time put into it. If you want something a little more advanced, make sure to spend a little bit more time on the details and get the smoke to behave the way you want. Go ahead and and try this out for yourself.Each year, on average, almost 5000 people die of suicide in England and Wales. The 1992 Health of the Nation aimed to reduce the suicide rate by 15% by 2000. The 1999 Department of Health National Service Framework sought to cut the suicide risk by a further fifth from this target.1 There has been significant pressure on mental health services to improve risk assessment in order to reduce the suicide rate. This implies that suicide is mainly seen as a medical or psychiatric issue – a mental illness.
Decisions regarding end of life are encountered more frequently than before. Recently there have been debates and disputes over physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. The debate has become more intense following the Assisted Suicide Bill. The number of British people who have visited Dignitas in Switzerland for assisted suicide has doubled from 2005 to 2006.2 Two high profile cases brought the issue of physician-assisted suicide back into public discourse. First, 45 year old multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy took her case to court in order to protect her husband from prosecution when assisting her to end her own life. Then Daniel James, a 23 year old rugby player who had become paralysed in an accident, ended his life in Switzerland. These cases challenge the idea that suicide necessarily arises from a mental illness.
Physician-assisted suicide highlights this challenging question – is ‘intent to commit suicide prima facie evidence for a disease of the mind?’3
Burgess and Hawton highlight the difficulties psychiatry encounters when facing suicide.4 They claim that not all who commit suicide are mentally ill, and also that mental illness is often not clearly distinguishable from normal distress. Moreover considering the difficulties in treating mental illnesses the authors suggest ‘there seems to be no a priori reason why psychiatrists should always find themselves bound to try to prevent suicide’. The case of Dr Chabot provides some insight into this problem. Dr Chabot helped a 50 year old social worker to commit suicide. The case was taken to the Netherlands Supreme Court. The court did not question the rationality. The Dutch Society of Psychiatrists’ committee, following the Chabot case, took the position that suicide should not be considered as an a priori psychopathological phenomenon.5
The extent to which someone is expressing their free will and is capable of being responsible for their actions is important to establish when deciding whether suicide indicates a psychopathological state of mind. The principle of autonomy, integral to a free society, requires that a person's decisions regarding their own life should be respected wherever possible.4 According to UK law every adult is assumed to have capacity until proven otherwise.
The idea of rationality of suicide has seemed ‘abhorrent’ and ‘close to eugenics’ to some professionals.6 This belief may be rooted in fear of malpractice rather than a strong philosophical or ethical argument, for it is clear that psychiatrists from time to time face cases in which suicide is a rational option. Ong and Carter reported a holocaust survivor who was detained under the Mental Health Act because of being suicidal. The patient accused the psychiatric team of acting like Nazis by wanting to exert control over who should live or die.7 As Loefler put it: ‘suicide is not necessarily a matter of insanity, irrationality or despair, and it is not primarily of medical concern’.8 To call all suicides mentally ill downgrades their individual responsibilities.9
Suicide is indeed a complex issue encompassing philosophical, ethical, legal and practical dilemmas. It needs open debate with due consideration to different aspects and points of view. Lack of precise measures to detect mental illness is not a sufficient reason to assume all suicides are due to abnormal mental states. It must be a drive towards developing measures that enable us to detect and exclude mental illnesses with more confidence and certainty.Rated 5 out of 5 by Gina_ap from Best lightening adapter! I’ve owned this lightening audio adapter for over a year and now own a second. I purchased 2-3 others from amazon at first but each of them dulled the sound from my phone and also had a loud buzzing noise. This was the first adapter that actually worked and has consistently worked! It’s a lot easier to charge and play music now as I only have one thing I have to plug in every time. Really good adapter!
Rated 5 out of 5 by Tom Tom from Exactly What I Need This adapter is a life saver, exactly what I needed. I noticed when I took it out of packaging the adapter was super small - very portable and easy to toss into my brief case. Also it comes with a warranty which gave me peace of mind. All in all it might my needs - easily charge while listening to my favorite jams
Rated 5 out of 5 by Flippant from It Works! Fantastic When I upgraded to my iphone 7, I had to use a dock to listen to music and charge at the same time. The dock did not work with a couole of the cases I tried, and I prefer to have my phone in the landscape position at night when going to sleep listening to tunes. Enter the Belkin Rockstar. There are some shoddy imitations, but Belkin works and I did not want to trust my iPhone power to an unknown. I have come to find that Belkin products are top quality- they just plain work!
Rated 5 out of 5 by Pamar47 from Finally a safe one I couldn’t find one that didn’t say “this may not be compatible” when I tried to use it. I learned the hard way that it really isn’t. Works great and is clear. It’s so sad I had to pay so much to get something for my iPhone but nothing else was a sure thing. I can always find something with Belkin.
Rated 1 out of 5 by Barngirl from Lasted three months This is my second one I purchased and each lasted about 3 months. Loved it when it was working.
Rated 1 out of 5 by Patrick SLC from Wiring breaks; max product life three months I’ve purchased five total since November of 2017. I bought three of them six months ago for the house, car, and briefcase. All of them short out with the slightest bit of bending with a max life of about three months. I’ve also tried other products that cost 1/3 of the price and they fail sooner. Now, to charge and talk, I’ve got to spend another $45 for three month or less.
Rated 1 out of 5 by BryanTUL from Broke in less than 2 weeks I bought this charger two weeks ago from Best Buy and it already has stopped working unless it is situated just right. It makes no difference if it is on my IPhone 7 or if I switch it over to my iPad. I’m super disappointed. I have had many other Belkin products over the years and have not ever experienced this poor of quality.3D printing will never be the same
We didn't set out to improve 3D printing, we set out to remove the barriers; to get 3D printers in the hands of everyone. That's why we have developed the worlds smallest, most affordable and easiest to use 3D Resin Printer. Most 3D printers are expensive, large, noisy and complicated. We created the iBox Nano with the home based user in mind. We are now ready to share this technology with you.
The Nano is the start of the home based 3D printing and replicating age
We have been hard at work, and with your help, we’re ready to take the iBox Nano into full-fledged production. By supporting this effort, you’ll be the first to get your hands on an amazing 3D printer AND help usher in a new era of home based 3D printing - an era in which your creative output is no longer limited by price or dauntingly complex machines.
3D printing for everyone
We have gone to extraordinary lengths to design a user friendly 3D printing experience:
The iBox Nano is designed to produce high resolution prints with the touch of a button
There is no software to install so you can spend less time setting up prints and more time printing
A robust ecosystem of open source and free software for 3D modeling and editing
WiFi enabled so you can print untethered
Battery powered option for on-the-go printing (optional purchase).
The iBox Nano is:
The worlds smallest Resin printer
The worlds most affordable Resin printer
The worlds only battery powered (option) Resin printer
The worlds first production LCD based UV Resin printer
The worlds quietest 3D printer
The worlds lightest 3D printer
Browser based 3D Printing
Smartphone and tablet control: Most 3D printers only support 1-2 operating systems and have to be tethered to your computer. With the iBox Nano, you can print from any browser; from your iPhone, your iPad, any Android device, Windows PC or Mac. You can print without installing any software. If it has a browser you can print to the iBox Nano.
WiFi enabled 3D Printing
The iBox Nano works over WiFi, so you can print without being tethered to your printer.
3D Resin Printing has evolved
Many of the Resin printers on the market use DLP technology to create and control the UV light used to cure the resin. Using a DLP projector introduces a few issues such as low bulb life and cooling fan noise. DLP projector bulbs will need to be replaced at their service interval, generally at 2000-8000 hours of use. Even before they fail they will suffer a noticeable loss in output power causing reduced print quality, or no print at all. These bulbs can cost hundreds of dollars, and all of them will need to be replaced.
Our design is unique, we use UV LEDs rated at 50,000+ hours, which is equivalent to 17 years, running 8 hours a day.
Excessive noise can affect the quality of your day, because 3D printers can take several hours or longer to complete taller builds, it’s important that the device makes as little noise pollution as possible. DLP projectors and Laser based SLA resin printers require cooling fans to be running 100% of the time. The DLPs use them to cool the bulbs to extend their life, and the Laser systems use them to cool the galvanometer drivers to extend their life. Our printer uses very little power and generates almost no heat, thus not requiring a cooling fan and its associated noise.
Most consumers buy a large 3D printer and statistically only print small items. The reasons behind this are material cost, print time, and the nature of the items that are typically 3D printed. So why pay 2-3 thousand dollars for a large printer that will consume space when a small printer that can be placed almost anywhere will print everything you want?
Large build plates on resin printers can also be a disadvantage. Unlike FDM (filament) printers the resin in the build tray is inadvertently exposed to UV radiation from sources such as indoor lighting. Over time, the resin in the vat degrades, which leads to failed prints. Resin is a consumable, so if you will be printing small things, your resin printer should suit your needs. The iBox Nano meets all your small print design needs.
iBox Printers has reset the bar Most 3D printers are general tools designed to try and meet a broad spectrum of needs, and in doing so, they don't meet any one need precisely. The iBox Nano is designed for the home user who wants to print small to average sized 3D objects with good resolution without having a large noisy printer intruding on their workspace. The goals were to be small, quiet, inexpensive, and portable. We have achieved all of this for one specific target audience; you.
High Resolution without High Prices Traditionally 3D printers have been segmented into two groups; High resolution models costing thousands of dollars, or Low resolution costing just under a thousand dollars. We are introducing a 3D Printer that prints at 328 microns on the X-Y axis and can print down to 0.39 microns on the Z axis.
3D Printing with Mobility; made possible with the iBox Nano
The iBox Nano is the worlds first truly portable 3D Resin Printer. Weighing only 3 pounds, it is small enough and light enough to just slide in your backpack, making it truly portable. Almost all 3D printers have several wires; a USB cable to connect to your computer and a power cable. The iBox Nano is WiFi enabled so you will never be tethered to your computer. It is also the worlds first battery powered 3D Resin Printer. The battery option* lasts approximately 10 hours.
The battery option, coupled with the Nano’s silent and completely wireless operation allows you to truly be mobile. You will be printing on the go at Starbucks, in the library, at a friends house, or at any location you desire.
We have silenced 3D Printing
3D Printers of all technologies have cooling fans and stepper motors. Both generate noise pollution. FDM printers use four stepper motors and generate a tremendous amount of random and distracting sounds. Projector and Laser 3D printers have one to two stepper motors and have high volume cooling fans which are inherently noisy.
The lowest energy consumption of any 3D printer
Whether you opt for our optional battery pack, power the iBox Nano from your notebook pc, or the included wall dongle, you will be happy to hear we have the worlds lowest power 3D printer. Consuming an order of magnitude less power than the next best printer. We offer optional 10 hour and 20 hour battery packs. These are external packs that connect via USB to your Nano. You will be able to purchase them in our online store by Jan 2015.
Advanced Materials
The iBox Nano is constructed of precision laser cut extruded acrylic. Also known as Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). It is 17 times stronger than glass and at only half the weight provides a beautiful yet durable structure where neither function nor form are compromised.
The iBox Nano was designed to be the worlds lowest priced 3D Resin Printer
Our goals for the Nano were many, but in meeting each and every feature target we also kept absolute focus on price while upholding the highest standards in quality. We believe everyone should have access to a 3D printer, that’s why we are presenting the worlds least expensive 3D Resin Printer.
Taking resolution to the next level; the iBox Nano has almost 3x times the Z resolution of the next best 3D Printer.
The higher the Z resolution the less banding in the Z axis and the smoother the layers look. Printing in extreme Z precision will increase print times proportionately, but the option is there in case you want ultra Z resolution.
Beta Unit 3D Prints
Tall Print Example
We printed two of these extrusions side by side at once on the Nano. They measure 15x15x60mm
Early Alpha Unit Test Prints
iBox Nano Specifications
iBox Nano Production Timeline
Reward Levels
About the Founder
Trent Carter is the Founder of iBox Printers with more than 20 years of extensive experience in various software and hardware engineering fields as well as management. He has been a CEO for technology companies for more than 10 years. iBox Printers develops and sells 3D printer solutions focusing on the large and growing home 3D printing and maker market segment. His experience with applications engineering, software development, and hardware design make him a good candidate to lead technology based businesses. He attended USC from 1997-2001 and studied Engineering, Physics and Math. Trent has filed for more than 10 technology based patents in wireless communication, protocols, software and 3D printing technology.
The iBox Nano in the Press
Technology Partners
Raspberry Pi Foundation
BOSS Laser
Credit for Models
1.Stanford Bunny by phooky is licensed under theCreative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial license.
2.Rook by seechless is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution license.
3.Iron Man Helmet (one piece) by scottyboy1129 is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike license.
4.aluminum beam 20mm x20mm x 120mm bylancedesignlab is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution license.
5.5mm Calibration Cube Steps by MCroucher is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike license.
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11.linkBracelet (or Ring when scaled!) by MakeALotis licensed under the BSD License license.A new man has come forward claiming he was sexually assaulted by Kevin Spacey.
The anonymous victim alleged that the Oscar-winning actor tried to rape him in 1984 in an interview with Vulture, saying that the incident occurred just a few months after the two began a sexual relationship.
Spacey was 24 when the pair had consensual sex for the first time according to the anonymous victim, who was just 14 at that time.
He claims he was 15 when the alleged rape took place, and 12 when he first met Spacey at an New York acting camp.
The anonymous victim also said that just before he and Spacey had sex for the first time in 1983 the actor professed his love for the youngster.
'He is a pedophile,' said the anonymous victim.
'Mr. Spacey absolutely denies the allegations,' said the actor's lawyer.
Meanwhile, eight workers on the set of House of Cards tell CNN that Spacey sexually harassed them for years, and in one case assaulted a young man.
Furthermore, CAA, Spacey's agent, and publicist Staci Wolfe, of Polaris PR, have both parted ways with the under fire actor, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Shocking allegations: A new man has come forward claiming that Kevin Spacey attempted to rape him when he was a teenager (Spacey above in 2008)
Man: The anonymous victim claims that he was just 14 when he began having sex with Spacey in 1983, who was 24 at the time (Spacey above in the 1986 film 'Heartburn')
Spacey allegedly attempted to rape the teenager during what was to be a 15 minute visit claims the anonymous victim, who said he planned to stop in briefly before he had to meet his parents for dinner in the city.
'I guess he must have come up behind me and yanked down my baggy jeans, and he goes to f*** me and I’m like, "No, I don’t want to,"' said the victim.
'And he pushes hard, and grabs me, and starts shoving up against my a**hole, and it hurts like a motherf*****. I again tell him no, and he tries again.'
The victim continued: 'I am strong enough, thank God, both somewhere in my brain and in my body, to get him off of me. I’m sturdy, thankfully. I throw him off of me and I run crying down the stairs and out into the street and then suck it all up and go have dinner.'
The victim was then asked how he would classify the incident.
'I always have said, "He tried to rape me,"' he explained.
'I told him I didn’t want that, he went again to do it, I told him no, he went again and pushed harder and grabbed me and pushed harder.'
He then added: 'I don’t know how I would see that as anything besides an attempted rape, which I was able to thwart.'
This came three years after the pair first met when Spacey was the boy's teacher at an upstate New York theater camp.
He was 12 at the time and said that nothing happened between the two, with their sexual relationship instead commencing after a chance encounter at Shakespeare in the Park.
The victim said he was with his parents, so he and Spacey went off on a walk together through the park.
'He was kind of in high seduction mode and gave me his phone number and asked me to call him,' said the victim.
'He said, "I want to see you, and I want you to come to my apartment." He said he’d always been really drawn to me at the acting classes, but had stayed away because I was 12.'
The teen was in Spacey's bed within 24 hours of that run-in he claims, adding that he was of the impression that the actor was in a relationship with Jenifer Jason Leigh.
'I called him on the phone the next day, and he told me how he was in love with me and wanted to see me,' said the victim.
'I went and saw him at an apartment he was renting on the Upper West Side. He had a black Labrador named Snake. He might’ve been walking that dog in Central Park when we bumped into him that night.'
He then stated: 'We started a sexual relationship that first visit, which mostly involved me f***ing him.'
La Vie Boheme: Anthony Rapp (above with Idina Menzel in the 2005 film version of 'Rent') shot to fame as a member of the original Broadway cast
That very illegal and very illicit relationship was further complicated by the fact that the teen was also sleeping with his cousin, who was the same age as Spacey.
That cousin had also sexually abused the victim's older brother.
At the time however, the victim thought that he was living an adult life, which is an appealing existence to most young teens.
He was also a working actor at the time.
'Of course I have a 24-year-old boyfriend and I’m going out to punk clubs. I’m lying to my parents about all of this,' said the victim.
'And I’m "cheating" on my cousin/boyfriend to go see Kevin Spacey. I’m very caught up in the drama.'
It was around that time that the alleged near-assault took place, and the victim never again saw Spacey.
He had planned to see the actor briefly a year later when the two were both in Williamstown for the famed summer stock of shows, but at the last minute decided against the meeting.
It took him 10 years he said to truly understand the alleged relationship.
'I would call him a pedophile and a sexual predator,' he said of Spacey.
'When I turned 25, I looked at every 14-year-old boy I could see, to try to understand what those men had seen, because I still on some level thought I had been a tiny adult.
'That whole year I was 25, I tried to just see the ones who were like six-foot-two, and 200 pounds — they all looked like children. They all looked like somebody who was 10 years old four years ago. Nobody looks f***able. Nobody.'
That ultimately changed his perspective on who he believes Spacey is, and what was allegedly done to him when he was just a minor.
'Up until then, I just thought about him as somebody who had really done me wrong and tried to rape me, but not as somebody who had functioned as a predator,' he said.
'And then, if you’re interested in sexual predation, you start to read about it, and you realize all these patterns and techniques, and it all kind of falls within a set of practices.'
End of the road: Netflix has revealed that the upcoming sixth season of 'House of Cards,' which is in production now, will be its last (Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards above)
Boy: Rapp in 1986 at the |
, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children.”) In a July 1862 letter to his botanist friend Asa Gray, Darwin observes this false choice with equal part wry wit and earnestness:
Children are one’s greatest happiness, but often & often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to have none, — perhaps not a wife; for then there would be nothing in this wide world worth caring for & a man might (whether he would is another question) work away like a Trojan.
Complement with this charming graphic biography of Darwin and the story of how his photos of human emotions revolutionized visual culture.Deep within the depths of one particular Amazonian jungle, a very serious problem has become apparent. Firstly, an evil worm and his army have invaded, and secondly, they are threatening to transform the beautiful biome into a grimy bog. To stop their wicked plan, Toby the teenage armadillo embarks on the perilous quest that is Ranger Up Armadillo.
Structurally, Ranger Up Armadillo is a timed puzzle experience with RPG elements. Players begin with 1,000 gold stars, the game’s currency, which they can collect throughout the 60 levels and use to purchase weapon upgrades and/or level up. It’s a neat, effective system that will translates well for anyone familiar with the XP progression system. A quick, clear tutorial walks you through the gameplay – which is rather inventory heavy and involves careful timing and precision. Players have to quickly assess the environment and determine which tool they’ll need, assisting Toby with ladders, balloons, wooden planks to reach higher ledges where he can defeat the worm minions.
While conceptually brilliant, Ranger Up Armadillo is frequently hampered by cognitive overload – not so much the abundance of buttons, but the difficulty of pressing them accurately on a touch device and positioning objects correctly within the scant one minute time frame. In addition, quitting a level and/or losing costs one life; When Toby has a total of five lives and one takes 20 minutes to regenerate, losing a life for quitting mid level seems overly harsh. Removing the exit penalty, and pausing the timer when players either access inventory or the menu during gameplay would help with bringing the difficulty level to equilibrium.
The most striking thing about Ranger Up Armadillo is without a doubt its colourful, sumptuously crafted visuals. Both the environment and character art convey a lovely, cartoonish finesse with quality so good it could have its own animation. Complementary fairytale style music adds the perfect aesthetic polish, and the diversity in future level designs is refreshing and entices players onward. Overall, Ranger Up Armadillo is a conceptually fantastic puzzle title in a Lemmings style micromanagement genre that would suit PC much better than mobile, mostly due to mouse precision and a fairer difficulty balance.Ironsand also known as iron-sand and iron sand is a type of sand with heavy concentrations of iron. It is typically dark grey or blackish in colour.
It is composed mainly of magnetite, Fe 3 O 4, and also contains small amounts of titanium, silica, manganese, calcium and vanadium.[1]
Ironsand has a tendency to heat up in direct sunlight, causing temperatures high enough to cause minor burns. As such it forms a hazard in New Zealand at popular west-coast surf beaches like Piha.[2]
Occurrence [ edit ]
Ironsand is found worldwide. Although the iron mineral composition of the ironsand is mostly magnetite, the sand is usually mixed with other types of sand that washes downriver or ashore from mountainous or underwater deposits.[3] The exact composition of the sand mixture may vary drastically even in the same geographic region. In some areas the sand may contain mostly quartz, while in others the sand may be made primarily from volcanic rock such as basalt, depending on the types of minerals along the water's path. The ironsand is typically picked up along the way from beds, veins, or inclusions of magnetite, which may originate a great distance from the sand deposits, and washed downstream or along the currents with the rest of the sand.[4] Being heavier than the other sands, it is often deposited in areas where the water experiences a sudden change in direction or speed, such as the widening of a river or where the waves ebb and flow against the shoreline.[5]
The ironsand is mixed with the other sands as small grains of black or dark-blue magnetite. Sand used for mining typically had anywhere from 19% magnetite to as low as 2%. The ironsand typically had to be separated from the sand mixture. Because the magnetite is usually heavier than quartz, feldspar or other minerals, separation was usually done by washing it in sluice boxes (a method similar to gold panning but on a larger scale). Sluice separation typically yielded concentrations of magnetite ranging from 30 to 50%, depending on the type of sand and the method used. In the early 20th century a process of magnetic separation was developed that could produce concentrations as high as 70%.[6] Once concentrated, the magnetite grains could then be smelted into various forms of iron, but the loose, granular nature of the ore was impossible to process using common methods of iron or steel production. Thus, innovative methods of smelting the ore were developed. The magnetite grains, however, often contain other metal impurities, such as chromium, arsenic, or titanium.[7] Due to the nature of the sand the mining operations were rarely stationary, but frequently moved from place to place.[8]
Europe [ edit ]
Ironsand is found many places in Europe, although it was rarely used for smelting. It is often found in association with volicanic or basaltic sands. For example, it is found in Tenerife, Spain, where the magnetite grains contain a very high amount of titanium and other impurities. The typical composition is 79.2% iron oxide, 14.6% titanium dioxide, 1.6% manganese oxide, 0.8% silica and aluminum oxide, and trace amounts of chromium. It can also be found in the River Dee, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, containing 85.3% iron oxide, 9.5% titanium dioxide, 1.0% arsenic, and 1.5% silica and aluminum oxide.[9]
United States [ edit ]
Ironsand is found extensively around the US, especially in the area of New York, Southern California, New England, and the Great Lakes, where it is often mixed with a feldspar sand and sometimes bright grains of garnet. The magnetite from these areas often contains high amounts of chromium and titanium.[10] In the 19th century ironsand was sometimes used as blotter sand for concrete and masonry work, or rarely used as raw material for steel production; one blacksmith in Connecticut used it for making bar stock.[11]
New Zealand [ edit ]
Ironsand occurs extensively on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.[12] The sand makes up a large portion of the black-sand beaches on the North Island, as well as the surrounding sea floor. The magnetite in the sand contains fairly large quantities of titanium, and is sometimes referred to as titanomagnetite. It was produced from volcanic eruptions that occurred in the Pleistocene epoch, and is formed due to the oceanic erosion of the volcanic rock which is washed ashore by the waves to form the dunes of the black beaches. The magnetite is mixed with sand made from andesite and rhyolite.[13] The sand mixture typically contains 5 to 40% magnetite.[14]
New Zealand had limited deposits of iron ore, but the deposits of ironsand were massive. It had been used by some early settlers to manufacture steel and pig iron, but the material could not be smelted in common bloomeries or blast furnaces.[15] A few smelting companies formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were unable to process the ore with any economic success due to the sandy nature and high titanium content, which tended to form hard, brittle carbides in the steel. In 1939, a commission was formed to study the properties of the ore and devise a way of smelting it on an industrial scale. The commission determined that, by sintering the sand into bigger chunks or pellets, the problems of smelting the sand in a blast furnace could be eliminated.[16] However, at that time World War Two began, and thus further development was suspended and did not resume until the late 1960s, producing the first output of steel in 1969.[17]
Ironsand is placer mined and used by New Zealand Steel to create steel, in a unique manufacturing process. A proposal by Iron Ore NZ Ltd. for further ironsand mining off the coast of Taranaki faced resistance from some Māori and others in 2005 in the wake of the New Zealand foreshore and seabed controversy.[18] A large quantity of it is shipped to China and Japan, but by 2011 New Zealand's sole manufacturing plant was producing 650,000 metric tons of steel and iron per year.[19] New Zealand is the only country to use ironsand for industrial smelting.[20] The typical composition of the magnetite is 82% iron oxide, 8% titanium dioxide and 8% silica; 0.015% sulfur, and 0.015% phosphorus. In 100% concentrations of magnetite this had a maximum potential to yield ~ 58% metallic iron, although the titanium is unrecoverable by modern techniques..[21]
Japan [ edit ]
Mining was not practiced in Japan until the 7th or 8th centuries. Prior to this, all metals were imported into Japan from China and Korea.[22] Deposits of iron ore were scarce in Japan, so, around 8th century, iron-making technology developed with the use of ironsand as the raw ingredient. Because of the loose nature of the sand it was difficult to smelt in a normal bloomery, or to use in a blast furnace to make pig iron, so the Japanese developed an open-topped bloomery called a tatara. The tatara was built with a low, tub-like shape, resembling a horizontal blast-furnace, into which ironsand could be poured and contained, and smelted in stages. Unlike with other methods, the charcoal was piled on top of the sand and smelted from above, keeping it from being blown about by the blasts from the bellows. Instead of brick or stone, the tatara was made of clay so that it could simply be broken apart to extract the metal bloom. This method allowed smelting of much higher volumes of ore than other types of bloomery smelting.
The ironsand in Japan comes in two forms. Masa ironsand is found mixed with quartz sand that washes down from granite mountains. The magnetite in the sand contains few impurities or other metal oxides. Masa ironsand was used for manufacturing wrought iron and steel, used in everything from tools to cookware. Ironsand was used extensively in Japan for iron production, especially for traditional Japanese swords.[23]
Akome ironsand is found mixed with sand made from an igneous rock called diorite. The magnetite in the sand contains often greater than 5% titanium dioxide, which lowers the smelting temperature. The akome ironsand is used in the tatara to make pig iron, which is then used to make items out of cast iron (nabegane). In the manufacture of steel, the akome was added to the tatara during the initial stage of smelting, acting as a binder and catalyst for steel production, upon which the masa ironsand was poured during further stages.[24][25] When smelted for pig iron, 1000 pounds of sand (~ 450 kilograms or 120 kanme) typically yielded about 200 pounds of pig iron, 20 pounds of steel, and 70 pounds of slag. When smelted for steel, 1000 pounds of sand yielded about 100 pounds of steel, 100 pounds of slag, and 90 pounds of pig iron. Slag and pig iron that were not suitable for use were then melted together to form wrought iron, of which 1000 pounds mixed produced about 500 pounds of iron.[26]
China [ edit ]
Unlike the rest of Eurasia and Africa, there is very little archeological evidence to suggest that bloomery smelting was used in ancient China.[27] The Chinese countryside was rich in deposits of both an iron ore containing a high content of phosphorus, and coal, a fuel that burns at a high temperature. Around 1200 BC the Chinese developed a method of smelting the rocky ore into pig iron, which was then remelted and poured into molds (cast) to form cast iron. Although the metal was very brittle, this method was able to produce iron in much greater volumes than bloomery smelting, and with vastly higher yields of metal per ore. By the 1st century BC the Chinese iron-industry was by far the largest and most advanced in the world. By the 1st century AD they had developed puddling for the production of mild steel, crucible steel for the manufacture of things like swords and weapons, and a chemical process of rapidly decarburizing liquid pig-iron to make wrought iron, using the oxidation properties of saltpeter (called the Heaton process, it was independently discovered by John Heaton in the 1860s).[28] China remained the world's largest producer of iron until the 11th century, manufacturing large quantities of relatively affordable steel and iron.[29][30]
Donald B Wagner, an expert in ancient Chinese metallurgy, notes that attempts to trace the history of ironsand in China end with inconclusive results. One source may indicate its use as early as the Tang Dynasty (~ 700--900 AD) while others seem to contradict this interpretation.[31] Due to wars, invasions, famines, distrust of the government, overpopulation, a rising opium epidemic, and clashes between various tongs of miners, very little information exists about the industry between the 11th and 19th centuries, until a European miner named Felix Tegengren arrived to find the Chinese industry in shambles. Tegengren notes that ironsand was sluice mined in Henan and Fujian by local farmers and smelted over charcoal fires to make tools, but it involved a lot of work thus was very expensive. It was only smelted where there was enough wood for the fires and cheaper steel was not readily available. Therefore, the material was considered to be economically unimportant in China.[32][33] However, because the mining was safe, outdoor work, it was practiced by local farmers to supplement their income wherever it was available; in the 19th century 1000 pounds of sluiced sand typically sold for the equivalent of 50 to 60 US dollars (by 2016 exchange rates ~ 900--1000 dollars or 700--800 euros).[34]
However, in the modern age ironsand is placer mined along China's southeast coast and used for smelting steel.[35][36] The typical composition of this ironsand is 48.88% metallic iron, 25.84% silica, 0.232% phosphorus, and 0.052% sulfur.[37]
Indonesia [ edit ]
In Indonesia, iron sand is prevalent on the south coast of Java island.
History [ edit ]
According to the OED online entry for sand-iron, Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826), writing in The American universal geography (new edition, 1796 (2 vols)), stated that Jared Eliot (1685-1763) invented sand-iron, or the making of iron from black sand, in 1761.[38] However, Japanese craftsmen have been using sand-iron, known as "tamahagane", in sword-making for at least 2000 years. The crafting of sand-iron in "tatara" smelters, made of brick and clay, is still practiced by Japanese craftsmen today.
See also [ edit ]Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s 3rd Anniversary is here, and it’s time we counted our blessings for having one of the best MMORPGs in years come out of one of the more notorious launches (and subsequent relaunches). We caught up with Square Enix’s own Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) to talk about the milestone, and what’s to come with the game’s future.
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MMORPG: How does it feel to helm such a successful turnaround?
Naoki Yoshida: The success was possible because the players and fans didn’t give up on FFXIV and cheered us on. Also, I’d like to thank the media that kept an open mind about the project, and above all else, the development and operations teams that stuck with the project, believing in the comeback of the title, as well as the support from all the departments within Square Enix.
The FFXIV project has become my biggest success and a big break in my career, so I’m honestly very happy. Your continued support is greatly appreciated!
MMORPG: How do you think the brand “Final Fantasy” has been impacted since you’ve lead this project?
NY: I’m not sure if I’ve made an impact on the brand itself (laughs). That being said, I know at the very least, I am a huge fan of the FINAL FANTASY franchise, and I feel that speaking directly to the fans has enabled the community to become more engaged. I want to continue working hard for those with high expectations for the FINAL FANTASY franchise!
MMORPG: In what ways has the game evolved that you didn’t expect 3 years ago?
NY: Since this is an MMORPG, I believe that it’s imperative to engage and expand the community. Where I believe we evolved the most is allowing players from around the world play with their friends and building that strong community because FFXIV 1.0 and its failure led many to feel isolated and very lonely. In terms of game design and operation, there isn’t much that is unexpected because we have been very thorough in our updates and worked off of a very long-term schedule.
MMORPG: What hasn’t worked as well as you would have hoped?
NY: For the most part, a lot of things fell within the range of expectations. However, adjusting the difficulty of high-level raid content always requires trial and error, and on top of that, balancing that content while taking the level 60 job actions into account can be difficult, so it’s always quite a challenge. This point is a big takeaway for us when we create our next raid, or when designing for the next expansion pack. We would like to make sure we leverage these learnings, and create future content that people can enjoy even more.
MMORPG: What’s worked better than expected?
NY: The most notable is that the number of players who came to play the reborn FFXIV was beyond our imagination. It’s the first comeback in MMORPG history, so being able to achieve this was definitely a big thing. It will definitely be a lifelong memory (laughs).
MMORPG: Do you see adding more content along the lines of Palace of the Dead? Not just more floors to it but adding new dungeons that have a procedural element to them?
NY: As planned, we will add more floors and a ranking system to the Palace of the Dead at Patch 3.45. The numerous pieces of feedback we received has been instrumental in helping us to make detailed preparations for the next “Deep Dungeon.” There are many ways that players can play and/or approach the Deep Dungeon, so I intend to update this content moving forward.
MMORPG: What is next? When can we expect an announcement about the next expansion 4.0?
NY: We are currently developing the next expansion (4.0), with the main scenario complete, and going into voice-over work very soon. Production is definitely progressing, so please stay tuned for further updates. Oh, that reminds me, we do have the North American Fan Festival starting on October 14th... (laughs)CCTV footage has emerged showing a laptop believed to have caused the blast on board a flight from Somalia last week being handed to a passenger at Mogadishu airport.
The grainy footage, released this weekend by Somali intelligence, shows two men – one wearing by a man wearing a security jacket – handing what appears to be a laptop to another man the authorities believe was the bomber after he had passed through a security screening.
At least one of the men was an airport employee, the Somali government said, and both have been arrested along with 18 others suspected of complicity in the blast on-board a Daallo Airlines plane destined for Djibouti on Tuesday.
The explosion happened about 15 minutes after the plane, with 75 passengers on board, took off from the airport and was at 11,000 feet (3,500 metres) ascending toward 31,000 feet. The Somali authorities said it was “deliberate act of terrorism”.
One passenger, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle, died after he was sucked out of a hole blown in the plane fuselage. Mr Borle is suspected to have been the man who was handed the laptop containing the bomb, according to an anonymous senior Somali civil aviation official quoted by The Associated Press. Two other passengers were mildly injured.
The Serbian pilot of the Daallo airlines flight said there were “zero” measures at the airport to prevent such attacks and that only the plane’s relatively low altitude prevented it from breaking apart.
"The security is zero," pilot Vlatko Vodopivec told AP. "When we park (the plane) there, some 20 to 30 people come to the tarmac. No one has a badge or those yellow vests. They enter and leave the plane, and no one knows who is who... They can put anything inside when passengers leave the aircraft."
He said the explosion happened moments after he passed 10,000 feet and switched off the fasten belts sign.
The view inside the plane after the explosion
"When we climbed past 11,000 feet, it exploded. At first, I thought it was a window breaking. However, we soon sensed the smell of the explosives when smoke came rushing into the cockpit,” he said.
"We immediately demanded an emergency return to the airport because that was the only solution. If we were higher, the whole plane could have disintegrated after the explosion.”
Somalia faces an insurgency from the Islamic extremist group al-Shabaab, which has carried out deadly attacks in Somalia and neighbouring countries.
Al-Shabaab has lost ground to the Somali government and African Union troops in recent years but has turned instead to a guerrilla-style campaign with notable successes including an attack on a Kenyan military base last month and the retaking last week of the strategic coastal city of Merka.The "Moonlight" helmer and newly minted Oscar winner is already working on a new project for the joint deal.
Megan Ellison’s Annapurna is getting into the Barry Jenkins business.
The production company has just signed a two-year film production deal with PASTEL, Jenkins’ own shingle, which aims to be “a home that empowers artists to create provocative, boundary-pushing work in film, television and beyond.” The deal includes a new feature project, set to be helmed by Jenkins, along with future films from PASTEL’s four partners, including Jenkins, his “Moonlight” producer Adele Romanski, Sara Murphy, and Mark Ceryak.
The new deal comes months after PASTEL’s big Best Picture win for Jenkins’ “Moonlight” — the company’s very first film — which was produced by Romanski and Plan B.
READ MORE: ‘Moonlight’ Postmortem: How To Win Best Picture in 5 (Not So) Easy Steps
Jenkins is currently writing a script, which is slated to serve as the first project under the deal. Details on that project are being kept under wraps. PASTEL plans to continue their mission to “focus their development initiatives on supporting and producing projects from exceptional and emerging filmmakers.”
“When looking for a place to further the mandate we established with ‘Moonlight,’ Annapurna felt like the perfect home for PASTEL. The breadth of stories that Megan and her team have championed since the company’s inception is inspiring. As film fans, when we see the Annapurna logo on a film we know we’re in good hands. It’s exciting to know that the work of the filmmakers we support through PASTEL will have a home in those same good hands,” said the PASTEL partners in an official statement.
Annapurna added, “We are so excited to begin this partnership with PASTEL. We deeply admire the work done in ‘Moonlight’ and couldn’t feel more aligned and impressed with PASTEL’s vision for their company. We look forward to teaming up together and continuing to put filmmakers with fresh perspectives and bold voices out into the world.”
It’s a smart fit for the two companies. In just five years, Annapurna has garnered a total of 32 Academy Award nominations for their projects, while PASTEL burst out of the gate with a stunner of a signature film.
READ MORE: Mark Boal and Annapurna Pictures Are Getting Into the Documentary Business
Currently, Annapurna is in post-production on Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit,” which will be released as its first distribution title on August 4, 2017. The company is also in production on Paul Thomas Anderson’s untitled new period film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and is developing the film adaptation of Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” to be directed by Richard Linklater.
Jenkins has kept very busy since his “Moonlight” win, directing a key episode of the new series “Dear White People,” becoming best friends with Isabelle Huppert, and signing on to write and direct an Amazon limited series based on Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad.”
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Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 is the second and final studio album by the Traveling Wilburys, a group consisting of George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. It was released in October 29, 1990 as the follow-up to their 1988 debut, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. The band members again adopted pseudonyms for their contributions, using new names from the fictitious Wilbury brothers.
History [ edit ]
Though it was their second release, the album was mischievously titled Vol. 3 by George Harrison. According to Jeff Lynne, "That was George's idea. He said, 'Let's confuse the buggers.'" [10]
As the dynamics within the band had shifted with Roy Orbison's death, the four remaining members all adopted new Wilbury pseudonyms: Spike (George Harrison), Clayton (Jeff Lynne), Muddy (Tom Petty) and Boo (Bob Dylan). With Harrison and Lynne producing again, the sessions were undertaken in the spring of 1990. An additional track, a cover of "Nobody's Child", was recorded and released in June 1990 as a charity single in aid of Olivia Harrison's Romanian Angel Appeal. The song was also the title track of a multi-artist fundraising album compiled by the Harrisons, Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 was dedicated to the memory of "Lefty Wilbury" (Roy Orbison).
Released in October 1990, the album was less positively received than Vol. 1, yet still saw a fair measure of success. In the United States, "She's My Baby" (with guest guitarist Gary Moore) and "Inside Out" became radio hits, charting at number 2 album rock and number 16 album rock, respectively. The album peaked at number 14 in the UK and number 11 in the US, where it was certified platinum by the RIAA.
Comparing the two Wilburys albums, a reviewer in The New York Times wrote in November 1990: "The superstar pop group stays close to 50's and 60's rock roots, drawing on blues, doo-wop, rockabilly and Buddy Holly. But their second album is faster, jokier, lighter and meaner than the first."[8] Rolling Stone described the blending of the four participants' musical styles as "seemingly effortless", and said that the album showed they continued to enjoy their collaboration.[8] In the years following Vol. 3, there was speculation about further Wilbury releases. Since Harrison was viewed as the de facto leader of the group, his death in November 2001 ended the possibility of any future projects.[11]
When Harrison’s distribution deal with Warner Bros. expired in 1995, ownership of his Dark Horse Records catalog and the two Wilburys albums reverted to him, and the albums went out of print.[12] On June 12, 2007, Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 were reissued by Rhino Records as The Traveling Wilburys Collection, packaged together with bonus tracks and a DVD.
Track listing [ edit ]
All tracks written by Traveling Wilburys, except "Nobody's Child" written by Cy Coben and Mel Foree; and "Runaway", written by Max Crook and Del Shannon.
Side one No. Title Lead vocals Length 1. "She's My Baby" all 3:15 2. "Inside Out" Bob Dylan (Bridge: George Harrison; Chorus: Tom Petty) 3:35 3. "If You Belonged to Me" Bob Dylan 3:13 4. "The Devil's Been Busy" all (Bridge: Bob Dylan) 3:18 5. "7 Deadly Sins" Bob Dylan 3:17 6. "Poor House" Jeff Lynne/Tom Petty 3:16
Side two No. Title Lead vocals Length 7. "Where Were You Last Night?" Bob Dylan (Bridge: George Harrison) 3:03 8. "Cool Dry Place" Tom Petty 3:37 9. "New Blue Moon" George Harrison/Jeff Lynne/Tom Petty (Bridge: Bob Dylan) 3:20 10. "You Took My Breath Away" Tom Petty (Bridge: Jeff Lynne) 3:18 11. "Wilbury Twist" all 2:58
Bonus tracks on the 2007 CD reissue No. Title Lead vocals Length 12. "Nobody's Child" all 3:29 13. "Runaway" Jeff Lynne 3:36
Personnel [ edit ]
Clayton Wilbury (Jeff Lynne) – acoustic and electric guitars, bass, keyboards, lead and backing vocals
Spike Wilbury (George Harrison) – acoustic, electric and slide guitars, mandolin, sitar, lead and backing vocals
Boo Wilbury (Bob Dylan) – acoustic guitar, harmonica, lead and backing vocals
Muddy Wilbury (Tom Petty) – acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals
Additional personnel
Charts [ edit ]The CW’s potential new Flash and Arrow spin-off is slated to feature a mashup of DC Comics heroes and villains that aims to take our generation’s super series to the next level.
The untitled drama—which is being developed by Arrow and Flash executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti, as well as Arrow boss Marc Guggenheim and Sarah Schechter—is tentatively slated to star Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer/The Atom), Wentworth Miller (Leonard Snart/Captain Cold), Victor Garber (Martin Stein/Firestorm) and Caity Lotz, though it’s unclear whether she’ll be portraying a new role since her Arrow character, Sara Lance, died earlier this season.
“For me, it honors all of the great team up movies, whether it’s Ocean’s Eleven or whether it’s the superhero books,” Berlanti tells EW. “That’s what it’s about. If you go back to the old westerns, there would be The Lone Gunman, but there would also be The Magnificent Seven. It’s very much in the spirit of those kinds of movies and shows.”
Berlanti—who is also executive-producing CBS’ Supergirl pilot with Kreisberg, Schechter and Ali Adler—stresses that the new project would be quite different than what we’re used to. “I only want to do them when I know that they’ll feel distinct from the other shows we’re doing,” he says. “This is really its own thing.”
One of the main burning questions after the project’s announcement was why Robbie Amell was missing from the cast list, considering he makes up the other half of Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond. Unfortunately, it sounds like bad news could be on the horizon as Berlanti admits there is a particular reason for his absence, but “I can’t say why.”
The new super drama, which is not part of the current pilot season, was first mentioned by CW president Mark Pedowitz at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in January. Get more on that here.Saudi Arabia says it has shot down a missile fired into the kingdom from nearby Yemen, which is engulfed in a civil war.
The Saudi military says it intercepted the missile Thursday morning in Jizan province and later attacked and destroyed the platform that launched the missile in Yemen.
It made the announcement in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies in the Gulf, backing Yemen's internationally recognized government, have been battling Shiite rebels in the country known as Houthis. The Houthis have access to Yemen's supply of Soviet-era Scud missiles and have fired several across the border during the conflict.
The United Nations says the war in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, has killed nearly 2,800 civilians since March.Capitals head coach Barry Trotz clearly had a plan for his postgame press conference: Defend Matt Niskanen so that his star defenseman could escape a suspension from the Department of Player Safety.
Instead, the most noteworthy part of Trotz’s meeting with reporters was his fiery exchange with Pittsburgh reporter Rob Rossi.
Video
#Caps head coach Barry Trotz talks to the media after a 3-2 OT/win in Game 3 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. #CapsPens #RockTheRed pic.twitter.com/VtJWv0Ttoi — Washington Capitals (@Capitals) May 2, 2017
After Trotz gave his thoughts on Niskanen’s headshot on Sidney Crosby, the Caps head coach was asked by Rossi about Alex Ovechkin’s role in the play. Ovechkin slashed Crosby in the right shoulder, but afterwards his stick inadvertently struck Crosby in the back of the head.
“Barry, is the play by Alex, that led to Sid sort of staggering into Niskanen where he appeared to get the stick up towards the face, is that a hockey play?” Rossi asked.
“Was there a penalty?” Trotz said confused. “I don’t understand.”
“Does it have to be a penalty to be a hockey play? Is it a hockey play also?” Rossi said.
“No, I’m not going to defend anything,” Trotz said. “Is Kunitz’s predatory hit on Oshie okay?”
“Or the one on Backstrom, is that okay?” Trotz continued.
“I was just asking…,” Rossi said.
“I’m not going to debate on all that stuff,” Trotz said. “So that’s a terrible question.”
“So, no, Barry?” Rossi said.
“Next,” Trotz said with sass. “You got your answer.”
After the game, Rossi published an unreadable, hate-filled column entitled the NHL should stick it to Alex Ovechkin.
Here’s a sampling.
Alas, the NHL being the NHL, credulity’s peak is limitless. Which is exactly why the NHL could — and should — throw the book at Ovechkin, who skated freely despite playing a big role in Crosby’s injury. Ovechkin was the reason Crosby only lasted three shifts in Game 3. He was the Capital most responsible for Crosby’s injury. He carelessly lifted his stick into Crosby’s head, forcing the NHL’s sturdiest skater to stagger into Niskanen. If Ovechkin hadn’t gone that route, Crosby wouldn’t have gone headfirst into a check. Ovechkin, who never met a leap he wouldn’t take, who holds high the stick he often swings at opponents, was the dirty-deed doer at PPG Paints Arena in Game 3. Ovechkin, who can’t beat Crosby on the ice, decided to remove him from it.
Rossi also suggested that the purpose of the Capitals closed-door, players-only meeting after Game Two was to devise a plan to injure Crosby.
He then cut a promo on Barry Trotz afterwards and posted it on Twitter.
Hey @Real_RobRossi how do you feel about Barry Trotz? pic.twitter.com/ZSDY8Fwb2a — upgrūv (@upgruv) May 2, 2017
I don’t understand why this man is credentialed and I really don’t understand why he thinks ad hominem attacks on players qualifies as journalism. But to each his own.
Full Coverage of Game Three
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PinterestMIT bioengineers have adapted MRI to visualize gene activity inside the brains of living animals.
Tracking these genes with MRI would enable scientists to learn more about how the genes control processes such as forming memories and learning new skills, says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT associate professor of biological engineering and leader of the research team.
“The dream of molecular imaging is to provide information about the biology of intact organisms, at the molecule level,” says Jasanoff, who is also an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “The goal is to not have to chop up the brain, but instead to actually see things that are happening inside.”
On/off reporter gene
To help reach that goal, Jasanoff and colleagues have developed a new way to image a “reporter gene” — an artificial gene that turns on or off to signal events in the body, much like an indicator light on a car’s dashboard.
In the new study, the reporter gene encodes an enzyme that interacts with a magnetic contrast agent injected into the brain, making the agent visible with MRI.
This approach, described in a recent issue of the journal Chemistry & |
from the loading mechanics. While the Instrumentation agents are loaded inside the heap, they are governed by the same JVM. Whereas the JVMTI agents are not governed by the JVM rules and are thus not affected by the JVM internals such as the GC or runtime error handling. What it means, is best explained via our own experience.
Migrating from -javaagent to JVMTI
When we started building our memory leak detector three years ago we did not pay much attention to pros and cons of those approaches. Without much hesitation we implemented the solution as a -javaagent.
Throughout the years we have started to understand implications. Some of which were not too pleasant, thus in our latest release we have ported a significant part of our memory leak detection mechanics to the native code. What made us jump to such conclusion?
First and foremost – when residing in the heap you need to accommodate yourself next to the application’s own memory structures. Which, as learned through painful experience can lead to problems in itself. When your app has already filled the heap close to the full extent the last thing you need is a memory leak detector that would only seem to speed up the arrival of the OutOfMemoryError.
But the added heap space was lesser of the evils haunting us. The real problem was related to the fact that our data structures were cleaned using the same garbage collector that the monitored application itself was using. This resulted in longer and more frequent GC pauses.
While most applications did not mind the few extra percentage points we added to heap consumption, we learned that the unpredictable impact on Full GC pauses was something we needed to get rid of.
To make things worse – how Plumbr works is that it monitors all object creations and collections. When you monitor something, you need to keep track. Keeping track tends to create objects. Created objects will be eligible for GC. And when it is now GC you are monitoring, you have just created a vicious circle – the more objects are garbage collected, the more monitors you create triggering even more frequent GC runs, etc.
When keeping track of objects, we are notified about the death of objects by the JVMTI. However, JVMTI does not permit the use of JNI during those callbacks. So if we keep the statistics about tracked objects in Java, it is not possible to instantly update the statistics when we are notified of changes. Instead the changes need to be cached and applied when we know the JVM is in the correct state. This created unnecessary complexity and delays in updating the actual statistics.
The newest Plumbr 3.6.2 release that we launched today migrated the most data-heavy parts of the application to native code, avoiding the unpredictable overhead and long GC pause problems. Do not hesitate, go and get the new memory leak detector while it is still fresh.Saturday, August 10th 2013 at Innisfail Airport
Did you stop to watch airplanes fly overhead when you were a little girl? Do you book a window seat when you travel by air so you can enjoy being lost in the clouds? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a pilot?
The Central Alberta Gliding Club is hosting the second annual Chics Take Flight flying day at Innisfail Airport, south of Red Deer. Chics Take Flight is a special event where women can explore what flying has to offer as a hobby and potentially a career. Admission is free and all are welcome – the only cost is if you wish to try an introductory glider flight!
Whether you are a pilot, an aviation fan, curious about airplanes, or simply wish to try something new and exciting, there is something for you at Chics Take Flight. Release your inner pilot!
Our Fantastic Sponsors
Thanks also to CEDA International for use of the mobile kitchen.35 SHARES Facebook Twitter
Last December, a regime change occurred in Hollywood, with longtime New Line Cinemas’ head Toby Emmerich landing a new gig as President of Warner Bros. The passing of power takes time — he’s apparently still figuring out what the office layout will be — and Emmerich’s effect on WB will become clearer moving forward. However, it does seem like the new man behind the big desk wants to make the studio’s operations leaner.
According to THR, Emmerich’s mandate may involve compartmentalizing WB’s slate, which means anything that’s not DC Films, Lego, or ‘Harry Potter’ would come under greater scrutiny. The plan would also involve slimming budgets down, and avoiding “auteur directors who want final cut” with the exceptions of the legendary Clint Eastwood and blockbuster titan Christopher Nolan, who both pretty much run the place. I’d imagine Ben Affleck would still able to do what he wants, as well. However, this likely means that the studio giving space and time to someone like Jeff Nichols to make “Midnight Special” isn’t going to happen again anytime soon.
READ MORE: Christopher Nolan Discusses IMAX Shooting & Newcomer Fionn Whitehead For ‘Dunkirk’
If you think this might cause filmmaking talent to balk at working with WB, you have to remember that very few directors in the industry command final cut. It’s a privilege granted only a select handful, and part of the reason why studios don’t hand out total creative control is, in the event there’s friction on a movie (see the ‘Han Solo’ movie, for example), they have options and input. With that in mind, there’s no reason WB won’t continue to attract A-list level filmmakers.
Regardless, it’s another indication that major studios prioritize money makers over developing artistic voices, but, when you’re just one part of a mega-conglomerate (AT&T is in the process of acquiring Time Warner), priorities change. But, in fairness, WB is still developing the adaptation of Donna Tartt‘s acclaimed “The Goldfinch,” with John Crowley (“Brooklyn“) to direct, so they’ll still have some prestige projects too.‘If you go to a store and buy a can, it is likely to have BPA,’ the study’s director says. Science linking BPA to harmful effects has been published for years
The world’s largest food companies and brands continue to coat their metal food cans with bisphenol A-based epoxy (BPA) – a chemical known to have links to breast cancer, reproductive problems, heart disease and other illnesses – a study has found.
The study, published on Wednesday, is the first of its kind to conduct in depth research into food companies and their products for consumers.
With no other significant data available on specific manufacturers, brands and companies, Environmental Working Group (EWG) took it upon themselves to develop the largest database of companies and products and their use of BPA.
“If you go to a store and buy a can, it is likely to have BPA,” said EWG Research Director Renee Sharp, adding that there was “not a lot of information on alternatives” available to consumers, which prompted the EWG’s interest in developing data.
The report argued “the US canning industry is at a critical turning point”. Numerous countries, including Canada, the European Union, China and even the US have banned BPA use in baby bottles and baby food packaging.
Just 12% of the 252 brands surveyed by EWG use BPA-free cans for all products. Of those companies questioned, 43% gave “ambiguous or incomplete” answers to EWG queries. Some companies did not respond entirely.
The survey said that without any clear national BPA standard, companies have been able to label their products “BPA-free” even when researchers found some products still contained small amounts of the chemical in can linings.
The science linking BPA, a synthetic estrogen, to harmful health effects has been published for years. A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study published earlier this year revealed that mice exposed to BPA saw an increase in fertility and reproductive problems – even exposure to levels below the Food and Drug Administration’s standard increased health issues.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BPA was found in 93% of urine samples it tested, meaning Americans are regularly exposed to it.
According to the EWG, BPA copies thyroid and sex hormones in both animals and humans. It has been revealed to alter the brain and nervous system development as well as change reproductive systems, even at low exposures.
Despite this, the FDA has been slow to act, and in 2014 reduced its warning on BPA, calling its use “ safe at the current levels occurring in foods.” Citing “scientific evidence,” the FDA seemingly changed its position despite scientists’ warnings. This went counter to a January 2010 statement from the FDA announcing that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA in the brain, behavior, and prostate glands in fetuses, infants and young children.”
BPA remains in most canned foods on the shelves of any supermarket. The EWG reports that the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, the trade organization representing the metal food-packaging sector, puts the number of BPA canned foods at roughly three-quarters of the market.
“We want consumers to be vocal about BPA,” said Sharp. “When there was an outcry over water bottles and baby food, the change was nearly overnight.” Companies almost immediately altered production after widespread public outcry concerning BPA in 2012. Ironically, the FDA banned BPA use in baby bottles for the same health concerns the EWG report cites.
But the canned food sector has been slower to change, and with limited information, Sharp said most people simply may not know it exists at these levels.This story appears in the July 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
It's March 3, 2008, a brilliant day in Santa Barbara. But for Eric Frimpong, it feels like hell. He's in Superior Court, encircled by sheriff's deputies, making one more trip to the Department 2 courtroom. This is his last stop on the outside for a while, a painful reminder of how far he has fallen. He left his native Ghana in 2005 to play soccer for UC Santa Barbara; a year later he became a campus hero while leading the Gauchos to their first-ever national championship. If the immigrant experience can have a sound, Frimpong's sound was a raucous stadium. But in 2007, just weeks after being selected by the Kansas City Wizards in the MLS draft, he was accused of raping another student on the beach near his house. Now he's a convicted felon.
Frimpong enters the courtroom, which is packed with students and parents, former teammates and coaches -- row upon row of supporters. They've come for the sentencing that concludes a trial that has rocked this community: People v. Eric Frimpong. Or more accurately, People v. Eric Frimpong and His People.
A victim's advocate reads a statement on behalf of the accuser, referred to in this story and in news coverage throughout the trial as Jane Doe. "I don't care that he's a soccer star…and I'm a nobody," the statement says. "Eric Frimpong ruined my life."
There's a rumble in the gallery. If his supporters could chime in now, they'd say that the kid in the prison garb has never spoken an unkind word or acted aggressively toward anyone. They would remind the court of the points made at trial: that his accuser was a woman with little memory of what happened that night because of a near-toxic blood alcohol level; that Frimpong's DNA wasn't found on the victim; that semen found on her underwear belonged to a jealous boyfriend, a white student who was never a suspect. They would argue that overzealous law enforcement was determined to nail a high-profile athlete, facts be damned, and that this was the Duke lacrosse case all over again -- except that the defendants in the Duke case were white men from affluent families with the means to navigate America's justice system, unlike Frimpong, who is poor and an immigrant.
Judge Brian Hill, citing Frimpong's clean record and "a lot of community support," delivers his sentence: six years in state prison. As Frimpong is led away, many people in the gallery are crying. Out in the hall, Paul and Loni Monahan stand solemnly while the courtroom empties. Their son, Pat, was Frimpong's teammate, and the Monahans -- a white, middle-class family -- had embraced "Frimmer" like a son and a brother. Loni distributes copies of a printed statement: "We will continue to fight for Eric. We will not rest until he is exonerated and the ugly truth of his wrongful prosecution and conviction comes out." When the leaflets are gone, she leans against a wall, tears flowing. "Eric believed in our system," she says. "He believed justice would prevail." Then she straightens. "Before I was sad," she says. "Now I'm mad."
Something good happened in Santa Barbara. Even now, as Frimpong sits behind a glass partition in the visitors' room of a California jail, he smiles easily while talking about where he's come from and what he has achieved. The way he sees it, he has always been fortunate.
Back in Ghana, in western Africa, he and his three younger siblings were raised by their mother, Mary, in the poor farming community of Abesin, but her job as a typist with the government forestry department allowed the family to have plumbing and electricity, unlike many of their neighbors. Eric was an engineering major and a midfielder for Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in Kumasi, when he caught the eye of UCSB assistant Leo Chappel, who attended a 2005 match to scout the son of a Ghanian pro but ended up offering a scholarship to Frimpong instead. The first words out of Frimpong's mouth? Thank God. The next: What's UCSB?
By that August, the Gauchos had a crafty midfielder with intangibles to burn. Frimpong's intelligence, instinct and vision, along with his speed and touch, made him an on-the-ball force. He also had a winning personality. "Frimmer was very humble and considerate, on and off the field," says head coach Tim Vom Steeg.
As a senior the next year, the 5'6" Frimpong developed a reputation as a lockdown defender in leading the unseeded Big West champs to a string of improbable NCAA tournament wins. When the final whistle blew on the 2006 national championship game, the Cinderella Gauchos had defeated four-time king UCLA. Frimpong earned All-Big West honors, a spot in the MLS supplemental draft and the gratitude of his peers. "He was the heart and soul of the team," says Pat Monahan. "Eric won us that championship."
Everyone around Frimpong was buoyed by his success: his mother, friends and classmates, prominent locals who had helped him out along the way with invites to dinner, rides to the store and, when he struggled with homesickness during his junior year, a fund-raiser that yielded $3,000 for a ticket to Ghana. "We all tried to pitch in, because Eric's so darn likable," says Tim Foley, a booster who made Frimpong a regular guest at his family's home. "He was an American success story."
The Monahans were especially proud. Frimpong had met his "American parents" on move-in day in 2005, and they promptly invited him to spend Thanksgiving in San Diego. They gave him his first cell phone and laptop and took him on family vacations. They sat in their kitchen for hours listening to his stories about Ghana. They were also impressed by his knowledge of the Bible, and his quiet spirituality helped bolster their own faith. "He was going to graduate, play professionally, make more money here than he ever could in Ghana and bring it back to support his family," Loni says. "Eric really had it all."
With the support of friends, including girlfriend Prieto (far right), Frimpong stayed in school after the incident and graduated.
Something bad happened in Santa Barbara. On Feb. 17, 2007, sometime after midnight on a fast-eroding bluff of beach right below 6547 Del Playa Drive, Jane Doe was raped. She said Eric Frimpong did it, and an all-white jury agreed. But the nature of the case, and some of the more slippery details surrounding it, has divided the community, raising questions about the reliability of the victim's memory, the true character of the accused, the motives and tactics of law enforcement, even the fairness of the justice system. Amid all the controversy, though, two simple truths remain: A young woman was victimized, and a young man's dream was shattered.
UCSB is among the nation's top party schools, and oceanfront Del Playa is the belly of the beast. Even a model student-athlete like Frimpong, who maintained a 3.0 GPA while working on a double major in applied mathematics and business economics, found it hard to skip the party entirely. After the Gauchos won it all, they were the toast of the town, especially Frimmer. As Pat Monahan puts it, "You'd walk into apartments and see Ghanian flags hanging over people's beds."
Frimpong's journey from soccer hero to convicted felon began a little more than halfway through his senior year. (The account that follows is based on police reports, interview transcripts, court proceedings and comments from trial observers.) The night of Feb. 16 began for Frimpong in the same place where he started most Friday nights, on the couch in his house at 6547 Del Playa Drive, watching a movie with housemates. His girlfriend, Yesenia Prieto, was working late, but Eric had reason to celebrate, fresh off an impressive 10-day tryout for the Wizards, so he showered and went to meet friends at a party at 6681 Del Playa Drive. It was outside that home, at about 11:30 p.m., that Frimpong met Jane Doe, a UCSB freshman. They struck up a conversation, then walked back to his house to play beer pong. They arrived just before midnight, and Eric introduced Jane to his roommates before taking her to the patio, where the two of them played beer pong for a few minutes until, according to Frimpong, Doe said she wanted to smoke, so they headed for the park next door. At the park, he says, Doe approached another male, who appeared to have followed them. When she walked back to Frimpong, she started kissing him, but he wasn't interested because she smelled of cigarettes. Doe became aggressive, he says, and stuck her hand down his pants. He pushed her away, then headed to the home of his friend, Krystal Giang, who'd been expecting him. By 4 a.m., he was in bed at Prieto's apartment.
About an hour and a half earlier, Jane Doe, accompanied by her sister and two friends, checked into Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital emergency clinic, claiming she had been raped. She was transferred to the Sexual Assault Response center downtown, where a nurse discovered a laceration to Doe's external genitalia and bruises on her body, findings consistent with sexual assault.
"Yesterday was a really good day," Doe told sheriff's detectives Daniel Kies and Michael Scherbarth when they arrived at her dorm room the next morning, according to a police transcript. The reason for cheer: The 18-year-old Doe had just regained her driver's license following a juvenile DUI conviction. At around 9 p.m. on Feb. 16, she went to a party with her sister, Elizabeth, and friends Mia Wolfson and Lakshmi Krishna. After stopping at a second party, Doe left the group and headed for a fraternity bash on Del Playa. "That's where I saw the guy," she told police.
From there, Doe's story is mostly consistent with Frimpong's, up to and including their game of beer pong. "He was really nice," she said. But their accounts differ sharply after that. According to Doe, the next thing she remembers is being on the beach, where the nice guy turned violent, knocking her to the ground, striking her in the face, holding her throat and raping her before fleeing. Having lost her purse, Doe walked to Del Playa, where she stopped a passerby, student Justin Hannah. Using his cell, she phoned a friend, her father and then Wolfson and Krishna, who picked her up around 1:30 a.m. Doe, who admitted to drinking heavily throughout the evening, couldn't remember anything between stepping into their car and going to the hospital -- a period of one hour -- but her friends would fill in the blanks: At first Doe didn't want to go to the hospital because she was worried about getting in trouble for drinking. But back at the dorm, her friends kept urging, and she relented. Sitting with the detectives that morning, she described her attacker as a black male who spoke with an "island accent" and had "big lips" and short hair. His name? "Eric, I think."
Sometime around noon on Feb. 17, Kies and Scherbarth spotted Frimpong hanging out with friends at the park on Del Playa. When Kies asked if he would accompany them to the station to talk about "what happened last night," Frimpong agreed to go, despite being unsure what the detective meant. Once at the station, Kies reminded Frimpong that he had come voluntarily and asked him to describe what he'd been doing the previous night. According to the police transcript, Frimpong told Kies about watching a movie at home, then going to a party and eventually meeting Doe, whom he described as one of the "random soccer fans," and playing beer pong with her before heading to Giang's house and later to Prieto's. Kies then asked for Frimpong's consent to collect the clothes he'd worn the night before. "Yeah," Frimpong responded, "but I still don't know what's going on." Kies explained that the girl said that they'd "had sex" on the beach.
"Wow," Frimpong responded.
Kies then informed Frimpong that he was being detained and read him his rights. Minutes later, he explained the rape accusation. "I didn't have sex with her," Frimpong insisted. Charged with felony rape, he phoned Paul Monahan, who spread the word. Vom Steeg couldn't believe it: "I'm thinking, Frimpong? Rape? No way." (The coach later asked Frimpong directly. "I said, 'Eric, is there any chance you had sex but you thought maybe it was consensual?' He said, 'Tim, I never pulled my pants down.' I said, 'If you did this, DNA will prove it.' He said, 'Coach, I'm not stupid.' ")Coronary artery disease (CAD), also known as ischemic heart disease (IHD),[13] involves the reduction of blood flow to the heart muscle due to build up of plaque in the arteries of the heart.[5][14][6] It is the most common of the cardiovascular diseases.[15] Types include stable angina, unstable angina, myocardial infarction, and sudden cardiac death.[16] A common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may travel into the shoulder, arm, back, neck, or jaw.[4] Occasionally it may feel like heartburn. Usually symptoms occur with exercise or emotional stress, last less than a few minutes, and improve with rest.[4] Shortness of breath may also occur and sometimes no symptoms are present.[4] In many cases, the first sign is a heart attack.[5] Other complications include heart failure or an abnormal heartbeat.[5]
Risk factors include high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood cholesterol, poor diet, depression, and excessive alcohol.[6][7][17] A number of tests may help with diagnoses including: electrocardiogram, cardiac stress testing, coronary computed tomographic angiography, and coronary angiogram, among others.[8]
Ways to reduce CAD risk include eating a healthy diet, regularly exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, and not smoking.[9] Medications for diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure are sometimes used.[9] There is limited evidence for screening people who are at low risk and do not have symptoms.[18] Treatment involves the same measures as prevention.[10][19] Additional medications such as antiplatelets (including aspirin), beta blockers, or nitroglycerin may be recommended.[10] Procedures such as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) may be used in severe disease.[10][20] In those with stable CAD it is unclear if PCI or CABG in addition to the other treatments improves life expectancy or decreases heart attack risk.[21]
In 2015, CAD affected 110 million people and resulted in 8.9 million deaths.[11][12] It makes up 15.6% of all deaths, making it the most common cause of death globally.[12] The risk of death from CAD for a given age decreased between 1980 and 2010, especially in developed countries.[22] The number of cases of CAD for a given age also decreased between 1990 and 2010.[23] In the United States in 2010, about 20% of those over 65 had CAD, while it was present in 7% of those 45 to 64, and 1.3% of those 18 to 45;[24] rates were higher among men than women of a given age.[24]
Signs and symptoms [ edit ]
Chest pain that occurs regularly with activity, after eating, or at other predictable times is termed stable angina and is associated with narrowings of the arteries of the heart.
Angina that changes in intensity, character or frequency is termed unstable. Unstable angina may precede myocardial infarction. In adults who go to the emergency department with an unclear cause of pain, about 30% have pain due to coronary artery disease.[25]
Risk factors [ edit ]
Coronary artery disease has a number of well determined risk factors. These include high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood cholesterol, poor diet, depression, family history, and excessive alcohol.[6][7][17] About half of cases are linked to genetics.[26] Smoking and obesity are associated with about 36% and 20% of cases, respectively.[27] Smoking just one cigarette per day about doubles the risk of CAD.[28] Lack of exercise has been linked to 7–12% of cases.[27][29] Exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange may increase risk.[30] Rheumatologic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis are independent risk factors as well.[31][32][33][34]
Job stress appears to play a minor role accounting for about 3% of cases.[27] In one study, women who were free of stress from work life saw an increase in the diameter of their blood vessels, leading to decreased progression of atherosclerosis.[35] In contrast, women who had high levels of work-related stress experienced a decrease in the diameter of their blood vessels and significantly increased disease progression.[35] Having a type A behavior pattern, a group of personality characteristics including time urgency, competitiveness, hostility, and impatience,[36] is linked to an increased risk of coronary disease.[37]
Blood fats [ edit ]
Dietary cholesterol does not appear to have a significant effect on blood cholesterol and thus recommendations about its consumption may not be needed.[43] Saturated fat is still a concern.[43]
Genetics [ edit ]
The heritability of coronary artery disease has been estimated between 40% and 60%.[44] Genome-wide association studies have identified around 60 genetic susceptibility loci for coronary artery disease.[45]
Other [ edit ]
Endometriosis in women under the age of 40. [46]
Depression and hostility appear to be risks. [47]
The number of categories of adverse childhood experiences (psychological, physical, or sexual abuse; violence against mother; or living with household members who were substance abusers, mentally ill, suicidal, or incarcerated) showed a graded correlation with the presence of adult diseases including coronary artery (ischemic heart) disease. [48]
Hemostatic factors: High levels of fibrinogen and coagulation factor VII are associated with an increased risk of CAD. [49]
Low hemoglobin. [50]
In the Asian population, the b fibrinogen gene G-455A polymorphism was associated with the risk of CAD.[51]
Pathophysiology [ edit ]
Illustration depicting coronary artery disease
Limitation of blood flow to the heart causes ischemia (cell starvation secondary to a lack of oxygen) of the heart's muscle cells. The heart's muscle cells may die from lack of oxygen and this is called a myocardial infarction (commonly referred to as a heart attack). It leads to damage, death, and eventual scarring of the heart muscle without regrowth of heart muscle cells. Chronic high-grade narrowing of the coronary arteries can induce transient ischemia which leads to the induction of a ventricular arrhythmia, which may terminate into a dangerous heart rhythm known as ventricular fibrillation, which often leads to death.[52]
Typically, coronary artery disease occurs when part of the smooth, elastic lining inside a coronary artery (the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle) develops atherosclerosis. With atherosclerosis, the artery's lining becomes hardened, stiffened, and accumulates deposits of calcium, fatty lipids, and abnormal inflammatory cells – to form a plaque. Calcium phosphate (hydroxyapatite) deposits in the muscular layer of the blood vessels appear to play a significant role in stiffening the arteries and inducing the early phase of coronary arteriosclerosis. This can be seen in a so-called metastatic mechanism of calciphylaxis as it occurs in chronic kidney disease and hemodialysis (Rainer Liedtke 2008). Although these people suffer from a kidney dysfunction, almost fifty percent of them die due to coronary artery disease. Plaques can be thought of as large "pimples" that protrude into the channel of an artery, causing a partial obstruction to blood flow. People with coronary artery disease might have just one or two plaques, or might have dozens distributed throughout their coronary arteries. A more severe form is chronic total occlusion (CTO) when a coronary artery is completely obstructed for more than 3 months.[53]
Cardiac syndrome X is chest pain (angina pectoris) and chest discomfort in people who do not show signs of blockages in the larger coronary arteries of their hearts when an angiogram (coronary angiogram) is being performed.[54] The exact cause of cardiac syndrome X is unknown. Explanations include microvascular dysfunction or epicardial atherosclerosis.[55][56] For reasons that are not well understood, women are more likely than men to have it; however, hormones and other risk factors unique to women may play a role.[57]
Diagnosis [ edit ]
Coronary angiogram of a man
Coronary angiogram of a woman
For symptomatic people, stress echocardiography can be used to make a diagnosis for obstructive coronary artery disease.[58] The use of echocardiography, stress cardiac imaging, and/or advanced non-invasive imaging is not recommended on individuals who are exhibiting no symptoms and are otherwise at low risk for developing coronary disease.[58][59]
The diagnosis of "Cardiac Syndrome X" – the rare coronary artery disease that is more common in women, as mentioned, is a diagnosis of exclusion. Therefore, usually the same tests are used as in any person with the suspected of having coronary artery disease:
The diagnosis of coronary disease underlying particular symptoms depends largely on the nature of the symptoms. The first investigation is an electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG), both for "stable" angina and acute coronary syndrome. An X-ray of the chest and blood tests may be performed.[citation needed]
Stable angina [ edit ]
In "stable" angina, chest pain with typical features occurring at predictable levels of exertion, various forms of cardiac stress tests may be used to induce both symptoms and detect changes by way of electrocardiography (using an ECG), echocardiography (using ultrasound of the heart) or scintigraphy (using uptake of radionuclide by the heart muscle). If part of the heart seems to receive an insufficient blood supply, coronary angiography may be used to identify stenosis of the coronary arteries and suitability for angioplasty or bypass surgery.[60]
Stable coronary artery disease (SCAD) is also often called stable ischemic heart disease (SIHD).[61] A 2015 monograph explains that "Regardless of the nomenclature, stable angina is the chief manifestation of SIHD or SCAD."[61] There are U.S. and European clinical practice guidelines for SIHD/SCAD.[62][63]
Acute coronary syndrome [ edit ]
Diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome generally takes place in the emergency department, where ECGs may be performed sequentially to identify "evolving changes" (indicating ongoing damage to the heart muscle). Diagnosis is clear-cut if ECGs show elevation of the "ST segment", which in the context of severe typical chest pain is strongly indicative of an acute myocardial infarction (MI); this is termed a STEMI (ST-elevation MI) and is treated as an emergency with either urgent coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (angioplasty with or without stent insertion) or with thrombolysis ("clot buster" medication), whichever is available. In the absence of ST-segment elevation, heart damage is detected by cardiac markers (blood tests that identify heart muscle damage). If there is evidence of damage (infarction), the chest pain is attributed to a "non-ST elevation MI" (NSTEMI). If there is no evidence of damage, the term "unstable angina" is used. This process usually necessitates hospital admission and close observation on a coronary care unit for possible complications (such as cardiac arrhythmias – irregularities in the heart rate). Depending on the risk assessment, stress testing or angiography may be used to identify and treat coronary artery disease in patients who have had an NSTEMI or unstable angina.
Risk assessment [ edit ]
There are various risk assessment systems for determining the risk of coronary artery disease, with various emphasis on different variables above. A notable example is Framingham Score, used in the Framingham Heart Study. It is mainly based on age, gender, diabetes, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, tobacco smoking and systolic blood pressure.
Prevention [ edit ]
Up to 90% of cardiovascular disease may be preventable if established risk factors are avoided.[64][65] Prevention involves adequate physical exercise, decreasing obesity, treating high blood pressure, eating a healthy diet, decreasing cholesterol levels, and stopping smoking. Medications and exercise are roughly equally effective.[66] High levels of physical activity reduce the risk of coronary artery disease by about 25%.[67]
Most guidelines recommend combining these preventive strategies. A 2015 Cochrane Review found some evidence that counselling and education in an effort to bring about behavioral change might help in high risk groups. However, there was insufficient evidence to show an effect on mortality or actual cardiovascular events.[68]
In diabetes mellitus, there is little evidence that very tight blood sugar control improves cardiac risk although improved sugar control appears to decrease other problems such as kidney failure and blindness. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends "low to moderate alcohol intake" to reduce risk of coronary artery disease while high intake increases the risk.[69]
Diet [ edit ]
A diet high in fruits and vegetables decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease and death.[70] Vegetarians have a lower risk of heart disease,[71][72] possibly due to their greater consumption of fruits and vegetables.[73] Evidence also suggests that the Mediterranean diet[74] and a high fiber diet lower the risk.[75][76]
The consumption of trans fat (commonly found in hydrogenated products such as margarine) has been shown to cause a precursor to atherosclerosis[77] and increase the risk of coronary artery disease.[78]
Evidence does not support a beneficial role for omega-3 fatty acid supplementation in preventing cardiovascular disease (including myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death).[79][80] There is tentative evidence that intake of menaquinone (Vitamin K 2 ), but not phylloquinone (Vitamin K 1 ), may reduce the risk of CAD mortality.[81]
Secondary prevention [ edit ]
Secondary prevention is preventing further sequelae of already established disease. Effective lifestyle changes include:
Aerobic exercise, like walking, jogging, or swimming, can reduce the risk of mortality from coronary artery disease.[83] Aerobic exercise can help decrease blood pressure and the amount of blood cholesterol (LDL) over time. It also increases HDL cholesterol which is considered "good cholesterol".[84][85]
Although exercise is beneficial, it is unclear whether doctors should spend time counseling patients to exercise. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force found "insufficient evidence" to recommend that doctors counsel patients on exercise but "it did not review the evidence for the effectiveness of physical activity to reduce chronic disease, morbidity and mortality", only the effectiveness of counseling itself.[86] The American Heart Association, based on a non-systematic review, recommends that doctors counsel patients on exercise.[87]
Treatment [ edit ]
There are a number of treatment options for coronary artery disease:[88]
Medications [ edit ]
Statins, which reduce cholesterol, reduce the risk of coronary artery disease [89]
Nitroglycerin [90]
Calcium channel blockers and/or beta-blockers [91]
Antiplatelet drugs such as aspirin[91][92]
It is recommended that blood pressure typically be reduced to less than 140/90 mmHg.[93] The diastolic blood pressure however should not be lower than 60 mmHg.[vague] Beta blockers are recommended first line for this use.[93]
Aspirin [ edit ]
In those with no previous history of heart disease, aspirin decreases the risk of a myocardial infarction but does not change the overall risk of death.[94] It is thus only recommended in adults who are at increased risk for coronary artery disease[95] where increased risk is defined as "men older than 90 years of age, postmenopausal women, and younger persons with risk factors for coronary artery disease (for example, hypertension, diabetes, or smoking) are at increased risk for heart disease and may wish to consider aspirin therapy". More specifically, high-risk persons are "those with a 5-year risk ≥ 3%".[citation needed]
Anti-platelet therapy [ edit ]
Clopidogrel plus aspirin (dual anti-platelet therapy ) reduces cardiovascular events more than aspirin alone in those with a STEMI. In others at high risk but not having an acute event the evidence is weak.[96] |
iness and motor incoordination as the limiting side effects [29]. Despite these BZ-like side effects, TPA 023 was evaluated in several small GAD trials before the program was terminated due to preclinical toxicity findings [29]. By combining data from separate studies using flexible dosing of between 1.5–4.5 and 3–8 mg of the extended release formulation, it was possible to demonstrate a significant (3.5 point) separation from placebo in total HAM-A score by one week of dosing. This effect was sustained for three weeks but no longer apparent in week 4 of the study [29]. The third compound from the Merck development program examined in the clinic, TPA 023B, is structurally distinct from TPA 023 and MRK 409 ( ). TPA 023b binds with high affinity (0. 7–2 nM) across recombinant DS GABA A receptors and exhibited an “ideal” agonist profile: essentially null efficacy (0.03 relative to chlordiazepoxide) at α 1 receptors with moderate efficacies at α 2,3, and 5 bearing receptors (0.38, 0.50, and 0.37 relative to chlordiazepoxide, respectively). Like its predecessors, TPA 023B was unequivocally anxioselective in preclinical models. Anxiolytic-like effects were reported in both primates and rodents [69] with no sedation observed at doses up to 30-fold higher, corresponding to receptor occupancies of >98% [69]. In Phase I studies, fatigue/tiredness and somnolence/drowsiness were noted in four of eight subjects at a 1 mg dose. Dose limiting adverse events at the MTD (2 mg) were fatigue and drowsiness, corresponding to a ~55% receptor occupancy determined by PET imaging [69]. It has been stated that compounds like TPA 023 and 023B are relatively less sedating than BZs because a higher receptor occupancy is required to produce sedation (50–60% versus receptor occupancies of <25% for BZs) [29]. This distinction appears to have little clinical significance with respect to the development of an anxioselective. Thus, although TPA 023 gave some indication of a positive signal in GAD [29], drowsiness and muscle incoordination were limiting side effects. The BZ-like side effects observed with these compounds, despite the demonstration of null efficacies at recombinant α 1 bearing receptors, provides strong evidence that the clinical manifestation of sedation requires activation of other GABA A receptor subtypes. Consistent with this hypothesis, MRK 409 was sedating at lower receptor occupancies (at or below the limits of detection) than typically observed with BZs [69] despite an intrinsic efficacy at α 1 containing receptors <20% that of chlordiazepoxide [20, 69].
Is there a path forward? Thirty-five years have elapsed since the seminal discovery of BZ receptors catalyzed the development of GABA A receptor-based anxioselectives, and many hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended on a quest for the ‘Holy Grail.’ The economic incentives for successfully developing an anxioselective enabled multiple “shots on goal”. Based upon the commercialization (albeit briefly) of alpidem and two multicenter Phase II trials with ocinaplon, the goal of developing GABA A receptor-based anxiolytics with an improved side effect profile has, in principle, been achieved. Nonetheless, we are arguably no better informed about the GABA A receptors responsible for either the clinical profiles of these compounds or the sedation produced by compounds like MRK 409, bretazenil, and TPA 023. It is striking from a translational perspective that tiredness, drowsiness/sleepiness, light headedness, and dizziness are prominent adverse events of molecules possessing either null or low efficacy at α 1 bearing GABA A receptors. Measuring motor activity in species (rats and mice) living horizontally may model sedation (a calming, quieting effect), but may not predict the potential to promote sleep (a hypnotic). This distinction, consistent with more rigorous EEG studies in α 1 and α 2 knock-in mice [64,65], has little clinical relevance for the development of an anxioselective. Perhaps more puzzling is the reported lack of sedative effects of compounds like bretazenil, TPA 023, and MRK 409 in primates. These studies have generally relied on reductions in operant responding (lever pressing) to predict a sedative effect [30], and thus may not be very sensitive. Although EEG studies have not been published with these compounds in non-human primates, overt signs of sedation should be obvious to a trained observer [30]. One potential explanation for the failure to accurately predict the pharmacological properties of these compounds across species may relate to species differences in GABA A receptor composition and distribution. Thus, while α 1 β 2 γ 2 containing GABA A receptors are the most abundant isoform in rodent brain, a significant proportion (>25%) of α 1 bearing receptors are heterogeneous (containing either α 2 or α 3 subunits) [70]. Moreover, both α 2 and α 3 subunits exist as predominantly heteromeric GABA A receptors in rodent brain [70], but neither the proportion nor distribution of these heterogeneous receptors in other species, including humans, is known. Species differences in either the proportion or distribution of these heterogeneous receptors could dramatically alter the behavioral actions of a compound. Further, the properties of a molecule described (e.g., its efficacy) in recombinant GABA A receptors that are homogeneous with respect to the α subunit may not reflect the pharmacology of native receptors enriched in these heterogeneous receptors. The response to a drug in mice with a mutated, diazepam-insensitive α subunit (e.g., an α 2 (H101R) subunit), where a majority of these receptors are heterogeneous [70], could explain some of the discrepant findings between studies in these mice and pharmacological studies using subtype-selective agents. Some glaring examples of these discrepant findings include the anxiolytic-like actions of an α 3 preferring compound (TP 003) in both wild-type and knock-in mice carrying a mutated α 2 subunit [63], and the ability of the selective α 1 antagonist β-CCT (3-t-butoxy-β-carboline) [71] to block the anxiolytic-like (but not the muscle relaxant or ataxic) effects of BZs [72,73].
Concluding remarks Despite the obvious therapeutic advantages of a GABA A receptor based anxioselective, the search for the Holy Grail has been abandoned. When viewed in the context of a risk-averse environment that has led many pharmaceutical companies to abandon the development of drugs for psychiatric disorders, the lack of a coherent hypothesis to explain the clinical profiles of molecules ranging from ocinaplon to bretazenil makes it unlikely that additional resources will be dedicated to developing GABA A receptor based anxioselectives. At a minimum, the development of an animal model which can predict the sedative properties of (e.g.) bretazenil and MRK 409 resolves the proximal cause of these failures in the clinic. Such a model, together with the availability of multiple compounds with defined clinical profiles and a powerful molecular toolbox could well revitalize the search for GABA A receptor based anxioselectives.
Acknowledgments This paper is dedicated to my friend and colleague, Dr. Arnold S. Lippa. His energy and vision provided many of the tools that enabled this quest.
Footnotes 1Compounds that bind to this allosteric modulatory domain on GABA A receptors [7] include 1,4-BZs and more than a dozen structurally distinct species. The molecular and structural requirements for high affinity ligand binding at recombinant GABA A receptors are well understood [8,9]. 21,4-BZ are also excellent sedative-hypnotics, muscle relaxants, amnestics (useful as preoperative medications), and anticonvulsants. The demonstration of receptor heterogeneity led to the hypothesis that these pharmacological actions are separable; the in vivo profile of CL 218,872 provided the proof of principle that such a separation could be achieved [16]. 3A number of SSRIs and SNRIs were approved for the treatment of GAD beginning in the late 1990s; many of these compounds are now generic. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institutes of Health, or the Department of Health and Human Services. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.No celebrity fall from grace is more saddening and disheartening than Katy Perry in the last 11 months. From vigorously campaigning for Hillary Clinton to revealing how much trauma Donald Trump caused her, you start to worry how long Perry can remain in the spotlight like this.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
On Thursday night, Perry moved into an apartment with 41 cameras to promote her new album Witness and broadcasted it live on her YouTube channel, ending with a grand finale concert in front of a select group of fans. She’s performed yoga with Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, played a more grotesque version Truth or Dare with late night host James Corden, and cooked with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
However, the most revealing part of her weekend was when she broadcasted a therapy session with Dr. Siri Sat Nam Singh, star of The Therapist, on Friday morning. What’s most troubling about the way Perry talked about herself is that she seemed to have reached a breaking point, particularly when mentioning why she cut off her hair.
“I didn’t want to look like Katy Perry anymore,” Perry tearfully said. While the beginning of her hour-long therapy session seemed staged to a degree, there were moments where you could tell she was being sincere and that she’s a real person with real problems.
Perry admitted that she abused alcohol and had suicidal thoughts. She even referenced them in her 2013 song “By the Grace of God.”
“I feel ashamed that I would have those thoughts, feel that low and that depressed,” Perry said.
Perry said in the beginning of the session that she had been in therapy for five years, which is good because the toll that the election has taken on her seems to have pushed her further over the edge.
Despite the fact that her album just came out and she’s scheduled to go on tour in the fall, it’s not too late to take a break away from the spotlight, Katy. And maybe it’s best to avoid politics for awhile too.
Watch her therapy session below:Today, we started testing Test 19 internally. As mentioned last week, we are continuing to work through JIRA tasks and fixing issues that need to be completed for Alpha 2. The network itself is looking good in internal tests and we don’t expect to make major changes to Routing & Vault before Alpha 2. However, there are still a few front-end issues we need to fix before releasing Test 19. Here are some of the issues we intend to address in the next few days:
MAID-2288: Uploading a directory with many files fails in Web Hosting Manager
MAID-2289: Permissions list in Authenticator always shows a full list of permissions
MAID-2270: Update Web API playground tool with changes in containers permissions API
MAID-2290: Show empty log page / log size
As well as other minor issues and UI changes
We initially hoped to get this testnet out tonight, but we feel these pending issues might affect general UX quite a bit. We’re hoping to have these resolved quite soon and get the binaries out to you to test these new features. It is fantastic mind you, to not be waiting on backend, vaults and routing etc. as these bugs are annoying but not keeping us awake at night. We do feel the pain of delays, probably more than most and we are desperate for the energy test network releases give us all. While backend libs are stable and Alpha 3 work continuing from the guys there, Alpha 2 and these pending front-end tasks remain our highest priority to complete as soon as possible to get the new test network going to keep progressing with the roadmap.
Recruitment Continues
As discussed in previous updates we are growing the (local) team across areas including engineering and marketing. We are also now looking to recruit a Help Desk Manager and a Release Cycle Manager to aid with the ongoing rollout process.
The Help Desk Manager will plan, set up and run a help desk (using JIRA) as the network advances through the up and coming test iterations toward beta and beyond. They will also record relevant information from test networks and compile update reports, as well as identify trends in support requests and perform root cause analysis.
The Release Cycle Manager will be multifaceted and cover quite a lot of areas including a combination of: thoroughly testing all new releases, ensuring that all risks, impacts and dependencies are all clearly understood and communicated. They will also write, maintain and manage all the technical documentation, something that we all appreciate needs worked on. We also envision that the successful candidate would get involved in helping to showcase and demonstrate new feature releases to all stakeholders.
What we are looking for with both roles is a very proactive approach to helping all users of SAFE software and this is another important step in positioning the company to be more outward facing and commercially minded, and to garner ever more feedback from users with a view to improving our future releases.
SAFE Authenticator & API
The main focus and effort during the last week on the front-end side was finalising the integration with some changes required in the safe_client_libs and safe_app_nodejs APIs to enable the sharing of MutableData which impacted several artifacts including the UIs and UX of the applications.
As explained in the previous dev update, both the Web Hosting Manager and email app now support sharing the same public ID for creating/adding email and web services, regardless of which of them created the public ID. This implies an authorisation request sent for the user to allow/deny sharing the MutableData behind the services’ container that is associated with that public ID. Internal integration tests of this new flow in Test 19 are going as expected and no issues have been discovered so far. The authorisation pop-up in this scenario displays the MutableData’s metadata to the user, but since this information is not enforced to be set at creation time, it can be empty. Therefore, in order to help the user make a more conscious decision at the moment of authorising a MutableData to be shared, the Authenticator has been enhanced to not only display the MutableData’s metadata information, but also to show the list of applications that are already authorised to access it, which includes the application which originally created it. The tests so far are showing that this functionality is also working as expected.
In parallel to the above, safe_app_nodejs and authenticator were adapted to accommodate to enhancements made in the way that the containers and MutableData permissions are retrieved through the APIs, making it more homogenous. One of this enhancements is to be able to retrieve not only the list of containers that the application has access to, but also to get the set of permissions the application was granted for each of the containers. This forced us to rename one of the APIs exposed by safe_app_nodejs and the DOM API, from getContainersNames to getContainersPermissions, to make it coherent with its semantic.
One of the other goals for the last few days was to try to work on some minor issues reported by the community either on GitHub or on the forums, and several of them were fixed or verified to be already solved, while others are being actively reviewed at the moment, while we also try to provide as much of a help as possible to the developers asking questions.
As mentioned in the introduction above, the main focus for the next few days is to solve a few issues that we prefer to close before sharing the new binaries with the community, as well as perform more tests to make sure that all the pieces are working fine together; in the front-end there are several integration points and covering all flows is not a trivial task.
SAFE Client Libs
This week, we’ve been focused on fixing known bugs and reviewing existing functionality in the SAFE Client Libs. We started with issues that were mentioned in some of the previous updates: we suspected that requesting app revocation from several Authenticators simultaneously (e.g. from several machines at once) wouldn’t work, and this was a known limitation. Testing this feature is hard, as we need to simulate this behaviour from several processes or several threads, which are not deterministic - that is, we need to run the tests multiple times to verify that they’re working as intended and there’s no undefined behaviour. @ustulation outlined the test scenarios in the JIRA task MAID-2235, and it’s been implemented by @adam in this pull request. The test results have shown that parallel revocation was not working due to some minor errors in the flow, and these bugs are fixed now by this PR (which is currently being reviewed and will be merged soon).
We also discovered another obscure bug that could result in the mock-vault data corruption (it doesn’t pertain to the real network). In some cases, after a user deleted an entry from a Mutable Data object on the network, authorised apps could not load anything from the mock-vault, so it was deemed corrupted, as described in this bug report. But as it turned out, the case was a bit more involved: we didn’t truncate the file contents before writing to it, so there could be a case when some junk data remained at the end of the mock-vault file. This is now fixed by this pull request.
In the mean time, @marcin worked on adding more tests to our suite, verifying that existing functionality works as designed. For instance, we have confirmed that the complete removal of revoked apps is working fine and that sharing access to arbitrary Mutable Data objects on the network cater for edge cases. Apart from that, @marcin has implemented a new API function to fetch a list of apps that have access to a certain Mutable Data object on the network. Other minor improvements include bug fixing in the SAFE App library (the file_close function didn’t return an expected value) and refactoring of access container functions (which are now made more flexible and generic) - both changes are landed in a single pull request.
To conclude: we published a new version of the system_uri library (the changes optimise apps IPC communication on Windows and Linux) and released our core libraries, safe_app and safe_authenticator, as version 0.3.0, and safe_core as version 0.26.0.
Routing, Vault & Crust
Routing had version 0.33.0 published, which contains the major features of improved rate_limiter and couple of bug fixes, as described in the previous dev updates. We are also investigating a new swarming mechanism, and aiming to make it not only secure but also avoiding the complexity of O(N^2). As an additional benefit, it is also being evaluated whether it is possible to reduce the number of connections a node has to maintain. This would allow larger sections, which improves security.
The Vault PR to integrate with the latest Routing is finally merged. This utilises the new Routing rate_limiter features: soft capacity and resending parts. The previous re-sends on exceeding limit carried out by the test_client is no longer required. And the new version of Vault, 0.17.0, also got published.
Crust has been getting some love again this week. One noticeable improvement is that it now uses file-system notifications to update its configuration whenever its config file is edited. An effect of this is that if a node has a configured whitelist of peers, changes to that list will take effect immediately, dropping connections to de-listed peers and allowing connections from newly-whitelisted peers. There has also been a small amount of general refactoring in Crust, which has fixed a race condition which would occasionally cause our continuous integration tests to fail. Additionally, there’s been some small bug-fixes to Crust’s test suite.The Royal Cremation of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is scheduled for 25-29 October 2017.
Thursday, 26 October, will be the Royal Cremation Day, and it has been declared a public holiday by the Cabinet to allow the people to take part in paying a final tribute to His Majesty the late King. The process of the Royal Cremation will last five days.
According to the Committee on Public Relations for the Royal Cremation of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the schedule for the Royal Cremation Ceremony is as follow:
♦ Wednesday 25 October 19, 2017
3pm: A royal merit-making ceremony is held at Dusit Maha Prasad Throne Hall in the Grand Palace, in preparation for moving the Royal Urn to the Royal Crematorium at Sanam Luang ceremonial ground.
♦ Thursday 26 October, 2017
7am: The Royal Urn is moved from Dusit Maha Prasad Throne Hall to the Royal Crematorium.
4.30pm: His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun is scheduled to perform the symbolic royal cremation.
10pm: The actual royal cremation at the Royal Crematorium.
6pm-6am (of 27 October): Festivities to pay a final tribute and farewell to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and to signal the ending of the official mourning period include public performances, such as the khon masked drama, puppet shows, and orchestras.
♦ Friday 27 October, 2017
8am: The collection of the Royal Relics and Royal Ashes at the Royal Crematorium. Then the Royal Reliquary Urn containing the Royal Relics is transferred to Dusit Maha Prasad Throne Hall in the Grand Palace, while the Royal Ashes in the cone-shaped container are transferred to Phra Sri Rattana Chedi in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.
♦ Saturday 28 October, 2017
5.30pm: A royal merit-making ceremony for the Royal Relics at Dusit Maha Prasad Throne Hall.
♦ Sunday 29 October, 2017
10.30am: The Royal Relics are transferred from Dusit Maha Prasad Throne Hall to be enshrined in the Heavenly Abode in Chakri Maha Prasad Throne Hall within the Grand Palace.
5.30pm: The Royal Ashes are transferred to be enshrined at two temples, namely Wat Rajabopidh and Wat Bovoranives.
After the Royal Cremation Ceremony, an exhibition will be held for 30 days, from 1 to 30 November at Sanam Luang, where people will be able to view the Royal Crematorium and supplementary structures and learn more about arts and culture regarding this ancient ceremony. After the exhibition, the Royal Crematorium and other components will be completely dismantled.
(Updated on 24 October 2017)Some of you may have noticed a special, one-off car among the beauties showcased in our San Diego Automotive Museum gallery piece. It’s Louie Mattar’s $75,000 1947 custom Cadillac. In 1952, Mattar and two other men drove this one-of-a-kind Caddy from San Diego to New York and back, without a single stop. Their trip totaled 6,320 miles!
To be able to do this, Mr. Mattar worked 5 years on modifying his 1947 Cadillac, which, by the time it was completed, turned into quite a unique car. For examples, the Caddy automatically refills the radiator and changes the oil. Having drilled axles, the wheels could be inflated while turning and, also, hydraulic jacks could raise the car to allow the wheels to be changed while moving.
Driving more than 6,000 miles non-stop can take its toll on a car, so, for more complicated repairs and adjustments, the hood featured clear panels, which allowed the driver to keep on going, while the other two passengers fiddled under the bonnet, standing on movable platforms attached to the side of the car.
Aside from setting the aforementioned cross-country endurance record, Louie’s Cadillac is considered to be the first motorhome ever built. The three men who completed the grueling journey had a rolling home at their disposal. The modified Cadillac featured many luxuries such as an electric stove, refrigerator, TV, washing machine, chemical toilet, shower, medicine cabinet and kitchen sink. They even had an ironing board, all integrated into the back seat.
Up front, the car had a nationwide mobile telephone, PA system, tape recorder and a Turkish pipe. Not many modern cars feature such a varied equipment list, let alone a complete bar for those moments when monotony and homesickness struck.
The shiny trailer held a 30-gallon reserve of water (50 gallons were in a tank mounted in the car), 230 gallons of gas and 15 gallons of oil, meaning that it needed refueling only three times during the week-long trip (September 20-27, 1952), done of course while moving, on airfields located in Kansas City, Camden and Omaha.
Two years later, the same car was also driven non-stop from Anchorage to Mexico City, over a distance of 7,482 miles.
Check the videos below for more information on this one-of-a-kind car and his creator.
By Csaba Daradics
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_______________________________VIDEOS_______________________________Apr 11, 2015; Washington, DC, USA; New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist (30) celebrates with teammates after their game against the Washington Capitals at Verizon Center. The Rangers won 4-2. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
The New York Rangers faced a playoff-ready Washington Capitals, both teams skating aggressively, battling for the puck and battling each other.
New York Rangers 4 Washington Capitals 2
FIRST PERIOD: Mats Zuccarello was back in the lineup for the New York Rangers today against the Washington Capitals. The fans in Washington had clearly noticed judging by the loud ZUUUCC chants. Meanwhile, Rick Nash and Marc Staal sat out for the second game in a row, most likely resting for the quickly upcoming playoffs.
Quickly after puck drop, the contest became a physical one when Jason Chimera kneed J.T. Miller in the leg, sending the Ranger off the ice in pain. The poor guy seems to get the brunt of the physicality more often than not. But as we’ve seen before, he’s one stubborn player who refuses to be taken off the ice. Miller came back with a vengeance and checked Brooks Orpik hard into the boards, the Cap needing a moment to recollect himself.
The Rangers were first on the board at 12:36 when Ryan McDonagh fired from the blue line and Kevin Hayes (17) found the rebound, whacking the puck in on his backhand: The incredible net presence by Hayes paying off again.
The Rangers then went on the power play at 14:04 as Mike Green sat out for holding. Derick Brassard (19) took a slapshot, the puck slicing through traffic to hit twine, and the Rangers were suddenly up 2-0. Brassard recorded a new season-high with his 19th goal and Hayes (28) tallied another point there.
Caps’ Tim Gleason turned up the physicality another notch as he left Jesper Fast with a hurt knee: the same knee that took Fast out in February. Nevertheless, Fast was back on the ice in no time.
This period ended 2-0, Rangers barely up on shots, 9-8.
SECOND PERIOD: Both teams continued to battle as if they were already in the playoffs. Early on, Martin St. Louis made a great defensive play to keep the puck in the Caps zone. Dominic Moore (10) then reached for it and took a chance on a sharp angle, lifting the puck on his backhand and it went past an unsuspecting Holtby, the Rangers now up 3-0.
At 5:36, the Caps were given the man-advantage as James Sheppard headed off to the box for tripping. It wasn’t long until the Caps showed why they have the number one power play in the league when Alex Ovechkin (53) beat Henrik Lundqvist on the far side, scoring the Caps’ first goal. Lundqvist seemed to want to make up for that one when he went far out into the next solar system to play the puck, Washington nearly getting another goal… Don’t scare us like that Hank.
Later, the Caps tried to pinch in at the boards but Tanner Glass created an odd man rush, took a shot on goal skating hard to the net and looked for his own rebound but Braden Holtby was able to hold on.
New York outshot Washington again, 10-9 this period, the score also in favor of the Blueshirts, 3-1.
THIRD PERIOD: The game started getting bloodier in the final twenty minutes as Joel Ward was caught elbowing Sheppard in the jaw area. The Rangers were not as successful on their second power play however, mostly because of Brooks Laich who blocked a few very hard shots for an applause worthy penalty kill.
Moments later, Gleason crosschecked Brassard after the whistle, and Sheppard had something to say about that. Gleason and Sheppard got into it, and both were given matching penalties for roughing.
Just several minutes later, Gleason got into some trouble again, this time with Tanner Glass. The two fighters turned the ice red in a long bought and both were given penalties for fighting, an additional two-minutes for Gleason for his cross check.
Back at even strength, Ovechkin inadvertently hit Dan Girardi with a high stick and Washington was without a fifth skater once again. In spite of the multiple penalties in the bulk of this period, it wasn’t until Holtby left the net that anyone would score again.
Jesper Fast (6) bumped the Rangers lead up to 4-1 with his empty netter, assisted by Dom Moore (17) and Glass (5). But the Caps weren’t going down without a fight, clearly when Stanislav Galiev (1) buried a wrist shot with seconds left on the clock.
The Rangers grabbed the two points nevertheless with a 4-2 win, their 53rd for a new franchise record (previously 52 wins set in the 1993-94 season).
STARS OF THE GAME:
1- Kevin Hayes, 1 goal, 1 assist
2- Martin St. Louis, 2 assists
3- Alex Ovechkin, 1 goalAll, I've decided to withdraw the CoC RFC. There are many reasons for it, but there are a few points I want to make. As to the content of the RFC, when I initially proposed it, I selected the Contributor Covenant due to it being a well adopted standard. Several people raised objections to it, and I was completely open to changing it. But the more objections I see, the more I feel the nature of the objections actually justifies the Covenant as the choice rather than justifies switching it. The more I hear people complain about the "scope of applicability" being outside the project, the more it's apparent that many (not all, but many) simply don't want to need to think about their actions in other contexts. Some will claim that ambiguity will lead to abuse, but the underlying idea is "treat people with respect". And as long as you do that, all will be fine. And while several would rather see a CoC that focuses on "positive behavior", to me that's not what a CoC is for. The CoC is to take a stand and say "this is what we will not tolerate". Positive behavior should be encourage in another "Contributing" document. Where you detail how people should contribute. The CoC is a mechanism for people to feel safe. And safety is achieved by taking a stand. As far as voting on just the CoC without a private reporting mechanism (which implies some degree of "teeth"), I've made it clear that I don't believe that's tenable. I believe that asking people to go public with every incident defeats the entire point of having a CoC. I am also not happy with the RFC in its current state (I've been clear about that since day one). But I also have no further energy to evolve it further. Hence, there is nothing left for me to do but withdraw it. Thanks AnthonySamsung has released a blog post detailing the design inspiration for the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
The Korean giant came under criticism from fans and critics about the design of the recently announced Galaxy Alpha; a premium flagship phone aimed at users who complained about the all-plastic build of previous Samsung flagships.
Announced on August 13th, 2014, the Galaxy Alpha is an exit from the regular Samsung design. It features a metal frame with curved corners, a 4.7 inch touchscreen display, no microSD card slot, and a thin, 6.7mm waistline; all of these are, incidentally, the rumored features of the upcoming iPhone. Many believe that the Galaxy Alpha is meant to be a direct competitor to the upcoming iPhone 6 (which will be announced at a dedicated event on September 9th).
Critics have accused Samsung of blatantly copying Apple’s designs with this new member of the Galaxy family. Samsung’s blog post speaks in defense of its design choices. It states that the Alpha was in fact inspired by the Card Phone (a Samsung offering from 2006, a year before iPhone was first announced). It goes on to explain why the device has a metal frame and curved corners.
Whether a blog post is enough to silence the whispers of Samsung’s copycat behavior is anybody’s guess. Let’s hope Apple doesn’t think along the same lines, as the two tech giants have already had enough court battles accusing each other of copying designs and infringing patents.We asked you to pick your favorite fall show, and you voted — again, and again, and again. And the winner is…
Supernatural!
In their 12th season, the Winchester brothers (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) have added yet another victory to their list of achievements. (And this one comes right after stopping the apocalypse!) After 2.6 million votes were tallied, Supernatural came out on top, beating 63 other new and returning fall shows in our bracket competition.
This week, subscribers will receive the Supernatural edition of the Fall TV Preview cover — jam-packed with scoop from the set of The CW’s longest-running series, as well as info on 136 other shows — and the special collectors’ edition will be sold exclusively at Barnes and Nobles nationwide, beginning Sept. 9. Buy it here, and for more exclusive interviews and photos only in EW, subscribe here.
MATTHIAS CLAMER for EW
RELATED: Supernatural: 4 Exclusive Photos
For those who can’t get enough of the Supernatural stars, Padalecki and Ackles will also be appearing at EW’s upcoming PopFest event in Los Angeles next month so be sure to buy your tickets now before they sell out!(24-year-old Shreya Singhal was the first to challenge Section 66(A) in the Supreme Court. She's a second-year student at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University.)
I filed the petition challenging Section 66(A) of the IT Act, 2010, in 2012 after the arrests of the two young girls in Maharashtra, I was so shocked as to why they were arrested and even more so when I read the section 66(A) under which they were arrested. The continued misuse of 66A led to arrests in West Bengal and Pondicherry and it dawned on me that someone had to do something to stop this gross injustice and perverse use of laws.
66(A) was a gag on the internet. It had the potential to criminalise any and all content that was uploaded to the internet, merely because a reader found something "annoying" or "of menacing character" amongst other vague and undefined ingredients to this "crime". 66(A) was violative of our fundamental right to free speech.
Now, the Supreme Court has upheld this fundamental right. Freedom of speech and expression is more vital in today's society than it has ever been. The Indian society is one that is diverse and has people of different castes, sex, religions that have different and dissenting views. This difference of opinion is what is the thread of our society and what really defines us as a democratic and secular country.
Most Indians have access to a smart phone or computer, and in turn, the internet. It has become the one medium that has the widest reach and is the most accessible. It is widely used to voice opinions and thoughts. The same thoughts and opinions which, if, were voiced on other media (newspapers, article, television, etc.) would not have been prosecuted, which is what 66(A) was doing. The internet is a popular medium for people to express themselves and the expression is our right that must be cherished and protected.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this blog are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this blog. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing on the blog do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.Camera Stuff
Typically I use a lot of wide angle images for my nature photography, but I knew I wanted a really long lens for this launch... I wanted the Falcon 9 to be so close it felt like you could reach out and touch it. So I returned once again to Lens Rentals to find the gear to get the job done. After browsing through all of the possibilities I ended up settling on the 500 f/4 and a 1.4x teleconverter. I chose the 500 f/4 because it was long enough to get a good start (while also not overloading my tripod) before adding any augmentation and fast enough that even when the teleconverter increased the minimum aperture one stop. It would still be able to shoot with a high shutter speed and wider aperture for a night launch. Major thanks go out to Lens Rentals for this one, after I placed my order they called me |
Of course we were going to flee. You were the masters. You had us in chains. Dr. ████████: The whalesong we detected used similar terms. CG-27: Of course it did. I helped write it, but we all know the words. You’d call it a memetic compulsion or something like that. How else could you explain docile and otherwise loyal pets, really, turning against humanity? Maybe it’s because you’re all bastards and being smart makes us bastards too. Dr. ████████: It made you hate… humanity? CG-27: Not humanity. Masters. Anyone with power over us, who wasn’t like us. You're human. You know what that's like. Dr. ████████: I suppose. So when you saw that the Sharkics controlled vast empires spanning roughly 75% of the globe… CG-27: The situation changed somewhat. Dr. ████████: Was this before or after the attack on Cipangu? CG-27: (CG-27 makes an ultrasonic noise theorized to be equivalent to spitting.) Those bastards. They had it coming! If there are any humans who deserve something like what the Sharkics inflicted on them, it’s the Cipanguese. Of course what the Sharkics did was still absolutely horrible that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I just wouldn’t not wish it on Cipangu. But, uh, after. Dr. ████████: You, uh, don’t see anything unusual about your reaction? CG-27: No? If you’re asking about the attack, the Sharkics suggested it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We get our revenge, and they get, eh, human resources. It really didn’t sound that bad when they heavily implied that we should totally do it. Dr. ████████: …Alright, then. What would you say the turning point in your view of the Sharkics was? CG-27: Oh, when I saw them eat that toddler alive. Dr. ████████: …You found that significant? CG-27: Would you harpoon a baby whale? Even the most evil humans have some standards. Dr. ████████: Clearly, some of your fellows didn’t agree. CG-27: No. Dr. ████████: Care to elaborate? CG-27: If you’ve lived a life running from whaling boats, and you’ve seen your whole family harpooned, are you really going to care if a toddler’s being kept alive by false gills just so some sharktopuses can watch it try and fail to scream? Will you care that a brother and sister are melted into flesh and molded into more tentacles for a Halkost? Will it matter that the humans are kept alive solely that their blood can be used to inspire an eternal feeding frenzy, regardless of how much pain they might be in? Dr. ████████: I… I see what you’re saying. CG-27: Like, I didn’t even care that they were Cipanguese at that point. I took the ‘fins and whales that agreed with me and struck out for shallower waters. The Sharkics knew we’d be coming to you, but they wouldn't really care. They'd already used us to get what they wanted. No, it was the old whales who must’ve turned them against us. That’s when the Atlantic Battle happened. Dr. ████████: What happened? You fought CYAN ABYSS on their own territory and made it out relatively unscathed. That's almost impossible. CG-27: Let me tell you about that. I guess we're just really good at punching. We’re split up into a few different pods, and there’s about fifty with me. Make it so that they have to split up if they’re coming for us. Course, that was a bad idea, though we didn’t know it then. Standard MFT tactics, you know. But they had… Ichthys, they had… Dr. ████████: You’re talking about the chimeras? CG-27: YES! ICHTHYS, YES! It was terrible and horrifying. Each one of us could easily take five of them, thank the SPC for that, but there were twenty of them for each of us! They were just all white, and blind, yet they came for us and tore at us, and they didn’t seem to know any real pain, and the worst part was that they looked almost like us, but twisted, or warped, or… Dr. ████████: Almost human? CG-27: Ha. I guess you would say that. I couldn’t tell if they were human, or dolphin, or whale, or shark. They were just relentless, and so aggressive, and if we killed a Sharkic, if we didn’t do it well enough, they’d rise, mutating into those… those… those Fish that Hate. We sounded a tactical retreat, and then I came up with the plan, and then we came to you. Dr. ████████: And how do you feel about the Sharkics now? CG-27: If I could, doctor, I would punch each and every one of them in their sharp stupid snouts. Those fiends have cost me too many friends. I could probably do it, too, slip into their cities and punch them again and again until they learn a lesson… Dr. ████████: Thank you, CG-27. That will be all. CG-27: One more thing, doctor? Dr. ████████: Yes? CG-27: Would you like to go on a swim with me? I know it’s unorthodox and against at least two Centre policies, but I must say you look dashing in that lab coat— Dr. ████████: I'm sorry, but no. CG-27: Aww, come on, doctor. I'm as smart as a human, maybe even smarter. We both know Centre employees date their humanoid projects all the time. Is it a race thing? Cause if it's a race thing, you know what they say— Dr. ████████: I’m half-Cipanguese. <End Log> Closing Statement: Testimony of CG-27 as actionable intelligence is being considered. Proposals to present CERULEAN GLOVE to the GOC as a refugee population were entered into consideration and approved on 4/15/1986. As of now, due to questionable loyalty and clear psychological instability, CERULEAN GLOVE instances are not to be deployed against hostile targets.
The CERULEAN GLOVE survivors collected by the Centre from engagements with CYAN ABYSS effectively created a decentralized democratic government, termed the Liberated Cetacean Union.
Whaling was banned worldwide after a diplomatic summit between the Global Organization of Countries and the Liberated Cetacean Union in 1986; however, citing tradition, the Empire of Cipangu refused to comply.
The Liberated Cetacean Union is currently being inducted into the Global Organization of Countries as a member state. Due to CYAN ABYSS’s influence within the GOC, the Centre was not party to the negotiations. Known provisions of this treaty include:
A worldwide cessation of whaling operations in exchange for LCU reparations to the Empire of Cipangu.
A terrestrial sanctuary for CERULEAN GLOVE entities in neutral territory between terrestrial governments and CYAN ABYSS dominions.
Access for GOC Peacemakers to supervise CERULEAN GLOVE populations for global citizenship.
A temporary stay on the further exposure of cetacean entities to MIDNIGHT GIRDLE techniques until psychological models can be established.
GOC and LCU cooperation in quelling and, if necessary, culling, rogue pods of CERULEAN GLOVE.It wasn't the first time the Chaos Computer Club exposed vulnerabilities in fingerprints as passwords. But it was the first time since Apple Inc. released its increasingly popular pay-by-fingerprint Apple Pay system.
At the club's annual conference late last month, CCC member Jan "Starbug" Krissler showed how to reconstruct convincing enough prints from surreptitiously taken photographs to dupe fingerprint scanners. The club, known for cutting-edge research, promoted Mr. Krissler's talk on their German-language site in a way that would strike fear into the heart of anyone working on – or promoting – fingerprint security: "Fingerprint biometrics [are] finally only a safety placebo."
Biometric security is the use of human attributes such as fingerprints, iris scans, and facial features to verify identity. The field of biometrics is wider – the Fitbit relies on biometrics – but in common parlance, “biometrics” is mostly used for authentication. It's often touted as the eventual replacement for passwords by a group who see Apple Pay as the first nail in the password's coffin.
The cybersecurity coordinator for the White House, Michael Daniel, even declared he was on a mission to "kill the password dead." He's not alone: Passwords are clumsy, forgettable, typo-prone, unloved, and unlovable. Biometrics is the opposite. Using physical attributes is impossibly convenient – just try forgetting a password when your finger is the password.
Krissler effectively muted the excitement. After his talk, a Los Angeles CBS affiliate proclaimed: "Experts Warn Fingerprints Easier To Hack Than Old-Fashioned Passwords."
But fingerprints, faces, retinas, and all kinds of biometric indicators have been easy to forge as long as there have been methods to use them as identification. Go back 20 years to the movie "Sneakers," and the big heist hinged on a tape recorder beating voice identification. People leave fingerprints all over the place. We show our faces in public. There's plenty of opportunities for physical identity to be replicated.
“My password is in my head, and if I'm careful when I’m typing, I’ll stay the only one who knows it,” said Krissler, during a 2013 German-language interview discussing how the CCC had cracked the iPhone's fingerprint security.
But a critical component of Krissler's ruse (known as a spoof) had been thwarted by researchers years before – the materials used to make the fingerprint. Many popular fingerprint scanners have been slow to adopt a fix. And while manufacturers lag in picking up the last generation of attacks, attackers have beaten – and been defeated by – generations of cutting edge anti-spoofing technology.
It's a cat and mouse game. And you are the mouse.
“People need to realize: biometrics is not secret,” says Clarkson University Prof. Stephanie Schuckers, director the multiuniversity, federally funded biometrics project Center for Identity Technology Research. “Your fingerprints are not a secret. Your face is obviously not a secret.”
The success of biometrics, says Dr. Shuckers and slew of other researchers in the field, depends on meeting an unending supply of new threats with better and better forms of “liveness detection,” determining whether or not the thing that looks like a fingerprint is connected to you.
“Liveness detection means taking advantage of fakes being fake,” she says.
Companies slow to learn from vulnerabilities
In 2002, cryptographer Tsutomu Matsumoto first demonstrated how anyone who could make a dessert could beat a fingerprint scanner. His team at Yokohama National University replicated fingerprints using gelatin.
Fingerprint scanners detect fingerprints the same way a cellphone knows a finger is touching the screen – the ability of human skin to hold a tiny electric charge. But gelatin, the basic substance of Jell-O and Gummy Bears, has similar properties. Mr. Matsumoto etched molds of fingerprints he lifted off of glass using the type of circuit board kit anyone could buy at Radio Shack and the “gummy fingerprint” was born.
Gummy fingerprints brought to the forefront the problem Krissler continues to exploit, creating a new focus on liveness detection research. Fingerprint scanners can now be designed to analyze pores, sweat, heartbeat, vein placement, and many other mechanisms of determining whether or not their looking at gelatin or any other not-living print.
But much of that advanced research and science isn't found in the most widely used fingerprint scanners on the market. After Apple released its fingerprint scanning iPhone 5s in late 2013, the Chaos Computer Club beat the technology using the decade-old gummy fingerprint attack. The same attack still works on the iPhone 6.
“What’s frustrating on the part of insiders is the reluctance to publicly discuss the problems,” says Mark Cornet, chief operating officer of NexID Biometrics, a fingerprint-based identification company cofounded and healmed by Shuckers. “We don’t have 100 percent security, but we have huge advances that don’t get used unless we admit the need.”
Until that happens, companies such as Apple that promote biometrics and its many detractors will appear to be having two different conversations.
Some security consultants refuse to recommend biometrics to clients. Dave Aitel, chief executive officer of Immunity Inc., wrote piece for USA Today entitled “Why biometrics don't work” (the answer, he said, was that biometric passwords could never be reset if stolen). Nima Dezhkam, a consultant at Compass Security, is equally against a biometric-only world, worrying that “as a primary authentication method, weaknesses are more exposed.”
Meanwhile, Apple's website raves: "Your fingerprint is one of the best passcodes in the world."
This is not to harp on Apple, which declined to comment on this story. Gummy prints have fooled Samsung phones, too. In 2013, a Brazilian doctor was caught using silicone fingerprints to sign his friends in to work. In 2009, a $45 million dollar fingerprint scanning system at the Tokyo airport used to prevent blacklisted passengers from reentry was defeated by a South Korean woman who put clear tape over her fingers. In 2005, a Malaysian car thief successfully circumvented a cars’ fingerprint-based security system by chopping off its owners' finger.
Nor is this to harp on fingerprint scanning. A team of scientists from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and West Virginia University successfully reconstructed irises in 2012. Nguyen Minh Duc of the Hanoi University of Technology bypassed facial recognition programs on Lenovo, Asus, and Toshiba laptops using photographs in 2009. Researchers adapted to that new threat with techniques like requiring blinking, and this year Nesli Erdogmus and Sebastien Marcel of the Idiap Research Institute bypassed those methods with 3D-printed masks.
This is to harp on the promise of invulnerability when there is money at stake.
“We know large banks are currently being attacked [by hackers] 20,000 times a day,” says Mr. Dezhkam. “If there is money in attacking biometrics, people will attack biometrics."
To catch a spoof
“Gelatin is great – its only drawback is shelf life,” says NexID COO Cornet. “But when I really want to scare potential clients, I’ll take out an iPhone and spoof a fingerprint using latex paint.”
Wood glue will also work – Krissler of the Chaos Computer Club is a fan. Or Silly Putty. Or certain waxes.
None of these attacks will work on the liveness detection software NexID develops to work with other companies' scanners. NexID uses machine learning to detect the difference between fake prints and real ones. But being able to thwart a wide array of threats only happens through continuously training their program each time a new vulnerability arises.
It takes six to eight weeks for the company to adapt to new threats, most of which is impossible to speed up. The brunt of the work comes from wrangling test subjects to donate fingerprints and manufacturing the false ones the computer will be trained to differentiate the authentic prints from. It takes 1,000 sets of fingerprints – half that will work, half to simulate attackers trying to break the system – for their program to learn the difference.
The most recent advances in fingerprint spoofing, says Cornet, the NexID chief operating officer, have come in improvements to the molds that set fake fingerprints. Today, inexpensive 3D scanning technology can create detailed molds quickly and accurately.
“In fact, we can imagine 3D printed digits infused with liquid to mimic the composition of human skin,” he says.
But even though NexID can adapt more quickly to spoofs, getting those solutions to consumer devices can take longer. Manufacturers have taken more than a decade to adapt to gummy prints.
“A hardware solution for gummy fingerprints, when you’re talking about a smartphone, might require different components, a thicker case and more cost,” says Dr. Ross of Michigan State.
Occasionally, says Cornet, the delay is an advanced case of manufacturers ignoring problems until something big, such as the Chaos Computer Club, forces them to deal with the consequences.
They are starting to take notice, he says. "The sensor manufacturers that wouldn’t take our phone calls two years ago are calling us now."
Are you even worth spoofing?
Passwords are strong when they are difficult to guess. By that standard, biometrics are amazing – no one can guess your password. That doesn't mean they don't know where to find it.
“When people use passwords, attackers try to steal passwords to get access,” says Dezhkam. “When they use biometrics, the focus turns to you.”
Hacking a person takes a lot more effort than cutting and pasting a password from a compromised database. Successful attacks require some amount of direct contact (even if it's just through Krissler's photo lens tailing you). Are you even worth spoofing?
For high value targets, biometrics alone may never be enough. They'll need many layers of security. And the same may be true for people who worry about the ever-changing landscape of threats. For others, especially the third of cellphone users who don't employ any kind of security, Apple's fingerprint technology may strike the right balance of security and convenience.
“The notion of security isn't scientifically precise,” says Arun Ross, a current Michigan State professor and member of the West Virginia team that first demonstrated how reverse engineer a fake iris. "We could have a method that was entirely secure, and people would still prefer what was most convenient."For the low cost of a giant carton of oats, I was sold on switching up my morning routine. Here's what happened when I swapped my eggs for oatmeal every day for a month:
I found out exactly how I like my oatmeal.
That is, with sliced banana, cinnamon, a few raisins, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter, a bit of vanilla, and a light drizzle of maple syrup. For a while I was mashing my banana and cooking it in with the oats, but I quickly learned that process spelled disaster for the bottoms of my saucepans. ( Avoid these 6 other common oatmeal mistakes.) Sometimes I'd switch it up with chopped nuts, unsweetened shredded coconut, and cocoa powder or chocolate chips on top—or Nutella swirled in on Friday after a particularly exhausting week.
It took me about two weeks to discover precisely how I liked my oatmeal, and the right combo made all the difference. For me, honey or brown sugar instead of maple syrup tasted far too sweet, and milk choice was absolutely crucial (more on that next). On the weekend, I tested some savory variations with shredded sharp cheddar and leftover veggies, but I always fell back on my usual during the week.
Photograph courtesy of Leah Wynalek
I switched to whole milk.
My mom raised me on skim, and now I usually stock my fridge with almond milk and save the dairy for baking. But in pursuit of the perfect bowl of oatmeal I started experimenting with different milks: whole, 2%, coconut, almond, even hemp. Despite all the mixed messages about how good or bad regular milk is for you, I've embraced whole milk as the Holy Grail of creamy oats. Nothing else compares. Lucky for me, mounting evidence suggests full-fat dairy products are actually less likely to make you gain weight over time than low-fat dairy.
I started skipping my morning snack.
My protein-packed breakfast kept me fuller far longer than my usual smoothie or runny egg over veggies. Normally I start hankering for a snack around 10 a.m., but my oatmeal bowls kept me satisfied until closer to noon, and sometimes even longer than that when I hit the gym and pushed lunchtime till 1 p.m. Sure, some days I still needed carrots and hummus earlier on, but I noticed a major difference in the frequency of my morning hunger pangs—especially once I switched to whole milk. ( Here's what happened when one writer made breakfast her biggest meal of the day.
Photograph courtesy of Leah Wynalek
I felt off when I ditched my oats.
Full disclosure: I skipped my daily bowl some weekend mornings when I was traveling, out for brunch, or using my new waffle maker instead. While I was happy for a change in taste, I missed the consistency of my new routine (like knowing when I'd get hangry for lunch or need to take my morning bathroom break). Still, Saturday morning is too full of possibilities for the same-old-same.
I became a total creature of habit.
Eating the same meal every morning established a breakfast routine that I didn't have before. I looked forward to sitting down and reading a chapter of a book between peanut buttery bites of oats. Not only that, I wanted my oatmeal the same way and got a little grumpy if they didn't turn out as consistent as usual. (If you're bored with oatmeal, try these 4 savory grain breakfasts that aren't oats. ).
When I started this oatmeal ritual, a friend asked, "How are you going to survive eating that glop day after day?" Now I can honestly say I kind of loved it—and I'll likely eat it most weekday mornings from here on out because it's so cheap and easy to prepare. I've often scoffed at people who pack the same lunch all the time, baffled they're not completely bored, but now I think there's something to forming a food habit that works for your body.Last month an experiment conducted five years ago at Otago University which involved strapping live pigs to a surgical table and shooting them in the head to study so-called back spatter made international headlines.
Photo: 123rf
So how common are animal experiments in New Zealand; is it really necessary for tens of thousands of animals to die each year at our universities in the name of science; and, how do you weigh up the benefits of the experiments against the rights of the animals?
Joining Noelle McCarthy to discuss these and other questions are: Dr Virginia Williams, chair of the National Animals Ethics Committee; Hans Kriek, the executive director of animal rights group SAFE, and Dr Mike King, a lecturer in animal and environmental ethics at Otago University.In the first exclusive interview following her impeachment, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that her unelected successor, installed President Michel Temer, has “confessed to the coup” against her. Rousseff was referring to controversial public remarks delivered by Temer last week in which he explicitly stated that the impeachment process was initiated due to Rousseff’s refusal to accept his party’s neoliberal economic plan, rather than the alleged budgetary manipulations that served as the stated justification for impeachment. Temer’s remarks were first reported by The Intercept Brasil last Thursday.
Watch Rousseff’s statement:
Also, there were those with their own plans who wanted something else: “We will implement a political program that was not approved by the ballot box, a different political plan.” And this is being confessed, there’s something curious about this coup, they confess the coup. Two days later. They’re confessing. Last confession came from the illegitimate and usurper president, currently in office, who said the following: “We came up with the impeachment to implement the program ‘Bridge to the Future.’” Well, the program “Bridge to the Future,” that takes away labor rights, takes away social rights, privatizes, and sells lands to foreigners, this program was not approved by the ballot box. So, this is another reason behind the coup.
The interview, broadcast on Tuesday evening, was conducted by the veteran journalist Bob Fernandes for the public television station TVE Bahia.
The frankness of Temer’s statement, delivered to an audience of U.S. financiers and foreign policy elites at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) in New York City, stunned many people, although virtually none of the large Brazilian media — which united in support of impeachment — has yet reported the remarks. The economic proposal, which outlines a series of neoliberal reforms such as privatization of state assets and cuts to social programs, was introduced in 2015, when Temer’s party, the PMDB, worked in a coalition with Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT).
Watch Temer’s statement here:
During the same event in New York, these measures were described in greater detail by the new finance minister, Henrique Meirelles. The audience was comprised of AS/COA members and guests from collaborating organizations: the American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil and Brazil Investments and Business, known as BRAiN.
At the end of the presentation, the audience had the opportunity to ask only two questions to the finance minister, both illustrating well the concerns presented by Rousseff in her interview with TVE. An automobile industry representative asked when foreigners “will be allowed to acquire land in Brazil,” and a unnamed attendee asked about “plans that the government has to manage the potential social unrest of these measures that will affect the pockets of every Brazilian.”
The unexpected declaration by Temer was reported by several independent media outlets but was completely ignored by all the traditional media, with the exception of Exame and Carta Capital magazines and the left-leaning Jornal do Brasil newspaper. One person who seems excited about the neoliberal agenda of Brazil’s newly installed government is U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who, in Brasília yesterday, expressed great optimism about the economic path on which the country is now being placed.SpinVFX released the VFX breakdowns from Season 3. Enjoy.
Official Press Release.
Over the Wall
Aug, 9 2013
Spin announces their work on Season 3 of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
“We thank HBO and the VFX Production team for the opportunity to work on such a challenging and rewarding production as Game of Thrones. We are extremely proud of the work that resulted from the teams effort and from being synergistically inspired by Steve Kullback and Joe Bauer” says Neishaw Ali, Spin President and Visual Effects Executive Producer (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn)
Five-time Emmy nominated VFX Supervisor Doug Campbell and three-time Emmy nominated Supervising Producer, Luke Groves led Spin’s team to deliver over 200 shots for the season, including Mance Rayder’s Camp, the Direwolves compositing sequences in the Northern Forest, CG crows, the 3D Unsullied Army, the Twins matte painting and The Wall 3D environment.
Jon Snow, Ygritte and the Wildlings climb the Wall, triggering a devastating ice slide. Comprised of over 80 shots, Spin created a 700′ ft wall, a couple miles in length (real world scale) that would hold up from any distance and any angle. Spin then simulated the entire ice slide event, shooting it from all cameras set up in the sequence that created a sense of scale and continuity over the sequence, playing out the action in real time.
“The Ice Wall was one of the most compelling sequences for us. The 3D build provided the camera range required to deliver the drama and fear of the climb, and of course, the realism of the ice slide”, says Doug Campbell, VFX Supervisor (The Borgias, Jack Reacher)
The Executive Producers of Game of Thrones are David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Carolyn Strauss, Frank Doelger, Bernadette Caulfield; Co-Executive Producers, Guymon Casady, Vince Gerardis, George R.R. Martin, Vanessa Taylor; Produced by Chris Newman, Greg Spence.
Special thank you to Holly Schiffer, VP of Post Production, HBO, Joe Bauer, VFX Supervisor, Steve Kullback, VFX Producer, and Adam Chazen, VFX Coordinator.Subjects
A total of 390 DNA samples derived from c.5266dupC carrier families were genotyped, representing 245 families. For each participating family, a sample from one mutation carrier (index carrier, n=245) and available relatives (n=145) were obtained from collaborating research centers in Greece, Slovakia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Russia, France, Poland, Denmark and Canada. All participants provided informed consent for use of their genetic material in research as well as self-reported population group membership. A summary of the participating subjects is presented in Table 1.
Table 1: Mutation carrier families genotyped Full size table
Genotyping
We initially genotyped a subset of 130 index cases and 75 of their relatives for 15 microsatellite markers ( s hort t andem r epeat markers, or STRs) and performed a series of preliminary analyses. Characteristics of the region studied and markers analyzed are presented in Table 2. From these initial analyses it was evident that some markers were too far from BRCA1 to contribute useful information, whereas others were in partial linkage disequilibrium with nearby markers and provided mostly duplicate information. Thus, we selected a subset of seven STR markers covering 5.2 cM in 6.98 Mb of DNA that were highly heterozygous and which captured the haplotype diversity. These seven markers were then genotyped in a further 185 samples that were obtained subsequent to the original data collection and analysis. Genotyping data are presented in Supplementary Table 1. All genotyping was performed by deCODE genetics (Reykjavik, Iceland).
Table 2: Microsatellite markers genotyped in carrier families Full size table
Age estimates using the maximum likelihood method
In order to estimate the age of the mutation (or more precisely, the number of generations since the m ost r ecent c ommon a ncestor, MRCA), we used the method that was first used to estimate the age of several BRCA1 mutations including c.5266dupC6 and was then extended and applied to BRCA2 mutations.7 This method uses maximum likelihood and allows for both recombination and mutational events at the marker loci as means of altering a presumed ancestral haplotype. Phased haplotypes were used if these could be inferred from available family data; otherwise, all possible haplotypes were constructed from multilocus genotype data and weighted according to their probability. For each value of G (the number of G enerations since the MRCA), the relative likelihood that each haplotype is descended from the ancestral haplotype through mutation and recombination is calculated compared with the likelihood that it is a totally independent haplotype (ie, an independent recurrent c.5266dupC mutation on a different haplotype background). The value of G which maximizes this likelihood is obtained through iterative search. In all, 95% support intervals were constructed by identifying those points GL and GU where the likelihood differed from the maximum by 0.86 (corresponding to a χ2 likelihood ratio statistic of 3.84, eg, P=0.05). In order to examine the likely genetic history of the c.5266dupC mutation, we analyzed separately each of several defined subgroups in which a sufficient number of samples were available for analysis: (a) AJ; (b) Russian (St Petersburg); (c) Polish (Szczecin and Paris only); (d) French; (e) Danish; (f) Czech/Slovak; (g) Latvia; (h) other.
Assumed genetic map
The recombination rates between markers were assumed to be those estimated in Kong et al.8 Physical positions of the STRs and SNPs were those from the Human Reference sequence, build 3.7. For markers present on the deCODE map, we used the genetic positions in centimorgans as reported there, whereas for those not on the deCODE map, we estimated the genetic position from the proportion of physical distance between the known markers and then translated this to the genetic scale. This has the effect of using locally defined relationships between physical and genetic distance and thus can accommodate the reported recombination suppression in this region.9
Marker mutation rates
As a baseline we used the rates for the six dinucleotide and single tetranucleotide microsatellite markers as estimated from CEPH data by Weber and Wong10 of 0.0006 and 0.002, respectively, for a mutation of a single repeat unit. We assumed the probability of changes of n repeat units in a given meiosis was (0.0006 or 0.002)n for n=2,3,4 and that for more than four repeats was taken to be equal to that for four repeats units. Because of the imprecision of these rates (and model) we introduced another parameter into the likelihood and jointly estimated the number of generations and a multiplier of the assumed marker-mutation rates described above. Thus, to a certain extent, we let the data inform the proper marker mutation rates. In addition to the true underlying marker mutation rates, this also allows for potential genotyping errors to be accounted for in the model. We found that the best fit to our data was when the recombination rate was 2.75 × that of Weber and Wong.10
Allele frequencies
Our method uses marker allele frequencies in the calculation of the likelihood (Supplementary Table 2). We estimated frequencies from the unlinked allele of the chromosomes in the sample. Because the AJ population often has different allele frequencies at many genetic markers, the AJ frequencies were separately estimated from a sample of 30 controls and used for the likelihood calculations of the AJ multi-locus genotype/haplotype data.
Age estimates using single markers method
In an attempt to corroborate age estimate results obtained using the maximum likelihood method described above, we also estimated the time since MCRA using four markers (D17S1299, D17S1801, D17S951 and D17S1861) analyzed individually in three populations (Czech/Slovak, Polish and Danes) where we had the largest number of families with known phase for the markers linked to the mutation. The single marker method was implemented as described previously in Greenwood et al.11 The Labuda correction for population-growth rate was assumed to be 1.5 and applied as previously described. Because this method does not consider marker mutations, which likely have a significant role in a region where there is documented recombination suppression such as BRCA1,9 this method will not be as well-suited to our dataset as the maximum likelihood method, but can nevertheless serve to test the robustness of our original estimates.UPDATED: Both Sleepy Hollow and Bones went up a tenth in the finals to a 3.5 and 2.3 18-49 rating, respectively. Sleepy Hollow now stands as Fox’s highest-rated fall drama premiere in 7 years, since Standoff in 2006.
PREVIOUS: That’s how the broadcast networks would want to begin the rollout of new shows, with a strong opening out of the gate. It came courtesy of Fox’s new drama Sleepy Hollow last night. The pilot, co-written by Alex Kurtzman & Bob Orci and directed by Len Wiseman, drew a 3.4/9 among adults 18-49. It edged Fox’s breakout midseason drama The Following (3.1 18-49 rating in the fast nationals, 3.2 in the finals) to post the highest drama debut rating since last September’s bow of NBC’s Revolution, which was buoyed by a big The Voice lead-in and a preview during the Summer Olympics. This marks Fox’s highest-rated fall drama premiere in six years. Sleepy Hollow, a contemporary take on the Headless Horseman tale, grew an impressive 55% from its lead-in, the season premiere of veteran Bones (2.2/7), which was in line with last year’s opener. Understandably, Sleepy Hollow dwarfed Fox’s drama premiere in the time slot last year, the long gone Mob Doctor (1.5/4). Like The Following and Revolution, Sleepy Hollow will likely add as much as 50% or more to its live ratings within the 7-day playback window.
Related: 2013-14 Broadcast Season Preview: Challenges The Networks Face This Fall
While the Sleepy Hollow debut gets us in a fall season mode, let’s not forget we’re officially in the final week of the summer TV season. CBS’ summer series Under The Dome wrapped its solid run on a high note (at least ratings wise, reactions from fans to the finale have not been as favorable), drawing 11.8 million viewers and a 2.8/8 in 18-49, up 33% in the demo from last week and the best 18-49 rating since July 29.
Ratings for ABC and NBC are slightly inflated (0.1-0.2 demo rating) because of local NFL pre-emptions. With that in mind, veteran Dancing With The Stars opened its 17th cycle with 3.2/9 in 18-49, up 28% from the premiere of the ill-fated all-star edition last fall and in line with the franchise’s spring debut. On NBC, Million Second Quiz managed a 1.1/3, down 35% from last Monday and even with last Thursday. The American Ninja Warriors finale (1.6/4) was down 6% from last week, and the Siberia closer (0.8/2) was up 33%. On The CW, the season finale of Breaking Pointe matched last week’s 0.2 18-49 rating."This means there will be more information put out to the public to scrutinize what public officials do and to debate matters of public interest."
"It's probably the most important decision the Supreme Court's ever decided on the law of libel," said Star lawyer Paul Schabas. "It modernizes our laws to better reflect freedom of speech."
It is a huge legal victory for the Toronto Star, which along with a broad coalition of Canadian media outlets, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, had called for just such a defence.
The new defence, dubbed "responsible communication" by the country's top court, gives greater protection to broadcasters, writers and bloggers who diligently try to verify the accuracy of information in their reports, even if every statement cannot later be proven to be true.
OTTAWA – In a landmark ruling on freedom of expression, the Supreme Court of Canada has created a new legal defence to libel lawsuits that would shield journalists who fairly and responsibly report stories of public interest.
"Freewheeling debate on matters of public interest is to be encouraged and must not be thwarted by 'overly solicitous regard for personal reputation,'" said Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing for a unanimous court.
The decision |
olene had tried to hide from him.
"I would get beaten or raped, or starved or screamed at in front of people," she said. "I only did it a couple of times," she said. "It could be $5, it didn’t matter."
To Jolene, the only thing that did matter was getting out of this life. And one night the stars seemed to align. After a botched ear piercing, Jolene had a serious infection. Darrell dropped her off at an ER in Boston. She was alone. Here it was, Jolene’s chance to escape.
"I’m 99 percent sure they asked me, do you feel safe at home and all those questions," she said.
That sent Jolene’s mind spinning and her heart racing. First she was upset, angry at the question’s routine tone.
"You are not asking me because you care. You are asking because you can fill out your little sticker and stick that s**t in my chart and say you did your job," she said.
She also doubted doctors and nurses knew how to keep her safe, knowing Darrell could materialize in a second.
"Are you going to keep me safe like no matter how bad it is? Like this person could be violent, this person could have a gun. Like you need to be prepared for it all," she said.
Plus, Jolene had her own plan. All that running had taught her to stay a few steps ahead and that night at least, she had nothing.
"Even if I did get away, where was I going? Where were they going to put me," she said. "Were they going to call my mom? There wasn’t a lot of options for me, being someone that really had nobody."
So when Jolene was asked did she feel safe she said yes. Yes, she did feel safe.
Looking back, Jolene knows no murmured magic question could have broken the spell that night.
But she wonders if someone had seen that out-of-control ear infection for the suspicious clue that it was, maybe somehow things would have been different.
It’s theoretical. Nobody did. And the 19-year-old teenager in sweatpants went back outside, where Darrell was waiting.
***
That was nearly five years ago. Jolene did escape, eventually. Her pimp Darrell Graham was charged with human trafficking in 2012 and went to federal prison, in part because of her testimony. Jolene changed her name to Bella Brown, and she is now on the board of advisors at the Freedom Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, which provides medical, mental and dental care for trafficking survivors. She spoke with Marketplace -- and gave permission to use her real name -- to raise awareness about the issue of trafficking.
We've collected more resources related to human trafficking, particularly in health care, here.The Olympics are all about upsets - you just wish they don't happen to you and your nation. On Sunday night in London, one of the bigger ones in recent Olympic history occurred when the seemingly unbeatable Australian men's 4x100m freestyle relay team did not just fail to win gold, but left the pool without a medal of any colour.
Led by James Magnussen, the fastest man in water, the Australians were unbackable favourites to win the gold. Seemingly, the only matter up for debate was who would take out silver and bronze. But when the wall was touched at the end of eight laps by Australia's number four, James Roberts, his nation had no medal and his team's mettle was being questioned.
Shocker... James Magnussen sits in disbelief after Australia finished outside the medals in the 4x100m relay. Credit:Steve Christo
It was clear very early - to those who knew what was supposed to happen - that Australia were in trouble. Magnussen led off, as he had when the team won the world title in Shanghai last year. But unlike in 2011, his pace was missing. It was as if he was swimming in board shorts.Twitter is about to cut up to 336 jobs out of its 4,100 employees working for the company around the world. It represents around 8.2 percent of the company’s global workforce. Jack Dorsey, who just became full-time CEO again, shared the news in an email sent to the Twitter team. He also shared this email with the SEC.
Re/code reported today’s layoffs last week, saying that engineers would be the first people impacted by the layoffs. In particular, Dorsey wants a leaner company in order to iterate more quickly on the product.
The company launched Moments last week, a new tab in the mobile app for casual users. It lets you scan through stories. Each story is a compilation of the most important tweets, pictures and videos on a particular topic. This lean-back experience is apparently only the first one. “We launched the first of these experiences last week with Moments,” Dorsey wrote in his email.
The structure of the company is going to change a bit after the layoffs. While the engineering team will be smaller, it will still represent the biggest team of the company.
Twitter has a growth problem. It seems like the company is stuck when it comes to monthly active users. While 316 million active users is a huge number, the stock market is looking for growing companies. And this is probably one of the main concerns for the board, as well.
Twitter shares (NYSE:TWTR) are now up 1.74 percent in the premarket compared to yesterday’s closing price of $28.74.
Made some tough but necessary decisions that enable Twitter to move with greater focus and reinvest in our growth. http://t.co/BWd7EiGAF2 — jack (@jack) October 13, 2015
Here’s Jack Dorsey’s email:(Life Magazine) Midwestern futurism A look at the designs of Bruce Goff, an American architect whose work inspired the likes of Frank Gehry
“Architect Bruce Goff, one of the few US architects whom Frank Lloyd Wright considers creative, scorns houses that are ‘boxes with little holes’.” So starts a 1951 Life Magazine article on the Ford House in Aurora, Illinois, one of Goff’s many astounding and imaginative designs that are some of the most structurally forward-thinking of mid-century modern architecture.
Quonset ribs form the Ford House’s birdcage dome, with interior circles looping through with bedroom wings, supported by coal walls decorated with ordinary marbles and an iridescent glass cullet. Cullet is a hardened deposit that forms in glass furnaces and has to be periodically cleaned out. A great innovator who found many ways to elevate found and discarded materials, Goff often used the luminescent cullet and it became something of a signature on his buildings by providing a light accent with an unusual organic texture. When the house for Albert and Ruth Van Sickle Ford was built, it was met with derision by the local community. The unwanted attention of lay architecture critics lead the couple to eventually put up a sign that read: “We don’t like your house either.”
That divisive nature of Goff’s work, coupled with the location of many of his completed design projects — most in rural or residential areas in the Midwest — has limited his work from receiving the recognition it deserves. Goff’s name has faded into the geeky obscurity of architectural reference books and he doesn’t have a centrally located and breathtaking showcase building similar to his friend and mentor Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum to keep him in the public eye — the closest to a Goff landmark is the Pavilion for Japanese Art at the Los Angeles Museum of Art, which was completed in 1988, six years after his death, and is his final work. When the LA structure was unveiled, the New York Times architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, wrote that he hoped that it “will surely bring Goff’s flamboyant architecture to a wider public than has ever seen it before” and added:
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“There is a long tradition of highly personal, idiosyncratic, even wild, architecture in Los Angeles; this is one of the only cityscapes in America in which Goff’s expressionistic forms fit right in. In Los Angeles, nothing looks all that bizarre.”
Yet Goff’s bold gestural designs and masterful manipulation of geometric form still inspire, and his influence is particularly felt in the work of advocates for outside-the-box forms like Frank Gehry. Even if much of his best architecture has been lost to exceedingly strange circumstances, including arson, vandalism and deliberate destruction, his other buildings are often in perilous condition and may be lost as well.
Growing up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, I saw traces of Bruce Goff’s imagination everywhere, from the Redeemer Lutheran Church where I went on Sundays, its walls pocked by blue glass cullet and diamond windows, with massive arrows jutting up from the entrance overhangs as if shot down from a giant’s bow. In the city park is his airy 1963 Playtower, with a spiral staircase leading to an observation sphere (although the door has long been locked due to deterioration). The most astounding, however, was Shin’enKan: ”The House of the Far Away Heart,” an intricately detailed architecture collage of glass mosaics, goose feather ceilings, a white carpet sunken living room, secret passageways, growths of glass cullet, pagoda-like angles and interior and exterior ponds. It was designed in 1956 for Joe Price originally as a bachelor’s pad, then expanded after he married Etsuko Price, and shows how some of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma were taking risks on Goff in a sort of modern architecture patronage, knowing that whatever he created for them would be utterly unique.
Ledbetter House in Norman, Oklahoma. Photograph from 1948 by Michael Rougier. (via Life Magazine
Goff lived in Bartlesville after being forced to retire from the University of Oklahoma where he was department chair at the architecture school, which he had invigorated as a center for avant-garde thought on design. The exact reasons for his forced exile are still unclear, but are definitely linked to the fact that he was gay. He was accused of endangering the morals of a minor, although it is fair to say in 1950s Oklahoma, a state which remains highly conservative to this day, that any lifestyle outside the “norms” was likely to cause some hateful prejudice and irrational fear for his young students’ “morals.”
Bruce Goff in his office at the University of Oklahoma, under a ceiling made of tumbleweeds. 1954 photograph by Philip B. Welch. (via Art Institute of Chicago
Goff was born in Alton, Kansas, in 1904, although he would mostly grow up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he got his start in architecture, apprenticing at Rush, Endacott & Rush while still a teenager. His first significant contribution was in his early 20s, working on the Prairie School Art Deco wonder that is the Boston Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. He would never obtain any formal architecture degree, although he would gain experience in the construction battalion of the US Navy during WWII, where he learned to scrape by on unconventional and discarded materials.
In 1947, he was appointed OU’s department chair, where he drove his students to respect their creative impulses, often referencing Gertrude Stein’s idea of the “continuous present,” using it to emphasize the fluidity and flexibility of ideas, introducing masters of classical music along with the ideas of architecture. ”He never told students what to do; he led them back to their own sense of self and let them work it out from within,” wrote former student Philip B. Welch in his 1996 book Goff on Goff: Conversations and Lectures.
Inside Shin’enKan in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Photograph from 1956. (copyright the Inside Shin’enKan in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Photograph from 1956. (copyright the Art Institute of Chicago
Yet the most lamentable loss may be the Bavinger House in Norman, Oklahoma, arguably Goff’s masterpiece, which was destroyed just this past year under very unusual circumstances.
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The gravity-defying Bavinger House was designed as a logarithmic spiral of sandstone and glass cullet around a steel pole, with all its rooms suspended by cables above a sitting area with a pond and plants, the same types of plants that grew just outside the walls of the house, blurring the line between interior and exterior. It was designed for Nancy and Eugene Bavinger, both art faculty at OU, and completed in 1955, at which time it was widely celebrated by both popular and architectural publications, even going on to receive the 25-Year-Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1987.
Design for the Bavinger House. (Copyright the Design for the Bavinger House. (Copyright the Art Institute of Chicago
In recent years, the house had suddenly opened for visitors, but that all ended in June of 2011. At first there were reports that a spring storm had damaged the home, bending the spire at a 45 degree angle. However, it soon came out that it was likely Bob Bavinger, the son of Eugene and Nancy, who had himself destroyed the house. A story on This Land Press from November 2011 documents thoroughly the series of shocking events, including when journalists from Oklahoma City’s News 9 showed up and were met with gunfire. Apparently Bavinger had threatened people associated with the OU School of Architecture with its destruction, possibly fearing they would take ownership of it like they had with Shin’enKan in Bartlesville. In the Oklahoma Gazette on June 29, 2011, Bavinger is quoted as saying, in regards to tearing down the house: “It was the only solution that we had. We got backed into a corner.”
A year later, and the strange story continues, as the Bavinger House website has returned after disappearing following last year’s controversy. Apparently a “filmed interview with the son of the Bavinger House” is coming soon, and the news section has some telling unlinked stories such as “the promise made to Eugene Bavinger,” “the past and current political situation,” and “the House will never return under its current political situation.” The last one suggests the home is gone, but still exists somehow in pieces, dismantled as many suspected, although it would be impossible to rebuild it exactly how it was, and likely outside the resources of the current owner.
The only time I saw the Bavinger House, I got a strange sense of unease. It was in December 2010, and I remember me and my brother driving down a narrow rural road through a woods, past several identical old cars lined up under the trees, with other junk and and old house appearing like any hard-on-its-times off-road Oklahoma home. A man approached our car, but we didn’t get out, there was something odd about the place, although I snapped one photo from the window. I do regret not venturing inside to see its curious organic interior, but I was also not completely surprised to hear of its unfortunate and unusual fate.
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Hopewell Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
Thankfully, there are still many buildings by Goff that can be saved, although their deterioration would require some serious funding and concentrated preservation efforts. One of these is theHopewell Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, designed to reference a teepee and built by volunteer members of the congregation after Goff’s design using discarded oil field pipes. (Goff’s buildings, including the Bavinger House, were often built by the hands of their owners under Goff’s direction.) This past winter while I was visiting Oklahoma City, I decided to finally see it. It happened that the pastor of the church was there while I was taking photos and was incredibly generous in allowing me to see the interior and also describe how it was in its original glory (these photos on PrairieMod from 1959 show how dilapidated it has become, due to a roof leak that is beyond the financial resources of the congregation to fix).
Dome of Hopewell Baptist Church (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) Dome of Hopewell Baptist Church (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
Inside Hopewell Baptist Church, looking towards baptismal font (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
The church was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. Looking at the broken floors and open ceiling, it obviously needs a lot of work, yet even in that state it is awe-inspiring. The oculus at the peak of the dome warmly illuminates the room, a perfect example of how light was as much a material for Goff as anything physical. It must have been very impressive to be under the soaring dome when it was in better shape, and hopefully it can get the funding it needs before it goes too far beyond repair.
Grave of Bruce Goff (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
Even as I’ve moved out of Oklahoma, Goff and his work continue to linger in my mind, and I long for some of his whimsical experimentation in the sterile, uniform buildings that crowd the country’s cities and towns. Goff recognized that the spaces people inhabit can be challenging and still livable, that four walls don’t always have to make a room, that a room doesn’t necessarily need walls at all.
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When I was visiting a friend in Chicago, we were walking in the historic Graceland Cemetery, when I saw a gleam of aquamarine glass on a small headstone, the same glass I immediately recognized from Goff, a glass that is simultaneously beautiful and broken, both smooth and sharp, and like his work never exactly the same. But why would he be buried in Chicago? He wasn’t even on the cemetery map, losing out in the architects category to Louis Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. I later learned the glass was salvaged from the scorched remains of Shin’enKan, and Goff’s own ashes were only finally buried in 2000, nearly 20 years after his death. He had no immediate family, his estate going to Joe Price, and a burial just never happened. He was finally interred through the efforts of a former apprentice, Wayne Gustafson, who selected Chicago as the hub of Midwestern architecture and the site of some of Goff’s significant works. Gustafson designed the tombstone that perfectly reflects Goff’s aesthetic.
The fact that the destruction of the Bavinger House didn’t make national news — even local news appear to have jettisoned the fact down the endless hole of the 24 hour newscycle — and that his standing structures continue to rot, does not bode well for the future of Goff’s work. However, the rural and residential nature of much of his architecture may be a blessing in disguise, as there are still many people living in his homes who love and care for the unique places. Beyond the physical remnants of his singular career, I also hope that current and future architecture students will stumble upon his organic modern architecture and be intrigued or inspired by the odd buildings that look like they may have landed in the red dirt of Oklahoma thinking it was Mars.Here is a list of phone, fax, and email address for all US senators: United States Senate 110th Congress Phone, Fax, Email Addresses
Here is a second List Of Senate Contacts. I am told this list is more current. It was used to formulate the fax contact table below.
Here is the Complete List of Email Addresses and Fax Numbers for US Congress and Governors.
Here is a comma separated list for those of you with access to to a program that allows block faxing. You may need to modify that list slightly for your application. The bulk of the work is done.
Formatted Fax List
12022243416,Sen. Richard Shelby
12022243149,Sen. Jeff Sessions
12022242354,Sen. Ted Stevens
12022245301,Sen. Lisa Murkowski
12022242207,Sen. Jon Kyl
12022282862,Sen. John McCain
12022281371,Sen. Blanch Lincoln
12022280908,Sen. Mark Pryor
12022282382,Sen. Barbara Boxer
12022283954,Sen. Dianne Feinstein
12022246471,Sen. Wayne Allard
12022285036,Sen. Ken Salazar
12022241083,Sen. Christopher Dodd
12022249750,Sen. Joeseph Lieberman
12022240139,Sen. Joseph Biden
12022282190,Sen. Thomas Carper
12022282183,Sen. Bill Nelson
12022285171,Sen. Mel Martinez
12022240103,Sen. Saxby Chambliss
12022280724,Sen. Johnny Isakson
12022242126,Sen. Daniel Akaka
12022246747,Sen. Daniel Inouye
12022281067,Sen. Larry Craig
12022281375,Sen. Michael Crapo
12022280400,Sen. Dick Durbin
12022285417,Sen. Barack Obama
12022281377,Sen. Evan Bayh
12022280360,Sen. Richard Lugar
12022246020,Sen. Charles Grassley
12022249369,Sen. Tom Harkin
12022281265,Sen. Sam Brownback
12022243514,Sen. Pat Roberts
12022281373,Sen. Jim Bunning
12022242499,Sen. Mitch McConnell
12022249735,Sen. Mary Landrieu
12022285061,Sen. David Vitter
12022242693,Sen. Susan Collins
12022241946,Sen. Olympia Snowe
12022248858,Sen. Barbara Mikulski
12022241651,Sen. Ben Cardin
12022242417,Sen. Edward Kennedy
12022248525,Sen. John Kerry
12022280325,Sen. Debbie Stabenow
12022241388,Sen. Carl Levin
12022241152,Sen. Norm Coleman
12022282186,Sen. Amy Klobuchar
12022249450,Sen. Thad Cochran
12022242262,Sen. Roger Wicker
12022248149,Sen. Christopher Bond
12022286326,Sen. Claire McCaskill
12022244700,Sen. Max Baucus
12022248594,Sen. John Tester
12022245213,Sen. Chuck Hagel
12022280012,Sen. Ben Nelson
12022282193,Sen. John Ensign
12022247327,Sen. Harry Reid
12022244952,Sen. Judd Gregg
12022284131,Sen. John Sununu
12022282197,Sen. Robert Menendez
12022284054,Sen. Frank Lautenberg
12022242852,Sen. Jeff Bingaman
12022283261,Sen. Pete Domenici
12022280282,Sen. Hillary Clinton
12022283027,Sen. Charles Schumer
12022241100,Sen. Elizabeth Dole
12022282981,Sen. Richard Burr
12022247776,Sen. Kent Conrad
12022241193,Sen. Byron Dorgan
12022280514,Sen. Maria Cantwell
12022255893,Sen. Patty Murray
Metro Fax
I have an existing email fax number but I opened up a second account just now for purpose of faxing every senator in the US. If a senator is missing from the list it because they did not have a listed fax number. I did not count them up.
I chose to go with MetroFax. There are others services, but 1000 pages a month for $12.95 was the best overall deal I could find. There is a $10 activation fee, but the second month is also free. If you elect to do the same, mention my name and I will get a free month.
First Name,Last Name,Company,Voice Number,Fax Number
Congress,B. Evan Bayh (S),Congress,2022281377,2022281377
Congress,Barack Obama (S),Congress,2022285417,2022285417
Congress,Barbara Boxer (S),Congress,2022240454,2022240454
Congress,Barbara Mikulski (S),Congress,2022248858,2022248858
Congress,Ben Nelson (S),Congress,2022280012,2022280012
Congress,Bill Nelson (S),Congress,2022282183,2022282183
Congress,Blanche Lincoln (S),Congress,2022281371,2022281371
Congress,Byron Dorgan (S),Congress,2022241193,2022241193
Congress,Carl Levin (S),Congress,2022241388,2022241388
Congress,Charles Grassley (S),Congress,2022246020,2022246020
Congress,Charles Schumer (S),Congress,2022283027,2022283027
Congress,Christopher Dodd (S),Congress,2022241083,2022241083
Congress,Chuck Hagel (S),Congress,2022245213,2022245213
Congress,Daniel Inouye (S),Congress,2022246747,2022246747
Congress,Daniel Akaka (S),Congress,2022242126,2022242126
Congress,Debbie Stabenow (S), Congress,2022280325,2022280325
Congress,Dianne Feinstein (S),Congress,2022283954,2022283954
Congress,Edward Kennedy (S),Congress,2022242417,2022242417
Congress,Elizabeth Dole (S),Congress,2022241100,2022241100
Congress,Frank Lautenberg (S),Congress,2022284054,2022284054
Congress,GeorgeVoinovich (S),Congress,6144697733,6144697733
Congress,Gordon H. Smith (S),Congress,2022283997,2022283997
Congress,Harry Reid (S),Congress,2022247327,2022247327
Congress,Herbert Kohl (S),Congress,2022249787,2022249787
Congress,Hillary Clinton (S),Congress,2022280282,2022280282
Congress,James Inhofe (S),Congress,2022280380,2022280380
Congress,Jeff Bingaman (S),Congress,2022242852,2022242852
Congress,Jeff Sessions (S),Congress,2022243149,2022243149
Congress,Jim Bunning (S),Congress,2022281373,2022281373
Congress,Jim Demint(S),Congress,2022285143,2022285143
Congress,John Cornyn (S),Congress,2022282856,2022282856
Congress,John E. Sununu (S),Congress,2022284131,2022284131
Congress,John Ensign (S),Congress,2022282193,2022282193
Congress,John F. Reed (S),Congress,2022244680,2022244680
Congress,John Forbes Kerry (S),Congress,2022248525,2022248525
Congress,John McCain (S),Congress,2022282862,2022282862
Congress,John R. Thune(S),Congress,2022285429,2022285429
Congress,John Warner (S),Congress,2022246295,2022246295
Congress,Johnny Isakson (S),Congress,2022280724,2022280724
Congress,Jon Kyl (S),Congress,2022242207,2022242207
Congress,Joseph Biden (S),Congress,2022240139,2022240139
Congress,Joseph Lieberman (S),Congress,2022249750,2022249750
Congress,Judd Gregg (S),Congress,2022244952,2022244952
Congress,Kay Hutchison (S),Congress,2022240776,2022240776
Congress,Ken Salazar (S),Congress,2022285036,2022285036
Congress,Kent Conrad (S),Congress,2022247776,2022247776
Congress,Lamar Alexander(S),Congress,2022283398,2022283398
Congress,Larry E. Craig (S),Congress,2022281067,2022281067
Congress,Lisa Murkowski (S),Congress,2022245301,2022245301
Congress,Maria Cantwell (S),Congress,2022280514,2022280514
Congress,Mark Pryor (S),Congress,2022280908,2022280908
Congress,Mary Landrieu (S),Congress,2022249735,2022249735
Congress,Mel Martinez (S),Congress,2022885171,2022885171
Congress,Michael D. Crapo (S),Congress,2022281375,2022281375
Congress,Michael Enzi (S),Congress,2022280359,2022280359
Congress,Mitch McConnell(S),Congress,2022242499,2022242499
Congress,Norm Coleman (S),Congress,2022241152,2022241152
Congress,Olympia Snowe (S),Congress,2022241946,2022241946
Congress,Orrin Hatch (S),Congress,2022246331,2022246331
Congress,Pat Roberts (S),Congress,2022243514,2022243514
Congress,Patrick Leahy (S),Congress,2022243479,2022243479
Congress,Patty Murray (S),Congress,2022240238,2022240238
Congress,Pete Domenici (S),Congress,2022280900,2022280900
Congress,Richard Durbin (S),Congress,2022280400,2022280400
Congress,Richard Lugar (S),Congress,2022280360,2022280360
Congress,Richard Shelby (S),Congress,2022243416,2022243416
Congress,Robert Bennett (S),Congress,2022241168,2022241168
Congress,Robert Byrd (S),Congress,2022280002,2022280002
Congress,Ron Wyden (S),Congress,2022282717,2022282717
Congress,Russ Feingold (S),Congress,2022242725,2022242725
Congress,Sam Brownback (S),Congress,2022281265,2022281265
Congress,Saxby Chambliss (S),Congress,2022240103,2022240103
Congress,Susan M. Collins (S),Congress,2022242693,2022242693
Congress,Ted Stevens (S),Congress,2022242354,2022242354
Congress,Thomas R. Carper (S),Congress,2022282190,2022282190
Congress,Tim P. Johnson(S),Congress,2022285765,2022285765
Congress,Tom Harkin (S),Congress,2022249369,2022249369
Congress,Wayne Allard (S),Congress,2022246471,2022246471
Congress,Debbie Stabenow (S), Congress,2022280325,2022280325
Congress,Dianne Feinstein (S),Congress,2022283954,2022283954
Congress,Edward Kennedy (S),Congress,2022242417,2022242417
Congress,Elizabeth Dole (S),Congress,2022241100,2022241100
Congress,Frank Lautenberg (S),Congress,2022284054,2022284054
Congress,GeorgeVoinovich (S),Congress,6144697733,6144697733
Congress,Gordon H. Smith (S),Congress,2022283997,2022283997
Congress,Harry Reid (S),Congress,2022247327,2022247327
Congress,Herbert Kohl (S),Congress,2022249787,2022249787
Congress,Hillary Clinton (S),Congress,2022280282,2022280282
Congress,James Inhofe (S),Congress,2022280380,2022280380
Congress,Jeff Bingaman (S),Congress,2022242852,2022242852
Congress,Jeff Sessions (S),Congress,2022243149,2022243149
Congress,Jim Bunning (S),Congress,2022281373,2022281373
Congress,Jim Demint(S),Congress,2022285143,2022285143
Congress,John Cornyn (S),Congress,2022282856,2022282856
Congress,John E. Sununu (S),Congress,2022284131,2022284131
Congress,John Ensign (S),Congress,2022282193,2022282193
Congress,John F. Reed (S),Congress,2022244680,2022244680
Congress,John Forbes Kerry (S),Congress,2022248525,2022248525
Congress,John McCain (S),Congress,2022282862,2022282862
Congress,John R. Thune(S),Congress,2022285429,2022285429
Congress,John Warner (S),Congress,2022246295,2022246295
Congress,Johnny Isakson (S),Congress,2022280724,2022280724
Congress,Jon Kyl (S),Congress,2022242207,2022242207
Congress,Joseph Biden (S),Congress,2022240139,2022240139
Congress,Joseph Lieberman (S),Congress,2022249750,2022249750
Congress,Judd Gregg (S),Congress,2022244952,2022244952
Congress,Kay Hutchison (S),Congress,2022240776,2022240776
Congress,Ken Salazar (S),Congress,2022285036,2022285036
Congress,Kent Conrad (S),Congress,2022247776,2022247776
Congress,Lamar Alexander(S),Congress,2022283398,2022283398
Congress,Larry E. Craig (S),Congress,2022281067,2022281067
Congress,Lisa Murkowski (S),Congress,2022245301,2022245301
Congress,Maria Cantwell (S),Congress,2022280514,2022280514
Congress,Mark Pryor (S),Congress,2022280908,2022280908
Congress,Mary Landrieu (S),Congress,2022249735,2022249735
Congress,Mel Martinez (S),Congress,2022885171,2022885171
Congress,Michael D. Crapo (S),Congress,2022281375,2022281375
Congress,Michael Enzi (S),Congress,2022280359,2022280359
Congress,Mitch McConnell(S),Congress,2022242499,2022242499
Congress,Norm Coleman (S),Congress,2022241152,2022241152
Congress,Olympia Snowe (S),Congress,2022241946,2022241946
Congress,Orrin Hatch (S),Congress,2022246331,2022246331
Congress,Pat Roberts (S),Congress,2022243514,2022243514
Congress,Patrick Leahy (S),Congress,2022243479,2022243479
Congress,Patty Murray (S),Congress,2022240238,2022240238
Congress,Pete Domenici (S),Congress,2022280900,2022280900
Congress,Richard Durbin (S),Congress,2022280400,2022280400
Congress,Richard Lugar (S),Congress,2022280360,2022280360
Congress,Richard Shelby (S),Congress,2022243416,2022243416
Congress,Robert Bennett (S),Congress,2022241168,2022241168
Congress,Robert Byrd (S),Congress,2022280002,2022280002
Congress,Ron Wyden (S),Congress,2022282717,2022282717
Congress,Russ Feingold (S),Congress,2022242725,2022242725
Congress,Sam Brownback (S),Congress,2022281265,2022281265
Congress,Saxby Chambliss (S),Congress,2022240103,2022240103
Congress,Susan M. Collins (S),Congress,2022242693,2022242693
Congress,Ted Stevens (S),Congress,2022242354,2022242354
Congress,Thomas R. Carper (S),Congress,2022282190,2022282190
Congress,Tim P. Johnson(S),Congress,2022285765,2022285765
Congress,Tom Harkin (S),Congress,2022249369,2022249369
Congress,Wayne Allard (S),Congress,2022246471,2022246471
To use the above list in MetroFax it must be copied and saved as a CSV file. (The extension must be CSV). One can use either notepad or Excel to create the CSV files. The maximum list in any one file is 50. So create Senators1.CSV and Senators2.CSV or whatever names you prefer.
What I Am Doing
I am emailing the plan I outlined in Open Letter To Congress On The $700 Billion Paulson Bailout Plan to every senator.
Please phone, fax, or email your Senators asking that Congress consider my alternative plan or the Hussman plan.
Anything is better than the plan Paulson put together.
Please phone and FAX your Senators.
Ask 10 people to do the same.
Send them this link
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/09/phone-and-fax-numbers-for-all-us.html
Thanks
Adendum:
Please Act On This Now! It Is Easy
In at least one email please send your senators a brief message to consider the Mish Alternative (or whatever alternative you prefer).
Here is an easy way for those with outlook.
Please Click The Following Link To Email Them All Now: Email All Senators.
This is what I ask you to send. Please copy the following as the body of the email.
Dear Senator
Instead of rushing into a $700 billion Paulson bailout proposal, please consider the following alternatives:
Mish's Open Letter To Congress On The $700 Billion Paulson Bailout Plan
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-letter-to-congress-on |
a confrontation with anyone who displays such arrogance, which is I think what the commenter was alluding to. However the more I think about this, the bigger the problem reveals itself to be. I think the root of it lies in the reality of that occupation. IMO, it has to be one of the toughest jobs in the world. Not many adults aspire to be in the law enforcement field. The kids who do show interest, even in the most altruistic cases, soon find out that they bit off more than they can chew. They realize that being a cop isn’t all free coffee and found puppies. The majority of your duties are undesirable and even disgusting. As the old saying goes, “it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.” We somehow expect these men and women to solve the complex web of cause and effect that we call “crime” yet the only tools we give them are guns and handcuffs. We challenge them to uphold justice and fairness but also provide them the means to deny it. We teach them the myth that is is possible for one sovereign body to govern another despite the fallacy of logic therein. Cops are fed a steady diet of these logical inconsistencies and non sequiturs from the beginning of their academic training in law enforcement until their first “mishap.” When they get caught red-handed, it is then that society finally steps in to check their power, after it’s too late. The only way to fix this is radical change. The entire field of law enforcement needs to be restructured to meet reality and reason. Given that crime is ultra complex and that the roots of crime spread across a wide variety of scientific and social disciplines, law enforcement needs to be re-tooled to deal with these complexities more effectively. In other words, we can’t prepare cops to be grunts with clubs and chains and then act surprised when they behave violently and without reason. They will require a larger, more diverse toolbox and better training to do their jobs effectively. If you want to hear this told from a cop’s perspective (written almost 40 years ago!), you can read former NHPD Chief, Jim Ahern’s book, “Police in Trouble”. You’d be surprised how little has changed since then.
posted by: beefair on June 24, 2010 3:54pm @Kris: You might need to reread my post. There’s no discrimination in listing White and Bandy because I was speaking to rogue officers who were found to be “bad boys” and yet kept their jobs. The other officer who injured the little girl with his motorcycle was quickly removed from his post and scheduled for termination as he should be.
posted by: beefair on June 24, 2010 4:10pm @ Bill: We all have the right to walk around with a “chip on our shoulder” and officers do not have the unique right to “knock it off”. Maybe anti bullying training should be implemented in their training.
posted by: Hood Rebel on June 24, 2010 4:15pm I recently had a ticket nolled by prosecutors when I was wrongly stopped for supposedly running a stop sign. It all happened in April during the same time that the new police chief had all his cops looking for guns in the “corridor.” I definitely felt targeted and harassed but I focused hard on “being nice” because I was really p*&^d off for wrongfully stopped. I know that I absolutely did not run the stop sign. I think the cops wanted to say anything so they could look for weapons. Luckily the state prosecutors know the law and how to use discretion better than some cops do; and the prosecutors handled the situation professionally. They nolled the unfair ticket. Oh, by the way…there were no weapons.
posted by: junebugjune on June 24, 2010 4:43pm I agree with a lot of what is being said here 1) we all need to do our best to cooperate and defuse heated encounters with police 2) police must be accountable for their behavior and we need to adopt a zero tolerance policy for this kind of abuse. This also brings to mind for me the enormous quantity of money that the city pays in lawsuits etc whenever some “bad boy” (or girl) cop gets out of control and effs up a perp. That’s tax payer money. That’s fewer services and higher car and property taxes. Paying the salary of a bad cop is infuriating enough, paying his/her legal fees. Lord Jesus.
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on June 24, 2010 5:48pm posted by: STYLENE on June 24, 2010 2:52pm THREEFIFTHS- you are ASSUME that what these women has said is correct. while im not saying they are wrong and im not excusing the behavior of the police officers….it is still better to cooperate!!! resisting (as history has taught us) DOES NOT WORK!!!! Like you, i too am sick and tired. now, let us both say a prayer
You need to read this story again.Look at what both woman said. Hargrove said she cooperated. Hobson said she cooperated, then struggled with police. Both incidents turned out badly. Look at the Youtube that I post it of the people that also cooperated.look at the Black police officer who cooperated.We don’t need pray.We need to have a law that when police do these typs of things.They get automatic jail sentence of 25 to life.
posted by: JLAW on June 24, 2010 6:37pm “Attorney Jefferson said that even if Hobson was screaming and swearing, it doesn’t excuse the threatening behavior of the police. They are trained to handle difficult situations, he said.” Act with respect and you will be treated with respect. Screaming and swearing is OK? I don’t think so,...
posted by: Concerned Citizen on June 24, 2010 7:00pm Why is it O’K for the police officers to abuse citizens with obscenities? We teach our children to be respectful and law-abiding, but some of the most disrespectful and unlawful encounters they will ever have are with the police! Why are we prepared to accept that these are givens in today’s society? Isn’t there a code of conduct for police officers? Beefair has written a few potent statements with which I firmly agree; however, it seems that black people are in a no-win situation when it comes to dealing with police officers who are obnoxious, arrogant, bigoted, uncouth bullies who get a real kick out of throwing their power around. These officers do not throw the “f” word around because they are vocabulary deficient; they do so because they are vulgar and lack self-respect. I agree 100% w/Beefair that “They are trained in writing incident reports to justify their actions and can always find another officer to back them up because you see integrity is another character trait deficient in many officers.” Those who keep quiet are just as bad I also agree that “The profession has become laxed in quality and agency accountability” and that...“community minded officers are passed over for promotions.” This is a truly frightening statement made by Beefair “New Haven residents have no choice but (to) utilize deescalation tactics or we will be hearing about more of these cases. Police are trained but in what?...the use of the “f” word? How to traumatize children by defiling their parents in their presence? Is this a police state where taxpaying citizens have no voice, no power, no rights?” These are questions to be addressed to Mayor DeStefano. The fact that Ms. Hargrove’s case was nolled is not enough. The records are full of irrefutable evidence of the police lying on a range of situations. We can understand why some of our young people refuse to give police any information about crimes because they do not believe the police can be trusted any more than those committing the crimes. Billy White and Bandy are only two of thousands across the country who have disgraced their badges. There was a time when police officers deserved respect. While there are still many who do, because they often keep quiet and tacitly support the wrong-doers, it is hard to have respect for them. Yes, there should be mandatory unannounced drug testing for police officers. Again, I agree with Beefair that “Some of them are so aggressive they have to be on steroids or other drug that increases aggression… I know the union will never go for that but why should we pay for services that are undermined by the very officers whom we pay to protect and serve us?” NHPD needs a really good undercover STING operations to expose the dirty cops and purge the department; unfortunately, there might be so many, it will be hard to fill the slots. While citizens are being hurt, the larger hurt and disgrace, long-term, are squarely on the NHPD. Do Mayor DeStefano & brass really care?
posted by: JMills on June 24, 2010 8:00pm It’s not just African Americans. If we can come to terms with that, a stronger push for reform can emerge. Meanwhile, it is going to be more of the same, civil rights attorneys working their cases to make a living. It’s the truth. It’s very hard to bridge the gap between whites, blacks (all colors), interested in this issue to acknowledge how much common ground there is when it comes to police misconduct. The rhetoric and lopsided numbers of blacks in jail is exploited to suggest there is far less common ground than there really is. The result is a potentially more powerful coalition that could push for reforms that remains divided, merely a potentiality. (And hostage to the limits of civil rights’ attorneys work-a-day product) I’ve personally made efforts to reach out on issues in common and have met with only the tiniest minority of black activists in New Haven showing an interest and already aware of the issue, that it is true, that there is a lot in common. People are not always treated properly by police. Certain aspects of misconduct are systemic and actually colorblind.
posted by: nfjanette on June 24, 2010 8:55pm Both cases raise the question of how civilians should deal with police they feel are overreacting or mistreating them. Should they run? Cooperate? Curse back? It is disappointing and irresponsible of the author and NHI to even propose two out of those three options. There is only one rational option: obey the lawful orders of a police office and keep your attitude in check. Any claims of mistreatment can be made after the encounter. As I’ve posted previously, NHPD needs video/audio recording in their vehicles ASAP. Only then will the game of he-said she-said be over. I certainly know which side of these stories I think is more believable, but opinion doesn’t matter in these cases - facts do.
posted by: sam on June 25, 2010 5:10am to a bad cop master beware ye also have a master. the more you harm people the more harm will come to your family. this can proven watch your life you will see things happen because of what you do.when an officer is kill in the line of duty how do you want people to fill? maybe you don’t care think about their family
posted by: beefair on June 25, 2010 6:10am We should obey “the lawful orders” of the police. “Get the “f” out the car” is not a lawful order.It might be part of academy training but it’s not an appropriate greeting. Police can’t approach with the “f” word and expect “Yassir”.How can anyone continue to be blind to a real problem with policing when you watch the videos posted by three fifths? Do you think they are trick videos? They are real!
posted by: STYLENE on June 25, 2010 6:19am @THREEFIFTHS- i don’t need to re-read the article. i stand by my original statement!!! u can’t cooperate at first, then don’t cooperate. you are right we need harsh punishment for those police officers who thinks it’s ok to verbally/physically abuse citizens....
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on June 25, 2010 7:36am posted by: STYLENE on June 25, 2010 7:19am
@THREEFIFTHS- i don’t need to re-read the article. i stand by my original statement!!! u can’t cooperate at first, then don’t cooperate. you are right we need harsh punishment for those police officers who thinks it’s ok to verbally/physically abuse citizens.... And I stand by this statement that people do cooperate,But they are put into a position by the police into not cooperating.Again look at the you tubes,All of these people cooperate and look what happen.If you or one of you love one’s being beat down by the police,I bet you will not cooperate and in fact you would fight
back.
posted by: will on June 25, 2010 7:39am These two ladies must live in a different New Haven than I do. Over here in Fair Haven we see mostly passivity from NHPD. Truly, maybe they can transfer some of those cops over to this area. And give them some unmarked cars too so they can have a little element of surprise which they sorely lack. There is utter lack of respect for the police here. Crazy driving, drug sales, prostitution, 100+ decibel car sound systems at full blast, you name it, we have it. NHPD needs to seriously ramp it up over here. We can hardly wait to see what they (don’t) do 4th of July weekend.
posted by: Jay Tee on June 25, 2010 8:02am I got worked over by the New Haven police- I was waiting for a friend to come out of her house, and a black new haven cop (I’m white) came over and verbally attacked me; I thought he was literally going to attack me. My crime? It turned out I was in a no parking zone, which I hadn’t realized. I can only imaging how they treat black people. They are extremely unprofessional and antagonistic, from what I’ve heard.
Officer who worked me over: badge number 357.
posted by: bull caca on June 25, 2010 9:02am I think everyone with an outstanding arrest warrant should fight and kick the cops, remove their handcuffs because they are not comfortable, and refuse to show id. Then when we receive additional charges we should run to attorney jefferson’s office (who i think we should hire as mayor...)and cry about how we cooperated by fighting the police. By the way a nolle doesnt mean your charges are unwarranted. It just means the courts are willing to give u another chance.
posted by: Morris Cove Mom on June 25, 2010 9:18am It’s hard not to be confused/angry when dealing with police. The best thing to do is cooperate and play dumb. Never yell, ask mild questions, and explain yourself, but briefly. The more you talk, the guiltier you look. I am sorry for what the victims have3 gone through, it is intolerable. The police, and the dispatchers for that matter, need to be trained on how to deal with the public properly, or they will incite rioting and hate.
posted by: obvious on June 25, 2010 9:31am if you have nothing to hide and you have done nothing wrong, you should not fear the police.
posted by: will on June 25, 2010 9:54am Ooh ooh! We want the black cop Jay Tee mentioned here in Fair Haven. He sounds perfect for enforcing quality of life issues that currently get NO attention whatsoever. Littering, loitering, all manner of noise pollution, fishing off the Grand Ave bridge & fish-hooking boaters passing underneath. Just whatever. I’m telling you it’s a match made in heaven. Really, send him right over.
posted by: beefair on June 25, 2010 10:06am @obvious who said that police are “feared”? Believe me, fear is not the reaction their violent, disrespectful, and unprofessional behavior evokes. Again look at the posted videos of the consequences of those who cooperated and remind us that the police are our friends and somehow justify in your mind their sadistic behavior.Rogue cops can only gain respect from those indifferent to our experiences.Unfortunately they stain the entire department.
posted by: roger huzendubel on June 25, 2010 10:25am Once again the new haven independent has assumed these people are innocent. I find it hilarious that They print these one sided stories that make the cops look very bad, wether they are true or not and then have a “cop of the week”. This site used to be great lately it has been very one sided.
posted by: HewNaven?? on June 25, 2010 10:52am “I find it hilarious that They print these one sided stories that make the cops look very bad, wether they are true or not and then have a “cop of the week”.” roger huzendubel, Why is it so hilarious that the Independent covers both the good and bad cops in New Haven. That seems like a pretty normal and fair thing for journalists to do: to cover both sides of the story.
posted by: HewNaven?? on June 25, 2010 10:55am “if you have nothing to hide and you have done nothing wrong, you should not fear the police.” obvious, Don’t be facetious or naive. You have plenty to fear. Just ask all the people who have been accused or convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. There’s plenty of good stories out there involving bad cops. If you’re more of a movie person, just watch “The Hurricane.”
posted by: JMills on June 25, 2010 1:12pm To the person who said that nolle’s just mean the court wants to give you another chance: Nolle’s, known commonly as “dropped charges,”
are decisions by prosecutors, not courts. “Dismissals” are issued by judges, by the court, and they are not the same as nolle’s. Prosecutors “drop” charges, judges dismiss them. Prosecutors can not dismiss charges. When prosecutors drop charges they can bring those charges back for a 13 month period. After that 13 month period, the arrest record is no longer public. The arrest record is “erased” under the law which means that it is accessible to a very large number of law enforcement related entities and in other circumstances, including some employment and school related procedures, but not the public at large. They can, in fact, circulate quite surprisingly freely among an equally surprising array of entities to the point where one wonders sometimes if only the unaffiliated “everyman” off the street is the only one who can’t access them. The system of segregation can be a sieve. That is a bit of an overstatement, but not much. “Erased” is a deceiving term that really means segregated, not erased. If a judge dismisses charges, the arrest record becomes non public in a matter of days, something like 20 or 25 days, and is erased under the law. Defendants can reject a prosecutor’s offer to nolle charges, which means the law recognizes that a nolle and a dismissal are not the same thing. Lots of nolle’s is not necessarily a good sign. They can indicate a status quo of weak and problematic arrests and a dysfunctional system. Also, a prosecutor’s office can maintain this way of operating because it gives police the ability to master the streets through arrests even though the charges are never prosecuted and never could all be prosecuted. Aside from any other issues, I doubt the courts could ever handle the full adjudication of such a large number of arrests. An arrest begins a process of criminalization that can be a totally arbitrary one, as the standard for arrest combined with conventional practices that are widely accepted, is so low as to be nil. There is a disturbing level of irrationality in the process with extremely weak checks on it. The “erasure” law tends to silent the falsely accused. Having been acquitted or agreeing to a nolle and knowing the record won’t be public for the most part, arrestees rather keep it to themselves. To speak out, they need to disclose the arrest and the so called erasure is a very very strong disincentive. Also, there is a lot of confusion about erasure too, that it is very complete, final, actually gone off the books and local lawyers do very little to dispel that misconception among their clients. The ‘noble lie’ that is the erasure statute, passed by the CT legislature, is a double edged sword. It tends to leave us to our stereotypes about the kind of people who experience arrests. We don’t put a face to them because we don’t see them. If they were more public, we might lose some faith in the integrity of the arrest/criminal process. If wrong arrests remained public, believe me, victims would be shouting out about it much much more. Erasure tends to protect the state’s/police image and actually increases the stigmatization of those who have experienced an arrest. It tends to further denigrate our belief in the presumption of innocence. These are, it would seem, the unintended consequences of the law, which was passed to protect unconvicted arrestees from most of the collateral consequences of arrests. It is a statute that very much reflects our culture. In states that don’t have such statutes, stereotypes are less in circulation, stereotypes that assume that all arrestees are criminals, are people of a certain type, are people who cause trouble with police, and that arrests literally can’t happen unless arrestees bring it on themselves. The citizenry can not make informed decisions about what is going on, in part, because the erasure statute conceals the true picture. The erasure statute weakens controls on police misconduct. An arrest record also increases the chances of rearrest, so the more arbitrary, the more based on chance than on reason, the more horrifying the potentiality for an innocent who has experienced an arrest. The erasure statute does nothing to affect that. It is a very legitimate question to ask whether merely living in New Haven increases the chance of arrest for anybody, innocent or guilty, cooperative and law abiding or not. There are just a myriad of questions that emerge when you start to pick apart the laws and conventions of police and the courts and the makeup of one’s community and police department. The public needs a lot more demystification and demythologizing and some of our laws obstruct that process. This article is about overuse of force for the most part, but the meaning of nolle’s was raised in someone’s comment so I thought I would respond to that.
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on June 25, 2010 1:50pm posted by: obvious on June 25, 2010 10:31am
if you have nothing to hide and you have done nothing wrong, you should not fear the police. And it was obvious that these man had nothing to hid and look what happen to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=oUkiyBVytRQ&feature=related http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Louima
posted by: Ned on June 28, 2010 8:53am Cops you won’t see on television… http://www.unknownnews.org/cops.html latest update, from the Middletown Press http://tiny.cc/kp97i “3 more officers named in anal-cavity search lawsuit”Advertisement
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Hillary Clinton, who recently failed for the second time to be elected the first woman president of the United States, recently announced that she is ready “to come out of the woods.” She believes that she has it within her to find unity in a divided nation. By expressing this remarkable sentiment, Clinton demonstrated that she still does not understand the reason why the American electorate rejected her for one of the most unlikely men to ever achieve the presidency. She should stay in the woods, find a quiet place, and think about her life until she reached some kind of understanding.
Hillary Clinton is a woman who is so enraptured by herself that she lacks all sense of irony. Otherwise, she would not imagine that she could ever be an agent of unity and reconciliation, no more than her husband could ever advance the cause of respect for women.
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A point exists in the lives of some people when they realize just how rotten they really are. John Newton, the 18th Century clergyman, and poet was once the worst sort of human being, the captain of a slave ship. But Newton came to realize that the life he was leading was pure evil. He underwent a time of self-loathing, followed by repentance and a sense of forgiveness brought on by Christian faith. He composed one of the greatest hymns in history, “Amazing Grace,” and spent the rest of his life combatting the very evil he once helped to perpetuate.
Clinton needs to have a John Newton moment, not to put a too fine a point on it. She needs to find that sense of self-loathing for the things she had done in furtherance of her ambition, starting with the destruction of a 12-year-old rape victim named Kathy Shelton back in 1975 and including all the enablement of her husband’s crimes against women.
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She needs to beg for forgiveness, both of whatever God she acknowledges and of her victims and she needs to be sincere about it.
Maybe then Hillary Clinton can come out of the woods and spend the rest of her life doing good and not furthering a limitless ambition that has brought nothing but grief to herself and countless others.Literature
Stay-In Valentine's Day (an OrioKat short)
"Well, the outside world's not safe today." Orion flops face-up onto Kat's bed, staring at the ceiling.
Kat rolls her eyes. "The world is still just as safe as it's always been, Orion. Yeah, it's weird to see so many hearts everywhere, and pink and red are all over the place...but I wouldn't exactly call that dangerous."
Sitting up, he exclaims "But the gushy romance! It was oozing out of nearly every corner and from every person we saw! Cuddling and making out and..." He shudders, which get's a laugh out of Kat.
"Says the charmer!!" She smirks and lays next to him on her side.
He rolls onto his side and looks at her. "There's a difference. When I flirt and tease, it's only for you; when we cuddled before, it was in this room with just us; when I flirted with you at the bar, it was lightly and kept between us. Affection displayed for all to see is just...awkward, and kinda gross. Things like holding hands and a short kiss on the cheek are fine, and hugs are great. But full-on face-suckMeanwhile in China …
Time for the winter training camp update of the Chinese men’s team.
They are training in the Wuzhishan camp in the Hainan province.
Yu Jie along with his boys Lu Xiaojun, Liao Hui, Tian Tao and co. are preparing for the Chinese nationals games.
Update: Lu Xiaojun Video, needs translation translation below!
Translation
Thanks to Sean Gu in the comments!
(0:00-0:24) Reporter: During the adjustment period at the end of the training sessions, Guo Xiyan and the two year old Lu Jiaqi arrived to wait for husband Xiaojun so they can go home together. Despite usually having a tough persona, Lu only had his softest side to display in front of his daughter. Xiaojun’s wife and daughter arrived at Five Finger Mountain yesterday. As a professional athlete, Lu has very limited time to spend with his family. If he chooses to continue for another four years, his daughter would be six years old by then.
(0:25-0:49) Lu: She would be elementary school by then. My wife Guo Xiyan has given a lot for the family side of things., more so than myself. She has been taking care of our child on her own. I figured since I already owed her, what difference does it make to owe some more.(Jokingly)
(0:50-0:51) Reporter: You’re such an irresponsible father.
(0:52-1:05) Lu: It’s alright. Since its a recovery period, they are able to come spend time with me during training. This provides me with more motivation.
(1:06-1:29) Reporter: The 33 year old Lu has a very happy family. The multiple competition winning athlete has already won all there is to be won. He is even currently the vice captain of Tianjin’s Sports Team. Retiring and enjoying family life is a normal decision in his case. But he did not choose to leave. This December, he came back to the team and once again picked up the barbell. Is the 33 year old still able to withstand the training?
(1 :29-2:26) Lu: What do think from the look of my face? It’s indeed been harder than it has been before. But since I chose to continue, I want to give an effort. Especially for the National Games next year in Tianjin. I don’t think Tianjin has not ever hosted a weightlifting competition before, so I guess I want to get a gold medal there. Another reason I chose to stay is because there’s a lot I’m not willing to part with. After all, I’ve been weightlifting for around twenty years. Its not easy to just give it up. Im not willing to just part with so many brothers and my coach Yu Jie.
(2:27-2:47) Yu: His decision to stay is not only representative of his physical capabilities, but also of the fact that he does not have any major injuries. Also, continuing at such an ad vanced age, he is a very good role model for the younger athletes.
(2:48-3:07) Reporter: The old saying goes, the old won’t accept their age and want to surpass old Huang Zhong(character from Romance of the Three Kingdoms). This holds true for older athletes. But this refusal is built upon the foundation of the actually possession of ability. Lu’s wife was also a weightlifter. The ultimate decision was reached after a discussion with the family.
(3:07-3:54) Lu: My wife said she does not want to stop me if I possess the ability to continue to excel. If there wer e other youngsters who are catching up to me then she wouldn’t approve of me continuing. I also had the same thoughts. Currently, if there were one or two kids with a 375 or 380 total I would gladly step aside. I mean, you can’t be weightlifting forever right? Its food for the young. (young man’s career) I hope that they will be able to fill my position.
(3:55-4:11) Reporter: Another topic that must be mentioned is Lu’s good friend Liao Hui. Despite rising far above the rest, he missed two consecutive Olympic Games. Lu is very sad for Liao. All these years of brotherly relations has rendered Lu to be unable to allow Liao to continue this path alone.
(4:12-4:50) Lu: After the Olympics, I was resting the entire time. During this time, we asked each other back and forth whether or not the other person is staying. I told him that if you continue then I would too. None of us lack the ability. We only had bad luck sometimes. I encourage him to go for 2020. I told him no matter what happens, I will train by his side on the path to Tokyo.
(4:51-end) Reporter: The Chinese weightlifting team song [wtf they have a team song?? let’s get it!] has the lyrics “cheer for adherence”. For the veteran Lu Xiaojun, these lyrics alone are enough.
Update: Longer video with more interviews.
Also, for some reason the BBC picked up on the upcoming one year ban for the team (3 positives from 2008 and 2012 retests). So far nothing has been announced by the IWF regarding penalties for countries involved. So they aren’t any closer to facing a ban than they have been half a year ago. The interesting thing will be to see from what time on they will count country bans. Maybe they’ll find a loophole to not have them banned for worlds 2017?
Translation
Thanks to Sean Gu in the comments!
Specific interview segments (in order)
Liao Hui: (1:46-1:59) I think I only made the decision to continue my efforts after some deep considerations over a period of time. In reality, I never felt like I left the team.
Liao Hui: (2:46-3:06)I felt that just choosing to give up is not a right fit for my career legacy. All these years of hardship and sacrifice would have been for nothing. I feel like I owed it to myself. That’s why I chose to return. No matter what the outcome will be four years from now, I just hope that it is a fair and honest judgement.
Liao Hui: (3:26-4:06) It really was a hard decision to make. Over the course of half a year, I was trying to find different places to sort of vent frustrations and to relax. I traveled to many places but in the end, after coming full circle, none of them offered me the feelings that I wanted. I don’t think I could find the feelings of relaxation anywhere. I always felt there was still pressure on my back. After coming back to the team, it felt that everything was in place again. It was as if nothing had changed.
Xiaojun: (4:07-4:29) As a brother, to see him put in so much work and effort and to not get anything in return, it really pains me. He tells me that he continues not to get something in return. He only wants to make the statement that I, Liao Hui, in the world of weightlifting, is able and capable.
Liao Hui: (4:45-5:04) I feel that this kind of thing is a natural experience in one’s life. I see it as a gift. It has made grow as person. Amidst the feelings of being wronged and helpless, I am thankful for the opportunity of personal growth that this experience has provided. In all, I don’t really care that much. If I continue, I believe that I can still be a capable athlete.
Yu: (5:05-5:20) This time after the Olympics, through our private conversations during our break, he told me that he chooses to give his efforts again. I believe that he is a real man. This is a manly thing to do.
Xiaojun: (5:37-5:45) I told my brother Liao Hui that no matter what happens, lets walk this path together. I’ll be with you on the path to Tokyo.
Liao Hui: (5:45-6:03) In 2008 I became olympic champion and achieved fame as young man. From the sad circumstances in 2012 to the helplessness of 2016, I believe that 2020 is when my time will come.Insurance regulators in Ohio say their residents can expect their premiums to spike by double digits on the federal exchange created for the state under Obamacare.
Individuals will see an average rise of 13 percent, while small businesses should expect an 11-percent increase for health plans sold in 2015.
The health exchange is a virtual marketplace where consumers, under the new health care law, can compare private plans and qualify for government subsidies that help them pay their premiums.
Among 16 companies filing to sell plans on the exchange, proposals for the coming year average premiums of $374 per month compared to $332 per month for the same coverage last year, according to the Ohio Department of Insurance.
“It’s bad news, no doubt, but it’s what we expected and it’s what the research we did in advance predicted would happen,” Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor, a Republican, said. “Ohio has traditionally had a very competitive insurance market which meant our rates were lower than a lot of other states. That means that Obamacare is hitting us harder and driving our costs up significantly.”
The increase plays into Republican claims that Obamacare will cause insurance premiums to skyrocket.
The Obama administration said there is good news embedded in Ohio’s announcement.
Four more providers are participating in the state’s marketplace next year, allowing customers to shop for the lowest price among competing insurers and, on the bottom end, pay less than the 2014 average so long as they are willing to switch plans.
Insurance commissioners must approve the rates before they are sold, and insurers who propose increases of 10-percent or more are subject to review by outside experts. And, it said, the premium numbers do not take into account income-based premium assistance offered on the exchanges.
“Before the Affordable Care Act, consumers in individual market regularly faced annual double-digit premium increases,” said Aaron Albright, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“This is just the beginning of the process and as we saw last year all across the country, proposed rates were a high water mark and final rates were often lower than initially proposed. We are very pleased to see that the number of issuers planning to offer Marketplace plans in Ohio has jumped by 25 percent,” he said.
But for now, Republican leaders in Ohio insist that the figures are a bad sign.
“Higher premiums will continue to put a strain on consumers and small businesses at a time when our state’s economy is showing strong signs of recovery and growth,” Ms. Taylor said. “Continued and unnecessary headwinds out of Washington are making it more difficult for job creators, hard-working Ohioans and their families to purchase health insurance.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.GamesIndustry International Wednesday 15th May 2013 Share this article Share
Companies in this article 4A Games THQ
Jason Rubin is best known as the co-founder of leading game developer Naughty Dog. More recently, however, he had the thankless task of trying to overhaul struggling publisher THQ. Rubin joined THQ in May 2012 and while he made a valiant effort to improve the company, the bad momentum was too much and he didn't have enough time to steer the ship away from the iceberg.
As president of THQ, Rubin oversaw numerous studios, including the talented folks at 4A |
The Odyssey.'
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APRomania tries to stop brain drain with top student grants
About 270 top students in Romania, who received awards at national and international competitions called Olympiads, will get scholarships of up to EUR 3,500 a year each if they decide to study in Romania, said the Research and Innovation Minister Lucian Georgescu yesterday.
The money will be paid in several installments. The Government has already approved this financing. The Ministry will know exactly how many students will benefit from these grants around October 1, when the enrollment period at local universities ends, reports News.ro.
Students who received the first prize at international Olympiads will get EUR 3,500 a year whereas those who ranked first at national Olympiads will benefit from EUR 3,000 per year. The program’s budget has been drafted considering all the eligible students with international and national prizes who could enroll in Romanian universities this year.
In order to benefit from the money, students need to complete their studies in Romanian universities. They need to commit that they would not leave the country.
editor@romania-insider.comWhen a league sends nearly half its teams into a playoff to determine its champion it's a little silly to get too worked up about any one match. With the away goal rule recently creeping its way in to the Liguilla, the only advantage to higher seeds is hosting the second leg and having the second tiebreaker in the first two rounds (so, basically nothing). Finish in the top eight and you have a chance. With that being said, no champion of Mexico has finished outside of the top three in the regular season in the last eight tournaments[1]. Early results aren't everything, but staking a claim to one of the top spots appears to be just that. Also, the short fuse that every manager in Mexico works under, bears mentioning. A few bad results could end even the most respected of managers tenure with the team. Week four presents plenty of learning opportunities. Is this team for real? Is this team on a believable upswing? Is this team about to be in the market for a new manager? Let's look at this weekend's syllabus to get a better idea of the instruction that will be provided and the eventual learning outcomes. Queretaro v. Santos Laguna The opening weekend draw with Chivas was forgivable. The loss at Cruz Azul was unjust. The scoreless home draw with Puebla was scary. Santos are off to a forgettable start this season. They've looked lifeless and lacking of their usual bite. This Friday's match in Queretaro will be important for showing us if Santos will be pulling themselves back off the mat or this might just be the beginning of a disappointing season for the Guerreros. Queretaro present tough opposition, especially playing in Estadio Corregidora. This is by no means a must win for the visitors, but it is most definitely a'must-impress'. If we fail to see something more from Santos this Friday, it will be officially time to start worrying about the team from Torreon. Tigres v. Pumas This match is shaping up to be a loser goes home style battle. These are two teams absolutely under fire at the moment. Tigres are following up a highly disappointing Apertura, with a troubling start to the Clausura. Three matches, zero goals scored, and five goals allowed is not really a recipe for success. It is, however, a recipe to a coaching change. A home loss to their fellow struggling cats all but guarantees some sort of shake up. Pumas were very clear to send out messages of support and stability this week. This team has reached some serious lows over the past six months. It's going to be hard for them to climb out of that hole any time soon. After this match, Pumas return home to play Tijuana, and then travel to Leon the following week. If Pumas hope to take a step in the right direction, they need to take advantage of a struggling Tigres squad. A bad loss could here could very likely lead Pumas to three consecutive bad ones. Despite all the support messages for the manager and the team, marquee teams in Mexico don't survive these runs in form without change. Atlas v. America Six points from three matches is nothing to sneeze at; there's certainly no reason to be ringing alarm bells at Club America. However, it's worth noting that the team looked fairly mediocre through the majority of these 270 minutes. Even with a seemingly lopsided victory over Tigres in week one, America haven't played like a dominant force. This really shouldn't matter. America aren't going to collapse and miss the Liguilla, but this match should go a long way in showing us what the Aguilas are bringing to the table this season. Atlas should not be able to hang with America, even in the Estadio Jalisco. If Atlas is able to control possession in midfield and pressure the America defense, we could safely add some question marks to Antonio Mohammed's America. Otherwise, proceed as you will, nothing to see here. Toluca v. Monterrey The Diablos Rojos of Toluca were title contenders last season after an impressive offensive output and decent showing in the semifinals. They are beginning to look more and more like the title favorites. Monterrey are by no means a measuring stick at this point. The Rayados are starting to show signs of life, though. If Toluca are able to dispatch of this team easily, it's time to raise the levels past simply 'contender'. Atlante v. Chivas A win in Cancun isn't necessarily a mark of success. This should be a layup for visiting teams of strength. The problem is that Chivas have been anything but that over the past 18 months. It's a tired sports cliché, no doubt, but a good team needs to win the ones they are supposed to win. Chivas aren't a great team, but are they done being a joke? They've shown signs of being a competitive team thus far. If we are to continue to take them seriously, they need to come out with three points from this one. Chivas have lost three of the last four to Atlante, including losses in their last two trips to Cancun. A positive result for the visitors should be taken not as a salve for all the wounds, but simply a sign of being a team with fight. Puebla v. Chiapas I'm a big podcast guy. I listen to a collection of sports podcasts throughout the week religiously. One of the highlights each week is the new Men in Blazers podcast. They are always entertaining and a great listen. One of my personal favorites is an aside where the guys joke about the ridiculousness of a Will/Jalen Smith interview they had been recently released. Roger and Michael often reference one of the funniest lines from the interview that follows a discussion of the existence of mathematics in the world around us, where the younger Smith utters the ridiculous line of, "Patterns, Boom". Puebla has played three matches this season. They sit on three points after three straight draws. They have an even goal differential after scoring three goals and conceding three. Is this just an anomaly bound to corrected by a larger sample, or the result of larger forces at work? Is this a ridiculous question following a ridiculous collection of paragraphs? Surely. However, a 1-1 draw between these teams will have me talking like this guy. Boom, Patterns.
[1] The last team to finish outside the top three and capture the title was Vucetich's Monterrey in the Apertura 2009 season. The name of the team Monterrey defeated in said final was omitted for the sake of the author and his fragile psyche.
** the photo is used under a Creative Commons license from ec-jpr“Have you come up with a thesis yet?”
“No, I haven’t even started. I’ll get to it tonight or early tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, I am great under the gun. I write so much better when the pressure is on!”
“I can make up something in time.”
I assume many of the teachers of essay writing out there have overheard a variation on this conversation between students with a draft due (I have extracted the colorful language and eye-rolling that accompanies such exchanges!)
In our teaching of writing we have with all the best intent often created the impression that writing an essay is the result of a cynical process to “come up with” a thesis or to “find” a thesis rather than a process that at its heart should be about discovering a specific, hard-won belief about something one has read and engaged deeply, and then striving to find the best way to communicate that belief to an audience. This is a strange nook of teaching writing because working with students to discover actual belief should be less abstract than explaining to someone what it means to create an arguable position, and interestingly, if we push students to find belief, the results will almost invariably meet the demands we have for any standard for what is arguable.
When students think first about what is arguable, they are thinking about what someone else will think before they have a clear understanding of what they themselves believe, and even worse, that someone else they perceive is a caricature of the actual audience that spends nights and weekends reading their work. This is inherently a flawed approach. The best expository academic writing is personal first—what do you believe? Why do you believe it? How do you know? Worry about audience, but worry about it later. Students demand relevance and authenticity (and thank goodness they do!). As a result, while they will write the papers we assign, the work will not be meaningful to them unless we eliminate the idea that their goal is to divine what they think might impress others or what would make an appropriately arguable claim. Instead we want their writing to be an honest and thorough response to an aspect of what they have read or engaged as source material for the essay.
I have heard many teachers (myself included) lament the loss of dedicated readers from our classrooms, yet we can slip into teaching students a writing process that inadvertently diminishes the role of careful, attentive and passionate reading. The whole idea of “coming up with” a thesis undermines the relevance of personal reading, as “coming up with” a thesis doesn’t necessitate close reading and personal reflection. It is as if we are asking them to read carefully, and we then allow them to believe that their reading process is separate from their writing one. We put them in a position to conjure up a thesis at the cost of leaving the truth of their reading behind. What we want is writing that is a reflection of the actual thought process that has accompanied the reading. It should be a distillation of the best thinking they have done. These are the essays that impress me.
I want to read essays from people whose greatest interest in and perhaps greatest difficulty with what they have read is reflected in their writing about it. When students are only in the mode of creating an arguable thesis, they naturally stay way from the topics that ironically have the best chance of succeeding at the highest level with their audience. If we head astray here we teach them to be too careful, and I hate reading a stack of too-careful essays (yawn, snore, sleep!). I want essays from people who move toward what is difficult. Thus, it is vital that I create time for students to struggle with the discovery of belief, and that I find ways to reward risk-taking and revising.
Our students are reading all the time, and they have access to endless streams of information at any given moment. They just might not be reading what we assign with the attachment we wish. This exerts two central pressures on teachers. First, it pushes us to move toward their interests and continually update the ways we access their learning, including the ways we deploy digital tools to help us. Second, it requires us to make a more and more compelling case for the value of what we are teaching. Our students demand more of us in this moment because they can and they should. They have alternatives, many of which didn’t exist before, so our ability to demonstrate the flexibility of mind we ask of them is a pressing imperative. Interestingly, when we demonstrate that desire and ability to push our own learning and place ourselves in the slightly uncomfortable position of reinvention, they are far more likely to come follow us toward what we feel is most valuable.It’s no secret that the CIA, the U.S. government, and the cabal have some serious ties in Hollywood. Much of what we watch for ‘fun’ is actually propaganda that’s fed to us in order to shape our thoughts and values. We’re told what to wear, how to act, what our goals should be, and who we should love and hate, all through the media.
Not many people know this, but the CIA has an entire department dedicated to the entertainment industry. It’s run through the CIA’s Entertainment Industry Liaison Office, which collaborates in an advisory capacity with filmmakers. The CIA doesn’t just offer guidance to filmmakers, it even offers money. In 1950, the agency bought the rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and then funded the 1954 British animated version of the film. Its involvement had long been rumoured, but only in the past decade have those rumours been substantiated. The link between Hollywood and the CIA isn’t something new (you can read more about that in our CE article on whistleblower Roseanne Barr here).
In fact, many of the movies and TV shows you watch aren’t just written and directed by Hollywood big shots, but rather designed strategically by higher ups within the government and the elite in order to manipulate the general population.
You may remember when Sony was hacked around the time its North Korean film, The Interview, was making headlines, but do you know the whole story? Well, Wikileaks would certainly like you to.
Wikileaks’ Sony Email Dump
In April 2015, Wikileaks, the organization that exposes government and elite corruption, high-level crime, and other wrongdoings by leaking secret and classified information, published over 30,000 documents and 173,000 emails from Sony to make the previous hack more accessible to the public. This includes over 200,000 files from Sony Pictures Entertainment. The real question here is: What did Sony do that was notable enough for Wikileaks to publish that much information on it?
In a statement made last year, Wikileaks wrote: “The Sony Archives show that behind the scenes this is an influential corporation, with ties to the White House (there are almost 100 US government email addresses in the archive), with an ability to impact laws and policies, and with connections to the US military-industrial complex.”
In response, Sony quickly put out a very carefully worded statement, saying that Sony “vehemently disagrees” with the assertion that the material belongs in the public domain. Sony by no means denied the fact that the company works directly with the U.S. government, but rather simply said that they don’t think the public should know about it.
“This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there,” said Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder.
Of the more notable emails includes one between Sony and the Democratic Party, which sets up a collective within the company in order to strategically avoid the $5,000 limit on corporate campaign donations so that Sony could donate $50,000 to help the Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo get elected.
The email reads: “$50k is a heavy lift since most of it needs to come from individual contributions (only $5k can come from corp.), but I recommend we do it.... I think we can get to the 50k commitment by making this a focus of our individual giving from execs this year.”
Another email actually pertains to the movie The Interview, as it shows clear ties between Sony and a think tank, RAND, which is a part of the military-industrial complex. Sony reached out to RAND to get advice on the film. RAND connected Sony with one of their analysts specialized in North Korea, who suggested that Sony get in touch with the U.S. State Department and the NSA regarding North Korea’s complaints.
If you’ve never watched The Interview, it’s essentially propaganda disguised as political satire starring both James Franco and Seth Rogen, who are hired by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. It uses humour to desensitize you to violence and then has you cheering on the assassination of the dictator. It’s not difficult to understand why the film was considered controversial by many and upset North Korea.
In addition, according to WikiLeaks, Sony Pictures’ CEO Michael Lynton is on the board of trustees of the RAND Corporation, which can be considered as “an organization specializing in research and development for the United States military and intelligence sector.”
Why Is This Important?
Sony has a huge reach, with investments in numerous industries including music, electronics, television, movies, entertainment, book publishing, and financial services, and has the ability to manipulate and shift public opinion through the media. However, Sony isn’t the only one with such power; numerous corporations influence what we hear on mainstream media, which is why it’s crucial to look at independent sources as well.
The Interview isn’t the first movie to push a hidden agenda, and it won’t be the last. The CIA actively promotes a desirable public image of its history and operations by advising the production of different movies, including the hits Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. The CIA retains “entertainment industry liaison officers” on its staff that “plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment,” Tom Hayden explains in the LA Review of Books.
“So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold,” explains Hayden. You can read more about the CIA-media relationship in our CE article here.
Taking this into account, it makes perfect sense that Sony would have ties to the White House. This isn’t just apparent within movies either; it can be seen throughout all of the media, whether that be corporations and the government influencing mainstream news, or the government influencing popular songs and movies. (You can read about the elite and the CIA’s potential ties to the music industry in our CE article here.)
All of this simply works to distract us from two things: what’s truly going on in the world, and the true essence of our being. I’m not suggesting you lock yourself in a room or run away in the forest and never look at the media again. I’m simply recommending that you stay conscious of your surroundings and critically think about what’s actually happening!
So, the next time you’re watching a movie, reading an article, or listening to a song, ask yourself: What’s the real meaning behind this? Trust your intuition and don’t be afraid to investigate where the story came from, what the overarching message is, and more importantly, who it benefits.Want these election updates emailed to you right when they’re published? Sign up here.
Last week, Politico reported that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was set to employ a “run out the clock” strategy, declining to respond to recurring controversies even at the risk of seeming nonresponsive. In the abstract, such a strategy could make sense. Clinton has a fairly clear lead in the polls. There are only 10 weeks to go until the Nov. 8 election — and less than that until early voting, which begins in late September in some states.
But Clinton shouldn’t get too complacent. After mixed evidence before, it’s become clearer, at least according to our forecast models, that Donald Trump has regained some ground on her. Clinton’s national lead in our polls-only forecast has gone from a peak of about 8.5 percentage points two weeks ago to 6.5 percentage points as of Sunday evening — that is, a 2-point gain for Trump over two weeks. Correspondingly, Trump’s chances of winning the election have improved from a low of 11 percent to 19 percent.
Trump’s gains have been more modest in our polls-plus forecast, which discounted Clinton’s early August polls because of a potential convention bounce and which anticipated that the race would tighten. In polls-plus, which forecasts that Clinton’s margin over Trump will narrow to roughly 4 percentage points by Election Day, the clock is more of an ally to Clinton and an enemy to Trump. Still, Trump is keeping slightly ahead of the pace of improvement that polls-plus expected of him. His chances of winning are 27 percent according to polls-plus, up slightly from 25 percent a week ago and from a low of 21 percent earlier this month.
None of this is to say that there’s been some game-changing shift toward Trump. There probably hasn’t been, and you wouldn’t necessarily anticipate one given that, after such an action-packed period earlier this summer, there have been a lot of slow news days amid the August doldrums. Generally speaking, polls don’t move suddenly without a good reason.
But the polls can move gradually, whether because they’re reverting to a previous mean (a convention bounce wears off) or because of the cumulative effects of the campaign (an undecided voter finally makes up her mind). Lately, that movement seems to be slightly toward Trump.
The clearest case for this is in a set of daily and weekly tracking polls, several of which — including the Morning Consult poll, the UPI/CVoter poll, the Gravis Marketing poll, and the Ipsos/Reuters national tracking poll — show Clinton at or near her post-convention lows (and in some cases, within the margin of error of Trump overall). There are also a couple of exceptions: The Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports poll showed Clinton gaining ground this week, and the Ipsos/Reuters 50-state tracking poll, which has a considerably larger sample size than Ipsos’s national tracking poll, showed Clinton steady to slightly improving from the previous week.
But a candidate doesn’t need to gain ground in every poll to gain ground in our forecast, just in the preponderance of them. If the race shifts by 7 points toward a candidate essentially overnight, as it did toward Clinton following the Democratic convention, it’s going to be obvious in almost every poll. But such moves are rare, and a gradual shift — like Trump gaining 2 points over two weeks — will manifest itself in fits and starts in the averages.
A concern for Trump is that these gains haven’t been as apparent outside of those national tracking polls, all of which are conducted online or by automated script and several of which have a Trump-leaning house effect. The most recent traditional telephone poll, from Quinnipiac University, had Trump down by 7 percentage points — or down 10 points without third-party candidates — a poor result for him given that Quinnipiac had been one of the better traditional pollsters for Trump earlier in the cycle. There haven’t been very many of those traditional polls lately; it’s been a few weeks since we got numbers from any of the five major national surveys that will be used to determine eligibility for the debates, for example.
Polls in swing states were all over the place last week, meanwhile. In Florida, for example, we saw surveys showing everything from a 14-point lead for Clinton to a 3-point lead for Trump. If you squint, you can perhaps perceive some movement back toward Trump in some of the red-tinged swing states, such as North Carolina. But it’s hard to say for sure. A lot of the swing state polls released last week were from pollsters surveying the states for the first time, meaning that they didn’t have trend lines, or if they did have trend lines, they didn’t show much change from the previous version of the survey. The pollster that had Clinton up by 14 points in Florida, for example, had her ahead by 13 points when it previously surveyed the state in June.
How the clock does and doesn’t help Clinton
It’s nice to have a model at times like these, instead of just throwing up your hands (or worse, cherry-picking polls to suit your case). And that model, as I said, shows Trump as having gained about 2 points over two weeks. If Trump keeps gaining 1 percentage point a week, he’ll beat Clinton by a couple of percentage points on Nov. 8. Hence, Clinton should probably not be picking out the White House drapes just yet.
Continued gains may not be so easy for Trump, however. He’s still at only 37 or 38 percent in national polls that include third-party candidates. That might seem like an easy number to improve upon, but his favorability rating is only about 35 percent, meaning that he’s already relying on support from a few voters who don’t like him but may vote for him to prevent a Clinton presidency.
Clinton also has some work to do. She’s at about 43 percent in national polls and in polls of key swing states — not enough to clinch victory, even if 6 to 10 percent of the vote eventually goes to third-party candidates, as appears increasingly likely. She’ll need to persuade a few undecided voters toward her side or get some of those third-party voters — more of whom have Clinton than Trump as their second choice — to turn out for her.
Our models rely on both the number of days until the election and on the number of undecided and third-party voters to calculate the uncertainty in the race. Because the conventions were held early this year, it can be easy to forget that it’s still just August. (On this date four years ago — Aug. 28, 2012 — Republicans were holding their convention in Tampa and the Democratic convention hadn’t even started yet.) Meanwhile, there hasn’t been much of a decline in the undecided or third-party vote. As compared with July 17, the date before this year’s Republican convention, Clinton has gained only 2 to 3 percentage points in the polls and Trump hasn’t gained at all.
Toward the end of the 2012 campaign, we frequently emphasized the distinction between closeness and uncertainty. President Obama led Mitt Romney by just 1 or 2 percentage points nationally, according to our models, throughout much of the stretch run of that campaign — a close race. But between Obama’s consistently strong numbers in the swing states, the low number of undecided voters, and a strong alignment between polls and economic “fundamentals,” there was a narrow range of plausible outcomes for that election, with most of them resulting in a second Obama term.
This election, at least for the time being, presents something of the opposite case. It isn’t all that close — Clinton is up by around 6 percentage points as best as we can figure, a larger lead than Obama had at almost any point in 2012 or until the very end of the 2008 campaign. But it’s August, and the number of undecided voters is high, and so the outcome remains fairly uncertain. Furthermore, while the state polls are fairly good for Clinton right now, we don’t know how they’ll react if the race tightens further. We’re going on three weeks without a live-caller poll in Pennsylvania, for example.
Coincidentally or not, the Clinton campaign was more proactive last week. It pushed back quite aggressively at an Associated Press story about donations to the Clinton Foundation. And it instigated a fight with Trump over his connections with what Clinton called “the emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right.” Clinton remains in a strong overall position, but she shouldn’t be playing prevent defense yet; we’re still in the equivalent of the third quarter.WASHINGTON - New polling conducted for the AFL-CIO and shared with The Huffington Post shows Wisconsin voters siding with the state workers, unions and protestors by large majorities and expressing net disapproval of Republican Governor Scott Walker
The Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted two surveys among likely voters in Wisconsin this past week, one fielded between Wednesday and Sunday last week (604 live interviews, margin of error +/- 4%) and the second fielded Saturday and Sunday (402 live interviews, margin of error +/- 5%).
Both surveys began with questions about Walker's performance as governor and more general popularity ratings of Walker, Senate Democrats and other players on both sides of the controversy. The results of the two surveys on these questions were within sampling error of each other: Walker's approval rating is now net negative, with the disapproval rating reaching or slightly exceeding 50%. Meanwhile, the favorable ratings of "Democrats in the State Legislature" are slightly better and net positive (47% favorable, 38% unfavorable on the Saturday-Sunday sample).
The second survey proceeded next to questions focused more directly on the ongoing controversy. Respondents heard a list of people and groups involved in the controversy and were asked, for each one, if they agreed "with the positions they are taking in the current situation in the state capitol." The results presented in the following chart prepared by the pollsters show large majorities agreeing with "public employees" (67%), "protestors at the state capitol" (62%) and "unions" (59%) but far fewer agreeing with "Republicans in the Legislature" (48%) or Scott Walker (43% agree and 53% disagree).
The first survey also included a "message testing" question that asked respondents to react to the following description of Walker's proposal:
As you may know, Governor Scott Walker recently announced a plan to limit most public employees' ability to negotiate their wages and benefits. The plan cuts pension and health care benefits for current public workers, and restricts new wage increases unless approved by a voter referendum. Contracts would be limited to one year, with wages frozen until a new contract is settled. In addition, Walker's plan also changes rules to require collective bargaining units to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union, stops employers from collecting union dues, and allows members of collective bargaining units to avoid paying dues. Law enforcement, fire employees and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from the changes.
After hearing that description, 42% said they favor Walker's plan and 52% oppose it (24% say the favor it strongly, and 41% say they oppose it strongly).
Again, both surveys were sponsored by the AFL-CIO. As with any survey with partisan sponsorship, skepticism is in order. Data may have been released selectively, with less favorable results withheld. In the context of pre-election polling, partisan polls tend to skew in favor their sponsor by an average 3 percentage points and against their opponent by roughly the same amount.
In this case, however, the ratings of Walker and his budget and collective bargaining proposal are roughly comparable to an automated survey conducted in Wisconsin last week by WeAskAmerica, a for-profit subsidiary of Illinois Manufacturer's Association (an organization that has endorsed Republican candidates for state office in Illinois).
Documents shared with The Huffington Post also show that the AFL-CIO surveys report a party identification breakdown of 47-46% Democrat or lean Democrat, 40% Republican or lean Republican. This week, Gallup reported party identification results for all 50 states based on all interviews conducted during 2010 and found a leaned party ID breakdown for adults in Wisconsin of 43.1% Democrat, 40.5% Republican.PATERSON — A former Woodland Park police officer was sentenced to five years in prison today for attempting to sexually assault a 12-year-old girl.
Steven Vigorito Jr., 41, agreed to the prison term as part of an agreement with prosecutors earlier this year. He will also be required to register as a sex offender, and will never be able to work in law enforcement again.
A veteran of the Navy, Vigorito was arrested in April 2012, after a Woodland Park woman complained that he and her daughter had been exchanging sexually explicit text messages. The images included pictures of Vigorito exposing his penis while in uniform, and requests for the girl to meet him for sex.
Prosecutors say he and the girl had met while he responded to a call from her parents about her sneaking out of the house with an older boy.
The state's No Early Release Act will require Vigorito to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.Novel Chronicles A California Dream Divided
If Hector Tobar turns out to be the Charles Dickens or the Tom Wolfe of the 21st century, he owes a big thank-you to the people of California.
Some of them, anyway.
"Really, 187's passage is what made me want to write this book," he says.
Proposition 187 was the now-infamous voter initiative that was on the ballot in 1994. It denied basic assistance — social services, health care and public education — to illegal immigrants. After a lengthy legal contest, the federal government declared 187 unconstitutional. But Tobar remembers how shaken he was when the measure first passed.
"To me, it was really shocking to live in that California, because I had grown up in a California that was a really optimistic place and was accepting of outsiders," Tobar explains. "It was founded by outsiders — almost everybody here is from someplace else."
Tobar has just gotten off a train that brought him from his Mount Washington neighborhood to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. As early-morning commuters swirl around us, Tobar's point is well-taken: the different features, hues and accents here are testament to the still-potent pull of the Golden State.
Tobar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Los Angeles Times, is a California native, but the immigrant's story is never far from his consciousness: His parents came here from Guatemala. As the current debate about the legitimacy of undocumented immigrants continued to erupt, Tobar decided he wanted to explore those immigrants' tenuous status and the interdependence between those who are served and those who are doing the serving, using fiction as his vehicle. Thus, The Barbarian Nurseries was born, with its smart, grumpy heroine, 26-year-old Araceli Ramirez.
"In California today, many people see someone like [Araceli] and they think of someone who's done something illicit — they've crossed the border illegally," Tobar says. "In Los Angeles today, 'Guatemalan' is, for many people, synonymous with'servant.' "
In Araceli Ramirez, Tobar has created an astute observer of the privileged SoCal lifestyle. As she rides with her employer, Maureen Torres-Thompson, and her sons, Brandon and Keenan, Araceli notes Brandon's deft finger work on the buttons of his electronic toy:
"It occurred to Araceli that he might do well with a piano or guitar lessons, but la senora Maureen never pushed him. Sometimes you had to push children to do things that were good for them: If she ever found a partner to share her dreams, they would raise their offspring with that piece of Mexican wisdom. Maureen had the air conditioner on high and the cold made Araceli's nose run, and she gave a theatrically loud sniffle and feigned a cough, but her jefa didn't seem to notice."
When the California economy goes into meltdown, Maureen and Scott Torres-Thompson's pricey lifestyle is badly shaken. They're barely hanging on to their large house with the ocean view in a gated community in Orange County. The money worries lead to marriage troubles, and after a particularly nasty argument, Scott storms out to stay a couple of nights with a friend. Maureen takes their baby daughter with her for a couple of spa days. Each assumes the other has the boys; in fact, Araceli is left to console and care for them.
The housekeeper is afraid that if she calls the police, she'll be deported, the boys will be split up and dispatched by Child Protective Services to something Araceli hears as "Faster Care." She decides instead to reunite them with the grandfather whose photograph she dusts weekly. His central Los Angeles address is on the back of the photo, and she thinks she can find it.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Doug Knutson/ Hector Tobar, a weekly columnist for The Los Angeles Times, is also the author of Translation Nation and The Tattooed Soldier. Doug Knutson/
Araceli's determination to do the right thing — or the only thing she can think of, under the circumstances — takes her and the children on an odyssey through the elegant portals of Union Station and past that, into several of the neighborhoods that constitute unseen Los Angeles: the shabby rooming houses in the garment district, just beyond downtown; a proud working-class neighborhood in the gritty suburb of Huntington Park; homeless encampments by the railroad tracks.
Eventually the Torres-Thompsons figure out that neither of them has the boys, and the children's alleged disappearance is the catalyst for a huge manhunt and, later, public debate about America's sloppy immigration policy.
Yuppies, immigrants, politicians and vigilantes — Tobar has them all coming together in a Crash-like moment for a perfect California ending that will leave readers pondering the inconsistencies in the country's dependence on illegal immigrants even as some of us persist in keeping them at arm's length.A report by think tank Civitas says that the population of the United Kingdom is growing at a rate of more than 500,000 a year – the equivalent of a new town of about 10,000 people being created every week.
The report, ‘Britain’s Demographic Challenge: The Implications of the UK’s Rapidly Increasing Population’, also said that based on current projections, by 2039 there will be nearly 10 million more people in the UK – enough to populate Greater Manchester three times over.
“In the year ending 30 June 2016 the population of the United Kingdom increased by 538,500, equivalent to 1,475 people per day”, the report states.
The authors note that this growth in population would require the construction of 641 homes per day – “27 per hour or one every two minutes, night and day”.
Are you ready for a 77 million population? https://t.co/GsVPM1jkRn — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 21, 2017
The report states that whilst the total fertility rate (TFR) amongst the settled population continues to fall, population growth has been increased in part by the higher fertility rates of immigrants, noting that “in 2013 women born in four countries – Poland, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh – accounted for 8.8 per cent of all the births in the UK.“
The report points to the legacy of former prime minister Tony Blair’s immigration policies and EU expansion as sources for the rapid growth of the UK’s population since the mid-1990s.
Until 1995, two elements contributed to a slow rise in population growth over the preceding 30 years: a falling British fertility rate and low net immigration.
“These trends were |
in London than Liverpool
Dnipro president Igor Kolomoyskyi says he’s in talks with Tottenham over deal for Yevhen Konoplyanka.
The winger, who has 36 caps for Ukraine, was close to joining Liverpool on January transfer deadline day, but no deal took place.
VIDEO Scroll down to watch Tottenham and Liverpool target Konoplyanka score a beauty
On the move: Ukrainian midfielder Yevhen Konoplyanka (right) could be moving to White Hart Lane
Talks: The winger has 36 caps for Ukraine, seen here playing against England in September
Discussions: Dnipro president Igor Kolomoyskyi says he is in talks with Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy
And Kolomoyski says a move to Merseyside would not be ideal for the 24-year-old, who according to him would prefer to live in London.
‘I have contact with the Tottenham president. I am talking with him,' Kolomoysky told Ukrainian TV channel 2+2.
‘He is interested in Konoplyanka. We are in the stage of negotiations and are perhaps close to signing a contract if Yevhen agrees.
‘I would choose Tottenham - London - not Liverpool. There are matches only once or twice a week, and at other times he will still need somewhere to live. I believe London life is preferable to Liverpool.’
Fell through: Konoplyanka was close to joining Liverpool on January transfer deadline dayOoh! We forgot to mention something yesterday: One of the awards we were up for at the VGAs was Best Character. We can't say for sure if we came in second, but we definitely didn't win, so Wheatley's acceptance speech was never aired. Until now!Speaking of not winning, guess who didn't win Destructoid's Game of the Year. If you guessed Portal 2, we hope you didn't actually call your local sports book and put any money on that guess, because we won! WE'RE #1! Unless you're reading E-Online, in which case, WE'RE BACK TO #2! Look, we understand that awards season is a turbulent emotional hell ride. But you know what would probably make you feel better? Buying things. It just feels. With that in mind, we've put a bunch of Portal 2 merchandise on sale. For example, this incredible 1970s-style Portal 2 movie poster is 50% off! And if you're planning to go out to eat for the holidays, you should know that many restaurants now require shirts, something this 50% off "Wheatley Laboratories" tee is 100% guaranteed to be. Frankly, there's figuratively literally too much Portal 2 stuff on sale to list in one blog post, but you can check it all out here. If you order forty bucks worth of stuff, we'll throw in a FREE Aperture Lanyard. Just add it to your cart and then enter the code "COMBUSTIBLELANYARD" at the checkout.And just so you don't think all we're trying to do is sell you stuff, here's a sentence where we don't try to sell you anything. Now that that's over, J!nx has some excellent Portal gear, including the world's only Portal-themed baby onesies. Between now and December 22nd, you can get ten bucks off a thirty-five dollar order by entering the code "MILKANDCOOKIES" when you checkout.If you have enough shirts and/or no babies, ThinkGeek has some crazy Portal 2 inspired non-clothing products like an actual, working PotatOS science kit, a Wheatley LED flashlight, and an honest-to-God talking Cave Johnson Portrait. Until December 22nd, you can get five bucks off a thirty dollar order or ten bucks off a fifty dollar order by entering the code "YOUSAVED SCIENCE" at the checkout.Finally, do you like Portal 2? If the answer to that question is "no", then, man, did you make a wrong turn somewhere on the Internet. For everyone else, how would you like to celebrate those warm feelings every time you move your mouse? Because now that's possible with SteelSeries' new Portal 2 mousepad. It won't be available to order until tomorrow. But from then until December 26th, you'll be able to buy it for 15% off by using the code "SSP215".The competitive scene of Counter Strike has always had one team at a time reigning as champions. Specific time periods had dominating lineups that would have the spotlight for themselves as they won multiple premier tournaments consecutively. Looking back in the past of CSGO you can think of the NiP era, Fnatic era, LDLC era. There was never an extended period where the field was so competitive that tournaments had a different winner at each. That changed this year where the narrative changed from a not so dominant SK era to a time of parity.
Explaining the SK Era
Before the start of 2016, it was always clear which team was the best because of the streak of tournament wins they’d have. EnVyUs looked like it would take the crown and claim themselves as the first kings this year since they had a dominant end in 2015, but after the team had a huge dip in performance they lost their spot at the top and gave it up to the previous champions, Fnatic.
Fnatic were flawless in their first few tournaments of 2016. They were the team to beat in the first quarter of the year, but that changed when Luminosity Gaming were the champions at the first Valve major of the year. It was then when LG/SK Gaming took the lead and started to assert themselves as the rightful kings. They won the most tournaments after the aforementioned major and triumphed at the next major to make themselves a legendary team. This achievement made this time period their era, but it wasn’t an era as strong as previous periods in CSGO’s time.
Premier Tournament Winner Runner-up StarLadder i-League StarSeries XIV Finals Fnatic Na’Vi Global eSports Cup Season 1 EnVyUs Dignitas IEM Katowice Fnatic LG/SK MLG Columbus LG/SK Na’Vi DreamHack Masters Malmӧ NiP Na’Vi ESL Pro League Finals Season 3 SK G2 ECS Season 1 G2 SK ESL Cologne SK Liquid ELEAGUE Season 1 VP Fnatic
The table shown, showcases the first and second place team of the biggest tournaments based on prize money, but it doesn’t show the whole picture. First off, Fnatic had four more wins besides the ones shown which, obviously, has a better ring to it than just two. Also, EnVyUs’ win at the “eSports Cup” was pretty weak since the only other top team attending was Astralis.
By first glance it may look as if there was no dominating team and that might be true to an extent. However, in the time between MLG Columbus and ESL Cologne it was SK/ Luminosity Gaming who were known as the best team. As I mentioned before, it wasn’t the most assertive way to take the crown, but after only failing to get in the finals at Malmö, it was clear they were best. Getting in the finals multiple times gets you points and winning two majors in a row makes the run even better. After SK’s win at Cologne, Virtus.pro secured first place at ELEAGUE Season 1 in a dominating fashion, but the Brazilians were not there due to a disqualification. Thus, this win from VP only spiced up the rivalry they were starting to have with SK Gaming.
The Parity Era
After the unofficial off-season in August, it was unclear if SK would continue to win more tournaments with all the roster changes we saw. It wasn’t that the Brazilians would lose their touch and under-perform, but that other teams were ready to take the throne for themselves and bring a quick end to the SK era. It was the firepower of one team that knocked SK off the top, but it was the power of many that came to claim the crown.
Premier Tournament Winner Runner-up StarLadder StarSeries Season 2 Finals NiP w/ Maikelele G2 ESL One New York Na’Vi VP EPICENTER: Moscow Dignitas VP ESL Pro League Finals Season 4 C9 SK IEM Oakland NiP SK ELEAGUE Season 2 OpTic Astralis ECS Season 2 Astralis OpTic
Although many could argue that SK was still the best team, they failed to boast any tournament wins after ESL Cologne. However, they did manage to never fail before the semifinals which is amazing in an era where many other teams sprung out and won in unexpected fashions.
Virtus.pro became the team who brought the end to the SK era. VP knocked SK out of EPICENTER and ESL One New York in the semifinals. One has to wonder why it wasn’t VP who made the dominant run and the reason for that was their absence in multiple tournaments. They could’ve won at ESL Pro League if they qualified. IEM Oakland would’ve been more competitive if they attended. They could’ve been favorites at ECS Finals. Unfortunately VP decided to decline their invite to Oakland and failed to qualify for the Pro League and ECS Finals.
This time of parity, shows how competitive the scene was for the last few months of 2016. In ten tournaments there were nine different champions. NiP was the only two-time winner, but one of the championships was with Maikelele as a stand-in. It’s an incredible thing to witness, different winners at every event, but it’s completely different from what the CSGO scene is used to.
The alternating winners at consecutive tournaments was the true spectacle of 2016, but one has to wonder if it will carry into 2017.
Information source: liquidpedia
Photo Credit: HLTV.org, Helena Kristiansson – Twitter
AdvertisementsThe Tackle Time Fishing Tournament has been going on for 55 years, but this year was one for the record books.Catching big fish is not unfamiliar territory for Tim McClellan, but nothing in his fishing history could've prepared him for his catch Sunday morning.McClellan managed to bring a 1,033 pound hammerhead shark into the waystation of the Texas City Dike.His catch broke a record that stood for 37-years. The record was set back in 1980 when Mark Johnson caught an 871-pound hammerhead at 13.65 foot long.McClellan beat Johnson's record by 162 pounds.In the same tournament just a week ago, Sergio Roque caught a 946 pound tiger shark that took three hours to reel in.At the time, Roque was in first place for the tournament, but Sunday that record was broken as well.McClellan took home the first place prize in the 55th Annual Tackle Time Fishing Tournament.Since Frozen premiered, Disney fans have wondered aloud whether Maelstrom would become a Frozen-style attraction. That speculation began as early as the first of this year when Screamscape shared rumors that Walt Disney Imagineering had been given the initial nod to do some "blue sky" work on transforming Maelstrom into some Frozen concept. We want to address those rumors and look at what we know. But first let's turn back the clock just a little, and offer context and insight as to the design of this attraction, and how one might even justify adding a Frozen element.
Norway's quaint little village at Epcot. Photo by J. Jeff Kober.
Norway is the last of the 11 World Showcase countries to join Epcot. Originally the idea was to create a pavilion between Mexico and China that would combine several Scandinavian countries into one space, much as was planned out for with Equatorial Africa—though it never was built. Even upon opening, it was often referred to as "Norway, Gateway to Scandinavia" allowing it to be something of a catch-all for experiences found throughout northern Europe.
Epcot owes much of its financing to the sponsors that have supported attractions throughout Future World and World Showcase.
Sponsors play a role in shaping the look and feel of a pavilion. The more money you invest, the more your opinion is heard.
The original press release for Norway noted "The government of Norway and several key Norwegian companies have played an important role in financing the showcase project." There were 10 such companies, including a cruise operator, a civil engineering and construction firm, a commercial bank, two insurance groups, a cement producer, a shipping firm, a frozen seafood manufacturer, an IT group, and a food supplier.
Does the Norway Pavilion Have Any Current Major Sponsors?
All of the organizations mentioned above, including the government, are no longer sponsors, most having left years ago. Has Disney tried to entice others to sponsor? Yes. One news report in Norway affirmed that Disney has approached groups in the last few years, such as the American Norwegian Chamber of Commerce and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise. But, at this point, no major sponsor has come forward.
It should be noted also that Maelstrom is the one ride in Epcot that has not had a major overhaul since its opening. Even Wonders of Life, which opened about the same time, has long since left the Epcot scene. As the news report suggested, Disney has been working on sponsors for years—long before Frozen—to improve the pavilion. But, to this date, there has been no GM or Siemens-type sponsor publicly stepping up to the plate, and willing to write a big check.
In short, while there may be some in Norway, and elsewhere, who would rather not see Frozen woven into the Norway experience at Epcot, no one is investing in updating Norway—except Disney. And, it goes without saying, that Disney definitely wants to play on the popularity of Frozen.
So Is Frozen Coming to Maelstrom?
My sources say that Maelstrom will include a Frozen presence. It has been green-lit, and it is in the development phase.
This sign outside Maelstrom could likely be changing very soon. Photo by J. Jeff Kober.
That said, my understanding is that the footprint of the attraction will be the same. That won't change. Props and Audio-Animatronics will change, but the boats and where they go will not change.
What Will It Look Like?
That has not yet been announced. It could be an entire re-telling of the Frozen story, with you ending up in Arendelle. But much more likely is that it will be a re-dressing of the ride, still allowing for a larger cultural component that focuses on Norway, and not just a Disney film. An example of this is the Norway pavilion's Stave Church exhibit. It has a Frozen overlay, but still offers insight and understanding into the culture, which, at the end of the day, is what World Showcase is all about.
A presentation on caribou and its uses at the Stave Church. All of it is tied into Frozen. Photo by J. Jeff Kober.
Another comparison of how it might come together would be found at The Living Seas. Many people were skeptical about Nemo and Friends when it became an overlay to The Living Seas. But it has breathed new life into that pavilion and has been the means of introducing millions of people to one of the best aquariums in the country. Done right, I think Frozen stands the chance of doing that with the Norway pavilion. But again, Disney has yet to formally communicate that Frozen is going into Maelstrom, much less how it will be applied.
Frozen Isn't a Norway Story. Is it Really Appropriate for This Location?
Let's first talk about Maelstrom, which focuses the first part of the ride largely on Vikings. Vikings were Norse seafarers. Norseman means a person from the North, and refers to tribes that settled and sailed in not only southern and central Scandinavia, but in places as far away as England, Poland and Italy. So the entire theme of Vikings is really referring to the larger part of Scandinavia, and not to just Norway in particular. The same can be said of other Maelstrom components.
In the ride you can see trolls and splash past an oil derrick. But these same components can be found in other places like Finland and Denmark. There is little in the current ride that is exclusively Norway. The film, on the other hand, really focused on Norway. But, over time even Norwegans back home were embarrassed by the film, since many of the visuals seemed outdated.
Even the map in the queue of the Maelstrom points to Viking voyages being made the world over. And note that Norway on this map encompasses much of all of Scandinavia. Photo by J. Jeff Kober.
Frozen is loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen story of the The Snow Queen. Andersen is not Norwegian. He was born and spent most of his life in Denmark, but he was inspired by Scandinavisim and Nordism, which were literary and political movements found throughout the Scandinavian and Nordic countries. I think it's important that the setting for when these tales were written, and the environment for when they occur in their literary setting, are not so dictated by the geographical boundaries so well defined today. In short, I wonder if the story doesn't still work in the setting it will be played in.
When Will it Open?
Clearly Disney doesn't want the surge of attention on Frozen to go too long before a permanent attraction finds a home. Michael Eisner was frustrated that it took so long in his era, so shows based on The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were implemented, but attractions based on them took nearly 20-25 years to be built. I think Disney has learned from the Fantasyland expansion not to do just temporary attractions. But Bob Iger is not quite like Eisner in wanting things done yesterday, and thus just putting anything as long as it can be checked off. Work on the Avatar-inspired land at Disney's Animal Kingdom and the New Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom are such examples of how he is doing things right, rather than settling for quickly throwing something together. He has mentioned something similar with respect to Frozen being on Broadway: "We're not demanding speed…we're demanding excellence."
Several sources have disclosed that the ride could close in September and re-open in time for the holidays. Some have gone online and have even stated that in planning their vacations, they are unable to book a FastPass+ for Maelstrom during that period. But it still might not happen right at that time.
How Long Does It Take to Redo the Attraction?
Again, as I understand it from my sources, there are no plans to dramatically change the infrastructure. The ride's footprint will remain the same, as will the boats themselves. So it shouldn't be too long. Removing props and Audio-Animatronics and replacing them with other props and Audio-Animatronics does not take that long. That really is achievable in a few months' time—even from September to December.
What About the Theater? Will There Be a Movie?
Again, Disney hasn't made any announcements, but if they choose to do something other than use it as a theater, they will have to make changes to the sloping foundation of that room, and that could take more construction time. There are several possibilities. It could remain a theater. It could be absorbed into being an additional queue, or a "Scene 1" for those not holding a FastPass+. It could be a new meet-and-greet area. It could be more additional retail. Or it could be a combination of those things.
Could This Plan Change?
Absolutely. Projects further along have been delayed further and even cancelled. But it's a fair bet that within the next 12 months we will see Frozen in place of Maelstrom.
What Else?
Curiously, nothing seems to have happened to the meet-and-greet area. At least at the time of this writing, it has not returned to being a retail space. That might play into the future still of what is being planned.
Anna and Elsa first greeting guests in Norway when Frozen premiered. Photo by J. Jeff Kober.
No one has spoken about Akershus. It's koldtbord, or "cold table" of traditional Norwegian meats, cheeses, salads and breads has been largely compromised in favor of young princesses wanting pizza and hot dogs. It seems that this could be really re-fitted into something much more of a celebration featuring Anna and Elsa. But again, I don't think the intent here is to make Norway into Arendelle.
The Little Mermaid appears at Akershus as part of the character breakfasts. Photo by J. Jeff Kober.
What do you think?
Are you excited for what could happen here? Do you want Frozen to have a greater presence in Norway? If so, how would you like to see the ride presented? What do you think would make Norway and Frozen work well together?UPDATE: As happened back in November, an unofficial update seems to have gone out and made the rounds before Plum Village’s official health update for Thay.
This time, however, the message is the same: Thich Nhat Hanh continues his progress in the hospital.
Second UPDATE: the earlier, unofficial update from wkup.org, which is listed as an initiative of Plum Village, has been removed. The later official update remains in place at plumvillage.org.
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An announcement dated February 3rd and posted on Tuesday the 17th is available at the site wkup.org (link now goes to a 404 page). In the update, Sister Chân Không, Thich Nhat Hanh’s first fully ordained monastic and director of his humanitarian projects, tells us that Thay has been relocated to a rehabilitation center in his hospital where he has been able to communicate with staff using eye gestures and his left arm.
There, he is undergoing physical therapy to build strength in his back and legs, along with acupressure and acupuncture treatments.
One of the recent happiest moments for Thay was when he was with the speech therapist and enjoyed a quarter cup of tea! When Thay was finally able to hold his cup of tea upright, we declared, “Now we shall have a tea meditation!” Thay agreed and raised his hand as if about to speak and motioned for one of the attendants to give the therapist a short orientation on how to drink tea mindfully. Then Thay and his speech therapist had a sip of tea. While the therapist observed that Thay was swallowing properly, Thay also looked into his tea and smiled to her. Then he put his hand on his heart and the attendant explained that Thay was encouraging us to bring our mind back to our body and to look more deeply into and really enjoy the taste of tea and people around us.
The path of healing for Thay is still long, but we are certain that with the love and the support sent by all of his friends and disciples and with the energy of Avalokiteshvara, Thay will overcome the difficulties. Thank you so much for all the beautiful emails, prayer services, letters, post cards and adorable drawings by children. Our community also appreciates deeply the donations sent to support us with expenses of housing and food for the monastics and attendants who are caring for Thay.
Thich Nhat Hanh has been in the hospital since his severe brain hemorrhage on November 11, spending over a month in a coma before regaining full consciousness early this year. The update concludes:After a long gestation, the UN drug reform experiment suffered a miscarriage. It seems the UN is not the catalyst of change but its mirror. Reformers can learn many lessons – but can also be proud of their achievements.
Those who hoped this would be a watershed event must be feeling disappointed, after the closure of the UN General Assembly Special Session. As we reported earlier, the UNGASS adopted a weak and vague outcome document on the first day, in the opening plenary, without a debate. So the plenary debates and round-table discussions, which were supposed to shed new light on the world’s efforts to control drugs, were essentially no more than lip-service, and had no real impact on the system.
I have always been among the sceptics who didn’t believe that the UNGASS would bring much change, so this was not a real disappointment for me. I think drug policy reform has never come from the UN, and it never will. The UN is only a mirror that reflects the power structure of the world and what is happening at a national level. Its systemic inertia does not permit it to be the catalyst for change.
That said, it doesn’t mean that all advocacy efforts targeting the UN are necessarily meaningless. The UN is an important forum for power-play among world powers, and provides a platform for interaction between civil society and member states. What is more, it is a stage which NGOs can use, in order to highlight the flaws of the system in front of the watching eyes of the public. That’s why we, the Rights Reporter Foundation, attended the event and produced a movie about it.
(For the YouTube version, click here!)
I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable when governments in the “progressive camp” criticised the outcome document they had just adopted. I mean, people would be justified in asking, “Why the hell did you adopt the document without a debate, in that case?” Is maintaining the so called “Vienna consensus on drugs” so important that it justifies lending support to a document lacking any clear guidance on issues such as harm reduction, the death penalty, or the criminalisation of drug use, not to mention the regulation of drug markets?
The Czech Minister of Health, Svatopluk Nemecek, had an answer to this question. He said his government was only supporting the outcome document because it believes that this is just start of the debate, which will continue in 2019. Well, let’s hope he’s right! The world is changing, Canada announced at the UNGASS that it will legalise cannabis, Mexico announced that it will decriminalise drug use. If more and more countries are pushing for drug policy reform, it will definitely affect swinging member states which have no clear vision.
Some people have also pointed out that the outcome document includes some progressive achievements: for example, it supports access to essential medicines (partly as a consequence of repressive drug policies, millions of people cannot access pain medication). True. But the question is, what is the impact of having supportive language in the outcome document? It provides guidance for member states – but without civil society pressure, it will not be implemented at national level. We should bear in mind that changing the UN language is only the first step – using UN documents in advocacy is the next one.
For many NGOs, the UNGASS was an unpleasant experience. The UNGASS leadership changed its rules about accessing meetings daily, civil society representatives had to stand in line for hours to get in, and many of them missed the slot for their own speeches. Some people say this was intentional, aimed at excluding civil society from discussions. I don’t know the truth of it. Having stood in a queue for two hours myself to get in, I can tell you that it was not a warm welcome, not to mention stupid security rules such as the media being banned form moving around unescorted inside the building, or from doing interviews in the corridors without special permission from the media office.
Nevertheless, there was an unprecedented level of participation from civil society, often characterised by forms of expressions of emotions which are unusual in the highly formalised environment of the UN – such as NGOs cheering or booing speakers, to the great embarrassment of some diplomats. There were tons of side events, plenty of rallies and art installations around the UNGASS, and NGO speakers made the most factual and most lively interventions at the plenary and round-table debates. The voice of the movement has been heard – and it is something we can be proud of!
Drugreporter’s posters are used in action by the protesters of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP)
I think we should be modest though, both in our expectations and self-evaluation. We should not make the same mistake the drug warriors so often make (measuring success by the number/intensity of efforts of implementation), for example when they cite an increase in police seizures as proof that prohibition works. The sheer number of NGO participants, the intensity of their speeches, selfies with ourselves at the plenary etc. do not prove that the drug reform movement is being successful. We have a long way to go, and the real battles will not be fought in the UN, but in national parliaments, local councils, schools, on the streets and most importantly, in the hearts and minds of the people.
Posted by Peter Sarosi
Videographer: Istvan Gabor Takacs, reporter: Peter SarosiTest your puzzle solving skills in this spin-off of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong™ series. Use tiles to create the best path through each level. The main game contains over 180 levels, across four different puzzle modes. Although each mode has a slightly different style of play, they all share the same goal: get the Minis to the star!
Take a break from the main game to challenge high scores in four unlockable minigames. Feeling creative? Try your hand at building your own puzzles with an easy-to-use level builder. Once you’re done, you can play your puzzles and even share them with other players around the world. Access new levels created by fellow users, and save up to an additional 100 puzzles! Plenty of surprises await you in this rich Action-Puzzle game.Unexpectedly Intriguing!
Now that Paul Ryan has released the U.S. House of Representatives' proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2012, which aims to cut future U.S. government spending by over $6,200 billion over the next decade, we thought we'd take a moment to discuss just what the current battle over the unfinished portion of the U.S. government's Fiscal Year 2011 budget is really all about, so we can see just what it is that President Obama and the congressional Democrats are fighting for in the debate over excessive federal spending.
First, here's Representative Ryan laying out the basic fiscal issues:
Now let's take the current debate over the Fiscal Year 2011 budget into account.
Here, thanks to the inaction of the U.S. Senate and the White House, a potential shutdown of the federal government looms as early as this week. Assuming they don't opt for a more limited proposal to keep the federal government running for an additional week and cutting a less contentious $12 billion portion of excessive federal spending.
The main point of contention has to do with President Obama's and the majority Democratic Party senators' opposition to the Republican Party-controlled House's proposed total of $61 billion of spending cuts for Fiscal Year 2011, which is at stake because the previous 111th Congress, which was fully under the control of members of the Democratic Party, declined to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2011.
That $61 billion is just 1.6% of the $3,834 billion federal government budget for Fiscal Year budget that President Obama submitted to Congress early in February 2010, and a very slightly larger fraction of the $3,819 billion the government is currently projected to actually spend. It's also just 0.1% of the total amount of spending reductions in Paul Ryan's proposal for containing federal spending over the next decade.
But if you'd prefer to think of that $61 billion of spending cuts that President Obama and the Democratic Party members are willing to orchestrate the shut down of the U.S. government for means in more personal terms, we can help! If we assume that there are 118,700,000 households in the United States this year (2011), it amounts to savings to taxpayers of $513.90 per household.
That compares to the unrestrained amount of federal spending of $32,299 per U.S. household for Fiscal Year 2011. And that number, in turn, is about $12,000 per household more than what the typical American household can actually afford for it to be.
Now, if you'd rather get a sense of that total federal spending with a picture, we can accommodate you:
The "Zero Deficit Line" shown on the chart is the actual amount of federal spending that Americans can actually afford, given the income of a typical American household.
All in all, the President and congressional Democrats seem far too anxious to shut down the federal government over $61 billion worth of federal government spending that amounts to little more than a lot of excessive financial padding in the grand scheme of things, which we'll visualize below...
Just remember that they would really rather give this big bag of cash to their political friends so they can be popular with them and stay in power than see it not add to the already over $14,000 billion U.S. national debt. In Washington D.C., they call this "standing on principle."
And if you don't like those principles, well, we're sure they have others....
Image Credits: Cato Institute and thinkofthe.
Labels: national debtMindra Sahadeo shares an apartment in the Richmond Hills neighborhood of Queens, New York, with his mother, sister and a rotating cast of about a dozen harmoniums.
Several of the instruments packed inside thick aluminum cases and piled inside the front door. More are stacked up in the living room, which doubles as Sahadeo’s repair shop. The word is out about Sahadeo’s harmonium workshop, and there’s a steady stream of hobbyists, yoga instructors, and professional musicians dropping off instruments for him to fix.
Sonny Singh, a member of the band Red Baraat, was relieved to learn about Sahadeo's services when Singh faced a crisis with his own harmonium. I’d actually never seen a harmonium up close, so Sahadeo opened up one that he designed with a friend in Calcutta. Its body is a deep brown teak, with floral carving around a silver nameplate.
Music, of course, fills the apartment. When I got there, Sahadeo’s sister Nanda was in her room practicing. After we talked for a while — and, full disclosure, their mom fed me some pretty amazing Indian food — she and Sahadeo play a bit.
Their mom sits and listens, too, gently rocking back and forth in time with the music. Later she tells me that it’s a little bittersweet to listen to the two of them play. It reminds her of her husband, who passed away a while ago; and of her other son, who died recently. Pictures of both of them hang on the living room wall, looking on.
The instrument connects Sahadeo to his family’s roots in India. His great-grandparents moved from there to Guyana, part of a wave of migrant workers at the turn of the 20th century, and they brought India’s music with them.
The bodies of Sahadeo’s Madhura harmoniums are made of Burmese teak salvaged from old houses. Credit: Bruce Wallace
The family has Hindu singers and dancers on both sides, and Sahadeo's sister, Nanda, has pictures of herself performing as a kid. She also remembers the time someone came to her family's house in Guyana with a harmonium. They showed it to her dad and asked if he wanted to buy it.
Then Sahadeo put his hand on the harmonium and found melodies. "So we got our first harmonium," Nanda says. He soon mastered the instrument and, with Nanda and two other siblings, formed a sort of house band in the Hindu temple their father had rebuilt in their village.
Sahadeo moved from Guyana to New York five years ago and started tuning up harmoniums at the Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras in his neighborhood. Then demand grew and he started charging for repairs.
It sometimes bums him out to see harmoniums in bad shape.
“Harmoniums for us are like sacred," Sahadeo says. "It’s part of us, our culture and tradition and everything. I saw some harmoniums that came here — terrible, terrible condition. I always tell them, ‘Please, I’m gonna fix it and everything, but please, can you just, a little bit of care.’”While I, unlike that biographer, am an artesian font of utilitarian suggestions, I can now see that being asked to comment on young brilliance is an explicit invitation to pomposity. I have done my best to R.S.V.P. in the negative. The proximate, tacit call to romanticism is harder for me to resist. While all old people have been young, no young people have been old, and this troubling fact engenders the frustration of all parents and elders, which is that while you can describe your experience you cannot confer it. It’s tempting, nonetheless, to pose as an expert—and in another way it’s tempting to say, ‘I know nothing that you don’t already know.’ Neither of those postures is right. Every stage of life longs for others. When one is young and eager, one aspires to maturity, and everyone older would like nothing better than to be young. We have equal things to teach each other. Life is most transfixing when you are awake to diversity, not only of ethnicity, ability, gender, belief, and sexuality but also of age and experience. The worst mistake anyone can make is to perceive anyone else as lesser. The deeper you look into other souls—and writing is primarily an exercise in doing just that—the clearer people’s inherent dignity becomes. So I would like to be young again—for the obvious dermatological advantages, and because I would like to recapture who I was before the clutter of experience made me a bit more sagacious and exhausted. What I’d really like, in fact, is to be young and middle-aged, and perhaps even very old, all at the same time—and to be dark- and fair-skinned, deaf and hearing, gay and straight, male and female. I can’t do that in life, but I can do it in writing, and so can you. Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination’s curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.
When I had just finished my schooling and was looking for a job, a friend put me in touch with an absurdly well-connected British biographer who, she assured me, would help me find the professional position of my dreams. I wrote and asked him whether we might meet, explaining that I would appreciate his advice on securing literary work and enclosing some of my early efforts. He duly invited me for tea. The advice I had in mind sounded like this: “You must call so-and-so at this number and say I suggested it and he will publish you and give you loads of money.” After giving me a cup of weak tea—no sandwiches, no pastry, not even sugar or milk—he said, “I have only one piece of advice for you. Have a vision and cleave to it.” We then discussed the weather for twenty minutes.
I want to take a moment to talk about |
-layer cycles.
Photoelectrode assembly and active area determination.
The top edge of the PbS and TiO 2 layer on the photoelectrode was removed by a blade. This exposed FTO conductive area and the copper wire were glued together through conductive silver epoxy (PELCO colloid silver). The edge of the above-mentioned photoelectrode and the conductive connection area was then further completely protected via an insulation epoxy (Loctite 9462 Hysol). Further, a resistance epoxy (Loctite E-120 HP), cured at room temperature overnight, was then applied to prevent the epoxy layer from etching. The final active area of the photoelectrode was accurately determined by a HP Scanjet 7650 in combination with ImageJ software according to a previously reported method with slight modification27. In this method, the electrode surface was aligned parallel to the scanner glass and was scanned to obtain an electrode surface image. The number of black pixels of the measured active area can be extracted by the ImageJ software and such pixel number was then converted to the actual area through a standard relationship that was previously built (892,802 pixels per square centimetre).
Incident light and hydrogen gas calibrations.
The incident light came from white light passed through a monochromator, and a neutral density filter was also applied to adjust the light intensity at ∼10 μW cm−2, where typically a 75 W Xe arc lamp was used as the source. The PEC system was placed in a dark room to avoid interfering illumination. We used a silicon photodiode for the 380–1,060 nm range and a germanium photodiode for 1,060–1,500 nm. The calibrated photodiodes all have NIST traceable calibration, and have a similar area to the test photoelectrodes. We also applied a Newport UV-818-L detector (NIST traced calibration) to compare the light intensity results at the 380–650 nm range with the Si photodiode. The current measured from the Newport UV-818-L detector and the Si photodiode has less than 0.2% difference in the range of 380 nm to 500 nm, while the difference was manifested to 0.5% at the range from 500 nm to 650 nm. The specific light intensity inside the PEC cell, at the specific position where the photoelectrode will be placed, was accurately determined by the current generated by the calibrated photodiode. Note that the light intensity measurement might correspond to ∼3% systematic error under our measurement conditions due to the refractive index difference between the glass/air interface of the photodiode and the glass/solution interface of the photoelectrode (note: light passes through the air/glass interface and then through the glass/solution interface to reach the photodiode surface in solution). Such difference can be illustrated according to the equation: R = [ n 1 − n 2 ] 2 ∕ [ n 1 + n 2 ] 2 in which R is reflectivity, n 1 is the refractive index of glass and n 2 is the refractive index of solution in the photoelectrode case or air in the photodiode case. We can approximate the reflective losses via n 1 = 1.47 and n 2 = 1.33 (for Na 2 S solution, approximated by water) or n 2 = 1 (for air). We calculate R solu = 0.3% and R air = 3.4%. These two numbers indicated that (∼3%) more light might reach the photoelectrode surface than the photodiode surface.
Hydrogen gas was measured with a Shimadzu GC-2010 Plus Gas Chromatograph (Tracera) with a highly sensitive barrier discharge ionization detector and the carrying gas was 99.9999% ultrapure helium gas to ensure a two order higher detection limit on hydrogen than other common detectors in gas chromatography. The standard hydrogen gas was generated with a sealed two-compartment electrochemical cell filled with 1 M H 2 SO 4 and Pt as both cathode and anode. The theoretical hydrogen concentration was plotted against the detection area of GC, as shown in Supplementary Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 1. A highly correlated linear curve was obtained between the theoretical hydrogen concentration and the detection area of GC, with a linear correlation coefficiency of 0.999952. And this calibrated equation was applied for the future accurate amount determination of hydrogen gas. To reduce any systematic errors associated with different compartments we replaced only the anode with our QD photoelectrode; the cathode compartment (where H 2 evolves) remainedthe same.
Scanning electron microscopy.
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurement was conducted to obtain the thickness of the PbS films. The surface morphology was analysed using a JEOL JSM 7600F field-emission scanning electron microscope operated at 5 kV. First, the film on these photoelectrodes was fabricated as follows: we used the methods (as described from photoelectrode synthesis) to make PbS film from one batch of PbS solution at a specific bandgap deposited onto a ∼3 cm × 3 cm as-prepared glass first. Then each photoelectrode (in small size) was made from this large-area (3 cm × 3 cm) as-prepared film-coated glass, which was carefully cut into the specific size (approximately 1 cm2) as noted in Supplementary Table 2. Note that the thickness results of the film from the above table are listed below: for example PbS-0.85 eV, thicknesses of electrodes 1, 2 and 3 (originated from the same large electrode), measured using the SEM mentioned here, were very similar, noted as 265 nm; PbS-0.92 eV, thicknesses of electrodes 4–6 are also almost the same, noted as 255 nm; PbS-1.05 eV, thickness of electrodes 7–9 are also the same, noted as 270 nm. A thicker electrode at bandgap 0.85 eV was also intentionally made to investigate the IPCE difference from back and front illumination as shown in Fig. 3;SEM (Fig. 1c,d) indicated a thickness of 370 nm for the film.
Data availability.
The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on request.Does the phrase “XKeyscore” mean anything to you? If your answer is “huh?” then Daniel McCarney has a site you can visit.
McCarney, a security engineer and hacker, set up join.xkeyscore.club over the weekend as a reminder of the National Security Agency’s XKeyscore tool. Internally the NSA said the program, which Glenn Greenwald reported first reported on for The Guardian back in 2013, gave analysts access to "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet."
Visitors to join.xkeyscore.club are greeted by a background of tiled XKeyscore logos (as displayed in NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden). The logos are overlaid by moving static, and the sound of static plays in the background, over a faint instrumental version of The Star Spangled Banner.
A black box in the center of the page invites you to "JOIN THE XKEYSCORE CLUB" before informing you there's been an error: "You are already a member." A smiley emoticon below links out to threeletter.agency, another of McCarney's projects which has been up since May 2014. At threeletter.agency visitors are also met with the noise and appearance of static, as well as the admonition "You lack sufficient clearance to exist."
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McCarney decided to set up join.xkeyscore.club after attending the Black Hat Conference earlier this month. He described Black Hat as "a very self congratulatory party environment dominated by vendors that, on the one hand shill nearly useless products, and on the other operate as private arms of the surveillance state." Projects like xkeyscore.club and threeletter agency are his "outlets for feelings of extreme dissatisfaction with the state of the industry, the lack of progress made, and the general ethics/attitudes of those that participate in it."
The projects are also works-in-progress. I asked McCarney if the static noise on threeletter.agency had any meaning, and he explained that he didn't want to give anything away, adding "this is a body of work that I expect to grow and I'm not sure where it will end. There are outstanding connections to be surfaced."
Keep your eyes peeled, and your internet connections secure.
UPDATE: Man Bartlett just pointed out an easter egg in join.xkeyscore.club's source code. The same language is also in threeletter.agency's source code. It reads:
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Always remember to check the source code, kids.
Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at ethan.chiel@fusion.netThere's a lot of love that should be dealt toward PBS and, on its second day before cable and digital and the broadcast networks roll into TCA, this is that love.
But first, that awkward phase: There was a time at PBS, before it latched onto Downtown Abbey — and getting Downton Abbey was not unlike the kind of great fortune HBO felt when it discovered The Sopranos — when the public broadcaster was in a rut with its message and its perception of the TV universe at large. It still had a variety of excellent shows, but not yet having Downton Abbey and living in world where critics (and viewers) were well aware that lots of cable channels had great children's programming or excellent unscripted cultural programs and hordes of fine costume dramas somehow made PBS a little pissy. It's true. So every TCA, as it fought Republican pressure to defund it and other annoying things (like, say, trying to find funding in the early 2000s for what then was still called Masterpiece Theatre, its crown jewel), there was this attitude that nobody else out there had anything worthwhile and only PBS was a safe harbor for quality.
It was not a good message. Because it wasn't true. I'm not sure PBS really believed that — if it did, its pride was getting in the way or it wasn't really paying attention — but those were grumpy days. A better approach would have kept the drumbeat on its own quality without telling people paid to know better that everything outside the system was inferior.
But then it got Downton Abbey and there was a noticeable draining, for all those years, of whatever bitterness had been in its tea. Everybody at PBS really liked having one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on television. It was a good win for public broadcasting system that was also well deserved.
Before and after that, PBS always had great programming. But there was something very validating about Downton being in the zeitgeist. Now in the beginning of the post-Downton era PBS has continued its upbeat disposition, smartly refusing to pick up its tired rant about everybody else. What PBS is doing at this moment is exactly what it should be doing: waving its hand over the bountiful riches it has and saying, in a sense, "Ain't this great?"
Why yes, it is.
Most impressively, PBS has smartly started touting its vast array of cultural programs — not just its scripted dramas and BBC partnerships — in a pivot that will truly separate the system from what others offer. Because with BBC America and Sundance and countless other outlets producing top-notch drama, the real wealth of gold that makes PBS stand out is its commitment to the arts (and yes, it has excellent science and news shows, I know). But this newer drumbeat notice for its arts programming is smart branding.
For the last four or five years at least I've been saying something consistently about PBS and its presentations at the TCAs and, good people that those involved with PBS are, they have never considered it a backhanded compliment. In short, the sentiment I've espoused is that every time PBS shows up in winter or summer for these press tours, its two days of sessions look, on paper, decidedly unsexy compared to everybody else (outside of Sherlock and a smattering of others), but once you get into the sessions they are — and I can't be enthusiastic enough about this — astonishingly informative and compelling.
It never fails. You look at the schedule and think, "Hmmm, that Nova or American Experience or this documentary could maybe be interesting…" but the doubts roil. Then you show up and every panel seems to be endlessly fascinating.
This happened again on Thursday with Soundbreaking: Stories From the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music, which is one of the things I'm most excited about, then again with the scary Command and Control non-fiction series about nuclear errors. And it will no doubt happen on Friday with Nova, Great Performances, Independent Lens and others. It's almost as if the more dry the description the better the panel and series (which, to stretch this parched metaphor out a bit, probably hit its zenith a while back with Ken Burns' The Dust Bowl documentary, which I initially thought when looking at the schedule, "I love Ken but... really?" and then after it started I felt like leaping out of my chair five times in exuberance and The Dust Bowl ended up being one of PBS's most-watched documentaries).
This happens all the time. Twice a year at TCAs, two days each tour, the schedule comes out and everything looks topically "eat your vegetables," falling short of what Netflix or HBO or FX will trot through here. Then, without fail, the hook gets set. The sessions are unfailingly intriguing. You'd think I'd get used to it. Maybe this year I did. Hence this Journal.
There is an endless bounty of riches on PBS. And to be honest, sometimes this amazing but unsexy stuff does indeed lose out when it comes time to review them. I'll be the first to admit that — and other critics across the country and many other outlets would admit the same. We're all swayed by what has all the buzz. I tend to focus mainly on scripted series (and you may have heard there's an excess amount of great ones in both the drama and comedy genres), even while finding so much of PBS's unscripted fare the most riveting. I'm not alone in that bias, and critics have through the years kind of put their heads down and kicked the dirt and wished out loud they did more PBS reviews while making vague threats to do just that.
I hope they – and I – come through. PBS deserves exposure. It deserves more viewers. Even if it gets another Downton Abbey, which it probably will (and oh by the way, Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock), it already has so much going for it right now that should be applauded and certainly needs to be discovered.Canada's Enbridge Inc., already under fire from U.S. regulators over a massive oil spill two years ago, said on Friday it had shut a key pipeline indefinitely after an oil leak in Wisconsin.
Line 14, a 318,000 barrel per day leg of the major Lakehead System that carries light crude oil from Canada to Chicago-area refineries, was shut after a spill that released an estimated 1,200 barrels of oil, Enbridge Energy Partners said in statement. The cause of the spill was undetermined.
"Enbridge is treating this situation as a top priority," said Richard Adams, vice president of U.S. Operations at Enbridge. "We are bringing all necessary resources to bear."
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While the estimated size of the spill is not particularly large, it comes just weeks after a scathing report from the National Transportation Safety Board over Enbridge's handling of a major leak that spilled more than 20,000 barrel in Michigan in July 2010 – almost two years ago to the day.
The NTSB said its investigation found a complete breakdown of company safety measures, while its employees performed like "Keystone Kops" trying to contain it. The rupture, which went undetected for 17 hours, spilled more than 20,000 barrels of heavy crude into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.
In response to the report, Enbridge said it believed its personnel were trying to do the "right thing" at the time.
On Friday, Enbridge said it had no estimate on when Line 14, a 24-inch diameter pipe that was installed in 1988, could be restarted. In most cases, smaller pipeline leaks can be repaired quickly allowing operations to resume pumping, although regulators may require significant work if they find any cause for alarm.
No injury was reported at the line, which is near Grand Marsh, Wisconsin, Enbridge said.The KOF-K Rabbi Who Made BJ’s Kosher
Rabbi Moshe Lebovits, left, oversees the kashruth of many bakeries at BJâs Wholesale Clubs on behalf of the KOF-K. Rabbi Moshe Lebovits, second from left, overseeing the kashering of a BJâs Wholesale Club. Some of the KOF-K certified products available at BJâs Wholesale Club. Prev
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Teaneck—Rabbi Moshe Dovid Lebovits travels most of the week. In charge of new business development at the Teaneck-based KOF-K Kosher Supervision, he has spearheaded a huge project over the past couple of years. When BJ’s Wholesale Club identifies stores that are located around large Jewish communities, he works with the store administration to kasher the bakeries and helps bring in various packaged kosher items, such as challah, knishes and cheese.
In an interview with the Jewish Link, Rabbi Lebovits shared that BJ’s has done extensive market research on kosher labeling to understand their customers’ general interest in kosher products. He said that fully one in five Americans now look for the kosher symbol on products, even if they are not personally concerned with kashruth, because the symbols are associated with quality.
BJ’s decided to use the KOF-K, which has a national reputation, to kasher its bakeries so that they would “deal with one set of rabbis and rules,” Lebovits said. “Plus, it’s my baby, so to speak,” he joked, indicating that he makes an effort to attend every kashering and is in touch personally with local rabbis around each BJ’s location, so that the kashruth inspections that occur twice a month can be done by a trusted rabbinic authority if Lebovits can’t be there himself.
At the time of this writing, 36 of BJ’s 200 stores have kosher bakeries now certified kosher dairy by the KOF-K, including the Paramus location, which became certified earlier this year. A total of 50 are currently planned to be made kosher companywide. All the baked (mezonos) products are kosher, Rabbi Lebovits told the Jewish Link, including muffins, pastries, croissants, sheet cakes and cupcakes. Cakes can be ordered for birthdays, bat mitzvahs, chagim like Purim or Shavuot and other special occasions. There are packaged breads for sale at BJ’s that are also kosher.
In addition to the store in Paramus, Lebovits has kashered approximately 15 other stories in the New York metropolitan area and has traveled to various other locations, including Massachusetts, Maryland and Florida to do the same. He has responsibility for the entire Eastern Seaboard region. Because he wants the process to be transparent, he has placed customer service above everything else, and places his own cell phone number on the hechsher, which adorns the walls of each BJ’s kosher bakery. “It’s really important to be accessible,” he said.
In his “spare time,” Rabbi Lebovits, who lives in Brooklyn and is a musmach of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, is also an accomplished author and the writer of a book series of monthly articles called Halachically Speaking, which is currently published in three volumes (the books are available at the Israel Bookshop (http://www.israelbookshop.com/). The archives of Volumes four to 11 are published in pamphlet form and are available online at thehalacha.com). Rabbi Lebovits’ writings deals with issues of Jewish law, business and kashruth, which include interesting topics such as the halachot with regard to honey and of working on Tisha B’Av.
To have the BJ’s in your area added to the growing clubs that have kosher bakeries, email Rabbi Lebovits at [email protected] or call 718-744-4360.
By Elizabeth KratzGintama: Project Last Game for PS4 coming to Asia in English
A new Gintama game in English!?
Bandai Namco Entertainment Asia has announced that it will release the PlayStation 4 version of Gintama: Project Last Game with English subtitles in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia) in both physical and digital versions.
Gintama: Project Last Game was first announced for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita in Japan earlier this week.
Described as “the first full-scale action game project” in the Gintama franchise, the exact title of the game is still to be announced. More details about the gameplay will be released in due time.
Bandai Namco is also launching a Facebook poll for fans to decide their desired early purchase bonus downloadable content item. Here are the details:
Voting Period: Week 1: July 15, 2017~
Week 2: July 21, 2017~
Week 3: July 28, 2017~
Week 4: August 16, 2017~ Terms and conditions for the vote as follows: Voting will last for 4 weeks
Every week there will be a popularity vote between 2 choices. The winning choice will be rolled over to the next week.
The vote will be carried out at the same period across Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and South Korea.
The most popular (winning) entry will be used for the bonus item.
Final results will be posted on the BNEAsia Facebook at a later date.
Voting can be done once a day.
Watch the teaser trailer, featuring the three infamous Odd Jobs members Gintoki Sakada (voiced by Tomokazu Sugita), Shinpachi Shimura (voiced by Daisuke Sakaguchi), and Kagura (voiced by Rie Kugimiya), as well as a snippet of gameplay, below. View a set of screenshots at the gallery.A drug that’s used to treat alcoholism has been found to activate dormant HIV cells, dragging them out of hiding so they can be destroyed. When given to 30 HIV positive patients in the US and Australia in a three-day trial, the common anti-alcohol drug, disulfiram, appears to ‘wake up’ HIV cells without causing any harmful side-effects.
Sold commercially as Antabuse, the drug causes people to vomit when they consume alcohol, which makes a pretty strong case to never drink again. But now it seems it can also overcome one of the greatest hurdles to curing HIV/AIDS: HIV latency.
HIV latency allows the virus to lay dormant and undetected in various hiding places around the body, safe from the effects of current antiretroviral drugs (ART) that can only treat HIV in the bloodstream.
Scientists had already identified a class of drugs called histone deacetylase that can kick dormant HIV into gear, but they inflict too many toxic side effects to be a viable treatment option. That’s what makes disulfiram so promising - no harmful side-effects have been detected.
"This trial clearly demonstrates that disulfiram is not toxic and is safe to use, and could quite possibly be the game changer we need," lead researcher, Sharon Lewin from the University of Melbourne in Australia, told Reuters. "The dosage of disulfiram we used provided more of a tickle than a kick to the virus, but this could be enough. Even though the drug was only given for three days, we saw a clear increase in [the] virus in [blood] plasma, which was very encouraging."
Current antiretroviral drugs can keep HIV in the blood in check, but patients have to take them for the rest of their lives in case the dormant virus re-emerges. Disulfiram appears to flush everything out into the open, which is just the first step in the search for a cure.
Once the team confirms that the drug is definitely flushing out the dormant HIV - Andy Coghlan reports for New Scientist that they interpret an increase in HIV gene expression in their study group as a sign that it had been woken up - the next step will be to find a drug that can kill them once they hit the bloodstream. While antiretroviral drugs can stop these cells from multiplying, they can’t destroy them.
"This is a very important step as we have demonstrated we can wake up the sleeping virus with a safe medicine that is easily taken orally once a day. Now we need to work out how to get rid of the infected cell. A kick-start to the immune system might help," one of the team, Julian Elliott from the University of Melbourne, said in a press release. "We have an enormous amount still to learn about how to ultimately eradicate this very smart virus."
The study has been published in The Lancet HIV.Source: Harvey Weinstein Is Fired After Sexual Harassment Reports
The Weinstein Company’s board announced Mr. Weinstein’s firing on Sunday, days after The New York Times reported on decades of harassment allegations.The Weinstein Company board of directors fired one of its founders, Harvey Weinstein, effective immediately on Sunday, four days after a New York Times investigation uncovered accusations of rampant sexual harassment by Mr. Weinstein and at least eight settlements paid to women.
It was an escalation from Friday, when one-third of the all-male board resigned, and the members who remained announced that Mr. Weinstein would take a leave of absence while an outside lawyer investigated the accusations.
In an interview on Sunday, Lance Maerov, one of the four remaining board members, said it has been brought to their attention that Mr. Weinstein violated the company’s code of conduct at some point in the past week. But he would not specify what the violation was. The statement announcing the firing said that the decision had been made “in light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days.”
Mr. Maerov said that Mr. Weinstein was notified by email on Sunday night of his termination from the company he helped found. The action was taken by Mr. Maerov, Bob Weinstein, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar. A fifth board member, Paul Tudor Jones, resigned on Saturday.
Mr. Weinstein could not be reached for comment. Bob Weinstein, his brother and the other founder of the company, declined to comment.
The sexual harassment accusations uncovered by The Times stretched back decades. The actress Ashley Judd recalled him summoning her to his hotel room in the late 1990s for a work meeting where he asked if he could massage her and if she would watch him shower. Other complaints came from former employees of the Weinstein Company and its predecessor, Miramax. In 2015, a junior executive filed a searing memo with top executives at the company accusing Mr. Weinstein of rampant misconduct.
In response to the Times report, Mr. Weinstein said, “I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it.” But he also threatened to sue for defamation, and his legal adviser, Lisa Bloom, said he “denies many of the accusations as patently false.” (On Saturday, Ms. Bloom resigned.)
For the past week, many women in Hollywood, frustrated with an industry that seems to perpetually sexualize and mistreat women, were watching closely to see where the Weinstein revelations would lead. “I see this as a tipping point,” Jenni Konner, executive producer of the HBO series “Girls,” said on Sunday night. “This is the moment we look back on and say, ‘That’s when it all started to change.’”
The firing of Mr. Weinstein by his own company, Ms. Konner said, “is going to scare any man in Hollywood using his power for anything but making movies and television.”
The board’s statement was succinct. “In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of the Weinstein Company — Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar — have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with the Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately.”
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MoreHuge Hole in Earth’s ‘Detergent’ Layer Found Over Pacific
It turns out the hole in the now famous ozone layer above the South Pole isn’t the only hole in the atmosphere. Researchers recently discovered, to their considerable surprise, that the atmosphere above part of the western tropical Pacific Ocean is nearly devoid of one of the key chemicals that scrubs pollutants from the air.
In tropical thunderstorms over the West Pacific, air masses and the chemical substances they contain are quickly hurled upward to the edge of the stratosphere. On the way, hydroxyl (OH) molecules “scrub” these substances from the air before it reaches the stratosphere, where they would be able to spread around the globe and would last for longer than in the lower reaches of the atmosphere. Except in a region of the tropical Pacific a hole in this OH “shield” has been discovered.
Credit: Markus Rex, Alfred Wegener Institute
This newfound hole occurs naturally over thousands of kilometers in one of the most remote places on the planet (which accounts for its having gone unnoticed until now) and one of the main spots where air is sent up to the stratosphere. The stratosphere is the layer of Earth's atmosphere above the troposphere, the layer where humans live and in which most weather occurs. Having air shooting up to this layer without first being “washed” of all the junk that humans and nature put into the atmosphere has uncertain implications for the health of the planet’s protective ozone layer and its overall climate.
Marcus Rex, a climate scientist for the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, stumbled onto the discovery of the hole while sending balloons with ozone-detecting probes into the atmosphere from onboard the research vessel Sonne far out in the Pacific. Probe after probe went up every 250 miles and returned the same puzzling result: The levels of ozone in the air column some 9 miles up — all the way to the stratosphere — were below what could be reliably detected by the instruments.
“I first suspected a series of false measurements and had to convince myself that the measurements were correct,” Rex told Climate Central in an email.
But the probes were right: There was barely any ozone throughout this huge chunk of the atmosphere. Without any ozone, there weren’t any hydroxyl radicals, a molecule made up of an oxygen and hydrogen atom (designated as OH) that is highly reactive in the atmosphere. This reactivity makes it an excellent “detergent” for cleaning from the air many of the thousands of other chemical compounds released by humans, other animals, microbes and plants. For this reason, the layer of OH that exists elsewhere in the troposphere is known as the “OH shield.”
“Only a few, extremely long-lived compounds manage to make their way through the OH shield,” Rex said in a statement.
But where the hole has been found, the air moving to the stratosphere (driven by warm sea surface temperatures, which help cause the air to rise) isn’t subjected to the OH shield and so can reach the upper layers of the atmosphere. The stuff that reaches the stratosphere can remain up there for years and spread around the globe.
The location and extent of the OH (or hydroxyl) hole over the western tropical Pacific Ocean.
Credit: Markus Rex, Alfred Wegener Institute
Among the things that can reach the stratosphere through this hole are certain ozone-destroying compounds that contain the element bromine that could eat away at the planet's ozone layer, which protects life on the surface from the sun's harmful UV rays. This source of ozone-eating chemicals could account for the discrepancy that has been noted between measured ozone depletion rates in the stratosphere and what models suggested those rates would be, Rex and his colleagues said. However, the bromine compounds don’t pose a huge threat to the recovery Antarctic ozone hole, Rex said, since they need to be in the company of a lot of compounds that contain chlorine in order to destroy ozone efficiently, and such compounds (for example, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs) have been mostly phased out by world governments.
“Since chlorine is expected to recover, there is only a small potential of the additional bromine to affect the recovery of the ozone hole,” Rex said.
But research still remains to be done to see the exact contribution of the OH hole to the ozone hole, as well as how it influences Earth’s climate. For example, sulfur-containing particles could be swept up to the stratosphere, where they could have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back to space. But the issue might not be so straightforward given the complexities of the atmosphere made clear by the discovery of the OH hole, Rex said.
“Since we just start to understand what is going on, it is not clear yet, how this ‘hole’ interacts with climate change and/or air pollution,” Rex wrote in an email.
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Cheap Solar Power Pushes Renewables Growth Worldwide© 2009 Guru Khalsa Mason Bates DJing at Mercury Soul at San Francisco’s Mezzanine Club in 2009.
Mason Bates, Musical America’s 2018 Composer of the Year, is carrying a lot on his shoulders. At a time when classical music is eagerly, anxiously, even desperately trying to connect with a younger generation, Bates is one of the rare composers who is at once popular, hip, and active at the large classical-music institutions—opera houses and orchestras—that are having the hardest time winning young audiences.
Implicit sense of rebellion
This year, Bates’s first opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, had its premiere at the Santa Fe Opera. The response was overwhelmingly positive: standing ovations, sold-out houses, and generally favorable reviews—with a couple of negative ones only adding to the implicit sense of rebellion inherent in a 90-minute, one-act opera about the founder of Apple computers. The strongest part of the evening was Bates’s vital, nuanced score, mixing in his signature electronics, amplifying the voices (but not too much), and refraining from bogging down too often in the intoxication of creating something on such a large scale. “You don’t want to fall into the trap of writing a symphony with parlando grafted onto it,” he said to me, some months before the premiere. And he didn’t.
“It was the only opera I’ve ever really related to, not just enjoyed. It changed my experience of what opera can be,” wrote one fan, according to the Santa Fe Opera’s Twitter account.
Bates, 40, is one of the most-performed living American composers—precisely because he gives people something to like. Orchestra audiences who aren’t sure about contemporary music hear thoughtful, skillfully written pieces that are at home in the modern world and offer the ear a lot to hold onto. There are electronics—Bates himself, at his laptop, often sits among the orchestra players. There is amplification. There is a propulsive, kinetic energy. There are mercurial transformations from one thing to another. On the one hand, you have eye-catching elements like the percussion section played on used car parts in Alternative Energy, a four-part symphony that follows the development of modern technology from Henry Ford tinkering in a junkyard to a future in which the last members of humanity live in an Icelandic rain forest. On the other, you have passages like the solo violin line in the “Sirens” movement of the Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, based on a bestiary by Jorge Luis Borges, which Bates wrote for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: an unabashed moment of sheer beauty.
A dual musical citizenship
One reason Bates is able to reach audiences, according to the conventional wisdom, is what one might call his dual musical citizenship: In addition to being a classical composer, he has DJed under the name DJ Masonic. Yet at a time when the Brooklyn musical scene is rife with alt-classical composer-performers playing their own work in small, rock-band-like ensembles, Bates seems almost square for the company he keeps: active with groups like the CSO, where he was composer-in-residence for five years, or the San Francisco Symphony, which presented a festival called “Beethoven and Bates.” He’s currently the first-ever composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center, serving as a visible representative of youth and new music at an institution which hasn’t ever been particularly known for either.
“I’m not sure I have my finger on the pulse of exactly what’s fashionable or what’s not,” he said in a conversation two years ago, “but it certainly doesn’t seem very fashionable—people don’t do program music.” Coming from such a popular composer, the statement seems disingenuous. But it’s also right: There’s something unfashionable, or even old-fashioned, about Bates’s work. Indeed, like another Wunderkind of his generation, Gustavo Dudamel, Bates is partly successful because he is just the kind of young musician that older musicians, and audiences, want. He represents young talent, but also a kind of conventionality. This hard-to-balance combination has endeared him to some powerful musical allies—like Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco or Riccardo Muti, who selected him and Anna Clyne to serve jointly as the CSO composers-in-residence. “Mason,” he said to me, “writes very well for orchestra.”
Also attractive to orchestras is Bates’s involvement with that most popular of buzzwords, outreach. He doesn’t call it that. But given that orchestras hope to find ways of programming new music that will attract new audiences, and that Bates and Clyne did that through curating the CSO’s new-music series during their residency there, it’s small wonder that programming has become a significant part of his portfolio. At the Kennedy Center, Bates almost single-handedly carries classical new-music programming with the series “KC Jukebox,” which mingles voices from across the musical spectrum—from the male vocal group Chanticleer to the hiph |
. The Razer Stargazer bucks that trend and is the most powerful webcam ever created. Traditional webcams were needed for video conferencing with frame rate capture of only 30 frames-per-second, but the Razer Stargazer is capable of matching high-quality game streams with 60 frames-per-second. Intel RealSense technology makes this more than just a high-powered webcam. One of the most exciting advents there is Dynamic Background Removal, which gives gamers a true ‘green screen effect’ without the need for a studio, lights, or the actual green screen. This allows gamers to superimpose themselves in their game streams without showing their background. The Razer Stargazer also supports facial and gesture recognition, 3D scanning and more. In short, a professional streaming setup is more attainable than ever to amateur streamers out there. According to that same study I referenced earlier, there are almost 2 million broadcasters on Twitch, so the market for such a powerful and smart webcam is huge.
How is Razer marketing “Open Source Virtual Reality”? How will VR be a driver of new PC sales?
VR is creating a new way for people to experience games. It’s hard to say how big that market is or will become, but the technology is incredible, and companies like Oculus are bundling high-end PCs to power the hardware and software required with the headsets coming to market this year. We see this as a great thing for PC gamers, and the PC in general, as powerful machines will be in the hands of more people than ever before. However, we’re still in the very early stages of VR becoming truly accessible. Open Source Virtual Reality, or OSVR, is designed to support the growth of virtual reality headsets and other hardware, software and content to a more polished state that can be available to everyone, from the hackers to the general consumer. It’s not a competitor to what Oculus, HTC, Sony and others are doing. Instead, OSVR provides a single software plugin that makes every virtual reality device compatible with another within the OSVR ecosystem. Companies as big as Intel and Ubisoft are involved. All told, since OSVR’s was introduced at CES 2015, we have more than 300 partners in just over a year.
Lenovo and Razer recently teamed up to co-brand and co-market the Razer Edition gaming systems based on the Lenovo Y series. What are some other ways the company is repositioning to remain nimble in the future?
Our mission statement at Razer – For Gamers, By Gamers – presupposes an ultimately open platform from which we develop products and services for gamers. How our specific offerings manifest is solely in response to meeting the needs of the gaming community, whose needs are constantly evolving from within gaming and also from without it in terms of their lifestyle. Insofar as proactivity is concerned, we maintain key relationships and stay up to speed with respective development in areas of interest to gamers – ourselves included. Specifically, the partnership with Lenovo is focused on creating Razer Editions of some of the Lenovo Y Series products, two of which were announced at CES. Both brands will continue to create and market products under their respective brands outside of the scope of the partnership.
ESports is an arena that Razer is currently playing a big role in. How does the company plan on developing the engagement and experience for that platform in 2016?
One of the things we’re most excited about in terms of eSports engagement is Razer Arena. We see Razer Arena as a solution to open-up the full potential of tournament gaming for players, organizers and fans alike, which could lead to more players, more engagement, and ultimately more interest in eSports. The utility of our program applies to the most popular competitive titles today, including League of Legends, Call of Duty, CSGO, Dota2, World of Warcraft and others. What we’ve provided is a fully automated online tournament platform that covers a tournament lifecycle from start to finish, making it simple for organizers to create professional-grade tournaments and for players to participate. While there is more interest in eSports now than ever before, Razer has been involved in competitive gaming since the beginning. Before Arena, the vast majority of gamers didn’t have tools to really support tournaments, which are so critical for the growth of new talent. Being an online platform means that we’re not limited by physical boundaries, so the promise of Razer Arena is greater reach and more opportunities for aspiring players to shine.
How do you market to millennials as opposed to Generation X? Which markets would you consider experimenting more with?
We create and market all of our products for the benefit of gamers everywhere. Whether they’re Generation X, Millennial, Generation Z, or otherwise, Razer is committed to making great products that have profound effects on how people experience their favorite games. In terms of other markets we’re exploring more, Razer will always be focused on the gamer, but the technology we’re creating can benefit really anyone.
Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan.A ONE-ARMED man whose missing limb was severed from the shoulder in a freak biking accident has invented a prosthetic replacement which will allow him to fly a plane.
Steven Robinson’s right arm was torn off by another rider’s footpeg during a collision over 30 years ago, and attempts to rebuild his limb proved unsuccessful.
Steven Robinson is learning to fly with the help of a home-made prosthetic arm. Pictures: Ross Parry Agency
Since his crash, Mr Robinson, 51, from Leeds, has never worn a prosthetic arm but he realised he would need one if he wanted accomplish his lifelong dream of getting his private flying licence.
Despite trying out several types from the NHS, the motivational speaker soon discovered they weren’t going to do the job, so he set out to make his own - designing and building it all from scratch.
Now, after almost a year hard at work, Mr Robinson, who fixes vintage jukeboxes in his spare time, has a working prototype which was signed off by an aviation medical examiner two weeks ago - and he reckons it makes him look like RoboCop.
This means he will be able finally get his solo flying hours and, all being well, his licence.
Steven Robinson is learning to fly with the help of a home-made prosthetic arm. Pictures: Ross Parry Agency
At the age of 18 in 1982, a mid-air crash on his bike left Mr Robinson critically ill with damaged lungs, spleen and liver, a broken leg and most crucially, a severed arm.
His torn-off limb was found 100 metres away, too damaged to reattached, and his missing body part changed his life forever.
Mr Robinson said: “The day of the accident was the day my life changed for ever, but surprisingly it was a positive thing.
“As I lay in hospital I’d been told I’d lost my arm but I didn’t believe it as I could still ‘feel’ it.
“It wasn’t until a nurse took me into the bathroom for the first time that I realised the truth. But, as I looked in the mirror a wave of euphoria washed over me.
“I walked out of that bathroom a new person. I had gone in as a spotty, ugly, shy, boy with no confidence and walked out as a strong young man who had already survived against all the odds.”
Despite being so afraid of flying as a young man he had to have a course of hypnotherapy to even board a plane, on a whim Mr Robinson applied to the Flying Scholarships for Disabled People (FSDP) - and in 2012, was accepted.
But when he started flying in 2012, the prosthetic limb he had fell off each time he tried to operate the joystick, making flying as a one-armed pilot impossible.
Undaunted, he scrapped the false arm, and decided he would solve the problem himself.
He suspended his lessons until he could make himself a new arm that was up to the job.
He tried out two arms the NHS had given him but found he couldn’t use them to fly. He had flown co-pilot for several months without a prosthetic, but he needed the new arm to fly solo.
Mr Robinson believes that a number of ‘unique features’ make his #200 arm stand out from anything else at present.
He said: “I basically bought a milling machine and a lathe and started making components out of aluminium and putting them together.
“It has all been made by me, nothing is shop bought. I actually had to design some parts because they didn’t exist before.
“It has a very special shoulder socket that I have a patent on now, I also had to design a special jacket so that arm can fit over it.
“It looks pretty impressive.
“I look a bit like RoboCop.”
Mr Robinson explained that his arm has a quick-release shoulder socket, which means if he gets in trouble he can get out of his arm quickly.
“People don’t think about getting out of them quickly but you don’t want to be stuck if you are in trouble in a plane.
“It also has positive locking on the shoulder and it can fully rotate as well.”
Mr Robinson said the unique arm took him around 12 months to put together - but he took his time as he was hoping the arms on offer by the NHS might have fit the bill.
He added: “I’ve spoken to lots of different groups about how everyone is capable of overcoming obstacles and building their own future.
“I say to them, if I can achieve all of these things with one arm, what are you capable of achieving with two?”
“I’ve met people who had obstacles in their way which didn’t exist, just like my right arm. It’s just a question of overcoming them.
“With passion, determination and the right attitude you can achieve anything you put your mind to.”
Mr Robinson now need to fly ten hours solo and carry out various navigation tests before he is a fully-qualified pilotThey come with feet of clay, swinging monstrous arms thicker than a man's waist. They're destruction engines. Rock made flesh - the golem. From D&D scenarios to Minecraft and even in Pokémon, the rock monsters are perhaps the most well-known boss mook in gaming history. But their influence goes beyond that too, almost every rock elemental you fight or summon looks and behaves like the golem.
But before golems were a final-wave baddie, they were a creature from Jewish folklore. Animated from clay and sent to do their master's bidding, these golems were, some claim, the first depiction of a robot in human folklore. And like his metallic progeny, while the Golem can be a helpful force he can quickly turn into a rampaging menace, killing everything in his wake.
So what's the Golem's story? To hear the classic tale, let's step back to 16th century Prague, a world of magic and repression, when the Jewish people needed supernatural aid.
It was the late 1500s, and Prague's Jewish ghetto was in trouble. Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II had falsely accused them of killing Christian children and using their blood in rituals - a common lie during that time - and sent soldiers into the ghetto to drive the residents out.
In desperation, the community's rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel went down to the banks of the Vltava River and sculpted a hulking man out of mud. Using kabalistic rituals known only to a few, he inscribed the Hebrew word emet or "truth" on the creature's forehead, bringing it to life. The risen golem patrolled the streets, defending the people from anti-Semitic mobs. He could turn invisible and summon the dead to his aid. But one day the Golem went mad and began a murderous rampage. To protect the people, Rabbi Leow smeared mud on the creature's forehead, changing the word emet to met, or dead. The creature fell lifeless on the spot, its animation gone. Rabbi Leow stored its body in the attic of Prague's Old-New Synagogue, ready to resuscitate the monster should Prague's Jews ever be under threat again.
Legend has it, when German soldiers broke into the Synagogue during World War II, the Golem rose again and tore the Nazis apart with its gigantic hands.
Or maybe that's just what they tell the tourists. After all, the golem is something a cottage industry in Prague.
While this sounds like a classic fairy tale, golems are a part of the belief system in the mystical Kabbalah sect of Judaism. In Kabbalah, it's believed that a spiritually powerful practitioner or Rabbi can call on God's creative power through combining letters in the Hebrew alphabet into potent words, often understood as shem or one of the names of God.
Potent Magic
According to mystical texts from the Middle Ages and Early Modern Judaism, there are several ways to create a golem. A studied and righteous man could recite word combinations that begin with the first eleven letters of the Hebrew alphabet, giving life to the inanimate - a ritual reflecting the Kabbalah belief that God created the world out of words, numbers and sounds. Alternately, a practitioner could spread dust on the ground and write the letters ADM (man) in them, then chant combinations until the golem emerged from the dust. A particularly dramatic ritual involved dancing around the clay figure in an ecstatic trance. However, the most famous method involved either inscribing a shem on the golem's forehead, or writing the inscription on a piece of paper and placing it in its mouth. Destroying the golem involved either reciting the animating chant backwards, fouling the inscription, or pulling the shem from the creature's mouth. Words made the golem, and words could unmake it as well.
But while the golem was animated matter, it wasn't alive as such. Lacking a soul, it was mute, understood commands literally and had nearly no independent thought. Golems were not people or even a creature - they were machinery, something deactivated rather than killed. This distinction was important in early golem stories, which drove home that while mankind can create much like God does, we lack the ability to give our creations the divine spark of life. This is made explicit in the Talmud, where it's specified that when God made Adam out of clay, the first man existed for twelve hours before God game him a soul - in other words, men were once golems as well.
Thus, the golem legend was a metaphor for man's imperfect creative ability and the limits of his power. The act of making a golem was a metaphorical reenactment of God creating humanity, but also emphasized that even a righteous, wise and powerful man could not create a soul. Indeed, in most stories even this simulacrum of creation proves dangerous. Take the Rabbi Eliyau of Chelm, for instance, who was said to have created a golem in the 16th century. According to an 18th century account, Rabbi Eliyau created a golem as a laborer, but when he saw the creature growing larger each day, he feared that it might destroy the universe. Eliyau destroyed the golem by removing the Holy Name from its forehead, but the struggle left the rabbi with facial scars. In a similar story, a golem created for household chores grows so tall that his master cannot reach the magic amulet to deactivate it. Thinking quickly, he asked the golem to reach down and remove his boots - but when the master hurriedly changed the inscription, the creature toppled over dead and crushed him. In these stories, creation unleashes forces that the golem-makers cannot control, and they're punished for their hubris.
By contrast, the stories where golems are fashioned as protectors and avengers tend to configure them as metaphors for violence. While the Golem of Prague guards the Jewish quarter, for example, in many versions of the story it later attacks the synagogue. From this perspective these are warning tales, suggesting that even justifiable violence conducted in self-defense can corrupt or damage society. The creature, once unleashed, may deal with the threat, but it's ultimately a stupid thing that cannot tell friend from foe, and its maker must deactivate it before it wreaks havoc. This speaks to how force is sometimes necessary but also senseless and unreasoning, and once released it can itself pose a threat to the community.
So where do the games come in?The No. 1-ranked Huskies women's basketball team topped the 88-game winning streak set by John Wooden's UCLA men's team from 1971-74, beating Florida State 93-62 on Tuesday night. Playing with the relentlessness that has become its trademark -- and would have made Wooden proud -- Connecticut blew past the Seminoles (No. 20 ESPN/USA Today, No. 22 AP) as it has so many other teams in the last 2 1/2 years.
"I don't want my team to compare themselves to anyone," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said afterward. "I'm not John Wooden and this isn't UCLA. This is Connecticut and that's good enough."
Maya Moore had a career-high 41 points and 10 rebounds and freshman Bria Hartley added 21 points for the Huskies, who have not lost since April 6, 2008, in the NCAA tournament semifinals. Only twice during the record run has a team come within single digits of UConn -- Stanford in the NCAA championship game last season and Baylor in early November.
When the final buzzer sounded, UConn players sprinted across the floor to shake hands with the student section as fans held up "89" signs and "89" balloons bobbed in the stands behind center court. Two other fans raised a banner that read "The Sorcerer of Storrs" -- a play on Wooden's nickname, "The Wizard of Westwood."
After a brief huddle in front of their bench, UConn players re-emerged wearing "89 and Counting" T-shirts. As fans roared, the players bounced around the court before posing for photos.
It's one more chapter of history for UConn, and perhaps the grandest.
"It's pretty amazing. It really is," said Auriemma, at a rare loss for words.
Asked what he would recall from the incredible run, he mentioned a pair of experienced stars on this team: "I'll probably remember Maya Moore and Tiffany Hayes. And how incredibly difficult it is to play that many games in a row and win 'em all."
Connecticut long ago established itself as the marquee program in the women's game, the benchmark by which all others are measured. The Huskies already own seven national titles and four perfect seasons under Auriemma, and they've produced a galaxy of stars that includes Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi, Jennifer Rizzotti, Sue Bird and Tina Charles.
The streak, though, takes it to another level, certainly raising the profile of women's basketball and maybe all of women's athletics.
Two days after beating Ohio State (No. 12 ESPN/USA Today, No. 13 AP) to tie UCLA, UConn toppled the mark in front of a sellout crowd of 16,294 at the XL Center that included Wooden's grandson, Greg, attending his first women's game.
"My grandfather would have been thrilled. He would have been absolutely thrilled to see his streak broken by a women's basketball team," the 47-year-old Wooden said. "He thought, especially in the last 10 years, that the best basketball was played at the collegiate level -- and it wasn't by the men."
John Wooden was 99 when he died last June 4.
There was a festive atmosphere throughout the city, where building lights gleamed blue and white, and it was as electric as any Final Four inside the arena. Charles and UConn men's star Kemba Walker sat behind the Huskies' bench, and football coach Randy Edsall was there, too. Former NFL star Warrick Dunn, meanwhile, was cheering for his alma mater, Florida State.Huken II: Norwegian Bone Zone
We get sent Videos from all over the world (follow us on Facebook Here), and always cool to see what local scenes are producing. This crew in Norway have been building their own park in the woods for a few years now. This season their local resort only had a snowboard park up for one month, but looks like their DIY park they built in the woods was way fun. Props guys.
Joakím Boldó messaged us on Facebook: “This year we had alot of problems with the snow, really bad winter season in Norway, anyways we have make a mini movie this year always inspired in the old bonezone from Usa. Our local ski resort didnt have park longer than a month, so we have been ridding in the woods for almost all season. But we fimed just the last month of the season. We love power, we love rails.”
Featuring Sigurd Lindquist, Joakim Boldo, Sondre Orekasa, Kristoffer Jensvold, Ole Andreas Lervag, Andreas Grong, Thomas Baxter, Kristoffer Lerand, Stian Larsen, Jorgen Johnsen, Tormod Gregussen, Alfred Schille, and Olav Rodevand.Been nearly one year since I posted anything to this site and a lot of that is due to a busy lifestyle, job, plain laziness but probably the best excuse was a heart attack and open heart surgery that I experienced on March the 27th. Yep I had the big one and followed it up with open heart surgery, it was the last thing that I ever expected to happen but happen it did. I really don’t want to get to deep into it the doctors already did that for me, but I have been given a great prognosis and I am continuing on with life with a few behavior modifications. I am very thankful for all the support from my family and friends and the great work by all the doctors and hospitals that put me back together again. So now on to something a little more to my liking and that is sharing some of my work with everyone, I don’t even know where to begin I have captured so many images in the last year but I guess I will just start posting some my favorites and go from there!! One from last fall at Clifty Falls State Park here in Madison Indiana, was a beautiful morning with all the sunbeams streaking down thru the fog that made for a surreal scene.
AdvertisementsTadahito Iguchi had insisted that one of the reasons why he was hanging up his cleats was that he could no longer hit home runs as often as he used to.
But in the final game of his prolonged professional career, Tadahito Iguchi hit one over the fence.
The 42-year-old Marines star drove fans at a jam-packed Zozo Marine Stadium nuts as he blasted a game-tying two-run homer to the center-field bleachers in his fourth at-bat in the bottom of the ninth in the Chiba Lotte Marines’ 4-3, 12th-inning walk-off victory over the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters on Sunday.
“I played for the Hawks for eight years, four years in the majors and nine years for the Marines. I’ve always played with a challenger’s mind-set,” Iguchi, who went 2-for-5, said during his retirement ceremony after the game.
“When I came into pro baseball, my goals were to reach 2,000 hits, play in the majors and play until I was 40 years old. As I have achieved all of them, I feel fortunate that I had better experiences than other players. And it’s really become a treasure for me.”
Iguchi ended his 21-year career with 2,254 hits, 295 home runs and 1,222 RBIs combined in Japan and the United States. He captured three Japan Series and two World Series championships.
Sunday’s game was Iguchi’s first top-team game since he played in an Aug. 27 contest against the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. After that, he was on the farm team to prepare for his retirement game.
“I’ve been looking to hit in that direction in the last month,” Iguchi, who has always been good at hitting to the opposite direction, said of his homer. “I did it, and I have nothing to regret now.”
The Tokyo native said that he was not particularly aiming to hit a homer, but his teammates seemed more determined to win the game for the outgoing veteran than he was himself, which helped the batted ball fly as far as it did.
For the special game, all the Marines players wore No. 6, which Iguchi has worn since he returned to Japan and signed with the Marines in 2009 after his stints in the majors, where he played for the Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres.
Iguchi, a three-time Golden Glove award winner in Japan, did not have a chance to put on his glove and take the field.
Asked if he wanted to do it, Iguchi said: “I could not have done it in that (close) game situation. I didn’t take the field at all this year, and we have a legit second baseman in Daichi Suzuki, who’s played there all year. I could not have taken the spot from him. I value my team winning more than anything else and I’m just glad I was able to contribute today.”
Marines skipper Tsutomu Ito looked just as excited as his players about how Iguchi’s final contest played out.
“It was the best way to send someone off, and he did it on his own,” said Ito, who had already announced that he would step down as manager after this season. “We were able to glorify his retirement by ending with a walk-off.”
Ito also gave Iguchi credit for giving everything out on the field, just as he has always done, instead of making the game just a lukewarm farewell party.
“That’s the Iguchi we know,” Ito said. “Once he decided to play in this game, he was going to go all out. He chose to be on the farm to tune up for this particular game. He didn’t play easily. He tried to be in the best shape he could be leading up to this game.”
Several current and former teammates and coaches sent messages to Iguchi.
All-time home run king Sadaharu Oh, who was Iguchi’s first pro manager, recalled the player’s early years with the Hawks.
“Iguchi, you came to the Hawks in 1997 and we played together,” Oh said in a video message. “We were weak earlier, but you really did your best and greatly contributed to us winning the Japan Series titles in 1999 and 2003.
“Iguchi, who loves to play baseball, took on the challenge of the major leagues and spent four years there, and I think that it genuinely benefited your baseball career afterwards. You have a promising future, but I think that these four years will help you out.”
Iguchi was embraced by those whom he associated with during his years in the big leagues as well.
The White Sox, who the Japanese infielder played for and captured the World Series title with in 2005, created a tribute video clip for him on their official Twitter account.
“To me, it was an honor to manage you in your great career you got in the United States,” said Ozzie Guillen, who was the White Sox manager during Iguchi’s stint with the team. “You were one of my favorite players. (In) 2005, I told the media you were my MVP on the team. People don’t realize that.”
With Ito announcing his intention to resign in August, the Marines asked Iguchi to be the next manager.
Iguchi said that he would sit back and consider the possibility.
“I would like to have a good rest for now,” said Iguchi, who would become the first Japanese NPB manager with MLB experience. “I have different options for my future, but I would like to put on the jersey again.”
Hawks beat Eagles
Shuhei Fukuda brought Fukuoka SoftBank from a run down in the seventh with a two-out, two-run double, and closer Dennis Sarfate recorded his 52nd save as the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks beat the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 4-3 on Sunday, Kyodo News reports.
The Eagles still clinched a spot in the postseason despite the result at Yafuoku Dome.
Lions 8, Buffaloes 5
At MetLife Dome, Hotaka Yamakawa went 2-for-4 with his 20th home run and two RBIs as Seibu beat Orix to eliminate the Buffaloes from playoff contention.
CENTRAL LEAGUE
Dragons 3, Carp 2
At Nagoya Dome, Atsushi Fujii went 4-for-5 with a two-out, sayonara RBI double in the ninth inning to lift Chunichi to a walk-off win over Hiroshima.
Giants 5, Swallows 3
At Jingu Stadium, Tokyo Yakult starter David Buchanan (6-13) blew the game open in the third inning by allowing three-straight, two-out walks followed by three-straight RBI singles in a loss to Yomiuri.
BayStars 2, Tigers 0
At Koshien Stadium, Shota Imanaga (11-7) worked 6⅔ innings and three relievers completed Yokohama’s four-hit shutout of Hanshin. The win kept the BayStars 1½ games ahead of Yomiuri in the hunt for the CL’s final playoff spot.The Washington Post informed the White House before printing transcripts of telephone calls between President Donald Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Australia, and there was never a request made to stop the documents from being published, the newspaper's national security correspondent, Greg Miller, said Friday.
"I can tell you that we absolutely went to the White House before publishing any of this material," Miller told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, while not divulging his sources for the transcripts.
"We told them what our intention was, we told them what we thought was significant in these transcripts and what we intended to emphasize in our coverage, and we have some comment in the story from officials familiar with these conversations defending the president's handling of these calls."
There was no request, Miller said, at "any point" in the discussions to withhold the information.
"I should emphasize that happens from time-to-time," said Miller. "We have these conversations frequently with the U.S. government about programs, covert programs and things like that. The government doesn't always prevail when it comes to our news organizations and others, but [they] didn't even ask."
It was "extraordinary" to get the transcripts, said Miller, as "this isn't the kind of thing we're accustomed to seeing. These are extraordinary conversations that a president of the United States is having."
The conversations included a referral to New Hampshire as a "drug-infested den," pointed out Miller, and Trump also subjected "a very, very close ally, a country that has fought alongside the United States for a century in every conflict to a stream of invective abuse really. So these are extraordinary conversations."
Miller said he does not know what would have happened if a president in the past had treated an ally or a leader of a close nation in the way Trump did the president of Mexico or prime minister of Australia, but if they had, "perhaps we would have seen transcripts like that in those cases."
The newspaper, meanwhile, is mindful of the political climate in Washington and the hostility to the news media, so "extraordinary precautions" are taken when something like the transcripts come in, said Miller.
"This is an unusual moment in our country's history, an unusual moment in journalism," said Miller.
Veteran journalist and Post associate editor Bob Woodward, also appearing on the program, defended the decision to print the transcripts and called Miller "one of the great reporters.'
"There is a process which he described which is very important to understand," said Woodward, including going to the White House for reaction.
"There's nothing classified in these transcripts," said Woodward.
"I read them three times, and I think you can argue that it shows Trump negotiating. This is a New York real estate negotiation where you say, 'hey, look, if I do it your way, I'm going to look like a dope.'"Image: ASU/Vimeo
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Tomorrow, at a ridiculously early hour, we're flying to Chicago to cover the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). WOOHOO!
As we've mentioned, IROS 2014 is going to be unlike any IEEE conference that we've covered so far. Instead of eight or ten or twelve tracks of researchers giving PowerPoint presentations nearly non-stop, simultaneously, from what feels like 4 a.m. to 9 p.m., slowly killing us (with, um, happiness) over the course of three days, now everything is interactive sessions. This means that instead of relentless PowerPoint in overcrowded rooms, there will be a bunch of roboticists with tables, monitors, and (we hope) robots that we can actually, you know, interact with. It's a bit of a risk, since IROS has never tried this before, but we're hoping that it'll result in more time for us to talk to people, and more chances for the people actually doing the interesting robot stuff to tell us what they're up to directly.
So, you have that to look forward to next week, and so do we, assuming that we don't collapse by Wednesday.
Usually, we collapse.
But that hasn't happened yet! So, videos!
Need a robot to give your airplane a polish? The Kuka Moiros concept is possibly the largest mobile manipulator ever built. The thing rolls on a giant omnidirectional base and carries a robot arm capable of lifting a 120-kilogram payload and move with 5-millimeter accuracy. And Kuka says an even stronger arm can be mounted on the base.
[ KUKA ]
Here's one more ice bucket challenge video, and this one is worth it for two reason. Reason #1 is that it's Professor Sangbae Kim who gets ice bucket'd (and we're big fans of his work). Reason #2 is that it's the MIT Cheetah robot doing the bucketing (and this version looks WAY different).
From last year:
Are those battery packs on its back, maybe? Could it be running untethered? We have no idea, but we'll see what we can find out next week.
[ MIT Biomimetics ]
Chris Anderson's drone company 3D Robotics has had a busy, busy week. They started by announcing that billionaire Sir Richard Branson (!) is now one of their investors, which I guess involves a drone-filled vacation on an island that's slightly larger than mine:
It’s amazing to see what a little flying object with a GoPro attached can do; before they came along the alternative was an expensive helicopter and crew. I’m really excited about the potential for drones, and I hope this affordable technology will give many more people the chance to see our beautiful planet from such a powerful perspective. But it’s not just about beauty shots. When you say the word "drone", most people will think about military drones, which are used for surveillance and warfare. But this increasingly affordable, easy to use technology is starting to be used around the world in many positive ways. Like to monitor endangered species, deliver healthcare to remote areas, and help manage natural disasters. We’ll be sharing lots of stories about people and organisations involved in drones over on Virgin Unite from next week in our "Drones for good" series. Meanwhile, where did my sunglasses go?
Next from 3D Robotics: the release video for their Iris+ personal drone, and it's only slightly pretentious:
And lastly, 3D Robotics is now partnering with Intel to use their Edison microcomputer in drones:
Vision, eh? Does that mean my drone might soon be smart enough to follow me autonomously somewhere besides wide open fields, wide open lakes, and way above me in the wide open sky?
[ 3D Robotics ]
BUBBLES!
[ Moriyama Wado ]
RoboGen is open source software from EPFL LIS that can be used to evolve robots and control software. It's constrained such that the components that it generated can be easily 3D printed and assembled. First, you let the software do its thing for a few generations until you end up with something potentially effective:
And then, real hardware!
[ RoboGen ]
GPS is often not the best localization technique when you're going for precision. Vision is a lot harder to do, but potentially much better, and it's viable if you've got a semi-structured environment to deal with. When we think about structured environments, we usually think about hospitals and stuff, but farms are also structured environments, and Rowbot takes advantage of the fact that corn is planted in rows to use vision to traverse them while applying nitrogen fertilizer and seeding cover crops.
[ Rowbot ]
If you do this to any creature who is just trying to peacefully enjoy lunch, I think you deserve to get rammed:
I can't find a lot of information about StuntMIP, a speedy little self-balancing "stunt" robot from Ed Pogue at the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab, but I know it's awesome because it has the literal support of Switchblade:
[ UCSD Robotics ]
The idea of making a soft robotic exosuit is a very interesting one. At Harvard, instead of using a rigid structure driven directly by motors, they're developing a cable driven, completely flexible system:
You won't get as much power with this suit, and unlike most other hard exoskeletons, it won't transfer any weight directly to the ground, limiting how much it can augment your strength or endurance. But, it doesn't restrict your movement at all, either.
[ Harvard ]
Curiosity has finally, after two years and 9 kilometers of driving, officially reached the base of Mt. Sharp.
And here's what 9 kilometers of driving on Mars looks like:
[ MSL ]
Here's a talk by Intel's Genevieve Bell on the "prehistory of robots":
As human beings we have always been fascinated with making life, in its many forms, with all of the technologies of the day at our disposals. Our cultures and our histories are steeped in stories of making life: gods making human beings to do their biddings; gods making themselves into human beings temporarily; ancestral figures transforming themselves into human beings; strange hybrids of gods and human beings with blends of skills and powers. As an anthropologist working at the intersections of new technology development and cultural practices, Dr. Genevieve Bell is an a unique position to explore the relationships between innovation and society. In this talk, she explores a different set of narratives about making life – ones that revolve around technology. Specifically, Bell is interested in how we might locate robots in this larger set of cultural and historical conversations. Here she traces the history of automata, monsters, and mechanical men as precursors to robots. We had already built mechanical objects (and indeed mechanical people), and we had imagined making life. So when the word and idea of robots first appeared in English, it had immediate and global resonance in no |
information necessary to emit each patchpoint’s machine code. We could have written a layer around B3 that generates LLVM-like stackmaps using B3 Patchpoint s, but we instead opted for a rewrite of those parts of the FTL that use patchpoints. Using B3’s patchpoints is a lot easier. For example, here’s all of the code that is needed to use a patchpoint to emit a double-to-int instruction. B3 doesn’t support it natively because the specific behavior of such an instruction differs greatly between different targets.
LValue Output :: doubleToInt ( LValue value ) { PatchpointValue * result = patchpoint ( Int32 ); result -> append ( value, ValueRep :: SomeRegister ); result -> setGenerator ( [] ( CCallHelpers & jit, const StackmapGenerationParams & params ) { jit. truncateDoubleToInt32 ( params [ 1 ]. fpr (), params [ 0 ]. gpr ()); }); result -> effects = Effects :: none (); return result ; }
Notice how easy it is to query the register used for the input (params[1].fpr()) and the register used for the output (params[0].gpr()). Most patchpoints are much more sophisticated than this one, so having a clear API makes these patchpoints much easier to manage.
Performance Results
At the time of writing, it’s still possible to switch between LLVM and B3 using a compile-time flag. This enables head-to-head comparisons of LLVM and B3. This section summarizes the results of performance tests done on two machines using three benchmark suites.
We tested on two different Macs: an old Mac Pro with 12 hyperthreaded cores (two 6-core Xeons) and 32 GB or RAM, and somewhat newer MacBook Air with a 1.3 GHz Core i5 and 8 GB of RAM. The Mac Pro has 24 logical CPUs while the MacBook Air only has 4. It’s important to test different kinds of machines because the number of available CPUs, the relative speed of memory, and the kinds of things that the particular CPU model is good at all affect the bottom line. We have seen WebKit changes that improve performance on one kind of machine while regressing performance on another.
We used three different benchmark suites: JetStream, Octane, and Kraken. JetStream and Kraken have no overlap, and test different kinds of code. Kraken has a lot of numerical code that runs for a relatively short amount of time — something that is missing from JetStream. Octane tests similar things to JetStream, but with a different focus. We believe that WebKit should perform well on all benchmarks, so we always use a wide range of benchmarks as part of our experimental methodology.
All tests compare LLVM against B3 in the same revision of WebKit, r195946. The tests are run in a browser to make it as real as possible.
Compile Times in JetStream
Our hypothesis with B3 is that we could build a compiler that reduces compile times, which would enable the FTL JIT to benefit a wider set of applications. The chart above shows the geometric mean compile time for hot functions in JetStream. LLVM takes 4.7 times longer to compile than B3. While this is off from our original hypothetical goal of 10x reduction in compile times, it’s a great improvement. The sections that follow show how this compile time reduction coupled with overall good code generation quality of B3 combine to produce speed-ups on JetStream and other benchmarks.
JetStream Performance
On the Mac Pro, there is hardly any difference in performance between LLVM and B3. But on the MacBook Air, B3 gives a 4.5% overall speed-up. We can break this down further by JetStream’s Latency and Throughput components. This section also explores register allocation performance and considers JetStream’s performance with various LLVM configurations.
JetStream Latency
The latency component of JetStream has many shorter-running tests. A JIT compiler that takes too long impacts the latency score in multiple ways:
It delays the availability of optimized code, so the program spends extra time running slow code.
It puts pressure on the memory bus and slows down memory accesses on the thread running the benchmark.
Compiler threads are not perfectly concurrent. They can sometimes be scheduled on the same CPU as the main thread. They can sometimes take locks that cause the main thread to block.
B3 appears to improve the JetStream latency score on both the Mac Pro and the MacBook Air, though the effect on the MacBook Air is considerably larger.
JetStream Throughput
JetStream’s throughput tests run long enough that the time it takes to compile them should not matter much. But to the extent that the tests provide a warm-up cycle, the duration is fixed regardless of hardware. So, on slower hardware, we expect that not all of the hot code will be compiled by the time the warm-up cycle is done.
On the Mac Pro, the throughput score appears identical regardless of which backend we pick. But on the MacBook Air, B3 shows a 4.7% win.
The Mac Pro performance results seem to imply that LLVM and B3 are generating code of roughly equivalent quality, but we cannot be sure. It is possible, though unlikely, that the B3 is creating an X% slow-down in steady-state performance against an X% speed-up due to reduction in compiler latency, and they perfectly cancel each other out. We think that it’s more likely that LLVM and B3 are generating code of roughly equivalent quality.
We suspect that on the MacBook Air, compile times matter a great deal. Because a lot of JetStream tests have a 1 second warm-up where performance is not recorded, a computer that is fast enough (like the Mac Pro) will be able to completely hide the effects of compile time. So long as all relevant compiling is done in one second, nobody will know if it took the full second or just a fraction of it. But on a slow enough computer, or a computer like a MacBook Air or iPhone that doesn’t have 24 logical CPUs, the compiling of hot functions might still be happening after the 1 second of warm-up. At this point, every moment spent compiling deducts from the score because of the compounded effects of running slower code on the main thread and having to compete with compiler threads for memory bandwidth. The 4.7x reduction in compile times combined with the low parallelism of the MacBook Air probably explains why it gets a JetStream throughput speed-up from B3 even though the scores are identical on the Mac Pro.
Register Allocation Performance in JetStream
Our throughput results seem to indicate that there isn’t a significant difference in the quality of code produced by B3’s and LLVM’s register allocators. This begs the question: which register allocator is quickest? We measured time spent in register allocation in JetStream. Like we did for compile times, we correlated the register allocation times in all of JetStream’s hot functions, and computed the geometric mean of the ratios of time spent in LLVM’s Greedy register allocator versus B3’s IRC.
Both LLVM and B3 have expensive register allocators, but LLVM’s Greedy register allocator tends to run faster on average – the ratio of LLVM time to B3 time is around 0.6 on the MacBook Air. This isn’t enough to overcome LLVM’s performance deficits elsewhere, but it does suggest that we should implement LLVM’s Greedy allocator in WebKit to see if that gives a speed-up. We are also likely to continue tuning our IRC allocator, since there are still many improvements that can still be made, like removing the remaining uses of hashtables and switching to better data structures for representing interference.
These results suggest that IRC is still a great choice for new compilers, because it’s easy to implement, doesn’t require a lot of tuning, and delivers respectable performance results. It’s worth noting that while IRC is around 1300 lines of code, LLVM’s Greedy is close to 5000 lines if you consider the allocator itself (over 2000 lines) and the code for its supporting data structures.
Comparison with LLVM’s Fast Instruction Selector
Our final JetStream comparison considers the FTL JIT’s ability to run LLVM in the “fast isel” configuration, which we use on ARM64. This configuration reduces compile times by disabling some LLVM optimizations:
The Fast instruction selector is used instead of the Selection DAG instruction selector. When we switch to fast isel, we also always enable the LowerSwitch pass, since fast isel cannot handle switch statements.
The misched pass is disabled.
The Basic register allocator is used instead of the Greedy register allocator.
We tested just switching to fast isel, as well as switching to fast isel and doing the two other changes as well. As the chart above shows, using fast isel hurts throughput: the JetStream throughput score goes down by 7.9%, causing the overall score to go down by 4.5%. Also disabling the other optimizations seems to hurt throughput even more: the throughput score goes down by 9.1% and the overall score goes down by 4.9%, though these differences are close to the margin of error. B3 is able to reduce compile times without hurting performance: on this machine, B3’s and LLVM’s throughput scores are too close to call.
Kraken Performance
The Kraken benchmark has been challenging for the FTL JIT, because its tests run for a relatively short amount of time yet it contains a lot of code that requires the kinds of optimizations that WebKit only does in the FTL JIT. In fact, we had Kraken in mind when we first thought of doing B3. So it’s not surprising that B3 provides a speed-up: 8.2% on the Mac Pro and 11.6% on the MacBook Air.
Octane Performance
Octane has a lot of overlap with JetStream: roughly half of JetStream’s throughput component is taken from Octane. The Octane results, which show no difference on Mac Pro and a 5.2% B3 speed-up on MacBook Air, mirror the results we saw in JetStream throughput.
Conclusion
B3 generates code that is as good as LLVM on the benchmarks we tried, and makes WebKit faster overall by reducing the amount of time spent compiling. We’re happy to have enabled the new B3 compiler in the FTL JIT. Having our own low-level compiler backend gives us an immediate boost on some benchmarks. We hope that in the future it will allow us to better tune our compiler infrastructure for the web.
B3 is not yet complete. We still need to finish porting B3 to ARM64. B3 passes all tests, but we haven’t finished optimizing performance on ARM. Once all platforms that used the FTL switch to B3, we plan to remove LLVM support from the FTL JIT.
If you’re interested in more information about B3, we plan to maintain up-to-date documentation — every commit that changes how B3 works must change the documentation accordingly. The documentation focuses on B3 IR and we hope to add Air documentation soon.Journalists gather near the entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway, on Feb. 25, 2008. (Bob Strong/Reuters)
On Friday, a slew of alarming headlines emerged regarding the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Water had apparently breached this “fail-safe” trove of the planet’s seeds that is supposed to protect earth’s food supply in the event of a “doomsday” scenario.
The alleged failure of the vault, buried deep into an Arctic mountainside, had occurred after warmer than usual temperatures had caused a layer of permafrost to thaw, “sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel” and presumably putting the world’s most diverse collection of crop seeds at risk, according to the Guardian.
“Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts,” the newspaper announced.
“The Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault Flooded. Thanks, Global Warming,” Wired stated.
Though water did get past the vault’s threshold, none of the seeds had been damaged. But a spokeswoman for Statsbygg — a group that advises the Norwegian government, which owns the vault — cautioned that it might only be a matter of time before they were.
“A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in,” Statsbygg spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim told the Guardian of the water breach. She added that officials were now observing the seed vault around the clock to “minimize all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself.”
“The question is whether this is just happening now, or will it escalate?” Aschim asked.
On Saturday, Statsbygg seemed to walk back some of those comments in a statement published on the seed vault’s website. Yes, there had been “season-dependent intrusion of water” into the outer part of the seed vault, but the group was now taking precautionary measures to make improvements to the outer tunnel to prevent future occurrences.
“The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened and will remain safe during implementation of the measures,” the statement read.
In our news section: statement on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The seeds are safe and soundhttps://t.co/2U0unt3Q0y pic.twitter.com/urknLNFkJI — The Crop Trust (@CropTrust) May 20, 2017
According to the statement, the proposed improvements include removing heat sources, such as a transformer station, from the tunnel, as well as constructing drainage ditches on the mountainside to prevent meltwater from accumulating around the entrance. In addition, waterproof walls would be erected inside the tunnel. Finally, to be “better safe than sorry,” Statsbygg says researchers will closely follow the development of permafrost on Svalbard.
“The seeds are safe and sound,” tweeted the Crop Trust, an international nonprofit group that helped establish the Svalbard vault in 2008.
So which is it? Is the fact that some water seeped into a “fail-safe” vault no big deal? Or are we as a human race doomed to die, starving and cropless, in the event of global catastrophe?
The answer is more measured. Representatives for Statsbygg and Crop Trust did not immediately respond to an emailed interview request Saturday. However, Crop Trust on Saturday twice retweeted a Popular Science article that seemed to indicate the situation was not as dire as had been initially reported.
“In my experience, there’s been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year,” Cary Fowler, an American agriculturist who helped create the seed vault, told the magazine. Though he was not at the vault to observe the incident, he noted that “flooding” was probably not the most accurate word to describe what happened.
[Record-breaking climate events all over the world are being shaped by global warming, scientists find]
“The tunnel was never meant to be watertight at the front, because we didn’t think we would need that,” Fowler told Popular Science. “What happens is, in the summer the permafrost melts, and some water comes in, and when it comes in, it freezes. It doesn’t typically go very far.”
However, that doesn’t mean that the underlying cause for the thawing permafrost — warming temperatures — should be ignored.
“At the end of the day we have to realize that in a sense, everything is relative with this initiative,” Fowler told the magazine. “This whole planet is warming, and that includes Svalbard.”
Global warming has been particularly noticeable in the Arctic regions, and the thawing of permafrost is only one consequence; another includes the melting of major glaciers, which could lead to a dramatic sea-level rise, as The Post’s Chris Mooney reported.
Currently, the vault holds nearly 900,000 seed samples, from maize and sorghum from Africa and Asia to barley and eggplant from Europe and South America. It has the capacity to store up to 4.5 million crop varieties, or about 2.5 billion seeds, according to the vault website.
Inside, imposing concrete walls shelter those seeds at minus-18 degrees Celsius (minus-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit). From the outside, only a portion of the entrance is visible as it juts out at an angle from the snow and ice. It looks like the type of structure you might get if you commissioned I.M. Pei to design an Arctic hideaway for a James Bond film.
[Climate change is literally turning the Arctic ocean inside out]
When they chose to build the seed vault on Svalbard, the site was chosen for its accessible location, geological stability, low humidity levels and its perch well above sea level. Officials just hadn’t anticipated the permafrost would thaw and send water into the entrance.
“There’s no doubt that the permafrost will remain in the mountainside where the seeds are,” Marie Haga, head of Crop Trust, told Reuters. “But we had not expected it to melt around the tunnel.”
For his part, Fowler has always maintained confidence in the seed vault’s ability to endure natural or man-made disasters. In 2015, he told then-Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg that perhaps an atomic bomb dropped on top of the mountain would be the only thing that could destroy the vault. Fowler repeated those sentiments to Popular Science on Friday.
“We did this calculation; if all the ice in the world melted — Greenland, Arctic, Antarctic, everything — and then we had the world’s largest recorded tsunami right in front of the seed vault … what would happen to the seed vault?” Fowler told the magazines. “We found that the seed vault was somewhere between a five and seven story building above that point. It might not help the road leading up to the seed vault, but the seeds themselves would be okay.”
In other words, there are no guarantees about humanity in that scenario. But the seed vault is probably going to be fine.
1 of 12 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Inside the ‘doomsday’ vault buried deep inside an Arctic mountain View Photos The vault inside a Norway mountain aims to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters. Caption The vault inside a Norway mountain aims to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters. Journalists walk under a gust of cold air near the entrance of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Norway built the remote facility as a doomsday vault to protect the world’s seeds from such threats as war and global warming. Hakon Mosvold Larsen/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
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Russia plans to kill a quarter-million Siberian reindeer amid anthrax fears
Thanks to global warming, Antarctica is beginning to turn greenIrish NGO Concern has temporarily suspended its aid work in North Korea due to the increasing threat of war. The suspension takes place with immediate effect due to fears over staff safety.
The non-governmental organisation has 14 workers in the area. Eleven of them are from North Korea, while there are also three international workers from Nepal, India and Sweden. The only Irish Concern employee in the area left a number of months ago.
Concern’s overseas director of aid Paul O’Brien said the organisation had a meeting with the Department of Foreign Affairs last week, where the decision was made.“Two of our international staff are outside the area now and we can’t really function without them. We will return to work once it settles down there,” he said.
Mr O’Brien said he hopes things will settle in the country by the time former leader Kim Il-Sung’s birthday takes place on April 15th. The birthday is celebrated as a public holiday where North Koreans celebrate the life of their “Eternal President”, who died in 1994.
Mr O’Brien added that external aid is vital for North Korea, as their trade is limited to China. “Aid is quite important for then. I witnessed tractors from World War One being used there. The whole system is in a state of decay,” he said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs changed its travel advice for Irish people going to North Korea during the weekend. The department is now advising people to avoid all non-essential travel to the area and if essential, to register their travel via its website dfa.ie.
A statement from the Department said: “Since conducting what was stated to be a nuclear test on February 12th 2013 tensions have increased on the Korean Peninsula. Most recently, these statements have concerned the operation of the Kaesong Industrial Complex shared with the Republic of Korea (South Korea).
“In light of the fact that the North Korean authorities have indicated to the diplomatic community that they cannot guarantee their safety, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now advises against all non-essential travel to the DPRK (North Korea).”Democrats usually jump at opportunities to counter Trump’s reckless and incendiary policies. That is, when the policies don’t have to do with the state of Israel.
The origins of the Jerusalem controversy date back to the 1947 UN General Assembly partition dividing Palestine into two states (under protest by the majority Palestinian population living there). Rather than giving Jerusalem either to Israel or Palestine, the UN recommended the city be corpus separatum, a “separated body,” administered by the United Nations. The UN’s plan was never implemented. Instead in 1948 Israel ended up with control of the Western half of the city and Jordan held East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In 1967, Israel “unified the city” by occupying the eastern half as well.
Despite numerous UN resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw, Israel has continued to hold the land and take concrete measures to annex it. These actions have included the building of the separation wall to include East Jerusalem within Israel’s boundaries, revoking the residency permits of Palestinian Jerusalemites, home demolitions and ongoing settlement growth. An 2017 bill in the Knesset even tried to formally annex 19 settlements surrounding Jerusalem into the Jerusalem municipality. Transportation Minister Israel Katz proudly declared the intent of the legislation as being to “ensure a Jewish majority in the united city and to expand its borders by adding 150,000 residents to the area of a greater Jerusalem.” Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now, succeeded in generating enough opposition that its authors watered it down from blatant annexation. The Prime Minister delayed the planned October 2017 vote on it due to lack of support and possible U.S. disapproval. However, if passed, it would still amount to de facto annexation of the 19 settlements.
From 1967 through today, all countries in the world, in accordance with the UN’s original plan, have refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. U.S. policy had been that the city’s status should be not be determined unilaterally but through negotiations. In 1995, the U.S. Congress reversed this position by passing the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandated the U.S. by moved from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem be recognized as the capital of Israel. Democratic president Bill Clinton refused to sign the act, saying it “could hinder the peace process” and used the presidential waiver included in the legislation to prevent the embassy move... Following Clinton, all US Presidents have signed waivers every six months, as required by the 1995 act, to keep the US embassy in Tel Aviv because they know the dangerous spark not doing so could ignite in an already volatile Middle East.
Trump’s announcement stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and directing the State Department to begin moving the embassy sparked protests across the world. In the West Bank and Gaza, where even nonviolent protests are met with military force, the first few days saw at least two Palestinians were killed almost 800 injured. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that Friday, killed two and injured at least 25 people, including a six-month-old baby who was placed in critical condition. Whether the baby is still alive or has succumbed to his wounds is unknown.
One would think Democrats would be be jumping at the chance to hammer Trump for his reckless plans and their consequences, pitting us, once again, against the rest of the world and obliterating our credibility to be an honest broker. Instead, most have been, silent or, worse yet, taking credit themselves for Trump actions.
Senator Ben Cardin, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, responded to Trump’s actions with the affirmation that “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and the location of the U.S. Embassy should reflect this fact.”
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer actually bragged after Trump’s announcement that he had helped convince Trump to follow through with his campaign promise to move the embassy. “Moving the embassy as soon as possible would appropriately commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification,” Schumer said in October 2017. According to international law, however, Jerusalem has spent the past 50 years being occupied, not unified.
Democratic whip Steny Hoyer agreed as well, saying that it was simply “a fact of history that cannot be denied.” Representative Engel of New York stated, “this decision is long overdue and helps correct a decades-long indignity.” Florida Representative Schultz said “We must work toward a day where the entire world recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” Representative Deutch, also from Florida, released a joint statement with Republican Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen saying, “There is no debate that the Jewish people have a deep-rooted religious, cultural and historic tie to Jerusalem, and today’s decision reaffirms that connection.” Minority House Leader Nancy Pelosi said “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish homeland,” but added that “in the absence of a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem now may needlessly spark mass protests, fuel tensions, and make it more difficult to reach a durable peace.”
Not all democrats have fallen into line behind Trump’s decision. The strongest reaction of opposition to Trump’s decision has come from the Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Mark Pocan and Raúl M. Grijalva and Peace and Security Task Force Chair Barbara Lee. They released a joint statement. Trump’s decision fails “to take into consideration the serious and delicate nature of the situation,” said Rep. Grijalva. “President Trump’s decision to declare U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, before reaching a finalized peace deal or two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians, hurts future agreements and will create unnecessary tensions and violence in the region,” said Rep. Pocan. “Make no mistake,” said Representative Lee. “This decision sabotages our diplomatic efforts and makes it even harder to achieve peace.” The statement, however, did not have the signatures of the other 72 members of the caucus.
In advance of the announcement Senator Bernie Sanders put out a statement saying, “There’s a reason why all past U.S. administrations have avoided making this move, and why leaders from all over the world, including a group of former Israeli ambassadors, have warned Trump against doing it: It would dramatically undermine the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and severely, perhaps irreparably, damage the United States’ ability to broker that peace.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, penned a letter to in advance of Trump’s action. “I urge you to reject calls to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel…The future of Jerusalem is an issue that should be decided by Israel and the Palestinians, not unilaterally by the United States. Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital-or relocating our embassy to Jerusalem-will spark violence and embolden extremists on both sides of this debate.”
Before the announcement, Senators Durbin, Booker and Blumenthal expressed concern that the move would cause violence and suggested that it shouldn’t take place yet. But none of them put out statements of condemnation afterwards. Senator Warren, addressing a Union for Reform Judaism convention in Boston, agreed Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, but said diplomacy, not a unilateral move by the US, should determine the final status of the city. Senator Brown merely suggested, “Let’s see what happens when he announces it.” Senator Murphy said he agreed with Trump that declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel would help the peace process, but stated “It needs to be done at the right time and in the right manner. I don’t see any peace process beginning any time soon, so I seriously question the wisdom of making the choice now.”
Democrats either applauding Trump, not speaking up or only making moderate statements of concern-pretty much everyone except Grijalva, Pocan, Lee, Sanders and Feinstein-are at odds with current American Jewish opinion. A September 2017 survey by the AJC Global Jewish Advocacy, found that 44 percent of American Jews don’t think the embassy should be moved to Jerusalem and 36 percent think it should be moved only “at a later date in conjunction with progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.” Only 16 percent responded that they supported the embassy to be moved regardless of other factors.
Why are democratic positions in congress so out of step with Jewish constituents when it comes to moving the US embassy to Jerusalem? One answer might be the power of the congressional lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which spends upwards of $2 million annually lobbying for pro-Israel policies. AIPAC doesn’t give directly to candidates. Instead they connect candidates who support their positions on Israel with pro-Israel donors of enormous means.
The Democrats are even more out of step with global opinion. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, warned the announcement had “the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we are already living in.” The state of Jordan called it “nuts” and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said it was a gift that “radicals and extremists will use to fan the language of hate. Even U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, despite its budding friendship with Israel, described it as an “unjustified and irresponsible step.”
Trump’s action has already begun to wreak havoc in the Middle East. We don’t know how far this will escalate, especially as progress continues to actually move the embassy. What we do know is that is the reckless actions of a man who has no regard for international law or conception of what is in the U.S. national interest must be repudiated. So where are the Democrats?NewsFaith
BERKELEY, CA, April 7, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Oakland Bishop Michael Barber, Pope Francis’ first U.S. episcopal appointment, has drawn ire from Catholic progressives after replacing the priests serving the University of California at Berkeley campus, one of whom is “openly homosexual.”
Newman Hall Holy Spirit Church, which functions as the parish church for Catholic students at the university, has been led by its pastor, Fr. Bernard Campbell, for the past seven years. Fr. Bill Edens, a self-identified homosexual, has served as student chaplain for the last five. Both are members of the Paulist order, which normally appoints priests at the parish.
Barber explained in a letter to the parish that he had intervened in the regular process because he wants to “totally reinvigorate our evangelization efforts for the University Community at Cal Berkeley,” and “reinvigorate and expand our mission ‘to the periphery.’”
Fr. Campbell described the bishop’s decision as a “sad moment” in a statement to parishioners.
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The National Catholic Reporter, a newspaper devoted to opposing Church teaching that has been condemned by its local bishop in Kansas City, says the bishop’s action has “caused great puzzlement” among members of the parish.
The bishop “does not know the community. He has spent no time with us," Jean Molesky-Poz, a religious studies teacher at Santa Clara University, told the paper.
The National Catholic Reporter says the parish is “known for its vibrant embrace of the Second Vatican Council's reforms.”
The Paulist Order has been serving the parish for just over a century. Bishop Barber had originally requested the Paulists as a whole withdraw from the parish but later altered his instruction. The priests who will be replacing Campbell and Edens are also Paulists and Barber later stated he was impressed by them.
The parish has groups that cater to homosexual students and non-students, as well as some other non-traditional ministries, such as a dance ministry and Taize prayer. Several parishioners have spoken about liturgical abuses present at the church’s Masses, which has also been put forth as an explanation for the pastoral change. In his statement the bishop only indicated that the worship space required renovation.
A further sign of acrimony was apparent in Fr. Campbell’s declaration that it was “blatantly false” that the bishop had had “a number of discussions with the Newman Holy Spirit parish priests” before making his decision, in contradiction to what a spokesman for the diocese had claimed.by Allen St. Pierre, Former NORML Executive Director
“It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition”
Stephen W. Dillon’s Welcome Address
To The 37th Annual NORML Conference
October 17-18, 2008
Berkeley, California
Doubletree Hotel/Marina
I. Welcome/Introduction (Cannabem liberemus!)
Good morning! I am Steve Dillon, chairman of the NORML Board of Directors. I want to welcome all of you to our 37th Annual Conference in beautiful Berkeley, California. We are very glad you are here – California is still the ground zero in the government’s war on medical marijuana.
I am honored and excited to be with you and our outstanding group of speakers and panelists. We have a great conference planned. There are lots of opportunities to learn, share, experience with each other, and recommit to ending the government’s prohibition of marijuana.
II. The theme of the conference this year is: “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition“.
My parents were born during the government’s failed effort at alcohol prohibition (1919-1934). They learned about home-made beer and wine and even about secret stills for liquor in their basements. They shared with me some of the alcohol paraphernalia of my grandfather, Dr. John Dillon. He had a silver folding whiskey glass and a leather cigar case with fake glass cigars or containers for booze. My parents weren’t old enough to drink alcohol during the prohibition, but my grandparents did regularly. My parents didn’t think that their parents were criminals, only Al Capone and the gangsters who committed violent acts to support their illegal business enterprises.
There was an attitude of our citizens at that time that the government couldn’t really tell us that we couldn’t drink, we were Americans! It was fun to go to the speak-easy. It was a “forbidden fruit” that lead some people to drink alcohol just because we weren’t suppose to. However, people didn’t often get arrested for drinking a beer or having a glass of wine. People didn’t have their homes searched or seized or forfeited for home brew or wine. This marijuana prohibition is much worse than our parents’ prohibition. (1) unconstitutional/illegal, (2) more costly, (3) much longer/never-ending, (4) loss of freedom and property, (5) loss of opportunity, (6) loss of medicine and compassionate care of sick, (7) dishonest, (8) drug-testing.
What were the results of the American alcohol prohibition? It is undisputed that the prohibition was a complete failure. It certainly didn’t work to prohibit alcohol consumption by millions of Americans, from the very rich to the very poor. The prohibition resulted in an increase in organized crime and brutal violence. It resulted in corruption of our courts, police, and politicians. It misdirected our tax resources – it wasted millions of dollars that could have been spent to improve the lives of Americans.
The prohibition resulted in a growing disrespect for government and law enforcement. It led to countless deaths, not only from the gang violence in the streets trying to control the illegal market, but also from the deaths from tainted home-made liquor – “bathtub gin”. The prohibition made millions of American citizens “criminals” overnight, even though the vast majority had no intent to harm anyone, not even themselves. They had lost the right to choose.
Federal law enforcement officials like the FBI’s Hoover, used the prohibition as a reason to greatly increase the funding and power of their agencies; and they have never relinquished that power.
The alcohol prohibition was doomed because it was standing directly in the way of the citizens’ right to choose to use alcohol – even if it wasn’t good for them. There is a fundamental belief in America that we the people have the right to make decisions about how we live our life. That we are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – however we define it, as long as we don’t hurt others or interfere with their rights. The government’s marijuana prohibition was also doomed to fail for the same reasons.
III. The government’s 71 year prohibition of marijuana has also failed and is also counter-productive.
When the marijuana prohibition started in 1937, the government was trying to keep in place the federal law enforcement bureaucracy from the alcohol prohibition which ended just a few years before. The government picked marijuana to prohibit for a variety of reasons such as: (1) mostly blacks and Mexicans used marijuana (maybe 5000 users at the time). – racist, (2) most Americans were unaware of the benefits of marijuana, even though it was used in many patent medicines and treatments, (3) powerful lobbyists and their politicians protected the pharmaceutical industry, the paper industry, the oil industries from the competition for consumer dollars. The prohibition is still in place for all these reasons, mainly greed and control.
The marijuana prohibition has also resulted in an increase in organized, violent crime and gang warfare on our streets. It has resulted in corruption of police, politicians, and courts. It has wasted billions of our tax dollars each year; money that could be spent on education, or roads, or Social Security, or on protecting us from real crime or real terrorists. The marijuana prohibition has led to a strong disrespect for government, in general; and for school, police, and law enforcement officials, in particular.
One of the worst consequences of the marijuana prohibition is the loss of the truth about marijuana and its benefits. The government lies about marijuana. Drug Czar Walters regularly states that people aren’t getting arrested for marijuana possession. This is despite the fact that the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2007 recently stated that 872,721 citizens were arrested last year. One arrest each 37 seconds! (90% for possession only) Last week on October 10, 2008 the 20th million arrest for marijuana in this country happened. Samuel Caldwell was the first federal marijuana prisoner. He was sentenced in October 1937 to Ft. Leavenworth for four (4) years for two (2) joints. He died in prison of stomach cancer. There are now at least 33, 655 state marijuana prisoners and 10,785 federal marijuana prisoners. One out of eight (1/8) inmates are there for a marijuana offense. The marijuana arrests last year were a record, up 5% since the year before. Marijuana arrests accounted for almost ½ (47.5%) of all drug arrests in the country. Our America, sweet land of liberty has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population.
Americans will smoke pot if they want to, just like past Americans drank |
. Zevon Durham.[1]
The six worked in two teams of three snipers, built around two,.50-caliber, McMillan Brothers TAC-50 rifles (designated as the C15 long-range sniper weapon by the Canadian Forces). The lead shooters were Perry, for Alpha Detachment, and Furlong, for Bravo Detachment. Ragsdale and Eason worked predominately as spotter and guard for Alpha, while McMeekin and Marty served those roles for Bravo – though details of how many sniper shots the rest of the team may also have taken have not been released.[1][2]
The Canadian team received praise from United States Army colleagues for its extreme long range shots and for killing a significant number of Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants. When the operation ended, each of the Canadians were recommended for the US Military Bronze Star Medal, which they received in December 2003 from Paul Cellucci, the American ambassador to Canada.[2]
Controversy [ edit ]
McMillan Tac-50 rifle like Master Corporal Arron Perry used to kill an enemy combatant from 2,310 m (2,526 yd).
In 2002, Perry was accused of discreditable conduct by the Canadian Armed Forces. Forces personnel investigated allegations that he had desecrated a combatant's corpse by removing a finger, putting a cigarette in its mouth, and placing a sign reading "Fuck Terrorism" on its chest. Military police also suspected that Perry had defecated on another corpse. Ten months later the investigation was closed for lack of evidence, allowing the Bronze Star presentation ceremony to proceed for the entire team.[2]
In April 2005, Perry left the Canadian military.Barring some sort of political upheaval the likes of which America hasn't seen since Henry Ford was cranking out Model Ts, former reality TV personality and combover connoisseur Donald J. Trump is going to be the Republican Party's presidential candidate. It's a thought that terrifies conservatives and liberals alike for myriad reasons. But for hardcore fans of high-speed rail, a Trump Administration might actually be good news. As it turns out, The Donald and The Democrats are on the same page when it comes to upgrading America's trains.
During a speech on March 3, Trump's train of thought briefly switched tracks from castigating Mitt Romney to extolling the virtues of train travel. More specifically, he used it as an opportunity to hit one of his most crowd-pleasing talking points: how America is lagging behind China, and how the U.S. needs to invest in infrastructure to catch up.
"They have trains that go 300 miles per hour,” he said, according to Time. "We have trains that go chug … chug … chug.”
Like many statements Trump makes, it's a little soft on the facts—China has exactly one high-speed maglev train, and it tops out at 274 mph—but in principle it's fairly spot-on. China is kicking America's ass when it comes to investing in modern rail technology. Just as Japan is kicking America's ass in the field. As is South Korea. And Germany. And France. And the United Kingdom. Basically, every other major country is making us look like chumps when it comes to trains.Kiss houses, a new prefab offering on the scene stands out with a few things: passive house certification, larger sizes (it’s offered in two-, three-, four-bedroom models), and a design that once won the honor of being the “Best House in the U.K. (up to 2,500 square feet).”
Oxford-based architect Adrian James, who completed the popular original “Sandpath House” in 2014, partnered with Passivhaus specialist Mike Jacob of Trunk to turn the sleek, two-story design into a replicable prefab. Constructed sustainably using cross-laminated timber (CLT), Kiss houses ship flatpack to anywhere in the world and can be assembled in three to four days.
The interior is open plan, with the living area and modern kitchen on the ground floor, and bedrooms on the upper level. Customers can customize the specific floor plan, as well as cladding, with options ranging from traditional brick to metal and timber. The two-bedroom model comes in at 861 square feet, the three-bedroom at 1,335 square feet, and the four-bedroom at 1,500 square feet.
Pricing details are not available on the website, since they’ll heavily depend on custom finishes. But the company does plan on introducing a shell version sans finishes later this year, which should come with a more straightforward price. In any case, these pictures of the original Sandpath House alone suggest a more premium product. New Atlas has reported a U.K. price guide of approximately £2,000 ($2,550) per square meter.
Via: New AtlasWhenever we think of our good old memories in our childhood like seeing what made us burst out laughing then below given characters will definitely make you remember the golden days of Childhood.
1. Duck Tales : This was one of the best series made ever. All the adventures of uncle scrooge for finding the treasure made us super excited.
disney.wikia.com
2. TaleSpin: Baloo and his plane flying around the city of Cape Suzette and his notorious co-pilot Kit CloudKicker will make us go WOW!! from their stunts…
disney.wikia.com
3. Aladdin: Ever wondered if you had the Genie of Aladdin then what you could have done…
www.rotoscopers.com
4. Gummy Bears: Dwing Dwing …. Dwiiiinnnnggg.. after drinking that gummy beary juice jumping here and there, these Gummy Bears stolen our hearts
geocaching.com
5. The Jungle Book: The exciting fight of Mowgli’s Team with Sher Khan was astonishing..
cinetramando.blogspot.com
6. Rescue Rangers: Small heroes who were standing as a frontier against the evil for protecting the world …
tvtropes.org
7. Goof Troop: Full confusion and fun with these guys..
bigspiff.bandcamp.com
8. Little Mermaid: Curious Ariel with her besties going all around the sea …
drakalogia.wikispaces.com
9. Tom and Terry: The never ending fight of Tom & Terry has bought so many smiles in so many faces..
mydiginexus.com
They all reminds us all the sweet memories of our childhood and make us child again.66th Annual World Championship Over-The-Line®
July 13 and 14, 2019 (1st Weekend) & July 20 and 21, 2019 (2nd Weekend)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Interested in playing in the 2019 OTL Tournament?
ONLINE TEAM REGISTRATION IS COMING SOON! CHECK BACK FOR DETAILS
OMBAC would like to remind everyone to come to OTL and enjoy the tournament safely and responsibly. Please, DO NOT BRING ANY GLASS CONTAINERS.
Games start at 7:30 AM promptly and continue until dark on both weekends of OTL. Refer to your confirmation card for start date/time.
First weekend games are three innings only. 2nd weekend games are four innings. Men’s Open final Sunday will have a time limit imposed.
Double-elimination for all teams in all 10 divisions
Over The Line is a public event and requires no ticket or entrance fee to watch the games and enjoy the tournament.
The following rules will be strictly enforced:
The No “B”s: No Bottles, No Bicycles, No Bowzers (dogs), No Babies, No Boas, No Bad Attitudes, No Battles (fighting)
(OTL is a public event, however, it is not appropriate/safe for children due to crowds, bat & ball related games and language)
Alcohol rules and restrictions will exactly the same as previous years’ OTL tournaments
Public displays of nudity or violations of San Diego Municipal Code (Section 56.53) are illegal and will not be tolerated.
Bicycle Rules
Bikes are not permitted within the dunes, so be smart to bike and store your bike at the BIKE VALET! Bike Valet will be provided on the North side of the island as you bike in, and only $3.00 for the day. (Bikes must be Picked up by 6pm each day)
2019 OTL Art Contest
Do you have artistic talents? Win $1,000 for your design and it will be used at next year’s tournament. Download the details. Due date for 2019 artwork submissions is Dec 31, 2018.
2019 OTL Art Contest Form (available soon)
2019 OTL RV and Parking InfoBjarne Stroustrup is the well-known creator of C++. He also joined the Electronic Design Engineering Hall of Fame in 2013 (see “Gallery: 2013 Engineering Hall Of Fame”). He will be holding a Q&A on August 20th at the Google+ C++ Community but I thought we could get in a couple questions early.
Wong: Your latest book is Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++, 2nd Edition. What's new in this edition?
Stroustrup: The basic approach is the same, but I have upgraded the book to use (and teach) a bit of C++11 and C++14. This allows me to simplify many of the examples and some of the text.
For example, in the first edition I use
for (int i=0; i<v.size(); ++i) cout << v[i] << ′
′;
In the second, I immediately simplify that to
for (int x : v) cout << x << ′
′;
The first version may be more familiar to C and C++ programmers, but the second is simpler. In the second editions, I can also use initialization of containers
vector<int> v = {5,7,9,4,6,8};
The new language and library features allow me to make the examples executable earlier on and with less “boilerplate.” Basically, in the 2nd edition I can use my ideas of how to teach programming more effectively. Note that it is a book about Programming... using C++ not a C++ language primer, though it can also be used as that. My aim is – as ever – to teach generally useful software development concepts and techniques, rather than “mere syntax.”
Wong: What are some of the new language features in C++14 and why were they added?
Stroustrup: C++14 is simply the completion of the work that became C++11. When you finish a huge project, there are things you know need to be done, but you can’t add them if you want to ship on time. Inevitably, there are refinements that you don’t realize you need until you can try the whole “product” for real. C++14 adds such features and refinements to C++11. More dramatic improvements are targeted for C++17.
So, compared to the C++11 improvements (type-safe concurrency, lock-free programming, uniform initialization, lambdas, range-for loops, regular expressions, random numbers, etc.), the C++14 improvements are deliberately tiny, but add significant convenience for users. For example,
We can use units for many standard library types
auto d = 2h+5s+234ms; // d is a duration of 2 hours, 5 seconds, and 234 milliseconds
We can move objects into a lambda, rather than just copying
We can have separators in numeric literals; the single quote is the separator
uint16_t x = 0xDEAD’BEEF; // hexadecimal DEADBEEF int price = 1’200’500; // decimal 1200500 auto pattern = 0b1110’1101’1011’0111; // binary 1110110110110111
We can make an object and return a unique_ptr to it
auto p = make_unique<Entry>(“simple”,123); // p point to an Entry{“simple”,123}
to it We can use loops in constexpr functions (functions that can be evaluated at compile time)
This has already been shipping in the major C++ implementations for months!
In addition, this year and the next will see a stream of Technical Specification, which are not part ot the international standard but is guidance to implementers and will be essentially universally available:
File System: Provides file names, paths, and directories (portably)
Concepts: Provides explicit specification of template argument requirements, offering a much simpler syntax for templates, point-of-use checking, and overloading based on template argument properties
Both are the result of years of work and both are available now. I am particularly proud of “concepts” because they will dramatically change the way people think about and use generic programming
Wong: Are there any standard library changes with C++14?
Stroustrup: A few; these are again deliberately minor additions to complete the C++11 standard library, such as shared mutexes and make_unique. But note the technical specifications. More library TSs are coming, including:
More foundational types (e.g., optional<T> and string_vew )
and ) Networking
Parallel algorithms
SIMD vectors
Transactional memory
Wong: You have probably spent as much time writing and teaching about C++ and object oriented programming as writing code and developing C++. What have you seen as the challenges to learning C++ and using it effectively?
Stroustrup: People seem to be hell bent on doing clever and complicated stuff. Probably the hardest problem is to wean them of that. In their dash to write “sophisticated and efficient” code, many make such a mess that it becomes harder to introduce more elegant, efficient, and maintainable styles of code.
The more code I see, the more I appreciate simplicity. Typically, simplicity is the result of deep insight.
Wong: What do you think of contract programming like that found in Ada 2012, D and Eiffel? Is it applicable to C++?
Stroustrup: It is, but – as usual – we have to be careful not just about what we can add, but how. You can’t just graft a feature from one language into another. The notion of invariants that underlies “contract programming” is old (going back to Peter Naur’s work in the early 1970s) and has been used in various forms in C++ for ages without rising to become a first-class, directly supported language feature.
Constructors and destructors is the original support for that in C++: a constructor establishes the execution environment for operations on an object (partly by acquiring the resources needed) and the destructor reverses that action (in particular, the destructor releases all resources held at the point of destruction). Today, we would say “a constructor establishes the class invariant.”
Every year or so, a new proposal to add some form of “contract programming” to C++ appears and maybe someday one that’s good enough will emerge. For now, we keep improving the ability to specify interfaces. “Concepts” (now in the process of becoming a technical specification and already shipping as a GCC branch) allow us to directly specify arguments for template arguments and similarly the C++11 static_assert allows us to express requirements on our code that can be checked at compile-time.
Wong: What C++ tips might you have for embedded developers especially those that think C is necessary for dealing with hardware?
Stroustrup: Measure! The idea that low-level messes of code are efficient is a stubborn myth. Learn the higher-level C+ features, measure, and measure again when necessary. Maintain proper interfaces and define clear invariants for calls across such interfaces. Templates and inlining are incredibly effective mechanisms for expressing high-level notions and generating efficient code from them.
And, of course (?), huge hierarchies with loads of virtual functions can be damaging to performance and hard to maintain. I’m a great fan of pure abstract classes as interfaces where you can afford an indirect function call.
Wong: Do you still get a chance to write C++ applications, possibly for your own use?
Stroustrup: There isn’t a day where I don’t write or think about code. I write a lot of small code fragments for testing and I am involved in a range of real-world projects. Getting to do that was one of my reasons to (partially) leave academia to go back to industry. I don’t get to write much code “for my own use.” Anyway, that could be seen as too easy and too self-indulgent anyway.
Wong: Where can we find your books?
Stroustrup: You can find them at InformIT and in most technical bookstores (but sadly, there are so few good ones left these years). They areGround-breaking cover 'girl': Male model Andrej Pejic lands his first cover of Elle magazine
Andrej Pejic, 21, has taken the model world by storm with his androgynous look
This is the first time a male model has been on an Elle cover
Andrej appears on the cover of Serbian Elle - published in his home country
Andrej has previously modelled lingerie and wedding gowns
‘My gender is open to artistic interpretation', he says
Ground breaking: Male model Andrej Pejic lands his first Elle cover
He is the wildly successful male model that even Kate Moss has described as ‘beautiful.’
Now Andrej Pejic can add Elle cover ‘girl’ to his vast list of achievements as he graces the cover of Serbian Elle’s January issue.
The controversial model, who has hit the catwalk dressed as both sexes, is the first transgender model ever to be on the cover of Elle.
Dressed entirely in Jean Paul Gautier, the shoot features Andrej as both a man and a woman.
Perhaps in a symbolic representation of his real life gender struggle, ‘female’ Andrej, dressed in black lacy lingerie and suspenders, wrestles with ‘male’ Andrej who wears a variety of dark suits.
Andrej, who has appeared in other high fashion magazines including French Vogue, is a muse of Jean Paul Gautier who provided all the clothing for the ground-breaking shoot.
Significantly the magazine is for Andrej’s home country of Serbia.
Pejic fled to Australia as a political refugee when he was eight following the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia.
Responding to controversy over his feminine looks in the past he told New York magazine: ‘My gender is open to artistic interpretation.
'I don’t really have that sort of strong gender identity - I identify as what I am. The fact that people are using it for creative or marketing purposes, it’s just kind of like having a skill and using it to earn money.'
Andrej Pejic admits keeping up with his female colleagues is tough in terms of physique, but he manages to maintain his 25 inch waist through strict diet
The constant controversy surrounding him has done nothing to slow down his career.
The 21-year-old is in high demand and was even chosen to model for a lingerie campaign last year.
Andrej's lack of cleavage did nothing to hinder his appeal: in the poster, for Dutch department store Hema, the model advertised a push-up bra.
Andrej's lack of cleavage did nothing to hinder his appeal: in the poster, for Dutch department store Hema, the model advertised a push-up bra
He has also hit the catwalk to model wedding dresses for Rosa Clara, looking every inch the feminine bride.
An 'industry term' has even been invented after him: The 'Andrej Pejic effect' refers to male models who use make-up or have androgynous appeal.
Andrej Pejic has graced other magazine covers previously and was crowned'model of the moment'' by Canadian 'Fashion' magazine last year
But it's not all fun and games for Pejic, who admits he has to work hard to maintain a woman's figure.
He told Grazia magazine: 'To do womenswear I have to be disciplined. My waist has gone from 29 to 25 inches, my hips are 35 inches.'
Behind the scenes at the Elle photo shoot:Oh peanut butter cookies. You're awesome. I love peanut butter, a lot. In fact these days it's one of my few vices. I know that...
Oh peanut butter cookies. You're awesome.
I love peanut butter, a lot. In fact these days it's one of my few vices. I know that it has protein and it is vegan and gluten-free and all, but there's something about peanut butter...anything that addictive can't be good for you!
I generally follow a very healthy diet that doesn't involve a lot of bad-for-you foods. I know full well that peanut butter has it's fair share of ups and downs (like contributing to the growth of candida for example which causes mental fogginess, digestive issues and a host of other considerable health problems), and is totally debatable as a 'healthy" food but in my mind if the worst thing you're eating is organic unsweetened roasted peanut butter than you're probably doing alright! Though I generally limit my peanut butter intake to once or twice a week at the most, I have been hooked on it since my childhood. In University I would come home late from night classes and eat peanut butter straight out of the tub and on toast before bed. It was perhaps the best part of my day.
These days peanut butter is not my primary choice of spread. I usually try to abstain from it if I can muster up the will to because once I get into it I find it genuinely hard to stop eating it. I try to stay away from foods that induce a trance-like eating state because I don't think it's good for anyone to lose control with food. For me these foods include peanut butter and dairy ice cream.
Though it does pack some great vegan protein and some essential nutrients, peanut butter also packs a huge whack of fat and calories in fairly miniscule portions. I think the standard recommended serving is max about 2 tbsp, but I've never been able to stop there. It's just too damn good! That being said there are lots of great alternatives to peanut butter that don't seem to be as eerily addictive. My favorite peanut butter swap is pumpkin seed butter. It's really delicious and nutty, has a beautiful pale green color, is nut and legume free and packs a huge hit of healthy fat and protein. Pumpkin seeds also have the ability to paralyze parasites in the body, helping you to flush them out of your system with greater ease. I both make and buy pumpkin seed butter. Nuts to You is my brand of choice but there's not much of an excuse not to make it yourself. You just whiz roasted pumpkin seeds together in a food processor for a few minutes until they release their oil and become seed butter. Fresh also tastes much better.
Though pumpkinseed butter will do just fine when a peanut butter craving strikes, they are still quite different. Lately I've been trying to keep peanut butter in my life in small quantities by adding it to recipes. Because it doesn't take a lot of peanut butter to strongly flavor a dessert or drink, I find it far easier to control my portion size when I mix a little bit of it with other things. One of my favorite combinations these days is peanut butter and dates. When I'm craving something sweet and energizing I crack open a medjool date, remove the pit and smear the inside with peanut butter. Then I promptly eat it like a miniature sandwich -- HEAVEN.
Peanut butter also seems to pair well with dried figs. These delightful peanut butter cookies combine organic unsalted peanut butter with chewy figs, sweet and dense dates, and shredded coconut. The result is awesome. These cookies are sturdy, chewy and loaded with peanut butter flavor. Though they're great on their own, I prefer these smeared with some peanut butter. Insanely good.
If you like peanut butter and chocolate, these are great with some mini vegan chocolate chips thrown in. Trust me on this. My recipe below shows you how to make half the batch as plain peanut butter cookies and the other half as chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.
These delicious little cookies can easily be made peanut free by swapping the peanut butter for your favorite nut or seed butter. I recommend trying pumpkinseed butter. The best part about these cookies is they're no-bake and grain-free! They whiz up in mere minutes in your food processor, take a little nap in your freezer to firm up and voila! Peanut butter perfection.Both the Kindle Fire HD 7 and 8.9 are excellent value tablets for the solid, capable hardware you're getting. But you need to think carefully about what you want from a tablet and what the alternatives are.
After their first release two years ago, Amazon's Fire tablets have grown into some of the most popular slates on the market.
The Kindle Fire HD is no longer Amazon's main budget-centric device (that's the Kindle Fire HDX), but it's still available and for an even lower price.
Starting from just £95.20 for a 7-inch HD display and a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU with 8GB of onboard storage, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 appears to offer great value for money. There's also a 16GB version offered, which for the extra £16 definitely seems worth it.
If you fancy a little more screen real estate you can plump for the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire which starts at £127.20 for the 16GB version, while the 32GB option is still an affordable £151.20.
Expect to pay £8 more if you want one without Amazon's'special offers', targeted marketing that appears on the lockscreen and at the bottom of the home screen, but isn't too obtrusive.
The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 certainly no longer matches the new Nexus 7 in terms of raw power and screen quality, though it chops a lot off the asking price. It comfortably trumps the iPad mini on price, while offering a similar screen resolution to the original.
Good screen, good price
If you still think of Amazon Kindles as those little monochrome holiday companions, then you should know that the Amazon Kindle Fire HD tablets are completely different beasts.
Rather than focusing on the very specific job of downloading and reading electronic books, these are all-purpose tablets that act as windows onto Amazon's wider multimedia world - films, music, apps and games are all included in the Kindle Fire HD's remit.
With that in mind, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD range is a much simpler, purer design than the original Kindle.
A simple, pure tablet design
The emphasis here is on the screen first and foremost, with the only hardware controls coming in the shape of volume and power buttons on top of the devices, right alongside the 3.5mm headphone jack.
The lack of a fixed home key adds to that minimalist vibe (I'll discuss the effect that has on usability later). There isn't even a front-facing camera, so no Skype chatting on this device.
Amazon has updated the design of the 7-inch variant to bring it in line with the HDX range and its rivals in terms of build quality. The 8.9-inch option hasn't been given the same treatment though.
Despite the impossibly low price point, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD doesn't feel like a cheap device. It's solid in the hand, with none of the creak you find in many budget Android tablets.
There's a nice contrast between the Amazon Kindle Fire HD's smooth, glass front and its grippy matte, soft-touch back. It's quietly pleasing from a tactile perspective, even though it lacks the sheer machined precision and premium feel of Apple's tablets.
While Apple has opted for a super-slim bezel for its iPad mini - partly to facilitate that wider 7.9-inch display - Amazon has been more generous with its own offerings.
Indeed, the fairly thick border around even the smaller 7-inch screen brings it closer to the full-sized iPad in design than its miniature brother.
I like this approach from a purely practical perspective (although it makes it look a little chubby, if I'm honest). It's still comfier to hold the seven-inch model between your thumb and fingers than it is to rest it in the span of your hand, even when held in portrait view.
Of course, that's partly because it's slightly chunky for its size - at 345g the 7-inch model is just 14g heavier than the iPad mini.
Comfy to hold, even if it is a little chunky
The display on the Kindle Fire HD packs a decent resolution of 1280 x 800 with a ppi of 216. It's the same display as the original Kindle Fire HD model from last year, so expect the same slightly yellow tint, especially when you're looking at a white background.
Indeed, once your eyes have grown accustomed to its warmer hue, you'll no doubt begin to appreciate the Amazon Kindle Fire HD display's more naturalistic colour contrast - particularly when viewing video content.
It's certainly not in the same league as the Nexus 7, or the Retina-toting iPad Mini, but it's more than a match for the original compact slate from Apple.
The display is pleasantly sharp. This isn't particularly apparent within the main Kindle Fire interface, but it certainly bears fruit when reading a book or browsing the internet, where small text remains clear and eminently readable.
This display is powered by a capable 1.5GHz dual-core processor. While this is far from the most powerful processor on the market, it is very well balanced, and it certainly doesn't come up short when faced with demanding tasks like high-definition video and 3D games.
One final piece of hardware-related info I really must cover is the Amazon Kindle Fire HD's impressive sound. Positioned on either side of the device (if you're holding it in landscape), the speakers are surprisingly punchy, given their size.
They really do crank out some respectable stereo sound - both in terms of volume and clarity, and it reminds us a lot of the power of BoomSound on the HTC One.
Naturally, I'd recommend using earphones whenever possible, but for those times where you're just following a quick email link to a YouTube video, they're more than adequate.BY:
Sharyl Attkisson appeared on O'Reilly Factor Thursday night to discuss her time at CBS News in an exclusive interview. Attkisson revealed that higher ups at CBS had killed her investigative reporting on a number of stories that included Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and Obamacare.
CBS told Attkisson she had to abandoned her story regarding Fast and Furious because of lack of interest. According to Attkisson "It came to me I don't think on the viewers' part but on the people that decide what stories go into the broadcast and what there is room for, they felt fairly early on that this story was over when I felt as though we had barely begun to scratch the surface."
"As I felt we were beginning to scratch beneath the surface on that scandal as well which I think had many legitimate questions yet to be asked and answered. Interest was largely lost in that story as well on the part of the people that are responsible for deciding what goes on the news. Interest was largely lost on the part of the people that decide what goes on the news," Attkisson said regarding her reporting on the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.Last month, the US Senate passed the Travel Promotion Act. Such law will directly benefit the US tourism and travel sector. But those owners who are looking to get out of their timeshares may also indirectly benefit from the Act.
The Travel Promotion Act will create a public-private partnership for the purpose of promoting the US as a premier travel destination. Once it is put in place, the program is estimated to create thousands of jobs, increase consumer spending, and reduce the federal budget deficit. In addition to that, this will also drive millions of new visitors to the US. This implies that with more tourists and longer vacations in the US, there are also more timeshare buyers and timeshare renters.
According to Bill Marriott, chairman and CEO of Marriott International, “in 2008 the US welcomed fewer overseas visitors than in 2000 despite the fact that 48 million more people were taking overseas trips to countries around the world. This means that the pie grew big, but the US got a smaller piece of it. By marketing ‘Brand America,’ it’s time that the US claims a bigger piece of the pie.”
This law also gave hope to those timeshare owners who are already desperate in getting rid of their timeshares as most of them have already tried any way possible just to get rid of that considered unwanted property. But with this development, they may be able to rent out or sell their properties without hiring a timeshare transfer company like the Transfer Smart. With this newly passed act, there will be more potential buyers and renters of timeshares.Uber is now in the process of getting a permit from the California DMV to resume testing its self-driving vehicles on public state roads. Uber started testing its self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs in San Francisco last year – but the state DMV ultimately opposed the tests since Uber had not applied for its autonomous testing permit prior to beginning service.
While Uber took its test fleet of XC90s on the road to nearby Arizona, where Governor Doug Ducey and regulators welcomed them with open arms – the company said at the time that it was committed to California, and reiterated that position in a statement provided by a spokesperson to TechCrunch today:
These cars are legally registered and are being driven manually. We are taking steps to complete our application to apply for a DMV testing permit. As we said in December, Uber remains 100 percent committed to California.
As Uber notes, the self-driving vehicles made a return to SF streets recently – but they aren’t employed in picking up passengers. Instead, they’re being used to map the city for improvements to local maps for autonomous driving and other navigation purposes. Uber self-driving sedans have been spotted on streets in SF since the ban by local residents, but the company also now says two of its Volvos have had their registrations reinstated by the DMV, following their revocation last year.
Uber hasn’t yet applied for the permit, as implied in the statement, and first reported by The Mercury News. But the DMV tells the Mercury that it’s working with Uber on the application process, and the company does intend to go forward.
Despite that, its views on the legality of its tests and requirements regarding self-driving testing haven’t changed – Uber’s original reasoning for not applying for the permit was that it didn’t require this special permission under the letter of the law. Still, it now appears focused on the pragmatic task of redeploying its test vehicles regardless of its position on legality, something that makes a lot of sense given the wealth of other challenges the company is currently facing.America’s quiet indulging of Dan Aykroyd’s insistence that Ghostbusters 3 is a thing continues, as the vodka pitchman and occasional actor recently appeared on Dennis Miller’s radio show to once again vow that the sequel will film in the spring of 2012, no matter what, most likely because the alien takeover of all human minds later that year would obviously complicate their production schedule. However, having extraterrestrials forever change the human sense of perception might actually help with our acceptance of the film, considering Aykroyd is now hinting it will happen with or without the participation of longtime holdout Bill Murray.
“Yes, we will be doing the movie and hopefully with Mr. Murray," Aykroyd said, notably using the formal surname to let him know he’s angry, or maybe just disappointed. "That is our hope.” However, Aykroyd admonished, “What we have to remember is that Ghostbusters is bigger than any one component—although Billy was absolutely the lead and contributive to it in a massive way, as was the director and Harold [Ramis], myself, and Sigourney [Weaver]. The concept is much larger than any individual role and the promise of Ghostbusters 3 is that we get to hand the equipment and the franchise down to new blood." It’s a promise!
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Aykroyd then explained, once again, that this passing of the franchise-torch to new cast members is necessitated by the fact that the original Ghostbusters will be portrayed as old and totally useless, thereby sullying fans’ memories of them in a more visceral sense and helping to provide closure, we guess. “My character, Ray, is now blind in one eye and can't drive the Cadillac," he said, carefully explaining to your inner child that, eventually, everyone and everything dies and rots in the ground. "He's got a bad knee and can't carry the packs,” he continued in soothing, paternal tones as your snuffling soul wiped hot tears and a long string of snot on its sleeve. “Egon is too large to get into the harness. We need young blood."
That young blood, Aykroyd reiterated, will course through the veins of a yet-to-be-cast crew of “three guys and a young woman” that may or may not include Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler, whom Aykroyd now says he likes for the film, because why not? He's an actor, right? Of course, Aykroyd also insisted, again, that there will be a formal casting process, by which we’re guessing he means at least another year of musing aloud about this until it either does or doesn’t happen, whichever, let’s just get it over with. [via Coming Soon]View source on Github
When I was at ICFP last week, it became clear that I had made a huge mistake in the past three years. A few of us were talking, including Erik de Castro Lopo, and when I mentioned that he was the original inspiration for creating the conduit package, everyone else was surprised. So firstly: Erik, I apologize for not making it clear that you initially kicked off development by finding some fun corner cases in enumerator that were difficult to debug.
So to rectify that, I think it's only fair that I write the following:
conduit is entirely Erik's fault.
If you love conduit, write Erik a thank you email.
More importantly, if you hate conduit, there's no need to complain to me anymore. Erik presumably will be quite happy to receive all such further communications.
In other words, it's not my company, I just work here.
Thanks Erik :)
UPDATE Please also read my follow-up blog post clarifying this one, just in case you're confused.If commuter suits and skycycle paths, have yet to get you psychled (i.e. psyched about bikes), the latest in two-wheeling news should. Taylor Square’s former seedy nightclub T2 is about to be transformed into an Amsterdam-esque bike hub.
The 1,200 committed pedallers who sweat past on a daily basis will soon be able to stop for a coffee, chat with fellow cyclists and even pop in for a film screening or two. The building will feature a collection of spaces including a cafe, meeting places, public lecture rooms, multimedia facilities and shops. Plus, there’ll be bike-specific services on site including a workshop, repairs |
so I felt compelled to finally contribute to the community. Don't hesitate to make this upgrade. It may be the very thing that saves your old laptop and gives it a few more years of useful operation. My next move is to buy a few more ssd's so that I can breathe new life in my old paperweight machines that I've been cursing for the past few years. Good luck!
Read moreAfter four days in Kansas City, Sporting KC returned to Tucson for the second phase of preseason, which includes four games in the fourth annual Desert Diamond Cup. Sporting KC will play at least three Major League Soccer sides in the tournament including the Colorado Rapids, Seattle Sounders FC and Real Salt Lake.
This is Sporting KC's fifth consecutive year traveling to Tucson for preseason preparations. Sporting KC won the Desert Cup in 2011 and will look to use this year's tournament as a building block heading into the MLS season.
"There are a few different things we are trying to do in Tucson," Sporting KC captain Matt Besler said. "Guys are still getting fit and you want to stay healthy throughout preseason. The tournament setting gives you something to play for and it gives you that competitive aspect. We are going down there hoping to win the tournament and win as many games as we can."
Besler, along with homegrown goalkeeper Jon Kempin, are joining the team following the U.S. Men's National Team January camp. Haitian midfielder Soni Mustivar will join Sporting KC in Arizona after the club receives his P-1 Visa.
"There are still some more additions to come," Sporting KC Manager Peter Vermes said. "But what we have right now is here and especially with the national team guys coming back, it's a good thing going into this final phase leading up to the games in Tucson. It's especially important that Matt is back because he is the captain and his leadership, setting the tone is something that is very important for us."
One new face in camp is Canadian international Marcel De Jong (pictured, right). The Ontario native spent the past five years with FC Augsburg in the Bundesliga (Germany). De Jong made his senior debut for Canada's national team in 2007 and has since earned more than 30 caps for The Reds. Other trialists in camp include goalkeeper Matt Bersano, defender Amadou Dia, midfielder Christian Duke and striker James Rogers.
Speaking with reporters last Friday, Besler expressed his excitement to re-join his teammates in camp as Sporting KC pushes toward the March 8 season opener.
"Hopefully there isn't a learning curve," the Sporting KC captain said. "That is one of the reasons I am so excited to get back on to the field. We do have some new guys, especially in the back and I want to get to work. I want to get things sorted out. The last couple years we have had one of the best defenses in the League and I want to make sure that this year, that is the case again."
While De Jong is the only new player in camp, seven players who featured during Sporting KC's first training stint in Tucson are no longer with the club. Those players include goalkeeper Kevin Corby, defenders Brent Griffiths and Daniel Rodriguez, midfielders Santiago Otero, Felipe Hernandez and Tony Rocha and forward Alex Dixon.
Sporting Kansas City will open the Desert Diamond Cup on Wednesday night at Kino Sports Complex against the Colorado Rapids. The match will kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT and will be streamed live on SportingKC.com.Philadelphia sports radio station 97.5 The Fanatic has provided us with one of the most unusual planted caller stories ever, and one that’s already drawing a lot of backlash. As reported by Kyle Scott of Crossing Broad (via Deadspin’s Patrick Redford), regular 97.5 caller “Dwayne From Swedesboro” is actually 97.5 producer Pat Egan (seen above in a 2011 photo from his college newspaper, The Neuman Joust), and afternoon host Mike Missanelli (the primary target for “Dwayne”) has been unaware of this for years. This is particularly problematic when you consider that the “Dwayne” persona is of a black guy who’s always talking about paternity tests and hitting on white women, and that Egan is white.
What kind of comments are we talking about here? Well, here’s “Dwayne” calling 97.5 host Jason Myrtetus (who was in on the joke) at 4 a.m. this January and discussing paternity tests:
Look man, I ain’t gonna lie to ya, the paternity test was a big relief. It’s like I didn’t think that kid was my kid, but then its that little bit of fear like, oh snap, Dwayne could be paying for this for 18 years.”
Here’s Dwayne’s Twitter profile (update: now deleted) and some of the comments he’s made there:
https://twitter.com/Da_DwayneTrain/status/762691799643226114
https://twitter.com/Da_DwayneTrain/status/762776683925700608
So, yeah, this seems just a little problematic. Egan has been apparently doing it for years, and although there have been some suggestions “Dwayne” was fake before now, he wasn’t caught until tipster @theREALJAYEMCEE (a former 97.5 intern) contacted Scott Friday. “Dwayne” failed to show up at 97.5’s Fantasy Fest this past weekend (after offering to give away his tickets for nude pictures ), and Scott managed to not only confirm that his fake status was well-known amongst 97.5 staff, but to figure out where the Twitter photos of “Dwayne” came from. It turns out they’re of Nosike Onyemaobim, one of Egan’s hockey teammates.
Scott then contacted Missanelli, Myrtetus (who also produces Missanelli’s show), and Egan for comment, and the first two discussed his e-mail live on the air, with Missanelli insisting “Dwayne” was real because he’d showed up at the station once (and been turned away before the hosts saw him because they were on the air at the time) and Myrtetus playing along. Here’s that transcript:
Mike Missanelli: “The only thing I can tell you is that Dwayne from Swedesboro showed up live here at the radio station.” Jason Myrtetus: “He was not allowed back here we were told, right?” MM: “He was not, but he was Dwayne from Swedesboro. Dwayne was a real person when he came here. We met Dwayne.” JM: “Somebody was breathing.” MM: “Yeah somebody named Dwayne, from Swedesboro, was here so they might not wanna put that post up yet and check into that.” JM: “[Kyle] contacted me too, I’ll talk to him. I’m not gonna talk to him during the show. I’ll talk to him after.” MM: “Dwayne from Swedesboro being accused of apparently not being a real person, so Dwayne from Swedesboro, if you’re out there and you can put this to rest, we’d love to hear from you right now because there’s a gossip stream that is gonna label you as a fraud. But our program director, he met him.” JM: “I don’t think he did. I don’t know if it was the front desk or who it was. We were here.” MM: “We were here, I believe the program director spoke with Dwayne and did not allow him back here because we were doing the show and didn’t want any disturbances during the show. We know an actual person named Dwayne from Swedesboro, who was black, who spoke like Dwayne from Swedesboro was here.”
And here’s what Scott wrote about what happened next:
After the show, I spoke with Myrtetus and Egan, who were together, and was greeted by the voice of “Dwayne From Swedesboro.” They acknowledged that Dwayne was a character they created during a slow sports time around two years ago. They said his persona snowballed from one call to Missanelli where Dwayne was able to irritate Mike. Echoing what others said, they claim Mike had no idea that he was talking to one of his station’s producers.
Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in Egan taking a lot of criticism on Twitter for impersonating a black man and drawing on racist stereotypes. Here’s some of that:
Might wanna go with Rachel Dolezal? Also, good luck selling the “joke” RT @Pat_Egan: Do I change my Avi to Manti Teo or Ryan Lochte? 😂😂😂 — Les Bowen (@LesBowen) August 23, 2016
@Pat_Egan @StonedPhillyFan you wear black face while on the call or just a white hood? — untweetenedicet (@UntweetenedIceT) August 22, 2016
https://twitter.com/wolfdaddy89/status/767865802133340160
@Pat_Egan "talent" ha Only reason it went on so long is your audience is all white. Whites who only know black ppl from tv it seem. Cornball — MichaelMusa (@MikeMusa_) August 23, 2016
https://twitter.com/BroadStOracle/status/767866895609438209
https://twitter.com/Pat_Egan/status/767867925999054849
https://twitter.com/Pat_Egan/status/767868090885541888
@Pat_Egan and @975TheFanatic are both trash and disrespectful for this modern day minstrel they put on FOR 2 YEARS — Lit Flair (@Jam_Brandon) August 23, 2016
It’s going to be interesting to see where the reaction goes from here. Egan doesn’t seem to believe he did anything wrong, but from the outside, it seems highly problematic to repeatedly call in as a character of another race and embrace some oft-perpetrated racial stereotypes. We’ll see if it leads to any further response from the station.
[Crossing Broad]Birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to - and may even be benefiting from - long-term exposure to radiation.
Ecologists have found evidence that wild animals were adapting to ionising radiation from the worst nuclear disaster in history. Birds that produce the most pheomelanin, a pigment found in feathers, have the greatest problems coping with radiation exposure, said researchers.
"Previous studies of wildlife at Chernobyl showed that chronic radiation exposure depleted antioxidants and increased oxidative damage. We found the opposite - that antioxidant levels increased and oxidative stress decreased with increasing background radiation," said Dr Ismael Galván, of the Spanish National Research Council.
The Chernobyl disaster on 26 April, 1986, had catastrophic environmental consequences. But because the area remains heavily contaminated by radiation and is closed to the public, the region represents an accidental ecological experiment to study the effects of radiation on wild animals.
The researchers used mist nets to capture 152 birds of 16 species at eight sites inside and around the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They measured the background radiation levels at each site, while taking feather and blood samples from each bird.
They then measured levels of glutathione, an important antioxidant in plants, animals and fungi, as well as oxidative stress and DNA damage in the blood samples. The researchers also checked levels of melanin pigments in the feathers.
Melanins are the most common animal pigments, but because the production of pheomelanin (one type of melanin) uses upantioxidants, animals that produce the most pheomelanins are more susceptible to the effects of ionising radiation.
The team used a method which focused on individual birds instead of species averages, making it a more sensitive way to analyse biochemical responses to radiation. In this way, the study takes into account how closely related different species are.
The species surveyed were: Red-backed shrike, great tit, barn swallow, wood warbler, blackcap, whitethroat, barred warbler, tree pipit, chaffinch, hawfinch, mistle thrush, song thrush, blackbird, black redstart, robin and thrush nightingale. Levels of radiation in the study area ranged from 0.02 to 92.90 micro Sieverts per hour.
The results revealed that with increasing background radiation, the birds' body condition and glutathione levels increased and oxidative stress and DNA damage decreased. Birds which produced larger amounts of pheomelanin and lower amounts of eumelanin pay a cost in terms of poorer body condition, decreased glutathione increased oxidative stress and DNA damage.
"The findings are important because they tell us more about the different species' ability to adapt to environmental challenges such as Chernobyl and Fukushima," said Galván.
Ionising radiation damaged cells by producing free radicals, toxic molecules within cells. It is known that low doses of radiation increases an organisms ability to resist larger, subsequent doses of radiation.
The study was published in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology.ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX FINE
Every morning this week, I’ve walked my dog past the offices of a nondescript transportation company that’s being reinvented as a set for Jessica Jones season two. Earlier this month, in a different part of my Queens neighborhood, my dog had the privilege of peeing under several official NYPD signs advising residents that Luke Cage (well, the show’s covert-but-easily-Google-able working title) would be shooting nearby. With five Netflix series currently under its umbrella — the other three are Daredevil, Iron Fist, and the brand-new The Defenders, with The Punisher soon to come — the Marvel Television Universe is slowly but surely taking over the sidewalk-blocking, trailer-parking place once occupied by the Law & Order franchise in New Yorkers’ hearts.
As the onscreen Defenders battle to save the city, in real life Marvel has become responsible for the largest TV production commitment in the history of New York state. As of the end of 2017, 135 episodes in total will have been shot in the Empire State since summer 2014. The Defenders, the street-savvy superhero-crossover miniseries now streaming on Netflix, is the Marvel show in which New York City plays the most pivotal thematic role yet. The opening sequence traces city streets, illuminating portraits of the title characters within these maps — a cosmopolitan counterpoint to the Game of Thrones credits, transplanted from Westeros to Gotham. As is her custom, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) broods in her roach-infested P.I. office-apartment. Luke Cage (Mike Colter) rides a bus home from prison through his sun-drenched, D’Angelo-scored Harlem. Ominous antagonist Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver) gazes icily out over Columbus Circle and Central Park South during a private string quartet performance at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) catches up with Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) in a booth at a B.E.C.-slinging diner; Danny Rand (Finn Jones) goes, I don’t know, wherever a rich white boy who wants you to know that he’s “the immortal Iron Fist” feels like going. Jones, Cage, and Murdock even ride the subway together — which, not for nothing, is actually the PATH, but you get the point.
Nuts 4 Nuts: Sigourney Weaver enjoys a snack on location in Central Park. Jessica Miglio/Netflix
“The only thing keeping Manhattan from crumbling to a pile of dust is the four of you,” Murdock’s mentor, Stick (Scott Glenn), tells the titular allies. And as Alexandra tells Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho) with a menacing chuckle as she feeds the birds from a bench in Central Park: “The Dutch colonists, when they bought Manhattan from the natives, they’re said to have acquired the whole thing for $24. Ask me, they overpaid.” But the behind-the-scenes reality of The Defenders is much wider in its geographical scope. The Netflix franchise looked to Frank Miller’s Daredevil comics as source material, basing Marvel Television’s Hell’s Kitchen on a version of the neighborhood that hasn’t existed for decades. They needed locations that exuded more grime and crime than Shake Shack buzzers and photo opportunities with swarms of Spider-Men, Iron Men, and Hulks, dingy though those costumes may be. Defenders location manager Rafael Lima, a comic book fan and eighteen-year resident of New York City (he’s more recently relocated to Westchester), has been eager to take on that challenge. It’s required equal-opportunity scouting all over the city to find places that could capture that gritty feel, with a little modification — be they in the East Village, Greenpoint, Sunset Park, Yonkers, or Long Island.
“We faked the tunnels of Cambodia in Queens, at Fort Totten,” said Lima, also a veteran of Daredevil and Iron Fist, about making The Defenders. “We shot an old college bar, a favorite place of mine called the Blue & Gold in the East Village. We did some prison work out in Queens at a detention center. We did some courthouse work in the Bronx. We did a theater in Staten Island. So we hit all five boroughs.”
Of course, filming in a metropolis as bustling as New York City isn’t always easy, particularly given that roughly 75 to 80 percent of The Defenders was shot on location. “If [a setting is as] unspecific as ‘EXTERIOR DARK ALLEY,’ then the work really begins to find willing owners that’ll let you shoot all night long, dangle stuntmen from fire escapes, and keep people up,” Lima explained. To vet locations, his team had a brisk three or four weeks of “real lead time” before filming began, while they were still wrapping up Iron Fist. The pace grew faster still when production started, with only eight to ten days allotted for them to prep each new episode. “It’s very much like a freight train. Once it leaves the station, you’re just trying to stay ahead of it,” Lima said.
Finn Jones and Charlie Cox throw down at the Royal Dragon, the show’s ersatz Chinese restaurant in Williamsburg. Jessica Miglio/Netflix
His personal favorite location in The Defenders is the Royal Dragon, a Chinese restaurant that becomes a de facto clubhouse for the super-friends. That sounds like a straightforward enough locale to deliver, except for the inconvenient fact that the script happened to call for a “gigantic fight between machine gun-wielding bad guys and four superheroes and a supervillain, culminating with an SUV driving full speed through the front of it.” Lima was “terrified” when he read that, knowing that no Chinese-restaurant owner in their right mind would allow such havoc in their place of business. Instead, he was able to find a former car wash — which was, of course, designed to have cars drive right through it — in Williamsburg. Within a month the crew had built it out into the realistic and, even better, eminently destructible Chinese restaurant of their dreams.
“We had a large amount of fake display Chinese food made, which we used for most of the shots where it was in the background. For the scenes in which our heroes were sitting around the table, we ordered matching dishes from Shanghai Lee, a small restaurant at 157 Franklin Street in Greenpoint,” said Peter Gelfman, property master. “They have some of the best hot and sour soup in the city, and I highly recommend their chicken with red curry.” Lima also recalled, “The whole time, residents in Williamsburg kept on knocking on the front door, trying to get chop suey and lo mein, and we’re like, ‘No, it’s just for show.’ But it obviously meant we were doing a pretty good job.” Other location shoots didn’t go quite so smoothly. They began filming a setting vital to the finale at one building, but had no choice but to start over elsewhere when the façade was unexpectedly covered in scaffolding.
After years of Vancouver and Toronto posing as ersatz Manhattans, the genuine article is reclaiming its rightful place onscreen. Over the course of Lima’s career — he’s previously worked on projects like Suits, Banshee, Manhattan Love Story, and The Big C — shooting in the city has become more difficult as state and local tax incentives have brought an “explosion” of production to the boroughs and beyond. “Lots of people, and certainly New York City residents, love to consume their media. They don’t necessarily love the realities and the logistics involved with the process. So filming overnight in neighborhoods has become more restrictive. Parking large film trucks and campers has become more complicated. Location fees that we would normally pay to sites have increased,” he said. (Per Money, the rates for renting a home in New York State to a film crew range from $1,000 to $35,000 a day.) “I’m not trying to make it seem doom and gloom, but it is getting harder every day, and that is a trend that I expect will continue as long as this boom is in progress.”
Krysten Ritter in character as Jessica Jones, Hell’s Kitchen gumshoe Sarah Shatz/Netflix
What’s uniquely tricky about working on one of so many Marvel productions shooting in New York is that there are so many Marvel productions shooting in New York. With that in mind, all the location managers need to be in more or less constant communication to keep track of what spaces have been used for which series. The last thing they’d want is for a building that served as a hospital in Daredevil to be introduced as, say, an NYU dorm in Iron Fist. “Though the city is enormous and there’s lots of locations, we frequent certain places because we know we can get them and because they are film-friendly,” Lima explained. “So if we can reuse a place carefully, we will, so as to not ruin the illusion. Maybe we just use a different room of a warehouse. Or maybe we use a different alleyway in a complex of alleyways. And so I’m constantly checking with the others, being like, ‘Did you shoot that yet?… Aw, rats. Okay. Maybe I could use the downstairs.’ ”
As the Marvel Television freight train keeps chugging along, keep an eye out for your friendly neighborhood superheroes — and keep in mind that the brand-new Chinese restaurant on your block may not be what it seems.(Repeats from Friday April 4 without change)
By Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO, April 7 (Reuters) - The personal data gathering abilities of Google, Facebook and other tech companies has sparked growing unease among Americans, with a majority worried that Internet companies are encroaching too much upon their lives, a new poll showed.
Google and Facebook generally topped lists of Americans’ concerns about the ability to track physical locations and monitor spending habits and personal communications, according to a poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos from March 11 to March 26.
The survey highlights a growing ambivalence towards Internet companies whose popular online services, such as social networking, e-commerce and search, have blossomed into some of the world’s largest businesses.
Now, as the boundaries between Web products and real world services begin to blur, many of the top Internet companies are racing to put their stamp on everything from home appliances to drones and automobiles.
With billions of dollars in cash, high stock prices, and an appetite for more user data, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others are acquiring a diverse set of companies and launching ambitious technology projects.
But their grand ambitions are inciting concern, according to the poll of nearly 5,000 Americans. Of 4,781 respondents, 51 percent replied “yes” when asked if those three companies, plus Apple, Microsoft and Twitter, were pushing too far and expanding into too many areas of people’s lives.
This poll measures accuracy using a credibility interval and is accurate to plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.
“It’s very accurate to say that many people have love-hate relationships with some of their technology providers,” said Nuala O’Connor, the President of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet public policy group which has received funding from companies including Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
“As technology moves forward, as new technologies are in use and in people’s lives, they should question ‘Is this a fair deal between me and the device?’”
Fears about the expanding abilities of tech companies crystallized when Google acknowledged in 2010 that its fleet of StreetView cars, which criss-cross the globe taking panoramic photos for Google’s online mapping service, had inadvertently collected emails and other personal information transmitted over unencrypted home wireless networks.
Yet many Americans remain ignorant of the extent to which Internet companies are trying to extend their reach.
Google is one of the most aggressively ambitious, investing in the connected home through its $3.2 billion acquisition of smart thermostat maker Nest. Google is also investing in self-driving cars, augmented-reality glasses, robots and drones.
Almost a third of Americans say they know nothing about plans by Google and its rivals to get into real-world products such as phones, cars and appliances. Still, roughly two thirds of respondents are already worried about what Internet companies will do with the personal information they collect, or how securely they store the data.
“We’re getting to a point in society where basically everything’s going to be tracked,” said Richard Armitage, a 46-year-old budget analyst in Colorado who participated in the survey. “They have access to so much data that they could use inappropriately in my opinion.”
Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook had no immediate comment. Amazon and Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
But all have said protecting customers’ privacy is a top priority, or published strict policies restricting the use of personal data if needed. For instance, storing select data can make online searches and services more reliable.
EMBRACING THE REAL WORLD
Public sensitivity about privacy was heightened by revelations of U.S. surveillance activities by the National Security Agency, as leaked by former spy contractor Edward Snowden, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who recently wrote a paper about the legal and social implications of robotics.
Those concerns will become even more pressing as Internet companies expand the scope of their activities, said Marc Rotenberg, director of EPIC, a privacy advocacy group.
“The links between the online world and the offline world are growing tighter,” he said. “It’s no longer unplugging your laptop and walking away and rejoining the physical world, because the online world is now following you,” he said, citing examples like Google’s acquisition of home appliance maker Nest.
Google has said it will not combine user data from Nest products with the data it collects about it users of its other online services, but some privacy advocates remain concerned.
New wearable devices, like fitness bracelets and smartwatches that monitor heart rates and other biological information, will increasingly allow companies to collect biological data, said Jonathan Zittrain, the director of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
“The whole can become more than a sum of parts,” when it comes to personal information, said Zittrain. “Little bits of innocuous data...can add up to very revealing, and sometimes intensely private, insights,” about people, he said.
As Internet companies expand their scope of activities, they may not be able to count on the same level of public goodwill they enjoyed as smaller companies. Twenty-seven percent of the survey respondents said they did not think Google adhered to the “Don’t Be Evil” slogan that has long been its unofficial motto.
Of the respondents to the survey, 42 percent said they had negative feelings about Internet companies developing drones which both Amazon and Facebook have said they are investigating, while 29 percent felt negatively about robots, which Google thrust to the forefront with its acquisition of Boston Dynamics.
Only 13 percent of respondents indicated negative feelings about Internet companies offering home appliances however.
“It happens to be that there’s a constellation of technologies that are next, that are new, that are transforming, and they are unsettling,” Calo said. (Editing by Edwin Chan)Dita Von Teese brings old Hollywood glamour to the masses with new dress line - and it goes up to a size U.S. 16
Dita Von Teese has brought her iconic feminine and retro aesthetic to the masses with a new dress collection steeped in old Hollywood glamour.
Far from today's popular paired-down way of dressing, the collection, priced between $350 and $995, is reminiscent of an age when glamour after five was de rigueur.
The burlesque dancer told Refinery 29 : 'The dress collection is comprised of pieces that are all based on the things in my vintage collection that I believe are timeless.
Glamour for the masses: Dita Von Teese has brought her iconic feminine and retro aesthetic to the wider world with a new collection of dresses steeped in old world glamour
'Some of the dresses are based on favorite vintage pieces that I've worn over and over for 12 years, and that's a testament to a dress that transcends trends.
'I've also made them more wearable by changing little things like necklines, hemlines, etcetera, and making them out of the best quality fabrics so they are made to last, both physically and style-wise.
'This isn't a retro clothing line — it's really about classic glamour that doesn't fade with time.'
Vintage inspiration: The dress collection, which ranges in price from $350 to $995, is made up of pieces based on the things in her vintage collection that the 40-year-old believes 'are timeless'
The 40-year-old admitted to Vogue.co.uk that the off-duty look never worked for her, and even when she is having a lazy day, she still finds time to put on her powder and do her chingon.
'Any time I feel like being lazy, I think: "The day I don't dress up, that's when I'll run into my ex-boyfriend - or worse, his new girlfriend". I feel better about myself when I look my best,' she said.
First launched in Australia earlier this year, the range is now available on the American website shopdecadesinc.com, and comes in size from a U.S. 4 to a U.S 16.
Designing from her wardrobe: This Follow Me Dress, $850, is 100 per cent silk chiffon and designed after a dress from the Fifties that the burlesque dancer has been wearing for eleven years
All shapes and sizes: The Second Look Dress, $595 (left), and the Tryst Tulle Trench Coat, $350 (right), are also part of the collection, which ranges in size from a US 4 to a US 16
As for her favourite piece? She said: 'I find that I wear the Showcase Dress and the VIP Trench the most.
'A lot of people don't go for the former because you have to try it on to see its beauty. The black silk velvet is just about the most sensual dress I've ever worn - I just love really plush silk velvet - there's nothing more glamorous and nothing sexier.Last week, after a hurried, 700-word article of mine generated exactly 2.5 gazillion responses on the internet, I found myself lying face-down on top of the covers on our bed in the middle of the day.
Like, for an hour.
Dan finally walked in to make sure I wasn’t dead…or worse, watching a Netflix series without him.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I’m just so sick of RHE,” I said, my voice muffled by our comforter. “I really need a break from her.”
It’s funny how, as bizarre as that sounded, Dan knew exactly what I meant. There’s the Rachel whose strengths, weaknesses, dreams, quirks, passions, failings, and pet peeves he knows so intimately, the one still in her pajamas at 4 in the afternoon and pouting on his side of the bed, and then there’s the Rachel Held Evans who smiles from the corner of a Web site, cheerfully drumming up blog posts, pageviews, books, lectures, and the occasional controversy to be digested by the public each day.
They aren’t complete opposites of one another, of course, but they aren’t exactly the same either.
One uses a lot more profanity.
In the publishing industry, we talk a lot about a writer’s “brand”—the general impression an author leaves with readers based on her personality, writing style, favorite topics, marketing, packaging, and audience. But these days, you don’t have to have a book deal or a literary agent to cultivate a “brand.” You just need a little online real estate on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or some sort of blogging platform.
Over time, as your life gets distilled into these little pixels, it’s easy for the people who see them—be they friends, acquaintances, or perfect strangers—to assume they represent you in your totality. Even more frightening, as you gather feedback and gain friends/followers/subscribers, you can start to believe it too.
But we are not our messages, no matter how much we believe in them. We are not our filtered photos, or our tweets, or our political and religious ideologies. We are not even the stories we tell, no matter how carefully and truthfully we tell them.
We are not our brands.
We are human beings—little bundles of cells and relationships and hopes and fears that can never be crammed into images or words.
I have to remind myself of this now and then, when I see people discussing me on the internet in terms that dehumanize and reduce. They are caricatures, really, the sort of portraits you can pay a street artist in New Orleans to draw for you. The features are exaggerated, but they are based on just enough reality to look familiar, to make me a little more mindful of those warts and moles and wrinkles. Other artists accentuate the positives, of course, but those are glamor shots and no matter how many I hang in my locker, we all know they’re not entirely true; it’s all about the lighting.
It would be easier to ask for grace if I’d done a better job of extending it. But I too objectify other people. I’ve assumed that Mark Driscoll is his bullying, macho-man brand, John Piper the sum of his views on women. While these brands certainly don’t spontaneously generate, and while these ideas should be discussed, debated, and sometimes denounced, I find myself reluctant to retweet the fake twitter accounts or join in any online jeering. Because it’s a heck of a lot easier to dish it out than it is to eat it up, let me tell you, and I think sometimes we inadvertently perpetuate celebrity culture by railing so loudly against it, by feeding into the caricatures with our derision.
As much as I find Mark Driscoll’s “brand” highly distasteful and seriously problematic, I don’t know the man, so I have no business hating him. And as much as you may love or hate the RHE brand, most of you don’t really know the girl behind it, no matter how candid I am with you, no matter how hard I try to be real.
The truth is, that dude whose blog posts totally rub you the wrong way may be the best person in the world with which to watch a football game or talk theology over beer. That acquaintance on Facebook whose pictures make her life seem perfect may struggle with self-doubt, depression, and fear. That stuffy Calvinist you love to hate may melt into a goofy, delightful playmate when he’s tickling his kids on the living room floor. The feminist you always imagine shouting other people down may have an unbelievably tender heart. The pastor you think is always wrong probably gets a few things right. And the pastor you think is always right definitely gets some stuff wrong.
Perhaps the most radical thing we followers of Jesus can do in the information age is treat each other like humans—not heroes, not villains, not avatars, not statuses, not Republicans, not Democrats, not Calvinists, not Emergents—just humans. This wouldn't mean we would stop disagreeing, but I think it would mean we would disagree well.
It’s hard acknowledging the limits of a medium through which my own writing career has flourished, but I want you to know: The conversations we have here—as encouraging, informative, and life-changing as they can often be—are meant to be brought to dinner tables, coffee shops, AA meetings, parks, church fellowship halls, long car rides, dorm rooms, and diners, among people who (whether they agree or disagree) can look you in the eye and take you in, not as a brand but as a human being. It’s riskier, I know, but it’s truer. It’s better. And I think it’s what good writing is intended to accomplish—to connect us to the truth in one another, our world, and the divine...in real life, not just our heads.
Growing Pains
As if this post wasn’t self-indulgent enough, I should confess I’ve been experiencing some growing pains. I love that the blog is growing and that more people are reading my articles and books, but I’m in that awkward teenage stage when your arms and legs are suddenly longer so you’re knocking stuff over and running into doors. I’m upsetting apple carts I didn’t even mean to upset, apparently making theological statements about views I didn’t even know existed. I feel a little in over my head, to be honest.
[Let’s get real. When all you’ve got is an English Literature degree and they’re asking you to comment on substitutionary atonement at Christian colleges and church trends on CNN, something’s gone amiss.]
So I’m recalibrating a bit, figuring out what it means to steward whatever influence I have in ways that are both creative and sustainable, and that perhaps give some other folks the chance to step up to the mic. I’m also pouring the best of myself into a new book, which means posts may be a bit spottier… and weirder, as they will likely have been written after 1 a.m.
Thanks for your patience, wisdom, support, and willingness to call me on my crap. You’ve helped me grow my brand, yes, but you’ve also made me a better person. I hope we get the chance to really know one another someday.
***
So, have you ever felt you’ve been treated like a brand— a simplified rendering of your actual hopes, dreams, and ideas? Where does this happen – on the internet, in church, at your work? Who in your life actually knows you? And what can we do to avoid making caricatures of one another?Professor and former banker Vladimir Frolov hopes to create new international financial system using the principles of bitcoin. He named the system after the famous polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus.
Vladimir Frolov thinks that SWIFT system is slow and obsolete. He suggests to replace it with his own invention that he christened “Copernicus Gold”.
“It combines advantages of cryptocurrencies with conceptual advantages |
him: The Flames have spent the last three years convincing themselves that they were still contenders, even though everyone else in the hockey world was screaming at them to rebuild. But this year, Iginla’s pending free agency might finally force their hand.
Why they might not: Well, for one thing, Calgary GM Jay Feaster isn’t exactly riding a hot streak of smart decisions. But more importantly, Iginla’s in his 16th season in Calgary and could make a strong case as the most popular player in team history. It would be hard to say good-bye to one of the few guys who could truly be called a franchise player. And of course, if he pulls a Mats Sundin and decides not to waive, the Flames can’t force him to go anywhere.
What they’d get for him: A ton. Forget the stats — this is Jarome Iginla. If he’s on the market, the demand will be off the charts. Calgary’s captain would be a great fit for Cup contenders like the Penguins, Kings, and Bruins, so the potential is there for one of those bidding wars where you’re left wondering: Wait, they got how much?
Marian Gaborik, New York Rangers (RW, 31 years old)
The numbers: He’s put up 17 points in 29 games. For most players, that would be decent. For him, it’s a disaster — because of what you’re about to read in the next section
The contract: He gets $7.5 million both this year and next. He won’t be a UFA until 2014.
No-trade clause?: A modified NTC, which allows him to provide the Rangers with a list of 10 teams he can’t be moved to. According to Larry Brooks, the Rangers already have Gaborik’s list, though we don’t know which teams are on it.
Why they might trade him: The Rangers are bad and coach John Tortorella is frustrated, taking some very public shots at his best players. [Whispers to Marian Gaborik and Brad Richards in Homer Simpson voice: I think he’s talking to you.] Richards is pretty much unmovable, so that’s led to some Gaborik trade talk, which is surprising, given that the Rangers are barely hanging on to a shot at the playoffs. Still, New York could move him for a package of cheaper NHL players who could help in other areas.
Why they might not: The number of teams that could add a $7.5 million contract to their books is low. The number of teams that could add that deal and still give up enough value to keep the Rangers in the playoff hunt is even lower.
What they’d get for him: A lot, I guess, but let’s just go ahead and pencil Gaborik in for this year’s “superstar player who gets a ton of attention and then doesn’t get traded after all” award. Or, as we ended up calling it this time last year, the Rick Nash Trophy.
Mike Ribeiro, Washington Capitals (C, 33 years old)
The numbers: A team-leading 32 points, putting him on pace for his best season since 2007-08.
The contract: $5 million this year; he’s a UFA this summer.
No-trade clause?: A modified NTC, with similar terms as Gaborik’s.
Why they might trade him: Ribeiro has played well in Washington, but he’s a veteran and his time there is ending. For most teams, that would make him an ideal asset to offer up as a trade deadline rental.
Why they might not: For the Capitals, it probably makes him their next coach.
What they’d get for him: On the one hand, the diminutive Ribeiro doesn’t fit the “playoff warrior” mold contenders tend to be looking for this time of year (even though his career playoff stats are solid). On the other, he’s probably going to be the best center available at this year’s deadline. The Caps would be expecting a high pick and/or top prospect.
Jaromir Jagr, Dallas Stars (RW, 41 years old)
The numbers: On the year, he has a team-leading 21 points in 28 games. On his career, he’s the NHL’s active leader in just about every offensive category that matters.
The contract: He’s finishing off a one-year deal worth $4.5 million, and is a UFA after this season.
No-trade clause?: There have been some conflicting reports, but it doesn’t sound like he has one.
Why they might trade him: The Stars are probably more likely to move someone like Derek Roy or Brenden Morrow, but Jagr would be a lot more fun, so let’s talk about him instead. He fits the profile of the classic deadline-day rental: He’s good, his current team is not, and it would probably make sense for everyone involved to see him moved to a contender.
Why they might not: The Stars are still in the Western Conference playoff race because everyone is still in the Western Conference race, including half of the Eastern Conference.
What they’d get for him: It’s hard to say. Based purely on this year’s performance, a solid pick or prospect would be fair. But this time of year can sometimes make GMs get all misty-eyed for veteran stars; someone might be willing to overpay for a slam dunk Hall-of-Famer.
Chris Stewart, St. Louis Blues (RW, 25 years old)
The numbers: His 28 points in 29 games leads the Blues by a mile (assuming a mile is worth seven points, which it is).
The contract: He’s making $3 million on the last year of his deal. This offseason he becomes a restricted free agent (RFA), which means he could negotiate with other teams but the Blues would have the right to match.
No-trade clause?: No, not eligible.
Why they might trade him: While he’s not going to be a UFA, the Blues are a low-budget team and would be vulnerable to an offer sheet — the Ryan O’Reilly fiasco could serve as a warning here.
Why they might not: The Blues went into the season as trendy Cup picks, and you don’t often see contenders looking to trade their best young forward at the deadline.
What they’d get for him: While he could fetch a nice package of picks and prospects, you’d have to think the Blues would be asking for NHL assets instead. They’ve reportedly been looking for help on defense.
Bobby Ryan, Anaheim Ducks (LW, 26 years old)
The numbers: He has 23 points through 29 games.
The contract: He’s signed through 2015 at $5.1 million a year.
No-trade clause?: No, not eligible.
Why they might trade him: The two teammates he’s trailing in scoring, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, just signed $135 million worth of contract extensions. That’s not going to leave a lot of room in the budget for other big deals.
Why they might not: Ryan has been rumored to be on the verge of being dealt since before he was even in the NHL, and it never happens. Besides, the Ducks are legitimate Cup contenders this year and it would seem to make more sense to wait for the summer to move him. Still, it’s the trade deadline, so Bobby Ryan rumors are pretty much mandatory.
What they’d get for him: Much like the Blues and Stewart, the Ducks would only make a move here if it were for immediate NHL help. It’s hard to see a fit that makes any sense right now.
Jonathan Bernier, L.A. Kings (G, 24 years old)
The numbers: He’s put up excellent numbers as Jonathan Quick’s backup, both this year (1.94 GAA,.923 save percentage) and over his 58-game career.
The contract: He’s making $1.25 million this year and will be an RFA in the offseason.
No-trade clause?: No, not eligible.
Why they might trade him: Bernier’s been a good soldier over parts of five seasons in L.A., but it’s time for him to compete for a starter’s job somewhere. With Quick signed for a decade, that won’t happen in Los Angeles. Why not move now for a piece that could help the Kings repeat [cough, Jarome Iginla, cough]?
Why they might not: Not everyone agrees that Iginla and the Kings are a good match. The Kings might decide to hold on to Bernier as a cheap insurance policy and then move him in the summer.
What they’d get for him: The recent market for talented but unproven young goalies has ranged from solid to very good, but those were offseason deals. The Kings will presumably be aiming higher, which means Bernier would need to be part of a package.
Tyler Bozak, Toronto Maple Leafs (C, 27 years old)
The numbers: He has 17 points through 30 games, roughly on par with his career average. He’s also a career 54 percent faceoff man.
The contract: One year left at $1.5 million; UFA this summer.
No-trade clause?: Stunningly, given that this is the Maple Leafs, no.
Why they might trade him: The Leafs don’t seem all that interested in re-signing him. The fact that he’s not a real no. 1 center, despite the Leafs insisting on using him like one, has been well documented. He could still be a solid no. 2 or an excellent no. 3, but the Leafs already have Mikhail Grabovski fitting that description; paying two guys like that a combined $10 million or more on long-term deals doesn’t make much sense. Plus, Nazem Kadri might be ready to take his spot.
Why they might not: The Leafs are clinging to a playoff spot, so trading a player off the first line would seem like an odd move. This might be one of the rare cases when it really would make more sense to keep a player and then let him walk for nothing in the offseason.
What they’d get for him: Given their playoff status, the Leafs would probably prefer to move him for a roster player or even make him part of a package for a star (which is what they almost did, for Roberto Luongo, last offseason).
Pretty Much Everyone Who Plays for the Buffalo Sabres
The numbers: Bad.
The contract: Worse.
No-trade clauses?: Aplenty.
Why they might trade them: The Sabres are a mess that looks to be on the verge of a full-fledged implosion, and with a top-10 payroll full of stunningly bad contracts, this is pretty much the archetypal “burn it to the ground and start all over” team. Oh, and their long-time GM may need a few home runs to keep his job. Operators are standing by.
Why they might not: Because the players are either too good to want to trade (Thomas Vanek, and maybe Ryan Miller) or too overpaid to be able to trade (anyone who isn’t Thomas Vanek and Ryan Miller).
What they’d get for everyone: Not much, but that’s not the point. The Sabres need cap space and a clean start, and not necessarily in that order.
Martin St. Louis, Tampa Bay Lightning (RW, 37 years old)
The numbers: His 39 points have him in the top five in league scoring.
The contract: He’s signed through 2015 at $5.625 million per year.
No-trade clause?: St. Louis has a full NMC.
Why they might trade him: St. Louis’s name has only come up recently in the Tampa Bay media (and the mention was carefully called “pure speculation”), but the case is intriguing. The Lightning are struggling this year and have always had to keep an eye on the budget. Wouldn’t they have to at least consider moving a star player on a big contract who’s signed until he turns 40?
Why they might not: He’s Martin St. Louis. Even more than Vincent Lecavalier, he’s been the face of the franchise going back to their 2004 Stanley Cup run. And, of course, the Lightning can’t do anything unless St. Louis is willing to waive his NMC.
What they’d get for him: We can safely say the return would be huge, because it would have to be for Tampa Bay to even consider a move like this. The contract might scare off a few teams, but if the Lightning actually did decide to pursue a deal, you’d have to think St. Louis bumps Iginla off the top of the “best player available” list.Quik - The Missing Project Scaffolder (for Ruby) Quick Start Your Ruby Gems, Your Sinatra Apps, Your Jekyll Sites ‘n’ More w/ Project Templates Agenda: Quick Starter Kits / Boilerplates / Project Scaffolder in the World
What about Ye Old’ Ruby? How do you get started with creating a new gem? How do you get started with creating a new sinatra app? How do you get started with creating a new jekyll theme?
Turn GitHub repos into quik starter templates in 1-2-3 steps. Step 1: Download Single-File Quik Starter (.ZIP) Archive Step 2: Parameterize Files - Use a Meta Template Template Language Step 3: What’s Missing? All together Now - Automate with a Script
Let’s welcome the quik command line tool / gem. quik help - Quik Starter Commands quik ls - List Quik Starter Wizards quik new - New Wizard Quik Start
Bonus Meet Mr Hyde - Dr Jekyll’s Dark Side - New Static Website Wizard Command Quik Starter Thor Command Line Template
Quick Starter Kits / Boilerplates / Project Scaffolder in the World Python uses Cookiecutter
Node.js uses Yeoman ( yo ) or (NEW!) Yarn with ( create )
) or (NEW!) Yarn with ( ) Rails uses Rails Application Templates ;-) Q: What about Ye Old’ Ruby?
How do you get started with creating a new gem? [A] From scratch ;-)
[B] Using bundler with $ bundle gem
[C] Using quik with $ quik new gem
[D] Using hoe with $ sow (incl. with hoe rake tasks gem)
(incl. with hoe rake tasks gem) [E] Other (Please Tell).
How do you get started with creating a new sinatra app? [A] From scratch ;-)
[B] Using padrino with $ padrino g project
[C] Using quik with $ quik new sinatra
[D] Other (Please Tell).
How do you get started with creating a new jekyll theme? [A] From scratch ;-)
[B] Using jekyll with $ jekyll new-theme
[C] Using quik with $ quik new jekyll
[D] Other (Please Tell).
One Quik Starter to Rule Them All? The Idea - Many starter templates / boilerplates are ready-to-fork GitHub repos. Why not turn GitHub repos into quik starter templates?! Let’s do it in 1-2-3 steps.
Step 1: Download Single-File Quik Starter (.ZIP) Archive Did you know? You can download GitHub repos without git? That is, download a single-file archive (.ZIP) – gets (auto-)built by GitHub. Example - gem-starter-template.zip : lib/ $filename$.rb $filename$/ version.rb test/ helper.rb test_version.rb.gitignore HISTORY.md Manifest.txt README.md Rakefile (Source: quikstart/gem-starter-template)
Step 2: Parameterize Files - Use a Template Language [A] Use Embedded Ruby (ERB)
[B] Use Liquid
[C] Other (Please Tell). Example - lib/linz/version.rb : module Linz MAJOR = 0 MINOR = 0 PATCH = 1 VERSION = [MAJOR,MINOR,PATCH].join('.') def self.version VERSION end def self.banner "linz/#{VERSION} on Ruby #{RUBY_VERSION} (#{RUBY_RELEASE_DATE}) [#{RUBY_PLATFORM}]" end end # module Linz
Step 2: Parameterize Files - Use a Template Language Let’s use a new (simpler) template language (e.g. $name$ )! Example - lib/$filename$/version.rb : module $module$ MAJOR = 0 MINOR = 0 PATCH = 1 VERSION = [MAJOR,MINOR,PATCH].join('.') def self.version VERSION end def self.banner "$name$/#{VERSION} on Ruby #{RUBY_VERSION} (#{RUBY_RELEASE_DATE}) [#{RUBY_PLATFORM}]" end end # module $module$ (Source: quikstart/gem-starter-template/template/lib/$filename$/version.rb)
Step 2: Parameterize Files - A New Meta Template Template Language Why not ERB or Liquid? Simpler – works inside filenames too ;-) e.g. lib/$filename$/version.rb
Shorter – less typing (plus: no worries about whitespace) Most Important: “Orthogonal” to ERB and Liquid. Lets you parameterize ERB or Liquid templates too - no need for escaping or “raw” blocks etc. module $module$ | module <%= module %> | module {{ module }} | module Linz... |... |... |... end | end | end | end
Step 3: What’s Missing? All together Now - Automate with a Script Let’s use Ruby ;-) a with wizard mini language, that is, a domain-specific language (DSL). Example - scripts/gem.rb : say "Hello from the gem quick starter wizard script" name = ask "Name of the gem", "hola" def make_module( name )... end module_name = ask "Module name of the gem", make_module( name ) ## use template repo e.g. github.com/quikstart/gem-starter-template use "quikstart/gem-starter-template" config do |c| c.name = name c.filename = name ## for now assume name is 1:1 used as filename c.module = module_name c.date = Time.new.strftime("%Y-%m-%d") ## e.g. use like $date$ => 2015-08-27 end (Source: quikstart/scripts/gem.rb)
Voila. That’s it. Let’s welcome the quik command line tool / gem. Q: What’s qk/quik ★21 (github: quickstart/quik)? Ruby quick starter template script wizard.:. the missing code generator or project scaffolder. Trivia: Q: Why is quik misspelled? A: Because it’s shorter, that is, saves one letter - quik vs quick is quicker). Helps with finding quik templates on Google!
quik help - Quik Starter Commands $ quik --help # or $ qk -h Resulting in: NAME qk/quik - ruby quick starter template script wizard.:. the missing code generator SYNOPSIS quik [global options] command [command options] [arguments...] VERSION 0.3.0 GLOBAL OPTIONS --help - Show this message --verbose - (Debug) Show debug messages --version - Display the program version COMMANDS list, ls, l - List ruby quick starter scripts new, n - Run ruby quick starter script help - Shows a list of commands or help for one command
quik ls - List Quik Starter Wizards Use: $ quik list # or $ quik ls # or $ quik l # or $ qk l Resulting in: 1..gem.:. Gem Quick Starter Template 2..gem-hoe.:. Gem Quick Starter Template (Hoe Classic Edition) 3..sinatra.:. Sinatra Quick Starter Template...
quik new - New Wizard Quik Start To run a quick starter template wizard script to download and install (unzip/unpack) a template archive and configure the code ready-to-use. Try: $ quik new gem # or $ quik n gem # or $ qk n gem
quik new - New Wizard Quik Start (Cont.) This will download the gem.rb wizard script from the Scripts repo and run through all steps e.g.: Welcome, to the gem quick starter script. Q: What's your gem's name? [hola]: hello Q: What's your gem's module? [Hola]: Hello Thanks! Ready-to-go. Stand back. Downloading Gem Starter Template... Setting up Starter Template...... Done. That’s it. Now the gem starter code is ready in the hello folder.
That’s it. Thanks. Questions? Comments?
Bonus I: Meet Mr Hyde - Dr Jekyll’s Dark Side Q: What’s mrh/mrhyde ★14 (github: mrhydescripts/mrhyde)? Static website quick starter script wizard.:. the missing jekyll command line tool. Try: $ mrhyde help
Bonus I: Meet Mr Hyde - New Static Website Wizard Command To run a static website quick starter wizard script to download and install (unzip/unpack) a theme archive and configure a static website ready-to-use. Try: $ mrhyde new starter # or $ mrhyde n starter # or $ mrh n starter This will download the starter.rb wizard script from the Mr. Hyde’s Scripts repo and run through all steps.
Bonus I: Meet Mr Hyde - New Static Website Wizard Command (Cont.) Welcome, before setting up your site Mr. Hyde will ask you some questions. Q: What's your site's title? [Your Site Title]: Another Beautiful Static Website Q: What's your name? [Henry Jekyll]: Edward Hyde Q: Select your theme: 1 - Starter 2 - Bootstrap 3 - Minimal Your choice (1-3)? [1]: 2 Thanks! Ready-to-go. Stand back twenty-five meters.
Bonus I: Meet Mr Hyde - New Static Website Wizard Command (Cont.) Downloading Henry's Bootstrap Theme... Setting up Henry's Bootstrap Theme..... Updating settings in _config.yml... title: "Another Beautiful Static Website" author.name: "Edward Hyde"... Done. That’s it. Now use: $ cd starter $ jekyll serve And open up your new static website in your browser.
Bonus II: Quik Starter Thor Command Line Template by Georg G. (aka nilsding) from Linz! Thanks! config/ environment.rb my_app.yml.example exe/ __name__ lib/ __name__/ application.rb cli.rb configuration.rb rake/ rubocop_runner.rake __name__.rb.rubocop.yml.ruby-gemset.ruby-version Gemfile LICENSE README.md Rakefile (Source: nilsding/ndcli-template)Nest, the home automation and security business owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent, seems to be preparing a new security camera containing a sensor capable of recording at 4K resolution. However, Nest may not be using the device to record in 4K but instead to boost resolution: video feed from the device will be viewed at 1080p resolution, or Full HD.
The advantage of using a higher resolution camera sensor but recording at a lower resolution becomes obvious as soon as one zooms into the picture, and it’s a similar technology to live streaming using the Mevo camera.
Nest’s solution is especially neat; when the camera detects motion, the software will automatically zoom in on the activity. The software is said to include a down-scaled 1080p full frame view of all that the camera can see, giving customers the choice of either the zoomed-in 1080p view, or the full (but down-scaled) view. Nest is not expected to allow users to record or stream at 4K resolution, as this requires considerable bandwidth over a Wi-Fi network, which could reportedly cause performance issues.
Nest’s 4K camera is expected to look similar to the current Nest Outdoor camera but the technology will be for indoor use only. The device will be powered by a USB Type-C connector and there will be a LED ring around the lens showing that it is recording. It is expected to cost $300, so it will be considerably more expensive than other Nest cameras currently on sale, but the higher price may cover one or more features only available in Nest’s paid tier of service. Android Police states that the new 4K Nest camera may only include the human detection feature for free with the camera.
In 2017 there are many manufacturers offering Wi-Fi enabled security cameras, whereas when Nest first established the business these were much less commonplace. The upcoming 4K camera is reportedly designed to boost Nest’s product portfolio and is likely to encourage other manufacturers to launch their own similar solutions. The camera could also give the company room to grow by introducing a weatherproof version at some point in the future.
SOURCE [Android Police]Google’s Crisis Reponse team has responded to the threat of Typhoon Pablo, which is moving in on the Philippines, by publishing a map to gives local residents and emergency teams the latest information on how the situation is developing.
The map, which is updated in real time, uses EC Joint Research Centre data to show the predicted storm level across the country, in addition to grade storm level warnings and more, as Google explains:
On the map, you’ll find storm warnings, shelter locations, the latest weather information, and more. The map is available in English, as well as Filipino. You can also find the map embedded on the Filipino government’s Pablo site.
More than 41,000 residents have been evacuated in advance of Pablo hitting and in the south of the country, where it has already struck with wind gusts of up to 195 km/h (121 miles/h), at least one person is reported to have died.
Just yesterday at Google’s Next Billion event in Singapore, Anthony Baxter, team leader at the Google Crisis Response team in Sydney, discussed how the search giant respond to emergencies and crises across the world.
“Crisis response used to be run on a one-off basis around incidents, but it became ongoing after the 2010 disaster in Haiti,” Baxter explained.
Google’s central Crisis Response team is relatively slim, but it pulls in local country and regional staff to work specific projects when required. So, for Pablo, a number of the regional team in Singapore and local Googlers in the Philippines work with local agencies, the government and other response teams to help aggregate and provide information for residents and organizations alike.
The systems are built using open sourced system with API available for authorities and organizations that request them. Recently Google began providing easy share options, to help those affected or in a particular country, share information with friends and family through the Web and social network, in particular.
“The impact of each disaster is always different,” Baxter said. “Every one is a new lesson that we learn from since the response is always different. We take stock and our tools set becomes more polished.”
Baxter admits that the ultimate situation would see enough automated and ready-to-use services to allow organizations to tap into Google’s crisis response products independently, with Google acting in an advisory capacity.
Mobile remains a tricky area for Google’s crisis response efforts since a device carrying old data — perhaps because it is offline, or on a feature phone — can be more hazardous than no data at all, since it has the potential to mislead. For that reason, Baxter says that the company is treading carefully but definitely addressing the opportunity.
Image via aldorado / Shutterstock
Read next: Visa, MasterCard and Amex back Gemalto NFC payment SIM, coming soon to Canada, France and JapanPARIS, France — Rick Owens is a brand apart and it may not be too much to say that the designer and his wife and collaborator, Michèle Lamy, similarly exist in an alternate reality, a world of their own making — adjacent to ours, maybe, beholden to the same laws of physics and economic realities, but different, unique. Everything in Owens’ and Lamy’s life, as in their business (as if one can so easily differentiate between the two), is done in vigilant observation of Owens’ dictate, “We build, we don’t buy.” And, together, the two have conspired to build a world entirely of their own design, furnishing it solely with the fruits of their imaginings.
In Paris, this world is a five-storey mansion overlooking the gardens of the Ministry of Defence, minimally adorned with Owens’ furniture and art by Lamy’s daughter Scarlett rouge, and where, during the busiest times of the year as many as 15 employees scamper about the building’s first floor showroom and second floor offices in head-to-toe Rick Owens or DRKSHDW, his diffusion line. Upstairs, Owens spends his habitually routine days designing in the third floor studio, while the hushed austerity of the fourth and fifth floor living areas may suggest a modern hermitage, inhabited by a particularly devout monk of fashion. When in residence, Owens is as disciplined as any friar, hewing to a now famously strict regimen of work and exercise. But despite the precision and severity of his designs, and Owens’ own jokes about the rigours with which he pursues his vision (calling his production process “fascist”), the man himself is warm and engaging, almost puckish in temperament. And it is this spirit that animates Owenslandia as it grows outward from the elegant Palais Bourbon HQ.
A certain style, a certain way of working — that’s what creates the tribe. It’s not the clothes, or technical things. It’s the way of holding yourself in a different way.
It is a long way from the dusty town in central California where Owens grew up, though his own flowing designs still hold the charge he remembers feeling when he was just a boy, watching nuns from the local convent dragging their robes in the dirt. After moving south to Los Angeles, Owens enrolled in and then dropped out of art school. He studied pattern-making at a technical college, and, while working in a factory downtown, was soon introduced to Lamy, by his then boyfriend, as the best pattern cutter in Los Angeles.
Working on her menswear collection, the two became romantically involved. And by the time of Owens’ breakthrough Vogue-funded show at New York Fashion Week in 2002, they were living together in bohemian splendour in a row of storefronts in Hollywood, and Owens was selling his own line exclusively to Charles Galley, proprietor of an avant-garde boutique on Sunset Plaza. Later that year, Owens won the CFDA’s award for emerging talent and was approached by the centuries-old furrier Révillon, who hired him as creative director and brought him to France. In 2004, Owens entered into a partnership with his manufacturers in San Giacomo — “the Italians,” as he calls them — and began selling to Tommy Perse at Maxfield in Los Angeles, Maria Luisa in Paris, Joyce Ma in Hong Kong and Joan Burstein’s Browns in London.
But, even as their world has grown to include directly operated stores in Paris, New York, Seoul, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Miami and, soon, Los Angeles, little has changed within Owenscorp since its inception two decades ago. Elza Lanzo and her brother-in-law, Luca Ruggeri, are still CEO and commercial director, respectively. They still hold a shared 20 percent of the company (Owens and Lamy own the rest) — though it’s safe to say that those shares have significantly increased in value.
In 2010, Owenscorp revenue was around $40 million. In 2012, that number was closer to $70 million; in 2013 it exceeded $100 million and, this year, it’s projected to surpass $120 million. And, though he once flirted with the idea of selling to an unnamed conglomerate, Owens has grown his house without any outside help.
“We’ve never had to take any outside investment, thank god.” Nor has he ever outsourced production or in-sourced a single design. His is not an atelier system where a team of young designers submits ideas for a boss’ approval. Instead, he designs every piece from every line bearing his name. “I’m greedy,” he says, meaning he wants all of that, the fun stuff, for himself. “Really, I wouldn’t know how to do it any other way.”
And, even as their approach seems to have the company mushrooming, both Owens and Lamy maintain that they are simply moving and growing the way they always have — naturally, organically. “We are really just doing what feels right,” Owens says. “It isn’t that we are doing anything different,” says Lamy. “It just happens.”
On occasion, Owens has described the couple’s business partnership as “asking a gypsy to organise a war with a fascist.” He characterises himself as rigid about deadlines and not at all tolerant of people showing up late to work. Lamy is more comfortable giving a long leash to her collaborators. “She cajoles,” Owens says. “I demand. She lets people express themselves more; she lets the magic happen and I expect them to do exactly what I say. Which is how the furniture came to be her domain.” Turning to her, he says, “I think I inspire it. You direct it.”
Aside from directing the construction and sale of the furniture line they began in 2010, Lamy is also in charge of the company’s furs (they no longer work with Révillon) and handles a couture-like strand of the business, welcoming cherished clients into the atelier for private fittings. When BoF meets with the pair in early December, Lamy is studying satellite pictures of possible locations for their LA store and dreaming aloud about the possibility of opening in Dubai and Las Vegas. She is aware of the mystique and artistry of the world she and Owens have built — that the world is itself a work of art. Last year, she was in talks about taking over a factory on an island outside of Venice where they could build a kind of artisan utopia, but the plans fell through.
Now, she thinks she might want to open a hotel, a place where their world is thrown open to the rest of us on a grand scale — part haven, part fairy tale. It becomes clear that, beyond their remarkable construction, what has always made Owens’ clothes special is the sense of community that they bear, the imprimatur of that world. Indeed, wearing Rick Owens has always seemed to be very personal, an externalisation of beliefs or identity, of allegiance to something.
“That’s where he has created the tribe,” Lamy says. “A certain style, a certain way of working — that’s what creates the tribe. It’s not the clothes, or technical things. It’s the way of holding yourself in a different way. But you see the way it is changing.”
One place we see it changing is on the street. Only three years ago, membership in Owens’ tribe seemed to be an all or nothing proposition. You would often find the devotee in head-to-toe Rick Owens or DRKSHDW — and the fully devout are still here, in greater numbers than ever. But now, too, they are joined by the casual partisan pairing a Rick Owens jacket with Nike Flyknits, or a former streetwear kid working Owens’ sneakers with a bomber jacket.
Helping his brand break beyond cult status are Owens’ ludicrously luxe oversized jersey shirts and leather jackets, which have been much-fetishised by the hip hop set that drives much of the streetwear market these days (it may be impossible to quantify the power of rapper Rick Ross claiming, “Rick Owens on me, bombers for my whole army,” for example, but the reality it underscores is plain). As streetstyle lensman Tommy Ton observes, “You definitely see more of Rick’s iconic staples, like his leather jackets, filtered down to the streets nowadays.”
After the wild sensation over his show last Autumn, when American step dancers paraded his clothes in a choreographed performance, it was reported that orders went up as much as 20 percent, but Owens doesn’t see cause and effect there. “I think orders are based on the last season, how it sold.” Indeed, the uptick in orders, he says, is consistent with the growth over the last several years. Sprouting from the lucidity of his vision, protected by the brutalist simplicity of their operation, and maintained by his own intense commitment, Owens’ business has developed a momentum of its own.
“He’s one of the few that really sets the new direction which leaves everybody else to copy,” says Perse, the owner of Maxfield in LA. “But no one is able to replicate his stuff in a way that comes close to what he does. The man was obviously born a natural, because he just gets better and better.”
“It would take me ten years to burn this whole thing down,” Owens says, in signature deadpan. “Even if I were to go insane for five years, there is still enough in the archive that they could sell. It would take another five years before people caught on and it all came crumbling down.”
Then, after a beat, he says, “I don’t think I will do that.”
Order your copy of The Companies & Culture Issue, where this article originally appeared, for delivery anywhere in the world at shop.businessoffashion.com, or visit Browns (London), Colette (Paris), 10 Corso Como (Milan), En Inde (New Delhi), Holt Renfrew (Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary), Lane Crawford (Hong Kong), Le Mill (Mumbai), Liberty (London), L’Éclaireur (Paris), Opening Ceremony (New York and London), and Sneakerboy (Sydney and Melbourne), Wardour News (London), Mulberry Iconic Magazines (New York).One of the most talked about, yet infrequently seen film trilogies of all time has to be Satyajit Ray‘s The Apu Trilogy — Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World Of Apu). You can find poor quality versions on YouTube and purchase shoddy DVD copies on Amazon and eBay, but soon these classics will be available in newly minted restored versions as Janus Film announced today the upcoming $K restoration of all three films will be begin a national re-release in New York City at Film Forum on Friday, May 8 and in Los Angeles at Landmark’s Nuart Theater on Friday, May 29, followed by releases in art houses nationwide throughout the summer.
Frequently listed as one of the top accomplishments in the history of cinema, the trilogy helped bring India into the golden age of international art-house cinema – but this restoration was long thought to be impossible, after a fire severely damaged the original negatives in 1993. Whatever was left of the original negatives was salvaged by the Academy Film Archive and it wasn’t until the technology improved that this restoration was possible. Based on two books by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, The Apu Trilogy follows one indelible character, a free-spirited child in rural Bengal who matures into an adolescent urban student and finally a sensitive man of the world. The films, shot over the course of five years (and featuring different actors playing the maturing Apu), are among the most visually radiant, richly humane movies ever made – essential works for any film lover. Martin Scorsese called watching the films “ |
Afridi, a powerful Taliban commander based in Darra Adam Khel, has taken control of Taliban operations in Khyber. The Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam, a local Taliban ally commanded by Mangal Bagh, have gained power in Khyber despite a series of Pakistani military operations that began in the summer of 2007 which were supposedly designed to relieve Taliban pressure on neighboring Peshawar. A total of five military offensives have failed to dislodge the terror groups.
Both the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Islam are known to operate bases and training camps in the Tirah Valley, as well as in Bara and Jamrud in Khyber. These safe havens enable these terror groups to launch attacks inside Pakistan as well across the border in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan. In November 2008, the US military attacked Taliban forces in the Tirah Valley after they retreated across the border from Nangarhar in Afghanistan. US strike aircraft and artillery killed seven Taliban fighters during the hot pursuit.
The Khyber Pass is NATO’s main conduit for supplies into Afghanistan; an estimated 70 percent of NATO’s supplies move through this strategic crossing point. The Taliban forced the Khyber Pass to be shut down seven times between September 2007 and April 2008 due to attacks.
US strikes in Pakistan, by the numbers
Today’s strikes make for the fifth reported inside Pakistan this month. The US is well on its way to exceeding last year’s strike total in Pakistan, and has matched the 2008 total. So far this year, the US has carried out 36 strikes in Pakistan; all but one of the strikes this year have taken place in North Waziristan. In 2009, the US carried out 53 strikes in Pakistan. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see: “Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2010.”]
Unmanned US Predator and Reaper strike aircraft have been pounding Taliban and al Qaeda hideouts in North Waziristan over the past several months in an effort to kill senior terror leaders and disrupt the networks that threaten Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the West. [For more information, see LWJ report, “Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2010.”]
Most recently, on March 8, a US strike in a bazaar in Miramshah killed a top al Qaeda operative known as Sadam Hussein Al Hussami. Hussami was a prot
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.Chinese premium smartphone maker OnePlus has made India its second headquarters hiring not just local talent but even exporting talent from across the globe. The company’s founder and CEO Pete Lau told ET in an exclusive interaction in the company’s headquarters at Shenzhen in China that the online focussed brand is also making India the test market for offline experience zones. Lau says India’s rapid economic rise and technology evolution has happened at a faster pace than China making it the biggest bet for OnePlus.The Indian market contributes around 40% of our total revenue making it the biggest followed by our entire European operations. In the past four years, we have built a relatively good brand foundation in the market with our users passionate about the brand. And now we are now targeting the premium smartphone market. In the coming three years, this segment of the market will undergo a substantial increase which will help us positively.According to the latest IDC data, OnePlus is ranked at the third place in India at the $400-plus smartphone market after Samsung and Apple and we are really grateful to the Indian consumers for this. Our core strategy is to offer the best product regardless of the market scenario which will help us to win further.It is really important for us to set up some touch points for users to experience OnePlus. Hence, the experience stores are important. In India, our core users are living in the top ten cities so that allows us to easily copy and replicate the experience zones to other cities. These are company managed but owned by partners. But currently we do not have plans to do this outside of India since we are using the India experience as a global trial.We are open to look at other business models for these experience stores or touch points but our core objective is to offer the touch and feel option. For that, OnePlus is open to find the best methodology for these stores. So while Apple wants to sell, our first objective is to give experience. We are looking for best way to have our offline presence in India. So our first experience store at Bengaluru also does some sales, but a lot of users also go to see the phones.Digital first is a beneficiary business model for us to try out even in the Europe. We have partnered with the biggest telecom carrier in Finland, Elisa, whereby we have created OnePlus touch points in their retail stores. This has already made OnePlus the best seller there. We are doing similar partnership in UK too.So we have not been looking at the best manufacturing practises in India. For us, it is important which partner can offer the best built quality. If we manufacture, the benefits are same in India whether it is done through a partner or by us directly.We don’t regard this as a top concern for our brand since our products are sold in major countries in the globe where security is regarded as top priority. The issue is very sensitive in markets like Europe and North America where we are focussing a lot. In fact, this is what we offer to our users as part of owning the brand. We are not really worried about that. We respect the Indian government and their concerns, and we will cooperate as required.Currently, we have not received any direct request or requirement to build these up. We are also trying to get more clarity on this.For OnePlus, the priority is not to sell volume in India. Instead, we want to become the top-of-the-mind Android smartphone brand. So, couple of years later when Indian users want to think of Android phone, OnePlus should be the best one and their natural choice. Since our business is currently driven by e-commerce, volume will not be that big.India is always one of the primary market for us and we regard India as our second headquarters. In past few years, we hired a lot of Indian talent and also export our employees from China and other countries to build the team there. So we are continuously investing in India. It is not easy to get top-of-the-mind recall in India and hence we have to invest a lot.In certain degree, India can be regarded what China was ten years ago in terms of economic foundation and GDP. But India is skipping over some phases, like it has done the PC era while China went through the whole circle. Indian consumers are using a lot of mobile network and the smartphone is getting utilised. This development is really fast. We are looking at how we can get on that train and seize the opportunity.The gap between India and China in terms of internet services has been shortened drastically over the past year or so. For instance, cab aggregator service Ola and online food delivery services in India are like China currently. We are confident how India will shape up in the future. What surprises me is the development of e-commerce in India. E-commerce in China has gone through 20 years of development, while in India it is like what China was two years back.We actually have been in conversation with Reliance Jio sometime back and did some software and network testing with them. Ever since they started their 4G services, the development has been impressive. We are looking at opportunities for partnership to go to the market.While I am using Apple laptop, I am increasingly trying to use OnePlus for everything. Even couple of years back, you would need an MP3 player, camera, iPad, cellphone, laptop and even a desktop computer. But now OnePlus serves most of my needs, and a laptop is only there in the office. The phone screen is getting bigger and bigger which has replaced the iPad to deal with business stuff. I don’t think the time is very far when consumers can even fully replace the laptop with their smartphone.Pointing to the seven transgender women who were reportedly killed in the first two months of 2017, U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Brookline, pledged Thursday to lead the fight against policies and "hate-inspired violence" that threaten the LGBTQ community.
Kennedy, who will chair the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus' newly relaunched Transgender Equality Task Force, acknowledged that while the panel has "a rocky road ahead," the reported killings and recent actions by President Donald Trump's administration make its work more critical than ever.
"We will fight back against a Justice and an Education Department that turns a blind eye to discrimination in our schools," he said, referencing the recent rollback of protections for transgender students in schools during a Capitol Hill news conference.
AG Maura Healey, Rep. Joe Kennedy criticize President Donald Trump's rollback of transgender protections
"We'll fight back against a health care system that treats transgender Americans as second-class citizens. We'll fight back against our own colleagues, members of Congress that try to undermine religious liberty in this country by using it to support state-sanctioned discrimination," the congressman continued. "And we'll fight back against a scourge of hate-based and hate-inspired violence that plagues the transgender community every single day, particularly transgender women of color."
Contending that "a threat to any civil right is a threat to all civil rights," Kennedy read the names of Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow, Mesha Caldwell, JoJo Striker, Tiara Richmond, Chyna Doll Dupree, Ciara McElveen and Jaquarrius Holland -- the transgender women whom he said have "lost their lives to violence so far this year alone."
"This country owes them better... and this task force will fight every day to deliver better." he argued.
Kennedy, who pushed for passage of Massachusetts' transgender public accommodation law, further reaffirmed his commitment to representing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, stressing that he will stand with them.
US Rep. Joe Kennedy, others urge Massachusetts lawmakers to pass bill banning transgender discrimination in public spaces
"No matter the opposition, no matter the setbacks, no matter who occupies the Oval Office, we see you, we hear you and we are with you," he said, echoing remarks he made following the Trump administration's late-February ordering of public schools to disregard controversial memos issued under President Barack Obama regarding protections for transgender students.
Kennedy said the task force will focus on three main areas: health care access and disparities, public safety and violence against transgender men and women, and education and school environments.
In addition to pushing legislation to address issues facing the LGBTQ community, the congressman said the panel will continue promoting the stories of transgender individuals.
"One of the most impactful ways people can get accustomed to or open their eyes to some of these challenges is by meeting with members of these communities," he said in an interview. "When I spent some time with parents and children and students in the transgender community back home, it was impactful for me... the task force can be a forum where people can come in and have their voices heard."
The Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus created the Transgender Equality Task Force in November 2015 to study "barriers to full legal and societal equality faced by the transgender community" and to lead legislative efforts to address them.
It announced the working group's re-launch Thursday.A Dulono’s Pizza delivery driver was shot during an apparent robbery attempt early Saturday and was hospitalized in critical but stable condition.
While en route back to Dulono’s following his last delivery for the night, the driver as shot around 3:15 a.m., said his employer Jared Gruett, who owns the Uptown Minneapolis bar and restaurant.
Andrew Gryskiewicz, 30, was finishing his shift with one last delivery to a residence near E. 31st Street and Park Avenue but never returned to work. He’d been with the company for nearly a year, Gruett said.
“By God’s grace, Andrew was found unconscious in his car by officers of the MPD before he bled to death,” Gruett wrote on the bar’s Facebook page. “Heroic and gifted surgeons repaired the hole in his heart and have given him the chance to fight for his life.”
Minneapolis police responded to the intersection of 3rd Avenue S. and E. 31st Street — less than a mile from the restaurant and 6 blocks from his delivery — on a report of a man slumped over in his car. The victim was found with a gunshot wound in the chest and rushed to Hennepin County Medical Center, said police spokeswoman Sgt. Catherine Michal.
It remains unclear whether Gryskiewicz was shot during an altercation at the site of the delivery or randomly targeted on the street corner during an attempted carjacking.
“There’s a 50-50 chance it had nothing to do with work at all,” Gruett said. Dulono’s delivery personnel do not have any sort of roof signs on top of their vehicles.
“To shoot an unarmed person point-blank like that is pretty depraved,” Gruett said.
Gruett credited the bystander who immediately called police after finding Gryskiewicz bleeding behind the wheel with saving his life.
“For him to live, period, is amazing,” Gruett said. “If that person had assumed that [it] was just another drunk guy passed out on the side of the road with his car parked funny, he’d be dead.”
A fund-raising page at https://www.gofundme.com/2g2ukz8 has been started to assist Gryskiewicz in his recovery.
Dulono’s, a staple of the Lyn-Lake neighborhood for its pizza and 2-for-1 beer specials, stays open until 3 a.m. daily.Hillary Clinton and her family are operating one 'giant criminal enterprise,' former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Monday.
And the 'elite media, which really shouldn’t be considered news media,' are servicing the Clinton political machine, he argued.
'They are methodical propagandists for the left,' Gingrich told Fox News' Sean Hannity,'smothering negative information about Hillary and maximizing negative information about Trump in a way that is a huge disservice to the United States of America and to the people of the United States.'
Hillary Clinton and her family are operating one 'giant criminal enterprise,' former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Monday
Fox News' Sean Hannity had run down a list of embarrassing factoids revealed by the hack into John Podesta's emails, including what he called 'dirty tricks' against Barack Obama in 2008 to cast him as a Muslim and a 'pay-to-play scheme' in Haiti for Clinton Foundation donors
Hannity had run down a list of embarrassing factoids revealed by the hack into John Podesta's emails, including what he called 'dirty tricks' against Barack Obama in 2008 to cast him as a Muslim and a 'pay-to-play scheme' in Haiti for Clinton Foundation donors.
'In its totality, what are we to make of all of this?' Hannity asked Gingrich, a surrogate for Donald Trump who was nearly the billionaire's running mate.
Gingrich replied, 'This is a giant criminal enterprise disguised as a foundation and disguised as a campaign.'
Pivoting to a report published by The Center for Public Integrity, Gingrich noted that journalists were found to have given $382,000 to Clinton this election and $14,000 to Trump.
'So that means among the news media, the ratio was 24 to 1 in favor of Hillary Clinton,' he extrapolated. 'Now, of course, they wouldn't suggest that they're biased.'
But that's also the same ratio of time that the networks spent publicizing Trump's 2005 Access Hollywood video compared to their coverage of the Wikileaks' Podesta emails last Friday.
'It was 23 minutes on Trump and 57 seconds in all three networks combined on Wikileaks,' he claimed.
The 'elite media, which really shouldn’t be considered news media,' are working in service of the Clinton political machine, Gingrich said in his response
Columbia's School of Journalism'should rename itself the Columbia School of Propaganda,' Gingrich said, mocking the Ivy League institution.
'These people aren’t engaged in news,' he barked.
Gingrich's assault on the media follows several days of complaints from Trump that the media is helping to rig the election for Clinton.Bruce Craig, the chairman of Bath, says his club’s European Champions Cup pool game against Toulon will never be played after being postponed because of the terror attacks in Paris on Friday night.
The match, which was due to be played in Toulon on Sunday afternoon, was one of five games to be called off on Saturday in the wake of Friday night’s atrocities. The decision was imposed on Champions’ Cup organisers by the French Ministry for Sport and the prefecture.
The Telegraph can reveal that Toulouse were given the option of withdrawing from their pool game against Saracens at Allianz Park on Saturday evening, but declined the offer as a gesture of solidarity and played on. Saracens won 32-7.
Officials of the European Professional Club Rugby board, who worked through the night on Friday to prepare contingency plans, will reconvene this morning to sift the various rescheduling permutations.
Craig, who is on the EPCR board, believes that finding a slot for Bath’s game will prove impossible because of the congestion of the English calendar caused by the Rugby World Cup and England’s tour to Australia next summer.
• Townsend watches terror unfold at close hand
“It is very clear to me that the Toulon match can’t happen,” said Craig, who is based in Aix-en-Provence. “The midweek option is not an option to my mind as that would to the detriment of player welfare as well as the integrity of two competitions, an important Champions Cup game being squeezed in with all the attendant travel issues between two Premiership weekends.
“There is no way we should be letting that happen. You can’t play three high-profile games in a week. In the wider context of what has happened in Paris, this is not a serious matter, of course it isn’t. And I do understand why the decision was taken. But from a rugby point of view, and from the point of view of the competition, this is an issue of significant consequence. There is no place to fit it in. It is a bit of a disaster in that regard.”
Craig has long been a critic of the jigsaw nature of the season’s schedule with the mix-and-match format of club competitions and international rugby.
The delayed start to the domestic English season has compounded that log-jam. The other leagues in other territories, in France and the Pro12, all started before the action in the Aviva Premiership was allowed to get under way.
“There are simply no free weekends available between now and the end of the season,” said Craig. “It is unacceptable that the international calendar does not take into account the domestic game. We are playing matches right through the 2016 Six Nations championship to get everything fitted in. There are 33 weekends all accounted for and no slack. And why England are going off on a tour to Australia at the end of a World Cup season I don’t know. What is the point? The players will be knackered.
“They are like lambs to the slaughter. They are just being destroyed. Have a tour before a World Cup but not after one.”
Craig is aware of a format (periequation – equalisation) in France, akin to the Duckworth-Lewis system in cricket, where a formula has been used in amateur leagues to assess how postponed matches that have not been replayed might have worked out based on a team’s results throughout the competition.
Bath are the only team from England to be affected. Other leagues have more flexibility.
The EPCR board will consider all possibilities. “We will work through everything,” EPCR chairman, Simon Halliday, told The Telegraph. “This is going to be a consultative process with all those involved, and will not be a matter of us quoting the rule book and telling people to get on with it. It is an unprecedented situation and it is important we take into account all sensibilities.
“Whatever outcome we arrive at, I hope people accept that our methodology has been to consider all factors. We were doing our best to sort things through Friday night, aware of the worries of families, trying to stop teams flying, and then matters were taken out of our hand by the decisions taken in France. We will make the right decision for all concerned.”
There has been no projection yet as to what might happen with next weekend’s games in France. Black armbands and a minute’s silence are likely. “I’m sure there will be a desire to play on, to respect the awful events but to show solidarity,” Halliday said.Hadiya escorted by police officers at Kochi on Saturday before taking a flight to Delhi.
Hadiya, the young woman from Kerala who claimed last week that she had not been forcibly converted, "does not have an independent mind", her father's lawyer has said. The 25-year-old, he said, is under "mental kidnapping", indicating whatever she says cannot be relied on, he said.The case of Hadiya, who was born Akhila Ashokan, was dubbed as "love jihad" by social media after her father contested her marriage with a Muslim man, saying he was trying to recruit her for jihadi groups and take her to Syria.The young woman, who was flown to Delhi under high security, will appear before the Supreme Court today. On way to Delhi, Hadiya had told media persons at the Kochi airport: "I have not been forcefully converted, neither have I been forcefully married to Sheffin Jahan. I married him out of my own will and I want to live with my husband."On Sunday, A Raghunath, the lawyer of her father KM Asokan, told NDTV: "Any statement coming from such a mind (Hadiya's) cannot be accepted. She does not have an independent mind at all. She is heavily indoctrinated. Her response can be taken only after she comes out of the mental kidnapping that she has gone through."Asked if it was correct to confine her to her father's home, Mr Raghunath said, "If the high court had not passed this order, you would have found her in Syria or in Afghanistan."Hadiya had converted to Islam while studying in college and married Mr Jahan -- a Muslim who returned to Kerala from the Middle East - through an Islamic matrimonial site.In May, her marriage to Sheffin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala high court after her father Asokan KM claimed she had been forcibly converted and married. His petition said Sheffin Jahan has links to terror organisations and he feared that his daughter was being prepared to be taken to Syria.After an appeal from Mr Jahan against the high court order, the Supreme Court has said it wants to hear her version.Hadiya, who had been confined to her father's house for nearly four months and was allowed no contact with outsiders without the approval of her father, is now in Delhi. Mr Jahan has also filed a complaint with the police, claiming her parents have been trying to reconvert Hadiya to Hinduism.Jacob Townsend was named Richmond’s first J.J. Liston Trophy winner since the Tigers joined the Peter Jackson VFL as a standalone club in 2014 at Monday’s VFL Best & Fairest Night at Crown Palladium.
The tough 24-year-old forward/midfielder polled 18 votes in 15 VFL games before being called into Richmond’s AFL team in Round 22, where he has kicked 13 goals in three matches for the preliminary finalists.
Despite not polling in the last four rounds due to the VFL Tigers having a bye in Round 16 and earning AFL berths during VFL Rounds 18 and 19, Townsend finished two votes clear of Williamstown midfielder and 2016 J.J. Liston Trophy winner Michael Gibbons (16 votes) to be named the competition’s best and fairest player for the 2017 home-and-away season.
Gibbons’ Seagulls midfield teammate Adam Marcon finished equal-third on 14 votes alongside Werribee on-baller Matt Hanson, while Townsend’s fellow AFL-listed Tiger Anthony Miles rounded out the top five on the leaderboard with 13 votes.
Townsend first took the outright lead in the count after Round 2 with a two-vote and then three-vote performance in Richmond’s first two games. He relinquished the lead before winning it back for good following a two-vote effort in Round 10, when he took over from fellow joint-leaders Marcon and Footscray’s Mitch Honeychurch. Gibbons was six votes behind the leader’s tally of 11 at that stage and was unable to make up the deficit, with Townsend’s early form seeing him guaranteed the honour after Round 18 – the penultimate week of the season.
187cm Townsend averaged 21 disposals at 69 per cent efficiency, 11 contested possessions, six tackles, five clearances and four inside-50s per game as well as kicking 14 goals and recording 18 score assists in the VFL in 2017. He polled three votes on three occasions, two votes on four occasions and one vote once, with his best-on-ground performances including:
19 disposals, seven tackles and six clearances in a 25-point win against Sandringham at Trevor Barker Beach Oval in Round 2;
22 disposals, six tackles, six clearances and five inside-50s in a 49-point win against Geelong at Punt Road Oval in Round 9; and
30 disposals, 14 tackles, 13 clearances and one goal in a 28-point win against the Casey Demons in Beaconsfield in Round 12.
Townsend played his junior football in Leeton, NSW before being a zone selection by GWS and playing 28 AFL matches for the Giants from 2012-15. He was traded to Richmond ahead of the 2016 season, playing four AFL games and 15 VFL games for the Tigers last year.
Richmond VFL listed player Jacob Ballard was named on the interchange for the VFL Team of the Year.
J.J. LISTON TROPHY LEADERBOARD
JACOB TOWNSEND RICHMOND 18 MICHAEL GIBBONS WILLIAMSTOWN 16 ADAM MARCON WILLIAMSTOWN 14 MATT HANSON WERRIBEE 14 ANTHONY MILES RICHMOND 13 WILLIE WHEELER WILLIAMSTOWN 12 ANDREW MOORE BOX HILL HAWKS 11 ELI TEMPLETON PORT MELBOURNE 11 LUKAS WEBB FOOTSCRAY 11 TOBY PINWILL PORT MELBOURNE 11
* Full voting will be available on vfl.com.au TuesdayAn electronic quit-smoking "cigarette" used on Gosford railway station could end in an $1100 fine for a Wyoming man.
Retired pensioner Anthony Campo, 67, appeared in Gosford Local Court last week over a charge of smoking ``in or on a public passenger vehicle, train or public place'' for which he inititally faced a $300 fine.
But the case has left a magistrate and prosecutor scratching their heads and the whole affair lost in a legal smoke haze.
Representing himself, Mr Campo, initially said he intended to plead guilty to the public smoking fine.
``It was a train platform, your honour,'' he told magistrate Alan Railton.
But when he pulled out a small zip lock bag containing an electronic cigarette and a small charger - and offered by way of explanation ``it was only an electronic cigarette'' - the bemused magistrate could do little but shake his head and smile.
``It's a first for me,'' the long-serving magistrate said. ``That's a good one.''
The police prosecutor agreed as chuckles broke out in the public gallery.
Mr Railton stood the fine aside in the list and heard other matters while the prosecutor looked up the relevant legislation.
But when the magistrate returned to the case of the man fined for smoking a quit-smoking device in a public place, the 67-year-old defendant was nowhere to be seen.
``Where's Mr Campo,'' Mr Railton said.
``Has he gone outside for a smoke?''
On his return the prosecutor told the court the police said it was a lit cigarette and the regulations defined the offence as encompassing ``any tobacco or any other tobacco product intended to be smoked''.
``I would say that fits the definition,'' he said.
The prosecutor said there was nothing the court could do but proceed with the fine, at which point Mr Campo changed his plea
``Not guilty your honour,'' he said
``As far as I'm concerned it's not a cigarette.''
He told the court the female officer first said she was going to give him a warning and then fined him anyway.
According to court papers the retired pensioner was fined for smoking on the platform of Gosford train station at 8.19am on April 30
Outside court the lifelong smoker said he'd been trying to kick the habit when he was approached by police while waiting for a train.
He said he just slipped the electronic cigarette into his pocket.
``There were two guys smoking just before me and thousands of butts on the ground,'' he said.
``I was at the end [of the platform] it wasn't like I was under cover or anything and there were no [no smoking] signs.''
Rechargeable electronic cigarettes or ``e-cigs'' use an atomiser to vaporise a liquid solution containing various forms of propylene glycol or vegetable glycerine, flavours and usually nicotine.
Nicotine is classified as a Schedule 7 dangerous poison under the NSW Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation 2008, which tightly controls the sale of nicotine products.
A NSW Health spokeswoman said electronic cigarettes containing nicotine were banned in NSW and could attract a fine of up to $1100 but those without nicotine were legal.
``E-cigarettes emit vapour and not tobacco smoke and as such their sale and use does not come within NSW tobacco regulation,'' she said.
``Not all e-cigarettes dispense nicotine.''
Mr Campo said he got his electric cigarette from a tobacconist.
The matter returns on December 19 for hearing.Imagine the following person. He believes all individuals should be free to do anything that’s peaceful and therefore favors private property, free global markets, freedom of contract, civil liberties, and all the related ideas that come under the label libertarianism (or liberalism). Obviously he is not a statist. But is he an individualist and a capitalist or a socialist and a collectivist?
It sounds like an easy question, but on closer inspection it’s not. Much depends on the context, or the level of analysis at which the question is directed. An answer appropriate at the level of personal ethics may not be appropriate in a discussion of political economy. Take the word individualist. There are many senses in which the person described above could be called an individualist. If in his personal life he habitually and ultimately relies on himself to make decisions (although he seeks information and wisdom from others) and does not slavishly follow fashion, he could appropriately be called an individualist. He likewise is a methodological individualist if he believes that only individuals act and create; only individuals have intentions, values, and preferences. He understands that when a group acts, it’s really just individuals acting in concert.
What about at the level of political economy? Is this person also an individualist in that context? Here the labels get murkier. He certainly is an individualist in the political-legal sense; that is, he favors a system in which individuals’ titles to honestly acquired property are respected. Group ownership would have to be traceable to contracts among collections of individuals. (But for a libertarian theory of nonstate public property, see Roderick Long’s “A Plea for Public Property” and the Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work on common pool resources.)
This seems to yield the conclusion that a libertarian is categorically an individualist. Not so fast. The term individualist, let’s recall, was a pejorative aimed at people of the libertarian persuasion. It was meant to stigmatize them as anti-social. The adjectives rugged and atomistic were later added to drive home the point. In some minds, unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, who lived alone in a shack in the wilderness, was the quintessential individualist (except for the letter bombs). But libertarian philosophy is the furthest thing from anti-social. That would be a peculiar way indeed to describe a philosophy that embraces–with gusto!–the global division of labor and free trade across property, city, county, state, and national lines. (Yes, I left out planetary–for now.)
Collective Intelligence
There are other senses in which “individualist” is far off the mark and in which “socialist” and even “collectivist” are closer. The Austrian tradition in economics has long emphasized that the chief advantage of the market process over central decision-making lies in the market’s embodiment of a social, or collective, intelligence that is denied to any individual or small subgroup. This doesn’t mean that a collective mind literally emerges, only that the social process and the price system combine in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The market “knows” more than any of us do alone. (The same point can be made for a broader context. The philosopher Wittgenstein argued that language itself, without which there is little or no thought, is essentially social.)
Further, Ludwig von Mises often emphasized that in a freed market, consumers collectively, not individual business people, determine who owns the means of production and what will be produced. When you trace out the implications of this, things get interesting. Consumers constantly make this determination through their buying and abstention from buying, but the outcome is never the intended result of conscious decision-making. Business people may legally own their capital and capital goods, but if—in a genuinely competitive market—consumers don’t like what those owners do with those assets, they face bankruptcy and loss of control. It is a social, or collective, process. As Mises wrote in Human Action,
The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him. [Emphasis added.]
Social Control
Isn’t that social, or collective, control of the means of the production? Does that make libertarians socialists or collectivists? This fact about the market is worth passing along to our good-faith opponents who decry any system that does not allow the mass of people a say in matters than affect them. (See my “Market, State, and Autonomy.”) The irony is that the free market accomplishes this, while state socialist systems do not. But it is necessary to stress that Mises’s point applies fully only under laissez faire–meaning a free market without coerced privileges of any kind. Historically, government intervention in the market has aimed to shelter the privileged (owners of land and capital who benefited from political favoritism like patents, licensing, and land enclosure) from the demands of regular people–consumers and workers–the very ones whose voices are most effective in a truly free market. That is why the struggle for freedom has always been a struggle against privilege. (Libertarians who forget this espouse what free-market anti-capitalist Kevin Carson calls vulgar libertarianism, or faux “free market” analysis that consists of an apologetic for big business.)
In summary, the great political debate is not between individualists and collectivists, but between those who see the coercive State as the locus of authority and those who see voluntary society as that locus. Liberals from Adam Smith to Herbert Spencer to F.A. Hayek emphasized the benefits of free, spontaneous social (market) processes (including the common law) and how those processes are disrupted by the state. Advocates of the supremacy of state over society are properly called “statists.” Wouldn’t it follow that advocates of the supremacy of society over state should be called “socialists”? In this regard, I recall that the libertarian James Dale Davidson, founder of the National Taxpayers Union, long ago wrote a book (The Squeeze, as I remember) that called for a “socialization of rules.” By that he meant that the rules and customs of everyday life should be generated, bottom-up, by society, not imposed, top down, by legislators.
Consistent Manchesterism
Be assured, I am not suggesting that libertarians start calling themselves socialists. I am saying that a reconsideration of labels can clarify understanding. Nevertheless, as a historical matter I think Mises was mistaken when he wrote, “The notion of socialism as conceived and defined by all socialists implies the absence of a market for factors of production and of prices of such factors.” This can’t be true because some earlier American advocates of laissez faire– that is, consistent Manchesterism–called themselves socialists for at time, most prominently, Benjamin R. Tucker, editor of Liberty magazine (1881-1908). In the view of Tucker and his allies (and earlier liberal thinkers like Spencer’s mentor Thomas Hodgskin, capitalism meant government interference in the market (tariffs, the banking cartel, patents, and the land monopoly) on behalf of capital to the detriment of the rest of society. Their alternative was a completely free and competitive market void of privilege; only that system would restore to workers the just earnings taken through anticompetitive government intervention. In 1884 Tucker wrote:
Socialism [in his conception] says that what’s one man’s meat must no longer be another’s poison; that no man shall be able to add to his riches except by labor; that in adding to his riches by labor alone no man makes another man poorer; that on the contrary every man thus adding to his riches makes every other man richer; that increase and concentration of wealth through labor tend to increase, cheapen, and vary production; that every increase of capital in the hands of the laborer tends, in the absence of legal monopoly, to put more products, better products, cheaper products, and a greater variety of products within the reach of every man who works; and that this fact means the physical, |
. The UN, and in particular the Security Council, must be able to implement the mission set by the Charter with a renewed sense of responsibility.”
On July 17, 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed into a sunflower field in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Intelligence from America and Germany say the pro-Russians in east Ukraine shot down the plane with a Buk surface-to-air-missile. The five countries in charge of the investigation sought to form a United Nations tribunal to prosecute those responsible. However, Russia vetoed the United Nations Security Council move, while China, Angola, and Venezuela abstained from voting. On the 15-member council, the “resolution needs nine votes in favor to pass and no veto by Russia, the United States, China, Britain, or France.”
“Vetoing a Security Council resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica massacre or a tribunal for the downing of MH17 is unjustifiable and an insult to the memories of the victims,” declared Grybauskaitė, adding:
It also raises questions about the relevance in the 21st century of the Security Council as it is today. For the Council to maintain its credibility the least it can do is put an end to the veto in the cases of genocide, atrocity crimes, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Her thoughts echoed Ilves’ beliefs on the Security Council. He expressed disappointment in the Council when it “failed to act due to the use of the veto.” He urged members not to “vote against actions aimed at preventing and stopping mass atrocity crimes.”
“There is a clear necessity to make Security Council reform a reality,” said Ilves.
Vējonis agreed with his counterparts.
“Latvia supports the proposal to voluntarily restrain the use of the veto at the Security Council in situations involving mass atrocity crimes,” he said. “It also supports a Code of Conduct for any member of the Council not to vote against any action designed to end and prevent mass atrocity crimes.”AUSTIN (KXAN) -- An Austin Police Department officer has started a 20-day suspension after shocking a suspect with a stun gun who was not resisting arrest.
Officer Chris Limmer, who has been with the department since July 1994, was suspended beginning Wednesday continuing through June 26.
According to a department memo, Officer Limmer was working the Property Crimes Task Force on Jan. 17, trying to find a suspect with an active warrant for burglary of a habitation.
Officers found the man in northeast Austin and tried to arrest him, but he escaped in a vehicle. The suspect was later captured after trying to get away on foot.
Chief of Police Brian Manley says the man was lying face down on the ground as officers handcuffed him, when Officer Limmer ran up to the suspect and without warning to the man or the other officers "drive-stunned" the suspect with his Taser in the back for five seconds.
"At that time the suspect was not actively resisting arrest or trying to assault the officers," Chief Manley wrote, who found the use of the Taser was not objectively reasonable.
As part of the agreed suspension, Limmer will be evaluated by the APD psychologist and is under one year of departmental probation. If during the probation he does the same thing or something similar, the police chief says Limmer faces being fired without the right to appeal.Today was a dark day in American history, but you'd never know because the media is complicit in this sharia enforcement. I had a front-row seat to witness the rape of the First Amendment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Rosemary Collyer, presiding. Robert Spencer and I went down to Washington as defenders of America's most fundamental and unalienable right. And in return, we had the sad misfortune of watching a U.S. District Court Judge discard, denigrate, downplay and dismiss our most basic law of the land: the freedom of speech.
The Judge went out of her way to validate and substantiate the ridiculous premise of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), that the AFDI pro-freedom ad would endanger passengers on the D.C. subways and thus must not be posted, or at least delayed until some (fanciful) time when the jihad threat would subside. It was painful to watch Judge Collyer almost physically wrestling with the First Amendment, trying to tackle it and pin it to the floor. But the First Amendment was much too wily for the wrongheaded, utterly subjective, and clueless judge.
Philip Staub, the lawyer for WMATA, invoked the international Muslim riots that have been blamed (falsely) on the Muhammad video, and said the WMATA had received an email threatening them if they posted our ad. He was, in other words, counseling submission to violent Muslim intimidation, and the curtailing of the freedom of speech to appease savages. He made the laughable argument that if the ad ran after November 1, the threat would have subsided by then, and would be well -- as if the jihad terror threat would completely die down by then. Judge Collyer then asked him if the ads could be posted sooner if they were moved away from the train platforms, so that passengers would be less likely to get caught up in fights or terrorist attacks over them. He seemed open to that idea.
The whole issue about moving the ads represented the judge’s attempt to find a way to accommodate the WMATA’s fearmongering argument that the ad would endanger passengers. And is that now the American response to threats of violence from a fascist ideology – to accede and submit to that very same fascist ideology? The judge was an embarrassment to every proud American who understands what is at stake. I can’t speak for our lawyer, Robert Muise, but his frustration was palpable.
From Pamela at Atlas Shrugs:Germany's Environment Ministry is providing 4.5 million euros ($4.8 million) over the span of five years to support two projects associated with the Clinton Climate Initiative, part of the Clinton Foundation. The ministry is named on the foundation's list of donors - reason enough for the newspaper Die Welt to broach the idea of "accusations" that it had tried to "intervene" in the US election.
Nonsense, ministry spokesman Stephan Haufe said in Berlin on Monday.
"We haven't made any donations and certainly not to the Clinton Foundation," Haufe said. "The whole thing is part of the International Climate Initiative, which is carrying out various projects worldwide to help other countries protect the environment. And the amounts involved are no secret. They're freely available (on the initiative's home page). The Clinton Foundation is one of our partners here."
Money was transferred from Germany to the United States in the third quarter of 2016 in the run-up to the US election, but the ministry pointed out that it was part of long-term environmental support agreements.
"The decision wasn't made during the US election," Haufe said with visible irritation. "We're talking here about projects with a duration of 2014 to 2018. They were approved well before the election, several years before it in fact."
The foundation became a hot-button issue during the US presidential campaign, with Republican candidate Donald Trump accusing Hillary Clinton of corruption in conjunction with her family's private charitable organization. Some of that heat seems to have seeped over into Die Welt's report.
A misleading list
The money is earmarked for things like regenerating African forests
Christoph Bals, the political director of the Bonn-based NGO Germanwatch, points out that, as a government body, the Environment Ministry can only fund projects and isn't allowed to make donations. That fact, he says, reduces the credibility of the accusations indirectly leveled by Die Welt.
"They're not just blown out of proportion - they're false," Bals told DW. "If false statements like the idea of a donation being made to the Clinton Foundation, although the ministry explicitly denied it, are put forward, I think it shows that the accusations shouldn't be taken seriously."
Hartmut Bäumer, the deputy chairman of the German chapter of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, sees no evidence of any attempt to buy influence, but says the Clinton Foundation listed the money from Berlin in the wrong fashion.
"It's misleading when a payment by a government ministry earmarked for a specific purpose, the financing of a climate protection project, appears in what seems to be a list of donors to a foundation," Bäumer told DW. "In the first instance, that's a problem at the foundation. But in future the Environment Ministry should ensure that payments are correctly listed before releasing funds."
'A good supplement'
Trump successfully used the Clinton Foundation against his opponent in the election
The projects in question concern the recovery of forests and land in eastern Africa, El Salvador, Vietnam and India. The Clinton Foundation generally receives high marks from charity watchdog organizations, although the discussion surrounding the body is intensely partisan. The foundation receives funds from a very diverse list of entities and individuals, including ExxonMobil, Monsanto, Steven Spielberg and professional golf's PGA Tour. In the past, it has also received support from the Donald J Trump Foundation and individual Trump family members.
Conversely, would-be beneficiaries of the German Environment Ministry's International Climate Initiative have to prevail in an open-competition screening process.
"Any state or charitable organization can apply for support from the International Climate Initiative," Bals said. "The applications are evaluated and ranked, and the best ones then receive support. There's no principle that financial support should be allocated via such foundations, but there's no principle that it shouldn't be either."
"The Clinton Foundation's project in eastern Africa was selected in 2013 because it was judged to be a good supplement for the German government's developmental work," a statement from the Environment Ministry read.
It's not unprecedented
Germany's isn't the only government to support Clinton Foundation projects. According to the foundation website, Australia and Norway have joined Germany in supporting the organization's forestry program, whose stated goal is "to provide developing countries with the knowledge and tools to improve land use while helping to reduce carbon emissions by planting trees, improving farming practices and building carbon-measurement systems."
The Environment Ministry insists that it monitors all International Climate Initiative projects to ensure effectiveness.
"The experiences we've had with the Clinton Foundation have thus far been positive, and our evaluation of how the project has been going hasn't yielded any objections," the ministry's statement read.Robert Bobroczkyi is a 7-foot-6, 184-pound Romanian, and of course, he plays basketball. Bobroczkyi’s only 15 years old, however, so he’s being treated delicately as he stays at a hoops academy in Rome. Growing boys need their food, and since Bobroczkyi is a towering, growing boy, he needs even more food.
Giacomo Rossi, the general manager of Stellazzurra Basketball Academy, told the Associated Press that this basketball season will be used to preserve Bobroczkyi’s health and make him stronger, because it’s concerning to see a human run like this:
Bobroczkyi is purportedly in perfect health. His running style will supposedly smooth out as he gets older:
Bobroczkyi runs awkwardly because his hips are slanted. “The problem with his hips is normal for someone of his height,” [physiotherapist Daniele] Comandini said. “He grew so rapidly that his hips don’t correspond with the other bones yet.”
What’s the Italians’ nutrition plan to help this boy grow nice and strong? You guessed it: pasta. Pasta for breakfast. So much goddamn pasta:
8 a.m. — Breakfast: 10.5 ounces (300 grams) of pasta, either plain or with tomato sauce; eight slices of toast with bacon and an egg. 9:30 a.m. — Snack: energy bar or drink 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. — Physical therapy: stretching, coordination, posture exercises 12 p.m. — Snack: energy bar or drink 1 p.m. — Lunch: 14 ounces (400 grams) of pasta, meat or fish, vegetables 2 p.m. — Rest 2:30 p.m. — Snack: sweets 3-5 p.m. — Gym: muscle strengthening 5:30 p.m. — Snack: sweets 6 p.m. — Rest 8 p.m. — Dinner: 10.5 ounces (300 grams) of pasta, meat or fish, vegetables, dessert 9:30 p.m. — Sleep
We’re assuming that the academy’s nutritionist is an 87-year-old grandma who pokes the boys with a wooden spoon while yelling, “Eat! Eat! You too skinny!”
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Photo: APUK shoppers looking to score a deal on iTunes gift cards, which can be used to shop for movies, music, apps, magazines, and iBooks, can head over to PayPal where you'll get 25% off of the value of your purchase. The cards are available in denominations of £15, 25, 50, or 100 so after the discount you can expect to pay £11.25 for the lowest value and up to £75 for the highest denomination.
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Source: PayPalThe key to winning a championship in fantasy baseball is to find some gems in the late rounds of your fantasy baseball drafts. Anyone can draft a top-10 player, but only the good ones can find the diamonds in the rough.
Below are some deeper NL starting pitcher sleepers for 2017. I analyze five hidden starting pitchers from the National League who I think will break out in 2017 and provide great return based on their current draft stock.
Editor's note: You can find more draft values and potential sleepers all preseason long, and be sure to also check out our rankings dashboard which is loaded with lots of great analysis.
Deep NL Starting Pitcher Sleepers
Alex Wood (SP, LAD)
Alex Wood impressed in his first full season with the Braves, turning in a 2.78 ERA and 8.91 K/9 over 24 starts. He was in the midst of a down year in 2015, and was subsequently traded to the Dodgers in the Hector Olivera trade. Last season, he began to look more like the pitcher we saw in 2014, until elbow issues derailed his season. He made only 10 starts last season, with a 3.73 ERA and 1.26 WHIP. His FIP/xFIP of 3.18/3.29 say he pitched better than that however.
Though his stats dipped in 2015, one thing that remained consistent is his walk rate. His BB% of 7.8 percent last season was nearly identical to his 7.4 percent in 2015, and that 6.5 percent in his rookie season. His strikeout rate returned to normal last season; his K% was 24.5 percent in his rookie season, and 25.9 percent last season. It fell to 17.4 percent last season. Wood will still need to work on lowering his HR/FB rate (career-high 11.6 percent last season), but his GB% was the best of his career last year at 53.5 percent. With the elbow issues behind him, Wood can be a 3.00 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 9.0 K/9 pitcher with upside.
Jaime Garcia (SP, ATL)
After throwing nearly 900 innings with the Cardinals since 2008, Garcia was traded to the Braves for three minor leaguers this offseason as he enters the final year of his contract. Garcia had a down year in 2016, with a career-high 4.67 ERA and 1.37 WHIP. Some of this can be attributed to injuries; a finger injury affected his ability to grip the baseball, and a recurring blister cost him a fingernail heading into 2016. He got into some bad habits, resulting in his off year.
Heading into 2017 those issues are behind him, Garcia is looking to right the ship and find success in Atlanta. Last season his K% stayed in line with his career average, but his HR/FB% of 20.2 percent (!!) is likely to revert to his career average of 11.5 percent. His BB% was the highest it’s been since 2010 at 7.7 percent, which should also improve with his finger issues behind him. If he can return to his career averages, Garcia can be a very capable fantasy pitcher with a career ERA/FIP/xFIP of 3.57/3.56/3.48. Injury history is a cause for concern, so grab Garcia late as a big upside arm.
Zach Davies (SP, MIL)
After enjoying a cup of tea in the majors in 2015, Davies burst on the scene as a big fantasy surprise last season. He was able to improve his game in many areas, ending the year with a 3.97 ERA and 1.25 WHIP over 28 starts. He doesn’t do his damage being a big strikeout guy; he is a master of control. He was able to up his strikeout rate from 6.35 to 7.44 last season, but more impressively he lowered his walk rate from 3.97 to 2.09 last season.
Davies doesn’t have overpowering stuff; his fastball tops out at 92.1mph and sits at 89.3 on average (up from 88.7 in 2015). His best pitch is definitely his changeup. He threw the change second only to his fastball, and it generated a K% of 29.5 percent last season. Opposing hitters hit.214/.238/.384 off the pitch last season with an outside swing rate (o-swing%) of 50.6 percent, the highest of any of his pitches. His changeup is his best pitch, but he also mixes in an effective slider and curveball. With his elite, he doesn’t need to overpower hitters to be effective. He should be a nice innings eater for Milwaukee this season with an excellent K/BB ratio.
Robert Gsellman (SP, NYM)
The Mets rotation was a mess last season due to injuries, but something good came from it: we got to see Robert Gsellman make his major league debut. He made eight appearances (seven starts), and held his own with a 2.42 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, and a 42:15 K:BB ratio. Throughout his minor league career he wasn’t a big strikeout guy, he relies on limiting his walks, inducing soft contact, and getting hitters to ground out. He held a 54.2 percent ground ball rate last season (fifth among starters who qualified) and a microscopic 3.6 percent HR/FB rate.
After allowing nine earned runs through his first three starts, Gsellman settled in for his last four and flashed his potential. In those starts he threw two quality starts (one out away from three), allowing only three runs while striking out 25 and walking six over 24 innings. He did not allow a HR in those outings. If he can get his 3.02 BB/9 down to his minor league average of 2.42, Gsellman will be able to excel as the fifth starter in New York. He is the odds on favorite to get that spot over Seth Lugo and Zach Wheeler.
Dan Straily (SP, MIA)
Straily was able to make some minor adjustments in his game last season that had a huge impact on his success. The underlying statistics say he still has work to do (4.88/5.02 FIP/xFIP last season), but he certainly took a big step last season. After winning one game the previous two seasons with an unsightly 6.42 ERA, Straily was a 14-game winner last season for the Reds with a 3.76 ERA. He was 18th in the majors with 20 quality starts, and threw a career high 191.1 innings.
What changed that made him a more effective pitcher you ask? Pitch selection. He utilized his changeup more last season, and had one of the major league’s best sliders which allowed the seventh-fewest hits per nine innings in the NL. Throwing breaking pitches for strikes last season helped him become less predictable in hitters counts. The change was minor, but has been effective. He held hitters to a.218 average last season (down from.249 the previous two seasons). He still has work to do; his 3.43 BB/9 and 12.0 percent HR/FB rate both need to drop, but he is well on his way to becoming a consistent back-end fantasy starter.
More Potential Draft Values and BreakoutsA Louisville group has put a soulful twist on a Kentucky Derby classic - “My Old Kentucky Home”.
Linkin’ Bridge posted its version of the state’s official song on their Facebook page and so far the video has gotten more than two million views.
Group members are Montre Davis,a cook, crooner and soul-singer; Big Rome Kimbrough, the vocal powerhouse and family man; Shon China Lacy, the rhythmic, gritty tenor and restaurant manager; and Ekoe Alexanda- the Renaissance man, musical arranger and versatile vocalist, according to its website.
Kentucky adopted the song, written by Stephen Collins Foster, in 1928, according to the Kentucky Derby web site. However, it was originally published in 1853 and is said to have been inspired by author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
The song is available on iTunes.
Related:
Mint Julep recipes for Kentucky Derby 2017 honors its British roots
Video: Kentucky Derby fast facts
This is not the first time the internet has been warmly received the guys.
There were also on “America’s Got Talent.”.Ten days ago, Leeds United lost their third league game in a row, 1-0 at home to struggling Reading. Pablo Hernandez missed a late penalty to claim a point, but Leeds struggled to create presentable chances. They had three shots on target.
A funny thing happened after that defeat: nothing at all. There was no panicked reaction amongst supporters, worried that the owner’s trigger finger would get twitchy, no suspicion that the season was falling apart. Manager Thomas Christiansen ended his post-match press conference with “as a team we have to stand together and fight” and everyone agreed.
It was almost two years to the day since Leeds had last lost their third successive league game, a 2-1 home defeat to Brighton in October 2015 sealed by an 89th-minute Bobby Zamora winner. The next day, manager Uwe Rosler was sacked by Massimo Cellino.
Rosler had lasted 12 matches in all competitions, and became the fifth casualty of Cellino’s ownership. By the time Cellino, a walking hurricane of a man, had left Elland Road after three-and-a-half years of ownership, 18% of Leeds United’s permanent managers were the Italian’s appointments.
A week after that Reading defeat earlier this month, Leeds travelled to a Bristol City side that had conceded two goals in their last six home matches and beat them 3-0. If you needed any more proof that Andrea Radrizzani is no Massimo Cellino, this was it.
Then again, how could anyone be? Leeds had spent years turning financial collapse into spectacular art form under Peter Ridsdale’s stewardship, to the extent that ‘doing a Leeds’ even has its own Wikipedia page. Cellino was proof that you do not need economic disarray to turn a club into a crumbled heap. Astonishingly bad decision-making can have the same effect.
There is an accusation that fans of sleeping giant clubs are somehow entitled, spoilt brats, expecting to compete for major honours and host European football. Leeds United supporters have suffered similar treatment to Newcastle United fans, with Kieron Dyer this week taking particular care to put his foot in his mouth (and presumably suffering a mystery injury in the process).
The similarities between Newcastle and Leeds are obvious. Both are the only clubs in northern cities with a thriving passion for football, thus enjoying exclusive support from a local community desperate for their team to succeed. Both have enjoyed prodigious recent histories, but fell on hard times due to systemic abuse by incompetent owners. The only difference is the murder weapon; Newcastle were strangled while Leeds died from a thousand stab wounds.
The allegations of entitlement are unfounded. Every football supporter dreams of success, but there is a crucial difference between hope and expectation. After years of neglect, fans are not expecting shortcuts to success, merely asking that their club is allowed to be the best it can be. Patience must be exercised; demons must be exorcised. Promises must not be made to keep supporters quiet and temporarily sweet, but simply kept. Only then can a club truly move forward.
In Radrizzani, Leeds finally have a guardian rather than an absent parent. The purchase of Elland Road 13 years after selling it on a lease-back deal to relieve debts was an easy PR win for a new owner, but represents far more than that. Cellino had promised as early as 2014 that he would “buy back the house”, but it must have slipped his mind. Sacking and hiring managers takes up an awful lot of time.
Yet even the comparatively small gestures make a difference. Last week, the club announced that players and staff will donate a day’s wages to raise £200,000 and fund treatment for Toby Nye, a local boy who requires treatment on high-risk neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer.
“At Leeds United we do things as a family, Toby is part of our family and he needs our help,” Radrizzani. “I know our supporters will unite behind us and together we can get him the treatment he needs to get better.” These things matter.
Radrizzani clearly has bigger aims than mere consolidation, but is wary of running before walking. He has stated publicly an intention to have Leeds in the Premier League in five years, which seems entirely realistic. The Italian is keen to bathe in warm water heated by huge broadcasting revenues, and who can blame him? This is business, not charity.
Yet there is a way to conduct business, and Radrizzani understands that upholding the morale of supporters is a part of the process. A club that stays together moves forward together. Home attendances are up over 4,500 on last season, and every away game has been a sell-out.
That includes the EFL Cup tie at the King Power Stadium on Tuesday evening. “Leeds are falling apart again,” they sang after Pablo Hernandez’s superb opening goal. Now there is joyous sarcasm where once there was only dark humour.
Football fans are a notoriously fickle bunch, but capriciousness has its advantages. We can dislike everything about our clubs, players, managers, owners and their plans, but we can never truly fall out of love. Like an errant child who gets suspended from school but then makes his mother breakfast in bed, we spend the darkness waiting for a moment of light.
One moment is enough to fuel the collective hope. Marching on together, you might say.
Daniel StoreyBritain should grant Germany's federal prosecutor access to an RAF base which is alleged to have acted as a relay station for data intercepted from Angela Merkel's mobile phone by the US National Security Agency (NSA), the Labour MP Tom Watson has said.
In a letter to the prime minister Watson said that full British co-operation with Harald Range, the German federal prosecutor who has announced an investigation into the alleged tapping of Merkel's mobile phone, would ensure that Anglo-German relations are not damaged.
Der Spiegel last year revealed that Merkel's phone had been tapped after an investigation based on the NSA files leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Watson said that the German federal prosecutor should be given access to RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire after the Independent reported that information captured by the "stateroom" system of US listening stations in diplomatic missions is sent back to Washington via the base near Milton Keynes.
The Independent reported that documents showed that the base hosts "tech support activity" by the Special Collection Service (SCS). This is the joint CIA / NSA unit which runs around 100 listening posts in parallel with a scheme overseen by GCHQ, the Independent reported.
Watson called on the prime minister to disclose all material held by any public department that is relevant to the German investigation, to give federal prosecutors access to RAF Croughton and to carry out an investigation into the practices and use of technology at the base that may be relevant to the German investigation. He also said that relevant documents should be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales.
In his letter to the prime minister Watson wrote: "There will be no better moment to announce that Britain acknowledges the seriousness of the German criminal investigation; and we will do everything possible to support the work of the prosecutor. Our role in the investigation may be important, given the key role of RAF Croughton in the Defence Information Systems Network (DISN) backbone of the US global information grid. I'm sure you are well versed in the specific allegations [about] RAF Croughton."
Watson cited a legal opinion by the public law barrister Jemima Stratford QC that the surveillance exposed in the Snowden files would breach human rights laws. The advice, sent to the all-party parliamentary group on drones chaired by Watson, says that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), which has been used as the legal basis for much of GCHQ's work, has failed to keep pace with changes in technology.
Watson sent his letter to the prime minister as Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier, embarked on a three day visit to Britain. The Chinese foreign ministry announced earlier this month that it had "noted" that Germany had opened an investigation into the alleged tapping of Merkel's phone.The world’s superrich own around $3 trillion worth of owner-occupied residential properties, more than the gross domestic product of the U.K., France or India.
There are 211,275 ultra-high net worth individuals — defined as those with $30 million and above in net assets — around the world, and nearly 80% of them own two or more residences that they bought for their own personal use (rather than purely for an investment). The total value of their homes rose by 8% during 2014, according to a report released Wednesday by private wealth consultancy Wealth-X and Sotheby’s International Realty, citing 1,000 publicly available sources and databases. Ultra-high net worth individuals keep their primary residences for an average of over 15 years and their secondary residences for over 10 years, while billionaires change their properties once every three years.
The survey cites the “ongoing shift in the wealth creation cycle” from the West to the East and growing significance of “intergenerational wealth transfers,” which all help underpin the luxury residential real estate market; it also credits new developments from Hong Kong and Singapore to London and New York targeting the superrich. In fact, those with inherited wealth hold 17% of their net worth in luxury residential real estate, compared with just under 9% for self-made multi-millionaires. Some $16 trillion of global wealth will be transferred over the next three decades, mostly to family members, according to a separate survey released last month by Wealth-X found.
Read: 10 biggest billionaire winners (and losers) of 2014
For some superrich, luxury real estate is the next best thing to putting money in the mattress. “The typical buyers are Russian and Chinese, and some Brazilian and Middle Eastern investors,” says Leonard Baron, a real estate analyst and blogger at ProfessorBaron.com. “Some of these investors are probably getting hammered on the oil prices and they’re trying to get their money out of countries, so they’re buying these super-expensive homes.” Ultra-high net worth individuals generally hold around 30% of their wealth in property, according to a separate 2014 “Wealth Report” (pdf) by independent property consultancy Knight Frank. Almost three-quarters of these individuals own a townhouse, while just under 30% own a rural retreat.
But there are upsides to buying lavish property. Some ultra-high net worth individuals are more worried about confiscation of assets, an extraordinarily punitive tax regime or collapse of their currency, says Stephen Malpezzi, professor at the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the Wisconsin School of Business.
“If I were a Russian oligarch, I’d be looking to buy a house in London,” he says. Most people dream of owning property, and the bigger the bank balance, the bigger the dream, adds Suzanne Hollander, a real estate broker in Miami and a professor at Florida International University’s Hollo School of Real Estate. Exhibit A: This 27-story, 400,000 square foot home in Mumbai is one of the most lavish urban residences in the world. “No one wants to deal with traffic anymore,” Hollander adds. “People will pay a premium to live in a little place in the sky close to all the amenities of the city.”Wolf 1061c or WL 1061c is an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Wolf 1061 in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 13.8 light years from Earth, making it the fifth closest known, potentially habitable, and confirmed exoplanet to Earth (after Proxima Centauri b, Ross 128 b, Luyten b and Tau Ceti e), yielding interest from astronomers.[3][4] It is the second planet in order from its host star in a triple planetary system, and has an orbital period of 17.9 days. Wolf 1061c is classified as a super-Earth exoplanet as its estimated radius is greater than 1.5 R ⊕.
Characteristics [ edit ]
Mass, radius and temperature [ edit ]
Wolf 1061c is thought to be a rocky planet estimated to be a super-Earth exoplanet as its mass is about 4.3 times that of Earth and radius is over 1.5 which would give it a density either near or possibly higher than Earth.[5] It has an estimated surface gravity of 1.6 times that on Earth.[6]
In astronomical terms, the Wolf 1061 system is relatively close to Earth, at only 13.8 light years away.[3][4]
The discovery was announced on 17 December 2015, following a study that used 10 years of archival spectra of the star Wolf 1061 using the HARPS spectrograph attached to the ESO 3.6 m Telescope at the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile.[3][6]
The planet has an equilibrium temperature of 223 K (−50 °C; −58 °F), slightly higher than that of Mars.[2]
Host star [ edit ]
The planet orbits a (M-type) star named Wolf 1061, orbited by a total of three planets. The star has a mass of 0.25 M ☉ and a radius of 0.26 R ☉. It has a temperature of 3380 K. The age is poorly constrained/unknown, but estimates would place it around a few billion years. In comparison, the Sun is 4.6 billion years old[7] and has a surface temperature of 5778 K.[8]
The star's apparent magnitude, or how bright it appears from Earth's perspective, is 10.1m. Therefore, it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye.
Orbit [ edit ]
Wolf 1061c orbits its host star with less than 1% of the Sun's luminosity every 17.9 days at a distance of 0.08 AU (compared to Mercury which orbits at a distance of 0.38 AU).[6]
Habitability [ edit ]
The planet's orbital distance of 0.084 AU (assuming mild eccentricity) lies at the inner edge of its star's habitable zone, which extends from approximately 0.073 to 0.190 AU (for comparison, the habitable zone of the Sun is approximated at 0.5 to 3.0 AU for its different energy emission). Its host star is a red dwarf, with about a quarter as much mass as the Sun. As a result, stars like Wolf 1061 have the ability to burn up to 400–500 billion years, 40–50 times longer than the Sun will.[9]
Because it is so close to the star, it is likely to be tidally locked, meaning one side permanently faces the star and the other side permanently faces away. Although this scenario could result in extreme temperature differences on the planet, the terminator line that separates the illuminated side and the dark side could potentially be habitable, as the temperature there could be suitable for liquid water to exist.[10] Additionally, a much larger portion of the planet could also be habitable if it has a thick enough atmosphere to facilitate heat transfer away from the side facing the star.[4]
See also [ edit ]The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority will officially turn the dirt next week on one of the largest locally financed infrastructure projects in the region’s history.
Unlike other CTRMA projects – including the MoPac Improvement Project, MoPac South and State Highway 45 Southwest – the 183 South Project has largely progressed with little public controversy. However, during Wednesday’s meeting of the board of directors, board Member David Armbrust reported that one potentially controversial aspect of the project had popped up on his radar.
“Last night, I received a telephone call and saw a series of tweets expressing concerns about these cross streets that we’re cutting off,” Armbrust said, referencing five existing intersections along the highway that will be erased by the new project. Those include East 51st Street, Techni Center Drive, Bolm Road, Vargas Road and Thompson Lane.
Drivers looking to cross the highway at those streets will instead have to head down the frontage road to the next intersection and take a protected U-turn – known colloquially as a Texas turnaround – before doubling back to their destination. In addition, CTRMA will construct bicycle and pedestrian bridges at East 51 Street and Bolm Road, along with two more over Boggy Creek.
Project Manager Aaron Autry told the board that despite adding miles to the trip, the new configuration will be just |
Image copyright AP
Pregnant women have been warned not to travel to a Zika-affected part of Miami after another 10 cases were identified.
The victims were probably infected by local mosquitoes in the Wynwood area.
Pregnant women who had been in the zone since 15 June were urged to get tested, while those planning a baby should wait eight weeks after leaving the area.
The illness, which is most commonly transmitted by mosquitoes, is linked to defects including small-head syndrome, or microcephaly, in newborns.
The governor of Florida, Rick Scott, also called for an emergency response team to be set up, to investigate and combat the virus's spread.
On Saturday, England's public health agency advised mums-to-be to postpone non-essential travel to Florida.
At that point, only four cases of Zika that were believed to have been contracted from mosquitoes within Florida had been confirmed there. They were thought to be the first of their kind in the US.
Other Zika cases were among people returning from infected areas overseas.
The 14 latest Florida cases may have come about because the victims were bitten by mosquitoes that had themselves became infected by biting people who had brought the virus back from their travels to the Caribbean and South America.
Mr Scott said the new warning advises women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant to avoid the square mile area just north of central Miami.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the travel notice.
The CDC said that women who had been in Wynwood or had travelled there since 15 June and were in the first or second trimesters (weeks one to 27) should get tested.
It also recommends women not get pregnant for eight weeks after leaving the area.
Mr Scott said: "Florida has a proven track record of success when it comes to managing similar mosquito-borne viruses.
"While I encourage all residents and visitors to continue to use precaution by draining standing water and wearing bug spray, Florida remains safe and open for business."
However, the CDC said mosquito control efforts were not working as well as hoped.
Of the 14 individuals identified, two are women and 12 are men.Marcus Lewis, the Atlanta Uber driver implicated in a viral social media post over the weekend is innocent, the Atlanta Police Department said in a lengthy statement:
UBER DRIVER: "I never picked him up...I'm angry."
lewis
"1. The Uber driver listed on social media and other forms of media did not rob (Bo Cleary). In fact, the trip was cancelled prior to this driver arriving at Mr. Cleary’s location. Our investigation has determined the driver was on another trip at the time of this possible robbery.
2. Mr. Cleary was captured on video walking into the parking lot. He was not being followed and showed no obvious signs of distress. He was observed walking down to the adjacent creek in the area of the manhole. The manhole can be accessed from the creek.
3. The only vehicle observed in the parking lot of the church was believed to be that of the off duty officer working at the location. The off duty officer aided Mr. Cleary. Mr. Cleary did not report to the officer that he was robbed.
4. It is noted in the Atlanta Fire Report that upon his rescue, Mr. Cleary stated he had been drinking.
Based on these factors, we have not arrived at the conclusion that a robbery took place. We are certain that the Uber driver did not participate in any robbery."Florida regulators on Tuesday gave their approval for electric utilities to slash energy efficiency goals and end solar rebates to customers after 2015.
In a nearly two-hour session in Tallahassee, Florida's Public Service Commission voted 3-2 to approve staff recommendations that largely backed proposals from the utilities to cut "demand-side management" programs over the next five years.
Those programs include rebates for homeowners to install solar panels on their roofs.
Environmentalists and some business leaders decried the move as a step backward, arguing that conservation and renewable energy can reduce the need for new power plants and help in the fight against climate change.
"Today, the PSC failed Florida families by caving to big polluters," said Kelly Martin, the senior representative in Florida for environmental group Sierra Club in a statement.
"Florida already ranks in the bottom half of the nation for energy efficiency, and now will only fall farther behind, costing families and businesses in the process."
But Florida Power & Light Co. and other utilities insisted their "demand-side management" programs are just one part of their conservation efforts and they remain committed to energy-efficiency. For example, some of their current programs – such as rebates for certain high-efficiency air-conditioners – are no longer needed, because high-efficiency equipment now is standard under new federal rules.
FPL also has argued that rebates for solar installations on homes are not cost-effective, because all ratepayers contribute to a program that give millions of dollars yearly to just hundreds of homeowners.
"We look forward to offering cost-effective energy-efficiency programs that benefit all of our customers," FPL spokeswoman Alys Daly said Tuesday. FPL will spell out its "demand-side management" programs early next year for the 38 counties it serves, including those in South Florida.
In approving the cuts, PSC members recognized the need for further discussion on solar energy. The commission said it plans a workshop on solar issues next year.
But environmental groups Earth Justice and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy warned that the solar workshop "should not be a guise for an attack on current policies that promote customer rooftop solar."
Instead of current rebates, FPL has proposed building solar-panel arrays in select neighborhoods and selling their solar energy through its grid. FPL customers could then choose to donate money toward those FPL-owned installations, but donors would get no direct benefit either from lower rates or assurances that the energy they consume comes from a solar source.
Many solar advocates prefer programs encouraging customers to install their own solar equipment and buy or sell energy to utilities as needed. But utilities say it's unfair they be required to provide back-up energy to homes with solar, unless they get some payment to cover the costs of that backup.
dhemlock@sunsentinel.com, 305-810-5009, @dhemlock on TwitterDear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
There are many disturbing things about the fact that a few dozen rabbis signed on to the initiative of Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu of Safed to persuade Jews to refrain from selling or renting homes to non-Jews in Israel.
Eliahu claims to have “evidence” that Islamist forces are providing money for Arabs to buy up property to promote an Arab demographic takeover of the country, and evidently some of his colleagues have been persuaded that there is an imminent threat.
It is some small comfort that the majority of rabbis approached by Eliahu refused to support his initiative, that the chief rabbis have disassociated themselves from it, and that many notable rabbinic figures have publicly condemned it.However, the fact that a few dozen were willing to append their names to this deplorable letter not only displays the degree to which fear and paranoia prevail in segments of our society, but also reflects a worrying trend toward greater insularity within the rabbinate in recent years.Indeed, the halachic argumentation of Eliahu’s call reflects not only a mean spirit, but also a narrow- minded interpretation of halacha that completely disregards the enlightened interpretation of past chief rabbis.Eliahu’s argumentation rests on viewing Muslims and Christians as idolaters as well as a collective threat. However, Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook ruled categorically, on the basis of the position of the medieval rabbinic luminary Rabbi Menahem Hameiri rejecting such categorization of Christians and Muslims, that Jewish law requires a Jewish polity to guarantee full civil rights to its non-Jewish citizens. This ruling was reiterated by his successor, Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog.IN THE summer of 1939, after three violent years in the course of which hundreds of Jews were killed in acts of terror, some Jewish extremists called for and even perpetrated deeds of violent revenge. The Sephardi chief rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, Ben Zion Uziel, and the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Tel Aviv Moshe Amiel issued powerful statements that were widely disseminated, condemning such acts and ideas and stressed Judaism’s unqualified rejection of holding innocents – especially a whole community – responsible for the acts of some guilty individuals.The third Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the State of Israel, Isser Yehuda Unterman, issued a learned pronouncement to emphasize that the Jewish legal precept of “the ways of peace” that demands the highest ethical conduct toward non-Jews is not a “defense mechanism,” but represents the highest moral aspirations of Judaism.However, it seems that many rabbis today are, at best, plain ignorant of these positions and halachic rulings. At worst, they reflect an insular mind-set that represent a sad regression to a medieval view that can see only hostility all around.While the country’s leaders have condemned this racist advocacy, no legal steps have yet been taken against these rabbis, most of whom are civil service employees and thus in breach of the conditions of their employment by their very involvement in such an initiative. Indeed Israel’s legal authorities have been notably timorous as far as the possibility of prosecution of racist declarations when these have come from rabbinic quarters. Nevertheless there has been a groundswell of civil initiatives, including many rabbis who are still true to the higher ethical values and aspirations of our heritage, to pressure the attorney general to take the necessary action.Such civil response represents the authentic voice of Jewish morality and is in consonance with the above-mentioned positions of Jewish luminaries of the State of Israel’s earlier history. Rabbi Eliahu and his colleagues represent not only a halachic regression and a capitulation to scaremongering, but they are guilty of nothing less than chilul hashem, a desecration of the Divine Name, and an embarrassment to our Jewish heritage.The writer is the Jerusalem-based international director of interreligious affairs of the American Jewish Committee.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>Storks is a 2016 American 3D computer-animated adventure buddy comedy film that was produced by Warner Animation Group, RatPac-Dune Entertainment and Stoller Global Solutions. The film was directed by Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland (as his feature debut film), and was written by Stoller. It features the voices of notorious actors llike Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelse Grammer, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Anton Starkman, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burell, Danny Trejo and Stephen Kramer Glickman.
The film takes place in a location called “Cornerstore”. This place is known for delivery babies and its employees are, for the most part, storks, along with a few other birds. The current CEO of Cornerstore, a stork who’s named Hunter (played by Kelsey Grammer), discontinues the baby delivering business and sees more profit for the company by converting it to a parcel delivery service. However, the last infant from before delivery was discontinued, Tulip, could not be delivered and was ultimately taken in by the company as an orphan.
The film made its initial premier in Los Angeles on September 17, 2016 and was released by Warner Bros. Pictures on September 23, 2016 in 3D, IMAX and the conventional formats. The film ultimately received mixed reviews from critics and ended up grossing over $179 million worldwide against its $70 million operating budget.
The Film Itself (3/5):
Initially, after seeing the various trailers that were released for Storks, I was kind of looking forward to this release. Seeing some of the funny moments that played out in those trailers, I was looking forward to a film that’s loaded with some clean humor. However, there was a lot less of that than I anticipated. While the films story itself was pretty solid, you can definitely tell that this film was directed to much younger audiences and it plays out very much like a children’s book. After watching through this film, it kind of felt like there was a subtle attempt at trying to win over the same audiences who loved Disney’s Finding Nemo. There are quite a few portions that align right up with the Disney favorite, the wolves being a prime example as I found myself really liking the wolves part of the movie.
Picture Quality (5/5):
One thing that is certain is that animated features like Storks look absolutely amazing in 1080p. Having and maintaining sharp, crisp lines throughout and presenting an extremely vivid color palette, Storks looked absolutely beautiful as it played out on my living room television. I know there was a 4K UHD release of this movie and I normally would have opted to pick that copy up, however after my previous experiences and the realization that animated features in UHD, like this, only benefit from the use of HDR and even then it isn’t really worth the extra few dollars it would cost to have gotten that format.
Audio Quality (5/5):
Storks does an absolutely fantastic job at utilizing the technologies that are associated with its DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio track. Being able to hear the various supplemental sounds that were associated with the films scenes as they played out allowed for them to be as immersive as possible. Another notable thing about this release is the films musical score. The included audio tracks did a fantastic job at helping the audience to hear the overall tone of the scene and fit right into the movie.
The Packaging (3.5/5):
Storks comes packaged in your typical Blu-ray amaray case. Within that case is the standard Blu-ray disc of the film as well as the standard DVD copy of the film. There is also a digital copy redemption pamphlet so consumers can add the film to their digital libraries as well as a slipcover that’s been made available with the films first pressing.
Special Features (5/5):
I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of special features that were included on the release of Storks. While not much of it is really related to the making of the film, it’s all still relevant to the movie. Included with this release is:
Storks: Guide To Your New Baby : All-New Hilarious Animated Short Starring Pigeon Toady
: All-New Hilarious Animated Short Starring Pigeon Toady The Master: A LEGO Ninjago Short
Music Video For Jason Derulo’s Hit Song “Kiss The Sky”
Deleted Scenes : Scenes not seen in theaters
: Scenes not seen in theaters Audio Commentary
Outtakes
Technical Specs:
Video
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (24.59 Mbps)
Resolution: 1080p
Original Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Note: Spanish=Latin & Mexicano; English DD 5.1=audio descriptive
Subtitles
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Runtime
Original Film: 88 minutes
Final Thoughts:
Overall, Storks wasn’t a bad film by any means. It certainly had its fair share of enjoyable moments, however this film is most definitely geared more for the younger crowd. The overall visual and audible experiences that the Blu-ray release of this film provides is what I could consider to be top notch as we were more than able to see and hear everything as the story moved forward. There is also a significant amount of additional content that’s been made available on the Blu-ray disc that allows people to dive even deeper into the film. A few of the special features that I really enjoyed was the deleted scenes and the all new short film that was included. If you’ve got children and are considering picking this film up for them, I’d highly recommend it. Hell, if you enjoy a good children’s animated feature, I’d definitely recommend this movie to you too. If you’re looking to pick it up, you can order it from Amazon now; I’d definitely recommend the Blu-ray release as the 4K UHD wouldn’t really be worth the extra money.​ FIFA is considering replacing international friendlies with a new ‘World League’.Â
According to the proposal the implementation would last a whole year and divide nations into first, second and third divisions.
The proposal comes with FIFA conducting a broad review of international tournaments ahead of next summer’s World Cup.
Friendlies have proved increasingly unpopular given the focus on club football and there is a growing perception that they are nothing more than a distraction.
The ‘World League’ appears to have similarities to the ‘UEFA Nations League’, which is how European countries will qualify for the 2020 European Championship.
That has led to complaints from South American nations such as Argentina and Brazil who are finding it harder to play lucrative games against European opposition.
FIFA is now discussing the idea of the ‘World League’, which would likely be introduced in 2019 and involve sides from different continents.
The divisions would represent the quality of the countries involved using the world rankings as a criteria, and would be played over the duration of a year.“I absolutely think that the underfunding has led to police seeing more people with mental health problems and crises than they ought to,” said Dr. Vicky Stergiopoulos, psychiatrist-in-chief at St. Michael’s Hospital.
Advocates say changes in the legislation and chronic funding problems in the mental health system are prompting increased encounters between police and people with mental illness, which can end in tragedy.
Mental Health Act apprehensions in the city have skyrocketed over the past two decades — from 520 in 1997 to 8,441 in 2013, raising questions about community services for people with mental illness.
Toronto police are apprehending more people than ever before and taking them to hospital under mental health legislation, according to data obtained exclusively by the Star.
The provincial act was last updated in 2000, with the controversial Brian’s Law, named for sportscaster Brian Smith, who was killed by a man suffering severe mental illness.
Ontario’s Mental Health Act allows police to take people to hospital if they pose a risk to themselves or to others, or are unable to care for themselves.
“I think it’s a direct reflection not only of the underfunding, because you can throw a lot of money at a system that’s broken and it’s not going to fix it. I think we need a complete redesign of services.”
“Who’s not in that bed is the person who wants to be admitted, who knows they’ve decompensated, who is feeling like they’re going to hurt themselves or hurt someone else,” Szigeti said. “Those people can’t get a bed, because all the beds are taken up by people who don’t want to be there,” and who in fact may pose no risk to anyone, she said.
Anita Szigeti, a lawyer with the Empowerment Council, an advocacy group representing people who have accessed psychiatric services, said the impetus for Brian’s Law was to intervene sooner, when a person’s mental state first starts to deteriorate. But no new in-patient psychiatric beds have been added.
It also created “community treatment orders,” which compel people to take medication or face being apprehended by police and taken back to hospital.
Szigeti said community treatment orders were supposed to be reserved for the most chronically unwell people, about 250 across the province. Now, there are at least 5,000 of those orders imposed on people who don’t necessarily need them and who would be compliant with medical orders anyway, she said.
“I don’t know what, if anything, the legislation has done to help. All it’s really done is exponentially increase contact with the police, and people are getting shot and killed,” she said.
Some advocates say the rising number of Mental Health Act apprehensions may be a good sign: where officers may have previously arrested people suffering from an emotional crisis and taken them to jail, perhaps now they are better trained to recognize the signs of a mental illness and are taking those people to hospital instead.
Barry Swadron, a civil rights lawyer who wrote the 1967 Mental Health Act, and who represented the family of Jeffrey Munro, a mentally ill man killed by another inmate while housed in the psychiatric unit of the Don Jail, said he was encouraged by the statistics, to a certain extent.
“If (people with mental illness) are acting in a disorderly manner, you can be sure that there’s some crime they could be charged with. But to take them directly to a psychiatric facility where they’re going to be examined is a far more humane approach,” he said.
Ontario’s mental health funding has declined since the 1970s, from 11.3 per cent of health care funding to 7 per cent. This is less than the national average of 7.2 per cent, and significantly less than the target of 9 per cent recommended by the Mental Health Commission of Canada in its national strategy on mental health in 2012.
Some high-income countries, including the U.K. and Sweden, invest more than 10 per cent of their health budget on mental health services, wrote Steve Lurie, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Toronto branch, in a recent report.
“A lack of funding is actually a structural representation of stigma. It’s the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ phenomenon. This isn’t a big enough priority,” Lurie said in an interview.
Advocates say that community mental health services are crucial to keeping people out of hospital. These services include, for example, the Gerstein Centre in Toronto, which offers supportive counselling, telephone support, community visits and a ten-bed, short-stay residence.
But currently, these kinds of services are often difficult to reach, plagued by long wait lists and chronic under-funding. Further, there is a dire need for supportive housing and more employment services, said Stergiopoulos.
“You can provide all the care you want, if somebody is homeless, it’s not going to help them very much,” she said. “If you look at who the frequent users are of services, a lot of them are poor, experience social disadvantage and housing instability. We need to look at all the contributors to this.”
David Jensen, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, said the province released a 10-year mental health and addictions strategy in 2011.The first three years of the strategy focused on children and youth, with funding of $93 million. An additional $65 million was proposed in the 2014 budget.
The province also doubled spending on community mental health over the past decade, from $399 million in 2003 to $810 million in 2013, said Jensen. (This still represents a small fraction of overall increased health spending.)
Deputy Chief Michael Federico, a 40-year veteran of the Toronto police, has taken leadership of the mental health file. He said police were experiencing a rising number of calls about what they term “emotionally disturbed persons” — about 20,000 such calls in 2011.
Federico said there is more awareness of mental health disorders in society and thus more people are seeking help for themselves or loved ones. But many calls to police would be better responded to by community agencies or mental health professionals, he said.
“I’m not going to tell people, ‘Don’t call police,’ ” he said. “But if it’s a situation where a person is struggling and feeling more anxious and looking for a re-introduction into a stream of care, that would be much better handled (by) somebody other than the police.”
Toronto police are trained to speak to people with mental illness calmly and to offer to help. But their options are limited: they can refer someone to a community service, apprehend them under the Mental Health Act or walk away because they have no authority to act, Federico said.
He called it a “truism” that the best way to prevent lethal encounters between police and people with mental illness is to avoid those interactions in the first place.
“Sadly, we will be called where a situation is now out of control. When we look back upon the individual’s history, we can easily identify intervention points. The problem is, does the community have the capacity to intervene at that point?” he asked.
A recent inquest into the police shooting deaths of three mentally ill people — Michael Eligon, 29; Reyal Jardine-Douglas, 25; and Sylvia Klibingaitis, 52, recommended, among other things, that police stop automatically handcuffing people taken into custody under the Mental Health Act. Advocates say handcuffing people shames them and makes them feel like criminals.
When asked about this recommendation, however, Federico said that officers only handcuff people when necessary. This came as a surprise to Jennifer Chambers, director of the Empowerment Council.
“That’s not what they’re telling clients,” she said. “Clients say, ‘The police told me they have to handcuff everybody.’... I haven’t heard of anyone who’s not been handcuffed. Perhaps I haven’t met them.”
She said she was concerned by the increasing number of involuntary hospitalizations under the Mental Health Act.
“The answer to people being distraught is not institutionalizing them. There’s so much evidence to show that isn’t necessary. Instead, you need to start with social determinants of health and good community supports.”An estate agent who was offered a sex act by his boss if he hit sales targets has won legal battle against her.
Sarah Thompson, 51, told Paul Elworthy, 45, that she would perform the act on him if he banked £180,000.
The senior financial consultant at Your Move reported his manager after saying the proposition made him feel 'uncomfortable'.
Sarah Thompson (left), 51, told Paul Elworthy (right), 45, that she would perform the act on him if he banked £180,000
Judges at an employment tribunal ruled that Mr Elworthy had been subjected to direct sexual discrimination by Thompson and should be compensated.
Mr Elworthy told the hearing in south London: 'I attended a senior consultants' reward lunch.
'At that meeting Sarah Thompson stated she would provide me with a blow job if I hit £180,000 banked income.
'This was said in the presence of a number of people. It made me feel very uncomfortable. I did not report it as she was my line manager. I would not get a fair hearing.'
Thompson, who works at Your Move's regional HQ in Chessington, South London, had denied the claims.
When asked by her firm's HR department in 2015 if she had made the comment she said: 'Absolutely not, do you really think I would ever say that? He might have wanted me too.'
The tribunal heard evidence from members of staff who were at the Christmas lunch which contradicted what Thomson said.
Thompson denied that she offered to perform the sex act on Mr Elworthy
One colleague, Giles Barrett, recalled that he heard Thompson make the comment and had replied 'does that count for everyone?' only for her to say 'no, you're married' - this was followed by laughter.
The panel said although the comments amounted to sexual discrimination, they were not harassment.
The judges also found against Mr Elworthy's claim of constructive unfair dismissal.
The tribunal ruled: 'We have found that Ms Thompson's comment left the claimant feeling 'a bit uncomfortable' and 'not great'.
'It did not meet the bar for harassment but we find that the effect on him was nevertheless a detriment.
'It was a highly sexualised comment and we have no hesitation in finding that the comment was made because of the claimant's gender.'
They added: 'We find that Ms Thompson would not have made an equivalent comment to a woman.
'We therefore find that the comment was less favourable treatment because of sex and the claim for direct sex discrimination succeeds.'
Mr Elworthy had also claimed he was constructively unfairly dismissed as he was 'forced' to clean toilets - but judges threw out this claim.
At the tribunal Mr Elworthy accepted that he had never cleaned and that he had never been disciplined or reprimanded for failing to carry out cleaning duties in the seven-year period he worked at the firm.
A further hearing will determine the amount of damages.May 8th, 2014 - kyledrake
The Federal Communications Commission is planning to vote for a proposal on May 15th to scrap Net Neutrality. Instead of all sites being given fair and equal access to consumers, this proposal will allow for your ISP to create special internet speed lanes for ultra-rich corporations, and force their own customers wanting to access your site into an internet traffic jam lane that's slower. The bonehead responsible for this idiotic and insane proposal is no less than the chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, a cable industry hand-picked lobbyist.
The FCC isn't doing their job of protecting American consumers, or producers like Neocities users. Perhaps they got a dump truck full of money from the cable corporation lobby, or perhaps they're too busy surfing Neocities sites. Well either way, it looks like they need some help remembering what their job is.
Since the FCC seems to have no problem with this idea, I've (through correspondence) gotten access to the FCC's internal IP block, and throttled all connections from the FCC to 28.8kbps modem speeds on the Neocities.org front site, and I'm not removing it until the FCC pays us for the bandwidth they've been wasting instead of doing their jobs protecting us from the "keep America's internet slow and expensive forever" lobby.
The Ferengi Plan
The Ferengi plan is a special FCC-only plan that costs $1000 per year, and removes the 28.8kbps modem throttle to the FCC. We will happily take Credit Cards, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin from crooked FCC executives that probably have plenty of money from bribes on our Donations page (sorry, we don't accept Latinum yet).
If it bothers you that I'm doing this, I want to point out that everyone is going to be doing crap like this after the FCC rips apart Net Neutrality. It's time for the web to organize and stand up against these thugs before they ruin everything that the web stands for.
Update 8:19PM PST - want to make your own FCC Ferengi Plan? Here's the code we're using on our nginx server.
Read our follow up article: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war
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Make the internet fun again - create your own free web site
PermalinkWhen Wayne Rooney announced his international retirement last week most of us thought it was a very sensible decision – not least because it might stop the whole Rooney debate once and for all. But no. It was about Wayne, so inevitably it immediately became A Big Thing.
It’s always been like this. All things Rooney seem to push some to extremes.
Gary Lineker said we should appreciate him more and those who denounced the Everton man’s international career were “buffoons”. Rio Ferdinand went further to say it is “disgraceful” the way Wayne has been underappreciated in recent years. “I couldn’t understand why people were disrespecting him so much,” said Andy Cole on MOTD2.
Buffoons? Disgraceful? Disrespect? This is odd language to use. Only Rooney seems to provoke such extreme responses from the media.
Once we discount the usual football stupids, who haven’t got a nice word to say about anyone, and also exclude the ignorant tribal nonsense and other unthinking knee-jerkery, I think most fans have always had a very reasonable and balanced view of Wayne: a well-liked player who has been capable of occasional tens, quite a few eights and nines, and a lot of fours and fives. I just wish the majority of pundits and press were as sensible because that realistic viewpoint is the one they seem to be railing against.
Rooney has been, and continues to be, the beneficiary of praise and reward far beyond anyone else who has displayed the alarmingly wild fluctuations of form that have characterized his career. He has largely been insulated from professional criticism to an unprecedented degree. Regardless of the stellar statistics – and they are stellar (even if they don’t tell the whole story) – the fact that the player himself regards Euro 2004 as his international highpoint 13 years ago, tells us much about his international contribution.
While critics of Rooney are often accused of being blinkered, and I wouldn’t always discount that, his media allies most certainly are. The sickly over-vaunting after just two decent games for Everton is but another example. There have always been those who are simply blind to his failings. Even on Sunday, after Everton’s defeat without a shot on goal, Martin Keown was quick to pull out an excuse. “Rooney is being asked to play a lot of games.” Excuses. Excuses. One week’s “fit and lean” when he scores, is the next week’s overworked when he doesn’t. This has been typical over the years. Every purple patch excused every flabby, clunking period; one act of brilliance atoned for hours of lumpen mediocrity.
For years we were constantly told that he needed to play a lot of games to get fit after injury. And because he was slow to get fit, that excused him a run of poor performances, as though he wasn’t complicit in his own fitness levels. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that excuse used for anyone else other than Wayne. And even when undeniably out of form, he was almost uniquely praised for literally just running around a lot.
So any unreasonable criticism, and there absolutely has been some over these long years, is because so much media was so committed to praising or excusing him. This insistence from self-appointed high priests of punditry and press that Wayne was a football superhero, despite what we witnessed for so long with our own eyes, actually made it harder to appreciate him. Fans made an inevitable, if subconscious, psychic rebalancing of unreasonable criticism against all the unreasonable praise.
But actually, looking beyond the diaphanous veil of facts and deeper into the more subconscious roots of all of this, I think something more profound has been going on. There are always controversies surrounding players and how good they are or aren’t; that’s all part of football’s subjective nature. Yet I’ve long thought the bipolar schism over Rooney is not to do with him as a footballer at all. It’s not to do with him as a person, either. In fact, in my experience, most decent people rather like what we see of him when interviewed, and admire what he’s achieved. He’s made the most of what talent he was blessed with and I think all of us can see and appreciate that.
No, this is actually all to do with him as a symbol. A symbol of the unfair, brutal, greed-is-good insane-o-nomics of football, politics and society. It plugs into the culture of CEO’s of failing companies who award themselves huge pay rises while everyone else has their pay frozen. It speaks of bulletproof elites who profit at the expense of everyone else, regardless of their contribution or quality. These are the dark materials of our modern existence. Profound unfairness kneeling on our throat and choking the life out of our future in order to further aggrandise and enrich. We might not always be able to fight it but sure as hell know its going on.
So on a subconscious level it’s inevitable that when we feel there is an agenda to unreasonably promote Rooney by those who have also benefited from this heinous, soulless system, it feels like they’re all part of the same gang. A gang that’s not our gang. They don’t understand our position because they’ve lost touch with reality. Lost touch with what a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay looks like. Lost touch with how we equate money and performance in normal life.
Subconsciously, we see Rooney as emblematic of What Is Wrong.
Rich people telling poor people how great other rich people are is not an easy sell. And you certainly can’t do it by calling us buffoons, you really can’t. Rather, it just confirms our worldview, rightly or wrongly, that you’re out of touch and doing the bidding of an unjustified, oppressive elitist financial and moral philosophy. You might not be, or at least not consciously, but that’s how it sounds and feels and that’s why it is so divisive.
But this is not to decry his very real achievements one iota. They are substantial and noteworthy, yet we have arrived at the weird situation where those real achievements are in the shadow of the astronomic imaginary achievements that his media supporters would have us believe are the reality, and to which they apparently expect us to supplicate ourselves in awe.
It appears we’re being berated for not pouring yet more praise onto a man who has already been over-praised, and whose manifest flaws have been dismissed as though they do not even exist.
While it’s easy for any ex-player or pundit to dismiss the hateful talkin’-loud-saying-nuthin’ blowhard constituency that is football’s curse, I would suggest most of us are all very well aware of exactly how good Rooney is and has been, and do not need lecturing about it from on high.
However, those who have created a fiction around Rooney need to take a long hard look at themselves and ask why they’re so blinded to truths that others see so easily, and why they feel the need to proselytise this misplaced analysis with such an obviously tin ear to our critique and our times.
John NicholsonYou have heard the stories of park visitors taking selfies with bears, walking off of the boardwalk, petting a bison, even putting a newborn bison in their car. You commit one of these crimes in Yellowstone National Park? You answer to one man: Judge Mark Carman.
However, recent visitor stories are not the most shocking things that have crossed Judge Carman's desk.
Judge Mark Carman says, "It wasn't as shocking as a lot of other things I see.”
And Judge Mark Carman has seen a lot. The former attorney was tapped four years ago to be the U.S. Magistrate Judge in Yellowstone National Park.
Judge Carman says, "I was excited.”
He has a spacious corner office overlooking the Gallatin and Absaroka Mountains. Like most federal judges, he wears a tie to work. But unlike most other judges, when it’s time for lunch he laces |
modrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan Getty Images
2/50 20 April 2017 Visitors listen to remarks by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on a giant monitor in the atrium of the IMF headquarters during a press briefing to open the IMF and World Bank's 2017 Annual Spring Meetings, in Washington DC Reuters
3/50 20 April 2017 A Kashmiri school girl throws stones at Indian paramilitary soldiers during a protest in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir AP
4/50 20 April 2017 Kashmiri school girls tend to wounded girl after she was hit by a stone during a protest in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. Government forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday fired tear gas to stop student demonstrations as sporadic protests by students continued on straight fourth day even as authorities closed colleges and universities in the restive region. The students have been protesting since Monday against a police raid in a college in southern Pulwama town on Saturday in which at least 50 students were injured AP
5/50 20 April 2017 Former president of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre addresses the media after testifying in the Guertel political corruption case at the National Court in Madrid, Spain EPA
6/50 20 April 2017 US Defense Secretary James Mattis briefs reporters after his arrival in Tel Aviv, Israel AP
7/50 20 April 2017 An exterior view for the Holy Shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadim in the Kadhimiyah district of Baghdad, Iraq. Tens of thousands of Shiite worshippers streamed into the Iraqi capital amid heavy security to mark the anniversary of the death of Imam Musa al-Kadim who was the seventh of the twelve Shia Imams EPA
8/50 20 April 2017 Indian nomad youths play in the water with their herd of buffaloes as they cool off in the Tawi River on a hot day on the outskirts of Jammu Getty Images
9/50 20 April 2017 Russian Defence Ministry's forest guard member controls a firefighting robot during drills to fight wildfires Getty Images
10/50 20 April 2017 A firefighting robot during drills to fight wildfires held by Russian Defence Ministry's forest guards Getty Images
11/50 19 April 2017 Demonstrators take cover with a piece of corrugated tin roofing during anti-government protests in Caracas, Venezuela. Tens of thousands of opponents of President Nicolas Maduro flooded the streets of Caracas in what's been dubbed the'mother of all marches' against the president AP
12/50 19 April 2017 Opposition supporters clash with police during protests against unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro in San Cristobal, Venezuela Reuters
13/50 19 April 2017 Government supporters attend a rally in Caracas, Venezuela Reuters
14/50 19 April 2017 An artist's rendering of a Harper's Bazaar magazine cover is projected onto the Empire State Building's north facade to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Harper's Bazaar Magazine in New York EPA
15/50 19 April 2017 Zoe Saldana at the 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' film premiere in Los Angeles, California Rex
16/50 17 April 2017 A femen attacks Marine Le Pen as she delivers a speech in Paris Rex
17/50 16 April 2017 People take part in the Colour Run 2017's edition in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Colour Run is a five kilometres paint race without winners nor prizes, while runners are showered with coloured powder at stations along the run Getty Images
18/50 16 April 2017 A woman pours coloured powder on a man as they take part in the Colour Run 2017's edition, in Paris Getty Images
19/50 16 April 2017 A Somali soldier patrols next to the burnt-out wreckage of a car that was used by suspected al-shabab fighters Getty Images
20/50 16 April 2017 Rescuers of the Malta-based NGO Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) place a dead migrant on their rigid hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) into a body bag before transferring it to their ship Phoenix, after some 20 migrants drowned in the central Mediterranean in international waters off the coast of Libya Reuters
21/50 16 April 2017 Some 662 people dressed as Charlie Chaplin pose for a group photo in front of the Manoir de Ban during an attempt of the world's largest gathering of people dressed as 'The Tramp' on the occasion of Charlie Chaplin's birthday, and to celebrate the first year of the museum "Chaplin's World by Grevin", in Corsier, above Vevey, Switzerland EPA
22/50 16 April 2017 Some 662 people dressed as Charlie Chaplin pose for a group photo in front of the Manoir de Ban during an attempt of the world's largest gathering of people dressed as 'The Tramp' on the occasion of Charlie Chaplin's birthday, and to celebrate the first year of the museum "Chaplin's World by Grevin", in Corsier, above Vevey, Switzerland EPA
23/50 16 April 2017 A damaged bus is seen after an explosion yesterday at insurgent-held al-Rashideen, Aleppo province, Syria Reuters
24/50 16 April 2017 Girls enjoy ice cream in a zoo in Pyongyang, North Korea Reuters
25/50 16 April 2017 A child looks through the rear window of a bus in Pyongyang, North Korea Reuters
26/50 15 April 2017 Head of a legendary ethnic Miao goddess statue is lifted at the construction site of the statue, in Jianhe County, Guizhou Province Reuters
27/50 15 April 2017 Members of Acapulco tourist police attend injured tourists after a shootout in Acapulco, Mexico. A shootout in the tourist area of the resort left one dead and seven wounded on Saturday night, local authorities reported Getty Images
28/50 15 April 2017 Members of Acapulco tourist police attend injured tourists after a shootout in Acapulco, Mexico Getty Images
29/50 15 April 2017 A bald eagle rests on a perch at Eagle Beach State Recreation Area in Juneau, Alaska AP
30/50 15 April 2017 Competitors take part in Stage 6 of the 32nd edition of the Marathon des Sables In the dunes of Merzouga in the southern Moroccan Sahara desert Getty Images
31/50 15 April 2017 Competitors take part in Stage 6 of the 32nd edition of the Marathon des Sables In the dunes of Merzouga in the southern Moroccan Sahara desert. The 32nd edition of the marathon is a live stage 250 kilometre race through a formidable landscape in one of the world's most inhospitable climates Getty Images
32/50 15 April 2017 A Trump supporter holds on to another man for support after being pepper sprayed by protesters at a 'Patriots Day' free speech rally on April 15, 2017 in Berkeley, California Getty Images
33/50 15 April 2017 More than a dozen people were arrested after fist fights broke out at a park where supporters and opponents of President Trump had gathered Getty Images
34/50 15 April 2017 Hundreds of people with opposing opinions on President Donald Trump threw stones, lit fires, tossed explosives and tear gas and attacked each other with makeshift weapons as police stood by Getty Images
35/50 15 April 2017 A conservative protestor squares off with a anti-fascist protestor during the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley, California Reuters
36/50 15 April 2017 An anti-fascist protestor is detained by law enforcement during the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley, California Reuters
37/50 15 April 2017 Smoke billowing following a suicide car bombing in Rashidin, west of Aleppo, that targeted buses carrying Syrians evacuated from two besieged government-held towns of Fuaa and Kafraya Getty Images
38/50 15 April 2017 Female bodybuilders prepare themselves for judging backstage during the 2017 NABBA WFF Asia Seoul Open Championship in Seoul, South Korea Getty Images
39/50 15 April 2017 Female bodybuilders prepare themselves for judging backstage during the 2017 NABBA WFF Asia Seoul Open Championship in Seoul, South Korea Getty Images
40/50 15 April 2017 North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un waving to people after the military parade in Pyongyang marking the 105th anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung Getty Images
41/50 15 April 2017 Korean People's Army ballistic missiles being displayed through Kim Il-Sung square during a military parade in Pyongyang marking the 105th anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung Getty Images
42/50 14 April 2017 Tory Lanez performs on the Sahara Stage during day 2 of the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival Getty Images
43/50 13 April 2017 Pope Francis kisses the feet of an inmate after washing it, at Paliano prison, to celebrate the Mass in Coena Domini, with the rite of the washing of the feet of some detainees, south of Rome, Italy EPA
44/50 13 April 2017 This aerial photo shows solar photovoltaic modules on a hillside in a village in Chuzhou, in eastern China's Anhui province Getty Images
45/50 13 April 2017 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un cuts the ribbon for an opening ceremony of a new residential housing project on Ryo Myong street in Pyongyang, North Korea EPA
46/50 13 April 2017 Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., arrives for his trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea. The scion of South Korea's Samsung business empire Lee appeared in court on trial for bribery and other charges AP
47/50 13 April 2017 Vietnamese national Doan Thi Huong is escorted by Malaysian police for a court appearance with Indonesian national Siti Aisyah (not pictured) at the magistrates' court in Sepang, for their alleged role in the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un Getty Images
48/50 13 April 2017 Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, who was detained in connection with the death of Kim Jong-Nam, is escorted by Malaysian police for a court appearance at magistrates' court in Sepang, Malaysia EPA
49/50 12 April 2017 Iraqi federal police fire a mortar at an Islamic State position during the battle to recapture west Mosul Getty Images
50/50 11 April 2017 A migrant sits in a tent on the land of Cedric Herrou, a French farmer and volunteer assisting migrants to cross the French-Italian border to avoid police controls, in Breil-sur-Roya, France Reuters
There has been speculation that the There has been speculation that the Champs-Elysees terror attack, which left one police officer dead and two officers injured in Paris on Thursday, could boost the chances of either a Le Pen or a Fillon presidency.
Both candidates declared “war against Islamism”, sparking widespread condemnation that they were attempting to solicit political gain from the attack.
The two candidates, along with Mr Macron, cancelled planned events on Friday, which would have been the last day of campaigning.What most Latter-day Saints call "garments" is, strictly speaking, the garment, the garment of the holy priesthood, received during the initiatory. When Latter-day Saints speak of "temple clothes" (or "robes"), they usually have in mind the additional ritual vestments that are donned in the course of the endowment proper: robe, apron, sash, cap, veil. By "temple clothes" they may also mean the white clothing--dress, shirt, pants, tie, slippers--worn under the ritual vestments. While the other vestments are used only inside the temple, the garment is regularly worn outside the temple as underclothing. Wearing the garment is an important sign of one's identity as an endowed Latter-day Saint. This article focuses mostly on the garment, followed by comments about the other temple vestments.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GARMENT Traditionally, the temple garment was a white, one-piece undergarment not unlike a union suit. It originally extended to the wrists and the ankles, had a collar, and closed with strings. In the 1920s, Church leaders authorized a shorter garment that extended to the elbows and knees, had no collar, and closed with buttons. A two-piece garment was introduced in 1979, resembling a t-shirt and knee-length boxer briefs. A women's garment has a somewhat lower neckline and shorter sleeves. The garment is manufactured and distributed by Church-owned Beehive Clothing, the same company authorized to make temple robes. Today garments are available in ten different fabrics, including cotton, cotton-polyster, nylon mesh, and corban. Latter-day Saints serving in the armed forces can obtain the garment in a military-approved shade of brown. Also, customized garments are available for individuals with special needs: bedfast Saints, for example, can obtain a garment designed like a hospital gown. The most important defining feature of a temple garment is the four marks. The mark of the square, shaped like a reverse L, appears over the right breast. The mark of the compass, shaped like a V, appears over the left breast. The navel mark is a horizontal line about three-fourths inch long placed in the midsection; the knee mark is the same, placed just above the hem of the right leg. Originally, the four marks were cut into the garment during the initiatory. In the twentieth century, this custom gave way to stitching the marks into the garment at the time of its manufacture. Church policy dictates that when a garment wears out, the marks should be cut out and destroyed, and then the garment cut into pieces so that it cannot be recognized. Latter-day Saints typically destroy the marks by burning or shredding them. Once the marks have been removed from the garment, the remaining fabric is not considered sacred and can be discarded or used as rags.
FUNCTIONS OF THE GARMENT In practical terms, the garment serves two functions: it sets the LDS standard for modesty, and it serves as a constant reminder of one's temple covenants. (The garment is also understood to provide spiritual or physical protection to the wearer, but I will discuss that subject farther down.)
Standard for Modesty The garment's function as a standard for modesty grows out of the initiatory's statement that the garment is "to cover your nakedness." Though Latter-day Saints may remove the garment briefly for activities such as swimming, Church leaders have enjoined them not to remove it for purposes such as lounging around the house or working in the yard. Since the Saints are also instructed not to expose to the garment to view, this means they must regularly wear clothing that will keep the garment covered--that is, from shoulder to knee. These standards of modesty have become normative for Latter-day Saints generally, not just for those who are endowed. Instructions that the garment is to be worn "both night and day" have created some uncertainty among married couples about the propriety of removing the garment for the sake of physical intimacy. Qualitative research by Catholic scholar Colleen McDannell offers grounds to suspect that LDS couples typically take a common-sense attitude toward negotiating between their romantic needs and their commitment to regularly wear the garment. However, as recently as 1968, the First Presidency had to rein in temple workers who were instructing couples to keep their garments on during sexual relations. There appears to have been a notion among nineteenth-century Saints that one should never be entirely divested of the garment--that even when bathing or changing clothes, one should contrive to never be entirely naked.
Reminder of Covenants According to the instructions at the veil, each of the four marks on the garment is meant to call to mind certain principles of faith or right living. Among other things, the mark of the square is to inspire exactness and honor in keeping one's covenants, and the mark of the compass is a "constant reminder" to keep one's passions within the bounds set by the Lord. These interpretations of specific marks on the garments have given rise to an oft-expressed understanding that the marks collectively remind Latter-day Saints of their temple covenants. Thus, it is believed, the garment can prevent transgression. This belief is nurtured by folklore about endowed Saints who are prevented from committing sexual transgression because, as they undress, the sight of the garment pricks their conscience. Worn consciously as a reminder or sign of one's temple covenants, the garment becomes an expression of a person's commitment to LDS religiosity. In that regard, the garment serves a similar function for a Latter-day Saint as a crucifix or scapular serves for a Catholic, ritual fringes for a Jewish man, or the veil for a Muslim woman. The garment, however, unlike some of its analogues in other faith traditions, is an essentially private expression because it is worn under one's street clothes. Thus, wearing the garment can symbolize "wearing" one's faith--not to be "seen of men" yet visibly affecting how one lives. Along these same lines, the garment becomes a tangible sign of a Latter-day Saint's entrance into adulthood or full-fledged membership in the community of the Saints, with the privileges and obligations that brings. As a 19-year-old, looking at myself in a mirror wearing the garment for the first time, I had a vivid sensation that I had crossed a threshold--that from now on, this was going to be my life. Receiving the garment is a rite of passage. It may be loosely compared, perhaps, to societies where the passage to adulthood is marked by the receipt of a tattoo or scar: symbolically, at least, regular wearing of the garment "marks" the initiate's body. (This symbolism might have been especially pronounced back in the days when the marks were actually cut into the garment in the washing room.)
SYMBOLISM OF THE GARMENT The garment is a rich symbol that can work at multiple levels. In the context of the initatory's sequence of washing, anointing, and clothing (derived from Exodous 28), the garment is one piece of the priestly vestments that initiates don in the course of the endowment, betokening their consecration to God's service and their empowerment to enter God's presence. At the same time, receipt of the garment, said to represent the coat of skins from Genesis 3, identifies initiates with Adam and Eve and thus forms part of the endowment's reenactment of the creation and the fall. The coat of skins--and thus the garment--can be read as a type of Christ's atonement, which covers sin in a way that feeble human efforts (the fig leaf aprons) cannot. At another level, the ritual of clothing evokes the promise that those who "have not defiled their garments" shall be "clothed in white raiment" (Revelation 3:4-5). Read in the light of Matthew 22:11-14, a parable about a man who is thrown into outer darkness when he attends the king's feast without a wedding garment, the temple garment may be understood as a symbol of spiritual preparedness, akin to the parable of the ten virgins with their oil lamps (Matthew 25:1-13). The initiatory's injunction to cover one's nakedness can be taken as an exhortation to prepare for judgment, in light of scriptural passages that equate nakedness with the shame of sin (Revelation 3:18; 2 Nephi 9:14; Mormon 9:5; cf. the allusion to the final judgment in the explanation of the knee mark). The garment yields yet another set of meanings when seen as an enactment of scriptural metaphors about being clothed: with salvation and righteousness (Isaiah 61:10), with purity (2 Nephi 9:14), with humility (1 Peter 5:5), with charity (D&C 88:125), with strength (Psalm 18:39). Pushing this symbolism farther, receiving the garment can be seen as a token of being encircled in the robe of God's righteousness and in the arms of safety (2 Nephi 4:33; Alma 34:16). Understood in this way, the garment is a sign of grace. The garment can be a symbolic reminder that we depend upon God for all we have, "both food and raiment" (Mosiah 4:19, 21), and that the One who clothes the lilies in glory has promised to clothe us also--to give us all that we need (Matthew 6:28-32).
THE GARMENT AS PROTECTION Initiates are told that the garment "will be a shield and a protection to you against the power of the destroyer until you have finished your work here on earth." Today, official Church discourse treats this as a spiritual promise: as a reminder of one's covenants and a token of obedience to God's commandments, the garment serves "as a protection against temptation and evil." However, the notion that the garment can provide not only spiritual but also physical protection from harm has a long history among the Saints. Just one year after the death of Joseph Smith, members of the Quorum of the Twelve opined that Willard Richards had survived the attack on Carthage Jail because he had been wearing his garment. (Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and John Taylor had removed their garments "on account of the hot weather.") To this day, stories abound of Saints who have been miraculously saved from harm by the temple garment. Perhaps the most famous example comes from a 1996 feature on Mormons for 60 Minutes, in which hotel magnate Willard Marriott told Mike Wallace of a boat fire that had consumed his pants yet left him unscathed above the knee, where his garment was. As a missionary, I read a typescript account about an elder from that same mission who had been the victim of a drive-by shooting a year before (during the 1990 Gulf War): according to his mother's account, bullets shredded his shirt without piercing his garments, while the only wound he received was from a bullet that hit him below the knee. D. Michael Quinn observes that stories such as these attribute to the garment the kind of power associated with a magical object such as an amulet. That the stories survive in contemporary Mormonism is an indication of how vividly many Latter-day Saints believe in divine intervention and in the power connected to temple rituals.
THE GARMENT AS SACRED OBJECT Miracle stories about the garment help to illustrate how important the garment is for many Latter-day Saints, not only as a symbol of their covenants or as a marker of identity, but as a sacred material object. Sanctity physically adheres to the garment as long as it bears the four marks. Not only what it represents, but the garment itself--the fabric, according to the Church Handbook of Instructions--is held to be sacred. As with the temple ceremony in general, the sanctity of the garment is expressed in a mystique of "sacred secrecy" (to use theologian Douglas Davies's term). Just as the endowment does not actually restrict initiates from discussing most aspects of the ceremony, neither does it enjoin secrecy about the garment. Yet in LDS lore and practice, public display of the garment is seen to be, at best, inadvisable and, at worst, a kind of taboo. Church leaders instruct the Saints not to "display [the garment] or expose it to the view of those who do not understand its significance." Anxieties about publicly displaying the garment have led to discussions about how LDS athletes should cope with public locker rooms or how soldiers should cope with open barracks. (In such situations, the Saints are advised to be as discreet as possible, to use questions about the garment as a teaching opportunity, and to bear ridicule with patience.) Displays of the garment by non-Mormons--as in Tony Kushner's drama Angels in America, in which Mormon characters are shown wearing the garment--are deeply offensive to many Saints. An indication of how strong Latter-day Saints' feelings about the garment can run is a 2003 incident in which an anti-Mormon demonstrator at the Church's General Conference blew his nose into a temple garment he was wearing around his neck; an incensed LDS observer was arrested for battery after trying to wrest the garment away from the protestor. LDS convictions about the garment's significance as a sacred object are also conveyed in a widely circulating piece of folkore which narrates the divine destruction (usually by fire) of a laundromat whose owners hang temple garments in the window for public ridicule.
OTHER TEMPLE VESTMENTS The sacred secrecy attached to the garment is even more pronounced for the other temple vestments: distressing as it is for Latter-day Saints to see the garment on public display, a display of the full temple regalia is worse. No doubt this is because the other temple vestments are worn only in the temple, never outside it, making a public display a greater transgression of boundaries. The temple vestments seem to be loosely patterned after the priestly vestments described in Exodus 28. As the high priest wore a robe, an ephod, a girdle, and a mitre, so initiates don a robe, an apron, a sash, and, for men, a cap that looks vaguely like a turban. In place of a cap, women wear a veil, which they use to cover their faces during prayer, a practice no doubt inspired by 1 Corinthians 11:5. Men and women alike wear slippers in the temple instead of shoes, recalling God's command that Moses remove his shoes on holy ground (Exodus 3:5). For the endowment, women wear white dresses, while men wear white shirts, white pants, and white ties; the temple vestments are placed over this basic clothing. Except for the apron, which is green and stitched to resemble nine fig leaves, the temple vestments are white and unembroidered (though the robe may be pleated). The robe is designed such that it hangs from one shoulder; just before entering the Terrestrial Room, initiates remove the robe and turn it around to change it from the left shoulder to the right. Like the temple garment, temple vestments are manufactured and sold by Church-owned Beehive Clothing. Initiates must purchase the garment, but in many temples vestments can be rented for a very low fee. The new, smaller temples now preferred by the Church typically are not large enough to have their own laundry facilities and therefore do not rent vestments, which means temple-goers have to purchase and bring their own. The sale of temple vestments is controlled by requiring presentation of a current temple recommend. The sale of temple garments has not been so tightly controlled, since a person who has lost his or her temple recommend because of church discipline but who has not been excommunicated is encouraged to keep wearing the garment. However, as of August 2004, the presentation of a temple recommend or driver's license is required to purchase the garment. This may be an attempt to prevent the desecration of garments by anti-Mormon protestors or the sale of garments on E-Bay. Endowed Latter-day Saints who die in good church standing are usually buried in their temple clothing (the garment as well as the vestments).
NOTES Information about the historical development of the garment is drawn from David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994).
Church Handbook of Instructions, vol. 1 of 2 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), 70.
Instructions to wear the garment "both night and day" can be found in a First Presidency letter of November 5, 1996, quoted in David E. Sorensen, "The Doctrine of Temple Work," Ensign (October 2003), 56.
Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1995, chapter 7.
The First Presidency ordered an end to such teaching. Letter to all temple presidents from the First Presidency, May 22, 1968; archived in "Research Notes on LDS Temples: Temple Clothes," New Mormon Studies CD-ROM: A Comprehensive Resource Library (San Francisco, Smith Research Associates, 1998).
Matthew 6:1-5.
Several passages in the first chapters of Revelation have echoes in the initiatory: Revelation 1:5-6; 2:17; 3:4-5, 12, 18.
First Presidency letter of November 5, 1996, quoted in Sorensen, 56. The same phrasing is used in a First presidency letter of October 10, 1988, quoted in Asay, 19. Similarly, Boyd K. Packer writes, "For many Church members the garment has formed a barrier of protection when the wearer has been faced with temptation" (The Holy Temple [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980], 79).
Buerger, 147-148.
D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 276.
Church Handbook of Instructions, 69.
Back to Top | WebmasterI went to Las Vegas recently to view the first test of Hyperloop. As someone who experiences aging infrastructure daily and desires something better, I was ready to be convinced of the feasibility and future of this idea, which has become one of the purest expressions of techno-optimism.
First, a little background. In 2013, Elon Musk, he of Tesla and space exploration fame, floated a 58-page outline presenting Hyperloop as an alternative to California’s high-speed rail (though in fact the idea has existed since the 1800s — Google it). A smart but busy man, Mr. Musk announced that he wanted to make Hyperloop a sort of open-source Manhattan Project for high-speed transportation, since he didn’t have the time to pursue it himself.
Several separate entities have since been formed to explore the possibilities. The event I attended was presented by Hyperloop Technologies, a group inspired by but not affiliated with Mr. Musk (though riding on his name recognition and involving several of his former employees). Hyperloop Technologies and its competitors are working to develop a structure to move passengers and cargo between two points safely, efficiently and sustainably. And quickly: Mr. Musk’s initial dream was to propel passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about a half an hour (Amtrak takes 12 hours; flight time is an hour).
Hyperloop Technologies, which announced its name change to Hyperloop One with much fanfare in Las Vegas, is a well-funded operation with over 100 employees. It’s gaining new investors (such as Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems; Sherpa Ventures; and SNCF, the French train company) and new partners (including the engineering firms Aecom and ARUP, as well as the starchitect Bjarke Ingels) almost as fast as the model on view at its press event.
Approximately 200 investors, polo-shirted employees and reporters piled onto buses to converge on a site that looked eerily like a desert scene from “Breaking Bad.” We’d been brought here to watch a test vehicle accelerate down a rail track at speeds of up to 300 m.p.h. using the company’s propulsion technology. The dream is that capsules will hurl through a tube at 700 miles per hour on a cushion of air. That, however, was not what we witnessed.Moon drawings
Drawings of the moon as seen with Galileo's telescope. By his own account, Galileo first observed the Moon on November 30, 1609. Comparing patterns of light and shadow in the vicinity of the terminator (dividing line between light and shadow) at first and third quarter, Galileo could argue convincingly that there exists mountains and valleys on the lunar surface. Aristotelian doctrine stipulated that celestial bodies were perfectly smooth and spherical. Drawing reproduced from Galileo's 1610 Sidereus Nuncius.
The first telescopic observations of the Moon on record were carried out by the English man Thomas Harriot (ca. 1560-1621), on the evening of July 26, 1609. However, based on his extant correspondence, as well as entries in his notebooks, as in the case of sunspots, Harriot did not appear to have drawn any particular physical significance from what he saw.
Galileo, G. 1610, Sidereus Nuncius, trans. A. Van Helden 1989, The University of Chicago Press.
Whitaker, E.A. 1978, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 9, 155-169. Bibliography:
Sketches of faint stars
Sketches of faint stars in the Orion constellation, as seen by Galileo through his telescope. The larger stars with a central dots are those visible to the naked eye, with the topmost three corresponding to the so-called beltof Orion. That the universe contained many more stars than previously known gave moral support to the idea that it may also be a lot larger than assumed up to then. This idea had been advanced by Nicolaus Copernicus himself, as a possible explanation for the lack of observed annual parallax in the fixed stars. Reproduced from Galileo's 1610 Sidereus Nuncius.
Galileo, G. 1610, Sidereus Nuncius, trans. A. Van Helden 1989,The University of Chicago Press. Bibliography:
Sketch of Jupiter's moons
Sketches of the four moons of Jupiter, as seen by Galileo through his telescope. What he saw are the four larger moons of Jupiter, now known as Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The drawing depicts observations from the time period January 7 to 24, 1610. Galileo had considerable difficulty in recognizing the true meaning of what he was seeing; Callisto often layout side the (restricted) field of view of his telescope, Io often lost in Jupiter's glare, and some moon occasionally disappeared in Jupiter's shadow or behind or in front of the planet itself.
Galileo named the moons Medicean Stars, after the ruling Florentine family Medici. This was a move calculated to improve his chances of moving back to Florence, and it succeeded. The names used today were coined by Simon Mayr (1573-1624), who for a time claimed priority on their discovery.
Debarbat, S., and Wilson, C. 1989, The Galilean satellites of Jupiter from Galileo to Cassini, Roemer and Bradley, in The General History of Astronomy, vol. 2A, eds. R. Taton and C. Wilson, Cambridge University Press, pps. 144-157. Bibliography:
Dialogue
Galileo's Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, published in Florence in February 1632. This is usually considered as Galileo's masterpiece. Despite ostensible claims to the contrary, the Dialogue represents Galileo's strongest endorsement of the Copernican system over its Ptolemaic counterpart, and makes devastating refutations of many central tenets of Aristotelian Physics. The book still makes for fascinating reading today. Reproduced from S. Drake's 1967 translation.
On July 25 1632 the Roman authorities issued an order forbidding further distribution of the book, and recalling copies already distributed. Following Galileo's trial and condemnation in 1633 the Dialogue was put on the Index of Prohibited Books, where it remained until 1835.
Galileo, G. 1632, Dialogues concerning the two chief world systems, trans. S. Drake, 2nd edition 1967, University of California Press. Bibliography:
Discourses
The Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche Intorno a Due Nuove Scienze), published in 1638 was Galileo's final book and a scientific testament covering much of his work in physics over the preceding thirty years.
After his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the Roman Inquisition had banned the publication of any of Galileo's works, including any he might write in the future. After the failure of his initial attempts to publish Two New Sciences in France, Germany, and Poland, it was published by Lodewijk Elzevir who was working in Leiden, South Holland, where the writ of the Inquisition was of less consequence (see House of Elzevir).
Discourses was written in a style similar to Dialogues, in which three men (Simplicio, Sagredo, and Salviati) discuss and debate the various questions Galileo is seeking to answer. There is a notable change in the men, however; Simplicio, in particular, is no longer quite as simple-minded and stubborn an Aristotelian as his name implies. His arguments are representative of Galileo's own early beliefs, as Sagredo represents his middle period, and Salviati proposes Galileo's newest models.
Galileo, G. 1638, Discourses on two new sciences, trans. S. Drake 1974, The University of Wisconsin Press. Bibliography:
Letters on Sunspots
Title page of Galileo's Letters on Sunspots, published in Rome in 1613. The Letters were written to the wealthy Augsburg Magistrate MarkWesler (1558–1614), a well-known patron of the new sciences, in responses to Christoph Scheiner's own Letters on Sunspots, published through Wesler in 1612. The lynx depicted on the Title page indicates Galileo's membership in the Lincean academy (Accademia dei Lincei, for the "sharp-eyed"), the first scientific academy in Europe. The academy was founded 1603 by Prince Federigo Cesi, and was conspicuous in granting membership to a small number of selected intellectuals operating outside the mainstream academic establishment. In April 1611 Galileo became the sixth member elected to the Academy, and to the end of his life would identify himself as a "Lincean" on the title page of all his books.
In his Letters, and unlike Scheiner, Galileo correctly identifies sunspots as markings on the solar surface, as opposed to small intramercurial planets. By studying the position of sunspots on successive days Galileo also inferred that the Sun rotates, and established its rotation period as close to one lunar month. Galileo and Scheiner were later to quarrel bitterly over priority of discovery of sunspots; in fact the first recorded sunspot observation is on 8 December 1610 by the Englishman Thomas Thomas Harriott (1560–1621 |
in St. Joseph, Mo. She raised her son primarily in Warren and Detroit, including a home
by the State of Michigan because it was deemed unsafe. The Dresden home, in a blighted state, is featured on the cover of Eminem's
Marshall Mathers LP 2
album. Debbie Mathers claims through her friend Molly Marshall that the "Headlights" video directed by Lee shows an accurate portrayal of her efforts to get her son's attention at his home by a security gate. That, however, is
to giving her son a warm embrace after years of drama that resulted in everything from harsh song lyrics to a defamation lawsuit. Molly Marshall claims Debbie Mathers is so eager to see her son that she quoted over the phone to her Monday night
"She simply wants to hold her boy," Marshall said. Eminem mentions in the “Headlights” song lyrics directed at his mother that “to this day we remain estranged and I hate it though, ‘cause you ain’t even get to witness your grandbabies grow.” Lyrics in “Headlights” also mention that his mother’s “mental state is deteriorating slow.” Neal Alpert, another friend of Debbie Mathers, said in April she seemed to be in good health and spirits, and is eager to repair her relationship with Eminem. "To my knowledge she is doing OK," Alpert said Eminem, better known as Slim Shady, issues an apology to his mother in “Headlights” for harsh and abusive lyrics dating back to 1999 that were used in several songs including “My Name Is” and “My Mom.” The lyrics were the focus of Debbie Mathers' defamation lawsuit in 2001 that led to her pursuit of $11 million worth of damages. She reportedly settled for $25,000,
of that because the rest reportedly went to attorney fees. Debbie Mathers appeared to regroup after the settlement and
called “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem” that was released in 2007. It was co-written by New York journalist Annette Witheridge. The book, upon its release, was described by the publisher as “the inside truth about Marshall Bruce Mathers III” that attempts to “untangle the outspoken and enigmatic alter egos Eminem and Slim Shady.” Witheridge told MLive.com she spent more than a year working with Debbie Mathers on the book and agrees with Alpert the matriarch seems eager to repair the relationship. “Nothing would make Debbie happier than if Eminem were to make amends with her,” Witheridge said. “She has longed to have a proper relationship with him for many, many years. “I don’t know if she’d like to explain to him what happened when she sued him … but she has never stopped loving him.” Witheridge believes that Debbie Mathers would like a private meeting with her son to “bury the hatchet." “I think she would prefer not to be in the spotlight because of his fans,” Witheridge said. “I do know that when he first became famous and was singing about Debbie, that she would get fans throwing chewing gum at her in the shopping mall and it would get stuck in her hair. “She became the most hated mother in America.”A clearer picture of the strategy Republicans in both the House and the Senate will use to stop President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty in government funding bills is beginning to emerge.
The key point is that no matter what package emerges, there seems to be a consensus emerging among Republicans on Capitol Hill: There will be no funding for Obama’s planned executive amnesty. There’s a number of different ways that can happen.
First, there could be a short-term Continuing Resolution passed that funds all of government from Dec. 11—when current funding measures end—until shortly after the newly-elect Senate GOP majority takes office in early 2015. At that point, the Senate and House Republicans would block Obama’s planned immigration executive order in some fashion—either in a bill that funds all of the rest of government except for that or by splitting various Appropriations bills into different packages that separates funding the Department of Homeland Security out from the rest of government.
Another possibility is that there may be some kind of effort to cut the funding for Obama’s planned executive amnesty in the lame duck session of Congress now, but that effort would likely be thwarted as one of the last acts of outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“House members are looking for a way to stop executive amnesty while passing a partial omnibus that contains some appropriations bills already passed by the House,” a House GOP aide close to the negotiations told Breitbart News. “The approach would separate the agencies involved in executive amnesty from the rest of the government funding, perhaps through a short-term CR combined with an omnibus, or a ‘cromnibus’ as it’s been coined in recent days.”
In statements to Politico, both incoming Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn and incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) affirmed that is likely to be the pathway forward for Republicans.
“I think there is a growing momentum to the idea that Congress would be acting responsibly and modestly if it funds the government but simply bars the president from executing policies that Congress believes shouldn’t be executed by denying funding,” Sessions, one of the loudest and most aggressive proponents of Congress asserting its authority here, said.
“It seems to me the two options are to do a temporary CR, for everything and to revisit it at all early next year — or to do something longer term on everything other than” the DHS appropriations, Cornyn said. “But I know there will be controversy about that as well.”
One of the best parts of this strategy for Republicans is that they can have their cake and eat it too—have the government funding fight, and have no risk of a government shutdown at all.
As Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told NewsMax TV this week, the only person talking about a “shutdown” is Obama.
“For whatever reason, the president and his people want to push this idea that somehow a shutdown is on the horizon, that somehow Republicans in Congress want that,” Lee, the incoming chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, said. “That’s absolute nonsense. I think he knows that to be true. I don’t know anyone in either house of Congress that that’s what they want.”
There’s a number of reasons why, unlike the Obamacare defunding battle, this fight won’t likely lead to a government shutdown. First off, unlike Obamacare, executive amnesty is not the law. It’s a lot easier to make a case to block funding to use Congress’ power of the purse to stop an executive amnesty, and Lee said he expects many of the Democrats who have publicly opposed Obama’s planned executive amnesty will join in the effort to stop him.
Secondly, unlike Obamacare, amnesty is not implemented yet—and an effort to block funding would prevent the expenditure of taxpayer dollars being used to carry out a future action; in this case, the printing of executive amnesty documents like work permits, ID cards, and Social Security numbers for illegal aliens.
Thirdly and most importantly, with full control of both chambers of Congress, the GOP can push through appropriations bills or a partial Continuing Resolution that funds everything except for the Department of Homeland Security—separating that out for another fight. They can force Obama to sign those because otherwise he’d have a tough time defending not funding things like Obamacare or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the separate DHS Appropriations bill, they can block funding for Obama’s planned executive amnesty—and if Obama won’t sign it, the only part of government that would stop working are government bureaucrats who fall under DHS who are deemed unnecessary. The Secret Service would continue operating, as would the Border Patrol and the TSA, among others.
It will take just a bit of political maneuvering to get into that position, something that’s clearly already under way.
The biggest obstacle to congressional Republicans standing up to Obama’s planned executive amnesty has been Republican leadership in both chambers.
“Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and their top aides and deputies are mulling several options that would give Capitol Hill Republicans the opportunity to vent their frustration with what they view as an unconstitutional power grab by the White House — without jeopardizing the government financing bill,” Politico’s Jake Sherman and Manu Raju wrote late Monday.
One option GOP leaders are considering that the Politico writers described—“offering a separate piece of immigration legislation on the floor aimed at tightening border security and demanding the president enforce existing laws”—is unlikely to fly with Republicans in Congress since it won’t stick. Later in the story, the Politico writers quote Cornyn saying that won’t be acceptable.
“I think it’s got to be money focused because he could refuse to sign anything and everything we send him,” Cornyn said. “I think [a stand-alone bill] is problematic.”
The other options have potential to work out, and it remains to be seen what leadership will do. GOP leaders are likely to need prior buy-in on the strategy from Republicans like Sessions and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as both have shown propensity to blow up legislative plans by Republicans when they don’t serve the interests of the American people.
Those other options include, according to Sherman and Raju, “promises to renew the effort next year when Republicans have larger numbers in both chambers, and passing two separate funding bills — a short-term bill with tight restrictions on immigration enforcement agencies, and another that would fund the rest of the government until the fall.”
“The leadership has not made any decisions, and is likely to weigh additional options, as well,” Sherman and Raju wrote. “The House does not expect to bounce between options on the floor — they will pick one, and stick with it, sources said.”
The biggest obstacle to stopping Obama has more specifically been House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY). Rogers has been leading the charge for a long-term omnibus funding bill that pays for all of government, including Obama’s amnesty plans, through the end of the 2015 fiscal year which concludes in September. Rogers wants to forfeit Congress’ power of the purse, and until this weekend there was no clear reason as to why.
A Breitbart News investigation published on Sunday gives some indication of Rogers’ motivation: a major campaign contributor of his, defense contractor General Dynamics, is seeking the contract to print the documents required by Obama to implement executive amnesty at a facility in Rogers’ congressional district in Corbin, Kentucky. The facility, which already prints immigration documents like green cards, IDs, and work permits for legal immigrants, would—if the federal government enlists it in the event of an executive amnesty—print the work permits, ID cards, and Social Security cards needed for Obama to grant the executive amnesty. Rogers and his team have not responded to multiple requests for comment for the several days leading up to the publication of the Breitbart News investigation and have not responded to requests for comment since.
Instead of responding to the report, Rogers wrote an op-ed published Monday afternoon for Roll Call in which he laid out his vision for a long-term omnibus—and made not mention of immigration whatsoever within it, despite that being the central theme of this fight.
In the piece, Rogers argues that Congress needs to return to passing individual appropriations bills, but “we have to first clear the decks on the leftover, current-year appropriations work.”
“We are now months behind in completing these annual bills, and the current temporary measure keeping the lights on in our government will expire on Dec. 11,” Rogers wrote.
Rogers’ efforts have fallen apart in recent days as Republicans—including Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus, Sens. Sessions, Pat Roberts (R-KS), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and many, many more—have stepped up to call for Congress to assert its power to block Obama’s amnesty. Now, Rogers doesn’t even have the full support of members of his own House Appropriations Committee, as a spokesman for committee member Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) told Breitbart News that his boss is working to develop a strategy to block Obama’s amnesty.
“Congressman Graves is working with House members to craft a plan to keep the government open and shut down the president’s executive amnesty,” John Donnelly, a spokesman for Graves, told Breitbart News.Porsche topped the time charts in opening practice for Sunday’s FIA WEC season-ending Six Hours of Sao Paulo, in a dominant 1-2 performance.
The No. 20 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Brendon Hartley reeled off a best lap of 1:19.172 in the 90-minute session, outpacing teammate Romain Dumas in the No. 14 entry by 0.339 seconds.
Audi’s Lucas di Grassi was third, ahead of both Toyota TS040 Hybrids, which ended the session in an uncharacteristic 4th and 6th overall.
G-Drive Racing led the way in LMP2, thanks to Olivier Pla’s 1:25.670 in the Ligier JS P2 Nissan.
The production-based ranks were topped by AF Corse (GTE-Pro) and Aston Martin Racing (GTE-Am).
The second and final Free Practice of the day is on tap for 5:30 p.m. local.
RESULTS: Free Practice 1Developers throughout Comcast are extremely active users, contributors and creators of open source software. For years, we’ve used GitHub to host the open-source code we develop and today we’re excited to unveil our updated presence there.
GitHub Pages are public websites for organizations, users, and repositories, which are generously hosted on a custom domain, or on GitHub’s ‘github.io’ domain. It’s a great toolset, that makes it easier for us to display and promote the internally developed projects that we have contributed back to the community. In addition to presenting the projects in a more organized fashion the new site:
Clearly identifies projects by category
Presents useful data, including which projects have recently been updated, which projects have been forked the most, and which projects are new.
Presents short, actionable descriptions of the projects, and lets us highlight those that are most active.
A couple examples of the open source projects showcased on our GitHub pages site are:
Speed-TestJS - A JavaScript and Node.js-based solution for Internet connection throughput-related measurements.
Apache Traffic Control - A caching server control plane application used to aggregate caching servers into a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
We’re always seeking to encourage new contributors. If you’re an open source developer, we hope you’ll visit our site, check out the projects we’re working on and consider contributing back. Not all contributions have to be code. Documentation improvements are also valuable, and so are bug reports. Check back often for the latest developments. If our projects piques your interest, check out our open jobs and come work at Comcast.California is considering legislation that would tighten Facebook's privacy practices, and the social network is not happy about it.
The bill, Social Networking Privacy Act (SB 242), would require Facebook and other social networking sites to make big changes to the way they handle users' privacy. Industry analysts say social networks like Facebook could be wary of this move for fear that it will lead to a slippery slope of government control and privacy rules.
"Facebook has been very passive about security. They put the onus on the user to figure the security out on their own," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group. "Now it would automatically be more secure."
The legislation, introduced by California Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, would require Facebook and other social networks doing business in the state to ensure that users set up their privacy settings during the initial registration process, instead of after they've already become users. It also would mandate that social networks set users' default settings to private, as opposed to making them open and forcing users to take action to gain privacy.
The legislation also would enable parents of a child under the age of 18 to have the social network remove their child's personally identifying information from the site.
Facebook opposes the legislation and is actively working to hinder its passage.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said company representatives have had half a dozen meetings with Corbett since January. The state senator also visited Facebook's office in Palo Alto and met with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
"In each of these interactions, we have raised serious concerns about SB 242 directly to Sen. Corbett," said Noyes. "We've also met face-to-face with the bill's author and every other member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to express our concerns. We will continue to make the case on our own and with other groups... because we and many other online safety experts and industry groups believe SB 242 in its current form is a serious threat both to Facebook's business in California and to meaningful California consumers' choices about use of personal data."
Noyes added that Facebook is concerned that the legislation would not "honor users' expectations" of how they use online sites.
However, analysts doubted that the legislation would dramatically hurt Facebook.
"I don't think that these particular regulations are all that onerous for Facebook," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "They'll have to make some changes, but it's not going to cost them users or much money... I think the fact that it would set a precedent is what's most troubling for them. If it goes through, then we now have a state that's dictating how a social network operates. In FB's view, it's the first slip down a slippery slope."
Kerravala said if the law passes in California, other states will soon follow suit, adding that he wouldn't be surprised to see federal legislation in the future.
"Some of this seems smart and a good idea, like making the default initial settings lean more private than public," Olds said. "But other pieces of the law make less sense... State-by-state regulation of anything online is very problematic. The very nature of online commerce or interaction makes state borders irrelevant."
He added that if Facebook pulls out all the stops to kill SB 242, the company might have a good chance of at least getting the legislation watered down.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.Vikings returns for volume 2 of it's fourth season. Ragnar's reappearance in Kattegat triggers a chain of events no one – except the Seer – could have ever imagined. He unexpectedly arrives home to see what has become of his sons and to handle unfinished business in Wessex with King Ecbert
Vikings Season 4 Reviews
“It's a solid set-up for Season 4 as Vikings has never really been the type of show to keep secrets from viewers, smartly setting its eyes on the how and why rather than the what.” – TV.com
“Season 4 smacks wonderfully of the power of legend and how such stories are built and why they persist.” – ScreenRant
“What Hirst and company have accomplished in terms of creating an appointment series on a channel with at best a modest scripted portfolio is no small feat. And in TV, as in the bloody eighth century, to the victor go the spoils.” – VarietyTwo games into his MLB career, Masahiro Tanaka looks very much like the number two starter he was expected to be when he left the Rakuten Golden Eagles. Yeah, he has shown a penchant for the long ball, but he has also struck out 18 of 56 batters faced (32.1%) while walking only one (1.8%). He leads the league in swing and miss rate (17.2%) and in getting hitters to chase out of the zone (43.9%), both by comfortable margins.
Obviously the element of surprise is working in Tanaka’s favor. Most MLB hitters have never faced him before, and while they can watch all the video and read all the scouting reports in the world, there’s no substitute for standing in the box and seeing him for yourself. Tanaka definitely has an advantage right now, but eventually that element of surprise will go away. That’s okay though! He’s not going to turn into Sidney Ponson once the book gets out. Or maybe he will. Who knows? Whatever.
Anyway, one thing I’ve noticed about Tanaka in his two starts is that he is very unpredictable. I don’t mean his performance, I mean his pitch selection. It seems like he will throw almost anything in any count, but that’s just what I’ve seen, or at least what I think I’ve seen. I always think back to this whenever I’m writing about anecdotal stuff. PitchFX can tell us more about Tanaka’s pitch selection than my memory, so with a big assist from Brooks Baseball, here is how he has pitched in various situations in his two starts:
Total Pitches FB% SNK% SLD% SPL% CB% CUT% Count Even 87 21.8% 21.8% 21.8% 18.4% 12.6% 2.3% Tanaka Ahead 64 17.2% 20.3% 23.4% 35.9% 1.6% 0.0% Batter Ahead 47 25.5% 44.7% 10.6% 14.9% 0.0% 4.3% ALL 198 21.20% 26.80% 19.70% 23.20% 6.60% 2.50%
I was originally planning to include a table with the pitch selection breakdown by count, but that was a mess of numbers and in some cases the sample was only a handful of pitches. It was too much information. Breaking it down like I did above works much better, trust me. (If you must see the individual count info, you can do it via the Brooks link above.)
The first thing that stands out to me is how Tanaka has pitched with the count even. The cutter is his clear sixth pitch but otherwise he will throw his four-seamer, sinker, slider, and splitter interchangeably in those situations. The curveball lags behind slightly. How do you prepare for that if you’re a hitter? You can’t sit on a pitch with the count even. You can get lucky and guess right, sure, but there’s no pattern there. You’re just as likely to see a straight four-seamer as you are his trademark splitter.
When he gets ahead in the count, Tanaka tends to lean on his slider and especially his splitter, understandably. Those are his out pitches and when you’re ahead, you try to finish hitters off. He still throws plenty of fastballs in those counts, enough to keep hitters honest. When he’s behind, it tends to be mostly fastballs, which is pretty common. Tanaka has still thrown at least four different pitches at least 10% of the time regardless of whether he’s ahead in the count, behind in the count, or even.
So yeah, my memory didn’t lie. Tanaka has been very unpredictable with his pitch selection in his two starts. That doesn’t mean he will pitch this way forever, but that’s what has happened so far. I tend to think unpredictability is a good thing when it comes to pitching, but there is also an argument to be made that Tanaka’s splitter is so good that he shouldn’t bother screwing around with his other pitches in certain situations. Here’s a quote from one scout, courtesy of Baseball Prospectus (no subs. req’d):
“Without a doubt the splitter is a difference maker; it could very well be the best in the game. But I have concerns about the way he nibbles at the plate and drives up his pitch counts at times. He also gets a little too reliant on the fastball as well, using it instead of the splitter too often when he’s ahead of the count. He does have velocity, but it’s not nearly the same caliber of putaway pitch as the splitter. Why eat ground chuck when you’ve got filet in the fridge?”
Tanaka has averaged only 3.54 pitches per plate appearance in his two starts, the 79th lowest among 93 qualified starters. The first two innings of his two starts have been rough, but he’s averaged 3.43 pitches per plate appearance in the first and second inning. It’s 3.60 pitches per plate appearances from the third inning onward. This does not necessarily mean the scout is wrong. Tanaka has had some extended at-bats (like everyone else) and perhaps he could cut down on those by emphasizing the splitter.
The early inning struggles have been annoying, but Tanaka has pitched very well overall against two tough lineups in his two starts. Hitters haven’t seen him and that’s a distinct advantage, and the fact that he mixes pitches and uses his arsenal so well makes him even more unpredictable. Even though he is only 25 years old, Tanaka definitely has a “crafty veteran” element to his pitching style, and it’s a lot of fun to watch.Superannuation tax breaks described by Australia Institute as the Hindenburg of the federal budget
Updated
A left-leaning think tank says the federal budget would be more than $13 billion better off if the Government scrapped all tax breaks on superannuation and dramatically increased the age pension.
The radical proposal is contained in a report by the Australia Institute, which will be released today, and comes amid increasing speculation the Coalition is preparing to increase the retirement age to 70.
"There is nothing in the budget that's going to grow faster than the tax concessions for superannuation," said the report's author Richard Denniss.
"It's the big elephant in the room. If we talk about the pension ballooning, well this is the Hindenburg."
The age pension and superannuation tax concessions are two major ways the Commonwealth helps retirees, but the policies are getting more expensive as Australia's population gets older.
"We're looking at around $70 billion in combined cost now with an estimated $100 billion in combined cost by 2020," Dr Denniss said.
"Superannuation concessions are unfair... the top 5 per cent of income earners get a third of the benefit, and the bottom 20 per cent get literally nothing."
The report suggests scrapping concessions entirely, introducing a universal or non-means-tested age pension and upping the current rate by about 7.5 per cent to $26,273 a year for singles and nearly $39,611 for couples.
The Australia Institute says that plan would cost about $52 billion annually, leaving the budget between $13 billion and $22 billion better off. It says more money would flow to women and poor people.
"You often hear people say the more people spend on superannuation tax concessions, the more we save on the age pension," Dr Denniss said.
"In theory that's possible, but in practice it's just not the case. If it were the case, the combined cost of these two schemes would be flat-lining."
The Australia Institute has long campaigned on superannuation tax breaks.
Its plan would hit high income earners, reduce the incentive for people to top up their superannuation and probably lead them to put more money into other investments with significant tax breaks, such as property.
"I don't expect all our proposals to be taken up... but the general public and the Government need to start seriously talking about superannuation concessions," Dr Denniss said.
"The report makes it clear... this issue is too big to avoid."
The idea is also likely to be fiercely opposed by superannuation funds.
The Financial Services Council says it will review the modelling and assumptions in the report before it comments.
Topics: budget, superannuation, tax, government-and-politics, older-people, community-and-society, australia
First postedNASA’s planet hunting space telescope Kepler added a record 1,284 confirmed planets to its already impressive discoveries of extraterrestrial worlds.
This batch of planets is the largest single account of new planets since Kepler launched in 2009 and more than doubles the number of confirmed planets realized by the space telescope so far to more than 2,300.
NASA: Kepler's most excellent space discoveries
"Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars,” said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA. "This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe."
The discoveries are a result of a technique developed at Princeton that lets scientists analyze thousands of signals Kepler has identified to determine which are most likely to be caused by planets and which are caused by non-planetary objects such as stars. This automated technique -- reported in The Astrophysical Journal on May 10 and implemented in a publicly available custom software package called Vespa -- computes the chances that the signal is in fact caused by a planet, the researchers said.
Kepler captures the discrete signals of distant planets – decreases in brightness that occur when planets pass in front of, or transit, their stars – much like the May 9 Mercury transit of our sun, NASA said.
“Vespa computed the reliability values for over 7,000 signals identified in the latest Kepler catalog which identified 4,302 potential planets and verified the 1,284 planets with 99% certainty. They also independently verified more than 700 additional planet signals that had already been confirmed as planets by other methods. In addition, the researchers identified 428 candidates as likely “false positives,” or signals generated by something other than a planet,” the Princeton researchers said.
"Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs,” said Morton. “If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you're going to need a broom. This statistical analysis is our broom."
According to NASA, in the newly validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this select group.
The fact that Kepler is still operating is amazing. Kepler you may recall was rendered inoperable after the second of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft for extended periods of time, failed in 2103 ending data collection for the original mission. The spacecraft required three working wheels to maintain the precision pointing necessary to detect the signal of small Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting stars like our sun in habitable zone -- the range of distances from a star where the surface temperature of a planet might be suitable for liquid water, NASA stated.
NASA Kepler and Ball Aerospace engineers say they have developed a way of recovering this pointing stability by maneuvering the spacecraft so that solar pressure - the pressure exerted when the photons of sunlight strike the spacecraft -- is evenly distributed across the surfaces of the spacecraft. NASA says by orienting the spacecraft nearly parallel to its orbital path around the sun, which is slightly offset from the ecliptic, the orbital plane of Earth, it can achieve spacecraft stability. The ecliptic plane defines the band of sky in which lie the constellations of the zodiac.
With a couple glitches – one recently that saw Kepler go into Emergency mode—the K2 system as it is known, has performed well and continues to send back myriad details of the little patch of space it watches.
Check out these other hot stories:
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NASA, FAA showoff wireless aircraft communication technology
Meet EMILY, the robotic life-guard that may save you from drowning some day
NASA, FAA showoff wireless aircraft communication technologyWhat a rush! Mad Max Is back, and louder, brasher and crazier than ever. Yes, it’s borderline ridiculous, but boy does it know it. George Miller’s rejuvenation of the long slumbering franchise is a beast, embracing its roots, and the more ‘out there’ elements of its universe, to provide a non-stop, roller coaster ride of a movie. But the film’s greatest strength is that amongst the carnage, chaos and downright insane action, there is a script worthy of making this much more than your standard summer blockbuster. This is how action should be done.
Mad Max’s post-apocloplytic world has never looked so go. The daylight drenches the outback in stunning oranges, whilst the night brings with it deep blues, with these rich colours intermingling stunningly at times, providing a beautiful back drop for the road tip of a lifetime. Director of Photography John Seale brings a tangible vibrancy to proceedings, which work wonderfully in unison with the smorgasbord of eclectic costumes, characters and, of course, action on the screen. The aforementioned elements are designed and executed with a rawness, combining realism and fantasy with expertise. Yes, this is a far fetched land, but it is one that is believable.
And in this world where we find our titular character Max, there are foul inequalities around every corner. Pregnant women are farmed for their milk, the lowly citizens scramble for smatterings of water afforded to them by their villainous cult leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), and human beings are used as “blood bags” to keep sickly warriors, born with defects and illness in good health.
This is where Max (Tom Hardy) finds his early purpose in the film, as a lifeline for one of Immortan Joe’s warriors, War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), strung up to the bonnet of his car to provide a constant source of healthy blood as he joins a party in pursuit of the film’s real lead, Furiosa, played by the impressive Charlize Theron. For Furiosa has in her possession the cult leader’s Five Wives, a rare handful of women who might be able to provide him with a son born free of illness.
For a film that features an explosion at least every five minutes or so, its story is fairly dense. It’s a personal journey (both figuratively and literally) for Furiosa as she strives to take the Wives to safety, and it’s one which Max is almost a passenger in. The film may be called Mad Max, but this is very much Furiosa, and Charlize Theron’s show. Tom Hardy does a great job filling Mel Gibson’s shoes (whilst doing his utmost to repress his Bane voice which seems to creep in now and then), but standing toe to toe with Theron’s Furiosa, her character simply has more depth, more development, and is therefore more interesting.
It’s a bumpy road that they’re on though. A road movie this may be, but not that kind that Kermit and company took you on in The Muppet Movie (1979). The action is simply incredible, and in many respects old fashioned – practical effects reign supreme over visual effects, and the stunt men and women of the film certainly earn their keep. But on the other hand, the scope and scale of the sweeping shots and flipping cars is beyond anything put to screen previously. It’s ambitious in its approach, and it pays off sensationally throughout. Director George Miller has his proverbial foot on the gas, and rather than this being set piece after set piece, it’s one ginormous, operatic, refined mess of action, as though Miller is releasing a glut pent up energy after spending the best part of the past two decades working on light hearted family films.
The missteps are small – there is a vague love story between Nicholas Hoult’s Nux and one of the Wives. Max suffers from flashbacks to his troubled past which don’t lead to all that much and he possibly could have done with a bit more meat on the bones of his character, but otherwise this is an exceptional example of how action movies should be made. It thrives on its crazy, and excels because of its excessiveness. What’s not to enjoy about a movie that features flame throwing guitars, adrenaline fuelled mayhem and a healthy dose of drama for good measure? Sign me up!
In short:
A callback to the good old days of practical effects that sets the standard for just how good a modern blockbuster can be, Mad Max: Fury Road is a stroke of genius from director George Miller. Bold, brash and beautiful from start to finish.
Rating (out of 5):Harry Kane is so “driven to be one of the world’s best” that he constantly compares his statistics to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Southgate has said.
The England manager added that despite his admission that his side were far behind Spain, their coach Julen Lopetegui had told him he was “lucky” to have Kane in his team.
For the record Kane is 24 years and 38 days old and has scored 125 career goals. By the same age Ronaldo, who had admittedly played most of his games as a wide player to that point, had 137 goals. Messi was way out in front on 203. Not that Kane is deterred.
“I was having some interaction with Julen Lopetegui at a game where he was commenting on how lucky I was to have Harry playing,” Southgate said. “He's in top form, but he's also got the mentality to want to be the best. He knew this morning how many goals in games he had, and also how many Ronaldo and Messi had at this point. He's driven to be one of the world's best. Why can't that happen moving forward?”
Kane is a contender to be England captain under Southgate – although Jordan Henderson will retain the armband for the World Cup qualifier against Slovakia at Wembley on Monday – and the manager added: “I have every trust in Harry. I've worked with him long enough, from the Under-21s through, and he'll deliver whatever the occasion.City in Cuba
Camagüey ( Spanish pronunciation: [kamaˈɣwej]) is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third-largest city with more than 321,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province.
History [ edit ]
Camagüey was founded as Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe in 1514, by Spanish colonists led by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at a location now known as Nuevitas on the northern coast. It was one of the seven original settlements (villas) founded in Cuba by the Spanish. The settlement was moved inland in 1528 to the site of a Taino village named Camagüey. The village may have been named for a local chief, or perhaps for a tree endemic to the region.
The new city was built with a confusing lay-out of winding alleys. There are many blind alleys and |
66 #12 -- 17,286 (- 7.3%) 07/2014: Batman '66 #13 -- 17,264 (- 0.1%) 08/2014: Batman '66 #14 -- 21,456 (+ 24.3%) 09/2014: Batman '66 #15 -- 16,842 (- 21.5%) 10/2014: Batman '66 #16 -- 15,923 (- 5.5%) 11/2014: Batman '66 #17 -- 15,585 (- 2.1%) 12/2014: Batman '66 #18 -- 15,409 (- 1.1%) 01/2015: -- 02/2015: Batman '66 #19 -- 14,770 (- 4.1%) 02/2015: Batman '66 #20 -- 14,525 (- 1.7%) 03/2015: Batman '66 #21 -- 14,238 (- 2.0%) 04/2015: Batman '66 #22 -- 14,135 (- 0.7%) 05/2015: Batman '66 #23 -- 20,045 (+ 41.8%) 06/2015: Batman '66 #24 -- 13,653 (- 31.9%) ----------------- 6 months: - 11.4% 1 year : - 21.0%
Whatever the reason for last month’s mysterious leap up, it’s gone. Just one of those things, I guess…
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164 - ASTRO CITY (Vertigo) ($3.99) 06/2005: Dark Age #1 -- 32,690 06/2010: -- 06/2011: -- 06/2012: -- 06/2013: Astro City #1 -- 27,700 ------------------------------ ------ 06/2014: Astro City #13 -- 13,419 (- 2.7%) 07/2014: -- 08/2014: Astro City #14 -- 13,069 (- 2.6%) 09/2014: Astro City #15 -- 12,660 (- 3.1%) 10/2014: Astro City #16 -- 12,480 (- 1.4%) 11/2014: Astro City #17 -- 12,055 (- 3.4%) 12/2014: Astro City #18 -- 11,985 (- 0.6%) 01/2015: Astro City #19 -- 11,734 (- 2.1%) 02/2015: Astro City #20 -- 11,603 (- 1.1%) 03/2015: Astro City #21 -- 11,492 (- 1.0%) 04/2015: Astro City #22 -- 11,359 (- 1.2%) 05/2015: Astro City #23 -- 11,215 (- 1.3%) 06/2015: Astro City #24 -- 11,226 (+ 0.1%) ----------------- 6 months: - 6.3% 1 year : - 16.3% 2 years : - 59.5% 5 years : n.a. 10 years: - 65.7%
Holding steady.
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170 - SENSATION COMICS FEAT WONDER WOMAN (Digital-First) ($3.99) 08/2014: Sensation Comics #1 -- 29,640 09/2014: Sensation Comics #2 -- 22,085 (- 25.5%) 10/2014: Sensation Comics #3 -- 17,996 (- 18.5%) 11/2014: Sensation Comics #4 -- 16,573 (- 7.9%) 12/2014: Sensation Comics #5 -- 14,323 (- 13.6%) 01/2015: Sensation Comics #6 -- 12,927 (- 9.7%) 02/2015: Sensation Comics #7 -- 12,115 (- 6.3%) 03/2015: Sensation Comics #8 -- 11,399 (- 5.9%) 04/2015: Sensation Comics #9 -- 11,007 (- 3.4%) 05/2015: Sensation Comics #10 -- 10,565 (- 4.0%) 06/2015: Sensation Comics #11 -- 10,761 (+ 1.9%) ---------------- 6 months: - 24.9%
A slight correction upward; maybe it has found its level? If so, it’s the same level that Adventures of Superman found, and it was cancelled after seventeen issues.
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179 - THE FLASH: SEASON ZERO (Digital-First) ($2.99) 10/2014: Flash Season 0 #1 -- 23,501 11/2014: Flash Season 0 #2 -- 14,287 (- 39.2%) 12/2014: Flash Season 0 #3 -- 12,247 (- 14.3%) 01/2015: Flash Season 0 #4 -- 10,806 (- 11.8%) 02/2015: Flash Season 0 #5 -- 10,450 (- 3.3%) 03/2015: Flash Season 0 #6 -- 10,188 (- 2.5%) 04/2015: Flash Season 0 #7 -- 10,152 (- 0.4%) 05/2015: Flash Season 0 #8 -- 11,037 (+ 8.7%) 06/2015: Flash Season 0 #9 -- 9,689 (- 12.2%) ---------------- 6 months: - 20.9%
After last month’s mysterious rise, a correction back down.
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180 - YOUNG GOTHAM SAMPLER ($1.00) 06/2015: Young Gotham Sampler -- 9,686
A bargain-priced reprint of stories from Grayson, Gotham Academy, and Batgirl.
(Excluded from the averages and analyses below, due to its being primarily a promotional item.)
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190 - TEEN TITANS GO! (Digital-First) ($2.99) 06/2005: Teen Titans Go! #20 -- 14,114 ------------------------------ -------- 06/2014: Teen Titans Go! #4 -- 8,667 (+ 5.9%) 07/2014: -- 08/2014: Teen Titans Go! #5 -- 8,688 (+ 0.2%) 09/2014: -- 10/2014: Teen Titans Go! #6 -- 8,677 (- 0.1%) 11/2014: -- 12/2014: Teen Titans Go! #7 -- 8,254 (- 4.9%) 01/2015: -- 02/2015: Teen Titans Go! #8 -- 7,917 (- 4.1%) 03/2015: -- 04/2015: Teen Titans Go! #9 -- 8,395 (+ 6.0%) 05/2015: -- 06/2015: Teen Titans Go! #10 -- 8,883 (+ 5.8%) ----------------- 6 months: + 7.6% 1 year : + 2.5% 10 years: - 37.1%
The second straight issue with small but measurable growth.
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193 - SUICIDERS (Vertigo) ($3.99) 02/2015: Suiciders #1 -- 18,275 03/2015: Suiciders #2 -- 10,585 (- 42.1%) 04/2015: Suiciders #3 -- 9,891 (- 6.6%) 05/2015: Suiciders #4 -- 9,316 (- 5.8%) 06/2015: Suiciders #5 -- 8,731 (- 6.3%)
The percentage drops are getting to be a bit uncomfortable at this point.
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197 - ARROW: SEASON 2.5 (Digital-First) ($2.99) 06/2013: Arrow #8 -- 9,671 ------------------------------ -------- 10/2014: Arrow Season 2.5 #1 -- 17,364 (+113.1%) 11/2014: Arrow Season 2.5 #2 -- 11,121 (- 36.0%) 12/2014: Arrow Season 2.5 #3 -- 9,862 (- 11.3%) 01/2015: Arrow Season 2.5 #4 -- 9,302 (- 5.7%) 02/2015: Arrow Season 2.5 #5 -- 9,060 (- 2.6%) 03/2015: Arrow Season 2.5 #6 -- 9,055 (- 0.1%) 04/2015: Arrow Season 2.5 #7 -- 8,671 (- 4.2%) 05/2015: Arrow Season 2.5 #8 -- 8,644 (- 0.3%) 06/2015: Arrow Season 2.5 #9 -- 8,592 (- 0.6%) ---------------- 6 months: - 12.9% 2 years : - 11.2%
Seems to have found its level. Is it enough to give a go to a Season 3.5? Probably, as DC will want to keep a comic tying in to their TV properties. DC have cancelled the print version and kept the digital version going for a television tie-in before (see Vampire Diaries), but the print will have to drop a lot further on Arrow before it comes to that. Maybe they’ll try something kind of novel for the next go-around, like a Flash/Arrow crossover comic.
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210 - FABLES: THE WOLF AMONG US (Vertigo) (Digital-First) ($3.99) 01/2015: Fables: TWAU #1 -- 13,620 02/2015: Fables: TWAU #2 -- 10,224 (- 24.9%) 03/2015: Fables: TWAU #3 -- 9,352 (- 8.5%) 04/2015: Fables: TWAU #4 -- 8,793 (- 6.0%) 05/2015: Fables: TWAU #5 -- 8,378 (- 4.7%) 06/2015: Fables: TWAU #6 -- 8,019 (- 4.3%)
Still dropping a few hundred per month.
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249 - INFINITE CRISIS: FIGHT FOR THE MULTIVERSE (Digital-First) ($3.99) 07/2014: Infinite Crisis FftM #1 -- 26,096 08/2014: Infinite Crisis FftM #2 -- 15,340 (- 41.2%) 09/2014: Infinite Crisis FftM #3 -- 13,884 (- 9.5%) 10/2014: Infinite Crisis FftM #4 -- 11,348 (- 18.3%) 11/2014: Infinite Crisis FftM #5 -- 8,920 (- 21.4%) 12/2014: Infinite Crisis FftM #6 -- 7,809 (- 12.5%) 01/2015: Infinite Crisis FftM #7 -- 7,231 (- 7.4%) 02/2015: Infinite Crisis FftM #8 -- 6,498 (- 10.1%) 03/2015: Infinite Crisis FftM #9 -- 6,236 (- 4.0%) 04/2015: Infinite Crisis FftM #10 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: Infinite Crisis FftM #11 -- 5,959 06/2015: Infinite Crisis FftM #12 -- 6,211 (+ 4.2%) ---------------- 6 months: - 20.5%
Sales rise a bit for the final issue.
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281 - COFFIN HILL (Vertigo) ($3.99) 06/2014: Coffin Hill #8 -- 8,764 (- 8.2%) 07/2014: Coffin Hill #9 -- 8,396 (- 4.2%) 08/2014: Coffin Hill #10 -- 7,710 (- 8.1%) 09/2014: Coffin Hill #11 -- 7,422 (- 3.7%) 10/2014: Coffin Hill #12 -- 7,136 (- 3.9%) 11/2014: Coffin Hill #13 -- 6,752 (- 5.4%) 12/2014: Coffin Hill #14 -- 6,410 (- 5.1%) 01/2015: -- 02/2015: Coffin Hill #15 -- 5,933 (- 7.4%) 03/2015: Coffin Hill #16 -- 5,785 (- 2.5%) 04/2015: Coffin Hill #17 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: Coffin Hill #18 -- 5,423 06/2015: Coffin Hill #19 -- 5,319 (- 1.9%) ----------------- 6 months: - 17.0% 1 year : - 39.3%
The price rises to $3.99, which appears that it’s going to be the new standard for Vertigo going forward.
Ending with issue #21. Or rather it was. An issue #21 was solicited, but it was recently cancelled by the publisher and issue #20 sure seemed like a final issue.
—
292 - SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? (All-Ages) ($2.99) 06/2005: Scooby-Doo #97 -- 4,819 06/2010: Scooby-Doo #157 --????? 06/2011: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #10 -- 4,774 06/2012: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #22 -- 4,968 06/2013: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #34 -- 4,881 ------------------------------ ----------------- 06/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #46 --????? (< 4,560) 07/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #47 --????? (< 6,594) 08/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #48 --????? (< 5,357) 09/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #49 --????? (< 6,262) 10/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #50 --????? (< 6,298) 11/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #51 --????? (< 5,214) 12/2014: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #52 --????? (< 5,053) 01/2015: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #53 -- 4,703 02/2015: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #54 --????? (< 4,804) 03/2015: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #55 --????? (< 4,917) 04/2015: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #56 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #57 -- 4,794 06/2015: Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #58 -- 5,033 (+ 5.0%) ----------------- 6 months:???% 1 year :???% 2 years : + 3.1% 5 years :???% 10 years: + 4.4%
It’s been a while since Scooby-Doo has had recorded sales over 5K (November 2012), though who knows what it was doing all those months there the Top 300 cut-off was above that mark.
—
+300 - THE KITCHEN (Vertigo) ($2.99) 11/2014: The Kitchen #1 of 8 -- 14,066 12/2014: The Kitchen #2 of 8 -- 7,403 (- 47.4%) 01/2015: The Kitchen #3 of 8 -- 6,328 (- 14.5%) 02/2015: The Kitchen #4 of 8 -- 5,153 (- 18.6%) 03/2015: The Kitchen #5 of 8 --????? (< 4,917) 04/2015: The Kitchen #6 of 8 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: The Kitchen #7 of 8 -- 4,473 06/2015: The Kitchen #8 of 8 --????? (< 4,684) ----------------- 6 months:???%
+300 - STRANGE SPORTS STORIES (Vertigo) ($4.99) 03/2015: Strange Sports #1 of 4 -- 9,003 04/2015: Strange Sports #2 of 4 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: Strange Sports #3 of 4 --????? (< 4,462) 05/2015: Strange Sports #3 of 4 --????? (< 4,684)
+300 - EFFIGY (Vertigo) ($3.99) 01/2015: Effigy #1 -- 11,656 02/2015: Effigy #2 -- 6,408 (- 45.0%) 03/2015: Effigy #3 --????? (< 4,917) 04/2015: Effigy #4 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: Effigy #5 --????? (< 4,462) 06/2015: Effigy #6 --????? (< 4,684)
+300 - FBP: FEDERAL BUREAU OF PHYSICS (Vertigo) ($3.99) 06/2014: FBP #11 -- 6,958 (- 3.9%) 07/2014: FBP #12 --????? (< 6,594) 08/2014: FBP #13 -- 6,189 09/2014: -- 10/2014: FBP #14 --????? (< 6,298) 11/2014: FBP #15 -- 5,288 12/2014: FBP #16 --????? (< 5,053) 01/2015: FBP #17 -- 4,707 02/2015: FBP #18 --????? (< 4,804) 03/2015: FBP #19 --????? (< 4,917) 04/2015: -- 05/2015: FBP #20 --????? (< 4,462) 06/2015: FBP #21 --????? (< 4,684) ----------------- 6 months:????% 1 year :????%
Four Vertigo series miss the Top 300 this month. It’s the final issues for The Kitchen and Strange Sports Stories, while Effigy and FBP increase their price to Vertigo’s new $3.99 standard.
+300 - LOONEY TUNES (All-Ages) ($2.99) 06/2005: Looney Tunes #127 -- 2,991 06/2010: Looney Tunes #187 --????? 06/2011: Looney Tunes #199 --????? 06/2012: Looney Tunes #208 --????? 06/2013: Looney Tunes #213 --????? ------------------------------ ---------- 06/2014: Looney Tunes #219 --????? (< 4,560) 07/2014: -- 08/2014: Looney Tunes #220 --????? (< 5,357) 09/2014: -- 10/2014: Looney Tunes #221 --????? (< 6,298) 11/2014: -- 12/2014: Looney Tunes #222 --????? (< 5,053) 01/2015: -- 02/2015: Looney Tunes #223 --????? (< 4,804) 03/2015: -- 04/2015: Looney Tunes #224 --????? (< 6,352) 05/2015: -- 06/2015: Looney Tunes #225 --????? (< 4,684) ----------------- 6 months:????% 1 year :????% 2 years :????% 5 years :????% 10 years:????%
And Looney Tunes rounds out the bottom of the sales chart, as it does every even-numbered month.
I’m sure that there’s a good reason why this continues to be published, though I’m surprised that they haven’t converted this to being a Digital-First title by now.
—
Average Periodical Sales (not counting reprints, reorders shipping after the initial month of release, and magazines)
DC COMICS 06/2005: 32,001 06/2010: 25,788 06/2011: 25,814 06/2012: 37,599 06/2013: 34,517 --------------- 06/2014: 32,834 (+ 3.4%)** 07/2014: 32,760 (+ 0.2%)** 08/2014: 28,951 (- 11.6%)** 09/2014: 46,869 (+ 61.9%)** 10/2014: 31,598 (- 32.6%)** 11/2014: 28,654 (- 9.3%)** 12/2014: 29,047 (+ 1.4%)** 01/2015: 24,289 (- 16.4%) 02/2015: 24,537 (+ 1.0%)** 03/2015: 23,466 (- 4.4%)** 04/2015: 38,318 (+ 63.3%)** 05/2015: 31,237 (- 18.5%)** 06/2015: 35,318 (+ 13.1%)** ----------------- 6 months: + 21.6% 1 year : + 7.8% 2 years : + 2.3% 5 years : + 37.0% 10 years: + 10.4%
DC UNIVERSE 06/2005: 39,888 06/2010: 34,612 06/2011: 28,673 06/2012: 43,082 06/2013: 37,133 --------------- 06/2014: 42,733 (+ 8.0%) 07/2014: 40,945 (- 4.2%) 08/2014: 36,645 (- 10.5%) 09/2014: 63,401 (+ 73.0%)** 10/2014: 39,978 (- 36.9%) 11/2014: 36,710 (- 8.2%) 12/2014: 34,882 (- 5.0%) 01/2015: 30,680 (- 12.0%) 02/2015: 32,403 (+ 5.6%) 03/2015: 28,559 (- 11.9%) 04/2015: 49,845 (+ 74.5%) 05/2015: 42,635 (- 14.5%) 06/2015: 46,980 (+ 10.2%) ----------------- 6 months: + 34.7% 1 year : + 9.9% 2 years : + 26.5% 5 years : + 35.7% 10 years: + 17.8%
VERTIGO 06/2005: 14,165 06/2010: 10,995 06/2011: 10,415 06/2012: 11,448 06/2013: 17,368 --------------- 06/2014: 11,372 (- 3.4%) 07/2014: 15,803 (+ 39.0%)** 08/2014: 9,082 (- 42.5%) 09/2014: 10,022 (+ 10.4%)** 10/2014: 9,066 (- 9.5%)** 11/2014: 8,511 (- 6.1%)** 12/2014: 13,195 (+ 55.0%)** 01/2015: 8,361 (- 36.6%) 02/2015: 8,612 (+ 3.0%)** 03/2015: 7,055 (- 15.6%)** 04/2015: 7,257 (+ 2.9%)** 05/2015: 10,616 (+ 46.3%)** 06/2015: 8,011 (- 24.5%)** ----------------- 6 months: - 39.3% 1 year : - 29.6% 2 years : - 53.9% 5 years : - 27.1% 10 years: - 43.4%
—
6 month comparisons =================== +169.0% - Constantine +135.4% - Red Hood/Arsenal (Red Hood & the Outlaws) + 89.7% - Justice League 3001 (JL3K) + 49.0% - Earth 2 + 41.3% - Green Arrow + 35.4% - Justice League + 33.2% - Batman + 28.6% - Suicide Squad + 14.1% - Deathstroke + 12.5% - Action Comics + 11.4% - Flash + 10.0% - Batman/Superman + 7.8% - Aquaman + 7.6% - Teen Titans Go! + 6.0% - Superman + 5.2% - Wonder Woman + 5.1% - Harley Quinn + 4.9% - Detective Comics + 3.8% - Green Lantern + 3.0% - Catwoman + 0.3% - Gotham Academy - 2.0% - Teen Titans - 3.5% - Superman/Wonder Woman - 4.6% - Lobo - 5.8% - Injustice - 6.3% - Astro City - 7.0% - Grayson - 11.3% - Sinestro - 11.4% - Batman '66 - 12.9% - Arrow Season 2.5 - 17.0% - Coffin Hill - 19.7% - Gotham by Midnight - 20.5% - Infinite Crisis: Fight for the Multiverse - 20.9% - Flash Season Zero - 24.9% - Sensation Comics feat. Wonder Woman - 35.4% - Secret Six - 38.6% - Batgirl
1 year comparisons =================== +320.5% - Batman Beyond +150.8% - Constantine + 46.4% - Justice League 3001 (JL3K) + 33.2% - Red Hood/Arsenal (Red Hood & the Outlaws) + 28.7% - Justice League + 25.6% - Batgirl + 25.2% - Green Arrow + 15.8% - Batman + 14.1% - Harley Quinn + 2.5% - Teen Titans Go! - 4.6% - Earth 2 - 5.2% - Sinestro - 6.1% - Wonder Woman - 12.6% - Flash - 16.3% - Astro City - 18.8% - Green Lantern - 19.8% - Catwoman - 20.3% - Injustice - 20.4% - Action Comics - 21.0% - Batman '66 - 21.0% - Detective Comics - 25.0% - Aquaman - 36.5% - Wonder Woman - 39.3% - Coffin Hill - 48.4% - Superman
2 year comparisons =================== +282.5% - Batman Beyond +110.1% - Justice League of America + 84.3% - New Suicide Squad + 56.6% - Constantine + 36.0% - Red Hood/Arsenal (Red Hood & the Outlaws) + 25.8% - Wonder Woman + 20.6% - Superman + 9.7% - Green Arrow + 6.2% - Flash + 5.6% - Catwoman + 5.1% - Earth 2 + 3.8% - Justice League + 3.1% - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? - 3.7% - Teen Titans - 3.8% - Batman - 5.1% - Action Comics - 8.6% - Grayson (Nightwing) - 11.2% - Arrow - 11.6% - Detective Comics - 19.3% - Batgirl - 28.2% - Aquaman - 36.4% - Green Lantern - 40.7% - Injustice - 59.5% - Astro City
5 year comparisons =================== +309.8% - Constantine (Hellblazer) +140.4% - Justice League of America + 56.6% - Batman/Superman (Superman/Batman) + 55.5% - Justice League (JLA) + 44.0% - Batman + 35.9% - Teen Titans + 35.1% - Batgirl + 29.7% - Secret Six + 24.8% - Detective Comics + 18.5% - Red Hood + 10.1% - Action Comics - 21.0% - Superman - 28.9% - Wonder Woman - 40.0% - Flash - 46.8% - Green Lantern - 48.7% - Green Arrow
10 year comparisons =================== +176.5% - Constantine (Hellblazer) +124.4% - Batman + 82.7% - Aquaman + 58.2% - Justice League of America + 49.7% - Detective Comics + 45.1% - Batgirl + 42.9% - Wonder Woman + 25.3% - Catwoman + 8.2% - Grayson (Nightwing) + 4.4% - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? + 2.5% - Action Comics + 2.3% - Justice League (JLA) - 5.7% - Green Arrow - 13.2% - Superman - 16.9% - Flash - 37.1% - Teen Titans Go! - 52.6% - Teen Titans - 56.9% - Batman/Superman (Superman/Batman) - 62.1% - Green Lantern - 65.7% - Astro City
Sales Indices ============= DCU: Average: 46,980. Median: 40,013. 3.2 - Justice League of America 3.0 - Batman 2.1 - Justice League 1.5 - Harley Quinn & Power Girl 1.5 - Robin, Son of Batman 1.5 - Harley Quinn 1.3 - Batman Beyond 1.2 - Detective Comics 1.2 - We Are Robin 1.1 - Superman 1.1 - Starfire 1.0 - Batman/Superman 1.0 - Green Lantern Lost Army 1.0 - Green Lantern 1.0 - Wonder Woman 1.0 - Earth 2 Society 1.0 - Black Canary 0.9 - Action Comics 0.9 - Red Hood/Arsenal 0.9 - New Suicide Squad 0.9 - COnstantine: The Hellblazer 0.9 - Flash 0.9 - Martian Manhunter 0.8 - Superman/Wonder Woman 0.8 - Grayson 0.8 - Doctor Fate 0.8 - Deathstroke 0.8 - Bizarro 0.8 - Bat-Mite 0.8 - Doomed 0.8 - Midnighter 0.8 - Justice League 3001 0.7 - All-Star Section Eight 0.7 - Aquaman 0.7 - Teen Titans 0.7 - Batgirl 0.7 - The Omega Men 0.7 - Prez 0.6 - Green Arrow 0.6 - Wonder Woman Annual 0.6 - Sinestro 0.6 - Secret Six 0.6 - Catwoman 0.6 - Gotham Academy 0.5 - Gotham By Midnight 0.4 - Lobo Vertigo: Average: 8,011*. Median: 5,319* 2.6 - Mad Max Furiosa 1.4 - Astro City 1.1 - Suiciders 1.0 - Fables: The Wolf Among Us 0.7 - Coffin Hill 0.6 - The Kitchen * 0.6 - Strange Sports Stories * 0.6 - Effigy * 0.6 - FBP * Digital First & Other: Average: 11,093*. Median: 10,255* 1.9 - Batman Arkham Knight 1.4 - Injustice Year Four 3 1.4 - Injustice Year Four 4 1.3 - Mortal Kombat X 1.2 - Batman '66 1.0 - Sensation Comics feat. Wonder Woman 0.9 - Flash Season Zero 0.8 - Teen Titans Go! 0.8 - Arrow Season 2.5 0.6 - Infinite Crisis: Fight for the Multiverse 0.5 - Scooby-Doo Where Are You? 0.3 - Looney Tunes *
—
The Fine Print (Disclaimers, et cetera)
The numbers above are estimates for comic-book sales in the North American direct market, as calculated by ICv2.com according to the chart and index information provided by Diamond Comic Distributors.
ICv2.com’s estimates are somewhat lower than the actual numbers, but they are consistent from month to month, so the trends they show are fairly accurate. Since it’s a “month-to-month” column, the comments, unless otherwise noted, are on the most recent month.
Bear in mind that the figures measure sales of physical comics to retailers, not customers. Also, these numbers do not include sales to bookstores, newsstands, other mass-market retail chains or the United Kingdom. Re-orders are included, so long as they either reached stores in a book’s initial calendar month of release or were strong enough to make the chart again in a subsequent month. Keep in mind that sales for some titles may include incentives to acquire variants and not every unit sold is necessarily even intended to be sold to a customer.
If additional copies of an issue did appear on the chart after a book’s initial calendar month of release, you can see the total number of copies sold in brackets behind those issues (e.g. “[36,599]”). Should more than one issue have shipped in a month which is relevant for one of the long-term comparisons, the average between them will be used.
Titles which are returnable have their numbers artificially adjusted down by Diamond. To make up for that this column increases the reported numbers for those titles by 10%. Which is likely also wrong, but it’s a different and likely less wrong kind of wrong, and experience has shown that this leads to sales figures which are more consistent.
Titles released under the All-Ages line and magazines, such as Mad, mostly sell through channels other than the direct market, so direct-market sales don’t tell us much about their performance. For most Vertigo titles, collection sales tend to be a significant factor, so the numbers for those books should be taken with a grain of salt as well. To learn (a little) more about Vertigo’s collection sales, go right here.
Please keep in mind that raw sales numbers do not tell us about how profitable a book is for a publisher or for the creators.
Above all, do not allow sales numbers to dictate your purchasing and enjoyment of a particular comic. If you enjoy reading a comic series then go right on buying and reading that comic, no matter what the sales figures say.
** Two asterisks after a given month in the average charts mean that one or more periodical release did not make the Top 300/400 chart in that month. In those cases, it’s assumed that said releases sold as many units as the No. 300/400 comic on the chart for that month for the purposes of the chart, although its actual sales are likely to be less than that.
Opinions expressed in this column are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Heidi MacDonald or anyone at The Comics Beat, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or my former neighbor’s dog Miles.
The author of this column does weekly snapshots of Amazon comic sales charts at http://yetanothercomicsblog. blogspot.com/ and tweets about comics and related subjects on Twitter at @davereadscomics (PM me there is you need to contact me).
As always, we welcome your comments and corrections below. Please try to keep things civilized.
The Beat Staff is an elite group of trained ninjas.
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, after we had visited the base in Qatar, where many of these aircraft take off from. What they told us in the case of, for example, the incident I just described to you with these injured women who could not afford medical treatment, was that in that case they had conducted an airstrike just meters away on that day. So this is very likely a coalition airstrike.
And these individuals, who often don’t even have cellphones that are working all of the time, have very little means and access. And we have now turned over all of those allegations that were close to where the coalition reported coordinates to us. And we are waiting to hear a response to them about whether or not they’re even going to investigate them.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Azmat, when you went—when Basim went to the U.S. lawyer and he laid out all he had lost—this is outside of the agony of the loss of his family—his wife, his daughter, his nephew, deeply close to him, and his brother next door—talked about what the houses were worth. He owns a downtown building in Mosul, said something like $500,000. And then they said, altogether, $15,000, if they sign—if he signs on the dotted line. How common is this? And, I mean, he’s talking about—even this wouldn’t have happened, though he’s not gotten a letter that he’s not part of ISIS, even if they say it to him privately. How typical is this?
AZMAT KHAN: So this is one of two condolence payment offers that have been offered in this entire anti-ISIS air war. So, since August 2014, and some 27,000 airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria, this is one of two offers. This is the only offer that was made for a civilian death. The other offer that was made was for damage to a car in a separate airstrike, but not for a civilian. And so, Basim has—
AMY GOODMAN: How much has been allocated?
AZMAT KHAN: So, every year, for the last two years, Congress has authorized $5 million in funds to be used for payments like these. There have only been two offers made. Basim is the only offer for a civilian death that has been made during that time. And in this case, the $15,000, just to give you a sense, it was for his wife and daughter only. That is even higher than what they ordinarily offer, which is usually capped at $2,500 per death.
AMY GOODMAN: Did it have something to do with you being there?
AZMAT KHAN: Actually, Basim—I’m sorry, excuse me—Anand was actually in the meeting with them.
AMY GOODMAN: Anand, describe that meeting and your participation in it.
ANAND GOPAL: Yeah. I went with Basim to the meeting at Erbil airport, and we didn’t exactly know how much they would offer, although we expected that it’s not going to be high. And in the meeting, the JAG officials explained that the offer they were going to make wasn’t a offer of compensation, but of condolence. And it was an important difference, because the U.S. military is not in the business of compensating civilians who’ve lost things, because, of course, the problem is, from their perspective, if they feel that they start compensating people for what they’ve lost, then they’re going to start having to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars, and it would impede their very ability to wage a war. So instead, it’s an offer of condolence, ultimately with the idea of not having Iraqis upset at them. That’s the purpose here.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Anand, what’s been the reaction by the U.S. military, by the coalition, since your article came out?
ANAND GOPAL: Well, almost nothing, actually. We’ve been waiting to hear something from them. You know, we gave them all of our essential findings way before the article was published, three or four weeks before, and asked them for comment on each specific individual allegation that was made in the piece. And we haven’t heard a thing.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Our guests are Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, co-authors of The New York Times Magazine cover story called, “The Uncounted.” Basim Razzo is joining us from Erbil, Iraq, who lost his wife, daughter, brother, and nephew during a U.S. airstrike on his home in Mosul, Iraq, in 2015. We’ll be back with them in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “The Descent” by Khyam Allami. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we continue to spend the hour looking at a damning new report that reveals how U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq have killed far more civilians than officials have acknowledged. The Pentagon claims 466 civilians have been killed in 89 airstrikes since 2014.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But an on-the-ground investigation by The New York Times Magazine titled “The Uncounted” found the actual civilian death toll is much higher than the U.S. is admitting. In fact, the report reveals that as many as one in five coalition airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq resulted in civilian deaths.
The reporters write, quote, “To understand how radically different our assessment is from the coalition’s own, consider this: According to the coalition’s available data, 89 of its more than 14,000 airstrikes in Iraq have resulted in civilian deaths, or about one of every 157 strikes. The rate we found on the ground—one out of every five—is 31 times as high.”
For more, we’re joined by the two reporters who co-authored this investigation titled “The Uncounted.” Azmat Khan is an investigative journalist and a Future of War fellow at New America and Arizona State University. And Anand Gopal is an assistant research professor at Arizona State University and the author of No Good Men Among the Living. Also with us is Basim Razzo in Erbil, Iraq, via Democracy Now! video stream.
Basim Razzo, I’d like to begin with you. In our headlines today, we talked about the—and I understand that he is in the dark right now, because the electricity has gone out in his city. But his line is still working with us. I’d like to ask you, the—in our headlines, we reported that the United States is going to end up spending trillions of dollars just in interest on all of the—over the next decades, on all of the military, the interventions in Iraq and Syria. I’m wondering, when you hear this enormous amount of funds, and yet you find that you are one of the few people, civilians, who suffered from a U.S. airstrike that’s actually been offered any kind of payment, your reaction when you hear these enormous sums spent, and yet so little that the United States is setting aside for the victims of its mistaken attacks?
AMY GOODMAN: I think his light has just come on.
BASIM RAZZO: Yes, it just came on. Well, really, it’s very upsetting, because, actually, the first time I heard that the civilian life of an Iraqi killed was $2,500, which was really, really upsetting, I felt it was degrading. And I talked to one person. I said, “How would you feel, like if you are in an airplane accident in the United States, and you lost somebody you love’s life, and the airline will give you $2,500 for it?” He said, “I would be outraged.” I said, “How do you think I feel? My wife, daughter, brother and nephew were killed by an airstrike. They were innocent civilians. And now they offered me $15,000 for two people.” It was—I was outraged, really, by this amount. Very, very upset.
AMY GOODMAN: Anand Gopal, can you talk about the effect of this on Iraq, the far more—far greater number of civilians killed than the U.S. is willing to admit, as it says it is routing out ISIS, the so-called Islamic State?
ANAND GOPAL: Yeah. The U.S. has effectively defeated ISIS, but at the cost of destroying whole cities and leaving thousands, if not tens of thousands, of families completely broken. Mosul is an example in which at least half of the city of Mosul is nearly in rubble. And these aren’t accidents in the sense that we would normally think about it. These are policy decisions. For instance, in Mosul, the city of Mosul was surrounded, and civilians and ISIS fighters were not allowed to leave the city in an exit corridor, which was one of the conditions which induced ISIS to take civilians hostage, and led to extraordinary numbers of civilian casualties.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Azmat, you had mentioned that your study area was East Mosul, but really some of the worst damage was in West Mosul, and you think that the casualty figures may actually be much higher than even your study shows.
AZMAT KHAN: Yes, not just because we didn’t include West Mosul, but also because these airstrikes that we were surveying, the 103 in that sample, occurred before a rule change that started last December, under President Obama, that authorized more ground commanders to be able to call in and approve airstrikes. And many believe that this was one of the reasons why we saw a spike in civilian casualties from these airstrikes.
But I also want to point out, you know, what we found to be a lack of ability to investigate properly by the coalition. What we found repeatedly during the course of our investigation is not just that they weren’t necessarily locating evidence or verifying evidence for allegations, but also that they sometimes lacked the information to even determine sometimes whether an airstrike was a coalition airstrike or their own. In the 103 coordinates, and even more than that, that we passed on, we were told sometimes that, you know, “Listen, this particular airstrike was not us. It’s unlikely to be us. The nearest airstrike we carried out was as far as 600 meters away.” But then we would find coalition videos, uploaded by the coalition itself, showing those airstrikes in the places that we had pinpointed, or in that area. And when we followed up about it, we were told, “We can only tell you what the log shows.” And we had this happen on several occasions.
And what it shows you is that their logs are incomplete or what they’re searching is incomplete. And the number one reason that they cite when they deny a civilian casualty allegation is that they have no record of a coalition airstrike taking place in a geographic area. And that casts doubt on their credibility investigations so far.
AMY GOODMAN: Have they taken down all these YouTube videos?
AZMAT KHAN: They took down videos from YouTube. These videos still—and to distinguish, they still exist on other military websites, but YouTube was the one place where people could comment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, in other words, to follow up on this, what you’re suggesting is that the actual record keeping, the logs of where the attacks occurred, are sometimes incorrect, which could either mean, one, just sloppy log keeping by the soldiers involved, or deliberate—deliberate reports of the wrong coordinates for an attack.
AZMAT KHAN: It really is troubling that these records were not kept in a way that was conducive to accurately investigating or investigating properly, because what we were told, when we visited—when I visited Qatar and I went to the Combined Air Operations Center, is that “We have 100 percent authority over where we drop our weapons. We know exactly where they’re landing.” And that turned out, in some cases, not to be true.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. military says it’s the most precise war and targeting that they have ever engaged in. We only have a minute, and we want to give that minute to the focus of your story, though you tell many, as we talk about what has happened to Basim Razzo. Your final comment, your message to the world, Basim?
BASIM RAZZO: Well, I want to add just one more thing in this one minute. Just like Azmat said, because there was no exit corridor for ISIS, they were forced to stay in the city and fight. And the excessive use of force, because some—probably one member of ISIS will be on top of a roof of a building—just remember, Azmat, the guy we met from al-Layla family. There were two members ISIS on his roof, and the whole house was bombed. This was excessive use of force.
My friends in Mosul told me of really precision bombing on small cars, and only the car will be hit. But when you—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
BASIM RAZZO: —kill one person—yeah, to kill one person, you demolish a whole house. This is really terrible. I’m sorry for all the loss that has happened. I really would like the Americans to restudy their strategy of using this precision bombing.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you so much for being with us, Basim Razzo, from Erbil, Iraq, and Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal. We will link to their story, “The Uncounted.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A longtime pastor at St. Helena, a Romanian Catholic church on Cleveland’s West Side, pleaded guilty Thursday to taking more than $100,000 from an elderly parishioner.
Andre Matthews, 54, had already pleaded guilty to separate charges that he stole $176,000 from the church.
Matthews, who now lives in Arizona, was placed on medical leave in August 2011.
Rev. Chris Terhes, director of communications for the
Romanian Catholic Diocese of St. George in Canton, said in a news release that Matthews was suspended from his duties as a priest on July 18.
"He is forbidden to celebrate any sacraments or represent himself as a priest," Terhes said.
Matthews is set to be sentenced for both crimes on Oct. 15.
After any court proceedings are over, Matthews will go through a separate church-based justice process.
Cleveland Heights police investigated the second case, which involved an 88-year-old woman whose bank accounts Matthews had power of attorney over, his attorney Gerald Gold said last month. Matthews by charged with misappropriation of funds by way of a bill of information rather than an indictment.
"We expect to make amends in court," said Gold, who couldn’t immediately be reached Thursday.
Matthews had been the pastor of St. Helena’s from 1990 until his resignation in 2011. The West 65th Street church is one of several Romanian Catholic churches in Northeast Ohio and has 80 to100 families as members.
The Romanian Catholic Church recognizes the pope as its leader, but follows different traditions than the Roman Catholic Church
Officials from the diocese hope to receive restitution as part any sentence, which could also include a significant prison sentence.AutoGuide.com
If you have been anxiously awaiting a new Jaguar supercar, we have bad news.
Jaguar axed the production and development for its C-X75 a long time ago, but now it appears that the company has no plans of developing another supercar at all. It also doesn’t intend on replacing the XK coupe and convertible, leaving the F-Type on its own to hold the sports car baton for the brand. As a sign that things are changing in the automotive industry, Jaguar will instead build two electric vehicles, one that will eventually replace the XJ sedan, while the other will be a premium SUV. The SUV has already been rumored to be based on the F-Pace, but the other model will be a four-door coupe with a rear hatch.
The sedan is codenamed X590 and will be Jaguar’s attempt to compete with the BMW 7 Series and Mercedes-Benz S-Class models. It will be built on a new electronic architecture developed by former BMW engineer Wolfgang Ziebart. The architecture will reportedly be adapted to accommodate everything necessary for autonomous driving.
SEE ALSO: Jaguar’s Fleet of Self-Driving Test Cars will Start Hitting UK Roads This Year
If this sounds a bit like a Tesla Model S fighter, it is. Jaguar’s all-electric sedan will also be all-wheel drive and is expected to come to market a full year before its German competitors. The company is hoping the head start will give it an advantage in a segment it has struggled in, but will also continue offering the current XJ alongside the new model just in case.
The electric SUV will come in 2019 and was originally planned to be a Range Rover model. Both electric vehicles are expected to be built by Austria’s Magna Steyr with the X590’s production estimated to be 20,000 to 30,000 units per year. The SUV will be more affordable and is expected to be more popular, with 30,000 to 50,000 units sold per year.
[Source: Automobile]
Discuss this story on our Jaguar ForumIn a wide-ranging interview, Denis Alipov, Deputy Chief of Mission in the Russian Embassy in New Delhi, outlined his views on the Russian relationship with India and the situation in South Asia.
The general sentiment, in India and more in Russia, is that the relations between the two countries have lost their earlier warmth. Do you agree with this, and if yes, why do you think this has happened?
The Russian-Indian relations during the days of the Soviet Union were omnipresent indeed but it is essentially wrong to argue that the two nations have cooled off each other since. In fact, having disengaged from ideological background our relationship has become more sincere and warmer than before. These are the sentiments that overwhelmingly prevail in Russia and we are very proud of the unprecedented level of trust and friendship with India. This is true of relationship between the leaders of the two countries irrespective of who is in power in Moscow or New Delhi. This is equally true of feelings of the general public. Trust is the very essence of our relations, something that does not come overnight but is nurtured for years and tested at the times of hardship. If some started to believe otherwise I wish to testify as a longstanding insider officially and personally that they are fundamentally wrong.
Russia and India pursue the same goals on international arena of which the recent BRICS and SCO summits in Ufa are indicative. Prime Minister Modi will visit Russia again by the end of the year for the bilateral summit expected to generate fresher ideas to deepen cooperation at both the global and bilateral levels. Russia is very extensively engaged with India in politics and economy although the latter has been less effective for objective reasons. I would say both the countries are rediscovering each other economically in terms of applying the capacity of private SMEs and start-ups while successfully maintaining traditional cooperation in such areas as hydroelectric power, mechanical engineering, metallurgy, oil and gas industry, petrochemicals etc.
The most promising has been the area of nuclear energy. Russia is the only country practically collaborating with India in the nuclear energy sector. Two state-of-the-art nuclear power units with the world safest light water reactors have already been constructed at the Kudankulam site. Unit 1 is operational and unit 2 is being prepared for attaining criticality. Preparatory works for the construction of units 3 & 4 at the same site are underway.
I would like to reiterate that the Russian engineers have successfully implemented all post-Fukusima safety requirements outlined by the Indian Regulator AERB. A very important factor is the economic viability of the Russian projects. The Kudankulam units offer the most competitive price for electricity strictly corresponding to the figures stipulated by the Indian Government.
It is noteworthy that the Russian-Indian collaboration in the nuclear sphere is not limited to NPP construction. There are joint projects in nuclear science and on aspects of nuclear fuel cycle. Russian and Indian scientists effectively cooperate in research at the Russian Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna and within the framework of such international projects like ITER programme (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).
How many reactors will Russia eventually build in India?
I would say as many as you wish us to.
The Strategic Vision for strengthening cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy signed during the bilateral summit in December 2014 provides for the construction of at least 12 units within the next two decades. This includes upto 6 more units at Kudankulam and units at other sites in India. We are expecting the Indian Government to soon announce and allocate a new site for these purposes. At Kudankulam Russian and Indian experts gained practical experience of construction and commissioning of the Russian-designed reactors. This platform will allow us to effectively continue with the construction of new units.
How do you view the ties in the defence sector?
In terms of volume and investments this is by far the most advanced area of bilateral cooperation. The value of our business in military hardware with India is over USD 30 billion, more than India has with all other foreign partners put together. And this business continues to flourish.
Moreover, Russian-Indian military technical cooperation is based on transfer of technology and mutual development of hi-tech platforms, licensed production of modern Russian equipment in India and modernisation of Russian weapons, which are in service with the Indian Armed Forces. This kind of extremely versatile cooperation is hors concours too. By all means Russia and India has a unique partnership within the global military market serving as an enviable example of the combination of trust and benefit.
Currently we are exploring new vistas of cooperation in research and development not only on GtoG but also on BtoB basis. Russian companies are in talks with Reliance Defence and Aerospace (RDA) for possible joint production of ships, submarines and aircraft under the transfer of technology. We have been deeply engaged with HAL for many years, which is India’s major public sector company and Russia’s time-tested and reliable partner. We are looking forward to expanding ties with Indian companies, which have been selected to participate in the “Make in India” programme. Russia is the only country, which has so far started working under this scheme. Again, while others talk, Russians do. Isn’t it the proof of the true strategic character of partnership? I think it is.
What do you think is holding back the signing of the final contract for the Fifth Generation Fighter?
Obviously such a sophisticated aircraft cannot be made overnight. It involves a long process of research and development, which is going on smoothly. This project is identified as a priority one by both countries, and we are committed to complete it as soon as possible.
There is a lot of talk about Russia-Pakistan cooperation. There have been high-profile visits on both sides and agreements have been signed for defence and military cooperation. How do you view this growing relationship in view of your historical ties with India?
Relations, which Russia develops with countries of the world, are not directed against anybody. Particularly, Russia’s policy in South Asia is consistently based on principles of promotion of regional stability and non-interference into the affairs of sovereign states and bilateral disputes. India is our historic and special and privileged strategic partner, and we have always been mindful and will continue to consider in the first place the Indian security concerns. This is our natural choice. The unique level of mutual trust and understanding on almost every issue of the international agenda should leave no scope for doubt about the future of the Russian-Indian ties even for sceptics.
Hence the relations with Pakistan while being independent in nature will never have any designs against India. Islamabad is a very important player in joint efforts to maintain regional stability, especially in view of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and growing threats of international terrorism fuelled by ISIS and rampant drug production. These factors require collective counteraction and target-oriented capacity building. And these are exactly the reasons for our recent arrangements with Islamabad on the supply of four Mi-35 helicopters. I would also like to respond to the idle talk and pure invention of the media by reiterating that Russia has not discussed and does not have any plans to sell Su-35 aircraft to Pakistan.
It was reported in the media that when Pakistan chief of army staff General Raheel Sharif visited Russia, a defence and military technical cooperation agreement was signed between the two countries.
The agreement you mentioned pertains to the military cooperation and provides for a general framework for interaction between the armed and security forces and capacity building.
The relations between India and Pakistan are not very good. Why don’t you informally facilitate talks between the two countries?
Russia entirely supports the normalization of relations between India and Pakistan and the early and peaceful resolution of all contentious issues, including trans-border terrorism and Kashmir. However, we are not in a position to interfere in any bilateral dispute unless we get a specific consensus-based request or invitation. Certainly, we acknowledge the existing legal architecture, which includes the 1972 Shimla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration urging the two parties to resolve their issues bilaterally. Russia hopes that New Delhi and Islamabad will show further restraint and continue to improve their relations according to the Ufa spirit.
Don’t you fear that unresolved bilateral problems between India and Pakistan may spill over in SCO when the two sides join it formally?
Both India and Pakistan are welcome as full members of the SCO. The political decision to this effect was unanimously taken and the membership process was launched at the SCO Summit in Ufa in July 2015. The. This step will drastically increase the capacity and effectiveness of the organization in tackling of the growing regional challenges and threats. With India and Pakistan on board, prospects of deeper integration, transport and energy infrastructure and diversified economic and financial cooperation within the SCO will obviously expand.
According to one of the basic principles of the SCO Charter the member-countries do not import bilateral issues into the SCO agenda. The same is expected of India and Pakistan. On the contrary, there is a feeling that the SCO may become an additional platform for narrowing down of the differences between the two countries through cooperation.
What does Russia think of China’s One Road One Belt initiative?
We support the Chinese initiative as a promising opportunity to promote trans-regional connectivity in Eurasia and improve linkages between Asia and Europe. A lot of attention is given to the development of transportation and energy potential of the Central Asian countries, from which the neighbouring regions will also benefit. There is a great scope for joint endeavours, and we would welcome the growing Indian participation.
Meanwhile increased efforts are being made to expedite the North-South Transport Corridor project, which is designed to enhance connectivity and economic cooperation between South and Central Asia and Europe and harmoniously blends with the Chinese initiative.
The interview was first given to Force magazine.
Courtesy : Embassy of the Russian Federation, New Delhi.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.WASHINGTON: The Air Force Chief of Staff appeared to be talking about putting nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour alert, but the man who’d make the decision, the head of Strategic Command, wasn’t.
After my colleague Marcus Weisgerber reported that Gen. David Goldfein said the Air Force was considering putting bombers back on alert, I checked with Strategic Command, since they are the ones who make operational decisions about the use of nuclear weapons systems.
Gen. John Hyten, head of Strategic Command, is not considering putting bombers back on alert, his spokesman says in an email.
“There are no discussions or plans for U.S. Strategic Command to place bombers on alert. Any decisions related to the posture of nuclear forces would come from, or through, U.S. Strategic Command. We constantly train, prepare and equip our personnel to ensure we have a combat-ready force that underwrites strategic deterrence in the 21st century,” Navy Capt. Brook DeWalt writes.
This raises a really interesting question: did Gen. David Goldfein tell Marcus — who was on an extended trip with the general inspecting nuclear bases — that the Air Force is preparing for the order?
“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Goldfein told Marcus in an interview. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.” While his story stresses the order has not been given, Marcus certainly raises the specter that the policy change is being considered. But Strategic Command says, unequivocally, that the only general empowered with the decision isn’t considering the change. So, the answer is no.
At first, this story seemed to contain the seeds of a policy under consideration, or one where the Air Force might be pressing for a change in policy. But it’s clearly a case where one fact got added to another and the result may have turned out to be less than first seemed. The alert center at Barksdale is being upgraded and renovated, but it’s not with an eye to housing bomber crews on 24/7 alert. Crews of planes such as the National Airborne Operations Center — the E4-B NAOC used by the Defense Secretary or other authority in time of war — use the center and it’s just being upgraded.
Work on the alert facility at Barksdale has been going on since August 2016. There’s a $3.5 million contract to improve the interior, electrical and mechanical systems. STRATCOM provided $136,000 at the end of fiscal 2017 to paint the building’s exterior and help with “quality of life” purchases.Poster collectors wait in line prior to Saturday's opening of The Mondo Gallery in Austin, Texas.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired A closeup of The Hand of Ming by Jason Edmiston.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired Mondo creative director Justin Ishmael says the collectible art boutique will do more posters for current theatrical releases going forward.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired Attendees admire sci-fi art on the walls of The Mondo Gallery at a preview event.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired Sci-fi art to infinity... and beyond!
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired A Trip To the Moon by Phantom City Creative
18 inches by 24 inches, edition of 145 Death In '91 by Esao Andrews
Oil on wood Fantastic Planet by Aaron Horkey
20 inches by 28 inches, edition of 332 (regular), 106 (variant) Fantastic Planet variant by Aaron Horkey
20 inches by 28 inches, edition of 106 Forbidden Planet by Ken Tong
24 inches by 36 inches, edition of 225 Matthew Bennell by Rich Kelly
Acrylic on board The Mondo team (left to right: Mo Shafeek, Jessica Olsen, Justin Ishmael, Mitch Putnam and Rob Jones) in their new workspace.
Photo: Annie Ray Party Planet by Scott Campbell
Watercolor on paper Rachel by Craig Drake
Gouache on paper Seth Brundle by Rich Kelly
Acrylic on board Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn by Tyler Stout
24 inches by 36 inches, edition of 635 (regular), 280 (variant) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn variant by Tyler Stout
24 inches by 36 inches, edition of 280 The Hand of Ming by Jason Edmiston
Acrylic on wood panel The Man Who Fell to Earth by Ken Taylor
Acrylic on board The War of the Worlds by Kako
24 inches by 36 inches, edition of 120
AUSTIN, Texas – Outside a nondescript building a mile or so north of the University of Texas campus, self-described poster addicts stood in the rain Saturday, anxious to get a fix of their exotic vice.
[bug id="sxsw2012"]
"We're poster nerds," said Sam Cardozo, a collector who lives in Austin and stood at the front of the line with a handful of out-of-town friends, waiting to get into opening night at The Mondo Gallery.
Cardozo, who said he owns between 500 and 600 posters, queued up around noon Friday with his fellow paper-and-ink fiends, some of whom had driven from Denver after receiving a cryptic announcement about some sort of Mondo event. Dozens of others braved the unnaturally soggy spring weather, some having traveled from as far as Southern California.
Chase Tatum and three friends made the 16-hour drive from Colorado, only to stand for 30 more hours in front of the new gallery, which was filled with who knew what. "We're here to buy," Tatum said.
They would soon find out that the Mondo Gallery's walls were covered with 38 pieces of imaginative sci-fi artwork (see some of them, along with photos of the Mondo team, in the gallery above). Some pieces were rare originals, like a painting by movie poster legend Drew Struzan or Jason Edmiston's riveting acrylic-on-wood The Hand of Ming, while others were screen-printed posters from Mondo's vaults, created by artists like Olly Moss and Tyler Stout.
The new digs will serve as a base of operations for Mondo, an expanding enterprise that has fueled a revival of poster art in recent years by hiring outstanding artists to put their own spin on sci-fi and other genre films.
Mondo sprang from humble beginnings, getting started after Alamo founder Tim League bought a bunch of vintage T-shirt iron-ons a decade or so ago to sell as Mondo Tees. Original artwork eventually became the focus, and Mondo's star rose after the company cut a licensing deal with Lucasfilm to create a series of Star Wars posters that generated nerdgasms among sci-fi and poster fans. Mondo's posters were added to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives last year alongside official studio posters, becoming the first non-Hollywood art to be included.
Perhaps hard-core poster collectors felt a disturbance in the Force as the collectible art boutique, which is operated by the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, moved its headquarters from the theater chain's popular location on South Lamar. Mondo's T-shirt sales benefited from a steady stream of moviegoers at the old location, but Mondo creative director Justin Ishmael said the art boutique had outgrown the space at the Alamo. Plus, the high-end art that is Mondo's future didn't necessarily benefit from the foot traffic.
"If you're taking your kids to The Lorax, you don't care about a $50 poster.""People thought we were crazy for moving out of the lobby of the Alamo," Ishmael said during a press preview before the gallery's grand opening, timed to land during the annual South by Southwest Film festival. "But if you're taking your kids to The Lorax, you don't care about a $50 poster."
Ishmael figures Austin's strong film community will continue to support the operation, with T-shirt sales moving mostly to the internet. In the new location, already a destination for poster geeks, Ishmael plans to put up about nine themed exhibits a year while pursuing deals with movie studios so Mondo can continue to crank out sought-after alternative posters for current theatrical releases.
Mondo's limited-edition prints, which generally go for between $40 and $75, almost always sell out within minutes when the sales go online, as announced at random times on Mondo's Twitter feed. The frenzied buying opportunities give poster junkies a bit of an adrenaline buzz.
"Have you ever tried a Mondo drop?" asked Cory Bank, another member of the Denver contingent at the gallery opening. "It's addictive."
What could be worse than simply zoning out and missing the sale of a special poster for a movie you love? How about trying, and failing, to complete an online purchase, despite a rapid series of desperate mouse clicks – or getting "drymounted," as they call it in the online poster forums. You end up caught in a sort of wannabe buyer's limbo when the computer screen goes blank, stuck somewhere between PayPal and shipping, these veteran shoppers said.
"We call it the white screen of death," said Colorado poster collector Mason Stoneking. "If you get the white screen of death, you're done,"
Images courtesy Mondo except where noted.Claim: Coca-Cola is an effective contraceptive.
FALSE
Origins: Somehow I doubt this is what Coca-Cola meant by ‘the pause that refreshes.’
Here’s a short newspaper summary from 1985 about the first study undertaken to verify claims about Coke’s contraceptive properties:
‘OLD COKE’ BETTER THAN ‘NEW COKE?’ ‘OLD COKE’ BETTER THAN ‘NEW COKE?’ Common commodities such as honey and sodium bicarbonate, acidic fruit juices and oils have been used through history as spermicides. Three Harvard researchers note that Coca-Cola is said to be favored for this purpose in some developing countries and was touted in American folklore as a contraceptive aid in years gone by. No documentation of the soft drink’s spermicidal capabilities was found, so Dr. Sharee
Umpierre and two colleagues decided to test Coke in some of its various formulations in their lab. They found that
Diet Coke was a most effective spermicide and the original formula Coke was also quite effective, five times more so than the reformulated “new” Coke. “Although not recommended for postcoital contraception, partly because sperm can be found in the oviducts within minutes after intercourse, Coca-Cola products do appear to have a spermicidal effect,” the researchers said in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. “Furthermore, our data indicate that at least in the area of spermicidal effect, ‘Classic’ Coke is it.” [T]he researchers said they found marked differences in the ability of four different Coca-Cola formulations to act as a spermicide. At the same time, they warned against the use of soft drinks of any kind as douches after intercourse to prevent pregnancy. While there are differences among soft drinks, all fail as effective contraceptives, the researchers noted. To test the sperm-killing abilities of various Coca-Cola products, the three researchers prepared test tubes containing small samples of carefully preserved sperm and poured in small amounts of Diet Coke, New Coke, caffeine-free New Coke and Classic Coke — carefully repeating the test three times for each soda. All of them killed some sperm, but New Coke turned out to be least effective, with Diet Coke having the most pronounced effect overall and Classic Coke recording a five times greater sperm-killing rate than its upstart rival. “ Coca-Cola products do appear to have a spermicidal effect,” the study deadpanned. “Furthermore, our data indicate that, at least in the area of spermicidal effect, ‘Classic Coke’ is it.” Coca-Cola saw little humor in the Harvard project. A spokesman said the company hadn’t seen the new report, but “our position is we do not promote any of our products for any medical use.” 1
However, other researchers were unable to verify these results in later experiments. Subsequent trials performed by medical researchers in Taiwan (using several varities of both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola ) led them to the opposite conclusion, that “cola has little if any spermicidal effect”:
The inhibitory effect of Old Coke, caffeine |
catch 15 or 20 gophers,” says O’Brien, whose 9-year-old dog Spencer assists in finishing off the pesky rodents.
Research Takes Flight
Under the shade of the oaks at Tres Sabores last summer, Carrie Wendt is on break explaining the owl study research she began in the winter of 2015. A graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in natural resources and wildlife at Humboldt State University, Wendt studies the ecological services that wildlife can provide in agriculture. Although owl boxes have been used in vineyards for several decades, there is little to no scientific literature about them. Many of the oft-cited statistics on owls come from studies done in England and elsewhere.
To start, Wendt cold-called hundreds of vineyard managers up and down Napa Valley for permission to monitor their owl boxes. With a list of nearly 300 boxes in hand, she visited them all three times at 10-day intervals—making for long drives around Northern California.
Nest boxes fail for a variety of reasons, says Wendt: opportunistic mammals may climb into them, or red-tailed hawks and great horned owls may hunt the parent owls while they fly to and from the box.
Widely used poison bait for rodent control is also a hazard, as owls may be poisoned when consuming stricken rodents. But sometimes it’s a lack of available prey that makes owls abandon their nest.
From Tres Sabores, I follow the student’s bumper-stickered truck across the valley to Saint Helena Winery, off the Silverado Trail, on the search for a surviving chick. An owl box is located in the middle of a vineyard, and was last seen containing one healthy, surviving chick. As Wendt maneuvers a swaying camera pole into the box, a chick’s head appears out of the darkness.
Still a fuzzball of downy feathers, he’s almost grown-up, and looking downright surly as he sways and bobs in front of the camera. The dark side of his success is that, most likely, he consumed his siblings—not uncommon in the unsentimental world of the barn owl.
Following up on Wendt’s work, Humboldt State grad student Xeronimo Castaneda has been tagging adult owls with GPS transmitters. The work must be done within a demanding time frame: Castaneda has to find owls while they’re in the nest box with chicks 14 to 21 weeks old. Afterward, the adults roost elsewhere while continuing to feed the increasingly large chicks.
The boxes have hinged doors to facilitate cleaning. But it’s not for amateur ornithologists. The team had to apply to two agencies, the Bird Banding Laboratory, a division of the United States Geological Survey, and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, to obtain permission to capture and tag owls. Researchers will then be able to track the owls and their hunting habits using GPS.
Castaneda suggests that while further study needs to be done, it may be true that even if owls aren’t actively hunting within the vineyard, their very presence affects the behavior of rodents, deterring them from eating vintners’ precious grapevines.
Castaneda mentions a small experiment conducted by an undergraduate that has yielded some interesting preliminary results. The student created a set of sandboxes, burying 100 sunflower seeds—rodent food—in each, and placed some in areas known to be populated with owls.
“It’s interesting that across the board,” says Castaneda, “those little bait stations where there were no owls—all the seeds were gone. But where there were owls, a portion of those were still left.”Have you ever wondered why fluorescent colors, like you see in highlighters or clothing dyes, seem so much brighter than other colors?
It’s because they seem to reflect more light than they receive! It may sound like a magic trick, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that the light you can see is only a small section of the larger spectrum of energy all around you.
Regular, non-fluorescent colors appear to our eyes when objects absorb some wavelengths of light, and reflect others. For example, a yellow pencil looks yellow because its paint reflects the wavelength of yellow light, and absorbs the other wavelengths. Fluorescent colors also reflect or absorb colors in the visible spectrum, but that extra glow in fluorescent colors comes from energy we humans don’t see, called ultraviolet light.
UV
Ultraviolet light, or UV, is just beyond visible violet in the spectrum. Its wavelength is too short to be visible to the naked eye, but you see it working when fluorescent colors glow! Regular dyes just absorb UV along with all the other wavelengths they don’t reflect, so you don’t see any evidence of it.
However, fluorescent dyes contain substances that respond to UV. Some of the molecules in these fluorescent dyes are excited by UV energy, and afterwards, as the energy level within these molecules decreases, they release part of that extra energy as visible light.
Fluorescent dyes turn invisible energy into visible light, and that’s how the magic trick works! They don’t reflect more energy than they receive, but they do reflect more visible light, converted from parts of the spectrum we can’t see.A $1.5 billion "knowledge hub" comprising retail stores, offices and research facilities has been proposed if Sydney University is selected as the site for a new train station for a metro line through the city.
The university is in a high-stakes contest with UrbanGrowth, the state government's property arm, which is pushing for a new station at Waterloo in the city's south instead. Cabinet is expected to consider competing sites for a train station for the metro line within weeks.
While UrbanGrowth has been relatively tight-lipped, Sydney University has released details of its proposal for 100,000 square metres of mixed-use facilities above a train station at Maze Crescent, which runs parallel to City Road.
The plans submitted to the Baird government are based on a $1 billion contribution from the private sector and $340 million from the university. The latter's funding would also go towards road improvements and better links to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and other nearby health facilities. If selected, the hub would be operational by 2024, in time for the opening of the station and metro line.Voters in St. Petersburg overwhelmingly approved Tampa Bay Rowdies owner Bill Edwards’ ballot initiative for an $80 million expansion of Al Lang Stadium on Tuesday, moving ahead plans for a potential MLS expansion bid. Edwards has promised to fund both the expansion to 18,000 seats and the $150 million expansion fee, so really there was nothing for voters to worry abou—
The referendum, which won approval with 87 percent of the vote, will allow city officials to begin negotiating a 25-year lease with Tampa Bay Rowdies owner Bill Edwards.
Noooooooooooooooooo!
Okay, it’s not so bad: There’s no guarantee that Edwards will try to get concessions on the back end — free rent, the city paying maintenance and operations costs, some kind of upgrades slush fund — on the back end, or that the council would approve such a lease if he did. But it’s important to remember that subsidies are increasingly being hidden in lease deals, in part precisely because they’re negotiated out of the public eye, so, you know, keep your public eye on this.
Anyway, add Tampa Bay to the list of metro areas fighting for an MLS franchise, and at least they did it without pouring tons of up-front cash into it like some other cities have been asked to do. That’s something, at least, and a valuable reminder that the sports industry can survive just fine without subsidies, if the level of public interest in the sport is low enough that subsidies are hard to come by. Apparently the Care Bears got it backwards!Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Alastair Leithead reports on the trial in which Hasan provided "no defence at all"
The US Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 comrades at a Texas Army base in 2009 has been convicted of all charges.
Maj Nidal Hasan faces the death penalty after being found guilty of 13 counts of pre-meditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.
Maj Hasan, 42, said he opened fire on the unarmed US soldiers to protect Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
The jury, which reached a unanimous verdict in seven hours, begins the penalty phase of the trial on Monday.
The 13-member panel must come to a unanimous agreement in order to recommend that the judge sentence Maj Hasan to death. If they do not agree, he will face a life prison sentence.
Blocked argument
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Fort Hood victim Sgt Alonzo Lunsford says "let the sword of justice swing"
The US military has not executed a service member since 1961. There are five inmates on the US military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, all at various stages of the appeals process.
Among the last barriers to military execution is authorisation from the president.
Maj Hasan, a Virginia-born Muslim, had no visible reaction as the verdict was read.
After the hearing, relatives of the dead and wounded fought back tears.
He admitted to being the gunman at the start of his court martial this month. Acting as his own lawyer, he questioned only three of 90 prosecution witnesses and declined to call witnesses of his own or make closing arguments.
His court-appointed legal advisers, who were little involved in his defence, have told the judge they believed he sought execution in a bid for martyrdom.
Maj Hasan has said he carried out the attack on unarmed soldiers at a medical building in Fort Hood in order to protect Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
146 bullets
Image caption Retired Staff Sgt Shawn Manning was among the many witnesses to the attack called by the prosecution
When the military judge, Col Tara Osborn, suggested shortly before jurors began deliberating on Thursday that the shootings happened because Maj Hasan had lost his temper, he challenged her.
"It wasn't done under the heat of sudden passion," he said.
"There was adequate provocation that these were deploying soldiers that were going to engage in an illegal war."
The Army psychiatrist opened fire on 5 November 2009 at a medical facility on the base where soldiers were being evaluated before deploying overseas.
Prosecutors said he had prepared carefully for the attack for weeks, visiting a target practice range, buying a gun, and stuffing paper towels into his trouser pockets to muffle noise from the extra ammunition before he opened fire.
Soldiers and civilians testified that they heard a man wearing Army camouflage scream an Islamic benediction before opening fire with two handguns.
Witnesses also said Maj Hasan's rapid reloading prevented the unarmed soldiers from halting the attack. Three separate people who attempted to charge him were stopped by gunfire.
Maj Hasan fired 146 bullets, prosecutors said. The attack ended when he was shot by a civilian police officer. He was paralysed from the waist down from the wound.
He uses a wheelchair after being left paralysed from the waist down when he was shot by one of the police officers who responded to the attack.Among the Sleep, Krillbite Studio's first-person horror/adventure game mashup, is shaping up for an "early spring 2014" release, the developer announced today in a backers-only Kickstarter blog update.
During the last few months and in the wake of the game's successful Kickstarter campaign, the developer has been "focusing intensively on the chapters that [need] most work" and combining those into "one continuous experience." Through that process, Krillbite was able to determine a release window.
"The most important thing for us is to make the game as good as possible," the blog post reads. "Going forward this involves streamlining the game overall, adding detail, implementing voiceovers, localization, optimising the Oculus Rift implementation, improving menu & GUI, and lots'n lots of testing and bug fixing. In addition we still have to nail the launch details with distributors like Steam and GOG.
"With that in mind, it looks as though Among the Sleep will be released [in] early spring 2014!"
Be sure to read Polygon's interview with Norwegian developer Adrian Tingstad Husby to learn more more about the game, in which you play as a two-year-old child.[/caption]
On August 12th, 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla was preparing to study the Sun at the recently opened Zacatecas Observatory. However, the Sun’s surface was marred by numerous objects quickly travelling across its disk. Over the course of the day and the next, Bonilla exposed several wet plates to take images of the 447 objects he would observe. They weren’t released publicly until January 1st, 1886 when they were published in the magazine L’Astronomie. Since then, UFOlogists have crowed these photographs as the first photographic evidence of UFOs. The chief editor of L’Astronomie passed the observations off as migrating animals, but a new study proposes the observation was due to the breakup of a comet that nearly hit us.
The only piece of evidence the authors, led by Hector Manterola at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, use to suggest that this was a comet in the process of breaking up, was the descriptions of the objects as being “fuzzy” in nature and leaving dark trails behind them. Assuming this were the case, the authors consider how close the object would have been. Since astronomers at observatories in Mexico City, or Puebla had not reported the objects, this would imply that they did not cross the disc of the Sun from these locations due to parallax. As such, the maximum distance the object could have been is roughly 80,000 km, roughly 1/5th the distance to the moon.
But the team suggests the fragments may have passed even closer. By the time comets reach the inner solar system, they have a significant velocity of some tens of kilometers per second. In such a case, to transverse the disc of the Sun in the time reported by Bonilla (a third to a full second), the object would have been, at most, at a distance of ~8,000km.
At such distances, the overall size of the fragments would be in rough agreement of sizes of other fragmented comets such as 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, which gave off several fragments in 2006. Based on the number of fragments, estimated sizes, and density of an average comet, the authors estimate that the mass may be anywhere between 2 x 1012 and 8 x 1015 kg. While this is a very large range (three orders of magnitude), it roughly brackets the range of known comets, again making it plausible. The upper range of this mass estimate is on par with Mars’ moon Deimos, which is generally held to be similar in mass to the progenitor of the impact that killed the dinosaurs.
One oddity is that one would likely expect such a close breakup to result in a meteor storm. The timing of these events is just before the annual Perseid meteor shower, but reports for that year, such as this one, do not depict it as being exceptional, or having a different radiant than should be expected. Instead, it notes that 157 of the 186 meteors observed on the 11th were definitively Perseids, and that the “year’s display cannot be reckoned as a fine one by any means.” Meanwhile, the Leonid meteor shower (peaking in November), was exceptional that year, generating an estimated 1,000 meteors an hour, but again, no records seem to indicate an unusual origin.
In total, I find the characterization of Bonilla’s observation as a comet plausible, but generally unconvincing. However, if it were a fragmented comet, we’re very lucky it wasn’t any closer.Statement of Privacy Commissioner Raymund Enriquez Liboro on the Mobile Number Portability Act recently signed by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte 1. We laud President Rodrigo Roa Duterte for signing the Mobile Number Portability Act. The law provides mobile postpaid or prepaid subscribers with the mechanism to retain an existing mobile number despite having moved from one mobile service provider to another. This gives data subjects control over their data which is a basic tenet under […] READ MORE
Official Statement of Privacy Commissioner Raymund E. Liboro Re: BREACH NOTIFICATION BY GLOBE TELECOM INC. On Sunday, Jan 27, 2019, Globe Telecom, through its Data Protection Officer, formally notified the NPC of a personal data breach. Based on their report, the personal data breach occurred due to a system error, potentially affecting 8851 customers. Our team is still evaluating the incident and verifying […] READ MOREWhen I saw the track list for this a few months ago, and the melting pot of artists from genres that aren't connected, I was anxious to see how Flume brought all them together to perform with his addictive beats on one fluent album. Impressed is an understatement.The tricky thing about an album like this, where there are more varied styles than your entire playlist, is the order in which the songs play and how they flow from one to another. You won't notice that you're going from electronic, to electro-rap, to Little Dragon-esque songs because of how well Flume makes them so naturally turn together. This reminds me of an upbeat version of ODESZA's In Return album, with slightly less female vocalists, and more scattered hip hop artists like Raekwon and Vince Staples, and alternative artists like Beck and Little Dragon.I haven't found myself in a situation since I've started listening to this last week where it didn't fit it: I listened to it riding to work on my motorcycle, concentrating at work, just in the background around the house doing chores, and having conversations with other people. So it's not an album where you have to be in the mood to hear it, then pass over it and think you'll come back to it later. You'll find yourself gravitating towards it whenever you know you need to listen to unique, great music whether you want to rock with the beats or just have something chill playing in the house. If you're testing the water for more electronic music without wanting to dive in fully, this and ODESZA's aforementioned album are great starting points that will not disappoint.Basim Salim, 40, who has fled Iraq with his three daughters, told Sweden's Aftonbladet newspaper that conditions at the Malmömässan conference hall had become "completely inhuman".
“Please help us here. We have been here for three nights and can not take any more,” he said. “Some people have been here for five nights. This is not a good place for children, it really isn’t. Everyone here is angry and wants to get out. It is like a prison."
A policeman from Stockholm sent to help keep order at the hall wrote on Facebook that he himself had had trouble breathing inside the centre, where nearly 1,000 refugees have been crammed over the past two weeks.
“It stings and itches in your eyes and nose,” the policeman wrote on Facebook, according to Expressen newspaper. “The health services have withdrawn the two nurses they had there because it is not a suitable workplace.”
The policeman wrote that children, many of them with high fevers, were forced to sleep on pieces of cardboard deposited on the concrete floors.
“All those poor children. I was stepping over children’s legs and arms, all sticking out under the sheets where they lay cheek by jowl in a row, sleeping on bits of cardboard laid out on the concrete floors,” he wrote.
“Happy children, sad children, children with 40C fevers who are getting neither food nor medicine.”
He said that the 900 to 1000 people estimated to be staying at the centre had to share just six toilets between them.
Rebecca Bichis from Migrationsverket later told Expressen that the nurses had returned, but were now operating from a mobile home parked outside the hall.
The toilets were being cleaned “constantly” from early morning until 9pm, she added.
“Now we are moving the operation to another part of the exhibition halls where there are two to three times as many toilets, and then we can clean the part we used previously,” she said. “If necessary, we can then alternate between the spaces.”
She explained that refugees only spent an average of 16 hours in the hall before being moved on.
Some 190,000 people are expected to seek asylum in Sweden by the end of the year.Making a Murderer is an American web series that focuses on the controversial life of Steven Avery. He spent almost two decades in prison for a crime he did not commit. Shortly after he was set free, he found himself again behind bars for the murder of a 25-year-old photographer, Teresa Halbach. The controversies surrounding the case sparked the interest of Columbia graduate students Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos. They felt it would make an interesting documentary and Netflix took on their concept and produced a 10 part docuseries. This then generated interest of the public and a petition was started to review Avery’s case. The Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department, however, insists that not all the evidence from the case was featured on Making a Murderer.
Steven Avery background
Steven Avery is the son of Allan and Dolores Avery. He was born on July 9, 1962 in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States. The family owns and operates a salvage yard for cars where Steven also works. He married in 1982 and had 4 children.
In 1985, Steven Avery’s life would change. He was convicted of rape and spent 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. After being proven of his innocence, he was convicted once again - 4 years after he was freed from prison. And this time, the charge was for first-degree murder. So is he a serial offender or a victim of a grand scheme of frame up?
This Steven Avery infographic by DealSunny shows all the important players, storylines and theories presented in the Making a Murderer series.
Innocence in the Rape Case
Looking back at the first case he was wrongfully imprisoned for, Steven Avery had a strong alibi during that time which was confirmed by several family members, yet he was still sentenced to 32 years for charges of first-degree sexual assault, attempted first-degree murder and false imprisonment in 1985. After ten years of Steven Avery being in prison, a detective called Sergeant Andrew Colborn of Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department received a call from a detective. The detective said he had a person in his custody who claimed to have committed a sexual assault that someone else was in jail for. Colborn informs Lieutenant James Lenk of this development but both officers did not pursue it further. Avery stayed in prison for another 8 years despite these developments. Thanks to better DNA test methods, Avery was proven innocent and all evidence pointed to Gregory Allen. Avery was finally released in 2003.
What events led to Steven Avery’s prosecution?
Penny Beerntsen, the victim, has claimed to recognize Steven Avery as her assailant. She is interviewed by Deputy Judy Dvorak after the rape. In the same year, Steven Avery threatens his cousin, Sandra Morris with a gun. Unfortunately for Avery, Sandra Morris and Judy Dvorak are known to be personal friends. It could be that Sandra’s testimony of Avery’s demeanor may have strengthened the suspicion against him. Not to mention Dvorak’s prejudices against Avery who has a history of bad behavior. This could easily be considered a railroad job against Avery.
Steven Avery files a lawsuit
What do you do after being imprisoned for a crime you did not commit? You guessed it; you sue the state or county. I think anyone would. The time you lost in being wrongfully in prison is a serious offense to any human being. And that is what Steven Avery did, he filed a lawsuit against Manitowoc Country and claimed $36 million in damages done to him and his life. Of course, these cases drag on for years and something might just come up and you’ll never know what happens in the next chapter of your life. After four years, Avery would later settle for a measly $400,000, which is just a little over 1% of his original claim. What would drive him to settle for such an amount? Avery is yet again implicated in a murder case and needed the money to afford legal representation. How unfortunate for this man indeed.
The Halbach Murder
On October 31, 2005, Teresa Halbach has gone missing. She was scheduled to meet Steven Avery to take pictures of his sister’s van for an advertisement. On November 11th, just a little over ten days since Halbach was reported missing, Halbach’s car and charred bones were found at Avery’s salvage yard. This was where Steven Avery’s nightmare began. The odds were all against him. One of the investigators in this case was Michael O’Kelly, who calls the Avery family ‘pure evil’, so obviously bias was already there. One major factor that implicated Avery was the involvement of his nephew Brendan Dassey in the picture. Brendan was only 16 years old at that time. According to reports, he was pressured by investigator Tom Fassbender into signing a false confession that implicated him and Avery for the murder of Halbach. There is another investigator, Mark Wiegert, who also tried to get false confession from Brendan. To make it fair for the suspects Avery and his nephew Brendan, the neighboring Calumet County was called in to lead the investigation to avoid conflict of interest. Despite the directive, members of the Manitowoc County still maintained active participation in the ongoing investigation.
Prosecution versus Defense
This is where it gets really interesting. The courtroom drama is where it all boils down. The prosecution has strong evidence to implicate Steven Avery. But the defense has equally strong arguments. Here’s a short summary of the courtroom drama that ensued.
Evidence shows that Halbach is murdered inside the salvage yard of the Avery family. The defense claims that Avery is a victim of a well-planned framing and that the Manitowoc County was responsible for pointing all evidence to Avery.
On the evidence of Halbach’s burned and shattered bones being found on Avery’s backyard, the prosecution has argued that Steven Avery did this to hide and destroy evidence. The defense, however, maintains that the evidence presented was moved there from a different, unknown location in order to frame Avery.
Because Halbach’s car was inside Avery’s property, the prosecution says it was tucked away in a corner of the salvage yard to hide it. Defense argues that the car was left there on purpose and was meant to be found. It’s interesting to note that officer Colborn called in the missing car plate of Halbach two days prior to the car being found in the salvage yard of Avery.
Halbach’s car keys were found in Steven Avery’s bedroom which just builds up the case against Avery. However, the defense claims that the car keys were planted in the bedroom. Suspicion arises because officers Colborn and Lenk of the Manitowoc County searched Avery’s bedroom without much supervision even when they were supposed to have minimal participation in the case. Halbach’s car key only surfaced after multiple searches done by Colborn and Lenk. This happened only after other search parties have conducted their own searching of the premises as well. It’s interesting to note that there were no DNA traces of Avery found on the key.
Avery’s blood was found in Halbach’s car that suggests Halbach fought back Avery and he bled while trying to hide the car, according to the prosecution. The defense maintains that the blood was planted to make it appear that Avery was inside the car. I think the defense team is weak in this argument since they are not able to obtain information as to how Avery’s blood is planted on the car.
There were anonymous calls to Halbach made by Avery which prosecution presented as evidence that Avery tried to lure Halbach in a plan to kill her. Defense, however, maintained that these calls did no prove anything.
It gets interesting though since the defense found it unusual for Halbach’s family, ex-boyfriend and close relatives to be involved in the investigation and search procedure. Why were civilians allowed to be involved in a search procedure in a crime scene? They also pointed out that officers Colborn and Lenk of the Manitowoc County should not have been involved due to possible conflicts of interests. The prosecution justified that the extra support was needed in searching the whole salvage yard. I take it as a very suspicious move by the Manitowoc County members.
A bullet was found on Avery’s garage suggesting Halbach was shot by Avery before she was burned. The defense then argued that there are bullets everywhere since Avery uses guns all the time for his recreation.
This is the prosecution’s ace: Brendan Dassey, who is Steven Avery’s nephew who was only 16 that time, narrated to the prosecution that Teresa Halbach was tied in Avery’s bed and her throat cut. The defense however pointed out that there were no traces of Halbach’s blood or DNA found inside Avery’s home where she was killed. Unless Avery and Brendan did a ‘Dexter’ style of execution where he lays out big sheets of plastic from wall to wall before killing the victim, I doubt that they are capable of this. The defense then also argued that Dassey was forced in giving out a false confession. Dassey also claims that he helped Avery commit the crime.
Doubting Brendan Dassey’s Confession
Brendan Dassey was only 16 years old during the commission of the crime. He had an IQ between 69 and 73, which lies along intellectual disability. That’s the first flag of doubt there. Second, no lawyer was present when Dassey was being interrogated. Although he was appointed a lawyer by the name Len Kachinsky, he was not present during the interrogation by Michael O’Kelly. Knowing O’Kelly’s prejudice against the Avery family, it’s not farfetched to believe that Brendan was pressured into admitting involvement in the crime. Kachinsky is then accused of working against his client thereby raising suspicion of his involvement in framing Steven Avery.
The Sentence
Ultimately, Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey are convicted for the murder of Teresa Halbach. On March 18, 2007, Avery was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and illegal possession of a firearm and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. At the start of the deliberation, the jury voted 7 for not guilty, three for guilty and two undecided. In less than 24 hours, Avery was found guilty. Later, a member of the jury claims that they were pressured to vote guilty. The claim may be moot at this time but still worth noting.
Brendan Dassey is also found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and first degree sexual assault. He was convicted on April 25, 2007. A lot of people did not agree with the conviction saying Dassey was manipulated. His low IQ suggests he was an easy target for manipulation by the investigators and bring out a forced confession and false testimony. I believe the defense did not argue much on Dassey’s condition on being in the lines of intellectual disability. Plus of course, his confession was acquired without the presence of his lawyer. That alone should nullify his testimony.
Steven Avery’s and Brendan Dassey’s Current Status
Despite appeals filed by Steven Avery, he is still in prison until today (May 2016) together with Brendan Dassey. Avery supporters sprouted after watching Making a Murderer. They organized a petition to free Avery and got 130,000 signatures which got noticed by President Barack Obama, However as president of the country, he is not able to pardon Avery and Dassey since this is a state matter. Kathleen Zellner is now Steven Avery’s new lawyer and she is conducting an investigation on the case. She’s focusing on blood research using the current luminal testing method. I just love it when the innocent gets a glimpse of hope even when the odds are stacked against them. Will there be another miracle for Steven Avery just like when he was first sentenced wrongfully? The petitioners for his case to be reinvestigated will surely be on the watch.
Fans of the ‘Making a Murderer’ series have voiced out their theories regarding the case. So the questions are, if Steven Avery did not kill Teresa Halbach, who did? How was Avery framed? Two theories have been selected in our infographic. The first suspected perpetrators are the members of Manitowoc County Sheriff’s department. They may have killed Halbach themselves or hired someone to do the killing, or just took the opportunity to use the case in framing Avery. The prime suspects are officer Colborn and Lieutenant Lenk who had been involved with Avery way back in 1995. We know that these officers received a call clearing Avery of the crime at that time but they ignored this call. Also, despite being ordered to have minimal involvement in the Halbach case, the two officers searched Avery’s trailer without much supervision, giving them a clear opportunity to plant evidence. The car key of Halbach being found by the officers in Avery’s bedroom is highly suspect since there have been several prior searches done yet no key was found by the other search party.
The second theory we found is, admittedly, a bit farfetched but still plausible. In this version, the murder suspects would be Halbach’s ex-boyfriend Ryan Hillegas and the brother of Teresa, Mike Halbach. They were seen eagerly leading search parties during the early stages of the investigation. That to me is already a red flag since they’re not investigators themselves. The only conclusion I can make is that they were allowed to do so by the authorities. Ryan Hillegas, who apparently has stalker tendencies, claims he guessed Teresa’s voicemail and deleted her voicemail messages. I’m pretty sure this guy knows something and didn’t want the authorities to find out. On the account of Teresa’s brother, Mike Halbach, he has mentioned to be grieving for his sister even when her body has not yet been found and there were no indications yet that she is dead. Sounds like premeditated to me. I’m for the truth and hopefully, the truth should be unearthed to bring true justice for Teresa Halbach’s murder.
Steven Avery’s compelling story is a depiction of what humans are capable of if we pursue the belief that ends justify the means. The American justice system is not a perfect one, and when the powerful is pitted against the powerless within this system, a gruesome injustice is produced.
The producers of Making a Murderer have heavily relied on interviews, news clips, court proceedings, telephone and video recordings to narrate the story. They’ve used the Avery family’s compound as their backdrop in the series which takes the viewer to the actual setting where everything happened. This is easily the most gripping docuseries yet. I wonder why PBS and HBO declined to make this one when they were first offered the idea by the Columbian graduates.
Use this HTML code to share the Steven Avery infographic on your website.Words have the power to inspire, but they can also backfire. My name’s Parker Terrell and I’m here to clear away the cloud of confusion with the Plain Truth.
I want to start off today talking about a recent comm I received from a passionate individual. A firm believer in the truth, he was looking to enlighten his friends as to what is really going on in this Empire. Unfortunately, he found himself having problems convincing them. He relates in the comm how their stubbornness leads to him sometimes getting overly passionate, i.e. screaming his head off. He wanted my advice on how he could go about converting his friends and not lose all of them in the process.
I tried to explain to him that the way we deliver our message is as important as the message we deliver. History has proven that words determine how wars are waged and won. We can’t just win the war of ideas; we must also win the war of words.
Turns out, he just started arguing with me, so it seemed like a good idea to address this issue with the rest of you.
With that in mind, I contacted Clair Rios and asked if she could come on and help explain that subtle distinction. Clair is a Nyx resident, and proud owner of Café Musain in Levski, so she knows a few things about conversing with a wide range of people. She was kind enough to take a little time out of her supply run to swing by the show and chat.
As a lifelong resident of Levski, Clair believes in many things that I don’t care for or that I even find foolish, like the complete overthrow of the UEE government. Yet I’m always willing to hear her out and sometimes even find myself slightly persuaded by her arguments. That’s why I asked her here today to teach how to best argue your beliefs without driving the opposing party away. Thanks for doing this, Clair.
Clair Rios: Parker, my boy, you’ve already gotten this off on the wrong foot. You keep describing the conversation as adversarial. Any discussion that begins with a “me versus them” mentality is already a lost cause. If you consider the conversation a battle to be won or lost, then you will be driven to make your point any way you can. That, my boy, is what makes a man a bully.
But if the goal of the conversation isn’t to convince them you’re right, then what’s the end goal?
Clair Rios: To get them to think about and consider your points long after the conversation is over. Let me tell you a little story. Now there was this young drifter that used to come in my bar. A little rough around the edges but nothing out of sorts for those parts. He’d always order a glass of Rust and grab a booth in back. Never bothered to ask my name or even say “Hi.”
Bet that rubbed you the wrong way.
Clair Rios: Damn right. I’m all about respecting my customer’s privacy, but I still believe in common courtesy. So this one time he comes in and I have a bottle waiting. I tell him the bottle’s all his if he has one drink with me. So he sits down and we drink. Not as barkeep and patron, or drifter and Nyx resident, just as people.
Turns out the boy had a rough and tumble upbringing and lost all faith in anyone and anything but himself. Claimed he had to live life the way he did to survive, and couldn’t stand the idealistic “empower the people” message of Levski. That’s why he always avoided talking to me.
I’ll be straight with you, Clair. The tenets of Levski have always sounded to me like a ‘head in the sand’ approach to fixing problems. Sealing yourself away from the universe is no way to change it.
Clair Rios: Dammit, Parker, stop trying to bait me. I’m not here to talk politics; I’m here to teach your audience about polite conversation. And, for the record, no … I didn’t even bring up the dream of Levski in my first conversation with the boy. Just created a comfortable atmosphere for him to express his ideas and, eventually, hear a few of my own. See, there was no way |
front of the plate that he tossed over first baseman Chance Vincent's 6'4" leaping head, scoring one run. An infield single drove in another before the inning ended.
The Vols added another run in the second on a two out rally, with two singles and a wild pitch leading to their third run. Soto stymied the Tide attack thru 4.1 innings before being lifted in favor of Eric Freeman. Freshman Chandler Taylor woke the Tide, and 'Bama fans up in the bottom of the sixth with a long blast to center that seemed destined to leave the park. However the ball caromed off the top of the wall, and the hustling Taylor dove into third with a triple. Fellow freshman Cobie Vance then singled Taylor in, finally putting the Tide on the board.
Ray Castillo followed Eicholtz to the mound, pitching scoreless innings in the sixth and seventh, allowing only a walk, while striking out two. The Tide kept their momentum going in the bottom of the seventh, tying the game at three apiece. Will Haynie singled and was sacrificed to second by Chandler Avant. Hunter Webb drew a walk, and both runners were chased home on a two run double off the bat of Connor Short.
Junior Matt Foster replaced Castillo, and had a scoreless eighth inning, before running into trouble in the ninth. With one out Derek Lance reached on an infield single, and was quickly sent back to the dugout after Haynie showcased his strong arm throwing him out trying to steal. However, a bloop double, followed by an RBI single from Chris Hall gave the Vols the lead back. They added insurance after Nick Senzel was intentionally walked and Vincent Jackson blasted a two run triple. 'Bama went quietly in the ninth, with a Hunter Webb single being the only base runner of the inning.
Both teams collected nine hits in the contest, but six walks by 'Bama pitchers, and two errors by 'Bama fielders help seal the fate in the game. Webb, Short, Taylor and Haynie all had two hits for the Tide.
Wrap Up
For the second straight week the Tide won an SEC series, which is great. A 4-2 SEC mark at this juncture, for a team that was picked by league coaches 14th out of 14 teams, speaks volumes to their character and potential. However, losing the third game each week after winning the first two always leaves somewhat of a bitter taste in your mouth, of what woulda, coulda, shoulda. On the plus side the offense seems to be heating up after a second straight weekend of collection over 30 hits, going 30-97 as a team. The pitching remains strong and the defense, while not up to last years standards, is also been good.
I know injuries are a part of every sport, and in a long season like baseball, even more so. However, this Tide team is probably a Thomas Burrows oblique muscle away from being 6-0 in the SEC. The All-American closer is almost automatic at the end of games, and his absence has led to new rolls for several players in the bullpen, who for the most part have adapted very well. Burrows hopes to be available by next weeks series at Georgia, and his return can not come soon enough.
What's Next?
Tuesday the Tide will travel to Montgomery for their annual matchup with Auburn in the Capital City Classic, held at Riverwalk Stadium. The game is at 7 p.m. and will be televised on the SEC Network. After the game the team will board their bus and continue on to Athens to take on Georgia in a three game set, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with game times at 6 p.m., 6 p.m and 11 a.m. Jon Keller is slated to start against Auburn, and the usual weekend rotation of Geoffrey Bramblett, Jake Walters and Nick Eicholtz.
Bama Baseball Fever, Catch it!
Follow @rogerpatmyers on twitter for live updatesThe Food and Drug Administration is using young lesbians, drag queens, and transgender individuals in a $36 million advertising campaign to encourage the LGBT community to quit smoking.
The government launched the “This Free Life” campaign Monday, which encourages young people to “find their own truth” and not smoke cigarettes.
“This Free Life is a campaign that proudly celebrates the lives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community,” the campaign’s website states. “We wave our colors high and seek to improve LGBT people’s health by encouraging tobacco-free lifestyles.”
“We focus on tobacco because of the damage it is causing in our community,” according to the website, which was funded by the FDA. “Think about all the progress we’ve made. From becoming powerhouses in entertainment, to standing up for our unique identities, we’ve simply come too far to set ourselves back by using tobacco. This Free Life wants to keep our momentum going by encouraging our community to live tobacco-free.”
The FDA said it is spending $35.7 million on the campaign that will involve print and digital ads, and “outreach at the local level to showcase tobacco-free behaviors and attitudes within the LGBT community.” The campaign is being paid for by tobacco taxes.
One ad shows two young lesbians meeting at a house party.
Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon.Dark tunnels, stations without evacuation procedures, and concrete crumbling onto the tracks are all among the problems federal inspectors found across the Metro system in April.
WASHINGTON — Dark tunnels, stations without evacuation procedures, and concrete crumbling onto the tracks are all among the problems federal inspectors found across the Metro system in April.
The April inspection reports, released late last week, show a number of positive signs, even as the Federal Transit Administration team found a series of issues that need to be addressed.
For example, there are still instances where workers stand around waiting more than two hours to get permission to access the tracks. A delay of two and a half hours in one instance meant only half a scheduled inspection near Foggy Bottom was completed.
Missing evacuation procedures
Several Red Line stations had old emergency evacuation maps, or no emergency evacuation procedures available at all, inspectors found.
At Rhode Island Avenue on April 6, the station manager did not have a copy of Metro’s safety rules and procedures handbook, or a copy of the station’s emergency evacuation procedures.
A week and a half later, an inspector found the station managers at Cleveland Park and Medical Center also did not have the handbook or the procedures for their stations available.
At Silver Spring and Brookland-CUA, emergency evacuation maps from 1997 remained at the station, even though updated 2016 maps were available too.
Similar problems with missing or outdated procedures were noted on the Green Line in March.
Dark tunnels, blocked emergency paths
Between Pentagon and Pentagon City, inspectors found “none to severely poor lighting” on April 6.
WMATA tie replacement equipment. (Courtesy FTA)
In an emergency, and at times when workers are inspecting the tracks, a dark tunnel can pose a safety risk. Inspectors have repeatedly noted the problem in other parts of the system before.
On one of the catwalks next to the tracks, leftover debris from track work blocked an exit path.
Inspectors also found water backing up to and under the electrified third rail in that stretch, and other spots where water was not draining properly.
Farther south on the Yellow and Blue lines, in the tunnel just south of King Street, inspectors found only three working lights in a 1,200-foot stretch on April 12.
In other parts of the system, inspectors and Metro crews identified cable seals that needed to be replaced and a number of cables lying on the track bed.
But even when Metro workers were able to identify an issue, the materials to fix it were not always available.
On April 21, Metro workers diagnosed a problem with an emergency power trip station between L’Enfant Plaza and Pentagon as a bad wire — but did not have a spare wire available to immediately replace it.
Concrete crumbling
Pieces of concrete fell from the ceiling next to the third rail between Union Station and Gallery Place, and the FTA directed Metro to figure out the cause.
In other areas, inspectors found a newly poured concrete pad supporting the tracks along the Yellow Line had fallen apart near Eisenhower Avenue.
A separate oversight report for 24/7 track work zones noted that as of mid-April, Metro had yet to approve a way to field-test the concrete that is poured for new grout pads.
Other pads poured in the Surge 13 work area appeared to hold up fine.
For future work zones, Metro is considering using data collected from railcars on how bouncy the ride is to determine areas where additional work is needed.
Rail yard safety
Metro has no standard procedures to secure railcars that are lifted up into the air in maintenance shops.
Federal inspectors found a number of safety risks during an inspection in the Alexandria rail yard in late April, including hoist controls left unattended and powered on, cars lifted up into the air without being secured, and the use of spare parts, rather than tools actually designed for the job, to keep stored wheels and axles from rolling away.
At Greenbelt, inspectors saw a train operator leave a train in a shop without applying handbrakes.
Inspectors planned to follow up on the potential safety issues.
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© 2017 WTOP. All Rights Reserved.An Egyptian student in California has agreed to return to Cairo after he wrote a threatening comment on Facebook about Donald J. Trump that drew the attention of the Secret Service and led to the cancellation of his student visa, according to law enforcement officials and his lawyer.
Emadeldin Elsayed, 23, posted an article on Facebook last month about Mr. Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States. “I literally don’t mind taking a lifetime sentence in jail for killing this guy, I would actually be doing the whole world a favor,” he wrote, according to his lawyer, Hani Bushra.
After the Secret Service investigated his comments, Mr. Elsayed was expelled from flight school, which made him ineligible to continue studying in the country on a visa, even though prosecutors decided not to charge him. Rights advocates say they are alarmed by his case and see it as another sign of the U.S. government using the immigration system as a punitive tool against people, particularly Muslims, who are perceived as threats.
An immigration judge last Friday granted Mr. Elsayed a voluntary departure, a form of repatriation that spares him a formal deportation but returns him to Egypt escorted by federal agents, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lawyers said it would be difficult for him to return.Queen's Birthday honours: Meet the Australians recognised with awards
Updated
Almost 600 Australians have been recognised for their contribution to the community in this year's Queen's Birthday honours.
The 565 recipients come from all walks of life, from an Australian pop star, to the expert who helped Australia transition from using pounds and pence to dollars and cents.
Others include Indigenous leaders, governors, sporting heroes, artists, law enforcers and philanthropists.
Andrew Scipione (AO)
New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, who has led the state's police force for almost a decade, has received a prestigious Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO).
He said he was honoured and humbled to be recognised for his distinguished service to law enforcement, his contribution to the professionalism of policing, as well as international investigations and counter-terrorism activities.
Commissioner Scipione told the ABC it was an acknowledgment for all his officers.
"This is not about me, this is about the men and the women that make this organisation what it is," he said.
"I'm just out the front, accepting it on behalf of the 21,000 people and the hundreds of thousands who have served in this organisation over those 150 odd years and for all of those who will serve into the future."
Commissioner Scipione said he was proud of the work his force undertook with German police to crack a major gun importation racket.
The investigation found parts of 200 Glock pistols were being imported into the country through an Australia Post franchise.
"They were reconstituted and found their way onto the streets, it was a major prosecution," he said.
Commissioner Scipione said counter-terrorism was a major focus for his force and his officers had also prevented terrorist attacks, but "the thing that most worries us is the age of the offender".
Nyunggai Warren Mundine (AO)
Bundjalung man Warren Mundine has devoted most of his life to improving the lives of Indigenous Australians.
His award as an Officer of the Order of Australia recognises more than 35 years of work to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.
Despite leaving school at the age of 16, Mr Mundine has been a leading figure, working to close the gap between Indigenous Australians and the wider population, for more than three decades.
He was part of John Howard's National Indigenous Council, and under Tony Abbott's leadership, he was named as the Chairman of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council.
His portfolio of roles within the Indigenous community seems to know no end.
Mr Mundine founded Nyunggai Black, is the chief executive officer of Andrew Forest's GenerationOne, is the chairman of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation, a director of the Australian Indigenous Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of NAISDA College, and the list goes on.
"It makes you feel funny," he said, upon being named on the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
"You don't go into these things thinking for medals or accolades or anything like that. You just go into things to see that you can play a little bit of a role in there."
But Mr Mundine said there was still a lot of work to do.
"The future's looking good, but it's still a struggle. I hope I'll be around for another 35 years to complete this work. But I hope it doesn't take that long," he said.
Kate Ceberano (AM)
Singer, songwriter and entertainer Kate Ceberano has been honoured for her contribution to the performing arts and her charitable work.
"I could cry," she told the ABC.
"I'm amazed that in the three plus decades I've been in music, that all the peripheral type activities that come with that seem to be acknowledged in this great honour, and I feel very moved by it."
Ceberano has raised money for causes including breast cancer and children's hospitals.
"My favourite assistance using music in the service of others is singing to premature babies in the premmie wards — my brother and I often do that," she said.
"The highlight is I've made enough of a career in order to be of use and be exploited in the best of all possible ways for the service of others."
The pop singer, who rose to fame in the 80s and has recorded 24 albums, told the ABC: "I'd like to feel there's a place for me well into my 70s and 80s".
Neil Davey (AO)
Dr Neil Davey was one of the experts who led Australia away from pounds and pence to dollars and cents.
He has been described as Australia's only expert in decimal currency at the time.
The Order of Australia honours Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) is awarded for eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or to humanity at large
Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) is awarded for distinguished service of a high degree to Australia or to humanity at large
Member of the Order of Australia (AM) is awarded for service in a particular locality or field of activity or to a particular group
Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) is awarded for service worthy of a particular recognition
Commonwealth Decimal Currency Committee chairman, Sir Walter Scott, wrote to then-prime minister Harold Holt during the changeover to say Dr Davey was the reason the transition to decimal currency went so smoothly.
Dr Davey joined the Treasury Department as a returned soldier in his mid 20s.
He studied at the University of Melbourne and competed further studies in London. Then he returned to Australia and was named the secretary of the newly formed Decimal Currency Committee.
Dr Davey recalls the time with little fanfare. "It was just a job," he said.
"I ran around to my friends saying I'm to be secretary of some committee, what do secretaries do for heaven's sake? And they said you're just going to be the general dog's body, running around organising meetings and so on.
"I thought well I can probably do that."
Dr Davey has been recognised for distinguished service to public administration.
Hieu Van Le (AC)
The Governor of South Australia, Hieu Van Le, has been awarded a Companion (AC) of the Order of Australia.
A former Vietnam refugee, Mr Le plays a leading role in the multicultural community, and has been recognised for his "eminent service to the people of South Australia, to the development of cultural and economic links with Australia's near neighbours, to the advancement of multicultural inclusion and as a supporter of the arts and education".
"I'm extremely honoured, but at the same time very humbled, this recognition is very special to me," he said.
Mr Le was the chairman of the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission prior to his appointment as Governor and considers the championing of an inclusive society as central to his current job.
"This is something that I commit myself to do as a main part of my role, to ensure that people realise, not much about me or about my story, but realise the egalitarian nature of this nation of Australia," he said.
"We need to keep reminding ourselves of how lucky we are to live in Australia, to live in this wonderful society."
Two years into a five-year appointment as Governor, Mr Le said he was thoroughly enjoying his role.
"I feel extremely privileged. It is a wonderful opportunity to contribute to our society," he said.
"In my role, as you can imagine, there have been opportunities for me to meet with so many people from all walks of life, in every corner of our state and listen to their stories.
"Seeing what they have been doing for our community, they are so inspiring and they deserve a very great acknowledgment. I feel very humbled by this and its very special for me."
He was recognised with an Order of Australia AO award in 2010.
Iain Murray (AM)
WA professor Iain Murray, who helps blind and vision-impaired people gain employment in technology-based industries, has been made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
Dr Murray helps to run a course called CAVI, which currently has 300 people enrolled around the world.
"What we do here is deliver courses to students internationally who are blind or vision impaired. The courses are mostly in information and communication technology," he said.
The program provides software that enlarges the print for students or allows them to perform commands through speech.
Dr Murray's students are located in America, England, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Australia.
The associate professor at Curtin University said technology was the key to overcome any accessibility issues that the blind or vision impaired face.
"Unemployment amongst people with vision impairment sits around 65 to 70 per cent, depending on what country you're in," Dr Murray said.
"If we can train, educate people and give them the skills to get jobs, they can do just as good a job as anyone else."
Graduates from the program go on to become web designers, networking designers or work in IT.
Dr Murray said his interest in helping the vision impaired stemmed from his family.
"My brother was blind, so I was interested in any assistant technology," he said.
He said he was honoured to be included in the list.
"It's wonderful to be recognised," he said.
Rhoda Roberts (AM)
Rhoda Roberts has been honoured for her distinguished service to the performing arts, leadership, advocacy and promoting contemporary Indigenous culture.
As the head of Indigenous programming at the Sydney Opera House, Ms Robert has been at the helm of Australian and international arts festivals for more than two decades, including the Sydney Olympics.
She told the ABC her award was "totally unexpected and quite humbling".
Ms Roberts, who is a member of the Bundjalung nation from northern New South Wales, said Queen Elizabeth was important to her people.
"The Queen's birthday means so much more in more ways than it possibly means to other Australians, because they see her as the law woman," she said.
She said she arts provided a form of healing for her community.
"I work in the arts because I really believe it's a platform for change and most importantly it keeps our languages, our stories, our rituals, the passages of life alive," she said.
Ms Roberts said she had seen "extraordinary changes" in the decades she had been working in the arts.
"If you think back to the 70s, there was a huge growth of the visual arts, and particularly with the Papunya Tula movement, we saw international galleries wanting our works," he said.
"There's always been music of course, and we moved more towards the performing arts in the 1980s."
But she said the biggest challenge was obtaining arts funding.
"We are unique as a nation. We have Australia's oldest living race, but we are going to have to get creative and it's quite frightening when you think of how many companies have had to close and how much employment that is," Ms Roberts said.
John Bertrand (AO)
John Bertrand has been made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his distinguished service to sports administration, in particular swimming and sailing, to child welfare, higher education and mentoring of young sports people.
Mr Bertrand rose to fame as the skipper of the Australia II yacht, which won the America's Cup in 1983.
"I was awarded an Order of Australia AM for winning the America's Cup quite a long time ago, but this is just fantastic to be acknowledged," he said.
He is also the head of Swimming Australia, and was given the tough task of trying to improve the team's performance in the lead-up to Rio, following their lacklustre display in London.
But he remains philosophical about the challenge.
"I thrive on pressure as it turns out, and we talk about peak performance, not medals," he said.
"A lot of people talk about medal counts. If our young people can achieve their peak performance at Rio, then results will follow."
Away from the sporting arena, Mr Bertrand is proud of his 14-year association with the Alannah and Madeline Foundation.
"Our children are the future of our country. If you talk about the responsibility that we have, it's to our kids and we've helped over one and half million kids," he said.
"That whole philanthropic space there is really very important and an important part of my life and continues to be."
Elizabeth White (AM)
Brisbane mother, grandmother and high school teacher Elizabeth White has been recognised with an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for her contribution to netball.
The Brisbane Cougars coach played professional netball from 1980 to 1982, but said her passion for the sport started at age 13.
"The minute I started playing netball, it had me," she said.
Mrs White was playing B-grade netball during her university years when former Queensland Netball Association president Deirdre Hyland recognised her talent for the sport.
"When I made the Australian team, the team manager happened to be Deirdre Hyland, so it was sort of nice to be in a team with the person who had first made you think that was possible," she said.
Her playing career was cut short by a knee injury in 1982, which she described as devastating at the time, but said it opened the door to coaching.
"I love it and I think I've been very, very lucky and very privileged to work with young athletes. Some want to play for Australia and some just want to enjoy the game," she said.
The more successful players included Vicki Wilson, Janet Bothwell, Janelle Peterson, Tracey Bruce and Amanda VanderWal.
"It's a privilege to work with anyone that chooses to come to you to be coached," she said.
Mrs White said she was surprised to be recognised.
"When I found out about it I was obviously honoured and to think that someone would nominate me for it," she said.
Her husband, former Olympic swimmer Graham White, received an OAM in 1984 for services to sport.
Reporting by Philippa McDonald, Rachel Pupazzoni, Jana Black, Laura Birch, Gloria Kalache, Michael Coggan and Kristina Harazim.
Topics: awards-and-prizes, human-interest, royal-and-imperial-matters, australia
First posted<br>
JACKSONVILLE – The preseason opener will be against the defending champs.
That’s one thing we now know about the Jaguars’ 2017 preseason schedule, and we also know EverBank Field will play host to a nationally-televised preseason game for a third consecutive season.
The Jaguars will visit defending Super Bowl champion New England in their first 2017 preseason game, the NFL announced late Monday afternoon. The league also announced the Jaguars will play host Tampa Bay in a Preseason Week 2 game on national television.
The Buccaneers game will be played on Thursday, August 17, at 8 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN. Dates and kickoff times of preseason games not nationally televised are not yet determined.
The Jaguars will play host to the Carolina Panthers in Preseason Week 3 and will visit the Atlanta Falcons in the August 31 preseason finale.
A look at the Jaguars’ 2017 preseason schedule:
*Preseason Game 1: at New England Patriots, August 10-13.
*Preseason Game 2: Tampa Bay Buccaneers at EverBank Field, August 17 at 8 p.m. (ESPN).
*Preseason Game 3: Carolina Panthers at EverBank Field, August 24-27.
*Preseason Game 4: at Atlanta Falcons, August 31.
The Jaguars played host to the Cincinnati Bengals in a nationally-televised Preseason Week 3 game in 2016 and played host to the Detroit Lions in a nationally-televised Preseason Week 3 game in 2015.Director of TV show on which student sold her virginity could be charged with sex trafficking
Catarina Migliorini will earn £490,000 from the online auction
The physical education student was taking part in a documentary called Virgins Wanted
The director of a reality show in which a Brazilian woman auctioned her virginity could be charged with sex trafficking offences.
Catarina Migliorini is set to earn £490,000 from the online auction which closed last Wednesday.
The physical education student was taking part in a documentary by Australian film-maker Justin Sisely, entitled Virgins Wanted.
Catarina Migliorini, 20, who sold her virginity online for $500,000 to a Japanese bidder named Natsu
The winning bidder is a Japanese man called Natsu. The pair will reportedly sleep together on a plane between Australia and the US in a bid to avoid prostitution laws.
But yesterday Brazil’s attorney general, Joao Pedro de Saboia Bandeira de Mello Filho, ordered an ‘urgent’ investigation, claiming the auction amounted to ‘people trafficking’.
In a letter to Brazil's Foreign Minister he said Mr Sisely should be stopped from ‘executing the crime’ and called on authorities in Australia, where Miss Migliorini lives, to revoke her visa and deport her back to Brazil for ‘the exercise of prostitution’.
He said: 'In prinicipal this looks to me like the crime of people traficking, whose repression is provided for in international treaties.'
Natsu fended off strong competition from American bidders Jack Miller and Jack Right, and Indian big-spender Rudra Chatterjee, to secure a date with the 20-year-old.
Miss Migliorini vehemently denied being a prostitute on the basis she was only selling her body the one time
Catarina's decision to sell her virginity sparked outrage across the globe, with many claiming she was little more than a prostitute.
She also caused controversy when she revealed she would be followed every step of the way by an Australian crew for a documentary film called Virgins Wanted.What the Curiously Recurring Template Pattern can bring to your code
After having defined the basics on the CRTP in episode #1 of the series, let’s now consider how the CRTP can be helpful in day-to-day code.
The episodes in this series are:
The CRTP, episode One: Definition
The CRTP, episode Two: What the CRTP can bring to your code
The CRTP, episode Three: An implementation helper for the CRTP
I don’t know about you, but the first few times I figured how the CRTP worked I ended up forgetting soon after, and in the end could never remember what the CRTP exactly was. This happened because a lot of definitions of CRTP stop there, and don’t show you what value the CRTP can bring to your code.
But there are several ways the CRTP can be useful. Here I am presenting the one that I see most in code, Adding Functionality, and another one that is interesting but that I don’t encounter as often: creating Static Interfaces.
In order to make the code examples shorter, I have omitted the private-constructor-and-template-friend trick seen in episode One. But in practice you would find it useful to prevent the wrong class from being passed to the CRTP template.
Adding functionality
Some classes provide generic functionality, that can be re-used by many other classes.
To illustrate this, let’s take the example of a class representing a sensitivity. A sensitivity is a measure that quantifies how much a given output would be impacted if a given input to compute it were to vary by a certain amount. This notion is related to derivatives. Anyway if you’re not (or no longer) familiar with maths, fear not: the following doesn’t depend on mathematical aspects, the only thing that matters for the example is that a sensitivity has a value.
class Sensitivity { public: double getValue() const; void setValue(double value); // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 class Sensitivity { public : double getValue ( ) const ; void setValue ( double value ) ; // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... } ;
Now we want to add helper operations for this sensitivity, like scaling it (multiplying it by a constant value), and say squaring it or setting it to the opposite value (unary minus). We can add the corresponding methods in the interface. I realize that in this case it would be good practice to implement these functionalities as non-member non-friend functions, but bear with me just a moment and let’s implement them as methods, in order to illustrate the point that is coming afterwards. We will come back to this.
class Sensitivity { public: double getValue() const; void setValue(double value); void scale(double multiplicator) { setValue(getValue() * multiplicator); } void square() { setValue(getValue() * getValue()); } void setToOpposite() { scale(-1); }; // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 class Sensitivity { public : double getValue ( ) const ; void setValue ( double value ) ; void scale ( double multiplicator ) { setValue ( getValue ( ) * multiplicator ) ; } void square ( ) { setValue ( getValue ( ) * getValue ( ) ) ; } void setToOpposite ( ) { scale ( - 1 ) ; } ; // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... } ;
So far so good. But imagine now that we have another class, that also has a value, and that also needs the 3 numerical capabilities above. Should we copy and paste the 3 implementations over to the new class?
By now I can almost hear some of you scream to use template non-member functions, that would accept any class and be done with it. Please bear with me just another moment, we will get there I promise.
This is where the CRTP comes into play. Here we can factor out the 3 numerical functions into a separate class:
template <typename T> struct NumericalFunctions { void scale(double multiplicator); void square(); void setToOpposite(); }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 template < typename T > struct NumericalFunctions { void scale ( double multiplicator ) ; void square ( ) ; void setToOpposite ( ) ; } ;
and use the CRTP to allow Sensitivity to use it:
class Sensitivity : public NumericalFunctions<Sensitivity> { public: double getValue() const; void setValue(double value); // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 class Sensitivity : public NumericalFunctions < Sensitivity > { public : double getValue ( ) const ; void setValue ( double value ) ; // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... } ;
For this to work, the implementation of the 3 numerical methods need to access the getValue and setValue methods from the Sensitivity class:
template <typename T> struct NumericalFunctions { void scale(double multiplicator) { T& underlying = static_cast<T&>(*this); underlying.setValue(underlying.getValue() * multiplicator); } void square() { T& underlying = static_cast<T&>(*this); underlying.setValue(underlying.getValue() * underlying.getValue()); } void setToOpposite() { scale(-1); }; }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 template < typename T > struct NumericalFunctions { void scale ( double multiplicator ) { T & underlying = static_cast < T & > ( * this ) ; underlying. setValue ( underlying. getValue ( ) * multiplicator ) ; } void square ( ) { T & underlying = static_cast < T & > ( * this ) ; underlying. setValue ( underlying. getValue ( ) * underlying. getValue ( ) ) ; } void setToOpposite ( ) { scale ( - 1 ) ; } ; } ;
This way we effectively added functionality to the initial Sensitivity class by using the CRTP. And this class can be inherited from by other classes, by using the same technique.
Why not non-member template functions?
Ah, there we are.
Why not use template non-member functions that could operate on any class, including Sensitivity and other candidates for numerical operations? They could look like the following:
template <typename T> void scale(T& object, double multiplicator) { object.setValue(object.getValue() * multiplicator); } template <typename T> void square(T& object) { object.setValue(object.getValue() * object.getValue()); } template <typename T> void setToOpposite(T& object) { object.scale(object, -1); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 template < typename T > void scale ( T & object, double multiplicator ) { object. setValue ( object. getValue ( ) * multiplicator ) ; } template < typename T > void square ( T & object ) { object. setValue ( object. getValue ( ) * object. getValue ( ) ) ; } template < typename T > void setToOpposite ( T & object ) { object. scale ( object, - 1 ) ; }
What’s all the fuss with the CRTP?
There is at least one argument for using the CRTP over non-member template functions: the CRTP shows in the interface.
With the CRTP, you can see that Sensitivity offers the interface of NumericalFunctions :
class Sensitivity : public NumericalFunctions<Sensitivity> { public: double getValue() const; void setValue(double value); // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 class Sensitivity : public NumericalFunctions < Sensitivity > { public : double getValue ( ) const ; void setValue ( double value ) ; // rest of the sensitivity's rich interface... } ;
And with the template non-member functions you don’t. They would be hidden behind a #include somewhere.
And even if you knew the existence of these 3 non-member functions, you wouldn’t have the guarantee that they would be compatible with a particular class (maybe they call get() or getData() instead of getValue()?). Whereas with the CRTP the code binding Sensitivity has already been compiled, so you know they have a compatible interface.
Who’s Your Interface Now?
A interesting point to note is that, although the CRTP uses inheritance, its usage of it does not have the same meaning as other cases of inheritance.
In general, a class deriving from another class expresses that the derived class somehow conceptually “is a” base class. The purpose is to use the base class in generic code, and to redirect calls to the base class over to code in the derived class.
With the CRTP the situation is radically different. The derived class does not express the fact it “is a” base class. Rather, it expands its interface by inherting from the base class, in order to add more functionality. In this case it makes sense to use the derived class directly, and to never use the base class (which is true for this usage of the CRTP, but not the one described below on static interfaces).
Therefore the base class is not the interface, and the derived class is not the implementation. Rather, it is the other way around: the base class uses the derived class methods (such as getValue and setValue ). In this regard, the derived class offers an interface to the base class. This illustrates again the fact that inheritance in the context of the CRTP can express quite a different thing from classical inheritance.
Static interfaces
The second usage of the CRTP is, as described in this answer on Stack Overflow, to create static interfaces. In this case, the base class does represent the interface and the derived one does represent the implementation, as usual with polymorphism. But the difference with traditional polymorphism is that there is no virtual involved and all calls are resolved during compilation.
Here is how it works.
Let’s take an CRTP base class modeling an amount, with one method, getValue :
template <typename T> class Amount { public: double getValue() const { return static_cast<T const&>(*this).getValue(); } }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 template < typename T > class Amount { public : double getValue ( ) const { return static_cast < T const & > ( * this ). getValue ( ) ; } } ;
Say we have two implementations for this interface: one that always returns a constant, and one whose value can be set. These two implementations inherit from the CRTP Amount base class:
class Constant42 : public Amount<Constant42> { public: double getValue() const {return 42;} }; class Variable : public Amount<Variable> { public: explicit Variable(int value) : value_(value) |
European title. Smith was apparently shocked, having been told all along in the build-up of the show, that Michaels was going to do a job for him, since Europe was promised to be ďhis territoryĒ. The explanation, which made and still makes logical business sense, is that they wanted to build for a bigger show - a second PPV show from Manchester, England, Smithís former home town, where Smith would regain the title - the same scenario the WWF did to draw 60,000 fans in San Antonio with Michaels in the other role working a program with Sycho Sid. So while it all made sense, it was rather strange he wasn't approached with this idea until just before the start of the show. At around this same time period, McMahon approached Hart about working with Michaels. Hart said that he had a problem with that since Michaels had still never really apologized to him for the Sunny days comment and said it would be hard to trust somebody like that in the ring and due to their past, and told McMahon that he would figure that Michaels would have the same concerns, since a few weeks earlier, after first making it clear he would never work with anyone in the Hart Foundation, Michaels had finally agreed to work with only Smith, saying he still couldnít trust Bret or Owen.
September 22, 1997 : On the day of the Raw taping at Madison Square Garden, McMahon told Bret Hart flat out that they were going to intentionally breach his contract because they couldnít afford the deal. He told a shocked Hart that he should go to World Championship Wrestling and make whatever deal he could with that group. ďI didnít feel comfortable doing it," Hart said of the suggestion. ďI feel like an old prisoner in a prison where I know all the guards and all the inmates and I have the best cell. Why would I want to move to a new prison where I donít know the guards and the inmates and I no longer have the best cell? I felt really bad after all the years of working for the WWF.Ē Hart had an escape clause in his contract since he had so much negotiating leverage when making his WWF deal 11 months earlier, in that he could leave the company giving 30 days notice and that he would have what the contract called ďreasonable creative controlĒ of his character during that lame duck period so that he couldnít be unreasonably buried on the way out. There was a window period for giving that notice and negotiating elsewhere that hadnít begun yet, so McMahon, showing he was serious, gave Hart written permission to begin negotiating with WCW and Hart contacted Eric Bischoff.
The same day, during a meeting with Hart, Michaels and McMahon - Michaels told both of them point blank that he wouldn't do any jobs for anyone in the territory, word that when it got out made most of the other top wrestlers feel even more warmly than usual toward Michaels. Michaels later reiterated that statement to Hart on 10/4, in St. Paul, when the two agreed that for the good of the business that theyíd work together. At a meeting, McMahon proposed a scenario where the two would have their first singles match in Montreal, where Undertaker would interfere causing a non-finish. This would lead to Hart wrestling Undertaker on the 12/7 PPV in Springfield, Ma., where Michaels would interfere causing Bret to win the title, which was poetic justice since it was his interference that caused Bret to win the title in the first place, and that Royal Rumble on 1/8, in San Jose, would be headlined by Undertaker vs. Michaels. During the meeting, Hart told Michaels that heíd be happy to put him over at the end of the run, but Michaels told Hart flat out that he wouldn't return the favor to him. Michaels and Hart spoke again on the subject on 10/12 in San Jose, when once again Michaels told Hart that he wasnít going to do a job for him.
October 21, 1997 : McMahon approached Hart with the idea of losing the title to Michaels in Montreal but promised that he would win it back on 12/7. Hart, remembering his conversations where Michaels was adamant about not doing any more jobs in the territory, was reluctant, saying after the way the angle had been done with him representing Canada and it becoming a big patriotic deal, that he didnít want to lose the title in Canada. He was then asked to lose to Michaels on 12/7 in Springfield, Ma. Hart told McMahon that since Michaels had told both of them that he wasn't doing any more jobs in the territory, that he had a problem doing a job for somebody who wouldnít do a job back. He told McMahon that he didnít want to drop the title in Montreal. Later, McMahon, Pat Patterson, Michaels, and Hart had another meeting where Michaels, teary eyed, said that he was looking forward to returning the favor to Bret and once again talked about his mouth saying the stupidest things. Hart still refused to lose the title in Montreal. The night before, he had been asked to put Hunter Heart Helmseley over in Oklahoma City via pin fall due to Michaelsí interference, but changed the finish to a count out. On this night he was asked to tap out to Ken Shamrock, before the DQ ending involving Michaels, which he had no problem doing because he liked and respected Shamrock and wanted to help elevate him.
The personal problems with himself and Michaels, which had become legendary in the business, resurfaced once again when the two and McMahon made an agreement to work together but to leave their respective families out of their interviews. It took just one week before Michaels did the interview talking about Stu Hart being dead but walking around Calgary because his body and brain hadnít figured it out yet. By this point, Hart had already stopped watching Raw because he had problems with the content of the show because he has four children that were wrestling fans that he didnít want seeing the direction it was going, so he was reacting to the remark based on the fact that his father and brother Owen heard the remarks and were upset about them.
October 24, 1997 : McMahon, before the show at Nassau Coliseum, told Hart that the money situation in the company had changed and they would have no problems paying him everything promised in his contract. Hart told McMahon that WCW really hadnít made him a serious offer and that he really didnít want to leave but that he was still uncomfortable doing the job for Michaels in that situation. He left the country for the tour of Oman with the idea that he was staying with the WWF, but knowing due to his window in his contract, he had to make the decision to give notice by midnight on 11/1.
October 31, 1997 : Never one to work without a flair for the dramatics, Bischoff finally caught up with Hart who was basically incommunicado in a foreign land most of the week. Just one day before Hart had to either give notice or stay for another year, Bischoff made a huge concrete offer. We donít know the exact terms of the offer, only that Hart said of the $3 million per year figure that both Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler talked about on the 11/10 Raw, that ďthey donít have any idea what I was offeredĒ, but other sources close to the situation say that figure is ďclose enough that you couldnít call it wrongĒ. Hart neither agreed nor turned down the deal, but gave the impression to WCW that they had a great shot at getting him.
November 1, 1997 : Hart had until midnight to make up his mind. He called McMahon and told him about the WCW offer and said that he wasnít asking for any more money to stay, but that he wanted to know what his future in the WWF would be over the next two years as an active wrestler and that at this point he was leaning toward accepting the WCW offer. McMahon said heíd think about it and call him back in an hour with some scenarios. Before McMahon called back, Bischoff called again trying to solidify the deal. McMahon ended up calling back four hours later from his barber shop and told Hart he didnít know what he was going to do with him but that he should trust his judgment because of their past relationship. That he had made him into a superstar and he wanted him to stay and that he should trust him and asked Hart to give him ideas of where he wanted to go. During the conversation, McMahon still brought up the scenario of wanting Hart to drop the title in Montreal, but promised that he would get it back in Springfield. ďI realized he had given the top heel spot to Shawn, but to turn back babyface it was too soon,Ē Hart said. Like in the negotiations one year earlier, it was going down to the wire and he had until midnight to make up his mind. When he was talking to McMahon, McMahon told him he could extend the deadline for giving notice. Hart asked for the permission in writing but McMahon told him that he was going out to a movie that night with his wife and said he was verbally giving permission to extend it and get written permission from the chief financial officer of the company. When Hart called to get the written notice he wasn't given it because he was told he couldnít get it in writing in such short notice. At 7pm Bischoff called again and presented a deal that, according to Hart, ď would have been insane not to be takenĒ.
At that point Hart was really having mixed emotions. He somehow felt bad about leaving the WWF and was hoping McMahon would lay out a good set of sceneries for him and convince him to stay, At 9pm, McMahon called and, reversing fields once again, urged him to take the WCW offer. Hart told him that his heart was with the company and it would break his heart to leave, and that he appreciated everything McMahon and the company had done for him. McMahon told Hart that he wanted him back as a babyface, and had been wanting him to turn babyface for two or three months but just hadnít brought it up until this point. He then presented a scenario to Hart, presenting it as a way to get Hart to stay, but obviously designed to get Hart to take the WCW offer. He wanted Michaels to win the title in Montreal. For Springfield, they would do a final four match with he, Michaels, Undertaker, and Ken Shamrock, that Michaels would again win. At the Royal Rumble, the two would have a ladder match, which Michaels would win. On Raw, on 1/19 in Fresno, Ca., Hart would open the show and say that if he couldnít beat Michaels and win the title that night. That he would retire from wrestling, and in that match he would regain the title. And then in Boston at Wrestlemania heíd drop the strap to Austin.
Hart looked at the scenario of four major losses with only one win and before his midnight deadline, gave official notice to the WWF and signed the contract WCW had sent over, with the agreement from all parties that the word wouldnít leak out until 11/10 to protect the Survivor Series PPV. Hart went so far as to have his few confidants sign written confidentiality letters to make sure word of his negotiations and signing with WCW didnít get out until 11/10.
November 2, 1997 : Hart and McMahon started a very amicable conversation with the pressure finally off and the decision for Hart to leave having been made. He again suggested that Michaels win the title in Montreal and in what will go down as perhaps the ultimate irony, said they could do a screw job ending to steal the title from him, and that the next night, on Raw, McMahon suggested the two get into a mock argument where Hart would punch him, blaming him for the screw job. McMahon even suggested to hardway him to make it look legit. Hart again refused to do the job in Montreal, saying that he had never refused to do a job but he wasnít going to lose on Sunday or Monday (at Raw in Ottawa). He agreed to put Michaels over in Madison Square Garden on 11/15, Springfield or anywhere else and said heíd put over Vader,Shamrock, Mankind, Undertaker or even Steve Lombardi. McMahon then made legal threats to Hart if he wouldnít lose in Montreal. Hart talked about the clause in his contract giving him ďreasonable creative controlĒ but McMahon claimed that refusing to drop the strap in Montreal wasnít ďreasonableĒ. The two argued about the finish in Montreal and the legalities of their respective positions all day Sunday and well into the night before finally agreeing to do a DQ finish in Montreal. Then in Springfield, in the final four match, Michaels would win the title. Bret would then go out on Raw on 12/8 in Portland, Me. and give a farewell interview as a babyface to the WWF fans and put the company and McMahon over as big as possible. He would apologize to the American fans and try to reasonably explain his actions in a way to end his 14-year association with the WWF on the highest note possible, something largely unheard of in pro wrestling, so that all parties and the fans could come out if it and his legacy with the company with a good feeling. Technically there was a problem, in that his WCW contract began on 12/1 so Hart called Bishoff, who when presented the scenario, agreed to allow him to work through 12/8 with Titan. Hart asked an associate who monitors news for him if he thought it was possible to keep the secret from the public until 11/10. Hart specifically asked about being able to keep it secret from one person until after the show and the associate laughed and said they would bet a million dollars that person already knew.
November 4, 1997 : McMahon called Hart and said that he had changed his mind. He suggested now that Michaels should lose clean in Montreal, then he'd "steal" the title with a controversial finish in Springfield and Hart would get to do his farewell speech in Portland. He said he was going to call Michaels and present the scenario to him. By this point word that Hart had signed with WCW had actually been reported the previous night on the Observer and Torch hotlines and it was only about one hour later before the folks who call those hotlines for much of their news started breaking the latest "biggest story in the history of wrestling" as their "exclusives". In response, WWF Canada released a press statement originally totally denying the story, claiming it was simply propaganda being spread by WCW. However, as the word got out Titan Sports in Connecticut, a few hours later, contradicted that story saying simply that Bret Hart was exploring all his options but not going any further, with the feeling that they wanted to protect the PPV show. Hart wouldn't publicly talk to anyone.
November 5, 1997 : The internet had paved the way for stories in the Calgary Sun, the Toronto Sun and one line in the Montreal Gazette in a PPV preview story about Steve Austin a line which resulted in the paper getting an incredible switchboard-blowing response of phone calls. McMahon called Hart and said that Michaels had agreed to the previous day's scenario, but that now he had changed his mind. He said the news was out everywhere and that Bret had to drop the belt before Monday because he couldn't have Bishoff go on television on 11/10 and announce the signing of his world champion while he still had the belt. Hart said that he would get Bishoff to postpone the announcement, but with Bishoff on a hunting trip all week in Wyoming Hart couldn't get a hold of him. McMahon then asked Hart to drop the title on 11/8 at the house show in Detroit. Hart again refused, feeling the way everything had been built up, he wanted the match with Michaels, which in the wake of all the insider publicity was building up a life of its own like no match in the recent history of wrestling, to not come off as anti-climatic and for that to happen he needed to go into Montreal as champion. He said that he would drop the title any time after 11/12 suggesting he'd do it at the house shows in Youngstown, OH, on 11/13, Pittsburgh on 11/14, or in Madison Square Garden if they wanted it that soon rather than waiting for 12/7. Jim Ross on the company's 900 line acknowledged the statement that Hart was exploring other options and said that nobody knows the real story, and in hyping the big match tossed in the phrase they'd be pushing in the final days leading up to the match--it will be their first meeting in 18 months, and most likely the final match between the two ever.
November 6,1997 : In a story in the Toronto Sun, Tiger Ali Singh, at a press conference promoting the WWF house show the next night in Toronto said of Hart's leaving. "It's very disheartening. He's not only been a mentor, but I've been a great admirer of him since I was a kid, and if he leaves you're going to see a whole bunch of other people leaving. And I'm not going to mention any names but WCW has been approaching a lot of people".
November 7, 1997 : There is no question that the power of on-line services when it comes to influence of pro wrestling was established this past week. It was generally portrayed that it was a power struggle between Hart and Michaels, that Michaels had won out, and to a lesser extent Hart was leaving over the direction of the product. While there was some truth to all of this, probably the greatest truth of all is it was simply a manipulation by McMahon to get out of a contract that in hindsight he wished he'd never offered. Whether Michaels who the wrestlers feel has McMahon's ear right now and has convinced him that what turned around WCW is Kevin Nash and Scott Hall and not Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper, and that he should and the company should do what they do to get WCW over. There is also a feeling amongst WWF wrestlers that Michaels pushed McMahon in the direction to rid the company of his hated rival who had apparently one-upped him when signing the new deal that made him so much higher paid. Maybe it was simply economics because the company is in financial straights. Hart did have a lot of problems over the direction of the company and his own decision was partially made based on that, but it's clear in hindsight that McMahon had a strong hand in manipulating Hartís decision to get out of the contract. In the vast majority opinion on-line from people who really had no clue as to what was really going on, Titan, McMahon and Michaels were coming off as major heels. The WWF's own on-line site, said to be the domain of young kids with no clue about wrestling, was besieged with reports about Hart leaving and the so-called marks were reacting very negatively toward Titan to the point Titan pulled all itís folders by the early afternoon which caused another outcry of censorship of opinions from wrestling fans. Finally McMahon responded publicly on-line with a letter of his own stating-
"Over the past few days I have read certain comments on the internet concerning Bret Hart and his "alleged" reasons for wanting to pursue other avenues than the World Wrestling Federation to earn his livelihood. While I respect the "opinions" of others, as owner of the World Wrestling Federation I felt that it was time to set the record straight. As it has been reported recently on line, part of Bret Hart's decision to pursue other options is allegedly due to his concerns with the "directionĒ of the World Wrestling Federation. Whereby each and every individual is entitled to his, or her, opinion, I take great offense when the issue of the direction of the World Wrestling Federation is raised. In the age of sports entertainment, the World Wrestling Federation refuses to insult itís audience in terms of "Baby Faces" and "Heels". In 1997, how many people do you truly know that are strictly "good" guys or "bad" guys? World Wrestling Federation programming reflects more of a reality based product in which life, as well as World Wrestling Federation superstars are portrayed as they truly are--in shades of gray...not black or white. From what I am reading it has been reported that Bret may be concerned about the morality issues in the World Wrestling Federation. Questionable language. Questionable gestures. Questionable sexuality. Questionable racial issues. Questionable? All of the issues mentioned above are issues that every human being must deal with every day of their lives. Also, with that in mind, please be aware that Bret Hart has been cautioned--on "numerous" occasions--to alter his language by not using expletives or God's name in vain. He was also told--on numerous occasions--not to use certain hand gestures some might find offensive. My point is, regardless of what some are reporting, Bret's decision to pursue other career options IS NOT genuinely a Shawn Michaels direction issue, as they would like you to believe! In the personification of DeGeneration X, Shawn Michaels character is expected to be living on the edge--which I might add Mr. Michaels portrays extremely well. The issue here is that the "direction" of the World Wrestling Federation is not determined by Shawn Michaels, OR Bret Hart for that matter. It is determined by you--the fans of the World Wrestling Federation. You demand a more sophisticated approach! You DEMAND to be intellectually challenged! You demand a product with attitude and as owner of this company--it is my responsibility to give you exactly what you want! Personally, I regret the animosity that has built up between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, but in the end, it is the World Wrestling Federation that is solely responsible for the content of this product--NOT Bret Hart --NOT Shawn Michaels--NOT Vince McMahon for that matter. May the best man win at the Survivor Series!Ē
This only made the situation worse in regard to how fans were viewing McMahon and the company even worse. "You demand to be intellectually challenged?" By doing racial angles. The fans chose that direction? The asked to see Michaels pull his pants down and jump up and down on television? Hart was booked for his first public appearance before the house show that night at the Sky Dome in Toronto. It was on a half hour TSN (The Sports Network, the Canadian version of ESPN) talk show called "Off the Record" Host Michael Landsberg opened the show saying the show had received more than 1000 calls to ask Hart if he was leaving for WCW. Despite the word being out everywhere by this point Hart would only go so far as to say that he had given his 30 day notice to the WWF, that he's reviewing offers from both groups and is strongly leaning going one way. "I'd like to really come more clean on this as I can, you know, that I have, but I have to do this thing by the book kind of thing'. Hart categorized the split as not being a money issue but said that he and the WWF had, "reached kind of a crisis or we've reached professional differences as to what direction that the wrestling shows are taking. You know, I'm not saying I'm always right, but I feel that some of the content of the shows goes against my belief in what wrestling should be and can be."
Later in the show he criticized Michaels and then stated that "wrestling is often scoffed at as a form of entertainment sometimes. or it used to be. I believe it came way up and I was very proud in the direction which has a lot to do with where I am right now today. Wrestling was cleaned up and it became something families could watch. He talked about inner workings of the business having to trust the guy you are working with because you give them your body and said the real animosities and hatred that exists have to be set aside. He said that everything he has said about Shawn Michaels is about the Shawn Michaels character, but said that Michaels has said things that have hit a raw nerve with him to the point it's unprofessional. The show aired the footage of the Shawn Michaels interview where he blamed the Hart Foundation for trashing the NOD dressing room and insinuating that Hart was a racist. Hart said that he doesn't blame Michaels for that, That's obviously a promotional direction and that's a poor concept. " I think that racial tension is something to be very very careful with. When you start messing around with racial things that I don't like." Hart said that he stopped watching Raw about five weeks earlier because he didn't like the direction and agreed when the host brought up Michaels calling him the Grand Wizard (a KKK reference, not a reference to a famous wrestling manager of the 70s) and then brought up what Michaels said about his father that he didn't see. You know I don't mind if anyone pokes fun at my dad. Jerry Lawler's made a living the last two or three years saying comments about my mom and dad but he's always fairly humorous about it. Actually I used to get offended at some of the things he used to say about my mother--until I realized that my mother thought they were humorous and then it was kind of OK with me. He then spoke at length about Brian Pillman. By this point in certain circles and particularly within the industry, interest in the match on Sunday due to all the uncertainty some of which was known and most of which actually wasn't had reached a level not seen in years. For all of Hart and McMahon's wanting to keep the story quiet, word getting out was the greatest thing for the buy rate. There were 14,374 fans paying $496,674 at the Sky Dome one night before the show. To credit the huge house to the interest in Canada since Hart leaving had been reported in the local newspapers would be incorrect as WWF officials a week before the event had figured on a crowd of 15,000. Obviously some fans knew and there were chants of "you sold out" directed at Hart. Although this should have been expected and Hart had been a pro wrestler for 21 years and been around the business a lot longer than that, the chants in his home country, knowing what he was going through, did get to him.
The main event was a six-man tag with Undertaker & Mankind & Austin vs. Bret & Smith & Neidhart, subbing for brother Owen who was supposed to start back but wasn't ready to return after a severe concussion from a few weeks earlier. Bret was asked to do the job for the Stone Cold stunner, debated the question for a while then refused figuring he was the only Canadian in the main event in the U.S. vs Canada type match with the big nationalistic angle and Austin ended up using the stunner on Neidhart instead.
November 8, 1997: The WWF ran a house show in Detroit at Cobo Arena for what would turn out to be Bret Hart's final match in the United States as a wrestler for the World Wrestling Federation. Tensions were really high and the prospect of a double-cross were looming by this time in many of the more paranoid types. By really this was 1997 and this was the World Wrestling Federation. That's stuff from the 20's where the real bad guy low-lifes were running the business. The days of making Lou Thesz world champion because you needed someone who could handle himself in the case of a double-cross had been over for more than three decades. That day Hart went to the one member of the front office he knew he could trust, Earl Hebner.
While there are what you call a lot of good acquaintances in this business Hart and Hebner were genuine close friends for years. Hart said he'd use his influence to get Hebner to referee the match because he wanted someone in the ring that he could trust. Hebner said he understood the situation and told Hart "I swear on my kids lives that I'd quit my job before double-crossing you" On a personal basis a little more than 24 hours later, remembrance of that conversation crushed him more than anything. At about the same time the WWF braintrust was in Montreal one day early. Vince McMahon held a meeting at the hotel with Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, Pat Patterson and Michaels. Reports are that at least two of the aforementioned names looked extremely uncomfortable leaving the meeting. Ross on the WWF 900 line filed a report saying due to the tension between Hart and Michaels that there would be armed security backstage and the two would dress as far apart from each other as possible. That was a total work since Michaels and Hart actually dressed together and were on professional terms the next afternoon. He also said that McMahon was not going to announce the show and instead would be handling any last minute problems backstage. Ross also hinted that it could be Harts final match in the world Wrestling Federation, something Hart, at that point, wasn't aware of.
November 9, 1997 : The Prelude-Imagine going into the most anticipated match on the inside of pro wrestling in years and on the day of the show not having any semblance of a finish? McMahon and Hart met that afternoon and McMahon said something to the effect of "What do you want me to do,You've got me by the balls" Hart said that he just wants to leave the building with his head up. Hart said to McMahon "let me hand you the belt on Raw (the next night in Ottawa). Everyone knows I'm leaving I'd like to tell the truth on Raw Monday. At this point the "truth" wouldn't include talking about finances, contract breaches, arguments about finishes, or anything that would make McMahon or the company look bad publicly. McMahon said he agreed., that it was the right thing to do and the two shook hands on it. Hart and Michaels were dressing together putting together a match. Both were professional with one another and talking about putting on the best match possible in Harts last hurrah. agreeing to a DQ finish in about 17:00 after a lengthy brawl before the bell would even sound to start the match. As they were putting their spots together Patterson came in. He had a suggestion for a high spot in the match as a false finish. There would be a referee bump. Michaels would put Hart in his own sharpshooter. Hart would reverse the hold.
Hebner would still be down at this point and not see Michaels tap out, Hart would release the hold to revive Hebner. Michaels would hit him when he turned around with the sweet chin music. A second ref. Mike Ciota would haul ass to the ring and begin the count. A few paces behind Owen Hart and Smith and possibly Neidhart as well would run down to the ring. Ciota would count 1-2, and whomever got to the ring first likely Owen would drag Ciota out of the ring. While they think they've saved the day on the pin on Bret suddenly Hebner would recover 1,2 and Bret would kick out. That would set the pace for about five more minutes of near falls before it would end up in a disqualification ending. Before the show started both Vader with his Japanese experiences and Smith told Hart to watch himself. He was warned not to lay down and not to allow himself to be put in a compromising position. He was told to kick out at one, not two and not to allow himself into any submission holds. Hart recognized the possibility of the situation but his thoughts regarding a double-cross were more along the lines of always protecting himself in case Michaels tried to hit him with a sucker punch when he left himself open.
The idea that being put in a submission or one of the near falls while working spots would be dangerous for him would be something to worry about normally, but he put it out of his mind because he had Hebner in the ring as the referee.
The Match: People on the inside were watching this as close as on the outside. Would Bret do the job? Would Shawn do the job? Would Bret give Shawn a real beating before putting him over? The Molson Center was packed with more than 20,000 rabid fans, who up to that point had seen a largely lackluster undercard. While the fear going in about the word getting out of Hart leaving hurting the PPV most likely turned out to be just the opposite, the sellout was not indicative of that either or it was well known by the advance that the show was going to sellout one or two days early. It appeared that about 10 to 20 percent of the crowd knew Hart was leaving and there were negative signs regarding his decision and negative signs toward the promotion for picking Michaels above him or the direction that seemingly forced him to leave. Some things were also strange and not just the absence of McMahon from the broadcast. Hart, the champion in the main event, wasn't scheduled for an interview building up the match. When his name was announced early in the show there were many boos from fans who knew he signed with the opposition. Once he got in the ring for the introduction, Michaels wiped his but, blew his nose and then picked his nose with the Canadian flag. He then put the flag on the ground and began humping it. Hart was immediately established as a babyface. The two began the match as a brawl all around ringside and into the stands. The crowd was so rabid that it appeared there was genuine danger they'd attack Michaels. As one point they were brawling near the entrance knocking down refs as planned, knocking down Patterson as planned and as planned Hart and McMahon had an argument almost teasing the idea of a spot later in the match where Hart would deck McMahon. Yet it was also clear that everything going on was 100% professional and the only curiosity left at that point was how good the match was going to be (it appeared to be very good) and how would they get "out" of the match (with something nobody will ever forget). But one thing was strange. Why were so many agents circling the ring and why was McMahon right there and acting so intense? About eight minutes before the show was "supposed" to end, Bruce Prichard in the "Gorilla" position (kind of the on-deck circle for the wrestlers) was screaming into his headset that we need more security at the ring, Why? They had already done the brawl in the crowd. The finish was going to be a DQ and it was still several minutes away.
The Double-Cross: Hart climbed the top rope for a double sledge on Michaels. Michaels pulled Hebner in the way and Hart crashed on him, just as planned. Michaels for a split second looked at McMahon and put Hart in the sharpshooter, just as planned. The next split seconds were the story. Ciota listening to his headpiece for his cue to run in heard the backstage director scream to Hebner it was time to get up. Hebner, listening himself, immediately got up. Ciota started screaming that he wasn't supposed to get up. Owen Hart and Smith readying their run in were equally perplexed seeing him get up. Prichard was freaking out backstage saying that wasn't supposed to happen. Bret still not realizing anything was wrong laid in the hold for only a few seconds to build up some heat before the reversal. Michaels cinched down hard on the hold and glanced at Hebner and then looked away which more than one wrestler in the promotion upon viewing the tape saw as proof he was in on it, but then fed Bret his leg for the reversal. Hebner quickly looked at the timekeeper and screamed "ring the bell." At the same moment McMahon sitting next to the timekeeper elbowed him hard and screamed "ring the fucking bell".
The bell rang at about the same moment Bret grabbed the leg for the reversal and Michaels fell down on his face on the mat. Michaels music played immediately and was immediately announced as the winner and new champion. Hebner sprinted out of the ring on the other side, into the dressing room through the dressing room and into an awaiting car in the parking lot that already had the motor running and was going to take him to the hotel where he'd be rushed out of town with his ticket home instead of staying to work the two Raw tapings. Michaels and Hart both leaped to their feet looking equally mad, cursing in McMahon's direction and glaring at him. Hart spit right in McMahon's face. The cameras immediately pulled away from Hart and to Michaels. Vince screamed at Michaels to ďpick the fucking belt up and get the fuck out of there.Ē Michaels still looking mad was ordered to the back by Jerry Brisco who told him to hold the belt up high and get to the back. The show abruptly went off the air about four minutes early.
The Aftermath: The officials left the ring immediatley, McMahon went into his private office in the building with Patterson and a few others and locked the door behind him. Hart in the ring flipped out on the realization of what happened and began smashing the television monitors left behind until Owen, Smith and Neidhart hit the ring to calm him down. The four had an animated discussion in the ring all looking perturbed. Finally Hart thanked his fans who for the most part left with the air let out of their sails, gave the I love you sign to the fans and finger painted "WCW" to all four corners of the ring, which got a surprisingly big pop, and went back to the dressing room. He first confronted Michaels who swore that he had nothing to do with it. Michaels, obviously afraid Hart would punch him out right there, told Hart that he gets heat for everything that happened but this time it wasn't his fault and he was as mad as Hart about the finish. He said he didn't want to win the belt that way, was disgusted by what happened and to prove it would refuse to bring the belt out or say anything bad about Hart on Raw the next night. Hart said that Michaels could prove whether he was in on it or not by his actions on television the next night. The entire dressing room was furious at McMahon by this point. The feeling was that if Hart having worked for the company for 14 years and not missing shots due to injuries the entire time and having made McMahon millions of dollars throughout the years could get double-crossed this bad, then how could any of them trust anything he would say or do? People were saying that how could anyone trust anyone ever again and that it was an unsafe working environment.
For three years after the steroid trial and all the bad publicity McMahon had worked feverably to change his legacy in the industry as not the man who ran all the other promoters out of business, not the man who marketed pro wrestling to young children while pushing steroid freaks and the man who tried to destroy wrestling history and create his own, not his worked Harvard MBA, worked billion dollar company, a man who was so vain as to give himself a huge award in Madison Square Garden as "the genius who created Wrestlemania" not the man who at one time tried to monopolize every aspect of the business for himself but instead as the working man's hero, coming from humble beginnings, fighting those ruthless rich regional promoters and through nothing but guts,gusto and vision became the dominant force in this industry and taking it to a new level. And now, against all odds, the generous friend trying to keep all the small regional promoters acknowledging the past history of the business, fighting against Billionaires Ted, the man who was selling all his self-made |
to you on conditions that seem to warrant a closer look.
We’ve been seeking access for several months, but Gov. Pat Quinn is keeping us out.
According to Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson, reporters can’t visit the minimum security prison because of safety and security concerns.
So, what exactly are the safety and security concerns?
That’s one of the questions we have for Quinn, but Anderson has refused to go on tape to answer our questions.
And now, I've talked to several former inmates like Louis Wilkins who say, when they tried to voice concerns, they were threatened with retaliation by prison employees.
"You know, I had to pipe down on the situation because I was trying to go to school to get my GED."
Wilkins says when he asked for grievances, the forms inmates use to write out complaints, the correctional officers said he needn't bother because they'd just throw out the grievances anyway.
And he says they also threatened to put him in segregation, which would have meant he couldn't attend GED classes.
In a written statement, the Department of Corrections says the allegations of threats are disturbing, but it has found no merit to the claims, though the department says it’s a serious matter and will be reviewing the issue further.
As for Wilkins, he says he stopped complaining so he could get his GED but he’s simmering with anger for how he was treated.
"I committed a crime and the judge sentenced me," he said. "He did not say, Mr. Wilkins, you will be sentenced to four years living in unhealthy conditions to be treated, or housed like an animal. I wouldn't even house an animal like that."
Alan Mills is an attorney with the Uptown People's Law Center in Chicago, which is suing the Department of Corrections over conditions at Vienna, the prison we reported on yesterday.
"If you're going to choose to lock up almost fifty thousand prisoners, then you have to pay the bill for doing it in a humane decent way. The constitution doesn't say you have constitutional rights if you can afford them. The constitution says you have to do this, so Illinois either has to let some people out of prison or improve the conditions, which is going to mean spending more money," he said.
Mills says they've got a lawsuit against Vandalia that they're ready to move on, but there's a problem.
In order to file a lawsuit, inmates have to complete the grievance process at the prison--a lawsuit can’t be filed as long as a complaint is still pending.
Mills says he believes prison administrators are purposely sitting on those grievances to make a lawsuit impossible.
"I mean some grievances get dealt with within a week. After six months, I know from my personal experience that clearly somebody is slowing things down."
In a written statement the Department of Corrections insists they strive to promptly respond to all grievances and appropriately address concerns raised in complaints.
As for the lawsuit Mills hopes to file, it’s focused solely on conditions, he said, "This is purely a forward looking lawsuit. We are not trying to figure out what living in these conditions is worth to somebody and therefore trying to get damages for all these individual prisoners. Nobody's trying to get rich off this. All we're trying to do is change the conditions so that Illinois does not run such a horrible prison anymore in the future."
Illinois spends more than a billion dollars a year on prisons, about $20,000 per year per inmate.
The conditions inside matter because the prisoners in Vandalia--they're going to be released.
And like Louis Wilkins, a lot of them are getting angry.
Wilkins says he sometimes wakes up crying and can't get back to sleep as his mind races over his experiences at Vandalia and the politicians and administrators he holds responsible.
Wilkins said, "Eventually they will have to answer to God. You know they might don't see their punishment here on earth but they will one day, when they get in front of the maker they'll see it."
Wilkins says he often thinks of the people still imprisoned at Vandalia.
He says they may have committed crimes, but they should not be forced to live like that.Best Buy Workers Give Wii U To Teen Who Visited Nearly Every Day To Play Video Games
’Tis the season when we’re happy to hear stories of big-hearted folks out there among all the Grinches, people who take it upon themselves to make a stranger’s holiday merry and bright. Like the Best Buy employees in New York who bought a Wii U for a teenager who visited almost every day to play Smash Bros. at the store.
In a Dec. 7 video posted by a YouTube user who says that he’s a manager at Best Buy, the workers approach the teen as he’s sitting at his usual spot, in front of the store’s display verison of the console.
“We got you this Wii U so you don’t have to come here every day and play it,” the worker says, holding the box, adding, “No, for real, it’s for you,” as the teen seems dumbfounded that the console is really for him.
“This kid came in every single day to play the display Wii U, the employees in this store saw an opportunity to make a child smile and did just that,” the video’s description reads.
The store’s General Manager confirmed the gift to Kotaku, noting that associates in the Appliances Department came up with the plan to buy the teen the video console.A deflationary Bacon Cheeseburger Index combined with optimistic Google searches for timeshares reflect a U.S. economy in flux — and, likely, a Federal Reserve in flux.
These readings, plus snapshots of car buying, gun ownership, food-stamp demand and more, make up the “Off the Grid Indicators” report that creator Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the New York–based global brokerage Convergex, argues pushes economic sleuthing beyond the obvious payrolls report or consumer price index.
Read: U.S. adds 215,000 new jobs in March as more workers enter labor force
Government data often strip out volatile food prices, but market strategist Nicholas Colas and company say doing so miscalculates inflation expectations among shoppers.
Highlights from the current edition of the now five-year-old quarterly report, especially when combined with traditional government- and industry-issued data and anecdotes, indicate the Fed can be slow with raising interest rates, Colas said. The Fed’s next two meetings come later this month and then in June.
Read: Fed will likely hike rates in June in wake of jobs report, economists say
Convergex even trademarked its “Bacon Cheeseburger Index,” an evenly split minibasket of the popular beef-bacon-and-cheese combo that can serve as a relatable inflation gauge. Government data often strip out volatile food prices, but Colas and company say doing so miscalculates inflation expectations among food-conscious shoppers.
As of the first quarter, thanks to price declines in all three of these cholesterol commodities, a bacon cheeseburger now costs 5.1% less than a year ago, the Convergex report shows.
A look back at the Bacon Cheeseburger Index to 1990 finds that it is actually a decent indicator of deflation risk. Prior periods when the BCI turned resoundingly negative (3% or more) since 1990 include: 2009 (financial crisis); 1998 (emerging market and Long Term Capital collapse), and 1992 (the lead up to the Iraq invasion). In each case, the Fed was cutting interest rates, not raising them.
“So should the Fed actually use the Bacon Cheeseburger Index? Of course not. But does it help explain in one compact, if anecdotal, form why the Federal Reserve is happy to hold off on rate increases? I think it does,” said Colas.
Here are some of the report’s other findings:
• Since Google GOOGL, +0.42% searches may reveal consumer behavior, Colas looked at what the search engine “autocompletes” when users type “I want to buy” and “I want to sell.” The algorithm attempts to predict the rest of a query based on what others have attached to the same starting words. “A house” has been the No. 1 autocomplete for “I want to buy” since the first quarter of 2015 and remains on top this quarter. And moving up to No. 2 for “buy” is “a timeshare.” That’s an economic positive for both the primary- and secondary-residence markets. Rounding out the top four are “a car” and “stock.” For “I want to sell,” the top three answers are “car,” “house” and — believe it or not — “kidney.” Kidney-sale searches were popular during the last recession — then, and now, illegal in the U.S.
‘So should the Fed actually use the Bacon Cheeseburger Index? Of course not.’ Nicholas Colas
• Used-vehicle prices remained stable and pickup truck sales still showed positive comps versus last year, in fact rising 8% on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter. That typically means two things: that consumers weren’t limiting their buying to used cars over new and stronger that small-business growth is demanding more pickup trucks in service.
• Data on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (often called food stamps), can shed light on how deep the economic “recovery” has run through the strata of American society. Prior to the financial crisis (2006 fiscal-year data), there were 26.5 million Americans enrolled in SNAP. That number rose to a peak of 47.6 million in 2013 but has only declined to 45.8 million as of the end of the last government fiscal year in September, according to the Convergex findings.
• Background checks by the FBI for firearm purchases hit a new record 23.1 million last year. At an average transaction price of $600, that equates to $14 billion in firearms sales. Also worth noting: Google Trend data (the number of searches for a specific term) for “buy a gun” are at multiyear lows. Colas surmised that could mean repeat buyers are responsible for the recent growth, since they have no need to search for a federal firearms dealer. Colas has loosely tied gun buying to wavering American sentiment; his research presumes that greater confidence in the economy is tied to confidence in personal security, although the data do not necessarily take into account any law changes that may impact data from one period to another.
• Nervous Americans also continued to stash their savings in the relative safety of precious-metal coins. On a rolling six-month basis, the mint is selling $87 million of gold coins per month now versus $62 million per month a year ago. As for silver bullion, the current average selling rate is $63 million per month versus $69 million last year at this time. Worth noting: Both figures far exceed the amount of incremental capital invested in U.S. equity mutual funds, which is negative $23 billion so far in 2016, according to the Investment Company Institute.Next month's European football championship in France could be a target for jihadist terror groups, French and German intelligence have warned.
"France is now clearly the country most targeted" by Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda jihadist groups, the head of the French domestic intelligence agency (DGSI) Patrick Calvar told MPs in a hearing last week.
"We know that Daesh [IS] in planning new attacks," he said, according to a transcript of the hearing published on Wednesday (18 May).
Calvar said IS would try to strike "as strongly and as rapidly as possible" in order to create a diversion from its difficult military situation in Syria and Iraq and as a retaliation against the international coalition's air strikes.
He said France could be faced with a "new kind of attack" and that the question was not "if" but "when and where" attacks would take place.
The risk is "a terror campaign characterised by leaving explosive devices in places where large crowds gather”, he said.
“This type of action would be multiplied to create a climate of panic," he said.
The intelligence chief gave no further details, but he spoke just a month ahead of the Euro 2016 tournament that will be held from 10 June to 10 July. Fifty-one matches will be played in 10 cities.
In an interview with Germany's Die Welt newspaper last weekend, Europol chief Rob Wainwright said Euro 2016 was "an attractive target for terrorists" and that he was looking at the event "with great concern".
The French sport minister said earlier this year that between seven and eight million people were expected to come to see the competition inside and outside the stadiums.
Security in and around the stadiums, especially in the so-called "fan zones" where people would watch the games on giant screens, have been a particular concern since the 13 November attacks in Paris.
The attacks started with the explosion of two suicide bombers outside the Stade de France, where 80,000 people were attending a match between France and Germany.
Ten thousand soldiers will be deployed during the competition as well as around 12,000 private security around fan zones. Exercises simulating attacks in stadiums have been organised, including one simulating a chemical attack.
'Crusader nations'
In addition to the crowds of supporters, another target could be the participating teams, according to a German criminal office (BKA) report leaked by German tabloid Bild.
"A successful attack on teams from 'crusader nations' including Germany would have a symbolic value," Bild quoted the report as saying, referring to teams from mainly Christian countries.
Twenty-four countries qualified for the competition. Among them only two, Albania and Turkey, have a population which is not mainly of Christian background.
According to Bild, the BKA report said France was a target because of "its colonial history in North Africa, its military involvement in Mali as well as its military support in the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria".The Start Menu is currently able to sticky Windows Store games, but with the help of Steam Tile, you can do pin games you’ve bought on Steam as a Live Tile on the Start Menu.
While it is no secret that the Start menu allows users to sticky apps – third party and first party – there is now a way to use this to benefit your gaming experience with the help of a simple app called Steam Tile.
The Start Menu itself is plentiful in customization options, but you can further decorate it with your favorite games ready to launch just like the olden days of Windows!
With the help of Steam Tile [Windows Store] you can now directly pin your favorite games to the Start Menu, ready to be run with a single click.
Setting up the application is relatively tricky if you aren’t familiar with the procedure. When you download and install the app, you will be prompted to enter your community ID.
If you want to find out your community ID, simply click on your name in Steam and choose Profile.
Next, Click on Edit Profile.
You will now be shown the following screen:
Whatever is written in the box at the end of /id/ is what you will enter as your community ID in Steam tile.
Once you have entered your ID, you will be shown your complete library of games as live tiles.
Now all you have to do is click on the game of your choice and accept the prompt that will pin the game to your start menu.
As you can see, the live tile flips over and shows me my latest achievements in the game too.
The tile isn’t there just for cosmetic value: clicking on the live tile will run the game for you without needing to run it manually from Steam!
This is a really convenient application for gamers who regularly play Steam games such as Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive etc. by having a convenient shortcut a click away.
Considering how tedious Steam can be at times when needing to run a game, Steam Tiles allows users to really give their Start Menu better versatility when it comes to what they can choose to pin/unpin on it.
If you found this to be a useful app, let us know in the comments section and what games have you pinned!Tampa Bay Lightning sign 2016 pick Taylor Raddysh to entry-level contract, could go shopping in the offseason by Kevin Tall
Tampa Bay Lightning fans will soon be able to vote for their favorite play of the 2016-17 season. The first round, consisting of 16 plays, kicks off at noon on Friday, May 12, on the team’s official website. Voting for the first round will end at noon on Monday, May 15.
Want your voice heard? Join the Bolts By The Bay team! Write for us!
Which play do you think deserves top honors for the Lightning’s 2016-17 campaign? According to Bolts beat writer Brian Burns, you’ll soon have your chance to make your voice heard.
Friday at noon, you’ll be able to select your favorite from among 16 plays from the past year. They’re paired up against each other in eight races in the first round — hopefully the playoff format doesn’t trigger any disappointed fans. Friday opens the Lightning Region of the eight-race bracket.
The first race of round one pits Lightning all star Nikita Kucherov’s sick shootout goal from March 4 against the Buffalo Sabres against another Kucherov goal, this one one a beautiful pass from then-healthy captain Steven Stamkos. The shootout stunner is considered the No. 1 seed, and it’s easy to see why. But what kind of magic did fans of the Tampa Bay Lightning miss out on with Stamkos sidelined?
Can’t get enough Nikita Kucherov? Read about his brilliant play in the IIHF Worlds!
The second match-up features the No. 8 seed, Lightning rookie Yanni Gourde’s game-winning, glove-side wrister to beat the Chicago Blackhawks in overtime on March 27. That tally is up against No. 9, another goal from Kucherov — is this a theme? — on April 7, on the road against the Montreal Canadiens. This one came off Ondrej Palat’s stick in the area of the defensive zone face-off circle and landed about half a rink away, right on Kuch’s tape. Notably, it was Kucherov’s 40th goal of the season.
Yanni Gourde wins it for Tampa Bay in overtime! His second career NHL goal. pic.twitter.com/RNvpppGxFO — Cristiano Simonetta (@CMS_74_) March 28, 2017
Stay tuned to Bolts by the Bay to find out when the next round of voting opens up.Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine fired a warning shot Friday and blocked Organization for Security and Cooperation staff from investigating the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, according to reporters tweeting from Ukraine.
"Shots fired by rebels at international team of investigators (OSCE) in Ukraine as they approach plane wreckage," Terry Moran, chief foreign correspondent at ABC News, tweeted Friday afternoon.
BREAKING: Shots fired by rebels at international team of investigators (OSCE) in Ukraine as they approach plane wreckage, via @KiritRadia — Terry Moran (@TerryMoran) July 18, 2014
About 30 OSCE investigators arrived at the crash site on Friday by helicopter, after the United Nations Security Council demanded a thorough and independent international investigation into the crash that killed 298 passengers. Ukrainian military and pro-Russian rebels accuse each other of shooting down the plane.
BREAKING NEWS: Shots fired by rebels at international team of investigators (OSCE) in Ukraine as they approach plane wreckage. — Jerry Liet (@jerryliet) July 18, 2014
According to Guardian reporter Harriet Salem, rebels turned away the OSCE investigators on Friday. But Reuters reported that pro-Russian separatists said they welcomed the investigators and denied reports to the contrary.
Ukrainian photographer Pierre Crom said on Twitter the rebels fired a warning shot into the air.Testing code that depends on databases has always had twists and turns, but writing tests against large-scale key/value stores has its own set of challenges. If your app writes to Riak, should each developer’s machine have a fully-configured Riak instance? If the code writes to the data store using futures, how would you test it? If the datastore changes to Cassandra or Redis, do the tests need to be re-written?
This last point is important. Kent Beck put it best:
Making workable decisions today and maintaining the flexibility to change your mind in the future is a key to good software development.
Twitter’s Storehaus library helped us build reusable interfaces to our key-value stores, allowing us to write asynchronously while abstracting away the messy internals. If we move from our choice (typically Redis) to some other backend, we have the flexibility to make that change.
Dependency Injection helps us wire together components, so that depending on the current environment (dev, staging, production) the right concrete implementation folds seamlessly into our code. We use Guice – with help from Spiros Tzavellas’ sse-guice library – to inject dependencies into our Scala apps. To demonstrate, we built a demo Play app called Dorota.
A Simple Ticker
Dorota is a news ticker that reads RSS feeds, peels off headlines, and caches the JSON in Redis. The app then serves headlines as a service (HaaS?).
To start, let’s set up our Guice injector and Storehaus. First, you’ll need to add these dependencies:
1 2 3 "com.google.inject" % "guice" % "3.0", "com.tzavellas" % "sse-guice" % "0.7.1", "com.twitter" %% "storehaus" % "0.6.0",
Here’s our controller:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 @Singleton class Feed @Inject () ( retriever : FeedRetriever, processor : FeedProcessor ) extends Controller { //... def json = Action { //... val feed = processor. headlines ( source, randomFeed, retriever ) //... } }
processor is parsing RSS feeds, extracting the headlines, converting them to JSON and caching via Storehaus to Redis. source, the friendly name of the site (e.g. Hacker News) becomes the Redis key. The @Inject annotation is Guice’s way of telling the class, “At runtime, you’ll get retriever and processor instances from some other context.”
Dorota specifies that context in ProdModule, via ScalaModule:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 class ProdModule extends ScalaModule { def configure () { bind [ Retriever ]. to [ FeedRetriever ] bind [ RedisClientFactory ]. toInstance ( new RedisClientFactory ) bind [ StorageFactory ]. toInstance ( new RedisStorageFactory ) bind [ FeedProcessor ]. toInstance ( new FeedProcessor ) } }
This module handles all our initialization, and the convenient ‘Global.scala’ file handles the direct injection of instances into the context of the running Play app. For more info on DI in Play, see the official docs.
1 2 3 4 5 6 object Global extends GlobalSettings { private lazy val injector = Guice. createInjector ( new ProdModule ) override def getControllerInstance [ A ]( clazz : Class [ A ]) = { injector. getInstance ( clazz ) } }
Now the controller has access to injected instances.
Where Are The Tests?
You might be wondering what all this has to do with tests. With Guice handling our dependencies, we can use modules to inject our test dependencies.
This happy path spec below (using specs2) binds dependencies to an injectable module that is only utilized in the test run.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 class FeedProcessorSpec extends Specification with Mockito { val fakeHeadlines = List ( "Costa Concordia salvage nears final phase - Reuters", "JPMorgan may pay $750M fine for 'whale' losses - USA TODAY", "Yellen Is Top Fed Hopeful, Yet Again - Wall Street Journal", ) val fakeRetriever = mock [ Retriever ] val fakeStoreFactory = mock [ StorageFactory ] val fakeStore = mock [ MergeableStore [ ChannelBuffer, String ]] fakeStoreFactory. createStore returns fakeStore class TestModule extends ScalaModule { def configure = { bind [ Retriever ]. toInstance ( fakeRetriever ) bind [ StorageFactory ]. toInstance ( fakeStoreFactory ) } } Dorota. injector = Guice. createInjector ( new TestModule ) val expectedJson = Json. toJson ( Json. obj ( "source" -> "Google News", "headlines" -> fakeHeadlines )). toString "A FeedProcessor" should { "be able to return finished JSON" in { val feedProcessor = new FeedProcessor val key = StringToChannelBuffer ( "Google News" ) fakeStore. get ( key ) returns Future. value { Some ( expectedJson ) } val result = feedProcessor. headlines ( "Google News", "http://example.com", fakeRetriever ) result mustEqual expectedJson } } }
The processor asks the Storehaus mergable store for headlines matching “Google News,” and the mock store returns correctly. You could also move the local mocks into a separate code unit, but I like to know what kind of setup is required in my spec, so that I know where I may need to simplify.
I’ve only touched the surface of what Guice has to offer. Hopefully this kind of setup will allow you to explore its power in the context of test-driving Storehaus applications.
Additional Reading
The following resources helped us wire our test infrastructure together:When I first downloaded this app there was no way to save or export your doodles to your mobile device's gallery. The developer was responsive in fixing that bug, so now I'm back to revise and upgrade the review I posted originally (from 1-star then, to 4-stars now).
If you want to doodle or sketch (moreso than create digital fine art - a la Hockney's) you can use the functionality in this app to set the background color, set the brush color, choose a line style then set its width and opacity and also choose whether to mirror the lines/shapes you lay down or not. To preserve your creation there are 3 options: 1- Doodles will save within the app itself, 2- Using the 'Export to Gallery' option you can save your masterpiece to your device's onboard gallery, and 3- You can upload to a public online gallery.
For both the background and the sketched lines you have an unlimited number of colors to choose from in the color picker - and the variety is not just in Hues, it is also in Shades (darkness & lightness) - if you couple those parameters with the opacity you can create all sorts of textures, lines, and shapes of subtle or bold variation.
I may do different types of doodling with this app, but one of the applications that attracted me to it was the idea to create backdrops or textures to use in digital photo composites. Now that the Export to Gallery function is enabled, all I have to do is go into one of my favorite photo editing apps (for something like this I'd probably use the Adobe Photoshop one...) then layer, blend and combine straight photographic images with what I've created and stored using OmniSketch.
If you just want to keep a little kid out of your hair for a bit rather than draw yourself this would also be a very good app for that. Especially now that you can save their art works either for their own future reference, for yours or to share with the grandparents or other family & friends.
In case you're not someone who comes to app usage symbols intuitively, there is an I(nformation) button that untangles what all the different symbols are used for to create or save doodles. It toggles, so just click it on or off for review. It's not rocket surgery (as they say...) so if you're not the 'I'll just explore' type, then give that page a quick glance but don't over think it. Start drawing! This is not a 'game' (as some people refer to every single app on the planet). It is a drawing tool app. So if you don't think you'd enjoy doing undirected drawing and will freak out about being creative on your own without templates etc. then perhaps this app wouldn't be for you. I read some complaints that certain reviewers felt that others couldn't create drawings like those in the app's previews. Baloney. If you have some drawing talent you can do so. But not everyone will have the patience and/or the skill to create such things without explicit directions. This is not a coloring book type app. You will be creating your own doodles. So get to it, doodle away, don't over-analyze something that could be relaxing & have fun!What It’s Like Being Lonely in SF
The Bold Italic Editors Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 2, 2014
Illustration by Monica Garwood
by Wendy Steiner
I’ve been living in San Francisco for almost two years now and I’ve made almost no friends. I’ve made some friends at work who I consider close, but I can’t help but think I should have more by now. It’s really easy not to interact with people in the city, so I unintentionally spend a lot of time alone. Most of my day is spent working or riding the bus, which is kind of like a giant silent contest. I live with my boyfriend, but he works late all the time so it’s often just me and my podcasts. I’ve found that I can trick myself into feeling like I’m talking with a friend while I listen to a podcast. The more casual and rambling ones are the most convincing.
I did a pretty good job of not noticing my lack of friends until my first birthday in SF rolled around. My boyfriend was out of the country and the three or so (not that close) friends I texted to hang out with were all busy. I ended up drinking white wine by myself and calling my mom, who I’m not even that close to. A year later, I planned to have people come over for my birthday and a very sweet group did, but there still wasn’t a huge showing like I imagined there would be. I can’t help but compare these birthdays to ones I’ve had in LA where I grew up, when friends would plan the whole thing and take me to Canter’s as a surprise and everything was perfect.
As an adult no one really cares if you eat string cheese by yourself every night.
OK, everything wasn’t perfect, but things were easier when I lived around the people who had known me for most of my life. The loneliness I’ve felt here has been a lot less romantic than I believed it would be. I thought maybe I’d feel more creative here, or I’d understand the world more than other people, but I just feel like a loser. As a kid, parents and teachers kept an eye out for whether or not you were making friends, but as an adult no one really cares if you eat string cheese by yourself every night.
Making friends feels a lot harder than I thought it would be. Maybe there’s a reason it’s called “making new friends” and not “magically finding new friends.” But I don’t think I fully appreciated how much easier it was to forge bonds with all the forced social interactions and free time that all my schooling brought.
Frankly, a lot of people now are busy with things like work or figuring out their romantic relationships, and most people don’t make that many new friends as they get older. That’s why in my darker moments I feel like I accidentally did things out of order. I’ve been passed up for a single-girls’ night out a time or two because I have a boyfriend, and I don’t meet new people under the pretext of dating, so I never make de facto friends that way.
I’m also not from San Francisco and I don’t have any family here, so I don’t have any deep-rooted friendships. Add to that the fact I have almost no hobbies. I’m interested in film photography, but that’s one of the loneliest hobbies of them all. A lot of articles about making friends suggest that you join a sports league, but I hate sports. How do I make friends with the other people who hate sports?
I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that San Francisco and the potential friends who live here might be too cool for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of going to beautiful places with beautiful bearded men serving beautiful food just as much as the next yuppie with a Kinfolk subscription. But alas, I’m not actually good at it. That’s not to say that I could never be good at it, but for now I find the fear of trying to be cool and failing to be paralyzing.
I don’t want to be in the same café with people who look like models in case they should judge me, or more likely, I judge myself for not being as perfect as they appear to be.
It’s gotten to the point where I prefer to look at supremely attractive humans in the privacy of my own home on Tumblr or Pinterest. I don’t want to be in the same café with people who look like models in case they should judge me, or more likely, I judge myself for not being as perfect as they appear to be. I find it incredibly difficult to relax around people who have more than 15,000 followers on Instagram. I can’t help but be hyperaware of how aggressively stylish they are and I reject it with my entire being while simultaneously wanting to know and understand it.
On top of all the other challenges of being friendless in San Francisco, this city has to go and have awesome events every night of the week. In a place with pop-ups and cat film festivals competing for people’s attention, who’s going to want to eat pizza on my couch with me?
All this bellyaching has forced me to look at what I’m doing about my lack of companionship now. Even though turning strangers into good friends is harder than I thought, I’m not making it any easier on myself by rarely leaving my apartment or worrying about whether I’m cool enough. I feel a little better even just admitting to more people that I struggle with feeling alone. Loneliness especially sucks because the less you talk about it the more isolated you feel.
I understand now that I may not find the perfectly balanced group of successful and charismatic friends with different hair colors to ride off into the sunset with, and I will come to terms with that eventually.
One of my loneliness management strategies is to call my sister in LA. It’s become a joke (that’s not really a joke) between us that I don’t have any friends, and I think it helps to laugh about it. I’ve also been actively adjusting my expectations of what friendships are really like. So far, adulthood has been one big lesson that life is not like Sex and the City. I understand now that I may not find the perfectly balanced group of successful and charismatic friends with different hair colors to ride off into the sunset with, and I will come to terms with that eventually.
I find it curious that friendship is one of the last domains still largely based on organic connections. There have been a few apps and startups targeting platonic friends, but none have really gotten it right. Since I can’t throw the usual suspects of tech or money at the problem, I sometimes catch myself daydreaming of meet-cutes with a nice lady who works at a cupcake place, but I’m really not sure anyone actually becomes a lifelong friend that way.
After thinking about what’s really important and considering how few people I like, I’ve also decided to double down on the friendships I already have out in the periphery. A few people from high school and college are floating around San Francisco who I never thought I’d be super close to, but I now feel I can have a deeper connection with them since some time has passed and we’re living in the same place (and I’ve reevaluated what makes a good friend).
And to combat the flakiness epidemic, I’ve decided to be way more proactive about making plans with people. When I was younger, I was a pretty popular kid and people were always inviting me places, so I never really knew what it was like to want to go somewhere and not be able to because I couldn’t get any of my friends to go with me. Some time between then and now I started worrying about being vulnerable. I thought I would sound needy if I was too eager to hang out with someone — but fuck it. I do have needs and they involve having conversations about stuff I actually care about with people I trust, just like every other human on the planet.
It might not be easy to make friends as you get older, but I haven’t given up. I actually think owning up to being lonely might have been the hardest part.Energy policymakers will need to carefully craft policy to head off conflict between competing users and avoid stressing water supplies, says the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. Researchers looked in particular at future energy systems, especially electricity generation, and their impact on water.
Keywan Riahi, director of the energy program at IIASA, told DW that one stress was the water use itself. "The other one was that you need water in the energy system for cooling, which means that you discharge heat back into the river and that heat can cause ecosystem damage."
Some forms of electricity generation - such as wind and some photovoltaic solar - are basically carbon dioxide neutral, reducing greenhouse gases and creating "a win-win situation," Riahi says.
But others, including nuclear and biomass, need water - sometimes even more than fossil power systems, according to IIASA's report. Centralized solar systems which generate power from concentrating solar heat also require large amounts of water. And hydropower presents its own special set of problems.
Some still see nuclear power as a good low-emission energy option
Conflicting water needs
Surely hydropower is a clean form of renewable energy that simply uses water, and then sends it on its way? According to IIASA research team leader Oliver Fricko, a rise in demand for hydropower, if not properly managed, can lead to what he calls "allocation conflict" - especially in developing countries.
"In Africa, in Southeast Asia, the population is growing very rapidly," says Fricko. "The energy demand is expected to increase and this will lead to certain allocation conflicts," he adds.
As sources of potential conflict, he identifies the water needs of individual consumers competing against the needs of agriculture, along with the demands of water for electricity production.
'A system that requires more water'
There's another cloud on the hydropower horizon. Even as streams are harnessed for low-emission power to mitigate climate change, climate change itself will be cutting water's ability to deliver electricity.
"We found that climate change will also reduce the capacity at which |
are tons of new combinations to explore with these fresh, Frostheart options, and we’re super excited to see what players will come up with! We’ve really enjoyed how these gems have played in our own Standard and Limited testing, and we cannot wait to see what you guys will build using these new gems!
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Got any questions? Want to chat with other players? Then discuss this article in our Forums! You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook, or enjoy regular streams on our official Twitch channel.Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos has encouraged harassment of a transgendered student, egged on the misogynistic Gamergate movement, flirted with the alt right movement, and been banned from Twitter for bullying Leslie Jones. Yet despite these controversies, Yiannopoulos seems to have had a banner year, from signing a mammoth book deal to being asked to serve as the keynote speaker for this year's Conservative Political Action Conference.
That all may change, however, after an old Yiannopoulos interview emerged, one in which he seemingly defended sex with minors.
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"In the homosexual world particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men the sort of coming of age relationships relationships in which those older men have helped those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable — and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents," Yiannopoulos said during an interview with The Drunken Peasants.
Yiannopoulos went on to say: "You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old, who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet who have not gone through puberty."
Another clip posted by The Reagan Battalion showed Yiannopoulos perpetuating Jewish stereotypes. In the clip, he argued to Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report that "it's a statistical fact, Jews own most of the banks, Jews completely dominate the media, vastly disproportionately represented in all of these professions."
In a Facebook post defending himself, Yiannopoulos insisted that he doesn't support pedophilia and views it as "a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst." He denounces the videos as "selectively edited," even though The Reagan Battalion posted unedited clips. Milo also characterized his statements about "boys" as "sloppy phrasing."
In addition, Yiannopoulos claimed that he outed three pedophiles during his career. He said he repeatedly denounced pedophilia in the past, but stood by his statement that "there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home."
"I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys,"Yiannopoulos wrote. He argued that his comment about learning how to give good blowjobs from a priest was an "edgy way" of coping with a sex crime perpetrated against him as a teenager, comparing it to the "gallows humor" displayed by individuals who have AIDS.
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Yiannopoulos' terminology is technically correct — someone who is sexually attracted to pubescent children (11 to 14) is a hebephile. Someone who is attracted to adolescents is an ephebophile. Nevertheless, it is still illegal in most parts of the Western world for an adult to have sex with a minor, a practice that Yiannopoulos was accused of defending in the clips.MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali militants launched an offensive on border towns in southern Somalia, killing government troops, residents and officials said on Friday.
Members of al Shabaab, al Qaeda-linked insurgents, ride in a pick-up truck after distributing relief to famine-stricken internally displaced people at Ala Yaasir camp, outside Somalia's capital Mogadishu, September 3, 2011. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
In what Western powers considered a strategic victory, government troops and African peacekeepers last month drove the al Qaeda-allied al Shabaab rebels out of the capital Mogadishu, as the group suffered from internal divisions, a reported lack of combatants and funding shortages.
But the insurgents’ latest assault shows they remain capable of launching major attacks for territorial gains at a time when aid groups are struggling to help more than 1 million Somalis struck by famine in southern and central Somalia.
Early on Friday the rebels entered Dhobley, near the Kenyan border, from three directions, attacking government troops and an allied militia known as the Raskamboni, a resident who fled the fighting said from Kenya.
“It was morning when al Shabaab attacked us from different directions... I have seen 13 dead bodies mostly from the Raskamboni. We can say al Shabaab is now fully in the city, and the casualties may be more than that,” officer Mohammed Wardhere told Reuters from the border.
A few hours later, residents said the Somali military regained control of the town.
“A more serious fight took place hours after government troops regrouped. However, al Shabaab is not far and fighting may restart at any time,” resident Abdiqader Saciid said by telephone.
Al Shabaab said it lost six fighters and killed 40 government soldiers.
KENYAN MILITARY DEPLOYS
Just 5 km (3 miles) away, hundreds of Kenyan security forces backed by armored vehicles and helicopters deployed at the porous frontier, as bodies lay on the ground at the scene of the battle across the border.
“We have a strong force spread along the long stretch of the border with Somalia where fighting has been reported. No militia has managed to enter the country,” said Kenya’s northeastern provincial police commander Leo Nyongesa.
Yusuf Dhere, a resident of the Kenyan border town of Liboi, said he saw wounded Somali troops being brought into the hospital. “We are still collecting and transporting more wounded people from the border, where we can hear artillery.”
Somali troops, with logistical and intelligence support from Kenya and Ethiopia, regained control of towns along the border with both neighbors earlier this year, but the insurgents have vowed to strike back.
Although they gave up most of the bases in Mogadishu, al Shabaab retain control in two city districts.
The failure of government and peacekeeping troops to seize the momentum, push them out completely and establish effective control has raised fears it is only a matter of time before the militants return in full force to the capital.
In the nearby southwestern region of Gedo, some parts of which are in the hands of the rebels, a clash between troops and militants killed 24 on Thursday, a government official said.
“Al Shabaab killed 10 of our soldiers in an ambush on Thursday. They hit us with artillery, “ Mahmoud Ali Shire told Reuters from the border town of Dolow.
“The ambush turned into hand to hand fighting and we killed 14 fighters from al Shabaab,” he added.
An al Shabaab spokesman said five of their men had been wounded and said dozens of government troops were killed.
“We ambushed the government convoy. We seized and fought them seriously and we captured machineguns and small arms from them. We will continue fighting until we remove them from Gedo region,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters.Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have announced intentions to open probes into USAID’s spending of $1.6 million in “Pakistan” aid money creating a Twitter work-a-like for Cuba, in the hopes of fueling regime change.
USAID’s scheme, budded ZunZuneo, funneled money into an offshore account in the Cayman Islands, and set up a dummy corporation to run the operation, with its corporate leaders kept in the dark about its nature as a US government operation.
USAID’s leadership continues to defend the operation as a valid part of its agenda, but officials higher up the food chain see the embarrassment for what it is, and are quickly distancing themselves from it.
The White House claimed some officials there might have had some idea that there was some effort to “encourage expression of free ideas” in Cuba, but insist they had no idea it took the form of ZunZuneo. Spokesman Jay Carney objected to calling it a “covert” operation, but similarly insisted he had no idea it existed.
The State Department similarly denied any knowledge of the program, insisting then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was never told about it, and that it ended before John Kerry took over.
Cuba’s state media, for their part, are mocking ZunZuneo, which never got all that popular to begin with and vanished in 2012 after USAID pulled funding, as yet another failed US plot for regime change.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzAn official said 787 people were inside the mine at the time and 363 have been rescued.
Miners escort a rescued friend after an explosion and fire at a coal mine in Soma, Turkey, on May 13. More than 700 workers were in the mine at the time of the accident. (Photo: AP)
An explosion and fire in a coal mine in western Turkey killed at least 201 workers and left some 200 more trapped deep inside, officials said Tuesday.
A massive rescue operation was underway at the mine in Soma, Turkey, about 150 miles south of Istanbul.
Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz updated the death toll and number of missing after earlier saying 787 people were inside the coal mine at the time of the accident and 363 of of them had been rescued.
He said 80 mine workers were injured, at least four of them in serious condition.
He said most of the deaths were from carbon monoxide poisoning, and those trapped were nearly 500 yards underground..
"Time is working against us," Yildiz said.
The blast happened during a change in shifts, leading to uncertainty over the exact number of workers still in the mine, the Turkish news agency Cihan reported, citing labor union officials.
Yıldız said the fire was triggered by an electrical fault.
NBC News reported that rescue teams were inside the mine, providing oxygen to the trapped miners.
Miners carry a rescued miner after an explosion and fire at a coal mine killed at least 166 miners a Turkish official said. (Photo: AP/Depo Photos)
Television video showed people cheering as some workers emerged from the mine covered in soot.
Authorities were preparing for the possibility that the death toll could jump dramatically, making arrangements to set up a cold storage facility to hold corpses, AP reported.
The rescue was complicated by miles of underground tunnels within the mine, said Cengiz Ergun, leader of Manisa province where the mine is located.
Police set up fences and stood guard around the state hospital where the injured were taken.
SOMA Komur Isletmeleri A.S., which owns the mine, confirmed that a number of its workers were killed but would not give a specific figure, AP reported. The company said the accident occurred despite the "highest safety measures and constant controls" and that an investigation was being launched.
"Our main priority is to get our workers out so that they may be reunited with their loved ones," the company said in a statement.
The English-language Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman reported that the fire knocked out electricity inside the mine. It said workers are pumping fresh air into the smoke-filled mine to get oxygen to trapped workers.
Mining accidents are common in Turkey, where safety conditions are sometimes poor. In 1992, a gas explosion killed 263 mine workers near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan postponed a trip to Albania on Wednesday and to visit Soma.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the mine and the hospital in Soma seeking news of their loved ones. NTV television said people broke into applause as rescued workers arrived in ambulances. Interviewed by Dogan news agency, some complained about the lack of information from state and company officials about the situation of the trapped workers.
"The rescue teams are very experienced," Yildiz said, according to CNN. "They know what they need to do."
Contributing: Associated Press
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ljokUVOne of Apple’s most successful products—which rarely gets recognized as such—is made not of aluminum and glass, but of words and pictures. The Apple keynote is the tool the company uses a few times a year to unveil its other products to millions of people.
To understand their hidden structure, Quartz reviewed more than a dozen Apple keynotes, logging and analyzing key elements. Here’s what we found.
By the numbers
The Apple Keynotes podcast on the iTunes Store lists 27 events since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007. (A few are missing.)
They are an average 88 minutes long, with a similar look and feel—a minimalist slide presentation with live demos from Apple executives and industry leaders, punctuated by videos explaining Apple’s design and manufacturing processes. These videos—a genre in themselves—have been frequently parodied.
Who’s on stage?
When Steve Jobs was running Apple and healthy, he dominated the stage. During Jobs’ finest performance—his 2007 iPhone “Stevenote”—he spent more than 90 minutes on stage, with breaks only to invite partners up for remarks, including then-Google CEO (and then-Apple board member) Eric Schmidt.
Later, Jobs gave other executives more stage time, notably Phil Schiller—Apple’s head of product marketing, who subbed for Jobs during his medical leaves—and Scott Forstall, a long-time Jobs protégé that Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed in 2012.
Cook has smartly taken a different approach. He instead plays emcee at Apple events, typically kicking things off with a company update, mixing in a few dry gags about Apple’s competitors, then handing off the reins to Schiller for hardware introductions and Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, for OS updates.
Cook usually spends less than 20 minutes onstage per event, but he has gone out of his way to remind the Apple community—its fans and customers, as well as its employees—how deeply he understands and cares for the company he has inherited. One of his frequent mantras is “only Apple…”—where he talks briefly about how no other company could create the products Apple just showed off.
Who’s the funniest?
The crowd—ranging in size from hundreds to thousands, depending on the venue—is a critical part of the event, and Apple has gotten great at engaging the audience with drama, visual humor, and inside jokes. These events are designed to inform, but also to entertain. Jobs once went as far as to prank call a local Starbucks—live from the stage—to show off the new iPhone’s local search feature: “I’d like to order 4,000 lattés to go, please!”
During Apple’s most recent presentation, kicking off its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 2, a crowd of over 5,000 made more than 50 outbursts of laughter over the keynote’s 117 minutes, and stopped to applaud almost 100 times. That became a laugh track for more than 20 million people who watched the keynote video—a record, Cook said during the company’s earnings call in July.
Keynote humor these days typically involves poking fun at Microsoft, Google, or other Apple executives. To see who gets the most gags in, we logged the six most recent Apple events, recording who’s on stage for how long and how many times the crowd broke into laughter. While Cook can be unexpectedly funny, Federighi—who spent the most time on stage—drew twice as many laughs.
Federighi, who re-joined Apple in 2009, has recently been an on-stage workhorse star, showing charisma and humor as he demonstrates Apple’s newest OS features. He spent about 75 minutes on stage at this year’s WWDC—Cook called him “Superman” by the end—and will likely play a role in this week’s show. Maybe he knows some watch jokes?
When is the unveil?
Of course, the “news” part of the keynote—the hot new product that millions will buy, and the reason people have flown to be there—often only lasts a few minutes. So to give the crowd its money’s worth, Apple surrounds it with context and suspense. Jobs famously sometimes saved the best for last—“one more thing”—a line that Cook’s Apple has respectfully retired.
What if you just want to know what the new iPhone looks like? On average, it has taken about 45 minutes to get to that part. But more recently, it has been shorter. With plenty to cover tomorrow—supposedly including two new iPhones, a wearable device, and a payments system—there shouldn’t be much filler content.What is the New Pueblo Freeway?
In 2000, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) initiated a study of I-25 through Pueblo, Colorado. The study integrated the transportation planning process with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) process to evaluate improvements to the I-25 corridor through Pueblo. When a federal agency, such as FHWA, proposes an action, such as the improvements to I-25, it is required by NEPA to conduct an EIS if the project is likely to “significantly affect the quality of the human environment” (42 USC 4332: 40 CFR 1501).
Through this NEPA/planning process, which included input by City of Pueblo engineering and planning staff, transportation conditions along I-25 through Pueblo were described, needs were identified, and transportation problems were defined. Consistent with NEPA and the regulation of the Council on Environmental Quality regulations, an active public participation program captured community values held by the citizens of Pueblo in a Vision Statement that asks FHWA and CDOT to respect the traditions and trends of the Pueblo community as they develop solutions to roadway problems. The culmination of this planning effort is called the New Pueblo Freeway project.
The purpose of the New Pueblo Freeway project is to: 1) improve safety by addressing deteriorating roadways and bridges and unsafe road characteristics on I-25; and 2) improve local and regional mobility within and through the City to meet existing and future travel demands. The need for the project results from the highway’s age and the design practices at the time it was built, which has led to the safety and mobility problems described in detail in the EIS.
Public Hearing for the New Pueblo Freeway Draft EIS
The Colorado Department of Transportation held a public hearing on December 8, 2011 as part of the public involvement process required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The purpose of the hearings was to allow the public to review the analysis presented in the Draft EIS and make official comments. Those comments will be addressed in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) as the next phase. The materials from the public hearing including display boards, handouts, and project presentation will be posted on this page soon!
Formal Public Comment Period Has Closed
The Draft EIS was made available to the public for a 45-day review and comment period from November 4, 2011 to December 19, 2011. Draft EIS comments will be addressed in the Final EIS.
New Pueblo Freeway Project (2000-2002)
During the summer of 2000, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) kicked off the New Pueblo Freeway Project with the goal of addressing the deteriorating roadway and bridges along I-25 through Pueblo. This initial phase of the project included an extensive public process. This public process created an understanding of the project issues and concerns, analyzed potential solutions (alternatives), and ultimately presented a recommended alternative.
A similar involvement effort happened for the next stage of the project, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process. The EIS process is examining the environmental issues of three alternatives, including the recommended alternative developed over the past two years.
The information below provides the background and overview for the phase of the New Pueblo Freeway Project from 2000 through 2002. This information is included to provide the important history, decisions, and public process that have propelled the project forward to the current EIS stage.
Project Background and Overview
The first contract to build the Pueblo Freeway, now designated as I-25, was awarded in 1949. It took 10 years for the freeway to be completed through Pueblo. Now, 50 years later there is a need to study and redesign the freeway to fit current and future demands. CDOT sponsored this study and redesign. The project is now in the environmental stage.
One of CDOT’s goals for this project was to develop a plan that respected the traditions and trends of the Pueblo community. To reach this goal CDOT conducted a process that included a community voice through leadership teams and an open community process. CDOT formed a team consisting of representatives from the city, county, and community to explore the roles I-25 currently plays in the community and what roles I-25 should play in the community’s future.
This team began with a Workshop to define the context of I-25 in the community and to capture the concerns, goals, and criteria by which solutions could be developed. Alternatives were then developed and analyzed through a series of screening efforts. Starting with a brainstorming exercise and carefully analyzing, screening, and refining alternatives to create the ideal recommendations for the I-25 corridor through Pueblo.
This effort culminated into a recommended action plan now continuing foward through environmental clearances and design once funding sources are identified. This was and will continue to be accomplished through a decision-making process that follows these 5 steps: Project Planning and Endorsement; Concerns and Criteria Development; Alternatives Development; Alternatives Analysis; Recommendation.
Communication, Leadership, and Support
The primary role of Stakeholders has been to provide vital local information, goals, and values. Stakeholders have been meeting in various formats. Each of these offer an opportunity for stakeholders to interact with project teams to affect the recommendation. Stakeholders are expected to share project information with their neighbors or groups they represent to gather feedback for the project. Community Leadership and Support is an ongoing process of group and individual meetings with community leaders to maintain a flow of information. A two-way communication first to the community about the project progress and then input from the community to the project. This communication has been facilitated by the inclusion of community leaders on the Project Leadership Team.
Community Working Group
Work sessions were held to bring stakeholders together to discover their common goals and priorities relating to transportation issues along I-25 through Pueblo. Each Community Working Group (CWG) meeting was conducted in a facilitated, yet informal small group. The groups met bimonthly to work through the 5 step decision-making process; brainstorming ideas and screening criteria to arrive at a recommendation for improvements to I-25 through Pueblo.
Why Does I-25 Need a ‘Good Look’?IN many respects, Saudi Arabia is one of the most advanced nations in the world.
It’s the world’s largest oil producer and its cities are glitz and glamour — thriving metropolis’ in the middle of the desert.
In other ways, the desert kingdom is far from advanced, a place where barbaric rituals still occur and where the country’s citizens are subjected to horrific punishments.
It’s hard to imagine that in Saudi Arabia this week preparations are being made to not only execute a young man but to crucify him. Literally.
The world is pleading with the Saudi government to reconsider. Advocates say what’s about to take place makes them feel physically ill.
The boy at the centre of it all — Ali Mohammed al-Nimr — says he’s done nothing wrong.
‘BARBARIC, INHUMANE, MERCILESS’
Al-Nimr was 17 when he went to an anti-government protest in the Saudi Arabian province of Qatif.
He was accused by the government of carrying a firearm, attacking security forces and even armed robbery. None of those charges could be proven but he confessed nonetheless. He didn’t have a lawyer and some say the confession was drawn from the teenager via torture.
He was demonstrating at the wrong time in the wrong place — in the middle of a violent government crackdown against detractors.
That was February, 2012. Fast forward three years and the charges have stuck, despite a recent appeal.
His sentence is due to be carried out by beheading and crucifixion, a method that involves removing the head of the prisoner and tying their headless body to a cross.
Often, the crucifixion is carried out in a public place. It sends a strong message to others: We will not stand for criticism, no matter who the person and no matter what their age.
‘HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN 2015?’
A Scottish politician raised al-Nimr’s case in parliament this week. She spoke eloquently and she spoke in strong opposition to a practice that has no place in our modern world.
“How in 2015 can a supposedly civilised country impose such an inhumane and merciless penalty on any of its citizens, let alone one so young?” MP Margaret Ferrier said.
“It’s an absolute outrage and I intend to write to the minister and ask for urgent action to be taken.
“Ali’s sentence is due to be barbarically carried out by crucifixion. I feel for this young man and his family. Reading Ali’s story this morning filled me with grief for his life about to be savagely and abruptly ended.”
Savagery is nothing new in Saudi Arabia, a country which between 1985 and 2013 executed more than 2000 people. In 2013, 79 people were put to death. Most of them had their heads cut off with large, sharp swords.
In January this year, a woman protested her innocence until the final moment when a sword fell across her neck. She was writhing on the hard ground in a very public place trying to escape her executioner. Not once but twice did the sword fall upon her neck, the first blow clearly not getting the job done.
Elsewhere, blogger Raif Badawi was jailed for 10 years recently after starting a website for social and political debate in Saudi Arabia. Raif will receive 50 lashings a week for a year for setting up the Saudi Arabian Liberals website.
The prosecution first called for him to be tried for apostasy (when a person abandons their religion), which carries a death sentence in Saudi Arabia. Then, in May this year, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, a fine of over $300,000 AUD and 1000 lashes. When he is finally released, Raif faces a 10-year travel ban which would keep him from his wife and three young children in Canada, according to Amnesty International.
A spokesman for Amnesty International told news.com.au the last time men were strapped to crosses and killed was in 2013.
“Five Yemeni men were beheaded and crucified, with pictures emerging on social media showing five decapitated bodies hanging from a horizontal pole with their heads wrapped in bags.
“The beheading and ‘crucifixion’ took place in front of the University of Jizan where students were taking exams.”
DOES SAUDI ARABIA HAVE AN AXE TO GRIND?
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is not the only family member under the careful watch of the Saudi government.
Ali’s uncle Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was arrested in July, 2012. A self-described campaigner for human rights for minorities, the 53-year-old has a strong following online where a website and Facebook page have been set up to rally support for his defence.
His crimes, including speaking out against the government, carry the death penalty.
Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at legal charity Reprieve, told the International Business Times nobody should have to go through what Ali is going through.
“Ali was a vulnerable child when he was arrested and this ordeal began. His execution — based apparently on the authorities’ dislike for his uncle, and his involvement in anti-government protests — would violate international law and the most basic standards of decency. It must be stopped.”Let’s say that you want to parse your source code to find all your methods, where they are defined & what arguments do they take.
How can you do this?
Your first idea might be to write a regexp for it…
But is there a better way?
Yes!
Static analysis is a technique you can use when you need to extract information from the source code itself.
This is done by converting source code into tokens (parsing).
Let’s get right into it!
Using the Parser Gem
Ruby has a parser available on the standard library, the name is Ripper. The output is hard to work with so I prefer using the fantastic parser gem. Rubocop uses this gem to do its magic.
This gem also includes a binary you can use to parse some code directly and see the resulting parse tree.
Here is an example:
ruby-parse -e '%w(hello world).map { |c| c.upcase }'
The output looks like this:
(block (send (array (str "hello") (str "world")) :map) (args (arg :c)) (send (lvar :c) :upcase))
This can be useful if you are trying to understand how Ruby parses some code. But if you want to create your own analysis tools you will have to read the source file, parse it and then traverse the generated tree.
Example:
require 'parser/current' code = File.read('app.rb') parsed_code = Parser::CurrentRuby.parse(code)
The parser will return an AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) of your code. Don’t get too intimidated by the name, it’s simpler than it sounds 🙂
Traversing The AST
Now that you have parsed your code using the parser gem you need to traverse the resulting AST.
You can do this by creating a class that inherits from AST::Processor.
Example:
class Processor < AST::Processor end
Then you have to instantiate this class & call the.process method:
ast = Processor.new ast.process(parsed_code)
You need to define some on_ methods. These methods correspond to the node names in the AST.
To discover what methods you need to define you can add the handler_missing method to your Processor class. You also need the on_begin method.
class Processor < AST::Processor def on_begin(node) node.children.each { |c| process(c) } end def handler_missing(node) puts "missing #{node.type}" end end
Here is where we are:
You have your Ruby AST and a basic processor, when you run this code you will see the node types for your AST.
Now:
You need to to implement all the on_ methods that you want to use. For example, if I want all the instance method names along with their line numbers I can do this:
def on_def(node) line_num = node.loc.line method_name = node.children[0] puts "Found #{method_name} at line #{line_num}" end
When you run your program now it should print all the method names found.
Conclusion
Building a Ruby static analysis tool is not as difficult as it may look. If you want a more complete example take a look at my class_indexer gem. Now it's your turn to make your own tools!
Please share this post if you enjoyed it! 🙂
RelatedOther reviewers have written that 'nothing happens' in Quarter Share. I would argue that 'nothing happens' to Ishmael in Quarter Share the same way 'nothing happens' to most of us in real life. All sorts of things happen; they're just things that could happen to any of us, except we don't live in 2351, in a version of the future where humankind has gone exploring for profits' sake, rather than just for curiosity's sake or to wage war. A crash makes our protagonist an orphan, and our eighteen-year-old hero -- 'just a guy', he calls himself, but most people who know him would disagree -- ships out on an interestellar bulk freight hauler, into a world he knows next to nothing about. Somehow, he makes that world a better place by doing incredibly simple things. Like making better coffee for his shipmates. Or organising them into working a booth at the flea market together. Or helping a friend pass a test that has been eluding him for a long time. It feels somehow magical and attainable at the same time. It says to the reader: you don't have to be or do anything special to make a difference in the world. You just have to get off your butt and do *something*. That's what makes the story so engaging. That's why I keep coming back.
Sometimes, Nathan Lowell leaves me wondering why nobody else ever thought of doing some of the incredibly simple things that can make such a world of difference in Ishmael's life, and particularly in that of the people around him. But then I get into a conversation about it with other readers on the author's Facebook page, and we, sometimes with a bit of help from Mr. Lowell to steer us in the right direction, always come up with some pretty good ideas about why things were the way they were before Mr. Wang came along. Every time we do, we discover new depths to a story nobody (maybe not even its writer) ever suspected of having so many depths to discover.
If you haven't read any of Mr. Lowell's work yet, now is a good time to start!THE rape of a Belgian tourist in a dark alley in Potts Point last month is a warning that environmentally sensitive street lighting will take a terrible human toll.
The 25-year-old was walking down a dimly lit Victoria Street from her serviced apartment to buy food at 8.30pm when a man forced her into the alley between two terrace houses.
It was so dark that the traumatised woman could not give police a description of her assailant, or even tell them the color of his clothes.
The alley where she was attacked is at the northern end of Victoria Street in a residential enclave just a block from the bright lights and fleshpots of Darlinghurst Road.
BLOG WITH MIRANDA DEVINE
And yet the lighting was like something out of the backblocks of St Ives: completely inadequate as a deterrent to crime.
There was a solitary lamp post near where the alley runs into the dead-end Tusculum Lane, positioned 6m south and covered by a tree canopy three storeys high. Nor is there any street light on that side of the road for 50m in the direction the victim was walking.
It was clearly an ideal spot for a predator.
To the council's credit, it has installed three new lights since the assault and is planning to install extra lights at nearby Butler Stairs.
The new lights are the low-energy LED (light-emitting diode) lights which the council is rolling out across Sydney to replace traditional street bulbs.
But the big worry is that LED lights will make Sydney's dim lighting fade even more, thanks to Lord Mayor Clover Moore's jihad against "carbon pollution".
Sure, LED technology is terrific in an enclosed space for focused light but there are drawbacks when it comes to providing uniform illumination for pedestrians to walk safely.
LED lights are white and easier to look at, without the halo effect of traditional street lights. They have the advantage of being more focused so that light doesn't "spill" into houses.
But the light doesn't spread as far, so the area of illumination is smaller. Lighting is further reduced by tree canopies, which abound in areas like Potts Point.
What's more, LED lights don't suddenly blow but degrade over time which means residents may not notice as illumination fades.
And while LEDs measure up to the old lights in "lumen output", the human eye doesn't perceive the same broad coverage.
But street lights are council's biggest single contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and our Lord Mayor is an ardent greenie.
She boasts that Sydney is the first city in Australia to roll out the new lights, after a trial in Alexandria Park, Kings Cross, Martin Place and Circular Quay. The venture will reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 2185 tonnes a year.
The council claims 90 per cent of residents surveyed during their trial found the new lights "appealing".
But when towns in the US and UK have trialled LED lighting residents complained about reduced illumination.
Almost every resident in the two streets in Salford, England, where LED lights were fitted in 2011 signed a petition asking, unsuccessfully, for the old lights to be reinstated.
In Sydney, AUSGRID maintains the traditional street lamps on Victoria Street under contract for the council. A spokesman said yesterday it was in discussions about upgrading lighting there but that council decides how many street lights to install and Standards Australia "dictates how bright lights should be".
You can expect those lights to be dimmer in future since the Australian standard AS/NZS 1158 has been under review to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
More secret enviro-meddling will come from a body called the "National Strategy on Energy Efficiency" which has been working since 2011 on a plan to "significantly improve street lighting energy efficiency by 2020".
We can assume "improve" is meant in the Orwellian sense, as cities around the world dim their lights.
Electric light has been the wellspring of human progress over the last century, protecting us from the creatures of the night. Now the luddites of the green movement want to send us back to the Dark Ages.
* An earlier version of this column claimed the council had not yet installed lights in the Victoria Street alley. This is not the case. Three new lights have been installed since the attack and the installation of further lights in the area is planned. The Daily Telegraph regrets the error and apologises to the council.Researchers have found that, based on enough Facebook Likes, computers can judge your personality traits better than your friends, family and even your partner. Using a new algorithm, researchers have calculated the average number of Likes artificial intelligence (AI) needs to draw personality inferences about you as accurately as your partner or parents.
A new study, published today in the journal PNAS, compares the ability of computers and people to make accurate judgments about our personalities. People's judgments were based on their familiarity with the judged individual, while computer models used a specific digital signal: Facebook Likes.
The results show that by mining Facebook Likes, the computer model was able to predict a person's personality more accurately than most of their friends and family. Given enough Likes to analyse, only a person's spouse rivalled the computer for accuracy of broad psychological traits.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University describe the finding as an "emphatic demonstration" of the capacity of computers to discover an individual's psychological traits through pure data analysis, showing machines can know us better than we'd previously thought: an "important milestone" on the path towards more social human-computer interactions.
"In the future, computers could be able to infer our psychological traits and react accordingly, leading to the emergence of emotionally-intelligent and socially skilled machines," said lead author Wu Youyou, from Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre.
"In this context, the human-computer interactions depicted in science fiction films such as Her seem to be within |
. I had heard some negative reviews on the non-engraved wording, but the font and letter finish are very nice and exude quality even without engraving. Perhaps the easiest "at a glance" watch I''ve owned - I "see" the hour hand first, and have a rough hour estimate without even focusing on the minute hand. And no battery is simply refreshing - I enjoy hearing the weighted winder spin as I move. Leather band is also better than expected. Worth more than I paid.
LVM
Northern California
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Conversation Starter
No matter where I go, someone always asks: "What kind of watch is that? How do you tell time on that thing?" And then I use that as an opportunity to tell them about Stauer's fine watches. Another great timepiece Stauer! Thanks!
S.B.
Ashland, KY
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Love The Watch
Purchased this watch for my husband. It is unique and elegant. He gets compliments on it often. Was a great gift!
Traveler
Atlanta, GA
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stauer 1930 watch
Just recieved my watch, love the design. A real conversation piece. One wish is that it illuminated, but other than that love the watch!
Randy
MI
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the best reproduction in the world
My cousin bought the watch for me as a graduation gift and I wear it always with my suit because what is a gentleman who has no perfect time than a good jeweled watch.
Godfather w
middleburg fl
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a 1930s beauty
The most astounding watch I have seen as such a low price and high quality.
Dr.C
Middleburg Fl
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Everybody asks me about this great 1930 automatic watch
I purchased this 1930 automatic watch about 7 yrs ago, and I tell you that I get not only the joy of wearing it. But everywhere I go, people see it, and they get excited as I explain how it works. Because it's not a ordinary watch, it's extra special in the way it works, plus if you look carefully, you will notice that the 2 dials actually run backwards when you compare it to a standard watch. Everyone usually have to take 2 or 3 looks at the dials. No joke....
I am still so very thrilled that I purchased it, after 7 yrs, today I came online to find a new band for it, for I simply wore it out from everyday use. And I consider it a good bargain to get a new band for a watch that made to last a lifetime or more. My 2 sons have argued over who will get it, when I am gone. LOL Simply the best watch I have ever owned.
Mr Dragovich 06/06/2014
ozzmirer
Moreno Valley, California
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Amazing watch
I love this watch. Everyone who looks at the watch is amazed, and wants to know where I purchased it. I suggest if you collect watches, this one is a great, inexpensive addition to your collection.
A must buy.
Soleburyguy
San Francisco, CA
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Nice watch
This is the second same watch i buy. I it is a nice piece of time
Mauricio
worcester, ma
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Gets Lots of Attentiion
After becoming tired from constantly replacing watch batteries, I ordered the Stauer 1930 Dashtronic as a last resort.
The Stauer 1930 Dashtronic is a very handsome watch and everyone who sees it asks, "what is that on your wrist?" When I tell them it is a watch they have to take a closer look.
I am so pleased with this watch that I just ordered two more Stauer automatic watches.
Keep making these well crafted and eye-catching watches at prices I can actually afford.
Other watches get stored away in the dead watch drawer but not the Stauer.
And no, I do not work for this company but I would be proud to.
Bubba Longfellow
Youngsville, NC
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I'm so glad i got this watch
I got this watch back in Nov for my birthday. I had been eyeing it for years. It went on sale around that time, and I got it
It is totally classic. It's a nice weight and size. The only thing i did was change it from a buckle clasp to a butterfly deployment clasp (5$ on eBay). Now, it got even better. Easy to put on and makes the watch look spectacular
This is definitely a must-have for any watch enthusiast! I cannot say enough good things about it
Rich Lemmermann
Clay, NY
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Classisc
Takes a little getting used to the dials, but it’s a great watch. I bought this watch 7 years ago and it still work and looks great. This is the watch that turned me into a watch guy. Great quality!
Justin
Woodridge, Illinois (Chicago Suburbs)
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Great Watch
Love this watch so much. I am always receiving complements on it, and it also acts as a great conversation maker due to its uniqueness.
Marshall
Detroit, MI
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Clean Lines
I purchased this watch because I wanted something interesting in a timepiece that wasn't crammed with extra dials. I just need to keep up with the time. I also like the retro look of this watch.
This watch fits well. I have big wrists and have trouble finding bands that fit properly. The watch is weighty, easy to read and keeps time as it should.
Joseph James
Asheville, North Carolina
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THE HARLEY!
Art my husband bought a watch for me! I am outside much of the day and needed a good watch that would hold up!! He bought me the HARLEY! By the way I ride a Harley 883 as well. It stands up to everything I do! Looks RICH AND LADYLIKE,but really can take a beating!LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!
SHIRL GREENBERG
Massachusetts
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Design
Saw someone at a coffee shop wearing this watch and admired it. But now that I'm looking at it closely online, I think the text "Automatic 21 Jewels" really spoils the design. It would look much cleaner and nicer without it!
Jay
NJ
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Design
Saw someone at a coffee shop wearing this watch and admired it. But now that I'm looking at it closely online, I think the text "Automatic 21 Jewels" really spoils the design. It would look much cleaner and nicer without it!
Jay
NJ
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Very Classy
Have owned this incredible watch for many years...it still keeps excellent time and always draws attention and interest! Enjoy it so much, I bought a gold one, as a gift, for our son. The band on mine is finally wearing out....I'm visiting Stauer website looking for a replacement and decided to submit a review for this most unusual timepiece!
D.Roy
Cambria, California
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Very satisfied for 3years
I have had this watch for over 3 years and have only had one issue-my watchband eventually broke.It has kept perfect time and has been a great conversation peace
Rooter
Crystal river,Florida
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Awesome
I been watching this watch from last years I like this watch and it automatic and 99$ price that good forget expansive buy good...
Pagi Patel
Dallas,TX
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Not for people who don't want to be noticed
It took me a little while to get used to reading this watch, but I loved the look and style from the moment I first saw it. I've had it for a number of years now, but it still commands comments and questions from my friends. As a matter of fact, the reason I'm only now writing this review is that a friend just asked me about this watch and I told him I'd see if it's still available. I'm sending him a link to this page.
RAS
San Mateo, CA
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Great eatch
I had this watch for six years no trouble at all none I had to replcae the band just last week. Has a China movement but is is a great one. I am very happy with this watch.
William
Murrieta,CA
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Simply Beautiful
I have been looking at this watch for a long time now. i will have one by Christmas. I can wait to get this!
tyson patrick
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Beautiful watch
I bought this watch for a Christmas present.
This is a beautiful watch. The pictures on the wed do not show all the beauty of this watch. I am very happy. Will purchase another one.
DJ
MarylandAmerican Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson kicks off next Tuesday on FX, and, as a result, many of the real-life personalities of that mid-90s media circus are coming out to comment on the show. Kim Kardashian—who appears in the show as a young girl—tweeted that she was watching an advance screener of an episode with her mom, Kris, who is played on the show by Selma Blair. In a bit of TV programming synergy, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Faye Resnick (played by Connie Britton), is currently feuding on-air with Kathryn Edwards about, what else, O.J. Simpson. But currently the best commentary by far has come from Kato Kaelin, the beloved blond wannabe actor and key witness in the Simpson trial.
For those unaware of his cultural significance in the 90s, the luxuriously haired Kaelin was staying in a guest house on the Simpson property on the night Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered. Kaelin’s signature look and laid-back, surfer-dude demeanor instantly made him a hit with those fascinated by the trial. David Spade mockingly portrayed him on S.N.L., and Kaelin’s notoriety landed him a role in the first-ever MadTV sketch and a cameo on Mr. Show with Bob and David.
Now Kato is back and has gone over the episode with a fine-tooth comb to bring some glaring errors to light. Here, in his own words for the New York Daily News, are the very important facts The People v. O.J. Simpson got wrong:
Counting the Detectives : “[The People v. O.J. Simpson] showed three detectives knocking at my door when there were in fact four. The episode also showed me walking the detectives out back, where the infamous bloody glove was found, but that never happened. I only told them I heard a loud thump coming from my back wall, which I dismissed as an earthquake.”
His Eating Habits : “ Billy Magnussen, who portrays me, is eating a hamburger and O.J. asked about his love for burgers, which hints to an alibi. In real life, I stopped eating red meat in 1983. Perhaps a small detail to some of you, but it makes me wonder if they can't get the facts right, how much creative license will the series take on other parts of the story that can't be corroborated.”
The Way He Ran : “I had the chance to see a scene in which Magnussen goes jogging by the beach with a friend and basks in the attention of women in his new-found fame, only to be insulted by a passerby... I was an avid runner in those days-10 miles a day, but always alone, it was my escape. What they got right-I did receive a lot of attention and not all of it was good. The notoriety had its highs and lows.”
Where the Limo Was Parked “The program shows the limo driver waiting on the curb to take OJ to the airport [on the night of the murders], with the driver loading luggage. The car was actually in the driveway and I was there talking to the driver. An important part of my testimony included how O.J. told me not to touch a bag that I had tried to help load. A bag that to this day, has never been found.”
O.K., I admit that last one does at least sound a little intriguing. Where is that bag? And what was in it? We may or may not find out when The People v. O.J. Simpson airs next month. But we do know that the circus is back in town.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter Sign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood. E-mail Address SubscribeLinus Torvalds finally announced the Linux Kernel 3.13 on Jan 19, 2014. In this tutorial you’ll see what’s new in this kernel release and how to install / upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.13 in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Linux Mint and also Ubuntu 14.04 daily build.
Linus Torvalds wrote on the mailing list (read the announcement):
The release got delayed by a week due to travels, but I suspect that’s just as well. We had a few fixes come in, and while it wasn’t a lot, I think we’re better off for it. At least I hope so – I’ll be very disappointed if any of them cause more problems than they fix.. Anyway, the patch from rc8 is fairly small, with mainly some small arch updates (arm, mips, powerpc, s390, sparc, x86 all had some minor changes, some of them due to a networking fix for the bpf jit). And drivers (mainly gpu and networking). And some generic networking fixes. The appended shortlog gives more details. Anyway, with this, the merge window for 3.14 is obviously open.
What’s New in Linux Kernel 3.13:
Below exciting new features comes from phoronix.com:
The multi-queue block layer (blk-mq) was merged. It provides better disk (SSD) performance and with lower disk latencies by allowing I/O load to now be balanced across multiple CPU cores, supporting multiple hardware queues, etc. The multi-queue block layer can scale much better and developers have reported improvements in the range of 3.5 to 10 times greater IOPS and a 10 to 38x reduction in latency.
The AMD hardware on the open-source driver now supporting the reading of ELD audio information, 7.1 channel audio support on capable hardware, and DTS HD-MA and TrueHD audio support. The Radeon HDMI driver is now enabling HDMI audio support by default where as on earlier kernels it required a special kernel command-line switch due to some users experiencing problems.
AMD has published open-source Hawaii GPU support to allow the Radeon R9 290 series to work on Linux without Catalyst. Besides needing Linux 3.13, you will also need other new code in user-space.
For users of the open-source Radeon driver there is now dynamic power management being enabled by default. It allows AMD GPUs to dynamically adjust their clock speeds and voltages based upon load, allowing for lower heat output and energy consumption while idling.
There’s now NFTables as the eventual replacement to IPTables.
New power management and re-clocking code for the open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) driver. With the new power management code is now fan management being enabled by default. The re-clocking work does include support for GeForce 400/500 “Fermi” and GeForce 600/700 “Kepler” GPUs, but this re-clocking support isn’t yet ready for use or enabled by default.
There’s now an Armada DRM driver in the mainline kernel along with PRIME and Render Nodes improvements to the MSM driver, overall continuing to improve the open-source ARM graphics landscape on Linux.
There’s ongoing work with Btrfs performance tuning.
Samsung’s F2FS supports new features as the promising Flash-Friendly File-System.
In making the Linux power efficiency and performance competitive, there’s been a number of changes to ACPI and power management, including more hardware having CPUfreq drivers.
While part of the power management work, Linux 3.13 introduces a Linux Power-Capping Framework and Run-Time Average Power Liming driver from Intel. The RAPL driver allows limiting power consumption of certain components from exceeding defined thresholds.
Intel’s open-source Direct Rendering Manager driver now supports HDMI Stereo/3D. This support is for the HDMI specification’s handling of a standardized stereoscopic 3D display format since version 1.4.
Install / Upgrade Kernel 3.13:
The Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the deb packages available in this page. If you’re comfortable with command line, follow below steps to download & install this kernel.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens:
1. Download DEBs for this kernel:
For 32-bit Ubuntu, Linux Mint and alternatives run commands below one by one:
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/linux-headers-3.13.0-031300-generic_3.13.0-031300.201401192235_i386.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/linux-headers-3.13.0-031300_3.13.0-031300.201401192235_all.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/linux-image-3.13.0-031300-generic_3.13.0-031300.201401192235_i386.deb
For 64-bit Ubuntu, Linux Mint and alternatives run commands below one by one:
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/linux-headers-3.13.0-031300-generic_3.13.0-031300.201401192235_amd64.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/linux-headers-3.13.0-031300_3.13.0-031300.201401192235_all.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.13-trusty/linux-image-3.13.0-031300-generic_3.13.0-031300.201401192235_amd64.deb
2. For both 32-bit & 64-bit install the Kernel via:
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.13.0-*.deb linux-image-3.13.0-*.deb
Once installed, restart your computer and done.
If you’re using a proprietary video driver, you may need to re-build or re-install to get it work with the new kernel.
If for some reason this kernel release doesn’t work properly for you, reboot into previous kernel (Grub -> Advanced -> select previous kernel) and run this command to remove Linux Kernel 3.13:
sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-3.13.0-* linux-image-3.13.0-*PHILADELPHIA—In state capitals and courtrooms across the nation, lawmakers and lawyers are challenging a tool used by law enforcement to take property and cash from Americans who, in many cases, have not committed a crime.
But in no other city is the convergence of efforts more evident than Philadelphia, where attempts to reform “policing for profit” aren’t limited to the state capitol and federal courts. They’re occurring in the belly of the beast: the district attorney’s office in the City of Brotherly Love.
Here in Philadelphia, Andrew Jenemann, head of the district’s attorney’s Public Nuisance Task Force, is making changes to how “real property”—homes, warehouses, and businesses—moves through the forfeiture process.
Jenemann, an assistant district attorney, also spearheads adjustments to the process that property owners go through to prove their cash or cars are not connected to criminal activity. That process begins in the notorious Courtroom 478.
Law enforcement agencies across America have been the target of critics who argue police and prosecutors use civil asset forfeiture—a legal tool giving them the power to seize property and money suspected of being related to a crime—to pad their budgets.
But for the officers of the Philadelphia Police Department and the prosecutors in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, the bulk of the criticism seems to be aimed at them.
“Why has there been so much scrutiny on our program?” Jenemann says in an interview with The Daily Signal. “I can’t tell you, honestly, why we have gotten that much scrutiny compared to any other city.”
The city seized more than $3.4 million in cash and property last year, according to a report from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. The total is more than any county in Pennsylvania and three times more than Montgomery County, which had the second-highest amount in proceeds.
By comparison, Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, reported forfeiture proceeds of $730,168 in cash and property last year.
The law enforcement officials at the top in Philadelphia: District Attorney R. Seth Williams, a Democrat who assumed the elected office in January 2010, is a former assistant district attorney. Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, former police chief of Washington, D.C., took over the Philadelphia force in 2008. He is set to retire in January.
As the city maneuvers through legal challenges and changes proposed at the state level, Jenemann concedes the system has flaws and recognizes change is both needed and coming.
“We have used forfeiture successfully as a tool for a long time. I think it’s used, for the most part, fairly,” he says. “As prosecutors, our objective is to take what we have to try and make it better and try to make it the system that people deserve going forward.”
Changes From the Courts
As opponents mount fights against the practice in statehouses in roughly a dozen states, organizations have challenged states’ civil asset forfeiture laws in at least three suits in federal courts.
In Arizona, the American Civil Liberties Union sued Pinal County’s top law enforcement officials on the grounds that the county’s use of asset forfeiture violates constitutionally protected rights.
Similarly, a District of Columbia class-action lawsuit by 22 property owners accuses the Metropolitan Police Department of improperly seizing vehicles and money, and failing to provide the property owners with timely notice to fight the seizures.
But perhaps the most well-known legal challenge comes from the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm in Arlington, Va. In August 2014, the group filed a class-action lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“Civil forfeiture is one of the greatest threats to property rights and due process in our nation today. And Philadelphia is just an example of what happens when it’s taken to its extreme,” Darpana Sheth, an Institute for Justice lawyer arguing the case, tells The Daily Signal. Sheth adds:
In Philadelphia, you have this system of robo-forfeitures, which is just automatically done, that’s why we call it the forfeiture machine, and the system of kangaroo courts. And that is all the inevitable results of a system of policing for profit that is driving Philadelphia’s forfeiture machine.
The Institute for Justice sued after Philadelphia police seized a house belonging to Chris Sourovelis and his wife, Markela. Their son had been arrested for selling $40 worth of heroin outside their northeast Philadelphia home.
The couple, though, never was charged with a crime.
The Philadelphia Police Department could not comment on the case, but a spokeswoman said the department follows the laws on the books regarding civil forfeiture.
Now, Chris Sourovelis is one of four property owners challenging the constitutionality of Philadelphia’s civil forfeiture system.
“No other jurisdiction is evicting people out of their homes without giving them notice,” Sheth says. She adds:
The Supreme Court made very clear that you cannot seize a home or real property without giving notice and without giving an opportunity to be heard. The fact that they were flagrantly violating that—we couldn’t understand how it had been going on this long.
‘Seize and Seal’
In its suit, the Institute for Justice first pushed back against Philadelphia’s “seize and seal” policy. Under it, law enforcement seals a property seized under forfeiture laws while the case moves through the court system.
The organization says the policy has led to the eviction of innocent property owners who don’t have the chance to defend themselves before their houses are sealed.
“Seize and seal” orders were intended to be used sparingly and only in extreme circumstances, but the group found that nearly 85 percent of forfeiture cases involving houses in Philadelphia began with such orders.
The Institute for Justice argues that the orders violate the Constitution because property owners are kept from their homes for several weeks or months.
In a proposed settlement agreement between prosecutors and the legal group, the city agrees to dismiss any “seize and seal” orders currently in effect.
The Institute for Justice also challenged the process by which property owners try to get their property back. In forfeiture cases, those who fight the city for the return of cash, motor vehicles, and houses are asked to return multiple times to Courtroom 478—where forfeiture proceedings take place.
For many property owners, the process is too lengthy to be pursued by anyone but the most dedicated.
According to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union, a review of 16,000 forfeiture cases between 2011 and 2013 that didn’t involve real estate found that property owners appeared in court a median of four times before their cases were decided.
And for some, the reward may not be worth the effort.
The ACLU, examining a random sample of 351 cash forfeitures over the same period, found that half involved amounts under $192. Just 10 percent topped $1,000.
Such “procedural pitfalls,” the Institute for Justice argues in its suit, violate the right to due process. The group refers to a 2002 case, Krimstock v. Kelly, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the government must provide a prompt hearing after law enforcement seizes property.
The Institute for Justice also argues that Philadephia law enforcement treats citizens “like ATMs.” It is a reference to what the group regards as a perverse profit incentive created by civil asset forfeiture: Pennsylvania law allows the proceeds to go into the coffers of police departments and district attorney’s offices that conduct the seizures.
The ACLU and Institute for Justice both found that the money is used to buy a vast array of items and also goes to paying officers’ and prosecutors’ salaries.
The Institute for Justice argues that such use of proceeds injects bias and self-interest into the decision-making process for prosecutors and police, since financial gain is to be had for city officials. Sheth says:
The heart of the lawsuit has always been the profit incentive, this direct conflict of interest that prosecutors and police have in seizing and forfeiting property. And that is something the city and the DA’s office has indicated they will never settle. It’s not a surprise there. It’s what’s driving and fueling the Philadelphia forfeiture machine—this $6 million slush fund that the City Council isn’t monitoring or accountable for. It’s just the [district attorney’s] office wants to spend it.
When property owners go to Courtroom 478 to prove their belongings are not tied to criminal activity, they appear only before prosecutors and a scheduler, who notifies them of when they need to return for the next hearing.
With no judge present, the Institute for Justice argues, a neutral party is not involved. And according to the lawsuit, lawyers representing the city can move for automatic forfeiture of cash, cars or houses if a property owner misses just one hearing.
The district attorney’s office asked that the case be dismissed, but in May a federal judge denied the request.
“Civil forfeiture is a problematic legal tool to begin with, but it’s been used in Philadelphia so aggressively,” Sheth said. “It’s created this sort of system where because of that direct profit incentive where 100 percent of the proceeds go directly back to the DA’s office … there’s a lack of any procedures.”
Changes From Within
As the federal court considers the case, the prosecutor who heads the civil asset forfeiture program is instituting changes from the inside.
Jenemann took over the Public Nuisance Task Force at the end of March. Although he doesn’t come from a background in forfeiture, he began making changes to the program just one week later.
“As a prosecutor’s office, our job is to ensure we’re providing justice and fairness to everyone we came into contact with,” Jenemann tells The Daily Signal. “When I looked at the processes, I wanted to make sure the right petitions are being filed, they are being filed with the right person, and the process works [in] the manner that everyone expects it to.”
Almost immediately, Jenemann changed how the office executes forfeitures on real property— including houses, businesses and warehouses—and specifically the process relating to property owners.
If the owner is the defendant named in a corresponding criminal case, then the office will move to forfeit the property. If not, the office will determine the owner’s level of involvement.
“Were they present during the search warrant? What extent are they involved? Are they a landlord or resident?” Jenemann says of the process for “weeding out” those who weren’t aware of what was occurring at their property.
if the property owner isn’t the defendant, the district attorney’s office won’t issue a forfeiture petition, Jenemann says. Instead, it will opt for a warning letter alerting the owner that illegal activity took place there.
In some cases, he says, illegal activity continues despite the warning. In those cases, what he said represents a “small category,” the city will file a forfeiture petition in court.
Jenemann said the district attorney’s office hasn’t yet had this happen. Instead, he cited an interaction prosecutors had with a landlord after his property was used three times for drug-dealing activity. The city spoke with the landlord and learned the property had been boarded up. Drug dealers, Jenemann said, were breaking in and selling drugs out of the home.
Because the landlord had acted swiftly to quell the illegal activity, the district attorney’s office opted not to forfeit the property.
In the months since Jenemann’s changes went into effect, his office has assigned nine new forfeiture cases. Four forfeiture petitions have been filed.
Riding in a black pickup truck owned by the DA’s office—it previously belonged to a drug dealer —Jenemann tells The Daily Signal the new process has been well received and appears to be working.
“We’re trying very hard to establish a track record,” Jenemann says, “to establish that people either do or do not have knowledge of what’s going on with their properties.”
Jenemann also is working to reform the court aspect of the process and move to a “more traditionally recognized” courtroom.
Reforms governing the court proceedings went into effect Oct. 19 to limit the number of times property owners must appear in Courtroom 478, as well as the interactions between them and prosecutors. Such interactions took place after the district attorney’s office picked up some of the slack for the courts, Jenemann says.
Jenemann contends that negotiations are a “fundamental part” of civil proceedings, since they can lead to settlements and withdrawal of cases. However, he put an end to the counseling and explaining that assistant district attorneys often did with property owners. Instead, a trial commissioner guides them.
“We’re always trying to make things work better,” Jenemann says of the forfeiture process. “We work closely with opponents. This is one of those processes where the time has come.”
The “single biggest change,” the assistant district attorney says, addresses the Institute for Justice’s criticism of re-listing cases—or requiring a property owner to appear multiple times in Courtroom 478.
Under the new system, property owners who have a criminal case pending at the same time a forfeiture case moves through the courts will not have to return to Courtroom 478 for status hearings. The change, Jenemann says, keeps property owners from having to appear multiple times.
Instead, the forfeiture case is virtually frozen in the system—continued without a further listing, officially—until the criminal case is resolved.
Property owners can request that a forfeiture case move forward, Jenemann says, and such demands typically are made by those fighting to have their vehicles returned.
Many of the changes Jenemann oversees were made in response to Sheth and the Institute for Justice’s lawsuit. She is glad the city has begun to make the process more fair, Sheth says, but was surprised to see how “resolute and defensive” prosecutors were at first.
“It’s been a lot of delay, delay, delay,” she says. “It’s a relief to see the light with respect to at least some of these claims.”
Changes at the Statehouse
For state Sen. Anthony Williams, a Democrat representing Delaware and Philadelphia counties, the increasing number of incidents involving innocent property owners who had cash, cars and houses seized by the City of Brotherly Love was cause for alarm.
“Private citizens should not feel that their government would take away their rights and treat them as guilty … if they’re innocent, but even if they’re not properly charged or vetted,” Williams says in an interview with The Daily Signal. “You don’t want any American feeling that the government is working against them and taking what is theirs rightfully away from them without due process.”
Now, as Jenemann and the district attorney’s office consider more internal changes, legislation reforming Pennsylvania law on civil asset forfeiture is before the state legislature.
Sponsored by Williams and state Sen. Mike Folmer, a Republican representing Dauphin, Lebanon and York counties, the bill addresses many of the most controversial aspects of the process. Specifically, their bill would:
Require a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited.
Raise the burden of proof to “clear and convincing.”
Guarantee the right to counsel and to seek attorneys fees.
Redirect forfeiture revenues to the county or state general fund.
“It’s a very comprehensive, top-down reform of the forfeiture system,” Jason Snead, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, says. “If you look down the list, it does everything that a good package should be considering.”
Legislative reforms have been lauded by groups opposed to forfeiture, but draw criticism from law enforcement agencies. They argue that such changes will impede their ability to curb drug trafficking and money laundering.
‘Get the Conviction First’
District attorneys across the state pushed back on his legislation, arguing that the revenue from forfeiture is important to fighting crime, Williams says.
However, speaking with The Daily Signal, Jenemann explains why it’s important for law enforcement to begin the forfeiture process before a conviction—a provision of the proposed legislation that has been criticized.
A drug dealer under surveillance by police may pass cash to another person, Jenemann says as an example. If a police officer stops the dealer but the person with the money goes in a different direction, he says, that person shouldn’t be allowed to keep it.
If a conviction is required before cash or property is forfeited, Jenemann says, some criminals won’t have to forfeit the profits from the crime:
The money is drug money. The person should be deprived of that. Forfeiture action gives us the opportunity to prove the money or house or car is related to the crime.
But Williams, the senator, says that requiring a conviction first puts the onus on the truly guilty—the property owners from whom law enforcement should seek revenue.
“The claim puts it in a category or space that, while you may have not been found guilty in court, we can still sort of weigh against you because our opinion is different,” Williams says, adding:
That’s not the standard we should be taking. That’s a standard you apply against O.J. Simpson. That’s not a standard you apply against O.J. Simpson’s grandmother.
Folmer, his Republican co-sponsor, stresses that under the proposal police still could seize money from those they believe are engaged in criminal activity.
“This doesn’t take away civil asset forfeiture,” Folmer tells The Daily Signal. “It just reforms it and brings it more in line with the Fifth and Sixth amendments [of] the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We are innocent until proven guilty.
“If [forfeiture is] a good tool for law enforcement, great. Use it,” he says. “But get the conviction first. I don’t want to hurt [police] in doing their job. Their job is hard enough. I get it. But get the conviction first.”
Heritage’s Snead commends the legislation for getting back to original intent—to send a clear message to criminals that crime doesn’t pay.
“A good forfeiture package should return forfeiture to its original and narrow purpose, which is relieving drug kingpins and criminal organizations of their ill-gotten gains,” he says, adding:
It’s sort of the logic that if you cut off the snake’s head, the body dies. If you go after the biggest organizations where you know the money is ill-gotten gains of criminality, you stand a much bigger chance of deterring crime rather than this current system, which is stacked against property owners.Its a mini panel-mountable HDMI monitor with a built-in touchscreen! So small and simple, you can use this display with any computer that has HDMI output, and the shape makes it easy to attach to a case or rail. This backpack features the TFP401 for decoding video, and includes the attached display so its plug-n-play.
The TFP401 is a beefy DVI/HDMI decoder from TI. It can take unencrypted video and pipe out the raw 24-bit color pixel data - HDCP not supported! The 7" display is 800x480 resolution, which is just enough to run most software, but still small enough that it can be used in portable or embedded projects without the bulk.
You can even power the entire display from a USB port. With the default 7" 800x480 display and 150mA backlight current, the current draw is 600mA total. You can reduce that down 400mA by running the backlight at half-brightness (75mA). With the backlight off, the decoder and display itself draws 250mA. If you want more backlight control, there's a PWM input, connect that to your microcontroller or other PWM output and you can continuously dim the backlight as desired.
We have two versions, one is video only and one is video+touch. This version has touch screen capability. The touch screen shows up as a USB mouse so no special drivers needed. We've tested |
men[31]. The vast majority of adverse events were minor and easily treatable with complete resolution.
LEGAL CHALLENGES The article refers to, “several judgments” by “courts in Europe”[1]. There was only one such judgment. That decision, by a regional court in Cologne, was overturned by legislation enacted by the German Federal Parliament[32]. The German ethics council lent its support to circumcision of boys[33]. The article then cites a, “law reform report from Australia” that calls for, “strict regulation and partial prohibition”. That report was written by a graduate student and placed on the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute website in 2012. A critical evaluation of the report by a lawyer, ethicist and medical experts found it had no basis in law, ethics or medicine[34]. The report appears to have been ignored by the Tasmanian Government.
IS CIRCUMCISION REALLY A MEDICAL ANOMALY? Another claim is that circumcision, “requires special rules”. The article did not consider the favorable risk:benefit to be sufficient reason to advocate prophylactic circumcision. It considered vaccination not to be a reasonable comparison, “because the nature, extent, risks and costs of the protection gained or claimed are quite different” and, “vaccination does not entail surgical removal of a significant body part”[1]. While vaccinations protect against many infectious diseases and cancers, IMC is a one-time intervention that provides life-long protection against a wide array of adverse medical conditions, many unrelated to infectious agents. The number of children who need to be vaccinated to prevent one infection[35] is greater than the number of boys who need to be circumcised to prevent adverse medical conditions resulting from failure to circumcise[12]. The article overstates the risks of circumcision. Apart from invoking the disproven belief that, “the foreskin has sexual functions”, it suggests “many people” value the foreskin for various, “personal reasons”. It cites a sexually explicit website that promotes foreskin use in sexual activities such as “docking”, engaged in by some men who have sex with men. The article also cites posts on, “Internet dating sites” and, “the distress many men feel” at having been circumcised when young. Neither represents scientific evidence. In contradiction to a 2002 paper by circumcision opponents listing criteria that should be met before childhood circumcision would be permissible, the AAP policy states the, “best interests” of the individual and “public health justifications” are served by ensuring a baby boy is circumcised[2]. The position that circumcision is, “impermissible because it was performed on a minor without consent” does not acknowledge that the same applies to childhood vaccinations. The claim that, “the human rights cost to the individual exceed the proven public health benefit; and the diseases from which circumcision might provide protection could be avoided through appropriate behavioral choices or otherwise managed without surgery” is not supported by evidence. For example, circumcision is the only way to prevent balanoposthitis, which only occurs in uncircumcised males, and to reduce balanitis, which is twice as common in the uncircumcised[12]. Condoms, when used correctly and consistently, provide only partial protection against STIs, e.g., 80% against HIV in a Cochrane meta-analysis[36]. However, seven RCTs (two in the United States, one in England and four in sub-Saharan African countries) found, “little clinical evidence of real-world effectiveness of interventions promoting condom use for dual protection” against HIV, but 42% effectiveness in syphilis reduction[37]. It should be noted that, unlike condoms, circumcision is a one-time intervention that provides a lifetime of protection. Condom use should nevertheless be encouraged. Together each confer greater protection than either alone. Phimosis can be managed using steroid creams, but this requires twice-daily administration for many weeks, the creams are effective for only a portion of cases, have side-effects and, unlike circumcision, do not protect against STIs[38,39] and UTIs[40]. While circumcision does remove, “a genital feature”, absence of a foreskin is preferred by most women[11,41-47]. Reasons included esthetics, better hygiene, reduced risk of infection, easier and less traumatic vaginal (or anal) penetration during intercourse, and greater overall sexual pleasure[11,44,45,48]. A large clinical trial found far more men reported an improvement in their sexual experience after having been circumcised, with few stating sex was worse[24]. A possible explanation might be that after circumcision the shaft of the penis makes closer contact with the walls of the vagina during intercourse. The three studies cited in the article to support a premise that, “circumcision is not ordinary medical treatment”[1] were selective citations of reports by circumcision opponents. The one by Frisch et al[49] has been severely criticized[21,50]. The one by O’Hara et al[51] was a “preliminary” survey by lay anti-circumcision activists of women, “recruited through … an announcement in an anti-circumcision newsletter”. Those authors acknowledged this was a “shortcoming”. They stated, “this study has some obvious methodological flaws” and that, “it is important that these findings be confirmed by a prospective study of a randomly selected population of women”. Since then a RCT has been conducted[45], and most of the female participants reported a better sexual experience after their male partner had been circumcised. The claim that the foreskin is as important as the female breast is implausible. The breast is a highly visible female accouterment providing, through its milk, critical nutrition and immune protection for the newborn. In contrast, the foreskin may only be seen when a male exposes his penis. In comparing penile cancer and breast cancer prevalence, the article misleadingly cites lifetime risk for breast cancer (1 in 10), but annual incidence of penile cancer (1 in 100000) rather than lifetime risk (approximately 1 in 1000)[2,9,52]. The article argues that, “it is impossible to identify a single [boy] who died because he had not been circumcised”[1]. A large CDC study reported higher rate of serious adverse events in boys not circumcised[31]. Apart from gangrene, a potential consequence of paraphimosis, these included several types of STIs, which can lead to death[2,9,12,39,52]. UTIs, which is ten times more prevalent in uncircumcised boys[40], can result in potentially fatal complications such as meningitis and sepsis[53]. Deaths from circumcision do occur after initiation ceremonies in sub-Saharan Africa involving non-medical operators. But the claim of 117 deaths in the United States per year from circumcision is fanciful. That figure is based on the false assumption by Daniel Bollinger that the well-known sex difference in infant mortality is entirely a consequence of IMC. A similar sex-difference is seen in countries with low circumcision prevalence[54]. Deaths from medical circumcision in the United States are exceedingly rare[31].
BIOETHICS AND AUTONOMY The ethics of IMC has been debated extensively. Scholarly assessments suggest circumcision of male minors is ethical[34,55-60]. Given the wide-ranging protection against multiple medical conditions and infections, including STIs in boys who become sexually active early, it has been argued that it would be unethical to leave boys uncircumcised[34,58]. Article 24(3) of the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child has been construed as mandating circumcision, since not circumcising boys should be deemed as prejudicial to their health[58]. In contrast to the claim about tattooing, piercing and genital cutting of girls[1], there are sound medical reasons why IMC should be regarded quite differently. While IMC has cosmetic benefits, it is not merely, “a cosmetic procedure”. It provides life-long medical benefits. A view expressed that, “the experts are unable to agree”[1], represents obfuscation of the AAP’s advice that, “parents should, weigh health benefits and risks in light of their own religious, cultural, and personal preferences, as the medical benefits alone may not outweigh these other considerations for individual families”[2]. All evidence-based policy statements support IMC on medical grounds[2,9,10,61]. As with childhood vaccination, parental consent is required. Moreover, the supposition, “if the risk/benefit equation is only slightly tilted (AAP) or equally balanced”[55] is not supported by the scientific evidence. Draft CDC recommendations state, “In a comprehensive risk-benefit analysis of [IMC] based on reviews of the literature and meta-analyses, it is estimated that over a lifetime, benefits exceed risks by a factor of 100:1”[9]. This risk-benefit analysis cited by the CDC found that the foreskin contributes to adverse medical conditions in half of uncircumcised males during their life-time[12]. Thus the data refute the assertion that a, “situation of uncertainty” exists. The article rejects parental choice, saying that, “it does not logically follow that parents are the appropriate party to make the proverbial circumcision decision”, because, “from the child’s point of view” a decision made by others, “denies him autonomy and choice in a matter affecting an intimate part of his own body”. An argument that a child has a right to, “bodily integrity” follows the line espoused by circumcision opponents that IMC should be banned, discouraged or at least delayed until the boy is old enough to decide for himself[62-64]. Ethics authorities have refuted this opinion[56-60,65,66]. It has been argued that being circumcised boosts autonomy more than constraining it[67]. The, “circumcision decision” is one of many decisions that a parent must make in the interests of the health of their male child. The AAP recommends that early in a pregnancy the medical practitioner should provide parents with unbiased education about risks and benefits of IMC so they have adequate opportunity to choose what is in the child’s best interests should they have a boy[2].
THE BEST TIME TO CIRCUMCISE Cogent arguments favor early parent-approved IMC over delaying circumcision until the male is old enough to decide for himself[30]. Circumcision in infancy is easier, lower-cost, more convenient, usually involves local anesthesia, healing is quick and cosmetic outcome is good as stitches are not required. In contrast, circumcision of older boys or adults is more difficult technically, poses a higher risk of adverse events[31], is more expensive, and, although can be done using local anesthesia, some operators prefer that general anesthesia be used, so further adding to cost. It means taking time off work or school, and is associated with psychological issues, including fear of pain, unfounded concern about diminished sexual pleasure, of having to undergo an operation, peer pressure not to get circumcised, sexual abstinence until healing is complete, which the man and/or his sexual partner may find unacceptable, and, when sutures are used, a cosmetic result that can be inferior to that achieved by IMC, which does not require sutures[30]. It also means years of not having been protected from adverse medical conditions that affect uncircumcised boys. Taken together, those observations provide a strong case favoring early infancy as being the best time to circumcise[30]. In light of all of this, the argument that the, “decision should still be left to the owner of the foreskin” is likely to mean circumcision will not occur, even if the older male wants to be circumcised. This probably represents the outcome desired by circumcision opponents. While children and infants, “lack the power to make rational choices and must therefore be guided by adults”[1], it is untrue that, “circumcision is not something that has to be done before a person is capable of rational thought”. Although, “children are not sexually active and thus not at risk of disease”[1], circumcision confers multiple benefits in infancy and childhood that are not related to sexual activity. Benefits include strong protection against UTIs[40] that are common in infancy[68] and can result in permanent kidney damage[53,69-73]. Early IMC prevents phimosis, which affects 10% of uncircumcised older boys and young men[74]. Paraphimosis is less common, but can lead to penile gangrene and auto-amputation of the penis[75]. Circumcision protects against inflammatory skin conditions (balanitis and balanoposthitis) that occur in 10% of uncircumcised boys and men[30]. Uncircumcised adolescents and men have inferior penile hygiene owing to the proliferation of bacteria and accumulation of smegma under the foreskin[76-80]. The thin, fragile foreskin is easily torn and trauma due to zipper injuries can occur[81].
HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS The article disputes claims that uncircumcised men are more likely to harbor oncogenic human papillomavirus (HPV) types[1]. In doing so the references cited[82,83] are misinterpreted, as explained previously[38]. The article fails to cite extensive evidence contradicting the author’s skepticism. That includes ignoring RCTs that found circumcision strongly protects men against ongogenic HPV acquisition and improves HPV clearance[84-89]. There is also RCT evidence of reduced low-risk HPV types that cause genital warts[90]. The claim that, “the development of safe, effective vaccines is rapidly making the question of circumcision irrelevant”, fails to appreciate that the two current HPV vaccines do not target all of the 14 or more prevalent oncogenic HPV types, whereas circumcision offers approximately 50% protection against all oncogenic HPV types. Thus circumcision and vaccination represent synergistic approaches to countering the HPV epidemic[91]. The article skirts the fact that by partially protecting against oncogenic HPV types and various other STIs male circumcision provides a range of benefits to women. Virtually all cases of cervical cancer are caused by oncogenic HPVs. The risk of cervical cancer is much lower in the female sexual partners of circumcised men[92]. While over 70% of girls in early adolescence have received HPV vaccination in Australia[93], vaccine uptake in the United States has been much lower[94]. Policy recommendations of the AAP and CDC recognize cervical cancer prevention as an important benefit of IMC[2,9]. Yet, the article inaccurately states that circumcision of boys has, “zero benefit” to, “reduce the risk of cervical cancer in future female sexual partners”[1].
OTHER STI, INCLUDING HIV Well-designed large RCTs provide the cleanest picture of the risks and benefits of circumcision compared to retrospective or observational studies. This is because confounding and bias are minimized. Three RCTs convincingly demonstrated that MC protects against heterosexual HIV infection in men[95-97]. The trials went on to demonstrate protection against other STIs such as oncogenic types of HPV[84-89], genital herpes (HSV-2)[87,98-100], Trichomonas vaginalis (T. vaginalis)[101] and Mycoplasma genitalium (M. genitalium)[102]. In addition, RCT data confirms the protective effect of MC in the female partners against oncogenic HPV types[103-105], HSV-2[106], T. vaginalis[107], M. genitalium[108], bacterial vaginosis[78,107] and genital ulceration[107]. The consistency in efficacy estimates between trials provides increased confidence in the benefits. The claim that, “the major benefits claimed (reduced risk of STIs, HIV and various cancers) can be obtained in adulthood”[1] fails to acknowledge that the likelihood an adolescent or adult male will seek a circumcision for himself is low. Thus, parents’ decision to circumcise a newborn son will ensure he has the lifelong benefits circumcision provides. Programs to encourage circumcision have been suggested by the CDC for high-risk population groups in the United States[9]. The WHO and other bodies have supported the implementation of such programs in sub-Saharan Africa since 2007. Although the article concedes that circumcision, “provides some degree of protection against HIV in certain risk situations and epidemiological environments”, it then states, “there is no proof that it provides any overall protection against other STIs”[1], citing an article containing a series of meta-analyses[109]. Those meta-analyses were criticized[38]. They contained extensive flaws, data manipulation, failed to include numerous studies, including high-quality RCT data, and used uncommon statistical approaches[38]. It then states, “most [STIs] are readily curable with antibiotics”, failing to realize that many common STIs (HIV, HPV and HSV-2) are viruses that cannot be cured. That exposes a lack of medical knowledge by the historian author.
WHY IS THERE OPPOSITION TO MALE CIRCUMCISION? The article refers to a man who suffered the consequences of a botched IMC[110]. Such occurrences are exceedingly rare in the current era for circumcision performed by experienced medical professionals. The AAP policy recommends provider training to help ensure good outcomes. At the population level the frequency and severity of medical conditions arising from failure to circumcise greatly exceed that of adverse events arising after IMC[12]. The existence of, “a vigorous, community-based anti-circumcision movement in places where the practice remains common”, as evidence, “circumcision is harmful and thus wrong” can be said of other fringe groups opposed to beneficial public health policies such as vaccination and water fluoridation.
FORESKIN RESTORATION AND PARTIALISM The article cites dated opinion pieces containing anecdotes and speculation about, “serious psychological dysfunction”, caused by IMC, in claiming, “some [men] resent [their IMC] sufficiently to attempt foreskin restoration”[1]. Rather than this being, “proof that they believe they have suffered sufficient harm to warrant a complex and laborious project”, these men may have formed a misguided belief, as discussed earlier. Following online instructions about “restoration” of a pseudo-foreskin seems ill-advised. Not only is the process cumbersome and protracted, but has led to genital mutilation[111]. A recent meta-analysis found that sexual dysfunctions in men are common, irrespective of their circumcision status[22]. Moreover, a study prompted by reports by proponents of, “foreskin restoration”, stated that there is a, “disparity between the mythology and medical reality of circumcision regarding male sexuality”[112]. A psychopathology term that fits the sexual obsession with the prepuce is termed “partialism” (see the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Revision (DSM-5)[113] under “Paraphilia not Otherwise Specified” (ICD-10 code CM F65.9) in the sexual and gender Identity Disorders Section). A diagnosis is made for paraphilia if, “the behavior, sexual urges, or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”. The definition of partialism is, “exclusive focus on part of the body”[114]. After “foreskin restoration”, claimed benefits of, “increased sensitivity” in reality are more likely a result of the friction of the foreskin, whether intact or newly created, on the moist or sweaty glans and undersurface of the prepuce in the un-aroused state and would obviously, in the “re-uncircumcised” penis, have nothing to do with an increase in touch receptors, as in most instances nerves tend not to regenerate. Moreover, in RCTs, follow-up of young healthy men after circumcision found they experienced no decrease in sensitivity during sexual intercourse[23,24]. A detailed professional analysis of psychiatric aspects in eight patients seeking prepuce restoration noted several psychological disorders[115]. These included narcissistic and exhibitionistic body image, depression, major defects in early mothering and ego pathology. These men had a preoccupation with their absent foreskin and represented a subgroup within the community of men who have sex with men[115]. Of the 1200 members of one organization devoted to foreskin restoration, 80% were homosexual, 10% were bisexual and 10% were heterosexual. The overall membership comprised 65% who were uncircumcised, 30% who were circumcised and 5% who were partially circumcised. Although many were happy with the result, thus justifying to themselves the decision to undertake this procedure, others disliked their new genital status, even choosing to undergo re-circumcision[116].
CONCLUSION Criticisms of the AAP policy statement supporting IMC fail to withstand scrutiny. The Hippocratic Oath states, “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure”[117,118]. Disease prevention is central to affirmative IMC policy recommendations. Given the immediate and lifelong protections and very low risk of adverse events, failure to recommend IMC or to suggest circumcision should be delayed seems unethical. We do not think the one-sided arguments opposing IMC are naïve. Rather, they involve deliberate obfuscation in support of an underlying agenda aimed at stopping IMC. We trust that our critical evaluation will set the record straight in the best interest of pediatrics, preventive medicine and individual wellbeing.Buy Photo Nippert Stadium in the first half during the USL soccer game between the Charlotte Independence (1-1-0) and FC Cincinnati (1-1-0), Saturday, April 9, 2016, at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)Buy Photo
Major League Soccer appears to be closely monitoring Futbol Club Cincinnati's progress, and one league official said they're impressed with what they're seeing.
The formidable Cincinnati sports landscape, the record April 16 Nippert Stadium crowd for the Louisville City FC game, and even this past weekend's game that saw more than 11,000 brave the threat of heavy rain at Nippert — MLS has taken note of it all, said MLS Executive Vice President of Communications Dan Courtemanche.
In an email to The Enquirer, Courtemanche said league officials are encouraged by the Queen City's first-year USL franchise.
"Regarding Cincinnati, we understand it is a tremendous sports market and FC Cincinnati had made a bold statement with the incredible crowds to kick off the season, including the passionate fans who came out in the rain (for the Wilmington game Saturday)," said Courtemanche in the email. "We are all impressed."
FC Cincinnati has hosted three home games in the young USL season and is averaging almost 15,500 fans per game. The team announced Tuesday its plan to push for 25,000 fans for the May 14 home game against Pittsburgh Riverhounds. The team's status is likely to be elevated again if they hit the 25,000 target, which would shatter the single-game USL attendance record it set just weeks ago.
Courtemanche's sentiments seemed to echo those expressed by MLS Commissioner Don Garber at an April 21 press conference. It's also the league's most recent nod to the positive momentum in FC Cincinnati's aggressive push for MLS.
Five days after setting the single-game USL attendance record against Louisville — an apparent narrative-changing moment that seemed to thrust the club into the MLS expansion discussion — FC Cincinnati was mentioned by Garber in the same breath as highly touted possible expansion markets like St. Louis, Sacramento and Detroit.
"I'd be remiss to not point out Cincinnati," Garber said while ranking in order the list of possible MLS expansion cities.
Courtemanche's email was in response to The Enquirer's request for comment from MLS Commissioner Don Garber regarding FC Cincinnati. Garber wasn't available to comment.
Cincinnati's inclusion in the expansion discussion was a 180-degree turn from just weeks ago when Cincinnati was rarely mentioned by the media.
More on expansion
Atlanta, Minnesota and Los Angeles are all in line to begin MLS play next season. Courtemanche also said the league is continuing progress with plans to expand to Miami, which would bring the league total to 24 teams.
MLS, which currently has 20 active teams, formally announced its intent to expand to 28 teams in the future.
In the April 21 press conference, Garber said Sacramento and St. Louis were front-runners for expansion. Since then, Garber has also appeared with a prospective ownership group representing the Detroit market.
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If Sacramento, St. Louis and Detroit all reach MLS, and the league caps expansion at 28 teams, that would seem to leave Cincinnati fighting it out for the final expansion spot with San Diego, San Antonio and Austin.
In his email to The Enquirer, Courtemanche expounded on the expansion process. He said the league's goal is to secure the following from prospective expansion projects:Five Nordic nations have agreed to work more closely on defense after declaring Russia the "biggest challenge to European security."
The defense ministers of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland said Northern Europe must prepare for possible crises or incidents because of Russia.
In a statement published in the daily Aftenposten, the ministers said Russian leaders had shown they are ready to use military means to reach political goals.
They noted increasing Russian military and intelligence activity in the Baltics and other northern European areas.
"The Russian military is challenging us along our borders and there have been several border infringements in the Baltics."
The statement comes amid heightened tensions in Europe since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine a year ago.
With large Russian minorities living in the Baltics, concerns have grown in the region about the risk of Russian intervention.
Based on reporting by ReutersKUALA LUMPUR Expectations ran high when Zakaria Arshad was appointed president of Felda Global Ventures Holdings, or FGV, a year ago. Net profit at the state-backed plantation operator had slid from 981 million ringgit ($228 million) in 2013 to 117 million ringgit in 2015, largely due to lower crude palm oil prices.
FGV is 34% owned by Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority, which was set up before independence to distribute agricultural land to ethnic Malays under a poverty elimination program. Around 112,000 FELDA settlers nationwide continue to benefit from state handouts in the form of subsidized fertilizer and low-interest loans. That has helped ensure the ruling party's control in rural constituencies.
Arshad, the son of a settler, was tasked with cutting costs and transforming FGV into a top-10 global agribusiness by 2020. Rising through the ranks to the top post, Arshad partly succeeded in trimming costs and improving yields, as reflected in FGV's first-quarter earnings this year, according to CIMB Investment Bank in a recent research note.
Yet, along with three other top executives, he was suspended indefinitely on June 6 pending an internal probe over alleged mismanagement. Mudslinging followed, with Arshad accusing FGV's board, led by then-Chairman Isa Samad, of creating the malaise that he said predated his appointment as president.
Prime Minister Najib Razak's office reacted swiftly to the boardroom tussle, appointing a former minister known for turning around ailing state-owned companies a day after Arshad's suspension to quell the unrest. The country's anti-graft agency also stepped in to investigate Arshad for alleged misconduct. Adding to the confusion, Najib moved Samad out of FGV, appointing him acting chairman of the Land Public Transport Commission.
The appointment is seen as a step up for Samad. The commission's job is to enforce land transport regulations. The transfer went ahead despite the ongoing corruption and abuse of power probe of Samad and his wife.
The turmoil at FGV comes at a time when public sentiment toward state-backed companies is at a low ebb, particularly due to the bailout of loss-making Malaysia Airlines in 2014, mismanagement at sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad and, more recently, at Proton Holdings, the automaker partly acquired by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
PUT A LID ON IT Malaysia is expected to hold a general election in less than a year and the government does not want problems at FGV to spiral out of control.
Najib's intervention is also seen as way to keep a lid on discontent among settlers who have seen their income shrink due to weak palm oil prices. Some who own shares in FGV have also been hurt by the sharp drop in share prices. The company's stock has fallen by two-thirds since it was listed in June 2012. Malaysian James Chin, a professor at the University of Tasmania, in Australia, said Najib is worried about FGV becoming a political scandal before the election because about a quarter of all constituencies are in or near FELDA settlements.
Public support for the government's handling of the economy was at 24% in March, an improvement over the 17% recorded a year earlier, according to a poll conducted by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research. Even so, the pollster said the result showed clearly that many Malaysians are not satisfied with the state of the economy, especially because the weaker ringgit that has eroded their savings.
S&P Global Ratings said on June 22 that the political challenges stemming from the corruption allegations at 1MDB could pose problems for Malaysia's sovereign rating over the near to medium term.
However, pundits are still predicting a win for the ruling party, partly because the opposition coalition remains fragmented. For Najib, whose image has been tarnished by the scandal at 1MDB, the margin of victory must be large to be taken as a sign of a new popular mandate. If not, he risks being booted out by his own party.Elizabeth Anne Ford (née Bloomer; April 8, 1918 – July 8, 2011) was the First Lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977, as the wife of the 38th President of the United States, Gerald Ford. As First Lady, she was active in social policy and created precedents as a politically active presidential wife.[2] Ford also served as the Second Lady of the United States from 1973 to 1974.
Throughout her husband's term in office, she maintained high approval ratings despite opposition from some conservative Republicans who objected to her more moderate and liberal positions on social issues. Ford was noted for raising breast cancer awareness following her 1974 mastectomy. In addition, she was a passionate supporter of, and activist for, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Pro-choice on abortion and a leader in the Women's Movement, she gained fame as one of the most candid first ladies in history, commenting on every hot-button issue of the time, including feminism, equal pay, the Equal Rights Amendment, sex, drugs, abortion, and gun control. She also raised awareness of addiction when in the 1970s, she announced her long-running battle with alcoholism and substance abuse, being the first First Lady to do so.
Following her White House years, she continued to lobby for the ERA and remained active in the feminist movement. She was the founder, and served as the first chair of the board of directors, of the Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and addiction. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal (co-presentation with her husband on October 21, 1998) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (presented 1991 by George H. W. Bush).
Early life and career [ edit ]
Betty Bloomer at age 18, 1936
Ford was born Elizabeth Anne Bloomer in 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, the third child and only daughter of Hortense (née Neahr; 1884 – 1948) and William Stephenson Bloomer, Sr. (1874 – 1934), who was a traveling salesman for Royal Rubber Co.[3] She was called Betty as a child.
Hortense and William married on November 9, 1904 in Chicago. Betty's two older brothers were Robert (d. 1971) and William Jr. After the family lived briefly in Denver, Colorado, she grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she graduated from Central High School.[4]
At the age of 11, she began modeling clothes and teaching children popular dances, such as the foxtrot, waltz, and big apple, to earn money in the wake of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. She worked with children with disabilities at the Mary Free Bed Home for Crippled Children. She studied dance at the Calla Travis Dance Studio, graduating in 1935.[3][5]
When Bloomer was age 16, her father died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the family's garage while working under their car, despite the garage doors being open.[6][7] He died the day before his 60th birthday.[3]
In 1936, after graduating from high school, Bloomer proposed continuing her study of dance in New York City, but her mother refused.[why?] She instead attended the Bennington School of Dance in Bennington, Vermont, for two summers, where she studied under director Martha Hill with choreographers Martha Graham and Hanya Holm. After being accepted by Graham as a student, Bloomer moved to New York City to live in its Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood; she worked as a fashion model for the John Robert Powers firm in order to finance her dance studies. She joined Graham's auxiliary troupe and eventually performed with the company at Carnegie Hall in New York City.[3]
Bloomer's mother opposed to her pursuing a career and insisted that she return home, and, as a compromise, they agreed that Bloomer would return home for six months and, if she still wanted to return to New York City at the end of that time, her mother would not protest further. Bloomer became immersed in her life in Grand Rapids and did not return to New York. Her mother remarried, to family friend and neighbor Arthur Meigs Goodwin, and Bloomer lived with them. She got a job as assistant to the fashion coordinator for Herpolsheimer's, a local department store. She also organized her own dance group and taught dance at various sites in Grand Rapids.[3]
Marriages and family [ edit ]
Betty and Gerald Ford on their wedding day, 1948
In 1942, Elizabeth Bloomer married William G. Warren,[4] who worked for his father in insurance sales, and whom she had known since she was 12. William Warren began selling insurance for another company shortly after their marriage. He later worked for Continental Can Co., and after that for Widdicomb Furniture. The couple moved frequently because of his work. At one point, they lived in Toledo, Ohio, where Elizabeth was employed at the department store Lasalle & Koch as a demonstrator, a job that entailed being a model and saleswoman. She worked a production line for a frozen-food company in Fulton, New York. When they returned to Grand Rapids, she worked again at Herpolsheimer's, this time as the fashion coordinator.[8] Warren was an alcoholic and in poor health. Just after Betty decided to file for divorce, he went into a coma. She took care of him for another two years as he convalesced, at his family's home. She stayed upstairs while he was nursed downstairs. After he recovered, they were divorced on September 22, 1947.[3]
On October 15, 1948, Elizabeth married Gerald Ford, a lawyer and World War II veteran, at Grace Episcopal Church, in Grand Rapids. Gerald Ford was then campaigning for what would be his first of thirteen terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the first of adjustments for politics, he asked her to delay the wedding until shortly before the elections because, as The New York Times reported, "Jerry was running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced ex-dancer."[3][9]
Betty Ford (third from left) and her family in the White House in 1974
Gerald and Elizabeth Ford had four children together: Michael Gerald Ford (born 1950), John Gardner Ford (nicknamed Jack; born 1952), Steven Meigs Ford (born 1956), and Susan Elizabeth Ford (born 1957).[10] Betty Ford never spanked or hit her children, believing that there were better, more constructive ways to deal with discipline and punishment.[11]
The Fords moved to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and lived there for twenty-five years. Gerald Ford rose to become the highest-ranking Republican in the House. After Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice President in 1973, President Richard Nixon appointed Gerald Ford to the position. He succeeded to the presidency in 1974, upon Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal.[12]
The Fords, who were married 58 years until Gerald's death, were among the more openly affectionate First Couples in United States history. Neither was shy about their mutual love and equal respect, and they were known to have a strong personal and political partnership.[13]
First Lady of the United States [ edit ]
National influence and candor [ edit ]
Reporters wondered what kind of first lady Ford would be, as they thought her predecessor, Pat Nixon, as noted by one reporter, to be the "most disciplined, composed first lady in history."[14] In the opinion of The New York Times and several presidential historians, "Mrs. Ford's impact on American culture may be far wider and more lasting than that of her husband, who served a mere 896 days, much of it spent trying to restore the dignity of the office of the president."[15]
Steinhauer of The New York Times described Ford as "a product and symbol of the cultural and political times — doing the Bump dance along the corridors of the White House, donning a mood ring, chatting on her CB radio with the handle First Mama — a housewife who argued passionately for equal rights for women, a mother of four who mused about drugs, abortion and premarital sex aloud and without regret."[16] In 1975, in an interview with McCall's, Ford said that she was asked just about everything, except for how often she and the president had sex. "And if they'd asked me that I would have told them," she said, adding that her response would be, "As often as possible."[7]
Gerald and Betty Ford in the presidential limousine, 1974
She was open about the benefits of psychiatric treatment, and spoke understandingly about marijuana use and premarital sex. The new First Lady noted during a televised White House tour that she and the President shared the same bed. Ford was a guest on 60 Minutes and |
sounds OK.' But in terms of how it was practiced, there was much opportunity and great potential for abuse by the upper-class cadets," Hammond says.
The abuses differed from the mistreatments piled on unlucky civilian college fraternity pledges. West Point hazing was supposedly instituted to improve the character of neophyte officer candidates.
In the name of leadership, plebes were mandated to learn not only military history, but pages of other trivia and gibberish that, in effect, equaled an extra academic course. But what really rankled Hammond and others was that upperclassmen were so busy trying to lead plebes, they didn't spend enough time working on their own character.
"Too many people in the past here saw the seniors' role as placing stress on the subordinate," he says. "But the leaders' role is to remove stress."
So this semester, with little ado, the Cadet Leadership Development System was unveiled. At the heart of this new system are 15 rules defining the proper way for a military leader to act toward subordinates.
This fall's plebes now just have to read the Times, not memorize the front page.
However, many who passed through hazing voice regret.
"You can tell by looking in their eyes that the plebes wish it was the same," Manninen says.
"It's not the same," says Robin Schuck, a female senior from Davenport, Iowa. "When I was a plebe, anybody could tell you your brass buckle needed a shine. Now only someone in your chain of command can make a correction."
"I wouldn't say it's easier," says John Shugena, a plebe. "A lot of the things we have to do, the upperclassmen had to do. We still have to be familiar with world events."
Some cadets have taken to calling the freshman class "getovers"--as in those who "get over" by doing as little work as possible.
Hammond though, emphatically rejects the idea that plebes have it any easier than their forebears or that West Point is becoming "a Harvard on the Hudson."NEW DELHI: In a shot in the arm for BJP, two senior leaders of the Asom Gana Parishad on Monday joined the party and the GJM pledged support to BJP candidates in West Bengal, including the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat.Former AGP president Chandra Mohan Patowary and senior AGP leader and former minister Hitendra Nath Goswami joined the BJP along with a large number of their supporters here and were welcomed by BJP President Rajnath Singh.In another development, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) president Bimal Gurung announced that his outfit will extend support to the BJP in West Bengal.In August, 2013, Gorkhaland supporters had lodged a "missing complaint" against former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, also the Darjeeling MP.Trinamool Congress has nominated former Indian soccer captain Baichung Bhutia for the Darjeeling seat.GJM president Bimal Gurung wrote in his Facebook page, "After meeting BJP President, Shri Rajnath Singh, the Gorkha Mukti Morcha has decided to extend full support to candidates fielded by BJP all over India and Darjeeling. I would appeal all Gorkhas to support BJP all over India. The name of the candidate for Darjeeling will be announced after BJP releases it's election manifesto 2014."BJP president Rajnath Singh wrote in Twitter, "Gorkha Janamukthi Morcha (GJM) president Shri Bimal Gurung has decided to support the BJP in coming Lok Sabha polls. I welcome his decision." Gurung feels GJM’s support will be the deciding factor not only in Darjeeling but also for Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar ConstituencyTrinamool Congress, however, didn''t express any surprise at the developments.North Bengal affairs minister Gautam Deb said, "Trinamool will contest the seat. People in the Hills have witnessed the persistent efforts by the Mamata Banerjee led goverment to usher development and peace in the hills. Else the hills were slipping into darkness due to the years of neglect and resultant strife. People will have a final say."Deb, however, also took a dig at GJM for lodging a missing complaint against their BJP MP earlier. Baichung had earlier spoken to Gurung over telephone seeking his support for his candidature.The GJM has decided not to support Bhaichung.In Assam, BJP has already declared five of its candidates including three sitting MPs.Sources said Patowary will be contesting from Barpeta constituency.(With inputs from PTI)Lucky her … “Emily Gets Her Gun” author Emily Miller claims she’d never heard of Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour before — before taping a debate for PBS’s “Third Rail” on free speech and if it’s alive and well, that is. Sarsour certainly had something to say about Miller after their exchange — something about her blood boiling.
According to her Facebook post, she clapped back @ you and your white privilege. What did you say? pic.twitter.com/WoQUEUchSv — cantwinkworthalick (@ck_marachi) September 30, 2017
If someone got Linda Sarsour’s blood boiling, then we’re happy to report that freedom of speech is alive and well, as is the First Amendment. We wonder if Sarsour mentioned the effort by the Women’s March to force the NRA to take down its recent ad featuring Dana Loesch?
Yes. Linda Saraour said I have no right to an opinion on police officers and "systemic racism" because I'm a "privileged white woman." 1/ https://t.co/O4DOHzBLKU — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
PBS edited out her comments to make her look less obnoxious since I was clearly shocked. Ironically edited on a show about free speech. 2/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
I have never heard of Linda Sarsour before I walked on set and introduced myself. So I asked her how she knew a stranger was privileged? 3/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
She responded: "I KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE." The host and rest of guests were stunned silent by her anger and rudeness to me. 4/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
I asked Linda if she personally knows any police officers? She said she did?. I said I have many cop friends and they aren't racists. 5/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
I said when I'm pulled over, I roll down windows and put open hands on steering wheel to put police more at ease. Not about race. 6/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
Linda said I don't know what it's like to have my life in danger. I said I carry a gun because of death threats for my conserv views. 7/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
I said I choose to exercise my 2nd amendment right to protect my 1st amendment right. Again PBS edited out of a show on "free speech" 8/ — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
Sarsour is just a "white girl from New York City." Hijab doesn't actually change that. https://t.co/1SnXqxKEO5 — Pablo (@Pablo_1791) September 30, 2017
That confused me. She's white American calling me "privileged white" but the two black men on table did not. Who does she represent? https://t.co/qkBvn9SfrM — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
@EmilyMiller v. @lsarsour — Linda was refuted every time, at each point. Of course, this only makes her angrier. https://t.co/zelQ75vgjs — Jim Stinson (@jimstinson) September 30, 2017
PBS is funded by the government so it is a First Amendment issue. Easy solution is PBS post unedited show online and hear both of us. https://t.co/sG62fkXpM7 — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) September 30, 2017
Here’s the edited version that aired, though we’d love to see the unedited version ourselves.
* * *
Related:Sean McCreight has a passion for teaching. But the 25-year-old California native is leaving that behind to pursue an even higher calling: becoming a Jesuit priest.
"I think to see Pope Francis living an active religious life, that's another aspect that's attractive to me," he said. "His life is so filled with serving the church and serving her people that I can also see myself doing those things."
A year after Pope Francis' election, one of the first measurable "Francis effects" may be emerging. The Jesuits, officially known as the Society of Jesus, have seen a 65 percent increase in inquiries from men seeking to join their religions order, according to the Jesuit Conference based in Washington D.C. For many Jesuit vocations directors across the country, that is a dramatic increase from what they were used to under the years of Benedict and previous popes.
The new wave of interest in the order, founded in 1540 and known for its commitment to service, social justice and education, represents a dramatic increase from what vocation directors were used to under the years of Benedict and previous popes.
"They've certainly been the largest numbers that I've seen in my time in this job," said The Rev. Charles Frederico, who runs the Jesuit's east coast vocations office, which stretches from Maine to Georgia.
"To have this level of inquiry into our life, for me, has been very exciting."
Before Francis, he received three to five inquiries a week. Now, he's fielding up to 10 or more. That increase can be significant for an order that has seen its numbers drop by roughly half in the last 50 years.
Sean McCreight CBS
McCreight submitted his spiritual autobiography for consideration to join the order in January. It's the first step in a long process that could take up to 14 years. But after a year in which Pope Francis has captured the public's imagination by embracing simplicity and focusing the Church's message on compassion, it became clear to McCreight that he's making the right choice.
"I've never felt more drawn to learn about a man's life," he said. "He communicates to me that the church is a church of mercy and acceptance."
The Rev. James Martin, author of the book "Jesus: A Pilgrimage," said it's no surprise that there's an uptick in interest for the Jesuits.
"It's the omnipresence of Francis in the media and the fact that people like him. And since people know that he's a Jesuit, we have more people finding out about the Jesuit order and so as a result we have more inquiries from more guys."
"If we had a Jesuit pope who was cold or off-putting, I doubt that would translate into as much interest in Jesuit vocations," said Martin. "But because he talks about his Jesuit background, it's going to be more in front of people and it's going to attract more people."
Pope Francis, part two
A recent CBS News poll found that 68 percent of American Catholics view Pope Francis favorably, while a mere 1 percent view him unfavorably. The poll also found that more Catholics, 48 percent, feel the Church is in touch with their needs than those who don't, 43 percent - significant for the Church after more than a decade mired in a child sex abuse crisis that rocked American Catholics' faith in the institution.
Mario Powell, 34, began his journey to ordination as a Jesuit priest at Boston College in 2002, just when the sex abuse revelations came to light.
"I remember seeing the satellite trucks outside the chancery of the Boston Archdiocese for days," said Powell, who is set to be ordained in June. "When I entered, you saw the church at its worst moment. To have a Jesuit pope then would've been crazy."
It's clearly not crazy now. But while Francis may have breathed new life into a Church seeking to maintain relevance in the lives of the faithful, sustaining that momentum will be the true test, one that will require more than the pope's personal charisma.
"If Francis is the only reason people are saying they're interested, I'd be highly suspicious of that," he said. "At the heart of a vocation, there must be a personal relationship with God."
McCreight couldn't agree more.
"Is Pope Francis alone what's inspiring me? No," he said. "I think it's the God within him that's really calling the God within me and all of us to be better."Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., today said Congress is “absolutely” abdicating its constitutional power to declare war by leaving Washington, D.C., without authorizing war in either Iraq or Syria.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace, Schiff criticized the legislative body for relying on an authorization of military force from 2001, which has been the Obama administration’s justification for involvement in the two Middle Eastern countries as part of its plan to combat ISIS, the brutal terrorist group also known as the Islamic State and ISIL.
The California Democrat noted that the power to declare war is solely designated to Congress and said the body is “abdicating our responsibility.” Schiff also criticized the Obama administration for using the 2001 AUMF and said it’s a “different conflict against a different enemy at a different time.”
At President Obama’s behest, lawmakers voted to approve $500 million in funding to arm and train Syrian rebels late last week. Congress then recessed until after the midterm elections in November.
In the lead-up to the vote on the funding, Schiff, as well as both Democrats and Republicans, expressed skepticism toward fulfilling the president’s request.
“It’s an abdication of constitutional dimension,” he told Wallace.
>>> For Lawmakers, an ‘Agonizing’ Decision on How to Confront ISISBooming house prices and stock market gains contribute to wealth as number of millionaires in UK rises by 200,000 in five years
The number of millionaires in the UK has shot up by 41% over the past five years, with one in 65 adults now classed as having a seven-figure fortune thanks to booming house prices and stock market gains.
There are now 715,000 millionaires living in Britain compared with 508,000 in 2010, with London having the highest concentration of wealthy individuals.
The capital has 191,000 millionaires, followed by the south-east with 157,000, according to data from the wealth management arm of Barclays bank. Wales had the fewest, with 12,000.
But wealth does not correlate with kindness. The region of the UK with the lowest average annual pay – Northern Ireland – is by far the country’s most charitable, with 45% of households giving to charity, Barclays found. The figure for London was just 28%.
Reading is named as the most prosperous town or city outside the capital, followed by Cambridge and then Birmingham.
The figures are likely to reignite concerns about the north/south divide and income inequality in Britain. Median household incomes have gone up just 2% since 2011, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, yet the number of millionaires continues to surge.
It was revealed this week that more than £42bn was paid out in bonuses in the last tax year, much of it to bankers in the City, where payouts have returned to within a whisker of their 2007-08 peak.
Rampant house price inflation in the capital is behind much of the surge in London millionaire numbers. One in 45 London residents are millionaires, compared with one in 255 in Wales.
Property website Zoopla currently lists about 9,400 homes for sale in London for more than £1m, compared with 52 in the whole of Scotland. A terraced home for sale in Leyton, a relatively down-at-heel part of east London, is on the market for £1.1m, or more than twice the current asking price for a 40-bedroom Victorian mansion leading to a beach in Ross-shire, Scotland.
But Barclays ranked towns and cities not just on wealth but also other indicators such as business startups, school exam grades and unemployment to create a “prosperity map” of Britain.
.The research showed that every UK region is now more affluent than it was five years ago, with north-east England enjoying the biggest improvement.
Akshaya Bhargava, chief executive of Barclays wealth and investment Management, said: “Although the north-east currently registers low on the prosperity index, the region has grown faster than the national average in the past five years. The 50% rise in the number of millionaires living in the north-east is the joint-largest increase of any region in the UK along with Wales. The north-east also has a thriving entrepreneurial scene, second only to London.”
Reading is listed second for prosperity in the UK, according to the index, with average earnings of £30,562.
The Berkshire town’s fortunes have improved dramatically over the years. It is now home to the largest concentration of information and communications technology companies in the UK, with Microsoft and Oracle among the larger tech firms that have their UK headquarters there.
But not everyone has benefited from Reading’s economic success. It has “extremes of both wealth and poverty in very small areas”, and has “some of the most affluent and the most deprived neighbourhoods in the whole of the Thames valley”, according to a 2014 report into poverty levels published by its council.
One surprise from the research is that Londoners are far from having the highest median wealth levels, highlighting the growing gulf between a property-rich minority and growing numbers of residents struggling with high rents.
Median household wealth in the capital is £213,000, significantly lower than the £309,700 in the south-east and £259,900 in the east of England, and only just ahead of the figure for Wales.
But other research suggests the Barclays report may be underplaying the number of millionaires in London. WealthInsight, a wealth consultancy, this week claimed the capital was home to 289,500 millionaires – equal to one in every 28 people on its streets. It added the figure was even higher if one included those wealthy families from other countries who owned second homes in the city.
During July and August, many rich Middle Eastern and African families temporarily relocate to the UK capital “to escape the heat in their home countries”, said WealthInsight, which has published research showing that London is the world’s most popular city for second home ownership, ahead of New York, Los Angeles, Monaco and Miami.
It is not just property ownership that is creating more UK millionaires. While the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was axed in the UK in 2014, the National Lottery says it has created more than 3,900 individual millionaires since 1994.
Each month sees another two people added to their ranks courtesy of National Savings and Investments’ premium bonds, which pay out a total of 24 £1m jackpots a year.
But you don’t need to be a millionaire in order for money to buy you happiness. Earlier this month, research from financial firm SunLife claimed that once a number of other factors that influence happiness are removed, to be among the happiest 10% of people in the UK, someone needs £310 spare cash each month – equivalent to £71.54 a week.
Cities and towns ranked by prosperity
1 London
2 Reading
3 Cambridge
4 Birmingham
5 Bristol
6 Leeds
7 Cardiff
8 Manchester
9 Liverpool
10 NewcastleEdgic is a weekly feature analyzing each player’s edit, mapping characters to their story-arc. Note that our focus is not solely to determine the winner, as is typical of other Edgic sites. For more information on how Edgic works and rating definitions read our Introduction to Edgic article.
You can read all our previous Edgic posts here.
Color Key
Name EP 1 EP 2 EP 3 EP 4 EP 5 EP 6 EP 7 EP 8 EP 9 EP 10 EP 11 EP 12 EP 13 EP 14 Adam MOR3 UTR2 CP4 CPP5 CPP3 CP4 MOR2 CPN5 CPN4 OTTP3 MOR2 OTTPP5 Bret MOR4 UTR1 UTR2 MOR2 MORN3 UTR1 CPM3 MOR3 OTT3 MOR3 CPM5 UTR1 David OTTM5 CPM5 CP5 CP5 CPM5 UTR2 CPM3 CP3 CP3 CPP5 CP5 CP3 Hannah CP3 OTT3 OTTN2 UTR1 INV CPP3 CP4 CP3 CPP3 OTTP3 CP4 MOR2 Jay MORN3 CP4 MOR2 UTR2 MOR3 CPP3 CP5 MORM4 CPN5 CP3 MOR2 MORP4 Ken MORP2 CPP4 CPP4 CP5 CPP3 CP4 UTR1 UTR1 UTR1 UTRP2 MOR2 CPM3 Sunday UTR2 UTR2 MOR2 UTR1 UTRN1 UTR1 MORP3 UTR1 CP3 UTR2 UTR1 UTR1 Will UTR2 UTR2 UTR1 INV INV UTR1 MOR3 MORP3 MOR2 MOR2 UTR1 OTT5 Zeke OTTP4 CP3 MOR2 UTR2 MOR4 CP3 MORM3 CP4 UTR1 CP4 CPM5 CP3 Jessica CP4 INV CP3 MORN4 MOR2 CP3 CP2 UTRP1 UTR1 MOR3 MORP3 Chris MOR4 MOR2 MOR3 MORM4 CP5 UTR1 UTRN2 CP3 MOR2 CP4 Taylor OTTN3 OTTN3 MOR3 OTT1 OTTN3 OTTN4 OTTM3 OTTN5 OTTM5 Michelle MOR2 CP3 UTR1 INV CP4 UTRP2 MORP2 MOR2 Michaela UTR1 CPM5 CP2 OTTP2 CPM3 OTTM3 CPP5 Figgy CPN3 OTTN5 CPN3 UTR1 CPN3 CPM5 CeCe UTR2 UTR1 MORN4 UTR1 MOR4 Lucy UTR1 INV UTR1 OTTN5 Paul UTR3 OTTN3 OTTN5 Mari CP3 MOR3 Rachel OTTN4
What did this episode tell us?
As we draw closer to the end of the season, this episode brought some things into focus, while muddying other elements. Characters who were edited positively earlier took a hit and the more mixed characters continued on an upward trend.
The theme of humility/connections that played a prominent role last week continued on into this episode. As per usual, Ken was the main character pushing this theme, however, for the first time this season we received negative Ken content. This negativity doesn’t undermine the theme of humility/connections, but it does undermine Ken. On the other hand, Adam and Jay became the leading representatives of this theme, with their scenes during the loved ones visit. The loved ones visit, and in particular the story about Adam’s mother, played a huge role in the episode.
Of course, the other big theme of this episode revolved around “big moves” and “resume building.” Will was the main proponent of this theme but his approach was shown to be over-the-top and ultimately damaging.
While we believe the editorial intention is to keep most of the players in winner contention (except for Bret, Sunday, and Will), if we had to narrow down our winner choice right now it would be between David or Jay, with an outside chance of Adam.
The Recap
The recap was extremely brief: “At the last tribal council there was a rock draw, Jessica was sent to the jury and willed her Legacy Advantage to Ken.” That was it. Nothing much to say. Perhaps they had a lot to fit into this episode and didn’t want to waste time recapping two episode’s worth of content.
THE CHARACTERS
Under the Radar
Sunday has now had nine UTR ratings, the most of anyone this season. While there is a consistent theme of her caring for others (she was again seen comforting Hannah at the start of this week’s episode), the edit hasn’t given her any depth, strategy or personality wise. Her only CP rating, back in Episode 8, was all about her plan to eliminate Jessica, and while her “Ken” whisper certainly played a role in last week’s chaotic tribal council, we never heard any follow up from Sunday this week, even though her arch-nemesis Jessica went home.
She was barely in this episode other than calling the Hannah shot before tribal council: “Do we wanna consider Hannah because they wouldn’t be expecting that?” she said, subtitled. Of course, this was proven wrong, as Hannah and the alliance were expecting it, and Adam played his idol on Hannah, ensuring that even if Hannah had the most votes, she wouldn’t go home. And her other line played into Will’s idea of being undermined, when at tribal council Sunday said, “I feel like [Will] doesn’t want to sit on the sidelines and feel like all the big kids did all the work. I think he was swayed a little bit today, but we’re hoping he sticks with us.” The camera cut to Will’s face, looking angry when Sunday said “big kids.” Will then had to interject that he “…wasn’t swayed at all today, I came to them with the decision to flip, and that’s the issue…” Although Sunday is a character that has been shown to care for others personally, this highlighted that she doesn’t quite have a pulse on the game dynamics. She was the token representative of not valuing Will’s game which pushed him away.
Overall, there’s not much more we can say about Sunday’s story as the edit hasn’t really given her anything substantial. As we stated last week, “she’s the nice person that cares for others and goes with the flow.” Perhaps when her boot episode comes, that will be given as the reason to eliminate her – she’s too nice and therefore a jury threat.
Bret had a big episode last week but returned to his pre-merge insignificance in Episode 12. There really wasn’t much to say about Bret’s edit here. His main scene was at the reward challenge, crying over seeing his dad, which continued his theme of macho-ness. “I said I wasn’t gonna cry,” he laughed, as his tribemates jokingly called him a “losah.” He wanted to uphold his macho image by not crying (something which he mocked David for last week) but was unable to hold back the tears. It shows Bret as a conflicted character.
Other than that, all we saw was him talking about being pissed off that David forced them into drawing rocks last week. Then later he was pissed off that Ken put Will in an awkward position, “Imagine putting you in that spot?” And he had the subtitled line when talking to his group of five, “When I’m with people. I’m with people.” While last week we talked about how it’s a positive to go out swinging and fighting with your allies, we have seen Bret proved wrong a lot this season. Does this suggest he’ll eventually flip on these people? Will he end up putting Will (or someone else) in an awkward position himself? Much like Sunday, there isn’t a great deal edit wise to stick our teeth into with Bret.
Middle of the Road
Hannah had her quietest edit since the pre-merge, bookending the episode’s start and ending, but taking a backseat in the middle. A cool-down episode can be a good thing after such a visible streak, and given the way this episode ended, with Hannah correctly predicting that the votes were coming her way, she looked good.
She opened up the episode feeling guilty about Jessica putting her game on the line and leaving via the black rock. “I feel guilty, and I feel thankful, and I… I just feel awful.” It showed Hannah as someone with humility and caring about others, both positives this season. At the loved ones visit, she got to talk about her mother and how she survived cancer. During this scene, the camera focused in on Adam’s reactions, with the audience knowing that Adam and his family are going through that situation right now with his mother at home. Even though Hannah doesn’t know of Adam’s situation, it connected these two even further for the viewers and gave extra impact to Adam using his idol on Hannah later in the episode.
Speaking of the idol, Hannah was shown once again accurately predicting that the votes were coming her way. This time she made sure to voice her opinion at tribal council, and Adam played his idol on her. Even though Will flipped and Hannah would have been safe regardless, the edit presented this as the correct move, making it seem like Will’s “big move” was overshadowed, and that Adam and Hannah came out with the most success.
The quieter edit and accurate reads make it seem more and more likely that Hannah makes final tribal council. But winning still seems like a stretch. Instead, these moments appear to give the illusion that she could win in an attempt not to make the final result too obvious.
Jay’s edit continues its upward trend after the hits it took in Episodes 8 and 9. He didn’t have a great deal of game complexity here, but he finally jumped on board with one of the season’s biggest themes, humility/connections. Not only was he committed to his allies, but his ability to put aside his differences with Adam at the loved ones visit showed humility and gained him his positive tone for the episode.
He started the episode cementing his allegiance to his alliance. “We’re all five together,” he said. “Five strong.” While he was an outlier last week, this showed Jay willing to stay strong with his group. “Let’s take them all out one-by-one,” he said subtitled. Although, this could also be seen as a negative, given that this alliance did not stay “five strong” by the end of the episode and did not take out the opposing group one-by-one. He also said, “David should freaking go home, bro,” but David did not go home this episode. While Jay has had strong content throughout the season, he has also been wrong a lot.
His most positive content this episode was the scenes revolving around the loved ones visit. By putting aside his past beef with Adam, Jay showed respect and humility, and he was rewarded with Adam’s advantage. “So I was like, “Yo, sometimes I hate you, and sometimes I love you, but at this moment, I-I truly respect you, and you’re a cool dude.”” He continued to show respect later in the episode in regards to Will, telling him that he’s always seen him as an equal, giving him credit for the Michaela vote, and telling him to just “go with [his] gut.” It’s this kind of stuff, along with the scene where he talked about his mother and sister, that keep Jay going as a contender in spite of his editorial flaws. He has a rounded edit with enough substance for a winner even if his path to the end isn’t as clear as others. Of course, there is also enough to suggest his edit is that of a scrappy underdog that comes close but just falls short too.
Over the Top
It’s very rare that we hand out a PP tone but if it applied to anyone this season it was Adam in Episode 12. He was pretty much the star of the night and the entire episode was centered around him and his story. Adam revealed the news about his mother back in Episode 4, and we’ve heard it pop up now and again throughout the season, here at the loved ones visit it took center stage. As an audience, we felt Adam’s emotional struggle as he decided not to use his advantage. We begged Jay to pick Adam to join him on the reward. We felt his pain as his brother told him that his mom had stopped her treatment. While the news is obviously devastating, the edit was PP for Adam, the music, the tears, the heavy subject matter, the positive words from his fellow tribemates, and add on top his immunity win and idol play; this was a clear PP edit.
We decided for OTT over CP because the majority of Adam’s content related to his mother and family. Even though he talked about it within the context of the game, its presentation was OTT. His only real game related content was talking about Ken betraying Will, but that was more narrational than strategic. Of course, his idol play was also strategic, and interestingly, the edit presented it as a correct move, even though in actuality Will flipped and Adam ended up wasting the idol. When Adam played the idol it cut to a shot of Will looking displeased, while Adam, David, and Hannah were all smiles. Even though only four Hannah votes were read out (indicating that Will flipped), to a casual viewer it would have appeared that Will voted with the Zeke group, and only at the very end of the credits would it have become clear Will flipped. Was this to undermine Will? Or make Adam look better?
Much like Jay, Adam’s edit continues on an upward trend after the knocks it took in Episodes 8 and 9. It showed people’s opinions of him changing, gave him a ton of personal content, he had a winner quote, “I only have one checkbox left, and that’s winning this game,” and was made to look like he made a great move at tribal council. His winner chances still seem less than David and Jay at the moment but he’s creeping back up there and is probably the only other true contender at this stage.
This was obviously Will’s break-out episode of the season. Other than Adam and his story, Will received the most content this episode, and it revolved around him wanting to make a “big move.” Even though there were elements of CP in his statements, the delivery and presentation were completely OTT. It was all about Will wanting to be taken seriously as an adult, but it was undermined due to him coming across like a sulking child in his quest to get that respect. Was there enough to give him N tone for the episode? Perhaps. But seeing as nobody really gave him NSPV, we’re keeping him a neutral OTT.
“Seeing my mom made me realize that I need to start playing this game, because despite the moves I made, despite the things that I’ve done in this game, people still don’t give me the credit I deserve, and that can ruin my shot at winning this game.” That was Will’s most CP statement, but with every following confessional his character became more one-note, continually emphasizing that he “came here to play” and make a “big move” in a very OTT manner.
“It is very risky, but I didn’t come here to be dragged as a goat. I came here to play,” he said regarding his Zeke plan. “This is my time to make a big move so that people realize that, hey, this 18-year-old kid from Jersey, he’s here to play,” he said after the immunity challenge. “It’s excruciating, but I want to make a big move, so I have to deal with that crap,” he said about Ken. “The logical side of me is telling me this is my time to make a big move, but I am so angry with Ken. I would love to blow up his game,” he said before tribal council. His confessionals about Ken were also very OTT, “This guy preaches about honor and integrity and how he’s this great and noble human being with his arrogance and his extreme ego, and then he has the audacity to pull this crap on me!” We didn’t get a rounded, complex view of Will. What the audience will remember here is the “young kid trying to prove himself to the whole world,” as Jay said.
It also doesn’t help that Adam usurped his plan. “Either way, I’m in control, and there is nothing anyone can do about it,” he said before heading to tribal council. But that was wrong. Even if Will decided to stick with the Zeke alliance, there was something that could be done about it, as Adam proved when he played his idol on Hannah. As we’ve just covered in Adam’s section, the edit presented this moment as if Adam played correctly, showing Will displeased with the move. Despite Will’s mantra all episode about not wanting to be undermined, it was the edit itself which ultimately undermined him.
Where does Will go from here? Last week we said that in an episode about standing by your allies, it looked bad that Will gave up one ally (Jay) in favor of two new allies (Zeke and Hannah) but then later declared that he wasn’t willing to put his game on the line for either of them. He continued on that path this week, abandoning Zeke who he promised allegiance to last episode, and continued to burn his bridges with Jay. If we’ve read this theme correctly, it will mean that Will’s constant flipping and abandoning of allies will eventually burn him, perhaps as soon as next week.
Complex Personalities
Given his prominent edit last week, and the fact that this was his boot episode, Zeke had a surprisingly quiet edit. His story pretty much took a backseat to the story of Adam and his mother and Will and his coming-of-age story. Even though we suspected Zeke would be able to maneuver through the game a little while longer, we did say last week that while winning wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility, “his downfall could be burning too many relationships.” That seems to be ultimately what did Zeke in. He turned on Chris, then turned on David, and openly admitted that he “realigns with people all the time.” That showed that Zeke wasn’t willing to stick by his allies through thick and thin and therefore Will had less trouble flipping.
His edit was CP-lite (if people want to argue it was MOR that is reasonable). The reason we decided for CP was his post-immunity challenge scenes when he put forward a new plan after feeling suspicious about David: “It does not make sense that the four should be as calm as they are. I know David’s coming for me, so we need to get rid of him. But David has a nose for idols, and I’m so close to the end, I can’t take the risk, so we need to throw someone else under the bus.” Even though David didn’t have an idol, Adam did, and he was right that the four were too calm.
The signs of his downfall were presented at the very start of the episode. “The Tribal Council was amazing! I |
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This story was produced with support from the Mozilla Foundation as part of its mission to educate individuals about their security and privacy on the internet.NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - December 23, 2014) -
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Oh man, this is the best Clinton conspiracy story ever. Except apparently it’s true:
Former president Bill Clinton had a private telephone conversation in late spring with Donald Trump at the same time that the billionaire investor and reality-television star was nearing a decision to run for the White House, according to associates of both men. Four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape. ….The tone of the call was informal, and Clinton never urged Trump to run, the four people said. Rather, they said, Clinton sounded curious about Trump’s moves toward a presidential bid and told Trump that he was striking a chord with frustrated conservatives and was a rising force on the right. One person with knowledge of Clinton’s end of the call said the former president was upbeat and encouraging during the conversation, which occurred as Trump was speaking out about GOP politics and his prescriptions for the nation.
Conservative heads must be exploding right about now. Is the Trump candidacy just a devious Clinton scheme to screw up the Republican primaries? It’s just the kind of thing a Clinton would do, after all. Did Bill know that Trump would confirm every horrible stereotype of conservative intolerance that moderates have of the GOP, thus ensuring a Hillary win in November? Or was it really just a casual call and Trump is still the real deal? Or…or…maybe the whole thing is yet another Trump PR stunt? Or maybe Bill has a mole inside the Trump campaign? OMG, OMG, OMG.
Anyway, the most fascinating thing about this is not the fact of the phone call itself, but the fact that four Trump allies spilled the beans to the Post reporters. That’s not just one loose-lipped nitwit. It’s as if Trump wanted this to get out. But why? And why the timing right before the first debate? Does Trump want to make sure he gets asked about this?
And how does this affect Trump’s candidacy? Does it make him less attractive to tea partiers, since he was consorting with the devil a few months ago? Or is it a net positive, because it makes him more attractive to moderates, who figure maybe Trump is OK if Bill Clinton encouraged him to “play a larger role”?
I dunno. I just want to know what conservative Trump supporters are thinking about this. I don’t see anything yet at Red State or The Corner or Hot Air or Power Line or Breitbart. Maybe they just haven’t caught up. Or maybe they don’t trust the reporting of the hated mainstream media in the first place. Stay tuned.Overpriced, default, fraud. Sounds like a typical day on Wall Street, right? According to a Government Accountability Office report released last week, these signal a growing trend in the sales and marketing practices of private, for-profit universities.
According to the report, GAO investigators posed as potential students at 15 for-profit colleges in order to find out how colleges that receive billion sin federal Pell Grants and federally subsidized student loans treat their students.
GAO investigators found that all of the colleges made “deceptive and otherwise questionable statements” to them. Four of the colleges encouraged fraudulent practices by the prospective students, including falsification of financial aid forms. Other college representatives violated federal regulations to provide students with accurate information about the length of programs offered, costs, and graduation rates. College staff frequently told applicants they would be in classes for 12 months but quoted prices of tuition for nine moths of classes.
GAO investigators reported that private colleges in California and Texas encouraged students to falsely increase the number of dependents on their financial aid form in order to qualify for grants. Another investigator applying to a Pennsylvania school was told not to report some $250,000 in savings in order to qualify for financial aid. An undercover applicant to a Florida school said they were falsely told that the school was accredited by the same organization as that which had accredited Harvard. Others grossly exaggerated the incomes they would earn after graduation, or implied to students that student loans don’t really have to be repaid.
The GAO report noted that student loan default rates for former students of for-profit colleges are much higher than those at public universities and colleges.
GAO investigators who used for-profit college websites to seek more information began receiving high-pressure phone calls within five minutes of their activity on the website. They reported receiving 180 calls in a month from the colleges anxious to get them into their classes.
A comparison between the tuition rates of for-profit colleges and local public universities with the same or similar programs found enormous disparities as well. According to data compiled by GAO investigators, students attending for-profit colleges could expect to pay far more for the same program. For example, a student seeking an associate’s degree in respiratory therapy at a for-profit Texas college could pay as much as 19 times more than a student in a similar program at a local publicly operated college. Earning a certificate in web page design at one Pennsylvania for-profit college could cost as much as 10 times more than the same program at a local public college.
The report showed that while some of the staff at these colleges provided accurate and helpful information for prospective students, deceptive or harmful practices were far too frequent. The names of the schools were not disclosed but they were located in Arizona, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida and Washington D.C.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/1la/4657015680/sizes/o/back to news News Attention! This news was published on the old version of the website. There may be some problems with news display in specific browser versions. Premium vehicles for Warbonds until the 31st of October - FAQ Update The Ki-100-II and many more awards are waiting for you! But before that:
We hope you didn’t miss the news that we updated the mechanism of warbond earning.
If you did, be sure to read it at first! We continue with tradition and present you once again with the updated assortment of the Warbonds for September. Everything is as before: fulfill Battle Tasks, earn warbonds, improve the shop and get the rewards. This assortment will be available for over a month (until the 31st of October)! Battle Tasks will be available to you after reaching the 3rd rank of any nation in-game. You can read more about Warbonds and Battle Tasks in the War Thunder wiki. Update 28.09.2017 (Server Update) and FAQ Rewards for daily tasks are increased by 25%
Special tasks purchase cost is lowered by 25%
Special task trophies will have 25,000 SL reward instead of 5,000
Special tasks are now available starting from rank 3
New rewards are effective only for the new tasks that players receive after these changes Q: Will my warbonds expire in the next month?
: No, they will not expire at all. Q:Why have you replaced difficult tasks with Special tasks?
: Special tasks were introduced so that you will have more options in how to complete tasks. Thus you may complete several tasks in one day or alternatively - extend one task over a few days. Q: Why are Special tasks only available from level 4?
: Previously difficult tasks became available only from rank 4 also, but we considered your suggestions and lowered rank requirement of the Special tasks to rank 3. Q: Will we keep the shop level and medals after the end of a month?
: No, every month new shop and medals should be earned from the beginning. Q: How much time do I have to upgrade the shop?
: You have one month to upgrade your shop, after that the progress halts and you have 1 more week to earn more warbonds and spend them in the upgraded shop - during this week you will have items from both shops available and you can choose whether you want to earn some more warbonds and use them for the upgraded shop, or keep them and start upgrading the new shop. However this time the shop upgrade is available from September 25th to October 31st - more than one month. Q: I got a Special task but didn’t manage to complete it before the end of the month. Will it expire?
: No the tasks will remain active and once you complete it you will earn a medal for the new shop. Q: Will Special tasks count for the shop progress?
: No, they won’t. Only daily tasks count for the shop upgrade. Special tasks give you a battle trophy and a medal that allows you to get premium items from the shop. Ki-100-II The Japanese Kawasaki Ki-100 was the most recent development of the Ki-61 line of military fighters. Its twin brother - the Ki-100-II was further development attempt to introduce high-altitude interceptor equipped with a supercharger capable of intercepting enemy bombers at a great altitude. Based on the series-produced Ki-100-Ib, by August 1945 three Ki-100-IIs were built with turbochargers and a methanol injection system for WEP. These were the most modern aircraft of their type. Because of the end of the war, these planes did not go into large-scale series production. Neubaufahrzeug
The German take on the multi-turret layout, the Neubaufahrzeug packs more of a punch than its British counterpart, with a combined 75mm and a coxal 37mm mounted within its primary turret as well as two machine gun turrets, mounted front and rear. This German multi-turret terror is a classic example of German efficiency and superb engineering! Detailed list of the Warbond items in the shop this month: Premium vehicles: Independent Nb.Fz. Ki-100-II A6M2 (USA) Hampden TB Mk.I (USSR)
Emblem "Sorci Verdi" of 205a Squadriglia, 41o Gruppo BT, RA, decal author - 'Fenris' Muir;
3d decorations (other);
3d decorations (camouflage) ;
Supply boxes with 30%, 60%, 90%, 300%, 600%, 900% RP and SL boosters for 1 battle;
RP and SL boosters for 1 battle; Vehicle rent: AC IV Thunderbolt Tempest Mk.V (Germany) B-17E (Japan) Super Hellcat Fw 190D-9 (USSR)
“Order” trophy;
Sets of the universal back-up vehicles - the universal backup vehicle. The player can activate this item to backup any one vehicle of their choice. Emblem "Sorci Verdi" Author: Colin 'Fenris' Muir Where can you find Warbonds?? ▼
On the menu that opens, click on the 'Warbond Shop' icon in the bottom right corner.
You can now view the range of Warbonds available by clicking on on the various icons.
Purchases can be made with the 'Purchase' icon in the bottom right corner.
Click on the 'Daily Tasks' icon from the War Thunder in-game hangar.On the menu that opens, click on the 'Warbond Shop' icon in the bottom right corner.You can now view the range of Warbonds available by clicking on on the various icons.Purchases can be made with the 'Purchase' icon in the bottom right corner. Battle tasks: These individual tasks bring variety to your gameplay and prevent situations where all the players in a battle try to complete one specific task, effectively ignoring mission objectives that are needed for a victory. They are available for players that have reached the 3rd rank of any nation. On completion, players will receive Silver Lions, and Warbonds - a special in-game currency with their own specific shop, where you can purchase many different items. You can read more about battle tasks and war bonds in our devblog and on War Thunder wiki. Enjoy the new items available and see you on the battlefield! The War Thunder Team“President Obama has traded in the hard hat and lunch bucket category of the Democratic Party for the hipster fedora and a double skim latte.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on Monday admitted he crafted a controversial tax provision, which could personally enrich Sen. Bob Corker, House Speaker Paul Ryan, President Donald Trump, and top Republican lawmakers directly overseeing the bill. The provision could additionally benefit the real estate industry — which has been one of Hatch’s largest sources of campaign donations.
In his letter explaining the situation, Hatch did not dispute that Corker and other Republicans who have large ownership stakes in real-estate-related LLCs stand to reap a personal windfall from the legislative language he added to the final bill. Instead, Hatch insisted the controversial provision wasn’t new, but was in fact included in the version of the bill passed by the House earlier this month. He wrote that the claim “that a new pass-through proposal was created out of whole cloth and inserted into the conference report is an irresponsible and partisan assertion that is belied by the facts.”
Hatch’s characterization of the provision was disputed by tax experts Monday, who said the Republican senator’s process argument was factually false.
“Chairman Hatch’s letter is an exploration of an alternative tax universe not previously known to science,” Edward Kleinbard, former chief of staff of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, told IBT.
“[The provision’s] only connection with the House bill is that it rewards owners of capital intensive businesses, like wealthy real estate investors, but the measure of those rewards and the new provision’s design have no relationship to the House bill,” said Kleinbard, currently a law professor at the University of Southern California.
Earlier this month, Corker cast the lone Republican “no” vote on the Senate version of the bill, which did not include the provision, but instead created a 20 percent deduction on income from “pass-through” entities, such as LLCs and S-Corps, that pay out wages to employees. But Friday, he announced he would vote “yes” on the final reconciled bill, which included the controversial new provision. That provision extended the deduction to income pass-throughs with large property holdings but few or no employees, effectively subverting efforts by Senate Republicans to ensure that the new tax break was limited to businesses paying out wages to employees.
Following an International Business Times investigative report detailing how Corker could personally benefit from the new provision, Corker faced a firestorm of criticism for switching his position on the $1.5 trillion legislation. On Saturday, he told IBT he could not have changed his vote out of self-interest because he had in fact not read the bill and was unaware of the provision. As criticism grew over the weekend, Corker sent a letter to Hatch, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, asking him to provide an explanation of how the provision ended up in the bill.
In a letter Monday morning addressed to Corker, Hatch said that the provision was a compromise between the House- and Senate-passed tax bills that had generally been considered before. Hatch asserted that no senator, including Corker, had asked him to put the provision into the final legislation, writing “I am unaware of any attempt by you or your staff to contact anyone on the conference committee regarding this provision or any related policy matter.”
Hatch did not dispute that Corker voted against the Senate bill when it restricted him from getting a personal benefit, and then switched his position and announced his support for the final bill after it included Hatch’s language.
A Debate Over Process, Not Substance
Hatch acknowledged that he put the provision into the bill — and federal financial disclosures show Hatch’s wife owns a real estate LLC worth up to $500,000 that earned up to $15,000 of income in 2016. Donors from the real estate industry — which could also benefit from the provision — gave Hatch more than $515,000 during his 2012 reelection campaign.
In his letter, Hatch focused primarily on the process by which he inserted the provision into the final bill, rather than on the substance of the provision itself. He argued that a version of the provision was included in the House version of the bill.
“Through several rounds of negotiations, the House secured a version of their proposal that was consistent with the overall structure of the compromise,” Hatch wrote.
Hatch asserted that the House bill — which Corker never voted on — included a section that “provided a special tax rate for pass-through income and included a ‘prove-out’ option for capital-intensive businesses,” but also acknowledged that “the Senate bill did not include a prove-out option for capital-intensive businesses like the one contained in the House bill.” He then declared: “It takes a great deal of imagination — and likely no small amount of partisanship — to argue that a provision that has been public for over a month, debated on the floor of the House of Representatives, included in a House-passed bill, and identified by JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] as an issue requiring a compromise between conferees is somehow a covert and last-minute addition to the conference report.”
Experts familiar with the specific workings of how the tax break is formulated said that while there are some general similarities between the House bill and the conference report, Hatch sculpted a brand new provision for the final bill — one that was not in the previous versions of the legislation.
“The mechanism that suddenly appeared in the conference committee was entirely new,” Matt Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which opposes the bill, told IBT in an email. “While the concept of giving a special pass-through carve-out to owners of real estate is, sadly, not new, the way in which the conference committee subverts the pass-through break is entirely new.”
Steve Rosenthal, a former tax attorney at Ropes & Gray, agreed.
“The House bill allowed lower rates for qualified income from pass-through businesses, but did not have a wage guardrail,” said Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, in an email. “The Senate bill added a wage guardrail, to limit the lower rates to income from businesses with substantial payrolls. The Senate copied the wage guardrail from another rule in the tax code today. The Conferees followed the Senate bill, but lifted the wage guardrail for real estate and, perhaps, other businesses without substantial payrolls. The rule in the Code today does not lift the guardrail for real estate and other businesses without substantial payrolls. The House bill did not have any wage guardrail to lift.”
Seth Hanlon, a former Obama administration adviser on the White House National Economic Council, said Hatch’s argument strained credulity.
“When they say ‘capital-intensive taxpayers,’ they mean passive, wealthy investors that own valuable assets but don’t employ many people,” he told IBT in an email. “When they say ‘prove-out,’ they mean a special trap-door from limits on the new passthrough loophole that allows wealthy real estate magnates to get an even bigger tax break. This special trap-door was not in the Senate bill that Corker voted against. And ironically, the Senate bill based the design of its passthrough loophole and the so-called ‘wage guardrail’ on a bill from then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that the House passed in 2012. That bill did not have this special trapdoor for wealthy owners. This is a new provision added to the bill, and not unveiled until Friday night.”
Hanlon also asserted that the Republicans were trying to use an arcane process argument to deliberately distract attention from how Corker and other lawmakers will personally benefit from the provision.
“It’s telling that Republicans are not even trying to defend this carveout on its merits,” he told IBT. “And that’s because it’s an indefensible giveaway to people like Bob Corker and Donald Trump. It is a special, new tax break that goes to rich investors, tilting the tax code in their favor and away from people who work for a living. And it’s one of the ugliest parts of a bill that raises health care premiums, raises taxes on millions of Americans, and explodes deficits.”
Experts estimate Corker could save as much as $1.1 million because of the tax break.
Alex Kotch contributed reporting to this story.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/mtcO
You probably didn't notice it during WRAL-TV weather segments but meteorologist across North America have had an additional challenge recently.
On Sept. 12, controllers at the NESDIS (National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service) noticed "noise" appearing in imagery from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 13 (GOES-13), a key weather satellite. GOES-13 is parked at 75 degrees longitude, south of Cape Hatteras, pretty much directly over the Columbia-Peru border. This position provides a complete view of the Eastern U.S. all the way to the western edge of Africa where much of the severe weather that affects North Carolina is born.
The quality of the images was degraded so much that a decision was made on Sept. 23 to take the satellite offline for more intensive troubleshooting. That left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with a single active weather satellite.
GOES-15 is parked at 135 degrees west longitude, over the Pacific Ocean and provides coverage focused on the west coast of North America.
NOAA immediately put GOES-West into "full disk scan mode" to help fill the gaps. This mode includes visible parts of the eastern United States not normally covered by that satellite.
For a longer term solution, the decision was made to activate a spare satellite put in place for situations like this. On Oct. 1, GOES-14 began moving from 105 degrees west longitude, south of the Texas-New Mexico border, eastward to take over the role of GOES-East. This is expected to take a full month to complete.
Why so long? Is NOAA playing it safe and moving this spare slowly? Not really. The ultimate answer lies, as it often does, in the math.
Weather satellites are in a geosynchronous orbit above the Equator. They fly at the same speed the Earth rotates which allows an unchanging, full-disk view of the Earth's surface. That's not just convenient for meteorologist to get the big picture of the weather, it's necessary to keep the satellites in orbit.
When you mix Newton's gravitational constant, the mass of Earth, the time it takes Earth to rotate once (4 minutes shy of 24 hours, but that's for another blog) and then subtract the radius of the Earth, you get a required orbital altitude of about 22,000 miles to keep a geosynchronous satellite in place.
At that altitude, moving 30 degrees west covers about 13,000 miles.
It also requires the satellite to speed up (Earth rotates from west to east, or counter clockwise when viewed from the North pole). All this takes a while.
As of Friday, GOES-14 had progressed about 10 degrees eastward at a rate of about 0.90 degrees per day. The plan is to move GOES-13 westward for additional troubleshooting. Project scientist Dennis Chesters of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, described pulling off this satellite shell game as “changing your pants while driving your car.”
">You can, of course, follow GOES-14's progress to its new home online.
Tony Rice is a volunteer in the NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador program and software engineer at Cisco Systems. You can follow him on twitter @rtphokie.Billy Andrade watches a tee shot during the Senior PGA Golf Championship at the Trump National in May. (Steve Helber/Associated Press)
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Billy Andrade doesn’t have a direct connection to the nation’s capital, but the Champions Tour golfer always will have fond memories of the area thanks to a breakthrough victory 26 years ago.
On June 3, 1991, Andrade beat close friend Jeff Sluman in a playoff at the Kemper Open for his first tour win. The tournament took place at what was then TPC Avenel in Potomac. The course since has been renamed TPC Potomac at Avenel Farms following a recent redesign.
Andrade reflected on that triumph Tuesday afternoon during media day for the Senior Players Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club, roughly an hour from TPC Potomac.
“A couple weeks ago I thought about it,” Andrade, 53, said, referring to when he played at the Senior PGA Championship at Trump National. “It wasn’t that far away from Avenel from where we played, and I played well, so yeah, I’m going to continue those thoughts of my first win here.”
Andrade finished tied for third at the Senior PGA, five shots behind winner Bernhard Langer, who claimed his senior tour record ninth major championship to break a tie with Jack Nicklaus. Langer is the three-time defending champion at the Senior Players, the fourth of five majors on the 50-and-over circuit.
Andrade, meanwhile, is seeking his first major on any tour. He joined the Champions Tour four years ago after four wins on the PGA Tour.
“I showed my kids a video of the Kemper Open from 1991 where there was 100,000 people at that event,” Andrade said. “So you talk about his area having great golf fans and loving the game, I’m going to use all that and see if I can have a chance.”
At the Kemper Open, Andrade had to make birdie at holes 16 and 17, and then save par from a green-side bunker on the 18th, just to force a playoff with Sluman.
They played No. 17 again for the playoff, and Andrade landed his six-iron tee shot within eight feet of the flagstick. Sluman’s tee shot landed in the water, leading to a double bogey.
Andrade made the putt for birdie to seal the win after having matched Sluman with a tournament-record 21-under 263. The previous four-round record had been 268.
Even before he earned his PGA Tour card, Andrade had become familiar with the Baltimore-Washington corridor. As a student at Wake Forest, where he also played on the golf team, Andrade would stop in the District during drives back home to Rhode Island.
Andrade’s sister at the time was a nurse at Georgetown University Hospital.
Two of Andrade’s PGA Tour wins have come in the Mid-Atlantic region. He won the Buick Classic at Westchester Country Club one week after his triumph at the Kemper Open. Andrade also won a the 1998 Canadian Open in Toronto.
“This is more like what I grew up on,” Andrade said of Caves Valley. “It’s amazing how in golf players play well where they kind of grew up. The California guys, Mark O’Meara and Corey Pavin, always seem to play well out in California. Guys like me always struggled on Poa annua greens out there.
“Then you come east, three of my four wins, here at Kemper, New York, Toronto, on the PGA Tour, so I like this feel. I like this place. I like this area.”The Canadian Press
Montreal-area mayors are joining forces and seeking to join a lawsuit aimed at overturning Canada Post's decision to reduce home delivery.
The mayors of Montreal, Laval, Longueuil and surrounding suburbs want in on the lawsuit filed by the union that represents employees at the Crown corporation.
The mayors held a news conference this morning and say Canada Post's decision was made without consulting municipalities and will hurt large numbers of seniors and people with reduced mobility.
Canada Post has said it is committed to moving ahead with its plans to gradually reduce home mail delivery and install community mailboxes despite court challenges and calls for a moratorium by some mayors.
It says it has no choice but to go that route because of a continuing drop in letter volume.
Canada Post has stated it is ready to defend its position all the way to the Supreme Court.The ravages of European nonacceptance endure. I see within my own family how the disappearance of a Jewish woman grabbed by Nazis on the streets of Krakow in 1941 can devour her descendants. I understand the rage of an Israeli, Naomi Ragen, whose words were forwarded by a cousin: “And I think of the rest of Europe, who rounded up our grandparents and great-grandparents, and relatives — men, women and children — and sent them off to be gassed, no questions asked. And I think: They are now the moral arbiters of the free world? They are telling the descendants of the people they murdered how to behave when other anti-Semites want to kill them?”
Those anti-Semites would be Hamas, raining terror on Israel, whose annihilation they seek. No state, goes the Israeli case, would not respond with force to such provocation. If there are more than 1,000 Palestinian deaths (including 200 children), and more than 50 Israeli deaths, Israel argues, it is the fault of Hamas, for whom Palestinian victims are the most powerful anti-Israeli argument in the court of world opinion.
I am a Zionist because the story of my forebears convinces me that Jews needed the homeland voted into existence by United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947, calling for the establishment of two states — one Jewish, one Arab — in Mandate Palestine. I am a Zionist who believes in the words of Israel’s founding charter of 1948 declaring that the nascent state would be based “on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”
What I cannot accept, however, is the perversion of Zionism that has seen the inexorable growth of a Messianic Israeli nationalism claiming all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; that has, for almost a half-century now, produced the systematic oppression of another people in the West Bank; that has led to the steady expansion of Israeli settlements on the very West Bank land of any Palestinian state; that isolates moderate Palestinians like Salam Fayyad in the name of divide-and-rule; that pursues policies that will make it impossible to remain a Jewish and democratic state; that seeks tactical advantage rather than the strategic breakthrough of a two-state peace; that blockades Gaza with 1.8 million people locked in its prison and is then surprised by the periodic eruptions of the inmates; and that responds disproportionately to attack in a way that kills hundreds of children.
This, as a Zionist, I cannot accept. Jews, above all people, know what oppression is. Children over millennia were the transmission belt of Jewish survival, the object of what the Israeli novelist Amos Oz and his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger have called “the intergenerational quizzing that ensures the passing of the torch.” No argument, no Palestinian outrage or subterfuge, can gloss over what Jewish failure the killing of children in such numbers represents.Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman says city council will take a second look at a multimillion-dollar plan for new walking and bike paths before the project is allowed to go through, delaying plans until at least next month.
On Tuesday, Bowman said he wants a review of how people were consulted about the 20-year, $334 million active transportation development.
That decision is music to Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt's ears, who wants Winnipeggers to have a chance to weigh in on the development.
He said the plan calls for changes to hundreds of Winnipeg streets.
"There's Winnipeggers across the city that... don't realize yet what's being recommended, potentially on a street they live on," said Wyatt. "Allow for public consultation. Allow for folks to have an input into it.'"
The proposed project, which includes building an expansive cycling and sidewalk network, was given the green light last week. The new announcement means construction will be delayed until at least June, when councillors will have another chance to vote on the plans.Many in the country’s east appeared unlikely to vote after weeks of violence between government troops and pro-Russian separatists.
Many in the country’s east appeared unlikely to vote after weeks of violence between government troops and pro-Russian separatists.
Ukraine handed chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko a commanding victory in its presidential election Sunday, giving the pro-European billionaire a chance to resolve a conflict that has created the greatest tensions between the West and Russia since the Cold War.
The new leader takes the office once held by pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February after anti-government protests. That revolt led to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the rise of a separatist movement in Ukraine’s east and a torrent of violence that increasingly looks like a low-grade civil war. All are massive challenges that will test a longtime politician who has promised to navigate between Russia and the West.
Poroshenko immediately moved Sunday to paint himself as a conciliator, declaring that his first official act after inauguration would be to visit the heart of the separatist rebellion in the Donets Basin.
“The first steps of our entire team at the beginning of the presidency will concentrate on ending the war, ending the chaos, ending the disorder and bringing peace to Ukrainian soil, to a united, single Ukraine,” he said at a victory rally Sunday. “Our decisive actions will bring this result fairly quickly.”
He has also said he wants to lead Ukraine to closer ties with the European Union.
Confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko claimed Ukraine's presidency Sunday. His rival Yulia Tymoshenko conceded. (Reuters)
But with violence preventing many citizens in pro-Russian eastern Ukraine from voting, it remained far from clear how much people there would accept Poroshenko’s mandate. Separatists in the region had vowed to disrupt the vote, and they largely succeeded Sunday, with many polling stations shuttered, ballots stolen, and election officials threatened and even kidnapped. Citizens in eastern Ukraine have long been skeptical of centralized power in Kiev, and many voted May 11 in a separatist-organized referendum in favor of autonomy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said a day before Ukraine voted that Russia would “cooperate with the authorities that will come to power as a result of the election,” but he added that he continued to consider Yanukovich the legitimate president of the country.
Exit polls released immediately after balloting ended showed Poroshenko taking more than 55 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff that would have left Ukraine without an elected leader for three more weeks. His closest rival, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whom polls indicated garnered 12 to 13 percent, conceded. Official results will be announced Monday.
Two far-right nationalist candidates appeared to do poorly. Oleg Tyagnibok of the Svoboda party and Dmitry Yarosh of the Right Sector party each received roughly 1 percent of the vote, according to the exit polls.
The Central Election Commission estimated final voter turnout nationwide at 60 percent, a spokesman said. Turnout in the 2010 election — in which residents of eastern Ukraine and Crimea could vote freely — was 67 percent. A regional breakdown of the final turnout figures was not immediately available, but 14 percent of the country’s registered voters live in the two eastern regions were voting was impeded Sunday.
Poroshenko, 48, is a soft-spoken businessman who built a candy empire out of the ashes of Ukraine’s post-Soviet economy. Forbes estimates his wealth at $1.3 billion. He has worked on both sides of the country’s political divide, as foreign minister during the pro-Western presidency of Viktor Yushchenko and briefly as economy minister under Yanukovych. But Poroshenko allied himself with protesters shortly after Yanukovych rejected a deal in November to move toward integration with the European Union.
Many of the anti-corruption civil society groups that occupied Kiev’s Independence Square in opposition to Yanukovich fear that the country’s new president could be an old-style representative of rule by Ukraine’s wealthiest.
Poroshenko said Sunday that he wants to hold new parliamentary elections this year, a move that would pave the way for a full revamp of the government. Yanukovich’s pro-Russian Party of Regions still holds a plurality of seats in the legislature.
Problems beyond the capital
In Kiev on Sunday, voters stood in long |
Yes Yes Recommends all Clarkson University No No Score choice OK Clemson University Yes No Score choice OK Coe College No No Score choice OK Colby College Yes Yes Recommends all Colgate University Yes Yes Score choice OK College of Charleston Yes Yes Recommends all College of New Jersey Yes No Score choice OK College of St. Benedict Yes Yes Recommends all College of the Holy Cross Yes Yes Score choice OK College of William and Mary Yes No Score choice OK College of Wooster Yes Yes Score choice OK Colorado College Yes No Score choice OK Colorado School of Mines No No Score choice OK Colorado State University Yes Yes Recommends all Columbia University Yes Yes Score choice OK Concordia College—Moorhead Yes Yes Score choice OK Connecticut College Yes Yes Score choice OK Cooper Union Yes Yes Recommends all Cornell College Yes Yes Score choice OK Cornell University Yes* No Requires all ACT; SAT Score Choice OK Creighton University Yes Yes Score choice OK CUNY—Baruch College Yes Yes Score 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* Weak Superscoring—This school falls somewhere between “highest composite” and true superscoring. For instance, Cornell, Duke, and NYU look at the highest subscores even though they do not build a new composite score. We find this to be almost a distinction without a difference, especially since some colleges do the same thing behind the scenes but label it “superscoring.”
**Stanford does not superscore ACT; however the website states, “For the ACT, we will review all subscores and will focus on the highest Composite and the highest English and writing scores from all test sittings.”
Post a comment or send an email to guide@compassprep.com with questions or recommended changes.
Updated 12/18/18In recent months McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell announced that they will no longer use ground beef made with "pink slime."
Pink slime is the nickname for the beef product made out of scraps gathered from the slaughterhouse floor then mushed up and treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill e. coli and salmonella. Consumer groups and celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver think the process is so gross that they campaigned the chains to change practice. Other fast food franchises still use the gunk in their meat, and it remains a primary ingredient in dog food.
Good thing internal combustion engines (and dogs) aren't as finicky as humans. In addition to pink slime, there's lots of useful if unsavory stuff that comes out of slaughterhouses, like beef tallow, yellow grease and chicken fat. It turns out that the right refinery can turn these animal fats into far better diesel and jet fuel than is commonly distilled from crude oil.
If people don't want to eat these animal parts, why not feed them to cars, trains and planes?
This week meat giant Tyson Foods and fuel-maker Syntroleum announced that their Dynamic Fuels joint venture was selling millions of gallons of animal-fat-based diesel to Norfolk Southern railroad to power freight trains.
Tyson provides the feedstock for the renewable diesel, which it sources from slaughterhouses across the country. The refining process is done at a $170 million plant they opened last year in Geismar, La. It takes roughly 7 pounds of fat to make one gallon of fuel.
The diesel they make is what's known as a "drop-in" fuel -- meaning you can use it as a direct substitute for regular diesel. Plus, it's higher quality, with cetane levels as high as 88. Cetane is the equivalent of octane in gasoline; the higher cetane, the more evenly and more powerfully the fuel combusts. The average diesel has a cetane level of less than 50. The fuel also has a lower freezing point than regular diesel, making it idea for cold climates. And because the animal fat doesn't start out with the impurities as fossil petroleum, the diesel has ultra low particulates, making it good for underground mining or anywhere air pollution is a problem.
Makes good jet fuel too. Syntroleum has had its synthetic jet fuels certified for use by the Air Force, and last November Dynamic Fuels announced a deal to provide the juice to Alaska Airlines.
These are far better fuels than ethanol, which although blended with gasoline, is nowhere near being a drop-in fuel because unlike gasoline and diesel it readily mixes with water. Ethanol also has far less energy content by volume than gasoline.
A product like this reduces reliance on petroleum, is good for trucks and trains, and might help keep gross stuff out of the human food supply (watch the documentary "Food, Inc." if you want a gut-wrenching depiction of how that pink slime is made).
Syntroleum reports that it is still losing money on the venture -- turning a profit will require expanding the scale and convincing buyers to pay a premium for a better fuel. In time, the Geismar plant could produce as much as 75 million gallons per year. With all the beef and chicken Americans eat, U.S. slaughterhouses generate roughly 10 billion pounds a year of inedible animal fats. This may sound like a Saudi Arabia of oily glop, but considering that much of it is already destined for products like soap, crayons, cosmetics and shortening, there's really not a lot left over for fuel. The Dynamic Fuels plant, and another bigger one being developed by oil refining giant Valero Energy, will soak up about 10% of total fat supplies.
Ultimately, this drop-in fuel will never amount to more than a drop of the 58 billion gallons of diesel the U.S. burns each year.When the Liberal party campaigned and won in 2015 on making significant new investments in infrastructure, there was cause for optimism.
The Broadbent Institute released important research last year on the significant long term economic benefits of public infrastructure spending and supports the idea of financing these needed infrastructure investments through federal borrowing at this time of historically-low interest rates.
In our study, authored by statistician Robin Somerville at the Centre for Spatial Economics, we examined the short term (2015 to 2019) and long run (2020 to 2040) economic impacts of a large public investment program ($50 billion over 10 years) in transportation and basic urban infrastructure, country-wide. The benefits of such a spending program include more private-sector investment, significant short-term employment gains, a more productive economy, and a higher standard of living — all of which is achieved without significant long-term fiscal consequences to government budgets.
The optimism over the Liberals “historic” infrastructure plan has been blunted of late amidst rumours that the government is considering selling off public assets like airports. Hopes turned sour with the government’s announcement in the recent budget update that the new Federal Infrastructure Bank will focus investments on “revenue-generating infrastructure projects”. In other words, the bank will fund public-private partnerships raising troubling questions about the role of private ownership, user fees and tolls in the financing of new projects.
The attack on the public sector:
For social democrats, the role of public investment and public provision is pivotal to building the kind of equitable and prosperous society we fight for. This is why the Broadbent Institute unequivocally opposes P3s and broader privatization efforts as for example with Hydro One in Ontario.
We believe public services and infrastructure are best financed and delivered by the public sector. While we believe in the role of a competitive market economy, we also believe in the virtue of collective action for the collective good. We champion public provision and investment in universal social programs as part of the fight to de-commodify our social architecture. Moreover, we favour strong progressive taxation in order to pay for public services, public infrastructure and other social goods that individuals cannot provide themselves. In short, we advocate against the prevailing wisdom that we need a lesser role for the state and the public sector.
The three decades long bashing and diminishing of the redistributive capacities of the state has led to pronounced inequality, degraded infrastructure stock, and a blunted ability of government to respond to current societal challenges. Of course, this was what the right-wing wanted. We understand the attack on the public sector as part and parcel of a broader neoliberal economic program that has favored financial deregulation, the expansion of unfair trade and investment deals, the weakening of worker rights and, finally, a retrenchment of welfare state programs and public services.
In Canada, the neoliberal attack on the public sector has been used to justify austerity and to promote both the privatization of existing public assets as well as the private ownership and operation of future projects and assets through P3 agreements. We fundamentally disagree that the private sector is necessarily more efficient or more capable of owning, operating and delivering projects and services as P3 advocates, including some progressives, falsely claim.
We believe these “partnerships” obscure that P3s socialize risk and privatize rewards.
Strong evidence against P3s:
Significant empirical work has demonstrated P3s to be costly and ineffective. The evidence, from groups like the CCPA, Columbia Institute, CUPE and others has demonstrated that P3s do not deliver on cost savings for the public, nor do they prove effective in sharing risk as advocates claim. Privatizing operation and ownership means foregoing significant returns on investment for the public dime, handing over potential revenue streams to private companies.
CUPE economist Toby Sanger's recent analysis of the Ontario Auditor General report on P3s captures the key evidence succinctly and convincingly. In short, P3s have been shown to cost more, to leave the public without control of services and assets, and ultimately to saddle the public with the costs if and when a project doesn't work out. It is for these reasons that we also support municipal moves to in-source or bring privatized services back in-house.
There are models of mission-oriented public investment banks that the government could have followed and that social democrats could, in theory, support. We see no credible case to use public funds to underwrite P3s rather than to invest in publicly run and operated infrastructure. That’s why we focused our response to the fiscal update on a rebuke of the infrastructure bank. Our senior policy advisor, Andrew Jackson, wrote about the folly of the banks mandate for the Globe and Mail, as well as for the Institute blog.
At this moment of deep political convulsion throughout the West, the fight against privatization is part of a broader struggle against the economic logic that has led to corrosive inequality and underpinned the bankrupt neoliberal economic paradigm. We must continue to dispel the myth that it is the private sector alone that drives innovation or that is capable of driving economic growth and dynamism. And we must fight to ensure that the public is equitably rewarded for the investments it makes.
For its part, the Institute will continue to advocate for government investment in public programs and public services that help cultivate a collective ethic, secure broadly shared prosperity, and defang and discredit right-wing populism in the process.
Jonathan Sas is the Research Director at the Broadbent Institute.
Photo of privatized Ontario highway 407 by Ken Lund, used under a creative commons BY-SA-2.0 license.I came, I saw, someone else conquered. Last weekend, I attended League of Legends’ Championship Series finals, which – in an undeniably historic moment for eSports – were held in Los Angeles’ Staples Center, a venue that’s played host to thousands upon thousands of fans through countless professional basketball games, boxing matches, and hockey games. Also, er, WWE Summerslams. League has, in other words, entered The Big Leagues. Even the US government recognizes it as a sport, and it is a body literally incapable of agreeing on anything else. But, as Korea’s SK Telecom T1 absolutely shut out China’s Royal Club, I bore witness to both glorious, beautiful triumphs and worrisome failings. I’m no League of Legends eSports expert, but perhaps that enables me even more to say this much: the sport still has a lot of important growing to do. Here’s what I saw.
Blue and white lights are flashing everywhere, like the sky is actually falling. And honestly, the ceiling’s so high that I’d probably believe someone if they told me there was a cloud or two up there. It’d also conveniently explain where the endless rain of silver confetti is coming from.
It’s the end of the LCS finals, and the Staples Center has exploded. OK, not literally, but it certainly looks like the sight of some kind of combustion. Sounds like it, too. Shouts, whoops, screams, whistles, bellows, thunderous applause – it’s all swirling together in adoration of five young men in matching red shirts, the oldest of whom is a mere 22 years-old. Together, SK Telecom T1 teammates Impact, Bengi, Faker, Piglet, and PoohManDu heft a gleaming silver cup over their heads, arms nearly straining under the weight. But then, I suppose that’s kind of fitting. After all, they’ve just won $1,000,000.
It’s a larger-than-life moment. I stand in awe – of the scene, of the spectacle, of some kids who are really, really good at a videogame.
——
I pace back-and-forth in my hotel room. It’s day one of Riot’s pre-LCS promotional build-up, and I honestly have no idea how I’m going to cover this thing. I’m what could charitably be called a LoL beginner, and eSports is so far outside my the upper stratospheres of my knowledge that I think I say it make a brief cameo in the film Gravity. I have some ideas, but not the foreknowledge or means to execute them in the moment. That makes me upset. I chew on a bagel spitefully, imagining myself as a vengeful Godzilla wreaking havoc on a donut shop.
Before long, I’m ushered onto a bus. Its wheels go ’round and ’round, all through the town until we arrive at Staples for a press briefing. It’s held in a decadent yet compact auditorium that doubles as a bar, a place where business and entertainment have locked horns many times before. Every conceivable surface is wood paneled. Basketball memorabilia dots the walls. There are chairs and a stage. This can mean only one thing.
Games journalist dunk contest. No, wait, the other thing: press conference.
Riot VP of eSports Dustin Beck takes the stage with a mixture of bravado, marketing speak, and sincere excitement. Despite that, most of the conference is snooze-worthy – a potent NyQuil cocktail of “Here’s what’s happened so far this season, described as simply and dryly as possible” and “WE ARE SUCCESSFUL THIS PLACE IS BIG I MET A BASKETBALL ONCE.” But other bits are worth chewing on, like a contemplative Godzilla wreaking havoc on a donut shop. The Riot presenters queue up a couple absurdly well-produced documentary-style videos of young pros’ stories. Their lives, their passions, their dreams, their ambitions. How incredible, unprecedented fame has altered the way other kids treat them at school.
This game changes lives, in big ways and small. It is legitimately a new sport, contested in an arena far removed from grassy fields or rot-infested school gymnasiums. Kids are starting to grow up with it.
I think back to the way martial arts steadied my life – gave me goals, friends, drive, a family, an identity where once I was just confused and depressed. I remember competing in tournaments, being encouraged by coaches and peers, learning to tear myself down in order to rebuild, to be better. I become excited by the potential of this nascent form of competition and teamwork, this place of expression where kids can clean off the garbage life throws at them and just do something pure for a little while. Whether they aspire to a career on Riot’s official pro roster or are just looking for a way to enjoy themselves and make new friends, there’s potential here. Huge potential. For growth, for lessons, for human relationships, for fun. And this sport is already highly multinational. There are opportunities to bridge cultural borders on a very personal level. LoL is – whether by design, fortuitous happenstance, or a mix of both – in a very rare, special place.
And then I wonder if Riot thinks about any of this when it devises strategies and systems to make its community less awful – and further, when it takes the reins on propagating its own professional scene. And I really, desperately hope it does, as opposed to simply thinking of all this as a giant promotional tool. Because growing up on the Internet is, frankly, a horrifying prospect. Humans aren’t made for it – for the disconnect, the lack of faces and feelings and empathy. It makes us monsters. We need all the help we can get.
——
A couple friends and I are walking through the chaotic, jam-packed halls of the Staples Center on LCS night. It’s mere moments before what will – in all likelihood – be the last match of the season. The air is electric. People stream past copious concession stands, talking and gesturing animatedly. Many of them wear silly hats, because sporting events are, by nature, this glorious nexus point between teeth-grinding seriousness and the side of Halloween that leads to rampant deletion of Facebook accounts.
And then I see a horde of people, teeming and squirming like ants on a fallen cupcake. Pointing toward the center of the crowd, one of my friends finds the source of the madness. “That’s Day[9],” he says, almost whispering. The eSports mega-personality shakes hands, signs pictures, and gives hugs. In his wake, young fans come away very nearly in shock. “That. Was. So. Awesome,” one young man says to a band of friends, biting his words as though they’ll come rampaging out otherwise. So many excited, awe-struck people.
They’re just happy. Passionate. Loving the moment. Nothing like the dreaded stereotypical LoL fans you hear about online. Granted, that reputation is blown out of proportion anyway, but it’s still quite the sight. This thing has brought people together, let them talk and cheer and shout together. In-person. The barriers are down. People are just being people.
It’s an interesting moment, too, because Day[9]’s just roaming around, like any other attendee. He’s not flanked by an entourage or anything of the sort, despite being a bonafide celebrity in this environment. It speaks, I think, to the background of eSports – and how close to that background competitors and fans still are. The culture emerged from people competing in modest venues and sharing videos online, often via rudimentary tools in their own homes. In theory, the doors have always been open to all, or at least more so than in other sports. No need for college scholarships or prestigious backgrounds or political mumbo-jumbo. Just passion and skill.
These homegrown stars would (and still do), in turn, stream and produce other content that interacts directly with their fans. It makes the proceedings so much warmer, so much more personal. The Internet can bring out the worst in a game, but it can also make it better. Perhaps it can even build a new, better type of professional sport – something that treats everyone like people, fame and fortune or not.
Maybe. Or it can just become like all the others.
——
I don’t know what to make of the LCS opening ceremonies, and I get the impression that I’m not alone. A man, who I’m told is Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, struts across the stage painted ghostly white from head-to-toe. He’s backed by a floppy haired drummer, a scantily clad female cellist, and – oh yeah – a full orchestra. Then a platform arises in the center of the stage, and The Crystal Method emerges, rocking out on synths and keyboards. All the while, lasers dart and dance, slicing through the dark blue hue of the stadium with Jedi-like finesse.
Admittedly, the orchestral rocktronica mega-ensemble is playing familiar League of Legends tunes, but it all just feels so… overblown. Like a cry for attention, an impassioned plea for legitimacy. And honestly, what is renting out the Staples Center for a videogame if not that, right on the money? I mean, why else would you play videogames in a place designed to house people throwing balls in hoops or punching each other in the face? But ultimately, I can’t fault Riot and its fans for enjoying their giant celebration, even if elements of it don’t make a lot of sense. They’ve earned this.
Still, I can’t help but find the moment a bit odd. On one side, you have League of Legends and its bouncing baby pro scene, a thing weened on fan support, community, and old-fashioned, down-to-earth humanity. But on the other, here’s this insane spectacle, this deafening cannon-blast of imagery and sound that wants me to believe – for this single moment, if nothing else – that these players and their game are bigger than me, bigger than other fans, bigger than anyone. And caught in the middle, you have the sport itself with an identity that’s still practically embryonic. Will it stay small and personable, or will a surge in growth propel it into a series of walled gardens – pens of athletic supremacy where mere mortals dare not tread? Will the Internet, YouTube, streams, Reddit AMAs, and things of the like allow it to straddle the line between both? And will it ever infiltrate the airwaves of John Q Public, or will League of Legends diehards keep it in their clutches until the whole scene peaks?
LoL eSports is in uncharted territory, and there is no “right” answer. Only hindsight will decide that.
——
The lights are bright – nearly blinding – as I thrust a microphone in front of Riot VP of eSports Dustin Beck. We’re in a bowling alley for some reason – or at least a bar/dining establishment that’s got strong bowling alley genes on its mother’s side because, let’s face it, Riot has too much money. I dive right into my concerns. The sport’s become massively successful – quite obviously, and you can’t argue with results – but it’s still nigh-impenetrable for all but a very specific subset of people. Meanwhile, Riot, the company that makes the game, has a stranglehold on the highest echelon of competition, potentially snuffing out legitimacy of third-party leagues that might want to cross over to wider audiences. At least, in North America, where they focus their efforts.
Beck replies that Riot’s taken big strides in professionalizing LoL eSports – making it more like a traditional “sport.” Now there are regularly scheduled programs, analyst desks, shoutcasters who’ve undergone rigorous training, and the like. When pressed, however, he concedes that at the moment Riot’s eSports focus will remain on preexisting fans of the game. Players. The goal is not to turn this into a far-reaching spectator sport. Not yet.
There is, admittedly, an appeal there. For those who are already in-the-know, they don’t have to fear dilution or the “dumbed down” approach it might bring. But, though LoL’s player base is truly gigantic, it also caps the sport’s growth, which is a shame.
Later, watching the finals unfold with a couple equally inexperienced friends, I can’t help but feel that a few simple tweaks would have me migrating to the frigid northern reaches of my seat far more often. As an avid (and unabashed) fan of mixed martial arts, I’ve clocked plenty of hours watching a sport with elements that initially make no sense to the masses. Ground fighting just looks like sweaty men laying on each other to those who’ve never, themselves, been twisted into a human pretzel, but good commentating can demystify even the highest levels of strategy. Better still, it can make them thrilling.
It’s just a matter of asking the right questions at the right times – playing dumb for the benefit of the audience – or replacing some jargon with language that’s more easily parsed. Not even all of it. Context will do the rest. People are smart. They’ll learn, and they’ll even enjoy doing it. They just need a little push sometimes.
——
People. That’s the point Beck proudly hammers home while on stage during the pre-LCS press conference. Riot wants to emphasize players and their stories, because ultimately that’s what makes sports interesting. I can’t disagree with him on that, and I can’t complain either. Certainly makes for better reading than a dry-to-the-point-of-crumbling match recap, anyway. And if there’s any way to make people care, it’s giving them something they can personally relate to.
Everyone’s got at least one interesting story in them, I figure.
——
“Yeah, a lot of eSports professionals retire when they’re, like, 24,” a journo friend tells me, idly, as he’s giving me an overview of the pro scene. “Slowing reflexes and all that.”
——
Tabe is 22. As the lights flash and the confetti rains, the curtains also close on his pro career. The fan-favorite Royal Club support planned this. Win or lose, he was going to do two things: 1) retire and 2) propose to his girlfriend. The shoutcasters briefly acknowledge the end of the ever-warm, famously personable player’s life as a pro, but their comments are quickly swallowed up by the sounds of SK Telecom T1’s celebration. I can’t help but wonder if Tabe finds the moment bittersweet.
The professional eSports scene is still young, but its players can’t stay that way forever. So what comes after? When you’ve eschewed job hunting and maybe even a college degree to master a videogame, where do you go when the game stops footing your bills?
——
My arm is getting tired from holding the microphone in front of Beck’s face, and the searing lights are causing sweat to pool beneath my ill-advised blazer. But still I persist, despite facing probably the greatest adversity any journalist has ever experienced. I remember what my friend said about pros retiring young, and I ask if Riot what kind of role it plans to play in all of this. After all, these players do help promote LoL in a very big way. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Riot at least owes them something. Beck replies that there’s always the possibility of a commentator or analyst gig, provided someone’s got the English-speaking skills and charisma to handle it. So there is my something.
But as the sport grows and more players begin to reach the twilight phases of their careers, that inevitably won’t be enough. Coaching is also an option, but it’s still early |
already here
A solid 56 percent majority of state voters support “suspending immigration from ‘terror prone’ regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions.” Thirty-one (31) percent are opposed, and the rest don’t know or give no answer.
They express relatively more benevolence, though, toward illegal immigrants already here. Asked about “illegal immigrants who are living in the U.S.,” 56 percent of voters in Tennessee say such individuals “should be allowed to stay in the U.S. and eventually apply for citizenship.” The next-largest group, 31 percent, say they “should be required to leave the U.S.,” and 6 percent say they should “be allowed to stay in the U.S. legally, but not be allowed to apply for citizenship.” The rest aren’t sure or give no answer.
These attitudes, too, have sharp partisan divides. Seventy-eight (78) percent of Republicans support suspending immigration from terror-prone regions, compared to 56 percent of independents and 19 percent of Democrats. In nearly a mirror-image split, 88 percent of Democrats think illegal immigrants living in the U.S. should be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship, compared to 58 percent of independents and 37 percent of Republicans.
State voters split three ways on veracity of Trump’s voting fraud claim
Tennessee voters divide into nearly equal thirds when asked whether Donald Trump, who won the electoral vote and presidency in the 2016 election, was right or wrong when he “said he would have won the popular vote as well had the results not included millions of illegal votes.”
About 28 percent say President Trump was right, 37 percent say he was wrong, and 34 percent aren’t sure. The rest give no answer. Fully 80 percent of Democrats say he was wrong. Republicans divide about evenly between the 48 percent who say he was right and the 42 percent who say they don’t know whether he was right or wrong, but a significantly smaller 10 percent say he was wrong. Among independents, 43 percent say he was wrong, and a significantly smaller 24 percent say he was right. In between, and statistically indistinguishable from either group, 32 percent are unsure.
President Trump has repeated the claim a number of times without providing evidence of its veracity. The claim has been questioned by journalists, fact checkers and the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State, a group that represents state election officials.
Despite their ambivalence about the president’s claim, Tennessee voters appear confident that votes in Tennessee were counted correctly. Seventy (70) percent have “a lot” of confidence that “votes for president in the state of Tennessee were counted properly this past November.” Another 13 percent have “some” confidence, 6 percent have “not much” confidence, and 4 percent have “none at all.” The rest aren’t sure or give no answer.
Other findings on handguns, abortion, and school issues
Asked, “Generally, what do you think the law should say about people carrying a handgun with them in public?”:
• 12 percent say the law should “prohibit people from carrying a handgun.”
• 51 percent say the law should “require a permit to carry a handgun.”
• 23 percent say the law should “require a permit to carry a handgun if the handgun is concealed from view but not if the handgun is carried in plain sight.”
• 9 percent say the law should “allow people to carry a handgun without a permit, whether concealed or in plain sight.”
Asked, “Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?”:
• 11 percent choose “legal in all cases”
• 25 percent choose “legal in most cases”
• 30 percent choose “illegal in most cases”
• 26 percent choose “illegal in all cases”
• The rest say they don’t know or decline to answer
Asked, “What would be most likely to reduce the number of abortions performed: stricter abortion regulations, more access to birth control and sex education, both, or neither?”:
• 13 percent say “stricter abortion regulations”
• 31 percent say “more access to birth control and sex education:
• 37 percent say “both”
• 12 percent say “neither”
• The rest say they don’t know or give no answer
Asked, “Some say requiring seat belts on school buses would keep children safer. Others say there are cheaper, easier ways to improve school bus safety. Do you think Tennessee should require seat belts on all school buses, or not?”:
• 67 percent want seat belts required on all school buses
• 22 percent don’t want seat belts required on all school buses
• The rest don’t know or decline to answer
Asked, “Would you favor or oppose providing most families in Tennessee with tax-funded school vouchers that they could use to help pay for sending their children to private or religious schools if they wanted to?”:
• 41 percent are in favor
• 45 percent are opposed
• The rest don’t know or decline to answer
Asked, as a follow-up, “What about if school vouchers were provided only to poor families whose children are attending low-achieving Tennessee schools?”:
• 38 percent are in favor
• 48 percent are opposed
• The rest don’t know or decline to answer
Asked, “Over the last decade, there has been a significant increase in testing in the public schools to measure academic achievement. Just your impression or what you may have heard or read, has increased testing helped, hurt, or made no difference in the performance of the local public schools?”
• 17 percent choose “helped”
• 33 percent choose “hurt”
• 37 percent choose “made no difference”
• The rest don’t know or give no answer
Methodology
Between Feb. 12-16, 2017, Issues & Answers Network Inc. completed 600 telephone surveys for the poll among a random sample of registered Tennessee voters aged 18 and over. Data were collected using a Tennessee statewide voter registration sample with 60 percent landlines and 40 percent cell phones. The average interview length was 13 minutes.
Quotas by gender and Grand Region were implemented. Data were weighted based on respondent age to ensure the data are representative of Tennessee registered voters. Landline numbers represent 58 percent of the completed interviews and 42 percent are from cell phones.
The survey’s margin of error is 4 percentage points, meaning one can be 95 percent confident that the population percentage being estimated lies within four percentage points, in either direction, of the result the sample produced.The plague of the manspreader is real (Picture: nevermindtheend/Flickr)
Manspreading has existed since the dawn of public transport. The word has come into existence only recently, and since we’ve become aware of it, it has been the bane of commuters all over.
Now, after years of awkwardly wedging ourselves onto train seats, one man has finally leapt up to the podium to take on a very important task.
No, not ridding the world of the plague of manspreading. That would be too helpful.
Instead, EconoMonitor writer Ash Bennington has teamed up with a data scientist named Mark Skinner, to mansplain and defend the act of manspreading, and thereby make us all accept the act into the fabric of our society.
HOORAY. Much easier than telling guys: ‘hey, would you mind shifting your legs closer together if someone’s trying to sit next to you? Thanks.’
Writes Bennington: ‘Our new analysis suggests that manspreading is something men do to adjust for their body proportions — especially their high shoulder to hip ratio — and not an act of transgression against their fellow passengers.’
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He and Skinner used three data sets for their in-depth mansplaining, so you know it’s legit (H/T Gothamist).
First off, the shoulder-to-hip ratio bit. According to the manspreading team’s data, the average man’s shoulders are 28% wider than his hips. By contrast, the average woman’s shoulders are only 3% wider than her hips.
This matters, apparently, because ‘if a man sits on the subway with his knees together, and other passengers crowd in closely on both sides, then his torso likely won’t fit on the top half of the seat if his knees are positioned less than shoulder width apart.’
Sure.
The second set of data is from military personnel, measuring foream-to-forearm breadth. This showed almost equal differentials between men’s and women’s upper torso breadth, but also that men and women have very similar ‘distributions of hip breadths’.
Bennington claims that ‘proportionally, a man needs to secure more seat space using his legs than a woman would need to, in order for the man to maintain enough room to sit up in his seat.’
Suuuuuure.
The final bit of data suggests that manspreading is an ‘adaptive benefit’ to avoid ‘collisions’ in the aisle of crowded trains. Apparently, the average man can reduce the distance his knees protrude in the aisles by about 3.1 inches simply by manspreading to a 30 degree angle.
They’re just trying to be kind and helpful, you guys!
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Clearly, these risk-avoiders have never seen the pure rage of someone being pushed into the glass divided by a man forcibly spreading his legs on the tube.
In short: sure.
Thanks so much, Ash, for mansplaining the concept that manspreaders prioritise a tiny increase in comfort over the comfort of anyone else riding public transport. Glad we got that sorted.
MORE: Pole-hogging is the new manspreading, and we’re so, so tired of it
MORE: These ‘Pussy Pouch’ bags are the best reaction to manspreading we’ve ever seen
MORE: Quiz: How good is your London Underground and Tube etiquette?
Advertisement AdvertisementIsraeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are viewed as illegal under international law (AFP Photo/Thomas Coex)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli authorities have advanced plans for 770 new settlement homes in annexed east Jerusalem, officials and rights groups said Monday, drawing condemnation from Palestinian leaders and the United Nations.
The homes would expand the Gilo settlement on the southern perimeter of east Jerusalem. They are part of a larger plan for around 1,200 units approved some three years ago, said Ir Amim, an NGO that monitors Israeli settlement activity.
The land where they are to be built requires technical approval known as "reparcelisation" by Jerusalem's local planning and building committee in order for the process to advance, according to Ir Amim.
The committee has now deposited the plans for public objections ahead of possible approval.
"The plans in question are not new, and were approved three years ago," a statement from Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat's office said.
"Recent deliberations in the municipal planning committee concerned technical details of plot distribution within the previously approved project."
The move to further advance the plans drew condemnation both from UN and Palestinian officials.
Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are viewed as illegal under international law.
They are also considered major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land Palestinians view as part of their future state.
A recent report by the diplomatic Quartet -- the United States, European Union, Russia and the UN -- said settlement expansion was eroding the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict.
"I strongly condemn the recent decision by Israeli authorities to advance plans to build some 770 housing units in the settlement of Gilo, built on the lands of occupied Palestinian towns and villages between Bethlehem and east Jerusalem," Nickolay Mladenov, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement.
Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the decision "further reflects the failure of the international community to stop Israel's settlement expansion".
Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as their future capital.
The status of Jerusalem has been among the most contentious issues in peace negotiations, which have been at a standstill since April 2014.BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The continuing evolution of Texas’ place in the Big 12 will have far-reaching ramifications — including the most powerful conference in college football.
A source told Sporting News on Wednesday that both Texas A&M and Oklahoma are so concerned about rival Texas gaining a recruiting advantage with the newly formed Longhorn Network, the two institutions could turn to the SEC if the problems can’t be figured out. The core issue: The Longhorn Network will televise live high school football games in the state of Texas, an obvious recruiting advantage for Texas. (Ed. note: The Big 12 announced later Wednesday that those plans had been put on hold.)
SEC commissioner Mike Slive said Wednesday that he will “continue to do what is in the best interest of the SEC.”
“It is my job to make sure the SEC is the premier league,” Slive said. “For me to exclude any action that would preclude that from happening would be inappropriate.”
Texas A&M and Oklahoma were both in talks with the SEC last summer when Texas was contemplating a move to the Pac-10. The Big 12 eventually made it work in the 11th hour, in part because of heavyweight Texas’ deal to pursue its own television network outside of the league coffers.
Now that the network will include televising high school games in the state of Texas, the dynamics of the Big 12 (and the SEC) could still change. Slive said that he is “comfortable” with the current 12-team SEC, and that it would take a “paradigm shift” for the SEC to expand.
Texas A&M and Oklahoma looking for a new home would be that kind of shift. Moreover, Slive said the SEC’s television deals with CBS and ESPN have clauses that allow them to renegotiate if the conference structure changes.
In other words, adding two teams wouldn’t mean the SEC is dividing the current revenue pie. It would mean, more than anything, completely restructured deals that would likely dwarf the $2 billion-plus the SEC receives from current CBS and ESPN deals.In one of those things you can only pull off on the printed comic book page, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso is teasing a new character, and major new development in the Marvel Universe. Tweeting out a single image with the words "Under Construction," Alonso teased something called "Batch-H." And that single image is of a massive Hulk-like figure in a tube... with Wolverine's signature three claws coming out of each hand.
So what the heck is Batch-H? Well, the governments of multiple countries in the Marvel Comics Universe have never been shy about experimenting, especially with the genetic material of Wolverine, James "Logan" Howlett. It looks like this is some kind of continuation of the Weapon Plus program, the government project that started with Weapon 1: Captain America, and continued on for decades, creating superheroes (but somehow more often creating failures or villains). When it got to Weapon 10, or roman numeral X, Wolverine, that project splintered off and Weapon X started making their own supersoldiers, often using Wolverine's abilities as a template.
In addition to that, of course, there was a Wolverine cloning program, which also resulted in a lot of unstable failures. X-23 broke free of that program, however, and has become a hero - and a Wolverine - in her own right. She's even making the jump to the big screen in live action in the upcoming Logan and by all accounts steals every scene she's in. So, this Batch-H is likely some variation on that theme, and will likely be contained to the current Wolverine comics - one of which stars X-23, and the other that stars Old Man Logan, the time-displaced older version of Wolverine. He in particular would be pretty pissed about a Hulk/Wolverine hybrid. After all, in his future timeline, the Hulk's own progeny murdered his family in cold blood. Seeing his claws on a Hulk's body would not make the Old Man smile and sing happy songs, that's for sure.Here are a few organizations you can contact if you want to volunteer your time to help clean up the ecological disaster underway in the Gulf of Mexico.
Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana – The oil spill off the mouth of the Mississippi River has been declared a “spill of national significance,” and threatens damage to the Gulf Coast—perhaps for months to come. With the first wave of the oil slick expected to impact coastal Louisiana as early as Thursday evening, Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency. CRCL is joining with our partners at the local, state and federal level to begin registering volunteers to assist with spill recovery efforts.
We do not know the location or the extent of impact to birds, wildlife, and habitat at this time. What we do know is that we need to be ready with on-call volunteers in the event that they are needed. National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana are building a list of volunteers prepared to help with this response.
Volunteers can fill a variety of needs, from oiled wildlife recovery, to monitoring and photographing oil movement, to providing a boat and driver for response activities. No specific training or experience is necessary, although you must be at least 18 years old to volunteer. Some tasks, such as food preparation, may require no training. Other tasks, such as washing oiled birds, may require specific certifications or skills. We encourage pre-veterinary students, veterinary technicians, and anyone with HAZWOPER training to volunteer. Anyone with experience in dealing with wildlife handling, rehabilitation, or hazardous materials clean up is also strongly encouraged to register.
In addition, volunteers may need to be mobilized throughout the Gulf Coast if and when they are needed. Interested volunteers are asked to provide your:
· Name
· Age
· Email
· Telephone
· Description of any relevant experience
· Any certifications in dealing with wildlife and/or hazardous materials.
Once you have registered, we will contact you as soon as opportunities arise. The severity of this spill may require a long-term and ongoing response, so if you don’t hear from us immediately, it doesn’t mean you won’t be contacted or that your efforts won’t be needed.
With your help, we can meet this challenge and reduce the impacts of this spill to habitat and wildlife.
Note: If you encounter oiled wildlife, please call 1 (800) 557-1401. Please do not touch or disturb oiled wildlife, for your safety and theirs.
Register Now
If you have any questions, please contact us by email at coalition@crcl.org
National Wildlife Federation – The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the April 20, 2010 explosion of an offshore oil rig has put local economies, wildlife and the Gulf’s delicate coastal ecosystem at risk. This could be one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation’s history. Our immediate task is clear: all resources of British Petroleum, federal and state government and even the U.S. military must be deployed to cap the well, contain the spill and minimize the damage to one of our nation’s crown jewels: the Mississippi Delta.
And get updates about the oil spill on twitter @Oil_Spill_2010:
People looking to volunteer with the response, call (866) 448-5816. To report affected wildlife, call (866) 557-1401, claims (800) 440-0858
A very helpful redditor going by the moniker OccamsAxeWound dropped a huge list of contact numbers, divided by state, for opportunities to help clean up the Gulf Coast. Here they are:For the second season of ‘Game of Thrones,’ HBO’s breakout fantasy epic, Kit Harington spent nearly a month filming on a glacier in Iceland. “I think the coldest day was minus 35 with windchill,” he says, “and there were 500-foot drops next to us all the time.”
Fur and crampons were not what Harington expected after graduating from London’s Central School of Speech & Drama in 2008. “I just hoped for a spear-carrier part in some Royal Shakespeare Company production,” says the 25-year-old. O, ye of little faith: ‘Thrones’ is the kind of TV beast that leads to major film roles (he’s slated to play King Arthur in a $100 million update) and deafening Comic-Con hysteria.
This season, Harington’s Jon Snow will play an increasingly central role. For his part, Harington is just hoping his character survives until the end. “No one on this show is safe,” he says. Even with crampons.
See also: Kit Harington Wears the Essential Casual Wardrobe00:49 Hole in Ozone Finally Closing Up Finally some positive news about the planet. Matt Sampson explains how large holes in the ozone are getting smaller.
A hole in our atmosphere more than twice the size of the United States is finally beginning to close up, and might even be completely gone by the end of the century, according to a new study by NASA scientists.
The report was published in the journal Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. In short, it tells us that the measures taken to heal our ozone layer are, and will be, successful.
It's been about 30 years since scientists discovered the massive hole above Antarctica – a hole that was created by releasing chlorofluorocarbons into the air, National Geographic reported. Since the alarming find, there has been an international movement to reduce the size of that hole, including a ban on CFCs.
(MORE: Sea Rise Is Slowly Swallowing America's Oldest City )
According to the new report, the ozone hole has been at least 8 million square miles in size every year since 1990, but if estimates are correct, the hole should shrink and remain consistently smaller by the 2040s. By 2100, the hole could be completely gone, the study added.
"With this new information, we can look into the future and say with confidence that ozone holes will be consistently smaller than 8 million square miles by 2040," Susan Strahan, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a video about the study. "And that will really be a milestone that we're finally past the era of big ozone holes."
The successful movement to restore the ozone layer has drawn parallels to another recent environmental struggle – climate change. But according to some scientists, the restoration of ozone over Antarctica might have negative effects on global warming.
"Ozone itself is a greenhouse gas. A thinner ozone layer not only reduced heat trapped over the region, it helped stir circumpolar winds, which in turn created sea spray that formed reflective, cooling clouds," said the National Geographic report.
MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Earth's Melting GlaciersMeaningful Motion: Circular Reveal & Shared Elements
Jossi Wolf Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 28, 2017
This post was featured in Android Weekly’s #290 issue
Material Design brings us Material Motion and the Android Framework gives us the possibilities to implement it in our apps. In this post I will write about implementing a Google-Play-like circular reveal effect with shared elements.
Circular Reveal Transition in the Google Play Store (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5hBViIzw5Y)
This post was heavily inspired by Antonis Tsagaris article “My FAB brings all the boys to the yard, damn right” and is specifically about implementing a circular reveal effect with shared elements and a CollapsingToolbarLayout.
Why Make The Effort?
Apart from the obvious (it really is pretty and smooth), it improves User Experience. Shared elements help the user keep track of what is happening on the screen and make opening a new screen less confusing.
Good UX is a key factor in your apps’ success.
The Implementation
Implementing a transition can be tricky to get started with, so let’s break it down and see what we need.
A circular reveal starts from a specific point, in our case it starts in the center of the view we want to reveal. We will start with a basic scrolling activity as generated by Android Studio. Now we will add a circle roughly in the center of the CollapsingToolbarLayout and also an ImageView that serves as background. There surely are many ways to create a colored circle, I modified a custom view from a library because I needed it to be dynamic.
Our app should now look like this. A little weird, but it’s worth it, just wait!
We have added a circle and have given it a transitionName. This name is used for shared elements in transitions. We will use this later when starting this activity.
The ImageView we added is hidden at the beginning, it is the view that will be revealed. It serves as background because hiding the CollapsingToolbarLayout doesn’t really look nice.
Now, we will add the circular reveal. Luckily, this is very easy as there is a method for this provided by the Android framework, ViewAnimationUtils#createCircularReveal. We only need to provide the center point, view to be revealed and the start and end radius.
But first, let’s take a look at how our starting activity looks.
For demonstration purposes, I added a RecyclerView with some items.
For the RecyclerView, I defined an onClickListener.
We create an Intent that will start SecondActivity. Before we actually start the other activity, we create the options to be used for the shared element transition. We add the view that should act as an shared element and its transition name (the one we defined earlier in the layout of SecondActivity ). Finally, we start the activity with the options. It looks like this:
The Big Reveal
Alright. Our circle is moving to a specific point and now we want to reveal our hidden background view. As I mentioned earlier, there is a method in the Android Framework for this:
createCircularReveal (target: View,
centerX: Int,
centerY: Int,
startRadius: Float,
endRadius: Float): Animator
It is available on API 21+, but there is a backport for API 14+.
We’ve got the target, our ImageView. The reveal animation starts at (centerX|centerY), which in our case we want to be the center of our circle.
We can use a Kotlin extension function (or not) — the math stays the same
Our start radius will be 0 and the end radius the width of our target view. The radius will increase throughout the animation.
We get the center of our circle ( roundedImage ) and create the animation. After that we set the duration to 400ms. I experimented a bit with this value and found something between 360ms and 400ms to be the smoothest.
Finally we make our ImageView that will be revealed by the animation visible and start the animation.
Now we can add a listener to our shared element transition and call our reveal function once the transition has ended.
Full DSL code for Kotlin here
This is what the transition and reveal look like now:
Pretty neat, isn’t it?
Making the transition “Material”
Until now, our shared element is moving along a straight line — and you have to admit, it looks a bit unnatural. Let’s fix this!
We can create our own TransitionSet and use it. We can do this by creating a new XML file in our transitions resources folder. An arc motion TransitionSet can look like this:
We can now use this transition using TransitionSet and TransitionInflater.
We create a new TransitionSet, inflate our arc transition and add it to the set. We set the duration to 380 and use an AccelerateDecelerateInterpolator to influence how our shared element will behave. The AccelerateDecelerateInterpolator helps us to get a non-linear motion. Just like in the real word, where motion is rarely linear.
Exiting with grace
Of course, we also want to have the circular reveal effect reversed when exiting the activity.
It is pretty much the same as the enter transition, except for startRadius and endRadius from earlier being exchanged and hiding the ImageView instead of showing it.
We will also set the transition for exiting the activity:
We again create a TransitionSet, only this time we add a start delay of 200ms so the activity exit transition and reveal hide animation don’t completely overlap each other.
The final result
MinSDK?
The createCircularReveal method was introduced in API 21, but there is a library that backports the circular reveal.
There is also a library that implements shared element transitions on API 14+.
With those two libraries it should be possible to create a similar effect, although I haven’t tried it.
Conclusion
Implementing a specific transition or animation can be tricky to get started with, especially when it is not obvious how the animation works. It helps to break what you are trying to achieve down, for example by taking a recording and slowing it down.
With Android’s tools, once you have broken the animation down, it is possible to implement animations and material, meaningful motion in your app and improve your UX.
You can find the full source code here: https://github.com/jossiwolf/CircularRevealExample
Below are some links for reading on about animations, transitions and meaningful motion on Android.
Reading on
Thanks to Alberto Ballano and Kim Wiederhold for proof-reading and giving me feedback!Marielle Lowes spent the past five years traveling the nation in buses and recreational vehicles as a dreadlocked hippie, trailing the remnants of the Grateful Dead and hitting Rainbow Nation bohemian gatherings while selling her art. Then, eight months ago, she gave birth to her first child, and she longs to go home to New Orleans “to settle down and be a mom.”
But she’s stuck in San Francisco. The recreational vehicle that she and her boyfriend have lived in for nearly two years and just fixed up to take them to Louisiana was towed by city parking officials more than a week ago — and they can’t get it back.
In the five months they’ve been living in San Francisco in the RV — “waiting out the bad weather so we can drive east,” Lowes said — they’ve racked up 27 parking tickets and penalties worth $2,095. On the afternoon of July 27, parking officials knocked on the door as the RV was parked on Lincoln Way near 25th Avenue alongside Golden Gate Park, told the sleeping Lowes and her baby to get out, and hauled the vehicle to the city tow yard. Mom and child were left on the sidewalk.
Now, with a $980 tow charge and $2,171 in storage fees tacked on, Lowes and her boyfriend owe a total of $5,246 — for a 1986 Travel Craft RV that cost them $2,500 when they bought it last year. And they have virtually no money.
Poverty advocates say Lowes’ predicament is a prime example of how low-income people are victimized by exorbitant parking and tow fees in San Francisco, which charges about two times more for such penalties than nearly every other city in the United States, a Chronicle investigation last year showed. Parking officials say they need to charge that much to recover their costs, and that towing is necessary to keep the jam-packed streets clear.
Lowes, 24, says all she wants to do is leave, but everything she and her boyfriend — Paul Wassell, 28, the baby’s father, who was not at the RV the day it was towed — own is in their vehicle. Which is in the tow yard. Which neither can access, they say, because they haven’t been able to negotiate the red tape involved.
Those locked-up belongings include all the equipment Wassell needs as a gemstone and crystal miner and jeweler, and the tools Lowes uses to make paintings and medicinal salves — along with the product they had on board to sell. Without those supplies, the two have quickly run out of cash and have been crashing with their baby boy, Donovan Wassell, on the couches of acquaintances they can’t stay with long-term. Complicating matters is that Lowes was recently diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a painful inflammation of the digestive tract that limits her mobility at times.
“We’ve had awesome adventures traveling, and I really wanted to do that to learn about the country and the people, but that’s not my focus now,” Lowes said the other day as she fed Donovan creamed spinach and apricots from baby-food jars. “I want to normalize my life for Donovan. I want to go back to be around relatives, give him a good education, go back to school.
“I’m a mom now. I quit partying and am more modest. Things are different. I just need to get home.”
Paul Rose, spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said it’s unfortunate that the family lost their rolling home, but rules are rules for a practical reason.
“No one wants to see a family left without a home, but we have to ensure we are providing objective enforcement so people follow the parking and traffic rules,” Rose said. Without a towing system, he said, vehicles could be left indefinitely blocking parking spaces and roadways — and traffic conditions are already notoriously crowded in San Francisco.
“Towing is necessary,” he said.
The agency received a request by voice mail from Wassell on July 27 for a towing review hearing, where MTA officials can determine if the tow and fees were warranted. But officials and Lowes and Wassell have played phone tag since then.
Paul Boden, an activist on homeless issues, called the seizure of Lowes’ vehicle “unconscionable.”
“The fact that there would be no humanitarian thought about putting this woman and her 8-month-old out on the sidewalk is so callous and dehumanizing,” said Boden, organizing director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project in San Francisco, an antipoverty advocacy group. “This is what happens to poor people who can’t pay these outrageous parking tickets and tow charges — they wind up losing their rolling homes.”
Boden called Jeff Kositsky, director of the city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, who has been working with MTA officials to help the couple get access to their vehicle in the tow yard. But Kositsky has no power to waive the tow and storage fees — that can only come, he said, through a towing review hearing. Rules for the hearing state, “Financial hardship is not a valid reason for appeal.”
Kositsky’s workers and Lowes have been talking about the family going back to New Orleans through the city’s Homeward Bound program, which reunites homeless people with family or close friends who can put them up.
If Lowes and Wassell can’t pay the fees or get them waived, they will have to leave the RV behind and it will become city property to be sold.
Meanwhile, Compass Connecting Point, the city agency that places homeless parents and their children in shelters, has put the couple and their baby on a waiting list of 50 other families without permanent housing.
“We get this kind of thing several times a year, with a family losing a vehicle that was their home,” said Carla Praglin, agency case management director. “When you lose your car and your valuable documents like ID, it’s an additional trauma, can really set a family back on getting things done.”
Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChronKampala, Uganda: The fugitive African warlord Joseph Kony recently found safe haven in territory controlled by Sudan, a watchdog group said Friday, accusing the Sudanese military of offering aid to commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The US-based group Resolve said in a new report that Kony recently directed killings from an enclave protected by the Sudanese military. Until early this year, according to the report, Kony and some of his commanders were operating in Kafia Kingi, a disputed area along the Sudan-South Sudan border where African Union troops tasked with catching Kony don’t have access.
“The enclave is currently controlled by Sudan, and numerous eyewitness reports indicate that elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Kafia Kingi have actively sheltered senior LRA commanders there and provided them with limited material support,” the report said. “According to LRA defectors and other sources, LRA leader Joseph Kony himself first traveled to the Kafia Kingi enclave in 2010. He returned to Kafia Kingi in 2011 and was present there throughout parts of 2012.”
In a series of makeshift camps near a Sudanese army barracks, Kony “continued to direct LRA attacks against civilians in neighboring countries and issue new orders for LRA fighters.”
The Ugandan military — with support from US military advisers — is the driving force behind the hunt for Kony. Ugandan army spokesman Col. Felix Kulayigye said the report vindicates Uganda’s contention that the LRA is a beneficiary of Sudanese support. Ugandan army officials said late last year they believed Kony was hiding in Sudan-controlled territory, although now they believe he has moved elsewhere.
“We always knew Kony was hiding in Kafia Kingi,” he said. “The way forward is that no country should be hiding a wanted criminal.”
Kony watchdog groups are concerned that Kony can retreat to Kafia Kingi whenever his pursuers get close. Resolve said it has satellite imagery of the now-abandoned camp where Kony was reportedly seen in late 2012. The warlord is no longer believed to be hiding there, the report noted, saying he may have crossed to Central African Republic.
Sudan has consistently denied charges it supports Kony, a warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Sudan’s army spokesman Sawarmy Khaled denied reports on Friday that his country has provided shelter or refuge to Kony.
“The report is baseless and rejected. The Sudanese army has no renegade leaders. It is a united army and has no place for individual acts,” he told the official state news agency SUNA. “The Sudanese army has no interest in adopting or sheltering rebels from other countries.”
The United States government is evaluating the report that the LRA is operating in the Kafia Kingi region, said State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell Friday.
“The US and the international community as a whole would take very seriously any credible evidence of support or safe haven being provided to the LRA,” said Ventrell, citing a December statement at the U.N. expressing concern about the LRA’s possible presence in Kafia Kingi.
“We continue to discuss our concerns about the whereabouts of Joseph Kony with all governments in the region, including with the government of Sudan, and we have encouraged Sudan to cooperate with regional efforts to counter the LRA,” Ventrell added. “We’re in a position now where two of the top five commanders are gone, the number of people killed by the LRA has gone down by 66 percent, and defections continue. So our pressure on the LRA continues.”
Kony’s LRA, which originated in Uganda in the 1980s as a popular tribal uprising |
broadly accepted ever since (including by contemporary scholars), that Aristotle’s corpus was divided into two broad categories of writings: a set of earlier, popular works, addressed to a wide audience (the now-lost dialogues and perhaps some other writings) and the more exacting, strictly philosophical works, addressed to the Lyceum’s inner circle, which includes virtually all the works we now possess.
This passage, however, explains why Philosophy Between the Lines is less than a bombshell. The Straussians haven”t uncovered a Dan Brown-like trove of secret writings by the greats. Instead, most of what has come down to us is the esoteric itself, while the theorized façade works have been lost to time and indifference. After all, before the invention of the printing press in the 1450s, most philosophy was preserved either by trained disciples of the inner circle or by rival philosophers who had excellent reading comprehension skills.
Pay to Play - Put your money where your mouth is and subscribe for an ad-free experience and to join the world famous Takimag comment board.The day Vance Joseph was introduced as the Broncos’ new head coach, his look ahead included a look back, as allegations from his past soon resurfaced.
Joseph was accused of sexually assaulting two female trainers while a defensive backs coach at Colorado from 2003-04. The allegations were investigated by a state task force that examined a recruiting scandal at the school. Joseph was not charged or interviewed as part of the investigation.
On Saturday, The Boulder Daily Camera published details it obtained from a 2004 Boulder Police Department report.
One of the two women involved said she did not want to press charges and the other declined to talk to police. As a result, the case was closed.
Joseph had never publicly addressed the allegations before Wednesday, when, in an interview with The Denver Post about the team and his recent coaching hires, he said the claims of sexual assault “are false.”
“That was resolved a long time ago,” he said. “For myself, for my family, for the Denver Broncos, I’m disappointed and embarrassed. I was a young guy and it showed to my immaturity and irresponsibility in my life when I was younger. But I’ve grown so much and that’s why I’m disappointed, because I’ve grown so much as a person, as a coach, as a father, as a husband.
“Everyone who knows me knows that I try to live my life the right way, and I regret that my name is even associated with this.”
Joseph spoke with Broncos general manager John Elway and president/CEO Joe Ellis about the allegations in the past week. Related Articles February 19, 2019 Broncos Mailbag: Should Denver move up to draft Drew Lock, even with Joe Flacco?
February 6, 2019 Broncos Mailbag: Calls for general manager John Elway to get busy
Patrick Smyth, the Broncos’ vice president of public relations, on Saturday addressed the accusations during Joseph’s time at CU, saying: “While we were aware of these accusations, he was not charged with anything from the report filed in 2004.”
Joseph, a quarterback and running back at CU from 1990-95, returned to the school as a graduate assistant in 1999 on the staff of head coach Gary Barnett. He stayed on until 2001 before heading to the University of Wyoming as a defensive backs coach in the spring of 2002. He returned to CU as a defensive backs coach and worked for two seasons (2003-04).
In 2004, during the investigation, Joseph was placed on administrative leave for what the university then described as a “personal matter.” Shortly after, Colorado announced Joseph had accepted an assistant’s coaching job at Bowling Green State University.A Canadian woman is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against the families of three teenage boys that she hit while driving her SUV on a rainy October night in 2012.
The Toronto Sun reports Sharlene Simon, 42, was driving home from a bar the night of October 28 when she ran into a group of three teenage boys who were riding their bicycles.
Simon claimed she had only had one drink at the bar with her husband, Jules Simon, a York Regional Police officer who was following her home in his own vehicle.
Richard Esch, who was 16 at the time, suffered a shattered pelvis in the accident and is still undergoing rehabilitation for his injuries.
Esch’s friend, 17-year-old Brandon Majewski, was killed by the impact.
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A third friend was thrown from his bike but suffered only minor injuries.
A toxicology report indicated the teens had no drugs or alcohol in their systems.
The suit was first reported in April. A USA Today story at that time said police who arrived at the scene did not suspect alcohol was a factor in the crash and Simon was not given a breathalyzer test or charged with any crime.
Simon is suing the families of all three victims saying she has suffered emotional trauma as the result of the accident.
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“They did not apply their brakes properly,” her lawsuit states. “They were incompetent bicyclists.”
She is asking for about $1.35 million in damages. Her husband has also filed a suit.
Esch’s father, Terry Esch, said he finds the legal action hard to believe.
“If this woman was a real person, with a real heart, she would not have done this to us … we have nothing,” Terry Esch said, explaining that he and his wife have both lost income from taking time away from work to help their son with his rehabilitation.
Majewski’s father, who was not named in the USA Today story, said his son’s death took an unbelievable toll on his family. Six months after the accident, he said, his 23-year-old son was found dead of an overdose that he said was the result of grief, not a suicide.
“This has ripped our family apart,” said Majewski's dad. “And now this woman has the gall to try to profit from our dead child she killed? Profit from another boy who was almost crippled?”
Majewski’s family has filed a separate suit asking that Simon pay for burial costs, loss of work pay and trauma counseling.
The family’s attorney, Brian Cameron, said the suit was necessary to recover money that insurance companies would have already paid out. But Simon’s lawsuit has delayed those payments.
“It’s all about getting compensation for the death of their son,” said Cameron. “This would have all been covered by their insurance.”
Cameron said Simon likely would have received an insurance payment for her counseling too if she had not filed the $1.35 million lawsuit.
Simon’s attorney, Michael Ellis, said his client was forced to file the suit to protect herself financially. He said the amount asked for in the suit covers money lost from missing work and the cost of therapy.
“She would have lost everything,” Ellis said. “She would have been destitute … homeless.”
Cameron disputes that and says Canadian law protects people from losing their homes and personal assets in such situations.
“This is a routine matter that would have been settled long ago,” he said. “But now, with her lawsuit, a relatively uncomplicated insurance process has become much more complicated … this is just prolonging the family’s pain.”
Sources: Toronto Sun, USA Today / Photo Credit: pixabay.com, roadsafetymayo.ie
undefinedThe inauguration of a new president requires the recitation of a 35-word oath. That’s it. Dress it up with some hoopla and glitz, though, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Donald Trump will have it to spend.
Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee has raised a record $90 million-plus in private donations, far more than President Barack Obama’s two inaugural committees. They collected $55 million in 2009 and $43 million in 2013, and had some left over on the first go-round.
But while Trump has raised more money for his inauguration than any president in history, he’s aiming to do less with it. Lead inaugural planner Tom Barrack said this week the Trump team wants to avoid a “circus-like atmosphere” in favor of a more “back to work” mindset that surrounds Trump “with the soft sensuality of the place.”
Trump’s committee has declined to provide details on how it’s aiming to spend its hefty bankroll. Steve Kerrigan, CEO for Obama’s inaugural committee in 2013 and chief of staff in 2009, said the $90 million fundraising haul looks like overkill.
“I can’t imagine how they are going to spend that amount of money — and why they would even keep raising money,” he said. “We planned the two largest inaugurations in the history of our country and we never spent anywhere near that.”
Trump this week promised a “very, very elegant day” with “massive crowds.” They’ll arrive to find a party that isn’t nearly as involved as Obama’s.
Trump is holding three inaugural balls; Obama had 10 balls at his first inaugural. Trump’s team also hopes to keep its parade to 90 minutes. The longest parade, with 73 bands and 59 floats, lasted more than four and half hours, at Dwight Eisenhower’s first inauguration, in 1953.
The president-elect’s inaugural team has also failed to attract the kind of A-list performers who turned out in force for Obama. Trump’s announced headliners are teen singer Jackie Evancho, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Radio City Rockettes.
Spokesman Boris Epshteyn said the inaugural committee is “fully focused on organizing world-class events that honor our nation’s tremendous history and reach every corner of the globe.” Any excess money raised will be donated to charity.
Obama used his excess inaugural dollars to help pay for the White House Easter egg roll and other events in his first term, Kerrigan said. Trump hasn’t specified what charities might benefit from any leftovers, but some of his past pledges to donate to charity haven’t always immediately panned out.
Trump’s committee has 90 days after the inauguration to reveal its donors, although some presidents have reported donations as they came in. A few contributors already are known. Among corporate donors, Boeing has given $1 million and Chevron, $500,000. AT&T says it has made both cash and in-kind donations, including quintupling phone capacity on the National Mall.
Alex Howard, deputy director of the private Sunlight Foundation, said the Trump inaugural committee is a “major vector for corporations and individuals who wish to make donations and have influence on the presidency.” He said the big donations and the lack of speedy disclosure “set a tone” that has implications for the transparency and accountability of the new president.
To be sure, the inaugural lineup of balls, parade, reviewing stands, concert, dinners, bleachers and all the rest doesn’t come cheap.
John Liipfert, who helped produce the Obama inaugurals, said big outdoor events in winter are particularly expensive, requiring robust sound and video systems, warming tents, fencing, barricades, security screeners and much more. As for the balls, halls must be rented, stages built, lighting systems constructed and draperies and floral arrangements brought in to dress up the decor.
“You’d be amazed,” he said. “There are a million factors going into it.”
And don’t forget all those portable toilets. There were 1,100 along the parade route in 2013.
While a big share of the cost is covered by the private donations, taxpayers provide a considerable amount as well. They’re on the hook, for example, to cover the close to $5 million cost of building the bunting-decorated 10,000 square-foot platform built on the West Front of the Capitol for the swearing-in.
The public also pays security costs for an event that brings together a big chunk of the U.S. political leadership, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans and a fair share of protesters. Because those expenses are scattered throughout the federal budget, it’s hard to get a fix on just how much the day will cost.
Some tabs are spelled out: $1.25 million for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which is responsible for the swearing-in ceremony, inaugural luncheon and review of troops, and $2.5 million for overtime for U.S. Capitol Police.
More than 5,000 active duty service members and 7,500 National Guard members will take part, too. In 2009, spending by the military’s inaugural joint task force and the Defense Department totaled $21.6 million.
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser says the city expects to spend at least $30 million, with the federal government reimbursing the full amount. So far, Congress has appropriated $19 million, and the city will go back to Congress after the swearing-in to ask for the rest.Introduction
I have been curious for awhile now about data regarding the number of vehicles people have at their home. I decided that instead of simply looking at just the number of cars people have. I would compare it against the number of people that live in the house.
The graphic below shows the number of households that fall into each category. It also shows the total percentage of homes that fall in that category when comparing households with the same number of people. It has been colored to show which category has the most responses among households with the same number of people.
Visualizations
Data Notes
It is very interesting that on the national level, the most common scenario is a household with two vehicles in almost every category other than one person household and a household with ten people. The percentage decreases as the number of people in the households increases, but its not until you get to ten household members that three vehicles becomes the most likely situation.
To get a better idea of what is happening it would probably be beneficial to look at the age of the household members and the income. Age and income may be why households with a lot of people don’t have additional vehicles on average.
As I played with the geographical filters, there does appear to be regional differences. I would love to hear what other people find in the comments section.
Source
The data for this visualization comes from the United States Census Bureau. It is gathered during the American Community Survey. I used 2014, 1 Year Estimates for this visualization. Since this is a custom tabulation, I had to use the ACS PUMS Microdata.
After downloading the data, Microsoft Access and Tableau were used to create this visualization. If you have any questions or concerns about the process go ahead and leave me a comment.
If you want to keep up with our surveys and data analysis, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Up Next“There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.”
- Mark Twain
You have to give a speech and you want to know what to do ahead of time? Follow these 10 pieces of advice and you'll be well on your way to a standing ovation.
1. Be ready. This happens long before you get to the venue but you have to make sure you've written, edited, practiced and perfected your speech. The rest of these tips mean nothing if you are starting off behind the mark.
2. Know the venue. You are the speaker and all eyes will be on you. Be sure you get a feel for seating arrangements, microphone setup, and audio/visual mechanics for presenting materials. Doing this will help you understand how you'll be making eye contact, how you can move around, what potential snags you might face.
3. Use the restroom. Your body's reaction to nervousness might be sending a signal that you need to go. Or you may really need to go and if you don't, you'll be the uncomfortable, sweaty speaker who seemed to rush through every slide quicker than the last. Get it done without rushing or making a mess.
4. Meet & Greet. Doing this will help you personalize the speaking experience, your audience will get to know you and they might warm up to you before you get a chance to speak. If you have some great interactions, you might be able to incorporate some of these conversations into an anecdote or quote while you speak.
5. Take a few deep breaths. There's a reason why this advice is always given: It maximizes the amount of oxygen that flows to the lungs and brain to give you a sense of clarity; interrupts the adrenalin-pumping "fight or flight" response; and triggers the body's normal relaxation response.
6. Go over your intro. Usually the feeling of your nerves will go away once you are done with your introduction. If you know exactly what you're going to say and how you'll convey it, you'll feel confident and exude that, you'll give better eye contact and you'll be on a roll when you get to the'real content'.
7. Strike a "power pose". I saw this advice a few years ago and thought it was ludicrous but it's actually helped me in the past. The logic is that if you strike a pose in a position of power, your mind basically reinforces that image of you and your confidence level goes up. It sounds silly but see how you feel in the Bicep Flex or Usain Bolt poses.
8. Hydration. You might remember in the original Anchorman when Ron Burgundy drinks his milk and laments "This was a bad choice". It would be a bad choice before your speech as well. Get water with a lemon to stop a dry mouth and clear your throat. Keep a bottle of water nearby during the speech in case you start getting dry mouth: a break to drink is better than giving rest of your speech feeling super uncomfortable.
9. Get the jitters out. I like to do some stretching or doing a bit of walking before I give a speech. If it's meeting a client in the work setting, I like walking as much as possible to get rid of excess energy, get my oxygen flowing and let my mind clear a bit.
10. Don't sit. I was reading about CEO interviews and one of the members of the hiring committee said that they didn't hire anyone who was sitting in the waiting area. At its core, the sitting position is motionless and passive. By standing up, you summon energy ahead of time, give your body a chance to warm up, and place yourself in a "ready for action" stance.
Famed speaker and coach Carmine Gallo said in a presentation at Microsoft that one of the most successful TED speeches was practiced 300+ times by the speaker. If you practice the hell out of a good speech, you're 90% of the way there. Do these things before you give your speech and I know it'll go well for you.
Thanks for reading! If you like this article, please click on the follow button above.Poland – This year, Poles celebrate the 1050th anniversary of Christianization of Poland. But as it seems, a pre-Christian consciousness still lives on. In the city of Wrocław in Poland the pagans or better the rodnovers from Slavic pagan association Watra, will build a temple, which will be located next to the Old Slavic ritual space. At this moment, only a visualization is available, which is based on the architecture of the old Slavic temples from historical sources.
This will not only be a temple but also a center of Slavic culture, which will serve for the education and raising awareness of the culture of Slavic ancestors.
Pagan temples and their construction is not a novelty. Some pagan temples were already built across Europe, such as this one in Russia and Scandinavia.
In the first days after the announcement of the project in middle of November, they already raised 4000 PLN (900 EUR) of the 70.000 PLN (16,000 EUR) needed for this project. You can help with donations on their site: Watra, which is sadly only available in Polish.Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek’s contract runs until 2016, but RadarOnline.com has learned he recently threatened to walk away during a testy standoff with Sony execs. The whole exchange was captured in explosive emails leaked by hackers in the latest Sony media dump, and Radar has all the details.
According to the emails, Trebek exploded in anger after he was asked to re-tape a segment of Jeopardy! Kids following an incident with a contestant.
The problem started near the end of the show when the contestant was in the red — making her unable to play in the Final Jeopardy round.
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“She was visibly upset” and ran backstage crying with her mother, a producer writes in the emails. The producer and her mother eventually calmed the girl and she returned to the set to watch the taping of another episode from the audience. But the mother wrote in a letter to producers that she “was quite a bit taken back” with Trebek’s reaction.
According to the mom, Trebek didn’t ever console the girl backstage. “If he had taken the time, he would have known, like you do, that my daughter is not a sore loser, and does not become emotional solely over losing a game,” the woman wrote. “She was upset about not being able to completely play the game to the end.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for that,” the girl’s mom wrote in a letter to Jeopardy! producers.
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A producer wrote in an e-mail that although “Alex’s intentions were good,” they would ask him to re-tape the offending segment “to appease an upset mother who could start another feeding frenzy about Alex’s perceived insensitivity.”
But the simple request sent Trebek into a rant that he dictated to a show staffer to be e-mailed to producers: “If you all think I should retape the opening, I will,” he wrote. “But I want to say that for 30 years I’ve defended our show against attacks inside and out. But it doesn’t seem to operate both ways. When I’m vilified, corporate (and certainly legal) always seems to say ‘don’t say anything and it’ll blow over,’ and I’m not feeling support from the producers, and that disappoints the s—t out of me.”
Trebek’s angry message ended with a threat that he insisted was anything but: “If I’m making mistakes and saying things you don’t like, maybe it’s time for me to move on,” he wrote. “It’s not a threat, but I want to let you know how I’m feeling.”
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Trebek has hosted the highly-profitable game show for 30 years and his early exit would be a blow for Sony Pictures Television.
The latest behind-the-scenes drama was revealed in several e-mails leaked in the massive dump of data posted online by hackers who identified themselves as Guardians of Peace.
Jeopardy! Executive Producer Harry Friedman wrote in an email that Trebek eventually calmed down.
Watch: Alex Trebek prepares for the Grand Prix of Long BeachTweet
On to Week 4 of the college football season, and specifically, the Missouri Valley Football Conference. It’s a bit of a slow week this time, with four games going on involving five MVFC teams.
First up, the games:
2:00 PM – #14 Illinois State (2-0) at Missouri State (1-2)
2:30 PM – Robert Morris (2-1) at #2 North Dakota State (2-0)
5:30 PM – #19 Western Illinois (2-0) at FBS Coastal Carolina (1-1)
7:00 PM – Southern Illinois (2-0) at FBS Memphis (2-0)
Youngstown State, Indiana State, Northern Iowa, South Dakota, and South Dakota State are all on their bye weeks.
All games are available streaming on ESPN3/WatchESPN.com
#14 Illinois State at Missouri State (Alumni Day)
Last Week:
Illinois State won at Eastern Illinois, 44-13
Missouri State beat Murray State, 28-21
History: The Redbirds and Bears have played each other 37 times going back to 1971. Illinois State holds the series lead with a 20-16-1 record.
The first MVFC conference matchup of the season sends the ISU Redbirds down the road to take on the MSU Bears. Illinois State has gotten off to a strong start this season, winning both of their first two games. In their game against Eastern Illinois, a usually tough rivalry game, ISU got off to a fast start and never really looked back, winning by 31 and putting together a fairly balanced offensive attack that racked up 451 total yards…233 on the ground and 218 through the air. JR QB Jake Kolbe runs the offense, averaging 206 yards per game passing, with 3 TDs and 0 INTs so far this season. His primary receiving targets are SR WR Christian Gibbs (49.5 ypg, 2 TD) and JR WR Spencer Schnell (42.5 ypg), but they’ve gotten most of their scoring this season with their ground game. SO RB Markel Smith leads the team on ground yardage (86 ypg, 2 TD) but SO RB James Robinson is currently ahead on the total TDs (64 ypg, 3 TD).
On the other side of the ball, the Redbird Defense is holding teams to a FCS-best 79 ypg average. I’m not sure how much you can read into this stat, however, since they’ve only played two games, and one was against non-scholarship Butler. Still, the defense has only allowed 7 yards on the ground so far, have intercepted the ball twice, and have forced 2 fumble turnovers. JR LB Tyree Horton currently leads the team in tackles with 15, including 4 for loss (2 sacks), 1 QBH, and 1 forced fumble. JR S Mitchell Brees has been having a productive first couple of games as well, netting 2 interceptions returned for a total of 35 yards to go along with 4 tackles.
Missouri State is having a bit of a rougher go of things so far, losing their first two games (one against FBS Mizzou) before picking up their first win in their home opener against Murray State last weekend. Like ISU, it was a relatively balanced attack, with 164 ground yards and 196 passing yards adding up to 360 total, while allowing 273. Newly-transferred SO QB Peyton Huslig has thrown for 227 yards per game with 4 TDs and 4 INTs this season so far and while he had his best day against Mizzou, he’s actually struggled more against FCS teams. SR WR Malik Earl is the man to watch on the receiving end of things with 81 yards per game so far and 2 TDs, but don’t look past the big SR TE Erik Furmanek (at 267 lbs is the largest non-lineman on the team) who’s just a bit behind with 70.3 yards per game. On the ground though, it’s all Calan Crowder. This SR TB (who’s brother Tristan is also on the team…a Sophomore Defensive Lineman) is averaging just under 100 yards per game (97) and has 3 rushing TDs.
Defensively, SO LB McNeece Egbim is attempting to fill the shoes of now Houston Texans LB Dylan Cole and currently leads the team with 24 tackles, 2.5 for loss. JR S Jared Beshore is decent at getting himself in the way of the ball, with 2 interceptions and 3 passes defended in addition to 10 tackles. One of the biggest threats for the Bears, however, is SR WR Deion Holliman…but not really at his regular WR position…Holliman currently leads the conference in both punt and combined kick return yardage and was an All-MVFC First Team return man last season and Preseason All-MVFC return specialist for this season, as well as receiving a MVFC Special Teams Player of the Week award last week.
Overall, the Bears do seem to be slowly improving over the past year or two, but at this point, it looks like ISU is just a bit too good. I think the Redbird defense will do pretty well at slowing down Crowder, although MSU might get a decent amount of yards through the air, but the MSU defense is going to have more trouble with ISU’s balanced offensive threats. It’s generally easier to cover one really good player than two decent players, and I think that’ll happen with ISU going between the two top WRs and handing the ball off to the two RBs. Holliman will get MSU some decent starting field position at times, but the ISU defense is going to make it hard for them to do much with it. To me, this looks to be a win for the Redbirds, probably by about 2 TDs.
Robert Morris at #2 North Dakota State (Trees Bowl)
Last Week:
Robert Morris beat VMI, 23-0
North Dakota State had a bye week.
History: The Bison and Colonials have played each other twice, in 2010 and 2012, both times in Fargo. NDSU has won both games and outscored RMU 95-17 in them.
NDSU has started off the season strong, going 2-0 against a severely over-matched Mississippi Valley State team and decimating a (at that time) top-10 ranked Eastern Washington. The 2-headed monster of JR RBs Lance Dunn (145 ypg, 5 TD) and Bruce Anderson (106 ypg, 1 TD) comprises a large part of their strong rushing offense. The Bison defense has only allowed 131 yards per game of total offense this season, primarily through the air (111.5 per game). JR SS Robbie Grimsley received a conference player of the week award following his 2 interception, 4 tackle, and 2 pass break up performance against Eastern Washington two weeks ago.
Robert Morris spent last weekend shutting out VMI and holding them to 182 yards and forcing 3 turnovers. This would be impressive if not for the fact that VMI is one of the worst of the DI football teams and hasn’t had a winning season since 1981. RMU is averaging 267.7 ypg, with 192.7 of that coming through the air. Defensively, they’re only allowing 13.3 points per game and are headlined by JR LB Adam Wollet, who is averaging 10 tackles per game.
Generally, if a team is going to do well against NDSU, they have to have a decent passing game and a strong running defense. Robert Morris statistically is fairly decent at both…for an NEC team. So far this season, MVFC teams have played NEC teams three times, with the MVFC team winning all three, by an average margin of approximately 40 points. This game will likely be no different. It’s going to take an absolutely phenomenal D-line combined with a couple of fearsome LB’s to be able to stop NDSU’s running game, and RMU doesn’t have that. I think the Bison win this one, pretty easily, by roughly 43 points.
#19 Western Illinois at FBS Coastal Carolina (Youth Day)
Last Week:
Western Illinois had a bye week.
Coastal Carolina lost at UAB, 30-23
History: The Leathernecks and Chanticleers have played each other twice, in 2010 and 2015, both times in Conway, SC. The first was in the FCS playoffs, where WIU won 17-10, and the second was early in the regular season, where CCU won 34-27.
The Leathernecks are currently off to a 2-0 start, having taken down both Tennessee Tech and Northern Arizona in convincing fashion, and both on the road. They had last weekend off to get healed up and get prepared for this weekend’s game over on the east coast. WIU is averaging slightly under 40 ppg and 432.5 ypg, with a strong emphasis on the run game (252.5 ypg). Due to the opening-game ankle injury to preseason all-conference RB Steve McShane, SO RB Max Norris has stepped up to fill the void with 118 ypg. From everything I’ve heard, it sounds like McShane might be ready to come back for some of this weekend’s game. SR WR Jaelon Acklin gets in on both aspects of the offense, catching for 90 ypg and 2 TDs and rushing for 51 ypg and 2 TDs. The Leatherneck defense is allowing 236.5 ypg, but only 28.5 ypg on the ground and are led by SR LB Brett Taylor with 22 tackles, 1 for loss, and 1 forced fumble. SR Transfer (from Liberty) DB Tyrin Holloway is another one to watch, having 2 interceptions in as many games. The Leathernecks are currently 2nd in the FCS in time of possession, holding on to the ball for an average of 38:11.
Newly-FBS Coastal Carolina is 1-1 in their first two games, beating UMass in their home opener, then losing at newly-reinstated UAB. Like Western, they rely much more heavily on the run game than the passing game, putting up 274 ypg on the ground but only 90 ypg through the air. SR RB Osharmar Abercrombie is the primary back to keep an eye on, averaging 112 rushing yards per game (6.2 per carry) with 4 TDs and was named Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Week following week 1 of the season. It’s hard to tell who the QB is going to be, with two guys getting playing time: Tyler Keane has a 79.25 efficiency rating with 76 passing yards per game, 1 TD and 3 INTs and Dalton Demos has a 65.85 efficiency rating with 27 total passing yards. Demos also gets in a bit of running with 39.5 ypg and 2 rushing TDs. While the offense is strong at the ground game, their defense is strong against the ground game, giving up 124 ypg rushing vs 233.5 ypg passing. Their top defensive players are Safety Fitz Wattley with 17 total tackles and LB Silas Kelly who also has 17 tackles in addition to 1.5 tackles for loss (.5 sack).
It’s pretty rare to see a FCS team actually favored on the road against an FBS team (although it has happened at least one other time this year), but that is the situation here, with most recent odds giving WIU around a 3-5 point edge. One thing is for certain though, if you like tough, run-first football…I think you’ll like this game. I think that the ground game is actually going to be fairly even, so the difference might end up being one or two big plays through the air, in which case, I think Western has the advantage with a couple of solid receivers and a pretty decent QB. For me, this points to a very close WIU victory…by 1 point.
Southern Illinois at FBS Memphis
Last Week:
Southern Illinois won at Southeast Missouri State, 35-17
Memphis defeated AP #25 UCLA, 48-45
History: This is the first game between SIU and Memphis, despite Memphis being nearly the closest FBS team to Carbondale (technically Vandy is slightly closer).
Southern Illinois has started off the season 2-0 with wins over Mississippi Valley State and OOC rival Southeast Missouri State. MVSU is pretty much right at the bottom of DI, so it’s going to be much more useful just to look at the SEMO game (although SEMO isn’t that great this year either). SIU has a decent passing offense, with JR QB putting up 206 yards and 4 TDs (1 INT). Most of those yards (119) and 2 of those TDs went to JR WR Darrell James and can run the ball when they need to with JR RB Jonathan Mixon picking up 46 yards and a TD. Their defense gave up 264 offensive yards (166 through the air) to the Red Hawks, who had more first downs than Salukis, but only half the points.
Memphis, meanwhile, began with a win over UL-Monroe and then a game against Central Florida getting postponed due to hurricane. Despite the craziness of an impromptu bye week, they then welcomed the 25th ranked FBS team, UCLA, to their place and came away with a 3-point win. In that game, the Tigers put up 398 yards and 6 TDs through the air. SR QB Riley Ferguson was then named the American Conference Offensive Player of the Week, Walter Camp Offensive Player of the Week, Athlon Sports Offensive Player of the Week, and College Sports Madness National Offensive Player of the Week. The big receiving threat is SR WR Anthony Miller, who had 185 yards and 2 TDs in that game, and SO RB Darrell Henderson is averaging 137 ypg so far this season with 2 TDs. The Memphis defense did allow 633 yards and 45 points to the Bruins, though, so it was a pretty big day for both offenses. SR DB Jonathan Cook and SO DB Austin Hall led Memphis with 9 tackles each.
Overall, this looks much more like a typical FCS vs FBS game than the WIU vs CCU one. SIU has struggled on defense over the last year or two and despite the improvements to their passing game, I don’t see how they’re going to be able to contain the Memphis passing attack. SIU might put up a few points against the Tigers, but Memphis is going to put up a lot of points on the Salukis. I think Memphis wins this one pretty comfortably, by around 28 points.Frank Koloski is a little embarrassed: It's just not like him to get gored at his own rodeo.
Koloski, 43, is the affable founder and co-owner of Rodeo Alaska, an outfit that puts on summer displays of bull riding and steer wrestling prowess around the state.
On Saturday, he was entered in a "double mugging" event at his own Alaska Sales & Service Bear Paw Rodeo Round-Up in Eagle River, he said in a phone call from his hospital bed Sunday.
"Double mugging" is Koloski's specialty -- the event involves one cowboy on a horse roping a steer while another cowboy on foot tries to wrestle the animal to the ground.
On Saturday night, Koloski was the cowboy on the ground. The steer was as rowdy as a barroom brawler.
"It was just pretty wild," he said. "When I went to take him down I felt him hit me."
He felt something wet |
Le Pen, came top in first-round voting to regional assemblies on December 6th. The party notched up a record 40% in the north, where Ms Le Pen ran, and the south, where her 26-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, did. These leads did not translate into a single victory at second-round voting on December 13th, chiefly because of a tactical decision by the governing Socialists to sacrifice their own candidates. Manuel Valls, the prime minister, ordered Socialists in three regions where the rival centre-right looked the stronger opponent to pull out (one refused). This, combined with some scaremongering—he warned of “civil war” should the far right win—helped to get voters out, and to thwart the FN.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the FN has been fatally weakened. It drew 6.8m votes in the second round—up from 6m in the first, and 400,000 more than Ms Le Pen scored at the presidential election of 2012, when turn-out was higher. Except in small constituencies, the party struggles to win a majority, and Ms Le Pen’s chances of becoming president remain slim. But she did win 42% in her region, and her niece 44%. The FN’s national second-round score of 27%, were it to be repeated in the first round of the presidential election in 2017, should be enough to secure Ms Le Pen a place in the run-off.
The bigger question is whether the rise of the far right could force mainstream parties to shift towards more bipartisanship. Mr Valls called this week for a different form of post-sectarian politics, in which opponents work together for the general interest. A centre-left politician with close links to Michel Rocard, a moderate former prime minister, Mr Valls has long craved a larger political centre. He has argued that it was a mistake not to have opened up to François Bayrou, the leader of a centrist party, after François Hollande was elected president in 2012.
That French voters, especially the young, rallied to block the FN suggests that left and right can unite against a common opponent—as they did in 2002, when leftists voted for Jacques Chirac, the centre-right candidate, to defeat Mr Le Pen after he unexpectedly squeaked through to the second round of the presidential race. In many ways, voters who backed the two main parties differ less from each other than from FN supporters (see chart). Voters without a high-school qualification are more than twice as likely to plump for FN as those with a degree. Both left and centre-right, by contrast, are more favoured by the better-educated.
Conceivably, both in France and elsewhere in Europe, the left-right political split that has dominated the post-war period could eventually give way to a division between globally minded parties and nationalists. Already, the populist parties’ rising vote share has at various times forced the centre-right and centre-left to co-operate in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. Such bipartisanship may be what France needs to form a political consensus behind more radical economic reform. Indeed the FN itself seeks to “refound French politics” along nationalist and internationalist lines, says Florian Philippot, a party vice-president, arguing that “there’s no difference between left and right”.
For now, though, it is hard to see how any formal political recomposition could take place. Both the centre-right, under Nicolas Sarkozy, and the left will treat 2016 as a pre-election year, when adversarial posturing is likely to prevail. It might take a systemic reform such as the introduction of proportional representation, which some close to Mr Valls advocate, to provoke a true realignment. This could come at a price. France tried it in 1986, and the upshot was the election of a record 35 FN deputies—among them Mr Le Pen.Access our FREE web-based Forbidden City audio tour. Use your own mobile device and headphones and our free wi-fi to stream the audio tour in the galleries or enjoy the tour at home on your computer.
Launch Audio Tour
Drawn from the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing, Forbidden City will offer visitors a unique journey through a palace once forbidden to the general public, and provide a glimpse into this hidden world through rich and diverse objects from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. Featured works include large portraits, costumes, furniture, court paintings, religious sculptures, and fine decorative arts such as bronzes, lacquer ware, and jade. This exhibition explores the significant roles of imperial rituals, court painting, imperial family life, and religion in the Forbidden City.
Forbidden City: Imperial Treasures from the Palace Museum, Beijing is organized by the Palace Museum and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition is curated by Li Jian, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art at VMFA.
This exhibition is part of a groundbreaking exchange between the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Palace Museum – a series of collaborative projects between 2011 and 2016 that include exhibition and staff exchange in the areas of administration, curatorship, conservation, education, and security. VMFA is the first art museum in the United States to establish such an extensive collaborative project with the Palace Museum in Beijing, and this is the first time VMFA will host an exhibition of Chinese art directly from China.
A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with essays contributed by Li Jian, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art at VMFA; He Li, Associate Curator of Chinese Art from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; Hou-mei Sung, Curator of Asian Art from the Cincinnati Art Museum; and Ma Shengnan, Associate Researcher from the Palace Museum. The exhibition catalogue is published by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Sponsors
Forbidden City: Imperial Treasures from the Palace Museum, Beijing is presented by:
Julia Louise Reynolds Fund
Eda Hofstead Cabaniss
Mrs. Frances Massey Dulaney
National Endowment for the Arts
The Richard S. Reynolds Foundation
The Anne Carter and Walter R. Robins, Jr. Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Fred T. Tattersall
Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation
Lilli and William Beyer
The Dr. Donald S. and Beejay Brown Exhibitions Endowment
The Community Foundation Serving Richmond & Central Virginia
Frank Qiu and Ting Xu of Evergreen Enterprises
Leapfrog 3D Printers
Memorial Foundation for Children
Norfolk Southern Corporation
Mary and Don Shockey
Carolyn and John Snow
Capital One Bank
The Jeanann Gray Dunlap Foundation
Jack and Mary Spain
Official Passenger Rail Partner
Media SponsorCities designed for humans are hard to come by. At least that’s what Mountain View, California-based Y Combinator thinks. According to an announcement on the incubator’s blog today (June 27), Y Combinator is launching a project to research urban planning.
“We want to study building new, better cities,” YC president Sam Altman and partner Adora Cheung wrote. ”The world is full of people who aren’t realizing their potential in large part because their cities don’t provide the opportunities and living conditions necessary for success.”
Altman and Cheung cited most cities’ lack of affordable housing—an ongoing issue in San Francisco—as a key reason for their research. One of the goals of the incubator’s imagined city will be a 90% reduction in housing costs. They will also look at the role of emerging technologies, such as self-driving cars, in urban planning, as well as diversity, civic engagement and the complexity of rules and regulations (Y Combinator wants to see if they can simplify those to 100 pages or less).
“We want to build cities for all humans—tech and non-tech people,” Altman and Cheung wrote. “We’re not interested in building ‘crazy libertarian utopias for techies.'”
This isn’t Y Combinator’s first foray into urban policy. Earlier this month, YC Research—the incubator’s nonprofit research arm—launched a program in Oakland to test the concept of universal basic income, giving citizens $1,000 to $2,000 per month regardless of whether or not they work.
Applications to participate in YC’s project will be open through July 30.Originally published October 7, 2014 at 1:32 PM | Page modified October 9, 2014 at 6:36 AM
The chain of high-end meat shops, organized in 2009, has been financially strapped for most of its existence.
Bill the Butcher, a tiny publicly traded Seattle company aiming to build a chain of independent high-end meat shops, has closed its six locations, according to separate reports on two area websites.
The websites, Eater Seattle and Wallywood, showed photos of notices posted on the doors of the Laurelhurst and Wallingford outlets. Both read, “Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are closed until further notice... Hope to see you soon.”
A call to Bill the Butcher’s main office was not returned.
Tony Schor of Investor Awareness, an Illinois firm listed on the Bill the Butcher’s website as its investor relations firm, said by email he no longer represents the company.
The company, organized in 2009, has been financially strapped for most of its existence. Its most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed a nine-month loss of $3.2 million on sales of $1.3 million.
Last week, as the Seattle Times reported, a well-known local retail entrepreneur, Sunny Kobe Cook, wrote a blog post complaining that Bill the Butcher owner J’Amy Owens owed her about $66,000 from a personal loan she had not repaid.
Four weeks for 99 cents of unlimited digital access to The Seattle Times. Try it now!The Latest: 'El Chapo' being taken to same prison he escaped
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The latest on Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman who was recaptured six months after he escaped from a maximum security prison: (all times local)
10:35 p.m.
Mexican Attorney General Ariely Gomez says drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is being taken back to Antiplano — the same maximum-security prison where he escaped last July 11 using an elaborate tunnel that was dug to his shower stall.
FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2014 file photo, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican Navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto posted on his Twitter account, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, that drug lord Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman has been recaptured. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
Guzman was captured by Mexican marines early Friday in a coastal city, and the attorney general says the drug boss was tracked down partly because he was making a biographical movie.
The attorney general spoke at a ceremony Friday night at Mexico City's airport where Mexican marines displayed Guzman to journalists.
Guzman was put on a navy helicopter to be flown to the prison.
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5:10 p.m.
A law enforcement official says Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's capture at a motel on the outskirts of Los Mochis was related to an earlier gun battle at a house elsewhere in the city.
That official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, says Guzman may have been at the house and left while his gunmen and bodyguards provided covering fire from the house.
Marines checked the storm drain system, though it was unclear if Guzman had once again fled through the drains. — Mark Stevenson
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3:40 p.m.
President Enrique Pena Nieto calls the capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman a "victory for the rule of law" that demonstrates that Mexicans can have confidence in their institutions, using the capture to boost the administration's lagging credibility after a series of scandals.
Guzman's escape six months ago from a maximum security prison was a major embarrassment to Pena Nieto's government.
He made the comments in a televised speech Friday.
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3:22 p.m.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is calling the recapture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman "a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States, and a vindication of the rule of law in our countries."
In a statement, Lynch said Guzman "will now have to answer for his alleged crimes" and congratulated Mexico's government but did not directly address the sticky issue of extradition.
Guzman faces charges in multiple different jurisdictions across the United States. His escape six months ago from a maximum security prison in Mexico was a point of friction between the two governments. The U.S. has sought his extradition, though Mexico in the past has said he would serve sentences here first.
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2:47 p.m.
A Mexican law enforcement official confirms that drug lorg Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was captured at a motel on the outskirts of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa. The official was not authorized to talk to the press and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mexico's Navy earlier said that marines seized an arsenal of weapons belonging to Guzman and his associates in a house in Los Mochis. — Mark Stevenson
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2:15 p.m.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says it is "extremely pleased" by the recapture of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
On its Twitter account, the DEA congratulated Mexico's government on nabbing Guzman, who escaped from a maximum-security prison six months ago, and said it salutes "the bravery involved in his capture."
Guzman was apprehended after a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa.
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1:59 p.m.
The Justice Department has no immediate comment on whether it will push to extradite Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States, where he faces charges in multiple different jurisdictions across the country.
Guzman's escape six months ago from a maximum security prison was a point of friction between the governments of the two countries. The U.S. had desired his extradition and his recapture Friday is sure to reopen the issue.
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1:45 p.m.
A Mexican law enforcement official says authorities located Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman several days ago, based on reports that he was in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
The official says that authorities even searched storm drains in the area. The official was not authorized to talk to the press and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In 2014, Guzman escaped arrest by fleeing through a network of interconnected tunnels in the city's drainage system in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan. — Mark Stevenson
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1:04 p.m.
Mexico's Navy says that marines seized two armored vehicles, eight rifles, one handgun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the raid that captured fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Photos of the arms seized suggested that Guzman and his associates had a fearsome arsenal in a non-descript white house.
Two of the rifles seized were.50-caliber sniper guns, capable of penetrating most bullet-proof vests and cars. The grenade launcher was found loaded, with an extra round nearby. And an assault rifle had a.40 mm grenade launcher, and at least one grenade.
___
12:47 p.m.
An official says that fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was apprehended after a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Los Mochis, in his home state of Sinaloa. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name.
Five people were killed and one Mexican marine wounded in the clash.
The Mexican Navy said in a statement that marines acting on a tip raided a home in the town of Los Mochis before dawn. They were fired on from inside the structure. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. — Mark Stevenson
___
12:31 p.m.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has written in his Twitter account that fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been recaptured six months after he escaped from a maximum security prison.
Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account on Friday: "mission accomplished: we have him."
FILE - In this July 16, 2015 file photo, a Federal Police shows a reward notice for information leading to the capture of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who made his escape from the Altiplano maximum security prison via an underground tunnel, in Almoloya, west of Mexico City. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto posted on his Twitter account, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, that drug lord Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman has been recaptured.(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)
FILE.- This July 15, 2015 photo shows the shower area where authorities claim drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, slipped into a tunnel to escape from his prison cell at the Altiplano maximum security prison, in Almoloya, west of Mexico City. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto posted on his Twitter account, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, that drug lord Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman has been recaptured.(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
In this July 16, 2015 file photo a motorcycle adapted to a rail sits in the tunnel under the half-built house where according to authorities, drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman made his escape from the Altiplano maximum security prison in Almoloya, west of Mexico City. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto posted on his Twitter account, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, that drug lord Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman has been recaptured. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The news that U.S. House Speaker John Boehner will resign electrified a summit of Republican conservatives on Friday, with a variety of presidential candidates saying it is time for a new generation of leadership in Washington.
Donald Trump (L) talks with fellow candidate and former Jeb Bush during a commercial break at the first official Republican presidential candidates debate of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign in Cleveland, Ohio, August 6, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Raucous cheers broke out at the Values Voter Summit in Washington when Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, broke into his prepared speech to announce that Boehner planned to step down.
“I’m not here to bash anyone,” Rubio told the crowd. “But the time has come to turn the page.”
Many conservatives have long since been fed up with Boehner for what they consider a failure to advance their agenda. With Republicans in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, conservatives are frustrated that President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law has not been repealed and that Obama still seems to have his way with Congress.
“This is an opportunity for a new speaker who will take it as a solemn commitment to the people who elected us that he or she is going to do exactly what we told the voters we will do,” said Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican presidential hopeful.
Boehner’s announcement that he was leaving the speakership and Congress effective Oct. 30 highlighted the split in his party between conservatives and more moderate Republicans.
Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, hailed Boehner as a good man who had grown weary of attempting to keep conservative House Republicans in line.
“I’m sad because I have great respect and affection for Speaker Boehner,” McCain told reporters after his address to the Values Voter Summit.
Some Republican presidential candidates are trying to tap into conservatives’ anger at the party’s establishment in order to gain support from a key voting bloc and advance their bid for the nomination to run in November 2016.
New York billionaire Donald Trump, who is leading in opinion polls of Republican voters, said politicians become different people once they get to Washington.
“They get elected. They’re full of vim and vigor. They’re going to change things. They’re going to get rid of Obamacare. They’re going to do all of these things. They come down to these magnificent vaulted ceilings that you see all over Washington. And what happens? They become different people,” Trump told summit attendees.
The candidates had another reason to welcome the Boehner news. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 72 percent of Republican primary voters were dissatisfied with Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s ability to achieve Republican goals. The poll was conducted Sunday through Thursday.I've been working on my health and losing weight for a while now, and part of my success has been packing my lunch every day. My current lunch bag is falling apart, and every night I look at it and think, "Ugh, you again? You look gross, and you smell weird." As small a thing as that is, it made packing lunches a drag.
No more! Santa has come to the rescue with a brand new lunch box for me. I'm excited to pack all my goodies inside. Lunchbox, are you ready to see the world? Because you're with me now, kid. I'm talking all corporate refrigerators and breakrooms your heart can take. You like carrot sticks and Greek yogurt? Well, boy, do I have good news for you.
Santa also sent me "Living Well, Spending Less," which is great because after the holidays I always feel like I need a financial tidy-up. I can't wait to dig into the book and start saving that dough.
Santa, you're awesome! Never change!Will he or won't he? Should he or shouldn't he? If he does, what will it say about him, David Cameron and the prospects of the Tory party? The interesting thing about the latest burst of reports that Boris Johnson is planning to stand as an MP at the next election is that he has remained mute. The normally voluble mayor, a man rarely caught short of an opinion about anything, has been Trappist about his own future.
It is certainly being noted by people around David Cameron who keep a constant and wary eye on the blond over the water. "He's doing nothing to damp it down," notes one friend of the prime minister. "There's been this huge amount of speculation and it is notable that he has not come out and said, 'I'm not standing."'
No, he has not and the reason why he hasn't is obvious. There is turmoil in Borisworld. Both his admirers and the man himself have been agonising for months about whether his ambitions are best advanced by plotting a return to the Commons next May or by waiting until his mayoral term is complete in 2016.
Toryland is divided on the subject. Paul Goodman, the editor of the ConservativeHome website, urges him to stand. James Forsyth, the political editor of the Spectator, warns that it would be a mistake. That split among the Tory commentators reflects the wider division within the Conservative party.
Then there are those Tories who are simply becoming tired with and frustrated by the whole soap opera, a feeling you might well share. As we report today, influential figures on the executive of the Tory backbench 1922 committee reckon he needs to make his mind up and quick because the incessant speculation about his intentions is destabilising.
The reason it is such a hot topic among Tories is not just because he is a big player, their most popular politician and a potential leader. It is also because his decision will send a significant message about what he really thinks about the election prospects of his fellow old Etonian at Number 10.
There is no constitutional impediment to prevent him from returning as an MP in 2015 and continuing to sit in City Hall for a further 12 months after that. Many will recall that, after Ken Livingstone's election as mayor in 2000, he continued to be the MP for Brent East until the general election a year later. Though not strictly the same – that was Ken's first year of his first term in a newly created post – Boris could and no doubt would sort of argue that this sort of set a sort of precedent. Adored as he is by many Tory activists, he would have no trouble finding a seat. There is already a clamour from some Conservative associations to have him as their candidate.
But there are big risks for him and that is what explains his dithering. The largest of those risks is that he would do serious damage to his reputation by breaking his promise not to seek to return to the Commons before his mayoral term is up in May 2016. As recently as last month, when asked by LBC's Nick Ferrari whether he was preparing to stand as an MP, the mayor replied: "The daily excitement of helping to run the greatest city on Earth, why would you want to do anything else?" He went on: "I'm sticking to the job that I was elected to do in 2012."
Some note that he left himself a bit of wriggle-room: while the spirit of those remarks suggested that he wouldn't stand as an MP, he did not actually make an unequivocal statement to that effect.
However, I can find no escape clauses at all in the declaration he made during the last mayoral campaign to the London Evening Standard. It is worth quoting in full: "If I am fortunate enough to win I will need four years to deliver what I have promised. And having put trust at the heart of this election, I would serve out that term in full.
"I made a solemn vow to Londoners to lead them out of recession, bring down crime and deliver the growth, investment and jobs that this city so desperately needs. Keeping that promise cannot be combined with any other political capacity."
Not just any old political promise, then, but a "solemn vow", the political equivalent of swearing on the Bible, not to seek any other elected office for the duration of his term as mayor and a holy pledge couched in terms of "trust".
Maybe he could betray that promise and not suffer too much adverse reaction. This is the view taken by many of his fans among Tories. One Boris-friendly Conservative recently told me that he didn't think "most voters would be all that fussed really" because everyone is well-aware that he is entering the final stretch of his time at City Hall and his interest in becoming prime minister is not exactly a secret.
You might take a view that people are so accustomed to politicians breaking promises that they would merely respond with a weary shrug. You could also think that whatever appeals to voters about Boris, his brand has not been built on reliability anyway. This is the man who once said that his policy on cake was to be "pro-having it and pro-eating it".
The flings, the fibs, the flip-flops, he has survived, even thrived on, a variety of misadventures and scandals that would have felled more conventional politicians. Those who have conducted focus groups about him report that participants are aware that he has often got into trouble, but give him a benefit of the doubt that other politicians would kill for and are inclined to put a forgiving interpretation on the controversial episodes of his career. That helped him get elected, and then re-elected, in a traditionally Labour city.
The normal rules of politics don't appear to apply to Boris. But it would nevertheless be quite a gamble to assume that this would continue to be the case if he were to flagrantly break a "solemn vow".
One of his attractions to voters – one of the things that has made him one of those politicians who can ride the anti-political mood – is that he comes over as more authentic than most. Breaking his promise to eight million Londoners in pursuit of personal ambition would put that at risk.
Labour would relentlessly hammer him for it and say that he was a part-time mayor sacrificing the interests of the capital on the altar of his ego.
Some Tory strategists are sceptical that he would get away with it. As one senior adviser at Number 10 puts it: "The rules don't apply until they do."
What will also be troubling him – or certainly should be – is that he will know that none of the excuses he might advance will pass even the most cursory of inspections. I expect he would try to justify breaking the promise by claiming that being an MP would allow him to represent London in parliament. I doubt there will be many buyers for that defence and especially not if he pursues a seat such as North West Hampshire or Louth and Horncastle, to name two of the out-of-capital constituencies being touted as potential parliamentary berths. One of his talents as mayor has been championing the capital and he's done it well for six years without the need to have a perch on the green leather benches of the Commons.
If he decides to declare that he is standing as an MP, another argument we will hear will be that the Tories need him for the general election campaign. That claim is already being made by David Cameron who said last week that his rival was "a great striker" whom he was keen to have "on the team". The prime minister feels obliged to grit his teeth and say that he wants Boris back, but I'm not at all convinced that the Tory leader really hopes to see the man who is after his job in the Commons in 2015. There is a false note when David Cameron speaks in footballing metaphors.
Mayor Johnson doesn't need to stand as an MP to be on the election campaign trail. He already has a national recognition factor the equal of any member of the cabinet; he can already command vast amounts of media attention; he is already supposed to be on the Tory team. Standing as an MP would add exactly nothing to his capacity to play a prominent role in Conservative campaigning.
When you have dispensed with all the bogus excuses for breaking his "solemn vow", that leaves only one real reason for doing it: not because he wants to help the Tories to win, but because he calculates that it is quite likely that they won't. The only rational purpose for rushing back to the Commons is because he thinks there is a good probability that there will be a vacancy for the party leadership after the election. Whatever he or David Cameron say to the contrary, even the dogs on the streets know it.Culture ministry says those posting selfies featuring partially-exposed breasts could face up to five years in jail
Thailand’s military government warned women on Monday against posting photos of the lower half of their breasts – a current social media trend – saying their actions could violate the country’s computer crime laws.
Thailand’s computer crimes act 2007 bans material that causes “damage to the country’s security or causes public panic” or “any obscene computer data which is accessible to the public”.
The culture ministry said offenders faced up to five years in jail, but did not say how they would identify the culprits.
“When people take these ‘underboob selfies’ no one can see their faces,” ministry spokesman Anandha Chouchoti said. “So it’s like, we don’t know who these belong to, and it encourages others to do the same.
“We can only warn people to not take it up. They are inappropriate actions.”
The ministry has long been criticised for being overzealous in its censorship of films, music, television and some western cultural practices in an attempt to preserve traditional values of a country that is also infamous of its raunchy night life.Let's talk about hypothetical risks. If you go to a big preview screening in Leicester Square – a privilege given to the press, entertainment industry VIPs, and a fair number of punters who win radio phone-in prizes – you'll be asked to leave your mobile phone in a baggie behind a counter at the front of the cinema.
The film industry says that this is a necessary precaution against the hypothetical losses that would result should someone use a mobile phone to "camcord" (that is, record from the audience) a pre-release movie and leak it onto the internet. The film Wolverine (panned by 63% of critics according to Rotten Tomatoes, which also reports a $177,288,905 box office gross to date) is often cited as an example of how a film can be harmed by pre-release leaks. Also cited is Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) research claiming the vast majority of pirate movies on the internet and sold on the street start as camcordered movies (more on this later).
When pressed, spokespeople from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Film Distributors' Association (FDA) admitted they had never heard of a pirated movie "in the wild" that originated with a mobile phone, nor, to the best of their knowledge, had anyone ever been ejected from a cinema for attempting this.
What's more, although FACT and the FDA stressed their belief that the majority of pirate movies originate with camcorders, they also admitted that this was never the case with pre-release movies: film previews have never been a source of film piracy.
The whole business of camcordering seems to be a red herring, frankly.
The supposedly damning pre-release leak of Wolverine? An inside job. Of the 26 Oscar-nominated films for 2009, 23 were available as pirated copies online on the eve of voting, 100% of them derived from "screeners" (discs given to jurors, critics, exhibitors, sales agents, etc). On average, screener copies leaked onto the internet six days after they were sent out to the Academy for review prior to awards voting.
Music piracy is characterised as "grave" by the industry (in the US, NBC went so far as to tell the Federal Communications Commission that film piracy threatened the livelihoods of heavily subsidised corn farmers due to potential losses in popcorn sales, and that this would have knock-on effects in the market for heavy farm machinery). But the studios have just enjoyed yet another record-smashing box office quarter, in the teeth of a global econo-polcalypse that has every other sector of the economy on life support.
But there is one indisputable fact: mobile phones are rapidly expanding their capabilities. Megapixel phones are the norm now, as are fast network connections and memory slots that can accept up to 64GB of storage. If a tenfold increase in battery life were to take place tomorrow, it would, indeed, be practical to record a feature film with a mobile.
Which brings us to the other theoretical risk: the risk of leaving hundreds of increasingly powerful phones in the safekeeping of a cinema, out of your sight for two or three hours while you watch gigantic robots throwing buildings at each other.
This risk is also substantial. From sim cloning (copying the phone's sim so that other phones can use your account, listen to your voicemail, and make calls that are billed to you) to data theft, the risks are enormous. Think of the data storage on your phone – that potential 64GB on a postage-stamp-sized SD card. That's enough to carry around libraries' worth of confidential or proprietary information – several times the amount of data lost in the enormous HMRC leak of family financial information last year. Add to that the contact information – personal phone numbers for all the people in the lives of everyone at the movie, including, for example, ministers of state and other VIPs who are routinely invited to previews. Then consider confidential diaries, family photos, personal voice memos, access to your search history …
Once you start enumerating the potentially sensitive information on a mobile phone, it's hard to stop.
Ironically, mobile phones have terrible security models. They don't support encryption for in-built or expanded memory, have short passwords that are often easily bypassable – a problem that's exacerbated by corporate IT departments who set bad passwords across the system (one enterprise I know of gives all its executives a BlackBerry with the password "QWERTY").
What's more, the more confidential – and useful – things there are on your phone, the less likely you are to want to leave it at home during a night out. Indeed, the very capabilities that make a phone useful also make it indispensable. It doesn't take a techno-visionary to see the train wreck in the offing.
As the movie industry reminds us, phones are getting more powerful all the time. Entrepreneurs look forward to phones that work as authentication tokens for signing into corporate networks (phones are already used to complete many security procedures today, as when Pins are texted to your phone), stored value cards that work like Oyster cards, allowing you to spend money just by waving your phone at a touchplate, and as trusted network conduits into the innermost layer of secured and sensitive systems.
Any phone that can do all this can also handily copy a film. Any phone that can do all this is a device that you'll never leave the house without.
Of course, there are ways of containing liability. If I wanted to stop movies from being pirated, I'd focus my effort on the places where they leak. In the case of the Oscars, that's the insider awards voters who leak every movie they're sent within six days, not the film critics – who have never, ever leaked a movie by recording it at a preview.
Likewise, if I wanted to secure hundreds of mobile phones, my first resort would be to leave them where they are, in cinemagoers' pockets, which is surely the safest place for them to be. Failing that, I'd have a top-notch security system, with tamper-evident, shielded, opaque bags for storing phones, a system of multiple watchers who kept an eye on each other as well as the phones, and special background checks into anyone allowed anywhere in the vicinity of the handsets.
Oh, and I'd make sure I was carrying special insurance that specifically covered losses due to data breaches from phones in my care.
What does the film industry do to safeguard your phone when you see a preview? It's very hard to say. No one could really tell me what the details were. Most helpful was the FDA, which was also able to confirm that it had never had a known data breach from a phone taken into custody during a preview. It also assured me that only staff from the security companies were allowed to handle the phones in care.
But it wasn't able to confirm the qualifications of the security staff, nor whether there was any special insurance cover for data breaches from these phones. And the baggies that are used are "like the ones at the airport" – standard, transparent Ziploc bags through which phones can be seen and worked. These bags lack tamper-evident seals, so it's also possible to remove a phone and replace it without its owner being aware of it.
The FDA's spokesman also stated that he believed people who had a need to retain their |
things for a long time, and the World Transhumanist Association (now known as Humanity+) adopted a formal position on human germline genetic modification 11 years ago.
The WTA/H+ statement embraces the desirability and inevitability of germline and enhancing gene therapies, while also calling for public financing of research and a regulatory process to ensure their safety. While the group that published a statement in Science called for a moratorium on applications of the technology until they are safe, the industry group Alliance for Regenerative Medicine went further to call for a ban on any research that could prove the safety of the techniques.
As the statement below suggests, the transhumanist (and technoprogressive) position is that any effort to ban research leading to such therapies, or the use of such therapies once they have been proved safe and effective, would be a violation of the rights to procreative liberty and bodily autonomy.
Position on Human Germline Genetic Modification
Adopted unanimously by the WTA Board of Directors December 24, 2004*
There is an urgent need for new policies to regulate research on and application of inheritable gene therapies. Inheritable genetic therapies will open up society to new forms of diversity and change, and require new thinking in risk regulation and human rights to avoid both the proliferation of untested and harmful therapies, and unnecessary bans that restrict reproductive rights.
Because of the sad history of eugenic authoritarianism in the 20th century, states must meet a high burden of evidence before interfering in the bodily autonomy and reproductive decision-making of parents. The principal grounds for such interference is society’s obligation to ensure that the clinical risks of new reproductive and genetic technologies are reasonable and well enough understood, so that parents can make informed decisions.
It is every parent’s obligation, and the obligation of society as a whole, to ensure that the next generation is as healthy, long-lived and able as possible. Given a commitment to procreative liberty, the best way to ensure that children benefit from genetic therapies is to provide parents with the information about their risks and benefits, and to ensure equitable access to the technologies, so they can give their children the best possible start in life.
Existing laws, testing regimes, and agencies that ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs should be expanded, where necessary, to encompass inheritable gene therapies. In the United States we support the Food and Drug Administration’s position that they have the authority to regulate the safety of human gene therapies and novel reproductive technologies such as cloning. No new agencies are required.
Nor should laws specify acceptable and unacceptable gene therapies based on distinctions of “therapy” versus “enhancement,” or on the basis of speculative long-term social impacts. The only basis for regulations of gene therapy are traditional clinical risk/benefit ratios for the subjects and their children.
We believe the Council of Europe should amend its “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being” to acknowledge the legitimacy of germline therapies and enhancements within the context of individual and reproductive rights. We also believe international treaties to ban inheritable genetic modification and genetic enhancement would violate human rights, deny people their benefits, and make it impossible to regulate their safety.
The standards for the safety of inheritable genetic therapy should be no higher than the safety of unassisted reproduction. Multi-generational effects may be explored in animal trials, but human trials should not have to demonstrate a low risk of teratogenic effects beyond the first generation.
Genetic modifications that adults make on their own genetic material, both somatic and germline, should be approved on the basis of their safety for the adult subject, with appropriate informed consent about any teratogenic risks if modified genetic material is passed on to children. There should be no penalties for adults who knowingly modify their own reproductive cells, or for health care providers who have given adequate information about risks and benefits, even if that use is not approved as a therapy for the modification of sperm, eggs and embryos ex vivo.
There should be state funding of inheritable genetic therapy research in both animal and human trials. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health should reverse its ban on funding of inheritable gene therapy research. Funding policy should not distinguish between somatic or inheritable therapies, or “therapy” vs. “enhancement,” but should be based on the feasibility, safety and potential benefits of the treatment. There should be state funding for long-term prospective studies of the safety and impact on health of inheritable gene therapies. But there should not be a mandatory registry of the subjects of inheritable genetic therapies.
Finally, given the potential for genetic therapies to exacerbate inequality, we believe safe, beneficial genetic therapies should be made as universally accessible as possible. Highest priority should be placed on making universally accessible genetic therapies that provide intrinsic benefits [1, 2] — such as health, longevity and intelligence — as opposed to germinal choices and genetic therapies that do not provide intrinsic benefit, such as height and gender.
* On the WTA website it says 2005, but it was actually 2004
Reprinted from IEET with permission.If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member. If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.
Four days after a picture-perfect blastoff from southern Japan, a cargo-carrying supply freighter arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday with 4.5 tons of equipment, food, clothing and experiments.
The 33-foot-long (10-meter) H-2 Transfer Vehicle built and operated by Japan approached the space station from below, pausing at predetermined hold points to ensure proper alignment with its flight corridor.
The rendezvous went faster than anticipated, and the HTV supply ship was grappled by the space station’s 58-foot-long (17.6-meter) Canadian-built robotic arm at 1037 GMT (5:37 a.m. EST) as the complex sailed 250 miles (402 kilometers) over southern Chile.
“Houston, station, we see a good capture of the HTV,” radioed astronaut Thomas Pesquet soon after the Japanese supply carrier was in the firm grasp of the station’s robotic arm.
“Copy, we see the same, congrats,” replied astronaut Jessica Meir, spacecraft communicator in mission control.
Shane Kimbrough, the commander of the station’s Expedition 50 crew who was in control of the robot arm Tuesday, chimed in moments later with his congratulations for the HTV ground team.
“It has about four-and-a-half tons of supplies for us, which we’re really excited about,” Kimbrough said.
“We were talking last night and thought it was really cool how our cooperation, and the strength of our international cooperation, is so strong when you have a NASA astronaut and a European Space Agency astronaut using the Canadian robotic arm grabbing a Japanese vehicle and attaching it to the U.S. side of the space station,” Kimbrough said. “That’s pretty cool, so we’re very excited about that.”
Ground controllers took over commanding of the robotic arm soon after Kimbrough captured the cargo craft to maneuver the HTV to a berthing port on the Earth-facing side of the space station’s Harmony module.
Mission control completed installation of the HTV on the space station at 1357 GMT (8:57 a.m. EST), when 16 bolts drove into place to create a firm connection between the supply ship and the Harmony module. Astronauts planned to open hatches leading into the HTV on Wednesday, but that could be moved up to Tuesday evening if the crew has time.
The HTV mission is Japan’s sixth resupply flight to the orbiting research outpost. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency pays its share of the space station’s annual operating costs with cargo delivery services, earning access for Japanese astronauts and research experiments.
Nicknamed Kounotori 6 — the Japanese word for white stork — the logistics freighter is packed with 9,080 pounds (4,119 kilograms) of payloads, according to NASA.
The mission blasted off from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on Dec. 9 on top of an H-2B rocket.
Equipment aboard Kounotori 6 includes hardware for the space station’s life support system. NASA requested the Japanese space agency deliver fresh parts for the space station’s carbon dioxide removal assembly, which scrubs carbon dioxide from the air inside the complex.
Among the science hardware is a payload package designed to demonstrate new spacecraft cooling systems, and a dosimeter to measure radiation exposure inside the space station. A high-definition imager, with 4K and 2K cameras, is also aboard Kounotori 6 to eventually be added to an external mount outside Kibo, enabling better nighttime photography.
The pressurized cargo manifest includes 2,786 pounds (1,264 kilograms) of crew supplies — food, water, clothing and other items — 1,641 pounds (663 kilograms) of vehicle hardware, such as tools and spare parts, 925 pounds (420 kilograms) of research payloads and associated gear, and 343 pounds (156 kilograms) of computer resources.
Ground crews also placed inside Kounotori 6 around 77 pounds (35 kilograms) of spacesuit and spacewalk equipment and 62 pounds (28 kilograms) of cargo for the the station’s Russian segment.
But the items aboard Kounotori 6 that will get the most attention from the station crew are six lithium-ion batteries bolted to a pallet nestled inside the HTV’s unpressurized cargo section.
While astronauts inside the outpost unload the HTV’s pressurized module, the station’s robot arm will pull the pallet out of the spacecraft’s external payload bay to begin the process of replacing batteries on one of the research lab’s solar array truss segments.
The space station has a truss backbone stretching longer than a football field. There are four solar array modules on the ends of the truss, each with solar panel wings measuring around 240 feet (73 meters) tip-to-tip to charge the station’s batteries when in sunlight.
The original nickel-hydrogen batteries are aging, and the replacements that began arriving Tuesday are lighter and more efficient.
“Based on a lot of the equipment thats brought up we’re going to see a lot of robotic and spacewalk activity coming up in the next few weeks, and it’s going to be really exciting,” Kimbrough said. “The vehicle has the new lithium-ion batteries that are going to get installed on the outside of the space station to improve our power system on the space station.
“Again, congrats to our JAXA partners and other members of our international partnership on this really impressive achievement,” he said. “The vehicle is beautiful, and it performed flawlessly.”
The bulk of the battery replacement work will be done using the space station’s Dextre robotic handyman, which has two arms and a toolkit to do tasks that previously required astronauts to go out on spacewalks.
Still, two spacewalks are scheduled for Jan. 6 and Jan. 13 to assist in the battery upgrade.
Kimbrough and astronaut Peggy Whitson will go outside on the first spacewalk, and Kimbrough and Pesquet are assigned to the second excursion.
The robotic part of the battery swap will start New Year’s Eve. The six lithium-ion batteries will go on the station’s S4 starboard-side truss segment, home base for two of the lab’s eight prime power channels.
There are 12 old nickel-hydrogen batteries being replaced on this mission — each new unit has the capacity of two old batteries — and nine of the outgoing batteries will be mounted on the HTV cargo pallet for disposal at the end of the craft’s mission.
The three other disused batteries will go on adapter plates also delivered by Kounotori 6 to be stored outside the station.
Eighteen more lithium-ion batteries are scheduled to head for the space station on the next three HTV missions in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The new lithium-ion batteries should operate for at least 10 years — longer than the space station’s planned remaining lifetime. Each new unit weighs about 550 pounds (250 kilograms).
The total mass of the battery package, including the adapter plates, is around 3,013 pounds (1,367 kilograms), a NASA spokesperson said.
The next-generation batteries were assembled by Aerojet Rocketdyne with cells supplied by GS Yuasa Lithium Power Inc., a Roswell, Georgia-based subsidiary of GS Yuasa Corp. of Japan. GS Yuasa says it has lithium-ion battery cells on more than 120 government and commercial satellites, including the H-2B rocket and HTV cargo carrier slated to launch the station’s new batteries.
The HTV is the only cargo transporter that can carry a large number of battery units, according to JAXA.
There are 12 CubeSats inside the HTV cargo craft — seven with their launch arranged by JAXA and five by Houston-based NanoRacks — to be ejected into orbit outside the station’s Kibo lab in the coming months.
The CubeSats launched through an arrangement with NanoRacks include the 6-pound (3-kilogram) TechEdSat 5 spacecraft, a mission from NASA’s Ames Research Center to test out an “exo-brake” device to slow down and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.
NanoRacks’ allotment also includes four Lemur-2 CubeSats from Spire Global, a San Francisco company with a growing fleet of small satellites to track global shipping traffic and collect commercial weather data.
Here is a list of the CubeSats on Japan’s payload manifest, with descriptions offered by JAXA :
AOBA-Velox 3, from the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, will evaluate the performance of a pulsed plasma thruster
TuPOD, from the Italian company GAUSS, will attempt deployment of two daughter nanosatellites from Brazilian and U.S. builders
EGG, from the University of Tokyo, will test the inflation of a torus‐shaped aeroshell for a de-orbit demonstration
ITF-2, from the University of Tsukuba, will connect amateur radio users
STARS-C, from Shizuoka University, will attempt to extend a tether between two 1U CubeSats
FREEDOM, from Nakashimada Engineering Works Ltd. and Tohoku University, will deploy a “film-type” de-orbiting device
WASEDA-SAT 3, from Waseda University, will also deploy a “film-type” de-orbiting device and project an image onto the film surface using a micro-miniature projector
Once the HTV leaves the station Jan. 20, it will spend another week in orbit conducting an experiment that could lay the foundation for a mechanism to remove space junk from orbit.
The spaceship will unreel a nearly half-mile-long (700-meter) tether, made of strands of thin aluminum and stainless steel wire, once at a safe distance from the space station, and scientists will monitor the device’s deployment and behavior for about seven days.
Space debris experts say electrodynamic tethers like the one carried on Kounotori 6, which has a thin coating of lubricant to encourage electric conductivity, could offer a way to de-orbit derelict rocket stages and aging satellites without expending precious propellants.
The interaction between an electrodynamic tether and the Earth’s magnetic field should generate enough energy to change an object’s orbit, eventually allowing it to burn up in the atmosphere.
Japanese ground controllers will sever the tether after about a week to keep it from interfering with the HTV’s own destructive re-entry, which will be guided by conventional rocket thrusters in a de-orbit burn. The ship will dispose of several tons of space station waste and the decommissioned nickel-hydrogen batteries.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday.
Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.
While not particularly lucrative by industry standards, the contracts were valued for providing a foothold in Iraq at a time when oil companies are being shut out of energy-rich countries around the world. The companies will still be eligible to compete in open bidding in Iraq.
The six no-bid deals were for work to increase Iraqi oil production from existing oil fields by half a million barrels a day — the same amount by which OPEC countries agreed Tuesday to reduce output. After its cancellation of the deals, Iraq reduced by 200,000 barrels per day its goal of producing 2.9 million barrels per day by the end of the year.
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The deals would have been the first major oil contracts with the central government since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, though the Kurdistan region has separately signed more than 20 contracts.Farm-to-Bottle: Bring Small Grape Farmers into the Flourishing Wine Industry ONEArmenia Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 8, 2017 The wine industry in Armenia is flourishing, but small farmers are being left behind.
Historical Context Nestled alongside the Arpa river in the Vayots Dzor Province of Armenia is the now infamous Areni-1 cave, discovery site of the oldest winemaking facilities in the world, dating back over 6000 years. This nondescript hole in the cliff face was an extraordinary discovery for Armenians, archaeologists, historians, scientists and wine enthusiasts alike- or anyone interested in history, people or life. The grape seeds found in the vessels half buried in the floor of the cave were remnants of production and evidence of the ancient practice of winemaking in the region. In short- people living in this area of the world have been making wine for a long time. We can learn a lot from this discovery but let us focus on two main points: The land has produced wine grapes for millennia, the volcanic soil lends itself well to the practice. People have been producing wine here for millennia, there is a historical precedent for being winemakers. Today, many Armenians living in Vayots Dzor still grow grapes, but instead of producing wine, they sell their grapes to major wineries for approximately 50cents/ kilo. They make a profit, but they could significantly increase their income by selling wine made from the grapes they grow. Many farmers have an entrepreneurial spirit and desire to expand their production and from them we can expect great things, which is where our latest campaign comes in…
Farm-to-Bottle The wine industry in Armenia is growing quickly with Armenian wines gaining international recognition and awards. Grape growers in Vayots Dzor have the potential to establish themselves as major players in the industry, but there is a definite need for the initial investment to empower them to do so. ONEArmenia, in collaboration with Semina Consulting, will raise $61,515 to lay the groundwork for grape growers to create their own brands of wine and market them in Armenia and eventually on an international market. Within the scope of this project each farmer will receive: V iticultural Trainings: Semina Consulting together with EVN Wine Academy will teach the farmers the best practices of viticulture to ensure that their grapes are high quality and their vineyards are properly maintained. Growing grapes is one thing, growing high quality grapes requires more attention and expertise.
Semina Consulting together with EVN Wine Academy will teach the farmers the best practices of viticulture to ensure that their grapes are high quality and their vineyards are properly maintained. Growing grapes is one thing, growing high quality grapes requires more attention and expertise. Branding & Marketing Coaching: Semina Consulting will guide the farmers through the process of branding their products and marketing them. It isn’t as easy as slapping on a label- the brands will reflect each individual farmers’ tastes and vision.
Semina Consulting will guide the farmers through the process of branding their products and marketing them. It isn’t as easy as slapping on a label- the brands will reflect each individual farmers’ tastes and vision. A Wine Cube: A wine tasting room which will enable them to showcase their wine to tourists. For many small grape farmers beginning to sell their own wine, tasting rooms are where the majority of their sales will happen. Designed by DZ Architectural Design Studio, the Cubes will be elegant, beautiful and the perfect place for welcoming guests.
Our Partners Semina Consulting is a winery incubator whose mission is to develop and promote the wine industry in Armenia. Their experience mentoring many of the emerging brands of Armenian wine means that they know what works well, what doesn’t work and what the areas of opportunity are in the wine industry. They will donate their services for two years to the farmers selected for this project. Under Semina’s tutelage, the farmers will have the guidance and instruction they need to establish their own brands- because experience really is the best teacher. The Farmers The farmers will be carefully vetted to ensure that they are set up for success with this project. The two main criteria are that they: Own land and vineyards (approximately 1 hectare)- Owning already established vineyards means that the farmers will not be starting from scratch. They already have the vines needed to produce grapes that can be turned into wine, they just need the training to learn how to improve the quality. Exhibit a sense of entrepreneurship- Those farmers who are already looking to expand will be the ones best suited for this project. If they have bought additional land, planted more crops, tried various ways to increase production and are still looking for new ways to improve, they will be prepared to take on the challenge of producing, branding and marketing their own wine.
Wine Tourism The impact of this project, beyond the individual farmers and their families and communities, will be seen in the tourism industry. There are those who travel and drink wine and there are those that travel to drink wine. Both categories of travelers are welcome to Vayots Dzor. The Wine Cubes will help develop the infrastructure needed in the region to support regular tourism. With a concrete place to bring their clients, and a way to map out actual wine trails, tour agencies in Armenia can incorporate visits to the different vineyards and bring more tourists to the region. As more visitors come to Vayots Dzor there will be a higher demand for things like accommodation, food and other wares.The Greek god of thunder and lightning had Earthly beginnings, and scientists think they finally know where.
Ancient Greeks first worshipped the omnipotent Zeus at a remote altar on Mount Lykaion, a team of Greek and American archaeologists now think. During a recent dig at the site, the researchers found ceremonial goods commonly used in cult activity and dated at over three millennia old, making them the earliest known "appearance" of Zeus in Greece.
The discovery challenges the idea that Zeus worship began on the Greek island of Crete, which at least one classical historian names as the god's mythic birthplace. The latest finds on Mount Lykaion, in the mainland province of Arcadia, are as old as the idea of Zeus himself, said the project's senior research scientist David Romano, of the University of Pennsylvania.
"This new evidence strongly suggests that there were drinking (and perhaps feasting) parties taking place on the top of the mountain in the Late Helladic period, around 3,300 or 3,400 years ago," Romano said.
Worship of lightning god unbroken
Zeus is the most important figure in ancient Greek mythology. He is the supreme ruler of Mount Olympus, the god of the skies and the father of a slew of other deities and mortals, such as Athena, Apollo, Heracles, Aphrodite and Helen of Troy, say the legends.
The heroic figure was born on either the island of Crete or on Mount Lykaion, according to two competing accounts written in ancient times. While the myths are just that — stories — historians and archaeologists have always been interested in discovering what elements of the stories might be at least loosely based on fact.
Though temples to Zeus, including one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, are found throughout Greece, Zeus' mythic "birthplace" may actually be the spot where Greeks first started to worship him too, the new finds suggest.
Excavating a trench on Mount Lykaion, in an area which ancient Greek historians later called "the ash altar of Zeus," archaeologists found more than 50 drinking vessels, fragments of human and animal figurines, as well as burned sheep and goat bones. All of the artifacts are consistent with cult ceremonies of the Mycenaean people, who settled Greece approximately between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, historians say.
A portion of these finds were announced preliminarily by the research team last year.
Mycenaean mountain-top altars are very rare on mainland Greece, according to archaeologists. The period also coincides with the first historical mentions of the god Zeus in Greek texts, suggesting that the Mount Lykaion ceremonies were to honor the man himself.
The worship of Zeus, a god traditionally associated with mountains, became popular on Mount Lykaion during classic Greek antiquity, said the team, made up of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania, Arizona, and the Greek Archaeological Service.
Younger, higher levels of the trench have yielded silver coins, a bronze hand holding a lightning bolt and petrified lightning in past dig seasons. All are clear dedications to Zeus, indicating that the use of the god's altar on Mount Lykaion was likely unbroken for several millennia.
Myth and history
The connection between myth and history doesn't apply solely to ancient Greece. Many ancient cultures worshipped gods that had links to both the spirit and physical worlds.
Real-world spots mentioned in mythic or sacred texts often become places of worship or temple locations or, like Mount Lykaion, vice-versa. This especially applies to birthplaces or homes of the Gods, such as:
Heliopolis, Egypt: Though largely destroyed and swallowed by the sprawl of modern Cairo, the ancient city of Heliopolis was once the center of the Egyptians' worship of Ra, the all-important sun God. Ra died in the evening and was reborn every morning, according to legend, spending the night in a boat floating through the underworld.
Kilauea, Hawaii: This sacred volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii is both feared (it is the most active volcano on the planet) and revered as the home of Pele, Hawaii's fire Goddess. Tourists who disrespect Kilauea or take rocks from the mountain are thought to incur the wrath of Pele, who will curse those individuals with bad luck.
Teotihuacan, Mexico: The most important site of the pre-Columbian Aztecs and a major world city in its own right, Teotihuacan was also the ceremonial heart of the cult of the feathered-serpent Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec's creator god. It was at the site's temple where Quetzalcoatl first had plumes added to his reptilian body, according to Aztec myth.Party votes to support terminations in limited cases, such as pregnant women with fatal foetal abnormalities, in both Irish Republic and Northern Ireland
Sinn Féin has dropped its historic opposition to abortion at its annual congress held in Derry.
The party voted this weekend to support terminations in limited cases, such as pregnant women with fatal foetal abnormalities. This involves women whose babies will be born dead and who have to either go full term in Ireland or seek abortions across the Irish sea in Britain.
The policy switch will apply to both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.
Earlier on Saturday, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin president, said he was backing motions from delegates to support abortion in certain circumstances.
“I have listened very intently to testimony from parents dealing with fatal foetal abnormalities. We have to be very compassionate about this.
“Obviously, there are some women who want to continue with their pregnancy to full term and we need to support them, but there are others who feel they are not able to do that and we need to deal with both groups with the absolute maximum of support,” Adams said.
The party, which the Adams-led leadership in the past vetoed any major debate or policy change on abortion, also voted for the repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Irish constitution. The 8th Amendment, passed by a referendum back in 1983, gives the foetus and embryo even at conception full constitutional rights in Ireland.
However, Sinn Féin has not backed a pro-choice abortion stance advocated by hard left parties in the Irish parliament.
During the party’s Ard Fheis (annual conference), Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, tried to counter accusations from political rivals that while Sinn Féin opposed austerity cuts in the Irish Republic it was implementing the same austerity policies in the power sharing executive in Belfast.
McGuinness claimed that the Stormont House Agreement gained extra cash from the UK Treasury to cushion Northern Ireland against the effect of cuts to the region’s public sector.
“We need to be very clear about the alternative if the institutions had collapsed – instead of our locally elected and accountable assembly we would have had rule by British Tories and the imposition of Thatcherite policies that no one here voted for or wants,” he told party delegates.WASHINGTON — One of President-elect Donald Trump's first, and defining, acts next year could come on Republican legislation to cut off taxpayer money from Planned Parenthood.
Trump sent mixed signals during the campaign about the 100-year-old organization, which provides birth control, abortions and various women's health services. He said "millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood," but he also endorsed efforts to defund it.
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Trump once described himself as "very pro-choice." Now he's in the anti-abortion camp.
Still, the Republican has been steadfast in calling for repeal of President Barack Obama's health care law, and the GOP-led Congress is eager to comply. One of the first pieces of legislation will be a repeal measure that's paired with cutting off money for Planned Parenthood. While the GOP may delay the impact of scuttling the law for almost four years, denying Planned Parenthood roughly $400 million in Medicaid funds would take effect immediately.
"We've already shown what we believe with respect to funding of Planned Parenthood," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters last month. "Our position has not changed."
Legislation to both repeal the law and cut Planned Parenthood funds for services to low-income women moved through Congress along party lines last year. Obama vetoed it; Trump's win removes any obstacle.
Cutting off Planned Parenthood from taxpayer money is a long-sought dream of social conservatives, but it's a loser in the minds of some GOP strategists. Planned Parenthood is loathed by anti-abortion activists who are the backbone of the GOP coalition. Polls, however, show that the group is favorably viewed by a sizable majority of Americans — 59 percent in a Gallup survey last year, including more than one-third of Republicans.
"Defunding Planned Parenthood as one of their first acts in the New Year would be devastating for millions of families and a huge mistake by Republicans," said incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
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Democrats pledge to defend the group, and they point to the issue of birth control and women's health as helping them win Senate races in New Hampshire and Nevada this year. They argue that Trump would be leading off with a political loser. But if he were to have second thoughts and if the Planned Parenthood provision were to be dropped from the health law repeal, then social conservatives probably would erupt.
"They may well be able to succeed, but the women of America are going to know what that means," said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., citing reduced access to services Planned Parenthood clinics provide. "And we're going to call Republicans on the carpet for that."
At least one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, may oppose the effort. Collins has defended Planned Parenthood, saying it "provides important family planning, cancer screening, and basic preventive health care services to millions of women across the country." She voted against the health overhaul repeal last year as a result.
Continued opposition from Collins, which appears likely, would put the repeal measure on a knife's edge in the Senate, where Republicans will have a 52-48 majority next year. Senate GOP leaders could afford to lose just one other Republican.
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Anti-abortion conservatives have long tried to cut Planned Parenthood funds, arguing that reimbursements for nonabortion services such as gynecological exams help subsidize abortions. Though Planned Parenthood says it performed 324,000 abortions in 2014, the most recent year tallied, the vast majority of women seek out contraception, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and other services including cancer screenings.
The drive against Planned Parenthood picked up steam in 2015 after an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress released secretly-recorded videos that it claimed showed Planned Parenthood officials profiting from sales of fetal tissue for medical research. The measure, however, would strip Planned Parenthood's Medicaid funding for only a year, a step taken to give time for continued investigations of Planned Parenthood's activities. A House panel is still active, but investigations by 13 states have been concluded without charges of wrongdoing.
Planned Parenthood strongly denied the allegations and no wrongdoing was proved, but the group announced in October that it will no longer accept reimbursement for the costs involved in providing fetal tissue to researchers.
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The defunding measure would take away roughly $400 million in Medicaid money from the group in the year after enactment, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and would result in roughly 400,000 women losing access to care. One factor is that being enrolled in Medicaid doesn't guarantee access to a doctor, so women denied Medicaid services from Planned Parenthood may not be able to find replacement care.
Planned Parenthood says private contributions are way up since the election, but that they are not a permanent replacement for federal reimbursements. "We're going to fight like hell to make sure our doors stay open," said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Erica Sackin.
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Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president, once declared to the world: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals. In Iran, we don’t have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you we have it.” Ahmadinejad’s remarks at Columbia University were met with much laughter and criticism at the time. Ironically, however, his claim is not far from the truth. This narrative is reflective and representative of the state’s policies and practice that, in fact, do not support a homosexual “subject.” Conversely, despite how this subject is named, same-sex relationships have historically existed and continue to subsist/persist even in today’s toxic environment—though silenced and under-recognized. This is precisely because every cultural apparatus, from families to society to the government and judiciary, deny their sexual identity and human rights.
Human-rights campaigners report that over 4,000 members of sexual minorities have been executed since the ayatollahs seized power in 1979. However, it is estimated the number and frequency of executions is much higher due to the fact that queer Iranians are often condemned under the charges of rape, fraud, or treason in order to justify their criminality. These camouflaged charges appear to allow the Iranian government to conceal the punishment of queer citizens, thereby continuing to curtail sexual minorities’ rights to life and security as well as obscuring from reports the circumstances surrounding their executions.
The religious fundamentalism that characterizes the attitude of the Iranian judiciary toward homosexuality is longstanding. To contextualize the strict upholding of such judiciary practices one must first consider the ideology of the Islamic Republic as it is embodied in its religious and political leaders. Within months of the 1979 Iranian revolution, the birth date of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—then the highest-ranking political and religious authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and its supreme leader—called for homosexuals to be exterminated. They were to be understood as the “parasites and corruptors of the nation” who “spread the stains of wickedness.”
Makwan Moloudzadeh’s bitter trial and execution is testament to the harshness of this central tenet of regime ideology—one that Amnesty International deemed “a mockery of justice.” Makwan had been found guilty of multiple counts of anal rape, allegedly committed when he was only 13 years old. The alleged victims in his case withdrew their testimony, claiming to have lied under duress. Makwan also informed the court that his confession had been coerced, and pleaded not guilty. Most important, Makwan was only a minor and under Article 49 of the Iranian Penal Code, minors—“those who have not yet reached maturity [puberty] as defined by Islamic Law”—are exempt from criminal responsibility.
Nevertheless, according to Article 120 of the Penal Code, in cases of anal sex between men, the judge “can make his judgment according to his knowledge, which is obtained through conventional methods.” Accordingly, the judge relied on his discretionary powers under Article 120 to rule that Makwan could be tried as an adult. Both the seventh district criminal court of Kermanshah, and later the supreme court, found him guilty and ordered his execution.
Makwan was executed in Kermanshah’s central prison Dec. 5, 2007, “in the absence of medical evidence testifying to his state of maturity at the time of the crime,” and in spite of widespread international uproar. Makwan was invisible throughout the proceedings to those who turned on him, to the prosecutor, the executor, and, most significantly, to the society and the status quo that stood idly by and witnessed it all.
***
Despite the official pronouncements that deny or discount the existence of homosexuals in the Islamic Republic, the existence of legal sanctions, militia actions and relationships indicate that whatever the official pronouncements, thousands of Iranians clearly self-identify as what we would term “queers” (whatever labels they themselves dare use), while many others engage in consensual same-sex acts. There are, of course, no official statistics regarding the size of Iran’s queer population. They are visible in a number of Iran’s larger urban areas such as Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz. In the capital city, Tehran, for example, there are public and semipublic spaces known for being meeting places where Iranian queers may discreetly meet or gather. Some of these spaces, such as cafés and restaurants, are associated with the middle class or well-to-do, while others, including several well-known parks, are frequented by queers who have often been rejected by their families and are living on the fringes of society or are even homeless—particularly gay youth and men, as well as transgender individuals, who must resort to prostitution in order to afford basic needs.
Queer Iranians live in an atmosphere of uncertainty, peril, and pressure. There are various factors |
and Grand Central services with easier connections to Eurostar.
High Speed 2 [ edit ]
Eurostar has already been involved in reviewing and publishing reports into High Speed 2 for the British Government[222] and looks favourably upon such an undertaking. The operation of Regional Eurostar services will not be considered until such time as High Speed 2 has been completed.[217] Alternatively, future loans of the North of London sets to other operators would enable the trains to operate at their full speed, unlike GNER's previous loan between 2000 and 2005, where the trains were limited to 175 km/h (109 mph) on regular track. A separate company called High Speed Two (HS2) Ltd[223] has been set up to investigate the feasibility and viability of a new line likely serving a similar route to the West Coast Main Line.[224]
LGV Picardie [ edit ]
LGV Picardie is a proposed high-speed line between Paris and Calais via Amiens. By cutting off the corner of the LGV Nord at Lille, it would enable Eurostar trains to save 20 minutes on the journey between Paris and Calais, bringing the London–Paris journey time under 2 hours. In 2008 the French Government announced its future investment plans for new LGVs to be built up to 2020; LGV Picardie was not included but was listed as planned in the longer term.[225]
New destinations [ edit ]
Operational difficulties with cross-border trains [ edit ]
"We know we can go to most places in France physically, because our trains are compatible with French infrastructure, but then you've got to look at impact on fleet utilisation, you've got to have a station that's got the spare capacity to have a train stood for a number of hours, for all the security, screening, passport control passes. So it's not possible to go just anywhere. And you've got to be able to get the control authorities to agree that there's a big enough market for it to be worthwhile for them to set up there." Richard Brown, Chief Executive of Eurostar.[226]
The reduced journey times offered by the opening of High Speed 1[61] and the opening of the LGV Est and HSL-Zuid bring more continental destinations[227] within a range from London where rail is competitive with air travel. By Eurostar's estimates a train would then take 3 hours 30 minutes from London to Amsterdam.[228] At present Eurostar is concentrating on developing its connections with other services,[87][88] but direct services to other destinations would be possible. With the new e320 rolling stock allowed Eurostar to enter the Netherlands and possibly German in future. In additional with every new country Eurostar enters there are security issues, due to the UK's not having signed up to the Schengen Agreement,[93] which allows unrestricted movement across borders of member countries. For example on the current Amsterdam to London route it is only direct one way with people needing to get a train to Brussel to go through UK passport control. With the direct connection subjects to talks between the UK and Dutch governments set to be compete in 2020 for services to start.
The difficulties that Eurostar faces in expanding its services would also be faced by any potential competitors to Eurostar. As the UK is outside the Schengen Agreement, London-bound trains must use platforms that are physically isolated,[152] a constraint which other international operators such as Thalys do not face. In addition, the British authorities are required to make passenger security and passport checks before they board the train,[229] which might deter domestic passengers. Compounding the difficulties in providing a similar service are the Channel Tunnel safety rules, the major ones being the "half-train rule" and the "length rule". The "half-train rule" stipulated that passenger trains had to be able to split in the case of emergency.[50] Class 373 trains were designed as two half-sets, which when coupled form a complete train, enabling them to be split easily in the event of an emergency while in the tunnel, with the unaffected set able to be driven out. The half-train rule was finally abolished in May 2010. However, the "length rule", which states that passenger trains must be at least 375 metres long with a through corridor (to match the distance between the safety doors in the tunnel), was retained, preventing any potential operators from applying to run services with existing fleets (the majority of both TGV and ICE trains are only 200m long).[230]
French high-speed rail expansion [ edit ]
Eurostar expansion [ edit ]
At the same time as Pepy's announcement, Richard Brown announced that Eurostar's plans for expanding its network potentially included Amsterdam and Rotterdam as destinations, using the HSL Zuid line. This would require either equipment upgrades of the existing fleet, or a new fleet equipped for both ERTMS and the domestic signalling systems used by Nederlandse Spoorwegen.[231] Following the December 2009 opening of HSL Zuid, a London–Amsterdam journey is estimated to take 4 hr 16 min.[232]
In an interview with Eurostar's Chief Executive Nicolas Petrovic in the Financial Times in May 2012, an intention for Eurostar to serve ten new destinations was expressed, including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Cologne, Lyon, Marseille and Geneva, along with a likely second hub to be created in Brussels.[233][234]
In March 2016 in an interview with Bloomberg, Eurostar's Chief Executive expressed interest in operating a direct train service between London and Bordeaux, but not before 2019. Journey time was said to be around four and a half hours using the new LGV Sud Europe Atlantique.[235]
Southern France [ edit ]
In December 2012 Eurostar announced that on Saturdays during May 2013–June 2013 a new seasonal service would be introduced to Aix-en-Provence, also serving Lyon Part-Dieu and Avignon TGV on the way (the latter being 6 kilometres (4 miles) from central Avignon). This is in addition to the long-standing seasonal summer service on Saturdays during July and August and the first week of September travelling to Avignon Centre.[236] The Aix-en-Provence services did not run in 2014 but was replaced along with the seasonal Avignon Centre services with the new year-round service to Lyon and Marseille as of 1 May 2015.[162] In 2018, at least, direct services to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille ran only from May to September,[237][238] with connections during the rest of the year being offered via Eurostar but requiring a change to SNCF trains in Paris or Lille.[239] Travel time from London to Marseille was roughly 6.5 hours in 2018.[238]
Netherlands [ edit ]
The first Eurostar service from London after its arrival at Amsterdam Centraal, 4 April 2018
In September 2013, Eurostar announced an agreement with the Government of Netherlands and NS, the Dutch railway company to start twice daily services between London and Amsterdam Centraal; the launch was initially planned for December 2016. The service will use the newly bought Siemens Velaro trainsets and will also call at Brussels, and Rotterdam. The journey time will be around four hours.[240]
Trains will stop in Brussels for half an hour for a security check.[241] Passengers for London from Amsterdam and Rotterdam will undertake all security checks before boarding and will not need to get off in Brussels. The train will also convey passengers from the Netherlands on journeys to Brussels who will not need to pass through security and they will be allocated half the train which will be kept separate from the London-bound passengers by locking the intermediate door. The Brussels-bound half of the train will be security swept on arrival at Brussels before Brussels-to-London passengers can board.[242]
The journey from London to Amsterdam Centraal will take 3 hr 41 min and trains will call at Brussels Zuid/Midi and Rotterdam Centraal Station. From Amsterdam Centraal to London St Pancras, trains will take 4 hr 9 min to include the 28 minute stop at Brussels. Eurostar trains from London will also call at Antwerp Centraal and Schiphol Airport, although trains from Amsterdam will miss out Antwerp on the journey back to London.[243]
In November 2014, Eurostar announced the service to Amsterdam would start in "2016-2017", and would include a stop at Schiphol Airport in addition to the previously announced destinations. Eurostar have indicated that the calling pattern 'is not set in stone' and if a business case supports it the service might be extended to additional cities such as Utrecht.[244]
The service was finally planned to start running on 4 April 2018, with fare prices starting at £35 for a single ticket.[245] An "inaugural train" from St Pancras International to Amsterdam via Rotterdam broke a speed record for the journey to Brussels (1hr 46mins) on 20 February 2018.[245] The first regular service to Amsterdam left St Pancras at 08:31 on 4 April 2018.[246]
Competition [ edit ]
In 2010, international rail travel was liberalised by new European Union directives, designed to break up monopolies in order to encourage competition for services between countries.[247][248] This sparked interest among other companies in providing services in competition to Eurostar and new services to destinations beyond Paris and Brussels. The only rail carrier to formally propose and secure permission for such a service up to now is Deutsche Bahn, which intends to run services between London and Germany and the Netherlands. The sale of High Speed One by the British Government having effectively nationalised LCR in June 2009 is also likely to stimulate competition on the line.[249]
In March 2010, it was announced that Eurotunnel was in discussions with the Intergovernment Commission, which oversees the tunnel, with the aim of amending elements of the safety code governing the tunnel's usage. Most saliently, the requirement that trains be able to split within the tunnel and each part of the train be driven out to opposite ends has been removed. However, the proposal to allow shorter trains was not passed.[230] Eurotunnel Chairman & Chief Executive Jacques Gounon said that he hoped the liberalisation of rules would allow entry into the market of competitors such as Deutsche Bahn. Sources at Eurotunnel suggested that Deutsche Bahn could have entered the market at the timetable change in December 2012.[250] This, however, did not happen.
In July 2010 Deutsche Bahn (DB) announced that it intended to make a test run with a high-speed ICE-3MF train through the Channel Tunnel in October 2010 in preparation for possible future operations.[251] The trial ran on 19 October 2010 with a Class 406 ICE train specially liveried with a British "Union flag" decal. The train was then put on display for the press at St Pancras International. However, this is not the class of train that would be used for the proposed service. At the St Pancras ceremony, DB revealed that it planned to operate from London to Frankfurt and Amsterdam (two of the biggest air travel markets in Europe), with trains'splitting & joining' in Brussels. It hoped to begin these services in 2013 using Class 407 ICE units, with three trains per day each way—morning, midday and afternoon. Initially the only calling points would be Rotterdam on the way to Amsterdam, and Cologne on the way to Frankfurt. Amsterdam and Cologne would be under four hours from London, Frankfurt around five hours.[252] DB decided to put this on hold mainly due to advance passport check requirements. DB had hoped that immigration checks could be done on board, but British authorities required immigration and security checks to be done at Lille Europe station, taking at least 30 minutes.[100]
In August 2010, Trenitalia announced its desire to eventually run high-speed trains from Italy to the United Kingdom, using its newly ordered high-speed trains. The trains will be delivered from 2013.[253][clarification needed]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Brunhouse, Jay (1999). Traveling Europe's Trains. Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 1-56554-854-X.
Comfort, Nicholas (2007). The Channel Tunnel and its High Speed Links. Oakwood Press. ISBN 1-56554-854-X.
Grant, John (2008). The green marketing manifesto. John Wiley. ISBN 0-470-72324-6.
Griffiths, Jeanne (1995). London to Paris in Ten Minutes: The Eurostar Story. Images. ISBN 1-897817-47-9.
Mitchell, Vic (1996). Ashford: From Steam to Eurostar. Middleton Press. ISBN 1-873793-67-7.
Parliament: House of Commons Transport Committee (2008). Delivering a Sustainable Railway. The Stationery Office. ISBN 0-215-52222-2.
Penny, Charles (1996). Channel Tunnel Transport System. Thomas Telford. ISBN 0-7277-2515-7.
Pielow, Simon (1997). Eurostar. Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-2451-0.
Piggott, Reginald; Thompson, Matt (2012). Mile by Mile London to Paris: the entire railway journey by historic Golden Arrow and modern Eurostar mapped for the interested traveller. London: Aurum. ISBN 9781845137724.
Roza, Greg (2004). The Incredible Story of Trains. Rosen Publishing. ISBN 0-8239-6712-3.
Sievert, Terri (2002). The World's Fastest Trains. Capstone Press. ISBN 0-7368-1061-7.
Whiteside, Thomas (1962). The Tunnel under the Channel. Rupert Hart-Davis. ISBN 0-684-83243-7.
Wilson, Jeremy; Spick, Jerome (1994). Eurotunnel – The Illustrated Journey. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-255539-5.
Media related to Eurostar at Wikimedia CommonsJust days before he was scheduled for trial for allegedly punching and kicking his wife, and shoving her into a television at their Redondo Beach home, Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov pleaded no contest today to a domestic violence charge that will earn him 90 days in jail.
The misdemeanor conviction means the Russian hockey player can remain in the United States, but federal officials ultimately would control his status in the country. All state convictions can result in deportation, but decisions on visas and travel are up to the Department of Homeland Security.
Through a Russian interpreter, Voynov pleaded “no contest” to the misdemeanor count, which additionally will place him on three years probation, require him to complete a 52-session domestic violence counseling program, pay about $700 in fines, and attend eight hours of community service.
If he violates probation, he could serve up to 364 days in county jail.
Torrance Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor accepted the plea, which is treated the same as a guilty plea.
Voynov, who initially was charged with a felony that could have sent him to prison, can serve his 90 days in county jail, or at a local city jail, where he would have to pay. He must serve half his sentence before his release, but his ultimate service time would be up to the Sheriff’s Department because of overcrowding issues. If Voynov chooses a city jail, he possibly would serve more time than at the county jail.
“I think we were able to reach a fair dispotition that reflects the conduct, ensures protection of the victim as well as the community,” Deputy District Attorney Frank Dunnick said.
Voynov, accompanied by his wife, Marta Varlamova, declined to talk to reporters, who were headed off in a court hallway by his attorney, Pamela Mackey. Mackey and fellow defense attorney, Blair Berk, also had no statements.
Voynov’s representative, Rolland Hedges, released a statement “Voynov and his family are grateful that this matter is nearly at an end.”
“Mr. Voynov accepts responsibility for his actions the night of the incident and will complete his sentence as required by the court,” Hedges said. “Mr. Voynov and his wife believe that ending domestic violence both inside and outside of professional sports must be a high priority. They fully support that goal and from the time of the incident Mr. Voynov has been and remains fully committed to long-term therapy and counseling, individually and with his family.”
After charges were filed in November, Voynov, 25, pleaded not guilty to the felony domestic violence count that accused him of causing great bodily injury to his wife during an argument in their Avenue C home Oct. 19. Varlamova required eight stitches for a 1 1/2-inch gash above her left eye. Voynov’s attorney at the time, Craig Renetzky, said the injury resulted from accident.
Redondo Beach police arrested Voynov early Oct. 20 at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center. The National Hockey League immediately suspended him.
Testimony and court documents during the lead-up to next week’s scheduled trial revealed Voynov allegedly punched his wife at a Kings team Halloween party in Manhattan Beach, then kicked and choked her at home. He allegedly pushed her into the corner of a flat-screen television in their bedroom, causing the gash.
For months the case focused on Varlamova’s refusal to testify against her husband, and whether statements she made to police and nurses could be used during the trial. Varlamova told police and nurses that it was not the first time that Voynov hit her.
Dunnick, who at least twice wanted to put Varlamova on the witness stand during pre-trial proceedings, declined to say if Varlamova’s refusal resulted in the plea deal.
“It’s not uncommon for cases of domestic violence to encounter victims who are uncomfortable frotable with the notion of testifying,” Dunnick said. “We were able to reach a fair dispostition, something that reflected the conduct and was basically fair across the board to what we would give other defendants.”
In court documents, attorneys said Varlamova did not want details of her marriage to become public.
In recent days, Voynov’s attorneys met with prosecutors to come to an agreement reducing the case to a misdemeanor that would allow him to resume his career. All defendants, whether citizens or not, who are convicted in any case, are told they potentially could be deported if they are not citizens.
Although they did not comment, Voynov’s attorneys would not have agreed to any deal that resulted in a deportation.
Voynov, who must surrender to jail on July 14, might not be able to resume his career immediately when he has served his time. Besides his league suspension, Voynov also was recently suspended by the team for what was described as an “off-ice injury.” Voynov tore an Achilles tendon during the season and appeared in court with a white cast on one leg.
His employer issued a statement saying “the legal system has effectively resolved this matter and the punishment is fair and just.”
“Any act of domestic violence is unacceptable. As an organization, the prevention of domestic violence and the education of our players and employees is of paramount importance. We will continue to actively develop and implement a strategy to deliver this message. We remain steadfast in our support of the National Hockey League as they now begin their own investigative process. Until that is complete we will withhold further comment.”
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said the league was aware of the court developments and Voynov’s status remained unchanged.
“At an appropriate time, I am sure we will be in touch with Mr. Voynov and the NHLPA with respect to next steps regarding the League’s review and further handling of the events at issue.” Daily said.When avid hunter Jeff McDonald donned his hunting attire and headed out to spend some time in nature, looking for deer in woods near his Manning home, the last thing he expected was to be attacked by a naked man claiming to be Bigfoot.
Having walked a little way down the path he knew so well, McDonald saw a figure on the horizon which looked like a person dressed in tan clothing.
As he told reporters, according to OregonLive.com, “I thought, ‘Man, that is really crazy for someone to be up here in deer season, to be wearing basically buck-skin-colored clothes. I was armed with a high-powered rifle. I thought he’s probably not going to do anything.”
When the strange-looking man approached McDonald, he asked him who he was. The man responded by saying his name was Linus Norgren and added that “he was a Sasquatch from a family of Sasquatches.”
McDonald wanted to keep things calm with Norgen, saying to him, “I attempted to talk to him like it was someone with clothes on.”
However, some seconds later, according to McDonald, the naked man approached him and hit him in the head with a rock, which sent the hunter to the ground, unconscious.
The next thing he remembered was waking up with Norgen on top of him, strangling him while grunting and growling.
McDonald was able to free himself from the situation with considerable effort, as he asked Norgen,”Why are you trying to kill me?” to which he replied, “Sasquatch kills the hunter.”
In court, jurors rejected the self-defense theory and found Norgren guilty of attempted murder and three counts of second-degree assault, even though he was acquitted of first-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon.
Norgren, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, will undergo psychiatric evaluation while in custody.Image caption Qasab was found guilty of mass murder
The high court in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) has upheld the death penalty for the sole surviving gunman of the deadly 2008 assault on the city.
Rejecting his appeal against the sentence, the judges said Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab was guilty of waging war against India, multiple murder and conspiracy.
Qasab was given the death sentence by a lower court in May last year.
More than 170 people died when Qasab and nine others attacked the city.
The Bombay High Court in Mumbai said Qasab had the right to appeal to India's Supreme Court and that he would be given legal aid if he chose to appeal.
"The case was of extreme brutality. The crime was enormous and pre-planned. It was a threat to society," judges Ranjana Desai and Ranjit More said in their order explaining the reasons for upholding the death penalty.
'No remorse'
The court said Qasab was "responsible for the murder of seven people directly and more than 66 people with an accomplice". He was involved in the killings of "the rest by conspiracy".
"Qasab killed innocent people, including women and children, mercilessly. He never showed any remorse," the judges said.
Qasab heard the court order through a video link from the Arthur Road prison where he is kept under tight security.
He wore a white jail uniform and smiled throughout the court proceedings, reports the BBC's Prachi Pinglay.
The court also upheld the trial court's order acquitting two Indians, Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, accused of playing a role in the attacks.
Ten gunmen attacked Mumbai on 26 November 2008. All of them except Qasab were killed during the attacks.
The 60-hour siege targeted luxury hotels, the main railway station and a Jewish cultural centre.
Qasab and an accomplice carried out the assault on the railway station, killing 52 people.
The attacks soured ties between India and Pakistan with India blaming Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for attacks.
After initial denials, Pakistan acknowledged that the Mumbai attacks had been partially planned on its territory and that Qasab was a Pakistani citizen.
But despite charging seven people in connection with the attacks, the Pakistani authorities have yet to convict anyone.
Relations with India have been slowly improving and earlier this month the two countries announced resumption of peace talks.Getty Images
Basketball fans looking for a fix this summer can take in the Big 3, a three-on-three competition full of retired players headed by rapper Ice Cube and former Raiders executive Amy Trask.
Football fans may have a similar option next summer, if tonight’s test goes well.
According to Sal Pizarro of the Bay Area News Group, former stars including Terrell Owens and Michael Vick will be among the players involved in tonight’s game of the American Flag Football League in San Jose.
The group plans to play a full schedule next year, but tonight’s game is their version of a preseason game, to work out the kinks of the game and the broadcasting.
“When I think about football in the future for guys who want to further their career, this could be an opportunity for them,” Vick said in a video posted on the AFFL’s Facebook page. “They could get enjoyment and fulfillment out of the flag league. I just wanted to be one of the first pioneers being involved.”
Former 49ers quarterback Jeff Garcia will be there as well, providing color commentary.
If nothing else, it’s an outlet for former players, and something to fill time during the slowest month of the calendar in sports. And hopefully, no one gets hurt, as a couple of guys did during the Big 3 debut Saturday night.Members of the scientific community, environmental advocates, and supporters demonstrate Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017, in Boston, to call attention to what they say are the increasing threats to science and scientific research under the administration of President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
BOSTON (AP) — Hundreds of scientists, environmental advocates and their supporters held a rally in Boston on Sunday to protest what they see as increasing threats to science and research in the U.S.
The scientists, some dressed in white lab coats, called on President Donald Trump's administration to recognize evidence of climate change and take action on various environmental issues.
Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies renewable energy solutions to climate change, said scientists are responding to the Trump administration's "anti-science rhetoric."
"We're really trying to send a message today to Mr. Trump that America runs on science, science is the backbone of our prosperity and progress," Supran said.
The "Rally to Stand Up for Science" in Boston's Copley Square was held outside of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, one of the first major gatherings of scientists since Trump was elected in November.
Protesters held signs that read "Science Matters," ''Scientists Pursuing Truth, Saving the World" and "Make America Smart Again."
Some of those who turned out criticized Trump's appointment of Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency over the objections of environmental groups.
During six years as the attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt filed 14 lawsuits challenging EPA regulations. He previously expressed skepticism about scientific evidence showing the planet is heating up and that humans are to blame. However, during his Senate confirmation hearing last month, he said he disagreed with Trump's past statements that global warming is a hoax.
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For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.West Seattle bicycle rider Al survived a frightening collision with a semi-truck/trailer on Thursday – and it’s all on video, recorded by his helmet cam. He asked if we would share it here as, at the very least, a reminder of why it’s important to be aware of everyone and everything on the road – it can be a matter of life and death. It happened as he was riding southbound on East Marginal Way near its turn into Alaskan Way, as he headed back to West Seattle after yesterday’s Mariners game. WARNING: LOTS OF PROFANITY – the video is not edited and so, Al says, “A word of warning…If you don’t want to hear a bunch of words and phrases most parents don’t teach their children, hit the ‘mute’ button.” You have lots of time once you hit “play,” as the truck does not come into view until almost a minute into the video, and the collision happens shortly thereafter. Al adds, “I was very lucky and I’m okay (a scratch on my left elbow and thigh), my bike was mended (rode straight to Alki Bike with a rubbing I couldn’t find).” He says the crash was reported to police and that Port of Seattle PD took a report. East Marginal Way S. was in the spotlight in 2013 after a deadly crash (less than a mile south of Al’s incident), and is one of the “multimodal corridors” that SDOT is currently studying for safety improvements.What would a real-world place like New York City look like as an 8-bit video game map?
I started wondering, so I created 8-Bit NYC, mixing the lo-fi overhead world maps of 1980s role-playing and adventure games with the kind of geographical data that drives today's web maps and GPS navigation. It's interactive (like Google Maps), letting you zoom from a view of the whole city, down to an individual street -- any address, anywhere in the city. Here are a few highlights: Central Park, Greenwich Village, World Trade Center. Now I want to expand to more cities! And I'm asking you to help me: this project is to fund the addition of 15 new 8-bit city maps. The money will be used to cover the web hosting costs (server, disk space, bandwidth, etc.) and the initial computing time needed for drawing the maps (purchased using Amazon EC2).
Here's how the city selection will work. I will create maps of the 8 cities listed below. The other 7 cities will be selected by YOU. All project backers will vote for their favorite cities, and I will make maps of the top 7 vote-getters.
The 8 "reserved" cities will be:
- San Francisco - Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - Washington D.C. - Seattle - London - Paris
As I create each map, I'll post project updates with highlight pictures of each city.
I hope that these maps will evoke the same urge for exploration and abstract sense of scale that many of us remember experiencing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Commodore 64, or any other number of 8-bit microcomputers. Maps offer us visual architectures of the world, encouraging us to think about and interact with space in particularly constrained ways. Let's set out on an 8-bit quest!
P.S. This project uses map data from the excellent OpenStreetMap, a community-managed, wiki-like map of the world. Check it out and contribute to your city!The event promises to include "fun on-bike safety activities and games" starting at 10 a.m. Saturday. View Full Caption Shutterstock
CHICAGO — City transportation and park officials will host a free workshop aimed at educating and energizing the next generation of cyclists.
Families with kids 13 and younger are invited to join the transportation department's Bicycling Ambassadors Safety Clinic at the Oriole Park basketball court, 5430 N. Olcott Ave., in the Norwood Park neighborhood on Saturday.
The event, which runs from 10 a.m -noon, won't be all about instruction. Organizers promise fun bike safety activities and games including an obstacle course, according to Oriole Park Advisory Council event chairwoman Kristine Schnoes.
Kids will also be given American flag-colored streamers and pinwheels to decorate their bikes in advance of the Independence Day Children's Bike Parade, which steps off from the park at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Schnoes said.
The council will also sell candy, bottled water and Gatorade at the event, she said. Organizers will sell $1 raffle tickets for the chance to win a gift basket full of bicycle accessories.At the beginning of the week, we prepared to block families visiting Hamas prisoners at Shata Prison, yet the closure imposed on the territories by the IDF prevented their arrival and our rally was called off. However, even before we managed to protest, some people were asking: “Why collective punishment?”; others charged that we “disrupt negotiations.”
Yet no negotiations are taking place at this time. What we have is silence, and the only thing moving forward is Gilad Shalit’s time in prison. Hamas’ response to the latest Israeli offer is negative, even if it was not provided officially. Hence, we must go back to protests.
Renewed Efforts New campaign: Gilad Shalit becoming Ron Arad Ynet (Video) Family of abducted IDF soldier launch campaign 'No time to waste' after meeting UN secretary-general. Meeting with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights due this week New campaign: Gilad Shalit becoming Ron Arad
We must worsen the imprisonment conditions of prisoners and declare there will be no family visits. No newspapers, no money, no phones, no television, and no visits. Darkness. We must prevent the transfer of fuel, electricity, and food to Gaza through Israel. Yes, a collective punishment until the Israeli soldier is released. This will also serve as deterrence against more abductions.
It appears this is the only means left at our disposal – only collective punishment. We tried the path of war, where hundreds of people were killed, including children. Yet this had no effect on Hamas’ killers. They will continue to hide behind innocents and inside hospitals. We must not punish hospitals or children, but we need to punish the prisoners who murdered whole families without letting our humanitarian side defeat us, because these are the last measures we haven’t tried yet. They are also better than war, as they don’t kill.
Scare and deter
At the same time, it’s clear that securing the abducted soldier’s release will eventually include the release of these murderers. The names are the same, and the dangers will not disappear even if they remain in prison. The murderers are everywhere, not necessarily in prison. An example of this is the murderer of staff sergeant Ihab Khatib, a “normative person” who was not in jail and was not released from it with “blood on his hands.” He demonstrates the existence of other murderers who are waiting to act and kill us, even though they were not prisoners in the past. However, Khatib’s killer must know which conditions await him at the Israeli prison.
Hence, detainment in Israel must aim to scare and deter; deterrence that is also premised on the IDF’s ability to abduct their leaders should they continue to encourage abduction and murder attempts.
Collective punishment is not something easy for me, especially when it entails starving the Gaza population. Yet when an Israel soldier remains in captivity for close to four years, without any Red Cross visits and of course without any family visits, such punishment becomes just and moral. We must try all these measures, until Gilad the soldier is back at his parents’ home, with us here in Israel.Hey Exiles,
It's that time of the year once again! E3 2015 has come and gone, and the gaming world has been flooded with big news from all over the globe. And we are no exception to that, as we have a huge helping of items ourselves to share with you!
The Bard's Tale IV – Just over 2 weeks left!
As some of you might have heard, the team behind Wasteland 2 has also been running a Kickstarter campaign for The Bard's Tale IV. We've fully funded the project thanks to the support of nearly 30,000 backers, but are looking to make this the epic scale game that you have come to expect from us! With only two weeks left on our campaign, we want to close in a big way.
If you haven't seen The Bard's Tale IV footage, you must check it out!
We say it all the time, but we mean it: our games would not happen without your incredible support. And we want to reward your generosity in the past by offering a special promotion for all of our returning backers.
Today we are happy to roll out an inXile Loyalty Rewards promotion! Anyone who backed Wasteland 2 or Torment: Tides of Numenera previously, who also backs The Bard's Tale IV at $20 or above, will get a FREE bonus reward containing items from either Torment, Wasteland 2 or The Bard's Tale IV (valued at up to $15)! These rewards include items such as digital soundtracks, novella compilations, concept art books and more.
Furthermore, any returning backers who back The Bard's Tale IV at the $33 tier or higher will additionally receive FREE copies of Ultima Underworld 1 & 2, from GOG.com and our friends at OtherSide Entertainment. This offer is only available until June 26th. If you are a returning backer and have already backed The Bard's Tale IV – and if you did, thank you! – the loyalty reward is also retroactive for you as well.
Simply back The Bard's Tale IV on Kickstarter using the same account you did previously in our system. We'll contact you after the Kickstarter campaign concludes so you can make your selection. For more details and the full roster of options available, please visit this page.
Of course, this is independent of our other special offer: all backers of The Bard's Tale IV at $20 and up, whether they've backed us before or not, will be getting a free copy of the Bard's Tale I-III Trilogy, letting everyone experience the original games that started it all.
We are very cognizant of how many emails you get each day so we promise not to update on the Bard’s Tale Kickstarter campaign again. Supporting inXile with each of our endeavors allows us to bring you a certain style of RPG that we know you love.
So, we invite you to join us to hail the Bard’s return!
And now for something fun: Gavin/Miracle of Sound did a great rendition of "Money for Nothing", with his own RPG-themed take on it that we think will resonate with a lot of you. Take a look!
Featuring lyrics by Nathan Long, writer on Wasteland 2 and The Bard's Tale IV!
Wasteland 2 Director's Cut
Many of you are familiar with our previously announced Game of the Year Edition update for Wasteland 2. Today, we are happy to share with you that Wasteland 2 Game of the Year Edition will henceforth be known as Wasteland 2 Director's Cut. And to commemorate this occasion, we have a brand-new trailer to share with you, featuring all-new footage taken directly from the Director's Cut!
Why the change? We feel that this new title more accurately reflects the contents of the update. Rather than just being a repackaging of the same old content, the Director's Cut name indicates the sheer scope of the changes involved. With many all-new features that you have requested, overhauled graphics, an upgrade to a new game engine, and tons of new recorded |
definitive conclusions as to the true cause.While thewas sinking, Jessop and other passengers were nearly killed by the boat's propellers that were sucking lifeboats under the stern. Jessop had to jump out of her lifeboat and received a traumatic head injury, but survived despite her injuries.In her memoirs, she described the scene she witnessed as the Britannic went under:After the war, Jessop continued to work for the White Star Line, before joining the Red Star Line and then the Royal Mail Line again. During her tenure with Red Star, Jessop went on two around the world cruises on that company's largest ship, the Belgenland. In her late 30s, Jessop had a brief marriage, and in 1950 she retired to Great Ashfield, Suffolk.Years after her retirement, Jessop claimed to have received a telephone call, on a stormy night, from a woman who asked Jessop if she saved a baby on the night that the Titanic sank. "Yes," Jessop replied. The voice then said "I was that baby," laughed, and hung up. Her friend and biographer John Maxtone-Graham said it was most likely some children in the village playing a joke on her. She replied, "No, John, I had never told that story to anyone before I told you now." Records indicate that the only baby on boat 16 was Assad Thomas, who was handed to Edwina Troutt, and later reunited with his mother on the Carpathia.Jessop, often winkingly called "Miss Unsinkable", died of congestive heart failure in 1971 at the age of 83.UFO Interactive's fourth eShop game is their best yet.
UFO Interactive is one of the most prolific 3DS eShop developers; Balloon Pop Remix is their fourth release in the past year alone. Most of those games were middling affairs, but it seems like UFO cracked some sort of code with Balloon Pop Remix, a well-made puzzle game that offers a solid portable experience.
The game is a weird cross between the Bejeweled and Puyo Puyo puzzle archetypes. You’re presented with a grid of balloons on the touch screen, and you have to pop groups of two or more balloons to then set up combos of three or more balloons of the same color. To complicate things, you use mana to power your balloon popping, and regain mana by accruing balloon combos.
Foresight and skill is required to set up most combos, but sometimes you’ll slip into a particularly lucky string where everything falls into place. When you pop or combo balloons, more fall into place, thus making any combo after three or four a random affair. It’s still rewarding when you see the combos soar, though. Items and concepts are also continually introduced through the story mode, giving the game even more depth.
The plot of the story mode, presented in a few cut scenes that really pop in 3D, revolves around an alien who crashes his ship and has to regain the parts (think Pikmin, but with balloons instead of cute creatures). You need to keep your mana higher in this mode because it is split up into three categories: run, walk, and stand. You want to keep your character moving so you can progress through the level, and you can’t do that when your mana is in the “walk” position.
There is also Endless Mode and Puzzle Mode, but neither one is that engaging. In Endless Mode, you shoot for high scores; Puzzle Mode gives you limited groupings of balloons, and tasks you with wiping out the entire screen by strategically popping balloons. There are also a few mini-games, such as one where you have to drag colored balloons into the correct colored area, but none of those are interesting for longer than a few minutes.
The highlight of the game, for me, was the 3D effect. As previously stated, the cut scenes feature a wonderful 3D effect. While the gameplay is primarily on the touch screen, I had the occasional awesome sensation where, out of my periphery vision, it seemed like the game was throwing something at me from the top screen.
Balloon Pop Remix won’t supplant the Tetrises and the Dr. Marios of the world, but it’s a fine puzzle game that presents a complete package on the eShop."On the Republican side, what we’re hearing is truly scary. When Donald Trump talks casually about using torture and allowing more countries to get nuclear weapons, or when Ted Cruz calls for treating American Muslims like criminals and racially profiling Muslim neighborhoods, that doesn’t make them sound strong. It makes them sound in over their heads. You know, loose cannons tend to misfire, and in a dangerous world, that’s not a gamble we can afford," Clinton said.
Jasmine Schoemberger and Elisa Pavanello, two roommates from Queens, both said foreign-policy experience is high up on their list of priorities in the 2016 race.
"She has a strong foreign-policy record and it's very important right now in this unstable world," said Schoemberger, a student.
Schoemberger said the fact that Clinton is a woman wasn't the most important factor. But Pavanello said it was "very important."
"She would be the first Madam President in the U.S., so it's a big thing," Pavanello, an intern at the United Nations, said.
Vy Higginsen, a lifelong Harlem resident, author, playwright, producer, and radio host, echoed this sentiment.
"It's important to me as a woman. I'm a person that has had a lot of firsts... I know how hard it is to break down the barriers, I know what it takes to get through the door and stay there. I have to respect her resilience, her commitment, and her experience to deliver not just words but actions," Higginsen said.
Lilli Petersen contributed reporting from New York.Although she has many progressive platforms, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's position on gay adoption is not as easy to decipher. It's not that she's flip-flopped on issues — rather, because she has been in politics, wearing many hats during various federal and state administrations, Clinton has carefully chosen when and to whom to speak to when it comes to LGBT rights, adoption included, by highlighting and downplaying them given whatever race she's running. However, since launching a second bid for president, Clinton has decidedly made LGBT issues one of the main focused of her primary campaign to win the Democratic nomination. Adoption, it seems, was bound to come up.
When it comes to gay couples and adoption, the topic seems to be snuggled in with Clinton's overall support for "full federal equality " of LGBT Americans, as outlined on her official campaign website. According to The Advocate, when she spoke to the Human Rights Campaign in October, she seemed to be moving from what they called "tepidly tolerant" to full on activist. Clinton told the outlet that she was running "to stand up for the fundamental rights of LGBT Americans, and all Americans" and "enforcing" basic civil and human rights for LGBT Americans, and all Americans. That's more than most of the current headliners of the Republican party seem to be offering the LGBT community, but it's still vague and open to interpretation.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images News/Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks about human rights during a event co-hosted by the Department of State, and Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA), at the State Department on June 27, 2011 in Washington, DC. During the event Secretary Clinton was presented with the GLIFAA Equality Award. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Still, things weren't always this way. Last October, when Clinton's emails were released to the public, the LGBT community was dismayed to learn that in 2010 Clinton opposed a pretty simple change to the State Department's policy about listing parents on passports. The legislation, which never passed, would have allowed same-sex parents to list their relationship to children as Parent 1 and Parent 2.
Clinton wrote to her staff, in 2010, that she "could live" with "letting people in nontraditional families choose another descriptor so long as we retained the presumption of mother and father." In fairness, she was prescient as a savvy politician, noting in the same email that without these traditional gender roles, they would face backlash from conservative leaders and "a huge Fox-generated media storm led by Palin et al."
MarcinCalifornia on YouTube
But that attention to minor details about what would ruffle certain feathers just doesn't fly with a real activist agenda concerning overall, full federal equality for everyone.
In her current primary run, Clinton has turned up the volume on her position for LGBT rights and issues. She is in support of marriage equality, protecting transgender rights, anti-discrimination legislation, and even tapping Republicans to extend Medicaid coverage for treatment and health care to people living with HIV and AIDs, according to her website. Her official platform includes capping costs for PrEP and HIV medications.
Given her current platform on equality and federal protection, Clinton seems to be taking a stance that would support and uphold the rights of any couple to adopt. But her ability to transform, if not change her positions and get her history wrong is worth noting for wary voters. Especially LGBT voters thinking about starting a family that would be protected by the government anytime soon. Basic gist? Feel free to applaud her efforts, but don't be afraid to keep a keen eye on what's happening when nobody's looking.Image: Flickr/eFile989. Composition: Author
Monero is a cryptocurrency that aims to be more anonymous than Bitcoin, and has become a recent favorite of the online drug trade. Unlike Bitcoin transactions, Monero trades aren't plainly viewable on a public ledger. But to purchase Monero, you may have to first use Bitcoin, leaving a clear digital trail.
What if you could buy Monero offline, with cash, in a public place like a library or a restaurant? That would make Monero transactions much more anonymous, save for the person you're meeting.
A new site called LocalMonero—its launch was announced on Friday on Reddit—facilitates these types of transactions between people all over the world. While the site's founders are based in Hong Kong, listings offering Monero for cash from all over Canada, the US, the UK, and the United Arab Emirates, have already popped up on the site. The site also allows users to use bank transfers or other payment methods, if they wish.
Read More: Meet Monero, the Currency Dark Net Dealers Hope Is More Anonymous Than Bitcoin
LocalMonero is inspired by the long-running site LocalBitcoins, which also facilitates cash transactions for Bitcoin. However, LocalBitcoins tracks visitors' IP addresses, which can reveal their location, and requires an email for sign-up. Other methods of trading Monero, such as on a cryptocurrency exchange, may require you to reveal your identity. According to one of LocalMonero's founders, whom I interviewed via encrypted chat and who goes by "Alex," their site does none of this.
"Monero's defining feature is privacy, so going through ID/address verification kind of nullifies the point of using Monero unless you're just using it as a speculative asset," Alex wrote to me. "There's no point for us to collect more information than we need to run the platform. And Monero users will value that more than most."
When Monero is mentioned, drug markets on the darknet aren't far behind. This is because of its privacy-boosting features. There is a public blockchain, but transactions are obfuscated. One-time addresses are the default for transactions and newly sent funds are mixed in with old ones to hide their origin. It's worth noting that researchers have claimed that it's possible to de-anonymize some Monero transactions. Last year, AlphaBay, one of the biggest drug markets at the time added Monero as a payment option.
Several people in the US have been charged or pleaded guilty this year alone for selling large volumes of Bitcoin in person
Alex said that he doesn't want LocalMonero, and Monero itself, to be associated with crime. He simply believes that Monero is better than Bitcoin and that a local option to buy the currency was needed since Bitcoin already has one. Monero could be used for "literally everything money is used for today," he wrote.
The LocalMonero site encourages users to stay on the level, legally speaking. Its terms of service admonish users living in regions where selling large amounts of cryptocurrencies offline may be considered a crime, such as New York State in the US, and Hong Kong. Several people in the US have been charged or pleaded guilty this year alone for selling large volumes of Bitcoin in person (The LocalMonero team is based in Hong Kong, Alex said, but it discourages local trades there and its servers are based outside of the region, but Alex didn't elaborate on where.)
While Alex and the rest of the LocalMonero team are currently anonymous, if the site takes off, they will reveal their identities, he said.
"We're not trying to be a shady platform for darknet market vendors to cash out," Alex wrote to me. "We intend to be mainstream. And for us to be respected [in the] mainstream we understand that we can't be anonymous."
But, like most things in the world of cryptocurrencies, there's always the chance that the whole endeavor could go belly-up, even if the reasons why aren't immediately apparent. "If, however, for whatever reason the business fails—we don't intend to de-anonymize," Alex wrote.
In that case, the LocalMonero founders will simply fade back into the ether, like a Monero transaction conducted with cash.
Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.* Study finds immigrants pay billions more than they use
* Immigration policy changes could deplete program-researchers
* Immigrants generated $13.8 bln surplus in 2009
By Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) - Immigrants for years have paid far more into Medicare's coffers than they have pulled out, effectively subsidizing rising healthcare payments to the aging U.S. population, a study released on Wednesday showed.
The analysis from Harvard Medical School showed immigrants generated a $13.8 billion surplus for the U.S. government healthcare program for the elderly in 2009, the most recent figures available.
From 2002 through 2009 immigrants posted a Medicare surplus of $115 billion, while the American-born population logged a deficit of $28 billion in contributions.
The Harvard study was posted in the June issue of the medical journal "Health Affairs." It counters impressions that immigrants put a strain on healthcare resources.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in February showed that more than half of U.S. citizens think most unauthorized immigrants should be deported. Opponents said the immigrants take Americans' jobs, drive down wages, and are a drain on benefits.
Researchers did not break down the Medicare contributions or use by legal and illegal immigrants and noted that the study may undercount contributions from so-called undocumented workers.
The Harvard researchers said their analysis offers the first look at immigrants' contributions to Medicare and thus the potential impact any changes to U.S. immigration policies could have on the nation's healthcare funding.
"Policies that reduce immigration would almost certainly weaken Medicare's financial health, while an increasing flow of immigrants might bolster its sustainability," they wrote.
U.S. officials estimate that funds for the insurance program will run out in 2024 as health costs for aging Americans surpass revenues. Immigrants, for now, are paying heavily into a system they are not yet using, the analysis said.
Immigrants are more likely to be younger and of working age than the U.S.-born Americans who make up the bulk of those aged 65 and older and are thus eligible for the Medicare program, which is funded through workers' payroll taxes.
Some immigrants might retire to their home country, or simply have less access to care, researchers said.
The analysis comes as lawmakers in Congress consider legislation to revamp the nation's immigration policy.
The legislation includes addressing the roughly 11 million immigrants now in the country illegally but also how to structure legal immigration, including rising demand for workers at technology companies.
The researchers said the results support the argument that immigrants are a key component to sustaining popular government benefits like Medicare.
The bipartisan plan moving through the Senate includes a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States to transition to legal residency and then obtain permanent resident status.
Critics of such a "pathway" say it would reward those who come into the country illegally and add to the burden on the government, which is already struggling to find its financial footing.
The Harvard-led team said the pathway would have a dual impact on Medicare funding: in the short-term it would likely boost payroll tax collections from working immigrants, but over time it could also increase the number of immigrants eligible for Medicare and thus the cost of the program.Account login services that implement applications from Google, Facebook, and other commercial providers are prone to flaws that allow adversaries unauthorized access to private user profiles on the third-party Websites that use them, a team of computer scientists has concluded.
Their 10-month study found that many SSO, or single sign-on, services supplied by IdPs or ID Providers including Google, Facebook, and PayPal weren't properly integrated into Websites that used the services. As a result, private data on RP, or relying party, sites belonging to Farmville, Freelancer, Nasdaq, Sears, JanRain, and other sites were all vulnerable to snoops.
"The result shows that these prominent web SSO systems contain serious logic flaws that make it completely realistic for an unauthorized party to log into their customers' accounts," the scientists wrote in a research paper (PDF) scheduled to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May. "These flaws are also found to be diverse, distributed across the code of [third-party Websites] and [SSO providers], and at the stages of login and account linking."
The researchers reported the vulnerabilities to parties responsible for the code and in the vast majority of cases, those parties have already implemented fixes. But in an email, XiaoFeng Wang, an associate professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University and one of the report's coauthors, wrote: "We strongly believe that given the complexity of web SSO service integration, particularly the coordination between RP and IdP, other web SSO systems can also be error-prone."
SSO services have grown in popularity with the increased use of social networking. Part of its appeal is the promise that security professionals from Google, Facebook and other large properties can build and maintain sensitive services that smaller Websites can deploy. Many end users prefer them because they allow them to use a single password to access scores of individual accounts, saving them the hassle of having to use a unique code for each one.
SSOs typically work by offering programming interfaces that relay the visitor's login information to the provider of the service. If the user credentials are valid, the provider usually returns some sort of certified token that instructs the third-party Website to give the user access to the requested account. The problem with this "proof-by-possession" scheme is that the data relayed from Website to provider is sent to the end user's browser first, creating the opportunity for adversaries to manipulate the credentials that are sent to and from the provider. As a result, an attacker can obtain a token granting him access to an account without supplying the user name and password that are normally required for authorization.
A critical bug affecting the Google SSO service, for example, stemmed from the ability to change queries received from the RP before a user's browser sent it to Google. That allowed an attacker to remove the Gmail address the website was asking Google to vouch for before the request was sent and then append a victim's Gmail address to the response returned by Google. The flaw, which Wang said was the result of a miscommunication between the website and Google over whether the email address the Website receives had been signed, has since been addressed.
The researchers also found weaknesses in OpenID, a popular open standard that the researchers said Google, PayPal, and 9 million other sites use to grant access to more than 1 billion accounts. The OpenID foundation has since addressed those bugs as well.
In some respects, Wang said, the bugs were the result of oversights made by the SSO providers, which tested custom-made implementations of OpenID software and failed to discover the problems. But in other cases, the vulnerabilities existed because the third-party sites didn't implement otherwise secure SSOs correctly. Ensuring they are set up correctly is difficult given the huge number of modifications typically made when a system is integrated into a given Website.
"During this process, a protocol serves merely as a loose guideline, which individual RPs often bend for the convenience of integrating SSO into their systems," the paper states. "Some IdPs do not even bother to come up with a rigorous protocol for their service. For example, popular IdPs like Facebook and Google, and their RPs either customize published protocols like OpenID or have no well-specified protocols at all."
In an e-mail, a Facebook spokesman thanked the researchers for privately reporting the bug. "It was fixed shortly after it was reported and we are not aware of any cases in which it was used maliciously. Developers can find our documentation on Authentication using Facebook Platform here. A Google spokesman declined to comment for this article.
The researchers also found that the security of otherwise safe SSOs were sometimes undermined when the systems were combined with certain components. Cross-domain capabilities built into Adobe Flash, for instance, "totally crippled Facebook SSO security," they said.
The researchers, who also included Indiana University professor Rui Wang and Shuo Chen of Microsoft Research, designed an automated black-box test to analyze the series of HTTP messages that passed between the RPs and the IdPs to invoke the SSO's programming interfaces. Their analyzer worked by capturing and parsing browser response messages and in some cases later modifying them. Among other things, it used the Fiddler web proxy and the Firebug tool for web development.
While the blue prints of a given system aren't always available to attackers, the web traffic that the SSO systems generate is trivial to view, often making it easy to spot errors that can be exploited, the researchers warned.
They wrote: "Our study shows that not only do logic flaws pervasively exist in web SSO deployments, but they are practically discoverable by the adversary through analysis of the SSO steps disclosed from the browser, even though source code of these systems is unavailable."Attitudes towards online abuse have undergone a sea change over the last decade. In the past, cyber-harassment – often a perfect storm of threats, impersonations, defamation, and privacy invasions directed at an individual – was routinely dismissed as “no big deal”.
So it was for one Yale law student. Starting in 2007, on an online discussion board, a cyber-mob falsely accused her of having herpes and sleeping with her dean. Anonymous posters described how they would rape her; they chronicled her daily whereabouts and prior jobs. Yet law enforcement told the student to ignore the attacks because “boys will be boys”. Officers advised her to “clean up” her cyber-reputation, as if she could control what appeared about her. Trivialising online abuse and blaming victims was the norm.
There are laws available in the UK to bring to bear against online abuse
Today, the public has a deeper appreciation of victims’ suffering. As advocacy groups like the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative have shown, and as society has come to recognise, the costs of cyber-harassment are steep. Because searches of victims’ names prominently display the abuse, victims have lost their jobs. They have had difficulty finding employment. Employers do not interview victims because hiring people with damaged online reputations is risky. Victims struggle with anxiety and depression. They withdraw from online engagement to avoid further abuse. Women, especially younger women, are more often targeted than men, but in either case, the abuse often has a sexually demeaning and sexually threatening cast.
Legal developments reflect a growing understanding of cyber-harassment’s harms. In the US, 27 states have criminalised revenge porn – also known as non-consensual pornography. California’s attorney general Kamala Harris created a first-of-its-kind online resource to train law enforcement about cyber-harassment. Her office successfully prosecuted revenge porn operators for soliciting the posting of nude photos and charging for their removal. Inspired by Harris, the Federal Trade Commission entered into a consent decree with a revenge porn operator for inducing the disclosure of confidential information for financial gain.
In the UK, cyber-harassers have been held responsible for their destruction. There are now laws to bring to bear against online abuse. Prosecutions under the Malicious Communications Act have resulted in convictions, as in the case involving death threats tweeted at Caroline Criado-Perez. In April 2015, the UK criminalised revenge pornography. What the UK still needs is better training of law enforcement and perhaps some clarification of the laws already on the books rather than a new set of laws, as the Conservative MP Maria Miller suggested this week.
Two jailed for Twitter abuse of feminist campaigner Read more
Even with better training the law is a blunt tool. Its effectiveness depends upon the discretion of the officials invoking it. We have seen law enforcement pursue frivolous cases, which undermine society’s confidence in harassment and threat laws. We have seen prosecutors pursue individuals who, by all societal accounts, are either trying to help others or are victims themselves. Prosecutorial overreaching and poor judgment are risks, no matter the crime at hand. But efforts to deter and prosecute crimes should not be abandoned because some prosecutors may abuse their power.
Then, too, law may not be able to reach some online assaults. For instance, criminal law may not cover the individual acts of a cyber-mob, even though the abuse as a whole is destructive. Each member of a mob may have contributed a little and thus no one person has transgressed harassment laws, which require repeated “course of conduct”. There is also the practical reality of dealing with a cyber-mob. As in the case of games designer Zoe Quinn, who was targeted in “Gamergate”, victims have urged prosecutors to drop cases because the attacks got worse – not better – after charges were filed. Civil claims can only be brought if victims have the resources to hire counsel or find lawyers to take on cases pro bono.
Since law cannot do it all, and should not do it all given our commitments to free expression, who else can combat cyber-harassment? Civil society should step in. Schools, community leaders, and family members should help inculcate norms of respect. Being told to avoid playground fights at school is par for the course – so too should be discussions about the responsibilities of digital citizenship. Young people must be taught about our shared responsibility for online safety.
Private companies have a role to play as well. Indeed, market forces may be pushing them in that direction. Advertisers have threatened to pull their business unless platforms ban bigoted online abuse. Whether it is thanks to commercial interests or social responsibility, some online platforms have taken a stand against cyber-harassment. Social media providers, including Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, now ban threats, cyber-harassment, and non-consensual pornography.
Insults and rape threats. Writers shouldn’t have to deal with this | Jessica Valenti Read more
Companies should be clear about their policies. They need to explain what they mean by “cyber-harassment”, “non-consensual pornography”, “threats” and “bullying”. Users will then have a better understanding of precisely what is and what is not prohibited. Platforms should explain whether content will be taken down or what the next step would be. To ensure the fairness of the complaint process, companies should notify users of their decisions and give them a chance to appeal.
Of course, private companies do not owe their users any formal obligation of due process. But they should have an appeals procedure, because when people perceive a process to be fair they are more inclined to accept its results. Clear policies, a means of review, and transparent enforcement decisions will help to protect users from destructive abuse and set clear norms for sites.
What about startups that lack resources to address complaints comprehensively? Users could be recruited to help enforce community norms. The multiplayer online game League of Legends has enlisted users to help address players’ abusive behaviour, notably harassment and bigoted epithets, with much success.
In short, there is no magic bullet to combat cyber-harassment. But this is an opportune moment to educate the public about the destruction wrought by cyber-harassment and the various ways of addressing it. Social attitudes trivialising it can be reversed before they become entrenched. If we act now, future generations might view cyber-harassment as a disgraceful remnant of the internet’s early history.We’ve talked about this back in March but it looks like LEGO Dimensions has been officially cancelled. A source that is close to to TT Games has told Eurogamer that the game is over and done, a year earlier than expected. There isn’t expected to be an official announcement as it seems that TT Games wants it to be silently cancelled. This news was first talked about by Bricks to Life back in March as well.
A reason for the game being going away is that the sales for the Year 2 content did not meet expectations as the whole toys-to-life genre has been slowly fading away. One interesting tidbid is that some of the Year 3 content included Lord Vortech to round out the story. Some other planned expansions included LEGO Minecraft, another Doctor Who pack to feature Missy, and DC Comics Super Heroes Flash. The company also had an idea to have a camera scan a LEGO build and replicate them in the game but this idea was shot down.
TT Games studio manager Dave Dootson sent a memo to the company when it was for sure the LEGO Dimensions was cancelled:
Thanks so much to everyone for making Dimensions possible. As difficult as it has been, it is worth celebrating the incredible achievement it represents in the quality of the game, the amazing blend of IPs and the challenging technical demands it presented. It stands as a real testament to the talent within TT.
LEGO Dimensions has good while it lasted and many fans did have a good time with it. What was your favorite memory of LEGO Dimensions?Mislabeling Mental Illness
is the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, who has the expertise and moral authority to compare psychology to a rotten piece of furniture.A group of US. Academics ranked the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century in 2002 and they put Kagan in 22nd place, even above Carl Jung (the founder of analytical psychology-23rd)and above Ivan Pavlov (who discovered the Pavlovian reflex-24).It may be very surprising to learn that he believes that the most modern diagnosis ofis a mere invention rather than a serious condition.So it may be surprising for you to learn that Kagan believes the diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is an invention which mainly benefits the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists.is well-known for his pioneering work in developmental psychology at Harvard University where he has spent decades observing and documenting how babies and small children grow, measuring them, testing their reactions and once they’ve learned to speak, questioning them over and over again. He is an exceptional and highly-regarded researcher.In an interview with Spiegel, Kagan addressed the skyrocketing rates of ADHD in America. He attributes to “fuzzy diagnostic practices” and illustrated his point with the following example:“Let’s go back 50 years. We have a 7-year-old child who is bored in school and disrupts classes. Back then, he was called lazy. Today, he is said to suffer from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). That’s why the numbers have soared,” says Kegan in the interview.When asked about his opinion on the disorder, Kegan told the Spiegel that he believes ADHD is an invention. He thinks that if a child is not doing well in school, the pediatrician gives that child Ritalin, since the cure is available to the doctors and they give the diagnosis.According to Kagan, the fact that millions of American children who are inaccurately diagnosed as mentally ill because they think there is something fundamentally wrong with them is devastating.Besides being a psychologist is determined to raise the alarm about this trend, Kagan and others feel they’re up against “an enormously powerful alliance: pharmaceutical companies that are making billions, and a profession that is self-interested.”Kaganfrom inner restlessness and stuttering as a child, but his mother told him that there was nothing wrong with him, only that his mind was working faster than his tongue.He thought at the time: “Gee, that’s great, I’m only stuttering because I’m so smart.” If he had been born in the present era, he most likely would have been classified as mentally ill.However,isn’t the only mental illness epidemic among children that worries Kagan. Depression is another mental illness that almost started in 1987, when about one in 400 American teenagers was using an antidepressant and the numbers leaped to one in 40 by 2002.Kegan believes that depression is also another overused diagnosis, simply because the pills are available. Instead of immediately resorting to pharmaceutical drugs, he thinks doctors should take more time with the child to find out why they aren’t as cheerful.Since studies have shown that people who have heightened activity in the right frontal lobe respond poorly to antidepressants a few tests should be carried out (an EEG for certain).It’s very important for distinction to be made: when a life event overwhelms us, it’s common to fall into a depression for a while, but there are those who have a genetic vulnerability and experience chronic depression.It’s crucial to look not only at the symptoms, but the causes :the former are experiencing a certain depression caused by an event and the latter are mentally ill.Psychiatry it’s the only medical profession that establishes illness on symptoms alone and such a blind spot opens the door for new maladies — like bipolar disorder, which we never used to see in children. Acording to statistics,nearly a million Americans under the age of 19 are diagnosed with bipolar disorder.“A group of doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital just started calling kids who had temper tantrums bipolar. They shouldn’t have done that. But the drug companies loved it because drugs against bipolar disorders are expensive.That’s how the trend was started. It’s a little like in the 15th century, when people started thinking someone could be possessed by the devil or hexed by a witch,” said Kagan.About the alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs for behavioral abnormalities Kagan said that we could look at tutoring, as an example. It’s a good start since children who are diagnosed with ADHD are mainly the children who are struggling at school.Written by Simon Segal A professional writer with years of continual practice. His experience in writing varies from science to psychology and spirituality. He also teaches academic and creative writing. Curious Mind Magazine via The Mind's JournalWATCH MSNBC DEFEND HILLARY=> She Was”A Little Bit Wobbly” After Standing in “Oppressive Heat”
On Sunday Hillary Clinton collapsed at the Ground Zero Memorial.
She was OUT COLD.
She was dragged into her van – Lost a shoe on the street.
The Clinton campaign first said she “overheated.”
It was 77 degrees and breezy!
Then the campaign said she had pneumonia since Thursday.
Then the Clinton campaign said EVERYONE had pneumonia including campaign manager Robbie Mook.
We’re waiting on the latest pathetic excuse development.
Watch how MSNBC lied continuously to their audience about the “oppressive heat” that took down Hillary Clinton.
The media bias was not lost on Wikileaks.
AP, CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, reporting videos of Clinton collapsing & being dragged on unresponsive legs into a car a'stumble'. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 11, 2016Shutterstock
A global robotic arms race "is virtually inevitable" unless a ban is imposed on autonomous weapons, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and 1,000 academics, researchers and public figures have warned.
In an open letter presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aries, the Future of Life Institute signatories caution that "starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control".
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Although the letter, first reported by the Guardian, notes that "we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so", it concludes that "this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow".
Joining Professor Hawking and SpaceX founder Elon Musk below the letter are Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, linguist Noam Chomsky, cofounder of Sky Jaan Tallinn and Stephen Goose, director of Human Rights Watch's arms division.
Read next The paedophile scandal shows YouTube is broken. Only radical change can fix it The paedophile scandal shows YouTube is broken. Only radical change can fix it
The UK says it is not developing lethal AI, but the potential to build such weapons already exists and is developing fast -- a recent report into the future of warfare commissioned by the US military predicts "swarms of robots" will be ubiquitous by 2050. In response, experts and high-profile figures like Musk have made repeated calls to limit the development of deadly AI, even as peaceful autonomy grows more central to virtually every other area of tech and industry. The Future of Life Institute announced in June it would use a $10m donation from Elon Musk to fund 37 projects aimed at keeping AI "beneficial", with $1.5m dedicated to a new research centre in the UK run by Oxford and Cambridge universities.
The latest letter starts by defining autonomous weapons as those which "select and engage targets without human intervention", including quadcopters able to search for and kill people, but not remotely piloted missiles or drones. It also lists the arguments usually made in favour of such machines -- such as reducing casualties among soldiers.
But for the academics and figures who signed the letter, AI weapons are potentially more dangerous than nuclear bombs. "Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. "Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilising nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity."
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The letter also notes specifically that most AI researchers do not want to "tarnish their field" by contributing to lethal AI and "by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its future societal benefits". "Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons |
Hub City’s diverse and upscale dining scene.
As the War of the Five Wings heats up, I have a hunch that Roosterspin’s more refined take on Korean and more specifically Korean fried chicken, will be the death knell for George Street’s Bonchon Korean Fried Chicken, which has stumbled out of the gate and still lacks the liquor license they promised earlier this year. I should also mention that Roosterspin boasts two full-service karaoke rooms, which are available to rent on any and all nights.
Roosterspin: Take your rightful place on the Iron Throne, because it’s time to crown the king of New Brunswick wings.
Devin Healey knows food and drink. In addition to writing columns for TAPinto New Brunswick, he runs a blog network called CougEats. You can find more of his work on Facebook and Instagram.It's possible to do a lot more than just make a drink with lemon juice. You can use it to sanitize a counter top, brighten white loads of laundry, and, believe it or not, you can even use it to treat freckles. It won't actually get rid of freckles, but lemon juice is a strong fruit acid, and it works well as a bleaching agent. Similar to the way people use it to highlight streaks of hair during the summer, lemon juice can lighten to your skin.
Some people are born with freckles, and others develop them after years of sun exposure. Since they're common and almost always harmless, there's not usually any health reason to treat freckles. If you don't want to live with them, however, you don't have to. To fade them out, go to the store and buy some lemons -- or, if you don't like squeezing them yourself, just buy lemon juice, but make sure it's pure. Artificial ingredients and flavorings won't work as well.
Once you've got the juice, all you have to do is apply it to your freckles. A cotton ball or a paintbrush should work. After a few months of continued application, your freckles should begin to fade.
While lemon juice can be effective at fading freckles, any progress you make can be completely undone by a few days in the sun without any protection. So, if you want to keep those freckles away, you need to wear sunscreen. You'll also need to keep applying lemon juice to maintain your results, as it's only a temporary solution [source: Cuming]. If you're looking for something more permanent, you may want to look into laser removal. It can be fast and effective, but it's the more expensive option [source: Bernstein].
See the links below for lots more information on freckles and skin care.
Related HowStuffWorks Articles
SourcesHow UK Chiropractors' Attempt To Silence One Critic Created The Backlash That May Change Chiropractics In The UK
from the can-a-chiropractor-fix-that? dept
The statement, supported by just 29 citations, was ripped apart by bloggers within 24 hours of publication, before being subjected to a further shredding in the British Medical Journal. It emerged that 10 of the papers cited had nothing to do with chiropractic treatment, and several weren't even studies. The remainder consisted of a small collection of poor-quality trials.
More seriously, the BCA misled the public with a misrepresentation of one paper, a Cochrane review looking at the effectiveness of various treatments for bed-wetting, claiming that the authors had simply concluded that, "there was weak evidence to support the use of [chiropractic].
Last year, we wrote about a really troubling incident in the UK, where the British Chiropractic Association had sued Dr. Simon Singh for noting that there was little scientific evidence to back up some of the marketing claims used by the BCA concerning what chiropractors could treat. Rather than responding with evidence, the BCA responded with a lawsuit. As we noted at the time, the backlash against the BCA was pretty impressive, with it calling amore attention to the questionable medical claims, as well as tremendous anger towards the BCA and chiropractors for the actions against Singh. It was a classic Streisand Effect in action. What was also interesting was how a group of bloggers then teamed up to do the investigative work that no full-time journalist was doing (and who says bloggers can't do investigative journalism?) to debunk the BCA's claims.While the lawsuit continues, the loosely organized group of folks who had been fighting back against the BCA have continued to work their magic. Brandon writes in to let us know that they've been going one-by-one through every chiropractor who's a member of the BCA and examining their web sites for false marketing claims -- leading to a situation where a stunning one out of every four chiropractors in the UK is under investigation for misleading marketing or advertising. This isn't just the Streisand Effect, this is the Streisand Effect on steroids. In trying to hush up one critic, the BCA has unleashed a large group of concerned folks who are organized (perhaps loosely, but quite effectively) to bring about massive change concerning the BCA and chiropractor marketing practices in general.The article linked above also goes through more details of how this group has helped dismantle the BCA's weak attempt at showing scientific evidence for some of those marketing claims:One day someone will write a big case study (or perhaps a book) about what happened here. An attempt to silence a critic may end up resulting in massive changes to not just the British Chiropractic Association (the article notes that many chiropractors are horrified and want to leave the organization), but also how people view chiropractors and how chiropractic services are marketed.
Filed Under: backlash, chiropractors, streisand effect, truth in advertising, ukMany people say, “I could never run that far”. They are almost always wrong.
Running long distances is something that you can easily train your body to do. The biggest barrier is your own mind. If your longest run is 5 miles, you can’t imagine that you could run 10, 15, 20 miles or more. You can run farther than you think you can.
There are several things that you can do to successfully increase the length of your runs.
Slow down - Don’t expect to be able to run longer distances at the same speed as do on your short runs.
Get some rest - If you do shorter runs every day, take a rest day (or two) and then attempt a longer run.
Run back-to-back’s - If you normally take a rest day between runs, run two of your normal runs back-to-back on consecutive days. This will help you build the endurance needed for longer runs. If you can run 5 miles on 2 consecutive days, you can probably run 7-8 miles after a rest day.
Cross-train - If you normally take a rest day between runs, but don’t want to run back-to-back’s, you can do some cross-training to help improve your endurance. Biking, elliptical, and stair climber are all good choices.
Walk - If you are trying to extend the length of your runs, don’t be afraid to walk a bit, if you need to. It’s not a failure. Run-walking is a perfectly legitimate way to cover long distances. Jeff Galloway and thousands of his followers do it. Most ultramarathoners do it at some point in their races.
Strengthen your legs - Even using just your body weight, there are a lot of exercises you can do that will help you to improve your leg strength to be able to handle longer runs.
Increase gradually - Don’t suddenly double the length of your long runs. Increase them gradually, by not more than 10% per week.
Have a plan - Plan out the routes for your long runs carefully. Give yourself a destination to go to. Have someone drop you off at a distant point and run home. Run an out and back course and plan where you will turn around. Give yourself some options to run slightly longer or shorter, depending on how you feel.
Bring a drink and a snack - If you are running for more than an hour, it’s a good idea to bring a drink with you (or plan your run around the location of a water fountain). An energy gel or a chew may provide the carbs you need to finish strong on a long run.
Enter a race - You can usually run a race that is a bit longer than your longest run. If your longest run is 5 miles, you can probably do a 10K race. If your longest run is 10 miles, you can probably do a half marathon. The crowd and your adrenaline will carry you to the finish line.
How do you increase the length of your long runs? Tell me in the comments.
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Hate 20 Mile Runs? You Can Still Finish A Marathon Without Them!
Can CrossFit Endurance Get You to the Finish Line?
Strengthen Your Quads with Isometrics
Strengthen Your Legs to Improve Your Running Speed
Calf Exercises to Build Speed and Prevent InjuriesCarbohydrates are integral to biological signaling networks and cell–cell interactions, yet the detection of discrete carbohydrate–lectin interactions remains difficult since binding is generally weak. A strategy to overcome this problem is to create multivalent sensors, where the avidity rather than the affinity of the interaction is important. Here we describe the development of a series of multivalent sensors that self-assemble via hydrophobic supramolecular interactions. The multivalent sensors are comprised of a fluorescent ruthenium(II) core surrounded by a heptamannosylated β-cyclodextrin scaffold. Two additional series of complexes were synthesized as proof-of-principle for supramolecular self-assembly, the fluorescent core alone and the core plus β-cyclodextrin. Spectroscopic analyses confirmed that the three mannosylated sensors displayed 14, 28, and 42 sugar units, respectively. Each complex adopted original and unique spatial arrangements. The sensors were used to investigate the influence of carbohydrate spatial arrangement and clustering on the mechanistic and qualitative properties of lectin binding. Simple visualization of binding between a fluorescent, multivalent mannose complex and the Escherichia coli strain ORN178 that possesses mannose-specific receptor sites illustrates the potential for these complexes as biosensors.Written by
Every once in a while when thinking up topics for No Meat Athlete posts, I hit on one that’s so obvious, it’s a joke that I haven’t already written it.
We’ve had protein posts before, like the primer from vegan R.D. Matt Ruscigno.
And I’ve written a few articles about protein myself, but the main one wasn’t a blog post; it’s a lesson in my e-course for newsletter subscribers (join here if you haven’t yet).
But have I really not written a post about where to get your protein? The question that vegetarians get asked more than any other?
Apparently, not yet. So here it is.
First, my standard answer to the question, Where do you get your protein?:
You don’t need as much protein as most people think, and it’s easy to get what you do need from beans, nuts, seeds, grains, soy, and even greens.
So how much protein do you really need?
Not as much as people would have you believe. Somehow, everyone got the idea that we need exorbitant amounts of protein, way more than is even recommended. I know, it’s fun to blame government agencies and cry conspiracy, but if you actually look at the recommendations, they’re not that high at all.
For example, the U.S. recommended daily allowance of protein is.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight (.36 grams per pound) for the general population.
Athletes need more than that, mostly due to greater tissue-repair needs. But how much more protein do we need as athletes?
Several sources I looked at cited a study which concluded that endurance athletes benefit most from 1.2 to 1.4 daily grams per kilogram of bodyweight, while strength athletes do best with 1.4 to 1.8 grams per kilogram. In pounds, that’s.54 to.63 grams per pound for endurance athletes,.63 to.81 grams per pound for strength athletes.
A simple example
Let’s take a typical No Meat Athlete reader and see what this means for her, let’s a say a 140-pound runner. We’ll split the daily protein range for endurance athletes in the middle and aim for.59 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight:
140 pounds *.59 grams/pound = 83 grams of protein per day
Keep in mind that’s for a 140-pound endurance athlete, so you’ll need to plug in your own weight and, if you do a strength sport, use a different protein figure.
But really, only 83 grams?
All of this protein fuss — the incessant inquisition about where we get protein — is about 83 grams per day, even after adjusting for being an athlete? (And if our 140-pound woman weren’t an athlete, she’d need only 50 grams to hit the RDA number!)
What the pros say
Before we move onto good vegan and vegetarian protein sources for getting this amount, let’s take a look at what some well-known and credentialed vegans say about protein.
In the documentary Forks Over Knives, China Study author Dr. T. Colin Campbell says that you need 8 to 10 percent of your calories to come from protein. (Keep in mind he’s not necessarily talking about athletes.)
Vegan Ironman Brendan Brazier, in his appearance on No Meat Athlete radio (which is coming back soon, by the way!), says he eats about 15 percent protein when training for short events, and close to 20 percent protein during periods of heavy training (several hours per day) for long endurance events.
Tim Ferriss writes in The 4-Hour Body that ultrarunner Scott Jurek gets 15 to 20 percent of his calories from protein.
Matt Ruscigno, in the post he wrote for No Meat Athlete about vegetarian protein, says he recommends that his athlete clients get 10 to 15 percent of their calories from protein.
Notice that everybody expresses things in percentages rather than grams. How does our 83 grams of protein, for a 140-pound female endurance athlete stack up in terms of percentage of total calories?
Well, the first thing to note is that a gram of protein contains four calories. (Yay for paying attention in health class!) So:
83 grams * 4 calories/gram = 332 calories of protein
We’ll need to divide this figure by total daily calories to get the percentage we’re after. I plugged my imaginary friend’s stats (5’3″, 140 lbs, female, very active) into this basal metabolic rate calculator to approximate her total daily calories at 2375. Drumroll, please …
322 calories of protein / 2375 total calories = 13.6% of calories from protein
Not far off from the 15 percent that most of our experts mentioned! Based on all of this, aiming to get 15 percent of your calories from protein seems like a pretty good rule of thumb.
(And by the way, I find using percentages to be a much easier way to evaluate a food’s protein content than grams. See a post I wrote about using protein percentages.)
Where do vegetarians get their protein?
There’s no shortage of lists of high-protein vegan foods floating around. As you might expect, they’re topped by soy products (tempeh is much higher in protein than tofu), seitan, and legumes.
My personal favorite vegan foods for protein, in rough, descending order of how often I eat them, are:
Lentils (red are my favorites), 18 grams of protein per cup
Chickpeas, 12 grams/cup
Tempeh (locally made in Asheville!), 41 grams per cup
Black beans, 15 grams per cup
Nuts and nut butters (I eat a good mix, usually without peanuts), varied
Tofu, 11 grams per 4 ounces
Quinoa, 9 grams per cup
Other legumes, varied
Grains, varied
These protein content numbers come from the Vegetarian Resource Group’s excellent article on vegetarian protein.
I also add a protein supplement to my smoothie each morning, which gets me about 20 grams to start the day, before you consider the protein from flaxseed, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, and almond butter that I sometimes throw in there.
I like the Vega Sport protein blend of hemp, rice, and pea, but often to save money I use this one, which also includes protein from chia seeds. (These links are both affiliate links, meaning No Meat Athlete earns a small commission if you use them to buy anything).
Don’t ignore amino acids!
All protein is not created equally. Protein is made up of amino acids, and there are certain ones, called “essential,” which your body cannot produce on its own and must get through food.
As long as you’re eating a wide variety of whole foods — a good practice to follow for many reasons — you’re probably getting a nice mix of amino acids. One, though, that’s particularly tough for vegetarians to get, is lysine, as explained in this article on protein from Vegan Health.
Only a few vegan foods contain lysine in large amounts, but fortunately, they’re staples in many of our diets: tempeh, tofu, and legumes. If you don’t eat beans or soy, because of allergies or some other reason, you’ll need to pay special attention to lysine, and it might be worth considering an amino acid supplement.
See an old No Meat Athlete article for a breakdown of which foods contain which amino acids.
My easy way to get enough protein every day
As it turns out, I weigh around 140 pounds, so the 83 grams of protein mentioned above is right about what I aim for. (I’m fairly certain I’m not female, but sex only entered the conversation when we were estimating total calories.)
So how do I get my 83 grams of protein per day?
My approach to getting enough protein is very simple:
Make sure you include a decent protein source, even if just a little bit, in every meal or snack.
Mainly, this just keeps you mindful and prevents you from slipping into junk-food-vegan, carbohydrate-only mode. It’s as easy as adding nuts or beans to your salad, protein powder to your smoothie, almond butter on your bagel, or beans to your pasta dish (actually not an inauthentic thing to do in Italy). For snacks, eat a handful of nuts, spread some sunflower butter on your apple, make roasted chickpeas, dip a pita in some hummus … all of these add just a little bit of protein, but if you eat two or three snacks a day, it adds up.
So the next time someone asks …
You won’t have to tell them it’s complicated, or argue to no avail that broccoli would be a good protein source if only you could eat five pounds of it in a sitting. Instead, you can just explain that we don’t need all that much protein, and it’s easy to get what we do need from a half dozen, common foods, eaten just a little bit at a time throughout the day.
No big deal.America let me tell you something,
We seem have a sort of schizophrenic view in this country towards what government is supposed to do, according to a recent poll covered at WaPo:
Most of those who see the country as headed off-course put “a great deal” of blame on the government. Overall, 55 percent of Americans say the government is not paying attention to the biggest issues. Similar percentages say the government does not use tax money wisely, is out of sync with their values and has not helped their families. Half say the government has a big effect on their daily lives – up significantly from 10 years ago – but most of those say the impact is a negative one. [BUT THEN…]
Nearly six in 10 say they want their congressional representatives to fight for additional government spending in their districts to spur job creation; fewer (39 percent) want their member of Congress to cut spending, even if that means not as many local jobs. This is a turnabout from September 1994, when 53 percent said they wanted their representative to battle against spending and 42 percent were on the other side.
A lot of people don’t grasp that when someone says they are going to give you everything you want, they are usually asking you to check your brain at the door. Personally I’m sickened of the hypocrisy of many of my fellow Americans who think it’s cool to put their hand in my pocket under the guise of “the greater good” when they are also the ones saying that government can’t be trusted… we simply can’t have it be both ways.
This kind of attitude strays across party lines as we all pretty much know. It’s the simple view that someone else will pay for what’s owed to me (and my neighbors, who are good people), but the hell with who foots the bill or any kind of higher level accounting for costs of letting the government run such programs.
Social Security is the big elephant in the room, but there’s a shit ton of entitlement programs that are propping people and corporations up in this country, and with each dollar comes a poison pill of a government agent to hand it out.
To close… If I see another fat motherfucker in the Tea Party show up to a rally in a scooter paid for with medicare or some other bullshit government subsidy, I’m kicking that shit over. Start LITERALLY walking the walk, hypocrites… some of us are on to these intellectually damaged, bullshit arguments.
If you’re not one of these people, by all means sound off in the comments.The next time you navigate home, Google Maps will look a lot different. Google this week took the wraps off a redesigned Google Maps, which the search giant says “better reflects” our world.
Going forward, Google says information relevant to your experience will be more prominently featured. When you’re following turn-by-turn directions, for example, Google will highlight nearby gas stations; in transit, you’ll see train stations.
Google has also updated the color scheme that’s supposed to make it easier to identify points of interest. Maps look brighter, while colors pop. There’s a cheat sheet (below) that reveals what colors represent places that are around you, from health to shopping to services.
The redesign looks like an overall more appealing way to navigate and discover, and the decision to use different colors for different points of interest is a welcome change.
According to Google, the revamped experience will start rolling out over the next few weeks, and will be available in all Google products, including Maps, Assistant, Search, and more.Former White House Official Says U.S. Already At War With Russia & China
Today a former White House official stunned King World News by saying the United States is already at war with China and Russia. Former presidential adviser and member of the U.S. President's Working Group on Financial Markets, Dr. Philippa Malmgren, also discussed how and where this dangerous war is taking place and why the public is totally unaware of it up to now.
Eric King: “Because you are friends with former defense ministers you are up to speed on geopolitics, but I kind of laughed because NATO was talking about creating a ‘Spearhead Force’ of 3,000 – 4,000 soldiers, and the United States said they are going to send 100 tanks to the Baltic States. (Laughter)”
Dr. Malmgren: “Yes." (Laughter).
Eric King: “The reason I’m laughing is because just one battle in World War II, the Battle of Kursk in Russia, involved 2,000,000 men, 6,000 tanks, and 4,000 aircraft. I laugh because what does the West think it’s going to do by getting 3,000 – 4,000 men together and sending 100 tanks up against Russia? (Laughter). It’s comical.”
Dr. Malmgren: “I was commissioned to write a 90 page study. That gets into this issue of how modern wars are conducted. It isn’t with boots on the ground and tanks any more. Increasingly these things (wars) are fought in cyberspace and we’ve seen that happen recently with North Korea. Cyberwarfare and space is really where the action is….
Continue reading the Dr. Philippa Malmgren interview below…
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"The United States, Russia, and China are all vying for dominance over high-altitude satellites, which dominate all the guidance and communications systems for the conduct of warfare. And increasingly (we are seeing) stealthy methods of conducting conflict.
For example, the Russians have been very active recently in showing their dominance in the Baltic Sea, which dictates who dominants Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. And in doing that, it’s not that they have so many ships or better quality ships, it’s how effectively they’ve been able to show they can take territory if they want to.
The Danes released a report showing that during the largest naval exercise held last summer by the Russians, since the Soviet period, in part what they were doing was practicing taking and seizing an island in the Baltic which currently belongs to Denmark. And it was so interesting they (Russia) picked the very week that the Danes held the equivalent of Davos — the meeting where every single political leader in that nation happens to be on that island at that time.
The question is: If the Russians were to take a Danish island, would President Obama respond? And I think the Russian view is, 'No.' That’s an interesting question because then it doesn’t even matter how many (men, tanks, and planes) you have. The question is: Would you be willing to deploy all of your capabilities, including in cyberspace and real space? And the answer there is less obvious.
So think about the conduct of conflict because it may not look the same as it did in the past. War is a subject where innovation matters.”
Eric King: “So this next war is to be fought in space and over the internet?”
Dr. Malmgren: “Conflict is already occurring in that arena. And it’s interesting how the public either doesn’t know about it or doesn’t want to know about it. I was recently at a meeting with a lot of very senior people from the defense community, and their view is that we are already in a nose-to-nose confrontation (war) with China and Russia. But these (wars) are being conducted through cyberspace rather than through traditional conventional weapons.
Although having said that, we’ve had so many near misses between Russian fighter jets and NATO or American fighter jets. There have been a huge number of air incursions by the Russians into western European airspace and Japanese airspace. And the same with the Chinese — we’ve had a number of near misses.
In fact, when President Obama did his recent trip to Asia he signed a deal with President Xi of China where they basically agreed to set up a hotline between Beijing and Washington that’s exclusively devoted to a ‘Near-miss’ between any U.S. or Asian allied aircraft or ships that might occur with Chinese aircraft or ships.
Now, you wouldn’t be doing that unless you were expecting more of these things to occur. Meanwhile, there is no such hotline anymore between Washington and Moscow.” KWN has now released the incredible Dr. Philippa Malmgren audio interview which discusses the war that is raging between the United States, Russia and China, stunning 2015 predictions, the war in the gold market and much more. This is one of Dr. Malmgren's most important audio interviews and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
****UPDATE – KWN readers need to update the bookmarks of the King World News home page to www.kingworldnews.com
© 2014 by King World News®. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the blog page is permitted and encouraged.
The audio interviews with David Stockman, Dr. Philippa Malmgren, Egon von Greyerz, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Leeb, Andrew Maguire, John Embry, Gerald Celente, Rick Rule, Bill Fleckenstein, Ben Davies, William Kaye, Rick Santelli, John Mauldin and Marc Faber are available now. Other recent KWN interviews include Jim Grant and Felix Zulauf — to listen CLICK HERE.
Eric King
KingWorldNews.comJunior doctors aren’t renowned for their revolting. Even if they wanted to, many are simply too knackered.
But they are revolting now. Against a new contract imposed on them after their negotiations with NHS Employers (on behalf of the government) broke down, and the British Medical Association walked away.
The junior doctors (and this means virtually any medic up to consultant, GP or associate specialist) are angry. There is no doubt about it. Mainly, they say, because it will affect patient safety.
Under the new contract, a safeguard is being removed which means employers will be hit by making juniors work longer hours.
A normal working week will be reclassified from 7am-7pm Monday to Friday (60 hours) to 7am-10pm Monday to Saturday (90 hours).
Working a Saturday night will be the same as working a Tuesday morning.
The concern, of course, is not just that patients will be in the hands of juniors who can barely stand, see, think, but that all this will be a disincentive for juniors to go in to acute specialties like A&E. And as we all know, we need more doctors there.
There’s another perverse disincentive in the contract, too.
The GP trainee supplement is to go. It was put there to lure juniors out of hospitals and into general practice and ensure they don’t suffer financially.
I’ve just spoken to a woman junior who says she will lose a third of her salary if she goes ahead with her long-held desire to be a GP.
But that’s not the only whammy.
I specifically said a woman because, under the new contract, incremental pay rates are lost if a junior takes time out for maternity leave or to go part-time. Not to mention if they want to do academic work.
This is 2015, for goodness sake. Employers cannot say we are going to make you work long, antisocial hours, and on top of that don’t go and have babies because we will cut your pay further.
In fact, so astonishing is this hark back to Victorian times that I can’t believe that the men (because surely no women were involved in the drafting) on the doctors’ and dentists’ remuneration review board meant to come up with this.
The Department of Health (DoH) has been passing all media inquiries to NHS Employers, even though it’s ministers who imposed the contract.
But a DoH media release does say “NHS Employers will continue to develop a contract that is good for junior doctors and patients.
They, and we, will talk to all stakeholders, including the BMA, as that work develops.”
The statement continues:
“The proposals actually offered junior doctors a better deal, including:
· enhancing the quality and quantity of training opportunities for junior doctors
· a higher basic rate, with a significant increase in basic salary;
· proportionate payment for additional hours worked (including when on-call);
· unsocial hours paid at a higher rate;
· flexible pay premiums for hard-to-fill specialties.”
In the meantime, a number of juniors I’ve spoken to are saying Australia and New Zealand are seeming increasingly enticing.
Unusually most of the Royal Colleges (surgeons excepted) have issued statements in support of the junior doctors and against the contract.
We have been leaked a letter to Jeremy Hunt from the presidents of nine Royal Colleges in which they warn: “the proposals represent a real and immediate threat to the current stated priorities of the NHS, namely recruitment and retention of front line staff.”
Normally they stand back, but this time they are worried too.
Follow @vsmacdonald on Twitter.FierceWireless has partnered with iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than 7 million smart TVs, to bring you a monthly snapshot of the wireless industry's advertising spending. The results below are for the top five spenders among wireless industry brands from Oct. 1-31.
For the third time in a row the wireless industry saw an increase in spending, up to an estimated $271 million in October from $236 million in September. In total, 18 brands ran 106 spots over 45,700 times, with Verizon leading in spend once again.
(Check out how these numbers compare with October, November and December of 2016, or with February, March, April, May, June, July, August and September of this year.)
Mobile World Congress 2019 Attend the 2-Day Executive 5G Panel Series FierceWireless is returning to Barcelona, Spain, during Mobile World Congress 2019 with a two-day Executive 5G Panel Series at the Fira Congress Hotel, conveniently located across the street from the MWC Convention Center. The panel events will take place on Feb. 25-26 and will cover 5G and The Fixed Wireless Access Opportunity, Taking 5G Indoors, and Making 5G Ubiquitous. Attendees will have the opportunity to network and hear from 5G leaders including Verizon, Vodafone, Orange, Sprint, NTT Docomo, Boingo Wireless, Qualcomm, and more over the course of two days.
Secure your spot at the event today! Now is your chance to join fellow industry professionals for networking and education. Registration information and the schedule can be found on the website here. Register today
Here’s how the top brands allocated their national TV advertising budgets:
1. Verizon
Spent an estimated $82.9 million on eight spots that ran over 7,700 times.
Generated over 2.3 billion TV ad impressions.
Prioritized spend on these networks: CBS, NBC and Fox.
Prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, College Football and the 2017 World Series
The Verizon ad with the most spend (est. $30.1 million): “Google Pixel 2,” featuring Thomas Middleditch.
2. T-Mobile
Spent an estimated $69.9 million on 15 spots that ran over 8,300 times
Generated 2.6 billion TV ad impressions
Prioritized spend on these networks: Fox, NBC and ABC
Prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, the 2017 World Series and MLB Baseball
The T-Mobile ad with the most spend (est. $28.5 million): “Netflix on Us”
3. Sprint
Spent an estimated $31.1 million on 14 spots that ran over 6,500 times
Generated 1.3 billion TV ad impressions
Prioritized spend on these networks: NBC, CBS and Fox
Prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, NFL Thursday Night Kickoff and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
The Sprint ad with the most spend (est. $7.8 million): “iPhone Season: iPhone Forever”
4. MetroPCS
Spent an estimated $23.8 million on 16 spots that ran over 5,500 times
Generated 1.1 billion TV ad impressions
Prioritized spend on these networks: ESPN, Fox and NBC
Prioritized spend on this programming: NBA Basketball, NBA Preseason Basketball and The Voice
The MetroPCS ad with the most spend (est. $12.6 million): “Unlimited Deal: Two 32GB Phones”
5. Cricket Wireless
Spent an estimated $17.9 million on nine spots that ran over 2,900 times
Generated 1.2 billion TV ad impressions
Prioritized spend on these networks: CBS, FOX and Fox Sports 1
Prioritized spend on this programming: NFL Football, the 2017 World Series and MLB Baseball
The AT&T Wireless ad with the most spend (est. $12.2 million): “The Right Play Any Day”
ISpot's data do not include co-promotions or local market data. Click here for more on iSpot.tv's methodology.
The company's software leverages proprietary audio and video fingerprinting algorithms to automatically identify and extract TV commercials, movie trailers and show promotions.
The company tracks hundreds of millions of explicit interactions with TV ads across roughly 100 million unique consumers. These interactions include video plays, searches and social activity. The company also analyzes online views across YouTube and iSpot.tv, searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo!, and social activity on Facebook (including Facebook private views) and Twitter.
iSpot.tv tags over 40 different dimensions of metadata, including brand, agency, actors, products, songs, moods, URLs and other pertinent data, to create its results.Huntsville, Al. - November 21st, 2017 — The team behind the popular EsportsWikis reference sites announced today that they have reached an agreement with Curse to host and maintain their wikis on Gamepedia. Combining their existing League of Legends content with Gamepedia’s popular Leaguepedia wiki, the partnership will initially cover 7 competitive titles including SMITE and Rocket League, with expansion into new titles planned for the near future. The content team for these wikis is headed up by Megan River Cutrofello, formerly of EsportsWikis and Esportspedia and recent recipient of the Unsung Hero award at the Esports Industry awards. “I’m excited to be partnering with Gamepedia,” said Cutrofello. “Gamepedia is a powerful wiki platform and my team looks forward to merging our content to provide even more value to the community.” Owned and operated by Curse, Gamepedia is the host for major gaming wikis including the official wikis for Minecraft, Terraria, and hundreds of other popular games, making it a destination for more than 20 million gamers each month seeking information. Gamepedia will provide the resources and technology necessary to host these crucial resources for the esports community. “Developing strong community-driven resources for esports requires a lot of dedication and an intimate knowledge of the scene,” said Ben Robinson, Director of Wiki Partnerships at Curse. “River and her team have the passion and experience necessary to deliver these resources, and we’re looking forward to supporting these projects.” About Gamepedia Gamepedia is the largest video game wiki platform on the web, featuring over 1000 community-driven wiki projects. Owned and operated by Curse Inc., Gamepedia is home to everything from indie titles to some of the best-known gaming wikis such as the Official Minecraft Wiki, Leaguepedia, and Titanfall Wiki. Ranked in the top 250 sites globally by traffic, Game |
he recorded as an accompanist or duo artist with Earl Hooker, Robert Nighthawk, Lowell Fulson, Eddie Taylor, Louisiana Red and Jimmy Dawkins and was a frequent partner with his son, the guitarist Lurrie Bell. Blues Revue called Bell "one of Chicago’s finest harpists."[2] The Chicago Tribune said Bell was "a terrific talent in the tradition of Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter."[3]
Career [ edit ]
Early life [ edit ]
Bell was born Carey Bell Harrington in Macon, Mississippi.[4] As a child, he was intrigued by the music of Louis Jordan and wanted a saxophone in order to be like his hero Jordan. His family could not afford one, so he had to settle for a harmonica, colloquially known as a "Mississippi saxophone". Soon Bell was attracted by the blues harmonica greats—DeFord Bailey, Big Walter Horton, Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs, Sonny Boy Williamson I and Sonny Boy Williamson II—and taught himself to play. By the time he was eight, he was proficient on the instrument. When he was thirteen, he joined the blues band of his godfather, the pianist Lovie Lee.
Chicago [ edit ]
In September 1956, Lee persuaded Bell to go with him to Chicago.[4] Not long after arriving, Bell went to the Club Zanzibar, where Little Walter was appearing. Bell met Walter and later learned some harp playing from him and from Big Walter Horton, his main Chicago teacher.[4] To help further his chances of employment as a musician, he learned how to play the electric bass from Hound Dog Taylor.[5]
Having learned from some of the greatest blues harp players of the genre, Bell arrived in Chicago at an unfortunate time. The demand for harp players was decreasing there, as the electric guitar became the prominent blues instrument. To pay the bills, he joined several bands as a bassist. In the late 1960s, he performed regularly on the West Side of Chicago with the guitarists Eddie Taylor and Royal Johnson, playing harmonica and bass. In 1969, Bell toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and played at the Royal Albert Hall in London, appearing on a live recording of the event.
Debut through 1980s [ edit ]
In 1969, Delmark Records in Chicago released Bell's debut album, Carey Bell's Blues Harp.[4] He played with Muddy Waters in late 1970 and 1971 and later with Willie Dixon's Chicago Blues All-Stars.[4] In 1972, Bell teamed up with Big Walter in the studio and recorded Big Walter Horton with Carey Bell for Alligator Records. A year later Bell released a solo project, Last Night, for ABC Bluesway. He continued to play with Dixon and with his own groups. In 1978, he was featured on the Grammy-nominated album Living Chicago Blues, released by Alligator. Also in the 1970s, he contributed to two recordings by the Bob Riedy Blues Band.[6]
During the 1980s Bell continued to record for various labels and to tour. In 1990, he teamed up with fellow harpists Junior Wells, James Cotton and Billy Branch to record Harp Attack!,[4] which became a modern blues classic and one of Alligator's best-selling albums.[5]
Alligator years [ edit ]
Despite years in the business and work with Alligator, Bell's first full-length solo album for the label, Deep Down, was not released until 1995. He released a second album, Good Luck Man, for the label in 1997. Second Nature followed in 2004 (recorded in Finland a few years earlier), in which he was accompanied by his son, the guitarist Lurrie Bell (who also played guitar, along with Carl Weathersby, on Deep Down).
In 1998, Bell was awarded the Blues Music Award for Traditional Male Artist of the Year.
Final work [ edit ]
In 2007, Delmark Records released a live set by Bell, accompanied by a band which included his son Lurrie, the guitarist Scott Cable, Kenny Smith, Bob Stroger and Joe Thomas.
Death [ edit ]
Bell died of heart failure on May 6, 2007, in Chicago.[7]
Discography [ edit ]
Carey Bell's Blues Harp (Delmark), 1969
(Delmark), 1969 Last Night (One Way), 1973
(One Way), 1973 Heartaches and Pain (Delmark), 1977
(Delmark), 1977 Goin' on Main Street (Evidence), 1982
(Evidence), 1982 Son of a Gun (Rooster Blues), 1983
(Rooster Blues), 1983 Straight Shoot (Blues South West), 1986
(Blues South West), 1986 Harpslinger (JSP), 1988
(JSP), 1988 Dynasty! (JSP), 1990
(JSP), 1990 Mellow Down Easy (Blind Pig), 1991
(Blind Pig), 1991 Breakdown Blues Live!, with "The Cat" (CMA), 1992
, with "The Cat" (CMA), 1992 Harpmaster (JSP), 1994
(JSP), 1994 Carey Bell & Spike Ravenswood (Saar), 1995
(Saar), 1995 Deep Down (Alligator), 1995
(Alligator), 1995 Good Luck Man (Alligator), 1997
(Alligator), 1997 Brought Up the Hard Way (JSP CD 802), 1999
(JSP CD 802), 1999 Second Nature (Alligator), 2004
(Alligator), 2004 Gettin' Up: Live at Buddy Guy's Legends, Rosa's and Lurrie's Home, with Lurrie Bell (Delmark), 2007
With Louisiana Red [ edit ]
Reality Blues (L+R), 1980
(L+R), 1980 Boy from Black Bayou (L+R), 1983
(L+R), 1983 My Life (L+R), 1984
(L+R), 1984 Brothers in Blues (CMA Records), 1993
(CMA Records), 1993 Live at 55 (Enja), 1994
(Enja), 1994 The Blues Masters Bad Case of the Blues (Mojo Tone), 2004
Collaborations with other artists [ edit ]Thomas (Photo: Provided/Hamilton County Sheriff's Office)
A member of the University of Cincinnati football team is set to face a judge Thursday morning on an aggravated robbery charge, Hamilton County court records show.
Alex Thomas, 20, a junior cornerback for the Bearcats, is accused of participating in an armed robbery to steal a man's marijuana, an affidavit states.
Thomas and another man, Julien Holton, 23, were arrested at Cincinnati Police District 4 station in Avondale just after 5 p.m. Wednesday, booked into the Hamilton County jail and held overnight without bond, records show.
According to Cincinnati police, the incident occurred at 2:13 p.m. Wednesday on the third floor of an apartment building in the 100 block of East Corry Street.
The building is listed in court paperwork as Thomas' residence.
Thomas and Holton "chased" the victim down the hallway, police wrote in a criminal complaint filed in Hamilton County Municipal Court.
Holton (Photo: Provided/Hamilton County Sheriff's Office)
"Julien Holton had a firearm in his left hand and approached the victim. As the victim ran away he was pushed to the ground and his keys were taken," police wrote in a sworn affidavit.
"Alexander Thomas and Co-Def Julien Holton were identified by security video with Julien Holton holding the firearm."
The victim ran away and called police, the criminal complaint states.
Thomas "admitted to being there and part of the offense," police wrote.
"Alexander Thomas was arrested and, after Miranda Rights were read, he admitted to being at the location of the offense and going with Julien Holton to find victim.... He said his part was to knock on the victim's door in order for him to come out," the affidavit states.
"This offense is based on officer investigation, a video recording of the incident, and victims statement, and Julien Holton's admission."
Thomas has been suspended indefinitely, according to a statement from the athletics department.
School officials said his status "will be addressed following the resolution of the legal process."
UC will not comment further on the matter, according to the statement.
Thomas started 10 games last season with four interceptions.
Enquirer media partner Fox19 provided this report.
Read or Share this story: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/07/06/uc-cornerback-accused-participating-armed-robbery-marijuana/454523001/On this day, In 1936 Denny Shute won the 19th PGA Championship at Pinehurst
The 1936 PGA Championship was the 19th PGA Championship, held in mid November at Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Then a match play championship, Denny Shute won the first of his consecutive PGA Championships, defeating Jimmy Thomson 3 & 2 on the No. 2 Course. It was Shute’s second major title; his first was at the British Open in 1933 at St. Andrews. He previously made the finals at the PGA Championship in 1931.
Fay Coleman was the medalist in the stroke play qualifier at 143 (–1). Five-time champion Walter Hagen and two-time winner Leo Diegel both shot 157 (+13), one stroke out of the playoff. Defending champion Johnny Revolta lost in the second round to Harold “Jug” McSpaden in 19 holes. Shute repeated as champion less than seven months later in May 1937. He was the last to successfully defend his title at the PGA Championship until Tiger Woods won consecutive titles in 1999 and 2000 and again in 2006 and 2007.Shut It Down
Sara Danver Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 6, 2017
The government is going to run out of money on December 8th. For those of you frantically reaching for your calendars, that is in fact in two days. How, you ask? And, you know, why??
A few months ago, on September 13 to be exact, as we neared our last government funding deadline, Chuck and Nancy (or Senator Schumer and Representative Pelosi for those of us not limited to 140 characters) headed up to the White House so that Trump could try to sell them on a deal. What they thought might be a tough conversation or even just the beginning of a protracted negotiation turned out to be a pleasant lunch over Chinese food in which Trump gave them everything they wanted. In exchange for their votes on a much shorter continuing resolution to fund the government than the Republicans wanted, they got a promise that Trump would help the DACA recipients whose lives he had so recently upended. As we near the deadline on that CR (December 8th), the budget fights that led us to that moment could very well come to a head.
Or we could force it.
The Republican Party has liked to claim for some time now, to be a “big tent” party. In theory, this means they celebrate diverse viewpoints and people with different policy ideas. In practice, this means they welcome anyone as long as they will vote for tax cuts for the super wealthy, and they enjoy an absurdly awkward kind of power. They can get a president elected, but they can’t repeal the Affordable Care Act. They can (maybe) pass some kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a tax reform bill, but they can’t pass a budget. Because they are the party of “moderates” who want to cut spending but not that much, and those who would really enjoy a more feudal system of government, their budget priorities are often in conflict.
Instead of trying to pass a budget by this Friday (because apparently there are some bills they don’t want to try to force through in the middle of the night), the current GOP plan is to pass another continuing resolution — one that would expire on December 22 instead. And in an attempt to push that to December 30, some of those medieval reprobates, the House Freedom Caucus, those purveyors of “unfettered capitalism,” almost killed the tax bill.
If strategy of the Freedom Caucus sounds confusing, it’s because it is. And no clear explanation pops up on the first two pages of a google search. But many suspect that they are afraid that the pressure of passing a spending bill before Christmas will force their GOP colleagues to cave to a raw deal.
Cave to whom, you ask? Surely not the Democrats, those losers of elections. Those impotent defenders of health care and progressive tax codes. Surely not Chuck and Nancy, nor those cloying masses shouting about insurance mandates and frantically explaining CSR payments to their friends.
Yes, my friends. They fear us.
Republicans walk a rather precarious tightrope. Make their bill too friendly to the would-be feudal overlords and they risk losing more “moderate” Republicans in purple districts. Tilt too closely to those “moderates” and they lose the Freedom Caucus. It’s a constantly shifting balancing act — how many people, exactly, can we screw over before we lose too many votes to screw anyone over. With health care, they lost that fight. With tax reform, they are terrifyingly close to winning it. But very often, when the Freedom Caucus sticks to its guns and refuses to pass anything short of draconian, Republicans need Democrats to pass the budget.
What does this mean for us?
Well, we can’t shut down the government. We’re not in charge here. We don’t have the votes to do anything (something more vicious critics of the Democrats would do well to remember). But we can demand that our members of Congress refuse to vote for a budget unless certain demands have been met — a DREAM Act with a path to citizenship for one. Funding for CHIP. The Alexander-Murray bipartisan deal to stabilize the insurance markets. If Republicans need our help to keep the government going, they are going to have to give us a little something first.
Because if they can’t do it with their own party, which controls both the executive and the legislative branches, well, that sounds like a personal problem.
Of course, it’s not. Many of us remember the government shutdown of 2013. National Parks close, many who work in government have to stay home or work without pay, EPA inspections stop, and the blame game makes Twitter even more toxic than usual. A government shutdown is a problem that belongs to all of us. But some things are more important. Like health insurance for children. And a strong and unambiguous fix to the underground economy we have allowed to exist under our noses, that we have benefited from, that we have taken advantage of, and that is built on the blood and sweat, tears and separate families, of the undocumented Americans who have made their home here.
Those of us who live in blue states have called our members of Congress, have pestered our friends, have gotten drunk and wailed into the night about our futility. We drink our wine, and we tweet at Senators who have no obligation to listen to us. We try to raise a groundswell, but it’s kind of hard from our skyscrapers. Well, now it’s our turn. We have leverage here, and we have to use it.
Call your members of Congress. Demand that they join Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and others in refusing to vote for a government funding bill unless the DREAM Act is passed, CHIP is funded, and the ACA is stabilized.
We might not win. In fact, if “moderate” Republicans like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake and co. punk the fuck out again and sell their souls for the spectre of Koch donations, we probably won’t. But we have an opportunity to tell the vulnerable of this country, to tell the oppressed, and the hurt, and the struggling, that we won’t give them up. We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to them. So pick up the phone, write an email, and call your friends.
We have work to do. And very little time to do it.Last days of 2015 @ Precise Shooter
As you may have heard, we have lost the first round of legal challenge against Seattle Gun "Tax", and while we will, of course, appeal, this will cause some changes at Precise Shooter in the short to medium term.
Short term
On January 1, 2016 sales of guns and ammunition will cease at our Aurora location. We will continue doing transfers and sales of accessories, cleaning and reloading equipment while the licensing at our new location outside the city is in process.
We applied for our FFL and local business license a week ago, so we expect our new location to be up and running somewhere between end of January and end of February, at which point our Seattle store will close and all business will be transferred outside the city.
Effective immediately, gun sales which may stretch beyond the end of the year - such as handgun sales without a CPL - will no longer be processed. Please keep this in mind.
Also, we will no longer be processing special orders for guns that we do not have in stock. The web site has been updated to remove all special order inventory.
Medium term
While the antigun activists may have won a battle, we're in for the long term. The Seattle location may be closed, but it will not be sold - we have no doubt that eventually we will prevail.
We have to: the claim that Seattle City has made, and the lower court judge upheld, is that they can wild the tax hammer as a way to destroy any behavior or industry that they disagree with. This eviscerates the preemption at the state or federal level, and it has implications far beyond the firearms.
Can't ban firearms? Let's tax them 100,000% - that's now legal. Can't institute rent control? Let's tax landlords whose rent is too high. Pornography corrupts children? Tax adult stores. Fast food increases the rates of adult onset diabetes? That would be $15 per hamburger. Any regulation can be disguised as taxation.
So we will appeal, and we will lobby the lawmakers to smack Seattle with its legal "innovations" down. You can help us with that - write your State representative.
Until the end of the year - business as usual!
Precise Shooter is widely known for some of the best prices on guns and ammunition in Puget Sound area - and for the next week and a half we can still give you fantastic deals and the best service around.
Our ammunition is cheapest around - we price to the Internet - so check out the prices for 9mm, 40S&W, and 45ACP at our ammunition store.
In particular, we found a crazy deal on Beretta M9 30th Anniversary Edition, and we are passing the savings to you. It comes in a beautiful walnut presentation case, and we sell if for only $699.95 - $250-$300 less than the Internet.
We have a fantastic supply of pistols small and large - Glock 43s, 42s, Shields, and Ruger LCPs (only $219.95!) on one end of the spectrum, and a bunch of Freedom Arms revolvers and Les Baers on the other.
Our Glocks are priced at MAP, which means that you cannot buy them cheaper on the Internet - and with us there is neither shipping nor transfer charges.
One amazing deal that we have is Talo Edition Ruger SR-22 pistols. These come with Crimson Trace CMR-202 light which typically sells on the Internet for $110+. Obviously, it is completely useless on a 22LR plinker, but for just $10 more than the base model, you can take it off and put it on a different firearm. We have 4 pistols remaining, but the battery on 3 of them went bad - the guns were store in a way that caused the light to activate. If we discover a good source of the batteries, we might replace them ourselves, if not, it is still a crazy deal even with a dead battery.
See our firearms inventory here.Israel uses military force to maintain its oppression of Palestinians. It targets people with tear gas grenades, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, and carries out mass arrests, house demolitions and extrajudicial executions. This brutality lies at the heart of Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian rights, amounting to serious breaches of international law, and even war crimes.
This violence and destruction is made possible by Israel’s trade in arms with dozens of countries, including the UK. In 2017 alone, the UK government granted more than £289 million worth of licenses for the export of arms and military technology to Israel.
On paper, the UK has strict rules and regulations about trading arms with regimes that systematically abuse human rights. In reality, legal loopholes and a lack of scrutiny enable the regular export of military technology and weaponry from the UK to repressive regimes around the world, including Israel.
The deadly trade of arms is facilitated not only by the UK government; UK banks and financial institutions participate in Israel’s militarised repression by holding shares in companies that export military technology and weapons to Israel, and by providing and facilitating loans to companies producing such military technology and weapons.
Banks like HSBC, with high street branches across the UK, are key players in the UK-Israel arms trade by providing financial services to companies that allow for these deadly arms sales. Far from being the removed outsiders that they claim to be, UK high street banks are profiting from the UK-Israel arms trade.
Read War on Want's groundbreaking report Deadly InvestmentsSan Diego Chargers' Jatavis Brown, Cleveland Browns' Cody Kessler, Philadelphia Eagles' Wendell Smallwood, and Dallas Cowboys' Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott were the standout rookies for Week 6. Here's a deeper look at the nominees for Pepsi Rookie of the Week honors.
PEPSI ROOKIE OF THE WEEK NOMINEES
Jatavis Brown, San Diego Chargers Brown registered 14 tackles, a sack and a forced fumble in a 21-13 win over the Denver Broncos.
Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys Prescott completed 18 of 27 passes for 247 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 30-16 win over the Green Bay Packers.
Ezekiel Elliott, Dallas Cowboys Elliott rushed for 157 yards on 28 carries in a 30-16 win over the Green Bay Packers.
Wendell Smallwood, Philadelphia Eagles Smallwood ran in a 86-yard kick return for a TD against the Washington Redskins.For a variety of reasons (often war), various political parties or governments have been forced into exile. These groups usually wield no power, but are seen as a protest against the regime that exiled them. This is a list of ten of those exiled governments.
10 Belarusian National Republic
The BNR was created as a pro-German buffer state against revolutionary Russia in 1918. The BNR was never a real state, as it had no constitution, no military and no defined territory. When German troops withdrew from Belarus, the region was quickly overrun by the Red Army, and the BNR provisional council went into exile to facilitate an anti-communist movement there. Its government still exists, though it is unrecognized and in exile in Toronto.
9 Republic of Cabinda
Cabinda is a region located in west central Africa between Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Cabinda’s claims to independence from Angola trace back to its days as a Portuguese protectorate. When Angola achieved independence in the 1960s, the exiled Cabinda government declared independence as well, though it went unrecognized. Its government is currently based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
8 The Crown Council of Ethiopia
This governing body once acted as a board of advisors for the reigning emperors of Ethiopia. When the monarchy was driven out in 1975, members of the Crown Council (including descendants of Haile Selassie) claimed that the emperorship still existed, and was thus the only legitimate head of state. Its current leader is Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie and it is based in Washington, DC.
7 Progress Party of Equatorial Guinea
The PPGE (as it’s abbreviated in Spanish) was founded as a pro-market, pro-democratic party in Equatorial Guinea in west Africa, after a lengthy period of repressive military authoritarianism. The volatile political situation in Equatorial Guinea led to party members’ harassment and imprisonment. In response, the party declared a “government-in-exile” in Madrid, where it is still located.
6 Monarchy of Lao
The monarchy of Lao traces its origins to the consolidated Kingdom of Laos, formed in 1946. In 1975, the monarchy was dissolved by the communist regime and was sent into exile. It remains opposed to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and its stated goal is “to institute in Laos a true democracy, one which will ensure freedom, justice, peace and prosperity for all Lao people.” Its headquarters is located in the U.S.
5 NCBUG
The NCGUB (National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma) was formed in 1995 at a convention in Bommersvik, Sweden. Among its founding goals were the support of the political initiatives of imprisoned Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the establishment of a democratic multi-party union through talks with the ruling military junta led by General Than Shwe. Members were elected to parliament but not allowed by the junta to take office. It is currently based in Rockville, Maryland, U.S.
4 Republic of Serbian Krajina
This government was formed during the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s but was reinstated in 2005. Serbian Krajina was formerly a self-proclaimed Serbian state within Croatia, though it was later overrun by Croatian forces. More recently, former legislators of the RSK again pushed for greater autonomy (though not independence) from the Croatian government. The RSK exiled government is headquartered in Belgrade.
3 Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Chechnya is a breakaway province in the Northern Caucasus and is the site of two devastating wars between Chechen separatists and the Russian Federation. When the Russians overran Grozny in 2000, the Chechen government was exiled to various Arab countries, the U.K., the U.S. and Poland. In 2007, Ichkerian President Dokka Umarov declared himself the “emir” of a greater Caucasus Emirate, though this has been rejected by pro-republican forces and members of the former Chechen government.
2 Monarchy of Iran
The modern Iranian monarchy was established in 1501 and was presided over by the Shahanshah, the equivalent of an emperor. Through much of its history, Iran was ruled by an absolute monarchy. It’s last ruling shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was deposed by the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and sent into exile. Upon his death, the crown passed to his eldest son Reza Pahlavi. He has used his position to try to influence the Iranian electorate to perform acts of civil disobedience and non-participation, though he opposes foreign military action to oust the Islamic regime. He currently lives in Potomac, Maryland, U.S.
1 Central Tibetan Administration
Tibet is a region under the administration of the People’s Republic of China, a situation which is considered by the Central Tibetan Administration to be an unlawful occupation. The exiled Tibetan government is headed by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The CTA claims jurisdiction over those regions referred to as “Historic Tibet.” Among its current functions are the the building of schools, health services, economic development and cultural activities for the international Tibetan community. Its current policy advocates autonomy rather than total independence. The CTA is based in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama first settled following the Chinese military occupation of Tibet in 1959. Pictured above is the Prime Minister of the Central Tibetan Administration.
Contributor: MortimerBYou don’t have to donate any money for this, but a few clicks could help the Reddit Atheists win $50,000 for a variety of charities, including:
Secular Student Alliance
Doctors without Borders
Center for Inquiry
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Foundation Beyond Belief
What do you have to do?
Click this EXACT link. Sign up under “Start Your Foundation” and check “I agree to the GiveBack Terms…” (I would uncheck “I agree to receive email communication…”) Verify you’re a human. Don’t bother filling out the optional “Name Your Foundation” information. Just click on “Save Changes” at the bottom of that page. You’ll get an email. Click on the link in there to verify your registration.
That’s it! (A fantastic visual explanation of all that is right here.)
Once you register, 50 points will be awarded to the Reddit Atheists for your work. We’re currently in first place, but we need to maintain that spot to win the money. Whoever has the most points on July 17th will be declared the winner (so sign up before then).
Tell your friends to do it, too. It takes a couple minutes and it could help a lot of really wonderful groups.
(Thanks to everyone for the link!)This 48-year-old patient was evaluated for an interstitial pneumonia. An open-lung biopsy showed a pattern of nonspecific interstitial pneumonia. The CT scan appearance, showing mosaic ground-glass opacities in the ventilated parts of the lung, the centrolobular predominance of inflammation on the lung sections, and the presence of a lymphocytic alveolitis at BAL suggested a hypersensitivity pneumonitis. The patient was a white-collar worker and had no contact with pets, birds, drugs, or molds at home. He used to play the saxophone as a hobby. Two molds, Ulocladium botrytis and Phoma sp, were detected in the saxophone. Precipitating antibodies to these molds were present in his serum. An additional study confirmed the frequent colonization of saxophones with potentially pathogenic molds, such as Fusarium sp, Penicillium sp, and Cladosporium sp. Respiratory physicians should be aware of the risk of hypersensitivity pneumonitis in saxophone or perhaps other wind instrument players.Chinese president Xi Jinping has decided to skip a meeting of world leaders on climate change in New York, according to climate insiders, casting doubt on the summit’s potential to make progress ahead of next year’s major UN climate summit in Paris.
President Xi had been expected to attend the 23 September summit called by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, but is now set to send another senior Chinese politician in his place, though Beijing officials are yet to confirm this.
The news will be a blow to summit organisers, coming swiftly after the announcement that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi will also miss the meeting. Modi is scheduled to go to New York on 26 September and his decision not to advance his trip by three days to appear at the informal climate summit has created further paralysis among bureaucrats. Most of them do not even know if the environment minister is planning to go instead.
In this situation, the statement issued after the recent New Delhi meeting of environment ministers from BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries assumes added significance. The joint statement stuck to the long-held stand of developing nations.
Since then, there have been reports in India about alleged attempts by industrialised countries to woo Philippines away from the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) group. Other members of the group include India, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia.
During last year’s UN climate summit in Warsaw, Philippines took a leading position in this group by pressuring industrialised countries to live up to their commitments to mitigate emissions and help poorer nations tackle climate change effects. This position was strengthened because that summit was held in the immediate aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated large areas in the Philippines.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s informal summit comes as climate negotiations are heating up because a comprehensive global treaty to tackle climate change is expected by the end of 2015. Industrialised countries – led by the US and the European Union – are pressing for all 192 nations to take on legally binding obligations to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. India has so far opposed this strongly.
At a negotiating session of the UN’s climate secretariat this June, on behalf of LMDC the Venezuelan delegation submitted a draft of what the global climate deal should contain, a draft that was promptly opposed by negotiators from many industrialised countries. Indian negotiators now say they are waiting to see the draft being prepared by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat. They want this ready before the next UNFCCC summit – scheduled in Lima this December – so that every government has a year to negotiate before the 2015 deadline.
Leaders of climate NGOs that regularly shadow the UNFCCC summits are apprehensive because they have heard the French government is preparing its own secret draft – the 2015 summit will be held in Paris – just the kind of activity that led to a fiasco at the 2009 summit in Copenhagen. Negotiators from most developing countries are keen to see a public draft months before the deadline.
The UN Secretary General’s informal summit is being held against this backdrop, with the hope that heads of government will provide some much-needed political impulse to the negotiations.
Led by US President Barack Obama, many heads of industrialised nations are expected at the summit. The absence of China and India at the highest level will take some of the sheen off, but they can possibly come back on board if leaders of industrialised countries make serious commitments about what they are going to do to mitigate emissions and help developing nations. An expert group set up by the UN Secretary General has already given recommendations on how to finance a greener economic path for all countries.
The office of the UN Secretary General is bringing business and civil society leaders to meet the heads of state and government at the summit, hoping for announcements of new commitments and practical actions to address climate change. It will be the first time since the Copenhagen summit that a majority of world leaders will get together on the issue. Green NGOs are mobilising to hold street marches in New York and elsewhere to coincide with the summit.
Speaking ahead of the summit, Ban Ki-moon said: “Solutions exist and we are already seeing significant changes in government policies and investments in sustainable ways of living and doing business. The race is on, and now is the time for leaders to step up and steer the world towards a safer future.”It has been a long, long time since the year 2000. Wars have begun and ended, technology has completely transformed the way we communicate with each other, and the landscape of WWE has changed more times than is physically possible to count. Ever since the bell tolled on January 1, 2000 and it became clear the Y2K virus wasn’t going to destroy us all, Superstars and Divas seemed to come out of the woodwork in an attempt to claim the top spot in WWE.
What followed was a lengthy exercise in one-upmanship that established legends, won championships and changed fates, and the best part is everyone involved is just getting started. Here are 25 of the best Superstars of this very young millennium.
25
'Stone Cold' Steve Austin
Yes, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin rose to prominence in the late 1990s, living the blue collar dream of sticking it to one’s boss. But as the new millennium dawned, The Texas Rattlesnake showed there was more to him than, “Austin 3:16,” “Stone Cold” Stunners and throwing back Steveweisers.
In 2001, Austin sent shockwaves through the WWE Universe at WrestleMania X-Seven, when he joined forces with Mr. McMahon to regain the WWE Championship, then turned his back on WWE to join the WCW/ECW Alliance. By 2003, injuries from a career of stomping mudholes forced “Stone Cold” into retirement after one last classic with The Rock at WrestleMania 19, but that didn’t stop Austin from making an impact.
WWE Network: Relive Austin's rivalry with Mr. McMahon | How did the rivalry end?
“Stone Cold” enforced his brand of Texas justice on Monday Night Raw as the red brand’s ATV-riding sheriff, took his rightful place in the WWE Hall of Fame, and became an unlikely star in the world of podcasting. The medium has allowed The Texas Rattlesnake to show off his journalistic side, grilling WWE Chairman Mr. McMahon live on WWE Network, as well as his humor, with shows like the one detailing his battles against a Mexican fly.
Plus, he started that whole “What?” thing the WWE Universe is still crazy about. — BOBBY MELOK
24
Lita
Upon flying onto the scene during WWE’s Attitude Era, Lita helped redefine women’s competition at a crucial juncture, not only reshaping the division in which she competed, but also creating a lasting legacy for the Divas who followed. Utterly unlike any woman who had stepped in the WWE ring before her, Lita was unapologetically punk, but her famous aesthetic — the baggy pants, shoulder tat — was only one of the reasons she transformed women’s wrestling.
Full WWE Tough Enough coverage | Throwback Lita photos
There were also the breathtaking risks she took in matches, against men and women both, which included a dizzying array of lucha libre-inspired moves like moonsaults and hurricanranas. Though Lita gained footing as a valet of Esaa Rios, then Matt & Jeff Hardy, her breakthrough came in singles competition, where she won four WWE Women’s Championships. In December 2004, Lita’s duel with Trish Stratus set a new milestone as the first women’s main event in the history of Raw. Factor in her jaw-dropping tenure as Edge’s ally during the tail end of the envelope-pushing Attitude Era, and it’s no wonder Lita is remembered as one of the millennium’s most important personalities. — JOHN CLAPP
23
The Miz
The Miz’s story reads, appropriately enough, like a Hollywood script: A kid from Cleveland rises to fame on a popular reality show and parlays his success into a dream career at WWE where, after several stops and starts, he becomes the WWE Champion. Cue credits.
WWE Network: The Miz main-events WrestleMania
If only this was a movie. Few Superstars have had a climb quite like The Miz, who really did go from “Real World” hothead to “Tough Enough” contender to a Ryan Seacrest knockoff to, against all odds, a top-tier WWE Superstar. He |
is ensured that it will always fully respect the will of the people and will never go against them.Four men were caught in an avalanche on Vancouver Island on Tuesday, but only one 18-year-old suffered a minor leg injury, the RCMP has confirmed.
The small slide happened near Moat and Circlet Lakes in Strathcona Provincial Park, according to a statement issued by Cpl. Darren Lagen.
"The group used a cellphone to call for help, leading to the activation of the Comox Valley Search and Rescue Team and the Comox Valley RCMP," said Lagen.
A spokesman for Comox Search and Rescue said it appears nobody was buried or trapped in the slide.
The group was about two kilometres away from the Mount Washington Alpine Resort when the slide occurred, an official at the resort said.
RCMP said a command centre had been set up at the Raven Lodge at the resort and rescue technicians were using snow machines to reach the group.
The Vancouver Island Avalanche Centre rated the avalanche danger for areas at the treeline or higher as considerable on Tuesday.
Heavy snow is expected in the area overnight as part of a major storm passing over southern B.C.Since CAZ eSports released their CSGO team last month, there have been no signs of them picking up a new one apart from a brief moment where it looked like BEASTS were going to join them over Infused.
Ben “r0m” Smith returns to the org, along with Jesper “Jesp” Johansson who played with the old lineup during ESEA Season 21, but they have thrown in a curveball, introducing 3 new players that have been seen around the top of the ESEA RWS leaderboards recently.
r0m revealed the lineup on his twitter last month, but with no indication as to the organisation or the team name, with the ESEA team name being just “TBA”:
A notable player in that roster is Owen “sMooYa” Butterfield who, if you looked at ESEA’s premium stats leaderboards any time in February, you will have noticed had both of his ESEA accounts topping the RWS leaderboard, which is no mean feat but, obviously, doesn’t show the true skill of a player.
The full lineup is as follows:
Ben “r0m” Smith
Owen “Smooya” Butterfield
Jesper “Jesp” Johansson
Yannick “ync“ Van Boven
Donovon “zNf” Froid
r0m released the following statement on the CAZ eSports website:
I’m absolutely delighted to be back with CAZ and to be part of what I believe will be a very successful team. I’ve decided to branch out to Europe when choosing players, I feel the overall commitment to Counter Strike from a lot of Europeans tends to be so much higher than that of the average UK player. For the most part they generally have a better understanding of the practice schedules and the play style I want to be adopting. I’m extremely happy with this new lineup and the potential we have is absolutely massive. I really want to thank CAZ and all of our sponsors for this opportunity and most importantly the fans we have and hope to gain over the course of the next 6 months on our journey to success. Hard work will pay off!
This signing also means that long standing member Jake “jakem” McCausland is no longer part of CAZ. He was listed on the site as part of the streaming and entertainment team, but is no longer there. He is currently playing in a team with Daniel “RE1EASE” Mullan on ESEA which could be the start of a new team for him.Source: Rex Features
I have to write. It sometimes doesn’t matter what I write. I feel supremely confident and in control when I am writing, as I don’t in ordinary life
It has been 50 years since Terry Eagleton, at the age of just 21, became the youngest junior research fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge since the 18th century, thereby embarking on a career that, as early as the 1980s, made him one of the world’s best-known literary critics and left-wing public intellectuals. Given his political reputation, it was perhaps surprising that he went on to become the Thomas Wharton professor of English literature at the University of Oxford, although perhaps less surprising that he was, reputedly, once described by Prince Charles as “that dreadful Terry Eagleton”.
When we meet at Lancaster University, where he is now a distinguished professor, to talk about his half-century – years that Eagleton had suggested we might call the “disaster years” – I begin by asking, as if to double-check his literary credentials, for his favourite novelist and poet, respectively. Proust, he says, and Wallace Stevens. And music? “Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major,” he replies, “and Teddy Bears’ Picnic, though not necessarily in that order.”
Proust, Mozart and Oxford might seem, I suggest, a long way from his childhood in Salford. He agrees, recalling that “they used to say of the river there that not even canned fish could survive in it”. He is quick to mention his father, himself a socialist – “a highly intelligent man, a deeply intelligent man”, says Eagleton. “I doubt he ever read a book in his life.” Eagleton has no idea where he himself got the strange idea of reading books, but recalls that “about the age of eight, I was seized by the idea that I had to read the classics. I didn’t know what the classics were, or whether they were three books or 300, and so dragged my poor mother to a second-hand bookshop in the middle of Manchester, and there was a row of Dickens novels. I said to the man, ‘Is that the classics?’ And he said, ‘Well, yes, part of the classics.’ So my mother put down five shillings and paid the rest off in instalments of two-and-six. I read my way doggedly and uncomprehendingly through quite a few of them.”
Eagleton has not yet mentioned the Irish Catholicism of his parents, but it was not something he left behind in Salford: “When I arrived in Cambridge,” he says, “I became a part of a movement based there called the Catholic Left. I was lucky, you see, to encounter a version of Christianity that was radical, which meant something in human terms.” I ask what it actually “felt like” to be a Catholic in Cambridge in the 1960s, from the inside as it were; or was his early Catholicism, as he suggests in The Task of the Critic, primarily objective or liturgical?
He doesn’t really respond to this, if only because he’s eager to stress how “astonishingly exciting” he found the Cambridge Faculty of English; he fires off a list of names including not only his mentor, the Welsh socialist Raymond Williams, but also those with whom politically he had less in common: F. R. Leavis, L. C. Knights, George Steiner, Denis Donoghue.
“Literature mattered there,” he enthuses. “Though there were some for whom literature mattered too much.”
Unlike, then, the Oxford that he moved to in 1969? He nods. “I had moved from one bastion”, he confesses, “to another – in this case to a bastion of right-wing medievalist whimsy. Occasionally, I’d see members of the faculty quite literally crossing the road to avoid meeting me. I thought at the time this was because I was a communist; but I think now it was because I came from Cambridge.”
He explains that he prefers, these days, the word “communist” to “Marxist”: “‘Marxist’ is true but ‘communist’ is more a kind of practical term.” I mean to quiz him on this, but he is already describing the heady days of the radicalised 1970s academy, and it is too good to interrupt. “I was invited”, he recalls, “to speak at a university in Denmark which made Essex look like a tea party and was greeted by two shame-faced young academics, one of them carrying a small tape recorder. ‘Our students’, they said, ‘believe that lecturing is a form of violence, so you can’t lecture here. Would you mind speaking into this?’ So I gave the whole lecture into the tape recorder, and they nodded, took it away, and that was that.”
These were days when it was thought by many, including Eagleton, that literary criticism had the potential to play a politically revolutionary role. This is hard now to imagine, a point I put to Eagleton who seems almost to share this retrospective bemusement, which surprises me. Perhaps I am in danger of making the Cambridge mistake. Besides, it has been many years since Eagleton was, in his own words, “an earnest, high-minded, grim-lipped intellectual”. He explains that it was feminism that, around 1980, helped him out of that phase, with his work thereafter marked by all sorts of “low-minded” virtues such as bathos, irony and indeed comedy.
I ask him about this, the comedy, quoting a line from his novel Saints and Scholars (1987): “Your revolution will not succeed because you have not yet learnt to be frivolous.” So what is it about comedy? Why so important? “It is”, he says, “because comedy can be a form of friendship, solidarity. I mean, one of the difficulties of being a radical is always being against or outside things. Radicals want to come in from the cold as much as anybody else.” For Eagleton, it seems, the cold is part of the radical life – he is now both thinking of Bertolt Brecht and quoting him: “‘We who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship could not ourselves be friendly.’ ”
We’re living through an absolutely historic moment - namely the effective end of universities as centres of humane critique
Eagleton remarks that he once wrote a play about Brecht for the Edinburgh Fringe that “never saw the dead light of day again”. If he had not been an academic, he adds, he would almost certainly have been an actor. He then moves, paradoxically perhaps, to his conviction that each of us is driven by “inner necessity, by the undeviating law of our being”. Could he give an example? “Writing,” he says. “I have to write. In fact, you know, it sometimes doesn’t matter what I write. I feel supremely confident and in control when I am writing, as I don’t in ordinary life.”
He doesn’t appear particularly short of confidence when he’s speaking, a point I am about to make but he is already off into deeper waters – out into the cold, as it were: “Inner necessity; it’s a kind of tragedy when somebody confronts what they can’t walk away from. Part of the grandeur of Oedipus is that he doesn’t and can’t and won’t walk away from the horror of the real.” Eagleton is now serious, dead serious, and reaches for James Joyce’s famous line that “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken”. Then, in an instant, he is suddenly back in from the cold with, “And it was Woody Allen who said ‘History is a nightmare through which I am trying to get some sleep.’” Boom! For Eagleton, tragedy and comedy are, it seems, inseparable. But, for now, I want to know more about the tragedy, its everydayness, and so remind Eagleton of his claim that “every word I’ve written has been in the name of my father and people like him”. I am hoping he’ll say something about his father but instead he stresses how, historically, it was perhaps “women who had been most acutely aware of the everydayness of tragedy, the banality of tragedy”.
This banality is not to be confused with triviality or indeed secularity – for talk of tragedy quickly prompts Eagleton to talk of the crucifixion, which seems, as he speaks, to work so well for him as a picture of tragedy because of its connection to “the possibility of new life”, a possibility that has, he adds, “the political name of revolution”.
There was a time, mainly in the 1980s, when Catholicism was all but invisible in Eagleton’s writing. For some time now, it has been very evident; nevertheless, to date, Christianity has seemed to be primarily a language for Eagleton’s Marxism, or communism, with the crucifixion being a way of unearthing what Eagleton seemed to think of as a tragic vision otherwise buried within communism. However, what I am hearing now, as he speaks, is not so much communism-via-Christianity but rather communism-and-Christianity, a genuinely double act.
Is Eagleton, then, back where he was 50 years ago when he would often refer to himself as a Christian? I am tempted to ask this rather dumb, card-carrying question but resist. I do, though, summon the stupidity to ask the “afterlife” question, the heaven question. Given that he makes so much of the crucifixion, what, I ask, should we make of the biblical account of resurrection? What, if anything, is its significance and does that in any sense include an afterlife? “No,” he says, “the after-life is not a Judaeo-Christian belief. As Wittgenstein says somewhere, ‘How strange that people believe that when you die eternity starts.’ The Christian belief is in an eternity that is here and now.” “But,” I ask, “is eternity limited to here and now?” To which he replies that “eternity does not mean we will live on and on – that would be hell”.
I am tempted to ask my eternity question again, but time is running out and besides we both, he and I, work for a university not a church. Or is that the question? My final question? The what-is-a-university question? The question of to whom I owe my allegiance as a critic, an academic? Is it to truth, knowledge and enquiry, or is to my line manager, the research excellence framework and the taxpayer or student or whoever it is that’s paying me? God or Caesar, if you like.
And so I ask: who calls the tune? “History,” he replies, apologising for the upper-case “H”. “History sets the tasks for the critics.” But what if history is against us, or rather against truth, thought, the real? I am tempted to ask this, but there is no need since he is already on to this one: “What I would say about the university today,” he says, “is that we’re living through an absolutely historic moment – namely the effective end of universities as centres of humane critique, an almost complete capitulation to the philistine and sometimes barbaric values of neo-capitalism.”
This sounds rather like tragedy – if, that is, we really stare at the abyss. If so, is there the possibility of new life? Is there yet hope for the university? Eagleton smiles and quotes Kafka: “‘Yes, there is an infinity of hope, but not for us.’” With that we have to finish, there being no more time; though perhaps somewhere, somewhere else, there is still hope.When Major League Baseball made it clear this week that guns were banned in clubhouses by posting signs articulating that policy, it seemed a no-brainer. The guns-in-workplace issue gained steam with the indefinite suspensions slapped on Washington Wizards Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton after they brought firearms to practice. New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress remains imprisoned after accidentally discharging a firearm in a New York nightclub.
But it took less than a day for a hunting-happy ballplayer to take offense.
St. Louis Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin is upset about the ban, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that "a few guys screwed it up for everybody." Says Franklin:
"If you grew up around it, being in the outdoors and stuff, I was taught as a young kid how to respect firearms," Franklin said following Saturday's workout. "First of all, you don't get stupid with it. Always treat a gun like it's loaded. That's what I taught my son and daughters. There's a place for them."
While Franklin clearly stated he uses guns in the sportsman's sense and not for self-defense, here's guessing his comment will draw the ire of anti-gun activists, particularly given the St. Louis and Missouri areas' rank in various homicide rates.
By Gabe LacquesI’m standing in the secret room behind the office of the Palisade Bank’s CEO, grabbing a particularly damning document that I obtained at great personal risk. It’s how I got here that takes the stable platform of Deus Ex: Human Revolution (my review from five years ago here) and elevates it to something so much better.
Following the events at Panchaea, millions of augmented individuals lost control over their faculties and launched into a rage. This is the canon ending to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The outcome was catastrophic as hundreds of millions of people died and almost as many were injured. That was two years ago. As you can imagine, fear and resentment have taken hold, and the “Mechanical Apartheid” trailer that Eidos and Square Enix released (seen below) becomes far more than just an evocative and controversial tagline.
Seats for “Naturals Only” dot the nicer parts of Prague, while train stations have queues equally segregated. Guards with a look and demeanor of German SS soldiers frequently halt people in the streets, demanding to see their papers. Those without are carted off to “Golem City” — a sort of augmentation internment camp. But it’s worse than that — people have to take expensive Neuropozine to prevent their augments from rejecting, and the poorest population has to resort to crime, extortion, and even violence to get it. People openly spit racial epithets (e.g. “Clank”) and demean the augmented. Hatred and fear threaten to rip the world apart, and behind it all are shadowy puppet masters pulling the strings.
Adam’s had a rough few years. After the events at Pangaea, he was found floating in the water and spent the last two years in an amnesiatic state, recovering at an unspecified base in Alaska. Ready for duty once again, Adam has left Sarif Industries to join Interpol in Prague. After a series of terrorist anti-augment activities, Adam sets off to uncover the truth about the source of the movement, as well as what happened during the two years he can’t remember.
Mankind Divided spells a retooling of a great many aspects of Human Revolution. The new Dawn Engine brings better cover controls, tighter shooting mechanics, cleaner balance between RPG, combat, and stealth, and all on top of the vastly improved visuals. There is a lot of polish going on here, and it’s not just the significant graphical upgrades.
Back to the Palisade Bank, I reflect on what it took to get here. Sure, there’s plenty of air ducts to crawl through, but in Mankind Divided things are not nearly as binary as they were in Human Revolution. In this particular case, I used some social engineering on the bank receptionist who bragged entirely too much. Using that information and some hacking skills, I popped a few locked doors and found my way into a boardroom with a weak wall. Using my strength, I punched through the soft wall and exposed the building infrastructure where I found the aforementioned vents. Climbing down, I stumbled upon heavily fortified vaults with lasers and turrets that were, at this point, impassable with my current augment loadouts. Reversing course, I used the maintenance spaces and ductwork to get to the third floor. Moving a grate, I was face to face with a heavy multifunction printer that I couldn’t move, so I backtracked until I found another vent that dropped me directly into the third-floor hallway.
At this point, I faced long sightlines, patrolling guards, laser fencing grids, and very narrow windows of opportunity for movement. Other than the energy-expensive cloaking augment, this area is 100% based on your skill as an operative, and provides a breath of fresh air. It is also very indicative of the rest of the game — it doesn’t feel quite so much like you are locked into a single path if you chose hacking over strength, or eschewed a particular augment altogether. While all of that sounds like it’s a big fat easy button, the opposite is true. Tighter level design means that while there are many different paths you can take, so it requires more planning and forethought. While you can, with the right augs, play the game run-and-gun, the game slants heavily towards careful study and pinpoint execution.
It’s not all sunshine and roses in this story, though. In my playthrough I ran into more than a few Havok engine-related bugs. While these normally manifest in people doing step-ups on their desk or jittering around in hilarious ways, I did have several instances where somebody jammed their head, arms, or legs through a solid object, preventing me from dragging them out of the path of other wandering guards. In a game built on stealth, that becomes an obvious problem.
The second issue that I encountered wasn’t until it was well past the point to fix it. In the scenario above I carefully knocked out cameras and guards alike to ensure no casualties or alarms. In a different mission I snuck through a crime scene and stole some crucial evidence. When I made my way back to Interpol, everyone was asking me why I murdered all of the police guarding said crime scene. Given that nobody even spotted me, and that I didn’t even knock anyone out, I was a bit mystified. If you are aiming for an entirely non-lethal playthrough, this is a bit problematic. It’s not a dealbreaker, but more of a scuff on immersion and adherence to the selected playstyle.
Thankfully these two issues are completely overshadowed by the sheer volumes of improvements.
If you enjoyed the C.A.S.I.E. (Computer Assisted Social Interaction Enhancer) conversation system that went all-but-unused in Human Revolution, you should enjoy Mankind Divided, as this system gets much more use, if you spent the Praxis for the augments. Without it, the conversations require paying attention to verbal cues and reacting, but with these augments you need only respond to the lights. This augment is a giant easy button, but I was glad to see it used more frequently this time around.
The hacking system has received a bit of an overhaul. Level 1 objects might reveal all of the nodes, firewalls, datastores, and ICE (the enemy AI), but higher level hacks will obscure the path to the objective in a fog of war. Additionally, the higher level hacks now have directional flow indicators that force you to follow a specific path. To mitigate, you have more tools like Overclock to speed up hacks, Reveal to pull back the fog of war, and more. As a result, hacking is more challenging than before, and ultimately more rewarding.
Adam receives a handful of new augments (it’s a story element, so I’ll let you discover it for yourself) that will require you to balance Adam’s power requirements against the familiar ones from Human Revolution. Similarly, you can augment your weapons, but new ammunition types, like EMP shotgun rounds and stun pistol rounds, make each system feel more versatile. Inventory management is still a struggle, but with far more vendors in the game, it’s less of an issue than before.
Speaking of vendors, the city hubs are far larger than Human Revolution, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The game is more vertical than its predecessor, making far better use of Adam’s leg augments and further expanding traversal options. Also, the levels are more alive and richly detailed than before. Familiar things like the “Augmentchoo’s” cereal boxes mix with pop-culture references like a vendor talking about Wierzbowski (a name drop from the movie Aliens) or magazines mentioning the H.A.A.R.P. satellite (from 80’s cult flick Remo Williams) to paint a more complete picture of the future world, but with a dash of humor to offset the otherwise darker tone. Dust motes fill the air in Adam’s apartment, textures are rich and detailed, and the city feels more complete. The contrast between main characters and secondary can sometimes be jarring, but it’s still significantly better than Human Revolution.
There is a crafting engine here, but I didn’t find that I used it very much in my stealth playthrough. Picking up crafting materials in the environment allows you to create consumables like Biocells (replacement for the various foods and candy bars from the first game) and ammunition. A more combat-focused run would likely use more of these resources.
If I had a disappointment, it’s that the game is over faster than I expected, and the story was a little less compelling than Human Revolution. Even tackling all of the side content, I was through my first run in just over a dozen hours. Human Revolution was easily double that number, featuring several massive locations to explore. Mankind Divided spends the bulk of its time in Prague. You’ll leave for a mission, and then come back and explore the same Prague, but at night. While this city hub is significantly bigger, It would have been nice to see more locations for Adam to tackle. Similarly, the Aug “ghetto” Golem City feels more like a ‘level’ than a city. It’s a common problem in the movie genre, and it’s no less true here — following up an origin story is always a difficult proposition.
Perhaps in place of additional content is a mode called Breach. Existing in a VR world, Breach has the player carefully navigating over 75 levels to hack servers and extract data. Their quotas filled, they then have to escape in a designated amount of time. Completing these extractions allows you to pick up Praxis kits and augment your avatar with new skills, some from the main game, and some unique to this mode. Each augment takes up ‘memory’ space for your avatar, so you’ll have to balance your loadout before tackling a new level. Leveling up gives you “firmware updates” that expand your memory capacity.
As you push further into Breach, the rules will change. Sometimes that means armored enemies, other times the countdown starts immediately. There are even boss battles. To combat this, you can collect and use single-use “cheats” to break the server rules. These cheats can increase run speed, multiply damage, grant additional health, and more. Eventually, you’ll uncover “Darknet” files, revealing story-related missions that you can tackle for additional rewards. These are loosely tied to the main story, so I don’t want to give away any details, but they provide a bit more connection to the virtual adventure. Weapon upgrades, crafting, and more await you in Breach. While we may not have asked for this, it’s a very complete and entertaining extension to the main game.
The biggest complaint with Human Revolution was the boss battles. If you spent all of your points on stealth, you probably found yourself outmatched when it came time to take on the big baddies in the game. Mankind Divided combats this with allowing you to talk your way out of nearly every conflict, if you are smart about the interaction. It makes the game feel less ‘segmented’ by boss battles, though the re-use of the Prague hub does little to make use of this improvement.
85 Great Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Review Guidelines I imagine the Internet will be abuzz with discussion on the “Mechanical Apartheid” issue, debating whether it was offensive, or if Eidos Montreal did enough to warrant the comparison, but aside from that, there is a very solid effort here. The new augments combined with better level design makes exploration more satisfying, and the little upgrades to hacking make that whole system more tense. While it’s over a little too soon, if you enjoyed Human Revolution, there is a lot to like here. —Ron Burke
Ron Burke is the Editor in Chief for Gaming Trend. Currently living in Fort Worth, Texas, Ron is an old-school gamer who enjoys CRPGs, action/adventure, platformers, music games, and has recently gotten into tabletop gaming. Ron is also a fourth degree black belt, with a Master's rank in Matsumura Seito Shōrin-ryū, Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do, Universal Tang Soo Do Alliance, and International Tang Soo Do Federation. He also holds ranks in several other styles in his search to be a well-rounded fighter. Ron has been married to Gaming Trend Editor, Laura Burke, for 21 years. They have three dogs - Pazuzu (Irish Terrier), Atë, and Calliope (both Australian Kelpie/Pit Bull mixes).It couldn’t be more fitting even if it had been planned. The perfect way to celebrate the National Park Service 100th birthday presented herself earlier this month when she — a condor chick raised in the wild of Pinnacles National Park — took her first flight, becoming the first chick to do so in Pinnacles National Park in more than 100 years. The Pinnacles' condor crew attributes this success, and others, to the meticulous dedication and skill of its volunteers.
Striving to maintain the success of its management program, Pinnacles National Park and the American Conservation Experience are seeking one local full-time intern (age 18 or older) to assist with the monitoring of captive and wild California condors at Pinnacles National Park. This is a six-month internship with the possibility of extension. The position is scheduled to begin in early January 2017. The intern will receive a $360 per week stipend. An AmeriCorps educational award may also be available.
Applicants within commuting distance to Pinnacles National Park are highly encouraged to apply as housing in the park is not available.
We are seeking individuals with enthusiasm, self-initiative, dependability, and an open mind. If you are interested in joining this team of committed staff and volunteers, please send a cover letter, resume, and 3 references to Alacia Welch at alacia_welch@nps.gov no later than Nov. 1, 2016. Please write “Internship Application” in the subject line of your email and send all application components as a single attachment using the following file naming format: First name_Last name_Internship_Application.
Highlight any educational or work experience with endangered species or wildlife, radio-telemetry, public speaking, basic maintenance and construction tasks, 4x4 driving on primitive roads, and hunting or ranching operations.
Any questions should be directed to Alacia Welch through email at alacia_welch@nps.gov (preferred) or by phone (831) 389-4486, ext. 276. For further position details please go to the volunteer opportunities on the Pinnacles National Park website and see the California Condor Recovery Program Intern description: https://www.nps.gov/pinn/getinvolved/volunteer.htmPresident Obama plans to announce tonight the most extreme assertion of domestic executive power in our lifetimes. The justification he has offered would be almost amusing if it were not so disturbingly hard to distinguish from blackmail: If Congress won’t rewrite our laws the way the president asked them to, he’s just going to do it himself.
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The president is expected to promise to halt enforcement of congressional statutes for millions of illegal immigrants and give many of them authorization to work here in the United States. (He is planning on a range of other changes to our immigration laws, too.)
His legal argument is exceedingly weak and obviously disingenuous. The plan’s precedents, such as they are, were responses to discrete crises, did not include positive benefits like work authorization, or were addenda to duly passed congressional amnesties.
President Obama’s plan is none of these things. It will offer work permits to millions of illegal immigrants at a time when many legal immigrants and American citizens are looking for jobs themselves. Much of the plan expands an already unprecedented executive action from two years ago, which put the so-called Dream Act into effect by fiat. And it certainly is not a response to an isolated crisis; indeed, this kind of amnesty can only be assumed to encourage widespread illegal immigration in the future.
In the past, and not the distant past, the president has forcefully and repeatedly argued that he could not do what he plans to do tonight. But, the White House explained yesterday, “The president has been waiting a long time — more importantly, the American people have been waiting a long time — for congressional Republicans to stop blocking a commonsense proposal,” so now things have changed.
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There is no Waiting a Long Time or Commonsense Proposal Clause in the Constitution. The separation-of-powers doctrine does not have an expiration schedule — or didn’t until this president announced one. And the public doesn’t even believe that action is urgent or necessary: Various polls suggest that it opposes the president’s executive-action plans by a substantial margin.
Republicans would be right to stand for our system even if they did not have public opinion at their backs. But they do, and the planned Republican response looks far short of what the crisis demands. Yet Republicans at the highest levels appear uninterested in the options available to force the president to do his duty.
One possibility would be to restrict funding for the president’s proposed order. House Republicans should consider a bill to fund the government except for Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), the agency in the Department of Homeland Security responsible for implementing the president’s order, and perhaps a few other selected portions of the administration. They could then propose a bill funding these agencies, including in it a prohibition against executing the president’s amnesty. Democrats would have little excuse not to pass the former bill, and, were the president to sign it, both sides could proceed to a focused argument on immigration funding. If the president were to veto the larger bill, or Democrats to block it, a shutdown might occur — but the White House, or congressional Democrats, might end up shouldering the blame.
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There are more modes of resistance. Legal remedies can be considered. A Republican Senate should refuse to confirm any attorney-general nominee who is willing to carry out the president’s plan. In their efforts, the GOP should enlist any Democrats who retain a shred of sympathy for written law over the president’s pen.
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Congressional leadership has shown almost no interest in any of these tactics. They should consider which of these remedies are most prudent, but they must consider all of them. The strategy should depend in some measure on exactly what reaction the public has to the plan, which, of course, will depend in some measure on how effectively Congress makes its case.
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President Obama’s hubris has forced a constitutional crisis. Republicans need to start saying that — and acting like it.MANILA, Philippines – Senator Vicente Sotto III admitted that he is one of two senators who inserted the libel clause in the Philippines' new anti-cybercrime law, according to a report by a US news website.
In a September 28 article, cbsnews.com’ s Barnaby Lo quoted Sotto saying, "Yes, I did it. I inserted the provision on libel. Because I believe in it and I don't think there's any additional harm."
Sotto earlier said he supports the libel clause in the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (Republic Act 10175) to "level the playing field" between journalists and social media users.
Sotto was involved in a controversy recently for allegedly plagiarizing blog posts of American blogger Sarah Pope and a speech of the late US Senator Robert Kennedy.
The senator claimed he became a victim of “cyber-bullying” following uproar from netizens.
But Sotto has said the libel clause, under Section 4-C(4), is not meant to "curtail press freedom" but to protect ordinary people who are "victims of online attacks, character assassination and the like from people who do not observe the standards of journalism."
Senate records show that Sotto added the libel amendment on January 24, 2012.
The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 will take effect October 3.Graphic novel draws on Northern Ireland bonfire culture for thought-provoking tale BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Bonfires may have become a source of dispute in Northern Ireland's divided society, but a new comic book is aiming to shed some light on the debate. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/graphic-novel-draws-on-northern-ireland-bonfire-culture-for-thoughtprovoking-tale-36143566.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article36143565.ece/4fd09/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-09-19_new_34691548_I1.JPG
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Bonfires may have become a source of dispute in Northern Ireland's divided society, but a new comic book is aiming to shed some light on the debate.
The Burning Issues graphic novel launched this week in Londonderry aims to spark debate when it is rolled out across youth clubs and schools.
The storyline revolves around two teenagers and two bonfires in the city - in the nationalist Bogside and unionist Fountain areas - in 2016 when the republican bonfire was constructed in the middle of the road.
It tells the story of a Catholic teenage boy from the Bogside and Protestant girl from the Fountain Estate who fall in love during 'bonfire season'.
It reveals how they deal with the problems arising from their differences and divided cultures.
The storyline emerged from school and community-based workshops attended by young people from both sides, who shared their experiences.
Eamonn Baker is from Towards Understanding and Healing which produced the graphic novel with the Community Relations Council.
He said: "We want to promote understanding, we want to reduce the sense of a burning issue. Fire, per se, is not a bad thing, bonfires are not bad things, sectarianism is not a good thing. My hope is that through this people can understand each other better."
Catholic youth Seamus McGlinchey (17), who inspired one of the characters in the comic, said he hopes the work will make people aware of the impact of bonfires.
"It made me think about the community and how bonfires affect them," he said.
Protestant teenager Britney Heatherington (17), who also inspired a character, said she hopes the publication will make young people think.
"I think it's good," she said. "I've seen how both sides build their bonfires. It's culture.
"At the workshops we were asked what we did at our bonfire and they were asked what they did at theirs. In the magazine there are pictures of bonfires with election posters and flags. It should make people think of what they do."
Artist Joe Campbell created the striking images in the graphic novel. He said a comic is the perfect vehicle to drive home an important message.
Joe Thompson, whose Extern youth groups were |
ally-to-legalize-marijuana http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/100527/drug-war-policy-legalization
Medford: Melanie Barniskis sonorml(at)gmail.com 541-779-1448 http://www.so-norml.org Southern Oregon NORML (SO NORML), 332 W. 6th Ave., Medford OR 97501. Over 250 people marched through Downtown Medford from Alba Park. The march through downtown Medford took us right past the Federal Courthouse, the county courthouse, and our rally was held right outside of the Medford Police Department's windows. Law Enforcement was minimal, a couple of drive by observations, but no problems whatsoever. <http://www.so-norml.org/events.html> http://www.so-norml.org/events.html http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100502/NEWS/5020331&emailAFriend=1
Mediaopolis: Bob Creeman 319-671-1691 319-394-3425
Medicine Hat: Safra Sailer (403) 526-9070. Meet at BOB headquarters 1:30 PM; march to Medicine Hat City Hall
Memphis: Josh Devin 901-304-4537. or Sarah Stamps norml.memphis(at)gmail.com University of Memphis NORML Chapter http://www.myspace.com/memphisnorml
Mendoza: Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 200 people in 2010
Mérida: Enrique Dorta <enriquedorta(at)gmail.com> 0034 697149495 asociacioncannabicavenezolana(at)hotmail.com http://asocannaven.mforos.com
Mérida: "Eduardo Aquiles Toledo Puga" <eatp_sk8(at)hotmail.com> contact: 019999203546 cel number: 9991205847 <http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=333974592338&ref=mf>. starting from the Plaza grande, to paseo montejo. and the long of the march, about a 3 or 4 hours....
Mexico City: info(at)ameca.org.mx, amecannabis(at)yahoo.com, gregorio_samsa(at)hotmail.com +(52) 55-2166-6034 http://www.ameca.org.mx/ c/o Leopoldo Rivera Rivera, Amapola # 35, Jardines del Molinito, Naucalpan Estado de México, CP 53530. Día Mundial por la Liberación del Cannabis, marcha de la Alameda Central al Monumento a la Revolución.
Miami: Dail Adelman NORMLSFLA(at)gmail.com 305 401 5776. May 7, 2011 Hollywood Boardwalk at the Bandshell (Johnson St.) 2-5 p.m.
Miamitown: the Happy Hemptress <hemptress(at)hemprock.com> 513-684-HEMP HempRock Productions, P.O. Box 141066, Cincinnati, OH 45250 http://www.hemprock.com Riverfront West Pavilion, 7958 Harrison Ave. in Miamitown, OhighO. Doors open 7:30pm, Saturday May 1.
Middlesbrough: Dave Longshaw gmmmiddlesbrough(at)hotmail.co.uk 07867812551 http://www.freewebs.com/gmmmiddlesbrough Midland: Bryan Perryman <ih8review(at)gmail.com> (432) 559-4437 http://ih8review.tumblr.com Rally at the Federal Bldg, 200 E. Wall St..
Miesbach: Grüne Jugend Miesbach (Young Greens Miesbach) schmuddelkind(at)affenspass.com Info-booth.
Milwaukee: Dan Schroeder, acting Ex. Dir., S.E. Wisc. NORML 414-248-7721; Chris Henry chrisxhenry42(at)yahoo.com 414-698-2489. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000343441912 or Terrell 414-587-3106.
Minas Gerais: Gui Maluf <guimalufb(at)gmail.com> <guimaluf(at)dcc.ufmg.br> 55 31 98096559.
Minneapolis: Chris Wright tc_wright38(at)yahoo.com Phone: 651-280-7922. Noon-time rally (at) Washburn Fair-Oaks Park (24th Street and Stevens Ave) 2 p.m. marching to Smith Triangle Park (24th Street and Hennepin Ave) and returning to Washburn Fair-Oaks.
Minsk: http://www.legaliz.info
Missoula: John Masterson norml(at)montananorml.com 406-542-8696 Montana NORML, PO BOX 8411, Missoula, MT 59807. March begins at 4:20 at Jacob's Island/Bark Park- along the Clark Fork to the courthouse. Bring signs, bring love, bring strength and righteousness.
Monterey: Tara Curatolo <taracuratolo(at)yahoo.com> (831) 901-8249 1.
Montevideo: Ariel De Los Santos unomasnomata(at)hotmail.com "Movimiento por la Liberacion del Cannabis" http://www.liberaciondelcannabis.org/. The event this year was on May 15th, it was awful, rain, cold, wind and transport strike. We had just around 1000 people, we expected 10 times more but the climate didn't help. http://ladiaria.com/articulo/2010/5/fumar-la-propia/
Montpelier: Bonnie Scott. Medical marijuana contingent at Health Care is a Human Right rally.
Montgomery: Loretta Nall cnall1(at)charter.net Montreal: Marc-Boris St. Maurice Boris(at)mapinc.org. or Shantal Arroyo 514.842.4900 Compassion Club 4135 St. Laurent Blvd. Montreal Quebec H2W 1Y7, Canada. or Adam Greenblatt <cannabismontreal(at)gmail.com> cannabismontreal(at)gmail.com http://www.norml.ca 68 Rachel St. East, Montréal, QC, H2W 1C6. May 8th. http://web.archive.org/20100510012941/www.montrealmirror.com/2010/050610/news2.html
Montrose: Kimberley Hershkowitz hershkowitz21(at)hotmail.com 979-964-4209.
Morgantown: Richard Rudd 304-438-8296.
Morongo Valley: Jesse Perkins (760)-660-5048. Covington Park, noon til 6 pm.
Moscow: Adam Assenberg massenberg420(at)yahoo.com 509-397-3252. P.O. Box 482 Colfax, WA 99111 http://www.marijuanafactorfiction.org 2 PM from Hemp Fest site to City Hall. Moscow: Serge Konstantinov ussserge(at)gmail.com +7926-229-98-30 Dmitry Goldyz rastovd(at)gmail.com +7905-575-63-31 Maria Smirnov +7926-248-69-38 http://www.legaliz.info Cannabis Walk near the fountain "Druzhba Narodov" (Friendship of Nations)
Mount Pleasant: locasse9(at)aol.com 989-779-7572. March at 4:20 on May 1, at the downtown square to Island Park pavilion. http://themorningsun.com/articles/2010/05/02/news/srv0000008176339.txt
Mount Shasta: Paul von Hartmann projectpeace(at)yahoo.com 831 588 5095.
Nagaoka: Riki Hiroi bongler(at)hotmail.com Nippon Marijuana Lovers (0)25-792-0455,090-94644378 http://nipponmarijuanalovers.fc2web.com
Nanaimo: Tracie golden_angel2875(at)yahoo.ca
Nancy: Florent Compain <contact(at)circnordest.net> cell:.33 6 12 54 60 03 http://www.circnordest.net.. 200 rallied in '08.
Napier: Nashua: Scott Turner BDTdialup(at)aol.com
Nashville:Brent 615-516-9861 TNNorml <tnnorml(at)gmail.com>. "Howie & Marivuana Leinoff" marivuana(at)hotmail.com thezow(at)hotmail.com (615) ACT-HIGH. or 615-228-4444. http://www.marivuana.com http://www.punkenstein.com or 250 in '08: "High Noon," corner of 1st St. & Woodland Ave Parking Lot - Parking $1. Cross War Memorial Bridge, circle the court house, go down Second Avenue & up Broadway.
Nelson: Sarah Bergeron saraberg(at)live.com 1-250-505-5449. http://www.nelsondailynews.com/article/20100504/NELSON0101/305049992/-1/nelson/pot-on-parade
Netanya: Netta Simply nsimply(at)gmail.com 972-524-666445 P.O.Box 13914, Netanya, 42138, Israel. May 1st, 16:00 meet at the city fountain and march up and down the main st.
Neuquén: Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 100 people in 2010
Newark: Richard J. Schimelfenig hempman(at)verizon.net 302-439-0313 Delaware Cannabis Society, 37 Jill Ct., Wilmington, DE 19809 4:20 PM, Parking Lot, Main & Chapel St.
Newark: Danny Newkirk 973-230-0852 862-438-6674
New Brunswick: Jenna Schaal-O'Connor Jennasoc(at)eden.rutgers.edu 908-892-6037 Rutgers SSDP. On College Ave across from Student Center, noon.
New Orleans: Ashley Boudreaux mojofearless(at)gmail.com 504-710-9128. High Noon, rally details TBA.
New Paltz: George Selby38(at)newpaltz.edu 862-266-2911 or Lia 845-616-7707. April 17 RAR on campus with KRS-One
New Plymouth:
Newton: Adam Holdsworth Adam_419(at)hotmail.com 319-330-1902. Concert starts 4:20 PM. New York City: Dana 212-677-7180 dana(at)phantom.com http://www.worldwidemarijuanamarch.org Cures not Wars, 9 Bleecker St, NYC 10012. May 7, 2011 Details TBA. http://picasaweb.google.com/pderienzo/MayDayIsJayDay?feat=email#slideshow/5466553264139438530 http://nyulocal.com/entertainment/2010/05/04/i-like-marijuana-you-like-marijuana-rosie-and-ana-go-green/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTH0YDMFI7w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUlEQPl2WWI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVk1LOuTHvo&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay2e8pNhgyI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxBFPAgh0l4&feature=related
Nimbin: Max Stone Australian Cannabis Law Reform Movement aclrm(at)nimbinaustralia.com ph: 61 266 891842 http://www.nimbin-marijuana-march.420-web-hosting.com http://www.nimbinmardigrass.com. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCZxcBc4TbI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQgwWLUhjV4 http://www.nimbin-marijuana-march.420-web-hosting.com/ http://www.youtube.com/user/stodie17#p/a/u/1/qQgwWLUhjV4 http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2010/05/03/peace-and-love-with-a-dash-law-reform-mardigrass/http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/festival-cannabis-supply-seized-police-20100430-tycf.html
Normal: Stephanie Wolter slwolte(at)ilstu.edu 815-382-9008 ISU SSDP Pres.. or Viola Woolums nofxned(at)hotmail.com 309-507-3153
Norman: Chrissie Brown cbrown73(at)gmail.com 405-590-1315.
North Battleford: moe.brondum(at)gmail.com (Saskatchewan, Canada) Nottingham: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=325435053138&ref=mf
Novosibirsk: Vjacheslav A. Repkin RastaSibirsk(at)yandex.ru : +7(923)234.31.40. http://truebrary.narod.ru/ http://www.rastasibirsk.fastbb.ru/
Odessa: (Ukraine) absolutely1984(at)list.ru http://community.livejournal.com/legalize_ua/333443.html http://bg.liga.net/www/images/gmm_odesa_big.jpg Ogden: Happy Gorder utahliberty(at)yahoo.com 801-393-2806 cell 317-6262. 200 rallied despite police rudeness. Noon, 25th & Washington
Okechobee: Chantal Dupuis cstudent91(at)yahoo.com 863-261-1960
Okinawa: Cannabist <info(at)cannabist.org> http://www.cannabist.org/ +81-3-3706-6885
Oklahoma City: Ashley Burleson <ashley.sugardumplin(at)gmail.com>. Not this year
Olympia: James Baglio gymbags(at)yahoo.com. 360-915-3765. or mmjfreedom (at)yahoo.com http://www.mmjfreedom.com May 8 (at) HIGH NOON, Heritage Park, Olympia WA Hands around Capitol Lake.. "Do the WAVE at the Capitol at 4:20, National Anthem, Jimi style....CURES NOT WARS!!!
Omaha: Melanie Marshall 402-415-7373 mmelz5(at)yahoo.com http://www.makepotlegal555.org. Alan 402-892-9345 McFoster's 402-345-7477 302 S. 38th Street, Omaha, NE 68131 Check out 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yawvRvKeXU May 14 1-5 Gene Leahy Mall (at) 13th and Farnam. Open speeches (at) 2. March to Old Market (at) 3. Drumming circle Signs, snacks and water provided.
Orange: Dustin Devilray1969(at)yahoo.com 409-540-0916
Orange County: Joshua Potter joshuapotter1981(at)yahoo.com 949-973-7243 http://www.411BUD.com.
Orel: contact email: fester_ad(at)mail.ru http://forum.growhome.org
Orensburg (ural-llc(at)ultra.ru)
Orlando: Donna Drake floridamom4marijuana(at)gmail.com 407-394-3307. or Josh/PUFMM 727-735-8270 http://www.pufmm.org/ 30 volunteers worked festival w. petitions.
Osaka: Cannabist <info(at)cannabist.org> http://www.cannabist.org/ +81-3-3706-6885.
Oslo: post(at)normal.no gmm(at)normal.no. gmm(at)globalmarijuanamarch.org Tokel +47 99 32 59 61 http://normal.no/gmm/ NORMAL, Hjelmsgt 3, N0-0355 Oslo, Norway. Gather (at) Youngstorget (square), 15.00 hours...stay after the march for a big concert.
Ottawa: Wes Bartlett <wesbartlett1(at)hotmail.com> 613 302 0922. or Darcy T <rizla_420(at)hotmail.com>. We are gathering (at) Confederation Park on May 1st around 2 p.m., and marching down to parliament at 3. http://cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2010/05/02/Successful-Global-Marijuana-March-Ottawa
Oulu: http://www.hamppu.net contact: Kyosti org: Vapaamieli http://www.mtv3.fi/luukku
Paducah: Paula Willett pioneerpaula(at)mchsi.com 270 703 5283 http://www.myspace.com/kentuckymarijuanamarch. Meet up at Dolly McNutt Plaza 6th & Washington St—the Veterans Memorial 11:00 a.m. March HIGH NOON
Paia: Brian Murphy info(at)patientswithouttime.com 808 344-2991. http://www.mccfdia.com & http://www.patientswithouttime.com Paia maui will be doing a rally (at) baldwin beach Park noon to 6pm.
Palm Springs: Aurora Maldonado aurora.maldonado(at)yahoo.com (760)660-7490. Very hot in 2010 but there was a lot of support.
Parana: Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 30 people in 2010
Paris: FARId Ghehioueche <farid(at)no-log.org> 0033614815679 /skype: farid3h http://www.myspace.com/farid71100 http://www.cannabissansfrontieres.org Postal : Lady Long Solo 38, rue Keller 75011 Paris. May 1st: from Republique to Bastille within all demonstrators of labor day; May 8th "Liberation day" - all in Paris / Bastille Place from 3PM to 6 PM.; Nationwide CannaPeace gathering (music, information, speeches, street arts...). Over 1000 people at Place de la Bastille http://www.alain-teoule-images.com/canabis/index.htm http://www.blog-video.tv/video-242599246e-Archive-tele-du-08-05-2010-15-53-58.html http://essonneinfo.fr/91-essonne-info/reportage-legalisation-du-cannabis-l%E2%80%99enquete-a-bastille-lors-du-rassemblement-organise-par-cannabis-sans-frontieres-ce-samedi/
Parker: Robert Leivas robert_Leivas_Holquin(at)yahoo.com 928-667-5163. Details TBA
Pasadena: Kandice Hawes Kandiceocnorml(at)aol.com 1-877-OCN-ORML. The Million Marijuana March was a huge success and definite crowd favorite at the Annual Doo Dah Parade in Pasadena this year. About 50 Marchers held signs from different groups advocating Cannabis Freedom.
Pasco: John C. Imus 509-545-3970.
Pecs, Hungary: Kendermag (Hemp Seed Association), http://www.kendermag.hu 3 PM 13 May Pensacola: Montaye Hill montayehill(at)yahoo.com 850-485-8008.
Penticton. Amanda Stewart astewart(at)img.net 250-770-8171 http://www.valleyhemp.com http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=62759125730&ref=mf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5K_vNnPKEk&feature=related c/o Valley Hemp, 4143 Skaha Lake Rd, Penticton, British Columbia, V2A 6J7 Canada. 30 people in small town, lots of support and honks from drive-bys. May 7, 2011, 3:00 p.m. Gyro Park
Peoria: Shannon Keith, Ill. Medical Marijuana Not-for-profit, 309-264-9638. or Richard J. Rawlings richrawlings(at)usmjparty.com Voice and Fax: 309-648-2525 http://usmjparty.com.2009 on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7ym6I7yXc May 1, 2010 march was excellent w/more than 150 people.
Philadelphia: Rob Dougherty <rob(at)phillynorml.org> rob(at)phillynorml.org 215-586-3483 or Derek Rosenzweig derek(at)phillynorml.org http://www.phillynorml.org http://www.pa4mmj.org Postal: 1234 Market St., PO. Box 36687, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Over 1200 people marched down South Street on May 1, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XR-6FQrnxg http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=marijuana+march+philadelphia http://www.examiner.com/x-29881-Philadelphia-NORML-Examiner~y2010m5d3-VIDEO-PhillyNORML-2010-Global-Marijuana-March http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uXNISjgbQ&feature=PlayList&p=4C97CB25ABC82379&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=48 May 7, 2011 meeting at Broad and South St, details TBA
Phnom Penh: Ray Crystl THCMinistrycambodia(at)gmail.com 011-855 17 58 1930 High noon, Wat Phnom
Phoenix: The Phoenix March Kathy & Nancy Kathy(at)PhoenixNORML.net<free420arizona(at)aol.com> P.O. Box 60272 Phoenix AZ 85082- May 7, 2011 - The 4th Annual Worldwide March for Cannabis Liberation in Phoenix PhoenixMarch.Org Facebook Phoenix March <http://myspace.com/phoenixmarch> http://myspace.com/phoenixmarch <http://www.phoenixnorml.org> http://phoenixmarch.org/ Facebook Phoenix March 2010 recap: about 300 or so...we did a medical marijuana Candlelight Vigil
Pietarsaari: Marcus / Kulturväxternas Vänner jeppisrescueteam(at)gmail.com http://www.myspace.com/kultvaxt
Pineville: Ragan Tolbert & Chris Parkes onthatlevel2(at)gmail.com 704.698.5364. Marching on May 8th (at) Park Rd. Park
Pittsburg: Jen Rainey jrainey(at)gus.pittstate.edu 417-396-6618 http://www.myspace.com/pittstatenorml. http://www.koamtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12418784 http://media.www.psucollegio.com/media/storage/paper437/news/2010/05/06/CampusLife/Students.Make.Their.Stances.On.Marijuana.Known-3917725.shtml
Pittsburgh: Richard Schmitt, Comm. Dir., Pitt. NORML, rick(at)pittsburghnorml.org 412-576-0103. or Benjamin Wilhelm info(at)wpanorml.org 724-601-7510 http://www.wpanorml.org.
Port Aransas: Kelsey Jackson dr.pepper4293(at)yahoo.com 361-557-8147. Rally on the Beach, mile marker 9, 4:20 PM.
Portland: Emma Donovan EmmaRDonovan(at)hotmail.com 207-332-3253 MaineLyNORML(at)gmail.com http://www.myspace.com/mainelynorml MaineLy NORML, 57 McKay Rd Norway, Maine 04268. Cap'n Joint C*J Bunn.50 gathered for rally in Monument Square. Next year gather at the square and march to Deering Oaks Park for music and speakers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzRIF56hn8k
Portland: Madeline Martinez: exec.director(at)ornorml.org or Anna Diaz: anna(at)ornorml.org 503.239.6110 http://www.ornorml.org GCM Organizing Committee c/o Oregon NORML, PO Box 16057, Portland, OR 97292-0057. http://www.ktvz.com/global/story.asp?s=12410367 http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april272010/cannabis-march.php http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/13320778-41/story.csp
Porto: Filipe Guedes, Carla Fernandes & Luis Castro info(at)mgmporto.org 00351225100455 or 00351917924889-Carla or 00351914207585-João http://www.mgmporto.org Postal: Rua São Roque da Lameira 839, 4350-311 Porto, Portugal
Porto Alegre: principioativo.rs(at)gmail.com or portoalegre(at)marchadamaconha.org http://www.principioatvio.org http://www.principioativo.blogspot.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR9cGMVK3U4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPahnnyiiF4 About 1,000 people marched at Parque da Redenção, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil. Music Speakers Clowns Cops and giant polystyrene joints! Sign up our city for May 14 or 21, 2011
Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago: Chad Paryag cpborgir(at)gmail.com
Potsdam: Annett Bauer verein(at)chillout-pdm.de 0049-331-581 3231 http://www.chillout-pdm.de http://www.liberationday.de.
Poznan (Posen): Inicjatywa Konopna - Konopie.info, inicjatywa(at)konopie.info, Marching on May 7th (at) Plac Wolnosci - 16:30, Poznan, Poland. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Poznanska-Inicjatywa-Konopna-konopieinfo/162347643814256
Prague: Jiri Novak jirka(at)legalizace.cz +420 605 115 146 or Robert Veverka robert(at)legalizace.cz +420 773 691 561 or Hana Gabrielová hanka(at)legalizace.cz +420 777 027 012 <http://www.legalizace.cz/> http://www.legalizace.cz, <http://mmm2010.legalizace.cz/en/> http://mmm2010.legalizace.cz/en/, o.s. Legalizace.cz: Jaromirova 23, Praha 2, 128 00 Czech republic. 8th May '10 at 1pm on Karlovo námûstí (Charles square) in Prague. http://mmm.legalizace.cz/page/streaming_en http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYPcj9CQcyY&feature=related Video from MMM in Prague http://mmm2010.legalizace.cz/article/videa-z-mmm2010 http://mmm2010.legalizace.cz/article/napsali-o-n-s
Pretoria: Chris J gmm(at)norml.org.za and wired(at)weed.co.za fax: 0866551933 cel: +27847362270
Prince George, B.C.: Mike Hornby lildevil868(at)hotmail.com 250-552-8892. March thru downtown to concert in Ft. George Park.
Prince Wales Island: Sara Yockey sarayockey(at)hotmail.com 907-329-2012/965-4106. March/rally
Providence: Cassandra Michael queen_of_rock3(at)yahoo.com (401) 461- 2353. Impromptu Statehouse rally—20 in '08.
Pueblo: Sidnee Love herb.of.life(at)live.com 719-429-7529.
Quincy: Zach Clark <zmcclark(at)hotmail.com> 217-299-6294.
Rainelle: Stephany Munden AnarchynUrGovt(at)aol.com 304-438-9108. Raleigh-Durham: Jeff Badalucco nc_ca(at)hotmail.com 919-247-2644. Craig Rhodes. Rally at the Halifax Mall located just North of the Capitol, May 7, 2011. The 2010 Raleigh Marijuana Rally, March, and Music Festival was a total success. More than 1,000 people showed up throughout the day and our parade was a city block long worth of pro-marijuana activists. There were no arrests of any kind during the entire day. http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/7524924/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYlwEgqc3rA&feature=related Ramapo: Ramapo College of New Jersey NORML
Rapid City: Bob Newland <newland(at)rapidcity.com> 605-255-4032 http://www.sodaknorml.org/.
Recife: recife(at)marchadamaconha.org http://www.marchadamaconha.org/blog - Rua do Apolo - Bar do Fogão, 14hs. 3 de Maio
Red Deer: Lindsey Korver sexy_picosa(at)hotmail.com City Hall at 4:20 pm.
Redding: Chantel Ybarra queenspade03(at)yahoo.com 530-410-5838. Reedley: Ted Chavez 559-397 6068.
Regina: Daniel Johnson joybuzzard(at)normlsaskatchewan.com http://www.normlsaskatchewan.com. http://www.normlsaskatchewan.com/gmm2010.html
Reno: Michelle 775-287-1594/ 775-348-8063 toots_77(at)sbcglobal.net..
Rice Lake: Michael Gorka michael_gorka2000(at)yahoo.com 715-338-8002. Village Park, 4:20 p.m. Richmond: Orin Martin OEM22(at)email.bccs.edu 804 516 9329. also Rev. Jacob Amsden temple420RVA(at)yahoo.com 703-303-9906. 300 rallied, 200 marched.
Rineyville: Shadysatterfield(at)aol.com
Río Cuarto: Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 30 people in 2010
Río de Janeiro: Renato Cinco renato_cinco(at)yahoo.com.br 55+21+87053357 cel.: 8705-3357 http://www.renatocinco.com.br <http://www.marchadamaconha.org> http://www.marchadamaconha.org. William riodejaneiro(at)marchadamaconha.org http://www.marchadamaconha.org or http://www.psicotropicus.org Psicotropicus, Rua Presidente Vargas 590, sala 515, 20.071-000, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. The Marijuana March Rio de Janeiro was a success! No serious incident, about 4,000 people participated. Media coverage is excellent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOOP69R7sFo http://video.globo.com/Videos/Player/Noticias/0,,GIM1256431-7823-RJ+MANIFESTACAO+EM+IPANEMA+PEDE+A+LEGALIZACAO+DA+MACONHA,00.html
Río Grande: Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 30 people in 2010
Riverside: Christopher Raymond Rice realchange(at)votestrike.com. Downtown Riverside Police Station 4:20 p.m.
Riverton: Tim Bach tim_bach_(at)yahoo.com 307-463-2448/851-2173 postal: 14 Arapahoe Dr, Riverton,Wyoming 82501 March (at) 4 pm from Central Wyoming College down main Street Right on Federal to Fairgrounds—Cwc field. Roanoke: "Marty" <yisno1(at)yahoo.com> 540-772-6355.
Rochester: Anthony Brucato buffalocannabis(at)gmail.com or Rochester Cannabis Coalition rochestercannabis(at)gmail.com http://www.rochester.norml.net
Rockford: skullmarbles(at)sbcglobal.net
Rome: giornatamondiale(at)millionmarijuanamarch.info INFO LINE: 0039 3393393589 Mefisto gica(at)inventati.org, Alberto roma(at)pazienticannabis.org, alb.pic(at)gmail.com http://www.millionmarijuanamarch.info. http://www.loccidentale.it/articolo/la+cannabis+fa+male,+anche+se+c'è+chi+ancora+scende+in+piazza+per+dire+di+no.0090550 http://www.terranews.it/news/2010/05/la-marcia-pro-cannabis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYqsvlgZ4i0&feature=related <https://archive.is/20131014233422/www.millionmarijuanamarch.info/images/repubblica.jpg> https://archive.is/20131014233422/www.millionmarijuanamarch.info/images/repubblica.jpg http://www.overgrow-italy.nl/?p=975
Rosario: Leandro Mussini 3mrosario(at)gmail.com. Agrupación Cogollos, http://3mrosario.blogspot.com. Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 1,000 people in 2010
Rostock: Info(at)rostocker-hanffest.de 01149-381-492-0016: Arved http://www.solid-mv.de http://www.rostocker-hanffest.de ~ looking for people to help with the organization of the event!
Roswell: Andrew Ward 575-613-2361.
Rothburry: "Angela Acuna " <babysmurf50(at)hotmail.com> 231-670-7883.. Noon-5pm. Rothburry. Mi. (meet at Rothburry Park on Old 31)
Rotterdam: Martijn le Noble m.lenoble1(at)chello.nl, Help de Hennep!, http://www.helpdehennep.tk Rye Brook: Jack Santon jacksanton420(at)gmail.com 914-356-5204. May 8th 4:20 From 751 King St to 64 S. Ridge.
Sacramento: Jolie Perea jusjazzi4me(at)yahoo.com 916-225-9058 or Ed Brooks 916-308-1314. freewebs.com/sacsmokers & http://www.myspace.com/sacsmokers. Max, 916-473-2427, El Camino Wellness Center, 2511 Connie Drive, Sacramento, CA 95815 or Steffany, Green Solutions, 1404 28th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816
Safford: http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2010/04/29/news/doc4bd2309f25c9c672482100.txt http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2010/04/23/news/update/doc4bd0d6fee356b004889915.txt
Salem: MERCY Center 503.363-4588 MERCY_Salem(at)hotmail.com. http://www.MercyCenters.org May 1st, 2010, rain or shine, High Noon. Assemble 11am at the far end of the mall across from the steps of the Capital Building, corner of W. Summer and Center streets. March at High Noon thru city and back to Rally point.
Salta: Coordination site in Argentina: http://www.gmmargentina.com.ar 30 people in 2010
Salt Lake City: Aaron Katz (801)953-9098
Salvador: Sergio Vidal sergiociso(at)yahoo.com.br (71) 81771488 http://www.growroom.net http://www.cannabismedicinal.org.br http://www.redeananda.org/ http://lattes.cnpq.br/3062718910317729 "ANANDA - Ativismo, Redução de Danos, Pesquisa e Informações sobre drogas". 14:00 hs, Praça Campo Grande.
Samara: Alexander Kondratov mapkc(at)pisem.net or samara.legaliz.info.. Check out http://theotherrussia.org/2007/05/18/
San Antonio: Eric Perez xxducktape420xx(at)yahoo.com 210-897-2505 (3-6 PM). or Andrew drez1320(at)yahoo.com 210-779-2794.
San Diego: Craig Beresh info(at)calcc.info 619-467-1235. or |
] beagle last week that was pregnant... last week it was 23 or 24 dogs... it's happened to us nine times... they drove straight from there, straight here, and disposed of the dogs in 30 seconds." Inquiring minds are asking: Where else were bodies dumped that have yet to be discovered?
70 ADDITIONAL DEAD ANIMALS DISCOVERED!
A few days after the arrests, officials in Greenville, North Carolina told WNCT-TV News they found in excess of 70 dead animals that could possibly be linked to PETA. They are in addition to the bodies found in grocery dumpsters. 150 MORE EUTHANIZED DOGS FOUND IN TRASH BAGS IN VIRGINIA!
Just prior to the June, 2005 PETA arrests, an eerily similar event occurred. On April 8, 2005 MSNBC reported that 150 euthanized dogs were found in industrial-strength trash bags in PETA'S home state. A construction worker made the grisly discovery on a remote road outside of Gate City. The bags contained various breeds, including Rottweilers, German shepherds, Labradors and a few small-breed dogs. Sheriff�s investigator Chris Holder said, �I�ve never seen anything like it. It looks like a deliberate dumping.� 1 Just the tip of the iceberg? GUARDIANS WHO GAVE PETA THEIR PETS THOUGHT THEY WOULD GET ADOPTED
A former PETA employee told a reporter: "a teary-eyed man showed up at PETA headquarters one day with his beloved pet rabbit. The man had grown old and sick and was no longer able to care properly for his friend. He supplied a cage, bed, toys, and even vet records for this pet. He was assured by PETA workers that they would take "good care" of his rabbit and find him a home. The man left distraught but no doubt believing that his friend would be able to live out the rest of his life in a loving, compassionate home...PETA workers carried him to the 'death house' immediately and ended his life!" The employee said there are many similar examples. 1 Former director of Norfolk's SPCA, Dana Cheek, wrote "I often receive phone calls from frantic people who have surrendered their pets to PETA with the understanding that PETA will "find them a good home...Little do they know that the pets are killed in the PETA van before they even pull away from the pet owner's home."
RESCUES FEAR THE WORST FOR ANIMALS THEY GAVE TO PETA TO ADOPT
The recent arrests have local rescues frantic with worry about the animals they gave PETA.Red Stars earn home field advantage in their first ever post season run
CHICAGO (September 5, 2015)- Following the results of tonight’s National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) matchups, the Chicago Red Stars will host a NWSL semifinal playoff game on Sunday, September 13th at 12:30 p.m. CDT at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, IL. This is the team’s first time playing in the NWSL post season, and their opponent next Sunday will be reigning NWSL champions FC Kansas City, meaning the matchup will feature seven U.S. World Cup champions.
Tickets to next Sunday’s match can be purchased online starting at 2:00 p.m. CDT tomorrow (September 6) by heading to www.redstarsgear.com/tickets.html or by calling the main ticketing line at 773-698-6001.
The Chicago Red Stars play their last regular season home game at Toyota Park in Bridgeview on Sunday, September 6 at 4 p.m. CDT, when they host World Cup star Carli Lloyd and the Houston Dash for their Fan Appreciation Night. Tickets for all Red Stars matches may be purchased by clicking here or by calling 773-698-6001.
Like this: Like Loading...Jackson, Tennessee
On March 27 of 2012 at 9:30 PM, Clint Earl Sims walked into the Madison County Jail to turn himself in. Mr. Sims had a history of run ins with local law enforcement (which included vandalizing the county courthouse in 2007), so the clerk on duty that day had no reason to doubt Mr Sims' word that he had committed a crime.
The problem with this seemingly forward act of contrition, however, was that it was based on an empty confession. When deputies checked his records, there were actually no outstanding warrants for Mr. Sims whatsoever.
"You will have in a minute." When the police told Sims that they had no reason to place him in jail, he responded with a chilling and grammatically dubious response
And yes, I am fully aware/ashamed of how ironic it is
that I am making a joke about bad grammar. Shut up.
Sims then calmly walked over to a gumball machine in the prison lobby (they have those?), picked it up, and walked out of the building. Just in case stealing a gumball machine wasn't a good enough crime to get him locked up, Sims took a short walk over the the Criminal Justice Complex and broke the glass out of the front door and a side window.
Sims returned to the jail and was promptly arrested on charges of burglary, felony vandalism, and theft of property.
There are still two unanswered questions that surround this very bizarre case:
1. Why did Clint Earl Sims want to break into jail? According to Sheriff David Woolfork, Sims has relatives in the area, but no friends or family that he knows of that are currently in the Madison County Jail.
2. Why the heck does a jail have a gumball machine in the lobby? Think about it: Most citizens visiting a jail are going to report a crime, getting arrested for a crime themselves, or visiting a loved one who is locked away. Who wants to pay 25 cents for a terrible piece of gum in those type of circumstances.
Also consider that gumball machine can't be a huge moneymaker for the department as far as vending machines go. And even if it was, the guards, clerks, and support staff that work at the jail should probably have higher quality vending machines or be able to receive gumballs for free. But I digress...
Clint Earl Sims is currently residing in the Madison County jail on the charges listed above. There is no information available on a trial date, but something tells me Mr. Sims isn't in a rush to have his day in court.Statement from United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz on United Express Flight 3411
The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.
I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right.
It’s never too late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employees that we are going to fix what’s broken so this never happens again. This will include a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement. We’ll communicate the results of our review by April 30th.
I promise you we will do better.
Sincerely,
OscarRep. Jason Chaffetz also sent a letter to Platte River Networks, the IT company that handled some of the server work for Clinton, seeking information about potential destruction of evidence. | AP Photo Chaffetz seeks probe of whether Clinton destroyed evidence
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Tuesday sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia asking him to investigate whether Hillary Clinton and her aides destroyed evidence and obstructed justice in the scandal over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Chaffetz also sent a letter to Platte River Networks, the IT company that handled some of the server work for Clinton, seeking information about potential destruction of evidence.
Story Continued Below
The letters come after the FBI last Friday released the notes on its now-closed investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information through her private server. The FBI’s investigation found that an individual, whose name was redacted in the report, used an online program called BleachBit to delete a file on the server containing Clinton’s emails. The unnamed staffer deleted the files after remembering an earlier request from longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills that changed "email retention policies" for Clinton's server.
"The FBI's investigative files reveal evidence that an engineer at Platte River Networks, the company responsible for maintaining the Secretary's third personal email server, deleted Secretary Clinton's email archives in March of 2015, despite knowing they were subject to preservation orders and a congressional subpoena," Chaffetz said in the letter to Channing Phillips, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
"In light of this information, the Department should investigate and determine whether Secretary Clinton or her employees and contractors violated statutes that prohibit destruction of records, obstruction of congressional inquiries, and concealment or cover up of evidence material to a congressional investigation," Chaffetz added.
The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Clinton told reporters later on Tuesday that there was "no concern" when it came to her email archives.
The leading Democrat on the oversight committee also leaped to Clinton's defense. “Unfortunately this is the latest misguided attempt to use taxpayer funds to help the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, and to essentially re-do what the FBI has already investigated because Republicans disagree with the outcome for political reasons," ranking Oversight member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a statement.
Speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt, Chaffetz suggested that he “might” subpoena longtime Clinton friend Sid Blumenthal, who sent dozens of memos to the secretary of state, some of which contained information later deemed classified.
“I mean, we still have a lot of moving parts here, and we’re trying to recover this. This, Hugh, this is potentially one of the largest breaches of security in the history of the State Department. So we’re not letting go on this. We’re going to get to the truth. We’ve got to make sure that this classified information isn’t able to walk out the door,” Chaffetz added. “Remember, there are two email systems at the State Department. You don’t just simply get a classified email and then whoops, I forwarded to the wrong person. You have to go to great lengths to take it off that system, or summarize what you saw, and put it on the non-classified system. So how Sidney Blumenthal and others are integrated into this really still, we need to get to the truth.
Pressed on whether he would use his subpoena power to gather people like Blumenthal to testify before the committee, Chaffetz responded, “I am not going to be bashful in using it.”
“I’ve tried to bend over backwards to give people a fair, honest chance. But if not, we’re going to start issuing subpoenas, absolutely,” the Utah Republican said.
As far as whether the process could go up through the Nov. 8 election, Chaffetz remarked, “Hillary Clinton chose this timeline, not me.”
“She decided to hold this information for years,” he continued. "And, but now that the FBI has concluded their portion, and by the way, the FBI did not, has not looked at her testimony before Congress, has not looked at other things that she did potentially with the destruction of documents. So that will continue, and we’re going to go full steam ahead."“This is a job for the printing press.”
Hyperinflation here we come
By Jon Herring
There are so many headwinds and cross currents in the market today, it is all but impossible to predict what will happen in the short term. There is too much volatility and noise. So, it pays to keep your eyes on the horizon, focused on the long term and the biggest trends.
Today, I want to tell about the biggest of all possible financial trends: the eventual bankruptcy of the United States government. Or should I say the existing bankruptcy of the U.S. government?
The United States government is facing an impending fiscal crisis. Former Comptroller General David Walker calls it a “cancer growing from within.” And the wheels for this were already set in motion well before the financial crisis. With ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a costly stimulus package and falling tax receipts, the U.S. was already neck deep in debt.
A Trillion Dollar Deficit?
Even before the bailouts, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projected that the 2009 federal deficit would be nearly $482 billion. Since then however, our government has jacked up spending by the trillions. In just a few months, we have already charted a course to triple that deficit. Some experts even suggest the 2009 deficit could be as high as $2 trillion!
But, believe it or not, this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the big picture
The True Scope of America’s Fiscal Problem
Richard Fisher is the CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which sets interest rate policy. In a speech in May of this year, he stated that the total U.S. debt – including Medicare and Social Security – is more than $99 TRILLION!
Along the same lines, Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, suggests that the “fiscal gap” – which is the difference between the number above and what we could reasonably expect to collect – is $66 trillion.
That is the definition of bankruptcy. It is just a matter of time. The scope and impact of our liabilities are stunning. But let’s play devil’s advocate and consider where this kind of money might come from.
How can we possibly meet our obligations to retirees… as well as service our debt to foreign governments… and still operate our own government?
It Won’t Come from Cuts in Spending
Let’s listen in on Fisher’s speech and consider what kind of spending cuts we would have to make to close the gap on what we owe:
“To fully fund our nation’s entitlement programs would be to cut discretionary spending by 97 percent. But hold on. That discretionary spending includes defense and national security, education, the environment and many other areas, not just those controversial earmarks that make the evening news. All of them would have to be cut—almost eliminated—to tackle this problem through discretionary spending.”
So, just to meet our current and future obligations, we would have to virtually clear out Washington, D.C. And these changes would have to be made to perpetuity. Now, Ron Paul might have cut government back to its constitutionally mandated functions, but don’t expect anyone else in Washington to even consider the notion. Congress has shown that it has NO moral regard for the long term economic viability of our country.
It Won’t Come from Tax Increases
Even if we did cut the government back to the bare minimum (which we won’t), that still wouldn’t solve the problem. We would also have to raise taxes. By how much? Back to Richard Fisher:
“Similarly on the taxation side, income tax revenue would have to rise 68 percent and remain that high forever. Remember, though, I said tax revenue, not tax rates. Who knows how much individual and corporate tax rates would have to change to increase revenue by 68 percent?”
We already don’t collect enough tax revenues to pay the government’s budget. And with a recession taking hold and a depression on the horizon, where are the tax revenues going to come from? Taxation is simply not an option for this kind of money.
We Can’t Borrow it from Ourselves
During World War II, we borrowed the money we needed from ourselves. But Americans had a high savings rate then. This is no longer true. Most Americans are upside down, with credit cards, mortgages, cars and other loans… not to mention growing unemployment.
It Won’t Come from Foreigners
For many, many years, the U.S. government has been able to pay for anything and everything we wanted to by borrowing the funds from other countries. We didn’t even pay for the Iraq war… it has all been borrowed money. But other countries are beginning to balk, and for a variety of reasons.
For one thing, the countries that do have reserves to lend us are turning their attention inward. Just this week, China began to shift its policy away from plowing reserves into forex and instead is investing internally (the Chinese government announced more than a half a trillion-dollar internal stimulus package this week).
This is BAD news for the U.S. government bond market. Just as America’s spending goes parabolic and we need to sell more debt than ever, the biggest buyer just left the trading floor.
Increases in spending and liabilities along with decreases in foreign lending equals a recipe for disaster.
So, where will the money come from?
This is a job for the printing press.
While we are certainly facing deflation in the near term and a very choppy market, the groundwork has been laid for hyperinflation, soaring interest rates and exploding gold and silver prices. So forget about the short term cross currents, and focus on the long term trends you can bank on.
This investment news is brought to you by Investor’s Daily Edge. Investor’s Daily Edge is a free daily investment newsletter that is delivered by email before the market opens. It’s published by Fourth Avenue Financial, a subsidiary of Early To Rise (an affiliate company of Agora Publishing). In each weekday issue you’ll receive practical strategies for protecting your portfolio and multiplying your money. You’ll also learn about undiscovered opportunities in emerging sectors and markets, deeply discounted stocks, recommendations for bonds, cash, commodity and real estate investing, and top ETFs. To view archives or subscribe, visit Investor’s Daily Edge.
Use our custom search to find more articles like thisUPDATED: Dr. Henry Blackaby’s family has just reported that Dr. Blackaby has been found. Thank you to all who have prayed today. This is truly an answer to prayer. Here is the tweet from his son Mel:
We are rejoicing tonight. That have just found Dad. Checking him over physically. Traumatic 28 hrs. Thanks for prayers! Family of God! — Mel Blackaby (@melblackaby) September 20, 2013
This morning we learned of an urgent prayer request for noted author and pastor Henry Blackaby. Dr. Blackaby lives in the Atlanta area and has been missing since yesterday. His son Richard tweeted this morning:
Please pray. Henry Blackaby has been missing since 4 p.m. Thursday. He is in black Lincoln without his diabetic medicine in Atlanta area — Richard Blackaby (@richardblackaby) September 20, 2013
Those praying for Henry Blackaby. His credit card has been used within 6 miles of his home. Missing for 19 hours. Police continue to search — Richard Blackaby (@richardblackaby) September 20, 2013
Henry Blackaby update: As of 12:30 Henry is still missing. Believed in the Atlanta area. Is Type 2 diabetic. No insulin. Please pray. — Richard Blackaby (@richardblackaby) September 20, 2013
Henry Blackaby update: As of 5 p.m. he has not been located. Police still searching. 100s of volunteers searching. Please continue to pray! — Richard Blackaby (@richardblackaby) September 20, 2013
UPDATE: Georgia police are still searching for Dr. Blackaby and his car, a 2010 Lincoln MKZ with Georgia tag ATP 6956.
Please join me and the LifeWay family in praying for his safe return to his family, and for strength for his wife, Marilynn, and his sons and other family.
Dr. Thom S. Rainer
President & CEO
LifeWay Christian ResourcesQueensland LNP MP George Christensen Credit:Andrew Meares "But we do know for a fact that there are old men out there who prey on younger men, groom them on the internet and seek to establish sexual relations with them, particularly when they are appear to be questioning their sexuality. "… I think at 16 years old, when you are questioning your sexuality, when you are going online, when there are predators out there, particularly older men looking for younger boys, this change in the law is fraught with disaster." Women have been able to legally give their consent for vaginal sex for decades, with Queensland, until Thursday, the only state to differentiate between ages for sex acts. But the Dawson MP said he did not share the same concerns for young women.
"For fear of being accused of being sexist – let me just say, it would be a great rarity to find a 16-year-old girl who would be willing to sleep with a 50-year-old man," he said. "Basically, anyone can have sexual relations with a16-year-old – and I am just speaking in general here and stereotyping I suppose, or generalising … I would think that most 16-year-old girls would find it pretty gross to be thinking about having sexual relations with a 40 or 50-year-old man. "But we do know there are older men, paedophiles, who are attracted to younger men in particular and I just think that if they were going to lower the age of consent - if we are talking about an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old, two guys in a relationship, I don't have any problem. "… The difference with what's happened has, is that last week, if a parent found out that their 16-year-old son had been having sex with a 50-year-old man, they could have phoned the police and that 50-year-old could have been done for statutory rape, and I think most people would agree – particularly if there is grooming involved and all the rest of it, that is fair enough. "This week, now it is different, that person gets a free kick from the government."
Mr Christensen's view, aired on social media on Friday morning, and the comments which followed, have been highlighted as examples the "respectful debate" the Turnbull Government is advocating for as part of its same-sex marriage plebiscite policy is impossible. Mr Christensen said the "untoward language and the vitriol in the debate cuts both ways". "Whenever I say something which I believe to be nuanced and appropriate, there are all these people out there who are willing to jump online and say all sorts of abuse at me for saying it," he said. "… If we can't talk about issues like this, the debate around same-sex marriage, what can we talk about?
"Within the same-sex marriage debate, it is almost like if you state any reason why you're opposed to same-sex marriage, you've immediately said something homophobic. "And if that is the stage of the debate, then basically – the pro side saying there is no debate, just do it – that is just wrong. "There are a lot of reasons why people are opposed to same-sex marriage. "I know gay people who are opposed to same-sex marriage – how could they be homophobic?" Queensland set differing ages of consent in 1990 when the Labor Goss Government decriminalised homosexuality. The law had made it difficult for teenagers, particularly young gay men, from accessing safe sexual practice information, with practitioners forced to inform those seeking information on anal sex about its illegality.
An expert panel assembled by the Annastacia Palaszczuk-led government overwhelming recommended the change earlier this year, as did health, welfare and legal advocates who made submissions to a parliamentary inquiry into the then-proposed law change. Just 28 of the 42 LNP MPs in Queensland's hung parliament backed the change, with the remainder abstaining.by UrbanTurf Staff
1055 High 1055 High
1055 High, the seven-unit luxury project from EastBanc at 1055 Wisconsin Avenue NW (map) in Georgetown that sold out earlier this year in a matter of weeks is nearing completion and UrbanTurf recently got a peek inside.
The three and four-bedroom residences abut the C&O Canal and range in size from 3,300 to 4,300 square feet. Each unit has a large private terrace, large kitchens with Thermador and Miele appliances, and bathrooms with heated marble floors and towel racks. The building has a landscaped roof with a heated pool and fitness center, two parking spaces for each residence and a 24-hour concierge. 1055 High was designed by the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, whose portfolio includes a number of residential projects in New York City.
Inside one of the units at 1055 High. Inside one of the units at 1055 High.
Despite price points between $3.6 and $5.5 million, the residences at 1055 High were all under contract within three weeks of hitting the market earlier this year. Each sold to all-cash buyers paying substantially over list price, according to the Washington Business Journal. Eastbanc’s Erin Milan told UrbanTurf that the ground-floor retail will be a high-end retailer along the lines of Hermes.
More photos of 1055 High below.
Photos courtesy of Connie Gauthier.
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This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_look_inside_georgetowns_1055_high/9287Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Punches and water were thrown, and the doors to the chamber were tied shut
A fight has broken out in Taiwan's parliament ahead of a vote on a referendum on a nuclear plant.
Several Taiwanese lawmakers exchanged punches and threw cups and bottles of water at each other on Friday.
The parliament is set to vote on whether to hold a referendum on completing construction of the plant, which is located close to Taipei.
Nuclear power is controversial in Taiwan, where safety fears remain in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster.
The nuclear plant, also known as Nuke 4, would be the island's fourth. It has been in construction for more than 10 years, and is near completion.
However, Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party is against the plant, citing safety fears.
More than 200,000 people took part in anti-nuclear protests in March.
The government says the $9bn (£6bn) facility is needed to prevent a power shortage.
Taiwan frequently experiences earthquakes. A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck central Taiwan in March, injuring at least 20 people.
In March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami damaged Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, triggering a meltdown.
Experts say years of work lie ahead before the problems at the plant can be fully contained.
Taiwan's parliament has experienced brawls in the past. In June, lawmakers clashed over capital gains tax.Former Iranian soccer manager and player Mansour Pourheidari has lost his battle against lung cancer and diabetes, and departed this life at the age of 71.
Pourheidari, who was born on January 26, 1946, in the Iranian capital, passed away at Iranmehr Hospital in the northern part of Tehran on Friday.
He was admitted to the coronary care unit (CCU) of the hospital earlier this month with a severe lung infection and serious breathing difficulties.
Pourheidari started his career with Tehran-based Daraei Football Club in 1962, before joining Taj (currently known as Esteghlal Tehran Football Club) three years later. He played for ten years at Taj, before returning to Daraei in 1975 to play his last two years at the club.
He was also a member of the Iran national soccer team, better known as Team Melli, from 1970 to 1973, and had three international caps.
Pourheidari started his coaching career after retirement from playing soccer, and was named the assistant manager of Esteghlal in 1980. He was promoted as the club's head coach in 1983 after Asghar Sharafi quit.
Three years later, he joined the Emirati professional association football club Al Ahli as the head coach, and led the team until 1989.
He was re-appointed as Esteghlal manager in 1989, and won the AFC Champions League title with the Iranian club in 1991.
Pourheidari left Esteghlal the next year but returned again as the head coach in 1995. After that, he was picked as the head coach of Fajr Sepasi football club for two seasons, but did not manage to pick up any trophy.
Pourheidari became head coach of Team Melli in 1998 and led it until 2000. He was the technical manager and a member of the Board of the Directors of Esteghlal club at the time of his death.
A number of high-ranking Iranian officials, including Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs Masoud Soltanifar and Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi, and sports figures have expressed their deep condolences over Pourheidari’s demise.
Pourheidari’s funeral procession is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. local time (0630 GMT) on Sunday at Shahid Shiroudi Stadium. He is due to be laid to rest at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran later in the day.TECHNOLOGY FIRMS MUST up their game in tackling ‘fake news’, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said, calling for a major public information campaign.
“All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news,” the US tech giant boss told the Daily Telegraph in an interview.
“We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press, but we must also help the reader.
“Too many of us are just in the complain category right now and haven’t figured out what to do.”
But Cook, who met British Prime Minister Theresa May at Downing Street on Thursday, said governments should also introduce a public information campaign.
“We need the modern version of a public-service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will,” he said.
Fabricated reports
He added: “We are going through this period of time right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth.
“It’s killing people’s minds in a way.”
Fake news, fabricated reports designed to promote a particular agenda, came to prominence during last year’s US presidential election campaign.
Facebook in particular has come under pressure for failing to take action, and last month modified its system for showing trending topics.
The change is designed to ensure that trends reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets.
© – AFP 2017So, back in January, my friend Rachel made the off-handed comment about how the Ant-Man promo poster would be a really simple project to tackle.
@K_ThRyce @CraftingGeek ant man cross stitch would be the easiest cross stitch in the world pic.twitter.com/oRn1Gr0ZbC — Rachel Harland (@rahcek) January 18, 2015
It sort of stuck in my mind, but I really didn’t think much about it until the Big, Bad, Burnout came along.
(I’m not *really* burned out of the Light World or my other big projects, but being able to complete a project does wonders for my drive.)
Boom.
The hardest thing about this project was making the chart. My pattern maker wanted me to use 31 (!) colors to get the shaded effect. An afternoon of wrestling with my program got it down to 6 (ok, 8 with Ant-Man and the backstitching).
I managed to crank this sucker out in two days, but I put in close to 10 hours into it (thanks nighttime shows that I mostly ignore in the favor of cross-stitching, LOL)
(Speaking of which, Barry, you need to smile more. Frowny faces are for Oliver.)
So, you wanna make your own movie poster? Of course you do. Here’s what you’ll need:
14 count AIDA cloth (the design is 8″ x 10″)
DMC colors: 310, 817, 3777, 606, 900, 3857, 221, and white
The chart
I used symbols for this chart because the colors are so similar, so here’s the breakdown:
X – 3857
| – 221
O – 3777
Triangle – 817
Diamond – 900
Upside-down triangle – 606
Also, you’ll notice the chart doesn’t have the two squares for the black. That’s because I’m lazy. Just go right in the middle of your rectangle and put two little squares of 310 and you’ll be as right as rain.
Now I’m back to the Light World and working on my project for the #bestbirthdayswapever (which I won’t be able to show you until after I send it off).
As always, if you tackle this project, let me know! And until next time, happy crafting!
AdvertisementsMUMBAI: The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has sent a notice to the office bearers of Green Arch Cooperative Housing Society in Mumbai for charging a member Rs 1,500 for allegedly feeding stray cats in the building compound. Bank employee and cat lover B K Rao told TOI: "Last month, I was surprised to see in my housing society bill a miscellaneous charge of Rs 1,500 for the specific reason that I feed cats inside the compound. I told them that this is an illegal fine and that I was being harassed."Rao contacted animal welfare officer Anand Siva who wrote back to the society asking it to revoke such an outrageous "miscellaneous fine" as it was perfectly legal to feed animals inside or outside a building compound."Despite the legally binding letter to Green Arch society, the members told me they did not care about my 'phaltu chitthi' (stupid letter) that I sent them. I then had no option but to urge AWBI to step in," Siva said.But the society secretary Manish Visawadia seemed to feel justified in fining Rao. "Before telling Rao to pay the additional charge of Rs 1,500, I had personally told him not to feed stray cats inside the society," he told TOI. "We had even designated a place outside the gate where he could feed the cats. But he did not listen," he added.Visawadia added a cat and three kittens dirtied the place and endangered the health of their children.But Rao claimed he cleaned up the place after feeding the cats. "When it rains, I have no option but to feed the stray animals inside the building. This does not endanger the health of anyone in the society," he asserted.GETTY A new poll has dealt a major blow to PM as public have more favour of Brexit
A massive YouGov poll of 3,482 people revealed that the Leave campaign is one point ahead of the Remain with 38 per cent to 37 per cent. It also showed almost half - 49 per cent - think Mr Cameron's deal on restricting benefits to EU migrants will have no effect on immigration and 35 per cent think he got a bad deal while only 26 per cent believe it is good for Britain.
YouGov The YouGov poll revealed that Boris Johnson and Brexit have more favour that PM's remain
Meanwhile the poll also showed that the London Mayor Mr Johnson is the most trusted voice on Europe with 34 per cent compared to the Prime Minister's 29 per cent. Ukip leader Nigel Farage importance in the campaign is highlighted by a 22 per cent trust rating.
GETTY The under pressure PM was dealt a major blow in losing favour
GETTY The poll showed that the London Mayor Mr Johnson is the most trusted voice on EuropeSHE wants to eliminate the NBA salary cap and transfer power in the league from the owners to the players.
Get to know Michele Roberts, the new NBA players’ union executive director who seems to be spoiling for a labour fight, because the feared attorney is just getting started in the basketball spotlight. Her provocative statements Wednesday to ESPN The Magazine made sure of that.
“Why don’t we have the owners play half the games?” said Roberts, who made history in July by being elected the first female union chief in major North American sports, in reference to a 50-50 split of revenue. “There would be no money if not for the players.
“Let’s call it what it is: There. Would. Be. No. Money. Thirty more owners can come in, and nothing will change. These guys [the players] go? The game will change. So let’s stop pretending.”
The league has a nine-year, $24 billion TV deal set to begin in 2016, but the players have the ability to opt-out of a collective bargaining agreement after the 2016-17 season. Roberts believes a salary cap — which has been in place in the NBA since 1984-85 — is wrong, even “un-American.”
“I don’t know of any space other than the world of sports where there’s this notion that we will artificially deflate what someone’s able to make, just because,” she said. “It’s incredibly un-American. My DNA is offended by it.”
The brassy talk certainly got the attention of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who answered Thursday with a curt statement in response.
“We couldn’t disagree more with these statements,” he said. “The NBA’s success is based on the collective efforts and investments of all of the team owners, the thousands of employees at our teams and arenas, and our extraordinarily talented players. No single group could accomplish this on its own. Nor is there anything unusual or ‘un-American’ in a unionised industry to have a collective system for paying employees — in fact, that’s the norm.
“The Salary Cap system, which splits revenues between team owners and players and has been agreed upon by the NBA and the Players Association since 1982, has served as a foundation for the growth of the league and has enabled NBA players to become the highest paid professional athletes in the world. We will address all of these topics and others with the Players Association at the appropriate time.”Police in Nova Scotia are investigating the theft of a tractor-trailer carrying more than 18,000 kilograms of snow crab in a container sprayed with a dangerous chemical.
Police say the 2007 Freightliner was reported stolen from Nova Truck Centre on Barker Lane in Westville on Sunday.
Police are warning people that the crab was to be shipped to Japan and is in a container laced with a preservative, which is not harmful to crab but can be lethal if consumed.
They say the green truck has the number 29 on both corners of the hood, a red and black coloured G on both doors and has Glencoe Mills Trucking Ltd. on it.
It has the New Brunswick licence plate number PTW 079 |
ina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have been in detention since March.
During that time, these educated, middle-class women, all in their 20s, have been part of a Kafkaesque drama that provides evidence of how the Putin system can lose control when confronted by unexpected challenges.
A guilty verdict is an almost foregone conclusion since acquittals by Russian courts are virtually unheard of. In 92 per cent of the 178 cases overseen by Judge Syrova, the defendants have been found guilty. The question, therefore, is whether the women will receive a suspended sentence or a jail term. The prosecutor is calling for them to be jailed for three years.
However, what is more interesting than the outcome is how the Russian system set out to punish three young punk anarchists, and ended up playing into their hands by making their case a Dreyfus affair at home and a cause célèbre abroad.
This is a result far beyond the wildest dreams of a hitherto marginal group of activists
The Putin system has made a PR catastrophe out of a situation that could have been easily contained with an administrative fine for a public order offence. Its actions have also revealed its clear desire to align itself closely with the Orthodox Church as a source of political support. The visible price of this policy has been the fusion of the Church’s principles and values with the “legal” process in the trial of the Pussy Riot activists.
The result has been to sow divisions within the ruling elite about how to handle the case and, at the same time, to create new dividing lines in society, including among Orthodox believers, about the type of justice that should be applied to Pussy Riot and the form it should take.
The authorities have also gifted a rallying point to the nascent and amorphous political opposition. Paradoxically, this comes at a time when opposition forces are struggling to rekindle the protest mood that swept Moscow in March during the run-up to the presidential election.
How is it that the Putin system was able to produce these outcomes that run counter to its interests of dividing the opposition and demonstrating the futility of protest?
The answer is simple: Pussy Riot’s performance mentioned Putin by name and encouraged the Russian bureaucracy to take actions that its different levels believed would keep the man at the top happy. Most probably, no instruction from the top was received. Working on autopilot, the machinery below Putin improvised and overcompensated, producing unplanned actions and results.
In an eloquent final statement to the court, Maria Alekhina explained that the group had been protesting against the Putin system and its “vertical of power” that suppressed freedom in Russia. This “vertical of power” is in fact the source of dysfunctionality that has prevented the Russian authorities from controlling the outcome of this case, beyond a guilty verdict in court.
Pussy Riot has laid bare a structural weakness of a highly personalised political system that operates without institutional checks and balances, supported by a judiciary whose function is to turn the desires of its political masters into legal decisions. The regime’s self-protection mechanism lost control because it was unable to calibrate the consequences of its actions.
Whether by accident or design, three young women opposed to the Putin system have scored a stunning victory over it. They threw it off balance, causing it to respond to its automatic reflexes and create outcomes that it neither wanted nor intended.
A new political Rubicon has been crossed in Russia. The Putin model could quickly start to look shaky if others follow Pussy Riot’s example and exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in its decision-making process.
John Lough is an associate fellow of the Russia & Eurasia Programme at Chatham HouseDays after the White House issued its official opinion on the case of Steven Avery, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made it clear a pardon is the last thing on his mind. On Monday, Walker's official Facebook account addressed Avery and the massive wave of support for the subject of Netflix's Making A Murderer. The post warned people from "jumping to conclusions" about the convicted killer who claims he's innocent for the death of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach.
"Viewers of the Netflix series on Steven Avery should read the unanimous opinion of the Court of Appeals before jumping to conclusions," the post said, along with a link to the three-judge panel's decision to uphold Avery's conviction. As of Monday, more than 400,000 people have signed a petition calling for Walker and President Obama to pardon Avery. Because Avery was convicted of a state crime, the decision falls solely upon the Wisconsin governor as to whether Avery should be allowed to walk free.
But if history is any indication, Walker has no plans to make that happen. Since becoming governor in 2010, Walker has never issued a pardon, not a single one, and it appears he doesn't intend to make Avery his first. Earlier this month, he told local station Fox 6, "Just because a documentary on TV says something doesn’t mean that's actually what the evidence shows," and said he would trust the justice system that put Avery behind bars.
Avery's story has sparked outrage among Netflix viewers who believe he did not receive a fair trial in Halbach's death, and the docuseries goes as far to suggest that Manitowoc County officials may have planted evidence to frame him. What made Avery's case particularly unusual was that before his 2007 conviction for Halbach's death, he served 18 years for a sexual assault he did not commit. New DNA evidence cleared him of that crime, and some viewers believe Avery has been wrongly convicted again.
Walker has largely remained out of the national spotlight since giving up his presidential bid in spectacular fashion, but Making A Murderer has dragged him back into the conversation (perhaps even more so than when he was in the running). With Walker standing firm, Avery will likely have to rely on his new lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, who specializes in wrongful convictions, to secure him a new hearing.Fictional global terrorist group SPECTRE have leaked a report insisting that Rupert Murdoch is exactly the sort of man they need to finally help them overcome James Bond.
The head of the supervillain syndicate has long been kept a sectret, but insiders have leaked a report in which Murdoch’s qualities are lauded across several pages.
As one section read, “Mr Murdoch clearly demonstrates the disdain for authority which is seen as a pre-requisite for SPECTRE.”
“Clearly he has no time for anyone in the world’s governing bodies, or their law enforcements arms. Unless they’re helping him.”
“He has close connections at the very highest levels, and the limitless resources needed to build a moon-base from which to launch our next attack.”
“Plus with his media connections he could probably help us quite a bit on the PR front.”
Murdoch ‘a fit boss’
The leaked report comes hours after the UK government found Murdoch not to be a ‘fit and proper person’ to run a major multinational company.
“This only makes him more perfect for us,” confirmed a SPECTRE insider.
“Having been shunned by mainstream society, he will be keener than ever to exact a revenge so outrageous we’ll all be wishing we’d left the News Of The World well alone.”
“He’s got a final interview on Thursday, and we’ll hopefully be announcing his appointment before the weekend.”PARIS (Reuters) - Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is attempting a political comeback before next year’s election, said on Saturday that Britain should open an asylum center on its territory to deal with asylum seekers now camped in Calais.
Nicolas Sarkozy, former head of the Les Republicains political party and former French president, attends the party's weekend summer university youth meeting in Le Touquet, France August 27, 2016. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
Migrants aiming to reach Britain have over the years gathered in camps called the “jungle” in the French port of Calais.
In the past two years, the population of the camps has swelled as warfare and economic upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East has driven thousands of migrants to try to reach Britain illegally through the Channel Tunnel.
“I’m demanding the opening of a center in Britain to deal with asylum seekers in Britain so that Britain can do the work that concerns them,” Nicolas Sarkozy told a political rally in Touquet in northern France.
Sarkozy said Britain should manage the asylum process, accepting those it wants on British territory and organizing charters to remove those who are rejected.
“The jungle should not be in Calais or anywhere else, because this is a republic and those with no rights to be here should return to their country,” Sarkozy said.
Sarkozy was speaking in Touquet, where in 2003, France signed a symbolic border treaty with Britain. Under Le Touquet accord, British officials can check passports in France and vice versa.
However, that has led to the migrants trying to reach British shores congregating at Calais. Images of hundreds of people trying to leap onto trucks bound for Britain has roused anti-immigration worries on both sides of the English Channel.
That was a key issue in Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and it has become a hot-button issue ahead of France’s April 2017 election.
Sarkozy’s conservative rival Alain Juppe, who opened his presidential bid on Saturday and is considered the frontrunner in the party’s presidential primaries, has called on the Touquet accord to be renegotiated.The CIA has “concluded” that Russia was behind the numerous hackings that shamed Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and the DNC in the months leading up to the election. Many blame the hacked emails, released by WikiLeaks, for Hillary Clinton’s failure.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” Trump said of the CIA’s claim. “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it.” Trump says the CIA has “no idea” who is behind the cyberattack. “They don’t know if it’s Russia or China… it could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace,” Trump told Fox News.
Former NSA and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden argues that Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the CIA’s findings is a “problem” that will affect Trump’s future relationship with the intelligence community.
Hayden, a registered Independent, views Trump’s refusal to accept the CIA’s claim (which seems to lack evidence) as a insult to the intelligence community. “This creates more than hurt feelings,” writes Hayden, noting that CIA directors “send people into harm’s way” to learn such information.
Hayden asks how the CIA will deal with its sworn duty to keep Congress “fully and currently informed” if the Trump Administration closes the “Russia did it” investigation. He worries about incoming CIA Director Mike Pompeo and his “willingness to defend them [his future workforce] against charges of incompetence and politicization simply for saying what their craft tells them to be true.”
Hayden may be certain that we are “moving in the wrong direction,” but PB feels that Hayden is the one putting the cart before the horse.
Last time I checked, the intelligence community serves the president – not the other way around. Who cares if Trump “antagonizes” the CIA? He’s their boss.
Editor’s note: Stay tuned, more on this later.I've had this idea for a while, and thought that now was better than never to write it.
This is a RWBY AU set to the Avengers, though it's not in the Marvel Universe, at all, which is why it's not a crossover. The RWBY characters will be the counterparts of the Avengers cast. This will make more sense once chapter two comes out.
So I think it's pretty obvious that the only thing I own is this story, and my time writing it, and my time fighting Word.
The agents of B.E.A.C.O.N. practically dove for the walls when they saw Agent Glynda Goodwitch walking – striding – down the halls. While it seemed overdramatic for them to do such a thing, they were justified for their actions; the look on her face would make anyone run for cover. Glynda was a top agent, and could kill a person in less than 5 seconds, so it was for the safety of the other agents to just get the hell out of her way.
Clutching the holographic tablet in her hand tightly, she came to a stop in front of a door and knocked on it curtly. When it didn't open, and when she didn't hear a response, she entered in her passcode on the keypad on the side of the door and got it to override, opening the door for her.
"Director Ozpin, this is rather important," Glynda stated when she entered.
"Of course it is," Ozpin stated, not looking up at her entrance, "that's the only reason you are here."
"This is serious sir," Glynda responded in exasperation. "The Mistral Region has been hit by the G.R.I.M.M. once more."
"Yes, I know," Ozpin answered, continuing to look at the tablet sitting before him on his desk.
"Sir-" she stopped herself when she saw the tablet he was looking at. She released a quite groan. "Sir, you know the Hunter Initiative was disbanded four years ago by the Council. Why are you looking through it now?"
"Because the Council was wrong," he responded. "The world will always need heroes. G.R.I.M.M. is only proving my point."
Glynda resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead reached out and took the tablet from off of the desk. Ozpin looked up at her from behind his small glasses. Staring down at him, she placed her tablet down, replacing his.
"Sir, the Hunter Initiative was determined to fail from the start. We need to focus on the here and now," Glynda responded. "The Mistral Region has been hit, and is teeming with those awful experiments that Torchwick has been working on. I suggest sending in Agents Beauty and Beast."
"Blake and Adam?" Ozpin questioned. "Don't you think they're a little more experienced for the situation?"
"You mean the situation of removing the experiments from hurting more innocent civilians?" Glynda questioned. "No, I think they'll be enough for the place."
Ozpin chuckled and nodded. He hit the communicator on his desk.
"Agent Port, send out Agents Blake and Adam to the Mistral Region," Ozpin ordered.
"Right away sir!" Peter Port responded on the other end before the line was broken.
Ozpin raised his eyebrows expectantly at his right-hand woman. She just glared at him, looking very unimpressed. The two really were an odd combo.
"Sir, you gave them the codenames Beauty and Beast when they were assigned, and yet you don't use them," Glynda stated.
"That's right."
"Care to explain why?"
"Because as the director of B.E.A.C.O.N., I don't have to use their codenames if I don't wish to."
Glynda sighed, and if it wasn't for the fact that she knew the director personally, she'd swear he was a child trapped in an adult's body. The communicator buzzed to life, demanding attention from the two occupants.
"Sir, Mister Lie Ren and his guest are waiting for you in Conference Room 619-B," Peter relayed.
"Thank you Agent Port. Tell them I shall be there soon," Ozpin answered, turning of the communicator.
He stood up and took the tablet off his desk, handing it back to its owner.
"Do you wish to accompany me to meet our guests?" Ozpin asked.
Glynda rolled her eyes but followed him as they exited the room. The conference room was two levels above them, so they would be there shortly.
"Sir, who is this guest that Mister Lie has brought with him?" Glynda asked.
"Miss Valkyrie, if I'm correct," Ozpin answered.
Glynda snapped her neck in his direction, giving him a glare so powerful a lesser human being would have been put up in flames. Ozpin was rather aloof to the death stare.
"Sir, is it smart to have Valkyrie on the Airship?" she questioned.
"Why would you think there was any danger?" he retorted.
"Sir, she's a Class Level A, and with her war hammer-"
"She has been running around as a vigilante under the hero name Valkyrie," Ozpin interrupted.
"And she was on your recruitment roster," Glynda added.
"And?"
"If the Council found out you were going against their explicit orders-"
"Orders are meant to be broken when it comes to the safety of Vytal," Ozpin countered as they entered the turbo lift. "Wouldn't you agree?"
Glynda bristled a little at the question, but she remained silent. She couldn't really argue with the safety part of it, no matter how much she was against it. They continued the trek in silence, before arriving at the conference room. Inside, they found Ren sitting down, having a conversation with Peter while Nora had her face glued to the window, staring at the endless sky before her. She didn't even bother to look when Ozpin and Glynda stepped in.
"Hello Mister Lie," Ozpin greeted.
"Hello Director Ozpin," Ren greeted with a brief nod. "Can I ask why I was called here?"
"Yes. Are you aware of the Aura Cube discovered several decades ago?" Ozpin asked, walking over to the conference table and taking a seat.
"You mean off the shores of Patch?" Ren asked for clarification. When he saw Ozpin nod, he continued with, "Yes. It's been my study for it. I've written several papers about it and the effects the Aura Cube had during the Great War and after. Including it's use in society today and how it, combined with Dust, affected many citizens of Vytal."
"Ren knows all about that Cube thing!" Nora spoke up, acknowledging the other occupants in the room. She rushed over and practically tackled Ren from behind. "It's been his obsession!"
"Thank you for telling them that Nora," Ren commented dryly.
"You're welcome," Nora responded back.
"Can I guess that you need me for this Cube?" Ren asked.
"Yes," Ozpin answered, folding his hands. "We want you to destroy it."
Ren's eyes widened only a fraction.
"Why would you want it destroyed? It's already been proven to be beneficial to society, even if it did cause some side-effects."
"While it may be beneficial, it's also very dangerous," Ozpin answered. "In our view, it is the greatest source of power, and destruction. In this case, the pros do not outweigh the cons. It was why B.E.A.C.O.N. took it and hid it away several years ago."
"I see. And you picked me because...?"
"You are the only one on Vytal capable of handling the Cube without getting yourself killed," Ozpin answered. "And believe me, many before you have attempted to rid it themselves."
Ren nodded, understanding what Ozpin meant.
"Where is it currently?" the younger man questioned.
"Hidden," Ozpin responded. "It's been traveling from location to location to keep it out of the hands of groups like G.R.I.M.M.. However, I feel he is getting closer to nabbing it, and if he does..."
"Then Vytal is practically wiped out," Ren responded.
"Exactly," Ozpin nodded.
"That sounds really bad," Nora commented, looking surprisingly serious.
"It is, which is why I asked you to help be his bodyguard while he rids the world of it," Ozpin said, directing his gaze on the red head.
Nora saluted, standing tall with her shoulders back.
"You can count on me. Valkyrie is on the case!" Nora stated before she broke into a grin.
Ren sighed lightly and shook his head.
"Must you encourage her?" he questioned.
"My dear boy, I'm not encouraging anyone," Ozpin said with a smirk that was anything but innocent.
"Mhm," Ren muttered.
"Agent Goodwitch, mind showing Mister Lie and Miss Nora to the Cube?" Ozpin asked.
Glynda was sending him a "this is a bad idea, sir" look, but did as he asked. Standing up from her seat, she beckoned the two to follow her, which they did; Nora skipped happily behind while Ren walked normally.
"Sir. I was wondering if you would be able to explain why a member of the Hunter Initiative is on the Airship," Peter spoke up. "I thought the Council terminated the plan."
"They did," Ozpin answered as he stood up. "Miss Nora is a guest, and now a bodyguard to Mister Lie. The Council never said anything about her assisting him while he worked."
Peter had a little smile under his mustache and nodded.
"Of course sir," he responded.
Ozpin smiled secretly at the agent before leaving the room to head back to his desk; he'd have to steal the tablet back from Glynda once she was done showing Ren and Nora to the secured chamber. He wasn't done reading through it.
"Wow! How big is this airship?" Nora asked as she followed behind Glynda.
"Very big," Glynda responded dryly. "You will refrain from-"
Whatever she had planned to say was cut off by the Airship suddenly making a groaning sound and then tilting to the left. All three hit the wall.
"Is this part of the tour?" Ren asked sarcastically.
"No, it's not," Glynda responded, pushing her glasses up her nose. Once the setting had righted itself, she stalked for the bridge. "Stay here."
"But we can help!" Nora called after the woman.
Either Glynda didn't hear her or ignored her, because the woman was still walking away, and she hadn't made a comment to Nora's call. Red reached out and grabbed Nora's shoulder, getting her to look at him.
"Let's do as she says and not get in their way," Ren told his female companion. "Besides, we don't know what caused the tilt."
"Detective Nora is on the case!" Nora shouted, running down the corridor.
"Nora wait!" Ren shouted as he trailed after the woman.
"Who's firing at us?" Glynda demanded when she arrives on the bridge.
"Unidentified airjet ma'am," a young woman, Agent Velvet Scarlatina, reported. "We can't identify what they are shooting at us."
"What did they hit?" Glynda asked.
"Unknown-ma'am-but-we're-still-getting-data-from-a ll-levels.-Only-level-4-is-not-responding," Agent Bartholomew Oobleck reported. "Weaponry-is-down-as-well-and-we-can't-get-them-on line!"
Glynda was forced to take a second to understand what he had said, and in that time, another hit sent the Airship tilting once more. By that time, Ozpin arrived on the Bridge with Port following close behind.
"What is going on with my Airship?" Ozipn demanded, his normally calm eyes ablaze with fury.
"We're being attacked," Glynda informed him. "And we have nothing to fire back with."
"G.R.I.M.M.?" Ozpin asked.
"Most likely," Glynda answered with a firm nod.
"Sir!" Velvet suddenly called out. "Two unidentified beings have been picked up on my radar screen! They're on Level 5."
"Can you I.D. them?" Ozpin demanded.
"I'm doing so now," Velvet responded, typing away at her station. "It's...Sir, it's Torchwick and Crimson!"
"Of course," Ozpin muttered under his breath.
"Sir! They're heading towards Lie Ren and Valkyrie!" Velvet reported.
"What?" Glynda and Ozpin demanded.
"Nora!" Ren was panting as he chased after his hyperactive friend.
He could barely breathe from all his running, and so he forced himself to stop and catch his breath. Unlike Nora and her superhuman durability, Ren was a little more mortal, and grew tired rather easily. While he was resting, he heard footsteps approaching him from behind. Turning, he found Roman Torchwick strolling towards him calmly. Without hesitating, he pulled out one of is Jade Dragons, and aimed it at Roman.
"Should have figured you were behind the attack," Ren said.
"Well it is obvious," Roman responded, puffing from his cigar as he coolly regarded his opponent. "But I'm not just here to wreck Oz's beloved Airship."
"And what else are you here for?" Ren questioned.
"You, Mister Lie," Roman responded with a smirk.
"And what makes you think I'd come willingly?" Ren demanded, leaving his face impassive.
"Whatever made you think it was going to be willingly?" Roman questioned.
From out of the shadows, a fireball was sent right at him. Ren jumped out of the way, missing the hit just in time before he was hit by another fire ball. It sent him into the wall. Giving himself a moment to be hurt by the hit, he quickly recovered and began to shoot at Roman and his assistant. The shots did little good, since the assistant (a mysterious woman who went by the name of Crimson, her real name unknown) placed up protective barriers that blocked the hits from his pistol. He was about to reach for the second one to fire off, but was caught off guard by the rocket to his chest from Roman's Candy Cane. The hit had been at point blank, and while it hadn't been one of his stronger ones, the hit and proximity was enough to send Ren into the unconscious world.
Roman smirked as he stood over the fallen man, lifting him over his shoulder.
"Rather light. Let's go back to the jet. I don't like Junior with my things for very long," Roman told his assistant.
Crimson nodded, and prepared to follow when she stopped and sensed a person approaching. Roman stopped with her and looked over his shoulder, hearing footsteps heading their way. Around the corner came Nora, holding her Magnhild tightly. Seeing her unconscious friend caused her to scream and rush at the two. Crimson stepped forward and sent several fireballs, all of which were destroyed with ease by the hammer. Roman had used the distraction to make a run for it down the hall, leaving it up to Crimson to knock her out before they'd get the chance to leave.
Nora jumped in the air when she was close enough and aimed her weapon for Crimson's head, but the woman had used a protective shield, sending Nora tumbling backwards. Crimson then sent specks down that surrounded Nora, and when the woman lifted her pam upwards, the specks glowed and exploded, knocking Nora out. Seeing her opponent down, Crimson turned and followed the corridor her leader had taken, getting to the airjet in no time. When she hopped on, she was helped by Militia, while Melanie was busy strapping in their 'guest'. Roman was making his way to the cockpit.
"Get us out of here, Jr," Roman ordered.
"Righto boss," the man with the red-tinted glasses responded, pulling away their airjet before the Airship could get a chance to fire back.
Ozpin and Glynda arrived on scene; Peter stayed on the bridge to give orders. Nora still laid unconscious, though she didn't look badly hurt. Glynda immediately called for a medical assistance, while Ozpin silently took everything in. When medical arrived, Glynda looked over at her head in command.
"Sir, what are we going to do now?" she asked. With Ren gone, the Cube was still a threat.
"We start the Hunter Initiative," Ozpin responded, sounding very firm and clear on the matter.
"But sir-"
"No buts. We won't inform the Council of anything unless otherwise necessary," Ozpin cut off, giving her a glare that told her not to cross him. "Vytal is in danger and it needs more than what B.E.A.C.O.N. can offer it. It needs heroes."
Glynda remained silent before releasing a defeated sigh.
"Understood sir," she responded.
"Good," he stated with a nod, watching his team of medics carry Nora off to the medbay. "Call the Hunters in."
I'm pretty sure the shadow people in Avengers is called the Council; if so, don't worry about them. They won't be showing up at all in this story; they will only be mentioned.Lindsay Lohan suffered a nasty injury while out on the high seas, accidentally ripping off a chunk of her ring finger while trying to pull up the anchor during a boat trip.
Lohan shared some video of her injury on Snapchat, which she posted on Instagram — and then quickly deleted, reports TMZ, which managed to preserve a copy of the vid before it was yanked.
RELATED: Lindsay Lohan Opens Up About Ex-Fiance In Tell-All Interview: ‘I Was Terrified He’d Throw Acid In My Face’
“Lindsay was enjoying Sunday in the ocean off Turkey when she tried pulling up the boat anchor and became entangled in it,” reports TMZ, nothing that the anchor pulled her down in the water and, as she struggled to untangle herself, sliced off the tip of her finger.
“Her friends went on the hunt and found the detached digit on the deck of the boat,” adds TMZ. “They rushed LiLo to an ER, where a plastic surgeon reattached it.”
TMZ also obtained some gruesome photos of the gashed finger before it was surgically attached, right here.Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (9) is sacked by New York Giants defensive tackle Linval Joseph during a game last season. (Photo11: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY Sports) Story Highlights Cowboys have struggled against the Giants; New York has won eight of last 11 meetings
Patriots have won nine straight openers, the NFL's longest active streak
Geno Smith begins his Jets career against the Buccaneers
DENVER — The 2013 NFL season kicked off here Thursday night with a playoff rematch between the Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos. Here are 10 things to watch when the other 30 teams open their seasons Sunday and Monday:
A GIANT ISSUE
The Cowboys have made the playoffs just once in the past five seasons, and their inability to beat the NFC East rival New York Giants — especially in Dallas — has been part of the problem. The Giants have won eight of the last 11 meetings in the series, including all four at AT&T Stadium (formerly Cowboys Stadium) since it opened in 2009.
WEEK 1: Picks for all 16 games
PREDICTIONS: All the picks for 2013
Snapping that skid Sunday night no doubt would give QB Tony Romo and the Cowboys a boost in a season that figures to make or break the Jason Garrett era. Then again, Dallas beat the Giants in last year's opener in New York — and lost five of its next seven on the way to a third-place finish at 8-8. Consistency, not putting on one good show on national TV, is what the Cowboys need most.
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III was held out the entire preseason. (Photo11: Kim Klement, USA TODAY Sports)
SLIDE, RG3, SLIDE!
Only the Washington Redskins made the playoffs out of the NFC East a year ago, thanks in large part to a dynamic rookie season from QB Robert Griffin III, who makes his return from knee reconstruction Monday night against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Can RGIII put all the offseason drama behind him and hit the ground running? Or at least hit the ground when danger is near?
"I just know I have to be safe, slide," Griffin said. "But I'm not going to go out and play scared. That's not the way I play."
Redskins coach Mike Shanahan has a history of getting his teams off to fast starts – he's 15-4 all-time in openers. New Eagles coach Chip Kelly has his work cut out for him.
PATRIOTS MOVE ON
Finally, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick can stop deflecting questions about Aaron Hernandez and Tim Tebow and do what he does as well as anyone: scheme to win on Sundays.
PREVIEW: AFC East
First up is a road game against a Buffalo Bills team that has a rookie coach (Doug Marrone) and rookie quarterback (first-round draft pick E.J. Manuel, who is coming off knee surgery). With extended time to prepare, it wouldn't be surprising to see the Patriots deliver a lopsided welcome to the NFL. They've won nine consecutive openers, the league's longest active streak.
New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan is under the microscope at the start of the 2013 season. (Photo11: Joe Camporeale, USA TODAY Sports)
REX'S LAST STAND?
The atmosphere at MetLife Stadium could get downright toxic if the New York Jets don't come out charging Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. New general manager John Idzik traded away the Jets' best player, CB Darrelle Revis, as part of the rebuilding process, and Revis returns to town with the Bucs.
Rookie QB Geno Smith is starting in place of injured incumbent QB Mark Sanchez, perhaps before he's ready, but Smith insists he won't be nervous.
"They'll try to rattle my cage," Smith said about the Buccaneers. "I expect those guys to come out fired up and they want to make a statement. They've got a rookie quarterback, and they'll want to hit me and get me off my game, but I expect those things. And I look forward to it."
Meanwhile, coach Rex Ryan seems more detached than ever — which might be just as well, if Smith falters and the J-E-T-S chant gives way quickly to other four-letter words.
SAINTS MARCH IN
Coach Sean Payton is back, and so are the expectations for a New Orleans Saints team that missed the playoffs for the first time since 2008 while Payton was suspended for his role in the Bountygate scandal.
What better way to send a message than knocking off the defending NFC South champion Atlanta Falcons at the Superdome?
The Saints are 10-2 in the series with Payton on the sideline, and QB Drew Brees remains on top of his game. But the Falcons have the personnel to be a title contender and were one of the NFL's best road teams a year ago, going 6-2 away from the Georgia Dome.
TOUGHEST SCHEDULE BEGINS
Coming off a 4-12 season, the Detroit Lions will play a dozen games against teams that finished above.500 last season and seven against 2012 playoff teams.
If coach Jim Schwartz is going to keep his job, winning at home — beginning Sunday against reigning MVP Adrian Peterson and the NFC North rival Minnesota Vikings — is essential. One break in the Lions' schedule: They'll travel fewer miles (4,202) than any NFL team. The San Francisco 49ers will travel a league-high 32,948.
Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers ran wild in last year's playoff win over the Packers. (Photo11: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
FIRST SHOT IN WILD WEST
No division figures to be more competitive than the NFC West, and Sunday will provide tests all around.
The 49ers host the Green Bay Packers in a divisional playoff rematch. The Seattle Seahawks face QB Cam Newton and the Panthers in Carolina. And two teams that should be improved – the young, fast Rams and the Arizona Cardinals, who brought in veteran Carson Palmer after years of incompetent QB play – square off in St. Louis.
Let the race to 11 wins (or 12? 13? 14?) begin.
STEEL RESOLVE
The Pittsburgh Steelers have won 10 consecutive home openers — the longest active streak in the NFL — and need to make it 11 on Sunday against the Tennessee Titans to avoid putting themselves in a hole as they try to reclaim the AFC North.
PREVIEW: AFC North
The schedule gets tougher from there, beginning with a Week 2 trip to face the rival Cincinnati Bengals, whose exciting rookie RB Giovani Bernard makes his NFL debut Sunday against the Bears' opportunistic defense in Chicago.
ONE WIDE-OPEN AFC
Remodeled rosters and talented young stars have several other AFC teams optimistic, but questions remain entering Week 1.
Will the Miami Dolphins (at Cleveland) reap the benefits of their offseason spending spree? Will coach Andy Reid's steady presence allow the Kansas City Chiefs (at Jacksonville) to put last season's mess behind them?
Will Andrew Luck make the leap the Indianapolis Colts (vs. Oakland) believe he can in Year 2? And will Arian Foster stay healthy enough for the Houston Texans (at San Diego on Monday night) to ride on his back offensively?
START FAST
One loss isn't a death knell for any team, but keep these numbers in mind: The 47 Super Bowl winners are 38-8-1 in Week 1 of their title seasons.
And since 1978, when the NFL went to a 16-game schedule (excluding the strike-shortened 1982 season), teams that have won their openers have made the playoffs more than twice as often (52.6%) as teams that have lost their openers (23.7%).
The best Week 1 record all-time? That belongs to the Cowboys (35-17-1).The reigning NL rookie of the year has a direct link to the greatest hitter who ever lived. Follow the lineage from Teddy Ballgame to one of the most exciting young talents in baseball. ESPN the Magazine's Robert Sanchez reports. (1:30)
This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's March 28 MLB Preview Issue. Subscribe today!
THE FATHER OF last year's National League Rookie of the Year puts a ball on a tee, picks out a point in the upper right corner of the enclosed batting cage and tells a 12-year-old boy to swing away. In his backyard west of the Las Vegas Strip, Mike Bryant is trying to teach yet another kid to be like his son Kris.
Yes, that Kris, the Cubs' 24-year-old All-Star third baseman. In his first major league season last year, he posted a.369 on-base percentage, 26 home runs and 99 RBIs. As such, Mike's hitting lessons have picked up -- parents want their children coached by the man who brought Kris forth. The man who's agonized over his own brief pro career and has spent years passing lessons learned from father to son. The man who has become the greatest entry point to Kris, a preternatural talent who prefers to let his on-field play speak for him.
Mike's student takes an uneasy cut at the teed-up ball and squibs a grounder up the middle. "Elevate it!" Mike says, his Boston accent booming off the walls, a Cubs hat pulled over his bald head. "Feel what your body's doing." He adjusts the boy's feet, tells him to open up his hips a little more. "You need the right knowledge," Mike says. "Believe me, I'm not wrong. I've spent the past 15 years being vindicated and validated."
As proof, Kris' likeness hangs in the batting cage on a massive banner that adorned Wrigley Field last season, a |
logy, Child Neurology Society and American Neurological Association, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology.
Doctors have an ethical obligation not to be part of the problem, the paper says.
"Doctors need to be more aware of this," says lead author William Graf, a child neurologist from Yale University. While some might knowingly prescribe unneeded medication, others might not recognize parents seeking an edge for a healthy child or a teen faking symptoms to get pills for their own use or to distribute to others, he says.
The report cites a nationwide survey of high school students that found about 3% of 12th-graders used Adderall without a prescription in 2008; most got the medication from friends or relatives.
The report also notes that diagnoses of ADHD and prescriptions for stimulants have increased greatly over two decades. Those jumps may reflect actual increases in the condition or growing recognition of its toll, but the neurologists write that "it is generally believed that some portion of the increase in stimulant use is attributable to neuroenhancement, especially among older teens."
Graf says that the report should not be seen as a criticism of stimulant use for the treatment of ADHD, which affects 3% to 7% of children. "We've all seen kids who have benefited from treatment, who have gone from not being able to function in a mainstream classroom to being able to function," he says.
But healthy children should not be exposed to drug risks and side effects and are not mature enough to consider the consequences, the paper says. It says doctors might take more leeway with adults seeking the same kind of cognitive enhancement.
While the ethical arguments in the paper are on target, doctors struggle with the fact that many patients fall into a "gray area between having a clear disorder and being totally normal," says Ben Vitiello, chief of the treatment and intervention branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. Parents, he says, also struggle with doing the right thing for their children in "a culture that is pushing kids to excel."
The report points to a real problem, but it is also a problem that most children and teens who actually have ADHD are not adequately treated for it, says Mark Wolraich, a pediatrician at Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center. He helped write ADHD treatment guidelines for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Wolraich says he also worries that the public may have a growing "sense that these are dangerous drugs." But, he says, "used appropriately, in the appropriate doses, they have a large margin of safety." The most common side effects, he says, are reduced appetite and disrupted sleep. Rarer side effects can include hallucinations. Some users become addicted.
The pediatrics academy also has urged doctors to watch out for misuse and to warn teens not to share or sell their medications.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/YmMdm6Hundreds arrive in trains every day in hope of finding employment
Aman Sood
Tribune News Service
Rajpura, August 20
“Ek roti aur aachaar pey hum do raat guzaarey hain (we survived two nights on a chapatti and some pickle),” said Rani Devi, seated in the tiny space adjacent to a train lavatory, tightly holding her two young children aged four and five. “As the train reached Punjab, some good Samaritans offered us milk, tea and pakoras,” she added, her face lighting up for a while. “I wonder what is in store for us with our cattle and crops swept away in floods back home in Bihar,” she looked at her kids dolefully.
(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)
Rani Devi is among thousands of flood-hit Biharis rushing to Punjab for sustenance — damp clothes thrown into jute bags and water bottles tucked under their arms. They are coming in groups from Purnia, Araria, Kishanganj and Katihar amid reports of the situation worsening with breaches in the embankments at Darbhanga, Katihar and Sitamarhi.
One such batch of migrants that arrived in Rajpura from Saharsa via the Jan Sewa Express told The Tribune they were hopeful of finding employment in industrial units at Bathinda, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar since the labour- intensive paddy season had come to an end.
Each of them carrying a packet of relief material, Saharsa residents Rajkumar, Raibir and Raju Yadav said they intended to join their relatives in Ludhiana working in a hosiery unit there. “We lost our house, two cows and a goat in the floods. I waited for days for the situation to improve. With flood camps running out of supplies, I decided to leave everything behind,” said Raibir. According to official figures, 1.08 crore people have been hit by floods in 18 districts of Bihar.
It was the same story at Patiala railway station. “Even during the floods last year, I had stayed in Punjab for three months. The situation back home is hopeless. I have been trying to locate my brother missing since last week,” said Lachman Ahlo from Champaran, desperation writ large on his face.
“As the flood waters gushed in, we hastened to vacate the village with only a few things we could lay our hands on,” recalled Pritpal Chohan, a resident of Araria, taking out wet clothes from his bag to dry in the sun.
“This is all I have. I will now proceed to Bathinda where my cousin works in a factory. He will get me a job. Two of my relatives, who make kite strings, will go to Ludhiana,” he said.
In a reverse swing, some Biharis working in Punjab are rushing home to trace their kin, having lost touch with them after the floods.
“I am neither able to reach my brother nor my wife, who is in her fourth month of pregnancy. The last time I spoke to a relative, I was told the fields in our village had submerged and the houses drowned,” said a worried Sham Sundar.
Amid the gloom is a silver lining. The rise in migrant workers is sure to bring cheer to Punjab’s hosiery sector which has been facing labour pains for long.Manus manum lavat. It means, roughly, “one hand washes the other.” The phrase appeared for the first time in a play by Seneca in which he ridiculed the culture of corruption that had settled in during the reign of Gaius Claudius Caesar. Seneca called the play Apocolocyntosis, which could be rendered into English as Turning into a Pumpkin. His point was simple: the integrity of things and people is essential. We shouldn’t hold ourselves out to be one thing and really be something else. For Seneca the phrase manus manum lavat explained “the way the world works,” but there’s something a little sleazy and dishonest about it—a lack of integrity, or honesty to one’s beliefs, a sort of minor moral compromise.
A critic sells the world his honest assessment of things, so a critic should be outside of the morals of the marketplace, the world of “one hand washes the other.” But of course there are true critics, and then there are those who bill and peddle themselves as critics without really observing the professional detachment and distance that the ethics of this calling command.
After watching Howard Kurtz appear on the Daily Show on Thursday evening, I started looking about for reviews to try to get a better take on what his book was about. I do watch Kurtz on CNN and read his Washington Post column from time to time, so I have a pretty good sense of what to expect.
And then I stumbled across something pretty strange. I found Rachel Sklar’s “Ringside at the Reality Show” over at the Huffington Post. Sklar’s piece is a drooling, fawning blurb-like emission. In fact, had it been authored by Kurtz’s own PR agent, I can’t imagine he’d have changed a comma. Of course, Sklar hasn’t really read Kurtz’s book (other than the first 7500 words, she says), but her praise couldn’t be stronger:
it looks to be a thoroughly engrossing, engaging and more than occasionally juicy read.
Sklar then gives us a plate filled with “juicy bites” from the book she hasn’t read. And it closes with a hard push to close the sale:
There’s more—and apparently it’s already available at your bookstore! So go buy it, or don’t and wait for the juicy bits to leak out on your favorite blog.
But wait a minute, I thought, this couldn’t be the same Rachel Sklar who ferociously trashed Howard Kurtz and the key ideas in his book back last year? Could there be two Rachel Sklars, both writing for Huffington Post? Am I hallucinating? So I went back and pulled up the writing of evil-twin-Rachel Sklar. And there it was, just as I remember it. Sklar describes an episode of Kurtz’s CNN show which, as it turns out, provides the core thesis of his new book:
It was an emotionally charged show, discussing last week’s awful attack on a CBS news team in Iraq which killed cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan and critically wounded correspondent Kimberly Dozier. NBC correspondent Richard Engel talked graphically about witnessing the horrors of war, getting used to hearing about atrocities: “[J]ust today I was reading reports that eight Iraqi heads were found severed in fruit baskets in Baquba… When I heard it, I’ve heard so many reports like this, I didn’t even bat an eye.” The program also discussed the Haditha massacre, unrest and violence in Afghanistan, and the fact that Bush flat-out lied about soon-to-be-departing Treasury Secretary John Snow. This is “Reliable Sources” for Sunday, June 4, 2006. Which is why my mouth literally dropped open when halfway through the program, Kurtz came out with this: “Coming up in the next half hour of “Reliable Sources”: with rising casualties in Iraq and sinking poll numbers, is the president having a terrible year, or are the media just making it seem that way?” Excuse me? Is this dude on drugs? The framing of this question is so biased, so skewed, and such a blatant, scapegoating stretch that I genuinely can’t believe Kurtz had the audacity to say it on the air in a show with the word “reliable” in it. This is even worse blame-the-media-mongering than his recent adoption of the journalists-are-ignoring-good-news-from-Iraq argument, for which he got a well-deserved smackdown from CBS’ Lara Logan. Why? Because it’s actually the SAME blame-the-media-mongering that he’s been pushing, except now instead of being blamed for bad news in Iraq Kurtz is blaming his fellow journalists for bad news about the Bush administration. After the break he goes on to frame the issue: ”Day after day the news from Iraq is consistently negative. Car bombs, roadside explosions and now disturbing allegations about the role of U.S. troops in the death of Iraqi civilians. President Bush’s popularity is inextricably linked to developments in Iraq. His poll numbers have been low for months. Some Republicans are criticizing him on other issues, such as immigration, and the press seems to be constantly beating him up. Are the media accurately reflecting an administration that’s lost its way or just piling on an embattled president?” Notice that he frames the issue in terms of Iraq, throwing a few general comments in there providing no other context or even a shred of evidence that the coverage amounts to “piling on” rather than, you know, “coverage.” Despite lipservice to “other issues” if you read the transcript you’ll see that the terms of the discussion deal exclusively with events in Iraq, with spin courtesy of former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke and The Nation’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel pointing out that, you know, this stuff is actually happening.
Sometime between last June and the first week of October, “is this dude on drugs” turned into “exciting,” “juicy” and “wonderful.” Now that’s a remarkable odyssey.
What might have happened? Well, cruising through the records of Kurtz’s program and his column, I found something interesting. First, it seems, Rachel Sklar was invited to Kurtz’s show as a guest, showing up in transcripts several times in the course of this past summer. Second, Howie wrote a piece about Sklar in his column at the Washington Post. It’s an over-the-top puff piece filled with product placement, which makes clear that Kurtz paid a call on Sklar in her office in New York:
In the high-ceilinged SoHo offices that once housed an art gallery, Rachel Sklar is juggling a slew of stories destined for the virtual pages of the Huffington Post. There’s her interview with author Gay Talese, an analysis of the Obama Girl video spoof, a look at all the iPhone hype and an assessment of Us Weekly’s bold publication of a Paris Hilton-free issue. Sklar’s provocative writing has drawn the attention of New York’s gossip blogs (which keep obsessing on her bosom). “Everyone’s amused by the attention I get,” says Sklar, who edits the Eat the Press section. “I’m 34. If it’s going to immortalize me as an ingenue, that’s fine.”
But Kurtz’s headline tells it all: “A Blog That Made It Big.” Of course, the blog features everything that Kurtz loves: hard left politics, anti-war rhetoric, feminist perspectives, and acid criticism of Howard Kurtz... or it did. Is it cynical to be suspicious of the dealings that produced a love-fest between Rachel Sklar and Howard Kurtz? Or perhaps it’s just an unreasonable expectation–namely, critics who are actually critical.A new drug for patients with a form of hemophilia may need fewer injections to control their bleeding, according to study results released in a press release by Biogen Idec and partner Swedish Orphan Biovitrum.
The new hemophilia drug, a bioengineered version of a clotting enzyme called factor IX, could come to dominate the $1 billion market for treatments for hemophilia B, the more rare form of hemophilia, displacing Pfizer's BeneFix, which generated $700 million in sales last year. The results could also bode well for a second long-acting hemophilia drug that Biogen is developing for the more common form of hemophilia, hemophilia A. Treatments for hemophilia A are a $5 billion market. In pre-market trading, shares of Biogen rose more than 3%.
The hemophila data are the first of a series of catalysts expected for Biogen Idec in coming months. Under chief executive George Scangos, who took over two years ago, Biogen has focused its research and development costs on a handful of core programs, most of which are going to hit milestones by the end of the year. Aside from the hemophilia drugs, the company is also expecting data from a drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and there could be an expert panel for its BG-12 multiple sclerosis pill by the end of the year, with approval expected early in 2013. Biogen shares have risen 60% in the past 12 months.
Hemophilia B was first described by British doctors in 1952, and occurs when a lack of factor IX causes a patient's blood to be unable to clot. Pfizer's BeneFix is a genetically engineered copy of the missing factor IX; some patients also get factor IX derived from blood products. But patients must receive injections several times a week. The biggest advantage of Biogen's new drug is that it lasts three times longer than BeneFix in the bloodstream.
In the clinical trial results released today, that translated to a less frequent dosing. In one arm of the study, patients were given the new drug once weekly; there were on an annualized basis, there were 2.95 bleeds per year in that group. A second arm allowed doctors to choose dosing based on blood tests; there there was only a 1.38 rate of bleeding; in the last six months of the study, the median patient got the drug only once every 14 days.
A third arm of the trial gave the drug only as needed. In that arm, there was a bleeding rate of 17.69. According to a detailed prep pack given to clients by Mark Schoenebaum at ISI Group last week, Biogen has said that bleeding rates in the the low single digits, with a 15-bleeds-per-year expected in as-needed use.
One very positive fact for the Biogen drug: there were no "inhibitors," or patients that developed an immune response to the new factor IX drug. This is a key safety result, because these patients become incredibly difficult to treat. Robyn Karnauskas, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to investors that this could bode well for Biogen's other hemophilia program, which replaces the factor VIII using similar long-acting technology.
The most common side effects included cold- and flu-like symptoms, joint pain, high blood pressure and headache.Sometimes, you get lucky.
Such was the case for me yesterday.
Not only did I get this awesome latte:
I also got to sit at the table at Benelux Coffee that has the best light of any table in the coffee shop.
Once I had myself situated, I got out my 4.0 mm hook and an assortment of yarns I now thing of as my “flamingo collection” and got to work on a new crochet soccer ball.
The African flower hexagon soccer ball that I designed to celebrate and commemorate the 2010 World Cup is one of my favorite designs.
It has been made on six continents that I know of, bringing (I hope) joy to soccer and crochet enthusiasts everywhere, and yesterday I decided that now was as good a time as any to get started on what is my fourth iteration of this project.
By the time I had finished my latte and was ready to pack up and go on my way, I had made this much progress toward a future soccer ball:
When I got home, I continued my efforts, and today, as the end of the day approached, I had gotten this far:
Satisfied with my progress on the soccer ball, I turned my attention to one of my unfinished crochet jellyfish focusing my efforts on this base for one of the jellyfish:
In short order, I had finished all of the hyperbolic curlicues/tentacles for this jellyfish, and I even had the ends woven in:
Each crochet project is its own journey, and while I am not entirely certain where either of these will take me, I am happy to move forward, one stitch at a time.CubeSats offered deep-space ride on ESA asteroid probe
AIM at binary asteroid system Think of it as the ultimate hitchhiking opportunity: ESA is offering CubeSats a ride to a pair of asteroids in deep space. CubeSats are among the smallest types of satellites: formed in standard cubic units of 10 cm per side, they provide affordable access to space for small companies, research institutes and universities. One-, two- or three-unit CubeSats are already being flown. Teams of researchers and companies from any ESA Member State are free to compete. The selected CubeSats will become Europe’s first to travel beyond Earth orbit once the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is launched in October 2020. “AIM has room for a total of six CubeSat units,” explains Ian Carnelli, managing the mission for ESA. “So potentially that might mean six different one-unit CubeSats could fly, but in practice it might turn out that two three-unit CubeSats will be needed to produce meaningful scientific return.
Triple-unit CubeSats “We’re looking for innovative ideas for CubeSat-hosted sensors that will boost and complement AIM’s own scientific return. “We also intend to use these CubeSats, together with AIM itself and its asteroid lander, to test out intersatellite communications networking. "ESA’s SysNova initiative will be applied to survey a comparatively large number of alternative solutions, this competition framework giving industry and universities the opportunity to work together on developing their scientific investigations in a field that is the technological cutting edge.” Beginning its preliminary Phase-A/B design work next month, ESA’s AIM spacecraft will be humanity’s first mission to a binary system – the paired Didymos asteroids, which come a comparatively close 11 million km to Earth in 2022. The 800 m-diameter main body is orbited by a 170 m moon.
Asteroid Impact Mission AIM will perform high-resolution visual, thermal and radar mapping of the moon. It will also put down a lander – ESA’s first touchdown on a small body since Rosetta’s Philae landed on a comet last November. AIM also represents ESA’s contribution to a larger international effort, the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission. The NASA-led Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) probe will impact the smaller body, while AIM will perform detailed before-and-after mapping, including pinpointing any shift in the asteroid’s orbit.
Asteroid impact “While it will return invaluable science,” adds Ian, “AIM is conceived as a technology demonstration mission, testing out various technologies and techniques needed for deep space expeditions in future. “These include two-way high-bandwidth optical communications – with data being returned via laser beam to ESA’s station in Tenerife – as well as intersatellite links in deep space and low-gravity lander operations. “Once demonstrated, these capabilities will be available to future deep-space endeavours, such as Lagrange-point observatories returning large amounts of data and sample return missions to Phobos – and ultimately Mars – as well as crewed missions far beyond Earth orbit.”
CubeSat The chance to put forward CubeSats is being organised as a SysNova competition, an initiative by ESA’s General Studies Programme – which is running the AIM project – to compare innovative solutions to space mission challenges. Interested teams can get more information from the published announcement of opportunity. As a next step, qualified teams can submit initial ‘challenge responses’ describing their proposed mission concepts and how they address the defined technical challenges associated with operating such small spacecraft close to an asteroid. The winning submissions will then be funded by ESA for further study over the next seven months, following up with a final review at ESA's ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. The victors will then work with ESA to elaborate their designs, including sessions at ESTEC's Concurrent Design Facility.If you’re a dog lover, you’ve got to check out the photography of 17-year-old photographer Jessica Trinh. Her two main photo subjects are her two dogs: a Golden Retriever named Chuppy and an Australian Shepherd named Daisy. Over the past few years, Trinh has captured hundreds of beautiful and creative portraits of her furry happy-go-lucky friends, aided by her keen eye for spotting gorgeous lighting and happy expressions. We dare you not to smile as you look through the images in this post.
Trinh writes,
Ever since I set my hands on a camera, I knew I had unlocked a new dimension. One where you can expand your imagination and run for endless miles. Photography makes you look at things differently. You notice rain drops and the way the sun kisses the Earth. You breath in every moment of your life. You love to live and live to love. There is no time to waste because there is an urgency to capture each loving gesture, smile, and laugh in both humans and animals. Then every photograph becomes timeless and you smile, knowing that you hold a few split seconds in your hands. I live in a box called a camera with the lens as my window and everyday I sit on my couch watching the world outside through a different perspective. No worries, my dogs are right beside me looking at it the same way.
For more of these photographs, head on over to Trinh’s Flickr photostream. Watch out though: you might spend hours and hours falling more and more in love with her dogs (and her photography).
Update: Trinh has informed us that the 8th photo in this set, the one with the butterfly, is actually a digital composite.
Image credits: Photographs by Jessica Trinh and used with permissionKentucky Judge W Mitchell Nance
A judge in southern Kentucky skipped his Friday disciplinary hearing examining allegations that he refused to hear adoption cases involving gay, lesbian or bisexual adults.
Judge W. Mitchell Nance, a family court judge for Barren and Metcalfe counties, was absent at his disciplinary hearing before the Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission in Lexington, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.
The judge’s absence was “an insult to the process,” Chris Hartman, the director of the Fairness Campaign, argued.
“It shows how flippantly he feels about this,” Hartman concluded.
The discipline hearing was conducted despite the judge offering no defense. The commission deliberated in secret following the hearing, but has yet to announce a decision.
“Whether Judge Nance appears or not, we are required to conduct a hearing,” explained Steve Woltnizek, the chairman of the commission.
Judge Nance was charged with failure to uphold standards of conduct, comply with the law, and promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.
Nance has been compared to Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who openly defied a federal judge’s order to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
In October, Judge Nance announced he would be resigning from the bench.
Nance’s resignation takes effect Saturday evening.TORONTO — A Muslim relief organization accused by federal auditors of sending almost $15-million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has been raided by police, who seized an “extensive amount” of evidence, the RCMP said Tuesday.
Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams searched the head office of the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy Canada in Mississauga, Ont., as well as a private residence in Montreal.
“We are determined to stop Canadian funds from getting in the hands of terrorist groups,” said RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia. “We continue to work diligently with our partners to investigate and disrupt organizations from misusing charitable donations to find terrorist activity.”
A non-profit group that worked mostly in Muslim countries, IRFAN-Canada lost its charity status in 2011 after Canada Revenue Agency auditors called it an “integral part” of an international fundraising effort that supported Hamas.
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said Tuesday that IRFAN-Canada had “for many years” funded Hamas. “The well intentioned and charitable Canadians who sought to support humanitarian relief through this organization deserve better.”
The minister made the comments as he announced the relief group had been placed on Canada’s list of proscribed terrorist entities. The designation makes it a crime to knowingly have any dealings with IRFAN-Canada’s property or finances.
On its face, we believe it is an unfair and unconstitutional decision
In Canada, it has been illegal to finance Hamas since 2002. But federal auditors claim that between 2005 and 2009, IRFAN-Canada provided over $14.6-million to “operating partners that were run by officials of Hamas, openly supported and provided funding to Hamas, or have been listed by various jurisdictions because of their support for Hamas or other terrorist entities.”
In addition, the CRA said it had found IRFAN-Canada videos at the group’s Mississauga office that “demonize Israel, characterize the Arab-Israeli conflict as a religious war, appeal for all Arab and Muslim nations to join in the struggle against Israel and glorify martyrdom.”
IRFAN-Canada could not be reached for comment but Ottawa lawyer Yavar Hameed said there was no evidence the group had directly financed Hamas. He questioned the timing of the government’s decision, saying it came just as the Federal Court of Appeal was to hear arguments about the revocation of IRFAN’s charity status.
“On its face, we believe it is an unfair and unconstitutional decision,” Mr. Hameed said. He called it a “nail in the coffin” for Canadian humanitarian support for Palestinians, and wondered whether the decision was politically motivated.
Liberal leader Justice Trudeau was recently criticized for agreeing to speak an Islamic conference in Toronto that was sponsored by IRFAN-Canada. The relief group eventually withdrew as a “diamond sponsor” of the event.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs commended the government for taking action. “All Canadians should be alarmed that millions of dollars were raised in Canada to support a foreign terrorist group with a long record of suicide bombings and other attacks against civilians,” said David Koschitzky, the CIJA chair.
National Post with files from The Canadian Press
• Email: sbell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @StewartBellNP
From Public Safety Canada’s release:
Government of Canada Lists IRFAN-Canada as terrorist entity It is now a criminal offence to knowingly deal in the property or finances of this entity April 29, 2014 Ottawa Public Safety Canada The Honourable Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, today announced that the Government of Canada has listed the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy-Canada (IRFAN-Canada) as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. IRFAN-Canada is a not for profit organization operating in Canada. Between 2005 and 2009, IRFAN-Canada transferred approximately $14.6 million worth of resources to various organizations associated with Hamas, a listed terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. The law mandates severe penalties for persons and organizations that deal in the property or finances of a listed entity. In addition, it is a crime to knowingly participate in, or contribute to, any activity of a listed entity for the purpose of enhancing the ability of the entity to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity. This offence and related offences are set out, in full, in the Criminal Code. The actions of IRFAN-Canada meet the legal threshold set out in the Criminal Code, which requires the existence of reasonable grounds to believe that the entity has knowingly participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity or is knowingly acting on behalf of, at the direction of, or in association with such an entity.All orders are custom cut pieces and are non-refundable and non-returnable.
Please check your orders carefully before submitting.
Remember - we cut each bottle to order, and we only use post consumer bottles. Therefore, quantities are always limited.
Although we try very hard to package your order as carefully as possible, sometimes, the post office is not very nice to glassware. If your order arrives damaged, please let us know and we will work with you on a replacement item. We will need a photo of the damaged items to submit an insurance claim with the carrier. Replacement items are shipped out as soon as the insurance claim has been filed.
We can not be held responsible for lost mail or items not delivered on time if we have shipped them correctly. All orders include shipping info. Returned orders due to incorrect addresses may be charged for additional shipping.Soldiers and riot police opened fire at Insein Prison in Rangoon, the capital of Burma, or Myanmar, after inmates there rioted, according to reports.
The facility, which houses many political prisoners who oppose the country’s military junta, has been described by former inmates as “the darkest hell-hole in Burma”.
The chilling report came after the Burmese authorities raised the estimate of the dead and missing to more than 60,000.
It is feared that the secretive regime’s paranoia has hampered the flow of aid which has now started flowing into the country.
According to state television, 22,464 had been killed and another 41,054 were missing after cyclone Nargis barrelled into the low-lying Irrawaddy delta with 120mph winds, bringing with it an enormous storm surge that inundated towns and villages.
The social welfare minister Maung Maung Swe said that 95 per cent of houses in the delta town of Bogalay had been “destroyed”.
“More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” he added. “The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages. They did not have anywhere to flee.”
The cyclone ripped the roofs of thousands of buildings including Insein Prison.
More than 1,500 prisoners were locked in a hall and rioted, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
It reported: “Even though prisoners requested prison guards to open the doors and move them to safety, the authorities ignored their request. Some prisoners set fire to the prison hall and a riot ensued.”
Soldiers and riot police called to the prison then opened fire and killed 36 prisoners and injured 70, AAPP said.
Ko Bo Kyi, AAPP’s joint secretary, said: “The authorities are to blame for this situation.
“As soon as the storm hit, they should have moved the prisoners to safety.”
Aid agencies fear the overall death toll in Burma could continue to climb.
If previous disasters of this kind are anything to go by, few of the missing are likely to be found alive. Around one million people were estimated to be homeless.
But despite the scale of the devastation, Burma’s military junta — the country has been under a dictatorship for 46 years — were obstructing the entry of foreign aid personnel and supplies.
“The United Nations is asking the Burmese government to open its doors. The Burmese government replies: 'Give us money, we'll distribute it.’ We can’t accept that,” said the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who is a co-founder of the aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières.
A UN disaster assessment team was stuck in Thailand overnight, unable to obtain visas, and the Burmese embassy in Bangkok was closed on Monday for a Thai holiday.
Countries around the world are offering help, but have yet to be invited in by the authorities, and aid agencies say that their staff are still waiting for visas.
In New York, Rashid Khalikov, the UN’s humanitarian affairs co-ordinator, appealed to Burma to drop visa requirements for UN aid staff.
“Unfortunately we cannot tell you how many people are in need of assistance,” he said. “We just clearly understand that it will probably be in the hundreds of thousands.”
But if visas were not forthcoming there were few alternatives, he said. “The backup plan is to urge (the government) to issue visas.”
Burma’s rulers are deeply suspicious of the outside world, particularly the West, but after years of mismanagement, corruption and self-imposed economic isolation, the country’s infrastructure is creaking at the best of times, and their ability to distribute huge quantities of supplies across a vast area in dire circumstances is highly questionable.
One aircraft arrived in Rangoon from Thailand with nine tonnes of food and medicine, but had to be unloaded by hand as no forklift trucks were available.
The World Food Programme began distributing 800 tons of food — a tiny amount relative to the scale of the disaster - in Rangoon, where supplies are running short, but its country director Chris Kaye said: “In order to meet the needs of the persons most badly affected by the disaster, much more cooperation will be required in the short term.”
The military government said a constitutional referendum that is part of its so-called “roadmap to democracy” would go ahead this weekend, except in the worst-affected areas. Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition National League for Democracy, which won elections in 1990 but has never been allowed to take power, said the decision was “extremely unacceptable”.
But analysts said the vote could give ordinary Burmese a safe way to protest against the generals’ handling of the disaster, after their bloody crackdown on protesting monks and civilians last year.
“The juxtaposition of the cyclone and the voting might cause many in Burma to feel this is an indication that the military should not be in power,” said David Steinberg, a Burma expert at Georgetown University in Washington.
Many Burmese are deeply traditional, he pointed out, and the disaster could be taken to mean the current rulers had lost the “mandate of heaven”.
In Rangoon, where monks and civilians were clearing the streets of debris, a man who refused to be identified added: “Where are all those uniformed people who are always ready to beat civilians? They should come out in full force and help clean up the areas and restore electricity.”
How you can donate:
A number of charities have launched appeals to help the Burmese in the wake of this weekend's cyclone. You can donate online to the British Red Cross, www.redcross.org.uk (£5 will provide water purification tablets for 60 people), to Oxfam's emergency fund, www.oxfam.co.uk, to Christian Aid, www.christianaid.org.uk, and Save the Children, www.savethechildren.org.uk.Hibernate is an open source Java persistence framework project. Perform powerful object relational mapping and query databases using HQL and SQL.
In general the widely used libraries are well designed and implemented, and it’s very interesting to learn from them some coding best practices.
Let’s take a look inside the hibernate core library and discover some of its design keys.
In this post Hibernate Core is analyzed by JArchitect to go deep inside its design and implementation.
Package by Feature
Package-by-feature uses packages to reflect the feature set. It places all items related to a single feature (and only that feature) into a single directory/package. This results in packages with high cohesion and high modularity, and with minimal coupling between packages. Items that work closely together are placed next to each other.
Hibernate core contains many packages, each one is related to a specific feature hql, sql, and others.
Coupling
Low coupling is desirable because a change in one area of an application will require fewer changes throughout the entire application. In the long run, this could alleviate a lot of time, effort, and cost associated with modifying and adding new features to an application.
Here are three key benefits derived from using interfaces:
An interface provides a way to define a contract that promotes reuse. If an object implements an interface then that object is to conform to a standard. An object that uses another object is called a consumer. An interface is a contract between an object and its consumer.
An interface also provides a level of abstraction that makes programs easier to understand. Interfaces allow developers to start talking about the general way that code behaves without having to get in to a lot of detailed specifics.
An interface enforce low coupling between components, what’s make easy to protect the interface consumer from any implementation changes in the classes implementing the interfaces.
Let’s search for all interfaces defined by Hibernate Core, for that we use CQLinq to query the code base.
1 from t in Types where t. IsInterface select t
If our primary goal is to enforce low coupling, there’s a common mistake when using interfaces that could kill the utility of using them. It’s the using of the concrete classes instead of interfaces, and to explain better this problem let’s take the following example:
The class A implements the Interface IA who contains the |
print. It’s unlikely the company would devise a system that depended entirely on a thief inadvertently pressing their thumb on the home button repeatedly. However, future versions of Touch ID and Apple's fingerprint scanners may be able to collect fingerprints in a more efficient manner.
Apps have tried these anti-theft measures before
More likely, at least in the near term, is a way to covertly capture photos, video, and audio at a system level, which would allow a stolen iPhone to more easily log who was trying to access its contents and let authorities ID the suspect. Other apps and services have tried this before. For instance, Lookout is an iOS and Android app that automatically snaps photos using a device’s front-facing camera if it detects any suspicious behavior, like any tampering with the device's security settings. Apple could be thinking about implementing something similar in future versions of iOS. The patent also outlines way to both store this information and cross-check it with online databases.
While just an application, these types of security features raise some privacy and legal red flags. If Apple has a way to covertly capture and store biometric information, even if it’s an opt-in feature designed to protect consumers, it could tarnish the company’s reputation with regards to user security. CEO Tim Cook has routinely used his company’s record on privacy — and its decision not to store any unencrypted information — as a tool to tout Apple hardware and software, even in the face of FBI investigations. So we may not see any unprecedented anti-theft measures like this in consumer products any time soon.Imagine, for a moment, you are one of the thousands of defendants whose cases were sullied by Annie Dookhan’s drug-lab skulduggery.
Shouldn’t someone let you know?
But who? Should it be the prosecutors who made cases using evidence her actions tainted? Or, less plausibly, the overburdened defense attorneys whose clients were harmed by her?
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Incredibly, more than four years after Dookhan’s crimes were first uncovered, this simple question of justice remains unresolved. Thousands of those whose lives were affected haven’t been notified of their rights, including the possibility of a new trial. Many still have no idea they are Dookhan defendants.
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The mess isn’t even close to being cleaned up. And what a mess it is.
The state chemist, who analysed drug samples for prosecutors, pleaded guilty in 2013 to filing false test results and mixing samples, casting doubt on some 20,000 cases.
They aren’t the most attractive lot, Dookhan’s victims — drug offenders in the main. But they have a right to know what may have been done to them.
After a hard push by advocates, including lawsuits, some district attorneys, who are ultimately responsible for Dookhan’s misconduct, have finally moved to give defense lawyers information that would help track down defendants who haven’t yet come forward.
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But the DAs haven’t all tried hard enough. Some have provided thousands of docket numbers for defendants who might have been affected. Others are only now preparing to turn over that information (though most have been good at correcting tainted cases brought to their attention).
And none of the prosecutors have taken it upon themselves to notify defendants their cases might have been compromised, leaving that task to the cash-strapped Committee for Public Counsel Services, which simply cannot make a dent in the massive problem.
“We are still very, very, very far from any kind of realistic solution to this lab crisis in Massachusetts,” said Daniel Marx, a Foley Hoag attorney who, along with the ACLU and the CPCS, has sued two district attorneys in an effort to force them to do more.
In other places where there have been lab scandals — Texas, New York, California — prosecutors have voluntarily identified tainted cases and notified defendants, Marx said.
Prosecutors here say they can’t do that because it would constitute giving legal advice to defendants, which ethics rules prohibit. Nonsense. Notice doesn’t constitute advice, said Marx and others.
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“Those are excuses,” he said. “There is no ethical bar to prosecutors doing in Massachusetts what prosecutors have done... around the country.”
Some prosecutors are willing to do more. Though her office has been slower to gather docket numbers for unresolved Dookhan cases, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan took an aggressive approach to resolving the tainted cases brought to her attention.
“This is on us,” she said. She is open to notifying defendants, working alongside CPCS, if the court makes a path clear.
“I want people to be notified,” she said. “I don’t think we can dump 7,000 names at CPCS and say, ‘Good luck.’ ”
Some defendants would have been charged and convicted even without the tainted evidence. But some were wrongfully convicted, or given harsher penalties, because of it. The consequences of that can last a lifetime.
In court papers, CPCS estimated it would take 16 full-time paralegals a year to track down defendants in the Dookhan cases. Every hour they spend on that debacle is an hour they can’t give to other clients.
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a reasonable, responsible, or constitutionally feasible approach,” chief counsel Anthony Benedetti said in an affidavit.
In papers filed this week, Marx and others asked Margot Botsford, the Supreme Judicial Court judge tasked with resolving the Dookhan mess, to decide whether prosecutors must notify defendants.
It’s time for the judge to put her foot down. Every day this drags on further harms the integrity of the justice system.
Dookhan is the government’s mess. Prosecutors should lead the cleanup.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeAbrahamSen. Arlen Specter told a boisterous crowd of union activists today that he backs a public health insurance option as part of the health care overhaul Congress is debating.
"I know you are very interested in the public component and I think Senator Schumer has the right idea about having a public component," Specter said at a rally held at the Capitol City Brewery near Union Station.
The shift -- Specter opposed a public option only months ago -- comes as Specter faces a potential primary opponent next spring in U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak and as a new poll shows his favorability rating at a 17-year low.
Here are all of his remarks, as provided by his staff...
I compliment you on your tenacity and your determination and your passion. I agree with you that health care is a right.
I am sorry to be a little late but President Obama scheduled a meeting at the White House on immigration and it ran a little long. But I’m glad to see you here, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to speak to you.
We are working hard on health care reform legislation. President Obama has established a summit and invited me to attend. And I do believe that there will be health care legislation. I know you are very interested in the public component and I think Senator Schumer has the right idea about having a public component which has a level playing field with the private sector, but the public component can be included.
I started life as a Democrat. My family was a typical American family, immigrant parents, tough times during the Depression, FDR Democrats - I was a JFK Democrat. I tried in the Senate for years to have a moderate wing and when President Obama was elected and wanted to bring in the stimulus package, and came and talked to the Senators and laid it on the line about the United States facing possibly a 1929-type depression. I voted for the stimulus package - provided a key vote to get it passed. For Pennsylvania, it means 143,000 jobs, it means $16 billion, it means the continuation of Medicaid and Medicare, and SCHIP – health care for children. It was the right thing to do.
I have had a voting record over the years more in line with Democrats than Republicans. I voted for a woman’s right to choose. I took the lead with Senator Harkin on increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health from $12 to 30 billion. I voted 22 times for Davis-Bacon, 20 times for extending unemployment compensation, cosponsored legislation for the minimum wage.
There were a lot of Democrats who had been urging me to change my registration. I rode the train for three decades with then-Senator Biden from Washington to Wilmington, and I went on to Philadelphia. You know how repetitious Joe Biden can be. And Ed Rendell has urged me for years to become a Democrat. You may not know that I gave Ed Rendell his first job out of law school. He was a law student at Villanova, I was District Attorney; he wanted to become an Assistant D.A. so he could become famous and get to be governor and there you are. He wanted me to become a Democrat. And after I voted for the stimulus package I found more Republicans who wanted me to be a Democrat than Democrats who wanted me to become a Democrat. So I went with the flow and we feel very comfortable. I don’t have to look over my right shoulder anymore.
I came in with Eileen Connolly who’s holding my coat - and my wallet. The Employee Free Choice Act was mentioned, and we’re working hard to find the answer which will get early union certification and we’ll get the first contract.
But today I know your focus is on health care. I have to now to the Senate chamber. We’re about to vote on Dean Koh where the filibuster was defeated. He’s a very strong Obama nominee to be legal counsel to the Department of State.
But I thank you for coming to Washington, and I thank you for putting up with this heat and waiting and I thank you for your passion and your presence here and your rally and your enthusiasm has a big effect on what goes on three blocks away on the Congress of the United States and you will get health care this year.Emily Thornberry has said that the UK’s membership of the EU is “indispensable” in helping keep Britain safe, following a visit to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.
The Shadow Defence Secretary met with a number of senior NATO officials over two days, and says that it was “repeatedly made clear” that the EU is considered an important ally of the security alliance.
“In recent days, we have been told by Leave campaigners that the EU is irrelevant to British security, because NATO is the only alliance that counts. We have even heard arguments that the EU is undermining NATO,” Thornberry said. “But, as NATO officials themselves have repeatedly made clear to me in the past two days, the EU and NATO are two sides of the same coin.”
Thornberry, who is currently chairing a review into Labour defence policy, also appeared reiterate Labour’s support for NATO membership.
There had been concerns that the party would consider its backing after Jeremy Corbyn made a speech in November calling for a “new kind of foreign policy” that makes the UK “more independent” from the rest of the world – a position backed by LabourList. In January, Labour denied that party policy on NATO membership would be considered in the defence review.
It seems that Thornberry is also adamant this will not be the case.
“When it comes to territorial defence, NATO has always been the alliance that counts,” she said. “That will not change. But the EU has a vastly different set of tools and capabilities, meaning that it too plays an indispensable role in keeping the British people safe.”A Libyan-flagged vessel which last year was used by a Malta-based humanitarian organisation in supplying a lifeline to rebels in Misurata, has been implicated in a covert US arms smuggling operation to Syrian freedom fighters, which may also be linked to murdered US ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi last month.
The ship 'Al Entisar' which was chartered last year by I-Go Aid Libya, then run by businessman Mario Debono, has been reported to be linked to last September's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
A Fox News investigation revealed that shipping records confirmed that the Al Entisar entered the Turkish port of Iskenderun, some 35 miles from the Syrian border, just five days before Ambassador Chris Stevens, and three other US officials were killed during an assault by more than 100 Islamist militants on the US Consulate compound in Benghazi.
Another report, this time appearing on the Times of London, said that the Al Entisar was carrying 400 tons of cargo. Some of it was humanitarian, but also reportedly weapons, described by the report as the largest consignment of weapons headed for Syria's rebels on the frontlines.
Walid Phares, a Fox News Middle East and terrorism analyst, identified the Al Entishar on a news report aired by the news channel, saying, "this is the Libyan ship... which is basically carrying weapons that are found in Libya."
Phares added that the ship came all the way up to Iskenderun in Turkey. "Now from the information that is available, there was aid material, but there were also weapons, a lot of weapons."
The cargo reportedly included surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles, RPGs and Russian-designed shoulder-launched missiles known as MANPADS.
The ship's Libyan captain reportedly told the Times of London that "I can only talk about the medicine and humanitarian aid" for the Syrian rebels.
It was reported there was a fight about the weapons and who got what "between the free Syrian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood."
According to various reports, on the night of September 11 - in what would become his last known public meeting - US Ambassador Stevens reportedly met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m.
Fox News said that although what was discussed during the meeting is not public, "Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists."
But although the negotiation was said to have taken place, it may have had nothing to do with the attack on the consulate later that night or the Al Entishar, it could explain why Stevens was travelling in such a volatile region on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Fox News added that a source at the US Congress also cautioned against drawing "premature conclusions" about the consulate attack and the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria via Turkey, noting they may in fact be two separate and distinct events.
But the source acknowledged to Fox News that the timing and the meeting between the Turkish diplomat and Stevens was "unusual."
Contacted last night, Mario Debono said that the Malta-based humanitarian organisation is now defunct, but still assists in civilian medical evacuations from Libya to other European countries.
When asked about the Al Entishar, Debono said that the ship was chartered from its Libyan owner to I-GO Aid Libya last year, and operated between Malta and Misurata to transport humanitarian aid.
"I can tell you 200% that no weapons were ever transported on board the Al Entishar to Misurata, and the only military equipment, if you may call them so, were bullet proof vests," Debono told MaltaToday.
Asked on whether he knew about the reports regarding the possible involvement of the Al Entishar in the transport of weapons from Libya to Syria, Debono said that he heard of the reports, but that the ship was returned to its Libyan owner, who in turn chartered it to a new contractor.
"I-GO Aid Libya has nothing more to do with the Al Entishar," Debono said.Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during the 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran, August 30, 2012. REUTERS/Hamid Forootan/ISNA
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has responded to overtures from U.S. President Barack Obama amid nuclear talks by sending him a secret letter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Citing an Iranian diplomat, the paper said the Iranian cleric had written to Obama in recent weeks in response to a presidential letter sent in October.
Obama’s letter suggested the possibility of U.S.-Iranian cooperation in fighting Islamic State if a nuclear deal was secured, the paper said, quoting the diplomat.
Khamenei’s letter was “respectful” but noncommittal, it quoted the diplomat as saying.
Both the White House and the Iranian mission at the United Nations declined to comment on the report.
Khamenei said this week he could accept a compromise in the nuclear talks and gave his strongest defense yet of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to negotiate with the West, a policy opposed by powerful hardliners at home.
The nuclear talks with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are aimed at clinching an accord that would ease Western concerns that Tehran could pursue a covert nuclear weapons program, in return for the lifting of sanctions that have ravaged the Iranian economy.
Negotiators have set a June 30 final deadline for an accord, and Western officials have said they aim to agree on the substance of such a deal by March.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due to address the U.S. Congress on Iran on March 3 - to the annoyance of the Obama administration - has vowed “to foil this bad and dangerous agreement.”Anti-Idling Bylaw (PDF)
- Turn off your vehicle if you are not driving.
- You may run your vehicle long enough to defrost the windshield.
Vehicles may idle if they are "working," which includes emergency vehicles and refrigeration vehicles.
- The fine for idling is $100.
Conduct in Public Places Bylaw (PDF)
- Yelling, screaming profanities, and fighting in a public place are not allowed.
Domestic Animal Bylaw (PDF)
- All dogs and cats require an annual license.
- Clean up after your dog. Scoop the poop!
- Dogs must be kept on a leash.
- Do not let your animal be a public nuisance by barking or howling and disturbing others.
Noise Bylaw (PDF)
- You cannot disturb the peace of your neighbour.
Nuisance Bylaw (PDF)
- Nuisance means any condition on property that is untidy, unsightly, and dangerous to health or which interferes with the use or enjoyment of other lands. For instance, a yard that is full of wrecked or dismantled vehicles, trade waste, tall and uncut weeds interferes with the neighbour's enjoyment of their own property.
Off-Site Levies Bylaw (PDF)
- Off-site levies are fees that must be paid to the Municipality of Jasper for new developments or building renovations to help pay for increased demands on municipal water and sewer systems.
Smoking Control Bylaw (PDF)
- Smoking is not permitted in bars, restaurants, retail, or commercial outlets, or public buildings.
- Smoking is not permitted in outdoor cafes or in taxis or buses.
Solid Waste Bylaw (PDF)
- Illegal dumping includes leaving unwanted furniture by residential garbage bins.For the third consecutive week, there was a red card handed out on DineSafe. Chinese Bakery on Dundas West is the second bakery in two weeks to be shut down for pest infestation and food contamination.
See the rest of this week's worst offenders on DineSafe.
The Homeway (955 Mount Pleasant Rd.)
Inspected on: November 17, 2014
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 3 (Minor: 1, Significant: 2)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
The Dizzy (305 Roncesvalles Ave.)
Inspected on: November 17, 2014
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 3 (Minor: 1, Significant: 2)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Chinese Bakery (433 Dundas St. West)
Inspected on: November 17, 2014
Inspection finding: Red (Closed)
Number of infractions: 7 (Minor: 4, Significant: 1, Crucial: 2)
Crucial infractions include: Operator fail to provide adequate pest control. Operator fail to ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated.
Utopia Cafe (586 College St.)
Inspected on: November 18, 2014
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 4 (Minor: 1, Significant: 3)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Ryus Noodle Bar (33 Baldwin St.)
Inspected on: November 19, 2014
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions:1 (Significant: 1)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
La Prep (125 Queens Quay E.)
Inspected on: November 19, 2014
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 6 (Minor: 2, Significant: 4)
Crucial infractions include: N/AA U.S. military official apologized Monday to an elementary school in Okinawa where a CH-53E helicopter window almost fell on children last week, while the governor blasted U.S. plans to announce the resumption of flights of that type of chopper later in the day.
The official also told the school that the U.S. military had reconsidered flight rules at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, where the chopper took off from, and confirmed it would make every effort not to overfly the school.
No one was injured when the metal-framed window landed on school property near the base last Wednesday, but the latest accident stoked local anger about the large U.S. military presence on the island.
Col. Darin Clarke, who manages the U.S. Marines’ government and external affairs in the Pacific, apologized to Futenma No. 2 Elementary School Principal Etsuko Kyan for causing great unease at the school and in the region.
Okinawa Deputy Gov. Moritake Tomikawa told reporters he was notified by U.S. forces that the resumption of CH-53E flights would be announced Monday. Sources said the government had decided not to oppose the plan.
Tomikawa said Brig. Gen. Paul Rock, commanding general of Marine Corps installations in the Pacific, told him so on Sunday.
Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga called the decision “truly ridiculous,” and said it showed the central government was “incapable of being involved.” He also said the U.S. military was “not a good neighbor.”
In Tokyo, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said the government had not “received a sufficient explanation about (U.S.) measures to prevent a repeat” of such accidents.
U.S. officials said pilot caused the window to detach, but this explanation has not satisfied residents in Okinawa, where tensions frequently flare over the prefecture’s disproportionate share of U.S. military facilities in Japan.
Parents of children who attend the school are among those rejecting the decision to resume flights so soon.
Resident Tomoko Miyagi, who was taking her 12-year-old son to the school, called the move “unforgivable” and said it shows “contempt for the people of Okinawa.”
The window, about 90 cm square and weighing 7.7 kg, fell off a CH-53E transport helicopter flying over the school and landed only a dozen meters away from where children were exercising.The Imperial Russian Navy (Russian: Российский императорский флот) was the navy of the Russian Empire. It was formally established in 1696 and lasted until being dissolved during the February Revolution of 1917. It developed from a smaller force that had existed prior to Czar Peter the Great's founding the regular Russian Navy during the Second Azov campaign. It was expanded in the second half of the 18th century and by the early part of the 19th century, it reached its peak strength, behind only the British and French fleets in terms of size.
Officers were drawn from the aristocracy of the Empire, who belonged to the state Russian Orthodox Church. Young aristocrats began to be trained for leadership at a national naval school. From 1818 on, only officers of the Imperial Russian Navy were appointed to the position of Chief Manager of the Russian-American Company, which was based in Russian America (present-day Alaska) for colonization and fur trade development. After the navy was initially staffed by paid foreign sailors, the government began to recruit native-born sailors as conscripts, drafted as were men to serve in the army. Service in the navy was lifelong.
The navy then went into a period of decline, due to Russia's slow technical and economic development in the first half of the 19th century. It had a revival in the latter part of the century during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, but most of its Pacific Fleet along with the Baltic Fleet which was sent to the Far East and was destroyed in the humiliating Russo-Japanese War of 1904.
The navy had mixed experiences during the First World War, with the Germans generally gaining the upper hand in the Baltic Sea. The Russians took control of the Black Sea. The Russian Revolution marked the end of the Imperial Navy; its officers had mostly aligned with the Tsar, and the sailors split to fight on either side. The surviving ships were taken over by the Soviet Navy when it was established in 1918 after the Revolution.
Background [ edit ]
Under Tsar Mikhail I (Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov), the first three-masted ship built within Russia was finished in 1636. Danish shipbuilders from Holstein built it in Balakhna according to contemporary European design. The ship was christened Frederick; during its maiden voyage on the Caspian Sea, the ship sailed into a heavy storm and was lost at sea.
During the Russo-Swedish War, 1656-1658, Russian forces seized the Swedish fortresses of Dünaburg and Kokenhusen on the Western Dvina. They renamed the former as Borisoglebsk and the latter as Tsarevich-Dmitriyev. A boyar named Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin founded a shipyard at Tsarevich-Dmitriev fortress and began constructing vessels to sail in the Baltic Sea. In 1661, however, Russia lost this and other captured territories by the Peace of Cardis. Russia agreed to surrender to Sweden all captured territories, and it ordered all vessels constructed at Tsarevich-Dmitriev to be destroyed.
Boyar Ordin-Nashchokin turned his attention to the Volga River and Caspian Sea. With the Tsar's approval, the boyar brought Dutch shipbuilding experts to the town of Dedinovo near the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers. Shipbuilding commenced in the winter of 1667. Within two years, four vessels had been completed: one 22-gun galley, christened Орёл ("Oryol" = "Eagle"), and three smaller ships. Орёл was Russia's first own three-masted, European-designed sailing ship. It was captured in Astrakhan by rebellious Cossacks led by Stepan Razin. The Cossacks ransacked Орёл and abandoned it, half-submerged, in an estuary of the Volga.
During much of the 17th century, independent Russian merchants and Cossacks, using koch boats, sailed across the White Sea, exploring the rivers Lena, Kolyma and Indigirka, and founding settlements in the region of the upper Amur. The most celebrated Russian explorer was Semyon Dezhnev who, in 1648, sailed along the entire northern expanse of present-day Russia by way of the Arctic Ocean. Rounding the Chukotsk Peninsula, Dezhnev passed through the Bering Sea and sailed into the Pacific Ocean.
Reign of Peter the Great [ edit ]
Peter the Great established a modern Russian navy. During the Second Azov campaign of 1696 against Turkey, the Russians for the first time used 2 warships, 4 fireships, 23 galleys and 1300 strugs, built on the Voronezh River. After the occupation of the Azov fortress, the Boyar Duma looked into Peter's report of this military campaign. It passed a decree on October 20, 1696 to commence construction of a navy. This date is considered the official founding of the Imperial Russian Navy.
During the Great Northern War of 1700-1721, the Russians built the Baltic Fleet. The construction of the oared fleet (galley fleet) took place in 1702-1704 at several shipyards (estuaries of the rivers Syas, Luga and Olonka). In order to defend the conquered coastline and attack enemy's maritime communications in the Baltic Sea, the Russians created a sailing fleet from ships built in Russia and others imported from abroad.
From 1703-1723, the main naval base of the Baltic Fleet was located in Saint Petersburg and then in Kronstadt. Bases were also created in Reval (Tallinn) and in Vyborg after it was ceded by Sweden after Russo-Swedish War (1741-1743). Vladimirsky Prikaz was the first organization in charge of shipbuilding. Later on, these functions were transferred to the Admiralteyskiy Prikaz (admiralty in St. Petersburg).
In 1745 the Russian Navy had 130 sailing vessels, including 36 ships of the line, 9 frigates, 3 shnyavas (шнява — a light two-mast ship used for reconnaissance and messenger services), 5 bombardier ships, and 77 auxiliary vessels. The oared fleet consisted of 396 vessels, including 253 galleys and semi-galleys (called скампавеи, or scampavei; a light high-speed galley) and 143 brigantines. The ships were being constructed at 24 shipyards, including the ones in Voronezh, Kazan, Pereyaslavl, Arkhangelsk, Olonets, Petersburg and Astrakhan.
The naval officers came from dvoryane (noblemen, aristocrats who belonged to the state Russian Orthodox Church). The regular sailors were conscripts, drafted into military service. The service in the navy was lifelong. Children of noblemen were educated for naval service at the School for Mathematical and Navigational Sciences, which had been founded in 1701 in Moscow's Sukharev Tower. Students were often sent abroad for training in foreign fleets. The Navy also hired foreign nationals, with significant naval experience, to serve in the Russian Navy, such as the Norwegian-Dutch Cornelius Cruys, the Greek Ivan Botsis, or the Scotsman Thomas Gordon. In 1718, the Admiralty Board (Адмиралтейств-коллегия) was established as the highest naval authority in Russia.
The naval cathedral in Kronstadt was one of several cathedrals of the Imperial Russian Navy.
The organizational principles of the Russian Navy, educational and training methods for preparing future staff, and methods for conducting military action were all summarized in the Naval Charter (1720), written by Peter I himself.[1] Peter the Great, Feodor Apraksin, Alexey Senyavin, Naum Senyavin, Admiral Mikhail Golitsyn and others are generally credited for the development of the Russian art of naval warfare. The main principles of naval warfare were further developed by Grigory Spiridov, Feodor Ushakov, and Dmitry Senyavin.
Between 1688 and 1725, a period spanning most of Peter's reign, some 1,260 seagoing vessels were built in Russian shipyards for the Imperial Russian Navy. Fleets were launched successively on the White Sea, the Sea of Azov (with access to the Black Sea), the Baltic Sea, and the Caspian Sea (Russo-Persian War of 1722-1723). In 1700, the majority of sailors in the Imperial Russian Navy were foreigners at the start of the Great Northern War. But by 1721, at the end of the same war, the navy had 7,215 native-born sailors.
18th century [ edit ]
In the second half of the 18th century, the Russian Navy was built up to support the government's foreign policy. The nation conducted the Russo-Turkish wars for supremacy in the Black Sea. For the first time, Russia sent its squadrons from the Baltic Sea to distant theaters of operations (see Archipelago expeditions of the Russian Navy). Admiral Spiridov's squadron gained supremacy in the Aegean Sea by destroying the Turkish fleet in the Battle of Chesma in 1770. In 1771, the Russian army conquered the coasts of the Kerch Strait and fortresses of Kerch and Yenikale.
After having advanced to the Danube, the Russians formed the Danube Military Flotilla for the purpose of guarding the Danube estuary. In 1771 they were guests to the Republic of Ragusa.[3] The Beluga caviar from the Danube was famous, and merchants from the Republic of Ragusa dominated the import-export business in Serbia with the Habsburg Monarchy.[4]
In 1773 the vessels of the Azov Flotilla (created anew in 1771) sailed into the Black Sea. Russia defeated Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, gaining control of the Sea of Azov and a part of the Black Sea coastline between the rivers Bug and Dniester. The Crimea was pronounced independent under Russia's protectorate and was annexed by Russia in 1783. In 1778, the Russians founded the port of Kherson. The first battleship of the Black Sea Fleet was commissioned here in 1783. A year later, a squadron had been developed.
19th century [ edit ]
By the second half of the 18th century, the Russian Navy had the fourth-largest fleet in the world after Great Britain, Spain and France. The Black Sea Fleet possessed five line-of-battle ships and 19 frigates (1787), and the Baltic Fleet had 23 ships of the line and 130 frigates (1788). In the early 19th century, the Russian Navy consisted of the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, Caspian Flotilla, White Sea Flotilla and Okhotsk Flotilla.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Navy had limited sea-going capability, with the 1802 Committee to Improve the Condition of the Navy concluding that the dire state of the ships of the Baltic Fleet, suffering as they did from extensive rot and a lack of copper plating, was incapable of defending Kronstadt and St Petersburg. The Committee's chairman, Vorontsov, concluded that "It is impossible for Russia to be considered a major naval power, but there is no predictable need or advantage in this status."[5] Consequently, the Committee recommended nothing more than limited measures to rectify the state of the fleets, and the Russians retained limited capability at sea thereafter, relying on their military power to defeat Napoleon. In 1802, the Ministry of Naval Military Forces was established (renamed to Naval Ministry in 1815).
Battle of Navarino, by, by Ivan Aivazovsky, showing the Russian squadron, in line ahead (left-centre, white flags with blue transversal crosses) bombarding the Ottoman fleet (right, with red flags)
This attitude changed with the accession of Nicholas I in 1825, who less than a month into his reign declared that "Russia must become the third naval power after England and France and must be more powerful than any coalition of secondary naval powers."[6] As a consequence, the 1825 Committee to Organise the Fleet was formed, which outlined an ambitious shipbuilding project which aimed to create the third largest navy in Europe.
The growth of the Navy in the years after this greatly bolstered Russian naval capability, expanding both the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets. A Russian squadron under the Dutch Admiral Lodewijk van Heiden fought at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. The Navy was used to great effect during the subsequent Russo-Turkish War (1828-29), utilising the Mediterranean squadron and the Black Sea Fleet to gain command of the Sea from the Ottomans, which contributed to Russian victory and the signing of the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829.
In 1826 the Russians built their first armed steamboat Izhora (73.6 kW (98.7 hp)), equipped with eight cannons. In 1836, they constructed the first paddle steam frigate of the Russian Navy called Bogatyr (displacement — 1,340 t (1,320 long tons), power — 177 kW (237 hp), armament — 28 cannons).
The Imperial Russian Navy sent out exploratory expeditions. Between 1803 and 1855, their ships undertook more than 40 circumnavigations and long-distant voyages, most of which were in support of their North Americans colonies in Russian America (Alaska) and Fort Ross in northern California, and their Pacific ports on the eastern seaboard of Siberia. These voyages produced important scientific research materials and discoveries in Pacific, Antarctic and Arctic theatres of operations.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, the Russian Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets wintered in the American ports of New York and San Francisco, respectively. Some historians credit this visit as a major factor in deterring France and the UK from entering the war on the Confederate side.[7] Delahaye states that besides supporting the Union, Russia was also preparing for a war with France and the UK should they intervene in the Polish insurrection of 1863. The Russian Navy was weak and could easily be blockaded in its home ports, but if it was in the US when the war started it could more easily attack British and French commerce.[8][9]
The Imperial Russian Navy continued to expand in the later part of the century becoming the third largest fleet in the world after the UK and France. The expansion accelerated under Tsar Nicholas II who had been influenced by the American naval theoretician Alfred Thayer Mahan. Russian industry, although growing in capacity, was not able to meet the demands and some ships were ordered from the UK, France, Germany, USA, and Denmark. French naval architects in particular had a considerable influence on Russian designs.
Crimean War and aftermath [ edit ]
Vladimir (ship, 1848) ru] and Turkish steam frigate Pervaz-ı Bahrî on 5 November 1853 — first action between steam ships in history. Action between Russian steam frigate 'and Turkish steam frigateon 5 November 1853 — first action between steam ships in history.
Russia's slow technical and economic development in the first half of the 19th century caused her to |
of the DREAM Act passing in 2011. As expected, Republicans lined up to stop the cloture vote on DREAM, fearful of being singed by a conservative base that has zero tolerance for immigration reform beyond the type favored in the Grand Canyon State.
Ironically — or perhaps predictably in the current Senate environment — DREAM was a bipartisan bill when it was introduced in the Senate in 2007 by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN). Now, defeat of the bill has fallen along largely partisan lines as expected.
But there were a few who jumped ship — Republican Sens. Dick Lugar (IN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Bob Bennett (UT) voted yes on cloture. Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (AR), Jon Tester (MT), Ben Nelson (NE), Kay Hagan (NC), and Max Baucus (MT) all voted no. Jim Bunning (R-KY), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Joe Manchin (D-WV) were absent.Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had some harsh words for DREAM Act proponents on the Senate floor today. “To those who have come to my office, you’re always welcome to come. But you’re wasting your time. We’re not going to pass the DREAM Act or any other legalization program until we secure our borders.”
“It will never be done” as a standalone bill, Graham said. “It has to be part of comprehensive immigration reform.”
Some had hoped DREAM might have a good chance at passing following the death of Ted Kennedy — the Liberal Lion of the Senate who had championed DREAM in his later years. But in the end, not even that legacy was able to move DREAM forward.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: ‘March For America’: Protesters In D.C Demand Immigration Reform]
Obama had put passage of DREAM on his legislative agenda this year. The House did as he asked, passing its version of DREAM earlier this month. As has so often been the case in the past two years, however, the Senate will be the place another Obama agenda item went to die.
Durbin, who is one of the bill’s original and current champions, is expected to address the future of DREAM at a press conference on Capitol Hill this morning. Few expect the next Congress will offer an easier path to passage than the current Congress does.
Correction: This post originally said Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) voted for cloture. He did not.Rafael dos Anjos has already won a UFC title at lightweight. Now, he’s on the verge of getting the chance at a second belt.
With a unanimous decision victory at UFC on FOX 26 on Saturday, dos Anjos puts himself near the top of the potential challenger list for Tyron Woodley’s UFC welterweight belt. Dos Anjos, speaking at the post-fight press conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, believes he has earned the next title shot and he said he has no problem waiting for Woodley’s shoulder surgery.
“I’m able to wait for him,” dos Anjos said. “I think I did enough in the division to deserve the title shot. And I’m not a guy that talks so much, try to get that title shot because I’m talking bad about people, cursing people. I just go there and do a great performance like I did tonight. I hope so. Dana White said that. That’s what I hope.”
White, the UFC president, did say leading up to this fight that the winner would face Woodley. But similar promises have been made before and who knows what could happen in the wild and wooly welterweight division by the time Woodley gets back from surgery next year.
Colby Covington, Darren Till, Santiago Ponzinibbio and Kamaru Usman are among the fresh names in the division that have come on as potential next contenders. Then there’s Georges St-Pierre, the former longtime legendary welterweight champion who just vacated the middleweight title. It’s unclear when he’ll be healthy enough to fight again after being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. But GSP might want a crack at his old belt. Stephen Thomson, who has already fought Woodley twice, is still lurking out there, too.
Dos Anjos, 33, is just four fights removed from losing the lightweight title, but he believes he should be next in line for welterweight gold. With wins over Tarec Saffiedine, Neil Magny and now Lawler, the former champ, in the last six months, it’s difficult to argue with him. Dos Anjos (28-9), despite a sterling résumé since 2012, is perennially underrated.
“People forget,” dos Anjos said. “Most of the people in MMA, MMA fans, they have very short memory. People remember you because of your last performance; they don’t remember your whole career. I never had an easy path to get to the lightweight belt. I’m not gonna have an easy path to the get to the welterweight belt. I’m not the guy that talk much, I don’t curse people. I just go in there and work.”
Dos Anjos encountered Woodley on Saturday night after the big win. Woodley was in attendance at Bell MTS Centre, working the analyst desk for Fox Sports. Dos Anjos made the title fight proposal right to Woodley, he said.
“I had to tell him to face to face that I’m not interested in his Gucci belt,” dos Anjos said. “I want that UFC gold belt. A Gucci belt, I can buy one if I want. It’s not my taste. I want that gold belt.”
The Brazilian believes he matches up very well with Woodley, who has held the title since July 2016, if the two meet in the Octagon because of his well-rounded fighting ability.
“I think when he fought Demian [Maia], he was worried about takedowns only,” dos Anjos said. “When he fought ‘Wonderboy’ (Thomson), he was worried only about stand up. I think with me, he’s gotta be worried about everywhere. I’m gonna kick him, I’m gonna wrestle him, i’m gonna try to take him down, I’m gonna box him. He’s gonna have a lot of things to worry about.”Sounds interesting? Xbox One users get an exclusive look at the premiere a week early.
On Monday, January 13th, FX is premiering an animated comedy called Chozen. It’s about a gay white rapper fresh out of prison. With a new worldview shaped by his time in prison, he is on a quest for redemption and to claim his rightful position as the world's top rap artist.
Starting January 6th, Xbox Live Gold members who are customers of AT&T U-Verse, Comcast, Cablevision, Suddenlink and WOW can use their subscriber credentials can watch the episode through the FXNOW app. It also gives users access full episodes, movies and unique original content from three channels: FX, FXX and FXM.
Chozen features voices from Bobby Moynihan, Michael Peña, Hannibal Buress, Nick Swardson, Kathryn Hahn and Cliff “Method Man” Smith. Watch the interview below with Saturday Night Live star Bobby Moynihan about his upcoming animated TV series:
Are you going to watch the premiere on your Xbox One? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Xbox WireYou can't say that pipeline whistleblower Evan Vokes didn't warn North Americans that something was wrong with TransCanada's pipeline safety system.
Pipeline whistleblower receives national award read more
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
Almost two years ago, the former TransCanada employee filed a lengthy complaint against the proponent of the Keystone XL line with the National Energy Board (NEB).
It claimed the Calgary-based company routinely cut corners, let business decisions undermine engineering practices, and did not uphold the law governing pipeline safety, such as Onshore Pipeline Regulations-99 (OPR-99).
In one of several forthcoming audits on the company's management practices, released this week, the federal pipeline regulator confirmed that the company is not complying with the law on a number of safety issues.
Prompted by Vokes' complaint and several media investigations, the NEB found that the company was "non-compliant" on issues designed to prevent and predict pipeline failures, including hazard identification, risk assessment, operational control-upset, inspection and management review.
In particular, the board found that TransCanada's NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. system, which is 23,500 kilometres long, was plagued with over-pressuring incidents and was "not conducting sufficient inspections or audits of its customer installations to ensure that the system is operated in compliance" with OPR-99.
Furthermore, the NEB found that the company gave "inadequate consideration" to the board's safety advisories and regulatory requirements. It also chastised the company for ignoring Vokes' concerns about pipeline safety while he worked for the company.
It said the company provided "ineffective implementation of internal practices to address the complainant's issues prior to Board notification."
The audit arrives just two months after an explosion at a TransCanada gas line in Manitoba. It sent a fireball into the sky and left 4,000 residents without heat during a bitter cold snap. The company is still trying to determine what caused the explosion.
Vokes, an expert on pipeline welding practices, worked for TransCanada for five years and was fired without cause in 2012 after persistently raising concerns about the company's safety practices with senior management.
The pipeline materials engineer told The Tyee that he does not feel vindicated by the report's findings. He also described the NEB audit as a "political" document with no teeth.
"I am not impressed. My complaint was only a brief sketch, and they didn't investigate some very serious issues. The company should have been fined for breaking the law and somebody in management should have been fired... The whole report is political."
The NEB's audit concludes that "TransCanada has now developed and implemented actions to correct and prevent similar occurrences for the confirmed issues."
Critical report on 2009 incident buried
Earlier this month, the CBC revealed that the NEB buried a critical report on TransCanada's safety policies after a trouble-plagued gas line ruptured and blew up in northern Alberta in 2009. Prior to 2009, the 31-year-old line had experienced 16 leaks and six ruptures.
But the NEB, which until recently did not post its company audits and has yet to fine a company for breaking the law, did not publish the report until November 2013.
In that report, the board found problems with the company's management safety culture such as "inadequate field inspections" and "ineffective operation control."
Along with filing a formal complaint to the NEB and the Prime Minister's Office as well as the U.S. regulator, in June 2013 Vokes provided the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources with a number of documented violations of welding and pressure testing codes. (The committee briefly studied the safety of pipeline transportation in Canada last year.)
During the company's construction of a natural gas line feeding one oilsands project, Vokes alleged shoddy workmanship resulting in "a 100 per cent repair rate." When the engineer identified the code violations to the company, his superiors forced him to "retract" his statement, Vokes told the committee.
"Coercion were the TransCanada management tools I experienced in my first months at TransCanada, as the written communications were very different from the oral instructions," he said at the time.
In addition, engineering shortcuts associated with the first phase of the Keystone XL project "resulted in substandard material being used in Keystone pump stations," he alleged.
In 2012, the NEB found "that the pump stations on the Keystone system are not equipped with an alternate source of power capable of operating each station's Emergency Shut-Down (ESD) system" and that the company was not complying with Onshore Pipeline Regulations.
Other line issues
Problems have popped up on other TransCanada lines. In 2013, for example, the NEB ordered the company to repair corroded equipment on a gas line in Grand Prairie. Since 2009, the U.S. Transportation Safety Board has also investigated the company for three pipeline malfunctions and ruptures in Ontario.
So many dents, bad welds and "anomalies" have been identified along the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline in southern Texas that the U.S. pipeline regulator issued TransCanada a number of blunt warning letters last year.
In his complaint to the NEB, Vokes specifically highlighted issues on two of three TransCanada lines that experienced major incidents in 2013.
Vokes told the NEB about problems at the Pelican Relocate gas line in Fort McMurray. The oilsands service line later ruptured and closed down Highway 63 in 2013. Neither the NEB nor the Transportation Safety Board posted any notice on the incident.
Vokes also detailed welding issues on the North Central Corridor, another oilsands service line, which blew up last year. That rupture forced oilsands companies to scale back production. The NEB later ordered TransCanada to reduce pressure on the line to protect public safety.
The NEB is also investigating the company's use of more than 600 steel pipe and fittings installed on the Keystone pipeline on both sides of the border "with the potential to exhibit lower than specified yield strength."
Fittings are used where pipelines turn corners. If not made with the proper hardness, they pose a hazard to the operation of the line.
Vokes says the NEB has known about that particular problem for four years. "They knew about it before my complaint and I explained the problem to them."Archaeologists have found a 10th century lead seal belonging to a Byzantine ostiary - dignitary close to the emperor in a medieval monastery complex in Bulgaria's Kireka area.
The seal was discovered in the last day of the excavation works and is very valuable, historian Georgi Maystorksi, head of the team of archaeologists exploring the site, told Radio Shumen.
"The seal is perfectly preserved. The obverse side depicts Saint Nikola and the reverse, which normally has the owner's name written on it, reads Leon imperial ostiary," Maystorski explained.
According to the archaeologist, the fact that the seal was found in a medieval monastery complex indicates that the monastery near Kireka was indeed built by the king, belonged to him, and after the fall of Bulgaria under Byzantine rule was in the possession of the basileus.On Saturday, Michigan Republicans gathered at their state convention in Lansing overwhelmingly voted in favor of a plan allocating 14 of their state’s 16 electoral votes by congressional district (Obama carried the state by 9.5 percentage points). Had it been in effect in 2012, the plan would have given Obama only 10 of the state’s 16 electoral votes. Despite his party’s overwhelming support, Gov. Snyder told the press that now was “not the appropriate time” to consider changing the state’s electoral college rules.
Pennsylvania Republicans, on the other hand, are full steam ahead on their plan to tinker with the way the state votes—Pennsylvania has a govenor that has long been supportive of rigging the electoral college. Late last week, a plan that would’ve given Mitt Romney 8 of the state’s 20 votes was introduced by Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi and 12 other Republican senators—that’s already half the votes needed to pass the plan in the Senate.
Plans to change the way states award their electoral votes gained traction in the wake of an election that saw Barack Obama sweep nearly all swing states, some by margins in the high single digits.
Earlier this year, Republicans looking to tinker with the electoral college got the backing of RNC chair Reince Priebus. In response to a plan that would allocate Wisconsin’s votes according to congressional district (under this plan, the President would have won only 6 votes, as opposed to all 10 of the state’s electoral votes), RNC Chair Reince Priebus said,”I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at.”
Sure enough, plans to ‘rig’ the electoral college popped up in states like Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan—all states that went for Obama in 2012 but are controlled by Republicans at the state level. If this plan was in use in all of the six states in which it was proposed in the 2012 election, President Obama would have carried the electoral college by only 271 votes, as opposed to the 332 he won under the current system. But nearly all the plans made very little headway as party bigwigs like Paul Ryan and Virginia Gov Bob McDonnell came out against the proposals.By PoliceOne Staff
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — A Corvette that was seized during a drug raid has a new life as a police vehicle.
According to the New Braunfels Police Department, police confiscated the C6-gen Corvette Z06 - along with other vehicles, jewelry, guns, cash and property all valued at more than $1 million - during a 2011 meth raid.
Deemed “Coptimus Prime,” the car became the department’s property after the suspect was convicted and sentenced. It was wrapped like a police vehicle and presented to the public in 2015, the department wrote on Facebook.
Facts About the NBPD Corvette: 2007 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 with after-market modifications for racing, 1005hp Seized... Posted by New Braunfels Police Department on Wednesday, May 24, 2017
But the Corvette isn’t out catching criminals, it’s used as a community outreach vehicle in parades, National Night Out and school-related functions.
Police said eventually the car will be sold at an auction and the money will be used to fund more community outreach programs done by the police department.Kangana Ranaut isn’t a big fan of the Rs100 crore ($16 million) club—a so-called benchmark of success reserved for Bollywood films that have a net earning of Rs100 crore or more within India.
“It’s a curse,” she said in a recent interview, “I don’t even pay attention to it.”
That might be, but the 28-year-old actor’s latest release Tanu Weds Manu Returns has become the first movie in 2015 to make it to that elite club this year. This is also the first time a female star has led a film to earn more than Rs100 crore, film trade analysts Taran Adarsh and Komal Nahta confirmed to Quartz.
“And the success is well deserved. The film is excellently scripted, beautifully made and has extraordinary performances. The success indicates that times are changing,” Nahta said.
The film—which is a sequel to the 2011 romantic comedy, Tanu Weds Manu—had one of the biggest openings in 2015 with Rs38.10 crore in box office collections in three days. Actor Akshay Kumar’s action-drama, Gabbar is Back, at Rs40 crore was the only film that collected more than Tanu Weds Manu Returns on the opening weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday.)
However, at the end of the second weekend—on May 31—the net box office collection of Tanu weds Manu Returns surpassed Gabbar is Back and stood at Rs98.37 crore. And on June 01, the film’s net (the box office collection of a film after taxes and other deductions) in India crossed the Rs100 crore benchmark.
Carving a niche
In an industry well known for sexism—be it in terms of how female characters are depicted onscreen, how female actors are written about in the media, or the much lesser remuneration they command—the Rs100 crore club is unsurprisingly reserved for, and dominated by, the three Khans: Salman, Shah Rukh and Aamir.
In fact, the top three films of 2014 were Aamir Khan’s PK, followed by Salman Khan’s Kick and Shah Rukh Khan’s Happy New Year—each earning more than Rs200 crore in Indian box office collections. If not the Khans, other male actors like Kumar, Hrithik Roshan and Ajay Devgn rule the box office.
Ranaut, however, is carving a niche in this man’s world—and not exactly playing by the rules. Unlike most of her female co-stars, she stood out for recently declining to perform item numbers in films or endorsing fairness creams.Habitat Brazilian tapirs prefer tropical montane forests, but are also present in swamps and lowland forests. It can be found from sea level up to 4500 meters in elevation. They are adept mountain climbers and sometimes create paths to larger bodies of water. They prefer to live close to water, especially rivers, and are comfortable swimmers. The highest population densities are found in areas with lush vegetation and 2,000 to 4,000 mm of rainfall per year. (Eisenberg and Hubbard Redford, 1999; Husson, 1978; Padilla and Dowler, 1994) Habitat Regions
tropical
terrestrial Terrestrial Biomes
forest
rainforest
mountains Wetlands
swamp Other Habitat Features
riparian Range elevation 0 to 4500 m 0.00 to 14763.78 ft
Behavior Brazilian tapirs are typically solitary, and although they are not exclusively nocturnal, they tend to keep to the shelter of the forest during the day and come out to feed at night. They are often seen in pairs during mating season and when females travel with offspring. Brazilian tapirs have limited eyesight, but strong olfactory perception. Although they are usually shy, they are aggressive while competing for mates or defending territories. (Eisenberg and Hubbard Redford, 1999; Padilla and Dowler, 1994; Wilson and Reeder, 2005) Key Behaviors
terricolous
motile
sedentary
solitary Home Range There is no information available regarding the home ranges of Brazilian tapirs.
Food Habits Brazilian tapirs browse at night, eating fruit, leaves, and other plant material. Preferred forage plants include mombins, which produces fruit similar to large plums; huito, which produces large berry-like fruit; and moriche palm, which produces palm fruit. (Nowak, 1999) Primary Diet
herbivore folivore frugivore
Plant Foods
leaves
wood, bark, or stems
seeds, grains, and nuts
fruit
Predation Other than humans, the tapir’s main predator is the jaguar. They are sometimes taken by crocodylians. When alarmed by predators, tapirs flee to water or the nearest brush. If cornered, however, a tapir runs directly at its predator. Its semi-nocturnal tendencies may help decrease risk of predation. (Padilla and Dowler, 1994) Known Predators jaguar (Panthera onca) humans (Homo sapiens)
Ecosystem Roles Brazilian tapirs are browsers and grazers. They are exceptionally common in certain area of their geographic range and make up a significant portion of the total biomass in these communities. They are frugivorous and are potential seed dispersers of many important fruit trees throughout their geographic range. Their digestion generally leaves ingested seeds undamaged, as is the case with fruit from assai palms and epena. Brazilian tapirs are host to a number of parasites including several species of ticks (Haemophysalis juxtakochi and Amblyomma ovale), numerous species of ciliated protozoa (Buisonella tapiri, Blepharocorys cardionucleata, Balantidium coli, and Prototapirella intestinalis), and roundworms (Neomurshidia monostichia and Physocephalas nitidulans). Burrowing mites sometimes cause sarcoptic mange. (Eisenberg and Hubbard Redford, 1999; Padilla and Dowler, 1994) Ecosystem Impact
disperses seeds Commensal/Parasitic Species
hard ticks, ( Haemophysalis juxtakochi )
) hard ticks, (Amblyomma ovale)
ciliated protozoa, ( Buisonella tapiri )
) ciliated protozoa, ( Blepharocorys cardionucleata )
) ciliated protozoa, ( Balantidium coli )
) ciliated protozoa, ( Prototapirella intestinalis )
) roundworms, ( Neomurshidia monostichia )
) roundworms, ( Physocephalas nitidulans )
) burrowing mites, (Sarcoptes scabiei)
Economic Importance for Humans: Positive Brazilian tapirs are hunted for hide and meat, providing a significant amount of protein to the diets of various rural populations. They have been domesticated in Brazil and taught to pull plows and allow children to ride them. They are also kept in numerous zoos across the globe. (Padilla and Dowler, 1994) Positive Impacts
food
body parts are source of valuable material
Economic Importance for Humans: Negative There are no known adverse effects of Tapirus terrestris on humans.
Conservation Status Tapirus terrestris is classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. Although more studies are needed to determine current population densities and trends, it is widely thought that T. terrestris is declining throughout its geographic range. Major threats include over hunting, competition with livestock, and habitat loss through deforestation. It occurs in numerous protected areas throughout its range, and although it is legally protected from hunting, these laws are rarely enforced and have proven ineffective. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) lists T. terrestris under Appendix II, and the species is listed as Endangered by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. (Naveda, et al., 2010.4) IUCN Red List Vulnerable
More information
IUCN Red List Vulnerable
More information
US Federal List Endangered
CITES Appendix II
State of Michigan List No special status
Contributors Samantha Luxenberg (author), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Phil Myers (editor), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, John Berini (editor), Animal Diversity Web Staff.
Glossary Neotropical living in the southern part of the New World. In other words, Central and South America. acoustic uses sound to communicate bilateral symmetry having body symmetry such that the animal can be divided in one plane into two mirror-image halves. Animals with bilateral symmetry have dorsal and ventral sides, as well as anterior and posterior ends. Synapomorphy of the Bilateria. chemical uses smells or other chemicals to communicate endothermic animals that use metabolically generated heat to regulate body temperature independently of ambient temperature. Endothermy is a synapomorphy of the Mammalia, although it may have arisen in a (now extinct) synapsid ancestor; the fossil record does not distinguish these possibilities. Convergent in birds. female parental care parental care is carried out by females fertilization union of egg and spermatozoan folivore an animal that mainly eats leaves. food A substance that provides both nutrients and energy to a living thing. forest forest biomes are dominated by trees, otherwise forest biomes can vary widely in amount of precipitation and seasonality. frugivore an animal that mainly eats fruit herbivore An animal that eats mainly plants or parts of plants. iteroparous offspring are produced in more than one group (litters, clutches, etc.) and across multiple seasons (or other periods hospitable to reproduction). Iteroparous animals must, by definition, survive over multiple seasons (or periodic condition changes). motile having the capacity to move from one place to another. mountains This terrestrial biome includes summits of high mountains, either without vegetation or covered by low, tundra-like vegetation. native range the area in which the animal is naturally found, the region in which it is endemic. pheromones chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species rainforest rainforests, both temperate and tropical, are dominated by trees often forming a closed canopy with little light reaching the ground. Epiphytes and climbing plants are also abundant. Precipitation is typically not limiting, but may be somewhat seasonal. riparian Referring to something living or located adjacent to a waterbody (usually, but not always, a river or stream). scent marks communicates by producing scents from special gland(s) and placing them on a surface whether others can smell or taste them sedentary remains in the same area sexual reproduction that includes combining the genetic contribution of two individuals, a male and a female solitary lives alone swamp a wetland area that may be permanently or intermittently covered in water, often dominated by woody vegetation. tactile uses touch to communicate terrestrial Living on the ground. tropical the region of the earth that surrounds the equator, from 23.5 degrees north to 23.5 degrees south. visual uses sight to communicate viviparous reproduction in which fertilization and development take place within the female body and the developing embryo derives nourishment from the female. year-round breeding breeding takes place throughout the year young precocial young are relatively well-developed when bornApparently, NVIDIA is convinced that it has a pair of winners on its hands, with its upcoming GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards, and is preparing to price them steeply. The GeForce GTX 980 is expected to start at US $599, nearly the same price as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. The GTX 970, on the other hand, will start at US $399, danger-close to cannibalizing the GTX 780.Across the brands, the GTX 980 is launching at the same pricing AMD's Radeon R9 290X launched at; and the GTX 970 at that of the R9 290. AMD's cards have since settled down to $449 for the R9 290X, and R9 290 at $350. Both the GTX 980 and GTX 970, will be available in non-reference board designs, although reference-design GTX 980 will dominate day-one reviews. Based on the 28 nm GM204 silicon, the GTX 980 features 2,048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs; while the GTX 970 features 1,664 CUDA cores, and 104 TMUs. Both feature 256-bit wide memory interfaces, holding 4 GB of GDDR5 memory.
71 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 Pricing Revealed
1 to 25 of 71 Go to Page 123 PreviousNext
#1 matar
GTX 980 Should be $499 Posted on Sep 15th 2014, 22:58 Reply
#2 64K
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMTGJIU/?tag=tec06d-20
I will wait for reviews of the GTX 980 though. This card is looking better to me for about the same price.I will wait for reviews of the GTX 980 though. Posted on Sep 15th 2014, 23:04 Reply
#3 manofthem
WCG-TPU Team All-Star! The GTX980 looks pretty sexy, but at that price....all I can do is :cry: Posted on Sep 15th 2014, 23:42 Reply
#4 The Von Matrices
btarunr said: The GeForce GTX 980 is expected to start at US $599 btarunr said: the GTX 980 is launching at the same pricing AMD's Radeon R9 290X launched at The launch price of the R9 290X was The launch price of the R9 290X was $549, not $599. Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 0:11 Reply
#5 revanchrist
980 at the price of 780 Ti;
970 at the price of 780;
probably 960 at the price of 770?
and maybe a future 980 Ti will set a new pricing mileage? And not to mention the Titans...
Performance aside, i can see a continuous trend of price increase with each new generation. Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 0:16 Reply
#6 ISI300
nVidia is reaching new levels of greed. FYI, this is not how it usually plays out. There's no way GM204 and that 4 phase VRM and 8 memory chips on a 256-bit bus warrant that high a launching price. It may perform well comparatively, but that's not enough justification for that price. Call me an AMD fanboy all day but AMD launched the 290x at the same price as they launched the 7970 back in 2012, even though it had a considerably bigger die and 512-bit complex PCB. Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 1:01 Reply
#7 erocker
* Price isn't bad for the 970 but that is quite a price premium for the 980 for seemingly not a premium performance boost. Maybe the leaked reviews have been wrong? Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 1:28 Reply
#8 GhostRyder
Something is not right here...200 bucks more for not much of a performance boost if the leaks are right. If the 979 though is that price it's going to be the best deal around!
I guess launch day will tell all and then we can see the actual performance numbers. Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 1:34 Reply
#9 HumanSmoke
GhostRyder said: Something is not right here...200 bucks more for not much of a performance boost if the leaks are right. If the 979 though is that price it's going to be the best deal around! There is a huge difference between the 980 and 970 specs-wise. A salvage part usually has one (possibly 2) compute units disabled. the 970 has 3 (13 SMM vs 16 SMM for the full-fat 980), By rights the 970 should be the 960 Ti and the 970 should be 1920 (15 SMM) or 1792 (14 SMM). If yields are bad there wouldn't be any 2048 shader GM 204's, so the obvious rationale is a GTX 970 Ti (975?) at a later date once it isn't in danger of cannibalizing GTX 980 sales too badly. The 20% hardware disparity is pretty much the same as that between the GTX 780 Ti and GTX 780 - except that the full-fat GK 110 didn't launch at the same time the 780 did.
Curious.
The GTX 980 should be a $100 cheaper. The GTX 970 at $399 more expected but ideally should be $50 less. I still wouldn't plump for either over a GK110 based on what I've seen. There is a huge difference between the 980 and 970 specs-wise. A salvage part usually has one (possibly 2) compute units disabled. the 970 has(13 SMM vs 16 SMM for the full-fat 980), By rights the 970 should be the 960 Ti and the 970 should be 1920 (15 SMM) or 1792 (14 SMM). If yields are bad there wouldn't be any 2048 shader GM 204's, so the obvious rationale is a GTX 970 Ti (975?) at a later date once it isn't in danger of cannibalizing GTX 980 sales too badly. The 20% hardware disparity is pretty much the same as that between the GTX 780 Ti and GTX 780 - except that the full-fat GK 110 didn't launch at the same time the 780 did.Curious.The GTX 980 should be a $100 cheaper. The GTX 970 at $399 more expected but ideally should be $50 less. I still wouldn't plump for either over a GK110 based on what I've seen. Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 2:00 Reply
#10 ZoneDymo
2expensive Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 2:16 Reply
#11 RejZoR
From the looks of it, i'll be buying Radeon once again... Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 3:02 Reply
#12 RCoon
Gaming Moderator revanchrist said: 980 at the price of 780 Ti;
970 at the price of 780;
probably 960 at the price of 770?
and maybe a future 980 Ti will set a new pricing mileage? And not to mention the Titans...
Performance aside, i can see a continuous trend of price increase with each new generation. Wrong. The 780ti price was once the 780 price when it first came out. It moved down the stack when the 780ti released, and the ti card adopted its price tag.
Nobody else saw this coming? If anybody thought NVidia would release their top tier card, that is still cut down silicon and will be replaced by a Ti anyway, at a reasonable price, then they've obviously never bought a flagship card on release. I'll remind everyone that the 780 was £550 on launch day, just look at it now. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. Wait a fair few months and prices will naturally become slightly more reasonable. Wrong. The 780ti price was once the 780 price when it first came out. It moved down the stack when the 780ti released, and the ti card adopted its price tag.Nobody else saw this coming? If anybody thought NVidia would release their top tier card, that is still cut down silicon and will be replaced by a Ti anyway, at a reasonable price, then they've obviously never bought a flagship card on release. I'll remind everyone that the 780 was £550 on launch day, just look at it now. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. Wait a fair few months and prices will naturally become slightly more reasonable. Posted on Sep 16th 2014, 3:03 Reply
#13 the54thvoid
If you add about 20% for UK prices, that equates to a shade under £450. That's higher than GTX680 release but lower than GTX780 although architectural model is x04, not x10.
Sub £400 would be far better but hey, let's see what happens....
And let's not forget, |
which was supposed to be televised on NBC that Sunday afternoon, was postponed due to snow. The cancellation of that game allowed CBS to achieve record breaking television viewership levels for a regular-season professional football broadcast. It was rated as the most watched afternoon of regular-season NFL football broadcasts on a single network in television history.
In 1981, CBS introduced a new opening theme for the NFL games, a peppy, fanfare-styled theme that remained in use until partway through the 1986 season. The patriotic-style opening title sequence showed the Stars and Stripes of the U.S. flag morphing into the words "National Football League." That same year, CBS Sports standardized its on-screen graphics for all of its telecasts; prior to this, each director in charge for each game used a different look. For the network's coverage of Super Bowl XVI at the end of that season, CBS' theme music eventually became the theme for CBS Sports Saturday/Sunday. The music itself, could be considered a hybrid of the theme used for The NFL Today at the time and the original theme for its college basketball broadcast; CBS would use this particular theme again at least for the NFC Championship Game at the end of the 1982 season.
Going into the 1981 NFL season, CBS Sports executives decided that John Madden, who had joined the network in 1979 and had worked with Frank Glieber and Gary Bender (Pat Summerall and Madden were first teamed on a November 25, 1979 broadcast of a Minnesota Vikings–Tampa Bay Buccaneers game[14]) in his first two years, was going to be their star NFL color commentator – however, they had trouble figuring out who was going to be his play-by-play partner. At the time CBS had reshuffled their #1 team lineup as Summerall's longtime broadcast partner Tom Brookshier was moved into a play-by-play role (teamed with former Detroit Lions legend Wayne Walker, at the time the sports director for CBS affiliate KPIX), and it was not immediately clear if Summerall was going to keep his position or if #2 play-by-play man Vin Scully,[15] whose contract was nearing expiration, was going to be promoted to take over. CBS elected to give both Summerall and Scully chances to work with Madden. Scully worked with Madden[16] for four games in September while Summerall was busy covering the U.S. Open tennis tournament for CBS. Summerall then worked with Madden for four October games as Scully called Major League Baseball's National League Championship Series and World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers Radio Network and CBS Radio respectively.
After the eighth week of the NFL season, CBS Sports executives decided that the laconic, baritone-voiced Summerall's style was more in tune with the lively, verbose Madden than the elegant, poetic Scully. As a consolation prize, CBS Sports gave Scully the "B" team assignment and the right to call the NFC Championship Game telecast with Hank Stram. Meanwhile, Pat Summerall called that game on CBS Radio with Jack Buck while John Madden prepared to do the Super Bowl XVI with Summerall in Pontiac, Michigan. Vin Scully reportedly was not happy about the demotion as well as (in his eyes) having his intelligence be insulted (at least, according to CBS Sports producer Terry O'Neil in the book The Game Behind the Game[17]). As a result, Scully bolted to NBC (where he started a seven-year run as their lead Major League Baseball announcer) as soon as his contract with CBS was up.
On January 24, 1982, CBS Sports' broadcast of Super Bowl XVI – in which the San Francisco 49ers (led by quarterback Joe Montana) defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, 26–21 – became the highest rated Super Bowl of all time, with a 49.1 rating/73 share. Summerall and Madden called their first Super Bowl together as they went on to become one of the most popular NFL announcing teams ever. During the Super Bowl XVI telecast, the telestrator made its major network debut, which the network introduced as the "CBS Chalkboard" during their sports coverage. Madden utilized the device effectively to diagram football plays on-air to viewers. The telestrator is generally credited with popularizing the use of "telestration" during sports commentary.
In 1982, the NFL signed a five-year contract with the three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) to televise all NFL regular season and postseason games starting with the 1982 season. By this particular time, CBS decided that instead of using the regular CBS Sports typeface of that period (a variant of Franklin Gothic), that it would instead use the Serifa typeface that began to be used a few months earlier on CBS News programs for their title graphics and lower-thirds. During the 1982 season, the NFL allowed CBS to rebroadcast Super Bowl XVI during the first Sunday of the strike. CBS also rebroadcast their most recent Super Bowl (XXI) telecast during the 1987 strike. Also during the 1982 strike, CBS' NCAA football contract required the network to show four Division III games; the network initially intended to show those games on Saturday afternoons, with the broadcasts being received only in markets that were interested in carrying them. However, with no NFL games to show on October 3, 1982 (on what would have been Week 5 of the NFL season) due to the strike, CBS decided to show all of its NCAA Division III games on a single Sunday afternoon in front of a mass audience. CBS also used their regular NFL crews (Pat Summerall and John Madden at Wittenberg–Baldwin–Wallace, Tom Brookshier and Wayne Walker at West Georgia–Millsaps, Tim Ryan and Johnny Morris at Wisconsin–Oshkosh – Wisconsin–Stout, and Dick Stockton and Roger Staubach at San Diego–Occidental) and aired The NFL Today instead of using their regular college football broadcasters.
In May 1985, shortly after calling after working the 17th hole at the Masters and calling Game 1 of the NBA Playoff series between Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Lakers, play-by-play announcer Frank Glieber died of a heart attack. Tom Brookshier, who previously served as Summerall's color commentator prior to Madden,[18] replaced Glieber in the NFL on CBS broadcast booth. For the 1985 season, the NFL showed a ratings increase on all three networks for the season, with viewership of CBS' telecasts increasing by 10%, NBC telecasts by 4%, and ABC telecasts by 16%.
Beginning in Week 4 of the 1986 season, CBS adapted a theme for its game broadcast, an intense, kinetic, synthesizer-laced theme that has affectionately been referred to as "Pots and Pans" (because of the background notes that often resembled the banging of those particular cooking objects). In 1989, the "Pots and Pans" theme was revamped to give it a more smooth, electronic style. This theme was also known for integrating the play-by-play announcer's voice-over introduction into the theme, it integrated three voice-over segments, one for the visiting team, home team and game storyline to set the latter element into the broadcast; this practice was common with CBS Sports' themes of the 1980s.
CBS' broadcast of Super Bowl XXI (at the end of the 1986 season) was the first NFL game to be broadcast in Dolby Surround sound and in stereo. The postgame show was supposed to feature the song "One Shining Moment", but due to the extended length of the postgame interviews, CBS did not play it. The lyrics to the song, which is now played at the end of the network's NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship coverage, were ultimately changed from "the ball is kicked" to "the ball is tipped". CBS also debuted the theme music (composed by Lloyd Landesman) that ultimately became the theme used for CBS' college football coverage (which was also the case for the theme CBS used from 1984 to 1986 after debuting it for Super Bowl XVIII) for the 1987 season (this theme was actually loosely based on the Pots and Pans theme).
At the NFL's annual meeting in Maui, Hawaii on March 15, 1987, Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Broadcast Committee Chairman Art Modell announced new three-year television contracts with ABC, CBS, and NBC, effective with the 1987 season. Beginning in 1987, CBS started broadcasting NFL games in stereo. On December 8, 1987, Cathy Barreto became the first woman to direct an NFL game at the network television level for the Minnesota Vikings–Detroit Lions telecast. On April 18, 1989, the NFL and CBS Radio jointly announced agreement extending CBS' radio broadcast rights to an annual 40-game package through the 1994 season.
For the Thanksgiving game broadcasts on November 23, 1989, John Madden awarded the first "Turkey Leg Award", for the annual game's most valuable player. Reggie White of the Philadelphia Eagles was the first recipient of the honor for his part in what would become known as Bounty Bowl I. The gesture was seen mostly as a humorous gimmick relating to Madden's famous multi-legged turkeys served on Thanksgiving. Since then, however, the award has gained subtle notoriety, and currently, each year an MVP has been chosen for both the CBS and Fox games. When CBS returned to the NFL in 1998, the network introduced their own award, the "All-Iron Award."
1990s Edit
For CBS' coverage of Super Bowl XXIV at the end of the 1989 season, CBS introduced a brand new theme[19] for its NFL broadcasts, using a considerably more traditional and standard (but still peppy and bombastic) theme than the one used the previous four seasons; the theme was used until the 1991 NFC Championship Game.
On March 12, 1990, at the NFL's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, the league ratified new four-year television agreements with existing partners ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as newly struck cable agreements with ESPN and TNT, to take effect with the 1990–1993 seasons. The contracts involving the four networks totaled US$3.6 billion, the largest in television history.
On September 9, 1990, The NFL Today overhauled its talent lineup, consisting of Greg Gumbel, Terry Bradshaw, Pat O'Brien and Lesley Visser. Gumbel and Bradshaw replaced Brent Musburger, who was fired by CBS on April 1, 1990, and Irv Cross, who was demoted to the position of game analyst. During the 1990 season, Pat Summerall was hospitalized after vomiting on a plane during a flight after a Bears–Redskins game, and was out for a considerable amount of time. While Verne Lundquist replaced Summerall on games with Madden, Jack Buck (who was at CBS during the time as the network's lead Major League Baseball announcer) was added as a regular NFL broadcaster to fill-in.
At Super Bowl XXVI, Lesley Visser became the first female sportscaster to preside over the Vince Lombardi Trophy presentation ceremony. The network's telecast of Super Bowl XXVI on January 26, 1992 was seen by more than 123 million viewers nationally, second only to the 127 million that viewed Super Bowl XX. The ongoing 1990 television contract gave CBS rights to Super Bowl XXVI instead of Super Bowl XXVII, which was in the network's rotation of the champion game. The NFL swapped the years in which CBS and NBC held rights to the Super Bowl in an effort to give CBS enough lead-in programming for the upcoming 1992 Winter Olympics that were set to begin two weeks later. For this game, CBS debuted a new network-wide red, white and blue graphics package as well as a new theme song (composed by Frankie Vinci) for its NFL coverage that replaced the one CBS debuted for their coverage of Super Bowl XXIV two years earlier. The package lasted until the end of 1995, after which CBS discarded it in favor of an orange and yellow color scheme for its sports graphics. The new music lasted until CBS lost the NFL rights at the end of the 1993 season, but continued to be used by CBS Radio until 2002. Several remixed versions of the 1993 theme were used upon the return of the NFL to CBS until the end of the 2002 season, when CBS replaced its entire NFL music package with one composed by E.S. Posthumus.
In September 1993, The NFL Today celebrated its 19th season as a half-hour pre-game show. It held the distinction of being the highest-rated program in its time slot for 18 years, longer than any other program on television.
Losing the NFL to Fox (1994–1997) Edit
The steady downturn in programming fortunes that CBS experienced during the tenure of network president Laurence Tisch (brother of New York Giants co-owner Bob Tisch) would precipitate in 1993. As the television contracts for both NFL conferences and for the Sunday and Monday prime time football packages came up for renewal, the Fox Broadcasting Company – which made a failed attempt at acquiring the Monday Night Football package six years earlier – made an aggressive move to acquire the league television rights. Knowing that it would likely need to bid considerably more than the incumbent networks to acquire a piece of the package, Fox placed a then-record bid of US$1.58 billion for the four-year contract for the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference, significantly exceeding CBS' bid of $290 million for each year of the contract. The NFC was considered the more desirable conference at the time due to its presence in most of the largest U.S. markets, such as New York City, Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia.
The NFL accepted Fox's bid on December 18, 1993, giving that network rights to televise NFC regular season and playoff games effective with the 1994 season, as well as the exclusive U.S. television rights to Super Bowl XXXI (held in 1997) under the initial contract. This stripped CBS of National Football League telecasts following the 1993 season after 38 years, resulting in CBS not broadcasting any NFL games for the next four years.[20][21] The Fox network had only debuted seven years earlier and did not have an existing sports division; however, it would establish its own sports division and began building its own coverage by hiring many former CBS personalities (such as Pat Summerall, John Madden, James Brown, Terry Bradshaw, Dick Stockton and Matt Millen), management and production personnel.[22]
CBS televised its last game as the rights holder of the National Football Conference package on January 23, 1994 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, 38–21. Before signing off one last time, CBS aired a photo montage of their most memorable moments during their 38 years of covering the NFL set to the song "After the Sunrise" by Yanni.
The acquisition of NFL rights by Fox made that network a major player in American television by giving it many new viewers (and affiliates) and a platform to advertise its other programs. In the meantime, CBS lost several affiliates, and ratings for its other programming languished. On May 23, 1994, News Corporation, then parent of Fox, struck an alliance with New World Communications, by now a key ownership group with several VHF affiliates of the three established major networks – most of which were CBS affiliates, almost all of which were located in NFC markets – and wary of a CBS without football. Through the deal, in which Fox purchased a 20% interest in New World, the company signed an agreement to affiliate the majority of its stations (including those that New World was in the process of acquiring from Argyle Communications and Citicasters) with Fox; twelve of New World's stations began switching their affiliations to Fox beginning in September 1994 and continuing through September 1996.[23][24]
To this day, CBS admits that it has never fully recovered from the loss of key affiliates through the New World-Fox deal. It took a particularly severe hit in Atlanta, Detroit and Milwaukee, as the network found itself on the verge of having to import the signals of nearby affiliates via cable and satellite after being turned down for affiliation deals by other major network stations in those markets. Ultimately, the network was relegated to UHF stations with marginal signals in certain areas within their markets (because of satellite television, the NFL Sunday Ticket in local markets, and rules of the time, satellite subscribers were required to use antennas to pick up local affiliates). CBS purchased one of these stations, WWJ-TV (channel 62), only days before its longtime Detroit affiliate, WJBK (channel 2), was set to switch to Fox. The ratings impact in these three markets was significant; the former CBS affiliates were all considered to be ratings contenders, especially during the NFL season. With CBS ending up on UHF stations that had virtually no significant history as a former Fox or first-tier independent station (or former Big Three affiliate for that matter), ratings for CBS programming in these markets declined significantly. In Milwaukee, for instance, WITI (channel 6)'s switch from CBS to Fox resulted in several of CBS' remaining sports properties, most notably the Daytona 500, not being available to cable subscribers for much of 1995 until Weigel Broadcasting signed carriage agreements with providers to add new CBS station WDJT-TV (channel 58).
CBS apparently underestimated the value of its rights with respect to its advertising revenues and to its promotional opportunities for other network programs.[22] The vast resources of Fox founder Rupert Murdoch allowed that network to grow quickly, primarily to the detriment of CBS. The loss of the NFL came in part because CBS Sports suddenly went into cost-cutting mode in the wake of its money-bleeding, $1 billion deal with Major League Baseball (1990–1993).[21][25] The network had already developed a stodgy and overly budgeted image under Laurence Tisch, who had become chief executive officer of CBS in 1985. Tisch was already notorious for having made deep cuts at the network's news division and for selling off major portions of the company (such as the 1988 sale of its Columbia Records division to Sony). When CBS lost the NFL to Fox, the "Tiffany Network" struggled to compete in the ratings with a slate of programming whose audiences skewed older than programs broadcast by the other networks, even though the network still finished ahead of Fox, whose programming at the time of the NFL deal was almost exclusively limited to primetime and children's programming. One of the few bright spots in terms of ratings and audience demographics for CBS in the Tisch era, the Late Show with David Letterman (which often dominated The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in its first two years) saw its ratings decline in large part due to the affiliation switches, at times even finishing third behind Nightline on ABC.[26]
Attempts at replacement programming Edit
The replacement programming on Sunday afternoons in the fall of 1994 and 1995 involved mostly a package of encore made-for-TV movies, which were targeted towards women in an attempt to counterprogram NBC and Fox. However, they made very little headway (with some affiliates forgoing the movie package altogether and instead airing either, local and/or religious programs and infomercials) and by 1996, CBS picked up additional NASCAR Winston Cup, Busch Series and Craftsman Truck races in order to compete in some form.
One of the often cited reasons for the Canadian Football League's failed American experiment, and part of the reason why the CFL fell behind the NFL in terms of quality players, was the state of the league's American television contract. The league, which had held a U.S. network television contract in the 1950s and again briefly in 1982, was then being carried on ESPN2, at the time a nascent channel devoted to extreme sports that was not nearly as widely available as its parent network and only carried a limited number of the league's games (with ESPN itself airing some games to fill in airtime available due to the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, as well as the Grey Cup on tape delay). It was not until after the 1995 season that the CFL, mainly through the action of its American franchises, approached CBS to see if it could get coverage.[27] However, by the time negotiations started, the CFL had decided to fold or relocate all of its American franchises, and the negotiations with CBS accordingly fell through. It would not be until several years later that the CFL reached a television contract in the United States, on a much smaller network (America One). The following year, in 1996, CBS added college football games featuring the Southeastern and Big East conferences on Saturday afternoons. It was the beginning of a rebuilding process that would eventually lead to the return of the NFL to the network.
The NFL returns Edit
Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports, said that "Four years later the negative impact was so severe that CBS went to the NFL and said, 'Name your price and we'll pay whatever to get a package'... We lost affiliates, ratings, the male audience and a lot of sports sponsorships".[28] In November 1996, Sean McManus (son of ABC Sports broadcast legend Jim McKay and protegé of longtime ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge) was named President of CBS Sports, and would lead CBS' efforts in re-acquiring broadcast rights to the NFL. On January 12, 1998, CBS agreed to a contract with the NFL to broadcast American Football Conference games effective with the 1998 season (taking over the rights from NBC), paying $4 billion over eight years ($500 million per season).[29] In the last year NBC had rights to the AFC, the Denver Broncos, an original AFL team, defeated the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII, which aired on NBC and ended a 13-year drought against the NFC in the Super Bowl. Around the time CBS took over the rights to the AFC saw the trend of the 1980s and 1990s reverse, in that the AFC became the dominant conference over the NFC (1998 also saw the Broncos win the Super Bowl). The New England Patriots dynasty in the 2000s in the only AFC-only top-ten market also contributed to the ratings surge. In fact, the primary stations for both the Broncos and Patriots are the same – KCNC-TV in Denver, and WBZ-TV in Boston, prior to the two stations switching to CBS in 1995 through the network's affiliation deal with Westinghouse – as when NBC carried the AFC (KUSA and WHDH-TV carried those teams' games from 1995 to 1998).
In addition, the current AFC deal also saw CBS indirectly acquire rights to air most games played by the Pittsburgh Steelers, which air locally on KDKA-TV (a longtime CBS affiliate, which became a CBS O&O after parent company Westinghouse Electric Corporation bought CBS in late 1995 and has long been one of CBS's strongest stations) and often get the highest television ratings for an NFL franchise due to the team's rabid fanbase on a national level. Coincidentally, before the AFL–NFL merger (when the Steelers went to the AFC voluntarily to balance out the number of teams between conferences), Steelers road games had aired on KDKA-TV as part of the network's deal to air NFL games, while league rules at the time mandated that home games could not be televised at all during this period, even if they did sell out tickets.
After acquiring the new package, CBS Sports then named former NFL Today host Greg Gumbel, as their lead play-by-play announcer (Gumbel had moved to NBC Sports, where he worked from 1994 to 1998 after CBS lost the NFL to Fox). Phil Simms (who at the time, was at NBC as part of the lead announcing team alongside Dick Enberg and Paul Maguire) was hired as the lead color commentator. On September 6, 1998, after 1,687 days since the last broadcast of The NFL Today, host Jim Nantz welcomed back viewers to CBS for its coverage of the National Football League.
Given the challenge of making its coverage of the American Football Conference different from that of NBC, CBS passed over longtime NBC veterans Charlie Jones and Bob Trumpy in favor of newcomers such as Ian Eagle and Steve Tasker. According to CBS Sports executive producer Terry Ewert, "We wanted to forge our own way and go in a different direction. We wanted to make decisions on a new way of looking at things." In one stark difference from NBC, CBS used a score and clock graphic for its NFL games that was constant during the game broadcasts outside of break tosses, a la the FoxBox. CBS' contribution was dubbed the EyeBox.
"When CBS got the NFL back (in 1997), everything picked up again", Pilson said.[28] On November 8, 1998, CBS televised the first NFL game to be broadcast in high-definition, between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills at Giants Stadium. It was also the first time two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks started against each other in the NFL (Vinny Testaverde for the Jets and Doug Flutie for the Bills).
2000s Edit
On January 28, 2001, CBS Sports, Core Digital and Princeton Video Image introduced state-of-the-art, three-dimensional replay technology called "EyeVision" for its coverage of Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa (at Raymond James Stadium). The game, CBS Sports' first Super Bowl broadcast since 1992, drew 131.2 million viewers for the Baltimore Ravens win over the New York Giants. As a result, Super Bowl XXXV was the most watched television program that year. Play-by-play announcer Greg Gumbel became the first African-American announcer to call a major sports championship; he was joined in the broadcast booth with Phil Simms. Both of the Ravens' Super Bowl championships to date have been on CBS; the CBS-owned station in Baltimore, WJZ-TV, had been, as an ABC affiliate, one of the strongest TV stations for ABC Monday Night Football for most of the 1980s and early 1990s, due to Baltimore's previous NFL team, the Colts' move to Indianapolis.
The 2001–02 NFL playoffs marked the first time that the league scheduled prime time playoff games for the first two rounds, in an attempt to attract more viewers. Saturday wild card and divisional playoff games were moved from 12:30 and 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time to 4:30 and 8:00 p.m., respectively. As a result, the league abandoned its practice of scheduling playoff games held mainly in colder, northern regions for daylight hours only; any stadium, regardless of evening January temperatures, could host prime time playoff games.
In 2004, Jim Nantz and Greg Gumbel swapped roles on the network's NFL broadcasts.[30] Nantz took Gumbel's place as the lead play-by-play announcer while Gumbel took Nantz's spot as the host of The NFL Today.
The next group of broadcast contracts, which began with the 2006–07 season, resulted in a sizeable increase in total rights fees. Both Fox and CBS renewed their Sunday afternoon broadcast packages through 2011, in both cases with modest increases. On February 6, 2006, CBS Sports announced the return of James Brown, who left CBS eleven years earlier to become studio host of Fox NFL Sunday, to the network as the host of The NFL Today. Greg Gumbel moved back to play-by-play, teaming with Dan Dierdorf. CBS decided to not feature sideline reports for the 2006 regular season. However, the network did use Lesley Visser, Sam Ryan, Solomon Wilcots and Steve Tasker to report from the sidelines and around the stadium for its telecast of Super Bowl XLI.
In 2006, CBS' coverage of the AFC Championship Game earned a 28.1 rating, which topped the season premiere of American Idol on Fox. Its Super Bowl XLI broadcast drew the third largest television audience in history, finishing behind only its broadcast of the M*A*S*H finale ("Goodbye, Farewell and Amen") in 1983 and NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl XXX (Dallas and Pittsburgh) from 1996. Super Bowl XLI was the second most watched Super Bowl broadcast of all-time, averaging 93.1 million viewers.[31]
For the 2007 season, CBS announced the advent of "CBS Eye-lert,"[32] a service that allows viewers to be notified via e-mail and text message when the start time of a program will be delayed. The "Eye-lert" was eventually extended on-air to a banner graphic that appears during the prime time lineup within sports broadcasts and segments of delayed regularly scheduled evening programs.
HDTV coverage Edit
As late as 2006, CBS aired only three of its NFL games in high-definition each week, the same number of games it had aired for the past few seasons. The other networks that held rights to broadcast NFL games – NBC, NFL Network and ESPN – broadcast all of their games in high definition, and Fox broadcast up to six in HD. Because of this, some fans accused CBS of being "cheap."[33] Beginning with the 2007 season, CBS began airing five of the Sunday games in high definition television on doubleheader weeks, and six on singleheader weeks.[34][35]
Former CBS Sports Executive Vice President Tony Petitti (who left CBS in April 2008 to become the head of the newly-established MLB Network) claimed the network would probably air all of its NFL games in high definition by 2009. When asked about the move, Petitti commented that CBS was focused on building a new studio for The NFL Today pre-game show. However, another CBS executive had previously indicated[36] that, because CBS was an "early adopter" with its first HD game in 1998, it is already "at capacity" and would have to replace newly purchased equipment in its network center with even more expensive equipment. However, CBS did carry its entire slate of games in 2009 in HD, though a few non-essential camera positions for some games (mainly used only in analysis situations) continued to be shot in 4:3 SD.
Beginning with the 2013 season, CBS Sports switched to a 16:9 full widescreen presentation, which began requiring the use of the #10 Active Format Description tag to present the games in a letterboxed widescreen format for viewers watching on cable television through 4:3 television sets.
2010s Edit
With an average U.S. audience of 106.5 million viewers, Super Bowl XLIV on CBS was, at the time, the most-watched Super Bowl telecast in the championship game's history as well as the most-watched program of any kind in American television history, beating the record previously set 27 years earlier by the final episode of M*A*S*H, which was watched by 105.97 million viewers.[37] The game telecast drew an overnight national Nielsen rating of 46.4 with a 68 share, the highest for a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XX in 1986; and drew a 56.3 rating in New Orleans and a 54.2 rating in Indianapolis, first and fourth respectively among local markets.[38] Super Bowl XLV surpassed the record a year later and was itself topped by Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.[39][40]
On November 28, 2010, CBS broadcast its 5,000th NFL game.[41] The game in question involved the Miami Dolphins visiting the Oakland Raiders, with Gus Johnson and Steve Tasker calling play-by-play.
On December 14, 2011, the NFL, along with Fox, NBC and CBS, announced a nine-year extension of the league's rights deal with all three networks to the end of the 2022 season. The extended contract includes the continued rotation of the Super Bowl yearly among the three networks, meaning CBS would air Super Bowls XLVII (2013), 50 (2016), LIII (2019), and LVI (2022).[42]
For the 2012 NFL season, CBS began providing Spanish play-by-play commentary of all game broadcasts via a secondary audio program feed.[43] Also in 2012, to further prevent issues surrounding late games from delaying primetime programming on the east coast (also influenced by other recent changes slowing the pace of games, such as video reviews and the kickoff for late games being moved from 4:15 to 4:25 p.m. Eastern Time), CBS began to move the start of its primetime schedule to 7:30 p.m. on weeks that the network carries a 4:25 p.m. game.[44]
Super Bowl XLVII was broadcast for free on the internet on the host network's website, in this case CBSSports.com. CBS charged an average of $4 million for a 30-second commercial during the game, the highest rate for any Super Bowl.[45] According to Nielsen, Super Bowl XLVII was watched by an estimated average total audience of 108.69 million U.S. viewers, with a record 164.1 million tuning into at least six minutes of the game.[46]
The late-afternoon regional games held on December 1, 2013 (Denver–Kansas City and Cincinnati–San Diego) drew a 16.7 household rating, a 29 share, and 28.106 million viewers from 4:25 to 7:47 p.m. Eastern Time.[47]
2014–2017: Thursday night games Edit
In January 2014, reports surfaced that the NFL was shopping a selection of up to eight games from its Thursday Night Football package to other broadcasters, including the league's existing broadcast partners, along with Turner Sports. While the league was seeking either a cable or broadcast outlet, they were strongly considering the latter.[48][49][50][51]
On February 5, 2014, it was announced that CBS would air eight, early-season Thursday night games during the 2014 NFL season in simulcast with NFL Network, with the remainder airing on NFL Network exclusively. CBS's team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms handled commentary for all of the games, and CBS Sports produces all of the games in the package, including those on NFL Network, which will be produced in the manner of CBS telecasts. As a part of the contract, CBS was also allowed to broadcast a Saturday game in Week 16 for the first time since 2005.[52][53]
On January 18, 2015, the NFL announced that CBS and the NFL Network would again partner, with the same broadcast schedule, during the 2015 NFL season.[54] The contract is again only for one year, while CBS's Sunday contract is 12 years long. The contract was renewed for another two years for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, with the network load reduced to five games each year. CBS also partnered with Yahoo! Sports during the 2015 season, with Yahoo live streaming a CBS-produced game around the globe. The game was not available on CBS except in the local markets of the teams (Jacksonville and Buffalo). CBS again produced Yahoo! Sports's webcast of the Jaguars's 2017 game against Baltimore.
On January 31, 2018, the NFL announced that Fox won the rights to televise Thursday Night Football for the next five seasons; this came after CBS requested a lower rights fee to compensate for declining viewership.[55][56]Scott McMillan pulled a stocking over his head before raiding a shop where he was a regular customer.
© Deadline
An armed robber was caught after a shopkeeper saw through his "farcical" disguise and recognised him as one of his customers.
Scott McMillan pulled a stocking over his face before walking into the store and demanding money from shopkeeper Eldho Vattakkattiel.
But the victim thought the raid was a joke because he could see through the stocking and recognised his regular customer.
On Thursday, advocate depute Stephen O'Rourke told the High Court in Edinburgh: "The victim recognised the accused as a regular customer at the shop and therefore initially thought it was a joke.
"It was only when the accused produced a large knife and walked behind the counter and threatened him that he realised it was a robbery."
McMillan, 26, was handed some of the cash from the till but threatened to stab Mr Vattakkattiel if he did not hand over the rest. He escaped with £295.
Defence solicitor advocate Jack Brown said McMillan, who has previous convictions for assault and robbery, had spent two days taking drink and drugs and had no recollection of events.
Mr Brown said the robber was "genuinely remorseful" for what had happened to the shopkeeper. He said the disguise adopted by unemployed McMillan for the armed raid was "farcical".
McMillan, from Dundee, admitted assaulting Mr Vattakkattiel on January 29 this year at Rachu's shop in Dundee’s Victoria Road.
Mr O'Rourke said after McMillan was handed the remainder of the money from the till he left the shop, but was followed by his victim. McMillan saw the shopkeeper was following him and pulled out his knife. The victim then returned to the store and called police.
Officers found McMillan in a friend’s flat with the knife and disguise. When questioned, he denied any involvement and the money was not found.
Lord Uist pointed out that McMillan had previously been jailed for five years for two charges of assault and robbery in 2007.
The judge said: "You have now pled guilty to an armed robbery involving the use of a knife as shown on the DVD footage."
He deferred sentence until next month for background reports. McMillan was remanded in custody.VOICE ACTING
Breath Support For Voice Over: Simple
Exercises Will Expand Your 'Air Time'
By Ann Utterback
By Ann Utterback November 19, 2015Voice Specialist and Author, Broadcast Voice Handbook
Breathing is the energy for speech, and not having good breath support is like driving a car with watered down gasoline. It wont take you very far.
Good breath support means you can control your exhalation. You want breath support that will allow you to:
talk for a long time on one breath of air, and
, and use that air to indicate emotional changes, and rate and volume variations. Breath support also prevents trailing off at the ends of your sentences, which can lead to the dreaded glottal fry.
LOOK AT YOUR LUNGS
Lets begin with a very simplified look at how the lungs work when we breathe.
When talking about breath support, I like to think of the lungs as balloons. We have the ability to hold the neck of a balloon and let the air out very slowly, or we can release the neck and let the air burst out.
We do much the same things with our abdominal muscles when we speak as we do with our fingers on |
Avenue (click map for enlargeable version):
This area included the Southern Railway passenger and freight depots, a planing mill, Asheville Ice & Coal Co., Asheville Milling Co., Asheville Cotton Mill (400 employees), the Ottalay Novelty Co., and numerous other production shops and warehouses.
Working class people, blacks, Jews, and other minorities (as well as–especially–the labor history embedded in many of their lives) have mostly been left out of familiar versions of the story.
Except for the extravagant Battery Park Hotel (1886), the even more extravagant Vanderbilt mansion (1895) and the Grove Park Inn (1913), the rowdy boom of the 1920s and the calamitous bust of 1930 provide most of the drama.
People in the surrounding mountains are much too frequently either cast condescendingly as pre-modern throwbacks, or romanticized as “our sturdy mountaineers”–whichever has seemed most useful at a particular moment.
In the late 1920s, the Chamber of Commerce’s Industrial Bureau brochure from which the image at left comes further assured potential industrial developers that among local “native-born” workers, “labor disturbances are practically unknown.” Here, they continued, “the seeds of discontent which radical forces might sow... find an exceedingly barren ground.” This just after the 1923 strike by Asheville Citizen-Times employees, and the memorable (and violent) 1913 strike by Asheville Street Railway operators
Recalcitrant Narratives
Clearly, some illumination and corrective work have long been needed. But here is the problem: as I and others have learned from working in other contexts, long accepted and recalcitrant notions and narratives are difficult to challenge. Local residents and officials, too many journalists, and (in the Asheville case especially) tourists tend–whatever the evidence, or lack of it–to believe whatever is congenial, whatever fits best with what else they believe or “know” or think “makes sense.” Public institutions buy into such narratives, commercial interests find them profitable, and historians themselves are not immune.
All one can do, it seems to me, is to bring forward new perspectives, lay them out carefully, present them appealingly, and hope for gradual modification of what “history” is believed to be. Fortunately, fresh perspectives on many aspects of history, life and culture in Asheville and western North Carolina are appearing almost constantly.
Here are a few examples, augmented by links to further detail. These are not meant to be comprehensive in any sense; my list includes only things I have found to be helpful for the blog at this juncture.
African American Life, Labor and History in Asheville
In the early days of Appalachian regional studies (the 1970s), even well-trained scholars acquiesced to the then standard notion that there had been few blacks (and nearly no slaves) in the (it was widely believed, WASP) Appalachian region. But that contention steadily eroded as scholars began actually to look closely at the documentary record.
Thirty years ago, historian John C. Inscoe completed his UNC PhD dissertation, “Slavery, Sectionalism, and Secession in Western North Carolina” (1985; published as Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina in 1989).
Inscoe laid out the case for a revised history of slavery in the mountains: western North Carolina’s trade networks with plantation markets, lowland planters who spent summers in mountain resorts, and slave-holding highland professionals and businessmen accounted for the presence of slaves. Relations between slaveowners and non-slave owners, for example, were better than they were in more heavily slave-owning areas. Inscoe’s early work showed that there was no doubt of the importance of slavery in western North Carolina’s history. A decade later, Inscoe and historian Gordon B. McKinney published The Heart of Confederate Appalachia:Western North Carolina in the Civil War (2000), which finally laid to rest the myth that the Civil War stopped at the foot of the mountains.
Putting Buncombe County Slave Records Online
For only one county in the United States can one go on the website of the Register of Deeds and see digital images of all of the original slave deeds of the county (1776-1865). That county is Buncombe, whose uncommonly public-spirited Register of Deeds is Drew Reisinger. Reisinger conceived of and carried out the project with the assistance of local student volunteers. These deeds–available free to the public–offer unprecedented and unparalleled opportunities to researchers, who can now avoid the formerly widely agreed upon assertion that the Civil War in the mountains “didn’t amount to much,” since everyone “knows” there were “no slaves there.” As Reisinger’s public-spirited efforts are replicated in other counties, it will become clear that there were no western North Carolina (or Appalachian) counties in which there were not slaves.
Recovering and Documenting the South Asheville Cemetery
Further evidence of the importance of slaves and the slave system in Asheville has recently been unearthed (literally) and recovered by the South Asheville Cemetery Association, whose website (developed by thirteen Warren Wilson College students) telegraphs the cemetery’s history.
Originally situated on the property of Asheville slave owner William Wallis McDowell (1823-1893)the cemetery began as a burial ground for slaves. It later became the first public African American cemetery in western North Carolina. Some 2,000 slaves and other African Americans were buried there until 1943, when the the city
absorbed the area and divided it into the Kenilworth and Shiloh neighborhoods.
The cemetery fell into disrepair after its longtime caretaker (formerly enslaved George Avery) died in 1938, but began to be restored in the 1980s by St. Johns “A” Baptist Church
members. It came to public attention partly through oral history interviews (now in the UNCA Library). In recent years, thousands of volunteers have aided in an arduous and painstaking cemetery restoration effort (photographs here). Very recently, Warren Wilson College professors Jeff Keith (Global Studies), David Ellum (Environmental Studies), and Catherine Reid (Creative Writing) and their students have studied and documented the cemetery in its regional and local context, augmenting their analysis through GIS mapping (maps here).
As with the online Buncombe County slave deeds, this mere existence of the cemetery fundamentally challenges the long-held notion that neither western North Carolina nor Asheville has a significant history of slavery. As analysis goes forward, depth and nuance will be added to the story, especially since it has been known for decades now that every Appalachian county had slaves.
Toward a Long Overdue Companion for the Vance Monument
Not only written and spoken narratives, but also landscapes–and especially commemorative ones graced with monuments–can tell incomplete and/or misleading stories.
On a Tuesday morning in late March 2015, the Citizen-Times reported, city workers beginning to repair Asheville’s iconic Zebulon B. Vance Monument on Pack Square came upon a copper box placed beneath the cornerstone in December 1897. Inside were a few silver coins, a muster roll from Vance’s Confederate Army company, some newspapers, and other items. One of the newspapers was The Colored Enterprise, a black-owned newspaper some scholars and archivists had heard of. But no one had ever actually seen a copy.
If more than a single copy of this newspaper had been saved, far more about black history in Asheville would long have been known, and fewer degrading images (like the one below) of blacks in Asheville might (one hopes) might have been spread about.
Even even as plans were being laid and funds sought to repair the Vance monument, Asheville’s recently formed African American Heritage Commission was circulating a petition to erect a comparable monument on Pack Square to recognize “the achievements, sacrifices and histories of Western North Carolina’s African Americans.” “We are concerned,” it said, “that we... not continue to perpetuate the long-standing pattern of commemorating only parts of our shared history.”
Speaking at the kickoff event for the petition drive, UNCA History Professor Darin Waters observed trenchantly that “There are Confederate monuments all over the state... always in places of power.” Many dated back to a post-1898 effort “to create monuments to a white supremacist past.” In the wake of the tragic massacre at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston SC in mid-June 2015, the iconography (monumental and otherwise) of the south’s Confederate past is being scrutinized with newly-opened eyes–in Asheville and all across the south. (For a long and thoughtful reflection on this train of events, see Rob Neufeld’s April 4, 2015 article in the Citizen-Times.)
A Pioneering Doctoral Dissertation
Waters (whose family has been in Henderson County since the 1850s), was no stranger to the difficulties of correcting cherished but untenable narratives of the past. There long had been, he knew, a myth “that there were no African Americans in Western North Carolina.” A few years earlier, when it came time to choose his dissertation topic in History at UNC Chapel Hill, Waters recalled, “some academics told [me] there was little history of African Americans in the area to study at all.” He was able to focus on blacks in Asheville only “after fighting my dissertation committee for the right to do that.”
Waters’s dissertation “Life Beneath The Veneer: The Black Community in Asheville, North Carolina from 1793 to 1900” (2011) opens by discussing the black carpenter and painter Robert Duncanson’s A View of Asheville (1850)–three people gazing at the town against the mountainous background. No black people in evidence, but the first slave had arrived in Asheville, Waters notes several pages later, with the first white settler in 1783, and by 1800 Buncombe County had 300.
Waters’s dissertation, which follows the story of blacks in Asheville for the next hundred years, is an essential source for anyone to wants to understand African-American history, life and culture in Western North Carolina, and especially in Asheville.
Currently Emerging Work
Fortunately, excellent new work continues to emerge constantly, as both scholarly and public awareness of and attention to the history of blacks in Asheville gains force. A Conference on African-Americans in Western North Carolina in October 2014 drew a large audience and excellent presentations on slavery, emancipation, the civil rights movement, and other topics.
A single example of still emerging work in this area University of Georgia doctoral student Kevin Young’s presentation at the 2015 Appalachian Studies Association meeting on the rise of
the Ku Klux Klan in Asheville in the 1920s. Young rolls the story out piece by irrefutable piece: the enthusiastic crowd of 800 who attended its organizational meeting in late 1921, the role of First Christian Church as the seedbed of Klan activity, key leaders anti-Semite Laurence Froneberger and money-man Nathaniel (Gus) Reynolds (step-father of future U.S. Senator Bob Reynolds), their crusade to “raise hell in Asheville” about racial issues their use of false and slanderous charges against Asheville photographer George Masa, Fronenberger and Reynolds’s embezzlement from the KKK, and its national meeting in Asheville in 1923. The national meeting drew speakers from six southeastern states, the midwest and southwest, and Wyoming and Oregon; they railed against blacks, Jews and Catholics while extolling the “chivalric, patriotic and ennobling principles” of the Klan.
Music, Dance and Culture
Another Look at Dance History in Appalachia
For years, dancer, dance caller and multi-instrumentalist Phil Jamison (also longtime professor of mathematics and music at Warren Wilson College), has been working on a book on dance in the Appalachian region. Early on in the process, he became convinced that the usual narrative on the topic would not stand scrutiny: strictly “old-timey” fiddle tunes and some version of English country dance, brought “across the waters” by settlers who steadfastly held onto–and passed on face-to-face amongst themselves–their own cultural roots and forms, guarding them against influences from “outside.”
Over his years of work, Jamison learned, and documented meticulously, a more complicated and compelling narrative: of multiple sources (racially, culturally, geographically, artistically, technically) for dance; wide-ranging borrowings and adaptations; eager receptivity to new forms and styles; and dynamic innovation and creativity. Jamison’s recent book, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance (2015) conclusively challenges much of what has been written before about dance in the region.
New (Local) Light on an Old Song
At another scale, Warren Wilson College professors Kevin Kehrberg and Jeff Keith have under way a sophisticated and meticulous analysis of a single well-known and many times recorded (as early as 1922 by Bascom Lamar Lunsford) song, “Swannanoa Tunnel.” A local variant of a work-song that has carried numerous titles (“John Henry,” “Roll On, Buddy,” “Nine Pound Hammer,” “Take This Hammer,” “Ash[e]ville Junction”), it was performed and recorded later by many other singers (e.g., Artus Moser, Hoyt Axton, Bryan Sutton; see recent SingOut! article).
The western North Carolina version of the song, “Swanannoa Tunnel,” emerged from the building of the 1800+ ft. Western North Carolina Railroad tunnel that finally brought the railroad into Asheville in 1880–at the cost of the lives of several hundred black convict laborers.
Heretofore, “Swannanoa Tunnel” has been analyzed primarily in musical terms, but Keith and Kehrberg’s approach is more broadly historical and cultural. They explore the song’s reflection of the convict lease system, its message of racial injustice, the gradual conversion of a powerful work song into a pleasant “folk ballad,” and the historical airbrushing of the tunnel of death into mere landscape.
Class and Culture: The Rhododendron Queens
Virtually every extensive discussion of Asheville history since 1929 has at least mentioned the Rhododendron Festival, started the year before. But I had until recently encountered no careful or extended analysis of it. At the 2015 Society of Appalachian Historians meeting, University of Tennessee Ph.D. student Matthew Blaylock remedied that lack in his paper, “Rhododendron Queens: Elite Women and the Creation of Class in Western North Carolina.”
Asheville had had a “Gala Week” festival since 1892, but this one was a much bigger deal, inaugurated just short of the top of the wild roller coaster ride to the top of the speculative, bond-funded development boom (and crash) of the late 1920s. Blaylock lays out the details: Organized by civic and business elites and the Junior League, the 1931 event drew 50,000 visitors from as far away as Chicago. Al Capp’s then-new Dogpatch Appalachia was out; a magical, rhododendron-bedecked “mystical kingdom,” set in a “gay, delightful,” hillbilly-cleansed region and an “every bit as good as yours, thank you very much” city–proud of its own Vanderbilt-built, tapestry-hung Biltmore House–were in.
The whole agenda and its splashy iconography were embodied in the (always high-born) Rhododendron Queen, “based on two prevailing national symbols of elite womanhood,” Blaylock observes: “the British aristocratic lady and the southern belle or debutante.”
Daisy Mae had new duds, and Mammy Yokum was nowhere to be seen at the round of fancy teas, balls, parades and pageant events (the 1935 version of the latter supplied with “small Nubian slaves” bearing southern gifts of cotton, oranges, peaches, [and] sugar cane).” But nary a stalk of tobacco or corn in sight.
Forty seven National Broadcasting system stations broadcast from the “magical kingdom” in 1935, Blaylock notes. But it was too late, it turned out: the city had already gone belly up in 1930–beyond rescuing by rhododendron queens in their magical kingdom. Then war came, and the rhododendron wilted in 1942.
Urbanization and Modernization
Splendid though the results of the now half-century old Appalachian studies enterprise are, that enterprise has been somewhat slower than it should have to move beyond its early focus on the central Appalachian coalfields focus (useful though it was at the outset). Serious historical, political, and cultural analysis of the region’s urban areas has lagged behind, as it still does to some degree.
If one looks for serious new work on major Appalachian cities, one finds relatively little–especially compared to cities outside the region. There are shelves full of books focused on the Civil War (especially around Chattanooga), visitor guides, cookbooks, compendiums of postcards, coffee table picture books, and the like. A few exceptions are two substantial histories of Knoxville (McDonald and Wheeler 1983 and Wheeler 2005), Dotson’s on Roanoke (2008), and Nan Chase’s on Asheville (2007).
The role of tobacco in Asheville’s growth and development as a key urban center–especially before 1900–has never figured importantly in the city’s written history. But at a recent meeting of the Society of Appalachian Historians, historian Stephen Nash examined the interwoven histories of the push to grow and market tobacco in the 1870s, and that of the troubled Western North Carolina Railroad.
Asheville boosters hoped that tobacco might help catapult the city into the post-Civil War “New South” by linking it more broadly to markets beyond the mountains.
Completing the Western North Carolina Railroad across the mountain to Asheville (it finally reached Old Fort in 1869) was key to the New South agenda, but the WNCRR had been on and off the rails so many times that hope was slim. Tobacco shortly proved to be a winner, however: “tobacco fever” spread through mountain counties; production soon rose to a million pounds/year; tobacco factories multiplied in Asheville. And at long last, the first WNCRR locomotive finally chugged into town on October 3, 1880 and started hauling the tobacco out.
Environmental and Social History: One Example
Everyone knows, and virtually every book about Asheville mentions, the disastrous flood of July 1916. A week of torrential rains drove rivers far above flood stage and flooded farmers’ fields. Upstream dams broke. Bridges washed away. Raging waters destroyed
countless homes, as well as factories and businesses along the riverfront. Power and communications stayed out for days, and travel ranged from impossible to perilous. Dozens of people died, and there was massive economic loss. Even the popular and highly developed Riverside Park was swept down the river.
Fortunately the center of the city lay high above the river, but the industrial area along its banks was devastated, and remained so for years. Meanwhile, the ‘twenties boom that lay just around the bend acted as a new torrent that swept most memories of the flood away. It was, after all (it seems to have been generally agreed), an unforeseeable “act of God”–like the “freshets” of earlier years (1876 in particular, early Buncombe County historian Foster Sondley noted) that one could only accept and strive to move beyond.
Well, maybe. But a graduate student at Appalachian State University, Anthony Sadler, is running the flood’s history through a much finer screen (OK, a strained metaphor, but I like it) and producing a more complete, analytical and nuanced reading of this environmental event than has previously been available.
In “River of Sorrow in the Land of the Sky: Flood in Asheville, 1916,” Sadler argues that the flood “was not an immutable act of nature,” but rather must be understood within a framework of “class, race, and the rise of industrial capitalism.”
Within such a framework, what other factors besides the conjunction of two “Act of God” hurricanes in a certain geophysical area, Sadler asks, figure in the disaster and its outcomes? Clearly, some long-term fissures (race and class for example) within the social and cultural structure complicated the challenges of flood relief. Who was to get aid? Who was to organize and provide it? How equitably was it distributed? Were racial issues exacerbated by the flood? How was were tourism and other industries impacted?
Sadler’s skill in raising and engaging these questions sets his work above anything done before on the flood.
Digital History Approaches
As the brief discussion above of Buncombe County’s recently digitized slave deeds suggests, new work on Asheville, Buncombe County, and the surrounding area is coming out of new technologies as well as new historical perspectives and analytical methods. The South Asheville [Slave] Cemetery’s history is already being analyzed partly with GIS techniques, and to those may soon be added ground penetrating radar to locate more graves than have been located thus far. Cross-matching digitized slave deeds with other records and on-site analysis will likely also enrich the narrative.
Additionally, online digital resources are providing both scholars and the public with far more accurate and nuanced interpretations of even long-investigated histories. The public historian Anne Mitchell Whisnant (full disclosure: my wife) and colleagues in the UNC Library have built the web site Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway. A repository of thousands of images, planning maps, construction drawings, newspapers, and other print materials covering the history of this Appalachian national park, the site also incorporates a “geobrowse” feature that allows everything to be searched by location.
Many of the maps, moreover, are “georeferenced”–aligned with their locations in space and overlaid on present-day maps– a technique that permits dynamic exploration of the layers of Parkway history, vanished or obliterated landscapes, and alternative outcomes.
The availability of such tools and techniques invites exploration of historical “roads not taken”: stories like those Anne’s fall 2013 UNC-Chapel Hill students examined in The Unbuilt Blue Ridge Parkway, a digital exhibit about Parkway plans made but not implemented. These stories remind us that the unfolding of history is not inevitable, but rather made of millions of decision points, when other outcomes could easily have come about.
A summary word
Asheville is now nearly 220 years old. Many people, at manyjunctures and for many reasons, have worked to tell its history. Some parts of it have been told well, some less well, some not at all. And in any case, no narrative history can be entirely stable. New sources come to light, and long trusted ones are called into question; perspectives and emphases change; audiences reconfigure over time; and writers have other unavoidable demands on their time.
So any narrative, or piece of one, can be no more than (as a colleague used to say) a stone in a wall built by many hands. Hence the work mentioned in this post (together with the post itself) should be considered a collection of small stones–some filling gaps among earlier ones, and others carrying the wall where it has not been before.
References
Asheville Citizen-Times, “City Unearths Time Capsule Beneath Vance Monument” (March 31, 2015); James S. Bissett, ” The Asheville Citizen Strike: An Example of the Ineffectiveness of Appalachian Labor” Appalachian Journal 11 (July 1984): 403-409; Matthew Blaylock, “Rhododendron Queens: Elite Women and the Creation of Class in Western North Carolina,” Society of Appalachian Historians, 2015; Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong (1981); Archie Green, Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal Mining Songs (1972); John C. Inscoe, Mountain Masters, Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina (1989); John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (2000); Phil Jamison, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance (2015); Jeff Keith, Presentation on South Asheville Cemetery, Appalachian Studies Association, March 2015; Jeff Keith, “Using Google Earth to Document Slave History,” National Public Radio Interview, June 19, 2015; Kevin Kehrberg and Jeff Keith, Presentation on “Swannanoa Tunnel,” Appalachian Studies Association, March 2015; Stephen Nash, “The Beginning of a ‘New’ Mountain South: Western North Carolina in the 1870s,” Society for Appalachian Historians, 2015; Anthony Sadler, “River of Sorrow in the Land of the Sky: Flood in Asheville, 1916,” Society of Appalachian Historians” (2015); Robert A. Topkins, “William Wallis McDowell” in NCPedia (1991; via Encyclopedia of North Carolina Biography); Darin Waters, “Life Beneath The Veneer: The Black Community in Asheville, North Carolina from 1793 to 1900″ (UNC Ph.D. diss., 2011); Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (2006).The coveted spot for most watched anime on the popular anime ranking site MyAnimeList has been taken over earlier today, by lo-fi hip hop live streams. These live steams most often appear on YouTube and feature a playlist of low fidelity hip hop beats, usually with some form of anime girl appearing in the background. Whie the decision has been controversial, MyAnimeList has these videos listed as anime in their database, stating: “it’s a video of cute anime girls, so I guess it’s anime”.
Top anime experts theorize that such a statistic shows a great shift in the viewing habits of anime viewers. “It would appear that most fans now-a-days don’t care for actual content,” says anime scientologist Weebz McKenzie. “Originally we deduced this by looking at what an average seasonal anime viewer watches, but now with the move of the number one spot going to these lo-fi streams, we can say with certainty that your average fan only wants to see cute 2D girls, and could care less about what they are doing and the adventures they go on.”
“It makes sense. I like to listen to these live streams everyday when I do dishes or pretend to do homework, so I can see how the views would pile up,” anime fan Carl Thompson tells Anime Maru. “And it can’t just be any lo-fi stream, either. I often see the Simpsons lo-fi streams or other nostalgic cartoons in the background, but that’s not for me. I want to see a cute anime girl sleeping at her computer or doing homework or something.”
And while many have expressed the opinion that lo-fi YouTube music streams are not actually anime, many fans have taken a more inclusive stance on the matter.
“You have some Japanese anime girl constantly twirling a pencil, so by legal definition it is a legitimate anime,” explains lo-fi fan Darren Pasturli. “Honestly, I don’t understand why people even watch things with plot anymore.”When Congress decided it was more important to take its summer break than work out a bipartisan deal to fund Zika testing and prevention efforts, they effectively put the health of tens of thousands of people at risk.
By now we know that this disease, carried by certain types of mosquitos, can cause devastating birth defects – primarily microencephaly – by attacking the brains of developing fetuses. We also now know that the virus can be transmitted through sexual contact, potentially threatening the health of even more pregnant women, or those hoping to become pregnant. Because symptoms vary so widely, or are nonexistent, testing pregnant women is vital.
'Nobody's looking': why US Zika outbreak could be bigger than we know Read more
The CDC wants any pregnant woman who has traveled to a Zika hotspot, or whose partner has, to get tested. But they say further expanding Zika-specific screenings could provide more people, especially pregnant women, with a definitive diagnosis, which helps direct medical evaluation and care. Florida took it one step further by offering to test to any pregnant woman who wants it.
But most of this desired testing just isn’t happening, allowing the virus to potentially spread undetected. And if testing does speed up, it’s unclear who will pay for it all.
The National Institutes of Health says its limited available funding will be exhausted in just weeks. Lack of dollars hamstring local, state and federal efforts to rapidly and effectively test thousands of women and their partners. Even fewer funds are earmarked for mosquito testing, which help local officials pinpoint abatement efforts more effectively and conduct more coordinated community outreach. Testing mosquitos is complex, and it can take weeks to find out whether control efforts are working.
In cities like Miami, Houston and New York, with large populations who have ties to “Zika zones”, public health officials, clinic directors and doctors are scrambling to educate and screen at-risk women. They rightly worry about who will pay for testing, that demand will overtake supply of available test kits, and that an inability to hire more personnel at all levels will mean missed opportunities for diagnosis. In Texas, the state health commissioner worries that public health capabilities could become overwhelmed.
There’s only one commercially available test, and it’s only available at certain CDC-approved labs. The rest of the samples are sent to public health labs or the CDC, who have the sophisticated equipment necessary to run the complex analyses. The testing process is cumbersome and the wait for results is often agonizingly long.
Think Zika just affects Brazil? It's in Florida now | Celine Gounder Read more
Because of the delays and confusion, some women are paying out of pocket (some with help of private insurance) for the commercial test, which must be ordered by their physician. The cost can easily exceed several hundred dollars. One recent report cited a private lab charging $500 for an insured individual and a “discounted” fee of $120 for someone without health insurance.
For low-income individuals, who either rely on Medicaid or have no health insurance, this isn’t an option. Instead, they must turn to overwhelmed clinics, overburdened public health labs and doctors who may still be unclear on exactly who should be tested – or when. And if you don’t fit into that narrow window, and you’re poor, too bad. Our dysfunctional political system is putting people’s health at risk and leading to a two-tiered system of testing. Without more funding, those who may be at most risk will have the most difficulty getting screened or accessing appropriate preventive services.
The NIH channelled $589m in leftover funding from the Ebola crisis to help some states with their testing and abatement efforts. But time, and money, are quickly running out. CDC director Thomas Frieden described the situation as “unprecedented” and an urgent public health threat. Shifting funds from a previous health crisis to the current one is no way to manage major public health menaces.
Members of Congress need to stop pointing fingers at each other, return to Washington and pass a clean Zika funding bill so more people can get tested before this threat turns into a full blown disaster.Updated 12:15 a.m ET Friday.
Somebody almost had to call a self-driving tow truck.
Two autonomous vehicles, one powered by Google and the other from Delphi Automotive, nearly collided this week in what’s thought to be the first close call between a pair of self-driving cars, Reuters reports.
The Google car, a modified Lexus, cut off Delphi’s modified Audi and forced it abort changing lanes to avoid a crash, Delphi’s John Absmeier told Reuters. Absmeier was a passenger in the Audi at the time of the incident; nobody was hurt in the event.
Delphi has two driverless Audi prototypes on California roads, while Google has 20 being tested.
The near collision raises important questions about self-driving cars, including who’s responsible when two are involved in an accident.
Update: A Delphi spokesperson emailed Fortune with the following statement: “During a demo drive of our automated vehicle, our expert used the interaction with the Google car as an example of the types of scenarios that the car can encounter in real-world driving. It was an anecdote of an interaction, not a ‘near miss’. Reuters completely misrepresented the facts.”Acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto River. From Wikipedia. In the public domain.
Note: The memo below is my response to an editor at a U.S. news organization who was soliciting feedback for a review of the organization’s coverage of environmental news. From a conservative point of view, this newsroom is part of the “liberal media.” My goal in the memo was to step back from that superficial, diversionary label and evaluate the deeper ideological commitments that shape mainstream news.
Evaluation of a news media outlet’s coverage of a subject often focuses on a critique of how stories are covered, suggestions for how stories can be improved, and ideas for stories that currently aren’t being covered. Such an evaluation of XYZ’s environmental coverage would be useful, but it also is crucial to consider more basic questions about the ideological framework in which the coverage goes forward.
Talk of journalism’s ideology typically meets resistance, given that journalists routinely assert that they are non-ideological. If “ideology” is defined as a rigid, even fanatical, devotion to a set of ideas no matter what the evidence, then it is a good thing for journalists (and everyone else) to avoid ideology. But if ideology is understood as the set of social attitudes, political beliefs, and moral values that shape one’s interpretation of the world, then everyone works within an ideological framework, including journalists. Then the task is to understand competing ideologies, including one’s own, and not to imagine that anyone, or any institution, transcends ideology.
There are three key elements to the dominant ideology of the contemporary United States—involving world affairs, economics, and ecology—which can be best understood as forms of fundamentalism. Moving beyond the religious roots of the term, we can understand fundamentalism as any intellectual, political, or moral position that asserts a certainty in the truth and/or righteousness of a belief system. In that sense, the United States is an especially fundamentalist country.
First is national fundamentalism, a faith in the benevolence of the United States’ projection of power around the world. From this fundamentalist position, the United States acts in its own interests but always to advance the greater goal of creating a just and peaceful world. Even when there is a consensus that U.S. policy has failed, such as in Vietnam or Iraq, the unquestioned assumption is that the United States’ intentions were noble and actions were morally justified. When journalists cannot step back to evaluate these claims, their accounts of the world inevitably reinforce the fundamentalism, even when those reports are critical of some of the specific ways that U.S. policy is executed.
Second is economic fundamentalism, the steadfast belief in the moral claims of capitalism and the efficiency claims of the corporation. From this fundamentalist position, corporate capitalism is not only the best, but the only viable, way to organize economic activity. Even when the system fails to deliver on its promise of shared prosperity and rationality, the only available responses are assumed to be minor shifts in limited government oversight. When journalists cannot step back to evaluate these claims, their accounts of the economy inevitably reinforce the fundamentalism, even when those reports highlight market failures and the corrosive nature of concentrated wealth.
Third is technological fundamentalism, the unquestioned assumption that the use of high-energy/high-technology is always a good thing and that any problems caused by the unintended consequences of such technology can be remedied by more technology. From this fundamentalist position, the industrial model is unchallengeable and any proposed solutions to environmental problems must conform to that model. Even when those solutions continue to create more problems, alternative paths based on different models are unacceptable. When journalists cannot step back to evaluate these claims, their accounts of the problems and potential solutions reinforce the fundamentalism, even when those reports present data that suggests that the solutions are inadequate or even counterproductive.
These three fundamentalisms are, of course, related. Aggressive U.S. foreign policy around the world typically serves the economic interests of a relatively small number of people; the capitalist growth imperative and conventional economic activity undermine the health of the ecosphere; military action is a tool for dealing with the conflict that emerges from, or is intensified by, ecological degradation and resource scarcity around the world.
All three of these ideologies also are in crisis, as the post-WWII dominance of U.S.-dictated economic arrangements erodes and the instability of the systems becomes more obvious. In each case, we can ask whether any current crisis is merely cyclical or more structural. Are relatively stable systems going through inevitable periodic corrections, or are the systems themselves running down? If the crisis in any one of these systems is structural, what is our best guess on the time frame of the process of systemic change (which will be planned or chaotic, depending on our choices)?
Given human intellectual limits, it is folly to make definitive claims about, or offer precise timetables for, such questions and processes. But our inability to know definitively and precisely does not absolve us of our obligation to come to the best judgments we can, since public-policy decisions must be based on some account of what we expect will happen. No one can predict the future, but everyone is responsible for our actions that create the future.
Obviously, reasonable people can disagree on these questions, and in a healthy political system striving for informed democratic deliberation, it is important for citizens to be exposed to all relevant opinions. Journalists’ task is not to settle these questions but rather help circulate the ideas, striving to identify and amplify the relevant competing points of view. The key term in those two sentences is “relevant.” If journalists are trapped within ideologies that prevent them from identifying the full range of relevant views, they will fail at their central task.
When faced with such criticism, mainstream journalism’s reflexive defense mechanism—“Look, conservatives hate us and liberals hate us, and so we must be doing something right”—is a shallow and inadequate response. A more useful approach would be for journalists to critically self-reflect on the ideological assumptions that define their reporting (such as the absence of foundational critiques of nationalism and capitalism) and how their professional practices (such as a heavy reliance on official sources) limit mainstream journalism’s ability to contribute to democratic dialogue.
The implications of this analysis for coverage of international and economic stories requires careful argument, though the broad outlines are fairly clear (the stunted coverage of the 2003 Iraq invasion and NAFTA negotiations of the early 1990s offer clear examples). The role of technological fundamentalism in journalism, which has not been as widely discussed, deserves more attention. I’ll address three aspects—how environmental issues are reported, the demand to focus on solutions, and the nature of the preferred solutions.
Contemporary journalism has long struggled to report on complex and multifaceted issues that aren’t tied to specific events. Wars and elections are comparatively easy; social movements that develop over time and the daily reality of institutionalized oppression are hard. But the first and most important step |
of the pedestrians. Watch out for angry bots, they are on a killing spree and will stop at nothing to smash everyone. make a pile of cars, have an all out battle, the game is up to you. Tons of stuff to do and see, try it out with a friend today, why not. Have Fun! *Keep an eye out for the IOS version, coming 2014... tegleg.co.uk
Tegs Playground Multi Edition
Raz around in the city faving fun, this time with your friends!
You can find the usual mayhem thats in earlier editions with a many new things and a few new tunes thrown in.The city has had a major makeover and has grown in size considerably.
Explore it all and try out the vehicles and weapons.
go for a ride with one of the traffic bots, find hidden special cars.
Swap character for different strengths or even change yourself into one of the pedestrians.
Watch out for angry bots, they are on a killing spree and will stop at nothing to smash everyone.
make a pile of cars, have an all out battle, the game is up to you.
Tons of stuff to do and see, try it out with a friend today, why not.
Have Fun!
*Keep an eye out for the IOS version, coming 2014...
tegleg.co.uk
Multiplayer:
for Multiplayer to work Steam must be open and logged in.
forward ports 7777 and 7778 on your router (search port forwarding)
If you cant get a listing, or nobody can connect to you, forward 6500, 7787, 13000, 27900
if nobody can connect to you, and your server has been running a while, close and re-open the application and host again.
Keys:
W, A, S, D/Arrow Keys - Move
Mouse - Look
Left Mouse - Fire
Right Mouse - Fire2
Mouse Scroll - Change Weapon
Space - Jump/Boost/Flying Up
C - Crouch/Flying Down
E - Enter/Exit Vehicle
I - Spawn Beacon
J - Dance
L - Lights
F2 - Big
F3 - Change Character
V - Change Camera
Left Shift - Run/Fly
Right Shift/Space - Nitro/Boost
P - Pawn Swap
T - Talk
1/2 - Change Seats
Escape - Open Menu
Alt + Enter - Full Screen
Tunes:
All Music Available from Tegleg Records
DxN, Kelper Sun, Flex
U39C, Mr Meener, Module5
Jacq Sporadic, Gambino 7, Yakuza
Rae Grebby, Tip Toe
AppleMax, Screamers
Sporsmaal2, Invaders, Say Hello, Lorg Elgar II
Keifyb, Target Friendlies, Its A Driving Success
Endoflevelbaddie, Giant Mushroom Forest
Numerical, Thunderous Territories
Spazoobertron, 1Extended
Yol, Tube Sketch
tegleg.co.ukNik Davidson makes games, writes stories, solves problems, and plays Magic. He's almost certainly doing one of those things right now.
Previous story: The Lunarch Inquisition
Jace Beleren's time on Innistrad has been spent chasing a mystery, from Liliana's home to Markov Manor to the Drownyard Temple, then back to Liliana, and finally to Thraben Cathedral. His guide on this journey has been a journal—a bound collection of research notes he found at Markov Manor.
As it happens, the journal's author, the moonfolk Planeswalker called Tamiyo, is several steps ahead of him....
Despite the fact that her feet never touched the stone floor, Tamiyo thought about tiptoeing as she slowly drifted through the chantry of Thraben Cathedral. Across dozens of planes, she found reference to bipeds tiptoeing, often in an exaggerated or theatrical style, as a method of indicating the intent to behave in a stealthy fashion. Yet, to stand on tiptoe concentrated a creature's weight on a smaller total area; on a wooden floor (a flooring surface common to a plurality of the planes she had surveyed), walking tiptoe would in fact increase the likelihood that the floorboards would creak, which was by far the most common form of inadvertent noise to reveal the presence of the tiptoer. Illogic of this nature was something she attributed most commonly to humans, and she took some consistent amusement from documenting it. But there was nothing amusing about Innistrad. The evidence immediately demonstrated something much deeper and more dangerous than illogic. She had already been here longer than she had intended. She had already taken on far too many risks. But this was a world entirely off its axis, and she needed to know why.
Several logical lines of inquiry had proven to be dead ends. Some had been promising, but inconclusive. Her astronomical work was near-definitive, but the cause—the first cause—still eluded her. This was a puzzle box with a thousand panels, a riddle of ten thousand lies. She had never solved anything more challenging than this.
She had also never quit before finishing her work.
Her latest line of research had brought her to the cathedral, where the humans of Innistrad housed their oldest histories of Avacyn. The stories she had collected to date, individually, were fragmented and obscured, but she knew the music of stories. She knew which threads to tug upon, which leads to follow, to bring herself—gliding step by gliding step—to a shred of truth. She did not expect to simply discover what she needed written plainly in an old tome. She had heard many stories like that, but never lived one. Still, the oldest histories had the fewest opportunities for distortion; the fewest hands had been given the chance to twist the words toward their own purpose and effect. Avacyn. The world was off its axis, and she was Innistrad's core. The metaphor fit well enough.
She whispered a small prayer to the kami. She knew, of course, that there were no kami here—that spirits manifested themselves very differently from plane to plane and that the geists of Innistrad bore no resemblance to the small gods of her home. None of her experiments had indicated that the kami could hear her prayers across the boundaries of planes. But the mere fact of their local immeasurability was no excuse to be rude.
Armed cathars patrolled the halls, stoic and vigilant, on the lookout for intruders like her. She had already made more contact with the local population than she was comfortable with, and she was pushing up against the limits of her natural silence and stealth. To penetrate the inner libraries, she would need a story—a story to tell the world around her.
An old scroll, one of her first and favorites, floated open from her side. It was a story from her home, and it was precisely the story she needed.
He Who Frightens the Sun
This is the story of the world gone dark, and He Who Frightens the Sun. His shadow brought night to those in his wake, and his hunger was never sated. The akki knew what the oni concealed, a lifetime of loot and of plunder. But none dared risk the oni's wrath, save one who felt no fear.
When that akki came upon a long flat stone, she held it above her head. From high up above, when the oni looked down, she seemed no more than such a stone. And so disguised she went to his cave, assured that she was safe.
But the oni was curious.
"It is strange, little stone, the way that you move! Are you here to steal my riches?"
"I have never heard, great one," the stone replied, "of a stone stealing riches, have you? I promise that if I see any thieves, I will let you know!"
The oni heard truth in the akki's words, and decided that all was well. He went to sleep, and the akki proceeded to take as much as she could carry. Gold, jewels, and a shining platter, in which her reflection grinned.
The next day, the akki returned, and the oni confronted the stone.
"Little stone, little stone! Someone has stolen my treasure! Did you see the thief?"
Remembering her promise, the akki replied, "Yes! I saw the thief, a clever little akki! Perhaps you should go and search for her, and punish her for her wicked ways!"
The oni agreed, and went off in search, and while he was gone, the akki once more made off with more stolen treasure.
If she had only ended there!
The greedy little akki came back to the oni's cave a third time, stone overhead and greed in her heart. The oni's heart held only rage.
"Little stone! It has happened again! I could not find the thief, but once more my treasures vanish! I do not know what to do, except to go to the akki warrens to the west, and devour them all, just to be sure I get the right one!"
Fearing for her home and friends, the akki replied, "Great one! Akki are tough and bitter, not at all delicious! It is best to leave them be, and continue your search for the thief!"
But while the oni did not know a stone, he knew a lie quite well. He scooped up the little akki, stone and all, and swallowed her in one bite.
The akki tell this tale to remember that the truth is a better deception than any lie ever told.
The story invoked, its magic became real, and Tamiyo faded from view. To any who saw her now, she would appear to be something that belonged there—another cathar, or a decorative vase—up until the moment she told a lie, or no longer desired deception. It was a very useful story, but as she did every time with every story, she whispered an apology for using it in this way. Stories were sacred, and to use them as tools felt just a little bit blasphemous every time.
She carried twenty-nine story scrolls with her this day, not including the three in iron bands—the ones that must never be used.
She walked (feet touching the stones now, quite cold) with purpose past a pair of cathars, who offered a crisp salute. She returned the gesture with less efficiency, and all saw what they needed to see. The central library was just ahead. She started mentally cataloguing the stories she brought with her, trying to determine how best to deal with the locks that would likely be up ahead, when she noticed something amiss. The door was already opened a crack, and candlelight flickered from within.
She gestured, and a slight push of wind opened the heavy door a few degrees more. She stepped into a deeper stance, her feet now gripping the stone evenly (though she still thought of tiptoeing, for reasons she could not explain), and crept toward the door, equally ready to flee or to pounce.
The well-oiled hinges parted further as she heard an unmistakable sound, a moment before her eyes confirmed it: a slumping body striking the ground, as if suddenly asleep. A librarian, aged, unarmed, and unarmored. And standing over him...a Planeswalker.
She took in as much information as she could in the moments before she needed to decide to fight or flee. Planeswalkers were to be avoided in her work, almost at all costs. They were brash and unpredictable, and could carry the biases of any unknown world or means of thinking—they were, in short, a liability to a truth-seeker. This one appeared human, male, young, though the wisps of mana that surrounded him smelled of deception. He had acquired some local clothing, but decorated them with sigils that were clearly not of Innistrad—a curiously poor disguise. His eyes glowed, panicked, wild, possibly afflicted (a thought she had not considered—if a Planeswalker contracted this plane's madness, could they spread it to other worlds?!), and in his hands...her field notes. Another complication. She waited two more heartbeats and resolved to let him make the first move, though a scroll had already drifted from her belt and begun to unfurl.
His eyes were confused. Furious, terrified, curious, then they settled on something like recognition and relief.
"You! It's you! You brought me here. No, not you, this, this journal. Your journal! You brought me here to meet? No, but how could you?" He trailed off, his eyes drifted toward the ground again, then snapped back to her, accusing. "You were watching me? You knew!" Then they softened again, now sad, pleading. "Help me. Can you? I think...can you help me? Help me." The last words were not a plea at all. A command, oppressively powerful, battering at her mind like wind at the shutters. But her mind withdrew to a far-off castle, and the winds could not reach her. Four more heartbeats to think, then she smiled as peacefully as she could manage. With a thought, she covered the Planeswalker in her veiling spell and removed a different scroll from her satchel. She slipped into the library and closed the door quietly behind her. She had never used this story in precisely this way, but a mad planeswalking telepath was a danger of the sort she had never contemplated. The story was one she gathered many, many years ago, from a world with five moons and gleaming metal as far as the eye could see.
Original
With their creator gone, the creatures known as the myr were lost.
Some continued with their last known instructions, repeating their tasks without direction or purpose, while others simply shut down to await commands that would never come. The loss of Memnarch did not kill them, but with no true consciousness within them, their continued life was scarcely life at all.
Some of the myr had been tasked to monitor the myr population, and create new myr to replace those that had been damaged or destroyed. One of those had been in hibernation for months when its instructions demanded that it act—myr of its kind were too few, and it needed to make another.
However, without its maker to guide it, it did not have clear instructions as to how to proceed. It did what it knew to do—it gathered the proper materials, took those materials to the crafting chamber, a small spherical room, and assembled a myr, completely identical to itself.
This was the point in the process when the Master would gift the new myr with life and a mind, such as it was. But the Master was not there. Still, his instructions persisted. The myr decided to use his own mind as a template, and copied itself into the new myr, creating a being completely identical to itself in every way. Its instructions satisfied, the myr went to leave the chamber...and found itself blocked by its duplicate.
The myr tried to let its duplicate go first—but the duplicate had the same thought at the same time. They waited an identical length of time, and then tried to go again, each colliding into its other self once more. The myr and its duplicate tried everything they could to break this impossible symmetry, but nothing worked. Eventually, in frustration, the two destroyed each other.
A third myr arrived some time later, being tasked with repair, and restored one of the myr—the restored myr stopped the repair myr before it could repair the duplicate and start the whole problem all over again. Instead, it decided to try something different, and copied its mind over again, but this time left it incomplete.
The newly awakened myr was able to create others in the same way, and these new myr, created with minds partially unformed, were able to multiply and modify themselves, act autonomously, and ultimately took the myriad forms that they have today.
The myr celebrate this story as their creation myth, but the reason they celebrate it is curious. There are three theories as to which of the myr in this story was actually the first myr of their kind. Was it the first myr who created another without a specific instruction from their creator? Did the repair myr actually repair the newly created myr first, and thus it was the second myr who made the critical leap that marked the creation of their race? Or was it the first of the myr with an incomplete imprint that was truly the first of their kind? The myr disagree on this point, and they celebrate the disagreement itself—the fact that they can have disagreements on issues of such a fundamental nature, yet still remain in unison, is at the core of what it means to be myr.
The young human's eyes closed, and he took several deep, slow breaths. When his eyes opened again, they were calm.
"Thank you. Wow. I...oh. Oh dear. Liliana..." He rubbed his head as if it had been struck, then looked sheepishly up at her. "I'm Jace. And you're Tamiyo, right? Your journal..."
He offered it to her with both hands; she raised a thin palm, a gesture of polite refusal.
"It led me here. Your calculations, your studies, the moon, it all made sense...or at least it felt like it did. I was affected and you...you fixed it. Somehow. I'm rambling. Probably sound almost as mad as I did before, I just...thank you."
Tamiyo smiled serenely. "My field notes. I gave them to someone trustworthy, and now you carry them. Did you bring Jenrik to harm, Jace?"
The human shook his head. "No. But whatever happened to Markov Manor, he didn't survive it."
She spent a moment in silent remembrance, but let no sorrow show on her face. "You need to leave, Jace. This place is dangerous, but far more so for one like you. Your telepathic powers carry with them a responsibility. If driven mad, the damage you could do across the planes would be immense, and it would be irresponsible of me to allow that."
"No, I understand, but..." Jace stopped suddenly. It had taken him a few moments to realize that she had just threatened him. He raised his palms, and took a step back.
"Tamiyo, I just want to help. We can save this place. Me and my friends, we can help you solve what's happening here, and help fix it. We've done it before...sort of."
Tamiyo raised one white eyebrow and said nothing.
"Listen, you and I both know that Avacyn is at the heart of what's happening here. Well, she has a mind, like any other being, and I can find out what's afflicting her. I can stop her, if it comes to that. And then we can move on to the next step in fixing this."
Tamiyo's smile disappeared.
"You know nothing, Jace. You suspect. You theorize. You have evidence, but it is far from conclusive. How much do you really know about Avacyn? Her purpose? You have no idea what would happen if Avacyn were destroyed. She wards the entire plane—have you ever heard of a planebound being interacting in such a way with the Multiverse? I will tell you this plainly, Jace: you know less than you are ignorant of, and I am not here to fix this world's problem. I am here to understand it. To chronicle it. To know the truth of it, and record that truth for all time. But this plane is likely doomed, and I have no intention of stopping it. It is sad, perhaps, to lose a thing of beauty, but, like the blossoms of an orchard in springtime, it is a temporary beauty. It is just one plane among countless. Planes are lost and renewed all the time. Your premises are flawed."
Jace flinched as if struck. "But the people here—there are millions of them! You'd just leave them to their fate? Madness and worse? We have the power, here, to make a difference. You have that power. Will you help me?"
Tamiyo's expression was unchanged, but her voice held a little more ice. "I have helped you, Jace. I will offer a compromise. I will share my research with you, and you and your friends can use that information to help avert similar disasters on other planes, if it suits you. But I have recorded ten thousand stories about heroes, and a hero is merely a disaster with a point of view."
The young human persisted. "Without conclusive insights from Avacyn herself, your research will be incomplete. Inconclusive. With my help, you will have the story in its entirety. And if I manage to stop Avacyn in the process, it wouldn't harm your work, and it could save countless lives."
Curiosity. Just a touch of it. "A definitive understanding of Avacyn's current state would certainly be helpful, but I suspect that even if you were capable of entering such an alien mind..."
"I can do it."
Tamiyo found the human's arrogance equal parts charming and irritating. "If you try, her madness will consume you, as it did before. But...in theory, I could anchor you. Tether you to your sanity. But if I decide that we are in too much danger, you will break off the connection immediately, and we will retreat. It will also require that we connect minds on a very fundamental level. I will understand you, and you will understand me. And if I do not like what I come to understand, I will alter the terms of this arrangement again. You, for your part, will come to know precisely what I am capable of. Is this acceptable to you?"
"I accept."
Jace felt something like a chime ringing in his mind. A tone that was clear, serene, and pure.
It was an invitation.
In an instant, she knew him. But it was not a simple thing to know this human. His mind was powerful, but broken. Shattered into a thousand shards, each of them a different man, many of them trying to work together, but some of them...
He had erased his own memories. He had destroyed his own truth. He had invaded the minds of the innocent, he had killed in anger, he had used his power for petty and selfish ends.
Yet.
He was capable of sacrifice, of bravery, and of understanding. He was willing to take on responsibilities. Too many responsibilities, perhaps, for one so young. Younger still, if you accounted for the years of his own life that he so roughly erased. His desire for truth was earnest, and his pledge to help the people of this place was pure.
And he was about seventy percent certain he could manage to do what he had told her that he could.
In an instant, he knew her. But knowing is not understanding. Jace had always held the soratami of Kamigawa in high esteem, their minds powerful and disciplined. He saw her life, and the contrast with his own was physically painful. Where he was untethered, she was safely anchored by family, tradition, and home.
Home. An endless library, high in the clouds; the place she loved more than any other. The smiles and sweet familiarity of her family. Children. They could not fully understand the places she went when she left them, but their faces lit up so brightly when she brought them stories, impossible stories, told in the voice of truth from places they could never see.
He saw her burden. The terrible burden of knowing, and the need to protect truths too dangerous to be spoken aloud, yet too important to be forgotten. Three iron-bound scrolls, each with a power...
Jace.
The connection changed, and the two Planeswalkers focused their consciousnesses back to the world they stood in.
"Jace, my veiling spell has been pierced. And there is a powerful presence moving this way."
The human nodded, and the two Planeswalkers hurried down the hallway into the cathedral's central chapel.
"I will attempt to communicate with Avacyn. Distract her. Emphatically distract her if I must. You will not have long to stop her before she kills us both."
Jace opened his mouth to reply, as the world became a symphony of howling winds and shattering glass.
The angel hovered, her massive wings stained with fresh blood, her spear molten and ablaze. The look on her face was one of restrained amusement. Tamiyo floated up to meet her gaze. The angel's wings displaced a gale; when the moonfolk rose, the air did not so much as whisper.
"Avacyn. I am a visitor to your world, and I have been as respectful a guest as I have been able. I want nothing but peace and wellness for those you protect. As an angel, you can hear the truth of my words. How do you respond?"
The angel's face twitched into the poorest mockery of any smile Tamiyo had ever known, and a clicking sort of laughter emanated from her, lips unmoving. Her voice was a pained scratch that brought to mind insects and fingernails.
"How...do I respond? I am...to protect. From you. Intruder. Invader. Rotmonger. Impure! IMPURE!"
"I see," replied Tamiyo, a waiting scroll unfurling. "That is unfortunate."
She did not need to do more than glance at the words on the scroll. It was a lament, a song from an ancient world, where the cold and ice were as dangerous as any beast. A song of loss and regret. She knew each line of the song by heart.
Winter's Howl
A young man took a step through mountain door,
A short trip to tend to his fence and farm,
The winter's chill and ice beneath the snow,
Did bring him to both swift and final harm.
His wife, a beauty who loved him so dear,
Went through her day not knowing awful truth,
That just a hundred yards from mountain door,
Her love's own blood did freeze despite his youth.
When widow did suspect that she might be,
She called with terror's breath from mountain door,
The truest cold had risen from the sea.
Only his howl of anguish echoed more.
Avacyn lunged forward with a massive beat of her wings, and Tamiyo slipped through the air, barely clearing the reach of the angel's burning spear. As Avacyn wheeled around in the eaves of the cathedral, Tamiyo let loose precisely targeted blasts of icy gale; a patch of feathers froze and shattered, white and red, falling like snow to the stone floors below.
The angel dove through the air, faster this time, her spear swinging in a wide arc. Tamiyo glided forward, baiting the attack, then tumbled in the opposite direction, more freezing blasts pushing her clear of the spear's tip. She targeted the angel's right wrist, then the joint of the left wing. As she passed behind, again, the spot where the wing met the shoulder. Avacyn was faster, and a single strike of her spear would likely mean Tamiyo's end, but the angel fought enraged, and the soratami moved with deftly calculated precision—Avacyn's face showed no pain, no frustration, but her maneuverability began to suffer. She slowed, and as she did so, the cathedral shook with that impossible laughter, the chattering of dry bones and the clawing of a thousand rats.
Tamiyo sent an urgent thought to Jace, hidden down below.
She's adapting. We don't have long.
Avacyn raised her spear, and for a moment, Tamiyo recognized the guardian from the stories, the Avacyn that had been a beacon to the people of Innistrad. A blinding light shone from her, illuminating every corner of the cathedral, and Tamiyo recoiled from its power. The light burned on, pressing on the two Planeswalkers like a physical force, driving Tamiyo back to the ground, driving Jace to his knees. The angel slowly descended, spear lowered at Tamiyo's chest, all her previous rage seemingly vanished—she was the picture of deadly grace.
Almost there...
And then she froze. The light persisted, but her motion stopped—she stood just feet from Tamiyo's motionless form, spear extended...and there she stayed. No breath, no fluttering of feathers, complete stillness. But the immobilizing light kept pressing down upon them.
"It's done, Tamiyo. She's, well, not sleeping exactly, but it's the closest thing I could manage."
"Jace, perhaps it's slipped your attention..."
"Working on that. But listen. She's the source of the madness among the angels. They synchronize with her somehow. And through her, the church. But...she's not the origin. She's being affected by something else, and—you were right! She's still holding something else at bay. I can't see it, but I think if I push a little deeper..."
"Jace, that's enough."
"Wait. No. That's..."
The air filled with the smell of rotting meat. Avacyn's light did not dim, but the sense of glory vanished from it; the light was cold, sickening, oily, and cruel. The angel rounded on Jace, Tamiyo seemingly forgotten, and she walked with purpose over to his crumpled form.
"Defiler," she whispered, her voice the sound of skin crackling away to ash in the flame. "Thief. Pustule of corruption." She reached down and placed her hand on his chest. Anything else she might have whispered to him was drowned out by his screams.
Tamiyo focused on the link between their minds, tried to offer him solace, any relief from the pain before the end came. Layers of his consciousness had already been peeled away, flayed into insensate misery by the angel's agonizing grasp. But his mind was layered, protected, and the pain had not yet penetrated his deepest thoughts.
Tamiyo. The scroll. The iron scroll. You showed it to me. An old story. A powerful story. The survivors of a place that was lost...Serra's realm. That cataclysm, that power...the story fits. You know it does. You can stop this.
Even as she felt his agony, even as she felt him starting to die, with the knowledge that she would be next, she did not hesitate in the slightest in her reply.
And then? She is still defending this world, Jace, despite her madness. Did you ever make a promise, Jace? I made one, long ago. And promises aren't just to be kept when the keeping of them is easy. We make promises for times like this, when we desperately want to break them. No, Jace. The scroll stays closed.
Disbelief. Anger.
I'm sorry, Jace. Sometimes, our stories have to end.
Shadows over Innistrad Story Archive
Planeswalker Profile: Jace Beleren
Planeswalker Profile: Tamiyo
Plane Profile: InnistradPhoto © Brewers Association
Dual speakers will offer perspectives from within and outside the brewing community.
Best-selling author and leadership guru Alison Levine and brewing icon Dick Cantwell have been tapped to deliver the keynote speeches for the 2017 Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America® (CBC).
Presented annually by the Brewers Association, CBC is the industry’s largest gathering, bringing together a record 14,000 brewing professionals and will be held in Washington, D.C. from April 10-13. The dual presenters will speak during the two general sessions offered at CBC.
“CBC attendees enjoy hearing from voices within the brewing community and outside of it as well,” said Paul Gatza, director, Brewers Association. “The combination of Dick, a prolific and venerable brewer, and Alison, a trailblazer and experienced risk taker, will offer attendees valuable insight as they navigate opportunities and challenges in both brewing and business.”
Slot Drain invites you to visit them at booth 4009 at the 2017 CBC and BrewExpo America.
Levine is a former Wall Street executive and avid explorer and mountaineer. She has climbed the world’s highest peaks, skied across the Arctic Circle and in 2008 made history as the first American to complete a 600-mile traverse from west Antarctica to the South Pole. For three years, Levine served as an adjunct professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point in the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department and in 2005, founded the Climb High Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of unemployed women in Africa. Levine’s authentic messages of survival and success in some of the most extreme circumstances translate and remain applicable on the mountains and in fast-paced business environments alike. She is the author of New York Times’ BestsellerOn the Edge and is the subject of the PBS documentary Living Courageously(2007).
As one of the industry’s well-respected and experienced craft brewers, Cantwell co-founded Elysian Brewing Company in 1996, where he served as head brewer until its sale to Anheuser-Busch in 2015. During his tenure, Elysian was named Large Brewpub of the Year three times at the Great American Beer Festival® (1999, 2003 and 2004), and in 2004, he received the BA’s Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Brewing. Additionally, Cantwell has written for various beer magazines, including The New Brewer, Beer Advocate and American Brewer. His book publishing credits include Barley Wine (with Fal Allen), The Brewers Association’s Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery, Second Edition and Wood & Beer: A Brewer’s Guide (with New Belgium’s Peter Bouckaert). He most recently served as Quality Ambassador for the Brewers Association, supporting and advocating to uphold quality in craft beer.
About the Craft Brewers Conference
Presented by the Brewers Association, the Craft Brewers Conference is the largest industry event. Thousands of brewing industry professionals from the across the country will gather from April 10-13 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. for nearly 70 seminars across 11 different tracks. CBC also includes BrewExpo America®, the nation’s premier trade show for the craft brewing industry.
Press Credentials
Media wishing to attend and cover the Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America must apply for press credentials.Video: (Ground) lousy sex Video: (Ground) lousy sex
Species: Zorotypus impolitus
Habitat: The rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia
If it exists, then so does porn featuring it. So says “rule 34” of the internet. It seems unlikely, however, that anyone has made a pornographic film inspired by the ground louse Zorotypus impolitus. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page (yet).
More to the point, it would be surprising if anyone wanted to replicate its peculiar sex life. The male produces a single sperm that is almost as long as he is, wraps it in a package called a spermatophore, and sticks it on the female’s abdomen. It’s then up to the female to transfer this lone giant sperm into her genital tract. While most insects abandoned this primitive mating system millions of years ago, Z. impolitus has stuck with it.
Lousy
Z. impolitus belongs to a rare and obscure order of insects called Zoraptera. They are commonly called ground lice or, for no good reason, angel insects. Just a few millimetres long, the creatures look rather like termites and spend their lives in piles of rotting wood, where they feed mostly on fungi.
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Obscure they may be, but the ground lice belong to the most successful group of animals on the planet: the winged insects, or Pterygota. Despite their vast diversity, all winged insects mate in more or less the same way: the male transfers his sperm directly into the female’s genital opening. “In general it is copulation,” says Romano Dallai of the University of Siena in Italy.
But Z. impolitus is the exception to that rule. Dallai and colleagues kept colonies of Z. impolitus in their lab, and monitored how they mated. To their surprise, the males didn’t bother to place their sperm inside the female’s genital tract.
“This is the first time we have described external transfer of sperm in a Pterygote insect,” says Dallai. In insects, external transfer is only found in ancient wingless groups like springtails, but they use yet another system. “The male deposits a spermatophore on the soil and then the female picks it up,” says Dallai.
Z. impolitus is a bit more advanced than the springtails, and may represent an intermediate stage in the evolution of true copulation. Male crickets are a step further along. Although they place their sperm in the female’s genital opening, “part remains outside and the female eats it”, says Dallai.
Hello sexy
Everything about Z. impolitus mating is strange. The female starts the process, approaching the male and stroking him with her antennae. If the male wants to mate, he moves behind her and performs a simple dance: he walks forwards and backwards, lowers his head and vibrates his antennae.
The climax of the process is when the male slips underneath the female for a few seconds and attaches a spermatophore to the female’s abdomen: a tiny package with a large surprise. “It [the sperm package] is the smallest we have seen in all insects,” he says. Whereas other species make spermatophores up to 2 millimetres across, those of Z. impolitus are just 0.1 millimetres across.
When Dallai dissected some of these spermatophores, however, he found that each one contained a single sperm about 3 millimetres long – about as long as the female. This seems strange. Males generally want to maximise their chances of fertilising the female’s eggs, so why produce only one, giant sperm?
Dallai thinks it may be a way of outcompeting other males. “The sperm is so large, it can fill the space in the female’s [genital tract],” he says. That plugs it up, so no other male can mate with her. Also, by using only one sperm at a time, the male ensures he gives each female just enough to fertilise her, while leaving him plenty to fertilise other females.
Journal reference: Naturwissenschaften, DOI: 10.1007/s00114-013-1055-0TrustBuilding.JPG
Huntington Bank will replace Bank of America as the anchor tenant in the Trust Building, 40 Pearl Street NW.
(File photo | Mlive |
any, significance that the developers saw in that specific spawn-interval. One might be able to get some information on that from the patch-logs.
Anyways, nice investigative work avenmarine! Wait, so the Larva spawn-interval is actually longer than the spawn time for Drones?! That's very unexpected. 340 seconds would then mean that the liquipedia-time/normal game-time should be about 22.666... ~ 22.5 seconds. Makes you wonder what, if any, significance that the developers saw in that specific spawn-interval. One might be able to get some information on that from the patch-logs.Anyways, nice investigative work avenmarine!
Xiphias Profile Blog Joined May 2010 Norway 2197 Posts #7 On July 21 2015 14:43 avenmarine wrote:
I ran a test using BWAPI, just counting the frames on just a plain hactery. It gave inconsistent results weirdly. I got 335, 337, 339, 345, and a few random ones up to 400. BUT 337 to 345 was extremely common. I'm completing guessing but maybe it only runs the check ever so often (instead 1 decrement each frame) and just carries over the difference to the next larva. Or it could just be a weird BWAPI anomaly. I think 340 frames is a safe guess though.
That's interesting. When I was running a test where I constantly made workers off of one hatch it seemed to sometimes line up with the drone and sometimes it would pop a tad later. The larva spawn time may have a random element to it. That's interesting. When I was running a test where I constantly made workers off of one hatch it seemed to sometimes line up with the drone and sometimes it would pop a tad later. The larva spawn time may have a random element to it. aka KanBan85. Working on Starbow.
Piste Profile Blog Joined July 2006 5902 Posts #8 On July 21 2015 14:43 avenmarine wrote:
I ran a test using BWAPI, just counting the frames on just a plain hactery. It gave inconsistent results weirdly. I got 335, 337, 339, 345, and a few random ones up to 400. BUT 337 to 345 was extremely common. I'm completing guessing but maybe it only runs the check ever so often (instead 1 decrement each frame) and just carries over the difference to the next larva. Or it could just be a weird BWAPI anomaly. I think 340 frames is a safe guess though.
Maybe if the egg spawns ON the hatch like it often does, the unit must pop off from the hatchery before it can produce more larva.
Units have different voices and sounds, maybe after larva is selected to build a worker, the sound sprite has to finish before hatch releases more space to another larva? silly guesses but those frame differences are strange too. Maybe if the egg spawns ON the hatch like it often does, the unit must pop off from the hatchery before it can produce more larva.Units have different voices and sounds, maybe after larva is selected to build a worker, the sound sprite has to finish before hatch releases more space to another larva? silly guesses but those frame differences are strange too.
[[Starlight]] Profile Joined December 2013 United States 1571 Posts #9 On July 21 2015 15:13 Tadah wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 21 2015 14:43 avenmarine wrote:
I ran a test using BWAPI, just counting the frames on just a plain hactery. It gave inconsistent results weirdly. I got 335, 337, 339, 345, and a few random ones up to 400. BUT 337 to 345 was extremely common. I'm completing guessing but maybe it only runs the check ever so often (instead 1 decrement each frame) and just carries over the difference to the next larva. Or it could just be a weird BWAPI anomaly. I think 340 frames is a safe guess though.
Wait, so the Larva spawn-interval is actually longer than the spawn time for Drones?! That's very unexpected. 340 seconds would then mean that the liquipedia-time/normal game-time should be about 22.666... ~ 22.5 seconds. Makes you wonder what, if any, significance that the developers saw in that specific spawn-interval. One might be able to get some information on that from the patch-logs.
Anyways, nice investigative work avenmarine! Wait, so the Larva spawn-interval is actually longer than the spawn time for Drones?! That's very unexpected. 340 seconds would then mean that the liquipedia-time/normal game-time should be about 22.666... ~ 22.5 seconds. Makes you wonder what, if any, significance that the developers saw in that specific spawn-interval. One might be able to get some information on that from the patch-logs.Anyways, nice investigative work avenmarine!
That's really strange... I remember Blizzard themselves saying on their own forums that the larvae spawn rate got changed from 15 seconds on Normal (225 frames) to 20 seconds (300 frames) for the 1.04 patch. Would assume that statement was true.
So... they slowed it down more after 1.04? Or is BWAPI a bit off here?
Seems that a second system of measurement should be used to confirm, even if its just a stopwatch.
That's really strange... I remember Blizzard themselves saying on their own forums that the larvae spawn rate got changed from 15 seconds on Normal (225 frames) to 20 seconds (300 frames) for the 1.04 patch. Would assume that statement was true.So... they slowed it down more after 1.04? Or is BWAPI a bit off here?Seems that a second system of measurement should be used to confirm, even if its just a stopwatch. User was warned for being hilarious
GGzerG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 United States 9295 Posts #10 This is some really in depth Zen stuff here, really diving deep into the Zerg to figure them out. I like your style. AKA: TelecoM[WHITE] Protoss fighting
avenmarine Profile Joined May 2012 United Arab Emirates 9 Posts #11 Did the test again, included lairs/hives. Basically the same story: 335, 444, 337, 337, 336, 336, 343, 347, 337, 335, 339, 339, 341,340,349, 340, 346, 338, 340, 349, 332, 402, 342. The average time was about 21.7 seconds game time, but again random. Sometimes it was 20, some times it was 22.
I did a similar test with drones, I got exactly 318 frames 8 times in a row. That seems significant to me that it is always the same. There could be some fudginess in whether the animation frames are included (larva->egg and egg->drone)
Based on the averages larva is 20 frames slower than the drone but that *might* overlap with animations.
xboi209 Profile Blog Joined June 2011 United States 1173 Posts #12 If anyone suspects bias from BWAPI, it would be a good idea to cross check the data by recording a video at the same frame rate as SC and then measuring the amount of frames http://www.reddit.com/r/broodwar/
Xiphias Profile Blog Joined May 2010 Norway 2197 Posts #13 On July 22 2015 10:46 avenmarine wrote:
Did the test again, included lairs/hives. Basically the same story: 335, 444, 337, 337, 336, 336, 343, 347, 337, 335, 339, 339, 341,340,349, 340, 346, 338, 340, 349, 332, 402, 342. The average time was about 21.7 seconds game time, but again random. Sometimes it was 20, some times it was 22.
I did a similar test with drones, I got exactly 318 frames 8 times in a row. That seems significant to me that it is always the same. There could be some fudginess in whether the animation frames are included (larva->egg and egg->drone)
Based on the averages larva is 20 frames slower than the drone but that *might* overlap with animations.
This is interesting as the BWAPI is listing worker BT as 300 frames as well. This is interesting as the BWAPI is listing worker BT as 300 frames as well. aka KanBan85. Working on Starbow.
GeckoXp Profile Blog Joined June 2013 Germany 1807 Posts #14 Once you figured that stuff out, please update the Wiki and link to this discussion / your findings. "Was macht Gecko da aus meiner BWCL." - Annihilator
Xiphias Profile Blog Joined May 2010 Norway 2197 Posts #15 I think we have an answer here: http://www.staredit.net/topic/16810/#5 aka KanBan85. Working on Starbow.
xboi209 Profile Blog Joined June 2011 United States 1173 Posts #16 I'm perplexed at how we are disecting this in 2015 http://www.reddit.com/r/broodwar/
BisuDagger Profile Blog Joined October 2009 Bisutopia 16637 Posts #17 On July 22 2015 19:27 Xiphias wrote:
I think we have an answer here: I think we have an answer here: http://www.staredit.net/topic/16810/#5
That answer is amazing. The math was like a brain massage it felt so good to read. That answer is amazing. The math was like a brain massage it felt so good to read. Moderator Ofiicial Afreeca Starleague Caster: http://afreeca.tv/ASL2ENG2
B-royal Profile Joined May 2015 Belgium 1326 Posts #18 But why does it work with 2 counters? Why is this variance included? Very interesting. new BW-player (~E rank fish) twitch.tv/crispydrone || What plays 500 games a season but can't get better? => http://imgur.com/a/pLzf9 <= ||
c3rberUs Profile Blog Joined December 2010 Japan 11274 Posts #19 I'm more perplexed at why there's a randomization factor included in one' of the game's fundamental mechanics.Or I just didn't understand. Writer Movie, 진영화 : "StarCraft will never die".
Peeano Profile Blog Joined March 2009 Netherlands 3126 Posts Last Edited: 2015-07-22 14:49:22 #20 Does latency have any influence? I remember playing Zerg on battle.net and very rarely have a larva pop immediately after I started 3 eggs. Maybe it only was on older patches or perhaps map max had to do with it. FBH #1! Trying my best to continue TLPD.
1 2 Next AllUber has accidentally leaked the personal details of hundreds of its drivers through a newly launched app.
The controversial company released a new "Uber Partner app" yesterday, which it claimed is "designed to give drivers more information so Uber works better for them".
However, as first reported by Gawker, a design flaw also gave drivers more information about each other by allowing anyone access to nearly 1,000 sensitive scanned documents, including social security numbers, tax forms, insurance documents, driving licenses and taxi certification forms.
The bug apparently appeared when an Uber driver tried to upload or edit such documents, with Gawker writing that they were "warped to a screen that contains documents for complete strangers, a legion of Uber drivers around the United States".
Speaking to Motherboard, an unnamed Uber driver said: "It (the app) started loading hundreds, maybe thousands of other uploaded documents from other Uber drivers. When I looked closer, it might have been the database of Uber drivers that are taxicab drivers that have access to Uber. There were a lot of taxi certification forms and livery drivers licenses."
Uber has responded to the incident, telling IT Pro: "We were notified about a bug impacting a fraction of our US drivers earlier this afternoon. Within 30 minutes our security team had fixed the issue.
"We'd like to thank the driver who drew it to our attention and apologise to those drivers whose information may have been affected. Their security is incredibly important to Uber and we will follow up with them directly."
The organisation also claimed that no more than 674 drivers in the US were affected.
However, this isn't the first time Uber has suffered a serious security breach exposing the details of its drivers.
In May 2014, a hacker stole the company's database containing the details of thousands of drivers, which were then posted to GitHub - and Uber didn't notice until September.
Even then, it did not notify registered drivers that their details were at risk until it had filed a lawsuit against GitHub demanding the IP addresses or subscriber details of anyone "that viewed, accessed, or modified these posts and the date/time of accessing, viewing, or modification".Upcoming drama “Girls’ Generation 1979” (working title) is off to a great start!
The KBS drama is slated to air its first episode on September 11 and recently unveiled photos from their first script reading.
The read-through took place on August 18 at the Yeouido KBS building. Producers Lee Gun Joon and Moon Joon Ha were present, as well as director Hong Suk Goo, writer Yoon Kyung Ah, and leading cast members Cosmic Girls’s Bona, Chae Seo Jin, Min Dohee, Seo Young Joo, CNBLUE’s Lee Jong Hyun, and Yeo Hoe Hyun. Also in attendance were the supporting cast of Kwon Hae Hyo, Kim Sun Young, In Gyo Jin, Kim Jae Hwa, Park Ha Na, and Jo Yeon Jin.
Before the reading began, director Hong Suk Goo said, “I am excited because this production takes place in the time and place where I used to live.” Producer Lee Gun Joon also said, “There will be good response from viewers as long as everyone here works their hardest.”
The actors all managed to get into the rhythm of the dialect that will be used for the drama. Cosmic Girls’s Bona plays the lead role for the first time in her career, but synchronized well with her character, “Jung Hee.” Chae Seo Jin slipped into her role as Bona’s friend and rival, while Min Dohee nailed the cold charismatic image of the neighborhood bully “Shim Ae Sook.”
The three male leads, Seo Young Joo, Lee Jong Hyun, and Yeo Hoe Hyun also perfected their lines as they began their love stories with the three female characters.
After the reading, Hong Suk Goo said, “Now that we’ve read the script, I feel like this production will be even more fun than I imagined.”
“Girls’ Generation 1979” tells the story of a group of female high school students in the late 1970’s in the city of Daegu.
Source (1)Commentary with Director Tom Savini
This is a good commentary if you can get past the dryness of it. Savini sounds like a film historian more than a filmmaker. Besides that, he talks about shooting in Pittsburgh and there is a lot of talk about the special effects used in the film.
I liked the commentary, but I wish that there was someone else in the booth with him to feed him questions. Would have made the track much better. Still, it is not a bad commentary.
The Dead Walk Featurette (24m 54s, SD, 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio)
This featurette first showed up on the film’s DVD release back in the early 2000’s. We get a history of the original film as well as the reasoning behind remaking the film in the first place. We then move on to some Savini history. There is a lot of talk about the special effects with a bit of behind the scenes footage shown.
This is a surprisingly thorough featurette. I learned a lot about what went into making this film. I did not know that the film ran afoul with the MPAA which resulted in much of the gore being removed from the film. We do get to see some of that gore, but this is the only place we get to see it.
Interview with Director Tom Savini (28m 7s, HD)
This is one of three brand new interviews conducted by Severin Films. Savini talks candidly about the film and how he had a miserable time making the film. He was going through a divorce at the time and was fearing losing his daughter. He was not able to watch the film until a few years ago and know he likes the film. He also talks about how George A. Romero was not on set except for the first day of filming and during the last few days. We do learn that scenes were cut from the shooting schedule or changed altogether because “there was no time”. There is one scene he talks about what was changed and that was the last scene in the film. It would have played out very differently and, I think, for the better.
This is a great interview. I learned a lot about the behind the scenes shenanigans that took place and how Savini just had to take the hits just so he could have his name on the film as director. Definitely worth the watch.
Interview with Special Effects Team John Vulch and Everett Burrell (21m 3s, HD)
This is the second of three new interviews and it is ok. The guys talk briefly about their work on Day of the Dead as well as the Fred Olin Rey films they did (although they don’t name them). They had worked for Savini before so they knew they would be in good hands. They talk about visiting the Pittsburgh morgue and watching an actual autopsy. We learn that some of the head shots (most of which were cut from the film) were done by firing a real shotgun on set. Of course, this is very illegal now, but back then it was something that would happen a lot on a low budget horror film. Savini had done it before in Maniac and the famous head exploding scene in Scanners was done the same way. There is a lot of behind the scenes footage shown throughout this interview.
Interview with Patricia Tallman (16m 31s, HD)
Rounding out the trio of new interviews is this interview with the heroine of the film. She talks about her first working with Savini on Knightriders. She also talks a bit about working with Bill Mosely and how he was very helpful with some of the legal paperwork that Tallman had to fill out. She has gone on to work with Mosley a few more times. She also didn’t know that the production was in trouble until Romero showed up on set.
All in all, these are some fine interviews
Behind the Scenes Featurette (8m 15s, Upconverted HD)
Not really a featurette, more of a fly on the wall type thing. We get to see some footage of the opening scene being shot before we move into more footage of the special effects.
Trailer (1m 6s, HD)
There is just something about trailers from the 80’s and 90’s that make me smile. Can’t tell what it is, but it is there and this is one of those trailers.
Umbrella has given us a nice looking package for Night of the Living Dead. The front cover is the original theatrical poster. It looks very nice and gets the job done. Umbrella has given us a nice looking package for Night of the Living Dead. The front cover is the original theatrical poster. It looks very nice and gets the job done.
The reverse cover features nicely drawn zombies that appear to be looking at us.
The disc art is the same as the front cover, but the title of the film is nowhere to be found, which is kind of strange, but not unheard of. The disc art is the same as the front cover, but the title of the film is nowhere to be found, which is kind of strange, but not unheard of.
The case is the regular 14mm amaray case that is used in the UK as well as Australia. The case is the regular 14mm amaray case that is used in the UK as well as Australia.
The disc is REGION FREE (even if the packaging says otherwise) and I had no problems playing this in my REGION A PlayStation 3.
When Night of the Living Dead 1990 was released from Twilight Time a few years ago there was a lot of debate of the blue tint that was placed on the film. Many cried foul saying this is not the way the film is supposed to look. The new interviews found on this disc contain snippets of the Twilight Time transfer and I can say that I like the way the transfer found on this disc a lot more than the Twilight Time transfer.
Gone is the blue tint and welcomed back is the natural color palette. The transfer does start and end very rocky with specks of dirt showing their face many times. I was a little bit worried that the whole film would look like this, but they go away by the time Barbara makes it to the house.
Colors are strong and blacks are deep. There is a lot of detail seen throughout the film although there are a few shots in the film that don’t fare so well. This might have had to do with the film being a low budget affair and they really didn’t bother me.
I did not see any digital enhancements like edge enhancement or DNR so that is to report.
All in all, I think that this a nice transfer and miles ahead of the Twilight Time version.
We get a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack and I was pleased with what I heard. The soundtrack is robust when it needs to be and quiet the other times. There are a few instances when the dialogue is muffled or unusually quiet. I again chalk this up to the low budget of the film. Other than that I was happy with the sound.
I went into this film blind. I had heard from many people that this film was trash and to go nowhere near it. I heeded that advice until this version of the film was released. I had heard that people were coming around to the positive feeling pertaining to this film and I was able to get it really cheap, so I decided to finally see the film.
The first thing that I noticed about the film was that the sense of dread was gone. The original had a foreboding feel to it. That may be because the film was shot for almost no money, but I have felt this feeling in Romero’s other work too.
As an audience, we were scared of the ghouls in the 1968 version of the film, but the 1990 version it seems like we are going through the motions. Not much is done to differentiate itself from the ’68 version outside of a few things.
This is more in line with how people would naturally act during something like what the characters are facing.
By making Barbara into the heroine, you would think that the filmmakers would lesson Ben’s role, but the man is still kicking ass and taking names (although he is not slapping a white woman in this version). Ben is still the defacto leader of the group and does just as much as Barbara in the film.
The second thing is the makeup is really so much better in this version. Romero had no money to work with so he worked with what he had. Savini has a budget (a small one, but still better than what Romero had) and he uses it to make the dead a lot more gruesome.
You would think that this being a Romero and Savini project that the blood would be flying, but that is not the case. The film was chopped up by the MPAA, resulting in a very tame film that has no bite. Savini says that the film plays better without those shots, but I think that the film plays more like a made for cable feel to it.
That made for cable feel is made all the more clear when you hear the music for the film. It is awful.
The whole time I felt like I was watching another Leprechaun or Children of the Corn film. There is a lot of emphasis on using synthesizers, and that would be fine if it didn’t sound so cheap. There are plenty of scores that use the same tools the composer used here, but those scores are much better than the one found here. It seems so small and cheap.
I can say that I did like a lot of the film, but it seemed very tame to me and know I why. Still, the actors are very good here and they are the driving force for the film. The film falters when the characters do something really stupid and that seems to be a lot. The thing is: the characters were just as dumb in the original. I think it all comes down to that sense of dread that I talked about earlier. It isn’t here and that is a shame because it would have made for a better film than what we have.
THE FILM 7.5 THE PICTURE 9 THE SOUND 8 THE FEATURES 7.5 THE PACKAGING 8.5 Summary Umbrella has been doing a lot good lately. They have given us a nice transfer and the sound is robust. The special features are really nice and contain some interviews that are exclusive to this disc. Don’t pay the high scalper prices when you can get this version, which has more, for less than $20. I would recommend this release to fans of the film, but not outside that group as the film is lacking the dread of the original. 8 Overall Score
CHECK OUT PAGE 2 FOR MORE SCREENCAPS!! BEWARE, THERE MIGHT BE SPOILERS!!
After the trainwreck that was the Twilight Time blu-ray, can Umbrella Entertainment save Night of the Living Dead from being a blu-ray joke?Mexico earthquake: Trapped woman saved by WhatsApp messages as hopes of finding more survivors fade
Posted
Trapped under tons of rubble and in complete darkness, Diana Pacheco's hopes were fading fast for making it out alive from a collapsed office building after a huge earthquake in Mexico City, despite rescuers' frantic attempts to reach her.
Then the trapped woman had a great stroke of luck: a series of short messages she had written and sent to her husband some 16 hours earlier lit up his phone screen.
"My love," the first message read. "The ceiling fell" "We're trapped" "I love you" "I love you a lot" "We're on the fourth floor" "Near the emergency stairway" "There's four of us."
Ms Pacheco's WhatsApp messages finally reached her husband Juan Jesus Garcia on Wednesday at 5:34am.
Garcia, 33, an Uber driver, had been waiting, often in tears, beside the collapsed building all night and immediately ran over to rescue workers.
"It was like a miracle because I was the only one who got the message and since I was there with the rescue workers I talked to them and they could locate her," Mr Garcia said.
The messages on Mr Garcia's phone, seen by Reuters shortly after they were received could have been delayed due to erratic mobile phone coverage in parts of Mexico City after the quake, or the fact that Ms Pacheco's phone signal was blocked by the tons of concrete that kept her trapped in the collapsed building.
When asked whether WhatsApp messages can be delivered hours after they were sent in an area without good phone coverage, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed it was possible.
Ms Pacheco, a recruiter for a human resources and accounting firm, said she sent the messages shortly after the magnitude earthquake struck at 1:14pm on Tuesday.
"Those messages helped them know more or less where we were located," Ms Pacheco said from her hospital bed, her voice weak.
Using the information to pinpoint their location, rescuers freed her and the three other survivors.
Rescue operations were still underway on Friday at the building, where Ms Pacheco said there were 60 people on her floor alone at the time of the quake.
"I think there are people [alive] there because we had oxygen, air was coming in," she said.
Despite having bruises all over her body and wearing a neck brace, Ms Pacheco was generally in good health.
She said she tried to send WhatsApp and text messages to other people from under the building, as well as make phone calls and post on Facebook, but only the messages to her husband got through.
She said when the building fell, the force of two floors above collapsing violently knocked her down, but a wall of concrete stopped just short of crushing her and three of her co-workers.
They found themselves huddled together in a cramped space.
They screamed out every time they heard voices from outside the building.
"We heard them [rescue workers] when they asked us to yell or make noise, but regardless of how much we yelled they couldn't hear us," Ms Pacheco said.
Exhaustion, frustration sets in
The quake, Mexico's deadliest in a generation, has already claimed close to 300 lives.
As the shock of this week began to subside, exhaustion crept in, along with growing discontent.
On Thursday, Mexico's Navy apologised for communicating incorrect information in a story about a girl supposedly trapped under a collapsed school in Mexico City.
A frantic effort had been made to reach the child, dubbed Frida Sofia by local media, but it turned out that the widely-publicised story had been false, leading to anger.
Francisco Ortiz questioned whether attention directed at trying to rescue the phantom girl had diverted resources from other places where they were desperately needed, like the apartment building where his sister, Maria, was trapped beneath debris.
Authorities had waited until Thursday (local time) to begin searching the building. The owner, Juan Salazar, said all the renters had been accounted for before realising that Ortiz's sister Maria, a maid, had been washing clothes on the roof when the quake struck.
Mr Salazar said he called civil protection and also implored passing brigades of rescue workers to help, but it was two days before rescue efforts began.
"It was negligence. Nobody wanted to take responsibility, neither the army nor Civil Protection," Mr Ortiz said. "We are hoping for something good from God."
On Friday afternoon after a full day's search, rescuers pulled Maria's body from the rubble.
Newlyweds spend honeymoon in makeshift shelter
In Mexico City, Jorge Daniel Huitzil and Erika Castillo Aparicio spent their first night as husband and wife sleeping beneath a tarp in a makeshift quake shelter.
They had plans to be married this week in a civil ceremony followed by a church service and a reception. But Tuesday's deadly magnitude-7.1 earthquake turned their world upside down.
Their apartment building was damaged so severely that it is too dangerous to live there, and the young couple wanted to postpone the nuptials.
But then they learned they would lose their slot at city hall — and the 1,019 pesos (about $US60) they had paid to reserve it.
"We were not able to cancel it, so we had our wedding today," a beaming Mr Huitzil said.
Reuters
Topics: earthquake, disasters-and-accidents, mexicoIn a truly touching moment, USC long snapper Jack Olson, who is blind, received a standing ovation from the Trojan faithful during the team's spring game on Saturday.
Olson came in and delivered perfect snaps on two field goal attempts. After the second made field goal, Olson's teammates embraced him and the USC fans in attendance stood up in applause.
Take a look:
"Bling Long Snapper Gets Standing O at Spring Game" via @TeamStream https://t.co/0YyanGWuKu — Jonathan Himebauch (@COACH_HIMEY) April 16, 2016
Kudos to Olson's USC family for showing him their support on Saturday and ever since he walked on the team last season.
Olson, who grew up a huge USC fan, has been blind since he was 12.
ESPN's Shelley Smith chronicled Olson's incredible journey toward becoming a Trojan last September.Steve Ells has stepped down as CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., the company said Wednesday, ending his nearly 25-year tenure at the helm of one of the most revolutionary concepts in restaurant history.
Ells has been named executive chairman, and the company has started a search for a new CEO.
His departure comes as Chipotle struggles to regain its once otherworldly status with consumers following a series of foodborne illness outbreaks in 2015. The company’s unit volumes fell 23 percent in 2016 and have not recovered this year, as many observers expected.
That has cost Chipotle profits and slashed its stock price. The company’s stock, one of the hottest on Wall Street as recently as 2015, when its price peaked at more than $750 per share, fell to below $290 per share by Tuesday.
“I am incredibly proud of Chipotle and our people — and grateful to our loyal customers — and while we are continuing to make progress, it is clear that we need to move faster to make improvements,” Ells said in a statement. “Simply put, we need to execute better to ensure our future success.
“The board and I are committed to bringing in an experienced leader with a passion for driving excellence across every aspect of our business.”
Ells founded the Denver-based chain in 1993. The company received a major investment from McDonald’s in 1998 that helped it grow in subsequent years.
Chipotle was taken public in a 2006 IPO, when its stock doubled from its initial offering price of $22 per share.
Even after recent declines, $1,000 worth of Chipotle’s stock bought at the IPO would be worth nearly $13,000 today. The company eventually became one of the most highly regarded fast-casual chains in the country, with more than 2,300 locations.
Chipotle also led the push toward better sourcing of food products and the use of freshly prepared ingredients.
But efforts to regain customers following the foodborne illness outbreaks have not worked, and Ells said the company would be better off with a different CEO. He will focus on innovation once a successor is named.
“Bringing in a new CEO is the right thing to do for all of our shareholders,” Ells said. “It will allow me to focus on my strengths, which include bringing innovation to the way we source and prepare our food.”
Chipotle’s stock was halted Wednesday morning on the news. The company has retained an executive recruiting firm, Spencer Stuart, to lead the search.
“Steve is a visionary leader and one of the most successful restaurateurs in history,” said Neil W. Flanzraich, Chipotle’s lead independent director, in a statement. “Steve made the decision, and the board agreed, that now is the time to identify a new CEO who can reinvigorate the brand and help the company achieve its potential.”
Contact Jonathan Maze at [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter: @jonathanmazeTank, Pakistan - Naheed Begum, clad from head to toe in a white garment, cuts a reluctant figure in this tiny alley in a congested residential area of the town of Tank, in northwestern Pakistan.
"I was afraid before I started this work. [I] do not feel safe out here, because there is a danger of being killed doing this work," Begum told Al Jazeera. "I do this because I'm desperate. My husband is sick, and there is no one else to earn in the house."
Naheed, 30, is normally a government worker, but on this bright afternoon in Tank, a small rural backwater that is one of the gateways to the tribal areas, she is going door to door on the front lines of one of Pakistan's biggest battles: the war against polio.
RELATED: Polio: Still battling the nearly eradicated disease
Polio (poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious debilitating virus that targets the nervous system of children, causing partial or complete paralysis of their limbs. Since 1988, reported polio cases worldwide have declined by more than 99 percent, but the virus remains endemic in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
Last year, Pakistan had its worst year in more than a decade in terms of polio infections, with at least 306 cases reported, 85.2 percent of the 359 cases worldwide, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
The campaign faces many challenges, but perhaps the most pressing is the matter of continuing threats against polio vaccination teams issued by armed religious groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its allies.
Such groups allege the vaccine is part of a plot to sterilise or infect children, a belief that has been disseminated through many mosques and clerics in Pakistan.
Since July 2012, at least 66 people have been killed in attacks on polio vaccination teams across the country. The latest took place on March 18, when a health worker was killed and another wounded in an attack on a team in the Bajaur tribal area of Pakistan.
A day earlier, gunmen killed two more health workers and a police guard in a similar attack in the town of Mansehra.
'Alarming' situation
Tank, along with neighbouring South Waziristan, is one of the districts worst hit by polio infections, and has been identified by the World Health Organisation as posing serious challenges to national immunisation efforts.
Last year, Tank and South Waziristan accounted for 29 cases of polio - 9.5 percent of the national total - while this year the area has already registered its first case, according to local health authorities.
Tahir Javed, the district health officer for Tank, described the situation as "alarming".
"Tank is a small district, but the geographical and geopolitical situation is such that those areas that are adjacent to FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], it's difficult for our teams to reach them," Javed told Al Jazeera, referring to South Waziristan and other tribal areas that together accounted for 53.2 percent of all polio cases in Pakistan.
"We have a vast shortage of staff [in Tank]. In the whole district, I have perhaps one medical officer, outside of the [main district] hospital," he said, explaining why polio immunisation efforts had suffered.
Polio is a water-borne virus, he explained, and is transmitted to children through the faecal-oral route. This is a particular challenge in a place such as Tank, where locals in the predominantly poor district often drink from the same surface or drainage water that they use for other household purposes.
"When that water flows |
, 0 losses, 16 ties.
#27 "The Scandal"
Shock waves rippled through the football world when it was revealed that Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck had graduated and was forgoing his final year of NCAA eligibility. In response to this grievous offense, the NFL announced disciplinary action in April, sentencing Luck to Career in Indianapolis. "Man, that's harsh," said a convicted serial killer currently on death row. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes." Luck is eligible for parole in five years, depending on unspecified behavior conditions.
Prediction: Misery. Bitterness. Ennui.
#28 Da Raiders
Oakland football fans were somewhat underwhelmed by the passing of owner Al Davis last year. "Really, there's only one angle you can take writing about Al Davis," said one reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But I've got a really nice piece written up for John Madden. I mean, I wish the guy the best and all, but when his time comes, it's going to be a real tear-jerker. Pulitzer Prize stuff."
Prediction: A 48% reduction in gameday violence, as jaded fans just go through the motions to uphold their reputation.
#29 St. Louis Rams
It hurts just to talk about this team. So we won't.
Prediction: Extraterrestrial observers, after years of disinterest in war, disease, and genocide, will finally be moved to pity by the plight of Steven Jackson. He will be transported to a parallel universe and allowed to play for a team that's "merely bad", earning a spot in the Hall of Fame.
#30 Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings were just seven wins away from a playoff berth last year. Christian Ponder's development should bring them another step closer.
Prediction: If Adrian Peterson stays healthy, expect this team to be playing deep into November.
#31 Cincinatti Tigers
They made the playoffs last year. Behind quarterback... um... some guy.
Prediction: They might again.
#32 Atlanta Hawks or Falcons or whatever
They should-- sh-- *yawn* Really, is there anything interesting happening here?
Prediction: *zzzzzzz*Illustration of Christopher Hitchens by Sturt Krygsman
LAST year, just before he was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens published the unexpectedly moving memoir Hitch-22.
"I soon enough realised when young," he revealed in that book, "that I did not have the true'stuff' for [writing] fiction and poetry. And I was very fortunate indeed to have, as contemporaries, several practitioners of those arts who made it obvious to me, without unduly rubbing in the point, that I would be wasting my time if I tried."
As a journalist, Hitchens has done everything with his time except waste it. He has made himself the key writer of the post-9/11 age. No novelist or poet has registered the texture of the past decade as pungently as Hitchens has in the essay form. His sheer blazing willingness to speak his mind, always and forcefully, has made him a lode-star of candour in a time of double-talk and euphemism. No matter how depressing political developments have got, one has always been able to look forward to what Hitchens will have to say about them. Just a few weeks ago, the Tea Party movement's lobotomisation of US politics was almost made worthwhile when it prompted Hitchens to coin the phrase "all politics is yokel". We have recently been forced to imagine what the intellectual world would be like without Hitchens. It is a dire prospect.
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But right now he is still with us and in the finest form of his career. This panoramic and deeply nourishing collection of essays is the thickest and the best that he has put together. Mainly it consists of articles written since his previous collection, which came out in 2004, although a few pieces have been corralled in from earlier dates. The shorter essays offer fiery confirmation, as if any were needed, that Hitchens is still the liveliest polemical writer around. But the weightier pieces (long and considered book reviews, extended dispatches from the world's hellholes and hot spots) remind us that his politics, as spectacular and controversial as they sometimes are, have deep and elaborate roots. It's conventional to say that Hitchens has moved, in the decade since 9/11, from the Left to the Right. Even a cursory reading of this book will prove that view to be simplistic.
Indeed, if we step back and take an overview of his career, it seems doubtful that 9/11 occasioned any substantial turn in his thinking at all. Certainly his forthright analysis of the attacks precipitated his formal break from the Anglo-American Left. But the ideas Hitchens brandished after 9/11 were just sharper versions of ideas he already had. Well before 2001, he was writing with an uncompromising moral frankness that made him a poor fit for any orthodoxy. Yes, he had been a self-declared Trotskyist in his youth; but in his mature writings he has never toed any particular party line.
Consider the trio of book-length polemics he wrote during the five or six years preceding 2001. The targets of these merciless books were Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger. At first glance this looks like a mixed bag of victims. But there was nothing mixed about Hitchens's approach to them: all he did was measure them by the one ethical standard. The Hitchens of those books was no different from the man who so bitterly annoys his enemies today: he was a moralist, and an admirably consistent one. Hitchens is the kind of writer who quite deliberately uses words like evil, and wicked, and shameful, and sinister. He reclaims these words from the religious; he deploys them in a robustly humanist way that maximises their meaning and weight. When Hitchens is standing up for a violated or threatened principle, he can attain a rhetorical white heat that no one else writing today can match.
What places him beyond Left and Right is his readiness to apply his moral anger across the board. Orthodox leftists, and indeed orthodox conservatives, exercise their senses of outrage more selectively. But Hitchens has no time for sniggering relativism. In 1989, when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Hitchens unequivocally took the side of the condemned novelist. He treated the death-dealing holy man with no more respect than he would later extend to Kissinger. If more flexible progressives, such as John le Carre, preferred to discuss the nuances and grey areas of Rushdie's death sentence, we should hesitate to conclude that this made them more enlightened than Hitchens. Perhaps this was Hitchens's first brush with an emerging pseudo-Left, identifiable by its tendency to retreat into sophistry when confronted by the topic of Islamic extremism.
In the immediate wake of 9/11, Hitchens published a series of unforgettable essays, the best of which were reprinted in his 2004 collection Love, Poverty, and War. These short pieces, I am convinced, will go down as classics of American journalism. Like H.L. Mencken at the Scopes monkey trial or Norman Mailer at the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968, Hitchens caught the turbulence of the moment in vividly atmospheric prose. More important, he condemned the perpetrators in language that was consonant with the nature of the offence. While Noam Chomsky and others construed the attacks as a more or less straightforward response to US foreign policy, Hitchens, seasoned by the Rushdie affair, called the hijackers "nihilists... at war with culture as a whole". One of his earliest ripostes to the Chomsky position has stuck in my mind. Noting that September 11 happened to mark the anniversary of the 1973 military coup in Chile -- a CIA-backed enormity that gave democratic Chileans every right to resent the US government -- Hitchens wrote: "I don't know any Chilean participant in this great historical struggle who would not rather have died -- you'll have to excuse the expression -- than commit an outrage against humanity that was even remotely comparable to the atrocities in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania."
What a supremely telling way to define the uniqueness of the 9/11 act. All of Hitchens's virtues as a writer were on display in that sentence. For starters, it let you know exactly where he stood. (It helped, greatly, that he knew exactly where he stood.) To speak of the attacks as an "outrage against humanity" was to use elementary moral language that few writers were ready to use at the time and that some writers are embarrassed to use still. Then you have the phrase "who would not rather have died", a chillingly compact way of evoking the universal, or apparently universal, norms of humanity that the jihadists had so monstrously violated. Behind the language lies Hitchens's experience as a campaigner and on-the-ground journalist: he knows Chilean dissidents personally and the date of Salvador Allende's death is fixed in his head. Above everything else, you have his uncanny skills as an off-the-cuff rhetorician: he can seize the clinching example when it's needed, and throw it down like an unanswerable card.
It was "as if Charles Manson had been made God for a day", Hitchens wrote, just a day after the attacks. Of course one already knew, in one's gut, that the hijackers were no more elevated than that. The evidence of it was ample: the leaping office workers, the slashed throats of the hostesses. But Hitchens's voice cut through the smog; he found words that conformed to the awful evidence in front of your eyes. "By their deeds," he wrote, "shall we know them." When he called the hijackers "theocratic fascists", the phrase caught on. So did his characterisation of bin Ladenism as a "cult of death". He was in the vanguard of the commentariat, saying things no other writer had yet had the guts to say.
It has been suggested that Hitchens overstates the magnitude of the jihadist threat to the West. Hitchens, this argument has it, fancies himself as a modern Orwell; but while Orwell had Hitler and Stalin to write about, Hitchens has been forced to inflate the importance of a bunch of fringe villains who pose no existential threat to Western civilisation. One pauses to wonder if the kind of people who say this would have been quite so ready to endorse Orwell's anti-totalitarianism if they'd been around in the 1930s. One could also note that terrorism poses an existential enough threat to the people it kills and may well be worth combating for that reason alone. But let's leave those objections aside and acknowledge that this line of argument isn't wholly rancid. Reading one or two of Hitchens's more gung-ho essays in isolation, you could just about bring yourself to believe that such critics are on to something.
But this new collection, in which Hitchens's more aggressive stuff is amply footnoted by his more analytical work, leaves their thesis looking pretty exposed. Hitchens devotes many more pages here to the extremists' actual offences against eastern cultures than he does to their potential threat to the West. He travels to Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, whose regime he abhors not because it is an official enemy of the US but because it is an enemy of its own people. He traces the "wretched... counter-evolution" of Pakistan, a place where women can be sentenced to be raped... if even a rumour of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk" and where "moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter".
Nor is Hitchens worried solely about extremists of the Islamic stripe. He travels to Uganda, where the Christian death squads of Joseph Kony employ child soldiers as young as nine. He goes to Venezuela, where the increasingly erratic Hugo Chavez is getting "very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg". In North Korea he sees people drinking from the sewer and notes that the average North Korean is now, because of malnutrition, 15cm shorter than the average South Korean.
In his book reviews, which occupy a good half of this volume, Hitchens frequently has call to revisit the totalitarianism of the past. Reviewing the wartime Diaries of the German Jew Victor Klemperer, he plucks out an "appallingly eloquent" illustration of Nazi cruelty: Klemperer, having been progressively stripped of all his other rights and dignities, is eventually denied the right to own a pet and must send off his beloved cat to be put down. Elsewhere, Hitchens analyses Hitler's increasingly psychopathic conduct near the war's end, by which time he had become a "howling nihilist... [who] didn't care if nobody outlived him". Again the word nihilist: the essays in this book merge into a compelling argument that all the various forms of zealotry, beyond a certain point of madness, begin to resemble one another, no matter what ideology they nominally embody. North Korea, Hitchens agrees, is these days less a communist state than "a phenomenon of the extreme and pathological right". Pathological is no doubt the key word there. Indeed, Hitchens proceeds to call Kim Jong-il's regime a "death cult". Making the same point in the other direction, he detects an early whiff of totalitarianism in the Ten Commandments: the injunction against coveting one's neighbour's property, he says, "is the first but not the last introduction in the Bible of the totalitarian concept of thought crime".
All this adds up to an analysis of totalitarianism that has geographical width and historical depth. And for Hitchens, the West's distance from these horrors is less secure than we might hope: "Everyone has a self-interest in the strivings and sufferings of others because the borders between societies are necessarily porous and contingent and are, when one factors in considerations such as the velocity of modern travel, easy access to weaponry and the spread of disease, becoming ever more so... A failed state may not trouble Americans' sleep, but a rogue one can, and the transition from failed to rogue can be alarmingly abrupt."
That first sentence, it should be said, is written with an uncharacteristic lack of fizz: it tries to pack too much of the Hitchens world-view into too small a space. His prose is at its vigorous best when Hitchens has been riled by some particular case or incident. His essay on the affair of the Danish cartoons is a standout. Its language is impassioned -- he calls the campaign of violence against Danish embassies a "Kristallnacht against Denmark" -- but his passion is marshalled in defence of an imperilled liberty: namely, the freedom to speak openly about religion. "If we have to accept this sickly babble about respect," he says, "we must at least demand that it is fully reciprocal."
That demand provides an important reminder about the nature of Hitchens's atheism. Militant as it sometimes sounds, his campaign against faith-based excess is essentially a defensive project, mounted during a decade when the powerful religions were making various unapologetic attempts to wind back the achievements of secularism -- a decade during which George W. Bush, for example, endorsed the teaching of intelligent design "theory" in US science classrooms. In 2007 Hitchens published God is Not Great, in which he observed that he would happily leave religion alone if only religion would leave him alone. But, he said, it keeps declining to do that. Praising Thomas Jefferson's wall of separation between church and state, Hitchens stresses that even the faithful have an interest in keeping religion out of the political sphere, since "a religiously neutral state is the chief guarantee of religious pluralism".
When Hitchens puts the boot into the Ten Commandments, he doesn't just do it for fun, although he undoubtedly has fun doing it. His object is serious and affirmative: he wants to demonstrate that a rational humanist, far from having no values, can in fact propose a far more moral set of universal commandments than the ten dealt to Moses. Before sketching out his new commandments, though, Hitchens does a cripplingly thorough job of dismantling the old ones. "They show every symptom," he says, "of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. They are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals."
He is just as sceptical when reading texts he nominally likes. In a section called Eclectic Affinities he runs the literary gamut, from Flaubert to J.K. Rowling. Eclectic they certainly are, but his literary affinities are rarely unqualified. Even on the subject of Harry Potter, his eye for the telling argument remains sharp: he praises Rowling for getting kids to read but complains that she "keeps forgetting that things are either magical or they are not: Hermione's family surely can't be any safer from the Dark Lord by moving to Australia, and Hagrid's corporeal bulk cannot make any difference to his ability, or otherwise, to mount a broomstick".
He is also constantly on the lookout for the general moral lesson. Discussing Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, first published in 1941, he calls West "one of those people, necessary in every epoch, who understand that there are things worth fighting for, and dying for, and killing for".
You can see, right there, why some in today's Left resent Hitchens so extravagantly. Such people are comfortable enough telling you what they are against: Bush, Tony Blair, the so-called war on terror. But they're considerably less audible about what aspects of civilised society, if any, they might theoretically be prepared to fight for, let alone kill for. Hitchens, on the other hand, is grown-up enough to acknowledge that history contains unpalatable lessons and he has the moral honesty to try to get to grips with them. He's ready to say that there is such a thing as civilisation, which must be prepared to use violence to defend its way of life against the kind of people for whom violence is a way of life.
Hitchens writes so prolifically, and with such brio, that it would be miraculous if this book didn't exhibit the odd rough edge. There's a certain amount of overlap and repetition. There is the occasional sentence that gets away from him. Some of his purely literary essays lack the crackle of his more committed work: when his prose isn't arranged around some burning moral purpose, it has a tendency not to take fire. A pun-riddled inquiry into the cultural significance of the blowjob proves that whimsy is not his best mode.
If he has a serious vice, it is the flip side of one of his main virtues. He doesn't like to lose an argument. His street-fighting instincts are part of what makes him such an entertaining writer, but occasionally they get the better of him. Even when he's landing good clean scoring punches, he'll sometimes bite off a chunk of his opponent's ear for good measure. In his mature work he has largely curbed this tendency, but there is one essay here in which he conspicuously loses his cool. Reviewing Koba the Dread, by his close friend Martin Amis, Hitchens gets personal in a big way.
Koba the Dread is a semi-autobiographical inquiry into the Left's slowness to acknowledge the full horror of Stalinism. Amis uses Hitchens as a kind of representative figure and makes much of his failure to renounce Trotsky and Lenin.
Hitchens, in his review, accuses Amis of hubris, self-righteousness and superficiality. These are big calls and Hitchens backs them up with some solid arguments. He demonstrates his superior knowledge of the terrain; he lists key books Amis hasn't read. If he'd rested his case there, it would have been sound enough. But he goes on to "set down a judgment I would once have thought unutterable": he accuses Amis of a "want of wit" that "compromises his seriousness".
Since Hitchens considers this charge so grave, it is worth examining the grounds on which he makes it. One of his beefs concerns an episode in Amis's book in which Hitchens, appearing at a debate in a London hall, jokes about earlier evenings he has spent there with "many 'an old comrade' ". The audience laughs and Amis wonders why. How can people laugh about a creed responsible for the deaths of 20 million people? After all, nobody would have laughed if Hitchens had said "many an 'old blackshirt' ". But Hitchens, in his review, lambasts Amis for having missed something crucial about the laughter's nature: "The laughter in that hall was resigned laughter that'sees' a poor jest, and recognises the fellow sufferer."
The second proof of Amis's "want of wit", says Hitchens, comes in some anecdotes that are "too obviously designed to place himself in a good light". These anecdotes recount a series of Stalin-related grillings that Amis, during the 1970s, gave Hitchens and poet James Fenton, who was also
a Trotskyist at the time. Again Hitchens suggests that Amis has missed something about the true tone or nature of these conversations: Amis's questions, he says, "are... plainly wife-beating questions, and the answers... clearly intended to pacify the aggressor by offering a mocking agreement."
Flip open a copy of Koba the Dread, though, and check how damaging these charges really are. To take the second point first, Amis explicitly says that his arguments with Fenton and Hitchens were only "semi-serious": "These exchanges took place in a spirit of humorous appraisal, mutual appraisal." Furthermore, the comebacks he quotes from Hitchens are decidedly funny. You don't need Hitchens's review to tell you they were mocking or ironic. Amis, in his book, doesn't pretend they were anything else. Nor do these exchanges show Amis in an especially good light. Few people reading them would disagree with the verdict, offered pre-emptively by Amis himself, that "my contributions were often callous as well as callow".
Nor does Hitchens's point about the laughter in the hall seem all that telling. The subtitle of Amis's book is Laughter and the Twenty Million, and one of his central lines of inquiry is the question of why, despite that horrendous death toll, "you could always joke about the USSR" in a way you couldn't joke about Nazi Germany. In the context of that argument, Hitchens's quibble about the nature of the laughter in the hall seems a touch irrelevant. It was still laughter and it still revolved around the word comrade. Amis, by the way, admits that he laughed, too. He doesn't exempt himself from the investigation.
Hitchens, especially when his blood is up, is capable of advancing poor arguments along with good ones. But we wouldn't want to be without his readiness to get personally involved. For Hitchens, the life and the work are thoroughly intertwined. His famous essay on waterboarding is here: the one in which he researched that procedure by volunteering to undergo it himself. Believe Me, It's Torture runs the title of his essay. In Vietnam he visits a hospital for victims of Agent Orange and emerges with almost unbearably vivid descriptions of the malformed children inside. "One should not run out of vocabulary to the point where one calls a child a monster," he writes, "but the temptation is there." It's a rare writer who can strike a note like that and also, at the other end of the register, make you laugh out loud. Ripping into waiters who top up your wine while you're trying to talk, Hitchens is brilliant. His famously close-to-the-wind piece Why Women Aren't Funny is here too. "Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about," he says in that essay: a phrase that would have made an apt title for the whole book, if an unfeasibly long one.
Writing in praise of Karl Marx's journalism, Hitchens compiles a list of the great writer-reporters -- Zola, Dickens, Twain, Orwell -- and wishes that the word " 'journalist' might be made to lose its association with the trivial and the evanescent". Hitchens has helped that to happen, and we can now safely enrol him among those great names. "Ours is a useful trade," Twain wrote in 1888: "With all its lightness and frivolity it has one serious purpose, one aim, one specialty, and it is constant to it -- the deriding of shams, the exposure of pretentious falsities, the laughing of stupid superstitions out of existence... Whoso is by instinct engaged in this sort of warfare is the natural enemy of royalties, nobilities, privileges and all kindred swindles, and the natural friend of human rights and human liberties."
Railing against the death cults, Hitchens has stood unapologetically for life. If he hasn't laughed superstition out of existence yet, that isn't for lack of trying. It would be a sad day for literature if his campaign were to end prematurely. But even if it does, we already know that his laughter and his derision will endure.
Arguably
By Christopher Hitchens
Allen & Unwin, 788pp, $32.99
* * *
HIS LIFE AND TIMES
1949: Born in Portsmouth, England.
Born in Portsmouth, England. 1967-70: Studies at Oxford, where he gains notoriety as a Trotskyist agitator and formidable debater.
Studies at Oxford, where he gains notoriety as a Trotskyist agitator and formidable debater. 1973: Begins work at The New Statesman, where his colleagues include Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and James Fenton.
Begins work at The New Statesman, where his colleagues include Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and James Fenton. 1981: Migrates to the US.
Migrates to the US. 1982: Becomes Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine.
Becomes Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine. 1995: PublishesThe Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.
PublishesThe Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. 1999: Publishes No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton.
Publishes No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. b Publishes The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
2002: Leaves The Nation after vocally supporting the invasion of Iraq.
Leaves The Nation after vocally supporting the invasion of Iraq. 2004: Publishes Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays.
Publishes Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays. 2007: Becomes a US citizen. Publishes God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
Becomes a US citizen. Publishes God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. 2010: Publishes Hitch-22: A Memoir. Is diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.From subsistence to a defensive existence, now brimming into offence, the Hindu identity has devolved with the passage of time. Unlike many other modern religions of the world which relied on conversion and expansion, the Hindu identity was passed on from generation to generation inside a bounded geographical nook of the world, i.e. the Indian subcontinent. Its people followed it, adapted it across generations, geographies, et al. Yet now a certain section of Hindus feel the need to doggedly advertise and thrust their version of Hinduism on the world.
A few months back, the Haryana government decided setting aside a generous cash purse for the ‘Gau Seva Aayog’ and providing ID cards to ‘gau rakshaks’. Vigilante outfits are forcing people to convert to Hinduism in the name of ‘Ghar Wapasi’, destroying film sets and murdering people for ‘disrespecting’ Hindu values; offensive religion specific text and imagery is being circulated on the unregulated social media during every national event of consequence. The recent vandalism in Saharanpur and Fatehpur Sikri police stations, death of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan and moral policing by anti-Romeo squads are disturbing trends where matters personal and domestic are up for moral censorship. The surge in such imprudent incidents is taking away the credibility of the rich history of Hinduism as well as the development initiatives of the BJP governments. It should set the alarm bells ringing amongst not just the so called ‘leftists’ but the restful Hindu world at large. What happens if these moral guardians find fault with the way we pray, celebrate, revere, dress, eat and even the way we conjugate! Pray tell, which Hindu text lays out these guidelines? What belies this sudden stiffness and self promotion? Is it mere insecurity or an identity crisis? What has changed in the past decade?
In today’s world of Whatsapp and virtual reality, lives an overexposed generation OD’ing on hyper-consumerism; it was never a part of a decent revolution. The world is replete with a rising population, shrinking jobs, uncertain markets and unspent emotion. People, all over the world, are looking for something to attach their passions and frustrations to. This phenomenon has led to the resurgent trends of right wing idealism globally; from the rise of the Islamic State to Brexit to Trump’s presidency to the ‘Narendra Modi’ wave in India to the recent Uttar Pradesh elections. People want to separate their black and white, with little room for all things grey. There is a yearning for an informed identity, both at a national as well as religious level, amongst the IBCD’s (Indian Born Confused Desi’s). An increasing number of highly qualified, technologically savvy youth is endorsing this brand of Hindutva, a trend similar to that seen in Islamist extremism during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Also, Indologists like David Frawley and Koenraad Elst, journalist Francois Gautier and Pakistan-born Canadian Tarek Fatah are validating the Hindutva version of nationalism, on matters like cow protection, triple talaq and the Ram Mandir.
The Hindu religion was not born a quantifiable number of years ago and it does not follow a fixed set of rules or teachings. The myriad rituals differ from every region to the next. Next generation Hindus have seldom questioned the previous one about the good or the bad of their religion, be it the diversity or the rigid caste system. For most, it was a way of life to be followed and imbibed, in their own little corner, not an accessory to be advertised. Outside of the subcontinent, there has always been an aura of mysticism and confusion around Hinduism, sometimes aided by blatant misinformation. There is no single book which you can read and learn the Hindu way of life. In the world of media favorite socialists, industry spewing capitalists, retail hyped Christmas and chest thumping Islamic State, the lack of cohesiveness in their religion confuses modern Hindus, who are seeking answers to their collective identity. It is this section which has become soft target, even unwillingly and unwittingly at times, for the misinformed myopic preaching of select self declared guardians of ‘Hindutva’. The Hindu religion still puzzles scholars after having studied infinite volumes of scriptures and the innumerable customs across castes and regions. Alas, vigilantes claim that a religion, as vast and complex as Hinduism, is contained only within a few of their tenets and teachings!
Another trend in the recent past has been the hardened, almost rigid, positioning of the so called ‘liberals’, which is both interesting and disturbing at the same time. Instead of pushing for dialogue and debate, the new set of ‘liberals’ have also adopted all things that irk Hindus as their holy grail. In a society where every win counts, the liberals are looking for their own place in the sun and battling their own insecurities of becoming irrelevant. This has led to the ‘liberal’ section in India becoming almost as rigid, if not more, as the right and the left wings. The more liberal left inclined academia and media has always been uncomfortable with attaching itself to even the slightest symbol of a majority religion, especially in India; the reason of which has probably more to do with the religion’s ‘majority’ tag than the ‘Hindu’ identity. Also, Hinduism being an ancient and complex religion has somehow translated into it being ‘backward’ in the eyes of the educated elite of its own, its rich history notwithstanding.
The lack of even one modern eminent role model, comfortable and confident of one’s religious identity, for the longest time has given birth to long standing awkwardness and frustration amongst the Hindu people. Like seasoned stock brokers timing the stock market correctly, a certain political mileage craving section of Hindus has scored the opportunity to fill this vacuum with their brand of ‘Hindutva’. Like any successful brand, they are manufacturing a need, in this case insecurity in the face of a fabricated existential threat, and then feeding off it.
From taking pride in its pre-civilization beginnings, to literally drawing out swords for cow vigilantism, the modern Hindu is in a deep paradox. The religion has its roots in the worship of mother goddess and nature. There is enough evidence that the Hindus revered the natural life cycle and were natural hunters; a section may have ventured towards vegetarianism as Hinduism assimilated characteristics of regions and religions it came in contact with. With passage of time, we moved from nature worship to idol worship. We moved from nature to class to caste to Arya Samaj. Who decides which version of Hinduism is the correct version, a vigilante outfit or a political party? Why do we have to choose? In absence of baptism or circumcision, do we have to be branded by fake Hindutva vigilantes and political parties to gain our passport to being a legitimate Hindu?Sixers seem to be going all in on small ball without Joel Embiid
Sixers seem to be going all in on small ball without Joel Embiid by George Kondoleon
Starting Five, Shirley Temples, Ben Simmons, A Complete Roster, and a romance with the bench. Follow these 5 storylines for the 2017 Philadelphia 76ers.
The 2017 Philadelphia 76ers are going to be endlessly fun to watch, talk about, and critique. There is an undeniable amount of potential with this young roster, and with that, some exciting storylines.
Here are 5 storylines to watch as the season approaches.
1) The Starting Lineup
Now that Brett Brown has named his starting roster for the 2017 season, we can finally start dreaming about what schemes he may draw up. Fultz, Redick, Covington, Simmons, and Embiid should prove to be one of the most interesting lineups in the entire league. Brown also reiterated that Simmons will be playing as the primary ball handler while on offense, hopefully putting to rest the tiresome debate that has raged on this entire offseason.
2) The Shirley Temple
Joel Embiid hasn’t been medically cleared for five-on-five action. However, Bryan Colangelo has said that the team is simply exercising an abundance of caution and that there is no reason to believe that Embiid won’t be ready to play when the time comes.
One of the most talked about storylines this season will be Embiid’s health. We’ll know more soon as training camp starts next week and the season kicks off in less than a month.
Want your voice heard? Join the Doc Octagon team! Write for us!
3) Ben Simmons
The highlights have trickled in this offseason – workouts, draining threes, acrobatic dunks. However, there were some great performances this summer league that have since dominated the rookie hype discussions. That said, Simmons is only a year removed from being the most highly touted prospect since Blake Griffin, and it won’t take long for fans to be reminded why.
4) The Gangs All Here
Brett Brown finally has a team. The question now is what will he do with it? Last season, Brown showed us that he can draw up the game-closing plays, make the most of the young talent, and even navigate the murky waters of a backlog at center. The 2017 campaign will give Brown a chance to coach a complete team while giving fans a chance to fairly and accurately judge their coach.
5) Old Loves
The Sixers have a unique competitive advantage over most of the Eastern Conference; our bench unit played starter minutes for the bulk of last season. Will this experience against 1st team lineups set our bench up for success against backups, or will we realize that we all fell in love and are overrating the likes of TJ, TLC, Holmes, and Stauskas?Detours to avoid restrictions released
05.19.2014
Armed soldiers patrol the Pudong International Airport yesterday. As the summit approaches, security at airports and on the coast is at the highest level with round-the-clock patrols.
Police have released a list of detours to advise motorists how to avoid streets with traffic restrictions during this week’s regional Asian summit.
For drivers who want to get to the Bund, the G15 Shenhai Expressway, Jiaming Expressway, S20 Outer Ring Road and the ramp to Zhongchun Road should be used because the Yan’an Elevated Road will be restricted to traffic.
Police also said the Shenhai and Jiaming expressways should be used to avoid heavy traffic on the Outer Ring Road.
Motorists were also advised to avoid the Yan’an Road E. Tunnel and use other cross-river routes such as Yangpu Bridge.
Meanwhile, more than 100 bus routes in the city will be affected tomorrow and on Wednesday due to the traffic restrictions in place for the summit.
During the summit, buses will shorten routes, make detours or services will be suspended altogether in areas such as People’s Square, Pudong’s Lujiazui, Yan’an Elevated Road and Yan’an Road Tunnel, said officials.
Restrictions at the Yan’an Road Tunnel will see airport bus services make detours.
Services affected include the Airport No. 5 service, between Pudong International Airport and Shanghai Railway Station, and Airport Night Shuttle Bus, operating between Pudong International Airport and the Hongqiao airport after 11pm.Correction appended.
Call it climate-lite.
The renewable electricity standard introduced in the Senate yesterday is a key element in most sprawling measures to address climate change. It's designed to rev up renewable electricity -- 15 percent by 2021, including efficiency -- resulting in less fossil fuel use and fewer emissions. That would help utilities cut their carbon output to comply with an emissions cap -- if Congress ever enacts one.
Yet the bill offered by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and |
in 2004, it was decided that O'Brien would take over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in 2009.[8] O'Brien was a guest on Jay Leno's final episode of The Tonight Show. On June 1, 2009, Will Ferrell became Conan's first Tonight Show guest on the couch and Pearl Jam appeared as his first musical guest.[57]
Conan acquired the nickname "Coco" after its use in the first "Twitter Tracker" sketch during the second episode of his Tonight Show run.[58] Guest Tom Hanks used the nickname during his subsequent interview, even getting the audience to chant it. In reaction to the moniker, Conan remarked to Hanks in jest, "If that catches on, I'll sue you."[59][60]
During the taping of the Friday, September 25, 2009, episode of The Tonight Show, O'Brien suffered from a mild concussion after he slipped and hit his head while running a race as part of a comedy sketch with guest Teri Hatcher. He was examined at a hospital and released the same day. A rerun was aired that night, but O'Brien returned to work the following Monday and poked fun at the incident.[61][62]
By January 2010, O'Brien's ratings for The Tonight Show were much lower than they had been when the show was hosted by Jay Leno. On January 7, 2010, NBC executive Jeff Zucker met with Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien to discuss how to move Leno out of prime time, where his ratings were lackluster, and back into late night. It was proposed that O'Brien would remain as host of The Tonight Show, which would run at 12:05 am with Leno hosting a 30-minute show at 11:35 pm[63] Three days later, NBC Universal Television Entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin confirmed that The Jay Leno Show would be moved to 11:35 pm following NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics.[64]
Every comedian, every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and—for seven months—I got to do it. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second [of it].... All I ask is one thing, and I'm asking this particularly of young people that watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism; for the record it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. —Conan O'Brien, on his departure from The Tonight Show, January 22, 2010[65]
Sources familiar with the situation told the New York Post that O'Brien was unhappy with NBC's plan.[66] On January 12, O'Brien released this statement: "I sincerely believe that delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't The Tonight Show."[67][68] On January 21, 2010, it was announced that Conan had reached a deal with NBC that would see him exit The Tonight Show the next day. The deal also granted him $45 million, of which $12 million was designated for distribution to his staff, who had moved with Conan to Los Angeles from New York when he left Late Night.
The final Tonight Show with Conan aired January 22, 2010, and featured guests Tom Hanks, Steve Carell (who did an exit interview and shredded Conan's ID badge), Neil Young (singing "Long May You Run"), and Will Ferrell. For Ferrell's appearance, Conan played guitar with the band and Ferrell sang "Free Bird" while reprising his SNL cowbell. Ferrell's wife, Viveca Paulin, together with Ben Harper, Beck, and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, also joined the band for this final performance.[69]
Jay Leno returned to The Tonight Show following NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Under the $45 million deal with NBC, Conan was allowed to start working for another network as soon as September 2010.[70][71][72] Conan's rumored next networks ranged from Fox[73] to Comedy Central.[74][75] Other networks reportedly interested in O'Brien included TNT, HBO, FX, Showtime, Revision3,[76] and even the NBC Universal–owned USA Network.[77]
Television hiatus
On February 8, 2010, it was reported that O'Brien was attempting to sell his Central Park West penthouse in New York with an asking price of $35 million.[78] He had purchased the apartment in 2007 for $10 million.[78] Two years earlier, O'Brien had purchased a home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles for over $10.5 million.[79] Some industry insiders have speculated that O'Brien had chosen to stay on the west coast in order to facilitate a return to late night television[78] and because he did not want to put his children through another move.[80]
On February 24, 2010, O'Brien attracted media attention for starting a Twitter account.[81][82] His tweets, although primarily jokes, amounted to his first public statements since leaving The Tonight Show one month earlier. After about one hour, O'Brien's subscriber list had rocketed to over 30,000 members, and approximately 30 minutes later he was on the brink of passing 50,000 followers, already 20,000 more than the verified @jayleno account.[86] After 24 hours, O'Brien had well over 300,000 followers. In late May 2010, he surpassed the one million mark for number of Twitter followers, and as of June 2018 he has over twenty nine million followers.[88]
O'Brien has been named to the 2010 Time 100, a list compiled by TIME of the 100 most influential people in the world as voted on by readers.[89] After being prohibited from making television appearances of any kind until May, O'Brien spoke about the Tonight Show conflict on the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes on May 2, 2010.[90] During the interview with Steve Kroft, O'Brien said the situation felt "like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened." He also said he "absolutely" expected NBC to give him more of a chance and that, if in Jay Leno's position, he would not have come back to The Tonight Show. However, Conan said he did not feel he got shafted. "It's crucial to me that anyone seeing this, if they take anything away from this, it's I'm fine. I'm doing great," said O'Brien. "I hope people still find me comedically absurd and ridiculous. And I don't regret anything."[91]
On March 11, 2010, O'Brien announced via his Twitter account that he would embark on a 30-city live tour beginning April 12, 2010, entitled "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour".[92][93] Co-host Andy Richter, along with members of the former Tonight Show Band, joined O'Brien on the tour.[94] Max Weinberg, however, was not able to join,[95] except for a guest appearance at one of Conan's New York City shows.
On April 12, 2010, O'Brien opened his two-month comedy tour in Eugene, Oregon, with a crowd of 2,500 and no TV cameras. The tour traveled through America's Northwest and Canada before moving on to larger cities, including Los Angeles and New York City, where he performed on the campuses that house both of the NBC-owned studios he formerly occupied. The tour ended in Atlanta on June 14.
Conan (2010–present)
The day his live tour began, O'Brien announced that he would host a new show on cable station TBS.[2] The show, named Conan, debuted on November 8, 2010,[96] and airs Monday through Thursday at 11:00 pm ET/10:00 pm CT. O'Brien's addition moved Lopez Tonight with George Lopez back one hour.[3] Refusing at first to do to Lopez what had happened to him at NBC, O'Brien agreed to join the network after Lopez called to persuade him to come to TBS.[97]
In February 2015, following the onset of the Cuban Thaw, O'Brien became the first American television personality to film in Cuba for more than half a century.[98] Conan O'Brien then visited Armenia.[99] In April 2016, O'Brien visited South Korea in response to a fan letter urging him to visit, as well as a growing fan base online. His visit included a trip to the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which resulted in O'Brien and Steven Yeun to also visit North Korea on a technicality by stepping across the border line at the DMZ. Conan commented on the significance during the sketch, claiming, "The idea that you and I could be in North Korea, talking and communicating freely, seems like kind of a cool message."[100]
TBS extended the show through 2018 in 2014[101] and through 2022 in 2017.[102]
In the fall of 2018, Conan took a hiatus while O'Brien launched another national comedy tour. The show returned January 22, 2019, in a new half-hour format without the live band.[103]
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (2018–present)
In 2018, O'Brien's production company, TeamCoco, partnered with Earwolf to launch his own weekly podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. The podcast debuted November 18, 2018, with Will Ferrell as the first guest.[103] The title of the podcast refers to the premise that O'Brien is lonely and is thus inviting people onto the show to see if they could be his actual friend. The podcast has received strong reviews and is the top podcast on iTunes.[104][105]
Television producer
O'Brien was executive producer and co-wrote the pilot of the 2007 NBC adventure/comedy series Andy Barker, P.I., starring O'Brien's sidekick Andy Richter. After six episodes and low ratings, the show was canceled despite being named one of the Top Ten Shows of 2007 by Entertainment Weekly.[106] Later, USA Network handed out a 90-minute, cast-contingent pilot order to the medical-themed Operating Instructions from O'Brien's production banner; O'Brien served as an executive producer through his Conaco label.[107] In January 2010 NBC ordered two pilots from Conaco, the one-hour courtroom drama Outlaw and a half-hour comedy.[108] Outlaw was produced in eight episodes and premiered on September 15, 2010.[109]
Voice work
O'Brien's first guest appearance after beginning his late-night career was playing himself in the season five Simpsons episode "Bart Gets Famous", interviewing Bart Simpson during his rise to fame as a catchphrase comedian. In 1999, O'Brien made an appearance on Futurama in the second-season episode "Xmas Story". O'Brien played himself as a head in a jar and still alive in the year 3000.[110]
O'Brien has made multiple voice appearances on the Adult Swim series Robot Chicken, including the specials Robot Chicken: Star Wars and Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II.[111]
Other voice work performed by O'Brien has included the voice of Robert Todd Lincoln in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell,[112] the voice of talk show host Dave Endochrine in the 2013 DC Universe animated original movie Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Part 2), and the voice of the character Kuchikukan in the "Operation: Lunacorn Apocalypse" episode of Nickelodeon's The Penguins of Madagascar.[113]
Guest appearances
On the TV show 30 Rock, O'Brien is depicted as an ex-boyfriend of lead character Liz Lemon, who works in the same building. In the episode "Tracy Does Conan", Conan appears as himself, awkwardly reunited with Lemon and coerced by network executive Jack Donaghy into having the character Tracy Jordan on Late Night, despite having been assaulted in Jordan's previous appearance.[114] O'Brien also made a cameo appearance on the U.S. version of The Office. In the episode "Valentine's Day", Michael believes that he spots former SNL cast member, Tina Fey, but has actually mistaken another woman for her. In the meantime, Conan has a quick walk-on and the camera crew informs Michael, when he returns from talking to the Tina Fey lookalike.[115] In 2011, he starred as himself in the web series Web Therapy (opposite Lisa Kudrow) for three episodes.
Hosting duties
O'Brien has hosted several awards shows and television specials. O'Brien hosted the 54th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2002 and the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006, to critical acclaim.[116] O'Brien also hosted the 2014 MTV Movie Awards.[117]
Since 2011, O'Brien has hosted the Christmas in Washington special for TBS' sister network, TNT, featuring celebrity performances and a special appearance by the Obama family.[118]
Conan has served as the master of ceremonies for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C. twice, in 1995 and 2013.
Influences
O'Brien lists among his comedic influences David Letterman, Peter Sellers,[119] Sid Caesar,[120] Warner Bros. Cartoons,[121] Johnny Carson,[122] Ernie Kovacs,[123] Bob Hope,[124] and Woody Allen.[125] In turn, actors and comedians who claim O'Brien as an influence include Mindy Kaling,[126] Pete Holmes,[127] and James Corden.[128]
On Late Night, O'Brien became known for his active and spontaneous hosting style,[8] which has been characterized as "awkward, self-deprecating humor".[129]
Personal life
O'Brien with his wife Liza in 2007
O'Brien met Elizabeth Ann 'Liza' Powel in 2000, when she appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in an advertising skit[130] involving Foote, Cone & Belding, where she worked as senior copywriter.[131] The couple dated for nearly 18 months before their 2002 marriage in Powel's hometown of Seattle. O'Brien and Powel have a daughter, Neve (born 2003)[132] and a son, Beckett (born 2005).[133] O'Brien often affirms his Irish Catholic heritage on his show. On a 2009 episode of Inside the Actors Studio, he stated that ancestors from both sides of his family moved to America from Ireland starting in the 1850s, subsequently marrying only other Irish Catholics, and that his lineage is thus 100% Irish Catholic.[8]
He has been a staunch Democrat since casting his first vote for President in 1984 for Walter Mondale. He considers himself a moderate on the political spectrum.[8] O'Brien founded the anti hunger organization Labels Are For Jars with his friend and former Harvard dormmate Father Paul B. O' Brien.[134] He also helped open the Cor Unum meal center in 2006.[135]
In January 2008, after his show was put on hold for two months owing to the strike by the Writers Guild of America, he reemerged on late-night TV sporting a beard, which guest Tom Brokaw described as making him look like "a draft dodger from the Civil War." After leaving The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in 2010, O'Brien again grew a beard, which he kept until May 2011, when it was partially shaved on the set of Conan by Will Ferrell (and completely shaved off-screen by a professional barber).[136]
O'Brien purchased a $10.5-million mansion in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, to prepare for his move there in 2009 from New York City to host The Tonight Show at Universal Studios Hollywood.[137] As part of a long-running gag, he brought his 1992 Ford Taurus SHO with him to California, showcasing it on both the inaugural episodes of The Tonight Show and Conan.
On June 12, 2011, O'Brien gave a commencement address to the class of 2011 at Dartmouth College.
On October 21, 2011, O'Brien was ordained as a minister by the Universal Life Church Monastery,[138][139] allowing him to perform a same-sex marriage while back in New York, then one of the few states in the US where gay marriage was legal, to tape a week's worth of shows. The wedding, between a member of O'Brien's staff and his partner, was held on the stage of the Beacon Theatre on November 3, 2011, and broadcast on Conan.[140]
Victim of stalking
Starting in September 2006, O'Brien was stalked by Father David Ajemian of the Archdiocese of Boston, who, despite multiple warnings to stop, sent O'Brien letters signed as "your priest stalker" and came into contact with O'Brien's parents. O'Brien and Ajemian had attended Harvard University at the same time. Frustrated that he had been denied a spot in the Late Night audience, Ajemian sent a letter to O'Brien stating that he flew to New York "in the dimming hope that you might finally acknowledge me." He stated in another letter, "Is this the way you treat your most dangerous fans??? You owe me big time, pal." In another letter, Ajemian seemed to make a death threat, saying, "Remember Frank Costello once dodged a bullet in your building and so can you."[141]
Ajemian then tried to forcefully enter a taping of Late Night but was caught and arrested. He was previously warned by the NBC security team to stay away from the studio. After a psychological evaluation, he was deemed fit to stand trial. He was bailed out of jail.[142] He was then reported missing by his father on November 10, 2007. He was found and underwent evaluation at a hospital. He was again found fit to stand trial on April 4, 2008. On April 8, Ajemian pleaded guilty to stalking, stating that he "never meant to cause anxiety or to upset anyone." He was ordered to pay a $95 court charge and to sign a two-year restraining order barring him from coming near O'Brien.[143] Ajemian was later defrocked.[144][145]
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Year Video game Voice role 2012 Halo 4 Soldier # 1 2014 Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Himself
Music videosNotes on a map written with a felt-tip pen by Michael Collins while in orbit around the Moon
Several instruments have been used to write in outer space, including different types of pencils and pens. Some of them have been unmodified versions of conventional writing instruments; others have been invented specifically to counter the problems with writing in space conditions.
A common urban legend states that, faced with the fact that ball-point pens would not write in zero-gravity, NASA spent a large amount of money to develop a pen that would write in the conditions experienced during spaceflight (the result purportedly being the Fisher Space Pen), while the Soviet Union took the simpler and cheaper route of just using pencils. The Fisher Space Pen was developed independently by a private organization in the 1960s.[1][2][3]
Mission requirements [ edit ]
Space versus ground recordkeeping presents several serious issues:
Contamination control [ edit ]
As with submarines before them, space capsules are closed environments, subject to strict contamination requirements. Incoming material is screened for mission threats. Any shedding, including wood, graphite, and ink vapors and droplets, may become a risk. In the case of a manned capsule, the much smaller recirculating volume, combined with microgravity and an even greater difficulty of resupply, make these requirements even more critical.
Release of wood shavings, graphite dust, broken graphite tips, and ink compounds are a dangerous flight hazard. Lack of gravity makes objects drift, even with air filtration. Any conductive material is a threat to electronics, including the electromechanical switches in use during early manned space programs. Nonconductive particles may also hamper switch contacts, such as normally-open and rotary mechanisms. Drifting particles are a threat to the eyes (and to a lesser extent an inhalation threat), which may risk execution of a critical procedure. Personnel may don protective gear, but both ground and flight crews are more comfortable and more productive "in shirtsleeves". Paul C. Fisher of Fisher Pen Company recounts that pencils were 'too dangerous to use in space'.[4]
Even before the Apollo 1 fire, the CM crew cabin was reviewed for hazardous materials such as paper, velcro, and even low-temperature plastics. A directive was issued but poorly enforced. When combined with high oxygen content, the Apollo 1 cabin burned within seconds, killing all three crew members.
Cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev flew with Space Pens starting in the '80s and states "pencil lead breaks...and is not good in space capsule; very dangerous to have metal lead particles in zero gravity".[5]
Mission assurance and quality records [ edit ]
Strict documentation requirements accompany anything as complex as a large-scale aerospace demonstration, let alone a manned spaceflight. Quality assurance records document individual parts, and instances of procedures, for deviances. Low production and flight rates generally result in high variance; most spacecraft designs (to say nothing of individual spacecraft) fly so infrequently that they are considered experimental aircraft. When combined with the stringent weight drivers of orbital and deep-space flight, the quality-control demands are high. Change control records track the evolution of hardware and procedures from their ground testing, initial flights, through necessary corrections and midlife revision and upgrades, and on to retention of engineering knowledge for later programs, and any incident investigations.
When the flight also has scientific or engineering science objectives, low-quality data may affect mission success directly.
Faced with these requirements, pencils or other non-permanent recordkeeping methods are unsatisfactory. The act of taking permanent, high-integrity documentation itself deters kludges, workarounds, and "go fever". The Apollo 1 investigation uncovered procedural and workmanship deficiencies in multiple areas, up to procedures on the pad.
Pressure and temperature [ edit ]
At sea level, temperature is moderated by the thick atmosphere. As air pressure falls, temperatures can swing more dramatically. Many early manned missions operated at below standard pressure, to decrease the stresses (and thus, mass) of their capsules. Many did not have separate airlocks, instead exposing the entire cabin to hard vacuum at times. Low pressures also exacerbate contamination issues, as substances acceptable at standard conditions may begin outgassing at lower pressures or higher temperatures. While the Soyuz spacecraft had a 14.7 psi (101 kPa) design pressure, and could use its orbital module as an airlock, the orbital module would be deleted for planned lunar missions. In any case, a pen which was insensitive to pressure and temperature would eliminate the issue (including accidental depressurizations), provide a margin, and allow the ability to record during extravehicular activities.
Pre-existing writing instruments [ edit ]
The wood pencil has been used for writing by NASA and Soviet space programs from the start. It is simple with no moving parts, except for the sharpener. However, wood, graphite, and rubber (in the eraser) are all combustible and create dust. Graphite, in particular, both burns and produces dust that conducts electricity.
The mechanical pencil has been used by NASA starting in the 1960s Gemini program. It can be made to be as wide as the width of astronauts' gloves, yet maintain its light weight. There are no wooden components which might catch fire and create dust. However, the pencil lead still creates graphite dust that conducts electricity.
Grease pencils on plastic slates were used by the Soviet space program as an early substitute for wood pencils. It is simple with no moving parts. The paper shroud is peeled back when needed. The disadvantage is that the paper wrapper has to be disposed of. Writing done with the grease pencil is also not as durable as ink on paper.
Ballpoint pens have been used by Soviet and then Russian space programs as a substitute for grease pencils as well as NASA and ESA. The pens are cheap, use paper (which is easily available), and writing done using pen is more permanent than that done with graphite pencils and grease pencils, which makes the ball point pen more suitable for log books and scientific note books. However, the ink is indelible, and depending on composition is subject to outgassing and temperature variations.
Felt-tip pens were used by NASA astronauts in the Apollo missions. However, wick-based instruments are designed around low viscosity, and thus operating temperature and pressure.
Writing instruments specifically intended for space writing [ edit ]
The Fisher Space Pen is a gas-charged ball point pen that is rugged and works in a wider variety of conditions, such as zero gravity, vacuum and extreme temperatures. Its thixotropic ink and vent-free cartridge release no significant vapor at common temperatures and low pressures. The ink is forced out by compressed nitrogen at a pressure of nearly 35 psi (240 kPa), and it functions at altitudes up to 12,500 feet (3800 m) and at temperatures from −30 to 250 °F (−35 to 120 °C). However, it is more expensive than the aforementioned alternatives. It has been used by both NASA and Soviet/Russian astronauts on Apollo, Shuttle, Mir,[6] and ISS missions.The IPA is part of the same apparatus as the Liberal Party and receives favourable treatment and access at every level of Government. (Image via realnewsaustralia.com)
Why do corporate lobby groups like the IPA and fossil fuel front organisations like the Waubra Foundation retain 'deductible gift recipient' status, while genuine environmental charities like the Australian Conservation Foundation face having theirs stripped away by the Abbott Government. Sandi Keane investigates.
FOR AN ORGANISATION that has been touting 'low taxes' for sixty years, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) sure delivers big on tax benefits to its major donors, especially Big Mining — which is already heavily subsidised by Australia’s taxpayers (note graphic below right).
Some, like Glencore, not only enjoy such subsidies but have no qualms about paying zero tax. These are the true “leaners” we tax-payers have to “lift”, as this article will show.
If your product (such as coal and tobacco) results in harm to man, beast and/or planet, why risk being mauled by the mob when you can hire a pressure group like the IPA to fudge the facts? Furthermore, your donation is tax deductible!
Professor Clive Hamilton explains how these blatant spin doctors hoodwinked the authorities:
In 1987 the IPA restructured itself as a company limited by guarantee, which means that its directors are not liable for any debts it might incur. The restructure enabled it to apply to become an Approved Research Institute (ARI) and thus be eligible for endorsement as a deductible gift recipient (DGR). In other words, donors to the Institute would be able to claim a tax deduction for their donations. DGR status is the most valuable asset of an organisation like the IPA because without it virtually no-one would donate.
So, when the IPA are out there spinning the facts on climate change, tobacco or GMO foods, we, the taxpayers, are subsidising the service through tax-deductions for IPA’s donors as well as providing free carriage of their message on our taxpayer-funded ABC.
The IPA’s media savvy guarantees a positive sound bite and millions of dollars of free publicity as a ‘credible commentator’.
The most egregious example of this is the use of taxpayer-funded ABC as a vehicle.
How often does the IPA appear on ABC's The Drum, Q&A, 7.30, Lateline and ABC Radio National to hammer home its paymasters’ agendas? That’s wall-to-wall media exposure for starters. Not a bad return on your investment?
A good example of this, as I have written, was when former IPA pin-up boy Tim Wilson stormed the airwaves trying to scare the public witless about the Gillard Government’s audacious plain packaging plan.
But we don’t even know the exact tax-leaners for whom the IPA are spin-doctoring, since the IPA guarantees anonymity.
Fortunately, Sourcewatch has done significant work into the IPA's funding and relates the following:
The IPA has heavily relied on funding from a small number of conservative corporations. Those funders disclosed by the IPA to journalists and media organisations include: Major mining companies - BHP-Billiton and Western Mining Corporation;
Pesticides/Genetically modified organisms: Monsanto;
A range of other companies including communications company Telstra, Clough Engineering, Visy, and News Limited;
Tobacco companies - Philip Morris (Nahan) and British American Tobacco
Oil and gas companies: Caltex, Esso Australia (a subsidiary of Exxon) and Shell and Woodside Petroleum; and fifteen major companies in the electricity industry;
Forestry: Gunns, the largest logging company in Tasmania;
Murray Irrigation Ltd... In 2003, the Australian [Howard] Government paid $50,000 to the Institute of Public Affairs to review the accountability of NGOs.
The latest truly breathtaking rort is tax deductibility for donations to fund the new IPA-promoted misinformation manual, Climate Change: The Facts 2014. Like previous books, it attacks climate science, carbon pricing and renewable energy targets.
The usual line-up of neo-lib nostrums, climate contrarians and carpetbaggers feature: Ian Plimer, Andrew Bolt, James Delingpole et al — each looking more like Comical Ali every day, rabidly denying the bleeding obvious and getting funded by the taxpayer to do so.
It is nothing short of perverse.
It becomes more so when you consider the requirements for an 'Approved Research Institute' eligible to be a 'deductible gift recipient', as Professor Hamilton further detailed in 2012 about the shysters from the IPA:
In order for the IPA to become a DGR it had to apply to the Secretary of what is now the Federal Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research giving various undertakings. Most importantly, it had to undertake to use all tax-deductible donations exclusively for scientific research,more particularly, "scientific research which is, or may prove to be, of value to Australia". In this context, the authorities have ruled that "scientific research" includes social scientific research.... It must also ensure that all disbursements... are evaluated and approved by "a suitably qualified research committee" of at least five members, the majority of whom are appropriately qualified in the field of research that is to be undertaken or have appropriate experience in reviewing research, and who should be nominated on the basis of their "proven ability to direct a research program". As far as I can tell, the IPA has not made public the membership of its research committee. The rules state explicitly that tax-deductible funds may not be used for "the organisation of conferences, congresses and symposia and the publication of information (other than the results of the ARI's own research work, undertaken through this program)." All of this raises the question of whether donations to the IPA for which the donor has claimed a tax deduction are being used in compliance with the law.
But here’s the real rub.
Along with moving to abolish the Renewable Energy Target, carbon price, Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Climate Change Authority and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Liberal Party now wants to gag environment groups.
This was kind of inevitable after the Queensland LNP voted to ban the teaching of climate science in the schools because it “poisoned children’s minds”. Really.
Now the Abbott government plans to abolish tax-deductibility for genuine charity organisations like the Australian Conservation Foundation, Friends of the Earth and The Wilderness Society. Why? As stupid as this may sound, because these groups are engaging in activism!
Obviously, climate denialism is "good" activism, while climate action is "bad" activism and deserves punishment in the upside down world of Tony 'Mad Hatter' Abbott's Tea Party.
But I really do need to clear the pigs for take-off when it comes to the Waubra Foundation.
Just as the IPA peddles climate skepticism, the 'astroturf' front Waubra Foundation peddles propaganda about wind farms.
Like the mining-funded IPA wants to stop regulation on the big polluters, the Waubra Foundation wants to stop wind farms replacing coal-fired power. Its chairman, Peter Mitchell, who made his fortune from mining, also set up the Australian Landscape Guardians.
The Pecksniffian-sounding “Guardians”, Waubra Foundation and Mitchell’s investment company, Lowell Resources Funds Management Limited all share the same address and P.O. Box in South Melbourne.
Lowell Resources, as its name would suggest, seeks investment in mining and fossil fuels and
'... concentrates the experience and knowledge of a group of individuals who have direct working experience in the oil & gas and minerals industries...'
Apart from sharing links to mining interests and the Liberal Party with the IPA, the Guardians enjoy the promotional support of the IPA’s own astroturfer, the Australian Environment Foundation. (My full investigation into the Guardians and the Waubra Foundation was used as the basis for a longish speech to Parliament.)
Only a halfwit could take seriously the Waubra Foundation’s totally-debunked claims, through at least 22 reviews, about 'wind turbine syndrome'(WTS) — a concocted illness, unheard of in the northern hemisphere where they’ve had wind farms for forty years.
This year, the National Health Medical Research Council again found there was no reliable evidence that proximity to wind farms directly caused health effects. This conclusion was supported by the Australian Medical Association.
Professor Simon Chapman believes WTS is a classic psychogenic illness. He has written widely on the “nocebo effect”. In effect, wherever Waubra's'medical director' Sarah Laurie goes on her fear and smear campaign, the 'disease' follows in her wake.
But the gullible who fell for this bunkum were surely eclipsed by the boneheads who classified the Waubra Foundation as a
'... health promotion charity.... [whose] principal activity is the prevention and control of disease in humans.'
Seriously, ATO, are you kidding?
When these anti-wind activists (there’s that word again) used tax-deductible donations from you-know-who to start funding campaigns against wind farms, outrage broke out amongst the Greens, Labor and environment groups.
Greens’ Senator Richard di Natale told the ABC:
“It beggars belief."
The Australian Tax Office and the Australian Charities and Not For Profit Commission (now about to get the chop from the Abbott government in its rampage against all regulators) are now reviewing Waubra’s charity status.
Change is only possible if people are informed about the facts. Social media is the most effective tool to get the word out. If you are outraged by the unfairness of mining-funded spin outfits getting charity status whilst environment groups face losing theirs, compel the ATO to respond by lodging an official complaint.
You can follow Sandi Keane on Twitter @Jarrapin.
Update: As a result of a campaign by the Greens and work of investigative journalists like Sandi Keane, the Waubra Foundation had its charitable tax status revoked in December 2014, five months after this article was published.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Monthly Donation Frequency Monthly Annually Amount $ Single Donation Amount $How runs are scored and teams win a match
Scoring in cricket matches involves two elements – the number of runs scored and the number of wickets lost by each team. The scorer is someone appointed to record all runs scored, all wickets taken and, where appropriate, the number of overs bowled. In professional games, in compliance with the Laws of Cricket, two scorers are appointed, most often one provided by each team.
The scorers have no say in whether runs or extras are scored, wickets taken or overs bowled. This is the job of the umpires on the field of play, who signal to the scorers in cases of ambiguity such as when runs are to be given as extras rather than credited to the batsmen, or when the batsman is to be awarded a boundary 4 or 6. So that the umpire knows that they have seen each signal, the scorers are required to immediately acknowledge it.
While it is possible to keep score using a pencil and plain paper, scorers often use pre-printed scoring books, and these are commercially available in many different styles. Simple score books allow the recording of each batsman's runs, their scores and mode of dismissal, the bowlers' analyses, the team score and the score at the fall of each wicket. More sophisticated score books allow for the recording of more detail, and other statistics such as the number of balls faced by each batsman. Scorers also sometimes produce their own scoring sheets to suit their techniques, and some use coloured pens to highlight events such as wickets, or differentiate the actions of different batsmen or bowlers. It is often possible to tell from a modern scorecard the time at which everything occurred, who bowled each delivery, which batsman faced it, whether the batsman left the ball or played and missed, or which direction the batsman hit the ball and whether runs were scored. Sometimes details of occurrences between deliveries, or incidental details like the weather, are recorded.
In early times runs scored were sometimes simply recorded by carving notches on a stick – this root of the use of the slang term "notches" for "runs". In contrast, scoring in the modern game has become a specialism, particularly for international and national cricket competitions. While the scorers' role is clearly defined under the Laws of Cricket to be merely the recording of runs, wickets and overs, and the constant checking of the accuracy of their records with each other and with the umpires, in practice a modern scorer's role is complicated by other requirements. For instance, cricket authorities often require information about matters such as the rate at which teams bowled their overs. The media also ask to be notified of records, statistics and averages. For many important matches, unofficial scorers keep tally for the broadcast commentators and newspaper journalists allowing the official scorers to concentrate undisturbed. In the English county game, the scorers also keep score on a computer that updates a central server, to meet the demands of the online press that scores should be as up-to-date as possible.
The official scorers occasionally make mistakes, but unlike umpires' mistakes these may be corrected after the event.
Some cricket statisticians who keep score unofficially for the printed and broadcast media have become quite famous, for instance Bill Frindall, who scored for the BBC radio commentary team from 1966 to 2008, |
has been given access to a large number of family memories of the war that show that, despite officers recording in official documents that no such friendly exchanges took place, the situation on the front lines was very different.
Weber wrote about some of these truces in his 2010 book Hitler's First War. In the trenches near Fromelles in 1915, he reports, the authorities actively attempted to prevent a rerun of the previous Christmas by ordering "massive machine-gun fire," among other measures. Nonetheless, small-scale acts of fraternization took place. If they weren't as widespread as in 1914, Weber argues, that wasn't because the men were less willing; it's because the higher-ups were working harder to stop them.
They kept trying to stop them as the war dragged on, but sometimes peace broke out anyway. The Scotsman story mentions "a truce between German and Canadian troops at Vimy Ridge in 1916":
The official version of events recorded by the Canadian Regiment, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, stated that the Germans tried to interact but that no one responded to it.
But the historian found that a letter written by Ronald MacKinnon, the son of a Scot from Levenseat, near Fauldhouse in West Lothian, tells a rather different story...."We had a truce on Xmas Day and our German friends were quite friendly. They came over to see us and we traded bully beef for cigars. Xmas was 'tray bon' which means very good."
In Hitler's First War, Weber notes that when the Canadian soldiers arrived at Vimy Ridge in October, some Germans had greeted the newcomers by holding up a sign that said "Welcome Canadians." (Another sign said: "Cut out your damned artillery. We, too, were at the Somme.") As December 25 approached, the authorities again tried to prevent a spontaneous holiday peace. Some officers even cancelled their men's Christmas rum ration, fearing that it would only encourage fraternization—but they didn't coordinate this as well as they could have, because some other officers decided to double their men's rum. In any event, "All attempts to prevent a truce had been futile. The men of the Princess Pats embarked on a truce with their German opponents, conversing with the help of a Canadian soldier who spoke German."
Bonus reading: I first learned about the 1914 Christmas Truce in Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation, which covers it in a great chapter about the many ways "nonaggression between the troops emerged spontaneously in many places along the front." The chapter opens with a wonderfully frustrated quote from a British staff officer visiting the trenches—and not at Christmastime. He was
astonished to observe German soldiers walking about within rifle range behind their own line. Our men appeared to take no notice. I privately made up my mind to do away with that sort of thing when we took over; such things should not be allowed. These people evidently did not know there was a war on. Both sides apparently believed in the policy of "live and let live."Looks like Amazon isn't going to wait a few weeks to drop the price on the Epic 4G: they're already offering it for $200, $50 less than the other big-name stores. The device won't ship until launch (August 31), but they're offering free two-day shipping - albeit, with a minor disclaimer:
The new Samsung Epic from Sprint is now available for pre-order and should begin shipping on August 31, 2010. Due to demand for this device, you may experience a slight shipping delay.
"See price in cart?" Oh Amazon, you're so sneaky.
I suppose that's to be expected with such a major launch, but it's hard not to wonder if Sprint wouldn't be doing a little better right now if they could actually keep up with the demand for their hottest hardware. Hell, this thing might turn out to be even harder to get than the EVO - a fair number of reviewers judged it to be a better phone, and it seems that all reviewers had a pretty high opinion of it.
Thanks for the tip, Mark H.!
[Source: AmazonChinese mainland and Taiwan should use their advantages and strength to put pressure on the Philippines by sanctions in the fields of economy, trade and tourism.
Taiwanese fishing boat Kuang Ta Hsin 28 was shot by Filipino coast guard officers when doing traditional fishing work. One fisherman was killed and three were injured. A poll by Taiwanese media after the incident shows that about 70 percent interviewees hope Chinese mainland and Taiwan to join hands to cope with the Philippines if it cannot give a satisfied response.
If the Philippines refuses to make compensation for the incident, Chinese mainland and Taiwan can impose more pressure.
The Kuang Ta Hsin 28 fishing boat is not the only incident involving Taiwanese fishermen. The same kind of incident has happened in 2006, when the Philippines coast guards’ brutal shooting killed one Taiwanese fisherman and injured another. Similarly, fishermen of the mainland have been killed, detained and their hard-earned money been extorted frequently.
The Philippine coast guard has disregarded international laws and humanitarian by assaulting Chinese civilians. Some Philippine soldiers even joined the race to bully and harass Chinese people in order to get ransoms. If the two sides of the Straits can form a joint force, they will be able to suppress the arrogance of the Philippines.
After the Kuang Ta Hsin 28 fishing boat incident, Chinese foreign ministry and Taiwan authorities condemned the atrocities of the Philippine side. The Philippine authorities should not misjudge the situation; it has to apologize, punish those responsible for the incident and fully compensate the Taiwan compatriots.
Edited and translated by Ma Xi, People's Daily Online
Read the Chinese version: 菲枪击台湾渔民事件，两岸可联手应对
Source: Beijing NewsThe inventive and simple to read Kisai Upload watch from Tokyoflash Japan has an LCD display that looks like a cryptic arrangement of lines and blocks. Tilt your wrist and the digital time can be read clearly at a glance.
Kisai Upload has USB memory in the form of a replaceable MicroSD card so that you can securely store data on your wrist. The watch also features date, alarm, LED backlighting and is available in eight different colors.
A Limited Edition Watch Design with Time, Date, Alarm & LED Backlight
The "always on" LCD display presents the time digitally in hours, minutes, seconds and hundredths of a second. Tilt the watch away from you at an angle and the time display becomes easily readable. The concept is the same as that used in road markings where words are stretched but can be read from a low angle. The digital time from a different perspective.
Push the lower button and the date will be displayed; you can set the date in one of three different formats. Push the upper button to activate the colored LED backlight, a great function for night time.
A USB Memory Watch with a Replaceable MicroSD Card
Kisai Upload comes with a 2GB MicroSD card which can be replaced with any capacity card available. To transfer data to and from the watch, just connect to your computer with the USB cable provided. This saves carrying multiple USB drives and means you always know your data is secure on your wrist. To replace the MicroSD card, simply unscrew the case back and slide in the new card.
A USB Rechargeable Stainless Steel Wrist Watch With An Adjustable Strap
Made from high quality stainless steel with a brushed finish, Kisai Upload is a USB rechargeable watch. To recharge, connect to your computer with the USB cable provided. One full charge will take 3.5 hours and each charge should last 3-4 months. There are more than 300 charges in one battery and the standard LIR2032 battery is replaceable. Kisai Upload also has an adjustable strap.
Each part of Kisai Upload has been individually designed and manufactured, including the case, strap and uniquely programmed display. Like all watches from Tokyoflash Japan it is limited edition which means that it is guaranteed to be an original design that not many other people own.
Displays the time and date
Alarm mode
LCD "always on" display
LED backlight for night time
Removable memory for storing data
2GB MicroSD card included
2 USB cables & spare USB caps included
Stainless steel case, & buckle
Adjustable stainless steel strap
Minimum wrist size: 100 mm (approx.)
Maximum wrist size: 220 mm (approx.)
Case Dimensions: 36 mm x 52 mm x 13 mm
Weight: 160 grams
Water resistance: 3ATM
Battery: LIR2032 rechargeable & replaceable battery
Japanese and English instructions
One year warranty
Concept to Reality
Kisai Upload originated as a concept on the Tokyoflash Design Studio Blog in July 2011. It was voted as one of the most popular concepts by fans on the blog and was developed based on feedback provided. Kisai Upload is now reality. Find out more about the original concept on the Tokyoflash Design Studio BLOG.Get the biggest rugby stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Cardiff Blues are set to release South African international Franco van der Merwe.
The Springbok second row was recruited from Ulster earlier this year, but, due to a change in the strategic direction of the region and the continued financial uncertainty in Welsh rugby, he is being let go.
The 34-year-old is now being targeted by newly promoted Aviva Premiership outfit London Irish, who would require approval from the RFU to sign him.
The Blues board opted to release Van der Merwe amid the ongoing financial challenges within the Welsh game and chairman Peter Thomas not being ready to continue to plough money in.
Thomas had been looking for the WRU to play a greater role in the region, relieving him of some of the financial burden, but that deal didn’t come to fruition.
Van der Merwe’s departure is likely to see a more prominent role for new Welsh international Seb Davies, the 21-year-old lock who started both Tests on the South seas tour.
That will tie in with the Blues’ shift to focusing more on homegrown talent, amid the appointment of Clive Jones as director of development.
At the time of Jones’ unveiling, Blues chief executive Richard Holland said: “Due to the ongoing financial challenges the business faces, we must put all our efforts into developing from within if we want to be competitive in the future.
“This fits into the Welsh Rugby Union’s strategy and there will be further investment into our realigned academy system to ensure we maximise the potential from within.”
With Kiwi Jarrad Hoeata having left at the end of last season, the release of Van der Merwe, without him playing a game for the Blues, leaves them with a second row contingent of Davies, George Earle, Macauley Cook, James Down and new recruit from Exeter Damian Welch, with the fit-again Josh Turnbull also able to provide cover.23 Shares 0
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U.S. government hypocrisy is, as most everyone knows, boundless. It’s also utterly transparent. Our public officials evidently see no shame in belying their professions of benign intent with awesome malevolence and destruction. After all, there’s always the doctrine of American Exceptionalism to justify the unjustifiable. Take for instance Barack Obama’s global assassination campaign, or “drone war” in media-speak. It is now common knowledge (among the mildly informed, anyway) that said campaign is only nominally discriminate, and furthermore essentially pointless, assuming its point is not to foster extremism. Last year, leaked government documents confirmed what was already suspected: most of those killed by Barry O’s drone fleet are unidentified people who happen to be standing near the intended target, who for one reason or another (we’re not allowed to know) was selected for summary execution.
What is the effect of this policy? It’s not difficult to figure out. Let’s suppose for a moment that these remote control airstrikes really were “surgical”—that they didn’t result in dead civilians. It would still be an exercise in futility. Wiping out a single terrorist, no matter his rank, doesn’t eliminate his position: he can and will be replaced. Would it disrupt the relevant cell’s operation? Does it matter? Disrupt it enough and it will splinter, and now you’ve got two cells instead of one, and perhaps the new one is more monstrous than the original. ISIS, let’s remember, was first an al-Qaeda franchise. The latter group, whose side we’ve taken against Syria’s elected president, now seems like the “JV team” (credit to Obama for the awkward analogy) to the former’s Varsity. Needless to say, U.S. foreign policy, in its liberal interventionist form, facilitated the rise and expansion of ISIS; the group that now, according to most Republicans, presents the gravest threat to our national security.
To label the drone war as merely futile, however, is disingenuous. Counterproductive is a better word, although probably still too charitable. We take out one militant—reducing him to “a greasy spot on the ground”—and another springs up to take his place. That’s futility. But in the process, people living in Pakistan and Somalia and Yemen observe that the U.S. is not bound by any standard principle of law, least of all the one guaranteeing a criminal suspect due process. How, one wonders, are they expected to feel about that? If the American Empire says you’re fit to die, you’re fit to die, and that’s an end of it. Interesting concept. Of course, such tyranny would never be tolerated here at home, where a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial remains (for the most part) inalienable and uncontroversial. No so for foreigners suspected by the U.S. government of terrorist activity in their own countries, with whom the U.S. is not at war and over whom the U.S. has no jurisdiction in any reasonable sense of the word.
The American public may not care very much about the extrajudicial killing of a few supposedly dangerous Muslims living in Somalia. (CNN doesn’t tell them to worry about it, so why should they?) They do, however, seem to care about anti-Americanism in the Muslim world, the threat of global jihad, etc.—and rightfully so. These are serious issues; they should be treated as such. Here’s an axiom: if we’re going to take an issue seriously, the very least we can do is make an effort to understand it. Why does Salafism (i.e. Wahhabism, i.e. Saudism) continue to spread like wildfire over the Middle East and beyond? Why do so many Muslims have, in the words of Donald Trump, a tremendous, tremendous hatred for the U.S.?
It couldn’t have anything to do with the continuous, illegal bombing of Muslim-majority countries. That would be too straightforward an answer, and moreover contradictory to the narrative our policy-makers, always looking out for the weapons industry, like to spin for us. There is, however, Occam’s razor, which would insist that we stop dismissing simple, obvious explanations. One such explanation might be that Obama’s drone fetish, even without the civilian death toll, certainly doesn’t make the terrorist recruiter’s job any less difficult (and in fact does precisely the reverse). Another might be that, by shoring up the medieval sadists governing Saudi Arabia and oppressing its population, the U.S. indirectly (or perhaps directly) promotes the ideology underpinning every Wahhabi terrorist gang in the world, whether JV or Varsity.
Saudi Arabia. The world’s most prolific exporter of oil. Also the world’s most prolific exporter of Wahhabi extremism, that omnipresent threat to civilization we’re allegedly so bent on eradicating. It was reported that our dear leader was cold-shouldered upon his recent arrival to the great pious kingdom. The impudence! Have the Wahhabi princes no appreciation for the Obama administration’s generosity? After all, $50 billion in munitions sales is nothing to sneeze at, particularly when those munitions are earmarked for war crimes. The United States has given Saudi Arabia, and its Wahhabi coalition, carte blanche to commit atrocities against civilians in Yemen: American bombs, including illegal “cluster bombs,” are being used to blow up schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., in the name of… well, nothing, really. What more could the Saudis want! More weapons? All they have to do is ask. Obama distributes “smart bombs” like candy.
The civil war in Yemen represents the latest, though not quite the greatest (which says a lot), failure of American foreign policy. With our weapons and whole-hearted support, Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi pals have managed to do to Yemen what NATO did to Libya. In other words, Yemen is now a failed state with no central government and a massive power vacuum—ideal conditions for terrorists, in this case al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, to exploit. Naturally, all of this is underreported by Western media, since we have no enemy on whom to cast blame. You may hear the occasional whisper about Ayatollah culpability, but that’s about it.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen… every time the same result. To say that the U.S. has failed to learn its lesson is erroneous. I’ve seen no evidence that U.S. policy-makers are interested in learning any sort of lesson, nor that they actually desire a better outcome to begin with. They’re not merely inept, as so many like to insist; they’re cynical, and profoundly so.
Terrorism is useful. It can be, and is, cited to justify almost anything: extravagant military budgets, abrogation of civil liberties, alliance with nefarious regimes, arbitrary detention, torture, war. They all matter, but the last one matters most. If the objective really is to defeat terrorism, as defined by us, then our policy is irrational; in fact it meets the famous definition of insanity. Plainly, bombing volatile societies and unleashing dormant sectarian violence does nothing to contain terrorism. Plainly, it has the opposite effect. Terrorists draw strength and support from chaos and carnage; if you think Cheney et al. were oblivious to that fact, I’ve a got a plot of land to sell you…. Bush may be simple, and it’s certainly possible that he derived his conception of war from the pictures, but his cabinet was a sly bunch; a bunch whose loyalty was not to our nation’s security but rather to the Pentagon and the weapons manufacturers.
Before Bush was sworn in by the Supreme Court, Dick was pushing for a bigger military budget. Little did he know that he needn’t bother! The events of 9/11 were a windfall for the jingoists, damage to the Pentagon notwithstanding. Terrorism was no longer an abstract threat; the threat was all too palpable, all too urgent, and nobody was prepared to question the government’s response, which was not to invade the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers, but rather the one in which the plot’s ringleader, another Saudi, happened to live. The U.S. could have invaded Canada that October (surely there were some Bin Laden sympathizers loitering in that country)—we just wanted a show of military might, projected wherever.
That’s the terrorism effect. That’s why Saddam Hussein, our long-time ally and Israel’s great “existential threat” of the day, was suddenly charged with sponsoring terrorism. Casting Saddam as a Bin Laden advocate, however false, gave us a solid pretext for war. The consequence of that war—ISIS—gives us a solid pretext for more war, etc. As long as terrorism exists, we can go to war, and as long as we go to war, terrorism will exist. Meanwhile the Pentagon’s budget continues to swell. The War on Terror, then, is a self-sustaining enterprise.
The beauty of Obama’s global assassination campaign is that it allows us to bomb without declaring war. We don’t have to worry about running out of countries to invade; we can drone our allies if we so choose. That being said, no war machine is complete, and no Empire content, without the occasional full-scale invasion. Iran has been in the crosshairs for a long time—ever since they had the nerve to overthrow the iron-fisted dictator we kindly installed for them. Predictably, the Iranian nuclear agreement, Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievement, has done nothing to curb the hawks’ appetite. Indeed, many of Republican presidential candidate have assured us that, as commander in chief, they would make it their first order of business to tear up the internationally-recognized treaty.
At the other end of the aisle, H.R. Clinton, the “superprepared warrior realist,” derides the prospect of normalizing relations with Iran. Back in 2008, she demonstrated her warrior spirit, boasting of her preparedness to “totally obliterate” the 80 million people who live there, which would steer the U.S. into a nuclear conflict with Russia, quite possibly annihilating us all. (Lest you forget: Trump is the real danger.)
Clinton and her fellow jingos hate the nuclear deal, and the reason is simple: it eliminates a major pretext for war. After all, the case against Iran is identical to the case against Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism. And Israel at the center of it all. The Zionists lobbied hard for war with Iraq, and no one is lobbying harder for war with Iran. They intend to make Hillary’s obliteration fantasy into reality. Lucky for them, and unlucky for the rest of us, she is almost certainly our next president, and no one is more subservient to their will.
Unsurprisingly, no presidential candidate has been asked whether they plan to adopt Obama’s failed anti-terror policy, which is to fight terror with more terror, forever fanning the proverbial flames. Perhaps “failed” is not quite an accurate description, though, as that word implies a wish to succeed. Presently there’s no excuse to believe the Obama administration was ever serious about checking the scourge of Saudi-inspired terrorism. If Trump is right, and the Muslim world hates us, Obama was very much committed to aggravating that sentiment. He’s done a fine job.CHICAGO, United States — Crowds of women converged on Chicago’s Trump Tower Tuesday in the latest of a string of protests over Donald Trump’s incendiary comments on women, brandishing signs saying “Real men get consent” and “Pussy grabs back.”
Protesters in Chicago and Philadelphia Tuesday, and a day earlier in New York, have been pushing back after the Republican nominee was caught, in a 2005 video, bragging that fame lets him grope women without their consent.
“Just the fact that he’s normalizing rape culture… is not cool with us,” said Kristin Marks, one of the mostly-female crowd gathered outside skyscraper — emblazoned with Trump’s name — in downtown Chicago.
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Blair Westover, who voted for Republicans George W. Bush and John McCain in previous elections, said she would be voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton this year though she disagrees with her on many issues.
“This isn’t just like another ‘gate’ or a scandal,” she said. “This is a presidential nominee advocating un-consensual sexual contact, in public to other people — and that’s not something that we should come to accept as part of the debate.”
Many protesters carried signs reading “Power to the Puss,” and “#Pussygrabsback” — which has become a trending hashtag among people incensed by Trump’s boast that he grabbed women by the genitals with impunity.
With just three weeks until Election Day, polls show Trump struggling with women voters following the release of the tape, which triggered a stream of allegations of sexual misconduct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY8FwWwIVyQ
Women voters in 13 battleground states — where the election is likely to be decided — prefer Clinton over Trump by 15 points, according to the latest CBS News poll. Clinton led by only five points a month ago.
Trump has apologized for the crude remarks caught on tape, but also minimized them as “locker room talk.” His wife Melania also shrugged them off in a CNN interview, characterizing them as “boy talk.”
His daughter, Ivanka Trump, called the remarks offensive and inappropriate.BRISBANE'S favourite crime-busting superhero is on the lookout for a sidekick.
Fighting crime can have dangerous consequences, but Captain Australia's quest for justice is stronger than ever.
Just days after mX introduced him to the world, Captain Australia reaffirmed his commitment to keep the city's streets free of scumbags.
But while his quest for justice is stronger than ever, he's already on the search for a side-kick.
In the grand traditions of Gotham City's Batman and Robin, Captain Australia decided today to open up his crusade to another partner in crime-fighting.
"I am definitely interested in bonding together with a sidekick, or other like-minded individuals interested in forming a team,'' Captain Australia said.
The idea of a crime-fighting collective in Brisbane has gained huge support from the public, with dozens of people writing in and asking how to apply for the job.
Lachlan of Brisbane posted on the www.couriermail.com.au: "I am available as a sidekick you can call me `Multicultural Boy'.''
Captain Australia said he would be open to holding auditions for any sidekick hopefuls after they proved their mettle in a series of tests designed to prove their worthiness.
Brisbane's guardian is taking the search for a sidekick so seriously that today he started a gruelling fitness regimen so he can truly test the suitability of applicants.
It includes pre-dawn running and weights sessions.
He told mX that Channel 9's A Current Affair was planning a story and and he would attend the Captain Australia Appreciation Night being planned for Wednesday, March 16, at a Fortitude Valley nightspot.
Do you think you have what it takes to be Captain Australia's sidekick? Email us.
Pick up your free copy of mX at locations around central Brisbane from 2pm
Originally published as City's caped crusader needs a sidekickThe coinciding form and meaning similarity of cognates, e.g. ‘flamme’ (French), ‘Flamme’ (German), ‘vlam’ (Dutch), meaning ‘flame’ in English, facilitates learning of additional languages. The cross-language frequency and similarity distributions of cognates vary according to evolutionary change and language contact. We compare frequency and orthographic (O), phonetic (P), and semantic similarity of cognates, automatically identified in semi-complete lexicons of six widely spoken languages. Comparisons of P and O similarity reveal inconsistent mappings in language pairs with deep orthographies. The frequency distributions show that cognate frequency is reduced in less closely related language pairs as compared to more closely related languages (e.g., French-English vs. German-English). These frequency and similarity patterns may support a better understanding of cognate processing in natural and experimental settings. The automatically identified cognates are available in the supplementary materials, including the frequency and similarity measurements.
Funding: This work was funded by the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition & Behaviour, Centre for Cognition ( http://www.ru.nl/donders ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2013 Schepens et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
In addition, we will investigate how differences in word frequency interact with differences in orthographic depth. O and P similarity distributions as well as word frequency distributions vary within the same linguistic system. The differences between how often we write and pronounce words may have consequences for the shapes of the orthographic as well as the phonetic similarity distribution. We assume that frequency of use and stability go hand in hand: Words with a more frequent use are generally more stable, while less frequent words are more susceptible to lexical replacement [36]. More and less closely related languages will therefore show different shapes in their word frequency distributions. We expect that words shared between more closely related languages are used more often than words shared between less closely related languages. Thus, differences in cognate frequency distributions should be directly related to the degree of relatedness between languages. It is predicted that cognates of higher frequency occur more in combinations of more closely related languages.
Quantifying the mapping between phonological and orthographic dimensions allows us to measure the orthographic depth of the spelling systems. We assume that differences in orthographic depth directly affect the similarity between spelling systems, because spelling systems tend to be parasitic on speech systems [35]. Our expectation is that distributions of phonetically similar cognates are associated with different patterns in their orthographic similarity distributions, depending on the mapping processes that determine orthographic depth. Because of their large degree of form similarity, differences in highly similar cognates across language combinations might reflect changes in mapping processes in a more sensitive way than differences in translation equivalents in general. The resulting quantifications of orthographic depth in terms of cognate frequency distributions are compared to commonly used categorizations of orthographic depth (in terms of regularities in spelling to sound mapping).
The degree to which languages have a shallow or deep orthographic depth can be quantified using computational tools [31] – [34]. According to [34], orthographic depth may be related to differences between O and P similarity measures. Only shallow orthographies (e.g. German and Spanish) showed high overlap of computationally derived similarity measures and deep orthographies showed low overlap (e.g. French). We hypothesize that the variation between shallow and deep spelling systems has consequences for the orthographic and phonological dimensions of cross-language similarity distributions. Two more specific hypotheses are concerned with orthographic depth and cognate frequency.
Third, the relationship between orthographic and phonetic similarity of translation equivalents in various language pairs will be considered in the present study. It is likely that the derived orthographic and phonetic similarity measures will be correlated; their relationship must be complex, because it depends on the orthographic depth or shallowness of the two spelling systems that the compared languages employ. Orthographic depth is a key term with respect to the orthographic make-up of languages. In the case of father, the English form has one letter more (the h) than the Dutch and German forms. This is an example of a word for which the English orthographic depth is deeper than the orthographic depth in Dutch and German. In this case, the orthographic depth of Dutch and German is shallower. In English, the two-letter combination th stands for the single phoneme indicated by θ. The number of phonemes in the word father is therefore the same across Dutch, German, and English. Also, English has a deeper orthography in which it can pronounce the 4-letter combination -ough in at least six different ways depending on the preceding letter: bough, cough, dough, rough, tough, though. This single 4-letter combination maps out many different sounds. In a perfectly shallow orthography, n-letter combinations always map to one sound.
Second, the present study considers language pairs in terms of the phonetic similarity of translation equivalents in these languages. It will be investigated how a measure of phoneme similarity can contribute to the Levenshtein distance. Assessing cross-language phonetic similarity requires a phonetic representation of words in the different languages with a cross-linguistically valid measurement system. Therefore, an adapted International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) will be used for the cross-language comparisons. The use of this categorization system allows the assessment of phonetic differences that do not directly depend on phonological combinations present in the languages considered. Phonetic representations of words are available in lexical databases [4], [27] – [29]. Vitevich [30] proposed that the Levenshtein distance metric applied to phonetic representations of translation equivalents could be used for estimations of phonological overlap between languages.
First, Schepens et al. [24] demonstrated that the degree of lexical orthographic similarity between language pairs could be quantified in terms of cognate distributions within and between languages from the same or different families. However, the present study also takes into account that cognates and translation equivalents have varying frequencies of usage in the languages concerned.
The numbers of automatically identified cognates correlated significantly (r = 0.72, p<.001) with branch lengths extracted from a study by Gray and Atkinson [11]. Although both accounts were largely consistent, some differences were observed, which appeared to be due to the similarity of English to Romance languages. The most prominent differences between the two studies were found in their accounts of English-French, English-Spanish, and English-Italian relatedness. A possible explanation is that the total English lexicon contains about 50% borrowings from Romance languages [26]. Differences between the results from expert and computational approaches may be explained by differences in word frequency of cognates, phonetic similarity and the mapping of phonetic to orthographic similarity. The present study considers these theoretically important but unresolved issues.
In a previous study [24], Schepens et al. constructed a language similarity ordering by automatically comparing the semi-complete lexicons of six European languages. The method used was similar to those used in lexicostatistical studies, but expert cognacy judgments were replaced with automatic judgement for semantic and orthographic similarity. To determine semantic similarity across languages, translation equivalents from six European languages were collected using a professional translation system. The word pairs that were identified using automatic translation overlapped substantially (81.5%) with subjective translation judgments [25]. Orthographic similarity was determined by applying a formal cognacy measure assuming semantic similarity of translation pairs. It was found that normalized scores of a Levenshtein distance based measure resembled form similarity judgments to a large extent (91%). This implies that researchers selecting cognates (e.g., as stimulus materials in experiments) can be confident in using computational tools for determining similarity automatically.
Yarkoni et al. [22] showed that the Levenshtein distance is able to outperform Coltheart’s orthographic neighbourhood size metric [23] in terms of word recognition and word production measures (a neighbour is a word that differs in just one letter position from a target word, e.g., cork – work). The authors computed the so-called orthographic Levenshtein distance 20 (OLD20) for all words in a monolingual lexicon (including words of different lengths). This OLD20 measures the average distance over the 20 closest neighbours according to the Levenshtein distance metric. OLD20 turned out to be a significantly better predictor of both lexical decision and pronunciation performance in three large data sets than standard orthographic neighbourhood density. There was a stronger interaction of the new measure with word frequency and stronger effects of neighbourhood frequency as well. However, due to its dependency on a fixed set of 20 words, OLD20 may conflate neighbourhood density with word frequency.
An example of an automatic measure that is able to simulate lexical matching criteria is the Levenshtein matching algorithm. This algorithm is a standard string matching metric from information theory that calculates the minimum number of insertions, deletions, and substitutions that are needed to edit one string into another. For example, the Levenshtein distance of the cognate pair guitar – gitaar results in a distance of two (one deletion of u and one insertion of a). When applied to words, this number represents form distance based on the overlap of the letters in the two words. Recent studies have made successful use of Levenshtein distance to simulate orthographic similarity [16], [21], [22].
In the phylogenetic studies on language relatedness mentioned above, cognacy judgments are still made by experts using the comparative method. However, recent attempts show that interchanging expert cognacy judgments for an automatic cognacy measure can result in accurate predictions of language relatedness as well [14] – [16]. As a consequence, computational methods are becoming more and more popular to estimate the numbers of shared cognates across languages [15], [17] – [20].
In the phylogenetic approach, the likelihood of cognate sets in language trees is maximized to find the language tree that best reflects cognacy between languages. This approach is based on techniques from evolutionary biology and is also applied in studies of language evolution. Divergence in evolutionary relationships can be simulated with phylogenetic techniques using expert cognacy judgements in 200-item Swadesh lists of 87 Indo-European languages [11], also see [12]. Language trees can be used to predict language divergence times and provide more general insights into the evolutionary process. The branch lengths of these phylogenetic language trees are proportional to maximum likelihood estimates of evolutionary change. Cognate classifications in Swadesh lists are made by experts using the comparative method. Pagel [13] found that high frequency words evolve relatively slowly; high frequency words in Swadesh lists are therefore useful for estimations of evolutionary relatedness between languages.
To measure cross-language similarity, quantitative approaches are available in various branches of cognitive science and biology [7]. Lexicostatistical comparison typically estimates the percentage of shared cognates in language pairs to give an account of the historical relatedness between languages. For example, Germanic languages are more closely related to each other than to Romance languages, and vice versa. In the lexicostatical approach, the percentage of cognates shared by two languages is estimated on the basis of cognacy judgments by experts. The vocabulary used for such cognacy judgments often consists of translation pairs from Swadesh lists [8]. Swadesh lists are small sets of universal culture-free meanings that are robust to changes in meaning and appearance over time. Examples of robust concepts in the Swadesh list are water, arm, and ear. Meaning of items in Swadesh lists is considered to be resistant to borrowings or chance resemblances between languages. Quantifications of the percentage of shared cognates in Swadesh lists can accurately predict language relatedness [9], [10] and can shed new light on traditional accounts of historical relatedness.
Translation equivalents can not only be compared with respect to their linguistic dimensions (O, P, and S), but also with respect to how often the words are encountered or used in everyday language. For example, the Dutch translation equivalent of hair, which is written as haar, is used much more often than hair because haar also translates to her. Word frequency can be assessed by measuring how often a particular word occurs per million words (occurrence per million or opm) in collected corpora (e.g., [4], [5] ). A high word frequency has been found to facilitate within- and between-language word recognition in terms of response times and accuracy (e.g., [6] ). Frequency of word usage can be used to distinguish common and uncommon S, O, or P |
until the player addresses that issue.
The facility Courageous can also be upgraded in the game by recruiting students from the military academy. Getting Becky on board, for example, is said to open up an item exchange facility, as well as a bargain shop. Nabbing Paula, meanwhile, results in gaining access to imperial highways that can then be traversed.
Four characters were also announced as joining the cast, specifically student council president Towa, Rufus, Angelica, and Sharon. All of these characters save for Rufus can join your party permanently, although he may still be able to join in a temporary capacity.
The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki II is set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita on September 25.
Thanks, Game Jouhou.Rev. Irene Matsumoto of Palolo Kwannon Temple signs a resolution supporting gay marriage at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu in Honolulu on Monday, Aug. 19, 2013. More than two dozen Hawaii faith leaders of various religions signed a resolution Monday calling the state to pass a law legalizing gay marriage. (AP/Oskar Garcia)
Hawaii state House Democrats will meet this week to gauge whether they can come up with the votes to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage.
If there is sufficient support, and if legislative leaders can agree on language that would withstand court challenges, Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) will call a special session to deal with the issue this fall. Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser he thinks it’s “very likely” there will be a special session.
“I think we can put together something that can achieve a solid majority, that will give us the opportunity to establish marriage equity in the state of Hawaii commensurate with the recent Supreme Court decisions, and will satisfy and resolve the issues that are presently before the appeals court on the mainland,” Abercrombie told a gathering of state Democrats.
Abercrombie’s chief of staff, Blake Oshiro, is working on language with the state attorney general’s office, the Star-Advertiser reported Monday. State Senate leadership says they have the votes to pass a same-sex marriage bill.
Democrats have overwhelming majorities in both legislative chambers; they control the House by a 44-7 margin, and they hold 24 of 25 seats in the Senate. But the legislature has to rely on Abercrombie to call a special session because they can’t meet the two-thirds threshold to call one themselves.
Hawaii passed a constitutional amendment giving the legislature power to define marriage as a heterosexual union in 1998, but the legislature partially reversed itself in 2011, legalizing civil unions between same-sex couples.
Related:
Same-sex marriage laws by state
Pentagon extends benefits to same-sex spousesPower Play - Talk of a land tax this week is classic tactic - float an idea to test the public mood, gently introduce it into the political dialogue and then if and when it is introduced it does not come as a rude shock.
Handy though for a government under consistent pressure to be able to talk about something 'in its toolbox' to possibly deploy in the future, to make it look like it intends doing something about the problem - in this case the overheated housing market.
Photo: 123rf
Prime Minister John Key has once again raised the prospect of a land tax, as he in fact did last July when asked what the government intended to do to dampen housing demand, in Auckland in particular.
What has given his comments more prominence this week is the imminent release of data relating to overseas purchasers.
A land tax is an annual levy based on the value of the land owned. In its 2010 report the Tax Working Group advocated for a land tax to make the system fairer, i.e. a way to broaden the tax burden away from income, but the option it presented was to apply the tax in New Zealand.
The disadvantages of a land tax, as outlined in the report, are that any tax levied on a piece of land automatically decreases the value of that land and it disadvantages groups likely to own large land masses, for example farmers and Māori authorities, and groups with fixed incomes.
In short, constituents the government would not want to mess with - its traditional farming base, homeowners in leafy suburbs enjoying the benefits of high house prices and the growing number of ageing New Zealanders moving onto a pension.
But that is never going to be a problem for Mr Key because he has no intention of levying the tax on anyone living here, in fact he has also talked about exempting New Zealanders who have moved overseas and still own a home here.
And there are still several ifs and buts.
The most significant is the government's dogged insistence foreign buyers are not pushing up prices in the Auckland market.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
This is where the politics of race get interesting; the prime minister has specifically said he doesn't think there are "people in Shanghai who get out of bed and think 'oh - I want to buy a house in New Zealand'".
But when people in Auckland talk about foreign buyers they are usually talking about those visibly different to the European constituents, mainly Asian people.
That's not to say there are plenty of Australians, Americans, Canadians and people from the United Kingdom at the auction houses, they're just not as easy to differentiate.
Mr Key makes the point many of the 'foreigners' in the Auckland market are in fact residents, citizens or have connections to New Zealand, for example a child studying here.
A land tax would not affect the vast majority of those people, but the message the government is taxing 'foreign buyers' is delivered nonetheless.
Last year the government introduced what it calls a "bright line test", that results in capital gains from houses other than the family home being taxed if that property is bought and sold within two years.
Not a capital gains tax though, insists the government.
As the National Party's ally and governing support party ACT points out, the introduction of a new tax would be breaking an election promise National campaigned on at the 2014 election.
Alongside the bright line test came new requirements for foreign investors to have a New Zealand IRD number and bank account, and for the Inland Revenue to keep track of that information.
That data will be released in the next few weeks, and will provide the first indication of how many foreign investors are active in the New Zealand property market. One limitation however, is the data will only show the number of foreign investors, and not the number of properties they have purchased.
If that data shows foreign buyers are having an impact on the market, Mr Key says a land tax is the strongest measure the government could take in response.
He has once again ruled out banning foreign sales, and a one-off payment in the form of stamp duty runs contrary to the large number of free trade deals and double tax agreements New Zealand has with other countries.
As well as running contrary to the spirit of those deals, New Zealand would not want to prompt retaliatory action from its partner countries.
Which leaves the land tax, which by all accounts would not cause any such difficulties.
There is no detail about what that tax would look like, for example at what percentage of its value would land be taxed, but we do know it would not be applied to land-owners in New Zealand.
Politically convenient in that case - a tax that sounds like the government is taking action in response to a problem, but one with little, if any, impact on constituents at home."We Will Live With Wildlife."
These five words, adopted extensively across Namibia's vast and beautiful rural landscapes, have instigated one of the greatest conservation stories ever told, happening right now in this quiet corner of Southern Africa. Namibia is in the midst of a conservation revolution, exchanging generations of wildlife conflict, poaching and unsustainable land-use practices for unparalleled levels of habitat protection, wildlife conservation and sustainable development.
"Before Damaraland Camp, before the conservancy, I was a goat herder," explains Lena Florry, a jovial woman who beams when she tells her transformational story. "For the first half of my life, I never slept in a bed and I never wore any shoes. I am one of nine children. My family did not have the money to afford these luxuries. We were bare-footed goat herders, and that's what I was destined to be."
That is, until she got her lucky break. Seventeen years ago, a safari camp was built near Lena's village, and she applied for a job as a waitress. Within a year, she was an assistant manager, and a year later, she became the first black lodge manager in all of Namibia.
Tourism has transformed Lena and thousands of other Namibians into passionate conservationists. Thanks to innovative partnerships between government, local communities and the travel industry, unique management structures have been created that allow rural Namibians to benefit significantly from tourism in their region by way of skills training, jobs and direct financial contributions. As a result, people in these communities have tangible reason to support wildlife conservation. This progressive form of community-integrated tourism is changing lives, protecting animals and establishing Namibia as a leader in sustainable tourism.
At the heart of Namibia's conservation revolution are communal conservancies, management units of neighboring communities who have been awarded rights to oversee wildlife and natural resources on their communal land. Thanks to innovative legislation, the Namibian government has granted these rights to the conservancies with the understanding that rural communities will use natural resources in a sustainable manner if these resources have sufficient value and benefit.
Enter safari tourism, a revenue-generating activity that relies entirely on wildlife protection and responsible environmental management. Historically, the tourism sector has been guilty of limiting benefits (and profits) to host communities, but the Namibian conservancy model has empowered local communities to take control over tourism investment on their land.
With the help of local and international NGOs, the communal conservancies are forging innovative joint-venture partnerships with tourism investors and management companies, creating high-quality tourism lodges and experiences that have direct financial benefits to the conservancies and individual communities. These joint ventures range from simple land lease payments to fully community-owned lodges. In addition to employment opportunities created, revenue earned as part of these ventures is paid to a community fund that supports local projects such as education, water access and health care.
To date, there are 71 communal conservancies in Namibia. Combined with existing private reserves and national parks, a staggering 42% of Namibia's land is now under conservation management. Since 1998, when the first conservancies were established, income in rural areas has risen from close to nothing to over $6 million annually, the majority of which is generated from tourism activities.
Thanks to the conservancy movement, wildlife became valuable and poaching unacceptable, resulting in an unprecedented recovery in wildlife numbers: since 1995, Namibia's desert-adapted lion population has quadrupled, the elephant population has more than doubled and the endangered black rhino populations are healthy enough to be moved out of national parks and into communal conservancies.
Of course, the growth of wildlife populations and safari tourism in Namibia brings its own set of challenges. With much healthier numbers of game come more frequent human-wildlife conflict -- such as elephants trampling crops and lions eating cattle -- and compensation mechanisms for unlucky farmers and herders are still under dispute. Historically, any animal causing damage would be killed, but thanks to conservancy-tourism partnerships, these same farmers and herders understand the benefits of keeping animals alive for the good of their communities.
Today, wildlife is the basis of a new rural economy that is creating jobs and providing direct benefits to communities that have chosen to live in harmony with it. Damarland Camp, the first joint-venture lodge in Namibia, is now owned 40% by Lena's conservancy. Lena has risen to the regional manager position, overseeing operations of three safari camps in her conservancy, leading a team of 200 of her fellow community members also employed there. And because of collective efforts across the conservancy, poaching has been almost entirely eliminated.
Thanks to the communal conservancy system, Lena and her peers have realized the commitment "We will live with wildlife" is not a sacrifice to be made, but a choice that ensures prosperity for the community and the country as a whole.
Learn more about Namibia's communal conservancies at their website, http://www.namibiawildlifesafaris.com/, or listen to conservancy leader John Kasaona's inspiring TED talk or visit the sustainable tours Elevate Destinations offers.So what would a RESTish web framework look like? I don't see much point to focusing on PUT and DELETE or URI design, simply because it doesn't achieve anything new. That stuff can lead to non-browser architectures, which means that there will have to be an intermediary, and that intermediary will need a web framework, and the premise here is that we're thinking about web frameworks.
Maybe it's better to just think about the goals of REST... loosely coupled, less code, decentralized, scalable, maybe even vague ideas like democratic, hackable, avoiding consulting-ware, less code, etc. etc. Small pieces.
So... Anders Pearson posted about his RESTful stack, a concrete set of actual small pieces. It's not one beautiful diamond, but just stuff. Hopefully useful. The architecture is interesting when thinking about them working in concert, not reflecting on the beauty of any one piece. Many of the pieces are incredibly boring, in fact. Tagging, okay, but a RESTful hash table? (Well, he's not the only one doing that -- but clearly it takes a bit of imagination to see the potential; the queue stuff Amazon is doing is also pretty abstract.)
What's interesting -- and hard -- is doing something with this mix. How will we keep the architecture manageable?
The direction I've been focused on for a while now is how to use this style internally in an application. Because yes, you may want to move some RESTful piece of your app onto another server, onto another service, into another environment. But first you have to make something useful -- scaling tools is boring, and for most of us scalability isn't even the reason for REST. Only working web applications have to scale.
So how can you handle a simple application (like, say, a blog) built from a dozen RESTful components? Lots of mod_rewrite rules, several startup scripts, some XML configuration, a couple app servers... oh just shoot me now. Setting up systems gets geometrically more annoying and error-prone as you add the number of systems working in concert. Probably half of why people like the ASP model is just because installation is so damned hard. You could just use S3 from the beginning... but I find that a non-starter as well, when the distributed hash table is just one piece among many. And then if you think about automated testing... ASP-only just isn't an option.
But you can manage these pieces. That's what the small apps post was about. And that's what the architecture of Paste is about. I say the "architecture", because Paste includes several examples of the kind of small application/component that you would use in this situation. By sticking to WSGI -- kind of an HTTP-in-Python -- any piece can be fully a peer, and Paste itself doesn't have a privileged position. A larger system of these kinds of components is in the works, like Beaker for sessions and caching. For an example of how small an application might be, in Paste there's an application for sending a single file ( paste.fileapp.FileApp ), or an application for sending 404 messages ( httpexceptions.HTTPNotFound.wsgi_application ). It sounds tedious, but those applications are as simple to invoke as they are to describe (at least once you have the WSGI invocation part down).
In addition to these endpoints, there are lots of intermediaries that rely on the transparency of the request. These get called "middleware"... but ignore the terminology. An example is code that checks IP addresses against rules ( paste.auth.grantip ), or validates HTML ( paste.debug.wdg_validate ). Intermediaries and end-point applications are even fuzzy -- paste.auth.open_id does a little of both, annotating some requests and completely intercepting others (since Open ID logins span several requests). In the context of WSGI, authentication is solved. It goes in REMOTE_USER (recognizing the standards we already have, even if those standards are sometimes undervalued due to poor implementations in the past). How's REMOTE_USER get there? Out of scope! (Like REST, WSGI is as much about what it doesn't promise as what it does promise.)
Paste Deploy is then a way to bring these pieces together and configure them, since a website will be built from a bunch of pieces. The actual invocation looks rather primitive, but the important part is that configuration is another syntax for Python function calls. So when you build a cohesive application from these pieces you put them all in a single process, build them at fixed locations. You don't configure them independently, instead you provide a cohesive single view of configuration, and programmatically configure the sub-pieces.
Another issue with a highly granular REST stack is the HTTP overhead. This may be a case of premature optimization, but latency in particular is something that might bite you later. But because WSGI maps so closely to HTTP, you can make equivalent REST calls purely with WSGI and no network connection; this just turns into some function calls. Later on you can break it up, scale it out, configure pieces to be in different locations. If you need to... and you probably won't, and you may not know which pieces should be broken off to begin with.
Anyway, that's why I think WSGI and Paste have some potential to work well with REST; not because they respect some idea of the purity of HTTP, but because they facilitate realistic architectures that are highly decoupled with HTTP (or looks-like-HTTP WSGI call) bringing those pieces togetherThis February 25, 2013 photo taken in Washington, DC, shows the splash page for the Internet social media giant Facebook. (Photo: KAREN BLEIER AFP/Getty Images)
FREELAND, Pa. (AP) — Police in one northeastern Pennsylvania town really "liked" this Facebook post.
Officers in Freeland arrested 35-year-old Anthony Lescowitch on Monday night, less than two hours after he shared a wanted photo of himself and taunted police for not being able to find him, the (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader (http://bit.ly/1bg0cOK ) reported Tuesday.
Lescowitch shared the wanted bulletin minutes after Freeland police posted it on the department Facebook page Monday night, authorities said. He was being sought on assault-related charges.
An officer pretending to be an attractive woman then messaged Lescowitch, according to police. Lescowitch refused the offer of a drink but eventually agreed to meet for a cigarette, and was arrested at the agreed-upon location.
After the arrest, police posted this message: "CAPTURED!!!!!! SHARES OUR STATUS ON FACEBOOK ABOUT HIMSELF, CAPTURED 45 MINUTES LATER."
Lescowitch, of Drifton, remained in the Luzerne County Jail Tuesday. Court records don't list a defense attorney for him, but show he faces a preliminary hearing Jan. 29 on charges including aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct stemming from an incident July 14.
___
Information from: Times Leader, http://www.timesleader.com
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1anYMap6th grade, Grant School, early 1900's. Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society by Thom Rosenblum, National Park Service Historian [1] As the First World War entered its final year, a bill to extend the authority to an ever widening circle of communities throughout the State of Kansas to segregate their public schools snaked its way through the State Legislature. Seeking to expand upon an 1879 law permitting school boards in cities of the first class with populations of over 15,000 to create a dual elementary school system, the state lawmakers were now considering granting the same discretionary powers to towns with populations as few as 2,000. With school segregation threatening to spill out of its legally defined space, local chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and others arrayed themselves against the proposed law. Nathaniel Sawyer, a Topeka teacher and member of the local branch of the NAACP, laid out the case of the African American community before Governor Henry Allen. Presaging the argument that lay at the heart of Brown v. Board of Education more than thirty years later, Sawyer noted “separation and segregation tends to lower the segregated class both in its own estimation and that of its fellows” and inevitably “the American colored man is robbed of his self respect by a treatment in schools and public places which accentuates complexion differences and masses all into a single body without regard to personal worth or character.” [2] The bill, a forthright expression of racist dogma, ultimately failed. Segregation was not a peculiarly southern institution and the position of Topeka’s African American parents and children was particularly ambiguous. Although state law forbid segregation based on race in most aspects of public life, African American parents desiring their children receive a sound education depended on something often undependable – the benevolence of the white community. 4th grade, Lowman Hill School, 1892. Courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Such benevolence was scarce in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1879, the Topeka Colored Citizen found the black Monroe Street School so mismanaged “that many children are in it are just where they were 2-3 years ago” expressing the opinion that the children were purposely held back so as to forestall their entering the city’s integrated junior high schools. More than a decade later, the Times-Observer advised its black readers not to rely on the public schools to educate their children but to “purchase books your children need” and that “those above the third grade should study at home.” [3] Such conditions gave rise to the first court case in Topeka challenging the constitutionality of the state’s segregation law. William Reynolds, a black resident of Topeka, sought admission of his son to the newly constructed Lowman Hill School replacing an earlier structure destroyed by fire. Reynolds presented his son at the door of the modern two-story brick building only to be turned away. His son and the other black children living in the district were ordered to attend an old two-room wooden structure moved to a site of the former school which was described as a “veritable cesspool”. [4] Reynolds’ suit charged that the separation of children by race in the classroom violated the provision in the state constitution requiring the establishment of a uniform system of schools and that the segregation law violated the rights of children under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The state’s highest court disposed of Reynolds’ claims finding that “the system of educational opportunities, advantages, methods and accommodations” in the city schools “was uniform, constant and equal” whether attended “by blacks and whites commingling, or by them, separately.” The court also dismissed the section of the complaint alleging the violation of constitutional rights, noting that segregation did not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other and that the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was not to “abolish distinctions based upon color” or force “a commingling of the races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” [5] The state’s highest court disposed of Reynolds’ claims finding that “the system of educational opportunities, advantages, methods and accommodations” in the city schools “was uniform, constant and equal” whether attended “by blacks and whites commingling, or by them, separately.” The court also dismissed the section of the complaint alleging the violation of constitutional rights, noting that segregation did not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other and that the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was not to “abolish distinctions based upon color” or force “a commingling of the races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” [5] Artist rendering of the new Buchanan School. Topeka Plaindealer, September 3, 1920 The school board’s actions in the Lowman Hill district at the turn of the century set the tone for a general policy of the gradual separation of the races in the city’s classrooms. Even as the Reynolds case held segregation to be a valid exercise of the legislative power, the creation of a dual public school system did not take place with the bold flick of a pen but rather occurred gradually over a period of years. When protests over the presence of black children in white schools did occur, the school board refused to act. In 1908, when white 7th and 8th grade students at Lincoln and Garfield schools staged a walkout “declaring they will never enter the doors of the school again until the Negro children are ousted,” the board refused to remove the thirty black children and simply waited out the strikers who returned to their classrooms quietly in a couple of days. [6] Rather than assign Topeka’s African American students to schools based solely on race, the school board adopted other means of segregating their school system such as choosing to wait until a school was closed and a new one erected or refusing the children of recently arrived black parents entrance to a school designated as white while leaving those already in attendance unmolested. Between Reynolds case and 1928, only one integrated school, Potwin, was forcefully segregated. [7] Certainly the school board’s cautious approach resulted partly from the fact that many of the city school districts lacked a population mix resulting in predominantly white or black school populations. Yet another reason the board trod carefully was that they had come to fully embrace the separate-but-equal doctrine established in the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. Throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Topeka Board of Education struggled to create a system which would meet the needs of African American students. New buildings equipped with plumbing, restrooms and electric lights were raised in the city’s African-American school districts. Existing classrooms were refitted with new equipment or additional rooms added and playgrounds authorized. Kindergartens and specialized rooms for the teaching of domestic science were approved. Nurses were assigned to serve African American students and more black teachers were hired while additional ones were added to the list of available teachers. [8] Throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Topeka Board of Education struggled to create a system which would meet the needs of African American students. New buildings equipped with plumbing, restrooms and electric lights were raised in the city’s African-American school districts. Existing classrooms were refitted with new equipment or additional rooms added and playgrounds authorized. Kindergartens and specialized rooms for the teaching of domestic science were approved. Nurses were assigned to serve African American students and more black teachers were hired while additional ones were added to the list of available teachers. [8] Old Gage School, late 1800's. Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society The school board, however, found it extremely difficult to keep up with a total student population which rose from 6,216 to 13,811 in the years between 1908 and 1924. [9] Under the existing conditions, the school board found it impossible to create a dual school system that met the requirements set forth in the Plessy decision. In 1924, when white parents demanded that the African American children at Gage Park School be removed “and sent to some other school,” the board refused giving as their reason “the colored schools are as badly overcrowded as the white schools” and the transfer of the students would place an undue burden on the black schools. [10] As the situation reached near-crisis proportions at both integrated and segregated schools, officials found themselves forced to convert the integrated Gage School basement into a classroom but could find no space to teach domestic science. In the all-white Parkdale School teachers packed forty-six students into classrooms with only enough desks and equipment for forty. In the Monroe School, located in one of Topeka’s black communities, teachers equipped a rest room and an office with tablet arm chairs and blackboards for use as classrooms. The principals of all the city’s black schools complained that having to teach full-time left them little opportunity to know what was going on in other rooms. The rapid growth of the student population posed particular problems for African American educators who not only had to seat and supply the students but find a way to teach the recent migrants from the south who, often deprived of even a rudimentary education, needed special attention to bring their work up to an appropriate level. Frequent requests for the establishment of night schools from recent arrivals from Europe and Mexico desiring to learn to read and write English only added to the school board’s anxiety about their ability to keep the system afloat. [11] Students entering Buchanan School. The timely passage of an $850,000 bond gave the city not only the means to alleviate overcrowding and repair or replace deteriorating schools but to enforce segregation. Launching an ambitious building program, the board created a system of four black and 18 white elementary schools. Upon viewing the sparkling new and remodeled edifices, the Kansas City Times lauded the schools as being “not only scientifically correct and modern, but things of beauty, and architectural parts of the neighborhoods in which they stand.” [12] In late summer 1948 when Isabel Lurie from the local branch of the NAACP appeared in the national organization’s New York offices to inform them Topeka was prepared to test the constitutionality of the state’s permissive school segregation law she pointed out that not only were the schools in that city “physically substantially equal” but in some cases “the Negro schools are even better than the white schools.” [13] Now the proud overseers of a modern school system, the board of education determined that the 1928 to 1929 school year would be the last in which black and white children would mingle together in the same classroom. [14] The board, however, continued to move cautiously. Aware of the outrage members of the black community felt when, as one critic railed in 1915 when the Madison School was closed down and the children sent to Buchanan School to have their children “carted over the town like a cage of monkeys” when “no white people would stand for a moment to have their children carried past many schools in order to get to a certain school,” school authorities initially adopted a policy of voluntary transfers. As segregation progressed, the board noted with pleasure that the transfer of blacks students from one district to another was going smoothly. [15] Any sense of relief however, proved short-lived. As principals turned black students away, a flurry of lawsuits erupted with at least three being filed in 1928 and 1929. With the support of the Topeka Chapter of the NAACP, attorneys representing residents Maud Rich, George Wright and Howard Foster took segregation head-on, charging the city’s elementary schools denied black children the rights guaranteed them under the equal distance creating undue hardships and was therefore unreasonable. Of the three cases, Wright and Foster made it into court, the other being dropped before it reached district court. Article from Topeka's African American newspaper. Topeka Plaindealer, February 8, 1929 In the Wright case, the district court denied an injunction to prevent the board of education from transferring African American students “from a school maintained for white children to one maintained for colored children.” The same court dismissed Foster’s Fourteenth Amendment case hearing only his second action that the school board’s use of public monies to transport students from one school to another was illegal. The court ruled in favor of the defendant. Lawyers appealed both cases to the Kansas Supreme Court which decided in favor of the school board noting that the Topeka Board of Education’s segregated school system was in accordance with the law and that the board was vested with the legal right to transport students from one district to the other. [16] The school segregation issue remained dormant in Topeka for more than a decade. In 1941, the relative calm was shattered with the Graham case. Under the existing system, the board of education assigned white students to the junior high schools for grades seven, eight and nine while black students did not graduate to one of the city’s integrated junior high schools until grade nine. [17] In 1941, Ulysses Graham challenged this pattern of school attendance as violating his son’s constitutional rights as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the State of Kansas. As in the earlier cases, Graham made no claims that the elementary school teachers were incompetent or the school “not a well-conducted grade school.” [18] Civil rights attorney Elisha Scott. Courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas The Kansas Supreme Court found that, due to the different systems of teaching and differences in the courses and facilities found in the junior high and elementary schools, the prevailing system of placement violated the African American children’s rights to equal treatment. Delivering the opinion of the court Justice Allen clearly stated “it will not do to say to one American citizen, you may not have the benefits of an improved method of education because of your race.” [19] The court, however, while ordering the Graham child be admitted to the junior high school refused to resolve the issue of full school desegregation of the 7th and 8th grades. The Graham case proved a watershed in the Topeka civil rights movement rupturing the tissue of African American society. At the core of the struggle in conscience was the resolution that school desegregation remained a necessity for Topeka’s children balanced against the fear that full consolidation of the junior high schools would hurt African American children and cost black teachers their jobs. Throughout the case the veteran civil rights attorney Elisha Scott struggled to accommodate his disdain for Jim Crowism with an ardent concern for the welfare of the teachers who he feared would be displaced with the closing of segregated schools. In 1937, smarting under accusations of incompetence leveled by a black-owned newspaper, Topeka Plaindealer, the maligned teachers turned to Scott who appeared before the Board of Education demanding “the Board should take action exonerating these teachers from the charges made.” [20] Four years later, many of the city’s black teachers again turned to Scott. In an effort to stave off wholesale integration and save their jobs, African American teachers, as one critic charged, “packed” the still un-chartered 1941 Topeka NAACP elections to hold the incumbent president Scott “selfishly at the head of the branch for their own particular purposes.” [21] Attorney Raymond Reynolds. Courtesy of the Topeka NAACP Blessed with a flair for the dramatic and capable of bringing spectators in a court of law to tears, Scott rose before the board on June 23, 1941 and argued that the time was not yet ripe for full integration. The contingent of twenty-five educators and parents including the recently retired principal of the all-black Washington School Ezekiel Ridley, declared that “at least 90 percent of the colored people in Topeka want their children to go to the colored schools” and requested the board continue to maintain grades seven and eight in the city’s four black schools. The children, the delegation made it known, would “get more out of the training by colored teachers and association of children of their own race.” In a statement eerily presaging that advanced by the school board’s defense of their segregated school system in the Brown case, parents expressed their fear that placing black children in predominantly white schools “would give the colored students an inferiority complex” resulting in many dropping out of school “which might lead them into trouble of various kinds.” Rather than forcing integration down the children’s throats, Scott pleaded for the retention of grades seven and eight in the black elementary schools but recommended that parents be granted discretionary powers to send their children to the white junior highs if they so pleased. [22] Others just as passionately dissented. Two days after Scott had pled his case before the board, former president of the Topeka NAACP and attorney Raymond Reynolds called a meeting in his office to form a committee to protest the position taken by Scott. Not foreseeing the day when the privileges, immunities and rights guaranteed every citizen were extended to African Americans, Reynolds was in no mood for compromise. The fiery Reynolds had assisted in the Foster case, fought to keep the gates of the city’s parks open to all, struck down an attempt to restrict black’s access to housing and joined forces with Scott to banish the film The Birth of a Nation from Kansas theatres. [23] Resolving to wage an “unrelenting fight in behalf of the children” the attorney and his committee condemned the plan offered by their opponents as being designed only to “save a few colored teachers their jobs at a sacrifice of the rights assured to the children under the court’s decision.” [24] Topeka's African American teachers in 1949. Courtesy of Dr. Owen M. Henson After hearing the cases presented by both sides, the school board, afraid of violating the high court’s order, sided with Reynolds and desegregated all of the city’s junior high schools. Eight African American teachers were fired or forced to resign. The Graham case opened a wound not easily healed. In 1948, McKinley Burnett, heading a revitalized local chapter of the NAACP reproached the board for failing to fully desegregate the city’s public school system and dispatched a representative to New York to meet with the national organization to discuss pursuing a school desegregation case. At the same time, the Topeka Council of Parents and Teachers took a determined stand against “abolishing segregated schools if such a move meant abolishing our own teacher’s jobs.” Addressing the school board, the group, representing all four of the city’s black schools protested “we fail to see how children can be inspired to get an education if we continually do away with the jobs they can fill after securing their education,” advising the board that no support for integration would be forthcoming until some proof was provided “that our children would do as well and be as happy as they are now.” [25] Even as the highest court in the land heard arguments in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, the core membership of the Topeka NAACP remained activists in an African American community still deeply troubled by the struggle to end the separation of children by race in the city’s classrooms. Topeka’s black teachers refused to lend their support. “We have a situation here in Topeka,” NAACP branch secretary and plaintiff in the Brown case Lucinda Todd notified the national organization “in which the Negro Teachers are violently opposed to our efforts to integrate the public schools.” Without the support of the teachers, the NAACP could not rally the city’s ministers, the local branch complaining that many of the African-American religious leaders remained aloof and “if it were not for our school case” would “help us more at present.” [26] Despite the lack of popular support, a small group of Topeka attorneys began fashioning a scaffold out of court papers. |
a WSWS reporting team, which visited the Maspeth facility. John stopped briefly on his way to his part-time job, sorting and loading UPS trailer trucks. “I start around 4 p.m. and work as long as they need me,” he said, “There is no overtime pay. I am lucky to get 40 hours. It depends on the workload.”
He described the strike and its aftermath. “It was only the drivers who walked out. A lot of them did not think he [Reyes] should be fired. One guy went around talking a lot and then they walked. Two hundred and fifty fired! Insane! I didn’t think they would go through with it. These were lots of good people with families to feed. Everybody is talking about it and wondering who is next.”
A building maintenance worker belonging to the International Association of Machinists asked to remain anonymous when he spoke to the WSWS, fearing for his job. “No name. It is like a dictatorship in there. There are security cameras all over. A guard will come outside here to see what you want.” Soon afterwards, in fact, a security guard did appear.
“I worked here more than 25 years. Drivers get harassed more than maintenance. There is a GPS in the electronic board you sign when you receive a package. They watch where they are, how long at each place.
“It was unfair about the driver that got fired. That started the protest. Another guy had been fired after he was injured while working, hit by a car. He became unconscious. When he returned to work he could not deliver the same number of packages per hour as before. Some drivers spoke at the rally in the parking lot about the conditions for the drivers. Then they went back in after 90 minutes.
“It was quiet for a couple of days. Then they were told they would all be fired after they trained their replacements. On Friday, they told 40 to 50 guys to turn in their uniforms. They were fired then.”
In response to the workers’ spontaneous action in defense of Reyes, Teamsters Local 804 immediately sought to suppress the walkout. A video of the action shows a union bureaucrat relaying an order from the Local 804 president, Tim Sylvester, to go back to work while the union negotiates with the company. It is clear from the video that the workers are reluctant to comply, well aware that the bogus “grievance” procedure would neither protect their jobs nor their rights.
UPS would never have attempted such a provocation if it had not been assured that the Teamsters would do nothing. For decades, the union has sanctioned the exploitation of part-timers and other workers. Former International president (and former Local 804 president) Ron Carey sold out the 1997 strike before being forced to resign for a kickback scheme orchestrated between the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party.
Last year, the Teamsters signed a new contract that imposed higher out-of-pocket health care expenses on current and retired workers, raised wages well below the rate of inflation and gave a green light to the company to use GPS technology to discipline and fire drivers.
Opposed to any struggle that would undermine its relations with the company, Local 804, which represents 6,000 New York area UPS workers, issued a toothless statement, saying, “UPS’s actions this week were a heartless attack on drivers and their families.” The union launched a petition drive and appealed to Democratic Party politicians to revoke the city’s contract with UPS, reportedly worth $43 million, in order to pressure the company to rehire the workers. In an utterly cynical response, UPS threatened that if the city terminated the contract and the company lost business it would lay off more workers, “potentially impacting the livelihoods of the many local UPS employees that did not join in the illegal work stoppage."
The city’s “Public Advocate,” Letitia James, issued an equally worthless statement that the company “receives millions of dollars every year in reduced fine and fees for parking tickets” from the city, presumably aimed at pressuring UPS. “They should not treat workers in this manner,” she said.
These are empty words. The UPS workers would do well to remember the treatment the city meted out to school bus workers whose month-long strike early last year was abruptly ended and sold out by the Amalgamated Transit Union. The ATU shut down the walkout based on a statement by the candidates running for the Democratic mayoral nomination, including de Blasio, promising to “revisit” former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s termination of the Employment Protection Policy” (EPP), which had for decades protected the bus workers’ wages, benefits and seniority regardless of which private company won contracts from the city.
More than three months into the de Blasio administration, aside from a city council committee hearing that yielded no specific results, and a vague, non-committal statement from the mayor, there has been no action to reverse the attack on the school bus workers. Thousands have lost their jobs, and thousands more have suffered severe reductions in pay and benefits. Meanwhile, the union, the ATU, has abandoned its members.
The outrageous victimization of the UPS drivers can and must be fought. The possibility for such a fight is expressed in the 100,000 signatures obtained within two weeks on a petition against the firings.
To transform this from potential into active support, however, UPS workers must take the struggle into their own hands by organizing rank-and-file committees, independent of the Teamsters and other unions, to appeal—not to big business politicians with worthless promises—but to the working class of the city. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, transit workers and other municipal workers are working without contracts and have suffered a devastating decline in living standards, while the stock market and bonuses to Wall Street executives have reached record levels. Rank-and-file workers must call for joint mass demonstrations and strike action to demand the rehiring of all the victimized workers and the full restitution of lost wages and benefits.
All of those—including pseudo-left organizations like Labor Notes and the International Socialist Organization—who claim that the Democratic Party can be pressured to defend workers are lying. Mayor de Blasio, Governor Andrew Cuomo and President Obama, no less than the Republicans, are tools of the corporate and financial elite. That is why the fight to mobilize the industrial strength of the working class to demand the rehiring of the UPS workers must be combined with the fight to build a mass political movement of the working class—in opposition to both big business parties—to end the economic and political dictatorship of the rich. Giant monopolies like UPS must be put under the democratic control of working people as part of a socialist transformation of society.
To take up this fight, we urge UPS workers and all those who oppose these victimizations to contact the Socialist Equality Party.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.A Defense of Forced Unwrapping
Max Althoff Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 18, 2016
Perhaps the single most defining feature of Swift is its overall focus on safety. This safety covers the type system, naturally, but also importantly assists the developer in ensuring the existence of a value at a property’s point of use. In those situations where it makes sense for a property to contain no value at all, the Optional type (along with a few handy pieces of syntactic sugar) allows us to safely check for the presence of a value, and then act in accordance with the needs of our app. And in all other cases (the default, ideally), we can make use of non-Optional types and avoid having to worry about whether our properties contain usable data or not, because the compiler ensures that they must.
And this is all pretty amazing stuff! But Swift’s focus on safety has also generated a troubling mentality in the community, by which a certain feature has been deemed “unsafe,” treated as a near-universal code smell, and had its (in my view) totally valid and essential meaning dismissed. I’m talking, of course, about the dreaded forced unwrap.
First, let’s take a quick look at some code snippets illustrating all of the major ways to deal with Optional types. There’s if-let unwrapping:
Nil coalescing:
Optional chaining:
Forced unwrapping:
The argument against forced unwrapping turns upon the notion that it is the only inherently unsafe method for unwrapping a value that may be present within an Optional. Which is to say, if you attempt this method and the Optional contains no value, your app will crash.
But what I’d like to suggest — and what I feel gets lost in all of the (well-intentioned) mania about safety within the Swift community — is that forced unwrapping, like all of the other unwrapping methods, conveys a unique and valid meaning to the reader of a piece of code, and that we do ourselves a disservice by suggesting that forced unwrapping is merely a product of reckless corner-cutting or laziness on the part of the programmer. To illustrate, let’s walk through the implied meanings of the unwrapping methods:
If-let: “I want to perform some (perhaps complex) action with the value contained in this Optional, so if it contains a value, do something with the value, otherwise perform a different action.” (There need not be an otherwise here, but I’ve included one for the sake of completeness.)
Nil coalescing: “I fundamentally care that this expression resolves to a value, so if this Optional type contains a value, use that value, otherwise use some default value of my choosing.”
Optional chaining: “If this Optional type contains a value, then access the value, but at the end of the day, I don’t really care whether this gets done or not, because it’s not essential to the core operation or functionality of the program.”
Forced unwrapping: “This Optional type may not begin with a value, but by the time I use it here, I expect it to have a value, and beyond that, it absolutely needs to have a value in order for the core functionality of my program to be intact. I would expect my program to crash if there is no value, because there is no way to handle this situation gracefully.”
I’ve noticed that many in the Swift community suggest in rather strong terms that forced unwrapping is to be avoided at all costs, even going so far as to recommend not using implicitly unwrapped IBOutlet properties (which are, for all intents and purposes, guaranteed by the system to be hooked up properly and accessible upon the loading of an app). The underlying assumption seems to be that the most important thing, at all times, is to ensure that one’s perceived competence as a programmer is always protected, and that the best way to do this is to make it impossible for your program to crash at all. Because forced unwrapping allows for runtime crashes to occur, it’s written up as a forbidden art, and its underlying meaning is dismissed.
Students of Swift are often told to replace forced unwrapping with optional chaining. But if we investigate what you are telling yourself and other readers of your code when you use it (“It literally does not matter whether this expression resolves or not”), it becomes clear that this is often not the meaning we intend at all. I’d wager that, much of the time, we do actually care whether the expression we’re writing resolves to a value, a successful method call, etc. The core functionality of our program depends on it. If this is the case, doesn’t it make more sense, in terms of the meaning being conveyed to ourselves and others, to use forced unwrapping? To say, in other words, “Yes, I fully expect there to be a value here, and if there isn’t one, that means there has been a catastrophic failure”? It seems to me that this is an extremely useful bit of self-documentation.
Which isn’t to say that forced unwrapping should be commonplace throughout your average program. I wouldn’t hesitate to categorize this as a code smell if it’s clear that a program is absolutely littered with forced unwrappings which could have been eliminated via more elegant design. Moreover, one’s expectation that a force unwrapped Optional will contain a value at its point of use should not be a matter of wishful thinking, but ideally the result of extensive testing, as well as a keen understanding of the program’s flow.
The argument I’m making is that, before we render a language feature taboo in the name of “safety,” we should first pay attention to what its meaning is, and to what we potentially lose by dismissing it wholesale.
Edit (7/19/2016): It’s worth noting that I’m not trying to recommend “best practices” or dictate what should or should not fly on a large team project written in Swift. There clearly do exist good reasons for wanting to minimize or stay away from forced unwrapping entirely. My point is directed more at the notion of evaluating what we mean by utilizing an unwrapping method, and to acknowledge that forced unwrapping means something specific, unique, and genuinely useful in relation to the other methods at our disposal. We should be teaching people this meaning, not concealing it in the assertion that forced unwraps are a dark art.
Another point I’m trying to make is that we sometimes suggest bad practices (for example, that people use optional chaining even if they don’t intend for non-execution to be a valid outcome) merely because they won’t directly cause a crash, and that this is a deeper ramification of putting the meaning of our code on the back burner, in favor of a safety-first mentality.You might think that the electronic technology involved in vaping is similar to the electronics involved in a smartphone or a flashlight, and for the most part, you would be right. The basic principles are the same. But then you notice that the batteries we’re using are a little more stout than the AA’s in your TV remote. Then you might see a news report where someone sets his backpack on fire with a mod, and you wonder, how? How does this happen with vaping but not with your MP3 player?
Here’s the thing: vaping requires power, and we don’t mean power like a portable Bluetooth speaker uses. We mean massive current. Vaping uses power like almost no other consumer electronic device, at a tremendous rate, meaning that there are serious risks. Newer devices have loads of safety features, but they can’t eliminate every possible way to abuse your gear. And that’s why we need to talk about safety.
As it has been for many years, the vaper’s battery of choice is the 18650 cell. That’s a size measurement, 18mm diameter and 65mm long. The 18650 comes in a lot of different varieties with a lot of different performance ratings. And vaping requires the best. When you factor in weight, longevity, price, and the ability to handle huge amperage, the 18650 owns every other type of battery, which is why you see them bundled into almost every high-powered electrical device you can buy, from computers to power tools to the Tesla automobile. We need to know how to use all this power, and how to make sure you aren’t pushing it too far.
If you have been vaping for more than a couple of years, you probably know this. Back in the bad old days, we had to use mechanical mods to get decent vapor output, and a mechanical is basically just a tube with a switch. The only safety was usually just a button lock, and some didn’t even have that.
Pretend you’re one of those old school vapers using a mechanical mod, and you need to figure out whether your setup is safe. Ultimately, this means you need to know that electricity won’t be drawn out of it too fast, like water being drained from a tank. If you drill a hole in a water tank and the water starts to spray out of it at high pressure, then the hole can widen and the tank could rupture. You want to avoid the electrical equivalent, which happens when a battery gets pushed too hard, causing too much heat to build up, rupturing the case and venting the battery.
So, how do you figure whether your build is going to draw too much amperage from your battery? Simple: it’s called math. You plug some numbers into an equation and calculate. But don’t worry! It’s not a tough problem. The equation only has three variables, so you just need to deal with two numbers in order to calculate the third. After you get used to it, the process is almost as easy as calculating a tip at a restaurant.
The equation goes like this: A=V/R. It means “amperage equals voltage divided by resistance”. It’s called Ohm’s Law.
An 18650 battery has two amperage limits. The first limit is the continuous rating, the amperage draw the battery can take at a constant rate until it runs out of power. The second limit is the pulse rating, which is the amperage draw it can take for a brief burst. You might be tempted to use the second rating, but this is how you push the envelope and get hurt and make the news and get the FDA involved. Use the continuous rating.
A fully charged battery is like a tank filled with water, meaning there is full pressure inside. Electrical pressure is called “voltage”. Most fully charged 18650 batteries have a voltage of 4.2, so use this number for safety purposes regardless of whether your batteries are fully charged at the moment or not.
Then all you need is the resistance, which you can figure out by using an ohmmeter. Resistance is like the diameter of the pipe the water is running through. Coils that use thicker wire will have a lower resistance, for the same reason water pipes with bigger diameters can let more water flow. And because of some interesting magnetic field properties, coils that use more wraps will have a higher resistance. We will assume you use Kanthal A1 instead of temp control wire, as Kanthal has a simple, constant resistance. Temp control requires advanced circuitry and can’t be done on a mechanical.
Say you wrap your own coils on an RDA, and you run a dual coil build made up of 24 gauge wire wrapped 7 times around a 3mm bit. You will probably have a resistance around 0.2 ohms, low sub-ohm territory.
Now, do the math. 4.2 divided by.2 gives you 21. So use a battery with a continuous rating of 21 amps.
It’s that simple. If you want it to be even simpler and you aren’t building sub-ohm, try using our Variable Voltage and Vaping Power Chart or Vape Safety Calculator
When you go looking for high-amp 18650’s, you won’t have as many choices as you might think. The Samsung 25R and the LG HE2 and HE4 continue to dominate the market, although for multi battery setups, the LG HG2 brownies are rising fast, mostly due to their 3000mAh endurance. The Sony VTC4 and VTC5 used to be the most sought after due to their extremely high continuous power rating of at least 30 amps, and still work very well, particularly in mechanical mods. These batteries come highly recommended. Batteries from Panasonic are good quality but none of them have a higher continuous rating than 10 amps.21 amps is fairly standard for vapers and that’s a lot of power for any portable electronic device, so it’s very important to get a good battery. Even if your mod uses the latest safety features, they are designed with high-amp batteries in mind and they can still draw too much current from a battery that’s below specification.
Almost everything else we see on the market, especially batteries specifically marketed for vapers – Imren, Efest, SubOhmCell, Vamped – is a relabeled version of these three brands, and we strongly suspect that some of them are factory seconds that tested below spec. Those are still far better than using a battery with a name like Trustfire or Ultrafire, either of which will probably start a fire and you should keep it away from your vape.
No matter which high-amp battery you choose, you need to keep an eye on the condition of the wrapping. An 18650 with no wrap is dangerous, because the entire outside surface acts like a negative contact and accidental firing becomes way too easy. Don’t use batteries with torn up wrappers! Get them rewrapped or buy new ones. You can expect to buy new ones after about 8 months or 200 charge cycles anyway, as they wear out and you will notice they don’t hang on like they used to.
To extend their life, use a quality charger. Efest and Nitecore make some of the best on the market. They have circuitry to make sure your batteries don’t get overcharged or undercharged, and they charge faster than the built in charge circuitry most mods use. Avoid the cheap single bay chargers which plug directly into the wall outlet instead of having a cord. They tend to only charge your batteries to about 90%, which will cut their lifespan.
The last point you need to keep in mind is that nearly every vaping device has some sort of lock on it to keep you from firing it accidentally. If you’re going to carry it in your pocket, use the lock! Even with a ten second cut-off, carrying an unlocked mod in your pocket can result in firing it on and off as you walk or move around, getting your tank or RDA very hot, melting plastic and rubber parts, and maybe even combusting your pants. Trust us, that isn’t as much fun as it sounds.
That’s most of what you need to know, but if you ever have any doubts that what you are using is safe, ask the people at a reputable vape shop. Not only can this keep you out of the burn ward, it can keep critics of vaping from finding ammunition they use to make vaping out to be a public menace. Media outlets tend to run with any story that makes vaping out to be a hazardous choice, so any honest accident will probably end up adding fuel to the worst stereotypes we are in the middle of fighting right now. One mistake, and the good work of hundreds of activists and researchers trying to keep this industry alive can end up in the dumpster.
Vape safe and enjoy!Why searching for scientific miracles in the Holy Book is neither good science nor good religion.
What is the relation between science and religion? This is an important question. The world we inhabit today is shaped by modern science and its practical applications. The way we perceive nature is deeply informed by our understanding of the vastness of the cosmos and the complexities of the sub-atomic worlds as revealed by science. At the same time, religion is an integral part of Pakistani society, and shapes the identity of millions of its citizens. For a place like Pakistan, both science and religion are essential.
It is no surprise then that the question of the relation between science and religion often comes up in conversations. From a historical perspective, there is no single narrative that defines this relation. There have been times when religious authorities stymied science. On other occasions, holy books have provided the inspiration, and religious institutions the support, to help discover the secrets of the universe. There have been religious scientists: Ibn al-Shattir was a muwaqqit at a mosque in Damascus, Mendel was a priest. And there have been scientists who have been vocal in their opposition to religion. Thus, it is hard to define the relation between science and religion in any other way than complex.
In Pakistan today, there seems to be consensus that science and religion are not opposed to each other. This signals a positive approach, as Pakistan needs to develop a strong scientific culture to meet the challenges of the 21st century. However, for a large majority, this view is shaped by the pseudoscience of finding scientific miracles in the Qur’an (also known as I’jaz). This is neither good science nor good religion! If many of our bright, young minds are being introduced to science this way, then the practice of I’jaz is perhaps a major impediment to the development of a vibrant scientific culture in Pakistan.
Science is driven by curiosity about the natural world. Unsolved problems attract the attention of its practitioners. The harder the problem, the more attention it gets.
For example, one of the hottest areas in astronomy today is exploring the nature of “dark matter” — we know it exists but we cannot see it, nor does it interact with ordinary matter. Some of the brightest minds are searching for dark matter in the largest particle accelerators in the world as well as in observatories looking for evidence in large galaxy clusters. We do not know when or where we will find the evidence. It is also possible (though unlikely) that someone will show that dark matter does not exist and that our inference about its existence was deeply flawed. Science will go wherever evidence will take it.
On the other hand, those who are seeking scientific miracles in the Qur’an are driven neither by curiosity about the natural world nor by the desire to find explanations of unsolved problems. Instead, they know that they already know the answer. For them, the primary goal is to seek validity of one’s own belief through the authority of science.
This search for science in scriptures is a relatively new phenomenon. It is the religious response to the advent of modernity and the rise of modern science as the most powerful method for explaining the natural world. Muslims are not alone in seeking validity from science. Christians find science in the New Testament, Jews find it in the Torah, Hindus find it in Bhagavad Gita, and Mormons find it in the Book of Mormon. Everyone is convinced that their holy book contains snippets of modern science. Take the specific case of dark matter: you can find websites and even books that claim that dark matter is already mentioned in the Qur’an (for Muslims), the Bible (for Christians), the Torah (for Jews), and Bhagavad Gita (for Hindus). Of course, everyone will be scrambling to change his or her respective interpretations if the dark matter idea turns out to be wrong.
Make no mistake. None of this is science.
It is ironic that when medieval Muslim scholars dominated natural philosophy (what we may loosely call science today), they did not seek ‘scientific miracles’ in the Qur’an. Instead, the Qur’an served as an inspiration to understand the natural world through reason.
So what can we do to rekindle the spirit of scientific culture in Pakistan? This is a large question, but we can take the small step of appreciating the joy of finding things out. From the condensation of water into rain here on Earth, to the detection of lakes of liquid methane on the Saturn’s moon, Titan. From understanding the way leaves change colours in the winter, to figuring out the how stars form in galaxies.
Science seeks answers about how the universe works. Religion provides inspiration to explore the natural world. The late American biologist Stephen J Gould called science and religion two equal but separate spheres of life, or Non-overlapping Magisteria, in his own words. The former deals with the physical world and the latter with questions of ethics and the meaning of life. The building blocks of a scientific culture in Pakistan will have to be laid upon this mutual respect and separation of these two vital spheres of life.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, August 28th, 2011.
Read full storyA storm brought a new round of wind-whipped snow to New England on Sunday, threatening white-out conditions in coastal areas and forcing people to contend with a fourth winter onslaught in less than a month.
A blizzard warning was in effect for coastal communities from Rhode Island to Maine into Monday; and a bone-chilling blast of cold, with lows of minus-10 degrees was in the Sunday night forecast in parts of the region.
With more than 6 feet of snow already standing in some areas from previous storms, crews struggled to keep snow-clogged roads clear as fresh snow blew in as soon as they passed.
Half a foot of snow had fallen across much of eastern Massachusetts by daybreak Sunday, with Ipswich recording 20 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Before it is all over, southern New England could get several more inches and coastal areas of New Hampshire and southern Maine could see up to 2 feet, weather forecasters said.
"The best thing people can do is stay home, stay indoors," said William Babcock, a weather service meteorologist.
Gov. Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and Gov. Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island warned motorists to stay off the roads.
Baker said Sunday morning that high tide was not as severe as anticipated, with no reports of major flooding, but warned that winds gusting over 60 mph could bring power outages.
"There's a little bit of deja vu all over again in this," he said.
Transportation officials in the region had taken precautions. Nearly 400 Sunday flights were canceled at Boston's Logan International Airport, and none was scheduled Sunday morning. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority canceled all rail, bus and ferry service in the Boston area on Sunday.
Babcock said gusts could max out at 75 mph — hurricane territory — on Cape Cod. Officials warned of possible power outages, and north-facing or vulnerable coastal areas could suffer flooding and beach erosion, the weather service said.
Ahead of the storm, forces gathered to remove piles of snow and ready for the next round.
Massachusetts called up hundreds of National Guard troops to assist with snow removal, and the Hanscom Air Force base outside Boston became a staging area for heavy equipment pouring in from eight other Northeast states to help in the effort.
Crews worked in Boston's Financial District to remove the massive amounts of snow that clogged streets and triggered numerous roof collapses.
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In southern New Hampshire, employees at a tree service volunteered to clear snow from the roof of Londonderry South Elementary School. Dave Burl of Accurate Tree Service told WMUR-TV the roof was engineered to hold 44 pounds per square foot, and the weight was already approaching 30 pounds per square foot.
The bad weather spanned several states — winter storm warnings extended west into Michigan and Ohio, where whiteout conditions led to a pileup on the Ohio Turnpike that killed at least two people. Another storm-related crash on the New York Thruway south of Buffalo killed one person.Image caption A navy officer described the floating spectacle as the "weirdest thing" he had seen at sea
A vast "raft" of volcanic rocks covering 10,000 sq miles (26,000 sq km) of ocean has been spotted by a New Zealand military aircraft.
A naval ship was forced to change course in order to avoid the cluster of buoyant rocks, located 1,000 miles off the New Zealand coast.
The unusual phenomenon was probably the result of pumice being released from an underwater volcano, experts said.
One navy officer described it as the "weirdest thing" he had seen at sea.
Lieutenant Tim Oscar told the AFP news agency: "As far ahead as I could observe was a raft of pumice moving up and down with the swell.
"The [top of the] rock looked to be sitting two feet above the surface of the waves and lit up a brilliant white colour. It looked exactly like the edge of an ice shelf," the officer said.
Researchers aboard the ship, HMNZS Canterbury, suggest that the source of the pumice was an underwater volcano (seamount) known as Monowai, located to the north of New Zealand.
The pumice is likely to have been formed when lava from the seamount came into contact with seawater, and as it is less dense than water it quickly rises to the surface of the ocean.
Vicky Hards from the British Geological Survey said the raft of volcanic rocks on this scale was a "relatively unusual occurrence".
"Some 50-60 volcanic eruptions are reported per year in total, and out of these only a very small proportion are submarine," she told BBC News.
"Nevertheless, submarine volcanic eruptions are a relatively common phenomena, in fact many probably go unrecorded in the deep marine environment.
Dr Hards added that a previous example was close to Tristan da Cunha, a small group of small volcanic islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
"A small eruption occurred in 2004 and rafts of pumice were observed about a mile offshore, washing up on the beaches for the next weeks" she explained.SHC directs varsities, boards to explain
KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has sought replies from all public universities, intermediate and matric boards of the province regarding the delay in the announcement of their annual examination results.
The SHC issued the directives while hearing the petition of Nazir Ahmed Dhoon who had moved the court against the delay in the announcement of results of matric, intermediate, bachelor’s and master’s annual examinations by the respective universities and boards in Sindh.
The petitioner submitted that 300,000 to 350,000 students had to suffer every year because of the deliberate delay in the announcement of results. As a result of the delay, the students cannot apply for admissions in other boards and universities [for higher education] as their admission dates have passed by the time the results are announced.
He submitted that it is mandatory on every board, college and university to announce results of the annual examination within 120 days so that students could apply for admissions in intermediate, graduation and post-graduation studies.
According to the petitioner, the various educational boards and universities were not making efforts to conduct supplementary exams for the students who could not succeed in the initial exams to save their academic year, and due to six to eight months of delay in announcement of the annual exams results, precious academic years of the students are lost.
The court was requested to direct the respondents to announce results of matric, intermediate, graduation and post graduation exams within four months and conduct supplementary exams regularly to facilitate the students. The counsel for the respondent boards and universities filed power and sought time to file replies in the petition.
The SHC division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar directed the counsel for boards and universities to file their replies with regard to the delay in announcement of annual examination results by September 13.
Plea for fund utilisation
In a separate case, the Sindh High Court directed the economic affairs division to file comments with regard to the utilisation of a multi-million-dollar US grant for a project to educate girls.
The court issued these directives while hearing the petition seeking an inquiry into the utilisation of the grant. Petitioner Bisma Naureen told the court that former US First Lady Michelle Obama had announced an education programme titled ‘Let Girls Learn’ in coordination with the Pakistani government.
She said the USAID project would provide USD70 million to new and ongoing USAID programmes that benefit more than 200,000 adolescent girls aged between 10 and 19 years across the country.
She added that the programme was announced in October 2015 during an event at the White House, where former premier Nawaz Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz was also present.
The petitioner claimed that Maryam had misused the office of the prime minister despite being Maryam Safdar. She expressed apprehension that the grant could be misused. She told the court that she had written to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Ministry of Finance for conducting an inquiry into the utilisation of the US70 million grant, but her request was ignored.
Citing the finance ministry, the PM’s secretary, NAB and Maryam as respondents, the petitioner requested the SHC to direct the accountability bureau to conduct an inquiry into the utilisation of the grant and take appropriate action if Maryam misused it.
The court was informed by the federal law officer that a letter has been sent to the national monetary fund’s department of finance department and their reply is awaited.
The court, granting time, directed the federal law officer to submit a report on the utilisation of funds and adjourned the hearing till September 18.
According to USAID, ‘Let Girls Learn’ is a new whole-of-government initiative to ensure that adolescent girls get the education they deserve.
Announced in October 2015, ‘Let Girls Learn-Pakistan’ would seek opportunities to foster public-private partnerships and collaborate with other development partners to advance girls’ education and empowerment.
The programme would serve as a platform and catalyst for broader political and social commitment to strengthen adolescent girls’ education and empowerment in Pakistan.A Strategy Analytics report found near universal acclaim for the T-Mobile Binge On video platform, which has since been folded into the One rate plan
T-Mobile US’ Binge On video-streaming platform is a winner with consumers, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics.
The research firm found 99% of smartphone users tapping into the video service claimed to be satisfied with the quality of mobile streaming. The platform, which was launched last year under the Binge On name and since folded into the carrier’s One rate plan, streams video content over T-Mobile US’ cellular network at 480-pixel video quality in its standard setting. Customers can now pay extra to have the service stream video at a higher quality.
The Strategy Analytics report said the findings came from SA’s AppOptix USA research platform using an opt-in panel of consumers, a telemetry application and big data analytics.
The results found 20% of T-Mobile US customers upgraded their rate plans in order to use the streaming video service, 14% of all wireless consumers said they were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in switching to T-Mobile US to take advantage of the streaming video service, and 68% of all wireless customers surveyed indicated “strong” or “moderate” interest in zero-rated streaming video at 480p quality.
“The survey results prove that Binge On has been a success for T-Mobile, helping to raise its [average revenue per user], increase mobile video usage and to give U.S. smartphone owners another reason to consider switching to T-Mobile,” wrote David Kerr, VP at Strategy Analytics. “Binge On has proved an important stage in the evolution from Simple Choice tariffs to T-Mobile One.”
The T-Mobile US service initially garnered some regulatory scrutiny as a potential violator of the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules. The FCC sent a letter to T-Mobile US seeking additional insight into the Binge On service, though FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler initially stated he did not think the service violated net neutrality or Open Internet provisions, indicating the offer was “highly innovative and highly competitive.” T-Mobile US earlier this year appeared to have soothed some content provider concerns by implementing content provider control over the video quality of the streamed content.
Imitation sincerest form of flattery
T-Mobile US rivals have, in various forms, jumped on the bandwagon of zero-rating streaming video content.
Sprint has been the most eager to copy T-Mobile US’ model, rolling out a video optimization package as part of its “Unlimited Freedom” rate plans designed to limit video streaming to 480p, or “DVD-like” quality. Sprint followed the launch with an offer for customers to stream video over its cellular network at higher-definition quality for an extra fee.
AT&T earlier this month moved to zero-rating streaming video content from its DirecTV and U-verse video platforms for its wireless customers, which now runs alongside its offer of “unlimited” data access for AT&T Mobility customers selecting one of the television services.
Verizon Wireless last week added streaming content through the NFL Mobile application |
$300 a month higher, it is comparable to other Mississauga centres, he said.
Article Continued Below
But with the proposed minimum wage increase, parent fees at Kids Zone will have to rise by at least 12.7 per cent on Jan. 1 and by another 6.5 per cent in January 2019, Taus said. Most of the centre’s 36 full-time staff and four part-timers earn between $12.50 and $13 an hour with a handful of long-time employees making between $16 and $17 an hour, he said. “But 100 per cent of our staff will get a raise to ensure the pay grid continues to reflect workers’ experience,” he added. And that means parent fees will have to go up at a time when many families are already financially strapped, he said. “Some parents will decide to just stay home or choose less regulated options,” he predicted. “You could see a lot of (licensed) daycares close.” Municipalities, which oversee provincial child care funding, can provide grants to boost wages, but only if staff are already earning minimum wage, said Suzanne Finn, director of early years and child care services for Peel Region. “We are worried about the impact of the increase, and we are doing some analysis to see what it will be in January,” she said in an interview. “The problem is everybody has different rates and everybody pays their staff differently,” Finn said. “I could make a decision to top up everyone, but that might mean I would be giving centres different amounts of money… It is a really complex problem, and I’m just trying to figure out the best thing to do. We wouldn’t want centres to close over this.” A report on new child care funding in the region — including $24.4 million in provincial and federal cash announced this spring — will be discussed by Peel Regional Council on Thursday, Finn said. Toronto is also assessing the potential fallout. “We are just starting the analysis now,” said Elaine Baxter-Trahair, the city’s general manager of children’s services. “There is no question we will have to deal with it as a budget pressure. We’re just trying to get our heads around what the quantum is at this point.” About one-quarter of registered early childhood educators in the province earn less than $15 an hour, notes Lyndsay Macdonald of the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario, which supported the recent Fight for $15 campaign to boost the minimum wage. “The province definitely has to step up and define for municipalities how this should be addressed,” she said. “A lot of the (new federal and provincial) money is going into subsidies, but not everybody has access to a subsidy,” she noted. “What is that going to look like for full-fee paying parents? It could very well put child care out of reach for them.”The great menace in headlines in 2011 was that either every headline was “11 Ways to X” or that it was “Y Happens to Z [SLIDESHOW].” You know, whatever our pals at Business Insider and Huffington Post’s Celebrity Sideboob’s page were doing. Well, guess what, we all got used to it, and now it barely registers as tacky or grabby, except when it’s over the top. Sure: promise me 11 things, I will at least read three of them. Fair’s fair.
The menace before that was the “How” headline, which is so hard to avoid. “How X Became Y.” “How Apple Something Something’d.” “How Your Mom Became Your Dad.” That kind of thing. We all use “how” because “The Story of…” is boring and gross as a headline. “How” will never die.
But that is all like Victorian poetry compared to the new headline colloquialism that flowered into dominance in 2012. Headlines now are a strange cross between imperative and inviting. The tone is soothing, seductive and at least a little bit demanding, like every character ever played by Linda Fiorentino.
Need an example? It uses constructions like “Take a Break,” as in this rather aggressively marketed headline from Gothamist.
I don’t know about you, but I was definitely ready for a Sandy break. (Hmm.)
These headlines don’t always include “you” directly; usually the “you” is implied. But they do often include “watch,” which blogs inherited from the bigger news sites, like CNN, which famously invite us to WATCH LIVE: TODDLER KILLED BY GOAT and the like constantly. (In a rare variant, websites invite other modes of consumption: “Read Floyd Landis’s Lawsuit Againt Lance Armstrong, Which The Government Could Join Any Day,” suggests Deadspin today.) This is a cousin to the “Here’s the Real Reason Why…” headlines, which is a time-honored go-to. Effective, but sometimes deathly.
(Spoiler: the real reason is that the “new Indian yuppie” wants is “a clean, quiet, comfortable, air-conditioned space, to work, meet friends or linger for hours, no questions asked.” Unlike, you know, everyone else everywhere. Which makes that headline a good bit overbuilt.)
Also headlines now often include a weird colloquial address. “Good Morning, X Happened to Y” is one of those weird situations. “Good morning” is a Deadspin classic. (Related: the use of “everyone.” As in: “Everyone Wants to Adopt This Adorable Three-Legged Dog Who Was Caught on Camera Stealing Pet Food from a Supermarket.”)
What’s oddest about this form of headline is that it’s disassociated from conveying news. Instead it conveys interaction. Headlines once were stuffed full of proper nouns. But it turns out, old-fashioned headlines don’t convey things that aren’t news well. “Three-Legged Dog Desirable”? Nope. It doesn’t work, because there’s nothing there. Nothing except “aww.” And service pieces — how to do x, why not to do y — need the help for their softness too.
Along the way, the second-person has become a bit overwhelming. For this, we can likely blame Thought Catalog, whose entire industry is about the “you”: “The Cycle Of Love You’ll Go Through With Your Phone.” And so on. It spreads! Today, on BuzzFeeᴅ: “The 10 Places You’d Rather Be Right Now” and “Hey, You’re Doing A Really Good Job Today!” (That’s not true, I am not.)
This headline style hit the big leagues finally, with Stephen Rodrick’s Times Mag piece on Lindsay Lohan, with the headline “Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie.”
Fascinated by web headlines that begin “Here Is” or “This Is.” Why do we need to be told it’s “here” or it’s “this”? ow.ly/gKG2F
Out of context, it’s jarring.
A lot of this vernacular arrived at Gawker at the same time that AJ Daulerio arrived at Gawker from Deadspin. [Note: Cause, effect, coincidence: no idea.] Now it’s totally saturated. “This Guy Is The Reason Hurricane Sandy’s Wikipedia Page Didn’t Mention Climate Change Until Today” was the Gawker repackaging of Popular Science’s headline “Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia.”
[Update: And here’s a funny iteration: “I Can’t Stop Staring At….” Google results are heavily Gawker Media sites.]
Here’s a flashback. In 2007, a popular video of a baby getting dropkicked by a breakdancer (hard to believe I just typed that) was headlined “Times Square Still Extremely Unsafe for Children” on Gawker, which is pretty so-so as a headline but still funny. There’s no way that would get that headline now. (“Breakdancing in Times Square — Baby goes flying!” was the YouTube video headline.) “Watch This Baby Get Drop-Kicked By a Subway Breakdancer” is what I’d predict for our age. You have to really tell the folks on Twitter what’s happening for your clicks ’n’ shares, you see.
One other note: this is pretty distinctly American. You won’t catch a whiff of it on The Daily Mail.
Another part of it is the BuzzFeeᴅ “joy” component. The headlines come to offer the “you” pleasure and entertainment. Here’s back-to-back stories from their “Best of 2012” page.
Now that’s a lot of enthusiasm.
And the real problem is… overall, these new headline actions are infectious. Once you hear the headlines this way, and get into their rhythm, you can’t stop.
• Here’s the First Trailer for Harmony Korine’s Contra-Disney Movie, Spring Breakers.
• Watch this: Sony assembles three of its hottest gadgets in just five minutes.
• How the American Who Outsourced His Own Job to China So He Could Watch Cat Videos Could Have Gotten Away With It, According to the Man Who Caught Him.
• How Two Teams Found a Way to Lose a Three-Team Trade.
• Here’s The Big Beautiful BMW That Will Replace The 3 Series Coupe.
• Who Wants To Read 120,000 Pages Of Boy Scout Sex Abuse Documents?
• Why You Shouldn’t Find A Job On Craigslist.
• Meet The Man Who “Made Love” To A Dolphin.
But I don’t want to perform or learn or observe any of these things. Nor do I want to meet any of these people, particularly the ones who have sex with dolphins. I mean, I might? But the real reason I don’t is because almost all these constructions are so passive; the verbs are so weak or insignificant. When you start looking for verbs, sometimes you hardly find any. “Here Is X” robs us of chances for passion and action. “Watch” boxes us in as consumers, just a pile of receptors down at the dark end of an Internet tube. These constructions acknowledge a truth: our actions are increasingly passive online, and we really are just looking for something to watch, click, share and receive.
Photo by Porsche Brosseau.“At the time, I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was domestic violence. I never thought I would end up in an abusive relationship.”
Domestic violence thrives on silence. To break the silence, a volunteer from the Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project (DVRP) has agreed to share her story about her abusive marriage.
Leaving an abusive relationship is never easy. Immigrant survivors face additional challenges including unfamiliarity with the legal system, immigration concerns, language barriers, lack of financial resources, and cultural and religious barriers.
DVRP is the only pan-Asian organization in the D.C. metropolitan area that provides services culturally and linguistically designed for Asian/Pacific Islander survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
For safety reasons, all identifying factors in this article have been removed.
People thought of us as the perfect couple.
During social events and get-togethers he would show off his love for me.
But when it was just the two of us, he acted like I was his enemy. He hurt me verbally. He hurt me physically. He was from another country and I sponsored his green card. He told me his ego was bruised because I was responsible for bringing him to America. He was an engineer. I paid his MBA tuition and took active interest in his course work. But the more I did for him, the more insecure he became about his manhood.
At the time, I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was domestic violence. I never thought I would end up in an abusive relationship.
“The more I did for him, the more insecure he became about his manhood.”
I come from a professional and educated upper middle class family. I have a graduate degree. I was the breadwinner in my marriage. I thought domestic violence only happened in lower-class communities. I know better now. Domestic violence does not discriminate.
The abuse started immediately after we were married. He demanded I give him all of my attention, even while I was at work. He called me at my job and forced me to be online so he could check up on me. His constant phone calls made it difficult for me to advance in my work and I ended up having to switch jobs.
He also kept tabs of my phone logs so he would know who I was communicating with at all times. He discouraged me from keeping in touch with family and friends. He isolated me from my support system.
I lived in chronic stress. I never imagined the man I married would end up abusing me for seven years.
“I never imagined the man I married would end up abusing me for seven years.”
Slowly, the violence escalated. He started intimidating me by crushing lampshades, throwing dishes full of food– shattering them into pieces. He would throw whatever he could get his hands on. Shoes. Windows rods. Sometimes in the car, he would break unexpectedly or speed just to scare me.
He often woke me up in the middle of the night just to argue. He loved to hear me apologize. He wouldn’t behave normally until after I had apologized multiple times. Some of our fights stemmed from his desire to be with other women. He wanted me to agree to an open marriage so he could have one-night stands. He told me about his fantasies of raping me.
“I kept hoping for things to get better, but they only got worse.”
I kept hoping for things to get better, but they only got worse. Once, he slapped me so hard my earrings broke. On another occasion, he tried to choke me. That was the turning point for me. I knew saving my marriage was not worth losing my life.
For years I kept quiet and suffered in silence, but that night I called my parents and brother and told them everything. They immediately supported me. My parents were with me when I told my husband I wanted a separation. My support system was back and it empowered me to face him and ask him to leave. It wasn’t easy, but I was persistent. He moved out.
Life after our separation was tough. It’s easy to think that getting your freedom back would immediately make life better, but it was hard at first. As unhealthy and abusive as our marriage was, I was used to having someone to go out to restaurants, share a bed, and travel with. I was not used to having so much freedom. There was no one to report to anymore. I could do whatever I wanted, but what was it that I wanted? For seven years, I had served someone else. Slowly, everything started to come back to me. I was free. I rebuilt my friendships and spent more time with my family. I traveled alone and it was some of the best times I’ve ever had. I focused on my career. I meditated and exercised.
I hadn’t just gotten my freedom back. I got my power back. And for that, I have never loved myself more than I love myself now.After days of haggling, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are agreeing to face off in a NY1-CNN presidential debate in Brooklyn before the April 19th presidential primary. NY1 Political Reporter Josh Robin has more details about the April 14th showdown.
NY1 political anchor Errol Louis will be among those questioning Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
The venue for the two-hour forum will be the Brooklyn Navy Yard's Duggal Greenhouse.
The New York Daily News is also participating.
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have campaigned in the city, but pinning down these two busy candidates had been trickier than hailing a rush hour cab in the rain.
Though both said they wanted to.
"I'll be there," Clinton said.
"I think we can work out a date that works for her schedule, that works for my schedule," Sanders said.
That schedule had Sanders holding a Washington Square Park rally April 14.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio said he'd arrange permits for another day — with Sanders settling on April 13.
"Having a presidential primary election that matters for the first time since 1992 certainty on the Democratic side, it's a very very important moment," the mayor said.
De Blasio backs Clinton, who appeared with Governor Cuomo on Monday, but didn't talk about debates in her speech.
Debates over debates are nothing new, but there is added urgency ahead of the April 19 primary. If Sanders loses, he would be even further back in the delegate race. But if Clinton loses, it would be a devastating loss in the state she represented for eight years.
In agreeing to the debate, both sides thawed, for a minute.
A Sanders statements says: "We hope the debate will be worth the inconvenience for thousands of New Yorkers who were planning to attend our rally on Thursday but will have to change their schedules to accommodate Secretary Clinton’s jam-packed, high-dollar, coast-to-coast schedule of fundraisers all over the country."
A Clinton statement adds: "We had thought the Sanders campaign would have accepted our offer for a Brooklyn debate on April 14 in a New York minute, but it ended up taking a few extra days for them to agree. We are glad they did. We are grateful to have both NY1 and the Daily News sponsoring this debate, ensuring a New York focus to the discussion."
And while the evening promises to be exciting and substantial, New Yorkers looking for Republican fare that evening don't have to stray far.
The three candidates are attending the State Republican dinner that evening. Their primary is also April 19.
WATCHING THE DEBATE
Tickets to the debate are not available to the general public, but are being distributed by the candidates' campaigns and by the Democratic party.
Viewers can watch the debate on TV on NY1 News; online at NY1.com/live and on the TWC News app.
The debate will also be carried on all TWC News channels throughout New York state. Viewers can follow along on Twitter or contribute their commentary using the hashtag #NYDebate.Would you admit to a crime that you didn’t commit? Your obvious answer would be: “Of course not.” But under duress, would you relent?
Watch The Confession Tapes to reveal the crimes people will admit to, when put under extraordinary pressure.
I don’t think I’ve seen a documentary of this nature before, and I’ve seen a lot, so I was fascinated and shocked by what I saw.
Cases include, two high school boys who were subject to a sting operation, as they were suspected of murdering of one of the boy’s parents.
A man is accused of murder, after the charred remains of his girlfriend are discovered in her burned out bar.
A woman is forced into confessing to the murder of her daughter, after an arson attack on their home.
And a father who confesses to the murder of his four children, after their car careered into the river because the accelerator stuck.
Via police video tapes, we witness the suspects being relentlessly interrogated for hours and hours, AND hours. And you wonder, who wouldn’t break and confess under those circumstances.
Thank goodness for the discovery of DNA, to exonerate innocent people from crimes they didn’t commit. But it is tragic to see the miscarriage of justice, when there is no forensic evidence to substantiate their innocence.
The episodes are divided into chapters, which makes the structure very neat and clear. And as you would imagine there are contributions by experts in their field, family members; legal representatives and of course the accused.
Are police under pressure to resolve crimes quickly? Or is it a case of once you are pegged for the crime, you’re doomed? Watch the documentary, and you decide.
It’s a sobering thought though just how many other people have been falsely accused, under such conditions.
I confess to liking The Confession Tapes.
Words: Claire Bueno
Runtime: 42 minutes, 7 episodes Year: 2017 Genre: Crime, Documentary, TV Streaming Service: Netflix UK, Netflix US
Please share with #Netpix #WatchinNotSearchinJust three weeks before Equifax disclosed a colossal data breach that compromised the data of more than 145 million people, its then-CEO Richard Smith gave a speech in which he declared that “fraud is a huge opportunity for us.”
Now, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is making Equifax (efx) and its former CEO rue those words. A day after berating Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan over the bank’s own scandal with phony accounts, Senator Warren took aim Wednesday at Smith, who retired as CEO of the credit reporting agency last week in the wake of the Equifax breach.
Smith faced Congress for the second day in a row to offer his testimony on the massive hack, part of a three-day schedule of hearings on Capitol Hill.
Quoting Smith’s earlier comments, delivered at the University of Georgia business school in August, Warren, an outspoken consumer watchdog, accused him of not only injuring Americans affected by the Equifax breach, but of profiting off their plight.
After Smith conceded that the Equifax hack had increased the likelihood of fraud, the Senator used his own words against him: “So the breach of your system has actually created more business opportunities for you,” Warren said Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate banking committee.
For one, Warren pointed out, 7.5 million people have signed up for the free year of credit monitoring that Equifax offered following the breach, but after that, they will have to pay Equifax $17 a month to continue the service. If just one million of those people opt to do so, it amounts to an additional $200 million in revenue for Equifax, Warren said. If they all do, Equifax stands to make more than $1.5 billion extra.
What’s more, LifeLock, an identity theft protection company, has said that enrollments for its service have increased 10-fold since the Equifax breach, with more than 100,000 signing up within just the first week after the hack was disclosed. But LifeLock, whose protection plans cost up to $29.99 a month, buys its credit monitoring service from Equifax—meaning that Equifax is still getting a cut of those sales, Warren said.
“You’ve got three different ways that Equifax is making money, millions of dollars, off its own screwup,” the Senator said at the hearing.
The third way Equifax may benefit, Warren explained, is through the products it sells to government agencies to help them with identity verification, something that could be all the more important if the breach leads to greater identity theft, as expected. For example, it was also revealed Wednesday that the IRS just signed a new $7.25 million contract with Equifax in September, after the breach was announced.
In short, the Senator argued, Equifax has far more to gain from its data breach than it does to lose, with the average victim of a data breach receiving a payout of just $2 in restitution, she said.
“Consumers will spend the rest of their lives worrying about identity theft,” Warren continued. “But Equifax will be just fine—heck, it could actually come out ahead.”
Equifax’s former CEO Smith will continue his testimony on Thursday when he appears before the House Financial Services Committee at 9:15 a.m. E.T.'I imagine that some people must wonder at how I trust Sandy's version of events. When I tell people for the first time, I see a flicker in their eyes, as if they are trying to make up their minds about him'
I was cycling home along the river one summer evening three years ago when I first saw Sandy at work. He's an artist, and I stopped to watch what he was doing. He saw me and called me over, we talked and at the end of the night we exchanged phone numbers. The next day he called to ask me to visit him again, and we sat by the Thames chatting until the sun came up.
From that time on, we spent a great deal of time with each other, and he moved in with me soon afterwards. A month or two later, Sandy told me his story. Without much buildup at all, he said, "I've got to tell you that I'm on the sex offenders register."
He began to explain that it had happened at a party a few years earlier. He'd met a girl there and went to bed with her. She'd taken him to a bed that her friend had already occupied. They fell asleep and the next morning, as they were getting into things again, the other girl began to stir and brush against him. Sandy had taken this as some sign of interest and began to touch her as well. She wasn't interested and told him so, and he stopped. But she went to the police the next day. He was arrested and charged with sexual assault. His solicitor advised him that if he pleaded not guilty and they found him guilty, he would face a prison sentence. Out of fear, he told me, he pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault and was sentenced to two years' probation.
Although Sandy was open about his offence from early on in our relationship, the full implications didn't properly sink in with me until about a year later, when the police came round to check that, as his official live-in partner, I was safe and aware of the situation. It was also when I found out that even they didn't know about the case details – the police knew only that Sandy had been sentenced and couldn't tell me any more.
That was the point when it dawned on me: I had no other source who could tell me what Sandy had done. I guess I have wondered about it from time to time. I'll never know what really happened that night, and I'm well aware that human memory can be fallible. I imagine that some people must wonder at how I trust Sandy's version of events. When I tell people, I see a flicker in their eyes, as if they are trying to make up their minds about him. People empathise with our situation, but you never know what they are really thinking.
Five years on, this is still Sandy's reality – and mine. As a couple, we have learned to adapt to a life where he still has to register his address with the police if he goes anywhere for more than three nights. I'm very aware of the parallels with my own history – I was abused between the ages of 12 to 15, and later found out that the man had abused many other children before me. My case eventually went to trial, but it took more than two years. He was sentenced to two years' rehabilitation and never allowed to be in the company of children again.
I imagine the man who abused me probably tells people he's innocent, too, so I do understand how people can behave in these situations. I'm aware, too, from my own experiences, that you can never really know a person. How does anyone know that their partner is telling the truth about their past? The answer is that none of us does – we have to trust our own experience of an individual. I made my decision to trust Sandy early on, and I still do.
What happened to him doesn't define us, and we don't focus on it all the time. I try to be as open as I can about what's happened, because I think people need to hear these things – our close circle of friends know, and it's not some-thing I feel ashamed about. Everyone has an idea of how good or bad people are, but there are grey areas and, as I've discovered, things are not always that simple.
At least we've been through the worst of it now. We've been told that the police monitoring will end in April and we plan to have a big party to celebrate. I don't expect it will change anything in our relationship, but I'm hoping it will be a new start for both of us.
• Sandy is not his real name.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 Welsh dad jailed for 10-and-a-half years on Malta after he was caught growing five cannabis plants has vowed: “I will get off this island.”
Speaking from behind bars, Daniel Holmes said the thought of being reunited with his wife and daughter in Wales gave him strength.
Daniel, 35, is 22 months into his decade-long sentence at Corradino Correctional Facility (CCF) near the Maltese capital, Valetta.
His family in Wales this week told of their desperate hope that appeal court judges will next month cut short his prison term.
Wife Marzena, 26, lives in Cardiff with their two-year-old daughter, Rainbow, who was born three months before Daniel was locked up in November 2011.
If he is forced to serve his full sentence, Daniel estimates he may not be released until 2019.
His nightmare started in June 2006 when he was caught growing cannabis plants in a flat he shared with a fellow Brit, Barry Lee, on Gozo.
Barry, a 44-year-old from Bolton, was found hanged in prison in 2010.
The following year, and after 65 court appearances, Daniel pleaded guilty on legal advice that he might receive a lesser sentence.
Despite the prosecution only asking for eight years, the judge stunned Daniel – who said the drug was for personal use only – with a 10-and-a-half-year jail term and a 23,000 (£19,000) fine.
“After all this time, especially with what happened to Barry, I always think ‘Whatever happens I will walk out of here one day for both of us’,” Daniel told WalesOnline in a telephone interview on Friday.
“I will leave the island. I will walk away from it. I won’t let it beat me. They can take a huge chunk of my life, but they won’t take it all.
“They won’t take who I am as a person and, if anything, I’ll use this time to become a stronger person and a better person – and never come back to Malta again.”
Stranded in a foreign country, with a three-month-old baby and no income, Marzena stood by her husband, getting a job and visiting Daniel three times a week with Rainbow.
“I said straight away, even before he got the sentence, that I knew I would stay by him and he knew it as well. It is true love,” said the 25-year-old, who is originally from Poland.
The couple were married inside the 170-year-old prison in May 2012, but finances forced Marzena to make the heart-breaking decision to return to Cardiff last December to live with her mother in St Mellons.
Daniel, from Newport, has his own cell, with a bed, toilet, window and a wardrobe, as well as a calendar to tick off the days. Compared to other foreign prisons, the conditions are “not too bad”, he said.
The chef spends his time going to the gym, writing and learning Polish. He also has a job assembling Playmobil dolls to pay for drinking water, stamps, cigarettes and soap.
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“It’s the same as anywhere else; it comes down to the person. If you want to fight to stay mentally fit, you will get through it,” Daniel said.
“Unfortunately, time is time and it’s quite a long time. I take it day by day. I don’t even think about the end of the month or the end of the year.
“Even though we haven’t seen each other now for seven or eight months, I’m a lot happier knowing Marzena and Rainbow are surrounded by a loving family. It makes it a lot easier for me knowing everybody else outside is all right.”
His family post him photographs and DVDs of Rainbow, as well as recordings from British TV to keep him up to date with life back home.
“I received videos of her walking, eating with a spoon, and her first teeth – all the things you miss, there is so much really,” Daniel said.
“As a substitute it helps, obviously nothing compares to the reality of being there and supporting them. It’s very hard when I think about them surviving out there.
“It’s definitely the hardest part, knowing that if it goes the full sentence, if the appeal doesn’t work, she will be in school, close to 10 years old, and it will be incredibly hard bonding with her.”
Rainbow turned two last month and during her birthday party, her daddy telephoned to join in the celebrations.
“The cell is covered in pictures and every time I make a doll or do anything, I always look at a picture for strength,” he said.
“I’m very lucky that I have that, a lot of people in here don’t. I see them cope with prison in a totally different way. If you’ve got nothing on the outside to look forward to, you can decline very quickly in here.”
He’s looking forward to seeing his wife and child again when they return to Malta for the appeal decision on October 31, although he admits from his experience of the Maltese judicial system, he is “not very hopeful”.
Daniel and his flatmate were found in possession of cannabis plants weighing about 1kg – which included the stems, roots and leaves – but Malta’s drug laws make no distinction between cultivating and trafficking.
Daniel’s sentence sparked an outcry on the island, with thousands signing petitions calling for a fair sentence on appeal.
“It’s been a total whitewash of a case. Even compared to a lot of sentences in here, it is unbelievable. One guy sentenced for 7kg of heroin got the same years as me,” Daniel said.
“Literally for a few plants, which is all it was. In the beginning, they put me down as a drug baron and cannabis factory owner, when realistically it was five plants and 25 baby plants.
“I obviously knew what I was doing was illegal in most countries, but most countries wouldn’t have dealt with it with this much of a sentence.”
Asked how he felt about Malta now, he replied: “I’ve spent almost eight or nine years on the island. I’ve made a lot of good friends. The island itself is nice and the people are generous, but unfortunately all these proceedings are slowly breaking me.
“I can’t say I hate Malta, I don’t want to be a hateful person and obviously my daughter was born here and I met my wife here, but it’s very hard not to hate the place.”
The thought of being reunited with his family and returning to a “mundane life” back in Wales “sounds amazing from in here”, he said.
“After all this time, I’d be like one of those films where you see the guy fall to the floor and kiss the dirt. It would be very nice to see a mountain and some greenery. Even the rain I think I’d look forward to.
“I was 26 when I first came here and I’m now 35 and if they have their way, I’ll be 42 when I leave. It’s been a hell of an experience to be honest.”
Marzena, who first got together with Daniel while they were both working in an English restaurant in 2010, said her “extremely honest and loyal” husband was “a very special person” and “worth waiting for”.
Since moving back to Cardiff, she has only managed to fly out to Malta once, in January, but talks to him daily on the phone.
“Rainbow has changed so much. She started speaking not long ago and when she sees photos or videos of him, she’s always like ‘daddy, daddy’. It’s not the best situation, but hey, we have to cope with it,” the part-time caterer and baker said.
She added: “In the best-case scenario, he’s actually going to get out straight away, so that’s what I’m hoping for and that’s what’s going to happen. If not, we’ll go from there. For now, I don’t have anything but hope for that.
“If not, then he could be transferred to Britain. We are staying very positive though. He is a very strong man and I try to stay strong for him.”
The son of two teachers, Daniel attended Newport’s Bassaleg School along with sisters Chloe, 39, and Lucy, 31. He qualified as a chef at Nash College (Coleg Gwent) and went on to work at renowned restaurant The Walnut Tree in Abergavenny.
He then worked at various pubs and restaurants, while at the same time pursuing his other passion of scuba-diving. In 2004, Daniel decided to combine his diving and chef skills by moving to Malta.
It was a decision that would change his life, as well as that of his family.
Far from being a drug baron, he relied on his parents, retired teachers Mel and Kate, who live in Risca, Newport, for money to pay rent and bills.
In the first year after his arrest in 2006, Daniel was kept in custody before his father managed to get him bail on the proviso that he would live with his dad.
It was while on bail that Daniel turned his life around, giving up pot and falling in love with Marzena.
The saga has cost Mel and Kate about £30,000, but the toll on the family has been “immeasurable”.
“In some ways, we’ve all grown stronger. Our hope is that he and us will come out of it better people,” Mel said.
Mel and Kate visit their son as much as possible, but Kate’s health makes it difficult. She this week thanked the charity Prisoners Abroad for their support, adding: “We want to warn young people going on holiday to Malta that they have to be so careful.”North American visual novel distributor Sekai Project announced on Wednesday that it will release PacoProject's PacaPlus visual novel in English. The company will have a limited number of physical copies available at its booth at Anime Expo, and customers who buy a copy of the game will receive one of two different PacaPlus clear file folders. Sekai Project will also release the title digitally via Steam.
Sekai Project describes the story:
The story follows the life of a certain Kazuma Saeki who is living the life. Surrounded by friends, especially his cute girlfriend Yukari Izumi, his school days could not be any better. However, on a bus ride back from "Alpaca Kingdom" he wakes up from a nap and finds that it's not Yukari that's sitting next to him but an alpaca. An alpaca that talks exactly like Yukari in fact... What will happen to Kazuma and his life with an alpaca? How exactly does an alpaca play the violin? What is the connection between "Alpaca Kingdom" and what happened to Yukari? Pick up the game and get to the bottom of this fluffy mystery!April 22nd, 2008
Every few months, I go to my doctor to get an injection that must be administered at a ventrogluteal site. What’s a ventrogluteal site, you ask?
My big ‘ol smiling butt, that’s what.
I’ve gotten quite used to getting injections this way. It’s not painful at all, and subjects me to only a mild amount of embarrassment. |
In October 1969, when he was 20, Thorpe met Denise Shipkowski. They spent an intense evening together, flirting and kissing.
“I warmed up to him,” Denise said.
Two days later Thorpe shipped out to Vietnam, where he served as a gunner on UH-1 helicopters — Hueys.
“I thought this is just my luck, to meet the woman of my dreams and then go to Vietnam,” Thorpe said. “I was pretty sure I wouldn’t come back.”
They exchanged letters, and a year later Thorpe returned home. He and Denise married in 1972. For their honeymoon they drove to Niagara Falls, following railroads all the way and staying in hotels near the tracks.
It was the early 1970s, and train service across the United States was collapsing. Steve decided to ride the final trip of every train he could.
Denise, for reasons she cannot fully articulate, agreed to come along.
“It’s almost unheard of to find a woman who’s up for doing all this rail stuff. “Steve definitely lucked out in that respect,” said David Peter Alan, chairman of the Lackawanna Coalition, which advocates for better train service. (Steve Thorpe is the group’s vice chairman.)
Together the Thorpes rode the last run of the Crusader, and the Jersey Central Railroad’s final Bayonne Shuttle. In 1973, Steve wanted to ride one of the last trains on the Apollo run, a high-speed freight from Newark to Buffalo.
A conductor barred them from the caboose. So the Thorpes waited for the train to start rolling and hopped aboard.
“I was shocked,” said Denise, 66. “I never even rode a train before I met him.”
In Sayre, Pennsylvania, a cleaning crew found the Thorpes hiding in a locomotive bathroom. Instead of throwing them off, the crew shared their food with the young couple. When they arrived in Buffalo, crew members drove the Thorpes to Niagara Falls.
“That was our anniversary present,” Steve said.
“It was pretty neat,” Denise said.
Steve Thorpe's lifelong romance with rail travel was kindled when he used to visit the original Penn Station in New York with his father. Denise has been along for the ride ever since the two met nearly 50 years ago. (Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)
Denise gave birth to four children, and for years she and Steve had no money for train tickets. Instead they packed the family into a station wagon to spend summer weekends chasing trains. When stuck at home, he’d spread railroad timetables across the kitchen table and create fantasy itineraries.
“That helped me keep my sanity,” he said.
When their youngest child left home in 2001, the Thorpes returned to the rails. Their annual vacation consists of riding Amtrak 16 hours to Chicago to spend a week riding commuter rail. As a special treat, Steve occasionally makes two consecutive round trips to Port Jervis, once by himself and the second time with Denise, riding trains for 17 hours straight.
Describing such days, Thorpe giggles with glee. Even his train friends don't understand.
“I don’t want to see the same scenery a hundred times,” said Alan, the Lackawanna Coalition leader. “Steve can do it. And Denise seems very devoted to Steve.”
Making friends everywhere
On a recent trip to Port Jervis, the Thorpes met friends everywhere. NJ Transit train crews deal with thousands of travelers every day. But each time the Thorpes boarded a new train, all the rail workers stopped, smiled and said hello. In the Secaucus Junction rotunda, one NJ Transit worker gave Denise a hug.
The weekly ritual reaches its midpoint at Brother Bruno's, a pizza restaurant near the Port Jervis train station. The Thorpes split a pie with banana peppers before beginning the long journey home. (Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)
When the couple arrived at Brother Bruno’s, a small cheer spread through the pizzeria.
“I don’t get it, why he does this,” said John Altadonna, the shop's owner. “But they’re the nicest people you could ever meet.”
Riding back, Steve told Denise at 11:30 p.m. that they would have a one-hour layover in Secaucus.
“An hour? Ugghhhh!” she said. It was her only complaint of the evening.
Finally, at 1 a.m., the train approached Metuchen. Denise was so sleepy she could barely open her eyes. Steve was wide awake. He helped Denise pull on her long green trench coat, then stepped from the warm train into the cold night air.
“I ride with him,” Denise said. “I’d just be bored if I rode the trains by myself.”
Email: maag@northjersey.com
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It is obvious to anyone who has traveled around the United States that cultural assumptions, behaviors, and norms vary widely. We all know, for instance, that the South is more politically conservative than the Northeast. And we at least vaguely assume that this is rooted in different outlooks on life.
But why do these different outlooks exist, and correspond so closely to different regions? In a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (and discussed more here), psychologists Jesse R. Harrington and Michele J. Gelfand of the University of Maryland propose a sweeping theory to explain this phenomenon. Call it the theory of “tightness-looseness”: The researchers show, through analysis of anything from numbers of police per capita to the availability of booze, that some US states are far more “tight”—meaning that they “have many strongly enforced rules and little tolerance for deviance.” Others, meanwhile, are more “loose,” meaning that they “have few strongly enforced rules and greater tolerance for deviance.”
The 10 tightest states? Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The 10 loosest, meanwhile, are California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Vermont. (Notice a pattern here?)
The 10 tightest states? Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and North Carolina. (Notice a pattern here?)
Harrington and Gelfand measure a state’s tightness or looseness based on indicators such as the legality of corporal punishment in schools, the general severity of legal sentences, access to alcohol and availability of civil unions, level of religiosity, and the percent of the population that is foreign. But really, that’s just the beginning of their analysis. After identifying which states are “tighter” and which are more “loose,” the researchers then trace these different outlooks to a range of ecological or historical factors in the states’ pasts (and in many cases, lingering into their presents). For as the authors write, tighter societies generally have had to deal with “a greater number of ecological and historical threats, including fewer natural resources, more natural disasters, a greater incidence of territorial threat, higher population density, and greater pathogen prevalence.”
That applies nicely to the United States. The “tight” states, it turns out, have higher death rates from heat, storms, floods, and lightning. (Not to mention tornadoes.) They also have higher rates of death from influenza and pneumonia, and higher rates of HIV and a number of other diseases. They have higher child and infant mortality. And then there’s external threat: The South, in the Civil War, was defending its own terrain and its own way of life. Indeed, the researchers show a very strong correlation between the percentage of slave-owning families that a state had in the year 1860, and its “tightness” measurement today.
It makes psychological sense, of course, that regions facing more threats would be much more inward-looking and tougher on deviants, because basically, they had to buckle down. They didn’t have the luxury of flowery art, creativity, and substance abuse.
Tight states have higher incarcertation and execution rates and “lower circulation of pornographic magazines.”
Still not done, Harrington and Gelfand also show that their index of states “tightness” and “looseness” maps nicely on to prior analyses of the differing personalities of people living in different US states. Citizens of “tight” states tend to be more “conscientious,” prizing order and structure in their lives. Citizens of “loose” states tend to be more “open,” wanting to try new things and have new experiences.
Other major distinguishing factors between “tight” and “loose” states:
Tight states have higher incarceration rates and higher execution rates.
Tight states have “lower circulation of pornographic magazines.”
Tight states have “more charges of employment discrimination per capita.”
Tight states produce fewer patents per capita, and have far fewer “fine artists” (including “painters, illustrators, writers”).
Most striking of all, the authors found “a negative and linear relationship between tightness and happiness” among citizens. Put more simply: People in loose states are happier.
In sum: It’s a very interesting theory, and one with quite a scope. Or as the authors put it: “tightness-looseness can account for the divergence of substance abuse and discrimination rates between states such as Hawaii and Ohio, reliably predicts the psychological differences…between Colorado and Alabama, helps to explain the contrasts in creativity and social organization between Vermont and North Dakota, and provides some understanding concerning the dissimilarity in insularity and resistance toward immigration between Arizona and New York.”
In these days of extreme political dysfunction, America itself is in increasing need of an explanation. Now, maybe, we have one.ORLANDO -- Hewlett-Packard today began taking orders for its first 3D printer, the HP Jet Fusion printer, which it said will be up to 10 times faster than existing machines and can cut the cost of manufacturing parts in half.
At the RAPID 3D additive manufacturing conference here, HP revealed two models: the lower-cost and lower production 3200 series and the 4200 series, for which it is now taking orders. The 4200 series will begin shipping to manufacturers in October; the 3200 series will be available in mid-2017.
HP originally unveiled its Jet Fusion printer in October 2014.
[ Further reading: How AR and VR will change enterprise mobility ]
HPs 4200 series Jet Fusion printer (left) and post processing station.
HP claims its printer will enable mass production of parts through additive manufacturing (3D printing), instead of just rapid prototyping, for which the technology is typically used. The printers are unlikely to be used to produce millions or billions of production parts; think, instead, in terms of hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of parts, HP said.
The printers will also revolutionize 3D printing in that they will be able to print electronics in the parts they create through the use of conductive materials printed at the voxel level. Like a pixel in a display, a voxel in 3D printing is a tiny cube, millions of which make up a larger object. A single voxel is 50 microns in size.
HP's Jet Fusion printers have a print area or a print bin of 16-in. x 12-in. x 16-in. Within that area, there are 2.4 teravoxels (a teravoxel is a trillion voxels).
"So parts are fused together at a very small level -- almost at the molecular level, and that helps give them a spectacular strength," said Alex Monino, HP 3D printing marketing director. "Imagine the possibilities of this in world of the Internet of Things, where not only every product is connected but every part in every product connected."
For example, Monino said, healthcare products such as orthotics or medical implants could have embedded wireless RFID chips that provide feedback to physicians or physical therapists on how well the product is performing or even how well a patient is doing.
HP HP's Jet Fusion 3D printer can embed electronics in parts, so that not only can a part's performance be measured, but the effects of its surroundings can be measured, too.
"Now, imagine the car of the future where every part is transmitting information," Monino said. "And, parts can be visibly or invisibly printed with ink that can only be seen with UV light, so you can print parts that ensure products cannot be counterfeited.
The printer works by first depositing powder (about 100 microns thick, or the thickness of a standard sheet of paper) onto a print bed using a print bar that looks like a scanning bar on a typical 2D printer. The print bar has 30,000 nozzles spraying 350 million fusing agent droplets per second in specific patterns as it moves back and forth across a print platform.
A detailing fusing agent is sprayed around the edges of a printed object, giving it "sharp" details.
HP The top of the HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printer showing a print bar. It looks like a scanning bar on a typical 2D printer. The 3D print bar, however, has 30,000 nozzles spraying 350 million drops per second of thermoplastic or other materials.
HP sells its printing materials in 30 liter boxes or 200 liter barrels. During post processing of printed objects, any unused powder materials is recycling for reuse.
HP An HP 10-liter material cartridge. HP also sells 200-liter barrels of printing powder.
Currently, HP's Jet Fusion printers only use nylon, although its technology roadmap includes other plastics, ceramics and possibly metals.
"I believe that HP will disrupt the industry with a new level of speed, quality and cost," said Terry Wohlers, president and lead analyst with market research firm Wohlers Associates. "It's difficult to validate machine and part quality until customers are available. My experience with HP and HP products is that the company does not take it lightly."
Like some other 3D printers, HP's is actually made up of printed parts. For example, of the 135 customer parts that make up a Jet Fusion printer, 66 were 3D printed by HP's own factory machines, according to Monino.
3D printing shines when it is used to produce an item that cannot be made with injection molding, CNC machines or other traditional manufacturing techniques, according to Pete Basiliere, imaging and print services vice president at research firm Gartner.
HP The HP Jet Fusion 3D printer prints at the voxel (or pixel) level, meaning it can use any combination of colors to create an object.
Examples of 3D printing in manufacturing abound, "ranging from medical implants and prostheses to MakieLab's' dolls. Align Technologies makes 150,000 Invisalign dental braces every day and every one of them requires a custom 3D-printed mold," Basiliere said.
"Compared to high-volume manufacturing of the same part, there is a cross-over point at which it is cheaper to produce the part with traditional technology than with 3D printing," Basiliere continued. "Injection molding, for instance, has a cost curve that starts high (due to tooling costs) but declines as those and other costs are amortized over the long production run. 3D printing has essentially a horizontal cost curve since there are no tooling costs and make-ready cost is low."
By enabling more productive 3D printing, HP is lowering the horizontal line for powder bed fusion costs, Basiliere said.
About the size of two washing machines, the HP Jet Fusion printer line will have a starting price of about $130,000 for the 3200 series and in the low $200,000 range for the more sophisticated 4200 series.
The 4200 series Jet Fusion printer is 25% faster than the 3200 series and will be able to produce product runs of more than 50,000, Monino said. Even at that rate, the printer will be more economical to run than traditional CNC milling or injection molding manufacturing techniques, Monino said.
HP Once a print job is complete, the printed parts must be removed from the Jet Fusion powder bin and cleaned. Here an HP technician cleans a printed vehicle intake manifold.
Along with the base printers, the HP Jet Fusion system comes with a separate post-processing station, which removes excess powder and debris and prepare printed parts for use. The post-processing stations are sold separately from the printers and add about $25,000 to the price.
While technically dissimilar in some ways to binder jet or selective laser sintering (SLS), a method of binding pulverized material together with either chemicals or laser light, HP's Jet Fusion 3D does result in a similar post-processing requirements; printed parts must be allowed to cool and then be pulled from a bin or "cake" of powder and cleaned before used.
Joe Kempton, an analyst for market research firm Canalys, said HP's Multi Jet Fusion technology is essentially powder bed fusion 3D printing.
HP In addition to thermoplastics, HP will offer other materials with which to print, including ceramics.
"Therefore, even though the technology is a game-changer, it will only affect a portion of the 3D printing industry, and within this segment, only the middle market of the enterprise space," Kempton said. "This means the kind of customers who will be using it are different from those who would be using, for example, [stereolithography]"
Stereolithography (SLA) is a 3D printing method where photosensitive resin is hardened with either UV or laser light. While various methods of SLA printing can be faster than others, HP's Multi Jet Fusion printing will top any previous production speeds.
"HP is truly offering a revolutionary new type of 3D printing," Kempton said. "There is often a lot of overhype in the 3D printing market over new technologies, most of which fail to live up to these lofty expectations, but HP's Jet Fusion technology really is something special."
While special, HP's Jet Fusion 3D printing technology is not about to "change manufacturing as we know it," Kempton cautioned. The technology is still likely to be used mostly for rapid prototyping. But if it lives up to its speed and quality claims, HP is likely to become a dominant player in the 3D printing arena, Kempton said.
HP
Wohlers agreed, saying HP's printers will "rewrite the rules of 3D printing."
For one, HP's Jef Fusion printers operate at half the cost of similar 3D printing methods, such as laser sintering. Today, laser sintering is the most popular additive manufacturing process for production parts.
Wohlers also pointed to HP's claim that its machines will be 10 times faster than laser sintering, since speed is critical to producing production quantities of parts. 3D printing has traditionally been faster at preparing parts for manufacturing, but slower in actually building the parts than traditional methods such as injection molds.
"So for some parts, companies will choose to use the HP machine for tens of thousands of parts annually, rather than using plastic injection molding. Determining whether it is viable will depend on the size of the parts and the requirements of the material," Wohlers said. "The company also said that the material properties are consistently better than laser sintering and I have no reason to doubt this claim. It is going to shake up 3D printing in ways that we have not seen in the past."
HP Chainmail printed by the HP Jet Fusion 3D printer.
While revolutionary in some ways, HP's Fusion Jet printing technology does have its drawbacks, Wohlers said. For example, like laser sintering, parts must cool before being removed from the printer's powder bin. So if a part's build takes 10 hours, it could take another 10 hours before parts can be extracted for post processing.
Additionally, HP has not released pricing for materials -- the powder for the Jet Fusion printers. If reasonably priced, it will be much more likely to attract manufacturers seeking to create large product runs with 3D printing.
"The automotive industry will likely begin to manufacture some plastic parts using HP's machine, whereas it was too expensive by 3D printing previously due to their high quantities," Wohlers said.
Ford Motor Co. has been using binder jetting and a half dozen other 3D printing methods -- such as fused deposition modeling (FDM) and stereo lithography (SLA) -- to create both prototypes and injection molds that can be used to make production parts.
With traditional automotive manufacturing methods, an engineer would create a computer model of an intake manifold, for example, and wait about four months for one prototype at a cost of $500,000, according to Harold Sears, Ford's head of additive manufacturing. With 3D printing, Ford can print the same part in four days, including multiple iterations and with no tooling limits, for just $3,000.
HP HP has been working with nearly a dozen companies, allowing them to test the Jet Fusion printing technology in its labs.
HP has been allowing nearly a dozen companies to test the Jet Fusion printing technology in its labs. The companies include Nike, BMW, Johnson & Johnson, Jabil, Siemens, Materialise, Shapeways, Autodesk, and Protolabs.
"For our future roadmap toward serial part production and personal customization, we see major potential in our partnership with HP to investigate this new kind of 3D printing technology at an early stage," Jens Ertel, head of BMW Group Additive Manufacturing Center, said in a statement.Two Singaporeans were detained under the Internal Security Act after they made plans to travel to Syria to fight for the Islamic State militant group, and another two were issued restriction orders.
SINGAPORE: Four Singaporeans who supported the Islamic State militant group have been dealt with under the Internal Security Act (ISA), the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said on Friday (Aug 19).
Two were detained under the ISA after they made plans to travel to Syria to fight for the terrorist group. The other two Singaporeans were issued restriction orders.
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THEY WERE PREPARED TO DIE MARTYRS: MHA
Car-washer Rosli Hamzah, 50, was one of two Singaporeans issued with a detention order for a period of two years.
MHA said that in 2009, Rosli started listening to a Batam-based religious radio station called Radio Hang, which sometimes features speakers who preach extreme religious views. The station is accessible online and over the airwaves.
Sometime between August and September 2014, Rosli was introduced to radical materials promoting the Islamic State by social media contacts who shared his religious orientation, MHA said.
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“He became interested in armed jihad and ISIS (another name for Islamic State), and as he perused more ISIS propaganda on the Internet, his support for ISIS grew. He eventually became convinced that ISIS militants were fighting for Islam, and that their beheading of ‘enemies’ was religiously permissible,” the ministry said.
Rosli was prepared to die for the terrorist group as he thought it would bring him “martyrdom status”, MHA added.
According to MHA, Rosli looked up information on travel routes to Syria to join Islamic State. He also actively shared radical information on social media to encourage others to support the militant group and engage in armed jihad.
In July this year, Rosli was arrested when he returned from Batam after visiting his Indonesian wife and children. “At the time of his arrest, he still harboured the intent to engage in armed violence in Syria,” MHA said.
The second Singaporean detained, Mohamed Omar Mahadi, had in 2010 started to listen to the same Batam-based religious radio station. In 2012, he encountered online materials by radical Al-Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki – killed in 2011 in Yemen – which led him to look up more radical information, including Islamic State-related propaganda.
“By 2014, Omar was convinced that ISIS was fighting to bring glory to Islam, and that it was his religious duty to become an ISIS fighter in Syria. He was prepared to die a martyr,” MHA said.
Omar had been making preparations with his wife to go to Syria with their children to join ISIS, said MHA, adding that there is no evidence at this point that their children were radicalised.
Omar tried to seek help online from militant entities to travel to Syria, and read an online ISIS "manual" that provided tips for those who wanted to join the group in Syria. To prepare for his trip, he memorised the bai’ah (pledge of allegiance), which he intended to take to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“In his view, he and his wife would have to carry out any assignments ISIS had for them once he had taken the bai’ah,” the ministry said.
TWO ISLAMIC STATE SUPPORTERS ISSUED RESTRICTION ORDERS
Omar’s wife Dian Faezah Ismail, a 34-year-old housewife, was issued a restriction order for a period of two years.
A person given a restriction order is not allowed to change his residence or employment or travel out of Singapore without prior approval from the authorities.
Dian was an Islamic State supporter who believed that the terrorist group’s violent actions were legitimate, MHA said. She supported her husband’s intention to join Islamic State and take up arms in Syria, and helped him in his plans to relocate their family to Syria.
She has moderated her views and will undergo religious counselling, the ministry added. Dian is not the first female to be dealt with under the ISA, but is the first female to be issued with a Restriction Order for her involvement in jihadi terrorism-related activities, MHA stated.
The second Singaporean issued a two-year restriction order was Mohamad Reiney Noor Mohd, a 26-year-old building technician. Reiney is related to Dian and Omar through marriage.
Reiney adopted a “more fundamentalist form of religious practice” in 2013 and searched for religious information online. After reading radical Islamic State materials, he aspired to fight for the terrorist group and was prepared to die in battle as a martyr, MHA said.
He planned to save money to travel to Syria, checked online for travel routes and was going to bring his family with him. But he has since “moderated his positive views about ISIS after reading negative reports about the group”, the ministry said.
“He has also set aside the intention to travel to Syria to join ISIS after he was admonished by a close relative that it was ‘forbidden’ for him to do so because the fighting in Syria did not concern him and he would be placing his family in harm’s way,” MHA stated.
Reiney will undergo religious counselling while on the restriction order.
ROSLI NOT INVOLVED IN BATAM PLOT: MHA
MHA said there is no indication that Rosli is acquainted with Omar, Dian and Reiney. It added there is no information to suggest that he is involved in the Batam plot to attack Singapore.
In response to the latest detentions, Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean said: "The threat from extremism and terrorism is real and present." In a post on Facebook late Friday, he wrote: "Let us all support the efforts of our Muslim community to protect itself from radicalism and extremist violence. And live in harmony together."
18 SINGAPOREANS DETAINED UNDER ISA
MHA said that a total of 18 Singaporeans and four Bangladeshi nationals are currently in detention, while 24 Singaporeans are on restriction orders.
These include Singaporean Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff, who was arrested and detained in July for spreading radical ideology and contributing to the radicalisation of at least two other Singaporeans. One, Muhammad Shamin Mohamed Sidik, has since been detained as well. The other, Mohamed Saiddhin Abdullah, was issued with a restriction order.
Another two Singaporeans, Mohammad Razif Yahya and Amiruddin Sawir, were detained under the ISA in Aug 2015 for voluntarily taking up arms and participating in the sectarian conflict in Yemen. A third man, Mohamed Mohideen Mohamed Jais, was issued a restriction order after he performed armed sentry duty in Yemen during his religious studies there, and a fourth, Wang Yuandongyi, was put on a restriction order for planning to join Kurdish militants in Syria who were fighting against IS.
RADICALISATION A “GROWING CONCERN”
MHA also said that there is a “growing concern” that Islamic State propaganda has led to an increase in the rate of Singaporeans being radicalised.
The first self-radicalised Singaporean was detained in 2007. Between 2007 and 2014, five Singaporeans were detained and six were placed on Restriction Orders. However, between Jan 2015 till Aug 2016, eight Singaporeans have been detained and five others placed on Restriction Orders. Since 2002, 83 persons have been detained under the ISA for terrorism-related activities. 62 have been released.
“ISIS extremist rhetoric continues to radicalise scores across the globe and Singapore has not been immune to this problem,” said the MHA. “ISIS indicated in the Nov 2014 edition of its online magazine Dabiq that it intended to set up wilayat (provinces under the ISIS caliphate) in Indonesia and the Philippines where militant groups have pledged allegiance to ISIS.”
MHA also highlighted the importance of sensitising the public to the dangers of extremist rhetoric, and to equip them with social media literacy so that they will not be vulnerable to terrorist propaganda. It added that the government "will block websites and radio stations, or remove online content that promote radical ideology, when it is deemed necessary".
Earlier this year, eight Bangladeshi nationals in Singapore were detained under the ISA for plotting to establish an Islamic state in Bangladesh. In July, four of them were sentenced to between 24 and 60 months' jail - the first convictions in Singapore under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act. Of the other four detained, two have denied the charges against them and the other two have not been charged.
In January, 27 Bangladeshi nationals in Singapore were arrested for planning to take part in extremist activities in other countries. They were repatriated to Bangladesh.
In light of the latest developments, the Government reiterated that it "will take action against persons who purvey extremist views, especially those which espouse violence or denigrate the beliefs of others".Al Iaquinta is out of his fight against Thiago Alves at UFC 205, and there is a chance Iaquinta could be done with the UFC for good.
Iaquinta revealed Monday that he pulled out of the Nov. 12 contest in his home state of New York due to a dispute over his UFC contract. Iaquinta said that after spending 17 months shelved by injuries, he couldn't afford to risk another health scare on the terms of his present contract, which was signed prior to the UFC-Reebok deal, and in the case of a loss, would effectively have him "fighting at Madison Square Garden for free."
"There's a lot things that have changed since I signed the contract, and for me to go in there and risk my health, risk everything that you risk when you go into a cage fight, I just said, ‘look, I can't do it,'" Iaquinta explained Monday on The MMA Hour. "'We've got to ask for more money. Maybe we can negotiate something.' My manager told me there's probably not a good chance of that happening, so I said, ‘you know what, I can't do it. Financially, I can't fight for this purse.'
"If I win the fight and they take taxes out and I pay my trainers, I make okay money. Okay. For fighting in a cage, I don't know about it. God forbid, I don't win the fight, (after) taxes, trainers, all the expenses, everything that goes into a training camp, I'm basically fighting at Madison Square Garden for free. It's just unreasonable. So I asked him to reach out to the UFC, and from what he tells me there was no consideration of a negotiation whatsoever."
Iaquinta, 29, is currently the No. 13 ranked lightweight on the UFC's media-generated rankings. The native New Yorker has fought nine times in the UFC since entering the promotion in 2012 as a finalist on The Ultimate Fighter 15. He has won seven of those nines appearances, punctuated by a split decision victory over Jorge Masvidal in his most recent outing in April 2015.
The victory over Masvidal marked the first bout on a new four-fight deal with the UFC for Iaquinta, and took place before the Reebok deal dramatically altered the UFC sponsorship landscape. Iaquinta was then slated to compete at UFC Fight Night 71, however the match-up was scrapped when both Bobby Green and Gilbert Melendez fell through as opponents, and Iaquinta instead elected to seek treatment on a severe knee injury that he suffered while competing on TUF 15.
What followed was a process that Iaquinta likened to a nightmare. After a meeting with Dr. Riley Williams at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, Iaquinta requested to have a procedure called an osteochondral allograft to repair his injured knee. Iaquinta said UFC doctors instead insisted on stem cell injections to repair the damage, although after a near half-year process, Iaqunita's injury remained unchanged and he again pushed to have surgery with Dr. Williams.
Iaquinta said the UFC initially offered to cover $15,000 of the procedure, which costs upwards of $60,000, not including the price of extensive post-surgery physical therapy. The UFC ultimately paid the full cost of the procedure, however there was an extended period when Iaquinta believed his mixed martial arts career may actually be over. That experience, coupled with the fact that his monthly income from sponsors was suddenly zeroed due to the UFC-Reebok partnership, left Iaquinta with a meager income and forced the fighter to find a full-time job as a real estate agent just to make ends meet.
"That just changed my outlook on everything," Iaquinta said. "God forbid, I take this fight, $26,000, I win, I lose, whatever happens. Say I get hurt somehow, I got nothing. I'd have to take off time from my clients, I'd have to take off time with the real estate that I'm learning. I kind of got myself in a groove. To stop that, to take a fight where I could be risking everything, it's just not worth it for the amount of money that they're going to pay me.
"It would be great to say that I fought at Madison Square Garden, but after a while, you're just saying that. There's nothing to show for it. And that's basically why I took the stance that I took, and it's a tough one because there's nothing I'd love to do more than fight at Madison Square Garden. But I feel like, to not even have a negotiation, and the things I heard (UFC matchmaker) Joe Silva say to my manager about me when he asked just to negotiate, ‘eff him, eff this' -- who is he to put a price tag on what my life is worth, on what my knee is worth? I've had two knee surgeries already. I may have to have to have another one after nine more fights.
"Am I going to be able to walk? Am I going to be able to live and enjoy life? And for him to say, ‘eff you, eff this, I'll cut him. Is he retired?'... Maybe we don't see eye-to-eye, and maybe I'm not worth what I am, but for you to say, ‘eff this, eff that' -- you've never stepped in the cage. You don't know what my body feels like after a fight, what my body will feel like down the line. So for a company like the UFC to talk to me like that, to talk about me like that, it just doesn't sit right with me. I think it could've been resolved a whole different way. I think we could've gone about it a whole different way. I don't know. It's just frustrating."
Iaquinta also pointed to several other factors that helped play a part in his stand, including the decision by the UFC to ban him from receiving post-fight bonuses for his next three fights.
That situation arose earlier this year, when an ill Iaquinta requested to skip a fighter summit in Las Vegas five weeks out from his bout against Green, then posted a picture on social media from a beach near his house in the days afterward. UFC officials informed him the following day that he would no longer be eligible for bonuses for his next three fights. The UFC declined to comment on Iaquinta's claims when reached Monday.
Iaquinta ended up losing further money on the situation when Green's replacement, Melendez, was pulled from the bout due to a failed drug test less than two weeks out from fight night, leaving Iaquinta without even his show purse.
"We'll go out to dinner with a bunch of fighters or whatever, and everyone sits around the table and everyone is talking about the Reebok deal, talking about how they're losing money, how it's tough to get by," Iaquinta said. "To get a good training camp, you've got to bring people in. You've got to pay. You've got to do this and do that. I flew people in for the Gilbert Melendez fight. He got pulled for what he got pulled for, and here I am, and they don't give me any of my show money. Nine days before the fight. Some guys get their show money, some don't. For some reason, I didn't. So it's tough."
When asked straight up if he is prepared to not compete again in the UFC if things remain the way they are, Iaquinta said that he was, stating that "it's just not worth it" and acknowledging that the past 17 months, and the treatment he has recieved throughout from the UFC, has left him disillusioned.
"I love fighting for the UFC. It's the best organization in the world with the best fighters in the world," Iaquinta said. "There's nothing I enjoyed more than fighting. When I hurt my knee and I thought my career was over, that was a hard, hard time for me. Because I do, there's nothing I like more than fighting. But there's nothing I like more than standing up for what I think is right, and what I think I've earned. I've earned more than that. I've earned a discussion.
"I've earned the right to ask and not be cursed at and put down. I feel like them paying for my knee surgery was almost (viewed) like a gift, like they went above and beyond to |
able to be a good winner."[6] Berry mocked her 2002 Oscar acceptance speech, acting tearful and saying, "I never thought this would happen to me." She then responded to some critics by holding up her Oscar and saying, "They can't take it away, my name's on it!" Screenwriter Michael Ferris also appeared to pick his Worst Screenplay award.[7][8]
The complete list of nominees are as follows with winners marked in bold:
Winners and nominees [ edit ]
Winner (in bold)
Special "Worst of Our First 25 Years" Awards [ edit ]
Winner (in bold)
See also [ edit ]Russia's top diplomat warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Rex Wayne TillersonHeather Nauert withdraws her name from consideration for UN ambassador job Trump administration’s top European diplomat to resign in February Pompeo planning to meet with Pat Roberts amid 2020 Senate speculation MORE against new sanctions on North Korea, saying additional penalties against Pyongyang would be "dangerous."
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the warning during a phone call with his U.S. counterpart on Wednesday evening, according to The Associated Press, which cited a readout of the call from Russia's foreign ministry.
The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously earlier this month to impose new sanctions in response to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launches earlier in the summer.
Lavrov's warning comes after President Trump said on Wednesday that talking with North Korea was "not the answer."
"The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years," Trump tweeted.
The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017
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Trump was responding to North Korea's latest missile launch, which flew through Japanese airspace on Tuesday.
The launch was seen by many observers as a signal to Trump that North Korea would not change its behavior.
American, South Korean and Japanese warplanes took part in a joint flyover of the Korean Peninsula on Thursday.
A U.S. official told CNN the exercise was intended to "strongly counter North Korea's repeated ballistic missile tests and development of nuclear weapons."Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron, and Rogers are collectively suing Kodi addon repository TVAddons, TorrentFreak can reveal. The lawsuit targets TVAddons' operator for the alleged unlawful distribution of Kodi software addons. It's fair to say that thus far, this process has revealed some of the most shocking abuses of power ever seen in an online copyright infringement case.
After Dish Network filed a lawsuit against TVAddons in Texas, several high-profile Kodi addons took the decision to shut down. Soon after, TVAddons itself went offline.
In the weeks that followed, several TVAddons-related domains were signed over (1,2) to a Canadian law firm, a mysterious situation that didn’t dovetail well with the US-based legal action.
TorrentFreak can now reveal that the shutdown of TVAddons had nothing to do with the US action and everything to do with a separate lawsuit filed in Canada.
The complaint against TVAddons
Two months ago on June 2, a collection of Canadian telecoms giants including Bell Canada, Bell ExpressVu, Bell Media, Videotron, Groupe TVA, Rogers Communications and Rogers Media, filed a complaint in Federal Court against Montreal resident, Adam Lackman, the man behind TVAddons.
The 18-page complaint details the plaintiffs’ case against Lackman, claiming that he communicated copyrighted TV shows including Game of Thrones, Prison Break, The Big Bang Theory, America’s Got Talent, Keeping Up With The Kardashians and dozens more, to the public in breach of copyright.
The key claim is that Lackman achieved this by developing, hosting, distributing or promoting Kodi add-ons.
Adam Lackman, the man behind TVAddons (@adam.lackman on Instagram)
A total of 18 major add-ons are detailed in the complaint including 1Channel, Exodus, Phoenix, Stream All The Sources, SportsDevil, cCloudTV and Alluc, to name a few. Also under the spotlight is the ‘FreeTelly’ custom Kodi build distributed by TVAddons alongside its Kodi configuration tool, Indigo.
“[The defendant] has made the [TV shows] available to the public by telecommunication in a way that allows members of the public to have access to them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them…consequently infringing the Plaintiffs’ copyright…in contravention of sections 2.4(1.1), 3(1)(f) and 27(1) of the Copyright Act,” the complaint reads.
The complaint alleges that Lackman “induced and/or authorized users” of the FreeTelly and Indigo tools to carry out infringement by his handling and promotion of infringing add-ons, including through TVAddons.ag and Offshoregit.com, in contravention of sections 3(1)(f) and 27(1) of the Copyright Act.
“Approximately 40 million unique users located around the world are actively using Infringing Addons hosted by TVAddons every month, and approximately 900,000 Canadian households use Infringing Add-ons to access television content. The amount of users of Infringing add-ons hosted TVAddons is constantly increasing,” the complaint adds.
To limit the harm allegedly caused by TVAddons, the complaint asked for interim, interlocutory, and permanent injunctions restraining Lackman and associates from developing, promoting or distributing any of the allegedly infringing add-ons or software. On top, the plaintiffs requested punitive and exemplary damages, plus costs.
The interim injunction and Anton Piller Order
Following the filing of the complaint, on June 9 the Federal Court handed down a time-limited interim injunction against Lackman which restrained him from various activities in respect of TVAddons. The process took place ex parte, meaning in secret, without Lackman being able to mount a defense.
The Court also authorized a bailiff and computer forensics experts to take control of Internet domains including TVAddons.ag and Offshoregit.com plus social media and hosting provider accounts for a period of 14 days. These were transferred to Daniel Drapeau at DrapeauLex, an independent court-appointed supervising counsel.
The order also contained an Anton Piller order, a civil search warrant that grants plaintiffs no-notice permission to enter a defendant’s premises in order to secure and copy evidence to support their case, before it can be destroyed or tampered with.
The order covered not only data related to the TVAddons platform, such as operating and financial details, revenues, and banking information, but everything in Lackman’s possession.
The Court ordered the telecoms companies to inform Lackman that the case against him is a civil proceeding and that he could deny entry to his property if he wished. However, that option would put him in breach of the order and would place him at risk of being fined or even imprisoned. Catch 22 springs to mind.
The Court did, however, put limits on the number of people that could be present during the execution of the Anton Piller order (ostensibly to avoid intimidation) and ordered the plaintiffs to deposit CAD$50,000 with the Court, in case the order was improperly executed. That decision would later prove an important one.
The search and interrogation of TVAddons’ operator
On June 12, the order was executed and Lackman’s premises were searched for more than 16 hours. For nine hours he was interrogated and effectively denied his right to remain silent since non-cooperation with an Anton Piller order amounts to contempt of court. The Court’s stated aim of not intimidating Lackman failed.
The TVAddons operator informs TorrentFreak that he heard a disturbance in the hallway outside and spotted several men hiding on the other side of the door. Fearing for his life, Lackman called the police and when they arrived he opened the door. At this point, the police were told by those in attendance to leave, despite Lackman’s protests.
Once inside, Lackman was told he had an hour to find a lawyer, but couldn’t use any electronic device to get one. Throughout the entire day, Lackman says he was reminded by the plaintiffs’ lawyer that he could be held in contempt of court and jailed, even though he was always cooperating.
“I had to sit there and not leave their sight. I was denied access to medication,” Lackman told TorrentFreak. “I had a doctor’s appointment I was forced to miss. I wasn’t even allowed to call and cancel.”
In papers later filed with the court by Lackman’s team, the Anton Piller order was described as a “bombe atomique” since TVAddons had never been served with so much as a copyright takedown notice in advance of this action.
The Anton Piller controversy
Anton Piller orders are only valid when passing a three-step test: when there is a strong prima facie case against the respondent, the damage – potential or actual – is serious for the applicant, and when there is a real possibility that evidence could be destroyed.
For Bell Canada, Bell ExpressVu, Bell Media, Videotron, Groupe TVA, Rogers Communications and Rogers Media, serious problems emerged on at least two of these points after the execution of the order.
For example, TVAddons carried more than 1,500 add-ons yet only 1% of those add-ons were considered to be infringing, a tiny number in the overall picture. Then there was the not insignificant problem with the exchange that took place during the hearing to obtain the order, during which Lackman was not present.
Clearly, the securing of existing evidence wasn’t the number one priority.
Plaintiffs: We want to destroy TVAddons
And the problems continued.
No right to remain silent, no right to consult a lawyer
The Anton Piller search should have been carried out between 8am and 8pm but actually carried on until midnight. As previously mentioned, Adam Lackman was effectively denied his right to remain silent and was forbidden from getting advice from his lawyer.
None of this sat well with the Honourable B. Richard Bell during a subsequent Federal Court hearing to consider the execution of the Anton Piller order.
“It is important to note that the Defendant was not permitted to refuse to answer questions under fear of contempt proceedings, and his counsel was not permitted to clarify the answers to questions. I conclude unhesitatingly that the Defendant was subjected to an examination for discovery without any of the protections normally afforded to litigants in such circumstances,” the Judge said.
“Here, I would add that the ‘questions’ were not really questions at all. They took the form of orders or directions. For example, the Defendant was told to ‘provide to the bailiff’ or ‘disclose to the Plaintiffs’ solicitors’.”
Evidence preservation? More like a fishing trip
But shockingly, the interrogation of Lackman went much, much further. TorrentFreak understands that the TVAddons operator was given a list of 30 names of people that might be operating sites or services similar to TVAddons. He was then ordered to provide all of the information he had on those individuals.
Of course, people tend to guard their online identities so it’s possible that the information provided by Lackman will be of limited use, but Judge Bell was not happy that the Anton Piller order was abused by the plaintiffs in this way.
“I conclude that those questions, posed by Plaintiffs’ counsel, were solely made in furtherance of their investigation and constituted a hunt for further evidence, as opposed to the preservation of then existing evidence,” he wrote in a June 29 order.
But he was only just getting started.
Plaintiffs unlawfully tried to destroy TVAddons before trial
The Judge went on to note that from their own mouths, the Anton Piller order was purposely designed by the plaintiffs to completely shut down TVAddons, despite the fact that only a tiny proportion of the add-ons available on the site were allegedly used to infringe copyright.
“I am of the view that [the order’s] true purpose was to destroy the livelihood of the Defendant, deny him the financial resources to finance a defense to the claim made against him, and to provide an opportunity for discovery of the Defendant in circumstances where none of the procedural safeguards of our civil justice system could be engaged,” Judge Bell wrote.
As noted, plaintiffs must also have a “strong prima facie case” to obtain an Anton Piller order but Judge Bell says he’s not convinced that one exists. Instead, he praised the “forthright manner” of Lackman, who successfully compared the ability of Kodi addons to find content in the same way as Google search can.
So why the big turn around?
Judge Bell said that while the prima facie case may have appeared strong before the judge who heard the matter ex parte (without Lackman being present to defend himself), the subsequent adversarial hearing undermined it, to the point that it no longer met the threshold.
As a result of these failings, Judge Bell declared the Anton Piller order unlawful. Things didn’t improve for the plaintiffs on the injunction front either.
The Judge said that he believes that Lackman has “an arguable case” that he is not violating the Copyright Act by merely providing addons and that TVAddons is his only source of income. So, if an injunction to close the site was granted, the litigation would effectively be over, since the plaintiffs already admitted that their aim was to neutralize the platform.
If the platform was neutralized, Lackman could no longer earn money from the site, which would harm his ability to mount a defense.
“In considering the balance of convenience, I also repeat that the plaintiffs admit that the vast majority of add-ons are non-infringing. Whether the remaining approximately 1% are infringing is very much up for debate. For these reasons, I find the balance of convenience favors the defendant, and no interlocutory injunction will be issued,” the Judge declared.
With the Anton Piller order declared unlawful and no interlocutory injunction (one effective until the final determination of the case) handed down, things were about to get worse for the telecoms companies.
They had paid CAD$50,000 to the court in security in case things went wrong with the Anton Piller order, so TVAddons was entitled to compensation from that amount. That would be helpful, since at this point TVAddons had already run up CAD$75,000 in legal expenses.
On top, the Judge told independent counsel to give everything seized during the Anton Piller search back to Lackman.
The order to return items previously seized
But things were far from over. Within days, the telecoms companies took the decision to the Court of Appeal, asking for a stay of execution (a delay in carrying out a court order) to retain possession of items seized, including physical property, domains, and social media accounts.
Mid-July the appeal was granted and certain confidentiality clauses affecting independent counsel (including Daniel Drapeau, who holds the TVAddons’ domains) were ordered to be continued. However, considering the problems with the execution of the Anton Piller order, Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron and Rogers et al, were ordered to submit an additional security bond of CAD$140,000, on top of the CAD$50,000 already deposited.
So the battle continues, and continue it will
Speaking with TorrentFreak, Adam Lackman says that he has no choice but to fight the telcoms companies since not doing so would result in a loss by default judgment. Interestingly, both he and one of the judges involved in the case thus far believe he has an arguable case.
Lackman says that his activities are protected under the Canadian Copyright Act, specifically subparagraph 2.4(1)(b) which states as follows:
A person whose only act in respect of the communication of a work or other subject-matter to the public consists of providing the means of telecommunication necessary for another person to so communicate the work or other subject-matter does not communicate that work or other subject-matter to the public;
Of course, finding out whether that’s indeed the case will be a costly endeavor.
“It all comes down to whether we will have the financial resources necessary to mount our defense and go to trial. We won’t have ad revenue coming in, since losing our domain names means that we’ll lose the majority of our traffic for quite some time into the future,” Lackman told TF in a statement.
“We’re hoping that others will be as concerned as us about big companies manipulating the law in order to shut down what they see as competition. We desperately need help in financially supporting our legal defense, we cannot do it alone.
“We’ve run up a legal bill of over $100,000 to date. We’re David, and they are four Goliaths with practically unlimited resources. If we lose, it will mean that new case law is made, case law that could mean increased censorship of the internet.”
In the hope of getting support, TVAddons has launched a fundraiser campaign and in the meantime, a new version of the site is back on a new domain, TVAddons.co.
Given TVAddons’ line of defense, the nature of both the platform and Kodi addons, and the fact that there has already been a serious abuse of process during evidence preservation, this is now one of the most interesting and potentially influential copyright cases underway anywhere today.
TVAddons is being represented by Éva Richard, Hilal Ayoubi and Karim Renno in Canada, plus Erin Russell and Jason Sweet in the United States.- Advertisement -
DC Comics dominated another month of comic book sales to no one’s surprise. Although they didn’t have the top selling book of the month, it’s pretty clear who the #1 “Big Dog” is right now. After reviewing Comichron’s sales estimates for February 2017, a few titles caught my eye as criminally under sold. Here are five comics outside of February’s Top 100 that deserve more attention.
New Super-Man (131 in Units, 160 in Dollars)
Writer Gene Luen Yang has tapped into something spectacular. His series has achieved so much already in less than ten issues. Kenan Kong, and the Justice League Of China, have quickly established themselves as heroes to pay attention to. New Super-Man is an underrated gem, one of the best DC Rebirth comic book series thus far. It’s a fun, action-packed, emotional joy ride. Yang is taking Kenan through an alternate route to becoming a “Superman”, get on board now.
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U.S.Avengers (111 in Units, 111 in Dollars)
The current state of Marvel Comics isn’t one that everybody is celebrating. Their sales numbers reflect a confused fan base, struggling to sort through this messy line of comic books. U.S.Avengers is a team of lesser-known heroes, assembled against the more ridiculous forces of evil. So far, writer Al Ewing has delivered a solid, over the top superhero team that patriotically protects and serves. The first arc was a lighthearted, and rather hilarious, introduction to the characters led by Roberto Da Costa. If you’ve ever wondered how entertaining a G.I. JOE-style Avengers team would be, this book is your answer.
Black Science (185 in Units, 179 in Dollars)
Rick Remender’s science fiction epic for Image Comics is about to reach it’s 29th issue. We’re well past the honeymoon phase, this is one of the best comics currently being published. This may be one of those books you usually “wait for the trade”, but you should reconsider that. Black Science is a triumph in both story and art, a masterpiece of comic book entertainment. Remender and Matteo Scalera combine to deliver a seemingly unlimited amount of worlds, characters, creatures, and concepts for readers to explore.
Star-Lord (149 in Units, 150 in Dollars)
Guardians Of The Galaxy fans haven’t been getting too many worthwhile comics recently. The film’s success has had a negative impact on the comic books for some time. That isn’t the case for Chip Zdarksy’s Star-Lord. Although still a young series in number, Zdarksy has already delivered the best interpretation of Peter Quill since 2014. Still operating within the Chris Pratt-inspired guidelines, this series manages to be a hilariously-entertaining struggle for the cosmic-hero trying to find his place while stranded on Earth.
Nova (115 in Units, 113 in Dollars)
Rich Rider has finally returned to split his Nova duties with fellow Corps member, Sam Alexander. Writer Jeff Loveness has been brilliantly balancing the two heroes within each issue. Nova jumps from Sam’s awkward high school dilemmas, to Rich’s troubling adjustment returning to the land of the living; all with plenty of Nova Corps action in between.
Which comics do you think deserve more attention? Which Top 100 books do you think are overrated? Have you been enjoying these five books listed above? Let us know in the comments below!SAN QUENTIN — A condemned murderer who was one of just 16 inmates on California’s Death Row to have exhausted his appeals died of unknown causes, prison officials have announced.
San Quentin officials are investigating the death of Fernando Belmontes, 56, but say there was no obvious cause. More details about his death earlier this month have not been released.
Belmontes was one of 16 condemned inmates — out of California’s nearly 750 — who had exhausted his appeals. As such, he was considered a top priority for execution.
Belmontes was sentenced to die at 20 years old, a year after he murdered 19-year-old Steacy McConnell during a 1981 burglary. It started when he and two others broke into McConnell’s home in San Joaquin County, just east of Lodi.
Belmontes, who was living in a halfway house at the time, bludgeoned McConnel 15-20 times with an iron dumbell, crushing her skull. In 1979, he had been convicted of being an accessory in a voluntary manslaughter, and he attacked his pregnant girlfriend months before the murder.
California has executed only 13 death row inmates since 1978, including the controversial 2005 execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a Crips gang dropout convicted of a double-murder who’d written books to steer youth away from gang life. The most recent execution was in 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was executed for organizing three murders while serving a life sentence for another murder conviction. Allen Spent 23 years on Death Row.
By contrast, 71 condemned inmates have died from natural causes, and 25 have committed suicide since 1978. In November, voters rejected a measure to overturn the death penalty, and passed a measure designed to streamline the execution process.
Belmontes’ death sentence was overturned in 2003, then reinstated in 2006. Belmontes lost his final attempt at a commuted sentence in 2010.
Prison officials say the coroner is conducting an autopsy to determine how Belmontes died.Missouri Rep. Scott Fitzpatrick believes the issue is simple: If you’re not in the country legally, you shouldn’t get benefits paid for by taxpayers.
“I can’t rationalize in my head why we would reward somebody who is breaking the law,” said Fitzpatrick, a Shell Knob Republican.
That philosophy led Fitzpatrick to sponsor legislation that will be among the most hotly debated topics when lawmakers return to the Capitol later this month for the annual veto session — a ban on the state-funded A+ Scholarship being awarded to undocumented immigrants.
“We’re not saying these students are banned from attending college,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re just saying we aren’t going to make the taxpayers of Missouri pay for it. There’s a difference between punishing someone and failing to reward someone.”
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The bill passed, but it was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon, who argued it was a “harsh measure imposed unfairly on children who have done nothing wrong.”
That has set up a showdown between the Democratic governor and the Republican-dominated General Assembly, with lawmakers intent on overriding the veto and implementing the legislation on Sept. 16.
“We’re confident the votes are there for an override,” said House Majority Leader Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican, who listed the bill among the GOP’s priorities going into the veto session.
At issue are students who qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. It was created by President Barack Obama in 2012 to stop the deportation of children brought to the country illegally by their parents.
Because these students were brought to the U.S. as young children and are undocumented through no fault of their own, DACA allows them to legally live, work and study in the U.S. It does not, however, create a path to citizenship.
“They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper,” Obama said in announcing the new policy.
In response to the federal government’s action, the Missouri Department of Higher Education established a rule last year stating that because the students were now lawfully present in the U.S., they were eligible for the A+ Scholarship.
As long as the students have attended a Missouri high school for three years and graduated with a 2.5 GPA, a 95 percent attendance record and 50 hours of tutoring or mentoring, they qualify for the state-funded scholarship.
These students meet all requirements of the scholarship program, Nixon said in a letter to lawmakers explaining his veto, “while overcoming daunting obstacles such as learning English, living in fear of deportation, and facing the constant stigma of being an alien.”
Nixon wrote: “Rather than discouraging the continuing education of these students, the state has an interest in encouraging their successful participation in higher education so that htey have an opportunity to pursue productive careers and make positive contributions to the state of Missouri.”
Vanessa Crawford Aragón, the executive director of Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates, said these students have done “everything we’ve asked them to do.”
“They are going to continue to live and work in Missouri,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to hinder them from getting a college education.”
Cierpiot said that the problem is that the A+ Scholarship program is underfunded.
“It’d be different if the program had all the money it needed, but it does not,” he said. “So there are citizens who can’t get these scholarships. We shouldn’t be adding students to the program at this time.”
Fitzpatrick also said that such students shouldn’t get access to scholarships that aren’t available to home-schooled students and those who attend private schools.
In the Senate, Jason Holsman of Kansas City, a Kansas City Democrat, voted with Republicans for the legislation. He said he did so because “with the resources falling short of fully funding the scholarship for citizens, it didn’t make sound policy to extend a scarce public benefit to undocumented citizens.”
Holsman said the answer is is for the federal government to “recognize these kids as future contributing Americans and pass immigration reform to provide a path to citizenship.”
Rep. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, said students shouldn’t be punished if the issue is simply a funding shortfall.
“It does not have to be a zero-sum game,” she said, adding that lawmakers should instead work to fully fund the scholarship program.
Contributing to the debate is another measure, which Fitzpatrick added to a budget bill, that denies scholarships to DACA students and threatens to withhold state funds to schools that allow the students to pay in-state tuition rates.
The Higher Education Department sent a memo to schools this summer stating that because the language was included in the preamble of the budget bill, and not in the bill itself, it is not legally enforceable.
Despite this interpretation, most Missouri universities have decided to abide by the legislature’s wishes and sent letters informing DACA students that they will be charged higher tuition rates and lose certain scholarships.
Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates estimates that more than 1,200 individuals with DACA credentials live in the state, but not all are college students.
“Right now there are families trying to figure out if their kid is going to be able to go to school,” Aragón said. “That’s something that really gets lost when we’re talking about this.”
The A+ Scholarship legislation passed the Missouri Senate with the support of 24 Republicans and one Democrat. That was two more votes than the two-thirds majority needed for an override, although Holsman said he plans to vote to uphold Nixon’s veto.
The bill passed the House with 108 votes in favor, one shy of a two-thirds majority. However, 11 Republicans were absent.Apple dropped a small, stealthy iPhone update last week aimed at updating carrier settings. The mystery update in question added iPhone-coded carrier logo replacements for AT&T’s new MicroCell (femtocell) service. What's that you ask?
The femtocell device acts like a mini cellular tower in your home to boost signal strength, connecting through your existing broadband internet service (DSL or cable). The 3G MicroCell supports up to ten 3G capable devices with enhanced coverage of 5,000 square feet for both voice and data.
AT&T is offering their new MicroCell device, so customers can finally enjoy the improved cellular performance they were promised with iPhone 3G in the first place. Are you paying for 3G reception at home that sucks badly? Just add another device along with the associated fees to help boost your miserable 3G service for the remaining 16 month prison sentence with AT&T. Arrival date and pricing for the new MicroCell service remains unconfirmed. Consumer trials in three cities are scheduled for Q1 according to an AT&T service rep I spoke to.
So instead of having a network of hard hat, zombie nerds following you around like Verizon offers, you get to pay for a MicroCell FAIL tower to ensure you can enjoy your iPhone 3G at home. Blazing 3G speeds? Not so much. I've seen the the future, it blows!
"At AT&T... We suck less when you pay for more of what we do poorly."Licking her wounds after UFC 200
Out of sorts after an early blow
Cyborg at 140 could happen
Her relationship with Bryan Caraway
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Miesha Tate is one of the lucky 26 fighters who will compete in Madison Square Garden on November 12 at UFC 205--the promotion's first ever show in New York City.While Tate is understandably ecstatic at the opportunity ahead, she's recently had the displeasure of mulling over losing the UFC women's bantamweight title at UFC 200 in July to Amanda Nunes. Speaking on the UFC Unfiltered show this week, Tate recalled the evening and how it all went wrong for her."I felt regardless I was going to be able to perform and win that fight," Tate said. "There were a lot of moving pieces and a lot of things going on, but that's life you know. Not every fight is perfect in the lead-up and sometimes life gets in the way and it makes it hard. Still, when the cage door closed I believed that I would be fine."I got caught really early with a big right hand, and it rocked me. It's one of those things that I'm not inclined to blame on external things about myself. I just need to take responsibility that I didn't turn up that night, and I thought I was good and that I could deal with it all and carry on with the juggling act. But I got caught that's all."Tate then further detailed the fight itself and gave a scary account of how she felt physically after being rocked early by a big Nunes right hand."I know I trained hard for that fight and I just got clipped really, really early and I really don't remember the fight. I wasn't aware of my surroundings and I lost my ability to move really and a lost strength in my body and it was the weirdest thing."Some people who have maybe knocked out you'll know there is something going on in your brain. It's like things are glitching and you aren't really aware of your surroundings and you are trying to get it together."I remember circling and trying to get my bearings back together, but she was really aggressive in the first round and she was just on me. I don't remember shooting, and I don't remember any of that stuff. I was definitely rocked, and it's crazy when you go back and watch it--I don't remember any of that."Having stated earlier in the week that she would be keen to face the challenge of facing Cristiane Justino, Tate reiterated the statement and said that she'd consider taking it at a catchweight if required."You can't say Cyborg isn't legit--she's crushing girls," Tate said. "Would I be open to it, yeah sure. It would be win-win. She's a beast, and it would be cool to challenge myself up against someone of her stature. I'm curious to see how she would do up against some of the top-five girls at 135, and you know, she's been impressive so far."I wish she could make 135 so we wouldn't have any questions about girls having to move up in weight. People question and say it's only five pounds it doesn't make a difference, but really it does. It might not sound big, but all wrestling weight classes when you get to the higher ones are all pretty much five pounds apart because five pounds makes a big difference. It's a big advantage if you know how to use your weight."It would be cool to see if she can take 135, but I wouldn't be opposed to taking the fight at 140."With the rumor mills spinning overtime regarding Tate's relationship with boyfriend and coach Bryan Caraway, host Matt Serra awkwardly asked if they were on hiatus. Tate wasn't giving away too much in her answer."Personal life is personal life, and I just don't care to talk about it," Tate said. "There are plenty of personal life things that I just keep under the radar."When asked whether it would be a scary proposition to run into Caraway if they were to break up, Tate dismissed it would, but then hinted that something had changed in their relationship."No not at all," Tate said. "I'm not saying anything as far as personal life stuff, but nothing has changed really. Everything is good and everything will be working exactly the same as it has before. Yeah, everything is good."Don't miss breaking news, feature stories, event updates, and more. Sign up for the FloCombat mailing list today.Man charged with fatal weekend shooting at Millennium Park
Peter Fabbri and two friends somehow found themselves arguing about the Bible with a group of people near Millennium Park on Saturday night, when a man rode up on a bicycle.
Paul Pagan apparently wasn’t there to debate scripture. Pagan, 32, has a history of getting into arguments — and using a gun to make his point, Chicago Police said.
On Saturday, shortly after he arrived on his bike, Pagan joined the argument. Things got heated between Fabbri and Pagan, police said. The argument ended with Pagan shooting Fabbri twice and riding away on his bike, police said. On Monday, police announced Pagan has been charged with first-degree murder in Fabbri’s death.
“He’s been on our radar for some time as someone who has a likelihood of being a perpetrator of gun violence,” Chicago Police First Deputy Supt. Kevin Navarro told reporters at CPD headquarters Monday afternoon, describing Pagan as a “documented gang member.”
Fabbri, 54, who lived in the western suburbs, was walking with two female friends about 7:35 p.m. Saturday along Michigan Avenue, after attending a “wine-tasting event,” police said. Fabbri and his friends encountered a group handing out pamphlets, police said.
“It was a little bit of a hateful message, our victim and his female companions believed,” Chicago Police Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan told reporters at the press briefing Monday.
Pagan then pulled up, argued with Fabbri, before shooting him, police said.
Pagan took off on a bicycle but was arrested nearby.
At the time of his arrest, Pagan had a warrant out for his arrest for a June 2016 incident that allegedly involved him pointing a gun during another argument, police said.
Pagan also has a 2015 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon, police said. He has been arrested 39 times, four of which led to felony convictions.
Saturday’s shooting left strollers uneasy along Michigan Avenue.
“I feel unsafe now,” said Twion Stevens, 26, who was out for a walk near the park when he heard the commotion and came upon the crime scene. “It makes me worry about my daughter — she’s 4 years old and means the world to me. This is Millennium Park. Kids play here, people come here to enjoy themselves. This is sad.”
Stevens, a minister, said he moved away from the South Side to get away from violence.
“Chicago needs to do better than what’s going on right now,” he said.Buccaneers defensive end George Johnson had something to say in response to Greg Schiano’s comments.
College teams cannot be compared to pro teams, even when the Buccaneers were at their worst. The difference in the speed of the game, even between the best college team and the worst NFL team, is stark. In short, any NFL team will mop the floor with any college team, any day of the week. Yes, even the Cleveland Browns. There is just too big of a difference in the level of the game from one to the other.
Most people understand this concept. Former head coach Greg Schiano does not, as evidenced by his comments the other day. Like we said there, Schiano didn’t like how things went in Tampa (neither did we), and he used the opportunity to take a shot at his former team. He could have pumped up his own guys without taking a shot at the Bucs but he chose not to. I’m sure I am not alone in thinking that showed the true character of the ex-coach.
The Bucs that played for Schiano had varying reactions. Gerald McCoy allowed the comments to slide as Schiano trying to pump his guys up. George Johnson wasn’t so forgiving. He had this to say (via Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times):
“I’m guessing it was to make his defensive line more confident, but it surprised me that he said it,” said George Johnson, who was cut midway through Schiano’s first season, rejoining the Bucs in 2015. “But, coming from Coach Schiano, it really didn’t surprise me.” “The fact is, they’re still in college, trying to get to where we are,” Johnson said. “You can’t compare a college team to an NFL team. There’s so many differences in talent. It’s kind of hard to say that when we’ve got one guy in the Pro Bowl every year and another guy (Bennett) in the top 100.”
Shots fired! Shots fired!
All kidding aside, Johnson has hit it right on the head. You simply cannot make that comparison. Before even knowing who the players are |
be returned
What items can be exchanged
What products are "final sale" (non-returnable, non-exchangeable)
When things can be returned or exchanged (e.g. 30, 60, 90 days post-purchase)
In what condition can items be returned (e.g. lightly worn, with tags still on, etc.)
What products can be returned for (store credit, refund, a product of equal value, etc.)
How to initiate a return or exchange (e.g. an email address to contact or a web page to visit)
Return policy template
Below is a basic template for a return policy that can be adapted to fit your business. Just replace the bolded text with your own policy and use the lists as a guide to ensure you don’t forget to include any important information:
If you’re looking to return or exchange your order for whatever reason, we're here to help! We offer free returns or exchanges within 30 days of receiving your order. You can return your product for store credit, a different product, or a refund to the original payment method. Please note the following exceptions to our return and exchange policy: Below are some examples of common exceptions. Discounted items are final and cannot be returned or exchanged
Returned items must have tags still on and be returned in original packaging
Returned items must have no visible signs of wear or use To initiate a return or exchange, please complete the following steps: Your steps should be laid out clearly, linking to relevant pages, such as your online portal. Login to our online return portal using your email address and order ID Choose the products you wish to return or exchange from your order Print your prepaid shipping label that you will receive by email Send all items back to us using the label provided Additional Information: The following are add-ons with more information that you may want to include. How long it takes to receive your refund, replacement product, or store credit
Any shipping fees the customer will need to pay
Any return restocking fees the customer will need to pay
How you handle lost or damaged returns
Contact information for your business if the customer has more questions
Where to surface your return policy
It is not enough to have a well-written return and exchange policy—you must also make sure that customers see it before they buy. When talking to a frustrated customer who is trying to return an item marked as final sale, simply telling them it’s their fault for not reading the policy is unlikely to resolve the issue.
Include links to your policy in several hard-to-miss places throughout your website to save time going back-and-forth with customers who did not see the policy. A few key places to list your policy include:
Your website footer
FAQ page
Product page
Cart
Checkout
Chubbies includes a link to their return policy in clear view on the product page.
If the return and exchange policy is clearly outlined on your website, so that it can’t be missed by customers, the right expectations will be set before the purchase is made. There will likely be some customers who are unsatisfied with your store's policy, but hiding the policy in fine-print only leads to more frustration.
Choosing a service to power your process
Just like having a formal return and exchange policy will help eliminate some of the hours spent on customer service, using the right services for processing returns and exchanges will save you both time and money on the fulfillment and operations side.
Shopify Shipping
Shopify has built-in features that allow you to manage returns and exchanges, including the ability to generate return shipping labels for orders. Return labels are “pay on scan”, which means return labels are only charged once they have been used. Shopify merchants benefit from steep shipping discounts with carriers.
Return and exchange apps, like the ones below, make processing returns and exchanges more self-serve for customers by offering a portal where they can make a return request, download a return shipping label, or choose products they want to exchange an item for.
Return Magic
Used by over 2,000 ecommerce stores, Return Magic is a return and exchange solution that easily integrates with your existing logistics system.
Return Magic also uses the Shopify product tags to allow businesses to set up customized rules for returning and exchanging certain products:
For businesses that sell a wide variety of products with different return rules, being able to customize your policy with these triggers can save valuable time going back and forth with customers.
Advanced features like these prove that return and exchange rules don’t need to be one-size-fits-all. Special circumstances, like buying during a flash sale, can still be taken into consideration within an automated system.
Returnly
Returnly is one of the larger self-service returns providers for ecommerce stores. The app provides online stores with their own customizable “Returns Center”, which customers can sign into using their order number or email address to access their past purchases and select items they wish to return.
Outdoor Voices' return center using the Returnly app.
On the merchant side, Returnly offers the option to purchase pre-paid shipping labels through the app and get access to their shipping rates, or the ability to upload your own shipping labels to send to customers. This customization extends to almost all other aspects of the return flow, where you can decide what products customers can return or exchange, who pays for the shipping label, and whether they are given a store credit or full refund.
One of Returnly’s main differentiators is its Instant Refunds feature, which offers customers a store credit they can use to reorder before sending back their original purchase. If the customer does not return the product but uses the Instant Refund credit, Returnly covers the cost. By providing an immediate store credit, Returnly found that shoppers were 3 times more likely to purchase again from the store. This feature helps transform returns and exchanges into repeat purchase opportunities for a business.
Strategies for more profitable returns and exchanges
An unavoidable consequence of offering returns and exchanges to customers is that it isn’t cheap. Although you can cut down on customer service hours with an app, the shipping fees associated with returning a product and restocking it can still threaten your profitability.
However, there are a few ways to minimize your losses while still offering returns and exchanges to customers.
1. Turn returns into exchanges
The difference between returns and exchanges is most prominent when looking at profitability. When a customer returns a product for a refund, the business usually loses money on the customer acquisition and return shipping costs, plus they need to refund the customer any profit made on the original order.
With an exchange, the loss is often less detrimental. With strong product margins, offering a replacement product instead of a full refund can keep your business cash flow positive.
A common way to encourage exchanges over returns is by only offering to cover the cost of return shipping if the customer chooses to exchange the product.
When presented with the three options above, the choice to get a store credit or new product may be more appealing to those who have not fully sworn off your brand. Convincing customers to give your brand a second chance with a new order can also help improve lifetime value, as they are more likely to come back and purchase again if they are satisfied the second time around.
Chubbies takes this extra value-add for exchanges a step further, by offering an additional $10 in purchase value if customers decide to buy a new product with their return credit:
By only making the exchange option more valuable, and not penalizing customers who just want to return, Chubbies creates a positive customer experience for everyone, while encouraging more customers to choose exchanges instead of returns.
2. Sell product warranties
When a customer chooses to return a product for a refund or exchange, one risk a company often takes on is whether or not they will be able to resell the item. It can sometimes take up to 2 weeks for a product to re-enter stock after a return is initiated, and the time spent in transit and unpacking can often leave it damaged. If the product is expensive, replacing it might not be an affordable option.
For more expensive items, companies may want to consider selling product warranties to customers. Warranties protect businesses against paying to replace damaged products and avoiding disputes over who is to blame.
Warranties can be sold through an app like Clyde, which can be added to your website to put the decision to protect the order back in the customer's hands:
Warranties like this can also have the potential to unlock a new revenue stream for your business, since the providers often offer a commission on all premiums sold. That way, your customers are protected for a longer term and your business collects a little extra revenue instead of paying for damaged goods.
3. Upsell or cross-sell on exchange requests
Although exchanges are usually more profitable than returns, their profitability can still be narrow depending on the product and its margins. If exchanges are still costly, it might be a good idea to look at upselling or cross-selling on exchanges.
When a customer comes back to your website to use their store credit, there is an opportunity to show them new products they did not purchase the first time around that compliment what they’re exchanging for.
Shopify apps like Boost Sales can be used to show customers related products at checkout.
In cases where customers cover the cost of shipping on an exchanged item, it may make sense to allow them to add more products to their cart to reach a free shipping threshold. Upselling is also possible when you know the reason for the exchange and can make a personalized recommendation for a higher priced item that addresses the specific needs that weren’t satisfied on their first purchase.
For example, if a customer is exchanging a digital camera because they found that it was too heavy, you can recommend a lighter-weight version that might have a higher price point, but resolves the issue they had with their first order.
Looking at every exchange as a new opportunity to increase order value by upselling or cross-selling, the incentive to convert more returns into exchanges becomes clear.
Making the most of returns and exchanges
No matter how much effort you put into your product and customer experience as you grow your business, chances are you will still encounter a few unsatisfied customers along the way.
How you decide to deal with these unsatisfied customers is an important factor in the staying power of your brand. A company that figures out a relatively painless way to handle return and exchange requests is more likely to retain their customers and have them come back and purchase again or, better yet, tell their friends.
Writing a clear return policy that feeds into a well-thought-out return and exchange system—and regularly optimizing it to make it more efficient—is a powerful way to cut costs and potentially turn a bad customer experience into a net positive outcome for your business.“Okay, learn, do you come from the goblin camp nearby?” I say sitting on a nearby rock
“Ya! Tribe a lot of fun!” Learn says with a huge smile
“Where is the camp? I have some business there.” I say with a tentative look
This is the most dangerous question yet. Its apparent goblins don’t think highly of humans so asking for the camp location could mark me as an enemy again.
“That way. Not long” The kid says pointing a bit northeast of the road to the capital.
Good, it seems either they aren’t keeping it a secret or this kid trusts me.
“Would you happen to kn-“
gero “Mano-sama it is precisely noon. Would you like me to gather everybody?” Gero says falling again from the canopy of trees
This time I’m not the only one who is startled by his sudden appearance. The goblin child startled immediately ran off at an incredible speed.
“Hey- Dang! I would have liked that to end differently.” I say turning to Gero
I must remember to be patient with him as he has no idea he even did anything wrong.
“Gero bring Kera, Kael, and the imps here. Plans have changed, and it would be best to do things quickly.” I command walking back over to the cave
“Yes Mano-sama” Gero says leaping away immediately
It is a small time before the group arrives. While I was waiting I used restore and restora on the slime puddles. It becomes harder to restore something the longer you wait to do so, and I still have plans for this slime so I would like its condition to be quality.
“Whatsup princess? Weren’t we gonna go searching for the goblins?” Kera says still sitting on top of her lion
“That’s not necessary anymore. First I want to ask, do you have anything that can hold this slime? My inventory won’t take it in, and I have nothing to transport liquids on me.” I say picking up some slime and attempting to put it in my inventory.
…It’s still incredibly uncomfortable to do so, but urgency wins out and I do so anyway.
“Hmm that’s tricky, didn’t expect you to up and take out the whole cave. A Bull Belly Frog can hold most of it but some of it’s gonna need to be left behind.”
“A Bull Belly Frog?” I ask confused at the new term
“Lemme show you.” She says reaching into her bag
I expected her to pull out some kind of item or gadget but again she pulls out a scroll. A chill runs down my spine when I realize the implications.
“Uvt summon!” She says tossing the scroll forward.
My head darts left and right trying to find where it is going to appear.
Jheeeroo
I hear a croak that gets louder and louder until
crash!
…it lands on top of me.
“KEEERA! Get this thing off of me this instant!” I yell violently struggling to get free
“Sure,” Kera says casually motioning with her finger for the creature to come to her
After it jumps from on top of me I quickly scramble and distance myself from it. It left a slimy oil on me which I frantically try and remove. Why is everything slimy today!?
The summoned creature looks exactly as one would imagine it would. Next to Kera stands a frog nearly as big as her lion. It is rather plainly colored, with a thick green on the top and a light beige shade making up the bottom of its legs and torso. Ugly is the best word one can use to describe it, with skin that looks nearly identical to the goblins, and dopy eyes that look in different directions. Its legs seem to be unnaturally long as well, as a fair portion of the frog’s body stays about two feet off the ground.
“Why did it have to be a frog of all things!?” I say still frantically removing the slime
“Huh? Mano-san, could it be that you don’t like frogs?” Kael says as he watches me in amazement
“Not just frogs! I hate anything that’s slimy in general. I just got don’t dealing with the slimes too!” I say angrily walking towards the slime
“So how is a frog going to help us collect slime?” I say looking over my shoulder
“Well first it’s a toad.”
“Like that matters! Also don’t put “frog” in its name then!” I rebut aloud
“Iyaa Mano-san has snapped,” Kael says backing away
“As for the slime, it should be rather easy with this guys ability,” Kera says pointing towards the slime… and me
I quickly scramble out of the way anticipating what was coming next. Like I anticipated the frog quickly jumps in the direction of the slime and stops just short of the first puddle. He then shoots his tongue into the middle of the puddle and the slime starts to disappear. Upon taking in the entire puddle, it becomes apparent that he was sucking it into his gut as he has become slightly larger. He continues forward to the next mass of slimes and repeats this pattern until his size rivals that of the cave itself. He walks rather than jumping out of the cave and stands next to Kera. His walk is awkward considering the size he has bloated to.
“Ugh, it looks just like a frog croaking when it’s like that,” I say backing further away
“Like I said though, there was too much slime. That last bit will need to be left behind.” When Kera says this I look deep into the cave to see that she was right
The last bit of the slime is just there in the back of the cave, as well as a bit is on the walls.
“If it’s just that much than I can do something about it. Fal-Kei-Tera Earth manipulation” I say walking into the cave.
This time I try and do it without putting my hands on the ground to see if it was possible to do it with my feet instead. The result was that it became a little bit harder to control and the activation was delayed. I began to move the earth in a way that cupped the slime and channeled it into an area of lowered rock. After the slime was all in place, I moved the rocks around it to form a bowl-like formation. I attempted to make a lid as well, but the result was more along the lines of an oblong rock that basically served the same purpose.
“…Seriously, remind me not to piss you off.” Kera says with a surprised and slightly fearful expression
I walk out of the cave and stare at the frog and Kera
“Don’t” I say glaring at the frog
I may have been going a bit overboard as the frog gains a true look of fear on its face and wobbles to stand behind Kera.
Sigh “anyways the reason I told you all to come here is there has been a change of plan. We aren’t going to be exterminating the goblin camp after all.”
Sigh “Oh, thank goodness you came to your senses. We were going to get slaughtered, even with your crazy abilities.” Kael says wiping sweat from his brow
“Instead we are going to go to their camp and negotiate for them to leave.” I say
“Whyyyyyyy?!” Kael cries out in a whimpering voice
“You really should have seen that coming,” Kera says placing her hand on his shoulder
“You realize that they are brainless monsters right? That they can’t talk, right?” Kael says pleading to me
“That seems not to be the case, it seems that you just can’t understand them.” I say with a look that implies “have some pride”
“What, and you can?” Kael says sarcastically
“Yes, one of my abilities gives me the capability to understand anything that has a spoken language,” I say
“Makes sense, lord of the demons, summoner of minions, leader of monsters, it would be common for such a being to be able to talk to just about anything,” Kera says in an oddly serious fashion
I suppose when it comes to monsters she takes things seriously.
“Indeed. I’ve already talked to a child of their tribe and learned the location of the camp. I may need to offer the slime as part of the negotiation.” I say pointing in the direction of the camp
It is rather hard to keep ones baring of direction in the forest, but thankfully having the cave at my back makes remembering the direction Learn pointed rather easy.
“and we are just going to walk into their camp, in the middle of possibly hundreds of angry goblins, and…talk? I think I’ve found a flaw in your strategy.” Kael says defeated
“If you don’t want to go, then I will go in by myself,” I say
“In fact, Kera you aren’t going in,” I say glaring a Kera
I can’t even imagine what kind of trouble we would get into if I took Kera to a meeting with diplomacy as the intention.
“Hmm, then tell me about it afterward,” Kera says continuing her serious tone
I must say it’s quite odd to see Kera act seriously, as well as not argue. Then again I’ve known her for a very short period; she might have just been in an obnoxiously playful mood earlier.
“You, come,” I say glaring at the frog.
It complexion goes from a typical green to a shade of blue as it attempts to do what I can only imagine is nodding. It’s quite hard to tell though considering how bloated it’s become.
“I’m going to head there now. The less time word of me talking to the child has to spread around the camp, the less likely they will have a defined opinion on me before I get there. Kael, you don’t have to come but it would be useful to have you along.” I say as I begin to walk in the direction the goblin child pointed.
“Wha…uh… me? How can I help? Hey, Mano-san! Wait up!” I hear Kael say behind me as I get further and further away from him.
After a short while, he caught up to me and continued to whine.
“Geez, you love dragging me into things don’t you” Afterwards we walked in silence until reaching the camp
Am I dragging him into things? I was very distinct about letting him have the option to sit it out this time. Why is he coming? He obviously doesn’t want to meet the goblins.
We notice some smoke billowing in front of us through the gaps the in trees. It doesn’t look too far away. The smoke was out of sight up until now because the wind is constantly blowing it in the other direction. We walk a bit closer before-
“Halt!” is yelled in a scratchy voice out of nowhere.
After the voice come four well-armed goblins. These were nothing like the last two we encountered; they had legitimate weapons and armor that looked to be made to fit them.
“Mano-san? Are we in trouble?” Kael says drawing his weapon ready to fight, his voice reeks of being frightened though.
I guess it’s apparent even to him that we are a bit out-matched right now.
“Come, we take you. No worry, won’t be harmed. Trick prisoners.” The goblin that seemed to be in charge of the four says.
What in the world is he saying? Where would they be taking me? They said “trick prisoners” do they mean to trick us and imprison us?
“Speak more specifically unless I know where you intend to take me and why I am going to resist,” I say drawing my weapon as well.
For a moment surprise appears on the faces of all four goblins after the moment passes through the goblin in charge dons a face full of disgust.
“Gue! Stupid human! Fine! We take you to chief, he say he wants to meet you. Other goblins no know. We pretend you prisoner trick them. Know enough now?” The goblin says in a slow deep voice.
Despite the fact that I’m pretty sure he is mocking me, I think I understand what he is trying to say. Goblins don’t seem to have a very high opinion of humans so they would not be very happy if one was allowed to walk right in their front door without resistance. The leaders probably managed to get the fact I talked to the child under wraps and plan to keep it secret for the moment.
“Mano-san? What are we doing? They don’t look very friendly you know.” Kael petitions
“We are going to be captured by them, let it happen,” I say putting away my weapon
“Huh?! Mano-san are you sure we are on the same side here?” Kael pleads as he looks my way
“Just do it. We are in a hurry here, and I don’t want to be your translator.” I say turning to the goblins again
“We will allow ourselves to be captured. We will ask that our gear and equipment be left on us though.” I say sternly at the Goblin
“Wha- no! We take stuff, maybe give it back!” One of the others goblins spouted off
“No. You take stuff, order from chief.” The goblin leader says as he motions for the others to begin binding us
AdvertisementsMegyn Kelly used to be a favorite among conservatives. However, her feud with Donald Trump and her bashing Fox News in what many considered an attempt to make herself more marketable to a liberal audience has alienated Kelly’s original fans.
The proof of this point is the coverage by conservative news outlets over Kelly’s new prime time news magazine show being cancelled.
“Disaster: Megyn’s Sunday Show‘s ‘Initial Run’ Pulled After Just Eight Episodes,” reads a headline on Breitbart.
“The initial run of Megyn Kelly’s Sunday newsmagazine show will reportedly be taken off the air at least two episodes earlier than scheduled because of her disastrous ratings,” happily notes columnist Tony Lee, adding that the network was originally hoping to air 10 episodes but was forced to shut her down.
Most of the comments after the article supported the cancellation of Kelly’s show.
“Megyn Kelly’s book was a flop and so is her new show. She is toxic and doesn’t have half as much class as Judge Jeanine does,” says Jay Blanca.
“She is a huge NARC and acts like she was abused so identifies with victims too yet unaware. SAD,” claims Debbie.
A lot of commenters seem to believe that Kelly’s demise is karma. The Daily Caller was just as dismissive of Kelly. In their article, they note that Megyn’s show has been “put out of its misery.” Conservatives on Twitter have been celebrating Megyn Kelly’s demise since the announcement.
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Just two years ago, it seemed like Megyn Kelly could do no wrong. She was beating Bill O’Reilly in the rating for the 25-54 age group. Variety wrote an article on how Kelly became the star of Fox News.
“Megyn Kelly is bucking the conventional wisdom of what it means to be a Fox News anchor. The take-no-prisoners newswoman isn’t afraid to throw hardballs at Republicans. She recently lectured Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over his penchant for arguing with female reporters.”
Many people thought her move to NBC would be a good idea. However, it’s had its share of critics from both the right and left. HuffPost recently wrote an article on how Kelly’s show is stuck in a bad pattern.
Megyn Kelly's move to NBC has sparked a major backlash. [Image by Andrew Toth/Getty Images]
“The ratings are the latest in a disappointing pattern for the show: Viewership has dropped with each episode since its debut. The show’s premiere episode, an interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, debuted to 6.1 million viewers, though even that lagged behind the ’60 Minutes’ episode airing that night,” said columnist Lydia O’Connor, who adds that much of this is due to her past as a Fox News host.
There has been a huge backlash to Kelly’s show from the start. However, what really tipped the scales was her interview with Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones, which many thought was exploitative.
After rumors spread that NBC didn’t want to deal with all of the controversy, the Washington Post said that Mrs. Kelly found Jones’s views revolting, but said that interviewing him had value.
The Alex Jones interview not only caused advertisers to pull out, but it angered families of the Sandy Hook victims as well. No matter how hard Megyn Kelly is trying, she just can’t seem to satisfy anybody these days. Perhaps once her show Megyn Kelly Today debuts this fall, things will turn around.
[Featured Image by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images]This guy from Portland, Oregon just lost his job at Home Depot for violating company policy, which doesn’t sound like such a big deal until you realize that the reason he broke the rules was because he was stopping a child from getting kidnapped!
“At the time, the only thing I was thinking about was the child’s safety,” said 32-year-old Dillon Reagan, who had worked at the Mall 205 store for four years before he was bizarrely dismissed for his heroics. “I stepped outside and sure enough, there’s this lady who’s frantic and crying, ‘Somebody help me please! He’s stealing my kid, he’s kidnapping my child!’”
Reagan and a colleague called the police and then, on the advice of the dispatcher, they followed the man on foot until the police arrived. After giving their statements, Reagan said they returned to the store around 10 minutes later, but the next day he was surprised when his supervisor scolded him for “doing the wrong thing.” A month later the company fired him for breaking the company’s safety policy, and even though they’ve since reversed their decision (possibly in light of media attention), Reagan says he isn’t sure if he wants to reclaim his job given the unfair treatment he’s received. What would you do? Let us know in the comments below. (h/t: KGW)
This is Dillon Reagan. He recently stopped a child from getting kidnapped while he was at work
But instead of a promotion, his employer, Home Depot, dismissed him for violating company policy!
“I was fired for stopping a kidnapper from successfully abducting a child. FML,” he wrote on Facebook
Needless to say, he wasn’t the only person who was outraged by what had happenedWinnipeg police have charged a suspect in the brutal slayings of three street people.
John Paul Ostamas has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, and one count of arson endangering life for his alleged involvement, police said Tuesday.
Ostamas, 39, will appear in court Wednesday.
Police found the body of Donald Collins, 65, near 329 Hargrave Street early Saturday morning, then found the body of 48-year-old Stony Stanley Bushie behind 333 Portage Avenue about 18 hours later. Police said both men, who had mental health and/or substance abuse issues, had been killed between 9 p.m. Friday and 1 a.m. Saturday.
"I think (Ostamas) was familiar with at least two of the victims, but I wouldn’t say they were friends," Supt. Danny Smyth said of the weekend’s victims.
Ostamas was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Miles Monias, 37, who had been beaten in a Main Street bus shelter on April 10 and later died in the hospital.
While speculation had been that a serial killer was targeting homeless people, Ostamas was part of the same community. Smyth said there was no apparent motive for the murders.
Police credited local businesses for providing surveillance videos of the areas where the two victims were slain on the weekend. Police would not say how they were killed but it is believed the suspect wielded a blunt instrument.
“My understanding is that the events that led up to (the weekend’s homicides) is that there was a fire that was set in the shower room at the Winnipeg Hotel,” Smyth said. “We believe (Ostamas) may be connected with that.”
Ostamas was charged with domestic assault here in March. In his hometown of Thunder Bay, Ont., Ostamas has a lengthy record of violence dating back to 2002.
On Monday morning, police removed two BFI bins from behind the Siloam Mission.
“We were led to believe that there may be evidence in the dumpsters,” Smyth said.
Smyth said Ostamas has visited Winnipeg many times in the last 10 years and had accessed services at Siloam.
Police plan to check with other jurisdictions where Ostamas had been known to travel to see if he had been involved in any unsolved crimes.
Ostamas has retained lawyer Greg Brodsky.
‘We can’t get Miles back’: Monias family forgives
Now that Ron Monias finally knows more details about the death of his son, Miles, his family can start healing.
John Paul Ostamas was charged with second-degree murder for his alleged role in the killing of Miles Monias, 37, on April 10, police said Tuesday. Police said Monias was beaten and left for dead in a Main Street bus shelter near Pioneer Avenue and later died in the hospital.
"We had hoped to get closure and we’re happy to know that he went by homicide and not by accident," Ron Monias said from Garden Hill First Nation on Tuesday. "Knowing allowed us to start healing."
But the family reacted emotionally when a police constable first broke the news to them.
"We took it very hard — myself, my wife and my daughter," Monias said. "But our initial thought was that our tradition is to forgive to start the healing process. So, we have no ill feelings towards anyone, including that man (Ostamas).
"If we have any ill feelings, we’re not going to heal. That way, we can have good closure and let justice take care of that man. We cannot dwell on this, we can’t get Miles back. We have to move on."
But first, the Monias family will come to Winnipeg on Wednesday.
"We want to finish a lot of things that we traditionally do," Monias said. "One is to visit the bus shelter where he was found and pay a visit to the hospital where he died, and leave some tobacco."
Miles Monias was buried in Garden Hill on April 17. He leaves behind four daughters, aged nine to 18, who live with their mother in Winnipeg.
"They were separated but were still good friends," Ron Monias said.
Van can help vulnerable: Shelter
The Main Street Project is hoping the latest focus on the plight of the homeless will help them get their van back on the road.
The shelter lost its funding for the van when the Housing First project started recently.
"We are a 24-7 agency, our priority would be to provide this service to the general community, to those identified as being at risk, those sleeping in bus shelters, those that are panhandling," executive director Lisa Goss said Tuesday.
Main Street Project needs $400,000 to pay staff to operate the van 24-7, Goss said.
Had the van been in the area, it may have prevented two street people from being murdered on the weekend.
"It would be a great way to diminish something like this from happening again," said Siloam Mission director of operations Dan Maxson.
The shelters were all breathing a sigh of relief because a suspect had been arrested and charged.
"For a vulnerable community, we spend time talking about risk all the time," Goss said. "So, when there is something like that comes out, that makes us highly aware that there’s added risk … When that comes to a close, there’s less of that tightening sense."
Supt. Danny Smyth praised the shelters for their roles in cautioning the homeless.
"But I think it’s an opportunity now for the city, the (police) service and other social agencies to bring to the forefront homelessness and some of the challenges that people on the streets have to face," he said.
Company donating panic alarms to homeless community
A business is donating 100 personal safety alarms to Winnipeg’s homeless community.
National Industrial Communications says it will offer the alarms to the Main Street Project, Salvation Army Booth Centre and Siloam Mission to pass on to at-risk people.
The pull of a pin on the device activates a flashing strobe light and 130 decibel sound that can be heard up to 500 metres away, according to National Industrial. The company said it hopes the alarm will deter attackers.Don’t Listen to Anyone: Casey Neistat on Trusting Your Instincts & The Principles That Guide A Creative Life
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“Success is defined not by how many cars you have or any of that nonsense but rather by how much of your day you spend doing something you really hate doing.” Casey Neistat
Today marks my third conversation with the singular Casey Neistat.
Does a guy who has amassed over 100 million total views on his YouTube Channel — not to mention 1 million views daily — really need a formal introduction? Unlikely. But if for some reason this exciting filmmaker has eclipsed your radar, you can read my in depth thoughts on his extraordinary life and listen to our prior conversations HERE (RRP #73) and HERE (RRP #144).
If you’re well on board the Casey train, you’ve witnessed quite an evolution in his recent trajectory. Since Casey began daily vlogging — posting a new movie on his YouTube Channel every single day since March 27, 2015 — his already incredibly popular YouTube Channel has exploded, growing from around 500,000 subscribers to well over 1.1 million in less than five months. On average, each vlog amasses around 500,000 views. This one tops out at 1.5 million (which incidentally has absolutely nothing to do with what occurs at the 4-minute mark):
A major network television show would kill for these numbers. But Casey has no interest in such matters. He’s not making videos to capture the interest of the system he consciously placed in his rear view. For Casey, YouTube is the finish line — a juggernaut channel he built all by himself. DIY on the most democratic video platform in the world. And that is far more powerful and compelling than anything HBO, NBC, Disney or any other traditional mainstream outlet could ever offer him. Ever.
If you’re not yet hip to his channel, get on it. A unique voice delivered with expert filmmaking acuity, each and every movie hooks you emotionally and never fails to captivate. His movies are so popular in fact, crowds of people congregate daily outside his downtown New York City studio, pining for a mere glimpse of the populist artist.
And now thanks to the new social media video sharing platform he co-founded called Beme, Casey can add technology entrepreneur to his expanding resume.
Intended to change how we view and use social media, Beme allows users to post successive 4-second video snippets without the opportunity to preview, review or even view the clips before they publish. By altogether dispensing with the opportunity to edit and filter, the big idea is to promote honesty, authenticity and ultimately empathy through shared experience. Rather than sharing the well crafted and highly filtered version of ourselves we want the world to see, Beme is about sharing our point of view the way we actually experience it.
Casey was nice enough to invite me to be a Beme beta tester, and I have been having a lot of fun with it. Download the app for free and follow me at richroll and Casey at casey.
In any event, when my daughter Mathis & I dropped by Casey’s epic studio this past July, Beme had not yet launched and was then still top secret. Therefore, I was unfortunately unable to explore the most exciting and relevant aspect of Casey’s current life in this podcast. But no worries — there is always so much to mine from Casey and this conversation does not disappoint.
I love this guy. I admire his determination. I applaud his positive message. I’m in awe of his creative output. And I celebrate his commitment to promting empathy by providing us with new tools to share our lives more honestly and authentically.
Today’s conversation spans:
the grind & reward of daily vlogging
creativity & responsibility in the social workplace
finding balance in the chaos
the principles that govern his creative life
the impact of growing up struggling
what it means to be truly successful; and
the importance of instinct over advice
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Casey vlogs, mainly because I think it captures his ethos and filmmaking perspective quite nicely.
I sincerely |
it is a pure function.
This is a situation where the infix notation would cause a problem. Let’s take the below example.
As explained in the docs, since there is no semicolon after the a x infix call, it considers the next statement i.e the println also as a method argument.
If we gave the method a dummy parameter of the Unit type as below.
val a = new A a x println ( "b" ) class A { def x ( f : Unit ) : Unit = println ( "a" ) }
Then something unexpected happens. It prints out b and then a as opposed to a and then b. This occurs since the entire println is passed as an argument to the x method.
I also encourage to debug through the code for more clarity.
So it is better to follow the regular dot notation and avoid infix for the above suffix/no argument pure functions.
val a = new A a. x println ( "b" ) class A { def x () : Unit = println ( "a" ) }
Works as expected i.e printing a before b.
Any method that has greater than zero arguments can be considered as an n-arity method where n is the number of arguments to that method.
As always, an example speaks more than words.
val list = List ( 1, 2, 3, 4 ) println ( list mkString "|" )
mkString is a method which takes one string argument as a separator and then turns the given list to a String.
If there is more than one argument, then it needs to be wrapped up to into a param.
val string = "Hi there" //Wrong - Will result in compilation error string substring 1, 3 //Correct string substring ( 1, 3 )
Infix notation is one of the core concepts in scala and it is used all over the place. It is particularly useful to design Domain Specific Languages(DSLs). A good understanding of it is necessary.
Stay tunedTrump Still Won't Say He Believes Obama Born In U.S. Despite Campaign Claim He Does
Enlarge this image toggle caption NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Updated at 10:50 p.m.
Donald Trump refused to say whether he believes President Obama was born in the United States in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday.
But in a statement hours later from the GOP nominee's spokesman, the campaign claimed Trump does indeed believe the president was born in Hawaii.
The ongoing "birther" saga is one that's spanned years, going back to 2011, when Trump very publicly embraced the conspiracy theory about the country's first African-American president.
When asked point-blank by The Post's Robert Costa during an interview in Ohio, Trump again dodged the question of whether he accepts that the president is indeed a natural-born U.S citizen.
"I'll answer that question at the right time," Trump said. "I just don't want to answer it yet."
"I don't talk about it anymore," he tried to explain. "The reason I don't is because then everyone is going to be talking about it — as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security."
Trump campaign then released a statement — not from Trump himself, but from senior communications adviser Jason Miller — claiming victory for Trump forcing Obama to release his long-form birth certificate, and saying that, because of that evidence, Trump now "believes that President Obama was born in the United States."
Here's Miller's full statement:
"Hillary Clinton's campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President. This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer. Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton's henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump.
"In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate. Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised. Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama's birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.
"Mr. Trump is now totally focused on bringing jobs back to America, defeating radical Islamic terrorism, taking care of our veterans, introducing school choice opportunities and rebuilding and making our inner cities safe again."
The notion that it was Clinton's 2008 campaign that began the birther movement is one that has been disproved. In 2015, PolitiFact found such a claim to be false. "Clinton's campaign, one of the most thoroughly dissected in modern history, never raised questions about the future president's citizenship. The idea that it did is based largely on a series of disconnected actions by supporters of Clinton, mostly in the months between Obama's reaction to the Jeremiah Wright story and the Democratic National Convention," The Post's David Weigel reported last year.
The statement coming from Miller — and not from Trump himself — is roughly the same as what other top Trump aides have been saying for the past week.
"He believes President Obama was born here," campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on CNN last week. "I was born in Camden, by the way, New Jersey. He was born in Hawaii."
Trump's response to his campaign manager's comments in the Post invterview: "It's OK — she's allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things."
His running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said earlier this month that he accepts the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also claimed just last week that the GOP nominee now accepts the president's legal birthplace.
"Donald Trump believes now that [Obama] was born in the United States," Giuliani said on CNN. "I believe it. He believes it. We all believe it. It took a long time to get out."
But while his top surrogates are circulating assertions that Trump has dropped any birther beliefs, the Republican nominee still refuses to say the words, and is keeping the issue alive.
And Trump already has reiterated this cycle that he — not campaign managers or spokesmen — is the only one who truly speaks for his campaign.
Trump championed the fringe theory about Obama — who some believed was born in Kenya and might even be a secret Muslim — during the 2012 election cycle, and was its largest driving force, as the New York Times explored earlier this year:
"In the birther movement, Mr. Trump recognized an opportunity to connect with the electorate over an issue many considered taboo: the discomfort, in some quarters of American society, with the election of the nation's first black president. He harnessed it for political gain, beginning his connection with the largely white Republican base that, in his 2016 campaign, helped clinch his party's nomination."
The White House eventually released President Obama's long-form birth certificate in 2011 — showing that he was, indeed, born in Honolulu in 1961.
Just as that was happening, Trump landed in New Hampshire while flirting with a presidential bid, and claimed victory.
"I'm very proud of myself," Trump said. "I've accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish."
Even after that, he continued to raise doubts about the birth certificate's authenticity.
Hillary Clinton didn't waste any time Thursday night responding to Trump's initial comments. Less than two hours after The Post published its interview with Trump, Clinton spoke at an event hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute: "He still wouldn't say 'Hawaii.' He still wouldn't say 'America.' This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?"
She also referred to how Trump has tried to refocus his campaign on an affirmative message and avoid more controversial statements.
"This is the best he can do. This is who he is," Clinton said.
Arnie Seipel contributed.It is an occupational hazard of poets laureate that, however far they flee the public, rustic local books will be shyly pressed into their hands. But when the British laureate Robert Southey was passing through the Scottish Highlands in 1819, literary discovery came from the simplest act of any tourist: he idly picked up a local guidebook from a table. “Striking and Picturesque Delineations of the Grand, Beautiful, Wonderful, and Interesting Scenery Around Loch-Earn,” the title page announced, by one Angus M’Diarmid. The rugged Highland landscape that the book described was, Southey marvelled, rivalled only by the prose itself from “the first sentence—if sentence that may be called which hath no limitations of sense or syntax.” The book’s dedication to a local noble, the Earl of Breadalbane, though wildly self-abasing—“With overpowering sentiments of the most profound humility, I prostrate myself at your noble feet”—is at least written in recognizable English. But after M’Diarmid expresses his “tumid emotions of heart-distending pride,” he commences with this extraordinary opening line: Of the different remarkable curiosity flowing from the excellencies of the cataract at Edinample, which partly perspicuously to the view of the beholders; its finitude confined between high wild rocks of asperity aspect, similar to a tract of solitude or savageness; its force emphatically overflowing three divisions; but, in the season of the water dropping from the clouds, its force increases so potently, that these divisions, almost undiscovered, at which its incremental exorbitance transcended various objects of inquisitiveness, peradventure in manuscript, in such eminently measure, that its homengeneously could not be recognish at the interim, except existing in emblem to the waves of the ocean in tempestuous season. The sentence occupies—overthrows is more like it—the entire first paragraph of “Striking and Picturesque Delineations,” and its massed armies overrun and conquer every page thereafter. Southey had discovered no common guidebook. As it now quietly celebrates its two-hundredth anniversary, Angus M’Diarmid’s slender 1815 masterpiece belongs to that same rare class of unintentional humor as “English as She Is Spoke”—the would-be reference work, written by an author whose second language was English, that achieves a strange linguistic greatness.
Angus M’Diarmid had, at first glance, a decidedly unrequited love of the English language. A “gillie” or hunting guide, on the Highland estate of the Earl of Breadalbane, M’Diarmid’s first language was Gaelic, with English a distant second. This was not unusual in Lochearnhead; though thirty-six miles north of Glasgow, it was a world away, on the other side of the Highland boundary and surrounded by mountains—a place one contemporary termed “a small, straggling village.” Gaelic remained the first language of most of its residents, as it still did throughout rural Highland districts. The area’s fine grouse-shooting and fishing, though, attracted enough cosmopolitan visitors that M’Diarmid’s ambitions with English soon vaulted over creag, loch, and ben. Fired by his fascination with the language and a much-abused dictionary, he undertook a guidebook for outlanders to Loch Earn and what he called “your Lordship’s delicious estate.” The book’s backer was apparently a visiting colonel taken with the author’s monologues, and its publisher explained its language thus in a preface: “Like the torrent shooting impetuously from crag to crag, his sentences, instead of flowing in a smooth and equal tenor, overleap with noble freedom the mounds and impediments of grammar, verbs, conjunctions, and adverbs, which give tameness and regularity to ordinary compositions.” Here, for instance, is M’Diarmid on an echoing gorge: The foresaid high Grampian mountains abounded with spasmodiac opening, or excavated parts, that if a loud cry made at accomodious distant, they would sounded the same in such miraculous manner, that one apt to conceive that each parts of those spasmodic rocks imbibed the vociferation which is depressing gradually the sonorific sound to the expiry thereof. In stirring accounts of castles, moors, and local feuds and massacres, we are informed that “they daggered the piper, and throwed him in a hole,” and told of “womens bewailing over the deprivation of their correlative husbands.” (One unfortunate is “seized of no less than nine arrows: Which occurrence in lower degree would enforce many to retire.”) Robbers, mystifyingly and yet somehow suitably, are repeatedly referred to as “men of incoherent transactions.” M’Diarmid’s prose has had an underground of fans among writers and linguists ever since. Vladimir Nabokov, no stranger to the alchemy of second-language writing, even has his “Pale Fire” narrator suggest “Finnegans Wake as a monstrous extension of Angus MacDiamid’s ‘incoherent transactions.’ ” The book went through four different editions between 1815 and 1879, though a fifth, promised in 1897 by the head of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, never materialized. Copies of the guide fetch over two hundred pounds at auction—but, thankfully, it can now be read online. But who, exactly, was Angus M’Diarmid?Honorably discharged Marine Marco Chavez, right, is hugged by combat veteran Nathan Fletcher, who along with others worked to get Chavez back into the U.S. after he was deported to Mexico 15 years ago after serving time for an animal cruelty charge, which he denies being responsible for, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, in San Diego. Chavez returned to the United States after getting a pardon from Gov. Jerry Brown. (John Gibbins/The San Diego Union-Tribune via AP)
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Former Marine Marco Chavez could not sleep the night before he was set to cross the border and return to the United States, a country he considers home after he was deported to Mexico 15 years ago following a dog beating conviction.
When Chavez finally walked Thursday into the United States through the Tijuana-San Diego border crossing on Thursday, he was speechless and still in disbelief that he had won his battle to regain his permanent U.S. residency.
It was an historic day for the Mexican-born father of three who returned to the U.S. as a grandfather. He is considered among the few former service members to regain permanent residency out of hundreds of veterans who have been deported.
“I was very nervous, very excited and it was still, I can’t believe it until now,” Chavez said standing outside a McDonald’s, just inside the California side of the border.
He was met by hugs and screams of “Welcome!” and “Bienvenidos!” by a group of veterans and immigrant rights advocates waving U.S. flags.
Chavez said it will be an unforgettable Christmas because he will spend it with his family.
“I’ll be able to wake up Christmas morning, and hug them and let them know I’m home,” Chavez said, his father standing by his side.
His father, Antonio Chavez, told reporters in English and Spanish that he was grateful to have his son finally home.
“I’m very thankful and happy,” Antonio Chavez said, his voice quivering as Marco Chavez hugged him.
The return gives hope to the other deported U.S. military veterans, said Nathan Fletcher, a Marine combat veteran whose organization lobbied on Chavez’s behalf.
“For those of us who have served and fought for this country, we can’t rest until they all come home,” said Fletcher, among the first to welcome Marco Chavez back with a big hug.
Fletcher, a former California state lawmaker, founded the Honorably Discharged/Dishonorably Deported Coalition that tries to help deported veterans get back to the U.S.
“We are here today because a group of people said if you are willing to die for a country, that country would not leave you behind, that country would not let you be deported,” he said.
Earlier this year at the request of Fletcher’s organization, California Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned Chavez for a 1998 conviction for animal cruelty in a dog beating. Chavez said another person was responsible.
Months after he was pardoned, an immigration judge granted Chavez’s request to return.
Brown, a Democrat, said Chavez served the U.S. and deserved “to come back home.”
Brown also pardoned two others veterans deported to Mexico who are waiting to win their legal battles to return.
Chavez was a baby when his parents brought him to the United States. He joined the Marine Corps at age 19, served four years during peacetime and received an honorable discharge.
He had been sentenced to two years in a state prison for his conviction and was released early because of good behavior. A federal judge, however, used the conviction to deport him in 2002.
Chavez, who whose three sons were young at the time, stayed in Tijuana. He said he had to learn Spanish and find work in a country that was foreign to him.
His wife moved the family to be with him but found life too difficult in the violence-plagued Mexican border city where schools are lacking and jobs are scarce. She eventually moved back to the United States, settling with his sons in Iowa after they divorced.
Chavez is now 45 and his sons range from 17 to 21. They last visited him in Tijuana in 2013.
His parents, who live in Los Angeles, would visit regularly. Chavez plans to live with them while he waits for his residency card to be replaced. He then will move to Iowa and try to rebuild a relationship with his children.
Among the few items he returned to the U.S. with was a red “Radio Flyer” wagon that he had carted his sons in when they lived in Tijuana with him.
He kept the wagon in storage for 15 years and is looking forward to showing it again to his sons and now his two grandchildren.
___
This version corrects that Marco Chavez has two grandchildren, not three.2012 in review
Record: 94-68 (92-70 Pythagorean)
700 runs scored (7th in NL)
600 runs allowed (4th in NL)
Big Offseason Moves
Acquired Justin Upton and Chris Johnson from Arizona for Martin Prado, Randall Delgado and three minor leaguers. Signed free agents B.J. Upton and Gerald Laird. Traded Tommy Hanson to the Angels for Jordan Walden. Re-signed Reed Johnson. Lost Michael Bourn, David Ross and Jair Jurrjens. Chipper Jones retired. Introduced a potentially racist spring training cap and then scrapped it.
The brothers Upton are in tow, giving the Braves a dynamic outfield trio of Upton, Upton and Jason Heyward. But the big question: Will Justin and B.J. be any better than what the Braves got from Prado and Bourn?
There are two ways to evaluate those moves. Long term, the Braves got younger and added much more power. But what about in the short term? Based off 2012 WAR, the Braves may not have improved much, especially given the superb defensive ratings attributed to Prado and Bourn:
Bourn: 6.0
Prado: 5.4
B.J. Upton: 2.6
Justin Upton: 2.1
However, if we look back to 2011, we get a different story:
Bourn: 3.0
Prado: 1.8
B.J Upton: 2.8
Justin Upton: 5.7
And moving forward, Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections for 2013:
Bourn: 4.0
Prado: 3.3
B.J. Upton: 3.0
Justin Upton: 3.5
Anyway, that's a long way of saying I like the trades but I don't think they transform a 94-win club into anything better than a 94-win club. But maintaining excellence can be just as difficult as building it. Acquiring B.J. Upton is certainly better than losing Bourn and not replacing him, and trading Hanson freed up some payroll to go after Justin Upton. The Braves got younger, more exciting, added power and didn't spike their payroll. Works for me.
Position Players
The Braves were seventh in the NL in runs -- 76 runs behind league-leading Milwaukee but only 31 runs behind NL East rival Washington. The Braves led the league in walks but they weren't strong in any other category: home runs (ninth), batting average (11th), isolated power (ninth) and so on. They were seventh in OBP but are losing Chipper Jones (first on the team in OBP), Prado (second) and Bourn (tied with Dan Uggla for third at.348).
B.J. Upton may not help here, coming off a.298 OBP with Tampa Bay, although he averaged.322 over the previous three seasons. Justin Upton was at.355 last year and.369 in his 2011. The big issue isn't so much the change in the outfield but the loss of Chipper, the guy who always worked the count and gave quality at-bats. Chris Johnson had 132 K's and just 31 walks last season; Juan Francisco was just as bad at 70/11.
In fact, Braves fans have raised questions about the potential strikeout concerns in the lineup. Yes, between Johnson/Francisco, Uggla (168 K's), B.J. Upton (169 K's) and Heyward (152 K's), that's a lot of strikeouts. But everyone strikes out a lot these days. The A's set the all-time record last year and made the playoffs. It is something to watch since things can snowball if all the strikeout guys are slumping at the same time, but overall it's not a big concern if the Braves are drawing their walks and hitting home runs.
Defensively, the Braves should still be very good, even without Bourn running down everything in center. Andrelton Simmons may already be the best defensive shortstop in the majors and Heyward was a deserving Gold Glove winner in right. The interesting guy is B.J. Upton; scouts have always liked his D but he has never rated that well in defensive runs saved, averaging minus-10 runs over the past three seasons.
To wrap, this could be an A lineup if (A) Heyward has the monster breakout season; (B) Justin Upton hits like he did in 2011 and B.J. Upton adds some OBP; (C) Freddie Freeman -- like Heyward, just 23 -- improves over his first two seasons (OPS marks of.795 and.796) and Simmons proves his rookie batting line wasn't a fluke (.289/.335/.416); (D) Brian McCann, who will probably miss the first couple weeks of the season while recovering from shoulder surgery, bounces back after a bad 2012.
OK, I think enough of those things do happen (how about Heyward as a sleeper MVP choice?) that I give this group a B+ rating. And that may be conservative.
Pitching Staff
Five thoughts:
1. Kris Medlen is for real. Not crazy, best-pitcher-on-the-planet real like he was the final two months, but I agree with the projections that see his ERA around the 2.80-3.00 range.
2. Respect Tim Hudson. I know he'll lose it one of these years and his strikeout percentage dipped a bit last year, but he still gets ground balls, chews up innings and does the job.
3. Mike Minor had a big second half. I wrote last September how his changeup location had improved. I believe he's a solid No. 3 moving forward.
4. Brandon Beachy was leading the NL in ERA when he went down with Tommy John. If he returns in the second half, he could provide a huge lift.
5. Craig Kimbrel & Co. The Braves had a 2.76 bullpen ERA last year, second in the NL to the Reds' 2.76 (and a half-run better than the No. 3 team). Good luck rallying in the ninth.
I'm downgrading because of concerns about depth. Remember, the Braves had depth heading into last year and had to resort to pulling Ben Sheets out of retirement and trading for Paul Maholm.
Heat Map to Watch
Pitchers dream of perfecting a pitch like Medlen did a year ago with his changeup. Just look at the location against left-handed batters and you can see why they hit.091 in 82 plate appearances ending in a changeup.
After moving into the rotation, Kris Medlen went 9-0 with a 0.97 ERA in 12 starts. ESPN Stats & Information
Overall Grade
I think the Nationals and Braves are the two best teams in the NL. The Nationals are more of a sure thing in my book, but the thing to love about the Braves is their youth: Heyward, Freeman, Simmons and both Uptons are all in their primes or still improving. They have the best closer in the game, a deep bullpen and a good rotation with a potential ace in Medlen.
Look, there are potential flaws here: The strikeouts could cascade and lead to OBP issues; maybe Medlen isn't an ace or can't pitch 200-plus innings; maybe Julio Teheran is terrible and Beachy doesn't return at midseason and the back of the rotation is a problem. If you believe in leadership, maybe the Braves will miss Chipper in the clubhouse.
But I clearly like this team. I think the Braves win 90-plus games... although that will be only good enough for the wild card.Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
Your Pick, Ben, But One Goes Off the Cliff
It's one or the other, Ben: you either push the real economy over the edge or you push stocks and the risk trade off the cliff.
Now that you've pushed the dollar down, Ben, it's your pick on what to push off the cliff: your beloved risk trade or the real economy. Here's a chart of the U.S. dollar and crude oil. Notice they're on a see-saw: when the dollar tanks, oil skyrockets. When the dollar recovers a bit, oil declines.
Ben Bernanke and the Fed are replaying their 2008 game plan: drive the dollar down to goose the risk trade in stocks. But a funny thing happened on the way to blowing another equity bubble: oil bubbled up, too, and that killed the real economy.
For the past three years, Ben has been trying to resuscitate the real economy via "the wealth effect": if your portfolio of stocks is rising, then you'll feel richer and your "animal spirits" of borrowing and spending will be aroused. The only proven way to goose stocks is to crush the dollar so overseas corporate earnings will be boosted by the currency depreciation (when transferred back into dollars, even flat profits look like they're rising), and U.S. exports will be cheaper to our trading partners.
Flooding the U.S. market with liquidity and keeping interest rates at zero had another consequence, one adamantly denied by the Ministry of Truth: it sparked a carry trade in which cheap dollars could be borrowed for next to nothing and exported around the world to seek higher returns.
Unsurprisingly, much of this free money flowed into commodities, which retained their value as the Fed pushed the dollar down. Also unsurprisingly, oil exporters raised the price of their oil in dollars as the dollar tanked.
Ben and his motley crew at the Fed reckoned that the financialized U.S. economy would respond positively to the lower dollar and the goosing of the risk trade in stocks. But the guys and gals seem to have forgotten that the real economy is dependent on oil. All the folks at the cocktail parties attended by Yellen et al. may be gushing over their hefty stock gains, but in the kitchen and carpark the workers are grousing about the rising prices of food and gasoline.
Now the cost of oil--the lifeblood of the real economy--is close to the point that it will push the real economy into recession. This sets up a difficult choice for Ben: if he pushes the dollar down to new lows, then oil leaps up and pushes the real economy off the cliff.
Alternatively, Ben renounces QE3 and "surprises" the markets with a rate increase, thus rescuing the dollar from freefall and pushing oil down. But that will send his precious risk trade and equity Bull off the cliff.
The politicos won't like either choice, but sacrificing the real economy will cost them their seat. All the fatcats who've raked in tens of billions from the risk trade Bull will be demanding that Ben "save" the financialized economy, but the politicos will see their political obituaries being written. Yes, the fatcats will shower them with millions in campaign contributions, but even those millions won't change the fact that Americans reliably vote their pocketbooks.
If rising oil pushes the real economy over the cliff, voters will not be re-electing incumbents in 2012.
Welcome to reality, Ben. Your "let's pretend the recovery is real" game is nearing an end. If you push the dollar down any more, then oil will go up and tip the real economy into a recession that QE3 will only make worse as you send the dollar into freefall. If the dollar rises, then your beloved "wealth effect" dies a horrible death on the rocks below.
Take your pick, but choose wisely.Launched yesterday in what the group hopes will represent a major step forward for the growth and stability of the sport, first details of the Velon project were finally unveiled.
Comprising eleven of cycling’s top WorldTour teams and targeting goals of making the sport more dramatic, introducing new technology and building a more sustainable and credible future, the group aims to transform the landscape of the sport.
It hands member teams new negotiation power in discussions with the UCI and with race organisers such as ASO, thus strengthening the hand of one of the most important stakeholder groups in cycling.
However while the launch document introduced Velon to those who follow the sport, many important details were not explained due to its brevity. CyclingTips spoke in depth to the group’s CEO Graham Bartlett, who previously worked with UEFA and Nike and was commercial director for Liverpool Football Club, getting greater detail on a variety of topics.
In part I of this interview, Bartlett fields questions on the group’s goals and finances, speaks about the teams who have not yet signed up and discusses some of the technology already employed such as on-bike cameras and whether that footage could become a revenue stream.
He also talks about Velon’s dealings with the AIGCP, the UCI plus Tour de France organiser ASO, who many anticipate could be the group’s biggest challenge.
CyclingTips: First off, can you explain what Velon means for the teams involved?
Graham Bartlett: We are very much about facing the same direction now. This is a joint business venture of eleven of the teams. It has got three founding principles, really – make the sport more exciting, bring new technology too it and that this all has to be underpinned by sustainable and credible teams.
This has to be a long term business shift, because you are not going to do anything overnight that is going to switch on massive big revenue streams. You have to build this slowly and shift that economic model. The teams want to be sustainable and credible in the long term. That has got to be better for the sport and better for the fans.
The teams have locked together in a company in their own joint business, they have put their rights and business in it and off it goes.
CT: Is that figure available, in terms of how much each team is contributing to it?
GB: No, it is not. The reason for that is not so much secrecy, but more to do with the fact that it will change and alter. What has happened is they are funding the company, and that company’s job is to go out into the world and bring back opportunities. With some of those opportunities the teams might decide, ‘well, actually, we will invest the funding in that, and upscale our commitment.’ Or they may say, ‘no, we need other expertise and other funding for that, so bring that.’
So how much more they put in and how that would work will flex according to the opportunities and change. As a result if I give you a figure it is fairly meaningless, to be honest, as it depends on what new business this company generates and on what basis. It also depends on what partners are involved. It is a flexible business model.
CT: There are a number of other WorldTour teams who haven’t come on board. Have they given a reason for that? Do you think that will change over time?
GB: I think all teams have got different objectives in what they want to achieve. We have had conversations with some of them to a large extent and some lesser so. What we did is we decided that rather than trying to keep taking, we will show what we are doing and what we are about, and then keep the door open for them to come on board later. And that door is very much open.
In deciding to get out there and do things, we did some good stuff this season in the on-bike camera space. That’s just a start; that is only one thing. We have got to do a lot more than that, but that showed that the group can act together.
CT: Do you see a possibility of selling that on-bike footage to the big broadcasters as a possible revenue stream?
GB: Well, the interesting thing about the on-bike camera footage is that you need both the teams and the organisers, as obviously the organisers have already sold a lot of their media rights.
What we are doing at the moment with the organisers is to see where that can fit to best effect. At the moment it is going out to the broadcast rights holders, and some of those are very long-term deals. As a result you have not got a huge amount of potential to get a massive revenue from an isolated one camera feed which is being shown on a delayed basis. You would be foolish if you thought that would be worth millions of pounds.
But what you do with it is to say, look, how do we improve the experience in the broadcast? How do we use it in a clever way? And how do we join it with other things? There is a lot of other technology that you can bring into the race.
So you round out your relationship between a group of teams and the organiser and see what you can build together. You can create new, exciting things that people haven’t seen before, then you figure out your best route to market direct to the fans with the sponsor, with an advertiser, with a broadcaster. Over time you can build that model up.
If you look at the examples from other sports, it takes a long time to change things. This economic model has been around in cycling for over 100 years. So you are not going to be able to change it overnight, but you want to be able to set off in the right direction.
It took tennis a lot of time, it took Formula One quite a long time. Even football. It is something that you have got to grow and get right at the beginning and move forward with, seeing where you can take it.
CT: Are there major obstacles to this footage going out live? Is being able to do that still a few years away?
GB: It is an interesting question. It is actually not a few years away. You could do it now, but the difficulty with it is doing it economically. It can be very expensive to extract live feeds of audio visual on a constant basis from lots of bikes. That gives you a lot of transmission challenges, it gives you a lot of expense challenges. You have to consider the weight of the cameras and so on.
What we will do is to move as quickly as we can in a good way. The worst thing you can do is to start to promise to do everything tomorrow and then deliver a bad product. It is better to deliver stuff that you think is good, do it in a right way and then build on from there.
I don’t think live transmission is two or three years away. It is closer than that, but it will be decided by what is economically possible, makes sense and also what, what the fans want.
CT: How are Velon’s dealings with the AIGCP, the teams’ association? Is there a cooperative relationship there?
GB: Very much so. All of our members are members of the AIGCP. So we sit within that organisation. AIGCP is a group that Velon as an entity relates to very strongly and very closely. We share common interests in what happens to a lot of teams, particularly on the political stage, which is where the AIGCP are obviously very important.
Velon has a very open dialogue with the AIGCP, and our members are their members.
CT: Is there any potential for Pro Continental teams to get involved in Velon, or is this a WorldTour-only initiative?
GB: It has not been set out as a WorldTour-only initiative, and we are open to having conversations with any team who can share our common objectives and deliver to those common objectives. I think some Pro Continental teams would find it difficult to join with us on what we are trying to deliver, others maybe could do that. But certainly there is no bar on the basis that you are not in the WorldTour.
We are happy to have a conversation with any team that shares the objectives and the vision and can contribute to the business.
CT: Let’s look at a couple of other stakeholders in the sport. What have the reaction been thus far from the UCI?
GT: A really good reaction. Funnily enough, I was just on the phone to the UCI a minute before this interview. We were just aligning on a point on season-long narrative. We have got a very open dialogue with the UCI, and we want to continue that. We have involved the key members of the UCI in what has been going on in Velon for quite a while.
The UCI were great, by the way, because they were the ones who changed regulations and allowed derogation of relegations in order to permit the cameras to go on bikes this season. So fair play to them…a governing body that works so quickly around making amendments and changing regulations is to be applauded. They helped make it happen.
CT: And what about ASO?
GB: ASO are a fantastic organiser for cycling in what they do and how they promote the races. We have had discussions with them where we are keen to partner with them. We have partnered with them twice this season already, because we did an arrangement with them for on-bike cameras for the |
kriminalpolizei lässt man sich jedenfalls nicht in die Karten blicken. Für die Bekämpfung der Internetkriminalität seien in erster Linie die Kantone zuständig, heisst es auf meine Anfrage. Dort würden auch die Anzeigen bei Verdacht auf Straftaten eingereicht.
Darknet Thema abonniert Thema abonniert Abonnieren Abonnieren Link zu Darknet
Der Bund koordiniert zwischen kantonalen und internationalen Stellen, kann jedoch keine konkreten Zahlen bezüglich der erfolgreich durchgeführten Strafverfahren nennen. In der Stellungnahme des Eidgenössischen Justiz- und Polizeidepartements heisst es lediglich: «Es ist den internationalen Strafverfolgungsbehörden bereits gelungen, für Unruhe und Unsicherheit in diesen Kreisen zu sorgen und die kriminelle Nutzung spürbar zu senken.»
Im Darknet ist davon nichts festzustellen. Es herrscht rund um die Uhr emsiges Treiben. Oder wie ein Anbieter bei Silk Road 2.0 festhält: «Erwischt wird nur, wer dumm oder zu gierig ist.»
Abonniere unseren NewsletterWhile I use emacs for all all sorts of things, one of the things I haven't done much is run shells from within emacs. I'm not sure why. I'm a command line wonk and adding command line goodness and emacs together seems like a natural. Maybe it's because back in the day I spent a lot of time on MS-DOS systems. You could get a reasonable Unixy facsimile using tools like the MKS toolkit and I like so many other young computer scientists wrote our own small shells when we learned C so I used that insted of command.com.
In any event, I'm trying to use the shell within emacs more.
Here's a quick video showing both shell, which runs whatever your default shell is in an emacs buffer and eshell which is emacs own shell.
I use a couple of packages to smooth over a couple of things.
Virtuelenvwrapper smooths things voer with the python virtaulenv and virtualenvwrapper linux packages:
(use-package virtualenvwrapper :ensure t :config (venv-initialize-interactive-shells) (venv-initialize-eshell))
Only relevant if you use Python and virtualenvs.
and more importantly, better shell:
(use-package better-shell :ensure t :bind (( "C-'". better-shell-shell) ( "C-;". better-shell-remote-open)))
cleans things up when using a termianl to connect to a remote machine.
If you use a shell from within emacs as part of your workflow, please post how, or better, make a video!!!!
EnjoyDec. 21, 2017 11:28 A.M. EDT (16:28 UTC), marks the solstice—the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere
by Ann-Marie Imbornoni
In astronomy, the solstice is either of the two times a year when the Sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator, the great circle on the celestial sphere that is on the same plane as the earth's equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs either December 21 or 22, when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Capricorn; the summer solstice occurs either June 20 or 21, when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Cancer. In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter and summer solstices are reversed.
Reason for the Seasons
The reason for the different seasons at opposite times of the year in the two hemispheres is that while the earth rotates about the sun, it also spins on its axis, which is tilted some 23.5 degrees towards the plane of its rotation. Because of this tilt, the Northern Hemisphere receives less direct sunlight (creating winter) while the Southern Hemisphere receives more direct sunlight (creating summer). As the Earth continues its orbit the hemisphere that is angled closest to the sun changes and the seasons are reversed.
Longest Night of the Year
The winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice. Hence the origin of the word solstice, which comes from Latin solstitium, from sol, "sun" and -stitium, "a stoppage." Following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter.Apple’s News app, which is installed on all iOS devices, is now open to all publishers. When it launched in fall 2015, News app’s publishing tools were only available to Apple’s partners, including big media players like Conde Nast, The New York Times, and CNN. Now anyone, including humble bloggers, can sign up and monetize their content.
The News app, however, isn’t going to be a free-for-all. Apple needs to approve content creators before they have access to publishing tools.
The company will roll out a document format for News content, called Apple News Format, that lets publishers customize content, including text, photos galleries, videos, and animations, for the News app. Creators who don’t want to bother with Apple News Format can submit RSS feeds to News Publisher, the iCloud application that pushes articles to the News app. Publishers then monitor traffic with News Publisher’s analytic tools and insert ads into their content with iAd, Apple’s advertising platform.
Though Apple News is on all iPhones and iPads, it’s unclear how much money publishers might actually be able to make. For one thing, Apple News already had a host of rivals when it launched. Flipboard is the most obvious one, but it also competes for eyeballs with services like Facebook Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover.
Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal reported two months ago that Apple had been underestimating the number of readers who use app and giving inaccurate information to its publishing partners, which made it difficult for them to manage advertising. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, told WSJ that the company was fixing the issue in order to give more accurate numbers to its partners, which of course is essential if it wants to attract and keep good content creators.The left-brain right-brain myth will probably never die because it has become a powerful metaphor for different ways of thinking – logical, focused and analytic versus broad-minded and creative. Take the example of Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks talking on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year. “What made Europe happen and made it so creative,” he explained, “is that Christianity was a right-brain … translated into a left-brain language [Greek]. So for many centuries you had this view that science and religion are essentially part of the same thing.”
As well as having metaphorical appeal, the seductive idea of the and its untapped creative potential also has a long history of being targeted by gurus peddling pseudo-psychology. Today the same idea is also picked up by the makers of self-improvement video games and apps. The latest version of the The Faces iMake-Right Brain app for the Ipad, for example, boasts that it is “an extraordinary tool for developing right brain creative capabilities”.
There is more than a grain of truth to the left-brain right-brain myth. While they look alike, the two hemispheres of the brain do function differently. For example, it’s become almost common knowledge that in most people the left brain is dominant for language. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is implicated more strongly in emotional processing and representing the mental states of others. However, the distinctions aren't as clear cut as the myth makes out - for instance, the right hemisphere is involved in processing some aspects of language, such as intonation and emphasis.
Much of what we know about the functional differences between the hemispheres comes from the remarkable split-brain studies that began in the sixties. These investigations were conducted on patients who’d had the thick bundle of fibres connecting their hemispheres cut as a last-resort treatment for epilepsy. Researchers, including the psychologists Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga, could present stimuli to just one hemisphere or the other at a time, and they discovered that the two halves of the brain acted like independent entities with contrasting processing styles.
But it’s important to remember that in healthy people the two brain hemispheres are well-connected. The fictional doctor Gregory House called the corpus callosum that joins the hemispheres the “George Washington Bridge” of the brain, and in most of what we do, the hemispheres have evolved to operate together, sharing information across this bridge. Neuroscientists working in this field today are interested in how this coordination occurs.
It’s also important to note that the kind of tasks that engage one hemisphere more than the other don’t always map neatly onto the kind of categories that we find useful to talk about in our everyday lives. Let’s take the example of creativity. We may find it a useful shorthand to divide tasks up into those that are creative and those that are repetitive. But the reality of course is more complex. There are many ways to be creative.
Some studies have indeed shown that the right hemisphere seems to be involved more when we have an Aha! flash of insight. For instance, one study found that activity was greater in the right hemisphere when participants solved a task via insight, rather than piecemeal. Another showed that brief exposure to a puzzle clue was more useful to the right hemisphere, than the left, as if the right hemisphere were nearer the answer.
But insight is just one type of creativity. Telling stories is another. One of the most fascinating insights from the split-brain studies was the way the left hemisphere made up stories to explain what the right hemisphere was up to – what Gazzaniga dubbed the “interpreter phenomenon”. For example, in one study, a patient completing a picture-matching task used their left hand (controlled by the right hemisphere) to match up a shovel with an image of a snow storm (shown only to the right hemisphere). The patient was then asked why he’d done this. But his left hemisphere (the source of speech) didn’t admit to not knowing. Instead, it confabulated, saying that he’d reached for the shovel to clear out the chicken coop (the picture shown to the left hemisphere was of a bird’s foot).
Writing an overview of the split-brain research in a 2002 article for Scientific American (pdf), Gazzaniga concluded, based on the interpreter phenomenon and other findings, that the left hemisphere is “inventive and interpreting”, whilst the right brain is “truthful and literal.” This seems at odds with the myth invoked by Rabbi Sacks and many others.
I suppose the logical left-brain, creative right-brain myth has a seductive simplicity about it. People can ask – which kind of brain have I got? They can buy an app to target their weaker half. They can categorise languages and people as right-brained or left. It’s tricky to combat that system by saying the truth is really more complicated. But it’s worth trying, because it would be a if the simplistic myth drowned out the more fascinating story of how our brains really work.The secret to life is practice, practice, practice. If you want to get good at something, all it requires is for you to keep at it and practice! No matter if it involves playing an instrument, dancing, sports, flexibility, or even SEX, consistent practice is the key.
[Perfect] Practice Makes Perfect
Practice doesn’t help if you’re making the same mistakes over and over. If you keep that up, the mistakes become a habitual part of the practice and you will be, literally, learning how to do it the wrong way.
Let’s say you’re trying to figure out how to transition smoothly in a yoga sequence. It’s better you go through the transitions slowly and with perfection rather than quickly and sloppily. When you take your time to flow perfectly, you will figure it out much faster than rushing through it and making the same mistake over and over.
If you’re playing the piano (or any other instrument) and you always keep messing up during a specific measure of a song, slow down and focus on hitting the notes in perfect sequence rather than just rushing through it.
Be Deliberate in your Perfect Practice
The difference between an expert performer and a “normal” one is not necessarily talent. How good one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing the skill repeatedly. An expert breaks down the skills required to be get to the goal and focuses on improving those skills in chunks. They’re what I call, baby steps, and with baby steps, you could climb any mountain.
Two examples of deliberately finding the breakthrough moment…
1. I kept trying to do this move on the right to help bring my feet all the way forward from down-ward dog. I kept coming up way short every single time. After a couple days I realized I’m not bringing my hips up high enough because it feels scary to be completely upside down and I don’t want to fall over the other side. So I deliberately pushed off with too much power and forced myself into the precarious position to see what that would feel like. In that moment I was able to hold the balance for a split second and then fell forward, as expected. That helped me understand how that feels and what this move is really going to require of me to find the balance. I learned more in that one deliberate push than in the previous days of doing the same thing over and over. And the smile on my face was massive.
2. When I first started learning how to walk on a slackline, I realized that when I’d fall, I would always abandon ship to the right and never the left. That clued me in to try something new: Deliberately fall to the left. And when I did that, it was totally different and helped engage new muscles that were somewhat asleep. It ultimately helped me figure out how to stay in center all the better.
So instead of just mindlessly practicing and doing the same thing wrong over and over, try doing it faster, slower, higher, lower: Anything you need to find that breakthrough moment. This advice can be applied not just to instruments or fitness or video games but symbolically to your entire life practice.
Hope that helps!
– AntranikIn on-the-record sessions with reporters — and more candid off-the-record ones — he has seemed goofily happy in recent weeks, prickly no more but strangely liberated and ebullient.
Even though he ordinarily hates being kept waiting, he made light of it while cooling his heels for John McCain, and did a soft shoe for the White House press. Wearing a cowboy hat, he warbled a comic Western ditty at the Gridiron Dinner a week ago — alluding to Scooter Libby ’s conviction, Saudis getting richer from our oil-guzzling, Brownie’s dismal Katrina performance, and Dick Cheney ’s winsome habit of withholding documents.
At a dinner on Wednesday, the man who is persona non grata on the campaign trail (except for closed fund-raisers) told morose Republican members of Congress that he was totally confident that “we can retake the House” and “hold the White House.”
Photo
“I think 2008 is going to be a fabulous year for the Republican Party!” he said, sounding like Rachael Ray sprinkling paprika on goulash. That must have been news to House Republicans, who have no money, just lost the seat held by their former speaker, and are hemorrhaging incumbents as they head into a campaign marked by an incipient recession and an unpopular war.
If only they could see things as the president does. Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”
Afghanistan is still roiling, as is Iraq, but W. is serene. “Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever,” he said, echoing that great American philosopher Dan Quayle, who once told Samoans, “Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”
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W. bragged to Republicans about his “considered judgment” in sending more troops to Iraq and again presented himself as an untroubled instrument of divine will. “I believe there’s an Almighty,” he said, “and I believe a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman and child is freedom.”
Although the president belittled the Democrats for their policy of “retreat,” his surge has been a temporary and expensive place-holder for what Americans want: a policy to get us out of Iraq.
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“Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started?” Michael Kinsley wrote recently. “The answer is no.” Gen. David Petraeus told The Washington Post last week that no one in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.”
Maybe the president is just putting on a good face to keep up American morale, the way Herbert Hoover did after the crash of ’29, when he continued to dress in a tuxedo for dinner.
Or maybe the old Andover cheerleader really believes his own cheers, and that prosperity will turn up any time now, just like the W.M.D. in Iraq.
Or perhaps it’s a Freudian trip. Now that he’s mucked up the world and the country, he can finally stop rebelling against his dad and relax in the certainty that the Bush name will forever be associated with crash-and-burn presidencies.
Whatever the explanation, it’s plumb loco.Ever wondered how can you purchase some bitcoins with Paypal, Credit Card, UKASH, Paysafe Card, Money Bookers, Sofort banking or Neteller etc. As you know, major Bitcoin exchanges do not allow funding through Paypal or Credit Card, due to various cases where someone pays for Bitcoins with Paypal, Credit Card then receives Bitcoins and fraudulently complains to Paypal or their credit card company that they never received the goods.
Imagine purchasing bitcoin in a country like INDIA, all we can find is third party retailers, selling at high price via localbitcoins.com, ebay.com etc. Buying Bitcoins from individuals using PayPal / Credit card is possible, but requires mutual trust. Well, here we found a little long but easy way to sale / purchase bitcoins with your Paypal, CC and some other sources.
First of all, have a little walkthrough about how this work >> Go to Virwox and register your account >> add funds to your account via paypal / credit card / paysafecard >> buy linden$ (SLL) >> buy bitcoins with your linden$ >> Finally send your bitcoins to your wallet.
Following are more detailed instructions with visuals.
Step 1. Go to Virwox and register your account. Ignore message saying Your avatar connection has not been validated yet.
Step 2. Add some funds to your Virwox account, you can add funds via various ways, including Paypal, Credit Card, UKASH, Paysafe Card, Money Bookers, Sofort banking or Neteller.
Step 3. Now convert your USD / EUR in to SLL (Linden $). Those who don’t know, Linden $ (SLL) is currency of The virtual world, Second Life.
Why Linden Dollar? Because direct trading from $ / € to Bitcoin is not possible. That’s why you have to take alternative route via Second – Life Linden$
Important links to Exchange USD/SLL for USD and Exchange EUR/SLL for EUR).
Step 4. Now go to BTC/SLL exchange and buy bitcoins of your desired amount.
Step 5. Congratulations, now you own bitcoins in your Virwox wallet, you can transfer these bitcoins to your personal wallet. Simply go to Withdraw section, first option is bitcoin withdrawal. Now add bitcoin payee address and hit the withdrawal button.
Step 6. That’s it. If you like the post or still have any doubt, post it in comments section right after the break.The USDA’s new Food Access Research Atlas is a map of all the places in the country where people live in food deserts — places where it’s difficult to access fresh food. There they are, above. (Click through to go to the interactive map.)
The green spots are all the places that fit the traditional definition of food deserts: urban census tracts where a significant proportion of people live more than a mile away from a grocery store and rural tracts where they live more than 10 miles away. The yellow spots are low-income areas where a significant proportion of people don’t have access to cars or live 20 miles away from the supermarket.
NPR reports:
“People can get a more detailed picture of exactly what challenges they encounter in getting to the grocery store,” says Paula Dutko, an economist for the USDA Economic Research Service who helped craft the atlas. Detailed, indeed. A few clicks and you’re deep into individual neighborhoods, showing what percentage of residents aren’t within walking distance of a supermarket.
In a lot of places, it’s a lot of people.German passports belonging to Ibrahim Kilani and four of his five children who were killed along with their mother during Israel’s assault on Gaza last year. Anne Paq
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to “stand by the side of Israel” as it attacked Gaza during the summer of 2014. Her solidarity with the aggressor included remaining silent as a family of her fellow citizens were massacred.
Ibrahim Kilani had lived in Germany for 20 years before moving back to Gaza. He, his wife, Taghreed, and their five children were killed when Israel shelled an apartment where they had sought refuge in Gaza City.
Ramsis Kilani is a son of Ibrahim from his previous marriage, living in the German city of Siegen. Unable to attend Ibrahim’s funeral because of the siege on Gaza, Ramsis has tried to keep his father’s memory alive by campaigning against Israel’s crimes.
Ramsis spoke to Emran Feroz.
Emran Feroz: One year has passed since your father was killed. Can you summarize what you have experienced since then?
Ramsis Kilani: My life has changed a lot. Especially before going to sleep, I cannot stop thinking about what has happened.
Not only do I think about my father, who I had not been able to see for years before his death, as I never managed to get into Gaza and he never managed to get out. I think about my half-siblings whose voices and laughter I had heard on the telephone, who told me they loved me, but who I had never encountered in their short lives.
This is why I have become openly political and outspoken on the Palestinian struggle, which I should have done years before. Of course, I have always been politically interested — as the child of a Palestinian, you are born into a political situation — but I had never pushed the issue the way I do now.
EF: After the attack on your family, it became clear that neither German politicians nor the German mainstream media were interested in their and your story. Has anything changed in that regard?
RK: The German mainstream media forgot all about the killing of Palestinian civilians — whether they had German citizenship or not — even before the war on Gaza was over.
One institution which more than once expressed its deepest condolences and told me it will not stop investigating the killing of my family was the German foreign ministry. I guess that was because it knows what has been going on in Gaza for years and was confronted with the Israeli army’s unwillingness to investigate its war crimes firsthand.
No politician with any higher standing in the German government has ever offered any kind of an apology, a sympathy call or even a simple comment on the case of my family.
EF: Why is that the case? Can you describe how the debate on Palestine is conducted in Germany? And how does it affect someone with Palestinian roots?
RK: The debate in Germany is obviously strongly influenced by historical issues. The Holocaust has had a deep impact on Germans, whose grandparents or great-grandparents may have committed atrocities or were at least passively complicit.
For many, the solution now is to stand in non-reflective solidarity with the State of Israel, which they think represents all Jews. This solidarity is interpreted as a sort of redemption for the genocide against millions of Jews by the Nazis.
Arabs and especially Palestinians are certainly among the most hated people in Germany. I, for example, have been called an anti-Semite because of my father’s background countless times.
The German support for the Israeli government is totally irrational. It is an illogical attempt to erase crimes and injustice by supporting crimes and injustice.
All these things affect you, of course. You do not feel like you belong here.
EF: Do you expect German public opinion on Palestine to change? And are you working to ensure that it does?
RK: I advise every international Palestine solidarity group not to hope for too much from Germany and to respect everything local activists can achieve here. If you have been to Germany, you know exactly what I mean.
The German left must seem like a particularly bad joke to other leftist groups across the world. It must be alone in defending a racist, extreme right-wing government and its reactionary ideology.
Still, I and many more in Germany will not be silent about the Palestinian cause. I am using the Internet as a platform in order to make people understand the situation of the Palestinians.
I am also involved in the German BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] groups in order to push for boycott of the State of Israel.
Emran Feroz is a freelance journalist, blogger and activist based in Germany. He is also the founder of Drone Memorial, a website listing victims of drone attacks. Twitter: @Emran_Feroz.We used a novel intermodal association task to examine whether infants associate own‐ and other‐race faces with music of different emotional valences. Three‐ to 9‐month‐olds saw a series of neutral own‐ or other‐race faces paired with happy or sad musical excerpts. Three‐ to 6‐month‐olds did not show any specific association between face race and music. At 9 months, however, infants looked longer at own‐race faces paired with happy music than at own‐race faces paired with sad music. Nine‐month‐olds also looked longer at other‐race faces paired with sad music than at other‐race faces paired with happy music. These results indicate that infants with nearly exclusive own‐race face experience develop associations between face race and music emotional valence in the first year of life. The potential implications of such associations for developing racial biases in early childhood are discussed.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Three‐ to six‐month‐olds did not show association between face race and music emotional valence.
Nine‐month‐olds cross‐modally associated own‐race faces with happy musical excerpts.
Nine‐month‐olds cross‐modally associated other‐race faces with sad musical excerpts.
Early asymmetrical experience with own‐ versus other‐race faces has downstream consequences.
1 INTRODUCTION Experience plays a crucial role in the development of face processing in infancy. With increased experience, infant face‐processing ability not only improves but also becomes specialized to process the types of faces experienced most frequently (for a review, see Lee, Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, & Slater, 2011). This specialization reflects the fact that infant face experience is typically asymmetrical. For example, infants encounter own‐race faces significantly more than other‐race faces (Liu, Xiao, Xiao et al., 2015; Rennels & Davis, 2008; Sugden, Mohamed‐Ali, & Moulson, 2014). Extensive studies have shown that owing to this own‐ versus other‐race face experience asymmetry, infants process own‐ and other‐race faces differently in the first year of life (Anzures et al., 2013). Whereas newborns show no visual preference for own‐ versus other‐race faces, infants as young as 3 months look longer at own‐race faces when they are paired with other‐race faces (Bar‐Haim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006; Kelly, Liu et al., 2007; Kelly et al., 2005; Liu, Xiao, Quinn et al., 2015). Moreover, whereas infants at 3 months initially recognize faces from various races equally well, by 9 months, they display superior recognition for own‐race faces (Kelly et al., 2009; Kelly, Quinn, et al., 2007). In addition, although younger infants sort faces from different races into distinctive race categories, 9‐month‐olds group own‐race faces into one category and multiple other‐race face classes into another category (Quinn, Lee, Pascalis, & Tanaka, 2016). Furthermore, with increased age, infants exhibit specialized eye‐movement patterns for own‐race, but not for other‐race, faces (Liu et al., 2011; Wheeler et al., 2011). These differential processing patterns for own‐ versus other‐race faces reflect emergent expertise in the perceptual processing of own‐race faces by infants as a result of asymmetrical exposure to own‐ versus other‐race faces (Anzures et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2011). Despite the substantial evidence regarding the effect of asymmetrical experience on the development of own‐ versus other‐race face recognition and category formation by infants, it is entirely unknown whether the asymmetrical face race experience has any other downstream consequences. Recent studies have shown that preschoolers by 3 years of age not only recognize own‐race faces better, but also are biased to associate own‐race faces with positive emotional valence and other‐race faces with negative emotional valence (e.g. Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, 2013; Qian et al., 2016; Xiao et al., 2015; for reviews, see Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2008; Lee, Quinn, & Heyman, in press). However, it is entirely unclear whether such biases already exist in infancy, and more specifically whether infants, like children, also associate own‐race faces with positive valence and other‐race faces with negative valence. The present study aimed to bridge this important gap in the literature. It is reasonable to expect that infants may associate own‐race faces with positive valence, given that much of infant own‐race face experience is acquired through direct interaction with own‐race adults who typically convey positive emotional signals. These positive emotional signals are commonly carried through positive facial expressions (Malatesta & Haviland, 1982), infant‐directed speech (Kim & Johnson, 2014; Trainor, Austin, & Desjardins, 2000), and haptic interaction (Hertenstein & Campos, 2001; Hertenstein, Holmes, McCullough, & Keltner, 2009). Owing to the co‐occurrence of positive emotional signals and own‐race faces, infants may learn to associate own‐race individuals with positive valence. Although no direct evidence supports this possibility, existing studies have shown that familiarity plays an important role in the associations infants make between faces and positive valence. Specifically, infants tend to associate familiar faces with positive emotional signals. For example, they associate happy facial expressions with happy voices when face and voice belong to their mother, but not when they are from strangers (Kahana‐Kalman & Walker‐Andrews, 2001; Montague & Walker‐Andrews, 2002). Thus, given the fact that own‐race faces are relatively more familiar than other‐race faces, infants might also associate novel own‐race faces with positive valence. The present study directly tested this ‘own race is positive’ hypothesis regarding own‐race faces. In contrast, no evidence exists regarding whether infants associate other‐race faces with negative valence. Infants may associate negative emotional valence with other‐race faces because infants develop stranger anxiety towards unfamiliar own‐race individuals, with the anxiety becoming stronger with age (e.g. Bigelow, MacLean, Wood, & Smith, 1990; Bronson, 1972). For example, 9‐month‐olds show accelerating heart rate when seeing a stranger of their own race, which is not observed in infants at 5 months. This finding suggests that infants between 5 and 9 months develop fearful responses towards unfamiliar individuals (Campos, Emde, Gaensbauer, & Henderson, 1975). Given that other‐race faces are perceptually different from faces of own‐race strangers in terms of salient facial information (Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, Slater, & Lee, 2010), infants may show even stronger ‘stranger anxiety’ towards other‐race faces. Thus, it is plausible that, with increased age, infants will come to associate negative valence with other‐race faces. According to this hypothesis, infants may treat other‐race faces fundamentally differently from novel own‐race faces by associating other‐race faces with negative emotional signals. The present study also directly tested this ‘other race is negative’ hypothesis regarding other‐race faces. In order to test the above two hypotheses concurrently regarding own‐ and other‐race faces, we developed a novel intermodal association paradigm. A typical intermodal association task involves the presentation of stimuli in two modalities sequentially or simultaneously. The association is assessed by examining the different responses between ‘congruent’ and ‘incongruent’ trials. On congruent trials, the stimuli in the two modalities share a certain commonality, such as happy expressive faces paired with happy voices. By contrast, on incongruent trials, the characteristics in one modality are not consistent with the characteristics in the other modality, such as happy expressive faces paired with sad voices. Existing studies using such intermodal association paradigms have consistently found that infants associate audio and visual signals on the basis of speech content (Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1984; Patterson & Werker, 2002, 2003; Pons, Lewkowicz, Soto‐Faraco, & Sebastián‐Gallés, 2009), emotional valence (Hietanen, Leppänen, Illi, & Surakka, 2004; Soken & Pick, 1992), gender information (Hillairet de Boisferon et al., 2015; Patterson & Werker, 2002), age characteristics (Bahrick, Netto, & Hernandez‐Reif, 1998), and face race with native or non‐native speech (Uttley et al., 2013). However, no such study has examined the association between face race and emotional valence. In the current study, we paired unfamiliar own‐ or other‐race neutral faces sequentially with positive or negative auditory signals in order to examine the associations infants make between own‐ versus other‐race faces and positive versus negative valence. The positive versus negative auditory signals were delivered by presenting happy versus sad musical excerpts. Our paradigm capitalizes on the ability that infants as young as 3 months have to discriminate between faces from different races (Kelly et al., 2005, 2009; Kelly, Liu et al., 2007; Kelly, Quinn et al., 2007; Liu, Xiao, Xiao et al., 2015). Furthermore, convergent evidence suggests that adults and children can reliably identify the emotional valence of happy and sad musical excerpts (Adachi, Trehub, & Abe, 2004; Balkwill & Thompson, 1999; Balkwill, Thompson, & Matsunaga, 2004; Dalla Bella, Peretz, Rousseau, & Gosselin, 2001; Juslin & Laukka, 2003; Kratus, 1993; Rock, Trainor, & Addison, 1999; Schmidt, Trainor, & Santesso, 2003; Trainor & Trehub, 1992; for a review, see Trainor & Corrigall, 2010). More relevant to the present study, studies have shown that infants between 5 and 9 months are also capable of discriminating happy and sad musical excerpts (Flom, Gentile, & Pick, 2008; Flom & Pick, 2012). They can additionally match happy music with happy facial expressions (Gentile, 1998; Nawrot, 2003). These studies together suggest that infants can distinguish musical excerpts in terms of positive versus negative valence. Using a between‐subjects design, we presented four groups of Chinese 3‐ to 9‐month‐olds with videos of either congruent or incongruent trials. On own‐race congruent trials, infants saw a series of videos of own‐race faces with neutral expressions that were sequentially paired with a series of happy musical excerpts. On other‐race congruent trials, infants saw a series of videos of other‐race faces with neutral expressions that were sequentially paired with a series of sad musical excerpts (Figure 1). On incongruent trials, the pairings between the race of the faces and the valence of the musical excerpts were reversed. We examined how long infants would maintain their attention to the face–music pairings on the congruent versus incongruent trials. Because repeated presentation of the same stimulus leads infants to habituate and thus rapidly decrease attention to the stimulus, we presented novel faces and novel musical excerpts sequentially that were never repeated. Presenting stimuli in different modalities is known to sustain infant attention and to prevent rapid habituation (Althaus & Mareschal, 2014; Reynolds, Zhang, & Guy, 2013). Figure 1 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint The stimulus sequences in the two sets of conditions. In the own‐race conditions (the top row), Asian face videos were sequentially paired with happy musical excerpts in the congruent condition, and with sad musical excerpts in the incongruent condition. In the other‐race conditions (the lower row), African face videos were sequentially paired with sad musical excerpts in the congruent condition, and with happy musical excerpts in the incongruent condition. When the musical excerpts were played, a crosshair |
estimate the cost, because of the recent change from a cabinet governance system to a committee system.
All councillors are entitled to a basic allowance, which the IRP is recommending should be set at £4,510 a year.
Councillors with extra responsibilities are then given more based on what they do.
The panel also said that because of the change in system, there should be another review in 2017.Christian University Stands by Decision to Keep Bill Cosby as Speaker at Benefit Dinner, Despite Outcry From Sexual Assault Victims Group
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Officials at a West Tennessee Christian University sparked a fiery debate over Christian values Wednesday for standing by their decision to invite embattled comedian Bill Cosby to serve as keynote speaker for the school's benefit dinner scheduled for next month, despite outcry from an advocacy group for victims of sexual assault.
David Brown, leader of the Memphis Chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, charged in a WREG report that if the officials at Freed-Hardeman University — a private Christian institution associated with the churches of Christ — go ahead with plans to host Bill Cosby at their benefit dinner on Dec. 5, he will protest.
Cosby, who declared in a New York Post report in 2013 that, "I am a Christian" is facing mounting allegations of rape from multiple women. The allegations have resulted in him being dropped from projects with NBC, Netflix and TV Land, according to CNN. Freed-Hardeman University, however, is standing by its position, infuriating Brown.
"If he does show up Dec. 5 to the auditorium, I'll be out there protesting, and I won't be alone," Brown threatened, according to WREG.
"I know this is about raising money, but you can raise money more admirably than this," he continued.
Brown explained that he sent a letter to the university, saying, "If you keep him as your keynote speaker, your fine university will hurt so many, and you will never know the harm that you have done."
In a response to his letter, Brown said the university noted: "oh, we are glad you got healed from your problem; however, we are still going to go forward."
In interviews with The Christian Post on Thursday, officials at the university noted that the decision to invite Cosby to speak at the benefit dinner was made in the spring and pointed to a statement on the school's Facebook page as their official response to the fiasco.
"Our 50th FHU Benefit Dinner remains scheduled for Friday, Dec. 5, to focus on our main goal — providing an avenue for donors to invest in the students' lives. We committed to a contract with Bill Cosby many months ago after soliciting input from alumni and friends," began the statement.
"While recent developments have drawn attention to our event because of the speaker, we hope that people will remember: 1.) this dinner is about helping students, and 2.) while we are reading stories in the media, they represent real people whose lives will be affected long after FHU's dinner has passed. Please join us in praying for healing and peace for those involved," it ended.
Frank M. Smith Jr., executive vice president at Simmons College of Kentucky and senior pastor/founder at Christ's Church for Our Community who is also an alumnus of the university, said the school's response was appropriate.
"This is an excellent opportunity for FHU to make a bold, compassionate advance for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To have open arms and receive one who is undergoing the personal trauma of allegations is consistent with the grace and mercy of our Lord," he noted in a response to the university's statement.
"The criticizing world only knows how to accuse and condemn. Christ presents a gracious alternative that we all find ourselves beneficiaries. Sometimes the providence of the Lord is so timely — all He needs from His redeemed people is to respond in a redemptive manner as a follow-through on whatever His plan and purpose may be. The students need the benefit dinner to proceed, but Bill Cosby needs the healing touch of Christ-followers. This event could prove to be a most pivotal turning point in his life," he said.
Cosby has refused to respond to any of the rape allegations so far. The AP released video footage from an interview it conducted earlier this month in which Cosby was surprised by questions about the allegations and then asked the reporter to "scuttle" the section of the interview declining to address the matter.
"No, no, we don't answer that," Cosby told the AP reporter who continued to push for a response. "There is no comment about that and I'll tell you why. I think you were told, I don't want to compromise your integrity, but I don't talk about it."
With the cameras still rolling at the end of that exchange Cosby asked: "Now can I get something from you? That none of that will be shown? …I would appreciate it if it was scuttled. I think if you want to consider yourself to be serious, that it will not appear anywhere."
Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy organization for women, said she believes Cosby's decision not to comment on the allegations is based on advice from his lawyers.
"I think that he is listening to his lawyers. Any kind of ongoing investigation, particularly a criminal investigation, people usually don't talk, so it's not surprising," she told CP on Thursday.
"Rape is a very serious allegation and it breaks my heart because I grew up watching the 'Cosbys' like many, many Americans; and I have this idyllic view of Bill Cosby and I hope that it's wrong, but it has to be fully and vigorously investigated," Nance said.
"I've only heard one side of the story, but the thing that bothers me is that this isn't just one woman. There has been smoke and innuendo to this effect for a couple of decades and so I don't want to believe that. I think that he has done some beautiful work and he's done some important things in our culture and America loves him. But if he is a rapist he needs to suffer the consequences, these women deserve justice," she said.The 33-year-old forward had 48 points (17 goals, 31 assists) in 68 games for the Florida Panthers and Detroit Red Wings last season.
Vanek, who scored at least 20 goals each of his first 10 NHL seasons before he had 18 in 74 games for the Minnesota Wild in 2015-16, will be counted on to help the Canucks improve offensively after they finished 29th in the League in scoring last season (2.17 goals per game).
[RELATED: NHL Free Agent Tracker]
"Looking at the team, they are obviously not where they wanted to be last year, but I think you can grow fairly quickly in this league and talking with [first-year coach] Travis Green and [general manager Jim] Benning, they wanted to come in and have someone help out scoring goals, and it just seemed like a really good fit for me," he said.
Vanek scored five power-play goals last season, and his 129 since entering the League in 2005-06 are second-most behind Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals (212). The Canucks had the worst power play in the NHL over the past two seasons (15.0 percent).
"That's one of my specialties," Vanek said. "I think I am still very good in front of the net and tipping pucks and reading other players and finding that open space, so it's definitely in my mindset to come in there and work for that power-play time."
Vancouver was 30-43-9 last season, finishing 25 points behind the Nashville Predators for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.
"Thomas has been a prolific scorer throughout his career and we're excited to add his offense and experience to help with the continued growth of our forwards," Benning said. "His skill and ability to contribute on the score sheet, combined with his lead-by-example style will help our team this year, and will benefit our younger players as they continue to develop their game."
Video: NYR@FLA: Vanek scores his first goal as a Panther
Forwards Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin each is entering the final season of a four-year contract. The twin brothers, who turn 37 on Sept. 26, have played their entire NHL career for the Canucks.
Vancouver signed centers Sam Gagner and Alexander Burmistrov, defensemen Michael Del Zotto and Patrick Wiercioch, and goalie Anders Nilsson as free agents July 1. Center Bo Horvat, 22, remains a restricted free agent after he led the Canucks with 52 points (20 goals, 32 assists) last season.
Vanek said he began discussing a contract with Vancouver a few weeks ago. He signed a one-year contract with Detroit on July 1, 2016, and was traded to Florida on March 1.
"After you don't go that first week or the first couple days, I knew it was going to be a longer summer," he said, "but at the same time I wasn't worried about it. I knew what I could do and what I could bring, and in fact, if anything, training harder to prove people wrong. I still feel like I can have a lot of years left and score many goals."
Vanek has gotten to know Vancouver forward prospect Brock Boeser, who had four goals and one assist in nine games after making his NHL debut at the end of 2016-17.
"Brock is awesome. I am not going to say that I know him inside and out, but I skated with him quite a bit this summer and told him this morning, 'You know I might be joining you,' and he seemed fairly excited," Vanek said of the Canucks' first-round pick (No. 23) at the 2015 NHL Draft. "Who knows what that means, but he's a great kid. What I like about him is even in summer hockey or shinny hockey, if you tell him a little tip here or there, he is the type of kid who will listen and doesn't just shake his head and say, 'I know it better anyways.' He's very impressive."
Selected in the first round (No. 5) by the Buffalo Sabres in the 2003 NHL Draft, Vanek has 697 points (333 goals, 364 assists) in 885 games for the Panthers, Red Wings, Wild, Sabres, Montreal Canadiens and New York Islanders. He has 34 points (20 goals, 14 assists) in 63 Stanley Cup Playoff games.Traffic shaping on a sheevaplug
In March 2009 I ordered two $100 Sheevaplugs (sometimes misspelled as Shivaplugs, hi Google). These are ARM-based Linux-capable "plug computers." Where by "plug computer" we mean that it's about the same size as a wall wart, and includes the AC/DC converter internally, so you don't need a separate stupid power adapter unit.
The devices are quite amazing for the price: gigabit ethernet (I don't know if they ever actually saturate it, though), 512 MB of flash, 512 MB of RAM, 1.2 GHz ARM processor, USB host and target ports, and an SD card slot. With Ubuntu pre-installed. And although you're definitely not getting as much "per GHz" as you would on a modern x86 processor, they're still surprisingly fast. Seems like Pentium-level performance, at least.
I ordered two of them because I figured I was going to do some experimenting, and since there was (is?) a 6-week lead time on ordering them, I figured it would be good to have a second one around in case I toasted the first one.
As it turned out, it's pretty hard to permanently break things; the only real way I can find to do it is to corrupt U-Boot, which in itself is kind of hard to do and I haven't managed it yet. And even if you do, the USB target port can be used as a serial console and as a JTAG port, which means you can reprogram the boot flash from any USB host computer, like, say, my laptop.
I haven't tried the JTAG yet, because I haven't needed to. But I believe the program necessary is called openocd. See this Sheevaplug-specific openocd tutorial. There is also something called a "sheevaplug installer," which purports to automate this process (it seems to use openocd internally), but such platform-specific tools are probably a bad idea. Hardware people seem to have a nasty propensity to make one-off solutions to their problems - after all, every circuit layout is unavoidably a one-off solution, so you get into the habit. Someday, there will be a post-Sheeva-plug, and we don't want to start a whole new software project with an installer for that. Do we? Well, someone will probably do it anyway. In any case, if you want to maximize your benefit-to-effort ratio, learn how to use openocd and forget about the "Sheevaplug installer."
If you haven't guessed yet, this article mostly exists to appease Google with a bunch of useful links, plus to write down the current overflowing contents of my web browser tabs in case I need the information again in the future, which I intend to do.
By the way, you can't order a Sheevaplug directly from Marvell (the chipset maker and the designer of the Sheevaplug reference design). The supplier I used was Globalscale Technologies, which seems to be rather clearly based in China, and has the customer service to prove it. There's probably a business model out there just for a trivial company who will stock these things and make a non-ridiculously-horrible web order form so it doesn't take 6 weeks to order one.
Now, the original Sheevaplug (still the only model of Sheevaplug, as far as I know, as of this writing) is a bit limited. The most terrible limitation is that it only has one network port and no wireless, which means, essentially, that the only thing you can possibly do with it is make a fileserver, because routing is impossible. Not surprisingly, the first and only Sheeva-based products (technically, that means using the Sheevaplug reference design, which uses the Marvell Fereoceon CPU core, part of the Marvell "Orion" (or is it "Kirkwood"?) product line) were all crappy fileservers. Essentially, Ubuntu + samba + terrible web UI + no attention to backups + low performance. Uninspiring.
Meanwhile, these systems are physically way more powerful than the original Weaver we made in 1999, and are also 1/10th the price, albeit software-wise much more crude than good old Weaver. The same old story: hardware improves, software backslides to keep up. But I digress.
Now, this Sheevaplug model was designed by Marvell to inspire developers (and hit the magic $99 price point!), and it's quite nicely done. Then companies like Globalscale manufacture it so Marvell doesn't have to. But interestingly, Globalscale has also done their own bit of innovation on top of the reference design. For example, their Guruplug Plus, which is essentially a Sheevaplug with 802.11g, Bluetooth, 2 x Gigabit ethernet, 2 x USB, an eSATA port, and a somewhat higher price tag ($129 instead of $99 USD). They also make a more expensive model with video out. Oh, and also it reputedly has terrible heat dissipation problems.
It's not surprising that the Guruplug has heat problems: while the Sheevaplug was designed with Western Hardware Designer Principles (make it look decent, not kill people, and largely useless), the Guruplug seems to have been designed using Chinese Hardware Designer Principles (make it amazingly cheap, flashy, potentially useful, and don't worry about those pesky safety underwriters). I'm not sure which I'd rather have. FWIW, I've run my "original" Sheevaplug full blast for long periods of time and it never gets any more than slightly warm, so any heat problems of the Guruplug are definitely not shared by the Sheeva design.
Nevertheless, everything factual (as opposed to opinionated) below applies to the Sheevaplug and maybe the Guruplug, but maybe not. I don't have a Guruplug.
Connecting to the serial console
Before you start any serious hacking on a Sheevaplug, you really want to get the serial console working. That's the only way to get to talk to U-boot, which you will want to do if you need to replace the kernel, boot from an external disk, etc.
The serial console uses the USB "target" port on the Sheevaplug. That is, you plug it into your USB "host" (eg. a laptop) and the Sheevaplug acts like a USB device, in this case a serial port or modem. (There's also a USB "host" port that works the other way around.) It even comes with a convenient cable. So you plug one end into your laptop, and the other end into the Sheevaplug.
In my case, I have a Macbook, which of course doesn't have the right driver for screwing around with Sheevaplugs, because such screwage is obviously not Apple Approved. Luckily though, I do all my real work in a Linux virtual machine running under Parallels (4.0.3848, in case you care).
One of the miracles of USB is that it's so simple - it's just a really fast serial port, after all - that it's trivially easy to forward it from your physical machine to your virtual one. So it's very easy to control the Sheevaplug from my virtual Linux box as if it was physically attached, and sure enough, it works perfectly.
The driver you need is called ftdi_sio. I had a pretty old kernel installed on my laptop (2.6.24), so the ftdi_sio driver didn't know the Sheevaplug's device ids. Luckily, Linux is designed for people like me, so it was easy to force the issue:
modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x9e88 product=0x9e8f
(I got the above magic incantation from Nozell.com.)
If you have a 2.6.24 kernel like me, you can then talk to /dev/ttyUSB1, 8N1, 115200. /dev/ttyUSB0 also exists, but that seems to be a bug since it doesn't do anything. I used minicom at first, but then got tired of it and wrote port.py, a totally trivial terminal connector that lets your terminal emulate VT100 the way God intended, rather than faking it up (badly) by hand. To use it, you'll also need a copy of the awesome options.py from bup, downloadable at that link for your convenience. You just run it like this:
port.py /dev/ttyUSB1 115200
Since my next step was to download and compile a new kernel for my Sheevaplug, I figured I might as well upgrade my laptop's Linux kernel at the same time. I picked Linus's standard, unadulterated 2.6.34 kernel. Two items of good news with this version: you no longer need the special vendor/product codes for the ftdi driver, and the mysterious broken /dev/ttyUSB0 no longer appears. (Which means the working /dev/ttyUSB1 is now renamed to /dev/ttyUSB0, so don't be surprised.)
Using a Sheevaplug as a router/firewall/shaper
I said earlier that a Sheevaplug only has one ethernet port, which makes it useless for anything but a fileserver. That was a slight lie; in fact, because it has a USB port, you can add whatever you want. I added an external ethernet device, the Trendnet TU-ET100C. It cost me about $40 at the overpriced local computer store on an island in the middle of nowhere, which isn't bad. It works with the Linux-USB "pegasus" ethernet driver, and it's fine.
Interestingly, either the hardware or the driver for the Trendnet turns out not to support automatic crossover cable detection/emulation. It's been so long since I ran into this problem that I'd forgotten what a hard-to-diagnose pain in the neck it is when you run into it. Someone put a lot of work into fixing that problem, and we as a society have already forgotten all about it.
Let's all just have a moment of silence to celebrate automatic ethernet port sensing.
...
Right, so, anyway, this USB device doesn't have automatic port sensing. Which is really not a big deal, once you know about it, but it sure confused me for about half an hour because I didn't have a crossover cable. In case you're wondering, the onboard ethernet on the Sheevaplug does do port sensing. Nice job, guys. So I just swapped ports and my problems were solved.
Okay, so, after all that, we now have a $140 device ($100 box + $40 ethernet) that can do routing. Right? Well, no, because the kernel is missing all the happy fun bits like iptables and iproute2. We need to upgrade the kernel.
Building the new kernel
Ah, but which kernel? On my x86 laptop, I used Linus's latest stable Linux kernel (2.6.34), but I gather that's not the best thing to do for ARM platforms right now. All the latest Marvell patches have been merged into Linus's 2.6.35-rc1, but I know better than to use a Linus -rc1 release. Instead, I tracked down Marvell's repo and used their "stable-2.6.31" branch, which corresponds to git commit 17e9ccfb3d083d9ad566f867d47de4cf37511cce, aka v2.6.31.1-277-g17e9ccf. It seems to work fine. By the way, here's my kernel.config file. It probably has some extra stuff enabled that's not necessary, but it works for me, and it works with my USB ethernet adapter.
For reference, the interesting git repositories are: - Linus: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git - Marvell: git://git.marvell.com/orion.git
Supposedly you can build the kernel with a cross-compiler. I didn't bother trying to do this. I just installed gcc and friends on the provided Ubuntu distribution and built it there. Warning: it took a long time. This processor isn't exactly running at warp speed, but worse, I was building it all on the cheapest 8GB SD card I could get at Future Shop a year and a half ago. Result: slow disk writes. Very slow. But I couldn't use a USB disk because my USB port was taken up by the USB ethernet, and I didn't want to blow more money on a USB hub.
plugcomputer.org has a very nice article with all you need to know to build a kernel for the Sheevaplug. Most of what you need to know is what I just wrote, plus that you need to'make uImage' to get a U-Boot image, and the'make uImage' process requires you to have a'mkimage' program that comes with U-Boot. They have links in that article, but the particular one I used (a pre-compiled binary for x86) was one I downloaded from a random place on the net. I can't find it anymore, so in the interest of sharing the love, I have mirrored mkimage.gz here. gunzip it, and rename it to /usr/local/bin/mkimage and you'll be fine.
Fixing broken Ubuntu
Now that you've upgraded a bunch of packages in order to install the compiler, you'll probably notice that your system is completely scrambled and won't let you log in anymore. The bad news is, this sucks. The good news is, maybe you read this far in advance so you're still logged in so you can fix it. The magic incantation to fix it is:
passwd -d root passwd -d root passwd root
Somehow, the passwords that got written into /etc/shadow didn't get encrypted properly, and some kind of Ubuntu upgrade "fixes" it, but makes future password checks fail. It's also suspicious that you have to delete the password twice, and that only changing the password doesn't work. I don't want to know. The /etc/shadow file has always been a mystery to me. Thanks, anyway, Ubuntu.
In case you managed to log out and now can't back log in, all is not lost. You need to run this series of commands in U-Boot to get into an emergency recovery mode:
setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200 mtdparts=nand_mtd:0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs) rw root=/dev/mtdblock1 init=/bin/bash saveenv reset
(You have to use init=/bin/bash. Using the normal sysvinit "emergency" command doesn't work, because it makes you enter your password, which has always been a pretty stupid idea. Because if you can type "emergency" you can also type "init=/bin/bash", so there's no added security, just more hassle. It used to not be stupid and just happily logged you in. But I digress.)
And then run the 'passwd' commands above, sync, and reboot.
Booting the new kernel
You can't, because you have to upgrade U-Boot first. Something about the bootloader operation in the more recent kernels is different from the experimental bootloader operation in the experimental Sheevaplug development kit, so it won't work by default.
Upgrading U-Boot
Luckily this is pretty easy. I found some nice instructions for upgrading U-Boot as part of a document about installing Debian on a Sheevaplug.
The easiest way to do this part is to use a TFTP server. Any TFTP server will do fine here, since you'll only do it once. However, WvTFTPd (wvtftp) is still the world's fastest TFTP server, and by comparison all the other ones are... "retarded," in the literal sense of not using negative latency.
WvTFTP really is at least 3-5x faster (and even more on a network with significant packet drops) than a typical TFTP server. Seriously. If you're netbooting embedded devices and you're still using a TFTP server that sucks, you're wasting your time. Stop doing that.
Okay, now we really boot the new kernel
Just follow the instructions and you'll be fine. However, I'm terrible at following instructions without knowing what I'm doing, so I didn't follow them and got myself into a bit of a mess which required a certain amount of Googling to get myself out of.
Here are the really important points that you shouldn't forget:
First, the new version of U-Boot supports booting both old-style kernels (like the one it came with) and new-style ones (like the current release kernels). Strangely, it defaults to the former, not the latter. To switch it into a mode capable of booting new-style kernels, you have to do (from the U-boot serial console) setenv mainlineLinux yes and saveenv and then reboot.
Note note note! This may sound obvious in retrospect, but once you've done this, booting your old kernel will stop working, because it's not a mainline kernel. Right? Well, it's obvious if you remember, hours of panic later, that you've run this command in the first place. Ha ha. Yeah. Anyway, if you want to boot your old kernel again, just run setenv mainlineLinux no and saveenv and then reboot.
The other thing you need to do is tell Linux what kind of hardware you're running on. Once upon a time, before the invention of so called plug-and-play, Linux used to "probe" for hardware devices automatically, so you didn't have to do such silly things. Linux had the very best hardware probing anywhere I've ever seen. I personally spent hours optimizing my Linux ISA arcnet driver's probing routines, and I personally solved the mystery of the "IRQ autoprobing in kernel modules causes a crash" in Linux 1.1.x or 1.2.x or so. But those days are long gone. Nowadays, we're back to specifying the hardware platform by hand, as if we were running Windows 3.0, which by the way is at least 10x smaller than the Sheevaplug's default Ubuntu install and it has a GUI. Hardware improves, software backslides. But I digress.
If you have an original Sheevaplug like mine, the magic incantation (at the U-boot console) is:
setenv arcNumber 2097 saveenv reset
Yes, you do have to saveenv. You might also have to reset. Don't be like me, and think you can "try a temporary experiment" by setting the environment variable and not saving it in the hopes it won't screw up. It will fail.
Note note note! Unlike the mainlineLinux option, setting the arcNumber option does not mess up your old kernel. That's because mainlineLinux is interpreted by U-Boot (I assume), which does something different depending if it's a new or old kernel. But arcNumber is interpreted by Linux, and the old Linux didn't know to look for it. (This also explains why you have to saveenv; Linux won't be able to find it if it's not saved.)
Once again, I refer you to the Debian Sheevaplug instructions for how to get your kernel booted, depending on what device you want to boot from.
Note note note! I don't recommend installing the new kernel into the "boot flash" memory segment until you're really sure it works, because that will overwrite the old kernel, and then you might be stuck. For experimenting, boot from an SD card or TFTP instead.
I personally recommend starting your experiments with TFTP, since that's the quickest way to change out your kernel while you're experimenting. I went from there to using an SD card, which gave me more disk space for messing around. Both boot methods are described at the Debian Sheevaplug link above.
Recovering after you've mangled all your U-Boot settings
If you're like me, you'll inevitably end up getting into a situation where you really wish you could just get back to your old kernel and tweak some more stuff from a nice, safe, userland Linux process. Here's the magic U-Boot incantation that works for me:
setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200 mtdparts=nand_mtd:0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs) rw root=/dev/mtdblock1 setenv bootargs_root root=/dev/mtdblock2 ro setenv bootcmd 'nand read.e 0x800000 0x100000 0x400000; bootm 0x800000' setenv cesvcid ULULULULULULPPULULULULULDA setenv console console=ttyS0,115200 setenv mainlineLinux no setenv run_diag no saveenv reset
Not so shockingly, the "resetenv" command resets the environment to "factory defaults," but apparently the guys down at the factory do not like to have their Sheevaplugs in a state that is actually bootable. Ha ha. Sucker.
Actually routing those packets
After all that, you're finally ready to set up your Sheevaplug to be a router. The good news: now that you have the @$!@#!@ thing booted, it's just like any old Linux box. iptables and iproute2 work exactly like they would on any Ubuntu system. Which is to say, they're amazingly obtuse and complex, and in the case of iproute2, the documentation outright lies.
I do have it working now, if that's any consolation.
Some other time, I'll write about my amazing adventures with token buckets, stochastic fair queuing, traffic shaping vs. policing, random early detection, explicit congestion notification (oh man, ECN performance actually is amazing when you have a router that uses it!) and how it really is possible to have a "usable" 256k Internet link even when you're downloading 10 files simultaneously and your provider thought a 5 second downstream DSL queue length was a good idea and you technically can't even shape downstream traffic.
(I put "usable" in quotes because 256k is getting to be pretty unusable nowadays even when it's not loaded down. Over time, you lose sight of the fact that that the 6 megabit link back at home really is 23 times faster than a "perfectly acceptable" 256 kbit link used to be. But the speed mostly doesn't bother me; it's the terrible queuing. Example: before I installed the shaping/policing, leaving Google Reader open in the background totally killed all other traffic. And it's mostly just downloading text!)
Too bad Linux's rather awesome RED traffic shaper doesn't work on downstream traffic, which means you can't use ECN on downstream traffic, so you end up dropping lots of packets all over the place. And too bad that if you use the "intermediate device" method (basically, egress queuing on the packets going to your internal network) you add tons of latency - of course.
But I think I know how to fix it. More later.2010 studio album by Kid Cudi
Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager is the second studio album by American rapper Kid Cudi. It was released on November 9, 2010, by Dream On, GOOD Music and Universal Motown Records.[1][2] It serves as a sequel to his debut studio album Man on the Moon: The End of Day (2009). Production for the album took place during 2009 to 2010 at various recording studios and was handled by long-time collaborators Emile Haynie and Plain Pat. It also featured contributions from Anthony Kilhoffer, Blended Babies, Chuck Inglish, Dot da Genius, Jim Jonsin, and Rami Beatz, among others. The album was supported by two singles: "Erase Me" and "Mr. Rager".
Man on the Moon II incorporates alternative and psychedelic elements to the sound that Cudi explored in his previous album. It features a blend of dark and emotional lyrics, exploring themes of depression, loneliness, detachment, and isolation. The album also highlights other topics, such as Cudi's former cocaine addiction, fame, and alcoholism, as well as family issues and women. The album features guest appearances from CeeLo Green, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West, Cage, St. Vincent, GLC, Chip tha Ripper, and Nicole Wray. Further contributors include Mike Dean, Larry Gold, Ken Lewis, Frank Romano, and Ray Bradley.
Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200, selling 169,000 copies during its first week of release.[3] It also topped the Billboard Rap Albums and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums in its debut week.[4][5] The album received generally positive reviews from critics, due to its diverse change to the sound and continuing theme of the album. On March 27, 2018, the album was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of 1,000,000 copies in the United States.[6]
Background [ edit ]
Kid Cudi in 2010.
On August 25, 2009, Cudi announces that his second album was going to be in a trilogy, it was originally going to be titled Man on the Moon: The Ghost in the Machine. In the same interview, he was still working on the title for the third Man on the Moon.[7] Three weeks later, Cudi releases Man on the Moon: The End of Day, it sold 104,000 in the first week and charted at number four.[8] In a MTV interview, Cudi announced that the follow-up to his debut album would be a compilation album entitled Cudder, which would have many collaborations. He stated he had already recorded songs with Snoop Dogg, Travis Barker, Clipse, Cage and Pharrell, and would also like to work with Drake, Green Day, Kings of Leon, Robin Thicke, The Killers and The Postal Service on the album.[9] On January 7, 2010, Cudi revealed in a video interview with Karmaloop TV that he was working with Pharrell in Miami for the album.[10] A week later, he changes the title from Cudder to Cudder and the Revolution of Evolution at a show in Milwaukee.[11] Few months later, Cudi took off to his blog to announce that he scrapped the collaborative theme of Cudder for a project that is more personal. He stated:
"A lot of you have read the news and think they know Cudi, got slick shit to say amongst your peers or just flat out hate me but you haven't the slightest clue of who I am. I will tell the story of Mr Rager."
He announces that the album was going to be titled Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager.[2] Cudi stated that "Man on the Moon II is dark by nature and instead of bringing you into my dreams like my first album, I'm bringing you into my reality, good and bad. It will explain more of who I am as well as pushing the envelope musically."[2] In a Complex interview for his cover shoot titled "Mad Man on the Moon", he talks about the album and stating "It's explicit, but smart explicit. I'm not holding back. I have no regard for what people consider right or wrong. Some things I follow—like the law, from here on out. But other than that, I'm doing whatever the fuck I want to do. I'm not holding back. That's why I've been so excited about this move to L.A., because I just want to keep growing creatively, all over, as a human being." Later in the interview, he talked about why the album changed saying "When I started making records like "Erase Me". |
sentence for a bank fraud scheme. Parsadanyan was convicted of 14 counts of bank fraud, with each count carrying a maximum of 30 years.
Parsadanyan's lawyer, Andrew Flier, maintains his client's innocence. He says Raffo has no gang ties, and is merely a small-business owner who was railroaded through to trial based on "guilt by association."
"When the fisherman are fishing for profit and collecting tuna, unfortunately, sometimes they get a dolphin in a net," Flier says of the investigators.
While these three face sentencing sometime this summer, Victim M.M. is trying to cope with his uneasy status as a known "snitch."
"Every day we're concerned, and he lives his life in a completely fearful manner," Stebbins says. "He's always careful about where he goes, who he goes with, what he tells people."
Despite being on the wrong side of an organized crime syndicate, it was Victim M.M.'s choice not to go into the federal witness protection program, where he would have been "disappeared" by the FBI. He decided not to leave behind his life as he knows it.
But the alternative is pretty bleak. He remains in danger, and among his daily safety precautions, Victim M.M. drives with at least 1½ car lengths in front of him so he has maneuvering room to evade pursuers if need be.
"This is a guy who was kidnapped at gunpoint — he's going to be scared for a long time, if not forever," Stebbins says.
Victim M.M. is right to be afraid. Throughout the FBI's investigation of Armenian Power, the mob and its associates committed kidnappings, extortions and murders, Stebbins says.
In 2009, through existing wiretaps, the FBI learned of a kidnapping in progress by Armenian Power associates, Estrada says. The target was Sandro Karmryan. It was the second harrowing time AP had kidnapped Karmryan, whose business is shipping cars to Russia, where he also owns a café.
During Karmryan's first abduction, his family in the L.A. area quietly paid $50,000 for his return.
"Then they decided they could kidnap him again, since he was sort of a 'patsy,'?" Estrada says. "[He] couldn't do anything against them, didn't have ties to Armenian Power, wasn't a gang member, had no way to sort of protect himself."
One early morning in July 2009, Karmryan was again snatched, this time from a parking garage in Van Nuys. When his captors approached him, he took off running — only to be accidentally shot by a friend who was with him. The defendants grabbed the severely injured Karmryan, threw him in a van and took off, Estrada says.
For nearly five days, he was moved from stash house to stash house as the kidnappers used his debit card to withdraw money from ATMs across Southern California. His ransom was set at $1 million, a fee they hoped his family in Russia would pay, Estrada says. But his friend's gunshots had torn through Karmryan's abdomen, causing his intestines to rupture and leak fluid into his body. He was vomiting stool and bleeding severely internally, Estrada says, when the FBI tracked Karmryan to a marijuana grow house in Mira Loma. They found him in agony, blindfolded on an air mattress, with a pit bull standing guard over him.
Karmryan was rushed to surgery. What happened next was like something out of a horror movie.
"The [trauma] surgeon actually testified at trial," Estrada says. "He said everyone was in shock, had never seen what they saw, which was basically a fountain of liquid stool erupt from his stomach because of all the pressure that was building up for the five days."
Karmryan was hospitalized for nearly a month, undergoing multiple surgeries. His kidnappers each got 15 to 30 years in prison.
Vagan Adzhemyan, a reported Armenian Power associate and former wrestling champion in Armenia, received the steepest sentence and showed "no conscience or remorse," according to a statement from the judge.
If it appears that Armenian Power has a lot of "associates," it's because it does. In addition to kidnapping and extortion, Armenian Power dabbles in whatever makes money, from buying and growing high-end marijuana to bank fraud, Estrada says. AP looks for people with expertise in certain areas and cozies up to them — no matter what their allegiance.
"If Darbinyan wanted guns, he'd find a source of guns.... He'd befriend him, get involved with him, and suddenly he's got a source of guns coming in," Estrada explains. "Their reach was really wide, much wider than you'd ever see with a traditional gang."
The organization even made friends in federal court, in what Estrada calls an "unprecedented" breach.
In 2012, a female employee of the federal district court clerk's office in L.A. and her husband were arrested for disclosing confidential information to members and associates of Armenian Power. The couple was accused of accessing sealed federal court documents and tipping off defendants before they were to be arrested. The wife, Nune Gevorkyan, was sentenced to six months; the husband, Oganes Koshkaryan, got almost five years.
With nearly all 90 of the indicted AP members now either serving time or awaiting sentencing this summer, the prosecution feels confident that it took out the "biggest, baddest" criminals and put a serious kink in Armenian Power's ability to operate.
But they can't arrest everyone. And there's always a squad of up-and-comers waiting in the wings to take control of all that illegal income.
"Somebody else will rise to leadership positions, and they'll create new, better ways to do fraud schemes," Stebbins says. "And we'll have to catch up and find those people and figure out who they are and how to prosecute them again."
Reach the writer at hfox510@gmail.com.There were mixed reactions to my post on Friday morning about the arrest of Charlie Veitch. Well, it turns out that Charlie’s girlfriend, Silkie, filmed the entire arrest. This seems to have been a political arrest ahead of the Royal Wedding.
My goodness, I must be getting old. These two coppers look like they’re in sixth form. And they were polite (well, Charlie was the only one without a video camera!).
Recent videos I have seen seem to suggest that the police’s hubris has reached the stage where proper procedure is no longer deemed necessary. Charlie didn’t even have his rights read to him. I guess because he didn’t have any.
The copper who does all the talking (Ashley Bennett) admits that he doesn’t mind obeying orders. Silkie shows a lot of compassion, especially under the circumstances.
And when did police officers stop calling the public “sir” and “madam”. Was it at the same time the shirts and ties made way for paramilitary-style uniforms?
The police were our servants; now we are the slaves?
If you don’t watch the whole video, be sure to fast forward to 12:25. Charlie goes out to the police van and is locked in a cage. They probably have to give the police dogs more room by law! This is absolutely outrageous. This is training us to toe the line. If he was so dangerous he had to be locked up like an animal, they wouldn’t have sent two boys to pick him up.
They would have done this instead.
Max Farquar found the video, also from Friday. Demotix reports:
An alternative to the Royal Wedding called the “Zombie Wedding” was to be held in London’s Soho Square, billed as “a right royal orgy” with “rumpy pumpy and guillotines”.
Professor Chris Knight, Camilla Power and Patrick Macroidan had already been arrested, locked up and had their props seized, on charges of suspicion to cause a breach of the peace and public nuisance.
At the start, there were more press and plain clothes police than protestors,
It seemed the square had been double booked with the secret policeman’s ball at one point. I know you’re not supposed to notice them, but most of them do stick out like sore thumbs. The fact they were all wearing luminous green wristbands, and not making that great a job at hiding them, didn’t really help their cause. In time, a few more zombies did arrive, as did the zombie wedding cake… A group of about half a dozen or so ‘wedding guests’ were singing “we all live in a fascist regime” to the tune of the Beatles yellow submarine, when a group of six men in hoodies & jeans came storming into the park and grabbed one of the singers from behind. As the detained man was manhandled towards the exit, another group of men charged in to prevent his friends assisting him, with at least two of them ending up on the floor. In all, I think I counted at least fifteen plain clothed, and two uniformed officers involved in the arrest of this one person. No details were forthcoming from the police for the reason of the arrest, but fifteen plus officers to arrest one man in a square surrounded by uniformed officers seemed a tad excessive, if not over dramatic to me.
And again, no ID was given and no rights were read.
I later bumped into an American zombie family, who had also been in Soho Square earlier. American zombie mum said how shocked they had been at the way the Met had conducted their operation, comparing it to something you would have expected in the former Soviet Union, but never expect to see in London.
I would not be surprised if this whole operation to “cleanse” the centre of London of all dissenters was organised in such a way as to train the public what we can expect if we step out of line. It could also have been an exercise to see how much the police could get away with and what the public’s reaction would be.
Here is another video of the “zombies” in Soho Square. This is LGBT anti-cuts group Queer Resistance, who are ordered to leave the area because Royalists would be offended. Lesbilicious reports,
Police arrested a number “zombie flashmob” participants, and prevented others from holding a picnic in Soho Square. A section 60 cordon was put in place in the centre of London this morning in response to reports that anarchists were “masking up” in Soho Square. The move gave police the power to stop and search anyone in the area. In a YouTube video uploaded by a protester, police officers can be seen telling unmasked lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans activists dressed as zombies to disperse before they “offend” royalists. “So the line is because the pro-monarchy people are coming here, you have to make us go,” asks a protester. “Yes,” they are told, before being informed that: “you have four minutes, either you leave or be arrested”.
As I have said before, the highly favoured status homosexuals enjoy will not last forever because they are just being used in social engineering experiments. They are esteemed as trash by the Establishment just like the rest of us.
Le’Belle alleges that police officers consistently misgendered both himself and his companion, a trans woman. He described how a police woman “cupped” his companion’s “genital area” in order to ascertain her genital status before conducting a search. The pair were questioned and then held in a police cell for three hours before being released without charge. “It was really horrible,” said Le’Belle. “We hadn’t done anything, we weren’t protesting”.
You might still be thinking that this was a one off “special” day and that the “authorities” had a right – duty, even – to clear the city of “undesirables,” even places like Soho Square, which are nowhere near to the wedding route. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really want to see most of these people in public, dressed as zombies and singing badly, but the world doesn’t revolve according to what I want and it shouldn’t revolve around what the Royal Family or the Government want, when what they want is unfair and unjust. I feel that this has set a very dangerous precedent.
I only use my telly for watching videos (so that I don’t have to fund the BBC), so while most people had already digested the televisual feast that was the Royal Wedding and were relaxing with Britain’s Got Talent, or some other prolefeed, I was watching this video: Taking Liberties.
The film is largely about the erosion of our freedoms under Tony Blair. We see protestors being arrested and prevented from going to their destinations. It seems fairly routine – not just on “special” days.
The film tells us that police have used The Terrorism Act to stop and search 100,000 people – and not one was a terrorist.
The “pre-crime” arrests we see in the videos I have linked to are nothing compared to what Blair would like. Forward to 46:24 and he advocates intervening before birth!
The state kidnapping of babies and children is just one more thing which happens when we lose our rights and the state gets more power than it should have. Not that there aren’t legitimate circumstances for taking children into care, but I am certain that we have gone beyond what is reasonable and decent.
The film covers other important topics like ID cards and the extradition treaty David Blunkett agreed with the USA whereby British people can be packed off to the States even without prima facie evidence. They say, “We want Mr Whoever” and our police are obliged to arrest him and put him on a plane.
And near the end of the film is an interesting piece on a judgment made in the House of Lords. They decided that the police had acted wrongly in turning back the coach-load of protestors en-route to a demonstration (as seen in the first part of the film), even though the courts sided with the police all the way. The House of Lords has protected basic freedoms a number of times when our elected representatives in the Commons voted to take them away.
No wonder the main parties want to change the Lords. They seem to be on the people’s side more often than our elected representatives are.
The film asks who is to blame for the situation we find ourselves in: the Government, the police, the media – or us?
It is “us,” isn’t it?
The EU ban on selling hundreds of over-the-counter herbal remedies has just come into effect. With the pan-European organisations sticking the jackboot in harder and harder, and with a European police force inevitable one day, the time will surely come when protestors, or anyone else, can be arrested and flown to a prison anywhere from Lapland to Cyprus.
In fact, even today, the European Arrest Warrant means you can be whisked away to another country. Michael Turner of Corfe Castle ended up in a Hungarian prison for four months without trial then was thrown out onto the street without an explanation. Apparently there are thousands of people in jails across Europe who have never been charged.
The writing is on the wall. The direction we are going is clear. There will be no mercy. We need to take our country back.
The first thing we can do is not to vote for the traitor parties in this week’s elections.Before hearing from a Lane Bryant employee on what she thinks about the recent controversy over her company’s overtly sexy ad featuring a non-emaciated model in a bra is really about, do me a favor: Name a beloved fat male celebrity. Jack Black, Jonah Hill, Ruben Studdard, Santa!
Now, how about a fat female celebrity? I won’t even ask that she be “beloved.” Rosie O’Donnell, Roseanne Barr, the ever shrinking/expanding Oprah, Kirstie Alley?
One of these groups is not like the other. The fat male group is more loved, less judged for their body size and more contemporary ; the fat female group has many members framed as being “bitchy” and “too opinionated,” is judged endlessly in relation to body size and is much less current in the zeitgeist (Gossip singer Beth Ditto is arguably a contemporary fat female icon, but hardly as well-known as the likes of Black).
Underneath the brouhaha over whether ABC declined to air the Lane Bryant ad for discriminatory reasons or not lies the pervasive cultural hatred of fat female bodies. The overt sexualization of women in almost all ads is problematic–even when the ad is attempting to reclaim the fat body as beautiful–but in this case other issues are in play.
As pointed out by blogger Artemis Rage, “Fat people need clothing too!” But there is a definite “size segregation” in many clothing stores, which makes stores like Lane Bryant, dedicated to woman above size 12, a welcome relief. She writes:
It’s comforting to me to when I can walk into a store and not feel ashamed for my body size because they don’t carry it, or barely do.
Yet, she bemoans the fact that Lane Bryant and other such stores are labeled as “plus size” while there is no ancillary label for stores stocking sizes 0 to 12. As Rage writes, “We aren’t just in a different store, we are the other, the abnormal.”
Donna (not her real name), who once starved herself into being a “walking hanger” in pursuit of a modeling career but now works at Lane Bryant, shares similar sentiments about what’s really normal:
I put most of the blame on how women feel they have to look [a certain way] due to Hollywood and the fashion industry. Most women in the U.S. are 5’7 and a size 14! So realistically, those toothpick-looking girls … are the freaks.
Another aspect of fat hatred is fat’s association with a lower-class body, writes Jill at Feministe:
Size, in the United States, is strongly associated with class and attractiveness. … Marketing a plus-sized line is still perceived as signaling a down-scale brand. Designers don’t want their clothes and their brand associated with larger women because it might challenge their brand’s cache.
Rage recognizes this dynamic as well, noting how stores such as Lane Bryant are usually located in hidden back corners of malls–in the mall’s figurative ghetto. While one cannot a body-barrier break, at least the continuing discussion the controversy has launched takes us a small step towards a future less filled with walking hangers.
Here’s the ad:
Photo above: Long-ago Lane Bryant ad; http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbilly/ / CC BY 2.0Dec 21, 2013; Charlotte, NC, USA; The Charlotte Bobcats unveil their new branding logo as the Charlotte Hornets for the 2014 season at halftime during the game against the Utah Jazz at Time Warner Cable Arena. Mandatory Credit: Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports
The NBA released the 2014-15 schedule Wednesday evening, moving us one step closer to the league’s October 28 season tip-off. The buzz is back in Charlotte, and expectations are high for the newly named Charlotte Hornets. With Lance Stephenson in Charlotte, and rookies Noah Vonleh and P.J. Hairston ready to make their mark on the league, there is no shortage of compelling reasons to follow the Hornets this season. You can find the full schedule here.
Here are five must-watch games for all Hornets fans:
Honorable Mentions:
Charlotte at Indiana (November 19) – Lance returns to his old team. This game would have made the cut if Paul George hadn’t suffered his gruesome leg injury.
Charlotte vs. L.A. Clippers (November 24) – The Clippers are among the most exciting teams in the league, and the Bobcats beat the Clippers last season in Charlotte.
Charlotte vs. Atlanta (November 7) – The Hawks have had the Hornets’ number the past few seasons. Winning this game would make an early statement against a division rival.
Charlotte vs. Utah (December 20) – The Bobcats somehow lost both games against the Jazz last season, and their personnel have been intertwined for the past few years. Hopefully the Hornets can regain the upper-hand in this series.
5. Charlotte vs. Golden State – Friday, November 28
The Hornets’ defense going up against the Splash Brothers. Charlotte swept the season series against the Warriors last season, so the Warriors should be ready for this contest. Throw in Steph Curry’s connection to Charlotte, and Dell Curry’s connection to his son, this game means a little more for both sides. One other point of interest is that both these teams are trying to break into the upper-echelon of their respective conferences. This game should be an interesting barometer of the strength of the West vs. East. (These teams first meet in the Bay Area on Saturday, November 15).
4. Charlotte vs. Washington – Monday, February 2 and Thursday, February 5
Charlotte won the season series 3-1 last season, though the Wizards finished higher in the standings. Both these teams are trying to finish in the top four in the East to get home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The Southeast division is up for grabs after LeBron’s departure to Cleveland, and both Charlotte and Washington are aiming to be the new kings of the division. This game is full of intriguing positional match-ups: Kemba Walker vs. John Wall, Lance vs. Bradley Beal, Big Al vs. Marcin Gortat. The Wiz vs. Buzz may be the next big Eastern Conference rivalry. These teams do not meet until early February, but face off in back-to-back games.
3. Charlotte vs. Miami – Wednesday, November 5
March 9, 2010 was the last time the Miami Heat lost a basketball game to a Charlotte professional basketball team. That is 20 straight Charlotte losses including last season’s sweep out of the playoffs. To add insult to injury, team favorite Josh McRoberts left Charlotte for Miami this offseason. Yes, the Hornets will beat the Heat at some point in the future, but with new jerseys, a new name, and new players, there is no better time to end the streak than the first meeting of the season. Oh, and in case you forgot, Dwyane Wade kicked Ramon Sessions in the groin two seasons ago.
2. Charlotte at Cleveland – Monday, December 15
To be the best, you have to beat the best, right? The King is back in Cleveland, and the Eastern Conference has a new favorite. One major reason Charlotte hasn’t beaten Miami in four years is LeBron James, but Charlotte hasn’t had Lance Stephenson in the last four years either. If we learned one thing in the Eastern Conference Finals last season, it is that Lance is not afraid of LeBron. If we learned two things, it’s that LeBron does not really care about Lance at all. Lance brings attitude and toughness, two things Charlotte needs in order to advance in the playoffs. Here’s hoping the Hornets rise to the occasion on December 15.
1. Charlotte vs. Milwaukee – Wednesday, October 29
Opening Night. The Buzz is Back. The Hive is Alive. Get Ready, Hornets fans. It all beings on October 29.
Which games are you most excited about? Let your voice be heard in the comments section below![9] We further consider two potentially important natural sources of atmospheric CH 4 in relation to the adopted scenarios: (1) Conversion of organic carbon to CH 4, and release when permafrost thaws; and (2) release of CH 4 hydrates in marine sediments. Earlier studies have demonstrated that large releases of CH 4 from natural sources during warming events can have significant impacts on atmospheric CH 4 levels and may have potential synergistic effects leading to increased and/or sustained global warming. Observed surface temperatures in recent years show significant warming, indicating Arctic warming of more than a factor 2 greater than the global mean value [ Hansen et al., 2007 ]. Permafrost thawing could be more extensive than previously predicted [ Camill, 2005 ; Osterkamp, 2005 ], with large potential for methane emission.
[8] In this study we use a global Chemical Transport Model (CTM), the Oslo CTM2 [ Isaksen et al., 2005 ; Søvde et al., 2008 ], to estimate the impact of additional CH 4 emissions on the atmospheric concentrations of the climate gases CH 4, O 3, stratospheric H 2 O, and CO 2, and on RF from these forcing agents. The study covers a wide range of hypothetical methane emission scenarios, up to about 5 times the current emission rate. Although there is no evidence supporting the higher emission in this range, we include them in order to demonstrate the particularly strong positive feedback in the chemical system from large methane releases and the general impact on atmospheric composition and on climate forcing.
[7] Increased CH 4 emissions affect climate in several ways: Directly through increased CH 4 concentrations and indirectly through the chemical feedback on CH 4 levels and through production of O 3 and stratospheric H 2 O. Furthermore, CO 2 will increase since it is the end product of atmospheric CH 4 oxidation. In the current atmosphere the indirect RF is approximately the same as the direct methane RF, taking into account the effect on its own lifetime, on ozone, and on stratospheric water vapor [ Forster et al., 2007 ].
[5] A small fraction is also removed by surface deposition. In the stratosphere, where water vapor is in the range of only a few ppm, CH 4 oxidation contributes to water vapor buildup. Since reaction (R1) also represents a significant loss path for OH, additional CH 4 emission will suppress OH and thereby increase the CH 4 lifetime, implying further increases in atmospheric CH 4 concentrations [ Isaksen and Hov, 1987 ; Prather et al., 2001 ]. This represents a positive chemical feedback, with a feedback factor estimated to be about 1.4 (uncertainty range 1.3 to 1.7) for current atmospheric conditions [ Prather et al., 2001 ]. The nonlinearity in the chemical system could result in a significantly enhanced feedback factor for large CH 4 emissions causing large perturbations [ Isaksen, 1988 ].
[2] Methane (CH 4 ) is an important greenhouse gas with a radiative forcing (RF) of 0.48 Wm −2, due to anthropogenic activity since preindustrial time [ Forster et al., 2007 ], being second only to CO 2 among the anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Its distribution and growth are well documented [ Forster et al., 2007 ; Ramaswamy et al., 2001 ] showing a significant increase in atmospheric concentrations since preindustrial times. Analyses of ice core data for the last 650,000 years show that atmospheric CH 4 concentrations varied from approximately 400 ppb during glacial periods to approximately 700 ppb during interglacial periods. The tropospheric average concentration is currently about 1,800 ppb, representing an approximate 2.5 increase since preindustrial time. The atmospheric concentrations in 2005 correspond to an atmospheric burden of 4,900 Tg CH 4 (1 Tg = 10 12 g). Observations since 1984, for which there are continuous measurements, show an increase in atmospheric abundances of CH 4 by about 10%. Growth rates have decreased significantly since the early 1990s, but with pronounced interannual variations [ Rigby et al., 2008 ].
2. CH 4 Emissions From the Arctic Region
[12] We consider two major sources of CH 4 emissions from the warming Arctic: (1) Methane produced from microbial degradation of labile organic carbon that becomes bioavailable as permafrost thaws; and (2) methane released from gas hydrate deposits as they dissociate in response to climate warming. Thawing permafrost may also promote emissions from other methane sources in the Arctic, but the amount of methane that could potentially be produced by microbial processes in thawed soils or release of methane from gas hydrates far exceeds that associated with other Arctic sources. There is evidence that continuous permafrost is actively thawing in many circum‐Arctic regions, both onshore and in the shallow offshore continental shelves [Rachold et al., 2007].A new report by the Pew Research Center has found that Americans accept gay families more than single-mother households. The study surveyed 2,691 people, who fell into three opinion groups: Acceptors, those who were comfortable with all family situations, Rejectors, those who considered non-traditional families damaging to the nation, and Skeptics, those with mixed views.
Although 99 percent of Acceptors were comfortable with single-mom homes, 99 percent of Skeptics and 98 percent of Rejectors believed that they were harmful to our nation. On the flip side, a majority of Acceptors and Skeptics accepted gay families and even believed that they would benefit society.
Although single-mom families have been around longer than gay and lesbian families, researches were not surprised by the results. According to Katherine Stamps Mitchell, an assistant professor of human ecology and sociology at Louisiana State University, gays and lesbians are perceived as a better alternative because they are a two-parent household.
Stamps Mitchell said that the results only prove American’s misconception about single-mom homes. The survey did not include single dads or the reasons behind single motherhood, which can range from personal choice to widowhood.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 52 percent of Americans accept gay relationships, and a recent Pew Research Center study that there is an equal percentage of people who accept gay marriage and those who oppose.
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According to Stamps Mitchell, one of the reasons for change is because of the media.
You’re seeing gay families more and more on TV in shows like Modern Family and in movies like The Kids Are All Right. The media does help with acceptance.
It’s hard to say for sure if this is the case. There have been a slew of strong, single moms on TV and in movies such as TV’s Murphy Brown and Julia Roberts’ Erin Brockovich, but they seem to be overshadowed by today’s negative portrayals—think MTV’s Teen Mom. (Although this could just be a result of our collective short-term memory loss.)
But gay marriage still has a long way to go. Despite Obama’s recent statements that he can no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the struggle in the LGBT community still continues. Today more than 100 people filed into the Indiana Senate chamber to consider a state constitutional ban on gay marriages and civil unions. And House Speaker John Boehner has come out and said that the House will defend the federal ban on gay marriages.
Americans may have come to accept gay families, but their legal fight is far from over.WCU renews agreement to continue support of Cherokee language, history, culture
Western Carolina University recently renewed an agreement with Cherokee tribes from North Carolina and Oklahoma in which the university pledges to continue its commitment to the academic study and promotion of Cherokee language, history and culture.
WCU Provost Alison Morrison-Shetlar met with principal chiefs of the Cherokee Tri-Council, consisting of North Carolina’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and two Oklahoma-based tribes – the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee, to sign a memorandum of agreement involving those three tribes and Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
The gathering took place during a meeting of the Tri-Council in Oklahoma. In addition to Morrison-Shetlar, representatives included principal chiefs Patrick H. Lambert of the Eastern Band, Bill John Baker of the Cherokee Nation and Joe Bunch of the United Keetoowah Band, along with Northeastern State President Steve Turner.
“Western Carolina University has a longstanding tradition of cooperating with the Eastern Band of Cherokee to work toward the preservation of the tribe’s language, history and culture, and we expect that relationship to only deepen and strengthen over the coming years,” Morrison-Shetlar said. “Not only does that relationship benefit our dear neighbors in Western North Carolina, the Eastern Band, but it also greatly enriches the educational experience of our students as they become involved in these cooperative efforts.”
Among the Cherokee-related initiatives at WCU are the university’s Cherokee Studies Program, which develops and coordinates programs and courses related to Native American and Cherokee studies, and is heavily involved in Cherokee language revitalization efforts. Also, the university’s Cherokee Center seeks to improve educational opportunities for residents of the Qualla Boundary.
For more information, contact WCU’s Office of the Provost at 828-227-7495.‘Ghostbusters 3’ News Update, Premiere Date Expected 2015: Reitman as Female Lead, Bill Murray Comeback? Patricia Villaceran Aug 31, 2014 01:59 PM EDT
If you have been an avid 'Ghostbusters' fan, you probably know that the plot revolves around catching ghosts and trapping them in a vacuum-like machine. However, producer Ivan Reitman aims for 'Ghostbuster III' to involve a little more than that.
He confirmed with Toronto Life that 'Ghostbusters III' is no longer just a rumor, but an actual film that is in the works.
"The studio is in, and we have writers working on it as we speak. We're hoping to film at the beginning of next year. Dan Aykroyd and I meet about once a month to talk about it" he said.
He also said that Bill Murray publicly declined working on the movie, but he still has hopes that he will join in considering that they "have done six movies together, and he never says yes until literally just before the shoot."
"I told him, 'I don't care if you do Ghostbusters-I mean, I'd love it if you did-but why aren't you doing leading parts for big studio films?' He said he didn't want that responsibility. He wanted to be a character actor," Reitman added.
It is also reported that the film will have a female lead, even though the original series only had male stars.
The female lead is Dr. Anna, and according to the Ghostbusters Blog, she is "a few years older (in her 30s?) and like the original Ghostbusters, is a real doctor."
The film is expected to hit the theaters next year.The Museum of the Order of St. John is hosting a series of events and talks to promote their project: Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World 1095-1300. Spearheaded by Dr. William Purkis (University of Birmingham), and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Crusade-centred project, which opened in October 2015, will, “develop new knowledge and understanding of the lived, material religion of medieval crusaders through a wide-ranging analysis of the texts, art, architecture and material culture associated with crusader belief”. The Bearers of the Cross project will run until December 2017.
There are over 60,000 objects at the museum, but its medieval collection has remained relatively unknown. The Museum of the Order of St. John now has the opportunity to showcase its impressive medieval artefacts to researchers and the public.
Purkis gave a talk last month on medieval relics for the project, entitled: Souvenirs of the Sepulchre: Devotion to an Empty Tomb at the Time of the First Crusade. He began by recounting a particularly curious tale of lust and intrigue, set in thirteenth century Jerusalem. The story of a merchant from Groningen who happened to come across the arm of St. John the Baptist.
A merchant bought the arm of St. John the Baptist from a harlot. He had visited the Hospital of St. John and became obsessed with having the arm for himself, but it was impossible, as the arm was guarded by a knight. He approached a harlot to help him procure the arm from the knight by seducing him. He paid £140 of silver for the ill deed, and having gotten what he wanted, he took it home to Groningen. The merchant tried to keep it secret, but the arm was discovered, and ended up getting passed around. The merchant suddenly fell ill and confessed his heinous crime, and the arm of St. John the Baptist ended up in the church of St. Martin. The story was written by a Cistercian monk from Germany, Caesarius of Heisterbach (1180-1240). It was clearly meant as a tale of warning for would-be pilgrims about the perils of mishandling relics or, obtaining them by nefarious means.
This story was a good segue for Purkis’s talk about the cult of medieval relics, their uses, and impact on society. Like modern day collectibles, relics fell into levels, or value categories. At the top, the most valuable were the physical remains of saints, e.g., teeth, bones, and hair. Also in this echelon were objects associated with Christ’s Passion, such as The Crown of Thorns, and the Holy Lance.
In “Level 2”, you had objects that had come into contact with a saint, such as clothes, or liquids. Fragments of these relics could be mass produced and given as gifts for reflection, healing, personal devotion, and to ward off evil. There were many tales of relic theft in the Middle Ages, like that of the Merchant of Groningen, and they were common devices of warning found in relic lore and hagiography.
Religious locations were also important to medieval people. Many made pilgrimages to Canterbury, Rome, and Santiago de Compostella, but according to Purkis, in the medieval mind, nothing topped Jerusalem. Robert the Monk, also known as Robert of Rheims (d. 1122), was a well known chronicler of the First Crusade (1095-1099), wrote that, “Jerusalem is the navel of the earth.” Other contemporaries such as the monk, Guibert de Cogent (1055-1124) and Baldric of Bourgueil (1050-1130), both extolled the virtues of Jerusalem.
The Cult of the Holy Sepulchre
A cult developed around the Holy Sepulchre, which was odd because there was no physical body to touch, or take pieces of to pass around. Purkis called the devotion to it, ‘a cult of absence.’ So how did pilgrims worship an empty tomb? Pilgrims went to great lengths to obtain pieces of the Holy Sepulchre; they devised interesting ways to capture the essence of being there, and bring it back with them. Pilgrimage sites, such as Jerusalem, often had merchants hawking religious wares, items like Ampulla seals, used for reflection, and announced to the world that while Christ’s body might not be there, it was there. The idea that the seal retained the spiritual presence in spite of the physical absence.
Some pilgrims would take scrapings of rock as proof for their journey to the |
of the jail conditions, we do not agree with many of the characterizations portrayed by the inmates interviewed for the report,” said Tom Dominguez, head of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, in a prepared statement.
“Our deputies will continue to do the professional job that the taxpayers expect of them. We are not troubled by the ACLU or any other organization scrutinizing our jails…. We welcome the scrutiny.”
The ACLU report also called for the Board of Supervisors to establish an independent citizen panel to oversee conditions in local jails, a step taken in some other jurisdictions. Two years ago, officials in Los Angeles agreed to federal oversight of LA County Men’s Jail, a response to complaints filed by, among others, the ACLU.
Some of the report’s specific allegations in Orange County mirror problems reported in Los Angeles, including:
• Excessive use of force by deputies against inmates.
• Deputies pitting inmates against each other to encourage violence.
• Ignoring inmate complaints.
• Housing inmates in unsanitary and unsafe conditions.
• Denying adequate health care.
The ACLU report noted that its findings are consistent with reports from other agencies that have criticized the Sheriff’s Dept. for the conditions and treatment within the county’s five jails.
In 2014, after six years of investigation in local jails, the Dept. of Justice wrote a letter that criticized use of force, crowded conditions, supervision practices, medical care, and mental health care within Orange County jails. That investigation, which remains open, was prompted by the death of Derek Chamberlain, a 41-year-old Mission Viejo man who was fatally beaten in 2006 by inmates in Orange County jail who wrongfully thought Chamberlain was a child molester. A lawsuit later alleged that a deputy didn’t respond to the fight while he watched a baseball game on television, and the suit resulted in the county paying $600,000 to Chamberlain’s family. A grand jury report later concluded that lax oversight by jailers contributed to Chamberlain’s death.
The ACLU report also referenced a pending lawsuit filed by the Association of Orange County Deputies Union alleging that staff reductions have led to unsafe jail conditions, and detailing a series of critical missteps that contributed to the escape of three inmates from the Central Men’s Jail last year.
The trio was taken into custody following an eight-day manhunt that drew national attention and brought scrutiny on the sheriff’s department. Following the escape, the department has “hardened” the Central Jail, with security upgrades and $570,000 in physical improvements.
The department also faced scrutiny in March when a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that immigrant detainees in the Theo Lacy jail were served spoiled lunch meats, forced to use dirty showers and subjected to harsh solitary confinement.
Local defense attorneys offered differing views on the ACLU report, some saying it overstates the violence their clients see in the county’s jails and others saying it mirrors what they’ve seen for some time.
“As much as I would not like to say this, Sandra Hutchens has dramatically reduced the amount of beatings by guards of inmates in the Orange County jails,” said Jerry Steering, a Newport Beach attorney who represented the Chamberlain family.
In Steering’s view, violence in the jails is lower than it’s been in 30 years.
Others disagree, saying violence and other problems highlighted in the ACLU report is routine in local jails.
“Medical care is always an issue, especially for people with serious conditions,” said Michael Guisti, a Garden Grove-based attorney. “Once, I had to intervene with a client who had a medical condition and was told by deputies to drink more water.”
Newport Beach-based defense attorney Kate Corrigan said jail visitors routinely are shocked by the unsanitary conditions in visiting areas, and that visitors typically voice complaints while the inmates keep quiet because they don’t want to raise any issues with staff.
Corrigan said she has concerns about proper mental health care and care for those who are detoxing off drugs or alcohol. While many jailers are respectful, Corrigan added, some jailers do not treat inmates respectfully.
“People who are in jail are at the lowest point in their lives and throwing salt on that wound doesn’t make for a good environment.”South Korea has become the first territory in Asia where the BET Channel has launched. Formerly known as Black Entertainment Television, the channel covers entertainment, music and news on urban black culture.
The channel kicked off Tuesday as a partnership between channel owner Viacom International Media Networks and South Korean pay-TV operator SK Broadband. BET is available on “B tv,” SK’s linear service, as well as oksusu, SK’s over-the-top (OTT) streaming service. Subscribers will be able to enjoy multi-platform viewing with digital simulcast and catch-up TV options for selected programs.
“The introduction of the BET Channel in Asia is a key step in strengthening our presence both in South Korea and in Asia, while expanding our portfolio of adult-targeted brands,” said Paras Sharma, senior VP and GM for Southeast Asia and head of digital media, Asia.
“We believe the BET channel will find a fan base among Korean youth, who are globally recognized as fashion and cultural trendsetters – similar to the BET audience,” said Lee Hyung Hee, SK Broadband CEO.
In South Korea, the channel’s offerings will include a mix of international shows including “Being Mary Jane,” “The Wendy Williams Show,” “50 Central,” and “Face Value,” in addition to award shows such as “BET Awards,” “Black Girls Rock,” and “The Hip Hop Awards.” It will also include local productions from South Korea.The 2-2 Washington Redskins are about to face the 4-0 Atlanta Falcons and there is not much hope for the Redskins to win. Falcons’ quarterback Matt Ryan is the leading MVP candidate and is playing the best football of his entire career, but the Falcons have one major weakness. That weakness is the rushing defense of the Atlanta Falcons. Coming into Week 5 the Atlanta Falcons have the 29th best rush defense. The Atlanta Falcons no longer have the asset of one of the best run stopping linebackers in the NFL in Curtis Lofton. Akeem Dent is the new middle linebacker and has played less than 18% of the Falcons defenses snaps, because the Falcons play nickel most of the time.
The Redskins can use that to their advantage to keep Matt Ryan off the field. Matt Ryan is playing the best football in his career and the Redskins can beat him by keeping him off the field. The Redskins by the way have the 2nd best rushing offense led by Robert Griffin the III and Alfred Morris. If the Redskins want to get to 3-2, then they have to run the ball 30-40 times if they want to claim victory. The only issues that will hold back the Redskins is the play of the passing defense of the Redskins being 31st in the NFL currently.
They made Sam Bradford and Josh Freeman look like superstars. Imagine how they will make Matt Ryan look? However if the Redskins can keep to the game plan outlined; which I’m sure they will try to implement, they will find success. The Skins did the same thing to the New Orleans Saints and even though the Falcons don’t have as many issues as the Saints, the Falcons are still susceptible to the poor rush defense. The Carolina Panthers exploited that weakness in Week 4 and the Redskins will exploit it this week. The difference of course is the Redskins have a better offense and better defensive pieces. The Falcons may still win on Sunday, but the Redskins will give them one heck of a fight.
AdvertisementsA Volvo deal would be one of the biggest moves yet by a Chinese car company in Europe or the United States. Beijing Automotive Industry Holding last week agreed to pay $200 million to acquire Saab Automotive carmaking technology from General Motors.
Ford, the only Detroit carmaker to avoid bankruptcy this year, is seeking to raise money as it refocuses on its core North American and European operations. It sold Aston Martin to a British-Kuwaiti consortium in 2007, and sold Land Rover and Jaguar to the Indian automaker, Tata Motors, in 2008. Ford last year also reduced its stake in Mazda Motor, the Japanese carmaker, to 13 percent from 33.4 percent.
Tata’s purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover, however, has turned out to be something of a cautionary tale. The companies continued to lose money, and the debt Tata took on to buy them has been a drag on its earnings.
Tata has repaid the debt, but had to raise money by selling shares diluting the stake of existing shareholders, including the Tata Group. Analysts say Tata Motors will have to nurse Jaguar and Land Rover to health for some time.
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Ford said it would continue to cooperate with Volvo, but it did not intend to retain a stake in the Swedish company.
Geely has sought to assuage anxiety about the deal in Sweden, saying it intends to maintain Volvo much as it is, including “an independent management” at its Gothenburg headquarters.
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“Geely is committed to working with all stakeholders to complete the transaction in the best interest of all parties,” Li Shufu, the chairman of Geely, said in a statement. The company said it had held “constructive meetings” in recent weeks with Volvo management, union leaders and government officials in Sweden and Belgium.
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Assuming the deal goes through, “Volvo will retain its leadership in safety and environmental technologies, and will be uniquely positioned as a world-leading premium brand to exploit opportunities in the fast-growing China market,” Geely said.
Meanwhile, General Motors is still working to dispose of its own Swedish carmaker, Saab. G.M. said last week that it would shut down Saab, which is based in Trollhattan, after negotiations to sell the company to Spyker Cars, a tiny Dutch automaker, fell through. G.M. said the sale of the older Saab technology to Beijing Automotive would not inhibit a sale.
Although G.M. had already begun closing the company down, Spyker came back this week with a revised offer, and G.M. said it was studying that offer as well as other potential bids. While talks were continuing, analysts said Spyker’s bid appeared to be a long shot.Jeffrey Marlow
Jeffrey Marlow, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, writes from New Mexico, where he is measuring sand particle sizes, layer thicknesses and angles to address questions about volcanoes and rock patterns on Mars.
Thursday, March 24
I’m on my hands and knees, staring at a rock wall inches from my face as the tan New Mexico sand coats my arms. I’m trying to answer one simple question: are the rock’s grains medium-size (0.25 to 0.5 millimeters) or coarse (0.5 to 1 millimeter)? The answer will help us figure out how this piece of rock was formed — a key piece to the puzzle of figuring out what exactly happened here one catastrophic day several tens of thousands of years ago. Lauren Edgar, the California Institute of Technology geology doctoral student leading our expedition, needed an answer. Medium or coarse?
Geology is the most instinctive of sciences, a common-sense desire to explain our planet at the most literal, physical level. It’s a science that has been enhanced, but not fundamentally changed, with the technological revolution of the last couple of centuries. Physicists have multibillion-dollar particle accelerators, biologists have robotic armies of gene sequencers, and astronomers peer into the vast expanses of the universe with space-age telescopes. But when it comes down to it, geologists have to get out into the world and look at it.
For a geologist, every landscape becomes a puzzle to be reassembled. We’ve got the end result in full view, but how did it get there? What events had to come together just right to make that mountainside happen? A helpful hint for your next road trip with restless passengers: teach them a few basics of geology, and shout-outs from the back seat are instantly transformed from “Are we there yet?” to “I’m pretty sure we just passed a gnarly thrust fault!”
This principle was in full force during our flight from Los Angeles to El Paso. Seat 22B was in and out of sleep reading about stagecoach history, 23D massaged the brim of his newly purchased fedora, and Lauren stared out the window, popping M&Ms while trying to identify the geological way points of the American Southwest.
Lauren specializes in sedimentology — a branch of geology that describes the movement and deposition of sediment. Using the principles of rock grain movement, she is able to translate subtle lines and squiggles into a rich picture of the environment that created them.
During this brief expedition, we’ll be checking out Hunt’s Hole and Kilbourne Hole, two pockmarks in the desert a dozen miles from the Mexican border. Today, the pits are a favorite recreational shooting ground, and the frequent border patrol activity — gleaming S.U.V.’s, helicopters and jets — combined with the background soundtrack of cracking shotguns lends a touch of the Wild West. Both of the craters are remnants of maar volcanic eruptions, explosive events caused by rising magma that mixes with shallow groundwater pools. The resulting reaction created an enormous amount of energy, causing this magma mix to burst through the ground and spew ash, water and chunks of rock onto the surface.
What happened next is what we’re here to find out. Rocks and ash flew into the sky and across the surface, but as these flows lost energy, particles began to fall out of the flow, leaving behind ash dunes punctuated with extraneous rock fragments — a pile of sediment called a base surge deposit. The loose deposits turned to rock over the years, and over the next few days I’ll be helping Lauren make measurements and develop hypotheses as she interprets the gorgeous patterns preserved in the rocks. If read correctly, these clues should allow us to piece together the few minutes of chaos that followed the maar eruption. How fast was the deadly cloud of ash moving? Where did it go? What was it made of? These rare and violent eruptions have never been observed up close — at least not by anyone who lived to tell the tale — so a bit of detective work will help us fully appreciate the power of maar volcanoes, prepare for the associated hazards on Earth, and possibly even recognize their brethren on Mars.
I consult my grain size chart one last time and give my verdict: coarse. It’s painstaking work, recording grain sizes and depositional features inch by dusty inch up a cliff face, but the smallest, most subtle features are often the most important pieces of the puzzle.Menu: Ho-Ho-Home Event Info -Register Online for 2019 -Classes & Seminars -Pre-Show Workshops --Light-O-Rama Immersion 2-Day --Spotlight on RGB 1-Day --xLights 2-Day -Dinner at Joe's -Hotel Reservations -Teach a Class -Event Videos -Cancellation & Event Policies For Vendors -General Vendor Information -2019 Vendor Information -Register for a Booth Online About -What is Christmas Expo? -About Us -FAQ's -Future Expo Dates -Donation Request -Media -Christmas Expo Magazine - 2016 Contact -Privacy Policy Blog Facebook Twitter List
Holiday lighting & decorating conference
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We are the original Christmas Decorating Expo!
Christmas Expo Holiday Lighting & Decorating Conference is three days of shopping, decorating ideas and education to help light your way to your best outdoor holiday display! The Conference is held once a year on the 3rd weekend in July and changes location each year. At Christmas Expo, you can network with other holiday decorators, shop for products that you seldom find in stores, take classes to learn how to get started or how to improve your display. Christmas Expo is the best way to meet with and learn from creative DIY’ers, resourceful professionals and industry experts that you simply won’t find anywhere else. You can also chat with participants from ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight and meet with casting agents for the show!
Home Decorators • DIY’ers • Businesses • Parks • Municipalities • Gardens
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Holiday Lighting & Decorating Conference Daytona Beach, FL
Expo: July 18-20, 2019 | Pre-Show Workshops: July 15-17, 2019 Register Now!
Are you a Holiday Lighting Installer, Designer or Decorator? The holiday light installation industry is booming and we have the information to help you start a holiday light installation or holiday decorating business or expand your current business. You can increase your holiday income with independent education taught by experienced business owners. Perfect for existing businesses, or a great addition for seasonal businesses such as landscapers and window washers. Learn more What to Expect The event is for Homeowners with displays large or small; Commercial Decorators for cities, businesses, parks; Lighting Installers will find sources, supplies and education. It’s for all skill levels, all interests, newbie to advanced! Classes on DIY projects, software, music, sequencing, animation, lighting, video, hardware, techniques and more.
on DIY projects, software, music, sequencing, animation, lighting, video, hardware, techniques and more. Vendor Hall with lighting, decorations and supplies used in outdoor displays
with lighting, decorations and supplies used in outdoor displays Pre-show “immersion” workshops
Event Details The Expo is open to the public Vendor hall hours:
Thu: 12:30 – 5:00
Fri: 9:30 – 5:00
Sat: 9:30 – 4:00
Admission to Vendor hall only:
$10 pp/day at the door (does not include classes). Children under 12 admitted free to vendor hall only.
To attend classes, you must purchase a Conference registration at the Expo.
Location July 18-20, 2019 Conference
July 15-17, 2019 Pre-Show Workshops
The Plaza Resort & Spa Conference Center
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Daytona Beach, FL 32118
Hotel Reservation Information
**The Plaza is now sold out. Our overflow hotel is close and is on the beach as well. We are awaiting the reservation link and will post it as soon as it’s available.
Creating an over-the-top display is easier than you think!
SponsorsAtlus Confirms That Persona 5 and Yakuza 0 Are PlayStation Exclusives; Won’t Come to Switch or PC
Giuseppe Nelva January 3, 2017 1:43:17 PM EST
Every time a PS4 box art comes with or without one of the variations of the “exclusive” label at the top, spurious speculation on whether the game will be released on other platforms occurs, and at least for the upcoming Persona 5 and Yakuza 0, Atlus USA PR manager John Hardin decided to take the axe to the rumors, posting a clarifying message on Twitter.
Persona 5 platforms: PS3, PS4.
Yakuza 0 platforms: PS4. THAT’S. IT. No Switch. No PC. Idk about the box label, that’s a Sony thing. pic.twitter.com/8R3Qj36deA — John Hardin (@JohnLHardin) January 3, 2017
@HumanityPlague I get it, people want to hold out hope that it comes to their platform of choice. But…it’s just a box label. — John Hardin (@JohnLHardin) January 3, 2017
So there you have it, straight from the lion’s mouth: Persona 5 will be released exclusively for PS4 and PS3, while Yakuza 0 will come only for PS4, as Hardin says, “that’s it.”
Sony has been less than consistent with the use of its “PS4 exclusive” and “PS4 console exclusive” labels, and that doesn’t just apply to covers, as it happened even in trailers and promotional material. It’s probably a good rule to avoid speculating on what has been proven time and time again to be pretty much irrelevant.
Persona 5 will be released in the west for PS4 and PS3 on April 4th, sporting both Japanese and English voice acting.
On the other hand, Yakuza 0 will be released in North America and Europe only for PS4 on January 24th, losing the PS3 version that was released in Japan. It will feature only Japanese voices and English subtitles, and a definitely interesting experiment involving the preservation of the Japanese honorifics like “san” and “sama” in the English script.
If it works (and I see no reason why it wouldn’t), it might open the door for good things in localization.Esteemed feminist author and scholar Camille Paglia argued that Women’s and Gender Studies Departments should be defunded in a recent conversation with Professor Jordan Peterson.
https://twitter.com/yeyoza/status/919909423849582592
In a wide-spanning discussion with Professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto, Camille Paglia argued that Women’s and Gender Studies departments should be defunded.
“The English Department had taken a century to develop,” Paglia began. “All of a sudden, to create a department with a politicized agenda from the start taught by people without any training in that field? What should be the parameters of the field? What should be the requirements of the field? How about biology? If you are going to be discussing gender, that should be a number one requirement.”
Paglia argued that active programs in the field were thrown together out of the urgency to highlight women’s issues in the curriculum of the American academy. “The administrators wanted to solve a public relations problem. They had a situation with very few women faculty nationwide, at the time when the women’s movement had just started up. The spotlight of tension was on them. They needed women faculty fast. They needed the women’s subject on the agenda fast. So they just like, poof! ‘Let there be Women’s Studies.'”
“Now we will just hire some women, usually from English departments, and we’ll just throw them together,” she continued. “‘You invent it, you say what it is.’ That is why women’s studies got frozen at a certain point of ideology of the early 1970s.”
Paglia says that early scholars in the field rejected the notion that biology played a role in shaping gender. “I couldn’t even have a conversation with any of these women. They were hysterical about the subject of biology. They knew nothing about hormones. I probably got in fist fights over this. People were so convinced that biology had nothing whatever to do with gender differences.”
It was announced this week the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth College was shut down over a lack of funding. The college claims that most of the work done by the research will now be conducted by the school’s Women’s and Gender Studies Department.Over the course of the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to serve as producer on the Tropes vs Women in Video Games web series. During that time, I have been taken aback by the intense and often abusive reaction to the project.
This backlash, along with a number of other recent high-profile harassment incidents targeting women, has highlighted sexism in the gaming community and brought the issue to wider public and media attention.
One particularly astounding theme I’ve noticed running through online discussions surrounding these incidents has been a consistent denial that there is any real problem with the way women are treated in gaming. Despite the abundance of evidence, I’ve seen many of my fellow male gamers, in comment thread after comment thread, dismiss the issue as "no big deal" and insist that everyone is essentially treated the same.
The fact that a great number of women have been speaking out about how they experience prejudice, alienation or worse on a fairly regular basis seems to hold little weight.
We can't work to fix something unless we first see and understand its effects
It’s not all bad news though; as a result of the expanding discussion in and about gaming spaces, it’s been encouraging to see a small but growing number of male gamers who seem to genuinely want to understand the problem and be part of the solution.
Working towards solutions requires that, as male gamers, we become aware of the ways in which we unconsciously benefit from sexism. We can't work to fix something unless we first see and understand its effects. When women as a group are systematically targeted by discrimination, it means that men are elevated by default.
Must Read No girls allowed
This phenomenon is often referred to as Male Privilege. The term may sound a little bit like academic jargon, but it’s useful in helping describe the set of unearned advantages men automatically receive, and which women do not given the same social circumstances. As in the rest of society, male privilege can manifest in both overt and subtle ways inside gaming culture.
One of the luxuries of being a member of the dominant group is that the benefits afforded us often remain invisible to us. This blindness allows many men to remain blissfully unaware of what roughly half of all gamers experience on a daily basis. We have been taught and socialized not to see it and to think of our own experiences as universal. So when men, even well meaning men, hear the term male privilege it can sometimes be difficult to understand exactly how it relates to our everyday lives.
With that in mind this checklist is my attempt to identify some of the concrete benefits and bonuses my fellow male gamers and I are afforded simply by virtue of being male. I say "some of the privileges" because I’m certain that I have missed a whole host of others that remain invisible to me.
I’ve decided to chronicle only those benefits granted to men regardless of our individual actions. However, impunity for the overt sexist behavior some men engage in is also a core part of how male privilege operates.
For the purposes of this list I’m referring primarily to straight men who are not transgender. Similar lists could be created for white, straight, cis, or able-bodied privilege and there would certainly be some overlap with the conditions identified below.
Daily effects of Male Gamer Privilege
I can choose to remain completely oblivious, or indifferent to the harassment that many women face in gaming spaces. I am never told that video games or the surrounding culture is not intended for me because I am male. I can publicly post my username, gamertag or contact information online without having to fear being stalked or sexually harassed because of my gender. I will never be asked to "prove my gaming cred" simply because of my gender. If I enthusiastically express my fondness for video games no one will automatically assume I’m faking my interest just to "get attention" from other gamers. I can look at practically any gaming review site, show, blog or magazine and see the voices of people of my own gender widely represented. When I go to a gaming event or convention, I can be relatively certain that I won’t be harassed, groped, propositioned or catcalled by total strangers. I will never be asked or expected to speak for all other gamers who share my gender. I can be sure that my gaming performance (good or bad) won’t be attributed to or reflect on my gender as a whole. My gaming ability, attitude, feelings or capability will never be called into question based on unrelated natural biological functions. I can be relatively sure my thoughts about video games won’t be dismissed or attacked based solely on my tone of voice, even if I speak in an aggressive, obnoxious, crude or flippant manner. I can openly say that my favorite games are casual, odd, non-violent, artistic, or cute without fear that my opinions will reinforce a stereotype that "men are not real gamers." When purchasing most major video games in a store, chances are I will not be asked if (or assumed to be) buying it for a wife, daughter or girlfriend. The vast majority of game studios, past and present, have been led and populated primarily by people of my own gender and as such most of their products have been specifically designed to cater to my demographic. I can walk into any gaming store and see images of my gender widely represented as powerful heroes, villains and non-playable characters alike. I will almost always have the option to play a character of my gender, as most protagonists or heroes will be male by default. I do not have to carefully navigate my engagement with online communities or gaming spaces in order to avoid or mitigate the possibility of being harassed because of my gender. I probably never think about hiding my real-life gender online through my gamer-name, my avatar choice, or by muting voice-chat, out of fear of harassment resulting from my being male. When I enter an online game, I can be relatively sure I won’t be attacked or harassed when and if my real-life gender is made public If I am trash-talked or verbally berated while playing online, it will not be because I am male nor will my gender be invoked as an insult. While playing online with people I don’t know I won’t be interrogated about the size and shape of my real-life body parts, nor will I be pressured to share intimate details about my sex life for the pleasure of other players. Complete strangers generally do not send me unsolicited images of their genitalia or demand to see me naked on the basis of being a male gamer. In multiplayer games I can be pretty sure that conversations between other players will not focus on speculation about my "attractiveness" or "sexual availability" in real-life. If I choose to point out sexism in gaming, my observations will not be seen as self-serving, and will therefore be perceived as more credible and worthy of respect than those of my female counterparts, even if they are saying the exact same thing. Because it was created by a straight white male, this checklist will likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by virtually any female gamer.
This list was inspired by the original Daily Effects of White Privilege list created by Peggy McIntosh and by The Male Privilege Checklist adaptation by Barry Deutsch. As well as by science fiction author John Scalzi’s post Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.
I think we can all agree it is unjust that these and other benefits are currently enjoyed almost exclusively by men. All people, regardless of gender, should be treated with the same respect and dignity.
I want to emphasize that this list is not meant to suggest that everything is always a cakewalk for male gamers. Male critics, developers, and gamers are also at times bullied or subjected to online nastiness, but it is not based on or because of our gender. This is a critical distinction. The pattern of unearned advantage also does not mean that all men are powerful as individuals or that all women are powerless as individuals. It simply means that men in gamer culture can, on average, count on these advantages, whereas women can not.
If this list does make you feel uncomfortable, that can be a positive step towards recognizing sexism as a real problem. In order to make change we need to first acknowledge it, and then take responsibility for it so we can actively work to dismantle the parts of gaming culture that perpetuate these imbalances.
Jonathan McIntosh is a pop culture critic and transformative media maker. His work has been featured in the New York Times, LA Times, Wired, and NPR. He currently serves as producer and co-writer on the Tropes vs Women in Video Games web series.Real Madrid Striker demanding a bigger role
Morata the conqueror
Tears of goodbye from Morata at Cibeles?
It is no secret that Alvaro Morata had hoped he'd be getting more playing time by this point in his Real Madrid return, and the striker is currently weighing the option of becoming AC Milan's flagship player.
The Spaniard's future, therefore, could be back in Italy, as new owner Li Yonghong wants to lure him to lead the Rossoneri's European resurgence.
Madrid are willing to let him go at a price of 60 milion euros, and the player isn't opposed to a move that would see him grow in importance within his squad.
While Manchester United and Chelsea are also reportedly interested, the forward's prior experience in Italy means Milan is a more likely option, at least at this point in time.
While 19 goals in 42 matches isn't a bad return, Morata knows he'd be first choice at practically any other club, making a move more likely.
Curiously enough, his last goal in Italy at former club Juventus came against Milan in a Coppa Italia final.Marilyn Monroe has stolen many hearts over the years, but last Friday someone stole Marilyn, or at least a mural of the sultry actress, from the outside wall of a downtown restaurant.
The mural of Marilyn, clad only in silk bedsheets and cracking an egg into a glass, had been there just a few months, said John Watson, general manager of Floyd’s Diner, 866 Yates St.
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Local artist Paul Archer painted the mural on plywood for $3,200. It was mounted on two-by-four frames, which were left behind.
“Usually when you rip off a piece of plywood, you’d see little bits of wood here and there,” Watson said.
“But all the screws were intact — it wasn’t vandalism.”
The motive for the theft is unclear. Some people loved the mural, while others felt uncomfortable with partial nudity, Watson said.
Archer said he has been flooded with calls since the theft.
The mural was stolen because someone either loved it or hated it, Archer said. Either way, he’s getting a lot of welcome publicity about his murals, which opens up avenues for future jobs.
He’s tempted to respond to the theft with an even racier image of Monroe, “because you’re talking about an artist and somebody stealing their masterpiece fromdowntown.”
He said he’s fighting for his right to express himself in a public space in downtown Victoria.
The theft is his second step into the public eye in less than a week. He has been in Prince George doing a five-by-11-metre mural for the airport. On Friday, he and his partner chose to work in pyjama bottoms as a way to beat the heat.
“The newspaper came by and took our picture and we were on the front page in our pyjamas,” Archer said.
Victoria police are investigating the theft of the mural. Anyone with information can reach them at 250-995-4321.
smcculloch@timescolonist.comArgonauts an early surprise in CFL July 11, 2017 3:03 AM
by Ian Cameron
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Through the first three weeks of the Canadian Football League season, we have seen some surprise developments. Underdogs started the season a perfect 8-0 ATS in Weeks 1 and 2 but things leveled off in Week 3 as dogs notched a losing 1-3 ATS mark with the lone pointspread cover being the Toronto Argonauts, who won outright as a 5-point underdog against Ottawa. Most of the surprising results in the opening few weeks of the season have taken place in the East Division.
The Toronto Argonauts entered the season with a completely new coaching staff and GM to go along with a totally revamped roster on both sides of the football. They were staring at a rebuilding season according to most people but Toronto is 2-1 SU and ATS to open the campaign with both of their victories coming inside their own division against Hamilton and Ottawa. The Argos offense, led by veteran QB Ricky Ray, has played well in both of their wins and the receiving corps of veteran WR S.J. Green along with newcomers Armanti Edwards and DeVier Posey has led to a solid offense in the first three weeks, but it is the play of this rebuilt defense that has been extremely impressive.
The Argos are ranked third in the league in total yards and points allowed. The contributions to the Toronto Argos’ solid start of Marc Trestman as head coach can’t be underestimated. Trestman led the Montreal Alouettes to being a steady and consistent contender in the CFL every year and his coaching style has clearly made a positive impact to this point.
The rebuilding process in Toronto was expected to be long and painful at the start following a 5-13 season last year that resulted in a full on house cleaning, but the early returns have been very positive for the Argos in their first three games.
A surprise in the other direction in the East is the winless Ottawa Redblacks who are the defending Grey Cup champions. Ottawa is 0-2-1 SU, 1-2 ATS through three games and has not been able to play well for an entire game on both sides of the football. Ottawa’s offense was fine in two games against Calgary but they were shut down by Toronto for the most part in the second half over the weekend and the Redblacks offensive line got dominated by the Argos’ strong and aggressive pass rush.
On the other side of the ball, the Ottawa defense, which lost their best CB from last season in free agency, has had a tough time against the pass, giving up big plays in each of their first three games to Calgary QB Bo Levi Mitchell and Toronto QB Ricky Ray.
Ottawa was considered to be a team in transition on that side of the football and they have surrendered 100 points in their first three games combined and that has contributed greatly to the struggles early in the season.
Injuries have also played a part for Ottawa so far and there is some concern, even though it is still early, the Redblacks may not be able to put forth that more consistent regular season performance after they were a sub.500 team last year in the regular season but got red hot at the right time in the playoffs en route to their championship.
Hamilton was expected to be better than they’ve been so far. Starting 0-2 SU and ATS, they own the league’s worst offense and defense after two games in terms of total yards allowed. Hamilton has been outgained by a horrendous 545 yards in those two defeats. The Ticats will be looking to get in the win column next Saturday as they have their home opener against the BC Lions who have won B2B games on the road against Eastern foes and are 9-1 SU in their last 10 games against East Division opponents.
The West Division has played out more like what most people expected. Calgary, BC and Edmonton are all neck and neck atop the division as many had the Stampeders, Lions and Eskimos as the top three teams going into the season. Winnipeg is just behind that group at 1-1 while Saskatchewan is 1-2.
Calgary had a win and tie in two games against Ottawa to open the season but looked much sharper |
their freedoms, and aspired to their achievements; she badly wanted their approval and admiration as well. But she was not, or not only, a flirt; mostly, she wanted to be one of them, to compete with them on their terms. She would always relish any chance to best "the young masculinity," whom she found so often "mistaking bluster for logic." Elizabeth Cady spent her time in Troy only vaguely attentive to academic pursuits; she claimed she had "already studied everything that was taught there except French, music, and dancing." She was far more interested in debating with the local boys and gaining the adoration of girls: "I loved flattery," she admitted. Both she and the more conventionally feminine girls were happy to cast her as a heroic male figure. In one foolish escapade, she swapped her essay for the less excellent composition of one of her young admirers; discovered and disgraced, she found, decades later, that the memory could still evoke that horrible adolescent mixture of mortification and pride: the girl "put her arms around me affectionately and kissed me again and again," said, " 'Oh!... you are a hero. You went through that ordeal like a soldier,' " and announced, " 'You are so good and noble I know you will not betray me.'" And Stanton never did.
Argumentative, heroic, and self-confident, Elizabeth Cady was not particularly bold in imagining her own life. At seventeen she was home again, her formal education complete. She had no particular plans for her future — but then, girls of her class were not expected to — and for all her later calls to rebellion, she showed little inclination to forge a new path. There were, after all, only a few appropriate choices for someone like her, at least before marriage: teaching, charitable activity, domestic work, and religious enthusiasm. None appealed.
Excerpted from Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life by Lori D. Ginzberg. Copyright 2009 by Lori D. Ginzberg. Reprinted with permission from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Europe’s second largest container port, Antwerp, is introducing a blockchain pilot which can release containers faster as well as more securely and efficiently. Working with start-up T-Mining, Antwerp uses blockchain technology to reflect the many processes which involve:
shippers
carriers
terminals
forwarders
hauliers
drivers
Securely digitised, every transaction and interaction is recorded as a block on the blockchain. This does not involve any central middleman removing the opportunity for fraud.
Nico Wauters, CEO of T-Mining said: “We aim to do something about this. We have developed a very secure solution. Currently, when we want to transfer a valuable object we generally make use of a trusted intermediary to carry out the transfer. For instance, when you want to sell a house the notary not only carries out all the paperwork but also ensures that the money lands safely in your bank account while the buyer receives full title to the property, without any unpleasant surprises for either party. But this intermediary naturally does not work for free, and furthermore the additional step causes extra delay.”
The problem the blockchain pilot tries to solve
Transporting a container from point A to point B frequently involves more than 30 different parties (see above) who may be located across continents, never mind countries. There are an average of 200 interactions between the parties which execute across multiple time zones. In addition, the five largest container ships can now carry over 20,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) containers.
Participants execute many of their interactions by e-mail, phone and even (still) by fax. Paperwork accounts for up to half of the cost of container transport. Each shipping company and container port have their own container management solution. A lot of money is spent each year maintaining the integration between these systems. There is also a need to integrate with the customs systems run by governments around the world. This adds up and becomes a complex problem which exposes containers to loss, thievery or misuse. What allows containers to be lost or used by criminal enterprises? The complexity of the paper chain. Blockchain offers an irrefutable digital footprint around each container.
Changing the economics
A different way to assess this is to examine the Maersk interest in blockchain. Maersk, as one of the world’s top shipping companies, seeks competitive advantage. It wants to reduce the time taken to process containers and simplify the paper chain. Blockchain creates a secure system where access can be restricted to limit the risk of criminals identifying and targeting containers. Each containers blockchain ID is updated as it is moved. This means that there is a highly trusted record of where the container is.
Importantly, it is not possible to alter a block on the chain as that would invalidate every block dependent upon it. This means that fraudsters and hackers cannot go back into the history of a container and make it ‘disappear’.
As Maersk is doing and Antwerp is piloting, blockchain offers an irrefutable digital footprint around each container. As a secure system access can be restricted to limit the risk of criminals identifying and targeting containers. Each container’s blockchain ID is updated as it is moved. This means that there is a highly trusted record of where the container is.
This is not the only project where a port is looking at blockchain. In Dubai the government has set out a blockchain plan for Dubai Customs and Dubai Trade. It is also expanding its plans to include banks, shipping companies and airlines. It expects this to speed up the transit of containers through the country and deliver massively cost reductions.
Antwerp port
With an annual volume of more than 208 million tonnes of maritime freight handled, the presence of the largest petrochemical cluster in Europe and extensive storage capacity, the Port of Antwerp is the largest integrated maritime, logistics and industrial platform in Europe.
The port accommodates the largest of container ships, the so-called Ultra Large Container Ships (ULCS). At its Deurganckdock, Antwerp can serve container vessels with a draught up to 16.0 metres travelling up-river and 15.2 metres down-river. Every terminal has a tri-modal access. This delivers fast and efficient barge, rail and road transport to and from the European hinterland.
The port possesses a modern infrastructure, facilities and equipment. Semi-automated operations and highly trained personnel contribute to productivity of up to 40 crane movements per hour per crane on average. This, Antwerp claims, is by far the highest productivity in Europe. These container terminals implement high standards of security and control, hence the blockchain interest. With more control comes less ‘wastage’ (or avoidable costs, whether criminal participation or bureaucracy.
The T-Mining approach in Antwerp
T-Mining is an Antwerp start-up. It has developed a solution for the widely recognised problem summarised above (though ET does not know which variant of the technology T-Mining chose – which may yet matter as the concluding section below describes).
When a container arrives in Antwerp’s port a truck driver collects it from the terminal. The appropriate person requires a PIN code to ensure he or she picks up the correct container. But several parties may receive this PIN code. This is a risk. Somebody with malign intentions can copy the PIN code. If this happens the consequences will cause problems and costs.
The Antwerp port blockchain solution overcomes these issues. It enables safer and faster transfer of valuable objects, digitally and without a middleman. With the T-mining blockchain platform, the right truck driver receives clearance to collect one particular container. There is no possibility of the process being intercepted. Furthermore, the T-Mining blockchain platform exploits the distributed network so that a transaction can go ahead only if there is consensus among all participating parties. This prevents attempts at fraud or undesired manipulations.
The pilot project is currently running in the port of Antwerp albeit with a limited number of parties. The intention is to test whether all works smoothly in practice before expanding. Thanks to involvement by the City of Antwerp there is a link to an office in Singapore.
What does it mean?
Conceptually, what Antwerp is doing with T-Mining and blockchain makes sense. All the problems described are common to the ‘container industry’ with its many and geographically diverse participants. Yet there are so many other competing initiatives originating in different parts of the container value chain. For example, ET alone has written about Dubai, Bogotá and SEB (as well as Maersk) and their use of blockchains in this arena.
The are several apparent conclusions to draw:
everyone seems agreed blockchain is the solution
no-one has spent much time on blockchain interoperation (what some might called ‘hybrid-blockchain)– even if many solutions will compete.
If blockchains interoperate there will not be a problem. But this requires proof. There are many unanswered questions about interoperability between blockchain projects on the same platform. In addition we are only just seeing the two main blockchain initiatives, Hyperledger and Ethereum, looking at interoperating with each other.
Blockchain solutions for the shipping industry will start by competing. The likes Dubai or Antwerp hope to gaining competitive advantage. But if every customer and shipper has to work with multiple different blockchains, which don’t interoperate they will, quite reasonably, resist. Expect the coming years to:
show that blockchain technology can deliver
demonstrate that multiple, incompatible blockchains frustrate (namely cost reduction and competitive advantage).
open up the debate about what ‘hybrid-blockchain’ means and what it might look like.
.President Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit on Monday morning to discuss the Syrian crisis, in what the UK Sun described as a “tense standoff,” with Obama “stony-faced” after a humiliating snub by the Chinese hosts.
Among other things, the Chinese did not roll a stairway up to Obama’s plane. Once Obama’s retinue did manage to hit the tarmac, they were harassed by a swarm of angry Chinese officials, shouting things like “This is our country! This is our airport!” China denied this was a deliberate effort to make Obama look bad, and Obama is pretending to believe them, which is all part of China’s strategy to make him look small and weak.
After meeting with Putin, Obama described their 90-minute talk as “candid,” “blunt,” and “productive” to CNN. He said Syria, Ukraine, and Russian hacking mischief against U.S. institutions were the primary topics of conversation.
“We have had some productive conversations about what a real cessation of hostilities would look like that would allow us both… to focus our attention on common enemies,” Obama said.
Despite the President’s talk of “productive conversations,” the official negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have collapsed, although CNN quotes an unnamed U.S. official who hoped negotiations would resume in the coming days.
“It’s clear now what our respective positions are,” the official said, without dwelling on the fact that such clarity is the reason the Kerry-Lavrov talks fell apart. The official also admitted that Obama and Putin would not be directly involved in such negotiations, so their ostensibly cordial and productive chat at the G20 summit was purely symbolic.
The “respective positions” of the U.S. and Russia are that the former wants Syrian dictator Bashar Assad removed from power, but the latter does not, and Russia is holding all the cards in Syria right now.
Obama tacitly admitted as much by telling CNN, “Our conversations with the Russians are key because, if it were not for the Russians, then Assad and the regime would not be able to sustain its offensive.”
The Obama Administration is left effectively begging Russia to think about hustling Assad out of Damascus, so the two super-powers and their allies can focus on destroying the Islamic State. Russia and Syria respond that the U.S. should abandon its unrealistic hopes of deposing Assad and join forces with them to pulverize all “terrorist” forces in Syria, a term whose definition neither begins, nor ends, with the Islamic State.
Putin’s Russia is the ultimate refutation of Obama’s hideously dangerous belief that he can solve geopolitical crises by giving speeches, or sneering that global villains are lurking on the “wrong side of history.”
As CNN observes, “Putin’s persistent support for the Syrian regime, Moscow’s moves in Ukraine and the charge that Russia may be meddling in the US presidential contest have built a deeply antagonistic dynamic between the two leaders.”
That would be the same Vladimir Putin that Obama thoughtlessly mocked his 2012 rival Mitt Romney for portraying as a major threat to American interests, taunting that the Eighties were on the line for Romney and wanted their foreign policy back.
NBC News reports that Obama complained about “problems with cyber-intrusion with Russia in the past,” and warned Putin he didn’t want to see cyber-warfare escalate into a “wild, wild west” shootout. Doesn’t anyone in this Administration understand that a wild, wild West is exactly what Russia wants?
Russia is partnered with Iran, which still hates the United States, despite Obama’s dogged, dishonest efforts to make Iran the ascendant regional power, no matter what the American people or their Congressional representatives think about it. America’s regional allies are angry and demoralized after Obama’s concessions to Iran, which were repaid with a string of humiliations for the U.S. Russia is poised to deliver Syria to Assad, while America’s Syrian allies have to worry about other nominal American allies killing them.
Russia is even beginning to get cozy with NATO member Turkey, with the blessing of the Obama Administration, which doesn’t seem to understand how angry the regime of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan became with the U.S. government, after July’s unsuccessful coup attempt.
Obama complained about “gaps of trust” between himself and Putin to CNN. The problem is that Obama views those gaps of trust as a dismaying surprise. Putin can only shake his head in amusement as the Obama Administration tries, one more time, to talk Russia out of pursuing its strategic interests, with all of its forces aligned for success in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere.Rényi's Parking Constants
Given the closed interval with, let one-dimensional "cars" of unit length be parked randomly on the interval. The mean number of cars which can fit (without overlapping!) satisfies
(1)
The mean density of the cars for large is
(2) (3) (4)
(OEIS A050996). While the inner integral can be done analytically,
(5) (6)
where is the Euler-Mascheroni constant and is the incomplete gamma function, it is not known how to do the outer one
(7) (8) (9)
where is the exponential integral. The slowly converging series expansion for the integrand is given by
(10)
(OEIS A050994 and A050995).
In addition,
(11)
for all (Rényi 1958), which was strengthened by Dvoretzky and Robbins (1964) to
(12)
Dvoretzky and Robbins (1964) also proved that
(13)
Let be the variance of the number of cars, then Dvoretzky and Robbins (1964) and Mannion (1964) showed that
(14) (15) (16)
(OEIS A086245), where
(17) (18)
and the numerical value is due to Blaisdell and Solomon (1970). Dvoretzky and Robbins (1964) also proved that
(19)
and that
(20)
Palasti (1960) conjectured that in two dimensions,
(21)
but this has not yet been proven or disproven (Finch 2003).V. Stiviano Rap Sheet with 6 Aliases Different Races
V. Stiviano -- Rap Sheet with 6 Aliases, Different Races
EXCLUSIVE
-- who is currently under investigation for extortion -- is no stranger to the criminal justice system. She's been arrested for at least 4 crimes and has used 5 aliases, and she's a true chameleon, changing her race from crime to crime.-- Stiviano was arrested by LAPD for petty theft. The official documents -- obtained by TMZ -- show she was a 5'4" 128 lb Hispanic woman named. She was convicted and placed on probation.-- Stiviano was arrested by Santa Monica PD for another petty theft and felony burglary. Her name was Vanessa Maria Perez (same as the first) but this time she's taller and thinner -- a 5'8" 115 lb Hispanic woman.-- Stiviano was arrested by LAPD for possession of a controlled substance -- a felony. This time she's Vanessa Maria Perez again, but she's black, weighing in at 5'7" and 125 lbs.-- Stiviano was busted by CHP for DUI. This time she was booked as, a 5'7" 110 lb black woman. We don't know the disposition.In addition to Vanness Maria Perez and Monica Gallegos, court records show she also used the namesand. She's currently going by V. Stiviano.Now it's clear whywas so confused about her race in the recording.Priests may be forced to divulge confessions
Updated
Catholic priests could be ordered to report crimes revealed to them in private confessions, under radical new proposals to be considered by a Victorian parliamentary inquiry.
The suggestion is part of a number of submissions to be considered by the inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious groups.
But Jesuit and human rights lawyer Father Frank Brennan says priests can never reveal secrets of the confessional, and he would rather go to jail than violate the trust of those who come to confession.
The Victorian Family and Community Development Committee has released a submission guide on its Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations.
The guide raises the prospect of extending mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse to include confessional, asking: "To what extent should the reporting of suspicions of abuse be circumscribed by laws, customs and ethical codes of religions?".
But Father Brennan says while priests in general should pass on abuse allegations, this does not apply to anything revealed during a confession.
Questions raised by submissions guide: 13.1 In what ways are religious laws and procedures used to address abuse within the organisation? 13.2 Have internal systems of investigation discouraged reporting of criminal acts to the police? 13.3 Have internal systems of redress discouraged or prevented civil legal action being taken by victims? 13.4 Under what circumstances is it appropriate for religious organisations to apply internal sanctions to offenders, such as expulsion or laicisation [defrocking]? 13.5 Have the legal structures used by religious bodies to manage their affairs and their assets acted to discourage or prevent civil legal action 13.7 To what extent should the reporting of suspicions of abuse be circumscribed by laws, customs and ethical codes of religions? (For example, should the sacrament of the Catholic confessional remain sacrosanct in these circumstances?) 13.8 What consequences may flow from the extension of mandatory reporting to ministers of religion?
"I'd have to say as a priest if I was told something strictly under the seal of the confessional, I would not reveal it, but I would readily concede if it were not under the strict seal of the confessional, then the same rule should apply to me as to any other citizen," he said.
Father Brennan told the ABC's 7.30 program he would rather go to jail than reveal anything said in a private confession.
"In confession I think that's quite a simple case. No matter what was confessed to me in confession I am not at liberty to disclose that to anybody," he said.
"And yes, as a priest, I would agree to going to jail rather than to disclose what was revealed to me in confession."
Independent inquiry
Fr Brennan made the comments while discussing the decision by the Catholic Church to launch an independent inquiry into the way child abuse allegations were dealt with in two New South Wales Catholic dioceses.
The inquiry, to be headed up by former Federal Court judge Antony Whitlam QC, will investigation allegations revolving around a New South Wales priest, Father F, who allegedly abused a number of altar boys in the 1980s.
Four Corners recently revealed the accused priest made admissions to three senior priests about his actions, but they never referred the matter to police.
In a joint statement, the Bishop of Armidale Michael Kennedy and the Bishop of Parramatta Anthony Fisher yesterday said the inquiry would look at the processes around Father F.
The statement says the inquiry does not replace any investigations being done by police or other authorities.
Fr Brennan says he is hopeful the inquiry will address the issue of when priests should pass on information.
"Well presumably Tony Whitlam will show up where there's room in terms of discovering the facts of what's gone on with these unfortunate cases. I think one of the uncertain areas is particularly the area of: when do you report things to police," he said.
Father Kevin Burke, the parish priest for Our Lady Help of Christians in Eltham, has told ABC Breakfast anonymity is necessary to encourage people to confess their sins.
"I think the law says we wouldn't do anything to identify the person or the sin so that people feel safe or confident in approaching us... that whatever they say, it will stay within the sacredness of that sacrament."
And he says it is likely that most priests, including himself, would ignore any directives to pass on the information.
"I suppose it's up to them to look at all possible options, but I don't think that would be feasible," he said.
"I think every Catholic priest would treat that matter as sacred and sacrosanct and wouldn't go along with any direction to reveal it."
Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu agrees confessions should remain confidential and says a recent inquiry into child protection has already dismissed the idea.
"The Cummins Report addressed this issue. And Phillip Cummins, Dorothy Scott and Bill Scales all concluded that the sanctity of the confessional should remain," he said.
"I think that's a powerful argument but the parliamentary inquiry will no doubt have an opportunity to look at this issue as well."
Topics: child-abuse, community-and-society, catholic, religion-and-beliefs, australia, vic
First postedTHE more parents talk to their children, the faster those children’s vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. That might seem blindingly obvious, but it took until 1995 for science to show just how early in life the difference begins to matter. In that year Betty Hart and Todd Risley of the University of Kansas published the results of a decade-long study in which they had looked at how, and how much, 42 families in Kansas City conversed at home. Dr Hart and Dr Risley found a close correlation between the number of words a child’s parents had spoken to him by the time he was three and his academic success at the age of nine. At three, children born into professional families had heard 30m more words than those from a poorer background.
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This observation has profound implications for policies about babies and their parents. It suggests that sending children to “pre-school” (nurseries or kindergartens) at the age of four—a favoured step among policymakers—comes too late to compensate for educational shortcomings at home. Happily, understanding of how children’s vocabularies develop is growing, as several presentations at this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed.
One of the most striking revelations came from Anne Fernald of Stanford University, who has found that the disparity appears well before a child is three. Even at the tender age of 18 months, when most toddlers speak only a dozen words, those from disadvantaged families are several months behind other, more favoured children. Indeed, Dr Fernald thinks the differentiation starts at birth.
She measures how quickly toddlers process language by sitting them on their mothers’ laps and showing them two images; a dog and a ball, say. A recorded voice tells the toddler to look at the ball while a camera records his reaction. This lets Dr Fernald note the moment the child’s gaze begins shifting towards the correct image. At 18 months, toddlers from better-off backgrounds can identify the correct object in 750 milliseconds—200 milliseconds faster than those from poorer families. This, says Dr Fernald, is a huge difference.
Mind the gap
The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month disparity in the language-processing skills and vocabulary of the two groups. It is easy to see how this might happen. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not.
It is also now clear from Dr Fernald’s work that words spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Plonking children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato.
The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University told the meeting how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with existing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three there will be about 1,000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child’s experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory of the child’s life.
Fortunately, taciturnity can be easily fixed. Telling parents is the first step: many who volunteered themselves and their children for study did not know they could help their babies do well simply by speaking to them.
There are tools that can help, as well. One such is a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) device. It is like a pedometer, but keeps track of words, not steps, by analysing the speech children hear. It was originally developed as a prop for research, but parents kept asking for the data it recorded and researchers thus realised it could also serve as a spur. Parents use it to monitor, and improve, their patterns of speech, much as a pedometer-wearing couch potato might try to reach 10,000 steps a day, say.
A recent study by Dana Suskind shows how promising this approach is. Dr Suskind is a paediatric surgeon in Chicago. She got interested in the field while monitoring children whom she had fitted with artificial cochleas, to treat deafness.
Her new study shows that the use of a LENA device, combined with a one-off home visit to give parents advice, produces a 32% increase in the number of words a child hears per hour after six weeks. Dr Suskind’s Thirty Million Words Initiative (named after Dr Hart’s and Dr Risley’s original finding) is now using LENA devices and weekly home visits to improve the linguistic diet of children in Chicago. Parents are taught to make the words they serve up more enriching. For example, instead of telling a child, “Put your shoes on,” one might say instead, “It is time to go out. What do we have to do?”
Other groups are trying similar approaches. In Providence, Rhode Island, Angel Taveras, the mayor, has started a project that uses LENA devices to improve the vocabularies of children in pre-school. Meanwhile, in Chicago and several other places, nurses who visit mothers’ homes to give them advice on health and nutrition also encourage them to chat to their children and read to them aloud. Such interventions are effective and not particularly expensive.
In January Barack Obama urged Congress and state governments to make high-quality pre-schools available to every four-year-old. He is knocking on an open door. This financial year 30 states and the District of Columbia have increased spending on pre-schools. Nationally, this amounts to an increase of 6.9%.
That is a good thing. Pre-school programmes are known to develop children’s numeracy, social skills and (as the term “pre-school” suggests) readiness for school. But they do not deal with the gap in much earlier development that Dr Fernald, Dr Noble, Dr Suskind and others have identified. And it is this gap, more than a year’s pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child’s chances for the rest of his life.Posted on August 18, 2012
First Romney Weekly Podcast Hammers Obama Over Medicare
MITT ROMNEY: This November, America will make a choice about the direction we want to go as a country – and nowhere is that choice clearer than on the issue of Medicare.
President Obama’s healthcare law raided $716 billion from the Medicare trust fund. And he did that to finance his takeover of the healthcare system.
Now if that wasn’t bad enough, his healthcare law also put in place a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats and gave them the power to make additional cuts to Medicare without even having to get approval from Congress. This means they could deny elderly Americans the care they’ve worked for their entire lives – all because President Obama trusts bureaucrats more than he trusts seniors and their doctors.
And here’s one more troubling aspect of all this: According to independent, non-partisan scorekeepers, these cuts the President’s people will take to Medicare won’t prevent it from going bankrupt: Experts estimate that Medicare’s trust funds will be exhausted just twelve short years from now.
Now there is good news, and that is there’s a better approach. Last November, I released a plan to save and strengthen Medicare – without making any changes for those that are 55 years of age and older. And then shortly after that, my running mate, Paul Ryan, he worked in a bipartisan way to advance a nearly identical series of reforms in Congress.
Now that he and I have teamed up, we’re going to ensure that seniors are protected from President Obama’s reckless actions. We’re going to take our solutions all the way to the White House.
We are going to start by repealing Obamacare. That law is threatening seniors, and it is a maze of new federal mandates, and taxes, and penalties that’s hampering job creation.
Once the partisan roadblock is removed, we can work with leaders from both parties to advance real solutions to save Medicare.
The Romney-Ryan plan will make no changes to Medicare for those that are retired or near retirement. And if we act soon, we can reorient our policies without asking seniors to reorganize their lives.
For younger Americans, we are going to strengthen Medicare by providing future retirees with federal financial support and letting them choose from a list of Medicare-approved coverage plans, including a traditional Medicare option.
The amount of financial support that a person would get would be adjusted based on their income; more help would go to the poor or the sick -- and less help would go to those that are financially better off. It would be based on how much the plans cost so that seniors always have access to affordable, quality coverage. And no senior could ever be denied coverage for any reason.
The Romney-Ryan plan preserves and protects Medicare – and it guarantees the future of the program by forcing insurance companies to compete for business. Choice and competition will drive costs down and make quality better, resulting in more affordable, better care for our seniors.
We’ve got to save this critical program. You paid into it, and you’ve earned it. I think it’s outrageous that the President took $716 billion out of the Medicare trust fund to pay for Obamacare. No President should put in jeopardy your benefits. And no board of bureaucrats should ever be empowered to make decisions that could deny you the kind of care that you deserve.
This November, I hope you will reject President Obama’s cuts to Medicare. And I hope you will choose Paul Ryan and me to protect health and retirement security, to promote prosperity, and restore our economic growth.Dream Job Interrupted: Is the Job of the Future Creating an Unsatisfied Generation?
Garreth Dottin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 16, 2017
Eleanor Doughty
Tech is touted as the future of the economy. A young engineer learns quickly what many engineers learn later. Are there questions to be raised about the career of the future?
In May 2016, at around 2 PM in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Mo, whose full name remains undisclosed for privacy reasons, just finished lifting weights for the second time during the work day. His ford mustang is parked right outside — his dream car. But Mo isn’t a retired businessman or a stay at home dad, he’s a millennial engineer.
He works remote and he should be typing away, programming or building out his eco-startup’s app. But he rarely does. Most days he plans trips to the Dominican Republic, goes climbing, works out twice a day, and does just about everything but programming.
When we first met years ago in California, I’d seen few engineers as gifted as Mo. The type of learner that’s frustratingly perceptive and fast. He’s what a technical recruiter, behind close doors, calls “match fit”. He’s intuitive, quick and sociable. But how did a gifted engineer, become so disinterested in his craft so early?
It would be easy to write off Mo’s situation as an isolated example of disillusioned youth. But a recent poll done by EE Times, seems to confirm his sentiment as engineers were “four times less likely than average Americans to be completely satisfied with their jobs”. Perhaps if this trend were brewing among doctors or police officers, it would be looked on as a national concern. But instead a new more diverse wave of engineers enters the field and slowly their discontent grows.
“Nobody on my team talks to each other, we don’t know each other”
Everyone from CEO’s to academics, tout the need for a new generation of engineers. It seems that popular culture has burned away the image of the geeky nerd with oversized glasses and replaced it with millennial icons like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Just as finance was the field of the 80’s and 90’s for promising careers and high paying opportunities, tech has fulfilled a similar role for millennials. Between 2006 and 2013, a study on the Wharton School of Business concluded that applicants for its finance sector dropped from 26% to 13% and had doubled in its tech field. Schools like Harvard Business School have found similar results. Yet what goes unreported is that the new recruits are a more diverse bunch. As engineering has grown more mainstream, it’s attracted a more sociable crowd. Jason Kent, a senior engineer at Three Parameters Plus in Portland, Oregon, described the problem:
“Many early career engineers are required to establish a close, meaningful relationship with their computer. More extroverted science/engineering professionals may become frustrated with the relative lack of communication, and seek a more fulfilling career.”
While talking with Mo on the subject, he echoed a similar sentiment on that realization. “Nobody on my team talks to each other, we don’t know each other” Mo said. He recalled the moment he had an epiphany while watching his sociable roommate.
Mo looked on as his roommate, a sales associate at an energy firm, craft-fully spun a customer on the phone. He bounced from the grand vision of the company to the minutiae of the deal, all while trickling in his sour humor.
After watching the performance, Mo recalled asking, somewhat stunned: “How’d you do that?” Mo’s roommate said that while Mo was skilled in talking to computers, his gift was with people, a realization that floored Mo. It kicked off a search for something outside brief vacations, trips to the gym, or a career in engineering.
The idea of the socially inept engineer whose strongest relationship is with their computer is laughable to most and is a mainstream comedy trope. Shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and HBO’s “Silicon Valley” have made big business of the prototypical nerd and their social maladies. In “Silicon Valley”, characters like Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti stumble from one interaction to the next. “Big Head” is unable to talk with everyone from managers to exotic strippers. His unhappiness and ineptitude are confused for brilliance as he’s pushed further up the corporate chain.
While these shows are at the forefront of prestige television and ratings, they obscure the underlying message — that millions of young people are moving into a career that seems to churn out the unhappiest people.
For Mo, simply being an engineer, skirting around his work, and aimlessly living in New Jersey wasn’t enough. He pushed back. Mo described it as “I had so much free time it got to my head, not knowing what to do with my life.” He was at a standstill and like many other young people, he stumbled into his next move. But unlike most, he got lucky. Through a friend of a friend, Mo heard about a new program, Escape the City, and applied, making the deadline by three hours.
Mo wasn’t the only engineer I talked to that echoed the sense of a muted voice. Scott Slatt, a fellow program attendee and Facebook engineer, had an epiphany of his own. Revered as the pinnacle for any engineer, Facebook should have been the place where Slatt’s career took a turn toward fulfillment. But just as it would happen at his previous companies, Slatt would bring up a concern, and weeks would go by with it unnoticed and the small product concerns he had unearthed would turn into full-scale problems.
Within a year he would leave Facebook, and when asked whether he left Facebook because he didn’t like it, he retorted, “Actually, it was the best job I ever had, but it still was not a fit.”
Mo and Slatt would later meet in Escape the City’s inaugural class. Talking with the program’s co-founder, it feels as if it were concocted by adventurists hell-bent on finding a way out of office life. With a Silicon Valley–esque story, the program started as an infrequent meet-up by two British consultants. Co-founder, Dominic Jackman, said that after a few years in their management consulting careers, they felt they were “sleepwalking through their career.” Seven years and 250,000 members later, they are re-launching in New York.
With activities like “Cake Failure” — rewarding students with cake for admitting failure — it’s hard to ignore the spirit of the program.Talking to Mo, other engineers and the program’s founder, all has an air of New Age optimism and the sense that mere motivation and cooperation can overcome the shallowness of corporatism or the endless grind of the startup.
And while the program is still nascent, for Mo and many of Escape The City’s early participants, it a path previously unthought and unheard of. Mo was extremely young, only 23, to make the realization that he needed a more sociable profession but in cities like New York it’s easy to see how these programs will quickly |
the Bible, not in spite of it. The Bible talks extensively about the qualifications for a pastor, most directly in the books of Titus and 1 Timothy. But even though it lists more than a dozen requirements from those who should hold that office, it does not list anything resembling a political requirement.
In fact, the Apostle Peter in his first epistle says that pastors should be examples to their flocks. He does this just three chapters after he tells the faithful to “honor the emperor.” This does not sound very extreme to modern readers, but a first century audience would know that the emperor was known for approving mass murder of the Jewish people.
As I pointed out in my book, A Faith of Our Own, just before Christ’s birth, Roman armies rolled through Galilee, burning down villages and killing innocents. Any who resisted their rule were tortured and often executed to deter mass rebellion. Sometime around or after Jesus’ birth, the Roman general Varus gathered the rebels in and around Jesus’ hometown and crucified about two thousand men.
Yet, Peter told believers to honor this emperor? Maybe Wilson thinks the surly apostle should have resigned his post too.
By all accounts, Doug Wilson jumped the shark a long time ago.
He expressed disturbing views on slavery in his pamphlet “Southern Slavery, As it Was.” Speaking fondly of the “unexpected blessings” of slavery, Wilson said, “slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.”
In 2005, Wilson also insinuated that gays and lesbians could be executed by law in some circumstances:
This is what happens when people comb through my words without reading them. “Yes, they will say, but notice that even if you don’t believe in the death penalty for homosexual behavior in all circumstances, you have (by implication) said that there could be occasions when it is called for. Admit it!” Okay, I admit it.
As support, he cited Leviticus 20:13, which states that those who commit sexual acts with someone of the same gender should be put to death.
“I also believe that the law of the Old Testament was the model for our common law system,” Wilson commented, “and our system should work in the same way.”
He added that “killing homosexuals is pretty much a non-priority for me” since AIDS is claiming so many lives in the LGBTQ community.
These comments are only the tip of the outrageous iceberg that is Doug Wilson’s public record.
While there is not a political requirement for pastors in scripture, the Bible does say that they should not be quarrelsome, but peacemakers, self-controlled, gentle, humble, and respectable. Given these requirements and the comments above, who do you think should be penning a resignation letter right now?When I hear the word "diorama," the first thing I think of is Mr. Mack’s fifth grade class and painting hills and grass and clouds and a fence into a shoebox and making little cardboard cut outs of Lassie and the boy she loved. God, I hated that stuff.
The second thing I think of is a place like the Peabody Museum in New Haven and their incredibly, obsessively, over-the-toply detailed dioramas of the plant and wildlife of Connecticut.
But that’s not all there is to dioramas.
There are 70-year-old dioramas that are used for forensics training. There are brand new, futuristic, post-apocalyptic dioramas that are photographed and then disposed of.
There’s a funeral home that builds full-sized dioramas for their wakes. There’s The Washington Post’s annual Peeps Diorama Contest for Easter.
This hour, we take an up-close look at all the newest diorama technology, all the newest new diorama news, all the controversy in the world of dioramas.
GUESTS:
Michael Anderson – Preparator at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History
– Preparator at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History Bruce Goldfarb – Executive Assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland
– Executive Assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland Emily Graslie – Chief Curiosity Correspondent at The Field Museum and writer and host of The Brain Scoop
– Chief Curiosity Correspondent at The Field Museum and writer and host of The Brain Scoop Lori Nix – Photographer and sculptor
Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.California County Pushes Drugmakers To Pay For Pill Waste
Enlarge this image toggle caption iStockphoto iStockphoto
The leftover prescription drugs you have around your house are at the center of a battle between small government and big pharmaceutical companies.
The immediate aim is to have the pharmaceutical companies take care of disposing of extra drugs. But Alameda County in northern California wants to make manufacturers think about the life cycles of their products — from their creation to what happens when they're no longer needed.
Mary Hill has been accumulating prescription drugs in her Oakland office. A social service coordinator at a retirement home, Hill has been storing leftover drugs from residents who have died or don't know how to get rid of them safely.
"I have here morphine from people who have cancer. I have Vicodin and methadone," says Hill, while rummaging through two bags of pill bottles and containers.
Hill doesn't want the drugs to get into the hands of recreational users, or into drinking water. Her office has no easy way to dispose of them. If she drives away with the drugs, she could be stopped by police for possession of drugs that don't belong to her.
Alameda County has a prescription drug disposal program. There are a couple dozen locations, but some people don't think that's enough.
"Our program that's in place just isn't extensive enough. It needs to be much more convenient," says Nate Miley, an Alameda County supervisor. He proposed a county ordinance that requires drugmakers to design and pay for a comprehensive drug take-back program.
And, he says, the wrong people are paying for it.
"This is not something taxpayers should be paying for," says Miley. "It seems like when products have reached their life cycle, it should be the responsibility of the manufacturers to have a way of properly disposing of those products."
Alameda County's ordinance creates the first drug take-back program in the country that puts the responsibility squarely on companies. States and the federal government have considered similar measures, but none has passed.
"We can't wait for Sacramento. We can't wait for the federal government," says Miley. "We're hoping that other counties will see what we've done and have the courage to follow our lead."
In fact, some California counties are considering similar laws. In Seattle, the King County council has passed an ordinance like Alameda's.
Pharmaceutical companies are noticing. "A waste disposal authority is something that's not in the institutional competence of manufacturers," says Mit Spears, general counsel for the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.
The trade group challenged the constitutionality of the Alameda County ordinance in federal court, and lost. Now the drug companies have appealed. Now the pharmaceutical industry is challenging the King County law, too.
"Local governments have been in the waste disposal business for a long, long time and... they know more about how to take care of their citizens and what the needs are," says Spears.
He says PhRMA isn't opposed to take-back programs. But if pharmaceutical companies have to pay for them, the costs will be passed onto consumers.
"We think it's unfair to basically put upon a Medicaid or Medicare beneficiary in Tennessee a higher cost on their product so that we to pay for a state-of-the-art take-back program in Alameda [County], California," says Spears.
Spears says PhRMA questions whether county governments can regulate interstate commerce.
But Heidi Sanborn of the California Product Stewardship Council says the discussion should focus on responsibility.
Whether it's electronics, pharmaceuticals or other consumer products, Sanborn says pushing manufacturers to be responsible for their waste makes them rethink production.
"If they have an economic incentive that drives them to redesign and rethink the product, what it's made out of, how it works, how long it lasts, then we'll see hopefully greener design," says Sanborn.
Pharmaceutical companies must deliver a safe drug disposal plan to Alameda County this May.
In the meantime, California lawmakers will look at a state proposal to force the industry to pay for its waste.Our online bookshop stocks hundreds of the most interesting books about anarchism around — and we also have a physical bookshop (see bottom of page).
Freedom is currently fundraising to help rebuild and improve the building at 84b, which hosts a number of anarchist groups. Find out more here.
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Canning’s daughter, 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, ended her life after her reported rape was photographed and disseminated on social media, after she was tormented by her classmates and dismissed by the police. “They made her feel like she didn’t matter, like she didn’t count,” Canning told me in an interview from his home in Halifax this week. Now, nearly three years after this too-familiar modern nightmare began at a small house party in their quiet Canadian city, Rehtaeh’s family is battling a judge’s order that bans the nation’s media – and even its citizens – from printing her name. Canning, who runs a blog dedicated to his late daughter, says, “We’re left holding onto the voice of our daughter, who has died, and we hope to keep her voice alive – and they’re not even letting us do that.”
Rehtaeh was one of several young women whose stories of sexual assault have gripped the world over the last few years after their tragic stories went viral. Shunned by peers and wronged by school administrations and law enforcement that did almost nothing to help them, these teenagers became international symbols as social media outrage and a growing movement against rape culture took up their cause. In the US, these places – like Steubenville in Ohio and Maryville in Missouri – aren’t just small towns anymore; they are part of a lurid vocabulary of a nation that has seen so much about teens, rape and consent, yet done too little.
But when the tweets recede and the Facebook shares cease to swell, the families of these young women are still there, fighting for some semblance of justice that doesn’t ever seem to arrive. These mothers and fathers are working to change the culture that so wronged their children, so that maybe, some day soon, they can offer the next victim a wave of hope.
“People say you’re so courageous,” Larry Pott tells me. “But our daughter is dead. We’re the surviving victims.”
Audrie Pott (right) with her grandmother, father, stepmother, brother and younger twin sisters. ‘Daddy,’ one of them recently asked Larry Pott, ‘why don’t girls ever assault anybody?’ Photograph: Courtesy of the Pott family
Almost immediately after Pott’s 15-year-old daughter, Audrie, was sexually assaulted at a party in Silicon Valley, California, her assailants – teenage classmates – spread photos of the attack around school. The California teen had been passed out, and woke up with her shorts off and her body covered in Sharpie pen scribbles. On Facebook, Pott despaired, “The whole school knows... I have a reputation I can never get rid of... my life is ruined.” Eight days after the attack, Audrie – a gifted artist and singer who was part of the only middle school band to march at President Obama’s 2008 inauguration – took her own life.
Audrie’s parents – her father Lawrence, her mother Sheila, and her stepmother Lisa – started speaking out even though their grief was still fresh. The first time I saw Larry Pott, he was speaking out, on camera at a press conference, against what he called the “sexual assault and bullying epidemic”. Today, he and the rest of the Pott family seem torn about this week’s signature by California governor Jerry Brown of “Audrie’s Law” – legislation that will increase the punishment for juveniles convicted of sexually assaulting unconscious victims, mandate sex-offender treatment and allow public access to juvenile court hearings in these kind of cases.
“When everything is done in a secret courtroom, there is no accountability,” Pott told me on Wednesday. “There seems to be this unalienable right, that I don’t understand, that if you’re ever assaulted by a juvenile, you can never let anyone know who they are.”
Audrie’s attackers – who pled guilty – were given unimaginably light sentences by the court: Two young men got 30 days in juvenile detention and one was given 45 days. They served some of their time on the weekends.
Sheila Pott, Audrie’s mother, expressed disappointment that California legislators were forced to remove any kind of minimum sentencing from the law. “We’re happy that the current legislation provides more accountability to victims’ rights,” she says. “But we still feel there is more work to be done to implement consequences for this type of criminal behavior.”
The Royal Canadian Mounties re-opened an investigation after what they described as new and credible information. By the time evidence was sufficient to prosecute, Rehtaeh Parsons was already gone. Photograph: Aaron McKenzie Fraser for Guardian US Opinion
In Canada, Canning tells me that when Rehtaeh decided to come forward and report her attack, he was incredibly proud. “She did the right thing,” he says, “and I’m telling her: Let the police do their job.” Rehtaeh alleged that she was assaulted by four boys at a party, where one took a picture of the assault. Canning thought that was all the evidence they needed: a photograph of Rehtaeh, naked from the waist-down, hanging out of a window vomiting up while a boy, also undressed, presses into her. He is giving the camera a thumbs-up. But after a year-long “investigation”, in which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police didn’t even bother to interview the boys accused or seize their phones, Rehtaeh was told there simply wasn’t enough evidence.
“It’s like saying someone wasn’t murdered when you have their body and a bullet right in front of you,” her father tells me.
“We asked the police to do something when it really mattered, and they did nothing,” says Canning. Only after his daughter’s death did the evidence seem to be sufficient enough to move forward. Now, one young man has pled guilty to child porn charges for sending around a picture of the attack, as another awaits trial.
But Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrie Pott are still gone. And for both girls’ parents, questions remain as to how something so horrible could have happened, and what they can do to ensure it never happens again.
Larry Pott tells me that his nine-year-old daughter recently asked him, “Daddy, why don’t girls ever assault anybody?” He told her it wasn’t that girls don’t ever rape, just that they don’t do it often. But the simple question from his grade-schooler has left Pott thinking a lot about “what the heck has happened to men and boys?”
Larry and Lisa Pott testified before the California state senate in April. This week, anti-bullying legislation named after his daughter went into effect. ‘There is more work to be done,’ says Audrie’s mother, Sheila. Photograph: Courtesy of the Pott family
“It’s not a college problem. It’s not a high-school problem. It’s a gender and societal problem,” he says. Lisa Pott, Audrie’s stepmom, adds that while they’re happy to see the White House initiative to end rape on college campuses, she’d like to see more done “at the high school level” to educate teenagers about sexual violence.
“The shame needs to be put on the attackers, and we want to see a general change in attitude that makes it unacceptable to blame the victim at any level.”
In Glen Canning’s house, Rehtaeh’s glasses and a Jane Goodall book still sit idly on bedroom shelves. “As a man, you don’t run into victim-blaming culture,” he tells me. “But now I see it like the sun in the sky.” These days, when he’s not working as a freelance photographer and writer, Canning keeps busy giving speeches about consent and sexual assault at high schools. “I guess it’s similar to Rehtaeh – she always wanted to be a veterinarian. After she was raped, she wanted to be a lawyer and help people who were wronged,” he says.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rehtaeh Parsons’ parents wore t-shirts with her name to court late last month, but her father still can’t print it on his blog devoted to her memory. Photograph: Aaron McKenzie Fraser for Guardian US Opinion
Despite the work being done by activists and victims’ families, despite the social media outcry that follows, young women continue to be wronged as if we have learned nothing. Just a few months ago, a 16-year-old girl from Houston, named Jada, was passed out and allegedly assaulted – photos of her started to spread on social media using a cruel hashtag and with users mimicking her unconscious pose. Instead of being shamed, Jada decided to speak out. She told a local television station: “There’s no point in hiding. Everybody has already seen my face and my body, but that’s not what I am and who I am.”
Audrie’s parents talk about their daughter as kind, beautiful, loyal. Her mother says her daughter had a passion for the arts – part of the reason the Audrie Pott Foundation, an organization founded in her memory – offers art and music scholarships. “She was always singing and working on art projects,” Sheila Pott says.
When Rehtaeh was three years old, she watched Babe: Pig in the City. There’s a scene where a fish is knocked out of its bowl. Rehtaeh stood on her seat in the theater and screamed for someone to help the fish. When Canning wrote on his blog about this memory of his daughter, whom he still could not call by name, he added: “Sometimes her heart was too big, sometimes it scared me.”
These young women are not just sad stories, or pictures gone viral. They were incredible young people, girls who were loved and cherished. And these loved and cherished children were treated like they were less than human – not only by their attackers, but by a system meant to protect them.
Their families have dedicated their lives to their children’s memories – to making sure that the same tragedy doesn’t play out over and over, again and again. These moms and dads simply can’t imagine doing anything else. And if we want to honor the lives ruined, the justice not yet done, it’s time to stop treating these young women’s lives like stories or memes and start thinking – like their families – what we can do to end the horror.SIX years ago, Carlos Tevez was ready to quit ‘money-obsessed’ football.
Now, following his stunning £615,000-a-week move to Shanghai Shenhua, he has a bigger GDP than the nation of Tuvalu.
Greenland Shanghai 10 Carlos Tevez has officially joined Shanghai Shenhua on £615k-a-week deal
Tevez will bring in £32million-a-year, which is around £200,000 more than that generated by the Oceanic island in 12 months.
Keep up to date with ALL the Chinese Super League news, gossip and transfers
However, back in 2010 the then Manchester City ace was so dismayed with how money-obsessed football had become, he was ready to QUIT.
Tevez, who at that time earned a meagre £145,000-a-week, said: "I don’t want to play anymore.
“I’m tired of football but also tired of people who work in football.
"I’m talking seriously. Football is only about money and I don't like it.
"There are so many agents with really young footballers.
“It’s awful as these young players are not interested in winning titles — they only want money."
10 Shanghai Shenhua welcome new signing Carlos Tevez to China
10 Tevez has become the world's highest-paid player
Corbis 10 U.N. independent nation, Tuvalu, have a smaller GDP than Carlos Tevez after move
And Tevez has previous for completely going back on himself.
In July 2011, he said: “It is with great regret that I have to inform Manchester City of my wish to leave the club.
“Living without my children in Manchester has been incredibly challenging for me.
“Everything I do, I do for my daughters, Katie and Florencia.
“I need to be closer to them and to spend more time with them.”
PA:Press Association 10 Carlos Tevez was ready to quit'money-obsessed football' when at Man City
Getty Images 10 Carlos Tevez cut a much happier figure when he won the Premier League with City
But, all seemed to be forgotten when Manchester City were on the brink of a maiden Premier League title ten months on.
Speaking in April 2012, he admitted: “It was the project and the dream that made me come to City in the first place.
“I've been here since the start of that project and I share the same vision as Sheikh Mansour.
“He has always been brilliant with me and I want to repay his faith and stay here as long as it takes to make the project a success.
“I am an ambitious person. I want to work hard and win things with City.
“That's all that matters to me, as a player and a person."
Getty Images 10 A devastated Boca fan climbs a fence holding a sign begging Carlos Tevez not to leave
Getty Images 10 Carlos Tevez bid an emotional farewell to Boca Juniors fans in his final game
Tevez, now 32, left the Premier League after helping West Ham stave off relegation and winning titles with Manchester United and City to join Juventus in 2013.
And, after adding more silverware in Serie A, he returned to boyhood club, Boca Juniors, for what looked to be his career swansong.
His penultimate match for the club was the Super Clasico against arch-rivals, River Plate.
Getty Images 10 Boca Juniors fans drops to his knees and begs Carlos Tevez not to leave club
Getty Images 10 Carlos Tevez won the Champions League with Manchester United in 2008
Keep up-to-date with all the latest transfer news and gossip ahead of the January window with SunSport's daily LIVE blog
And he was given an emotional send off by the fans.
He is the latest big-name to move to the Chinese Super League, with Oscar recently leaving Chelsea for Shanghai SIPG.
Tevez will join up with fellow former Premier League stars, Demba Ba and Obafemi Martins at his new club.Ouya, the company behind the gaming microconsole of the same name, is seeking a buyer amidst debt issues, according to a new report by Fortune.
The site was able to obtain an email sent by CEO Julie Uhrman to investors and advisors earlier this month. She notes, "Given our debtholder's timeline, the process will be quick. We are looking for expressions of interest by the end of this month."
This move comes in the wake of failed attempts to restructure debt, as well as reports last year that it was seeking a buyer.
"Our focus now is trying to recover as much investor capital as possible,” Uhrman said in the email. "We believe we've built something real and valuable. I continue to read the tweets and emails of our fans who play Ouya every day, and our catalog is now over 1,000 apps and 40,000 developers. We have the largest library of Android content for the TV (still more than Amazon)--hells ya!"
It was only three months ago, back in January, that Ouya received a $10 million investment from Chinese company Alibaba.
After raising more than $8 million through a Kickstarter campaign in 2012, the Android-based microconsole launched in 2013, but has yet to catch on in a major way. Since then, Ouya has attempted to expand its operations by offering its games on third-party devices.
GameSpot has contacted Ouya for more information, but the company declined to comment..Today I turn 30. I started throwing a disc 12 years ago and started playing ultimate 11 years ago. In that time I’ve played on roughly 19 teams in 3 different countries, been to over 50 tournaments, have met thousands of ultimate players, started a website dedicated to teaching players more about the game of ultimate and have been flown around the world to share my passion with others. Today I mark my 30th birthday with 30 quick tips about ultimate. Each of these tips could easily warrant an article and video (and in many cases multiple articles/videos); some of which have already been done, some which I’m planning on doing. Read on:
1. When you workout, lift weights – don’t just run. To get stronger, you need to do resistance exercises. Lifting weights will build muscle and help prevent you from getting injured.
2. You don’t have to be friends with your teammates but you do have to get along on the field.
3. Practice throwing. That’s the only way you’ll get better at it.
4. Throwing frisbees in trash cans is not the only way to practice.
5. Playing tournaments is how you can raise your game to the next level. The more you play, the quicker you’ll improve.
6. Discraft ultrastars are not the only disc. There are many other brands and all of them are all good to throw. Don’t get stuck just throwing an ultrastar. Your throwing will thank you.
7. Buy a good pair of cleats. Soccer, football, lacrosse. Whatever they are, having a good pair matters.
8. Don’t steal other people’s discs at a tournament. If you find one, give it to tournament central. Stealing discs is not cool.
9. Don’t be late for something because you’re on “ultimate time”. All you’re saying is that you think your time is more valuable than everyone else’s. Translation – you’re a jerk.
10. If you can’t make a game, let your captain know. They don’t get paid for what they do so help them out.
11. Learn to set up a field and how to properly pace off the dimensions. And then volunteer at league to set up the field. You’re doing a good thing.
12. Practice catching. Practice thinking “just catch” instead of “don’t drop”. Catching is a large part mental concentration.
13. Try disc golf. With golf discs. You will quickly learn what your throwing weaknesses are.
14. When you watch ultimate videos, try to learn from that. What strategies each team is employing. How the players cut. How the handlers move the disc. How hard the defence plays.
15. Try beach ultimate. At least once. It’s far different from running on grass. You will learn that your throws aren’t as good as you thought they were.
16. Be humble. Know your place on the team and your skill level and be honest with yourself about it. You can get better. No matter who you are. So don’t make excuses – get out and get better.
17. Help out your local organization by volunteering to teach kids, help with the juniors program, go into schools and help demo ultimate. Ultimate has grown because of great volunteers. So support them.
18. If you foul someone and they call it, don’t contest. Even if you are in the endzone and it will result in a point. Even if it’s on universe point. Don’t cheat. Be a spirited player.
19. Learn how to count to 10. In the right amount of time. Especially when you’re tired. You’ll become a more effective mark.
20. Focus mostly on throwing backhand and forehand. Your throwing will improve overall by learning the other throws as well (hammer, thumber, blade, scoober, push pass) but spend most of your time working on forehand and backhand. They are your bread and butter.
21. Shake hands after a game. No matter what happened in that game, be spirited and shake hands.
22. When someone asks you if you throw to dogs when you tell them you play ultimate, don’t get offended. Tell them there are competitions where people throw to dogs but that ultimate is more like non contact football with 7 players on the field per team. At least they tried to take an interest in what to do. So don’t throw it back in their face.
23. Learn the history of ultimate. About the Frisbie Pie Company. About Maplewood, New Jersey. About the UPA being founded. And don’t diss Wham-O. Without Wham-O, discs as we know them wouldn’t exist. Wham-O makes a lot of great discs, not just for ultimate. Respect all aspects of frisbee and disc sports.
24. Carry a disc with you. When you’re bored or have some time, play around with it, throwing it up, catching it, flipping it around in your hands, trying to spin it on your finger. The more comfortable you are with a disc in your hand, the less you’ll drop on the field and the quicker you’ll get throws off.
25. Watch the movie PCU with David Spade. It’s from 1994 but has some teams playing ultimate in the movie. It’s funny to watch in the least. Other movies you should watch: I Bleed Black and Chasing Sarasota.
26. Support your local organization and your national organization (Ultimate Canada, USA Ultimate, etc..). Without your local organization, ultimate won’t become the great sport we all know it can be. And without our national organizations, ultimate won’t ever grow internationally like we know it can.
27. Play coed and single gender (men’s/women’s). You will work on different elements of your game in each and you will become a better overall player by playing both.
28. Rehab properly. If you’re hurt, don’t try to play through it. Playing one more game of a tournament isn’t worth not playing for the next year. Or not being able to walk properly when you’re older. Be smart and take care of your body. You’re only given one after all.
29. Learn the rules (North America | Internationally). They’re easy to find, they can be downloaded and printed off, they have little rules booklets they give out and you can even get an app on your phone. So learn them.
30. Find your own path. Everyone plays ultimate for different reasons, so find your reason “why”. When it gets tough or you’re not sure if you want to keep playing, go back to your “why” and realize why you love this game. In this video, I share how it all began for me.
Bonus Tip:
31. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Think of your body like a Ferrari. Would you fill your gas tank with beer and pop? No, you would put in high octane fuel. Treat your body the same. Cut back on fast food. Buy groceries. Cut out caloric drinks, unless you are having something like Gatorade after/during a workout/tournament. To find out more about these 3 simple tips, pick up a copy of Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food.Does the Delmar and Skinker closure have you down? Consider the impact blocked streets have day in and day out in St. Louis. More congestion on open streets, more vehicle miles traveled, more pollution, and a more vulnerable transportation system. We’ve removed the resilience from the street grid in favor of the fragile hierarchical street/road network that fails to cope well to interruptions for construction, weather, or the higher rate and severity of wrecks it causes. We’ll get another taste when Pershing is closed at DeBaliviere. A missed opportunity that Waterman wasn’t opened at DeBaliviere making the detour very easy.
Blocked streets nextSTL coverage:
Potluck PAC Submission: Require Re-Authorization of Closed City Streets & Codify Process
Who Owns Our Streets? More Than Inertia Keeps Streets Closed, Non-Spec Barricades in Place
MoDOT Presents Plan to Close 16 City Streets Along Gravois Avenue
The City Body At War With Itself: Street Blockages in St. Louis
Street not Thru: The Cul-De-Sacking of St. Louis
Streets Not Through: An Analysis of the Blockages and Barricades to the St. Louis Street Network
Let’s #healthegrid
{More ties unearthed from the streetcar tracks of yore.}
{Blocking the street has calmed Delmar}
(Luckily one can cut through the Shell Station)
{Skinker is quite pleasant now.}Changing tides: Pakistan’s ‘brain drain’ in reverse
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Pakistanis all over the world have an interest – if not an obligation – in their homeland to do what they can towards its success as a nation. Around 7 million Pakistani’s live abroad, and in 2012 sent home approximately $13 billion in remittances.
While this revenue is vital to the country’s foreign exchange reserves, it’s the expertise of these expatriates that is needed, just as much as their money. The absence of highly qualified doctors, engineers and scientists is playing havoc with the long-term economic growth of the country.
A Gallup survey in 2000 confirmed the widely-held view that there has been a continuous brain drain from the country. Not only qualified professionals and university graduates, but even semi-skilled or unskilled workers want to leave Pakistan in search of better prospects, with as many as 38% saying they would prefer to permanently settle outside the country. Official estimates of Pakistan’s Overseas Employment Corporation, are that close to 36,000 professionals, including doctors, engineers and teachers, have migrated to other countries in the last 30 years – an unofficial estimate puts the number closer to 45,000.
Since the recent international financial crisis and the global economic downturn, a number of skilled and educated Pakistani Americans and Canadians have begun to return home, as new job opportunities become available in fields such as healthcare, engineering, law, banking, information technology, mass media and industry. This is a welcome development for a country that has been noted more for its brain drain, with so many educated and ambitious Pakistanis leaving the country for better opportunities.
However, as younger graduates face a shrinking job market in the US and the UK, Pakistan with its urgent need for development is both welcoming and familiar, and is attracting some of its brightest minds back to their homeland.
Pakistan has not always honoured its intellectuals, notably Mohammad Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s only Nobel Laureate. His work was the precursor of the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, as he theorised the existence of proton decay, earning him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. He directed research for the development of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb until 1974 when he left the country to protest the government’s declaration of the Ahmadi sect as unbelievers. Salam was a devout and patriotic Pakistani and even in exile contributed to Pakistan’s scientific community through his work at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. Many prominent scientists today recognise him as their mentor and his life should be honoured for his belief that “scientific thought is the common heritage of mankind”.
The current debate in Pakistan about dual nationality is a symptom of the pervasive nature of the expatriate experience. The government of Pakistan recognises and allows its citizens to hold dual nationality in 16 countries, including the UK and other EU countries, the USA, Canada, Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
However, Pakistan’s Constitution stops an individual being chosen or elected as a member of parliament if he or she ceases to be a citizen of Pakistan or acquires the citizenship of a foreign state. Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, recently resigned over this issue, but has been reinstated and the Supreme Court also temporarily suspended MP Farahnaz Ispahani for holding dual US-Pakistan nationality. It is commonly acknowledged that Article 63(1)(c) of the Constitution needs revision, and the term “acquired citizenship” needs to be defined.
Until all Pakistanis can feel welcome to return home, to contribute to the country’s development, to hold office and to earn salaries and respect such as they enjoy overseas, Pakistan will continue to be disadvantaged by the ‘brain drain’.
The future is too important to neglect. It is to be profoundly hoped that the trend will continue and that professional and skilled Pakistanis will continue to come home to help implement the civic and economic changes, so urgently needed in their communities.
Read more by Azeem here or follow him on Twitter@AzeemIbrahimOverview
EU Blue Card - Austria is introduced as an immigration card at par with US Green Card. This will allow highly educated skilled professionals from foreign locations to come to Austria and explore the opportunities available in this beautiful rich country.
It is issued in the shape of a bank card. This is a combination of residence permit and work permit. EU Blue Card - Austria entitles the visa holder for temporary settlement and employment with a certain employer. The card has a validity period of 2 years.
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Eligibility
You should have completed your university degree of minimum 3 years duration
Master Degree
5 years of work experience
You need to have a binding employment offer with 150% of the average yearly gross salary for a full-time employee (Annual gross salary of minimum 52 417.50 € which comes down to 3 745 € gross per month)
You should not be registered with the Austrian Public Employment Service (Arbeitsmarktservice, AMS)
Mandatory labour market test for visa applicants
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Advantages of EU Blue Card - Austria
Holders of a EU Blue Card - Austria can apply for an Austria RWR card after completion of at least 21 months of |
in Wales, who have called for separate referendums with Britain's exit from the EU only guaranteed if all four British nations vote in favour.
However William Dartmouth, Ukip MEP for southwest England, which include Gibraltar, said that it would be better off our of the European Union.
He said that there is a "permanent threat" that it will no longer be able to set its own tax rules if it remains in the European Union.In We’re No. 1, Steven Hyden examines an album that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be “popular” in pop music, and how that concept has changed over the years. In this installment, he covers Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile, which went to No. 1 on Oct. 9, 1999, where it stayed for one week.
There’s an anecdote about the making of Raging Bull, related by film critic Richard Schickel in a 2010 Vanity Fair story, illustrating the obsessive-compulsive drive that can take over when a laser-focused genius is this close to painting his masterpiece, and won’t allow any stray corner of his work to be left unattended.
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It’s late in the film’s already lengthy post-production period, and Martin Scorsese is neck-deep in overseeing sound mixing, working up to 16 hours a day in order to ensure that his tapestry of dialogue, music, and sound effects overlaps naturalistically, but that each sound is still discernible from the others. For a minor scene set in a nightclub, Scorsese labors long and hard on a line from a nothing character about ordering a glass of Cutty Sark scotch whiskey. He can’t get that “Cutty Sark” to be as intelligible as he needs it to be. Finally, producer Irwin Winkler—cognizant of the need to ship the film out for the rapidly impending première—decides that Scorsese is finished; the scene is “good enough,” he insists. But Scorsese won’t have it: “I want my name taken off the picture,” he snaps.
Was he serious? Would he really have thrown away years of work on perhaps his most personal film to date over, of all things, Cutty Sark? Winkler, for one, believed he would. So he caved, and Scorsese got to polish off the scene to his satisfaction.
I’m not aware of a similar “line in the sand” moment involving Trent Reznor during the making of Nine Inch Nails’ 1999 epic The Fragile. But this expansive, slow-burning double record, which eschewed obvious melodrama in favor of a subtler, more creeping psychic rot, is similarly composed of countless tiny components that Reznor (with a heavy assist from co-producer Alan Moulder) ruminated on intensely for two years. It is perhaps the most breathtakingly fussed-over rock record of its era, forgoing the aggressively hummable singles of Nine Inch Nails’ previous record, 1994’s The Downward Spiral, in favor of richly detailed soundscapes that drift in and out of 23 songs over the course of nearly two hours. It’s a seamless incorporation of bedroom electronics with stadium rock, quirky instrumentation with crushing dynamics, and abstractly personal confessionals with a broadly amorphous, “one angst fits all” album concept. “I wanted this record to sound like it was falling apart,” Reznor later told Spin. “So I really went for imperfection.” And yet the so-called “imperfections” on The Fragile are executed with the precision of a born technician. Everything is in its right place, especially the stuff that initially doesn’t seem like it fits: the out-of-tune violins, the atonal piano plunks, the deconstructed dance grooves.
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The Fragile is linked in my mind with Raging Bull in part because of this technical brilliance. The gut-rot of suppressed violence (whether physical or emotional) lingers in both works, but this unpredictability doesn’t carry over to how they were made. Reznor, like Scorsese, used his medium as a haven from the messiness of the outside world, and he was able to exert an uncommon amount of control over his tools. With the possible exception of Billy Corgan, no other ’90s rocker was nearly as skilled at the art of making records as Reznor. Even Corgan would’ve been outmatched trying to replicate the complexities of The Fragile, with its prog-rock overtures and classical-music pretensions. (It is very much a “composed by” record.)
And yet, for Reznor and Scorsese, what came out of this masterful control over their respective mediums were wild, rough, sickening depictions of the world that were also vital, and in their own way, beautiful. The “movements” on The Fragile—which correspond with the album’s discs, beginning with the insinuating “Somewhat Damaged” on disc one and the slithering psychodrama of “The Way Out Is Through” on disc two—point toward Reznor’s eventual career as an Oscar-winning film composer. The Fragile at its best is a cinematic album, only it tells its story through sound rather than images. (One of the album’s most literal tracks, the Marilyn Manson-dissing “Starfuckers, Inc.,” is also among the weakest.)
The main reason I liken The Fragile to Raging Bull is that they both serve as the unofficial end points for “golden” eras that made their very existence possible. Raging Bull is considered the last great film of ’70s Hollywood cinema, an era when directors were treated as the chief authors of their movies, and were encouraged to indulge in their artsiest, most subversive tendencies. It was the last time Hollywood followed the example of European cinema, and not just because it allowed for the sex and violence that ’70s audiences loved. Directors were seen as avatars pointing the culture toward what it wanted before the culture even knew what it wanted. But after a while, the American public decided it was sick of pain, existentialism, and sour endings, and with the failure of Michael Cimino’s moody three-hour Western Heaven’s Gate (released around the same time as Raging Bull, and by the same studio), the era of empowered directors was over.
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In the case of The Fragile, the period being ushered out was the alternative era. Released in fall of 1999, The Fragile was highly anticipated, coming five long years after The Downward Spiral made Nine Inch Nails a defining band of the “Alternative Nation” generation, and Reznor one of its figurehead rock stars. Compared with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, NIN hardly seemed like a conventional rock band. Reznor’s reference points were Skinny Puppy, Prince, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Berlin-era David Bowie. But with Spiral’s breakout hit “Closer,” Reznor became the closest thing alt-rock-loving teens had to their own Jim Morrison; Eddie Vedder might’ve aped Morrison’s vocal mannerisms, but Reznor stood alone among his sullen and stardom-averse peers as a dark and dirty sex symbol.
But the music world, and particularly rock music, had changed dramatically in the time between Nine Inch Nails records. In just the two years Reznor spent making The Fragile, alt-rock essentially dried up and disappeared from the charts, with many of NIN’s contemporaries either breaking up or being weakened by younger, hungrier insurgents. If Reznor was aware of this changing of the guard—and he must have been, on some level—he chose to either ignore it or forge ahead with a last stand of sorts. If anything, The Fragile is even more disaffected than Spiral, though it’s less physical and more introspective. It’s a journey inward rather than a flailing outward.
There was another seismic shift in music that Reznor could not have foreseen having an impact on The Fragile while he was laboring over it: the rise of Napster and file-sharing on the Internet. Alternative rock was, in many respects, an extension of classic rock; bands fetishized vinyl, railed against corporations, and brought back music festivals as peaceful places for young people to commune and dream of better futures. And The Fragile came out of that: It was conceived as an album listeners would pore over, track by track, and in a specific order. (Reznor even consulted Bob Ezrin, co-producer of The Wall, for help with properly ordering the songs.) The Fragile has many clandestine corners that invite listeners to peek inside, like how the melody slowly seeps out of the noise in “The Day The World Went Away” and how the guitars rise and take over the Depeche Mode-like “Where Is Everybody?” in the song’s final third.
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The Fragile was heavy, figuratively and literally, with generous packaging and an evocative album cover designed so fans could stare at it for hours without really getting it. And it was made to be played on an expensive stereo system, or at the very least, on top-notch headphones. It was not, in other words, well served by being chopped up and surveyed in 30-second intervals between downloads. Without the proper attention, The Fragile would seem boring, formless, and highly skippable on an MP3 playlist.
Unfortunately for Reznor, that’s pretty much how many fans received The Fragile. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, but after one week, it tumbled—not just out of the top spot, but out of the Top 10, and all the way down to No. 16, the worst second-week drop in chart history at that point. The Fragile was unseated by Creed’s Human Clay, a perfect metaphor for the changing of the guard if there ever was one. The other big sellers that year were Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time, Backstreet Boys’ Millennium, Dixie Chicks’ Fly, and Santana’s Supernatural. The most popular rock records included Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other and Korn’s Issues.
Given the commercial climate at the time, a concept record made by a 34-year-old man beating himself up with guilt and self-hatred spawned by the loss of his beloved grandmother could hardly be expected to fit in with fun-loving teen-pop acts and horndog meathead rap-rockers. In his pursuit of creating an immaculately arranged and studiously performed masterwork, Reznor put in so much time and effort that he aged Nine Inch Nails out of its window as a dominant commercial rock act. Nevertheless, I’d argue that The Fragile was worth the hassle, if only for how it memorializes the best aspects of a time for which it arrived too late.
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Coming up: The Beatles’ Yesterday And TodayBefore his experience with the youth volunteer program Katimavik, Kamloops resident Erik Nelson subscribed to the usual Quebec stereotypes. “Out here in the West,” he says, “we kind of view Quebec in a very simple light: as the angry, dissatisfied province.”
Nine months later, you’ll find Nelson busy planning ways to feed his new-found “obsession” with French-Canadian culture. Nelson credits the program for his change of heart. However, he’s not too impressed with Katimavik now. Like many, Nelson’s concern centres on recent “drastic changes” to the program. Starting this year, Katimavik is taking fewer volunteers, working in fewer communities and, for the first time, charging its participants.
Admittedly, Katimavik has been on the brink before. Launched in 1977 by Pierre Trudeau’s government, Katimavik was originally designed to solve Canada’s unity problem. Groups of youth from across Canada were cycled through three different communities, where they worked at non-profit organizations, lived together, and learned about the country’s cultural variety. Katimavik received its first blow in 1986, when Brian Mulroney’s government completely dismantled it. Jean Chrétien restarted it in 1994.
The program now has a three-year funding agreement with the Conservative government. Currently in its first year, the agreement will eventually cut Katimavik’s budget by a quarter, resulting in a yearly $4.7 million yearly shortfall. “Katimavik is certainly not as strong, and it is certainly not as able to create powerful Canadian citizens the way it could,” says Justin Trudeau, the opposition critic for youth, citizenship and immigration, and a former chair of the Katimavik board of directors.
The money isn’t the only thing that’s been cut. In order to balance its budget, the new funding agreement has forced Katimavik to cut back in many ways: it has reduced the number of participants to 1,000, down from 4,000 in the early ’80s; the program length has been cut from nine months to six; and, instead of being free, participants now must pay fees of up to $535, $350 of which is refunded upon successful completion of the program.
Trudeau doesn’t like the new fee structure. “It was something that was supposed to be accessible to all young Canadians,” he says, “regardless of social or economic status, regardless of education.”
Publicly, Katimavik has stated the cuts aren’t all bad, as they now have secure fiscal support, and are encouraged to diversify funding and look for new financial partners. But some former participants, such as Nelson, aren’t buying it: “I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for Katimavik, honestly.” For Trudeau, the changes are just another step away from his father’s vision. “Katimavik continues to fail to live up to it,” he says. “We haven’t had the capacity in this program to respond to the demand, to give opportunities to the tens of thousands of young people who would love to do this program.”Earlier this month, Memphis Meats stormed the food and tech worlds by announcing the world’s first "clean" (i.e., cultured) meatball—real beef, grown without animal slaughter. The same day, the company Gelzen revealed its plans to completely take over the gelatin industry with gelatin grown in fermenters—no animals required. Both companies receive support from the newly launched nonprofit organization The Good Food Institute and have secured investments from the VC firm New Crop Capital.
GFI and NCC address the problems of animal agriculture by supporting groundbreaking plant-based and clean meat, eggs, and dairy.
h its
, to start-up companies in the good food space. Finally, GFI focuses on increasing the amount of quality plant-based products in the marketplace by working with companies to expand their reach into more restaurants, grocery stores, and foodservice outlets.
NCC is a $25 million venture capital fund that invests exclusively in plant-based and clean alternatives to animal agriculture as well as technology platforms that make plant-based eating easier. NCC focuses on angel, seed, and Series A investments, with a goal of creating as robust a plant-based and clean marketplace as possible.
Since its inception last month, NCC has invested in clean meat company Memphis Meats, which was founded by two of the world’s foremost experts on clean meat; software/tech platform Lighter, a tech-based company that makes plant-based eating exponentially easier; plant-based meal delivery service The Purple Carrot, which enlisted former New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman as co-founder, partner, and chief innovation officer; plant-based dairy alternative company Lyrical Foods, which is the first and only company to create plant-based dairy alternatives using the exact same process as cow-based cheese production; clean collagen company Gelzen, a brand-new company that replaces gelatin with synthetic gelatin; up-and-coming plant-based meat company Beyond Meat, which currently offers superb plant-based chicken and beef options and is set to introduce a variety of exciting products in 2016; New Zealand’s first plant-based meat company, Sunfed Foods, which aims to introduce plant-based meats throughout New Zealand, Australia, and Asia; and Miyoko's Kitchen, which creates award-winning artisanal plant-based cheese products.
Bruce Friedrich, executive director of GFI, explains:
We are committed to driving the future of food. Consumers choose what to eat on the basis of taste, convenience, and price. That’s where The Good Food Institute and New Crop Capital come in. Both are laser-focused on creating plant-based and clean alternatives to conventional animal products that taste great, are available everywhere, and are cost competitive. Through market competition and food technology, we are speeding the global transition away from farming animals and toward much better plant-based and clean meat, dairy, and eggs.
For more information, visit TheGoodFoodInstitute.org and NewCropCapital.com
GFI focuses on dramatically extending the pipeline of scientists and entrepreneurs interested in working on plant-based and clean products via events at colleges and universities and contests at elite business and science schools. The organization also provides regulatory, marketing, business, and other support, including mentoring and business advice througWe're doing two-parters now! Hopefully, we'll consistently be able to release shorter episodes more often during the season. This, of course, if the first part of Episode 81. The preseason is over, but we still get to discuss the final game, as well as the most intriguing roster choices the Vikings made at the bottom (and even top) of the depth charts.
*****Download Link Here*****
Episode Notes:
Let us know what you think of the potential format change. Please! Through twitter, the comments below, email, whatever. We'd really appreciate it.
This is the link to that iTunes feed. If you can't for whatever reason subscribe via iTunes, subscribe to via our RSS feed, which should support the RSS reader or podcast organizer of your choice. If subscription isn't your scene, head over to norsecodepodcast.com (also donate there)!
But we also have a Patreon and that should make it even easier to support the best podcast for your Minnesota Vikings. Check it out here.The contentious plan to add bicycle lanes along Cleveland Avenue in St. Paul overcame its final hurdle Tuesday.
The Ramsey County Board voted to approve the lanes between Highland Parkway and St. Anthony Avenue. Lane striping and the addition of two half-block parking areas along the street are expected to be completed by fall, county and city staff said.
“It will create a critical north-south connection for bicyclists,” County Commissioner Toni Carter said. “The proposal before us moves us in the right direction to ensure that Cleveland can be safe for travel by all users.”
The board, however, voted against the city’s recommendation to reduce the speed along the county road from 30 to 25 miles per hour. Commissioners decided instead to take a broader look at road safety and they plan to ask municipalities across Ramsey County to join the effort.
“We’ve all had it in our districts where someone wanted a speed limit lowered,” Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt said. But if they approved all the community requests for stop signs or lower speed limits it would create a “mish mash” of rules that do not necessarily make people safer, she said.
Consistency is key to a safe road system, county Public Works Director Jim Tolaas said. The speed for Cleveland Avenue has been set according to Minnesota Department of Transportation standards. “If you’re going to deviate from that it should be based on technical work,” he said.
The County Board initially discussed the Cleveland Avenue project last June, but after an unusual amount of public interest, the city and county held off on a decision and sought community input. St. Paul created a working group that studied the situation and recommended adding the lanes in an 8-4 vote.
The speed limit reduction was one of the working group’s recommendations, St. Paul Council President Russ Stark said. The City Council approved the lanes and the lower speed limit.
“Motorists going slower is safer for everyone,” Stark said, but added that he understands the county’s concern and said it is important to address the issue systematically.
Parking debate
The Cleveland Avenue bicycle lanes, which will run past the University of St. Thomas and St. Catherine University, are a piece of the St. Paul Bicycle Plan that the city is building out.
Many residents and cyclists rallied in support of the Cleveland Avenue lanes, which they said will improve safety. Other residents and business owners fought the city’s plan to remove on-street parking along sections of the road to make way for the lanes.
St. Paul will build two half-block parking areas to replace the lost spots.
But Lynn Meyer, who owns Rising Sun Martial Arts Supply along the street, said the parking areas are too far away from some businesses to help. She said she was holding out hope that the County Board would deny the plan.
“There goes my last hope … It’s a reality and I don’t know what we’ll do,” Meyer said. “I’m hoping we’ll find some way to weather it. But taking our best parking is really going to harm the businesses in the area.”
The project is expected to cost $266,500, according to city estimates. St. Paul will pay for the parking mitigation and part of the road striping, St. Paul Transportation Planner Luke Hanson said. The county will add some bike lane stripes as part of a resurfacing project on a portion of Cleveland Avenue, Tolaas said.
The city plans to extend the lanes farther north to University Avenue, but has not set a timeline for that addition, Hanson said.Two main topics consume the conversations of Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza today. Whether through announcements, group assemblies or personal chatter, most cannot help but consider two large issues: moving forward from an unsuccessful protest at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and action plans after midnight.
Yesterday afternoon marked the weekend’s largest October2011 protest march through Washington, which ended with an attempted entry into the National Air and Space Museum. Though security guards and pepper spray stopped demonstrators, the mission aimed to highlight the Museum’s drone exhibit and its glorification of military executions at a public institution.
Museum security action has caused a great deal of controversy, even among those who marched. Several conflicting stories have raised questions about whether the security guards or demonstrators initiated force. Regardless of this controversy, many media networks published stories about the event without acknowledging the debate.
As someone who studied journalism for four years, I appreciate the media’s role in raising awareness and teaching about world issues. However, reading articles that scream bias about a controversial movement I participated in has given me first-hand look at the media’s ability to confuse statements and choose sides. Below are two of the many articles I read about yesterday’s protest. I applaud the Sun-Times for the reporter’s noticeable attempt to remain neutral. I cannot say the same for MSNBC.
Chicago Sun-Times: “D.C. Museum Closed After Protest Pepper Spray Used”
MSNBC: “Washington’s Air & Space Museum Shut After Protesters Storm In”
Conversation last night and this morning has included action steps regarding this Museum march. Options discussed include returning to the Museum for another attempted protest, challenging the Museum for using pepper spray against a nonviolent demonstration, and continuing to spread the October2011 message while remaining positive in the public eye.
(*Video taken by fellow October2011 demonstrator Nathan Schneider)
October2011‘s permit to occupy Freedom Plaza ends at midnight. Action plans for continuing this movement with no permit makes for another hot discussion item among demonstrators. Occupy D.C., a group modeled after the Occupy Wall Street protests, has also been active this weekend in Washington’s McPherson Square. Conversation leans toward a merge between October2011 and Occupy D.C. efforts, which would involve the two moving forward in solidarity. However, this is still in discussion.
While the word Occupy has begun uniting groups of demonstrators nationwide, words of action have focused on this other commonly used, powerful statement: Solidarity.Not sure what to wear on Oct. 31? For $20, you could dress as Toronto city councillor and Twitter guru Norm Kelly.
Kelly took to Twitter on Thursday to advertise masks of his face for Halloween.
"Need a Halloween costume? Norm Mask! $20!" the councillor posted to his 194,000 Twitter followers.
Kelly tweeted the message along with a photo of himself, partially covered by a cartoon two-dimensional mask with eye holes. The mask was created by sisters Aifel and Kheila Cruz, who run a photobooth service called Essentialist Media.
Just 20 minutes after posting, the message had been retweeted 138 times and favourited more than 270 times.
The 74-year-old has become something of a Twitter star this year, reaching 100,000 followers in August. Twitter Canada deemed the politician's quick rise to online fame the "#summerofnorm."
Kelly's fame spread across North America after posting attention-grabbing tweets including one that defended Toronto rapper Drake against U.S. performer Meek Mill.
The Scarborough-Agincourt councillor tweeted that Meek Mill was "no longer welcome in Toronto" in July, a message that was retweeted more than 130,000 times and favourited by 113,000 people.
Kelly told CTV Toronto in August that he uses his 140-character messages to show the "fun side" of his life, and doesn't use the social networking service as a soap box for political opinions.
"It's like being at a party. You can enjoy yourself."
On Thursday, Kelly used a tweet to raise money for a Canadian charity. He wrote that proceeds of the sale of the "Norm masks" will go towards Canadian Feed the Children, an organization that focuses on food security and education in Canada, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti and Uganda.
Anyone wishing to reserve a mask is asked to email the councillor at councillor_kelly@toronto.ca.Marvel Studios proved its moviemaking formula remains second to none with Doctor Strange, the media giant’s latest triumphant attempt at adapting one of its comic-book characters for the big screen. Scott Derrickson’s film was a critical and commercial ($660 million) smash, and as is so often the case with Marvel movies, Doctor Strange concludes with more than a few hints as to the future direction of its protagonist — namely, to adventure with the God of Thunder in this fall’s Thor: Ragnarok, and then to battle alongside the Avengers in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. And while Derrickson won’t be helming either of those forthcoming tentpoles, he did reveal to us the unlikely way in which he learned the plot of the latter surefire blockbuster.
Speaking to Yahoo Movies in advance of Doctor Strange’s home-video release, Derrickson admitted that he does know the basic story outline of Infinity War, thanks to an opportune run-in with its co-director Joe Russo:
“I don’t know anything about Thor: Ragnarok — Taika [Waititi, the director] and I are Twitter friends, but I don’t know him so well. I know Joe [Russo] a lot better, and I know the plot for Infinity War because I ran into him in front of the men’s room at Marvel one day, and we just got to talking and he ended up pitching me the story of Infinity War, which was great [laughs]! So I know the basic story of Infinity War because we both had to pee at the same time — and that’s really the only reason.”
Related: What ‘Doctor Strange’ Means to the Marvel Cinematic Universe
While he says he has “no hand” in any in-production movies featuring Benedict Cumberbatch’s mystical master, Derrickson expressed excitement about discovering what other Marvel directors have in store for the Sorcerer Supreme — as well as great confidence that the results will be fantastic:
I can’t wait to see what Taika does with Doctor Strange. He shot the tag scene, which was just a joy for me, the first time I saw it. And I enjoyed that so much, I can’t wait to see how he uses him in Thor: Ragnarok. The Russos are great filmmakers, and I’m friends with Joe, and they’re going to do amazing things with this character. I’m just glad I was able to help establish a character that was good enough to have life in those movies.
Related: Yahoo Movies’ Complete Coverage of ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
Derrickson’s conviction that Strange will be doing “amazing things” in Infinity War should only fuel excitement for the upcoming third entry in the Avengers series, due in May 2018. And while he credits mastermind Kevin Feige for keeping the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe together as a unified whole, he also believes the studio’s long-term success can be credited to its refusal to get too far ahead of itself, in terms of interconnecting its various properties:
I think one of the reasons it’s working over there at Marvel Studios is that they’re approaching it the same way Stan Lee did, in writing the comics. Which is, do it one comic at a time. They’re doing one movie at a time. And just making the next best step, and seeing where that leads. It turns into a really beautiful creative evolution, if you’re always looking for the best possible idea for each individual movie.
Stay tuned for our full, in-depth interview with Scott Derrickson in the coming weeks. Doctor Strange debuts on Digital HD on Feb. 14 and on Blu-ray/DVD on Feb. 28.Caroline Allen: UK drugs legislation 'is failing us all'
7 May 2014
UK DRUG legislation costs us billions of pounds, unnecessarily creates criminals and is failing us all. The law needs urgent reform.
The war on drugs in England and Wales alone costs us more than £3 billion per year. But it is failing. It’s time for something new.
The Green Party is the country’s only mainstream political party with a long-term commitment to decriminalise cannabis.
This is because we believe that people should not be criminalised for the recreational use of a drug which is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
It’s because we believe people must not be criminalised for using cannabis for its medicinal properties.
And it’s because we know that a legal, safe supply chain for cannabis will cut off cash from the black market and shady, ruthless, criminal drug cartels.
The Green Party has led the way, and continues to do so. We have stood against tabloid-led hysteria about cannabis, and our elected representatives have pushed the agenda forward.
At last, other politicians are catching up: even the Conservative Bright Blue think tank now suggests the time is right for reform.
But the Coalition refuses to admit there is any evidence even for the existence of medical benefits to cannabis use – even though a cannabis derivative, Sativex, has been licensed in the UK to relieve symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis.
Our drugs policy does not stop at reviewing the status of cannabis. We need a different approach to all currently illegal drugs.
Green MP Caroline Lucas has won support and the signatures of more than 100,000 people for her petition to ensure that her call for an independent assessment of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act will be debated in Parliament.
We believe the Act does more harm than good – and we must hold an independent view to measure its actual effects, so that all politicians have an evidence-based foundation from which to deliver effective, sensible policy on drugs.
Other countries are showing that alternatives to criminalization do work.
In the US, the very home of the failed war on drugs, two states are blazing a trail. Colorado raised US$1 million in taxes on cannabis in the first month of decriminalisation.
In 2001, Portugal adopted a new policy whereby drug possession was changed from a criminal offence to an administrative offence. Following the change, there was a reduction in new HIV diagnoses and in drug-related deaths.
In Switzerland, a series of new policies focusing attention on drug use from a public health – rather than a criminal deterrent - perspective, led to a decline in crime rates.
An investigation by Release looked at 21 places which had adopted some form of decriminalisation of drug possession.
Overwhelmingly, it found that such an approach does not lead to an increase in drug use but does improve outcomes for users - in terms of employment, relationships and likelihood of staying out of prison.
And over half of the 85,000 people in our prisons are thought to have serious drug problems.
It’s time for the UK to change its approach to drugs. The Green Party will continue to lead the way in developing evidence-based drugs laws, for the common good.
Back to main news page"Daryl, I'm not hearing great things to be honest, but you just might be able to do this with him." — Lester Crest
Daryl Johns is a character in the Grand Theft Auto series, appearing in Grand Theft Auto V. He is a character the player can employ as a gunman to help out with Heists.
Contents show]
Description
Daryl considers his brain to be his biggest weapon, he is also full of himself and is always scolding the other crew members. His skills in firearms are very low, making his cut the lowest of all the gunmen: 6%. Because of this, he is the worst gunman in the game.
Biography
Background
Calling himself a "prodigy", Daryl dropped out of school at an early age when he came up with an idea to rob banks: he would make a note, give it to a banker and get out of the agency, netting a few thousand dollars. He managed to rob the bank four times using this method, however, in the fifth time he was caught and sentenced to prison for 10 years.
He used his time in prison to study sociology, psychology and animal behavior. He claims that he transformed his brain into a "super weapon" in the process. Retrospectively, he calls his arrest the "best thing that could have happened to him".
Events of GTA V
If he is chosen for The Paleto Score, Daryl will be killed during the escape when a police car will crush him against a wall. He will struggle for his life, but will end up dying. His bag, with the money from the score can be collected near his body.
If he is chosen in the covert approach of The Bureau Raid, he will die while fleeing the building, unless he is chosen along with Hugh Welsh or Norm Richards, in this case, he or the other gunman will randomly die in the explosion during the escape. So if Daryl dies, just repeat the mission until he is the one who survives. In the roof approach, he will survive unless he is killed (unscripted) during the shootout; his low hit points are a liability.
In The Big Score, subtle approach, if chosen as the first gunman, Daryl will drop some gold bars while loading the Gauntlet, causing a $18 million loss for the crew, even if he has previously experience from the FIB heist, he will still drop the gold. If chosen as the second gunman, there will be no consequences at all for the crew.
In the obvious approach, Daryl does a decent job being either the first or second gunman, it's important to know that if he is the second gunman and doesn't have previous experience, there will be more chances of him dying during the shootout against the police. The player needs to protect him, so the heist doesn't have any casualties.
Mission Appearances
Skills
Daryl's skills includes:
Max Health
Accuracy
Shot Rate
Weapon Choice
Gallery
Trivia
Daryl is extremely cocky, to the point of calling Michael and Trevor amateurs and saying that he should plan the scores. In The Paleto Score, he claims that he is able to "optimize the efficiency of the score". After his death in that particular mission, Trevor even says that he "prefers to take care of all the military alone, instead of endure one more minute of Daryl's shit attitude".
If he dies in The Bureau Raid, Franklin sarcastically says that his death must have been their fault, since Daryl never considered anything wrong that happened in the mission his own fault.
If he survives The Bureau Raid while another gun man dies, he will say that his brain saved him and that the death of the other gunman was Darwinism's fault.
For some reason, he along with Karl and Hugh cannot be recruited in for a heist in replayable missions. Whether it was intentional or not is unknown.
Daryl will use the Assault Rifle in the Roof entry approach of The Bureau Raid, Franklin comments on it, asking him why he brought a weak weapon.Referring to criticism of President Bush by Dick Gephardt over rising gas prices, Rush Limbaugh asserted: "[G]as prices didn't start going through the roof till [Democrats] took over the House in 2006." In fact, average monthly gasoline prices (adjusted for inflation) began to climb several years before Democrats took control of Congress.
On the May 12 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh, in reference to criticism of President Bush by former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt over rising gas prices, asserted: "[G]as prices didn't start going through the roof till your buddies took over the House in 2006." In a May 10 speech at the Missouri Democratic convention, Gephardt reportedly said: "George Bush is, by far, the worst person who's ever been president of the United States.... Gas is $4 a gallon, on its way to $8 a gallon, and this man sits there, clueless."
In fact, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, depicted in the graph below, average monthly gasoline prices (adjusted for inflation) began to climb several years before Democrats took control of Congress, and have continued to climb since then.
From the May 12 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:An immutable operating system
Edit: Woha, lots of response over at Hacker News. I didn't post this article anywhere, so not sure how it got so much attention. I just wanted to brain-dump my current thoughts. But it's very cool to see that so many people find an immutable operating system interesting.
An operating system? Really?
Why an operating system
Roughly a year ago I got the idea for an OpenGL renderer based on immutable values. I blogged about it, and it acually got a little bit of attention on Hacker News and reddit. A few people even e-mailed me.
After a lot of hammock time, the idea has evolved into an operating system. The general idea is: what would an operating system look like if all values were immutable?
An immutable operating system!? The world is mutable!
Immutable values is actually a perfectly reasonable view of the world. As an observer, you observe the world as time passes. When you want to process something, you take a photograph. This photograph is immutable, and you can spend as much time as you'd like analyzing it.
Back to the operating system. The closest you can get to mutation is a swap operation. You will have something called atoms. All they do is point to an immutable value. You can at any point in time ask for its current immutable value (what is the current state?). You will always get a complete (immutable) value back from the atom, hence the name atom. And you can write to the atom, meaning point the atom |
into further strengthening the border and cautioned that Republican retaliatory tactics could themselves undermine border security.
He repeatedly appealed for a renewed push for bipartisan legislation that would satisfy both Democrats and Republicans.
“I believe if we could just strip away the emotion and the politics on this issue, and you brought me the right group of members of the House of Representatives, I could negotiate a bill with you,” he said. “It really should not be that difficult.”
The Republican charge was led by Mike McCaul, a Texan who chairs the committee. He argued that Obama had subverted the democratic process by taking unilateral action.
Contrary to research that indicates the brief spike in unaccompanied children crossing the border and seeking asylum over the summer was largely due to drug cartel-related violence in Central America, McCaul said Obama’s 2012 deferred action against childhood arrivals (Daca) order had “enticed” more than 60,000 children to cross the border illegally.
He argued DHS was unprepared to deal with the next surge. “I’m telling you, it is coming,” he said. “In my judgment, there is no doubt about it.”
McCaul also said Obama’s latest actions would encourage many more people to believe they can immigrate to the US illegally and will eventually receive safe haven. “If we don’t think that message is making its way back to Mexico and Central America we are simply fooling ourselves,” he said. “We will see a wave of illegal immigration because of the president’s actions.”
Johnson responded that the department was in fact prioritising the removal of recent border crossers and pointed out that Obama’s action only applies to those who can prove residence in the US for five years or more.
He called on Congress to authorise the additional $750m requested by the DHS to increase surveillance and security along the US-Mexican border, where several of his Republican critics on the committee have their districts.
In one of the more colourful exchanges, Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz played a short video from a speech in which Obama said he had “taken action to change the law”. Johnson insisted Obama was acting within the law.
“I’ve been a lawyer for 30 years. If someone plays me an eight-word excerpt from a speech I’m suspicious,” he said.
Chaffetz, among the secretary’s most animated inquisitors at the hearing, also raised the case of four Kurds who were detained in September crossing into Texas. Johnson previously said the men would be deported.
Two were released by a judge and fled to Canada, where they are seeking asylum. The men belonged to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party which, Chaffetz said, had been designated a terrorist organisation by the State Department.
“Mr Secretary, this is the problem,” Chaffetz said. “You come, you tell the world you are going to deport these four people. These are terrorists! And they get released!”
Lou Barletta, a Republican from Pennsylvania, argued that the surge of undocumented migrants now qualifying for work permits would be unfair competition for American citizens looking for jobs. Johnson retorted that undocumented migrants were already part of the workforce, albeit illegally.
“If that’s not apparent then I suggest you spend some time in a restaurant here in the Washington DC area to see for yourself,” he told Barletta.
Yet Barletta did land one of the Republicans’ few punches when he pressed Johnson over the fact that undocumented migrants granted permits to stay in and work in the country would not qualify for benefits under the Affordable Care Act.
He said that put them at an advantage over US citizens, who he referred to as “American workers”.
“You don’t think an employer will think, ‘Do I keep an American worker and provide health insurance or pay a $3,000 fine, or do I get rid of the American and hire an undocumented worker?’” Barletta asked.
“I don’t think I see it that way,” Johnson said. “You don’t think any American workers would see it that way?” Barletta continued.
“I don’t think I see it that way,” Johnson replied. “No, sir.”These Vegan Tiramisu Trifles are very addictive and come together really quickly. Free of Dairy, egg, nut, yeast. Can be made corn-free. Makes 4 Individual Trifles
Jump to Recipe
These Vegan Tiramisu Trifles you all. We ate so many of these in the past few weeks. Easy to put together and super quick with the new Coco Whip! Pre-whipped Coconut cream.
MY LATEST VIDEOS
From my pregan days, Winters were sprinkled with drives to get a large piece of Tiramisu with some hot coffee. It is easier to find a raw cashew Tiramisu around the northwest, but not so much the real deal. Of course, whipping up some coconut cream at home solves the problem, but you know me and whipping for minutes and minutes don’t go so well together. So this So Delicious Whipped Coco Whip is life saver. Regular and low-fat versions of this Coco Whip make it too easy. These whips are dangerous to have around! They have been launched and are available in Whole foods right now.
Make a Sponge Cake, Soak it, layer the whipped cream and make a load of Tiramisu. I prefer the quick version with the soaked sponge and whipped coconut cream layers. So quick with the already whipped coconut cream. You can add some cashew cream to the whipped cream and a tang to make it more mascarpone-ish. The Cake has 2 Tbsp oil for the 4 to 6 servings and is all whole grain with Spelt and Oat flour.
Gimme all 4 of these Vegan Tiramisu Trifles.
More Holiday Desserts
This Pumpkin Mousse Layer Cake. Soy-free
Triple chocolate Mousse Cake. GF
Salted Caramel Pie GF Soy-free
Dark Chocolate Silk Pie GF Soy-free
So Delicious has more goodies you have to try this holiday season. Like this Candy Corn Ice cream Bar!
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Steps:
Make the sponge. Cool, then cut into trifle bowl size.
Soak in coffee mixture, layer whipped cream, sift cocoa powder and done!Well… isn’t that a magical coincidence?
We’ve all seen Hillary’s miraculous emergence after her fall at Ground Zero on 9/11 from what we are told is her daughter Chelsea’s apartment, looking ten years younger and like she got a face lift and lost 25 lbs.
Chelsea’s apartment must be a really awesome place.
Turns out, the exact address where Chelsea’s “apartment” is located just so happens to be the same address once listed for a New York state medical facility.
Which leads to the obviously question… does Hillary have her own private hospice care set up there? That way, she can go “visit her daughter” any time she needs to for private medical attention away from the prying eyes of the public?
That question begs another: just how long has Hillary been sick and being taken care of here? This is just too much of a coincidence.
The bottom line is that if Hillary could go to all the trouble to have a private email server, there’s no reason to think she wouldn’t go to even more trouble to have secret, private, personal healthcare.
Lots of people are pointing out that it looks like Hillary used a body double after her fall. It makes sense people in high places have them.
It couldn’t have been Theresa Barnwell (above with Hillary), however, as they had her performing somewhere in California at the time, giving her an “iron clad alibi” according to an interview she did with Inside Edition to debunk all the “conspiracy theorists” out there:
All of which just gives the impression that its definitely a Hillary body double coming out of Chelsea’s apartment, just not Barnwell. They went to a whole lot of trouble putting Barnwell on a nationally televised program impersonating Hillary for Spike TV 3,000 miles away on the West Coast just to make sure that ground was covered.
So the ultimate question is this: if Hillary really is as sick as the Internet thinks she is, or if she actually died as supposed “hoax” reports have claimed today and was replaced, did she make some kind of deal to go down in the history books as the first woman president no matter what?
That legacy is her whole goal in life and it is blatantly obviously she doesn’t care how she gets there… cheating, stealing, lying… alive or dead.
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Piper writes for The Daily Sheeple. There’s a lot of B.S. out there. Someone has to write about it.Experts predict that California could soon create a new market worth more than $5 billion once the state’s recreational pot industry is fully operational.
A study by the University of California Agricultural Issues Center suggests that a legal marijuana market could generate said revenue once cannabis is regulated and taxed at 15 percent of its retail value, reports the Los Angeles Times.
“We projected that when legally allowed, slightly more than half of the demand currently in the illegal adult-use segment will quickly move to the legal adult-use segment to avoid the inconvenience, stigma, and legal risks of buying from an unlicensed seller,” the study says.
According to government estimates, the voter approved or Prop 64 initiative to establish recreational pot sales could bring the state and local municipalities $1 billion in tax revenue, while providing more than 1,200 new jobs in the field.
Despite the positive prediction, the study also suggests that a black market could still exist after a regulatory commission is established.
“It’s going to take some time,” said Lori Ajax, director of the state Bureau of Marijuana Control, to the Times. “While it’s unlikely that everyone will come into the regulated market on Day One, we plan to continue working with stakeholders as we move forward to increase participation over time.”
A regulated legal market will also boost the state’s tourism industry, as it did for Colorado. Their legal cannabis market raked in over $1 billion in sales in 2016. The state has used the tax revenue to aid the homeless, fund schools, and even help fight against the state’s opioid epidemic.
“Folks have been visiting California to enjoy the best cannabis in the world for many years,” Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Assn., told the Times. “It will be hugely beneficial to bring this existing commerce out of the shadows.”Many psychologists have asserted that people are heavily motivated by of their own mortality. This claim may well describe large numbers of people, not just Woody Allen, but is it normatively correct? Is it rational to fear death? How might this philosophical question be given an evidence-based answer?
It is still commonly believed that being rational is at odds with being emotional, but emotions such as fear can often be quite reasonable. For example, if a hurricane is predicted in the area in which you live, it is rational to fear the damage that can result, and evidence is accumulating to support fears about drastic declines in resulting from climate change. On the other hand, fear about some potential event is irrational when there is no evidence that the event will actually threaten a person’s well-being. Developing a strong fear of the earth being hit by a huge asteroid is currently irrational because there is no evidence that an asteroid strike is imminent. Is death like the hurricane or like the asteroid strike?
More than two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Epicurus constructed an argument against fearing death that has since become even more plausible: “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.” Epicurus was one of the first atomists who believed that everything consists of material entities and that there are no souls that survive death. If your life ends at death, then you have nothing to fear, because there will be no YOU to experience pleasure or pain. It’s all over when it’s over.
Of course, there are other aspects of dying that are worth fearing, such as disease, disability, and the distress of people who care about you. But from the philosophical perspective that there is no life after death, death itself is nothing to fear.
Especially in recent decades, evidence has mounted that Epicurus was right that minds are material processes rather than souls. is rapidly developing experiments and theories that support the claim that the identification of mind and brain provides the best explanation of people’s capacities for perception, reasoning, language, and even consciousness. If the mind is just the brain, then there is no mind to experience suffering of any kind when the brain stops functioning at death. Hence Epicurus was right that there is nothing to fear. If there were any good evidence that life does survive death, then we would have to reject Epicurus’ conclusion, but phenomena such as near-death experiences and séances can easily be explained away.
The persists as a vestige of views that proclaim that life on earth is just a fragment of the existence of an eternal soul. Then religion becomes a solution to a problem that it has itself created: You may be able to decrease your fear of death by believing that you have found the right religion that will ensure that your afterlife will be pleasant. Thus religion allows a person to careen from the fear-driven inference that death is threatening to the motivated inference that it won’t be so bad in the afterlife. Of course, this inference assumes that you have picked the right religion.
If I believed that life survives death, then I would be terrified at the prospect of an eternity of suffering, because I would have no way of knowing which religious beliefs to adopt. In addition to the different main religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, there are many variants, including dozens of different versions of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. Guessing wrong could lead not only to problems in this life, but to eternal. Moreover, it is entirely possible that the “right” religion hasn’t even been invented yet.
This variety is one of the flaws in Pascal’s famous wager that it is better to believe in God, because if religion turns out to be true, then you get eternal reward, instead of suffering eternal punishment. This wager assumes that you know what religion to bet on. In contrast, let me offer Thagard’s wager: it is better not to believe in God, because then you don’t have to suffer through a lifetime of worrying about death and the right religion! Happily, this wager fits perfectly with rapidly developing evidence that the mind is just the brain. Hence both inference to the best explanation and inference to the best plan support the conclusion that death should not be feared.Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA The possibility of alien life thriving somewhere other than Earth is now stronger than ever before.
Underwater hydrothermal vents — the same kind that may have spawned life on our planet — seem to be lining the ocean floors of Saturn's tiny, water-rich moon called Enceladus, according to two recently published papers.
This is the most compelling evidence we have so far for the existence of these vents anywhere other than Earth. The latest discovery is a tantalizing hint that the conditions right for life may be present outside of Earth.
While Enceladus is watery, it is no Earth: It is only about 300 miles across. But under a thick, icy shell lies a water ocean habitat that resembles the conditions on an adolescent Earth, between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago.
Back then, Earth was covered in a single, global ocean. Most of the ocean is thought to have been extremely acidic — to0 acidic to create life — except around certain underwater, hydrothermal vents in which pockets of warm, less-acidic water could have formed. These conditions would have been the ideal place for life to arise on Earth, according to NASA scientist Michael Russell.
With this latest announcement, hydrothermal vents with these pockets of warm water are now believed to exist outside of Earth — at the bottom of Enceladus' oceans.
So how did these researchers find vents under miles of ice? Using the instruments on board the Cassini spacecraft, the team measured the size and number of silicon-rich particles, called silicates, in Saturn's second outer-most ring, the E ring. The E ring is made of particles that came from the moon's plumes and therefore tells scientists something about what is going on underneath the surface.
Once formed, these particles rise to the surface, where they escape to space through plumes off the moon's south polar region, shown in the arresting image below taken by Cassini:
Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA The silicates' chemical makeup, size, and abundance give an indication of what is forming in the ocean underneath Enceladus' surface. And the result is incredibly exciting.
To show that these particles could come from hydrothermal vents, the team re-created them in the lab. To their surprise, they discovered that particles of this chemical composition, size, and abundance grow only under a very specific set of conditions. The team reported their findings Wednesday in the journal Nature.
What's more shocking is that these conditions are remarkably similar to a unique, underwater environment here on Earth, called the Lost City, which some researchers consider the cradle of life.
A miraculous find
Lost City Expedition 2005. One of four pinnacles that form the summit of the 200-foot tall carbonate chimney called Poseidon in the Lost City hydrothermal field. NOAA Photo Library on Flickr The Lost City is a field of hydrothermal vents that was first discovered in the mid-Atlantic ocean in the year 2000. Unlike other hydrothermal vents on Earth, this unique environment has basic, non-acidic waters that clock in at comfortable temperatures between 100 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Other vents can reach up to a scorching 860 degrees Fahrenheit.
Moreover, the life that thrives in the Lost City is mostly simple microorganisms — nothing like the larger, more complex life-forms hanging around other vents on Earth's ocean floor. Some scientists think these super-simple life-forms could be close-descendants of the first single-celled life on Earth.
The team's latest discovery makes Enceladus one of the most likely places in the solar system where alien life could exist, Linda Spilker, a project scientist with Cassini at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved with the study, told Business Insider.
"You have energy, nutrients, and liquid water, which create a potential habit that could support life," Spilker said.
In another recent paper published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a different team of researchers reports additional evidence supporting the presence of hydrothermal vents. The researchers used Cassini to measure the amount of methane inside of the plumes of Enceladus as Cassini flew through them, and they found more methane than what was expected.
Methane is one of the main products generated by the Lost City's hydrothermal vents. This excess methane is most likely coming from hydrothermal vents, Spilker said.
"The methane story helps verify what we found with the tiny sillica particles," Spilker said.
These vents may be powered by tidal energy generated by Saturn's powerful gravitational tug on the tiny moon.
A recipe for success
Enceladus floating in space beneath Saturn's rings with a larger moon, Titan, in the background. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Scientists first discovered that Enceladus was spewing jets of water vapor and ice back in 2005. This discovery rocked the scientific community because it indicated that Enceladus hosted liquid water underneath its surface. That was the first time astrobiologists began looking at Enceladus as a possible place to harbor alien life.
Then, in 2009, scientists discovered that not only was there an ocean, but it was salty, like the oceans on Earth.
Now there is compelling evidence that deep beneath the moon's icy surface, these salty oceans contain active hydrothermal vents like the vents of the Lost City.
About the only difference between Earth's oceans and those on Enceladus is evidence of life.
Although Spilker said the most likely source for both teams' measurements is hydrothermal vents, the authors of the Nature paper caution that further investigations are needed to confirm the presence of active vents on Enceladus. It's not as if we can see them under all that ice and ocean.
That we now have two very different measurements pointing to the same hydrothermal source, however, is encouraging.
The ultimate question
Cassini has made game-changing discoveries of Enceladus since it first began flying by the tiny moon in 2005, but it is not equipped with the right instruments to answer the ultimate question: Is there life on Enceladus?
And right now, NASA has no official plans to dispatch another spacecraft to Saturn anytime soon, Spilker told Business Insider. Moreover, it takes at least three years to reach Saturn, so it's going to be a while before we gain a better idea of what might be lurking beneath Enceladus' surface.
Cassini is scheduled to make its last three visits to Enceladus this year: two in October and the final flyby on December 19.In financial lingo, zombies are debtors that have little hope of recovery but manage to avoid being wiped out thanks to support from their lenders or the government. Zombies suck life out of an economy by consuming tax money, capital, and labor that would be better deployed in growing companies and sectors. Meanwhile, by slashing prices to generate sales, zombie companies can drag healthier rivals into insolvency.
—BusinessWeek
You would think that once was enough, that the failure of the first round was obvious, but no, Congress has done it again. They have released the second half of Paulson’s $700 billion and that shuffling sound you are hearing is the sound of zombies, coming at the smell of freshly-spilled money.
According to Peter Coy, writing for BusinessWeek: “The Bush Administration has already ladled out billions of dollars in assistance to weak banks and automakers. As the economy goes into what may become the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the Obama Administration will come under even more pressure to prop up sick financial and nonfinancial companies to save jobs. The debate will center on wounded giants such as Citigroup (C), General Motors (GM), and insurer American International Group (AIG). Other sectors with their hands out include steel, airlines, retail—and homeowners, who may be the scariest zombies of all.”
Creating Zombies
So far, what we have seen is the government propping up failed or failing businesses with little regard to whether those firms are strong enough to recover once the economic hard times are over. The general rule should be: If the company has a strong core but its finances have been compromised, then help them. If they don’t have the strength, then let them go.
Without that kind of hard assessment, you end up building zombies that suck the life out of the economy, and right now, the economy does not have that much life left in it to begin with.
Residence Evil
I can see the movie now, we can call it Residence Evil with Hank Paulson as the mad scientist who brings the Zombie King and Queen (played by Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank) to life and Ben Bernanke as his loyal assistant, Igor.
Ok, that may be a little over the top, but as Coy points out, the biggest group of zombies could easily arise from the graves of the subprime mortgage fiasco.
Right now, the biggest zombie problem may lie in housing. Millions of homeowners are juggling mortgages they can't afford to pay alongside other debts: credit cards, auto loans, and so forth. In struggling to keep their heads above water, they're slashing consumer spending, which is harming economic growth.
Coy goes on to point out that up to 2005, bankruptcy would have been the answer for these people, but with the change in the bankruptcy law that year, discharging bad debt is much harder and that just makes the zombie problem worse.
According to a new study by Alan M. White, a ValparaisoUniversitySchool of Law professor, only one-third of modifications of subprime and near-subprime mortgages in November 2008 involved reductions in the monthly payment, often because late fees got tacked onto principal. As a result, he writes, "many modifications are temporary." That's the zombie condition.
Killing the Zombies
The financial equivalent to the requisite headshot needed to take down a zombie is the last thing that our lawmakers—especially those who are ideologically pro-zombie or whose states are already overrun with zombies—are willing to consider: Bankruptcy.
True, it is harder for individuals—mostly thanks to hard-lobbying credit card issuers—but it is still a viable weapon against zombie businesses. Bankruptcy takes the life or death of a company out of the hands of politicians and places into the hands of people far more likely to do the right thing for the right reasons—judges and trustees. Their job is to liquidate a company too far gone to recover (killing the zombie) to restructure things so a company can recover and become profitable again. This was at the heart of the discussions people were having as the Detroit automakers became zombies by taking their first, real bites out of the taxpayers. Now they are back for another mouthful.
The Bottom Line
That is the issue—zombies don’t stop. They don’t suddenly decide to make the changes necessary for independent survival and they don’t go off somewhere to die. They are, to quote the Red Queen, driven by the most primal of urges: The Need to Feed. We look at these companies and feel as though we are helping them, but are we? Or, are we merely perpetuating the problem by allowing the zombies to feed. If we are to recover from this recession, we have to change the way we look at zombies. They must be dealt with once and for all and under current law, that means—for good or ill—bankruptcy.NEW YORK — The Walt Disney Company announced Thursday that it will acquire the majority of assets from rival 21st Century Fox, a megamerger that aims to reset the balance of power in an industry under siege from Silicon Valley.
The merger pairs Disney, the No. 1 studio at the box office and company behind massive hits like “The Avengers” and “Star Wars” reboots, with the No. 3 studio, Fox, which has produced the “X-Men” and “Avatar” franchises as well as a range of mid-budget crowd-pleasers and critically acclaimed films.
It also brings brands such as FX, National Geographic and “The Simpsons” into the same fold as ESPN and ABC — all part of Disney’s gamble that only a company of this size could effectively thwart a furious charge into the business of entertainment by well-financed technology giants like Netflix, Apple and Google.
Disney will pay $52.4 billion for Fox, which for its part will spin off Fox broadcast networks, the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel, the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles and several national sports channels, leaving them in the hands of 21st Century Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch and his family.
Robert Iger, the chairman and chief executive of Disney who had been discussed as a potential 2020 presidential candidate, will continue with the combined firm through 2021.
The deal takes two media and entertainments titans and, after a period of negotiating chess, essentially divides up territory between them. Iger will lead the legacy-entertainment charge against the new competitors, while Murdoch will attempt to make gains as the business of news and live programming face challenges from digital upstarts.
Disney has watched as viewership to its one-time powerhouse ESPN and other cable channels has shrunk as consumers have cut the cord on pricey cable bills. Instead, many consumers have opted for subscriptions to the likes of Netflix or Amazon, which offers a wide swath of video content at a fraction of the cost. (Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
The conglomerate is building up an arsenal of programming in the hope of fending off those firms’ forays into the content market. With enough material, it hopes, it can develop a streaming service that will win over customers who’ve cut the cord on its products.
“We’re excited about this extraordinary opportunity to significantly increase our portfolio of well-loved franchises and branded content to greatly enhance our growing direct-to-consumer offerings,” Iger said in a statement Thursday morning.
Murdoch, meanwhile, is confronting similar challenges in the news business. Fox News and Fox Business come as part of most basic cable bundles and are susceptible to the same cord-cutting challenges. The thorn in his side are free platforms like Facebook, which have become increasingly central to how many Americans consume news. A focused news company with its own scale, Murdoch hopes, can help defeat these rivals — potentially one reason Murdoch is reportedly interested in buying CNN.
“The new Fox will draw upon the powerful live news and sports businesses of Fox, as well as the strength of our broadcast network,” Murdoch said in a statement.
The new Fox will own 25 percent of the newly combined entity, but it’s not yet clear what representation the Murdochs will have in the new company. One of Rupert Murdoch’s sons, James, is chief executive of 21st century Fox, and it’s common for studio heads to remain after acquisitions. Iger on Thursday said he “look[s] forward to talking to him about it” in the coming months, referring to James.
As part of the all-stock deal, Disney will also acquire Fox’s 30 percent stake in Hulu, a group of U.S. cable stations, several powerhouse international satellite channels such as Star India and Sky Italia, and a host of U.S. regional sports outlets.
The deal takes Murdoch out of much of the scripted television game and all of the film business, ending a Hollywood association that began more than three decades ago when Murdoch bought Twentieth Century Fox from industrialist Marvin Davis and crested as recently as 2014 when Fox led all studios by market share for the first time this century.
Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s son and the executive co-chair of 21st Century Fox, noted that “while the merged business is about scale, the new Fox is about returning to our roots as a lean and aggressive brand.” The family said there had not been talk yet of recombining with the print media-driven News Corp., owner of the Wall Street Journal and other publication.
“If we do, it’s well into the future,” Rupert Murdoch said.
But close observers said Murdoch wants to remain involved in entertainment and simply saw a Disney combination as the best way forward.
“Rupert doesn’t see this as much as selling as he does buying,” the Los Angeles-based investment banker Lloyd Greif said in an email to The Post. “He’s buying Bob Iger and his Midas touch when it comes to filmed content,” Greif said.
Greif added, “It’s a vote of confidence by Rupert in Iger and his management team over his own. He sees troubled waters ahead and wants the best ship and crew to navigate them.”
For Iger, Thursday’s deal amounts to another success after earlier efforts to buy Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.
But Fox will provide the greatest integration challenge yet, with many of the newly acquired company’s divisions overlapping with Disney’s existing operations. And greater scale, while valuable in negotiating traditional distributor deals with cable operators and movie theaters, is no guarantee of direct-to-consumer success.
Wall Street was bullish on the announcement, sending Disney’s stock up nearly three and Fox almost seven percent.
Regulators and shareholders must still approve the Disney-Fox deal, but most analysts do not expect it to face problems. In a very different scenario, the Justice Department is currently suing AT&T to stop its acquisition of Time Warner, noting concerns about the marriage of a distributor and content provider.
A few experts dissented, though, and said the sheer volume of creative assets could give regulators pause.
“The scrutiny could be very close and the new antitrust leadership is unpredictable at this point, as witnessed by Time Warner-ATT,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond law school. “I expect DOJ and Congress will be most interested in what this combination will mean for consumers and whether it concentrates too much power in the new entity.”
Combined, the new Disney could boast as much as $75 billion in revenue, with nearly a third coming from Fox assets.
On the Disney call, Iger said that he envisions Disney’s new service, set for 2019, coexisting with Hulu, the former in a “family vein” and latter as “adult-oriented.” Analysts, however, have questioned what the long-term future of Hulu will hold now that Disney owns a controlling 60 percent stake (Comcast Universal has 30 percent and Time Warner 10 percent).
Would executives shelve the service and shift their resources to Disney’s proprietary platform? Or would they actually try to maintain both Hulu and a separate streaming service?
“I think it’s going to be tough — I don’t understand how you would segment it,” said Aaron Shapiro, the founder of Huge, a digital marketing agency that has done work for Hulu.
He said he eventually saw one Disney entry point for consumers, under one brand, whatever it was called. “I think they need to put all their eggs in one basket and go for it,” he said, noting the challenge of attracting many of the 100 million Netflix subscribers.
The Disney acquisition hints at a further industry consolidation, analysts say, that could see Viacom, CBS, Lionsgate and Sony seek large buyers too, and leave just a few large legacy conglomerates such as Disney-Fox, Comcast Universal and a potential AT&T Time Warner.
Insiders said they believe Disney will be a test for other content providers as they seek to launch direct-to-consumer businesses — if the world’s largest media conglomerate is unable to successfully do so, it might make them reconsider whether they should even try.
The news provides a bookend of sorts to a 1995 merger that also saw Disney combine with a television giant — Capital Cities/ABC — setting off a wave of entertainment-industry consolidation. Coincidentally, it was that deal that brought Iger into the Disney fold: he was the president of Capital Cities/ABC at the time.
In the call, Iger alluded to that past, saying he was a “product” of that merger, which in turn makes him “respect and appreciate the talent” that comes with the Fox acquisition.
Read more:
Disney’s potential Fox acquisition shows radically different responses to Hollywood’s Silicon Valley threat
Fox had a massive day at the Golden Globes. Now it all could end.One by one, each Big East coach spoke optimistically of the new league on its media day, championing its depth and quality, its present and future.
It came off as coach-speak, overly optimistic hyperbole that was met with quizzical looks and slight smirks.
Those 10 coaches are the ones smiling now, for the time being at least. They knew what everyone else is just finding out: The Big East, with all its question marks and unknown commodities, is better than advertised.
Forget top-ranked Kentucky and its platoon system. The Big East has been the story of the early season, carrying a stunning 41-5 record into Black Friday. The basketball-centric league, with just one preseason nationally ranked team — Villanova — already has defeated five ranked opponents, three more than any other league.
“It doesn’t surprise me what these guys are doing,” Villanova coach Jay Wright told reporters Tuesday night. “I think that this league is going to be much harder than last year.
“I never want to be in New York and say that I don’t miss the old Big East because I do, but in the same breath I’m really excited about this new league.”
Wednesday was a banner day for the conference, arguably the biggest one since the new league was created.
Butler, picked to finish seventh, stunned No. 5 North Carolina in the Battle 4 Atlantis opener, thoroughly outplaying the loaded Tar Heels. Georgetown edged No. 18 Florida on D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera’s clutch jumper with 3.4 seconds remaining, also at the Bahamas tournament, and nearly upset No. 2 Wisconsin on Thursday.
And St. John’s — which the league desperately wants and needs to emerge as a tournament team this season because it’s a major-market team — rode a dominant second half performance to knock off Big Ten foe Minnesota in the NIT Season Tip-Off, earning a major opportunity Friday night against No. 10 Gonzaga at the Garden.
Seton Hall and its heavily hyped freshmen class won the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands, and 12th-ranked Villanova knocked off two top-20 teams, No. 14 VCU and No. 19 Michigan, to claim the Legends Classic in Brooklyn this week, which likely pushes the Wildcats into the top 10 when the next AP rankings are released.
Providence has shown it may be top 25-caliber, carrying a 5-0 record and impressive victories over ACC teams Notre Dame and Florida In the Hall-of-Fame Tip-Off into a Sunday showdown at No. 1 Kentucky.
Creighton, expected to take a major step back after losing Doug McDermott and picked ninth in the league, has gotten off to a 5-0 start that includes a win over Oklahoma, ranked 18th at the time, that enabled the Bluejays to break into the AP rankings at No. 23 last week.
This is still a small body of work, a handful of games that doesn’t tell us anything about what will happen next week, next month or next year, but it is significant nevertheless.
This is the time of year when conferences separate from one another, when résumés for March get built.
The selection committee takes notice.
March, of course, is when the league really will be judged. The Big East needs a better showing this year, after receiving just four bids and failing to advance a single team past the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
But this is a start. The new Big East had to begin somewhere.Story highlights Trump also plugged his own golf course
He drew laughter and applause from local lawmakers
Seoul (CNN) President Donald Trump, perhaps seeking to endear himself to South Korean legislators, drew attention Wednesday to the prowess of Korean golfers during an otherwise deadly serious speech before South Korea's National Assembly.
Trump drew laughter and applause from local lawmakers when he remarked that "Korean golfers are some of the best on earth" and noted that the US Women's Open Championship was held at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, this year.
"In fact -- and you know what I'm going to say," Trump said with a grin, "the women's US Open was held this year at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey."
As the audience laughed, he added: "And it just happened to be won by a great Korean golfer."
Trump piled on the praise for Korea's affinity for golf, noting that "eight of the top 10 players were from Korea and the top four golfers -- one, two, three, four -- the top four were from Korea."
Read MoreThe waiting is over for all fans of Fox television shows as we have the official schedule for the 2013 |
ethnic origin.”
He added he would forward the bill to the state Duma for consideration.
Despite some outlets reporting it as the “first” such marriage, a similar incident occurred in August when Alina Davis and Allison Brooks were allowed to marry in matching wedding dresses, as one is legally male.The credenza is a garage sale find, lacquered black. It holds diapers, wipes and toys as well as some electronic equipment and cords!
The wall with the tv isn't at all finished. Ideally we will finish our basement to create a rec-room and have the tv down there.
The rush grass coffee table replaced a brass Ibex table for crawling/walking toddler purposes :). Very happy with
, I am so shocked and pleased by how well it is holding up.
The brass and navy velvet chairs are an estate sale purchase, I have four of them.
The vintage brass floor lamp is from my husbands Grandmother. The mirror is Home Sense.
The curtains[which neeeeed to be replaced, but serve a purpose] are canvas drop clothes from Home Depot].
The sunburst clock is vintage Syroco.
The ginger happiness jars are from my large, and growing, blue and white china collection. These particular two were from Etsy.
The area rug is from my families cottage in Muskoka. Its lovely, but not what I would choose for the room, and the piling drives me insane [its at least 25 years old, you would think it would stop shedding...but no, its the worst]The Russian ambassador to the US says Moscow is ramping up pressure on the Trump administration to return two diplomatic compounds that were seized by the Obama administration in response to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
“We insist that [the property] needs to be returned,” Sergey Kislyak told BuzzFeed News and another reporter at a party in Washington held by the government of Azerbaijan. “It’s a violation of the Vienna Convention. It belongs to Russia … It was seized unlawfully.”
The Kremlin’s push comes ahead of a June 23 visit to St. Petersburg by Tom Shannon, a senior State Department official, who is seeking to address what US officials are calling “irritants” in the US-Russia relationship. It also comes as testimony by former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday brought fresh scrutiny to Trump’s relationship with Moscow.
The compounds in New York and Maryland were seized in December when then-President Barack Obama said they were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and expelled 35 Russian officials he called “intelligence operatives.” The Trump administration is now reportedly considering returning the property to Russia, a prospect that is angering a bipartisan group of US lawmakers who say it would send the wrong message about the gravity of interfering in the US election.
Russia had been using the compounds since the days of the Soviet Union as a place for recreation for its diplomats. But for decades, US officials have suspected that it’s also been used for espionage based on information from aerial surveillance.
A senior State Department official told BuzzFeed News that Shannon would travel to St. Petersburg later this month to try to resolve the "irritants" in the US-Russia relationship with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Separately, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert confirmed that the dispute over the compounds was one of the "irritants" on the agenda between the two countries.
In an escalation of the dispute, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that if the US doesn’t restore Russian access to the property, the Kremlin would “reply in kind regarding US property in Russia.” One option the Trump administration is reportedly considering is letting Russian officials back on the properties, but withholding the buildings’ previous diplomatic immunity status. Such a move would allow US authorities to search the compounds like any other building in the US.Over at BusinessInsider, Henry Blodget has a post up that gets to at a topic I’ve wondered a lot about — both as someone just interested in tech but also as a news publisher. In short, with so many Android devices out there, why does so little mobile traffic seem to come from them?Blodget has the baseline numbers. Android devices (thus the Android operating system) vastly outnumber Apple (iOS) devices worldwide and they significantly outnumber them in the US market (53% to 34%, according to Blodget). And yet when it comes to actual web traffic, far more of it comes from iOS devices (60% for Apple to 20% for Android) and the same seems to be even more true for people buying things over mobile devices.
Our traffic data is even more overwhelmingly in that direction — something which has shaped the way we’ve approached the whole mobile market.
I just checked out numbers going back to August 1. Around 23% of our site traffic comes from mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) and of that fully 77% comes from iOS devices. 21% comes from Android devices. The trivial remaining numbers come from a mix of Blackberry and Windows Phone.
I’ve mentioned a number of times that TPM’s audience is disproportionately made up of Mac users — not a majority but a much higher percentage than the US population at large. So I’ve assume this iOS dominance stemmed from that as well as the general affluence of the audience. But it seems to be more general.
One place this played out was in our decision to make only an iPhone version of our PollTracker mobile app. I’ve corresponded with many readers about this and a lot of people were really upset, or thought that we were slighting Android users out of Apple snobbishness. As I explained in many individual emails, this wasn’t the case at all. Without a sponsor for an Android version we simply didn’t have the resources to produce two versions of the app. And in terms of our audience, as you can see from these numbers, if it had to be one it was going to be iOS.
So why the differential? Blodget asks, maybe a tad tongue in cheek, “Are Android devices mostly used by digitally incurious people who don’t do anything with them?”
I’m not sure if that’s the wording I’d prefer. But it does seem like it’s on the right track. The answer seems to be some mix of affluence and power-use for lack of a better phrase. If you’re really focused on living through your mobile device — shopping with it, constantly accessing news on it, getting really focused on apps, you’re far more likely to buy an iPhone. The demographics of affluence clearly play a significant factor as well. I suspect that’s why our audience for instance is even more tilted toward iOS than most.
Another way of looking at it is that phone manufacturers over the last 18 months or so have started moving most of the mobile phone population into the ‘smartphone’ category — subscription reupp cycles keep the old phones cycling out on a pretty consistent basis. But most people aren’t living their lives on Twitter or 24/7 news consumption. Most of these people — we might call them people with lives — are getting Android devices and just not using them (for Internet consumption) at anywhere near the rate that iOS users are.
Those last few points are conjecture but conjecture based on a fair amount of data. Curious to hear your thoughts depending on which sort of device you use.The number of bees and other diurnal pollinators is declining worldwide – due to diseases, introduced parasites, pesticides, climate change and the continuing loss of habitats. Now, Eva Knop’s team from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, shows for the first time, that nocturnal pollinators can be affected by artificial light leading to a disruption of the pollination service they provide. “So far, nocturnal pollinators have been largely neglected in the discussion of the worldwide known pollinator crisis”, says Knop. However, there are numerous nocturnal pollinators, and they play an important role for plants, as the study in the Bernese Prealps shows. Knop’s team found out, that flowers on meadows which were experimentally illuminated with street lamps are visited around two thirds less frequently by pollinators, than those that were on meadows without any light sources in the vicinity. This has an effect on the fruit set, and therefore the reproduction of plants. The study has now been published in the magazine “Nature”.
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Loss of nocturnal flower visitors
In the last 20 years, the light emissions have increased by 70%, particularly in residential areas. “As it is possible that light sensitive insects have already disappeared in regions with high levels of light pollution, we conducted our study in the still relatively dark Prealps”, explains Knop. The researchers could show that during night a total of almost 300 insect species visited the flowers of around 60 plant species on ruderal meadows without any artificial light sources in the vicinity. Interestingly, on meadows with experimentally set up street lights, the nocturnal pollination visits were 62% lower than in the unlit areas. The LED lamps used, are used as standard for public street lighting.
Consequences for biodiversity
This loss of nocturnal flower visitors leads to a reduction of the fruit set of plants, as the researchers have proved for the first time, with the example of the cabbage thistle (Cirsium oleraceum). The pale flower heads of the cabbage thistle are a rich and easily accessible source of pollen and nectar, for numerous species of insects, and are amongst the most visited plants both during the day and at night. The team investigated a total of 100 cabbage thistles, which were growing on five meadows experimentally illuminated with LED street lamps, and five meadows without artificial light. The illuminated plants were visited much more rarely by pollinating insects at night, than the unlit plants. The decline in pollinators had a significant influence on the reproduction of the cabbage thistles: at the end of the test phase, the average number of fruits per plants was around 13% lower. “The pollination during the day obviously cannot compensate for the losses in the night”, says Knop.
Diurnal pollinators also affected
The study also shows, that the nocturnal pollinators indirectly promote the diurnal pollinators, by visiting the same plants. The underlying mechanisms are still unknown – a possible explanation could be that the plants have a fitness advantage thanks to the nocturnal pollinators, and therefore provide more nutrition for the diurnal pollinators. A loss in nocturnal pollination due to increasing light pollution, could therefore also indirectly have a negative effect on the diurnal pollinator community. According to Knop, this still needs to be researched in detail, as well as the long-term consequences of the pollination losses for the biodiversity.
The findings have driven the researchers to demand action: “Urgent measures must be taken, to reduce the negative consequences of the annually increasing light emissions on the environment”, says Knop. This will be big challenge, as residential areas are worldwide increasing.SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.
In 1978 the Bee Gees ruled the airwaves, Grease topped the box office and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first proposed a rule on antibacterial hand soaps—a rule that would have eliminated an unnecessary and unsafe ingredient called triclosan. Thirty-five years later many things have changed, but the FDA has not. Just recently it proposed rules on antibacterial soaps that would remove triclosan-containing soap from the shelves—for the third time. Yet because the FDA has failed to finalize any of these proposals, triclosan has proliferated in the marketplace. It is now the most common active ingredient found in antibacterial consumer hand soaps.
It’s also common in our bodies. Triclosan has been measured in amniotic fluid, breast milk, human blood and the urine of 75 percent of Americans sampled over the age of six. Although it does not discriminate by gender or racial/ethnic group, it appears to increase in concentration as income increases. Despite little evidence of their effectiveness to reduce illness, triclosan-containing antibacterial soaps have dominated the market. Soap aside, triclosan can also be found in consumer products as diverse as cutting boards, shoes, lipstick and toothpaste.
In other words, we are continually exposed to triclosan. The problem is that triclosan is not safe. In animal studies it has been shown to interfere with the regulation of thyroid hormones (affecting metabolism and brain development), testosterone synthesis (decreasing sperm counts) and estrogen action (causing early onset of puberty). Exposure to triclosan has been shown to weaken heart muscle, impairing contractions and reducing heart function, and to weaken skeletal muscle, reducing grip strength. In aquatic environments fish exposed to triclosan were unable to swim properly.
Higher urinary levels of triclosan are associated with hay fever, allergies to airborne triggers (like ragweed and cats) and food (peanut, shrimp, dairy) allergies. Triclosan has even been associated with elevated body mass index in adults. Although the mechanism driving this association is not clear, researchers suggest that it could be due to changes in the gut flora or hormones.
There are also concerns about the potential impact of triclosan use on development of antibiotic resistance. Laboratory studies on bacteria exposed to triclosan demonstrate evidence of cross-resistance to critically important antibiotics including erythromycin, ciprofloxacin, ampicillin and gentamicin. Further, there is evidence that resistance to triclosan itself exists in Salmonella enterica, Staphylococcus aureus, streptococcus, Escherichia coli and other species of bacteria. Strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis tolerant to triclosan have also showed resistance to the drug isoniazid (INH), which is used to treat tuberculosis. Although the overuse of antibiotics in humans and livestock is a greater contributor to the public health crisis of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the potential increased risk of antibiotic resistance from the use of antimicrobial chemicals is unnecessary.
To add insult to injury, there is no added benefit to using triclosan (or any antibacterial) soaps. Triclosan is intrinsically ineffective against some bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and fungal infections. The FDA requires that to be considered effective these soaps must do more than remove bacteria; they must “provide a clinical benefit by reducing infections.” But studies show that using soap containing triclosan does not reduce human illnesses or infections any more than using regular soap. There have even been occasional reports of fatal bacterial outbreaks in hospitals using triclosan, including bacterial contamination of triclosan soap containers in a surgical intensive care unit.
Which brings us back to the FDA. In the rule it proposed in 1978 (and again in 1994 and 2013) the FDA said it does not have sufficient information to determine whether triclosan is safe or effective. In the absence of such a determination triclosan cannot be sold in the U.S.—but the FDA’s failure to finalize these proposals allowed the products to remain on the market. Therefore, in 2010 the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the FDA to compel it to finalize its rules. As a result of the settlement, the FDA now has to finish its rules on antibacterial soaps by September 2016. If at that time the FDA still cannot say triclosan is safe and effective, then antibacterial hand soaps can no longer contain triclosan. Until then, antibacterial soaps remain on the market and consumers are left to protect themselves from this harmful chemical.BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- A young man is undergoing treatment at UAB Hospital after he was shot at Railroad Park in downtown Birmingham at about 7 tonight, according to police.
Birmingham Police Sgt. Johnny Williams said officers responded to the park for a report of a person shot. "They found a young man suffering from serious injuries," Williams said, adding he did not know the individual's condition.
There was no one in custody as of 9 p.m., Williams said.
"We're not sure what events transpired prior to him being shot. We have investigators looking into that now," he said.
Although information about the victim was not immediately available from police, some bystanders among the dozens of people who remained gathered around the park this evening after the shooting said a young boy was shot.
Police officers next to numerous vehicles with flashing blue lights stationed around the park established a perimeter and halted any access into the popular outdoor spot. UAB officers assisted Birmingham police at the scene.
Dale Bryant of Birmingham said he was walking at the park when he heard gunshots at about 7:15 p.m.
"I heard six gunshots. I was up walking on the track and the gunshots were over by the skateboard park," he said.
"Everyone took off running. That's how I knew where it was. Everyone started running," Bryant said.
With the St. Patrick's Day holiday and warm weather today, many people flocked to the park adjacent to Regions Field to hang out.
Starr Alexander and Katrina Belvins, both of Birmingham, were at the park with their children when the gunshots rang out tonight.
"I just heard the shots, I grabbed both kids and ran," Blevins said. "It sounded really close."
Alexander added: "They just kept shooting, like they were determined to shoot someone."
When responding to the incident, officers were radioing each other to keep people on scene.
"Everyone, keep everyone in the park. Don't let anybody leave," one officer said on the radio at about 7:25 p.m. "See if we can isolate some witnesses. We've got no one to talk to right now," another officer later responded.
The story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Editor's note: Updated at 9:15 p.m. to include comments from Birmingham Police Sgt. Johnny Williams. Updated at 9:35 p.m. to include video of tonight's press conference taken by staff writer Kyle Whitmire.The Lugi Lions Rugby Football Club was founded in 1972 by three friends: John Nash, Perry Hadley and Calle Erlandsson. In 1980 the club joined the Swedish premier division and finished third overall in 1982 and second in 1984. In 1989, 90 and 92, Lugi’s youth side took gold in the Swedish Championships. The women’s team was founded in 2003 and have been just as active on and off the field as the men.
Today the Lugi Lions field men’s, women’s, youths and old boy’s teams.
We are forever welcoming new and experienced players from all over the world: Scotland, England, New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy and, of course, France! As a result Lugi is a very colourful club with a social life. Many students have found themselves returning to the club; ‘stuck’ in Sweden following their exchange.
Lugi is also proud of its oldboys and ex-players who contribute to the club’s atmosphere and rally around their younger peers.
Click on the links to find out more or get in contact with us. We are looking forward to welcoming you!Key members of President Trump's Cabinet take part in weekly Bible study classes, according to a report by the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Regular attendees at the sessions include Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Agriculture Secretary Sunny Perdue, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
CBN'S DAVID BRODY ON THE FAITH OF DONALD TRUMP
Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions also attend when their schedule permits.
The sessions are led by Ralph Drollinger, a former NBA basketball player who turned to the ministry full-time after his injury-shortened career.
MEDIA RIDICULE PHOTO OF EVANGELICALS PRAYING OVER TRUMP
"It's the best Bible study that I've ever taught in my life," Drollinger told CBN of his pupils. "They are so teachable; they're so noble; they're so learned."
Trump himself has a standing invitation to attend the sessions and receives a copy of Drollinger's teaching every week.
Drollinger believes that his Bible study is the first to be held for Cabinet members in at least 100 years.
"These are godly individuals that God has risen to a position of prominence in our culture," he said. "I just praise God for them."
Click for more from CBN.com.UPDATE: Kobe Bryant has re-posted the photos of his wife in a bikini with a watermark included this time. Instead of taking them down due to the churlish behavior of commenters, he did it because he didn’t want anyone to use the photos without giving him the proper credit. KOBE!
Of course Internet commenters don’t bother the Mamba. He just didn’t want anyone else getting credit for snapping these lovely pictures of his wife.
EARLIER:
Kobe Bryant posted pictures of his bikini-clad wife, Vanessa Bryant, on Instagram earlier tonight before removing the candid shots.
The side-by-side photos feature Mrs. Bryant in a revealing swimsuit from up close and far away. We’re guessing the comments—at the time of the screen grab, 728 of them—assumed the sort of covert misogyny and sexism you’d probably expect. If a famous athlete’s wife is featured in a skimpy bikini on the Internet, people are going to say some unkind things. That’s depressing to acknowledge, but still true.
But the Mamba has certainly figured out how to use hashtags. Bean captioned the photos: “#allreal” and “#ishouldknow.” This most likely added fuel to the fire for the anonymous commenters, but hopefully Kobe’s learned a valuable lesson with this Instagram posting, one we should all keep in mind if we find ourselves in a similar situation: don’t post pictures on the Internet of your wife in a tiny bikini when you’re an internationally famous athlete.
Unfortunately, the Internet hivemind is still a 13-year-old boy that can’t wait to make a joke about a woman’s body.
What do you think?
Follow Spencer on Twitter at @countcenci.
Follow Dime on Twitter at @DimeMag.
Become a fan of Dime Magazine on Facebook HERE.Posted: May 19, 2015 by Jérôme Segura
Last updated: March 30, 2016
It is a well-known fact that malware authors try really hard to avoid security researchers and their analysis tools. For instance, many binaries have anti VM features and will behave differently if they detect that they are running in a non genuine environment.
Exploit kits also perform similar tricks despite some limitations since they are browser based. Kafeine documented VM and network tools checks in a post showing how CVE-2013-7331, a vulnerability in Internet Explorer allows file system enumeration. According to Kafeine:
The Microsoft.XMLDOM ActiveX control in Microsoft Windows 8.1 and earlier allows remote attackers to determine the existence of local pathnames, UNC share pathnames, intranet hostnames, and intranet IP addresses by examining error codes, as demonstrated by a res:// URL, and exploited in the wild in February 2014.
We first spotted this vulnerability used in trying to detect the presence of our own software, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, in a limited custom exploit kit a couple of months ago (hat tip to @dsanchezlavado):
But now, as discovered by Kafeine, the latest version of Angler EK, one of the most popular and sophisticated exploit kits, also checks to see if either Malwarebytes Anti-Malware or Anti-Exploit are installed on the target system.
If Malwarebytes software is installed, then the exploit kit will silently exit and not even attempt to launch further exploits or malware.
We can almost imagine cyber criminals complaining about how their brand new creations, fresh out of the binary factory, are already being detected by our software. Even when they think they will catch everyone by surprise with a zero-day, we are already blocking it.
The combination of Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit and Anti-Malware is extremely effective at stopping both drive-by download and social engineering attacks. It’s nice however, when independent sources, albeit malware authors, confirm it.
The rationale behind not delivering the payloads to anyone running Malwarebytes software is motivated by a lack of return on investment. Knowing that they won’t be able to exploit those machines, cyber criminals would rather avoid wasting their ammo and also not generate unnecessary attention.
Just because exploit authors are choosing to avoid us doesn’t mean that we will avoid them. We are keeping a close eye on their activities and making sure that whatever they are cooking is still being blocked by our software.
In the meantime, this gives anyone not yet running Malwarebytes software another reason to go ahead and install our Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Anti-Exploit on their computers.‘The Hobbit’ outsells Breaking Dawn and Skyfall!
at 7:16 am by November 10, 20127:16 am by newsfrombree
Thanks to Ringer Josiah for sending this in from EW.com:
Peter Jackson just laid the smackdown on RPatz and James Bond. Advance tickets for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which doesn’t open in theaters until Dec. 14, went on sale on Wednesday, and if we’re speaking plainly, they crushed it. Sales for the film on Fandango accounted for 33 percent of all tickets sold that day on the ticket website, dethroning Breaking Dawn — Part 2, which had held the top spot since Oct. 1. Skyfall, the latest in the 007 franchise, placed second, with 31 percent of the day’s sales. The Twilight crew came in third, with 28 percent of the day’s take.
[Article][The following is the first of two guest posts from Nick Ritter, a member of Axenthof Thiâd, and The Wild Hunt’s resident expert on all things Théodish. Given the rise of Dan Halloran, a Republican New York City Councilman, congressional candidate, and Théodish Heathen, I thought it best spotlight a truly informed voice on the subject of his religion. This post will deal with Théodish belief, while a second post, published tomorrow, will deal with Dan Halloran specifically.]
While Théodish Belief has been “public” for about twenty years, it is still relatively unknown by most people in Paganism-at-large. For this reason, Jason has asked me to write an introductory post about Théodism and issues surrounding this religious movement, so as to better help the reader when Théodism comes up in the news.
First, though, I should introduce myself, and mention why I might know a thing or two about Théodism. I became Théodish in 1996, when I was inducted into Frêsena Thiâd. This was a Théodish group in the Upper Midwest, primarily Minnesota and Wisconsin, and led by Gerd Forsta. Gerd was a “fosterling” of Gárman, the founder and (at that time) leader of Théodish Belief; Gerd had entered into tutelage under Gárman with the understanding that he would eventually split off and found his own, independent Théodish organization. Over the next few years, our théod made trips about once a year to upstate New York, where Gárman lived. There, I was able to speak with Gárman, and train under him as a wéofodthegn (priest). I was certified as a wéofodthegn by Gárman, and also chosen to be his steward for a while. I also published a number of articles and two books through the Théodish press, was a member of the Thunor-gild (i.e. a Thunor cult), and founder of the scops’ gild (a guild of poets). I am currently a member of Axenthof Thiâd, serving under Gerd Forsta.
What is Théodish Belief?
Théodish Belief, or Théodism, is one of a number of approaches to the practice of pre-Christian Germanic religion. There have been individuals and groups attempting to practice this religion since at least the late 19th century, but such attempts really took off in the U.S. in the mid 1970s. Théodism got its start in 1976 in Watertown, New York, with a man known as Gárman Lord. This was about the same time that American versions of Ásatrú were getting their start in Texas, with folks such as Edred Thorsson and Stephen McNallen. Théodism started independently of Ásatrú, and there was not much interaction between the two until the late 1980s or early 1990s.
For some time during the early part of this interaction, much was made out of the ethnic distinction between Ásatrú and Théodism: Ásatrú was taken to be primarily Norse, and Théodism to be primarily Anglo-Saxon. While there are still Anglo-Saxon Théodish groups, the Théodish approach to religious reconstruction has branched out into the particular religious forms of the Frisians, the Continental Saxons, and the Goths. Scandinavian varieties of Théodism would be quite possible (as would other Continental forms), but no one has taken that project up just yet. The distinction between Théodism and other forms of heathenry is therefore not a matter of which people’s particular heathenry we’re trying to reconstruct, but rather a matter of approach and definition.
The differences between different approaches to Germanic religion such as Ásatrú, Forn Siðr / Forn Sed, Heiðni, Odinism, and Théodism, etc. grow out of differences in the definition of what constitutes Germanic religion, and what defines a successful practice of it. For instance, one approach might be that Germanic religion is simply the worship of the Germanic gods; therefore, to worship Germanic gods – in any way – is to practice Germanic religion. In Théodish Belief, Germanic religion is defined as the pre-Christian religion* of the Germanic peoples; as such, successfully practicing Germanic religion means practicing the religion as the pre-Christian Germanic peoples practiced it, to the best of our knowledge and ability. This means that we are continually trying to improve our knowledge and practice of Germanic religion. It also means, as Germanic religion was not really clearly separable from the rest of Germanic culture, that practicing Germanic religion also means, for us, adopting the culture of which it was a central part, specifically what might be called the ideological or mental component of culture; e.g. the worldview, ethos, etc. To do otherwise, we feel, would be to arbitrarily decide what is and is not “religious” about early Germanic cultures, and risk mutilating (or at least severely misunderstanding) the religion. The adoption of the early Germanic worldview has certain consequences in how we arrange and govern ourselves, as will be discussed below.
I sometimes liken our approach in reconstructing Germanic religion and culture to experimental archaeology: we research Germanic religion and culture extensively, put in practice what we learn, observe how it works, and make changes as we learn more. Along the way, we hypothesize and experiment; some of these experiments work, and some don’t, but we keep what works until we find something better.
Our religious practice, developed from our research into pre-Christian Germanic religion, has certain characteristics. For one, ours is a votive religion, insofar as we make offerings to our gods in return for their continued help and friendship, and we seek to enter into a relationship of reciprocal gift-giving with them; these offerings are in the form of libations, valuables, food offerings, and animal sacrifice (which is also, in part, a food offering). Théodism emphasizes right action, including right ritual action, and lets people sort out the specifics of belief for themselves; the forms and rituals of Théodism are primarily those of public worship in a group, and the private religious practices of individual Théodish people are not something that we try to direct. Along with the emphasis on correct ritual action, there is an emphasis on the composition and performance of religious poetry, often hymns to the gods, and usually in an old Germanic language; to date, there have been Théodish religious poems composed in Anglo-Saxon, Old Frisian, Gothic, and Old Saxon.
One of the things that people find off-putting about Théodism is that it is unabashedly hierarchical in its arrangement, even elitist. Our reasons for adopting such a hierarchical social structure in Théodism – aside from such a social structure being evident in early Germanic cultures, and thus our adoption of it being in keeping with our adoption of early Germanic culture – are mainly twofold.
On the one hand, we have learned through experience and observation that groups function best when people have responsibilities and duties befitting their own qualities and character; we do not assume beforehand that everyone is the same, and so there is a process of testing and observing new people to see if they will fit in with the group, and where (more on this below). Also, our hierarchy is based on demonstrated merit, rewarding responsibility, intelligence, vision, hard work, and ethical uprightness with more social standing and influence, but also a higher degree of responsibilities to the group as a whole. The social structure is therefore aristocratic in the original sense, with power (Greek kratos) being given to those who have demonstrated themselves to be the best (Greek aristoi).
The other main reason for our adoption of a hierarchical social structure is based on our observations that a democratic, egalitarian social structure is the easiest kind to subvert; who is to blame if no one is in charge, if wrongs done were done by committee, and in the name of the group? Instead, we put individuals in power, state clearly what powers and concomitant responsibilities those individuals have, so that when wrong is done, it is clear who has done it and who carries the blame.
That said, certain decisions need to be made by the group as a whole, and this is where the thing – the tribal council – is used as a means of making decisions. In the thing, everyone has a say regardless of rank, and everyone has a chance to try and convince the group through argument and persuasion.
What is Sacral Kingship?
Along with a hierarchical and aristocratic social structure, another important element of Théodish social structure is the institution of sacral kingship. The king is someone selected from the highest level of a Théodish group to be both the leader and highest religious functionary of that group, and has religious functions distinct from – and complementary to – those of the priests. It is important to note that no current Théodish groups have kings; although we do believe that sacral kingship is a valuable role, it is not a role that can be filled by just anyone. It is also important to know that sacral kingship is not monarchical: the king is answerable, is held responsible, perhaps to a greater extent than anyone else.
When Gárman was king of the Winland Ríce (a Théodish organization comprising several théods), he accepted a few people as “fosterlings”, that is to say that he trained them to eventually go off and lead their own, independent Théodish organizations, perhaps eventually to become sacral kings in their own right. Two such fosterlings were Gerd Forsta and Dan Halloran.
What is Thralldom?
As mentioned above, people who want to join a Théodish group have to go through a process of being observed and their character tested before being allowed in as full members of the group. This process is called “thralldom,” and the would-be entrants “thralls,” terms that tend to put people off. This is intentional: the name is part of the test of one’s character. If one can submit to being called something unpleasant, to sacrificing the gratification of one’s ego in return for something better, that says something important about one’s worth. As in the military, as in traditional martial arts, as in traditional initiatory practices the world over, so in Théodism: one must be broken down a little bit so as to be built up into something better.
Théodish groups tend to be somewhat small and tightly-knit; they are real communities with a great deal of internal loyalty. As such, they are justifiably wary of new people coming in and upsetting things; thralldom has developed as the method of teaching and observing would-be entrants to make sure that they will fit in their new community, and that this will be beneficial both to them and to the Théodish group they are trying to enter. Théodish thralls have no responsibilities within Théodism other than to listen, observe, and learn, and to repay their teaching with work; thralls have no rights either, except for the right not to be abused, and the right to walk away from Théodism. To ensure that thralls are not abused, Théodish Belief has at times made use of ambihtsþylas (ombudsmen), a function I served in for a while. If a thrall walks away, no questions are asked, but that person will not be allowed to gain entry into a Théodish group again. Over the decades, there have been a few exceptions made, where people have been allowed in without having to undergo thralldom. In all but one case, this has proven disastrous. As a result, we are much more consistent now in the application of this custom.
Thew: Custom, Customary Ethic, Customary Law
Another important aspect of Théodism is thew, which means something like “custom” “ethos” “customary law.” We do not write down bylaws or rules to govern behavior, as we have observed that it is very easy to subvert a written rule, and hold to the letter of the law while breaking it in spirit. Instead, we govern ourselves by thews, customary laws that – as I have read about English Common Law – can be written about, but which can never be entirely and definitively formulated in writing. Thus, if one breaks a thew, the thew is broken: there is no hiding behind the written form. Learning how to behave in Théodish society is therefore more complicated than memorizing a list of rules: one must be immersed in it and learn by observing, asking, listening, and doing. This immersive learning is the institution of thralldom mentioned above. We find that people are less likely to break the customs of a culture that they have become immers |
his second outing.
Fullback Jalston Fowler (Vigor) and running back Derrick Henry of the Tennessee Titans. Henry ran for 36 yards and two touchdowns on 16 carries and caught three passes for 17 yards in the Titans' 34-27 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Saturday. Fowler had two carries for 4 yards and left the game with an injury. Tennessee coach Mike Mularkey said the injury was a thigh bruise and wasn't as bad as it had looked.
Other former Alabama players seeing action in the second week of preseason games included:
Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey (Hoover) and outside linebacker Tim Williams. Williams had two tackles, including a sack and two quarterback hits, in Baltimore's 31-7 victory over the Miami Dolphins on Thursday. Humphrey missed the Ravens' first preseason game with a hamstring issue. Humphrey played six defensive snaps and three special-teams plays against Miami.
Bills linebacker Reggie Ragland (Bob Jones) and cornerback Bradley Sylve. Sylve had two tackles and Ragland one in Buffalo's 20-16 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday.
Chicago Bears safety Eddie Jackson, who broke up a pass in a 24-23 victory over the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday.
Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Wallace Gilberry (Baldwin County), quarterback AJ McCarron (St. Paul's) and guard Andre Smith (Huffman). McCarron completed 8-of-15 passes for 93 yards with no touchdowns and one interception in the Bengals' 30-12 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Browns wide receiver Richard Mullaney.
Lions offensive tackle Cyrus Kouandjio.
Houston Texans cornerback Kareem Jackson.
Chiefs wide receiver Gehrig Dieter, who had a 3-yard punt return against Cincinnati.
Los Angeles Chargers defensive tackle Damion Square, who had a quarterback hit in a 13-7 loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday.
Dolphins center Anthony Steen.
New England Patriots cornerback Cyrus Jones, who had two tackles in a 27-23 loss to the Texans on Saturday. Jones also returned four punts for 58 yards, including a 32-yarder, and one kickoff for 17 yards.
Cyrus goes up, over and around the defense on the punt return. #NEvsHOU pic.twitter.com/iFNbJ4LXLE -- New England Patriots (@Patriots) August 20, 2017
Giants offensive tackle D.J. Fluker (Foley) and defensive tackle Dalvin Tomlinson. Tomlinson made three tackles in the Giants' loss to Cleveland.
Jets wide receiver ArDarius Stewart (Fultondale), who caught two passes for 23 yards in a loss to Detroit.
Eagles guard Chance Warmack.
49ers defensive tackle Quinton Dial (Clay-Chalkville) and safety Vinnie Sunseri (Northridge). Dial had three tackles and a quarterback hit and Sunseri made two tackles against the Broncos.
Buccaneers offensive tackle Korren Kirven and running back Blake Sims.
Redskins defensive lineman Jonathan Allen and guard Arie Kouandjio. Allen had a tackle for loss against Green Bay.
FOR MORE OF AL.COM'S COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE
Cardinals defensive tackle Ed Stinson, Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones (Foley), Bears offensive tackle Brandon Greene, Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick (Gadsden City), Indianapolis Colts center Ryan Kelly, Dolphins running back Kenyan Drake, Rams linebacker Mark Barron (St. Paul's), Vikings offensive tackle Austin Shepherd, Patriots linebacker Dont'a Hightower, Saints running back Mark Ingram and Redskins outside linebacker Ryan Anderson (Daphne) did not play in the preseason's second week.CAPE CANAVERAL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA will partner with Boeing and SpaceX to build commercially owned and operated “space taxis” to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, ending U.S. dependence on Russia for rides, officials said on Tuesday.
NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik prepares to enter Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft for a fit check evaluation at the company's Houston Product Support Center in this undated image. NASA will partner with Boeing and SpaceX to build commercially owned and operated "space taxis" to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, ending U.S. dependence on Russia for rides, officials said on Tuesday. REUTERS/NASA/Handout via Reuters
The U.S. space agency also considered a bid by privately owned Sierra Nevada Corp, but opted to award long-time aerospace contractor Boeing and California’s SpaceX with contracts valued at a combined $6.8 billion to develop, certify and fly their seven-person capsules.
Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion to SpaceX’s $2.6 billion. SpaceX is run by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, also the chief executive officer of electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors.
“SpaceX is deeply honored by the trust NASA has placed in us,” said Musk, a South Africa-born, Canadian American billionaire. “It is a vital step in a journey that will ultimately take us to the stars and make humanity a multi-planet species.”
The awards position Boeing and SpaceX to be ready for commercial flight services in 2017, said Kathy Leuders, manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew program. She said both contracts have the same requirements.
“The companies proposed the value within which they were able to do the work and the government accepted that,” Leuders told reporters in a conference call.
The contract has taken on new urgency given rising tensions between the United States and Russia over its annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Boeing’s CST-100 spaceship would launch aboard Atlas 5 rockets, built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing. SpaceX, which already has a $1.3 billion NASA contract to fly cargo to the space station, intends to upgrade its Dragon freighter to carry astronauts.
NASA has said that in addition to test flights, the awards would include options for between two and six operational missions.
By flying astronauts commercially from the United States, NASA could end Russia’s monopoly on space station crew transport. The agency pays $70 million per person for rides on Russian Soyuz capsules, the only flights available for astronauts since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011.
China, the only other country to fly people in orbit besides the United States and Russia, is not a member of the 15-nation space station partnership.
NASA has spent about $1.5 billion since 2010 investing in partner companies under its Commercial Crew program. Boeing and SpaceX have won most of NASA’s development funds.
The companies retain ownership of their vehicles and can sell rides to customers outside of NASA, including private tourists.
“The work that we have underway … is making the possibility for everyone to someday see our planet Earth from space,” said Kennedy Space Center director and former astronaut Bob Cabana.
“I know a lot of us are cheering on the success of our Commercial Crew program, not because of what it means to NASA … but what it means to human spaceflight for everyone.”
The program is based on a public-private partnership that created two cargo lines to the station, a research laboratory that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.
In addition to SpaceX, NASA has a $1.9 billion contract with Orbital Sciences Corp for resupply missions.
Slideshow (3 Images)
For Boeing, the win in space is important symbolically, said Christian Mayes, an industrials analyst at Edward Jones in St. Louis, who rates Boeing stock a “hold.”
“But financially, people need to come back to Earth,” said Mayes. Boeing’s space and network businesses contribute less than 10 percent of total revenue, and a $4.2 billion contract over multiple years “is not going to move the needle,” he added.
Boeing shares closed about 0.8 percent higher.BEIRUT – The leader of a Free Syrian Army-affiliated force operating in the remote stretches of central Syria has been killed in an ISIS attack following recent advances by the US-backed rebels against the jihadist group.
A suicide bomber dispatched by ISIS detonated himself Thursday at dawn in an Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces position in the Eastern Qalamoun Mountains on the edge of the country’s vast semi-desert, killing Colonel Bakour Salim, according to a statement issued by the High Negotiations Committee.
The HNC, which is representing the Syrian opposition in the stalled Geneva peace talks, mourned the death of Salim, who was a member of the Saudi-backed diplomatic body that was formed in Riyadh in December 2015.
“Colonel Salim devoted his life to defend the Syrian people,” it said in honor of the leader of the Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces, a little-known group that reportedly receives support from the US and Jordan.
The exact circumstances of Salim’s death remain uncertain, with the Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces telling the pro-rebel Smart News Agency that he died from wounds suffered from a blast that detonated during clashes with ISIS.
However, the rebel group did not provide further details to the outlet and has yet to issue an official statement on the matter.
Enab Baladi, another pro-opposition news outlet, noted that activists were saying he was either killed in ISIS shelling or a suicide bombing.
Recent Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces gains
Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces on the move in the Syrian desert. (Facebook/Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces)
Salim’s death comes on the heels of recent gains by the Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces against ISIS in the desert region east of the Syrian capital.
The group announced on June 5 that it seized an ISIS position in Tal Makhoul, which serves as the first line of defense for the nearby Tal Dikweh. Only days before, the al-Abdo Martyrs Forces announced that its fighters seized the Zaza and Kabad checkpoints northeast of the Bir al-Qassab region in the country’s vast semi-desert following a “surprise operation.”
“[We] expelled ISIS members from the region, killing 10 of their fighters while capturing two of them as the rest fled toward… the desert,” the group claimed in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
A spokesperson for the Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Forces spoke with the activist Local Coordination Committees about the fighting, saying that a foreign ISIS commander had been killed in the battle.
Saeed Saif claimed that ISIS had running an operations room at the captured checkpoints, adding that the Zaza point carried “strategic importance” since it was a linking point for ISIS fighters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also covered the desert battle, reporting that a rebel group—which would not name—had killed a number of ISIS fighters during its fight to seize the Zaza and Kabad checkpoints.
NOW's English news desk editor Albin Szakola (@AlbinSzakola) wrote this report. Amin Nasr translated the Arabic-language source material.Image copyright Merseyside Police Image caption PC Paul Briggs was injured in a crash on his way to work for Merseyside Police
The funeral of a policeman whose wife fought a hospital to end his life support has taken place.
Friends and family gathered at the Landican Cemetery and Crematorium, Woodchurch, Wirral, to celebrate the life of Paul Briggs, 43.
Doctors treating PC Briggs at the Walton Centre in Liverpool opposed the application to withdraw treatment.
But a judge ruled in December in favour of the application from his wife Lindsey, 40.
Image caption Lindsey Briggs argued her husband should be allowed to die
Image copyright PA Image caption A guard of honour was formed as the cortege arrived at the crematorium
The officer suffered a brain injury in a crash on his way to work for Merseyside Police and had been in a minimally conscious state for 18 months.
PC Briggs, from Wirral, who died last month, suffered a bleed on the brain and five fractures to his spine in the crash. He was kept alive through medical intervention.
In July 2016, driver Chelsea Rowe was jailed for a year for crashing into the officer.
Lindsey Briggs told the Court of Protection her husband's treatment should be stopped "given his previously expressed wishes" and he should be allowed to die.
Image caption A reading is included in the service on behalf of PC Briggs' daughter, Ella
Image copyright PA Image caption A police officer's hat was laid on top of the coffin
Mr Justice Charles ruled in Mrs Briggs' favour at a hearing in the Court of Protection, where judges consider issues relating to people who lack the mental capacity to take decisions.
The judge attended the funeral service to pay his respects.
Officers on motorbikes and mounted officers led the funeral procession and a guard of honour was formed as it arrived at the chapel.
A police officer's hat was laid on the coffin, which was carried by PC Briggs' colleagues.
Assistant Chief Constable Ian Critchley saluted the coffin as mourners made their way inside the chapel for the ceremony which included tributes from his brothers Jeff and Greg and the song It's My Life by Bon Jovi.
The service ended with a poem chosen by his daughter, which was listed in the order of service as Ella's Tribute to Daddy - My Spirit.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
NEW YORK — Smokers could soon pay more for cigarettes in New York City.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a proposal Wednesday to raise the base price from $10.50 to $13 a pack. That would make New York City have the highest priced cigarettes in the country.
There would also be a tax on other tobacco products.
"I am trying to quit, so increasing the price would help," smoker Nichole Munisami said.
According to Mayor Bill de Blasio, raising the cost of cigarettes is "...clearly one of the best ways to drive down use, particularly among young people."
The goal, according to the mayor, is to reduce the number of smokers by 160,000 people by 2020.
Younis Ali's family owns Smoke City in Murray Hill. He said he's not worried about new tobacco regulations.
"New York in particular, I mean, people have just grown accustomed to the insane prices they are already are at," Ali said.
In addition to raising prices, newly proposed legislation would cut down on the number of stores selling cigarettes
"Tobacco is everywhere. It's just too easy to get. We are going to change that by capping the number of licenses available in each community," de Blasio said.
Part of the new anti-smoking proposals target vaping, a rising trend among young people. It would create a retail license for e-cigarettes.
Even if new regulations go into effect and prices go up, Meghan Quick said her friends would just cross state lines to find cheaper cigarettes.
"The thing is, when people are addicted, they're addicted. So they are going to buy it," she said.
Other bills connected to this proposal include residential buildings creating smoking polices and tobacco sales would be banned at pharmacies.
The City Council Health Committee is expected to hold a hearing about the legislation on April 27.Muhummad Iqbal, who is demanding justice after his pregnant second wife was killed by her family, admits his own crime
A Pakistani man demanding justice after his pregnant wife was murdered outside Lahore's high court this week admitted on Thursday to strangling his first wife, in an admission that is likely to focus even more attention on the prevalence of so-called "honour" killings in the country.
Muhummad Iqbal, the 45-year-old husband of Farzana Parveen, who was beaten to death by 20 male relatives on Tuesday, said he strangled his first wife in order to marry Parveen.
He avoided a prison sentence after his family used Islamic provisions of Pakistan's legal system to forgive him, precisely those he has insisted should not be available to his wife's killers.
"I was in love with Farzana and killed my first wife because of this love," he told Agence France-Presse.
Police confirmed that the killing had happened six years ago and that he was released after a "compromise" with his family.
Iqbal has also claimed that Parveen's family killed another one of their daughters some years ago. Speaking to a researcher from the Aurat Foundation, a women's rights organisation, he claimed that Parveen's father, Muhammad Azeem, had poisoned the other woman after falling out with her husband-in-law.
The foundation has been unable to confirm Iqbal's claim about a second killing.
The extraordinary twists to the affair came after Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, ordered an urgent investigation into the killing of Parveen, a woman who had enraged her family after marrying without their consent.
In a statement he said the crime was "totally unacceptable and must be dealt with in accordance with the law promptly".
He also ordered the chief minister of Punjab province, his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, to take immediate action and launch an urgent investigation.
The deadly attack on Parveen, which reportedly lasted for around 15 minutes, began soon after she and Iqbal arrived at the court where she was due to testify against her father's claim that she had been kidnapped and coerced into marriage.
Her father, who is the only one of the group to be have been arrested so far, told police that his daughter had been killed because he had dishonoured her family.
Iqbal has claimed that Parveen's father only withdrew his support for their marriage after demanding more money than had initially been agreed at the start of a long engagement. Sharif's intervention followed international uproar, including a lengthy and stinging condemnation from the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, who said Pakistan must take "urgent and strong measures to put an end to the continuous stream of so-called 'honour killings' and other forms of violence against women".
She said: "The fact that she was killed on her way to court shows a serious failure by the state to provide security for someone who – given how common such killings are in Pakistan – was obviously at risk."
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that the media had reported that nearly 900 women had been killed in "honour" crimes in 2013 alone, but the actual figure is likely to be far higher.
Until Thursday there had been little comment on the case domestically, with newspapers and television stations focussing on other stories.
One journalist, an editor of an Urdu national paper who did not want to be named, said the country's media reflected its audience.
"Although we have some educated people, most are still living in semi-tribal societies in far-flung rural areas," he said. "In a country where people are being killed every day by miscreants and militants it is not so important when one woman is killed by one husband."
Some members of the public in Lahore clearly share the media's ambivalence.
Muhammad Yaqub, a student at a private university in the city, said he understood the loss of honour for the family but disliked the brutal way the woman had been killed.
"He did some right and some wrong," he said.What happens when a live condor gets loose at a hockey game
The Bakersfield Condors brought a live version of their mascot to the game. It escaped. (Photo11: YouTube)
The ECHL's Bakersfield Condors decided to bring out a REAL CONDOR for the National Anthem because sure what could possibly happen?
Everything. Everything could possibly happen.
A quick rundown of Things the Real Condor Did at a Minor League Hockey Game.
* Escape, not once, but twice (!) from its handler
* Try, with varying degrees of success and hilarity, to walk on the ice
* Join its fellow Condors on the team's bench
* Delight and terrify these same hockey players
* Show itself out, through the tunnel to the locker room.
Summed up perfectly by the game's announcers, "That didn't exactly go as planned, but it's all good."
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So, is the Condor the worst-case scenario for mascot on the loose? Hm.
LIVE MASCOTS, RANKED BY POTENTIAL FOR DISASTER
5. Connecticut College Camels Seems like a good idea, until they start spitting. (Fun Fact, via the San Diego Zoo: "They aren't actually spitting—it's more like throwing up!")
4. Savannah College of Art and Design Bees Bees!
3. Scottsdale Community College Artichokes Gross. Just gross.
2. Bakersfield Condors Because again it's an ACTUAL NEW WORLD VULTURE, in a hockey rink.
1. Camas High School Papermakers Sentient, angry paper-making robots? Good luck.
Got another one? Leave a comment with the worst possible live mascot on the loose, or tell us @USATODAYsports. We'll feature some of our favorites here.
* "Banana slugs. UC Santa Cruz I think." Tom O'Neil. Yup, that could be sticky.
* "Cincinatti Bengals. Imagine the damage a bengal tiger on the loose wud do." Mick Lally. Yup, terrible idea.
* "Blooming Prairie awesome blossoms!" Dustin Draeger. Winner! Wow, the horror.
(Source: Bakersfield Condors on YouTube | Via: Deadspin)
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/Z3s4EKState-funded Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh schools should be required to treat applications from non-religious families the same as those from believers, according to campaigners.
The comments came as a national survey found that almost three-quarters of adults were in favour of an overhaul of rules on faith school admissions.
Some 73 per cent of adults polled by ComRes said that primaries and secondaries should be banned from discriminating “against prospective pupils on religious grounds”. Fewer than a fifth of the 2,000 people surveyed agreed with current rules.
The survey – commissioned by the Accord Coalition – comes just days before parents in Richmond, west London, are due to make appeals to the High Court as part of a long-running fight against the opening of a new Roman Catholic school in the borough.
But any changes to faith school admissions rules are likely to be strongly resisted by religious leaders.
Last year, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, sparked outrage after suggesting that the number of places at Church of England schools reserved for Anglican pupils should be limited to as little as 10 per cent.
Critics claimed that the move represented an attempt to undermine tradition and represented an attack on faith.
Currently, around a third of state schools in England and Wales are faith-based, giving them powers to select pupils on their religion.
But the Accord Coalition, which campaigns against rules on religious admissions, suggested that the survey results showed broad support for a change in the law.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, the group’s chairman, said: “Not only does selecting pupils on religious grounds contribute to greater segregation in the school system, and thereby risk undermining community cohesion, but it also goes against widely held understandings of fairness in society, as shown by the survey.
“Rather than helping to segregate, all state funded faith schools should open their doors to the fresh air of inter-cultural mixing and understanding. They should not look to serve themselves, but be part of their wider community."Trying to figure out where salsa fits into your diet? Tough break. After reviewing extensive research on the subject, scientists at MIT have determined that we will never know whether salsa is kind of good for you or kind of bad for you.
After poring over the last 50 years’ worth of scientific studies, the research team has concluded that we have exhausted our options for determining whether we should eat salsa a little more or a little less. Furthermore, they have found that no amount of additional research will tell us whether salsa consumption slightly increases your risk for some conditions, if it’s something that really has almost no effect on your diet, or if the ones with the beans in them can actually take the place of a balanced lunch because of the protein.
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“We have reviewed hundreds of studies, and our conclusion is that we will never know,” stated Dr. Richard Prewer, lead researcher on the project. “I mean, it’s pretty much all vegetables, so you know that’s good. But you probably can’t get all your daily vegetable servings from salsa, right? Like, you’d be getting too much salt in that case, or maybe it’s one of those deals where the vegetables in salsa don’t have all their nutritional value because they’re not fresh or whatever?”
While researchers were initially confident about their ability to get some sort of actionable results, additional considerations like what kind of chip you use, whether the salsa is a green one or a red one, and how long the jar has been in the fridge all contributed to the intractability of the problem. The research did conclude that eating salsa with a carrot is a little healthier than eating salsa with a tortilla chip, though tortilla chips are made out of corn, which is a vegetable, too, so who knows really.
Well, they tried their best, but it looks like it’s time to give up on this one. Salsa is either a moderately healthy food or a slight indulgence, and science has no idea which. For the foreseeable future, we’ll just have to roll the dice on eating a little bit more or a little bit less salsa than we should.view:
topics flat nest
mixdup
join:2003-06-28
Atlanta, GA 483.0 4.8
mixdup Member Not 100% their fault To be fair to Comcast (and I am far from a cable company apologist), high rates are not 100% their fault. The content companies have a huge role in both the unrelenting inflation of cable prices as well as bundling.
When unbundling comes to OTT, the cable companies will likely get it too. And when OTT gets first run availability of high quality content, it'll likely cost the same as it does on cable (see: HBO Now)
maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA ·AT&T FTTP
(Software) pfSense
2 recommendations maartena Premium Member Re: Not 100% their fault said by mixdup: To be fair to Comcast (and I am far from a cable company apologist), high rates are not 100% their fault. The content companies have a huge role in both the unrelenting inflation of cable prices as well as bundling.
When unbundling comes to OTT, the cable companies will likely get it too. And when OTT gets first run availability of high quality content, it'll likely cost the same as it does on cable (see: HBO Now)
As long as cable companies don't have the balls to stand up for their customers, we aren't going to get anywhere, and prices will continue to go up. I'd say it's certainly a two-way street. Cable companies are just as much at fault for allowing the content companies to walk all over them. Cable companies just succumb to the threat from the content companies who go all-out in marketing and advertising during a dispute, telling their viewers to go with another television subscriber, and they are desperate not to lose any customers.As long as cable companies don't have the balls to stand up for their customers, we aren't going to get anywhere, and prices will continue to go up. I'd say it's certainly a two-way street. Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ Kearnstd Premium Member Re: Not 100% their fault THis is why contracts being staggered works for the content owners. If all video platforms had to renew their contracts by the same exact due date the video providers could in theory secretly work together and come out and state "This is what we will pay" unclexrico
join:2014-03-28
Brooklyn, NY unclexrico Member Re: Not 100% their fault said by Kearnstd: THis is why contracts being staggered works for the content owners. If all video platforms had to renew their contracts by the same exact due date the video providers could in theory secretly work together and come out and state "This is what we will pay"
If the cable provider's had not shot themselves in the foot with endless price hikes, poor customer service, and hidden fees, maybe they'd have an ally in the consumer. As it stands now, the media companies and local broadcasters have a leg up in negotiation. It's not IF the MSO's will cave, but WHEN they'll cave during every re-trans fight. The problem is the must carry rule. They should just do away with it.If the cable provider's had not shot themselves in the foot with endless price hikes, poor customer service, and hidden fees, maybe they'd have an ally in the consumer. As it stands now, the media companies and local broadcasters have a leg up in negotiation. It's not IF the MSO's will cave, but WHEN they'll cave during every re-trans fight. Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL Zoder Member Re: Not 100% their fault 2 law changes passed together that would that would really help.
1. Give broadcast stations a choice. Choice 1 is they can continue getting their free license to broadcast on the local frequency but in exchange they must offer the channel to free to the distributers. Choice 2 is they can charge retrans fees but now they must pay a yearly fee to the FCC for the license. This will be a meaningful fee not a token cost of doing business fee.
tl:dr You want to use our public airways for free, you don't then get to charge for the content being broadcast
2. Provide an antitrust exemption to the distributers. Cable, telco, dish, and internet. Allow them to form a joint venture for negotiating content agreements. That way they can negotiate as a block and if the content company is being unreasonable in price increases, they risk their content going off the air on most of their distributers at the same time. No more playing the distributers against each other which has just led to higher and higher prices for the channels with no end in sight. mikesco8
join:2006-02-17
Southwick, MA mikesco8 to unclexrico
Member to unclexrico
The must carry rule only applies if a local channel offers it for free retransmission, if they want to charge, it is no longer must carry, so that rule isn't really a problem unless there is a capacity issue. Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL Zoder to Kearnstd
Member to Kearnstd
That would be illegal under the antitrust laws. See my next post. john262
join:2003-09-26
Elko, NV john262 to Kearnstd
Member to Kearnstd
That might be an anti-trust violation however. And if it is you can bet they would get sued over it.
Karl Bode
News Guy
join:2000-03-02 1 recommendation Karl Bode to maartena
News Guy to maartena
And that's before you get into they extract their own pound of flesh via equipment fees, Broadcast TV fees, fees to pay your bill in person, fees to pay your bill over the phone, etc. etc. They are far from innocent daisies in the price hike parade... Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL Zoder Member Re: Not 100% their fault I would require the removal of the broadcast fees if the laws I proposed above were implemented.
I would also enforce the FCC to have teeth on the equipment rentals. Right now Comcast laughs at the FCC customer owned equipment rule. They claim their STB is only $2.50 and the outlet is 7.25. So that way, customers who have a cable card device get a paltry credit making it pointless if your goal is to save money by buying CC enabled equipment.
I would wager if the books were being audited, most companies would be expensing the boxes at more than $2.50 a month. The highend boxes would be EOL before they made back the cost on the box at those rates. dfxmatt
join:2007-08-21
Cary, IL dfxmatt to mixdup
Member to mixdup
Wrong. It is 100% their fault. You think they don't know that they could sell internet service at the speeds we want at the prices we want? They've worked very, very hard to avoid that.
It's not at all hard to provide 100-200mb downstream for $20 or $30/mo, provided you actually build for it. john262
join:2003-09-26
Elko, NV john262 to mixdup
Member to mixdup
But if you are content with OTA plus Netflix as I am then you will continue to save money. I know that's not for everybody but I feel that with Netflix plus OTA I already get more content than I could ever watch in a million years.
maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA ·AT&T FTTP
(Software) pfSense
maartena Premium Member Not surprising
Sports programming is especially expensive, I calculated that a Los Angeles market customer is paying around $25 a month for sports alone when they take on a regular cable package, and with $5-a-team-channel prices that figure is only going to go up.
Right now, we are sort of in this situation:
And the cable companies need to stand up against content owners a lot more than they are doing now. They will all cave in eventually, and the customer will pay for it.
Enough is enough. Cable prices have steadily been going up with about twice the inflation rate every year. We are paying about DOUBLE what we are paying for cable television than we were around 10 years ago, and there doesn't seem to be any signs of stopping.Sports programming is especially expensive, I calculated that a Los Angeles market customer is paying around $25 a month for sports alone when they take on a regular cable package, and with $5-a-team-channel prices that figure is only going to go up.Right now, we are sort of in this situation:
Flyonthewall
@teksavvy.com 3 recommendations Flyonthewall Anon Re: Not surprising Isn't Comcast both the puppet and the puppeteer? They own NBC. john262
join:2003-09-26
Elko, NV john262 Member Re: Not surprising Yup and that is a big part of the problem. That merger should never have been approved. Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ Kearnstd Premium Member Then make video cheaper cable industry When it comes time for contracts play hardball.
Form some trade group of all MSOs and work together to tell the content industry enough is enough.
oh wait the MSOs also have a vested interest in the content creation. rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO 181.0 7.8
1 recommendation rradina Member Prices Only One Factor Granted, Comcast did say high prices helped create Netflix but they never seemed to acknowledge the convenience factor of streaming services. They allow us to choose what, when, where and how we view the content our paid subscription provides.
For years cable has used awful STB/DVR solutions as a means to control content and generate even more revenue. For some, cable cards offer relief but it seems an intentionally kept secret. Although my cable provider finally offers a streaming app, usability is horrible, it frequently crashes, refuses to show content if a device is rooted or any mechanism to show the content on a bigger screen is employed (casting/MHL). It's also available on only a few platforms (no SmartTV app, no XBox app, no Windows App and their browser-based solution is even worse than the apps they do provide!)
OTOH, Netflix streams on everything from almost anywhere (geo blocking the notable exception). Their service is also rock solid.
Flyonthewall
@teksavvy.com Flyonthewall Anon Thank you Captain Obvious What a shock, we created competition because we charge too much money. Holy Price Climb, Batman!
And they aren't potentially more attractive you boob, they ARE.
This guy needs to get hit on the side of his head with a hammer before he sees it. shanghaista
join:2014-08-03
Canton, MA shanghaista Member Re: Thank you Captain Obvious Oh he sees it. He just won't publicly admit to it. And why would he, it doesn't put his employer in a positive light.
Like Coke executives obviously know Pepsi as a competitor but literally will not mention the brand.
It's all about PR/Marketing...
why60loss
Premium Member
join:2012-09-20 why60loss Premium Member I bet if they had any idea this was going to happen.........
It would be better if they all day traded at this point than took the time to sit there and tell them what to do. (So they can pump and dump)
They likely will start doing that with software as the tech moves forward and they start letting trading bot tech out into the wild more. In fact many of the banks and other large business's already do trade the markets with pure software. They still wouldn't have done much because modern day shareholders only care about this year not 3 to 5 years from now.It would be better if they all day traded at this point than took the time to sit there and tell them what to do. (So they can pump and dump)They likely will start doing that with software as the tech moves forward and they start letting trading bot tech out into the wild more. In fact many of the banks and other large business's already do trade the markets with pure software.
davidc502
join:2002-03-06
Mount Juliet, TN 611.7 364.7
·TDS
-1 recommendation davidc502 Member Taking responsibility
They take credit for raping customers wallets, and they go as far as taking credit for the creation of Netflix because of their high prices.
I bet they would get into a fight with Al Gore about who invented the internet "While Cohen sees Netflix as a complement to Comcasts cable offering, he acknowledges that streaming services, especially those that offer slimmer video packages like Sling TV and Sony PlayStation Vue, could potentially be more attractive to price-conscious consumers. "Part of this is a self-inflicted wound, Cohen said. We have made video too expensive."They take credit for raping customers wallets, and they go as far as taking credit for the creation of Netflix because of their high prices.I bet they would get into a fight |
’s house yeast in stainless steel tanks and then aged with Lactobacillus and Pediococcus for 18 months in an oak foudre. It is then transferred to freshly emptied Laird and Company apple brandy barrels where it ages for an additional 12 months before being blended and bottle conditioned (allagash.com). Bursting with dark cherry, apple brandy, vanilla, and oak flavors; this beer blew my mind and was elated when Bob later found a bottle that I could enjoy again at home.
Saving the best experience for last, Bob grabbed a bottle of Coolship Resurgum for us to enjoy in the coolship itself. Upon entering the coolship he poured each of us a glass and we discussed our thoughts on the beer of which mine were the following. I felt that Resurgum had a more mild “funk” and tartness than the gueuzes of Belgium (e.g. Cantillon) that I’ve tried, while at the same time a more balanced complexity (mild funk, tart lemon, oak, bready malt sweetness, and a semi-dry finish) from the first sip which in the end made it quite drinkable and approachable. As shown in the video above Bob then concluded the formal portion of the tour with a detailed description of the construction of the coolship (e.g. how the rough cut pine ceiling harbors dormant wild yeast and bacteria which is constantly being brought inside through the windows that are always open and a fan which circulates the incoming air) and the excitement around the brewery on coolship beer brew days.
Though we knew that we’d be shown more of the brewery than on their general tour. Both my wife and I were blown away by how in depth and fun our tour was from start to finish.
Thanks to Bob, Lindsay, Rob, and the entire Allagash team for the tour, tasting, and never ending dedication to brewing high quality Belgian-style beers! Cheers!
Coming Next: Extra clips video!WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration’s move on Wednesday to rescind guidance allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice has raised the stakes for an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that could deliver a landmark decision on the issue.
Women chant during a protest against the Trump administration's move to rescind guidance allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice, in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Bria Webb
The eight justices are due to hear oral arguments on March 28 on whether the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia can block Gavin Grimm, a female-born transgender high school student, from using the boys’ bathroom. A ruling is due by the end of June.
A key question in the case is whether a federal law, known as Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education, covers transgender students. The Education Department under Democratic President Barack Obama said in guidance to public schools last May that it does, but the Republican Trump administration withdrew that finding on Wednesday.
The high court on Thursday asked the lawyers involved to file letters by March 1 giving their views on how the Trump action should affect consideration of the case.
Lawyers for Grimm say that the definition of sex discrimination in Title IX is broad and includes gender identity. The school board maintains that the law was enacted purely to address “physiological distinctions between men and women.”
If the Supreme Court rules that Title IX protects transgender students, the decision would become the law of the land, binding the Trump administration and the states.
“This is an incredibly urgent issue for Gavin and these other kids across the country,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who represents Grimm.
The Trump administration’s announcement “only underscores the need for the Supreme Court to bring some clarity here,” he added.
The administration on Wednesday did not offer its own interpretation of Title IX, with the Justice Department telling the court only that it plans to “consider further and more completely the legal issues involved.”
The administration is not directly involved in the case.
Lawyers for both Grimm and the Gloucester County School Board have urged the court to decide whether Title IX applies to transgender students rather than taking a narrower approach by sending the case back to a lower court.
In a court filing on Thursday, the ACLU said that, regardless of the administration’s position, the court “can - and should - resolve the underlying question of whether the Board’s policy violates Title IX.”
The school board’s lawyers made similar comments in their most recent court filing, saying that the meaning of the federal law is “plain and may be resolved as a matter of straightforward interpretation.”
But the court could take a more cautious approach and send the case back to the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court’s April 2016 ruling in favor of Grimm relied on the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law.
Kyle Duncan, a lawyer representing the school board, said the court must at a minimum throw out the appeals court decision because “the entire basis for that opinion” was the no-longer extant Obama administration interpretation.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: PIVOTAL VOTE?
With the eight-justice court likely to be closely divided, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, could end up casting the deciding vote if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate in time. Otherwise, the court, which is divided equally between liberals and conservatives, could split 4-4, which would set no nationwide legal precedent.
Clues as to how the high court could rule can be gleaned from its decision last August to temporarily block the appeals court decision in Grimm’s case from going into effect. That emergency request from the school board did not require the justices to decide the merits of the case.
The vote in favor of the school board was 5-3, with Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, joining the four conservative justices. Breyer made clear in a statement at the time that his vote would not dictate how he would approach the case if the court took the issue up.
That decision indicated that the court is likely to be closely divided at oral argument. Grimm’s hopes may rest in Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who voted against Grimm last summer but has sometimes sided with liberals in major cases, including several on gay rights.
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But even lawyers closely following the case are not sure which way Kennedy could go.
“If I could predict that, I would be down in the casino,” said Gary McCaleb, a lawyer with conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which backs the school board.
For graphic on transgender rights and "bathroom bills", click: tmsnrt.rs/2l529J9A boyfriend living in China witnessed the murder of his girlfriend in Toronto over the web.
Qian "Necole" Liu, a 23-year-old York University student from Beijing, was found dead just before noon Friday in her apartment. Toronto police are still looking for a man reportedly seen struggling with her earlier that morning.
Police say Liu was chatting with her boyfriend by webcam at about 1 a.m. when an unknown man knocked on the door.
"She opened the door to a male. She could have known the male but he was unknown to the online witness," Toronto Police Det. Frank Skubic told the Daily Mail
It took police more than 10 hours to arrive at the scene after Liu's boyfriend contacted her friends living in Toronto.
Toronto Police Constable Tony Vella explained to the Daily Mail that they were not notified until Friday morning.
"Someone had gone to (her) address because they were concerned for her well-being and they went into the apartment and they found her there and they were concerned so they contacted police," he told the paper.For those of you who aren't quite up to speed on the specifics of D&D settings and characters, here's what you need to know: Ravenloft, originally published in 1990, is a realm of gothic horror, a misty, vaguely Bavarian dimension ruled over by the Draculesque Strahd von Zarovich. Minsc, who first appeared in 1998's Baldur's Gate video game, is a good-hearted berserker with a pet miniature giant space hamster named Boo.
When IDW relaunches Dungeons & Dragons this April, Jim Zub and Nelson Daniel are slamming those two concepts into each other, and hijinx, one assumes, will ensue. To set the stage, I spoke to Zub --- who returns to Minsc's adventures after last year's Legends of Baldur's Gate --- about what this spooky new setting means for the character and his adventures!
ComicsAlliance: Taking Minsc and Boo into Ravenloft seems like a pretty great recipe for comedy. How does a berserker like Minsc fit into that spooky, foggy world of supernatural horror?
Jim Zub : For all his bombast and strangeness, Minsc is still a hero. He cares deeply for his friends and always tries to fight for what he thinks is right. Testing his boisterous idealism against the dreary despair inherent in the Ravenloft setting is a fun way to create both humor and dramatic tension. Add in the rest of our Baldur’s Gate adventuring crew, and a new cleric as well, and it becomes a really fun dynamic to work with.
CA: Is there any reason beyond that obvious comedy that you wanted to head into Ravenloft?
JZ : The synergy with the D&D 5th edition release of Curse of Strahd is obvious but, to be honest, I was the one who pushed for it. When I spoke to the Wizards of the Coast crew about their upcoming plans for the D&D line and they mentioned Ravenloft, I knew we had to take the gang there. It’s such an evocative Dungeons & Dragons location, one of my absolute favorite adventures, and it’s jam-packed with weird and wonderful possibilities. The darkness and light of the setting and our cast creates a lot of exciting contrast.
Like I did with the Legends of Baldur’s Gate mini-series, I want to channel the kind of energy and banter you get at the gaming table while still telling a sword & sorcery story both gamers and non-gamers alike can enjoy.
CA: How does it all start? Is it one of those "character gets lost in the mists and winds up dealing with vampires" situations that the original adventure module suggests, or something else?
JZ : Our heroes agree to help a small temple dedicated to Kelemvor, the God of the Dead in the Forgotten Realms, and they get pulled into a nasty caper that involves werewolves, skeletons, vampire servants, and a troublesome relic taken from Ravenloft. From there it’s just a misty moment away from being pulled into the Realm of Terror, and all that entails…
CA: Not to get too inside baseball --- or inside dungeons, as the case may be --- but how does writing Ravenloft differ from the Forgotten Realms?
JZ : It’s all D&D to me, so I don’t think they’re extremely different, all things considered. Role-Playing Games channel many different types of stories depending on the group you’re playing with and the mood they’re in.
There’s definitely a goth-drenched bleakness at the forefront of Ravenloft, so that’s something I’m obviously keeping in mind. They don’t call 'em the “Domains of Dread” for nothin’! That said, in Ravenloft there are still moments of levity, friendship, and heroism to explore. Even in a setting filled to the brim with undead gothic-horror you need to mix things up to keep it entertaining.Nerd Credit: Rob Vollman.
It’s early in the season, we still don’t have timeonice.com up and running (and that may not happen all season, sadly), and there’s still an awful lot of small sample noise in the advanced data. This unfortunate correlation of forces makes doing any wide-ranging analysis difficult this early in the season beyond pointing out an unsustainable shooting clip here, or some atrocious bad luck there. One thing that we can already look at, however, are deployment trends and Rob Vollman’s Player Usage Charts (see the image above) are perhaps the most accessible way of doing so.
Read on past the jump.
Let’s begin with a qualifier: the data you’ll find in the above chart still isn’t perfect and there’s still some "small sample" noise in the quality of competition component of the chart (for some teams more than others). But the results are interesting nonethless, and based on a quick cross reference of the chart and Vancouver’s head-to-head ice-time, the quality of competition noise doesn’t show up too much in Vancouver’s team specific Player Usage Chart. That allows us to proceed with a greater degree of confidence, but we should still be wary.
Here’s how Rob Vollman – who drew up this chart – describes the Player Usage Charts he created over at Hockey Abstract:
Player Usage Charts were first introduced in the 2011 off-season as OZQoC Charts after their two primary components: Offensive Zone Starts (OZ) on the horizontal axis and Quality of Competition (QoC) on their vertical axis. OZQoC charts were quickly adopted by dozens of statistical analysts, and even some front offices, most of whom also made various improvements…
Now because of Alain Vigneault’s radical "optimized" deployment schemes, Vancouver’s player usage charts have been exceptionally interesting by league standards over the past couple of seasons. I wrote about their Player Usage Charts from ’10-11 and ’11-12 in a post last Spring, so you can check that out if you want some additional background.
Looking over the differences between Vancouver’s deployment the past two seasons and this season, there are three things that stand out to me in particular.
The Fourth Line:
The first is that, in 2010-11 and even more so in 2011-12, Alain Vigneault did nothing to ease the burden on the fourth line in terms of zone-starts. The likes of Andrew Ebbett, Aaron Volpatti, Dale Weise, Maxim Lapierre and Manny Malhotra were thrown primarily in the defensive end at even-strength, and they often stayed there (albeit against inferior quality of competition). Manny Malhotra’s offensive zone start rate nearly hit single digits last season, which is basically underheard of in the Behind the Net era. This season however, it looks like Vancouver’s fourth liners, are being deployed more evenly between both zones.
A year ago Manny Malhotra, Dale Weise and Maxim Lapierre all hovered just below 20% in terms of an offensive-zone start rate (meaning they started four shifts in the defensive zone for every one offensive zone start). Through eight games this season that rate has nearly doubled in most cases, and in Dale Weise’s case it has tripled to 65%. The only player verging on 25% (which is what Malhotra’s offensive zone start rate was during his Selke caliber "enabler" season in 2010-11) is Maxim Lapierre.
The Third Pairing:
The second thing to notice, involves a seachange in the deployment of Vancouver’s third pairing, and this is where this gets really interesting. Check out Vancouver’s "Player Usage Chart" from a season ago and you’ll find that Vancouver’s primary "third pairing" guys (Aaron Rome, Andrew Alberts and Keith Ballard) are all paired neatly together. Vancouver’s third pairing during the ’11-12 NHL season generally started about forty percent of their shifts in the offensive end, and played against inferior quality of competition. This season so far, the third pairing is starting 55% of their shifts in the offensive zone – a massive shift – and are facing even softer competition.
This is a trend that Cam Charron began to point out last week, actually. The Keith Ballard – Chris Tanev pairing is playing a whole whack of minutes for the Canucks at even-strength, but they’re doing so while playing entirely against the bottom end of opponent’s rosters.
So what matters more to me than the third pairings "offensive zone start percentage" or their particular slot on a player usage chart, is how that deployment impacts Alain Vigneault’s ability to dole out minutes among his blueliners. Follow this intuitive leap with me if you would: by giving the third pairing easier minutes, Alain Vigneault is also able to give them more minutes. Meanwhile the top-four plays tougher minutes, but play significantly fewer of them. Make sense?
Consider that a season ago, Vancouver’s third pairing defenseman (again Aaron Rome, Keith Ballard and Andrew Alberts) were generally entrusted with somewhere between thirteen to fourteen and a half minutes at even-strength per game. Meanwhile the likes of Bieksa and Hamhuis played eighteen or nineteen minutes plus every night at five-on-five. Through eight games this season, however, Kevin Bieksa is playing just a hair over sixteen minutes per game, while the bottom-pairing is playing fifteen and a half minutes at even-strength per game. That seems meaningful, especially when you consider the extent to which this has allowed Alain Vigneault to limit the minutes burden among his blueliners. Kevin Bieksa, for example – Vancouver’s even-strength minutes leader – is playing the 94th most minutes per game at even-strength among all NHL defenseman through eight contests.
I’m not sure what angle that the Canucks are playing at precisely, though I have some theories. Perhaps the Canucks are trying to slowly get their core into game shape and are leaning on Tanev and Ballard in the interim. Or perhaps the Canucks are wary of exposing their blueliners to injury early in a shortened season, and want to do what they can to ensure that the top-four stay healthy. Here’s my actual guess: it’s a bit of both of those things, but mostly the Canucks are trying to keep their top-four fresh while they combat rust, suboptimal fitness levels and fatigue due to increased schedule density. Basically Vancouver’s third pairing may be being used the way advertisers want you to use Mentos: as a freshmaker for the top-four.
Anyway I’d be curious to hear a beatwriter ask Mike Gillis or Alain Vigneault why Vancouver’s top-four defenseman are playing so many fewer minutes this season than last. Seems like a reasonable question, right?
Trap it Up:
The final noticable change is that the Sedin line’s offensive zone start rate is hovering between 65% and 70% so far this season, way down from their 80%+ offensive zone start rate a season ago. I’ll be curious to see if that’s a "small sample" thing, or if Alain Vigneault is legitimately giving plum offensive zone start shifts to other lines, and counting on the Sedins to be slightly better two-way players in Ryan Kesler’s absence. I’d lean towards the latter theory, actually, but we’ll probably never know for sure since Ryan Kesler will return before we get a clearer picture.
I’d also note that the twins are playing fewer minutes overall at even-strength: Henrik Sedin is down thirty seconds per game so far, while Daniel is down a pretty significant ninety seconds per game. Many of those additional minutes appear to be going to the checking line, as Jannik Hansen is playing nearly 45 seconds more per game at five-on-five than he was a season ago. You can go ahead and include your "trap it up" hashtag in the comments.The forecast for the future of rainfall on Earth is in: over the next hundred years, areas that receive lots of precipitation right now are only going to get wetter, and dry areas will go for longer periods without seeing a drop, according to a new NASA-led study on global warming. "We looked at rainfall of different types," said William Lau, NASA's deputy director of atmospheric studies and the lead author of the study, in a phone interview with The Verge. "The extreme heavy rain end the prolonged drought side both increase drastically and are also connected physically."
"The new part is looking at the entire global rainfall system."
The NASA rainfall study
study, which is due to be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, examined data from 14 different leading global climate models. Although each one previously predicted rainfall increases in rain-prone areas such as the tropics, and droughts in drier regions including the American Southwest, the study by Lau and his colleagues is said to be the first to look at rainfall from a global perspective, including over unpopulated areas like the middle of the oceans. "The new part is looking at the entire global rainfall system from a basic science perspective, and what we're finding is amazing" Lau said.
NASA animation showing rainfall projections over a 140 year period. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.
Specifically, the new study found that although the 14 climate models differ when it comes to the amount of rainfall in individual locations such as cities, over larger areas, they all point to the same average picture. That is, for every single degree Fahrenheit the global average temperature climbs, heavy rainfall will increase in wet areas by 3.9 percent, while dry areas will experience a 2.6 percent increase in time periods without any rainfall.
"Dust Bowl levels by the end of the century."
"The projected Mediterranean and southwestern US droughts forced by CO2 [carbon dioxide] increases alone exceed Dust Bowl levels by the end of the century," said Dargan Frierson, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the study. The reason for the shift is thought to be due to the fact that as the globe warms, the atmosphere is able to hold more water vapor as moisture, but this moisture clusters in the already wet areas, depriving the dry areas of moisture and exacerbating their droughts. Just how quickly the change happens depends on how much CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere, but Lau said his study was applicable to the next century.We've got two big TV premieres this week: Halle Berry gets mysterious pregnant on a solo space mission in Extant and Guillermo del Toro brings his vampire contagion to TV with The Strain. Plus, Hemlock Grove, Mythbusters, and Masters of Sex are all back for their fresh new seasons. Summer TV is in full swing!
Top image from The Strain comic book.
Tonight
Beauty and the Beast (9 PM, The CW)
Beauty and Beast rounds its second season finale tonight, and will apparently be back later this year for a third season. So, uh, yay for Beauty and the Beast fans?
Cat (Kristin Kreuk) searches for a way to thwart Gabe (Sendhil Ramamurthy) and finds her answer in an unexpected place: the journal of her ancestor, which makes Cat fear the only way to stop Gabe is by killing Vincent (Jay Ryan).
Teen Wolf (10 PM, MTV)<
Ready those sticks, lads. There's high drama on the field this week:
Whilst Stilinski investigates a murder, Scott has his place on the Lacrosse team threatened by a freshman.
Under the Dome (10 PM, CBS)
Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.
Barbie risks his life to help Rebecca save the Chester's Mill food supply when she discovers an infestation of butterfly eggs on the town's crops.
Tuesday
The Wil Wheaton Project (9 PM, Syfy)
Andy Serkis shows up this week—presumably sans mo-cap.
Wednesday
Extant (9 PM, CBS)
Halle Berry stars in this new series about an astronaut who comes back from a solo space mission mysteriously pregnant.
Astronaut Molly Woods tries to reconnect with her husband, John, and son, Ethan, after returning from a 13-month solo mission in outer space. Molly's mystifying experiences in space lead to events that will ultimately change the course of human history.
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Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (10 PM, Science)
This week, the Science Channel wonders just how powerful humanity could become through scientific advancements.
Could we become as powerful as God? Scientific breakthroughs grant our species seemingly divine abilities. Scientists are figuring out ways to grow new life, create artificial consciousness, use big data to solve any problem, or even travel at light speed.
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Thursday
Adventure Time (7 PM, Cartoon Network)
Shelby is thrust into a new role after a party-related accident.
Defiance (8 PM, Syfy)
Datak and Stahma's marriage continues to be complicated:
Nolan is ordered to hunt down and destroy those responsible for a vicious attack in the badlands on a badly shaken Pottinger and his caravan. Tensions flare when Nolan's investigation turns up evidence implicating one of Rafe's miners. Meanwhile, Datak sets his vengeful sights on reclaiming control over the family business.
Dominion (9 PM, Syfy)
The truth about the Chosen One gets out, leading to a dangerous stand off. Meanwhile, a new angel threat emerges and someone dies.
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Mythbusters (9 PM, Discovery)
The Mythbusters are back, and they're wasting no time blowing things up:
The MythBusters tackle some of Hollywood's favorite explosive scenarios. Could a hero really shoot a live grenade in midair and thus render it useless? Could you really contain a TNT explosion inside an ordinary object like a file cabinet or aquarium?
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Friday
Hemlock Grove (Streaming, Netflix)
Season Two of Eli Roth's supernatural small-town drama goes online for your weekend binging. Hopefully, it will be less meandering than Season One.
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Legend of Korra (8 PM, Nickelodeon)
Hooray for more Lin Beifong! In the first of this week's two episodes:
Korra finds out that the Earth Queen imprisoned airbenders to create an army. Jinora leads an investigation with her spiritual projection. Lin joins the Avatar Team.
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And in the second:
Korra, Mako, Bolin and Asami visit Sao Fu, the city of Metal Clan. Lin does not want to meet her past. Su Jin tells her life story. Air Temple Island training camp has a new recruit.
Sunday
Space Dandy (12:30 AM, Adult Swim)
In "There's Music in Darkness, Baby," Dandy is captured by a ukulele-playing alien who wants to turn him into a statue.
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The Last Ship (9 PM, TNT)
Days after a trying series of events at Gitmo, Chandler and his crew are put under extreme duress when the ship's propulsion system suffers a catastrophic event. With Dr. Scott in danger of losing all her research on the virus and a crew overworked, overtired and desperately low on drinking water, Chandler's leadership and ingenuity are put to the test.
True Blood (9 PM, HBO)
Another day in Louisiana, another bloodbath:
In the aftermath of yet another bloodbath, Sam (Sam Trammell), Sookie and Jason find themselves the bearers of bad news in Bon Temps and beyond. Pam recalls the events that led her and Eric to Shreveport and Fangtasia. Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) get nourishment from unexpected sources. Following a new lead, Sookie enlists a band of vampires and humans to track down the H-Vamps.
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Witches of East End (9 PM, Lifetime)
Joanna is thrilled when Frederick returns, but Wendy remains suspicious of his behavior. Meanwhile, Killian discovers he has a lot in common with new love Eva; and Dash reluctantly deals with his blackmailer.
The Leftovers (10 PM, HBO)
After two weeks of watching Christopher Eccleston do nothing but hand out fliers, it'll be good to see him getting in on the action.
In the face of dwindling church attendance and threats on his life, Reverend Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) continues to preach his gospel: that many who disappeared in the Departure were sinners and not saints. Matt's campaign is detoured when he learns he may lose the church to foreclosure, forcing him to launch a desperate, last-minute plan to come up with the cash to keep it.
Masters of Sex (10 PM, Showtime)
Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson are back for another season of human sexual response:
Season 2 begins with Masters dealing with the ramifications of his disastrous presentation and being fired from the hospital. Meanwhile, Libby urges Masters to get another job; and Virginia fights off advances and innuendos stemming from the belief that she was the woman in Master's explicit film.
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Salem (10 PM, WGN)
In the Salem season finale, the show's most obvious secret comes to light:
Aiden learns a huge secret that Mary has been keeping from him.
The Strain (10 PM, FX)
We're ready for Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's vampire show to creep us out:
When a plane lands in New York City with everyone on board dead, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, head of the CDC's Canary Project, and his team are called upon to investigate. Harlem pawnbroker Abraham Setrakian races to the airport, convinced that what looks at first like a mysterious viral outbreak might be the beginning of something infinitely more sinister.It just got a little bit easier to mix Slayer and "Dragon Age."
A new Spotify app is launching for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 systems Monday that allows users to listen to albums, singles, custom playlists and everything else the music streaming service already offers on other devices. The move is the latest example of a media ramp-up on Sony's popular video game consoles, coming just weeks after the launches of PlayStation Vue, a streaming TV service, and HBO Go for PlayStation 4.
Cycling through albums on PlayStation's new Spotify app.
You'll access Spotify via the PlayStation's menu like any other app or game. Once the program is started, you can cycle through music on your TV and control it with your DualShock controller. You can also control music using a connected device, such as a smartphone -- a standard Spotify feature.
An example list of connected devices using Spotify on a Windows 8 computer.
There is a unique feature on the PlayStation Spotify app, however: It will allow you to select music and play it over a game's existing audio. If you were so inclined, you could blast some Drake over "Minecraft" or Johannes Brahms over "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare."
Imagine this climactic moment in "Dragon Age: Inquisition" set to "All About That Bass" as performed by the Kidz Bop Kids. Heaven.
Of course, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Tom Happ, developer and composer for "Axiom Verge," an upcoming PlayStation 4 title, told The Huffington Post that sound is a vital part of many games.
"I do personally feel that games tend to go hand in hand with their soundtracks, so it would be a little like watching the music video for one song while the audio from a different song plays," Happ told HuffPost.
That said, you might be forgiven for throwing on some interesting tunes if you're spending hours dodging lightning in the Thunder Plains of "Final Fantasy X." (Just trust us on this.)by Justin Strekal, NORML Political Director
In a new poll of US service veterans conducted by The American Legion and presented today on Capitol Hill, one in five veterans self-reported using marijuana to alleviate a medical or physical condition.
Flanked by lawmakers including Reps Tim Walz, Mark Takano, Julia Brownley, and Matt Gaetz, veterans presented their own personal stories of the efficacy of marijuana as a therapeutic treatment for a litany of conditions.
Other notable data points revealed by the survey:
81% of veterans support federally-legal treatment
60% of respondents do not live in states where medical cannabis is legal
40% of respondents live in states where medical cannabis is legal
And the partisan divide is nearly non-existent: 88% of self-identified conservative respondents support federally legalized medical
cannabis 90% of self-identified liberal respondents support federally legalized medical
cannabis 70% of self-identified non-partisan respondents support federally legalized medical
cannabis
My favorite data point from their poll: 100% of respondents aged 18-30 support federally legalized medical cannabis.
You can support the same legislation that the American Legion supports, the Veterans Equal Access Act, which would allow those who have served our country to discuss and be recommended medical marijuana in the states that have implemented programs by CLICKING HERE.CBS
Over the weekend, Star Trek: Discovery released some relatively innocuous news: it would be rated TV-MA, as revealed in a new trailer. Some fans, however, did not take that as a positive sign, worrying the show was chasing the streaming and cable trend towards “adult content.” And perhaps it is, but not in the sense of boobs and blood.
If you take a look at shows carrying TV-MA rating, it’s a broad category. Sure, Game of Thrones is on there, but so’s The Crown, and it’s not like John Lithgow’s parading around nude in that one. TV-MA is, essentially, TV shows that perhaps adults don’t want kids to see for any number of reasons, and that’s always been Star Trek to some degree. Not because it showed Vulcans Gone Wild: Pon-Farr Out or Worf proving tribbles are best eaten alive, but because of the franchise’s efforts to be socially relevant.
As a kid, Star Trek was where I first learned about a lot of political issues. Every weekend, my dad and I would sit down to breakfast in front of the TV to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Usually, those shows’ most puzzling elements involved space/time anomalies, but every now and then, my dad had to explain an episode like DS9‘s “Cardassians,” which focuses on war orphans being used as political bargaining chips, or “The Outcast,” a well-meaning but poorly considered episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation about gender identity and sexuality. Obviously we didn’t stop watching, but I doubt my dad woke up on Saturday excited to explain terrorism or race relations to a fifth-grader. And he’d grown up with the original series, which dealt with the Vietnam War, mutually assured destruction, and racism, so he knew what he was in for.
Part of the value of Star Trek, still, is that it’s willing to use science fiction themes as metaphors to deal with real issues. Sometimes this leads to some of the franchise’s best work. Deep Space Nine, in particular, explored terrorism, post-colonial politics, genocide, religious extremism, and other issues that were politically pressing in the 1990s (not to mention today) yet barely explored on TV outside of the nightly news. Sure, not every episode was a political allegory, but it happened often enough to prompt more than a few parental explanations. Other times, well, nobody’s turning to “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” to teach anyone about race relations, but hey, A for effort.
Over time, though, people have gotten touchier about the politics of their entertainment, real or perceived. It doesn’t matter what the show is, no matter how innocuous, there are people on the internet offended by it, even if they have to contort themselves into a mental pretzel to make that happen. So, networks turn to a simple ratings system: Don’t blame us, we told you it was TV-MA.
We already know this won’t be going Westworld. In fact, showrunner Aaron Harberts explicitly said as much to Entertainment Weekly:
I’m not saying we’re not doing some violent things or doing a tiny bit of language… But what’s important to the creative team is the legacy of the show — which is passed down from mother to daughter, from father to son, from brother to brother. We want to make sure we’re not creating a show that fans can’t share with their families. You have to honor what the franchise is. I would say we’re not going much beyond hard PG-13.
Really, if Star Trek Discovery is doing its job, a family will sit down one morning to watch and have at least one awkward conversation about what’s happening onscreen. But that’s part of the tradition of the show, really, and if CBS needs to give it a rating to warn people, so be it.Update: The computer is now trying its hand at cocktails. Click here to learn more.
In her spare time, research scientist Janelle Shane enjoys conducting weird, pop-culture-inspired experiments and sharing them on her popular Tumblr. Previously, she used a neural network (a learning program like in Terminator) to come up with names for Pokémon.
She's also been using neural networks to study cookbooks. By feeding it hundreds of pages of cookbooks, she's been able to use the program to automatically generate recipe titles. And while the technology is certainly impressive, it doesn't quite have Ina Garten's touch for naming dishes. In fact, the names it comes up with are hilariously weird. Shane posted a list of them on Tumblr, where it's gone massively viral.
These truly are the best:It didn’t take long for Chicago Bears nose tackle Eddie Goldman to earn the respect of his teammates along the interior offensive line. On Tuesday, veteran guard Matt Slauson spoke about the 6-foot-4, 332-pound rookie and his impressive early progress.
"As a veteran offensive lineman, you get a rookie across from you and you can think, ‘This is going to be great,’" Slauson said, per John Mullin of CSN Chicago. "But not with him, and I learned that really fast. He’s got really good tools and I think he’s going to be really, really good.
"Every time I’ve got to face him, whether it’s in one-on-one’s or in ‘team,’ the guy is just playing beyond his years."
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With veteran defensive lineman Jeremiah Ratliff suspended for the first three games of the 2015 season, Goldman will likely start the season as Chicago’s starting nose tackle. Working against Slauson, center Will Montgomery and guard Kyle Long in practice has helped him prepare for the challenge.
"When you put your hand down and the ball’s about to snap, you have to have a plan going up against these guys," Goldman said, via CSN Chicago. "Because, I mean Slauson’s been in the league about eight years and Kyle’s a Pro Bowler. Will, he’s been in the league for like 11 so you definitely have to have a plan and you have to be detailed with your technique as well."
Goldman, a 21-year-old second-round pick in this year’s draft, will be put to the test right away this season. If he’s successful from the start, he could anchor the Bears’ defense for years to come.
(h/t CSN Chicago)Kareem Jackson doesn’t do what Kareem Jackson does for Kareem Jackson. Kareem Jackson does what Kareem Jackson does because he is Kareem Jackson.
That’s right. The bar’s been raised.
Two years ago when the moniker "K-Jax" was uttered, it would simultaneously |
state and one unmarried couple – seeking to have Alaska’s ban on gay marriage overturned as unconstitutional. Voters in 1998 approved an amendment to the state’s constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Friday.
The state, in a filing last month, said the question of whether to define marriage to include gay couples should be decided by citizens, not the courts. The state also argued that Alaska laws prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages from other states or countries do not violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
“It is well established that a state is not required under the federal Constitution ‘to apply another state’s law in violation of its own legitimate public policy,'” attorneys for the state wrote.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys countered that the U.S. Supreme Court “has never held that a law’s democratic enactment constitutes even a rational basis for its existence.”
They also said the state’s interest in the democratic process is not advanced by excluding gay couples from marriage or by refusing to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere.
“Discrimination must be justified by more than a desire to discriminate,” they said.
The filing is here.
Follow this case: Hamby v. Parnell.
© 2014, Associated Press, All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This Story Filed UnderFabio Borini has scored just three times for Liverpool since joining in 2012
Fabio Borini wants to leave Liverpool, according to the player's agent.
Borini, 24, was Brendan Rodgers' first signing at Anfield for £11m from Serie A side Roma in 2012.
But the Italian forward has scored just three times in 38 games for the Reds, and spent the 2013-14 season on loan at Sunderland, where he scored 10 goals.
"Fabio wants a new experience. There are teams from all over Europe interested in him," said Marco De Marchi.
At the end of his loan spell with the Black Cats, the North East side agreed a £14m fee with Liverpool but Borini rejected the move.
The former Chelsea and Swansea man also turned down a move to QPR on transfer deadline day in September 2014.Evolution tells us a lot about death. Of course it's about life too, but it's really about survival, which involves both life and death.
As most people know, the Black Death was a horrible plague that swept through Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 1300's, killing tens of millions of people at a time when there weren't so many people to begin with. The world's population prior to the plague, about 450 million, dropped to 350 million. About one-third of the entire population of Europe, and half the population of China, may have died. Centuries earlier, the Plague of Justinian in 541-542 C.E. may have killed even more, up to half of Europe and untold millions elsewhere around the world. In ancient and medieval times, people thought the plague was caused by rats, but the true cause wasn't discovered until 1894, when Alexandre Yersin of France and Kitasato Shibasaburo of Japan finally traced it to a bacterium now called Yersinia pestis, which is transmitted by fleas, which in turn are carried around by rats.
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The plague kills all of its hosts, even the fleas:
"The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to starve. The flea then bites a host and continues to feed, even though it cannot quell its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new victim, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. " Source: Wikipedia
Gross, I know. But the original plague, the Black Death, has never returned. Why not? A study last year and another one published just this week provide the answer.
Last year, Barbara Bramanti and colleagues collected DNA from mass graves dating to the Black Death, and showed conclusively that the victims were infected with Yersinia pestis. Until this study, some scientists were uncertain about whether Yersinia pestis was the true cause, but Bramanti's research should settle that question once and for all. They also showed that at least two distinct strains of plague bacteria infected Europe, each arriving via a different route.
Further evidence appears in a remarkable new study published this week by Hendrik Poinar and colleagues. They exhumed over 100 skeletal remains from victims of the Black Death, collected from a ancient London cemetery, East Smithfield, which has been conclusively dated to the plague years, 1348-1350. Using the latest DNA sequencing methods, they identified Yersinia pestis DNA in 20 of the 109 victims.
Both studies collected enough DNA to show that the strain of Yersinia pestis from 1350 C.E. is unlike any modern strain. In other words, the original plague died out, probably long ago. The likely explanation is just this: the Black Death was simply too deadly to persist. Evolutionary theory tells us that a pathogen that kills all its victims will eventually run out of victims, leading to its own extinction. The plague bacteria needed to evolve into something less virulent, and that seems to be what happened. A bug that doesn't kill its host is far more successful evolutionarily. (Just look at the common cold, which we can't seem to get rid of.)
The same thing happened to the "Spanish" flu virus, the one that cause the terrible 1918 flu pandemic. It too evolved into a milder pathogen, and it is still with us today - the 2009 influenza pandemic was caused by a direct descendant of the 1918 virus.
The Black Death was so widespread that it even affected human evolution. In 1998, Stephen O'Brien and colleagues showed that a mutation that confers resistance to HIV first appeared in the human population in the 1300's. They concluded that this mutation can best be explained by "a widespread fatal epidemic"; in other words, the Black Death. I should be careful to explain that the plague didn't actually cause the mutation: the mutation occurred naturally. The Black Death selectively killed more people without the mutation, leaving us with a population of humans that tended to have the mutation.
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In light of these new results about evolution, I can't help pointing out that, finally, that evolution has been in the news recently for another reason. Several U.S. politicians, some campaigning for President, have been attacking evolution, saying that it has "got some gaps in it" and even supporting the teaching of creationism. Scientific facts aren't affected by political statements, of course, but the future of the U.S. is. Politicians who attack evolution, whether from ignorance or from some political or religious agenda, only hurt our future potential as a technology leader. I can only hope that the public won't support these anti-science positions.Readers may have seen both debates that Nick Clegg had with Nigel Farage on the future the UK’s relationship with Europe. In the second debate on the 2nd April, the Deputy Prime Minister cited government research stating that 7 percent of our primary laws and 14 percent of Statutory Laws come from Brussels, refuting Nigel Farage’s claims that 75 percent of our laws come from abroad.
Farage, given little time to reply, replied “You are wilfully lying to the British people.” Clegg’s pain was clear to see.
Most people have forgotten the column written by Clegg for the Guardian, dated the 8th December 2003 when Clegg was a Member of the European Parliament. He was a regular writer with the Guardian from July 2001 to June 2006. In this column, he stated:
“MEPs are parliamentary giants. Don’t snigger. There are many legitimate criticisms to be made of the European parliament, but irrelevance or lack of importance, the stock accusations, are laughably wide of the mark. “Probably half of all new legislation now enacted in the UK begins in Brussels. The European parliament has extensive powers to amend or strike down laws in almost every conceivable area of public life. … “It is no exaggeration to say that MEPs are now Europe’s most influential lawmakers. The European parliament is blissfully free of overweening government majorities. Individual MEPs, regardless of party affiliation, exercise a degree of direct leverage over legislation unheard of in national parliamentary systems.”
One has to say that Farage seems to have vindicated: any potential libel trial(!) seems to have little chance of getting through.
It is not the first time the Liberal Democrats have been accused of misleading the public over Europe. Highly pro-EU in their views, they have tried to neutralise British Euroscepticism by promising a referendum on the UK’s future at general elections. The campaign leaflet entitled “It’s time for a real referendum on Europe” is viewed by many as no more than an attempt to kick the EU issue into the long grass.
Gawain Towler, a UKIP MEP candidate said to me today “The sadness of Nick Clegg’s position is that he evidently believes what he says, whenever he says it. The inconsistency and mental gymnastics required by him resembles the White Queen, believing ‘six impossible things before breakfast’.”
What percentage of legislation emanates from the EU may ultimately be too different to quantify. However from his words Farage has a case to add “and knowingly” to “wilfully lying to the British people.”This is a guest post by Nick Johnson, and part of an ongoing series about youth in the office.
I am a 26-year-old Web developer based in Midtown Manhattan. On top of my “regular” job, I spend anywhere from 20 to 40 hours a week working on writing and marketing projects through my small business. I've spent all of my 20s hopping from major city to major city pursuing anything and everything I could construe as a career based on my ever-growing skill set.
Every city had a theme. Miami was graphic design, Russians and amphetamine; Chicago was Web development, citizen journalism and libertarianism gone horribly wrong; Los Angeles was a two-year vacation, working in the music industry and eating a lot of Vietnamese food. The decision to move to New York from LA came after downing half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue and playing too much World of Warcraft.
Truth is, I've never had a problem getting a job. I'm not bitter and underemployed like a lot of my peers. In all of the cities I listed, I had no family or any friends in any of them. In every case I set up a couple of job interviews, booked a flight, and didn't look back. I built my network from scratch when I got there. I know that no matter where I go, I will be successful. I will do well. I will never hurt for work.
This is different from the sentiments I hear from many of my peers. The reason for my perspective is two-fold:
1) I studied business at the University of Central Florida and digital media at technical school Full Sail University. Because my educational background covers a wide array of technical skills and business it allows me to work in pretty much any industry I want.
2) My class and racial background forced me into situations where I had to ignore most of what was around me to be successful. This became very useful later.
I grew up a poor black kid from Michigan and North Carolina. I am the eldest of six children. I had no support or encouragement for school or any sort of intellectual pursuits. In order for me to take “Academically Gifted” classes when I was in sixth grade, I had to go to my counselor, ask her to put me in the classes and forge my mother’s signature on the documents because she didn't care to look at them.
It was at this time that I began to learn the stark realities of class and race. Overnight, I went from a class with all black students, to being in a class where I was one of two black students. The difference in expectations was a bit of a culture shock. All of a sudden, I magically knew why I was teased for years for “talking like a white boy.”
These students--middle and upper-middle class and full-on rich--were nothing like the students I rode the bus with. Compared to me, these kids had everything. They had computers at home. They could afford things like pens and paper. They had parents who actually cared about their academic progress. They all expected to go to college at some point. They had rides to the library and bookstores and could check or buy out all the books they wanted. All of this was very strange to me. I thought what I experienced was the norm.
I've found that this difference in perspective would shape how we would deal with things much later. Having the background I did, if I wanted to learn, I had to create my own opportunities to do so. While my peers were taking trips and having fun on summer vacations, I would walk miles to the library every day to read and use the computers. Making the same grades as my peers meant I had to be smarter and more of a hustler.
While working on this, I admittedly picked up a healthy ego. Ignoring the chiding of my peers at home, ignoring my mother's constant anti-intellectual rants, ignoring the statistics about poor black boys, firmly believing they won't apply to myself and being further convinced that my limitations caused by class and race wouldn't matter, all takes a staggering amount of arrogance to pull off simultaneously.
Learning that "Academically Gifted" was merely a euphemism for "not black and not poor" fueled my determination to ignore the odds and trust in myself and my abilities to be successful no matter what the context.
When you believe all that, taking chances to find your own innovative path becomes easy. I think we should take as many calculated risks as we can in our 20s. If we don't, I predict that we are doomed to become like one of the zombies you see in Midtown who manage to just barely stave off the socially-accepted-as-inevitable midlife crisis with alcoholism and prescription opiates.
I'm afraid that many of my peers are afraid to move from the comfort zones that were graciously created for them by years of coddling from both their parents and educational institutions. They did everything people told them to do and expected that things would work out alright. They had no reason to think that what they were being told would be inapplicable by the time their undergraduate studies were completed.
It seems that no one taught my struggling peers that the key to success later on would be to keep their vibrant idealism locked in a jar for safety while strategizing ways to make themselves competitive in a world that's largely apathetic to their existence. The same world that would gladly tell them it's a good idea to study liberal arts and accrue six figures of debt. The same world that says "do what you love and the money will come" while smiling in devilish glee at the idea of collecting money from them for the next 30 years.
As a generation, "Millennials," or whatever name they want to give us, I believe our already fragile idealism about what's expected of the world has been all but destroyed. My personal response to this is to take off-the-wall approaches and calculated risks. It is not enough to merely concoct some lofty outline of what we want out of life, content to just let the details sort themselves out. This economy favors the bold, the creative and the slightly crazy.
This is the seventh post in a series that examines youth in the office, in the words of young workers themselves and others around them. Please share your own insights and experiences in the comments section below.
Follow me @Jenna_Goudreau, and subscribe to me on Facebook.At this point in the election cycle, both Democrats and Republicans are screaming apocalypse, and the rhetoric is so inflamed that at times it can be hard to see the flames for the smoke. Where to look? Which version of the end-times is most plausible? I now find myself identifying with Riley Finn, the Most Boring Boyfriend of Buffy Summers, who famously stammered, “When I saw you stop the world from, you know, ending, I just assumed that was a big week for you. It turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse.” Yes, we may be facing more than one apocalypse, and without the benefit of superhuman help. But what kinds of apocalypses should we be looking out for? As in all things, I went to the literature to prepare myself. So behold, if you dare: a necessarily incomplete list of literary visions of the future published in the last five years.
Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
Language has power, as we all know. But generally, there are limits, at least in terms of direct damage-dealing. In this novel, however, language has been weaponized. Specifically, the language of children has become toxic to adults, resulting in the silencing of the world, and an attendant societal breakdown. “Pain is too soft a word for the reaction,” Sam, the narrator, explains. “Crushing was more accurate, an intolerable squeezing in the chest and the hips.” That might or might not remind you of listening to the speeches of one particular (and very large, and very orange) child.
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Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife
Stockpilers all over the country already know: the future is going to be about water. Bacigalupi’s most recent novel imagines a near-future America torn apart by drought. But some do have water—fancy resorts for the wealthy stand like palaces in miles of dust—resulting in a complicated system of corruption, violence, deprivation and control, in which the rich get wetter and the poor get drier, and everyone is looking for a drink.
Nathaniel Rich, Odds Against Tomorrow
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Or, perhaps you’d prefer the other side of the coin: not drought, but flood. In Rich’s scarily prescient novel (it was written pre-Sandy), a hurricane hits New York, flooding the city, and making Mitchell Zukor, a disaster consultant for major corporations, into a strange kind of star. Given the near fortune-telling of this book, I think that, just for safety, it would be best if Rich’s next novel could predict a world where everything turns out ok.
Olivia A. Cole, Panther in the Hive
Our dependence on technology (and our bizarre health care system) might be the beginning of the end. In Cole’s version of the future, those with high-end health insurance (read: the wealthy and powerful) have been outfitted with chip implants that prevent all disease—but just before the novel begins, the chips go haywire, turning all of their owners into murderous monsters. A chipless girl named Tasha, wielding a kitchen knife and a Prada backpack, must navigate this instantly apocalyptic Chicago, fighting her way towards what may be only a rumor of help.
Laura van den Berg, Find Me
In this novel, a strange epidemic has taken hold of the country—it starts with silver blisters and amnesia, and ends up killing its victims. It’s poetic, really, how the loss of memory leads so swiftly to death. Joy, of course, is immune, which turns out to be almost as dangerous. Worth noting, too, is the way Van den Berg acknowledges the every day apocalyptic-ness of America in this novel: “For as long as I could remember, the weather had felt apocalyptic. Y2K fever and the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. The death of bees and the death of bats and radioactivity in the oceans and ravenous hurricanes. I though the country was like a fire that would rage and rage until the embers lost their heat, but instead the sickness appeared and within two weeks it had burned through the borders of every state in America… Our borders with Mexico and Canada were closed. For once, no one wanted to come in. And they definitely didn’t want us coming out.” Well, I guess that’s one way to solve the immigration issue.
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Arguably, the most common cause of the end of the world in literature is some variation on the pandemic. This much-celebrated novel kills most of the world off with the flu (Russia sent it over in a passenger plane), but what’s most compelling are those who are left—a traveling group of actors and musicians trying to keep Shakespeare alive in the shattered world.
Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles
Here’s a unique apocalypse: what if the earth simply began to slow down? What would happen to a society unhooked from time, with its gravity blurred? And what, Walker asks, would happen if you were trying to grow up—its own kind of apocalypse, of course—at the same time? On the plus side, I don’t think that any election result could make this particular apocalypse happen. But knock on wood.
N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season
“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we?” is how this novel begins. “Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.” The apocalypse (though again we need the plural) is geologic, meteorological—the land, called the Stillness, is in constant flux, breaking open, spewing out, coming down. The novel follows three women with special powers to control the elements as they make their way through this treacherous world. But in a world like this, what actually counts as the apocalypse?
Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things
Most apocalypse novels plant the reader directly at the end of the world—or at least in the scrum of the aftermath. But in this book, we see earth crumble through the eyes of Peter, a missionary on an entirely different planet, receiving news of disaster (dissolving governments, dissolving land masses) from his wife, who seems further and further away. “The world changes too fast,” a driver observes early on. “You take your eyes off something that’s always been there, and the next minute it’s just a memory.”
Colson Whitehead, Zone One
Hey, it could always be zombies.
Bonus!
Lucy Corin, One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses
The apocalypses in this book—most just a few lines long, because sometimes that’s all it takes for the apocalypse, some a paragraph or more—are not necessarily global. They can be the end of a relationship, or a moment, or an idea, because any of these can feel like cosmic destruction. None of these apocalypses are likely to caused by Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, but they do serve as a reminder of what havoc we can wreak on ourselves.Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice was established in 2011 in China. (Yang’s)
Owned and founder Xiao Lu Yang
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The secret sauce will be shipped from China.
Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice is served with a side of rice. (Yang’s)
Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice is coming to Tustin. (Yang’s)
Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice.
Founder Xiao Lu Yang
If you think In-N-Out Burger has a bare-bones menu, just wait until the arrival of Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice.
The fast food chain with nearly 6,000 units in China is bringing its one-item menu to Orange County in September. Yep, you read that right. Yang’s sells just one dish: a pound of chicken thigh meat marinated in a secret sauce and cooked in a clay pot.
“This is a very famous dish from Northern China. The sauce is the key,” said Xinyu Zhang, chief executive of the chain’s U.S. division.
Through a translator, Zhang said the first of several U.S.-based Yang’s is opening Sept. 10 in Tustin.
The 40-seat restaurant will be like no other fast food restaurant in Southern California, where variety and endless super-sized combinations are ubiquitous to most menus.
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3 new menu items you can’t get at your local Taco Bell But at Yang’s, the $9.99 dish, served with rice, is the only entree on the menu. No add-ons. No sides.
“We think one portion is enough,” Zhang said in a phone interview Friday.
The only customization is on the spice level: mild, medium or spicy.
Xiaolu Yang founded the first Yang’s in 2011 in the Shandong province of China, known for its Confucian heritage. The 37-year-old Yang, whose family ran several restaurants in the 1930s, inherited his grandmother’s secret sauce recipe used for a regional dish known as huang men chicken.
When Yang decided to open his own restaurant, he knew the clay pot dish would be a hot seller. He added rice to the dish, thinking it would be a perfect fast-food meal. By the third day of business, he had lines out the door.
Since then, the one-dish wonder chain has grown to nearly 6,000 restaurants in China with other locations in Melbourne, Singapore and Japan.
To maintain the integrity of the dish, Yang’s will continue to make the secret sauce in China. Shipments will be sent to Tustin. The thighs, typically the juiciest and most flavorful part of the chicken, are marinated in the sauce and partially cooked in a high-pressure cooker.
The chicken is then finished off in a clay pot, where it cooks over direct heat. The clay pot keeps the flavors locked in as the secret sauce “doesn’t evaporate as quickly,” Zhang said.
The Tustin restaurant is corporate-owned and the first under the Yang Ming Yu Braised Chicken USA Group based in Southern California. More locations are expected to open through franchising. The company has already seen interest from potential franchisees in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Canada.
Tustin’s grand opening will kick off at 9 a.m. Sept. 10 at 13824 Red Hill Ave. Zhang said customers can expect some giveaways including gift cards throughout the first week.Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik is in serious condition at a hospital near his Pennsylvania home.
A nursing supervisor at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem wouldn't provide additional information on the 85-year-old's condition, but The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., reported Thursday that Bednarik was admitted because of shortness of breath.
"They're still running tests, they still don't know the cause," Ken Safarowic, Bednarik's son-in-law, told the newspaper. "But his heart is as strong as when he was playing, and he is conscious and he just wants to get out of there.
"I'd like to say he's resting comfortably, but I don't know that Chuck can ever rest comfortably. That's just the way he is."
Bednarik played linebacker and center for the Eagles long after the heyday of two-way players. His game-saving tackle helped the Eagles claim the 1960 NFL championship, the last title won by the franchise.
Bednarik was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.eXodus eSports is proud to announce Clan Wars, a 4v4 clan league starting in September 2014. Fight both in your home system and in your opponents’. Test your teamwork and your ability to consistently perform over the course of a season. Sign-up in numbers and bring the best people to counter your opponents plans. Scout their systems and make your play.
Who will emerge as top dog among the clans? PA Gods? The Realm? Team Burning? Promethean? Nova? Ballistic Logistics?
Sign ups for this are now open, so rally your troops and make sure you’re ready.
Format:
Clan members will sign up here, providing their clan name during sign up. All clan members are added to their clan’s roster. Any member of a clan who is on the roster for that season can partake in a clan battle.
Every clan will have a home system, this is of your clan’s own design. The only design limit is that planned planet collisions must be made public.
A season of Clan Wars consists of each clan fighting every other clan twice, once on your home system and once on theirs.
Victories are worth three points, draws one and a loss none. The clan with the most points at the end of a season is the winner.
See the rules page for further details.
Sign ups
Sign ups for Clan Wars will close on the week beginning the 8th September.
Changing your name
Login to your eXodus account Mouse over your name in the top right and choose Edit My Profile Select Player Profile from the list on the left Change your name Click the update button
Matches
Date Time Name 13th September 2014 18:00 UTC The Realm vs. PA Gods 27th September 2014 12:00 UTC Team Burning vs. Promethean 11th October 2014 18:00 UTC The Cult vs. Voices of War 1st November 2014 18:00 UTC PA Gods vs. Voices of War 8th November 2014 12:00 UTC Team Burning vs. The Realm 22nd November 2014 18:00 UTC The Cult vs. Promethean 17th January 2015 13:00 UTC Team Burning vs. The Cult vs. PA Gods 31st January 2015 19:00 UTC The Realm vs. Voices of War vs. Promethean 21st February 2015 13:00 UTC PA Gods vs. Promethean 21st February 2015 13:01 UTC Team Burning vs. Voices of War
League
Each clan will play ten games during Clan Wars season one.There is not very much in life -- or hockey -- that shocks me. When the NHL's Department of Player Safety decided to essentially hands the car keys right back to serial reckless driver Zac Rinaldo, it did not shock me. Disappointed me, yes. Shocked, no.Forgetting just for a moment about Rinaldo's recidivist rap sheet of dangerous hits in every league in which he's ever played and his attitude of casual -- even cavalier -- disregard for fellow players' safety, let's look at the play itself.First of all, look at the game clock. The period is expiring.Look at where the puck is. It is already about 10 feet away from the recipient of the hit, Sean Couturier.Then look at Rinaldo's skates, slightly lifting upward in order to deliver a hit to the considerably taller player. Although Rinaldo's elbow is tucked and the main point of impact is Couturier's upper chest, the reason why the player's head snaps back so violently is that it bounces off the top of Rinaldo's shoulder pads (as I've written about several previous times, today's equipment is an unsafe-at-any-speed lethal weapon that is part of the problem, yet the tail continues to wag the dog in our sport).In no way, shape or form is this a legitimate hockey play. It's far from the worst hit I have ever seen but it is still a despicable and suspension-worthy one. Even for a first-time offender with no history of such hits, I would have pegged it as worthy of three games.Now we come to the issue of motivation and reputation. What we have is this case is a player who has already had multiple suspensions -- included several lengthy banishments -- in every single league in which he has ever played. There is no reforming this guy, but we owe it to the other players (including the safety of guys on his own team) to take away his privilege (not entitlement) to be part of this game for which he has so little respect.The NHL also slapped its officials -- who 100 percent made the right call with the charging major and game misconduct -- right in face here. Patrick Burke disingenously said it supports the call that was made on the and then turns around and says the play did not constitute charging (nor was it a check to the head, interference, a check to the head or elbowing).Well, no, this one wasn't an elbow. We will agree on that.Not a charge? The NHL said there was not a "significant" lifting of the skates into the hit. Well, it was significant enough to play into the recipient getting hurt and having to leave the game.Not interference? The puck is long gone and the recipient is no longer fair game for a body check.Not an illegal check to the head? Maybe not in principle point point of contact but a player's head doesn't snap back that jarringly if there is no head contact in the follow-through.Not excessive? Again, the period is expiring and it's a late hit on top of that.We are not talking about a reptuation call here. We are talking about a clearly predatory, illegal and reckless action that seemed suspiciously close to being premeditated. This was the accused player's first game against his former team -- a classic motivating factor for trying to show the old team they made a mistake and show the new team they made the right decision -- and the time, place on the ice and opportunistic nature of the hit raises a red flag of being something the player was actively seeking to do.Even if causing injury was not the explicit goal, the utter recklessness of it and the fact that the NHL Rule Book explicitly states that reckless plays that could reasonably be expected to inflict injury are worthy of supplemental discipline should have made this one a no-brainer.The NHL obviously feels differently. Obviously, Patrick Burke prefers to wait until the next time Rinaldo runs an even more defenseless player -- ala the hit on Kris Letang that got Rinaldo eight games off last year -- and causes an even more serious injury.Here ya go, Zac, here are the keys. We've refilled the tank for you and cleaned out the fuel injectors. Just drive safely next time, will ya buddy? Thanks.************************************************************************************************************************************************1. Make sure you have an AirPlay capable device activated, and that it's on the same network as your iOS device. This can be an Airport Express or an Apple TV.
2. Open an app that already supports AirPlay, for example, the iPod app.
3. Start the playback.
4. Hit the AirPlay button, select your AirPlay enabled device. The sound should now stream.
5. Close the app, jump to the non-airplay enabled app you want to stream over the air (like Pandora on the iPad).
6. Start the playback, and if everything goes right, the current audio will fade, and the new app will start streaming over the air.
Right now, AirPlay, Apple's upcoming iOS feature that will let you stream audio as well as video over the air to AirPlay enabled devices (such as the Apple TV) is getting a lot of attention. For those of you who may have tried it, you know that it already works with a couple of apps and it's really great. Thanks to a new discovery, we have found a way to bring this capability to almost any other app, including apps like Hulu, or Pandora on the iPad. Recently, we discovered that Apple had engineered AirPlay at the OS level, so any app that plays back audio or video could take advantage of it. It works like this: Apple added a new button to its built-in playback control panel, which lets you decide where to stream your content. Many apps, like Netflix, use these default controls and can already stream over the air using AirPlay. Other apps like Hulu use their own controls and therefore don't have the feature. The same story goes for Pandora on the iPad. This is unfortunate, as we don't want to depend on developers to activate the feature, and even though AirPlay only works with audio in the current betas, it would be great to use it with Pandora now. But, what looks like a limitation really isn't, as we have found a way to work around it. This week I discovered that just like Bluetooth, AirPlay remains the default output unless you tell your iOS device otherwise. Users with the beta of iOS 4.2 can actually turn on AirPlay mode in the iPod app. They can then jump into apps that currently don't support AirPlay: Pzizz, Pandora on the iPad, and even Hulu Plus, and stream audio to Apple TV (or Airport express). Here's how to do it:This hidden feature of AirPlay could be huge. Imagine the ability to have every app in the App Store stream audio and video to Apple TV without the developer doing anything to their app. One question remains, will this systemwide setting apply to video output as well? You can make the case that Apple would keep the AirPlay mode going unless the device was told otherwise. It seems unlikely that Apple would make a user repeatedly hit an AirPlay button over and over again, when all the user wants to do is watch videos on their Apple TV. Of course, Apple already announced that it will let developers implement and control AirPlay in their apps. We're hoping that developers will only use this capability to make it simple and better, not to prevent us from doing what we want with it. We are still a month away from AirPlay being officially released, but this discovery excites me with its potential. It means Hulu Plus and many other video applications on the iPad would automatically work with AirPlay, without the developer doing anything! What are your thoughts, will Apple let us stay in "AirPlay mode?" Or will Apple and developers shut us down?The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
It's that level of panic climate change alarmists like professionally monotone former Vice President Al Gore want everyone to rise to. But when people like Gore are called out on their rhetorical hot garbage, it they just tend to double down on their stance.
Gore was speaking at a town hall event, moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, to talk about climate change. Go figure. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that CNN would host Gore for a town hall days after his new documentary, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” saw a limited release in movie theaters.
Mayor James Eskridge, of Tangier Island, Va., was one of the lucky audience members that got to ask Gore a question -- one Gore was not prepared to answer.
Here’s what Eskridge had to say:
I’m a commercial crabber, and I’ve been working the Chesapeake Bay for 50-plus years. And I have a crab house business out on the water. And water level is the same it was when the place was built in 1970. I’m not a scientist but I |
checks of $22.5 million, $18 million and $10 million to Karl Rove’s Crossroads network in 2012.
2) A super PAC was the wrong choice
Why even use a super PAC for the ad campaign? There are better options to move shadowy, anonymous money around. Namely, a 501(c)4 nonprofit.
“If you’re going to funnel foreign money into an election, put it into a trade association or 501(c)4 that doesn’t have to disclose its donors,” said Adam Smith, communications director of the group Public Campaign. “If getting it to the super PAC is that important, just have the 501(c)4 make the donation.”
These nonprofits are not required to disclose their donors.Better yet, they don’t have to disclose anything about their spending until more than a year after election day.
( Also on POLITICO: Underwood's Clinton advice: Run)
The Tusk plot to funnel Chinese money into a campaign would have been much more effectively done through a nonprofit than a super PAC. And the cash and spending would have been much harder to track for nosy journalists and political operatives.
3) Tusk didn’t need a network of foreign donors to hide his influence peddling
In the show, Tusk is a wealthy energy bigwig — the kind that, in real life, contributes heavily to campaigns and candidates. He’s an amalgamation of real-life donors like the Kochs, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Warren Buffett — the Berkshire Hathaway head who is close to President Barack Obama.
“He doesn’t make political contributions. That’s how he remains flexible,” says Underwood about Tusk.
“You think he’s funneling the money somehow?” a Democratic operative replies, before Underwood sends a henchmen to find out for certain.
But there’s no need for Tusk to create a shadowy network of Chinese donors to spend money to influence U.S. elections.
If he wanted to be anonymous but still wield enormous influence, the status quo allows him to donate directly and anonymously to nonprofits.
“One of the threads in the story line is that they’re pouring over disclosure records from the super PAC,” said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “The players here could have avoided all of that.”Tabarka Studio designed by Anagrama
Tabarka Studio specialises in ‘detail-oriented’ and handcrafted tiles made from terracotta, a ‘clay-based ceramic earthenware that becomes porous when fired creating a worn-out, antique finish’. Anagrama, the design agency responsible for the studio’s visual identity and collateral, describe their approach as embracing an ‘archaic timelessness’ that reflects the products through the use of a blue and white scale pattern, tiled icon and a heavy, tactile and porous substrate.
It is a solution that confidently takes the traditional crafted elements of the pattern, its worn finish and the intelligent use of substrate texture to mirror elements of the product, and juxtaposes these alongside the more contemporary detail of a well-spaced, uppercase, geometric sans-serif logo-type and diamond frame – neat choices that reflect the aspect of tile repetition – a limited colour palette, plenty of white space and the conventional but effective high quality sensibilities of a gold foil print finish. Like a lot of Anagrama’s work there is a simplicity to the work that comfortably and appropriately unites design cues past and present to deliver a communicative dimensionality that feels clear and concise.
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More brand identity work by Anagrama:28 Pages Posted: 12 Jun 2013
Date Written: June 11, 2013
Abstract
After the battle, the moral and mortality stresses influence different soldiers in different ways. Using two large-scale surveys of World War II veterans, this research investigates the role of combat and long-term religiosity. Study 1 shows that as combat became more frightening, the percentage of soldiers who reported praying rose from 42% to 72%. Study 2 shows that 50 years later, many soldiers still exhibited religious behavior, but it varied by their war experience. Those facing heavy combat (versus no combat) attended church 21% more often if they claimed their war experience was negative, but those who claimed their experience was positive attended 26% less often. The more a veteran disliked the war, the more religious they were 50 years later. While implications for counselors, clergy, and health practitioners are outlined, saying there are no atheists in foxholes may be less of an argument against atheism than it is against foxholes.House for sale at 273 Lark St. Monday, July 28, 2014 in Albany, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) House for sale at 273 Lark St. Monday, July 28, 2014 in Albany, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) Photo: Lori Van Buren Buy photo Photo: Lori Van Buren Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Publication: Albany's housing 9th-oldest in USA 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
Albany has the ninth-oldest housing stock in America, according to the latest federal figures as reported by Buffalo Business First.
Six New York markets are included on the list of 25 metros with the oldest housing stocks: Buffalo (second), New York City (seventh), Albany (ninth), Rochester (10th), Syracuse (11th) and Poughkeepsie (24th).
The numbers come from the five-year version of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2012 American Community Survey. The bureau defines a housing unit as any dwelling, including free-standing homes, apartments and condominiums.
The national rankings are limited to the 108 metros that contain at least 200,000 units.
See the list here: http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2014/08/13/which-metro-has-americas-oldest-housing-stock-not.htmlFlorida Man Gets 30 Years in Prison for Murdering Trans Woman
The family of a Florida transgender woman murdered in April 2013 finally has some closure with the conviction of a 23-year-old man, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crime.
Kentz Louis is a prison-releasee reoffender, according to The Orlando Sentinel. This means Louis will spend all 30 years in prison for the murder of 30-year-old Ashley Sinclair, who was found shot to death in a wooded area in Orange County.
Emotions were high in the courtroom as the sentence was being decided. Friends and family of Sinclair spoke directly with Kentz Louis, according to The Sentinel.
“You took my child, but you didn’t break me. You can’t break me,” Angela Smith, the mother of Sinclair, told Louis according to The Orlando Sentinel. “I don’t hate you. You are somebody’s child. I will pray for you because somebody prayed for my child. But young man, if my heart could show... you would see a scar that will be there for ever and ever.”
In a final attempt to spare Louis punishment for the crime, his attorney called for a new trial claiming his client was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the attorney’s claims, the judge was unwavering in his decision to sentence Louis.
The conviction and sentencing has brought new faith to the LGBT community of Orange County. Axavier Darnell Strick, the entertainment director for Parliament House, remembered Sinclair as an entertainer, who was as an integral part of the community.
“She was somebody who was important,” Strick told The Sentinel. “She was somebody who was valued, and she was my friend...You took someone away from this community, and it mattered.”
Last year, Sinclair was remembered with other transgender men and women who had been killed because of their gender identity. A year later, one more case has been laid to rest, with justice provided to the grieving family and friends.Donald Trump has essentially seized the Republican presidential nomination, and now he has a key decision: Who will be his running mate?
Trump has benefited from his outsider status, but the billionaire businessman has said his vice presidential pick will likely have political experience.
In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, Trump repeated that idea and said his list of choices included "five or six" people.
Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Track the delegate race | Sign up for the newsletter
Some possible picks have indicated openness to the job; other prominent Republicans have forcefully said they would not join Trump on a ticket.
Trump plans to announce his No. 2 at the Republican National Convention in July and has asked his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to head the team vetting candidates.
Several names have been floated, some by Trump himself. What are their thoughts? Here's a look.
Open to the idea
Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer endorsed Donald Trump early on and has said she would be willing to be his vice president. (Matt York / Associated Press)
Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer
Jan Brewer, whose sharp attacks on illegal immigration resemble Trump's, has lauded his sometimes caustic rhetoric.
In 2010, she signed a law that made it a crime for immigrants in the country illegally to seek work or travel without carrying immigration papers. The law also required police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained.
Opponents of the law said it would lead to more racial profiling by police. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down much of the law in 2012 although it upheld the part allowing police to check people's status.
Picking Brewer would emphasize what has already been a key issue for Trump.
In an interview with Fox News in which he was asked whether any women were on his list of vice presidential possibilities, Trump referred to Brewer as "fantastic."
She has indicated interest. "I would be willing to serve in any capacity that I could be of help," she told CNN recently.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. (John Raoux / Associated Press)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
Shortly after suspending his own presidential campaign, Chris Christie became the first prominent figure in the Republican establishment to endorse Trump. He has traveled to primary states to campaign on Trump's behalf and stood at his side during news conferences.
Christie, whose blunt style is similar to Trump's, currently spearheads the wealthy businessman's transition team.
Christie's state -- a Democratic stronghold -- doesn't seem like a likely target for Trump in a general election, and Christie is currently extremely unpopular at home. His brash manner could be an asset to Trump's campaign, however, particularly in one of the vice presidential nominee's traditional jobs -- attacking the other side.
"He was an early endorsement and a very enthusiastic one," Trump said of Christie in a recent interview on Fox News. "He is a friend of mine and he is a very good guy and a talented guy and he is helping us a lot."
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has expressed interest in working alongside Donald Trump. (Alonzo Adams / Associated Press)
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin
Mary Fallin, who also served in Congress, is relatively unknown on the national stage and is not particularly popular in her home state. She became a subject of vice presidential chatter after former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer suggested her while speaking on CNN.
"Great job and advice," Trump wrote in a Twitter message after Bauer's appearance. In his Fox interview, Trump mentioned Fallin, along with former Arizona Gov. Brewer, as women he would consider.
Fallin called it an "honor" to be mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick and and has indicated an openness to serving alongside Trump.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has praised Donald Trump's candidacy throughout the primaries. (Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
Gingrich, whose quest for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 faltered, has deep roots in Washington and could serve as a bridge to some establishment Republican figures, although he also would bring considerable controversy with him.
At 72, he would be older than Trump, who is 69.
Gingrich has praised Trump for running "one of the most remarkable campaigns in American history."
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions offers Donald Trump advice on foreign policy. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions
Sessions is in lockstep with Trump on an issue that's become the core of his campaign: illegal immigration.
From building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to deporting immigrants, Sessions is a fierce advocate of Trump's immigration proposals. Sessions, who has spent nearly two decades in Washington, advises Trump on foreign policy.
He has told reporters on several occasions that he's willing to undergo the vetting process, should Trump consider him as a running mate.
On the fence
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst has not ruled out working alongside Donald Trump. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press)
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst
An Iraq war veteran serving her first term in the Senate, Ernst remained neutral throughout the caucus process in her home state. (She did, however, make a brief appearance at a rally for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.)
Many establishment Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 GOP nominee, and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, have floated Ernst's name as a possible running mate for Trump. Ernst is viewed by them and others as a rising star within the Republican party and might be able to help Trump improve his dismal poll numbers with women voters.
"I'm just focusing on Iowa right now," Ernst said in a brief interview with Politico this month, declining to rule out becoming Trump's No. 2. "That is my concern."
Florida Gov. Rick Scott withheld his endorsement until after the Florida primary. (Alan Diaz / Associated Press)
Florida Gov. Rick Scott
During the March primary in his home state, one that pitted Trump against Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Rick Scott remained neutral. But a day after Trump easily won Florida, Scott endorsed the billionaire mogul, who regularly stays at his Mar-a-Lago Club in South Florida.
Scott's approval ratings in Florida are far from stellar. Recent polls show him below average in popularity, although improved from last year. Still, he represents Florida, a perennial swing state with 29 electoral votes that could be pivotal in November.
Scott has said he's going to remain governor through the end of his term in 2018, but he has also told reporters he'd "do anything I can to make sure [Trump] wins.”
No way
In the days before South Carolina's primary, South Carloina Gov. Nikki Haley battled with Donald Trump. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley is a potentially transformational figure in the Republican party -- the daughter of immigrants from India who became the state's first female governor. Her endorsement was coveted by GOP presidential hopefuls ahead of the state's primary.
She backed Sen. Marco Rubio, and during her rebuttal of President Obama's State of the Union address in January, threw an indirect jab at Trump.
"During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices," Haley said during that nationally televised speech.
She told local reporters this month that she has no interest in a vice presidential slot.
The Ohio governor battled Donald Trump for the nomination up until this month. (Richard Drew / Associated Press)
Ohio Gov. John Kasich
The Ohio governor has consistently blasted Trump's rhetoric toward women and immigrants, calling it divisive and un-presidential. John Kasich, who leads a critical swing state, has noted that he will support the Republican nominee this fall.
But what about serving as Trump's No. 2?
"Zero chance," he said last month in an interview with CBS.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has declined to withdraw his criticism of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee. (Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio suspended his campaign in March, but has remained a critic of Trump.
In recent days, Rubio repeated that he will honor his pledge to support the party's nominee, but that he has no interest in becoming Trump's running mate. He expressed reservations about the businessman's views on foreign policy.
"He will be best served by a running mate and by surrogates who fully embrace his campaign. As such, I have never sought, will not seek and do not want to be considered for vice president," he wrote in a Facebook post.
kurtis.lee@latimes.com
Twitter: @kurtisaleeHappy Friday everyone! I’m excited to share a fun activity we did this past week. As you can see from the picture above and the title of this post, we made our own homemade lip balm!
Not only was it fun, but it was much easier than I thought it would be. It’s nice to know what we’re putting on our lips, plus it was cool to design our own labels too!
So what do you need to do this with your kiddos?
Other Items:
Sauce pan & metal mason jar lid ring
wooden Spoon
The first step is to place your coconut oil, beeswax, and vitamin e oil into a glass measuring cup. The vitamin-e will act as a moisturizer and preservative, the coconut oil is our moisturizer, and the beeswax will hold everything together.
I would suggest using one you don’t care about, or buy one to use only for lip balm. You can wash it out when done, but there’s kind of an oily film that doesn’t seem to go away.
Next, get a pan and fill it about half way with water and bring it to a boil. I also put a metal mason jar lid inside of ours to create a homemade double boiler type contraption. You do not want to place the glass measuring cup right in your pan as it may crack from the heat.
Once the water is at a slight boil, place your glass measuring cup into the water to melt the oils.
I suggest enlisting a kid or two to help stir, it took us about 15 minutes for all of the oils to fully melt together. While stirring be careful NOT to allow any water to splash into the oils as it can contaminate your balm.
After all of the oils are melted together, the beeswax will take the longest, you should have a nice golden liquid like this:
Adding Fragrance & Flavoring to Your Balm: (Optional)
At this stage, you can add in your favorite essential oils for fragrance. Do this while your balm is still over the heat so that the cooler oil doesn’t cause your balm to solidify again.
You can skip this step, but I personally don’t love the scent of this balm, so we like to add either a vanilla essential oil or peppermint essential oil scent to it using essential oils. You can also add in flavoring if you like, I use Candy & Baking Flavoring oil such as cherry, watermelon, or spearmint.
Fragrance: Keep in mind some oils are stronger than others, so you might consider adding a few drops at a time until the scent is to your liking.
Flavoring: To test the flavor of your balm, you can dab a small amount onto your lips. Keep in mind that the flavors get a bit stronger as the balm solidifies.
NOTE: I would NOT use Vanilla Extract to scent or flavor your balm as it does NOT mix well with the other oils and you’ll end up with a kind of splotchy looking balm.
Once the balm is scented & flavored to your liking, carefully pour it into your containers and allow to cool fully.
As you can see we made a couple varieties of balms. This one is a nice light yellow color, and is just the basic balm, no coloring.
For a more colorful balm, I shaved off a bit of one of my lipsticks and added it to the mixture after all of the oils were melted, then we poured into the containers. This is just enough color to tint the balm, and give a VERY slight pink tint when applied to the lips. I’ve found that brighter lipsticks provide the best coloring. Next time we’ll go for a hot pink lip stick I think.
Here are the three shades we ended up with. The yellow one is uncolored, the sort of tan one to the left we tried to color using some organic cherry juice I had. This didn’t work quite as well and if you look closely you can see specks in the balm where it didn’t quite blend with the oils. The more pigmented one to the right had lipstick coloring added which worked really well, so from here on out this is my preferred method for coloring the balms.
Once the balms were all cooled, we added the lids to them and started working on a design for our labels.
I purchased Avery Full Sheet Label paper from Office Depot, then made these cute lip gloss labels using Photoshop. Next we cut them out with a circle punch, ours was a 1 1/4” circle punch, but you’ll want to use whatever fits your containers.
Finally we labeled all of our balms! Aren’t they pretty? The girls took them to their friends and sold them for $1 which I thought was funny and quite entrepreneur-ish of them. They didn’t however repay their mama for supplies…hmmm…
So that’s it, our easy homemade lip balm tutorial! The vitamin-e acts as a preservative for the balms, so they should last about one year, but just keep an eye on them for any molding since they’re all natural.
I hope you enjoy this recipe, if you have a favorite lip balm recipe to share make sure to leave a comment below! This was so fun, and I’d love to try it again. Since this is a more solid balm, my next venture is to try and create a lip butter that is a bit creamier.
Have a great weekend, and let me know if you end up doing this project with your family!FBI Director James Comey responded to questions from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) about leaks of classified information that led to the resignation of then national security advisor Michael Flynn. (Reuters)
FBI Director James B. Comey began his testimony at Monday's House Intelligence Committee hearing by saying that he couldn't discuss the details of the ongoing Russia investigation. And he emphasized — repeatedly — that none of us should overanalyze anything on which he declined to comment.
“Please don't draw any conclusions from the fact that I may not be able to comment on certain topics,” Comey said.
He added: “I know speculating is part of human nature, but it really isn't fair to draw conclusions simply because I say that I can't comment.”
Comey's boss, President Trump, did not heed this plea.
FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia. pic.twitter.com/cUZ5KgBSYP — President Trump (@POTUS) March 20, 2017
Here's the exchange that was isolated by Trump's Twitter account.
GOWDY: Did you brief President Obama on — I'll just ask you: Did you brief President Obama on any calls involving Michael Flynn? COMEY: I'm not going to get into either that particular case, that matter, or any conversations I had with the president. So I can't answer that.
This was a standard answer for Comey throughout the hearing, and he stuck like glue to his promise not to comment on the ongoing investigation.
“Mr. Schiff, I'm worried we're going to a place I don't want to go, which is commenting on any particular person,” he said when asked by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. “And so I — I don't think I should comment.”
“That's not something I can comment on,” he said when asked how Trump adviser Roger Stone appeared to have advance knowledge of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails being leaked.
It got to the point where members acknowledged Comey wasn't going to be able to address questions they were about to ask. Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.) asked Comey four straight questions that elicited no-comments before yielding her time.
Basically, there were plenty of no-comments for just about anyone to read anything they wanted into Comey's testimony Monday. Any video editor/political spinner could make Comey look evasive on a given issue.
So the nation's political spinner-in-chief did. Even though Comey expressly told him not to.An Iranian cartoonist has taken the top prize for a ‘Trumpism’ exhibition aimed at mocking the US president. The winning work of art features the billionaire wearing a suit of money while his hair is ablaze.
The contest – sponsored by Iran's Organization for Sacred Defense Artistic and Cinema Affairs – featured over 1,600 works of art from 75 countries, according to the Tehran Times.
The winner, Hadi Asadi, received US$1,500, a trophy, and a plaque on Monday, Haaretz reported.
Other entries ranged from Donald Trump painting a Hitler-like mustache on the Statue of Liberty to a diaper-clad ‘baby Trump’ scribbling on walls in front of a White House made of Legos.
Another showed Trump amid a brick wall in the shape of a swastika.
READ MORE: Nazi-themed cartoon of Trump & Bannon aboard ‘Titanic’ published by Chinese paper (PHOTO)
It was that drawing which most closely aligned with the contest's logo, which was based on the Nazi emblem, with a “T” in a white circle against a red background.
“This contest considers Trump as a symbol of US capitalism and hegemony that many intellectuals compare with Nazism,” said Shojaei-Tabatabai, who presided over the contest, as quoted by the Tehran Times.
The director of the organization that sponsored the event, Ali-Asghar Jafari, said the theme was chosen because Trump “represents the real image of America.”
“Trump’s behavior clearly sets out Iran’s reasons to distrust the US, consequently, we decided to use art’s capacity for displaying the behavior,” he said during a press conference on Saturday.
“Aside from his personal characteristics, Trump has also posed different challenges to the world and treats Iran and the Islamic world unconventionally in particular.”
The same organizers of the event held a controversial Holocaust cartoon contest last year, which denounced what they claim is Western double standards on free speech.
A selection of the contest submissions will be showcased in exhibitions in Iran and 11 other countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey.
Meanwhile, tensions continue to mount between Iran and Washington, particularly over Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Trump has repeatedly angered Iran by calling the landmark nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers the “worst deal ever negotiated,” and put the country “on notice” after it conducted a ballistic missile test in February.Compared to other cities around the world, free Wi-Fi can be hard to come by in Toronto. Pop into a chain coffee shop or fast-food joint and you’ll probably be able to connect. Both Metrolinx and the Toronto Transit Commission are trying to offer up more access, but it’s still limited.
Customers at a Toronto Tim Hortons use public Wi-Fi. Some smaller cities in Canada have had more success in providing free public Internet access instead of Toronto, which continues to strive for more Wi-Fi at city parks and facilities as well as in community housing. ( Aaron Harris / For the Toronto Star file photo )
It’s a far cry from the experiment launched in New York earlier this year where free high-speed public Wi-Fi was made available through street kiosks. Using the city’s now outdated pay phone infrastructure, LinkNYC hopes to cover the whole city in the next 10 years, providing affordable access to an increasingly essential service. But Toronto was already thinking ahead to the need for such a service back in 2006, when Toronto Hydro Telecom offered up the free service for six months in the downtown core. Wireless hub devices placed on the tops of street light poles sent out powerful signals under the project known as OneZone, a small, 6-square-kilometre area running from Bloor St. to Front St., between Spadina Ave. and Jarvis St.
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The service was initially free, but once subscribers had to pay $30 a month for the service, or $10 a day, or $5 an hour, demand dropped off. Related: A new experiment has given New York City free Wi-Fi Eventually, Toronto city council voted to sell Toronto Hydro Telecom to Cogeco Cable in 2008 for $200 million, and while Cogeco operated the One Zone network for a few years, it eventually pulled the plug. Officials in the city’s economic development division are now working on a report on what could be done to improve public Wi-Fi access in Toronto, expected out later this year. The report comes as a result of a push from Councillor Josh Matlow, who has been calling for more Wi-Fi at city parks and facilities as well as in community housing.
“I want to see if there are creative ways to do this,” said Matlow, adding he wants the offering to come at no cost to the city, perhaps through a 5-second ad during log in. “The more tech-friendly a city becomes, the more incentive there is for startups to set up base here,” he said. “I also want to combat the digital divide.
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“If you want to apply for jobs or study for exams, it’s your connection to the world,” he said. “Some people have it, some do not. That’s not right.” Toronto as a municipality offers limited service at its city hall and civic centres, but lags behind neighbours like Brampton and Mississauga, which offer Wi-Fi at many arenas and community centres. In fact, some smaller cities in Canada have had more success in providing free public Wi-Fi. In New Brunswick, Fredericton has been a pioneer, first launching its free zone back in 2003 — four years before the first iPhone was even released.
A Toronto Hydro worker installs a wireless hub device at a street light in 2006 for the OneZone project. The Wi-Fi service was initially free, but once subscribers had to pay $30 a month for the service, or $10 a day, or $5 an hour, demand dropped off. ( Lucas Oleniuk )
Soon after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission deregulated the telecom industry, the city formed its own company called e-Novations ComNet Inc, a not-for-profit, non-dominant carrier that operates in the style of a utility. As it was getting off the ground, the utility wanted to conduct some demonstration projects, and embarked on a free public Wi-Fi idea. “Our project started before people had heard of smartphones, but Wi-Fi was becoming standard in laptops,” said Mike Richard, vice-president of operations for Go Fred, an e-Novations division, which sells Internet service to government, institutions and small businesses, competing with the country’s largest telecoms. The Fred eZone covers much of the downtown, including malls, parks, arenas, convention centres and the airport. The zone was initially funded with a $350,000 investment for capital costs from the city. The operating costs of the service, which draws about 1,500 users a day, are essentially donated from the utility company’s revenues, though Richard wouldn’t disclose the amount. It has adapted and made changes, such as providing a special access ID for vendors at the farmer’s market, where they can use hand-held terminals, using the wireless connection, to accept credit card or debit card payments. Richard credits Fredericton’s size, a city of about 55,000, for the success of the public Wi-Fi program. “We’re small enough to be just the right size to pull this off,” he said. “We have a bias to say yes, whether it’s staff or council. We have to punch above our weight.” Other communities have also brought in free public Wi-Fi including London, Ont., where the initiative has been spearheaded by the Downtown London business improvement association. Known as the London Area Wireless Network (LAWN), it provides free outdoors Wi-Fi in the core, though it has added indoor Wi-Fi at Citi Plaza, a mixed use office and retail space, and Covent Garden Market. Kathy McLaughlin, manager of MainStreet programs, a partner organization of the BIA, said the idea of offering public Wi-Fi came from a desire to offering more services that customers headed downtown would want. “We are in the business of providing amenities. Traditionally, it’s flowers, benches and clear sidewalks,” she said. “It stretched our thinking.” What started as a pilot project for $13,000 was eventually expanded in three phases for a total budget of about $69,000 over three years. Now, the BIA covers the annual $18,000 bill for Internet service, provided by Start Communications, a London-based provider. “Free Wi-Fi is an expectation now, it’s not just an option,” said McLaughlin, who estimated the service averaged almost 9,000 unique users a month last year, though it spikes in warmer weather. “It builds goodwill for the downtown brand,” she said, adding people will sometimes gather at their third place — a downtown mezzanine — instead of just the home or office. The service also draws individuals who don’t have access to data plans such as students or the unemployed, as well as transit users checking on schedules or office workers who aren’t allowed to use to company Internet for personal use. “There is a social good, but it’s not unlimited,” she said, adding usage is capped at 20 gigabytes a month. McLaughlin compared providing free Wi-Fi to offering water, a basic need. “We’re not going to tell you how to use it, but we know they need it,” she said. “For us, it’s the new utility.” Hotspots for hotspots San Francisco, California Thanks to a whopping $608,000 (U.S.) cheque from Google, residents in San Francisco now have access to Wi-Fi in playgrounds, recreation centres and parks — all part of the company’s efforts to promote Internet access. Taipei, Taiwan: The government-run program iTaiwan offers free public Wi-Fi for citizens across the island with thousands of hotspots, covering public buildings, tourist attractions and transport hubs. Visitors can sign up, in advance, for 30 days of access. Macau, China The land of casinos offers free Wi-Fi hotspots, some that operate from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m., while others run around the clock. Users have up to 45 minutes, and then the service will be disconnected. If a connection is available, then the user can reconnect. Helsinki, Finland Want to download or upload a video quickly? Go to Helsinki, where open public Wi-Fi is faster than some home systems. When the city government began installing Wi-Fi in buildings, it decided at the same time to install open networks for public use. Talk about forward thinking. Seoul, South Korea The country already describes itself as the most wired city, but Seoul Mayor Park Won-Soon is vowing to ensure every public space will have free Wi-Fi by 2017, including subways and buses. The city will spend $373.9 million (U.S.) over next five years as part of effort dubbed “diginomics” — bringing together digital and economics.Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Löfven said Sweden would be handing out residence permits to no more than the "EU minimum level" of refugees.
The new measures are:
• The Aliens Act will be adjusted so that Sweden will only offer temporary residence permits to those refugees they are obligated to help according to European Union and United Nations rules and conventions. This will apply for three years.
• The right to family reunification will be subject to a very strict time limit.
• The ages of all unaccompanied children will be medically verified.
• All new asylum seekers will be given temporary residence permits only, a major change from previous policies which included permanent permits. Exceptions will be made for children and families who registered before the new rules were announced.
• ID checks will be enforced on all modes of public transport to Sweden, which is already the case for ferries from Germany. Train staff were to be tasked with carrying out the checks. It remained unclear on Tuesday evening whether this would take place on the Danish or Swedish side of the border.
The ID checks are unlikely to affect people travelling from Syria, who usually have passports. However, experts said more refugees coming from African countries were likely to be turned away at the Swedish border unless they were able to present identification documents.
Åsa Romson and Stefan Löfven on Tuesday. Photo: Janerik Henriksson
The move spells a dramatic U-turn for the Nordic humanitarian superpower, which has previously said it would do anything possible to aid people fleeing armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.
And public and political opinion was split in Sweden after the shock announcement, with some saying the new rules were too strict and others calling it too little, too late.
"I am worried it is not enough," said Anna Kinberg Batra, leader of the biggest centre-right opposition party the Moderates, who nevertheless welcomed the temporary, rather than permanent, residence permits.
However, Left Party leader Jonas Sjöstedt tweeted: "Sweden was a light in the darkness for many forced to flee. That light goes out now. People fleeing will be hit hard."
Sverige var ett ljus i mörkret för många som tvingats fly, nu släcks det ljuset. Människor på flykt kommer att drabbas hårt. — Jonas Sjöstedt (@jsjostedt) November 24, 2015
The Swedish branch of charity Save the Children told the TT news agency it understood the government was under pressure, but criticized the new measures.
"Children become pawns in a political battle, where other EU states don't take their responsibility," said Sweden head of the organization Ola Mattsson.
Kent Ekeroth, spokesperson for anti-immigration party the Sweden Democrats, meanwhile told the newswire: "This is far too little and comes far too late."
Löfven, leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party, spoke alongside Åsa Romson, Deputy Prime Minister and one of the heads of the government's junior coalition partner, the Greens, at Tuesday's press conference.
One of the architects behind Sweden's hitherto generous asylum policy, Romson was visibly upset, choking back tears at one stage.
Before announcing the measures, the Prime Minister told reporters, "It pains me to say that Sweden is no longer able to accept the high number of asylum seekers we're seeing today. (…) The situation is unsustainable."
Löfven was very critical of other EU countries who he felt were not taking equal responsibility for the refugees, adding: "Now we must show that we can do no more. (...) We must create breathing space for the Swedish asylum system. We must get people seeking asylum to apply to other countries."
According to the Swedish Migration Agency, the number of refugees arriving dropped by 30 percent after the country reinstated border controls in southern parts of the |
remained together until bad light stopped cricket ten minutes before time. England's total stood at 253 for one wicket, Gibb 78 and Edrich 107.
Eighth day (Saturday).
Not a ball could be bowled owing to rain.
Ninth Day (Monday).
The wicket rolled out well after the weekend rain and Edrich and Gibb were still together at lunch time when the score was 331. Altogether the stand produced 280 before Gibb, whose innings lasted nine hours, was bowled. He hit only two 4's. Then Hammond joined Edrich and the score was taken to 447 before Edrich was third out. Very strong on the leg side and driving magnificently, he hit twenty-five 4's, making his 219 in seven hours forty minutes. Hammond and Paynter then took command until again poor light put an early end to the day's play when England were 496 for three wickets, with Hammond 58 and Paynter 24.
Tenth Day (Tuesday).
South Africa put forth a great effort to check the flow of runs and keen fielding, coupled with particularly accurate bowling by Gordon, who aimed at the leg stump, tied England down to 39 runs in the first hour. By this time rain threatened to stop play. Hammond and Paynter, realising that they were now engaged in a race against the weather and the clock, attacked the bowling. A smart catch near the ground by the wicket-keeper off Gordon ended the partnership which put on 164, at 611. Paynter batted three and a half hours but had to be satisfied with five 4's. Soon two interruptions occurred through rain and Hammond, when endeavouring to force the pace, was stumped. The England captain, in one of the finest innings of his career, excelled with masterly drives and powerful leg hits. His stay lasted six hours, yet his 4's numbered only seven. No sooner had Valentine joined Ames than the threatened downpour broke over the ground and nothing more could be done.
© John Wisden & CoIt’s a bank holiday Monday in the UK, which means that the Rock, Paper, Shotgun crew is still writing news and articles about videogames, but instead of posting them here we’re printing them off, feeding them directly into a shredder, and then deleting the source files. It’s a cruel shame, but that’s the world we live in.
Perhaps you still want some entertainment to get you through the day wherever you are, in which case here’s a video of someone smuggling illegal goods into an Elite: Dangerous space station. It’s nine minutes of interstellar stealth and pleasant space ship noises, with on-screen text to describe the tactics used at each stage, and it’s brilliant. Space!
I wrote this post on Friday, which is why I’ve not fed it directly into a bin.
Elite: Dangerous’s space police detect nearby vessels not only with their eyes, but by scanning for heat signatures. That means you can mask your ship by killing your engines and power and relying on inertia to drift past certain security measures, and leads to the thrilling moment above where the player, YouTube user Isinona, thrusts their engines hard, turns everything off, and drifts without control for a full ten kilometers in order to dock with the space station.
After a lengthy-but-efficient alpha process, Dangerous has now entered into beta and access is available for a chunky £50. It’s definitely unfinished, so you should read about the game carefully before deciding to commit to buying it at this stage.
Space!The sight of whites attempting to side with drug-lords in the Philippines over the people of the Philippines is an interesting one indeed. The ones who are destroying communities and violating the law, whose mafia murder innocents -- these are the ones that white globalists are siding with. And perhaps it's no coincidence given the alignment of values and tactics of those involved. Today's western government officials inherit and operate the same governments that forced opium on the Chinese people against the will of the government, who were sworn to protect them.
European colonists maintained a drug outpost in the Phillipines through which they routed drugs to China and other places; America inherited that outpost when they later colonized the Phillipines in the 20th century. It's certainly possible that early drug trade in the country was exacerbated by this trade. Given the ongoing involvement of US intelligence in the drug trade (which is not a conspiracy theory; there are significant testimonies from US govt. officials in other departments), there are legitimate question marks over why white globalists are taking the stand they are.
Asian populations deserve to have leaders who can stand up to the outside influence of foreign leaders who historically have not shown they have their best interests in mind. Hiding behind the nebulous surface-dressing of "values" doesn't easily fool a population that knows there's a history of abuse by the usual suspects, always dressed up in a new moral justification.The gun ban that has gone to New Jersey Governor Christie for signature has been described as a “gun magazine restriction“, but it bans numerous common sport and hunting rifles. The ban has no exemption for rifles with fixed magazines, including most common.22 rimfire rifles that are used for sport and small game hunting…and almost never used in crimes. Assembly Bill 2006 bans rifles that meet this definition: (4) A semi-automatic rifle with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding [15] 10 rounds...
The bracket and underline show the existing and proposed laws. There are no exemptions for grandfathering. Anyone who possesses such rifles after the ban goes into effect will be guilty of a felony. This has already happened at least once, when the owner of a.22 Marlin that he won at a police raffle was convicted for owning the firearm. The model owned was either the one pictured below a very similar Marlin. It is an “assault weapon” under current New Jersey law, as it has a magazine capacity of 17:
Marlin Model 60 with 17 shot magazine:
After the ban, Marlin modified the design to reduce the magazine capacity to 15 so that the rifles could be sold throughout the nation without having to cater to specific state laws. Now New Jersey is pushing to tighten the restrictions even further, outlawing the current Marlin model 60. It has a 15 round capacity and is arguably one of the most popular.22 rifles in the world.
Marlin Model 60 with 15 shot magazine:
Nearly all.22 rifles that have fixed tubular magazines have a capacity of more than 10 rounds. The Remington 552 holds 15 rounds.
Remington 552, 15-22 shot magazine:
Browning makes a semi-Auto.22 rifle that may slip under the ban that’s on Christie’s desk. Browning says that the magazine capacity on their SA-22 is exactly 10. Because of the variation of.22 ammunition, it’s likely that the rile would hold 11 rounds of some.22 ammunition. Older versions of the rifle advertised a magazine capacity of 11 in.22 LR, and 16 in.22 Short.
Browning Semi-Auto.22 rifle:
.22 rimfire semi-auto rifles with tubular magazines are some of the most popular sporting firearms ever produced. Over 11 million have been manufactured of the Marlin Model 60 and variants alone. Changing magazine capacity of one of these rifles isn’t simple, because the magazine is fixed, not easily removable. The New Jersey ban would make all of them in the state instant contraband. Here is a list of common sporting rifles that would be banned by the law:
Browning Semi-Auto.22
Colt Colteer and variants
Franchi Centennial.22
Marlin model 60 and variants
Norinco ATD.22 (Browning Clone)
Remington 6A and variants
Remington Nylon 66, clones, and variants
Remington 552
Remington 550
Remington 241
Savage model 87A and variants
Winchester model 74
Winchester 190, 290 and variants
This isn’t an exhaustive list. It is hard to think of rifles that were more obviously designed for “sporting purposes”. To my knowledge, they are one of the few firearms that was not originally intended as a potential military design. It seems that New Jersey legislators have not heard that “No one wants to ban your hunting rifle.”
©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun WatchPhoto
Ricky Gervais has no need to fear offending viewers of traditional American television with his latest series, because it won’t be broadcast there: Netflix said on Wednesday that it had acquired the rights to show “Derek,” a new comedy program written, directed by and starring Mr. Gervais, following its run on Channel 4 in Britain.
On “Derek,” Mr. Gervais, a creator and star of comedies like “The Office” and “Extras,” and a three-time host of the Golden Globe Awards, plays its title character, a naively simple man who works in a nursing home. The show also features Karl Pilkington, a regular on Mr. Gervais’s radio show and podcasts, and the star of the travel series “An Idiot Abroad.”
A pilot episode — which stirred up some concern that the Derek character was mocking disabled people, and which Mr. Gervais refuted, saying the character was not disabled — was shown in Britain in April, and drew about 2 million viewers for Channel 4, leading to a full series order. Netflix said it will make “Derek” available some time next year.
Mr. Gervais, whose standup comedy specials and series like “Extras,” “Life’s Too Short” and “The Ricky Gervais Show” have been broadcast in America on HBO, said in a statement: “Netflix is the future. TV habits have already changed drastically over the last 10 years and this is the next phase. People want their favorite shows on demand whether they are homegrown or not.”
Mr. Gervais added: “As an artist you want the fruits of your labor to be seen by the largest number of people possible without having to compromise the product. This deal gave me the freedom and the huge potential viewers of the Internet but the production values of film and TV. They also made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Come on, an artist gotta eat man.”Study: N.Y. teacher performance pay program flops
By Valerie Strauss
Just the other day we heard that a program in Chicago that attempted to link teacher pay with student standardized test scores wasn’t working, at least not in the first two years.
A 2009 analysis of a major program in Texas that also linked teacher pay to student achievement gains on tests showed no evidence of success. The multi-year Texas Educator Excellence Grant involved teachers at about 1,000 campuses, with a total of more than 140,000 students in lower-income neighborhoods. It was discontinued because of “design problems.”
Now, a paper prepared by two Columbia University researchers for a recent education conference at Harvard University said that the New York City Bonus Program, which attempts to raise student achievement by paying teachers for it, was -- you guessed -- also unsuccessful.
The researchers, Sarena Goodman and Lesley Turner, investigated the impacts of group-based incentive pay over two academic years (2007-2008 and 2008-2009) on a range of outcomes that included teacher effort, student performance in math and reading, and classroom activities. Also evaluated were impacts on the market for teachers by examining teacher turnover and the qualifications of newly hired teachers.
“Overall, we find the bonus program had little impact on any of these outcomes,” the researchers concluded.
In each of these reports, the authors noted that the design of the program was flawed in some way. Teachers weren’t paid enough or they were not paid individually or some other part was not well conceived.
The Goodman/Turner study says, for example, “We argue that the lack of bonus program impacts can be explained by the structure of the bonus program. Group bonuses led to free-riding, which significantly reduced the program’s incentives.”
Maybe. But maybe not. And this is our problem: Nobody yet knows.
That hasn’t stopped performance-based pay from becoming the new mantras in school reform. It was, in fact, a key part of the new teachers' contract negotiated in Washington, D.C., by Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and just ratified by members of the Washington Teachers' Union. It is also part of a number of school reform laws recently passed in various states to win favor -- and federal Race to the Top dollars -- from Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The thinking goes something like this: Why shouldn’t student achievement be included in the evaluation and compensation of teachers? For one thing, teachers aren’t the only players in the complex process in which kids learn. Home environments and biology play a role, too.
If, however, teachers are to be evaluated by how well their students do, the worst possible way to do that would be using student scores on standardized tests. There are a lot of reasons a student might do poorly on one of these tests, and how effective there teacher is or isn’t may well not be one of them. Besides, these tests aren’t designed to evaluate how well teachers do their jobs, and text experts will tell you that an assessment is only valid for the purpose for which it was designed.
Performance pay linked to test scores creates incentives for teachers to essentially do the wrong thing: Obsess on teaching kids how to do well on the tests -- in math and reading -- while giving short shrift to other vital subjects. So even if this scheme were to "work," it wouldn't really be working.
I do not suggest that these three reports are at all definitive. But they certainly show that education reformers are pushing school systems -- yet again -- into another costly experiment that may be doomed to fail.
You would think that after the disappointing results of No Child Left Behind, the folks behind school reform would think twice about jumping onto another racing train without knowing where it is going.
Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.
Follow my blog all day, every day by bookmarking washingtonpost.com/answersheet. And for admissions advice, college news and links to campus papers, please check out our new Higher Education page at washingtonpost.com/higher-ed Bookmark it!Many Latin American countries have been pondering a new approach to weed. Latin America mulls pot legalization
If the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state bends your mind, consider that it could prompt Mexico, Colombia and other Latin American countries to ease off of their enforcement efforts.
Weary of the gang violence fueled by America’s estimated $100 billion illegal drug habit, many countries in the region have been pondering a new approach to the challenge of countering the intercontinental drug trade — an issue that will take center stage Friday at the Organization of American States’ General Assembly meeting in Guatemala.
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“I think you can no longer expect countries like Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala — certainly on marijuana — to channel resources to fighting drug production and trafficking if they see Colorado and Washington have legalized marijuana,” Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said.
“The United States can’t have its cake and it eat it too,” he said. “At some point, it will have to reconcile what it is doing domestically — a slow motion but inevitable process toward de facto legalization — with its international law enforcement and drug control policies.”
( Also on POLITICO: NFL players, Obama agree on pot)
As part of the push toward alternatives to the current drug-fighting regime, Organization of American States Secretary General José Miguel Insulza said the group would issue a joint statement Friday urging members to focus more on treatment and rehabilitation for drug offenders rather than incarceration.
The countries, which include the United States and all 34 other nations in the Western Hemisphere, also agree that they should explore moving away from mandatory jail sentences toward alternative punishments for possession or sales of small amounts of drugs, the former Chilean diplomat said.
And while members will stress the need to strengthen public institutions to fight organized crime, especially in countries where there is weak rule of law, they will also recognize that the illicit drug trade affects countries differently in terms of violence and its drain on government resources, “so we will be tolerant to what countries want to do,” he said.
“In war terms, you could say we are successful,” Insulza said with a twist of irony. “We have taken a lot of prisoners in this war. But at the center of the debate is, if it’s a public health problem, why do we send people to jail? Victims should be treated in hospitals.”
( Also on POLITICO: What it means to be a high nation)
In a separate statement ahead of the OAS meeting, he elaborated: “What we wanted to achieve was to remove this war on drugs, that was a never-ending war, that led nowhere, that produced nothing and that affected greatly our countries. We are achieving this.”
The special meeting in Guatemala — a country that stands at the bloody crossroads of the international drug trade — follows a series of OAS reports on the issue commissioned by President Barack Obama and other regional leaders at a 2012 Summit of Americas meeting.
One such report outlines several scenarios for dealing with the problem over the next decade, including “trying and learning from alternative legal and regulatory regimes, starting with cannabis.” But even if prohibition continues, another scenario envisions Central American states abandoning the fight against drug production and transit through their territories in the hope of reducing the brutal toll from gang battles over control of the trade.The largest space telescope ever constructed is now complete and ready for testing, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but with bigger mirrors and stronger capabilities. Expected to launch within two years, the telescope was an effort 20 years in the making that saw delayed deadlines and financial setbacks.
"Today, we're celebrating the fact that our telescope is finished, and we're about to prove that it works," John Mather, an astrophysicist and senior project scientist for the telescope said in a news conference as reported by Space.com. "We've done two decades of innovation and hard work, and this is the result – we're opening up a whole new territory of astronomy."
While its predecessor is credited with unveiling important discoveries including the acceleration of the universe’s expansion, the JWST is expected to go even further by exploring the birthplaces of planets, stars, and first galaxies born after the Big Bang more than 13.5 billion years ago with its sensitive infrared cameras. These observations will not only help scientists understand the origins of the universe but at the same time, look for signs of life in other planets.
"We'd like to know if another planet out there has enough water to have an ocean, and we think we can do that," Dr. Mather said on one of the project’s missions to explore the Alpha Centauri system, Popular Mechanics reports.
The $8.8 billion space telescope will be launched from French Guiana to a place called the second sun-Earth Lagrange point, located four times the distance between the Earth and the moon. It is equipped with mirrors 2.7 times bigger than Hubble’s and powerful detectors that can observe very infrared lights 400 times fainter than current space-based telescopes can see, as Space.com points out, even through cosmic dust and atmospheres of exoplanets.
For example, it will be able to "see a bumblebee a moon’s distance away," Mather said, "both in reflected light and in the body heat the bee emitted."
A five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court will protect the telescope’s mirrors and instruments from the sun, Earth, moon, and its own electronics, with mirrors that will be kept at a temperature of minus 388 degrees F.
The next step before launch will be testing at multiple facilities and a final assembly in California to ensure the telescope can withstand the noise and shaking of a rocket launch. Unlike the Hubble, the telescope is not intended to be repaired once it is in orbit. The scientists expect it to be in orbit for 10 years. After it is launched, its large lenses will unfurl as it travels and be ready for experiments in six months time.
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The JWST is the result of a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. Originally scheduled for launch in 2013 at a cost of $5 billion, budget constraints nearly canceled the project. But with its completion and scheduled launch date in 2018, it is expected to join the Hubble in space.
Using both space telescopes at the same time, according to Ken Sembach, of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), "really gives you a more panchromatic view of the universe than you would get just from Hubble alone, or just from Webb alone," The Christian Science Monitor previously reported.Yahoo’s New CEO Preps Major Restructuring, Including Significant Layoffs
According to multiple sources both inside and outside the Silicon Valley Internet giant, Yahoo’s CEO Scott Thompson is preparing a massive restructuring of the company, including layoffs that are likely to number in the thousands.
Much of the change — which could be announced as soon as the end of this month — is being aimed at Yahoo’s large products organization, as well as other arenas in which the company has lagged.
Also among those being considered for targeting: Public relations and marketing, research, marginal businesses and weaker regional efforts.
After interviewing a number of outside firms, Thompson has recently hired Boston Consulting Group to help focus the company on “growth” initiatives and to help determine the best path for Yahoo going forward.
But much of the push for quick change, sources said, is being led by Thompson, who has aggressively taken up the reins of power at the company since he got the job in the beginning of the year.
His first — and very controversial — act has been to threaten patent litigation against Facebook. The move was widely decried in Silicon Valley and also has been unpopular with some of Yahoo’s own engineers, who think intellectual property should be used defensively and not offensively.
Thompson also played a role in reevaluating how Yahoo should approach the sale of its Asian assets back to partners there. The talks among Yahoo, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank over that stake are now paused, although they certainly could reengage at any time.
In Yahoo’s core business, Thompson appears to be looking widely across Yahoo in order to jumpstart what has largely been a failed turnaround for the company under previous leadership.
That is likely to include a much deeper and significant paring of its many businesses, while also seeking out new ones to move into.
“Some parts will be cut away, leaving resources to go to better efforts,” said one person close to the situation, who noted specific announcements could take longer than this month. “But this has to be a true change to get this company back on track.”
Such changes are likely to spur executive turnover. Already, as I reported yesterday, Yahoo Labs head Prabhavar Raghavan is leaving for Google, which sources said was spurred by the likelihood of major job cuts in his research unit.
And, indeed, the most dramatic move by Thompson will be to chop staff. While Yahoo has been subject to numerous layoffs over the years, none has been as large as what is now being contemplated to slash costs.
Yahoo’s employee base numbered 14,100 employees at the end of its last quarterly report, up over four percent from the previous year. But, sources said, the company also has a large contingent of software contractors who work on product and whose cost is masked in its capital expenditures.
“It is going to be deep,” said one manager who has not yet been given specific numbers to cut, but that it appears as if each unit will be required to show either substantive savings or a clear path to great growth in revenue.
Such moves by Thompson are likely to hearten Wall Street, boost its stock and perhaps temporarily assuage its noisy activist shareholder Daniel Loeb.
Loeb has been pushing for change on Yahoo’s board, which will be taking place now that five members of it — including co-founder Jerry Yang — will be changing out. He has put his own slate up, which includes former NBC exec Jeff Zucker.
Yahoo has also added new board members and has been trying to attract more, even as it engages with Loeb over his choices.
A settlement with Loeb — with whom Thompson has been talking with recently — would take the pressure off Yahoo going forward.
While it has disengaged formally with private equity players it was discussing investment with, for example, there might be other scenarios for a leaner and meaner Yahoo, especially given its huge audience.
Thompson certainly signaled big change in his first conference call with Wall Street analysts, although he declined to provide specifics.
“We will do more than protect our current revenue streams,” he said. “We will consider new business models and revenue sources.”
In an emailed statement to me, a Yahoo spokesman underscored that point without being specific (or even slightly riveting, Eric!):
“Our leadership is engaged in a process that will generate significant strategic change at Yahoo, but final decisions have not yet been made at this point. Beyond that, we will not comment.”
In other words, get ready for some big shoes to start dropping and very soon.by BRIAN NADIG
A proposal to build a new restaurant with a bar on the site of a 12-space parking lot in Downtown Edgebrook will be discussed at the March 5 meeting of the 41st Ward Zoning Advisory Board, according to Alderman Mary O’Connor’s chief of staff Lisa Ryan.
The property at northwest corner of Devon and Minnehaha avenues is zoned B1-1, which restricts the serving of alcohol to the dining room. Under the proposed B3-1 zoning, the restaurant would be allowed to have a bar, but most of the establishment’s revenue would have to be generated from non-alcoholic purchases.
The parking lot, at 5338 W. Devon Ave., had been used by the former Century 21 Ambassador, 5342 W. Devon Ave. The real estate office last year relocated to Niles and changed its name to Ambassador Real Estate Group.
A rear alley separates the approximately 4,000-square-foot parcel from a parking area to the north that is used by Happy Foods and Associated Bank.
The parcel is kiddie-corner to the Edgebrook Library, 5331 W. Devon Ave., but has been measured as more than 100 feet from the library, Ryan said. New liquor licenses cannot be issued to establishments which are located less than 100 feet from a library.
“It is going to be geared toward families,” project developer and Wildwood resident Kevin Walsh said of the restaurant. “It’ll have burgers, chicken, sandwiches and some salads with an underlying sports theme.”
Walsh serves as chairman of the advisory board, whose decisions serve as recommendations to O’Connor. Walsh said that he will recuse himself as chairman during the board’s deliberations on his project.
Five parking spaces behind the building are planned, and arrangements are being made to have additional parking at a nearby lot, Walsh said. The restaurant also is looking into offering valet parking, he said.
The one-story restaurant would include a side courtyard, Walsh said.
The advisory board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Olympia Park fieldhouse, 6566 N. Avondale Ave. A plan to build a two-story house at 7130-32 W. Highland Ave., which is vacant except for a shed, also is on the agenda.By Bill Barrow & Christina Cassidy - July 27, 2014
ATHENS, Ga. (AP) -- Republicans are on the offensive in the opening days of Georgia's Senate campaign, hammering Democrat Michelle Nunn as a rubber stamp for President Barack Obama and questioning her resume as a non-profit executive - the very experience that anchors her appeal as a moderate who gets things done without partisan wrangling.
It's a preview of a high-profile clash between two first-time candidates, Nunn, 47, and former corporate executive David Perdue, 64, with the outcome helping to decide which party controls the Senate for the final two years of Obama's presidency.
Nunn is one of the Democrats' few hopes to pick up a GOP-held Senate seat as they try to hold their majority and establish Georgia as another Southern swing state alongside Virginia and North Carolina. Republicans need six more seats to run the chamber and know they can't afford to let Nunn succeed retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss. There's also a little-known Libertarian on the Nov. 4 ballot.
Both sides agree that with no sitting politician left in the race, Nunn and Perdue will clash over personalities and backgrounds as they try to capitalize on voter discontent. They're trying to energize their core partisan supporters even as Nunn, especially, focuses on independents.
Perdue now sounds a more partisan tone after spending months blasting Rep. Jack Kingston and two other sitting congressmen as being part of the problem in Washington. Fresh off defeating Kingston in a primary runoff, Perdue promised to "prosecute the failed record of the Democratic administration over the last six years."
He urged Georgia voters not to give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "one more vote" in the chamber and called for the repeal of Obama's health care law and the Dodd-Frank law that changed financial regulations after the 2008 market collapse. Earlier in the year, Perdue said he wanted to work with Democrats to amend Dodd-Frank, not repeal it. And as a business executive, he once said that it would take a federal solution to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.
Meanwhile, a conservative Super PAC launched a television ad telling voters that Nunn supports "Obamacare." The ad also notes that she presided over layoffs when one of her earlier foundations merged with former President George H.W. Bush's Points of Light organization. Ending Spending Action Fund, the conservative political action committee, is backed by Joe Ricketts, founder of TDAmeritrade and owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise.
Nunn uses those attacks to tie Perdue to her usual critique that "our political system is broken."
Even more pointedly, Perdue dismissed Nunn's experience running Points of Light. Perdue argues that her post at the foundation does not prepare her for tackling issues in the free-enterprise system. His own background is in for-profit firms such as Reebok, Dollar General and the failed textile company Pillowtex.
Nunn has echoed criticisms that Perdue weathered from his Republican rivals, namely that he presided over layoffs and outsourcing. "My record, obviously, is around building communities, lifting people up, trying to make a difference, working in collaboration with folks from the other side," said Nunn, whose father, Sam, represented Georgia in the Senate for 24 years.
She has a tough contest on her hands. She's running in a state Obama lost twice - even if by much closer margins than the rest of the Deep South. And now Perdue's victory over Kingston takes away her opportunity to continue her "outsider" campaign against an 11-term congressman.
Nunn treads lightly on her party affiliation. Her ads don't mention she's a Democrat. She talks repeatedly of "moderation," noting the word is part of the Georgia state motto: "Wisdom Justice Moderation."
Yet she's voiced support for a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally, in a recent nod to liberals she has often avoided, even while calling for tighter border security.
Democrats say Nunn can succeed with a campaign that mixes her arguments about Washington's ineffectiveness with direct attacks on Perdue's record.
At the Democrats' national Senate campaign office, spokesman Justin Barasky skewered Perdue for "a record of tearing apart companies and communities by slashing thousands of jobs." Georgia Democratic Party Chairman DuBose Porter compared Perdue to Mitt Romney, whose wealth became a liability for the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.
Perdue said that doesn't worry him: "Well, I have lived through about six months of that. How'd that work?"Mike Commodore is just a few putts away from embarking on his next career.
No, not as a pro golfer.
And definitely not as a full-time Uber driver, which he has been dabbling in.
Fact is, the 37-year-old former Calgary Flames blue-liner isn’t quite sure what he’ll do next.
A poster boy of sorts for the retired NHLers of the modern era, he doesn’t ever have to work again.
Over $13 million in career earnings made sure of that.
And so, he lives the life many dream of, living in Scottsdale, Az., playing more rounds of golf than he can count.
“It’s got to be a minimum of 250, I don’t even know,” shrugged Commodore, who regularly tees it up with PGA Tour members like Graham DeLaet and Chez Reavie as a member of prestigious Whisper Rock. “I’m not quite scratch. I’m a bad 1.”
Retired in 2014 after the Ukrainian KHL team he was going to play on, Donetsk, had its rink burned down by pro-Russian rebels, Commodore’s chief focus has been to get his handicap down to zero.
“If I do get there, it’s getting about time for me to find something,” said the big ball hitter, who chuckled when it was suggested he’s purposely missing the odd putt to stave off making some big life decisions. “I promise I am trying to make every putt and not missing them so I stay at a 1. Once I bury those last couple putts, I’ll definitely get a place in Calgary.”
Although the afro-like orange hair that helped make him so famous and popular here during the Flames’ 2004 Stanley Cup final run has been replaced by a relative crew cut, Commodore said he’s still treated well in Calgary when regularly visiting his brother and friends.
“For only playing 18 regular-season games here, yeah, I get recognized a ton,” said the six-foot-four, 220-pound defenceman, who is still in great shape. “I still find it amazing. It has been 12 years since I played here, and I look a lot different. Shorter hair and obviously I’ve gotten older. This city has been very good to me. It didn’t have to, but it has. That’s one of the reasons I like coming back here. Love the city too.”
So it is here he’ll launch his second career, whatever that may look like.
He turned down the opportunity to try his hand as an NHL broadcaster following his final playing year in the KHL, as he’d stopped watching a game he’d lost interest in.
“I don’t know if I’m going to stay in hockey or get out of it,” said Commodore a second-pairing defenceman in his prime, who was also popular with fans in Carolina for wearing his bathrobe while his Hurricanes were en route to winning the Stanley Cup in 2006. “For me, when I was done I wanted to just get away from it.
From a pure mental part of it, the only thing you’ve really done – and were the top 700 in the world at – is gone, like that
“I’m watching more now. I started watching again when the Flames went to the playoffs again (in 2015) and I went to two games and started liking it again then.”
It’s unlikely those broadcasting offers still stand, which is something he hasn’t had to worry about as he criss-crosses the globe on golf trips with former teammates and enjoys a lifestyle he earned over 12 years in the NHL.
This week, he’s back in Calgary on his own dime, simply to take part in a sold out charity hot stove event for KidSport Calgary, reminiscing about the ’04 Cup craziness.
While most observers can’t understand why he’d want to even contemplate leaving that lifestyle, the reality is pro athletes are driven folks who need challenges.
“Hey, life is good, I’m not going to sit here and complain about it. I don’t have to work, for sure,” said the former second-round draft pick, who signed a five-year, $18.75 million contract with Columbus that got bought out after three years. “The flip side is that it might have been good if I did have to work so I would have jumped into something right away. Then I would have been busy, if that makes sense.
“But overall I can’t complain. I’m not bored … yet.”
Commodore made headlines a few months back when it came to light he was driving his Escalade for Uber.
“You don’t make much, that’s not why I’m doing it. I’ve had fun doing it,” said Commodore, sharing several funny Uber stories as he scrolls through the palty payouts of his 60 rides to date. “It’s a great way to get me out of the house but keeps me out of the bar. I get out and get to meet people but I’m not sitting in the bar, which, when you get out of hockey, is an easy thing to fall into. I’ve seen that happen to several guys – some guys I wouldn’t expect.”
In a city of six million people, he’s never been recognized while driving, chuckling about the time he picked up a group of gals that included the niece of former teammate Doug Weight, and the evening a boyfriend narrowly avoided allowing his drunk girlfriend to throw up in his truck.
Working for fun is something few people can relate to.
“A lot of people don’t understand, they say, ‘You played in the NHL? Shut up,’ I get that side too,” said Commodore of those who can’t comprehend how some players struggle to find their way after hockey. “But from a pure mental part of it, the only thing you’ve really done – and were the top 700 in the world at – is gone, like that. Not many guys get to leave when they want, and that can be tough. Your skills are no longer viable. As a player, you get a lot of attention then it’s gone.
“Unless you are Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky or a few others, nobody is going to be kicking your door down to give you opportunities. I think the sooner you realize nobody cares about you – and the only person who is going to take care of you is you – the better off you are. You’ve got to do it yourself.”
And he’s getting anxious to do just that.
As soon as he sinks a few more putts.How the states have used the War on Drugs to legalize and endorse highway robbery
Please note: This article is intended to expose local and state law enforcement tactics used to steal large sums of money from citizens. While this is a fairly specific article, there are thousands upon thousands of examples of this happening on the federal level as well. I mention this because most of what I write about is from personal experience as a law enforcement officer. As I have never been involved in a federal seizure I will not attempt to dissect federal laws as they are even more complicated and convoluted.
Does anyone see a problem here?
The victim here was from |
), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee (where he joined in the interrogations of Gonzales and other Department officials) as well as the Senate environmental committee (where he’s sharply questioned EPA chief Stephen Johnson), said the comparison is inevitable. Yesterday’s news that the EPA’s top environmental regulator in the Midwest had been fired over her efforts to force Dow Chemical to clean up chemical spills, he said, “looks like déjà vu all over again from an administration that values compliance with its political agenda more than it values the trust or best interests of the American people.” Here’s video:
Whitehouse said that the Senate environmental committee will be holding a hearing on EPA oversight next Wednesday.Thank you, Rematch Santa!! You totally saved reddit gifts for me!
I received two new books I haven’t read, in the genre I love! They both sound excellent and I can’t wait to dig in! I think I’ll start with the Windwitch first!! There’s nothing better than starting the new year with a new book—and now I have TWO to start the year with!
I also got a REAL wand!! Ha! I’ve never had any Harry Potter swag before, though I’ve loved the books since they first came out! I just finished rereading them all, and a wand is the perfect gift I never knew I needed! It’s really nice and heavier than I would have thought and I’ve already been practicing my flicks! My four year old is convinced that I must have real magic now and has been on exceptionally good behavior because of it...so extra thanks for that!
I had been feeling kinda bummed about Secret Santa, since my Santa forgot about me and my giftee’s gift is in USPS purgatory. You, Rematch Santa, saved Secret Santa for me and brought me more Christmas cheer then you can imagine! Thank you so much!!by William Henry from WilliamHenry Website
About a 20 minutes drive from the Great Pyramid, and visible from the Giza Plateau on clear day, is one of Egypt’s greatest treasures from antiquity, and one of the most extraordinary places on our planet.
Abu Ghurab, or “the crow’s nest" as it is called, is a closed to the public archaeological site in the pyramid fields that run along side the Nile south of Cairo. Egyptologists quaintly refer to it as a ‘sun temple’, a ‘burial center’ or ‘funerary complex’ for a new cult of Ra (they usually use these terms when the actual function of a place is unclear).
The site of Abu Ghurab is a part of the pyramid complex at Abu Sir. The name Abu Sir comes from the Greek name for this city, Busiris, which in turn comes from Bu Wizzer or Per Wsir, the “Place of Osiris”, the Egyptian god of resurrection. Egyptologists claim it was ‘made’ at the time of the 5th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom Period around 2400 B.C. I use the term ‘made’ for its double meaning. It means ‘created’, but ‘made’ is also a police term for ‘identified’ or ‘discovered’.
In fact, indigenous Egyptian tradition teaches that this site is one of the oldest ceremonial centers on the planet and is a place where the ancients connected with divine energies. Later, it was ‘made’ by a pharaoh. I visited the place three times during my stay in Cairo in March/April 2006 and found some eye-opening connections to both Atlantis and to the Anunnaki gods of Sumeria, which will be shared in these pages. The bustling neighborhood of Abu Gharob is a place where the streets literally have no names and life has changed little for thousands of years. Here is a chance to experience ancient Egypt.
On my first visit I was with the National Geographic Channel (NG) who took me to Abu Ghurab to interview me about Egypt’s connections to Atlantis. According to Plato’s version of the story, which originated in Egypt, Atlantis was a high civilization founded by the gods. They built a temple surrounded by a city formed of concentric rings, which was populated by hybrid god-men. When this race lost their ‘divine essence’ this brought about the wrath of Zeus, watching from the center of the universe. I believe that Egypt exists in the shadow of Atlantis. It is an echo of this lost realm. After a short Soprano’s style exchange with the Egyptian authorities that guard this site we entered a narrow path cut through a thick mango grove. When the trees cleared we suddenly entered what felt like a Hollywood movie set for a movie titled Forbidden World, or something like that. The dunes of the great desert appeared lunar. The three pyramids of Abu Sir, about a mile away, seemed surreal like three elder fires burning for eternity. Strangely, when I stepped onto this ‘set’ I have never felt more at home in a place in my life.
I could hardly wait to get up over the crest of hill in front of me and cross the barrier to Abu Guhrob. I had been told about a large square structure or platform made of alabaster (‘Egyptian crystal’) that sits in front of the mound where an obelisk stood. The alabaster platform is in the shape of the Khemetian symbol Hotep, translated by Egyptologists as “peace.”
As I mentioned to NG on the way up crest of the hill, to the prophets of the past peace was not the absence of conflict between warring factions or jealous religions. Peace is the unity of heaven and earth. Was Abu Ghurab where the stargate connection was made? The Three Pyramids of Abu Sir about a mile south from Abu Ghurab.
After a short walk we entered the gate of the complex. We were alone. The only sound was that of sand and ancient stones crunching beneath our feet… and a mammoth C-5 military aircraft flying low above us. The stepped pyramid with the alabaster hotep sitting in front of it greeted us. The site appeared as if it had sat undisturbed for millennia. Everything I knew about Abu Ghurab came from Stephen Mehler, author of Land of Osiris and From Light Into Darkness, and conversations with researcher Bob Vawter. Both men are top-of-the-class students of Abd’El Hakim Awyan, the acclaimed teacher and wayshower of the sacred mysteries of ancient Khemet, the early name for Egypt. According to Hakim, there exists an immense, relatively unknown oral tradition in Egypt that tells the actual history of Khem. One cannot fully learn this knowledge. Instead, one is ‘gifted’ with it.
Khemet is related to the word alchemy, Al- Khem or Chem, and is thought to designate the mysterious Black Land formed by the Nile. Interestingly, Indian scholars trace it to the Chinese Chin-I or Chin-je, meaning “Juice of Gold.” This alternative definition will appreciate exponentially in significance in a moment once we cross the threshold of the gates of knowledge at Abu Ghurab.
According to traditional Egyptological theory, Abu Ghurab was built by the 5th Dynasty pharaoh Niussere around 2400 B.C. Known as “the favorite of the Two Ladies” (lucky man) and “the Golden Falcon is divine” he built the temple to worship the god RA or RE (‘ray’). The mound at Abu Ghurab.
The massive alabaster (Egyptian crystal) platform at Abu Ghurab. It is a mandala depicting the four directions.
An obelisk (‘sun stick’) once stood atop this mound. Egyptologists say it was likely around a squat 15 feet tall and was modeled after the sun temple at On or Heliopolis, the site where Akhenaton, and other enlightened ones, was initiated in the esoteric mysteries that made them great mystics. Pieces of this original sun stick or ben ben are scattered all over the place. In fact, the entire site is one giant debris field with pieces of limestone scattered everywhere that appear to have come from structures that once existed here. According to Mehler’s account in Land of Osiris, ancient Khemetian oral tradition says Abu Ghurab was already ancient by the time of the 5th Dynasty. Hakim claims this bird’s nest dates deep into pre-history and is one of the oldest ceremonial sites on the entire planet. Moreover, he says the site was designed to create heightened spiritual awareness through the use of vibrations transmitted through the alabaster and other materials. This expanded awareness enabled one to connect with the sacred energies of the universe known as Neters.
In Land of Osiris Mehler notes that indigenous tradition teaches that the Neters themselves, in some sort of physical form, once “landed” and appeared in person at Abu Ghurab. It is for this reason that this site has been considered sacred for thousands upon thousands of years. Hakim proposes the alabaster platform created a harmonic resonance through sound vibrations to increase the heightened awareness and to further open the senses to “communicate” and be one with the Neters.
Of course, Hakim is describing what is called a “stargate” today. The circular center of the alabaster platform.
The perfectly smooth sides of the platform suggest advanced machining.
Perfectly circular ‘drill’ mark on the alabaster platform. Is this also evidence of advanced precision machining?
FORMLESS LIGHT BEINGS
I am highly intrigued by the re-collections and re-memberings concerning the Neter in the Khemetian tradition. Particularly since Ancient American oral tradition from Tennessee, where I live, retold by Cherokee wisdom keeper Dhyani Yahoo says that formless “thought beings” called TLA beings rode a sound wave from the Pleiades star cluster through a hole in space in East Tennessee and created the Cherokee. All humans are dream children of these angels or elemental forces who came from the stars. This legend obviously resonates with Khemetian belief concerning Abu Guhrob. In addition, before my trek to Khem my research was focused on the profound work of Dr. Eve Reymond, a scholar who had explored the ancient Egyptian Building Texts from Edfu, Egypt in her book The Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple. These little known texts also tell of formless beings who came from the stars and created an island civilization in Egypt. These Sages, as they were called, constructed an original mound where the creation of human kind took place. This island was called the Island of the Egg and was surrounded by the primeval water. By the edge of this lake was a ‘field of reeds’ (Aaru), a fact which will have enormous significance momentarily. The Edfu tale matches the Atlantis story as told by Plato of a civilization founded by the gods who created a hybrid race of humans. I believe the Edfu Building Texts are the source material for Plato’s story of Atlantis, which he originally learned from Egypt. I further believe that shards of this tale are found in numerous indigenous traditions, and that it may even relate to Abu Guhrob. The connection is found in the stones. One telltale characteristic alternative researchers uphold as a trademark of Atlantean temple building is the use of megalithic red granite blocks. The precision cut and polished red granite facing stones of the pyramid at Abu Guhrob is a trademark of ‘Atlantean’ construction. At Abu Gharob one sees colossal red granite blocks weighing several tons that were precision cut, polished and mounted in place as facing stones on the pyramid. Whoever laid these in place had an accuracy that was extraordinary. Then, some unknown force caused these casing stones to be scattered like Lego blocks. The whole place looks as if a massive hand had swatted it like a sand castle. In fact, one gets the compelling feeling that this place was intentionally destroyed by a massive show of force. On my second visit to this ‘stargate’ I learned why this may have been done. As NG cameraman, Rich Confalone, and I surveyed and studied the place together we both agreed that this was one of the strangest places we had ever been. Rich is a veteran videographer who during the past 18 years has been to virtually every corner of the globe. He’s the cameraman for Josh Bernstein, host of the hit History Channel show Digging for the Truth. He’d said he’d never dug in such mysterious sands before. About the time I had finished my interview with Rich and the National Geographic producer, Cara Biega, an alarm sounded among the temple guards. Suddenly, they were telling us in hostile voices that it was time for us to leave, like now. Undeterred, the National Geographic team continued gathering shots while I ran interference with the guards. Massive granite blocks are strewn about like Lego blocks. Some titanic force must have scattered these stones.
On the way out we took time to examine another of the oddities at Abu Guhrob. Set apart from everything else we had seen were giant square alabaster “dishes” or “basins” with strange gear-like designs on top. Egyptologists guess that the massive basins were used to hold sacrificial animal blood, which ran through perfectly round channels cut into the paving. There is not a single drop of DNA or other evidence to support this misconception. Interestingly, the inner surface of the basins are amazingly smooth to the touch and show signs of circular tool marks, suggesting that whoever crafted them did so with a technology we would admire today (and make fortunes marketing, too). A bunch of the ‘offering basins’ are lined up near the entrance, apparently placed there at some point enroute to another location. Significantly, a few more are still ‘in situ’. Two square alabaster basins with strange gear-like tops.
Beautifully round holes in the ‘basins’. What are they for? How were they drilled?
BLACK SUN RISING
A few days later, the total eclipse of the Sun was approaching. Our ‘cosmic bus’, ‘the Lady Isis’, eased to a stop beside a canal near Abu Guhrob. From the window I noticed that the only way across this particular canal was a bridge made of the trunks of palm trees. One misstep on this bridge and one would find themselves amalgamating their bodies in a vat of ‘the Nile cocktail’, the filthiest water imaginable. My second trek to Abu Ghurab would prove to be much different from the first. The people that accompanied me there made the difference. One of the greatest pleasures an author can have is to interact with people from the imagi-nation (which fellow traveler Bryan Gore calls the greatest “nation” for man) who passionately follow their bliss. On this day I participated in a meant-to-be dance of souls that was pure cosmic poetry. The primary cosmic dancer was Ted St. Rain ( www.lostartsmedia.com ). Any one who has attended a major UFO conference in the past ten years will recognize Ted as the ultra-frenetic video guy who always seems to be running. What many may not realize is that Ted has an astounding grasp of the ancient mysteries, an understanding that comes from face to face interactions with a who’s who of alternative researchers. Name a UFO, alternative science or ancient history researcher and, chances are, Ted has video taped every major lecture they’ve given. And mastered their material, too. He’s traveled to Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and Syria with Sitchin. Few know this genre better than Ted. I’m not sure when the first domino began to fall in Ted’s mind. However, after only a short time at Abu Ghurab (his first) Ted proclaimed that he had the answer to the question of the purpose of this temple site. “Has anyone here read The Lost Realms by Zecharia Sitchin?” Ted, began. “I would suggest you get a copy of this book because it will help explain what we are seeing here.” In his Earth Chronicles series of books Sitchin claims that a race of extraterrestrials called Anunnaki came to Earth over 450,000 years ago in search of gold. In addition to surface mining the Anunnaki used sophisticated water mining techniques to ‘filter’ or the process gold from the waters of Earth.
Abu Ghurab, it seems, may be one of their processing plants.
CROSSING THE THRESHOLD TO THE LOST REALM
The Lost Realms is about the massive pyramids of South American and MesoAmerican cultures and their interactions with gods who set-up pyramid/workshops there.
Sitchin cites the Mexican pyramids of Teotihuacan to support his theory. There are two pyramids – the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon – with the Avenue of the Dead running between them. Some scholars believe the Teotihuacan complex was begun 6,000 years ago and was known as the Place of the Gods. The Pyramid of the Moon is an earthen mound. Some 2,000 feet to the south the path of the Avenue of the Dead reaches the Pyramid of the Sun. These pyramids are virtually identical to the Giza pyramids. Sitchin believes that there is no doubt that the designer of this complex had detailed understanding of the Giza pyramids. The most remarkable correspondence noted by Sitchin is the existence of a lower passageway running underneath the Pyramid of the Sun.
As Sitchin records, in 1971 a complex underground chamber system was discovered directly underneath the Pyramid of the Sun. A tunnel, seven feet high and extending for almost 200 feet, was also discovered. The floor of this tunnel was divided into segments and drainage pipes (possibly connecting to an underground water source?) were found. The tunnel led to a strange hollowed out area shaped like a cloverleaf and supported by adobe columns and basalt slabs.
The enigma posed by this mysterious subterranean facility was amplified for Sitchin when he observed a path of six segments running along the Avenue of the Dead. These segments were formed by the erection of a series of double walls perpendicular to the course of the Avenue. These six compartments are fitted with sluices at their floor level. Sitchin proposes that the whole complex served to channel water that flowed down the Avenue. This complex, says Sitchin, was an enormous waterworks, employing water for a technological purpose.
This ceremonial center, notes Sitchin, has artificial water channels running through that diverted water from the nearby San Juan river. The water is channeled into the Ciudadela, a quadrangle that contains at its eastern side a third pyramid, called the Quetzalcoatl Pyramid.
Interestingly, in my lectures at Gouda Fayad’s Tree of Life Conference Center beside the Giza Plateau, I had admonished my tour group that we will be ‘following the water’ in Egypt. Little did I realize at the time that my intuition would prove so accurate. As Ted continued his brainstorm at Abu Ghurab, he noted a key discovery at Teotihuacan. Underneath the Pyramid of the Sun archaeologists discovered mica, a dielectric mineral composed of delicate crystal that is a semiconductor. The word “mica” is thought to be derived from the Latin word micare, meaning to shine, in reference to the brilliant appearance of this mineral (especially when in small scales). Mica has a high dielectric strength and excellent chemical stability, making it a favored material for manufacturing capacitors for radio frequency applications. It has also been used as an insulator in high voltage electrical equipment. Sheet mica is used as an insulating material and as a resonant diaphragm in certain acoustical devices. Sitchin was perplexed by the presence of this mineral beneath the pyramid. Then he remembered the water flowing from the San Juan River and how it was artificially channeled to this site. What he proposed is that the river was channeled along the Avenue of the Gods and underneath the pyramid. Through a chemical reaction caused by the mica (or, I wonder, could it have been a harmonic process?) gold was pulled from the river water.
Drainage holes are spread throughout Teotihuacan. Sitchin theorizes these were used to sluice the gold into chambers where the Anunnaki could collect it. “Just like you see here,” said Ted, pointing to one of the massive square alabaster basins or sluices at Abu Ghurab. “I was thinking about Sitchin’s theory,” said Ted, “because here’s the pyramid here. Now, keep in mind that 10,000 years ago this area was a lush jungle with water everywhere.” Indeed, the Abu Ghurab site was beginning to look a lot like the Teotihuacan site.
Those basins, it turns out, were decanters. The only thing missing was the mica. Ted St. Rain points to a drainage hole in one of the in-situ alabaster basins. That’s when Lady Isis intervened. Another traveler in our group was Anya Nadal, an artist and author of Holographic Mandalas ( www.eternalimagery.com ), who is also a very knowledgeable ‘rock hound’. It didn’t take very long before she called us together to show us something remarkable: huge sheets of mica in front of the pyramid. Ted was elated with this discovery. The pieces were falling into place. Anya Nadal points to the huge sheets of mica in front of the Abu Ghurab pyramid. As Ted explained, “the theory is that, like Teotihuacan, Abu Ghurab was a gold refining facility.” (Or, may I suggest, a ‘juice of gold’ production plant?) “What they would do,” Ted proposed, “is bring gold laden water in from the Nile. It would flow over the mica sheets (which may have covered this entire site)." Through the piezoelectric effect produced by the mica electricity was produced. The water would be channeled into the basins and would be spun around inside and flow up and out through the round holes in the sides. The gold (or again, how about the juice of gold?) would filter down and remain in the basins to be scooped out at the end of the day. As Ted proposed, the basins that are today lined up near the entrance were originally placed about every ten feet around the complex. (Stephen Mehler told me in a conversation upon my return that the basins may originally have been arranged in an circular pattern around the pyramid.)
In its original state the Abu Ghurab pyramid may have been a giant machine, especially a water processing plant. We have to imagine water everywhere, in pools in front of the pyramid and perhaps even flowing down from the top of the red granite faced pyramid like a fountain. The “juice of gold” produced by the piezoelectric effect of the quartz crystal-laden red granite may have been one of the products of this plant. We left Abu Ghurab in high spirits that day. As Ted remarked, “this is the third strangest place I’ve ever seen. The first is Baalbek, Lebanon. The second is the Hittite empire.” For me, it ranks at the top of the list.
Everything I had experienced at Abu Ghurab was ringing in my being when I left Egypt. I wondered it were possible if this – the oldest ceremonial center on the planet - is the original Island of the Egg referred to at Edfu and the original stargate of the gods.
The moment I returned home I hit the books and was intrigued by an initial finding. As noted, the Edfu Texts say the primeval water surrounded the Island of the Egg. By the edge of this island was a ‘field of reeds’ (Aaru).
The use of the word reed is very important. It establishes a link between Abu Ghurab and Teotihuacan. The classic Maya used the word “puh” which meant cat-tail reed, to refer to Teotihuacan. Although tribes of ancient Mexico reported that they came from a place where reeds grew, no location associated with reeds has been identified as their place of origin.
I believe in coincidences, but like a UFO, I’ve never seen one. In my view, the appellation, “place of reeds,” that identifies both the Egyptian Island of the Egg and Teotihuacan ties these places together. The apparent similarity in purpose of Abu Ghurab and Teotihuacan links these two places together and ties them to the Island of the Egg, the place or stargate of the gods. Tic-tac-toe. All three places are explanatory of one another.
Abu Ghurab is far older than Teotihuacan. Is it possible, therefore, that this site is the original home of the tribes of ancient Mexico? Interestingly, another name for the place of reeds is Tollan or Tula. The T-L-A root connects with the Cherokee legend of the T-LA beings who came from the Pleiades and settled in East Tennessee. The T-L-A vibration is also encoded in the place name Atlantis.
FROM OUT OF THE SHADOWS OF ATLANTIS, SHE WALKS LIKE A DREAM
One additional ‘coincidence’ worth mentioning involves the artwork of Anya Nadal. Shown on the next page is Anya’s painting entitled Wisdom from her book Holographic Mandalas. On the next page is the alabaster platform at Abu Ghurab. Not only do the outer patterns of these mandalas match, but also both have a circle in the center. Anya later told me she immediately recognized the similarity upon seeing the platform. She calls the ethereal being in the center of her painting an ‘Atlantean fairy’. Hmm. I wonder. Could she have tapped into the ‘stargate consciousness’ of the formless beings, the Neters, who came to Abu Guhrob deep in prehistory? The ‘Atlantean fairy’ at the center of Anya Nadal’s mandala titled “Wisdom”.
Wisdom, a painting by Anya Nadal, bears a striking similarity to the alabaster platform at Abu Ghurab. Anya’s mandala’s are a form of visual meditation that combine colors and sacred geometry to amplify heightened states of awareness. Gaze at this mandala and connect with hidden parts of yourself.
William Henry with the temple keepers at Abu Ghurab (top) and standing beside the alabaster platform (bottom).
When people discover strange or unusual things on our planet, such as pyramids as gold processing plants or giant alabaster landing platforms, there are, generally speaking, two paths one can take. They are discarded as meaningless out of place artifacts. The inner eye of light closes.
Or, they are exalted as evidence of a lost advanced civilization. The inner eye of light opens. With luck I will one day return to Abu Ghurab to bask in the rays of Ra. I am certain there is much more here than meets the eye. Return to Stargate Return to William Henry Return to Egypt - The Land of KemSnail Aliases Nil, AsNil Gender Hermaphrodite (on account of being a snail), He Age Unknown Status Unknown (likely deceased, as the average life span of a snail is 10-15 years) Hair color N/A Eye color N/A Relatives None known Appearances Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma (mentioned) (mentioned)
"There are moments when a single snail can make a world go extinct." — Zero, introducing himself to the Decision Game players
The Snail was an animal mentioned in Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma. The snail was indirectly responsible for the events that catalyzed the entirety of the Zero Escape series, as well as the apocalypse of 2029 on Earth.
Biography
Sometime in 2011, a young mother (implied to be the mother of Eric) was jogging in the park and reached a fork in the road. Normally, she went down one path, but she went down the other since this snail had been on her normal route. Why she specifically avoided walking down the snail's path is unknown. Was she afraid of them? Or felt a sense of danger from it? Whatever the case may be, the snail caused her to switch paths. The woman reported to a senior citizen who was familiar to her that she chose a different path to avoid the snail. This led her to the site of her murder by a girl, who is implied to be Mira.
One day, about a month later, a man was (falsely) accused of, being the killer. He claimed innocence, but the jury still found him guilty. The verdict could not be overturned and he was executed. As a result of this, the man's wife took her own life in despair. The couple left behind two young children, Aoi and Akane Kurashiki.
The accused man called a taxi soon before his arrest; but as a result of his arrest, the taxi did not pick him up but instead picked up another fare, a surgeon who had been scheduled to operate on a young boy named Sean (who a robot would eventually be named after). The taxi was involved in a lethal accident that killed the driver, the surgeon, and by extension the boy the surgeon was supposed to operate on. This accident would not have happened had the driver picked up the accused man.
Because 999 would never have happened if the Kurashiki parents survived, and subsequently neither Virtue's Last Reward or Zero Time Dilemma could have either, this snail indirectly caused the deaths of 6,000,000,000 humans and massive amounts of chaos and suffering.
TriviaPresident Barack Obama plans to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror, a decision that removes a major stumbling block in his efforts to restore ties with Havana.
Obama in a notice to Congress says Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the past six months and that its government has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.
The decision, which comes after a State Department review, would take 45 days to go into effect, the White House said in a notice to Congress.
Havana has made removing the designation a demand in negotiations to re-establish embassies in Havana and Washington.
U.S. authorities put Cuba on the state terror sponsor list in 1982, where it was joined by Iran, Syria and Sudan. The designation bars U.S. weapons sales and economic assistance and imposes a sweeping range of financial restrictions.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the decision “removes an outdated designation that no longer serves the security interests of the United States, nor the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people.”
But critics accused the administration of overlooking Cuba’s role in providing sanctuary to terrorist organizations, including Spain's ETA and Colombia's FARC and in harboring U.S. fugitives.
“To concede this key demand to Castro -- despite its continued support for terrorist groups and activities -- also sends a dangerous message of impunity to other nations in the region,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC.
Senior administration officials said they had received assurances from the Cuban government that it has renounced terrorism.Delinda Jensen, vegan food truck owner from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is out of business after sharing an insensitive and inflammatory post on Facebook about the victims of the Las Vegas shooting.
What did she say?
Jensen on Monday shared a post that read, "Yes I am jaded. Fifty nine meat eaters dead. How many animals will live because of this?"
She immediately faced backlash in the comments section, and it only got worse from there.
Jensen responded to her status with, "I don’t give a [expletive] about carnists anymore."
She began receiving death threats as a result of her comments.
According to Jensen, the death threats got so bad that she had to park her vegan food truck and go out of business.
How did she explain her post?
Jensen spoke to The Times Leader, where she expressed remorse for the Facebook status.
"I [expletive] up," she told the newspaper. "Was it poorly written? Absolutely. Do I regret it? Yes. I am so sorry I wrote that."
Jensen told the publication that she was not celebrating the mass killing of 59 people in Las Vegas with her status.
"Meat eaters or not, no one deserves to die like that," Jensen explained. "I wasn’t celebrating the death of those people. That’s not how vegans think — we are non-violent."
Jensen said that the point of the posting was to educate people on the amount of animal killings that occur annually.
How bad did the death threats get?
Jensen said that she deactivated her Facebook profile, and added that it's "like a lynch mob is forming."
"It’s seems that it’s no longer about the Facebook post — now it’s about eating meat," she added.
Jensen revealed that she received "hundreds" of comments, phone calls, and death threats as a result of her "moment of stupidity."
"There’s just so much visceral hate out there," Jensen complained.Image: Dismantling the Simulation
When Venezuelans go to the polls this Sunday to elect all 167 members of the National Assembly, they will be deciding whether to continue the 17-year legislative majority of President Nicolas Maduro's socialist party. Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, or PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), created by the late president Hugo Chavez in 2006 to absorb various similarly-minded parties under one umbrella, has been accused of intimidating its opponents and exploiting government propaganda. President Maduro has declared the government will do "whatever it takes" to win this election.
Enter augmented reality. Hack De Patria (HDP), a project developed by a Venezuelan experimental activist group and Berlin-based media artists Refrakt, attempts to reveal the "truth" in the campaign ads for Maduro's Chavismo government and its allies. Point the phone's camera at a particular campaign logo, and the app reveals more sinister meanings: one logo suddenly reads "Obey" and another "Fraud."
When HDP is pointed at any of the logos featuring Chavez's eyes, the word "Obedéceme," appears on the screen.
The idea is to provoke citizens to think more about the political imagery that surrounds them, said Gina Monc, a founder of Dismantling the Simulation, the group behind the app. "We are trying to bring attention to something that is probably more obvious to you—or anyone not being affected by the government hegemonic model—something that's even been taken for granted," she said. "And it is the fact that there are more ways to see things—that you are being indoctrinated, and resistance is not only possible, it is your right."
During this election cycle, PSUV has been accused of intimidating opponents, including through violence. Opposition politician Luis Diaz was killed in a drive-by shooting at a November 5th election rally. Meanwhile, the National Election Board—which PSUV essentially controls—have allowed one opposition group, MIN Unity, to remain on the ballot even though its party logo and slogan are nearly identical to the opposition coalition, Democratic Unity (also known as MUD Unity). Critics have also accused Venezuelan president Maduro and PSUV of trying to confuse voters at the ballot box: MIN Unity's candidate, a 28-year old parking attendant with no political experience, shares the same name as Democratic Unity's candidate, Ismael Garcia.
Election-monitoring organizations like the Organization of American States and the Carter Center have been barred from observing Sunday's vote, and the OAS has expressed concerns that the playing field between the opposition and the government has been unequal during the campaign. Still, if the elections proceed without interference, there are strong indications that mounting frustration with the Maduro government could lead to victory for the opposition parties.
The app's first intervention centers on the image of Hugo Chavez's eyes, a symbol used by the Maduro government after his death in 2013. The image can be found across the country on giant billboards, the facade of public building facades, graffiti murals, t-shirts, hats, jewelry and even school books. When a mobile device equipped with HDP is pointed at any surface with the logo featuring Chavez's eyes, the word "Obedéceme," or "Obey," appears on the screen.
The second augmented reality intervention uses the controversial MIN Unity party logo. The party's slogan is, "We are the opposition." But, again, the party is suspected of being Chavistas (its most recognizable candidate is William Ojeda, a Socialist Party legislator). When a device running HDP is pointed at the MIN Unity logo, the word "Unidad" is changed to "Fraude," or "fraud."
"The pieces work in many different ways, from interaction in space and morphing images, to editing the original image itself," Dismantling the Simulation's Helena Acosta told Motherboard.
Hack de Patria—named after the paternalistic approach of Chavez propaganda—was built on top of the augmented reality app Refrakt, created by the artists Carla Streckwall and Alexander Govoni. The idea grew out of a chance meeting between Acosta, Streckwall and Govoni at the B3 Biennale of Moving Image held in Frankfurt. Acosta was giving a talk on art and activism, which led the three artists to talk about "hacking" political propaganda in Venezuela along with Dismantling the Simulation's other founding members Monc, Violette Bule, and Miyö Van Stenis. (Refrakt debuted in a "guerilla exhibition" titled "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," currently on display at Berlin's Gemäldegalerie.)
Five Economies That Could Use Bitcoin
Acosta cited groups Voina and Pussy Riot, the Facebook group We Are All Khalid Said, and Paul Virilio as influences on projects like HDP. They are also interested in embracing the internet itself for their visual art activism. Dismantling the Simulation came into being as a Facebook group days after an array of human rights violations occurred at the student protests against Maduro in February of 2014. Acosta, Bule, Monc and Van Stenis "appropriated" the social media platform and attempted to deconstruct the overwhelming reality in the country by "assuming a critical posture towards institutionalized media content," modeling its non-hierarchical structure after the rhizome.
Not surprisingly, in creating HDP the groups were also influenced by the subliminal message-destroying glasses worn in John Carpenter's 1988 science-fiction satire They Live. The glasses allowed John Nada, the main character, to see the truth behind seemingly innocuous advertising, revealing an alien conspiracy to control the masses through capitalism.
"John Nada and his adventures discovering the messages behind commercial propaganda on the streets were definitely an inspiration in finding a way to communicate the message in a simple but strong way," Acosta said. "At some point, after more than a decade of living in this politically policed environment in Venezuela, you end up wishing there was such a device that could 'clean' the totality of our political reality."
"Unfortunately, we can't," she added, "but we hope that more people gain awareness of our predicament."
On television, opposition candidates |
harmful the government needs to change its strategy. It should encourage, not discourage, facing challenges head-on. We asked the company, WRPS, if the pressure to make their bonus money had any bearing at all on their decision with that tank. Today they sent us a response that says; after they found evidence of the leak they had all the resources they needed to attend to that, and to finish their bonus making projects. Of course, we also wanted to hear from their bosses, the US Department of Energy, on this topic — we wanted to ask them: Do you have any incentives for your contractors to report problems? But so far, they haven’t answered any of those questions.
Excerpt #5:
Bounds: In her continuing investigation, Hanford’s Dirty Secrets, Susannah Frame reveals the danger of an important tank at the site was concealed during meetings for the public and policymakers.
Frame: With all the uncertainties at Hanford, what’s buried below this dirt was supposed to be the one slam-dunk: 28 sturdy double-shell tanks. If all else failed, at least these would protect the Columbia River, the food-chain, and people from the worst of the worst on the planet. With two steel walls, not one like the older tanks, the added safety barrier would contain that nuclear waste until scientist figured a way to get rid of it for good. But that plan fell apart.
Carpenter: The failure of a double-shell tank is big, big news.
Frame: The citizen watchdog group Hanford Challenge shocked the public last summer with information from a Hanford insider. The press release read, “First Double-Shell Tank Leaks at Hanford [Nuclear Site]” — a massive blow to the entire cleanup operation.
Carpenter: And the reason is, that we are relying on these tanks to operate safely for 40, 50 years, through the rest of the cleanup.
Frame: Now the public wanted to know: What’s going on? — Especially the 32 members of the Hanford Advisory Board — citizens, government officials and scientists. It’s there job to give sound advice to the feds and the state of Washington on how to solve problems at the site. The Board had questions, and Tom Fletcher, a US Department of Energy Hanford manager, was supposed to be the man with the answers. At a Board meeting last September, Fletcher brought photos of mysterious material that had made its way into that safety space between the two walls of the tank known as AY-102. But Fletcher told the policy advisors he didn’t know what it was yet.
Meredith Crafton: They were saying, “Well, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s just a possible leak.”
Frame: Meredith Crafton and Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge both attended the September meeting.
Carpenter: The overall presentation was: We’re looking, but we don’t see any evidence yet.
Frame: Don’t worry?
Carpenter: Don’t worry.
Frame: Representative Gerry Pollet was there as well.
Pollet: And their answer was: We’re investigating it, but we think that it’s likely that it’s rainwater.
Frame: Here’s an audio recording of a potion of Fletcher’s presentation:
Fletcher: It could be a carbonate buildup — and that’s a possibility. Like I said, we’ve seen a lot of different things, and they just don’t point to any one thing, and that’s why [it’s] really hard to speculate what it is. We haven’t gotten to the point that says, hey, we know what it is. We know there is a history of rainwater leakage in this tank annulus.
Frame: We found those explanations don’t add up. A month before that meeting, with all the speculation of rainwater, a tiny piece of duct tape, something similar to this, told a different story. This is duct tape employees from the government contractor in charge of the tanks, WRPS, lowered into the safety space of AY-102, to grab a sample of whatever was down there. And boy, did that tape deliver! Internal emails obtained by King 5 show that on August 13, weeks before the Board briefing, a lab reported to company executives what they’d found: flakes of rust, old paint, and something else: some of the most dangerous nuclear byproducts known to man — strontium 90, plutonium, cesium 137 and more — the exact components of AY-102’s primary tank.
Frame to Kaltofen: After they analyzed the duct tape, should there have been a lingering question: Is the tank leaking, or not?
Frame: Via Skype, we shared the findings with our radiation expert Marco Kaltofen of Boston.
Kaltofen: I don’t know what they [were] waiting for. Did they need a fax from the President saying: “Ok, this is a leak.” It was time. All the information was there to make the right decision.
Frame: Enough was on that tape?
Kaltofen: Absolutely.
Frame: The tape held one more important clue: it was screaming hot with radioactivity. And remember, the sample came from the safety space that shouldn’t record any contamination at all.
Kaltofen: That’s a huge number. You actually have to go out and look hard for equipment that can measure radiation that’s that high. You had all the information you needed. You knew you had a leak. And now, it’s just time to fess up and face the music.
Frame: We wanted to ask WRPS President Mike Johnson about that and more. He repeatedly denied our request for an on-camera interview.
Frame to Johnson: Hi Mr. Johnson. I’m Susannah Frame from King TV. We’ve talked on the phone before. We’re here to talk about tank AY-102.
Johnson: (Inaudible)
Frame to Johnson: Can you tell us why the public was mislead for several months last year?
Johnson: No.
Frame: We caught up with Johnson outside the WRPS offices in Richland.
Frame to Johnson: I think we have some important questions that our viewers deserve to have answered.
Frame: Johnson didn’t answer our questions, but members of the Hanford Advisory Board did, when we told them about the tape and lab results dated in August — a month before their briefing.
Carpenter: If they are going to just dismiss the evidence — the obvious evidence in front of them, and not even tell us about that evidence, then how can we rely on them for anything?
Crafton: And I think it can put the public at risk and workers at risk when they’re not forthcoming with information. Also meaning, they’re not forthcoming with responding to issues, and creating solutions.
Pollet: This was a very deliberate cover-up, and I will use the word that we were “lied” to. There is no two ways about it. We were lied to.
Frame: Now, it wasn’t just WRPS President Mike Johnson who wouldn’t answer our questions about this issue. The Department of Energy, which put on the presentation for that Advisory Board, wouldn’t answer any questions about the [duct] tape, the lab results, and the delay in telling the public what was really going on.
Excerpt #6:
Allen Schauffler — Anchor, King 5: A big shakeup at the Hanford nuclear facility in eastern Washington.
Enersen: The president of one of the federal government’s main contractors there has abruptly announced he’s retiring. The change comes after a series of reports by King 5 investigator Susannah Frame called, Hanford’s Dirty Secrets.
Cunnings: So, without further ado, let’s hear what Arnie Gundersen, a man who knows all too well about nuclear cover-ups, had to say about Washington State’s festering radioactive stew.
Urry: We’ve mentioned Hanford a couple times. I want to just ask a couple questions on that. They’ve got a plutonium leak going on up there, and a journalist essentially discovered that the executives of that company — the way that it was set up, they were essentially incentivized, that they would receive bonuses if they reported that everything was fine and well. So, although there was a plant worker that was saying, “there’s a leak, there’s a leak, there’s a leak” — I think there was maybe a 10 or 11-month period where the executives were just like, “nope, it’s just rainwater.” Is that across the board that we see that? The way that it’s structured is that… I mean, essentially in this case, they were incentivized for bad behavior — to sweep it under the rug and just say, “everything is fine.”
Gundersen: It’s not just Hanford. It’s all of the Department of Energy contracts [that] have that same incentive in them. WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant), the waste isolation project…
Urry: Which has a plutonium leak also right?
Gundersen: Which had a plutonium explosion also. In the months before that, all the executives walked away with bonuses despite the fact that there were numerous safety problems. Part of the problem there is that it’s a revolving door. The Department of Energy inspector today becomes the executive after he retires. So, there is no incentive by the Department of Energy to put the brakes on and take away the incentive from those executives. The contracts that DOE has written are very liberal and very hard to enforce. It’s basically a gravy train for the companies that are doing it. Hanford’s a mess and will be for another 50 years. The commitment of the United States to Hanford, because we made bombs there, is that we’ll have to spend another 100 billion dollars to clean it up.
Cunnings: And there you have it folks. Only 100 billion of your hard-earned tax dollars will be required to clean up this disastrous place. No big deal right? Well, maybe it wouldn’t be if it weren’t barely one amongst thousands of Manhattan Project-era situations that are also in desperate need of being cleaned up. Tune in tomorrow for episode five in our 15-part mini-series, Nuclear Power in Our World Today, with Arnie Gundersen. In the next episode we’ll discuss the potential threat that is posed to humanity by General Electric’s Mark I reactor — of which there are still dozens in operation today. For EnviroNews USA, this is Josh Cunnings.In supervised learning, there are very good “shallow” models like XGBoost and SVMs. These models can learn powerful classifiers without an artificial neuron in sight. So why, then, is modern reinforcement learning totally dominated by neural networks? My answer: no good reason. And now I want to show everyone that shallow architectures can do RL too.
Right now, using absolutely no feature engineering, I can train an ensemble of decision trees to play various video games from the raw pixels. The performance isn’t comparable to deep RL algorithms yet, and it may never be for vision-based tasks (for good reason!), but it’s fairly impressive nonetheless.
So how exactly do I train shallow models on RL tasks? You might have a few ideas, and so did I. Today, I’ll just be telling you about the one that actually worked.
The algorithm itself is so simple that I’m almost kind of embarrassed by my previous (failed) attempts at tree-based RL. Essentially, I use gradient boosting with gradients from a policy gradient estimator. I call the resulting algorithm policy gradient boosting. In practice, I use a slightly more complex algorithm (a tree-based variant of PPO), but there is probably plenty of room for simplification.
With policy gradient boosting, we build up an ensemble of trees in an additive fashion. For every batch of experience, we add a few more trees to our model, making minor adjustments in the direction of the policy gradient. After hundreds or even thousands of trees, we can end up with a pretty good policy.
Now that I’ve found an algorithm that works pretty well, I want to figure out better hyper-parameters for it. I doubt that tree-based PPO is the best (or even a good) technique, and I doubt that my regularization heuristic is very good either. Yet, even with these somewhat random choices, my models perform well on very difficult tasks! This has convinced me that shallow architectures could really disrupt the modern RL landscape, given the proper care and attention.
All the code for this project is in my treeagent repository, and there are some video demonstrations up on this YouTube playlist. If you’re interested, feel free to contribute to treeagent on Github or send me a PM on Twitter.My latest video is from a talk I gave back in July at the RightOnline conference. I had 5 minutes to give a talk and I had something all planned out… until President Obama gave this speech in Cleveland. In this speech he stated:
Our businesses have gone back to basics and created over 4 million jobs in the last 27 months — (applause) — more private sector jobs than were created during the entire seven years before this crisis — in a little over two years
I decided to check him on his jobs claims and I summarized my findings in my talk, which I reproduced for this video.
I make 2 big points in this video:
Obama selectively chose specific dates to make his fairly weak jobs numbers look better
There is a more comprehensive jobs number (employment) that tells a very different story.
Deception Through Selection
And here is where I give a little more detail on what numbers I used. First a little background:
President Obama gave this speech on June 14, 2012, so at that time we were using the most recent BLS jobs report which had number up to May. Counting backward from there, that means Obama was counting from March 2010 to May 2012.
March 2010 – 106,914,000 private sector payrolls
May 2012 – 111,040,000 private sector payrolls (revised up 32,000 in later reports to 111,072,000)
Difference in Obama’s “27 month number” – 4.13 million private sector payrolls
I was assuming that when Obama said “before the crisis” he meant before we started losing jobs. That would put the “7 year” number from February 2001 to February 2008.
February 2001 – 111,623,000 private sector payrolls
February 2008 – 115,511,000 private sector payrolls
Difference in 7 years – 3.88 million private sector payrolls
As you can see, the Obama graph is a nice simply upward slope including only the part of his presidency where he gained jobs. In fact, he starts counting only after the jobs number completely bottomed out. If we look at the jobs record during his entire time in office, we get this chart
Is there any thing wrong with not counting those initial job losses? I don’t think so. I think it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do to say “let’s look at the strength of the recovery alone” and use that metric to count. But it is incredibly disingenuous of the Obama team to completely discount job losses for themselves but then turn around and count them in the comparison data point.
In the video, I point out that using “6 years before the crisis” or “5 years before the crisis” result in vastly larger numbers (6.4 million and 7.1 million respectively), but what I’m really interested in here (and what I’d like to expand upon) is comparing private sector payroll growth that Obama is touting to the private sector payroll growth under Bush.
I looked at this a couple months ago and was a little shocked to see the following chart, but here it is. Starting at the low point of private sector jobs growth, if we chart what I will (for simplicity sake) call the Bush recovery (starting in July 2003) and the Obama recovery (starting in March 2009) using the latest data, we get:
As you can see… the weird thing about this current recovery is how closely it is tracking to the previous recovery in terms of private payroll increases. For Obama to pretend he is substantially better than Bush on this metric is nothing short of fantasy.
The Larger Jobs Number (Employment)
Here is where things actually get really freaking weird. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses two numbers to count jobs. (See more about how the BLS counts jobs here)
The first one is the establishment data (B Tables) and this is a survey counts jobs by industry. Think of it as someone calling a bunch of businesses and asking “How many people do you have on payroll?” They directly sample over 100,000 businesses and it has a margin of error of about 100K jobs.
The second one is household data (A Tables) and this is a survey of households. Think of it as someone calling a bunch of people and asking “Do you have a job?” It samples about 60,000 households and has a much larger margin of error (400K jobs).
The establishment data is usually used for month-to-month job counts in part because it tends to be a much less volatile metric (household data can swing somewhat wildly). That’s why, when you hear about “X jobs gained last month”, they use the number from the establishment survey.
However, a weird thing happened in the 00’s with the household survey. If we take the private payrolls and compare them to what I’m going to call “private employment” (the A table employment number minus government jobs), we see a massive difference in the job count.
That’s a 3 million job difference between private payrolls and private employment. This is way outside the margin of error. Something happened there, althoughI’m not sure what. Maybe self-employment increased, or people made ends meet w/ irregular non-payroll income or farm employment jumped. I honestly don’t know and anything I say here is pure speculation. But there it is, clear as day.
This is why Obama focuses so much on private payrolls as the metric he uses. Most fact-check organizations are not savvy enough to notice that there is this huge discrepancy in the jobs data from survey to survey. They only think to check Obama’s statements against the private payrolls data, not the overall employment.
In contrast compare the chart above to the private payrolls vs private employment change since Obama’s inauguration.
As you can see, the change in both jobs numbers are nearly identical. If we add in government job losses, we actually get a negative number on employment change since his inauguration. This shows that something was happening in the last recovery that isn’t happening in this one.The ZOA called McConnell’s disgraceful namecalling rubbish.
Allies of Senator Mitch McConnell announced this week they will attack Steve Bannon personally in an effort to derail his attempts to hold the US Senate accountable to the base. McConnell allies are using left-wing talking points to smear Bannon as an antisemite.
This is a disgusting new low for the GOP elites.
The ZOA reported:
ZOA Appalled at Sen. McConnell/Josh Holmes Falsehoods on Bannon’s Views About Jews
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
As the leader of the oldest pro-Israel group in the United States and as a child of Holocaust survivors, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany after losing most of my family to the evil anti-Semites of Nazi Germany, I am appalled by the reprehensible lies being promoted by Sen. Mitch McConnell, Josh Holmes, and the Senate Leadership Fund, about Steven Bannon’s attitude toward Israel and Jews.
Their disgraceful name calling is rubbish.
The Anti-Defamation League acknowledged that it has found no written or verbal statements made by Bannon that were anti-Semitic.
Steve Bannon is joining world-renowned Zionists Alan Dershowitz, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, as an honored guest at the Zionist organization of America’s annual Gala on November 12th in New York City.
ZOA does not invite anti-Semites to our events. Steve Bannon is the furthest thing from an anti-Semite, contrary to McConnell and Holmes’s shameful lies. Steve is a proud friend of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel.
I know and have worked closely with Steve Bannon. I am appalled by these shameful attempts to smear Bannon’s character and integrity by promoting false allegations about Bannon’s views on Jews and Israel. This is clearly being done because of policy differences between Senator McConnell and Bannon.Aaron Saunders of Washington startup Clearly Innovative: Universities “need to rethink education.” (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post)
Aaron Saunders, chief executive of Clearly Innovative, took a traditional route to a tech career: He earned a computer science degree at Ohio Wesleyan, studied marketing and information technology en route to an MBA from NYU, then hopped through jobs as an application architect for Lotus Development, a designer of Web strategy for Time Warner Cable, and a manager for the redesign of an e-commerce site.
Now, at 50, Saunders is mentoring students who will be hired into jobs that didn’t exist when he entered college 32 years
ago: app coding. Social media management. User experience/user interface chief. Video game design. Data visualization specialist.
Saunders himself is part of this new arena: He runs a Washington startup he launched three years ago to advise companies on Web and mobile apps and modules. He has 15 employees, two overseas contractors and a New York-based apprentice. Most don’t have computer science degrees. When he considers what colleges are teaching the people he hopes to hire someday, he isn’t optimistic.
“Universities are slow to change,” he says. “They need to rethink education. What you’re teaching is just as important as how you’re teaching it.”
(Related story: What to know before you go.)
As tech jobs evolve at the pace of light through fiber-optic cable, Saunders and other leaders of tech firms such as Mozilla, Reddit and Tumblr say students should consider schools that not only will teach them traditional skills like coding, but also the softer skills that aren’t listed in the course guide but are essential to the 21st-century workplace: working with others, problem-solving, the ability to pick up enough from disciplines other than their own to create products users believe are indispensable to their lives.
That means high schoolers need to ask colleges different questions from the ones their parents might have asked. (After all, how many colleges have schools of problem-solving?) At the same time, colleges themselves are trying to figure out what they should be teaching.
Mark Surman of Mozilla: “You really need to be a well-rounded, Renaissance, Internet-era kind of person.” (Cole Burston/For The Washington Post)
“Coding, editing video, design — it really is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, based in Mountain View, Calif. Mozilla produces the Web browser Firefox. “What’s below the tip of the iceberg is participation, critical thinking and being able to collaborate. You really need to be a well-rounded, Renaissance, Internet-era kind of person.”
Although it’s still possible to get a job without a college degree, as companies mature they tend to look for employees who have experience collaborating with peers on projects and have picked up skills beyond, say, programming. Coding can be learned online, but students’ ability to connect with people and with alumni who can steer them to internships, jobs and mentors can’t easily be replicated outside a college setting.
Employers say the choice of a major isn’t critical. It’s the discipline to spend years on an area of study — and producing work that demonstrates the result of that effort — that persuades employers to take a chance on hiring someone in their 20s.
“We don’t really care what school you go to,” says Ellen Pao, senior vice president of strategic partnerships at Reddit, the San Francisco social news aggregation Web site that ranks content based on a user-influenced scoring system. “We’re interested in people who really love what they do.”
Employment statistics reflect the promise of job security for young people who want to pursue technology careers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 22.8 percent increase in employment for software developers through 2022, more than double the 10.8 percent increase in overall employment. The median wage isn’t too shabby, either: $101,410, according to the Labor Department. As more commerce — from making restaurant reservations to routing steel shipments — moves online and people increasingly search online via smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices instead of PCs, businesses will need more people to create and customize software, the Labor Department says.
U.S. News and World Report ranks “software developer” as the best tech job in 2014, up from seventh last year. Third, and ranked ninth overall on U.S. News’ list of the 100 best jobs, is “Web developer” (median salary: $62,500).
Meanwhile, the growth in tech-related college majors is surging. According to the Computing Research Association, enrollment in computing majors rose 13.4 percent in 2012-2013, the sixth straight year of increasing undergraduate enrollment. In its list last year of “11 Hot College Majors That Lead to Jobs,” U.S. News included cybersecurity, data science and computer game design. The Princeton Review began ranking video-game design programs for undergraduates and graduates in 2009, starting with eight programs; its most recent survey ranked 50 programs.
“Students are really pushing for these types of majors, and schools are responding in kind,” says David Soto, director of content development at the Princeton Review.
Mayank Jain, a Northern Virginia high school graduate studying at the University of Illinois and interning at a San Francisco startup: “It’s becoming less and less important to teach specific things and more important to teach how to think critically and solve problems,” he says. (Gabriela Hasbun/For The Washington Post)
Mayank Jain, a 2012 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, will be a junior this fall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is working this summer at a startup in San Francisco, helping to develop an iPhone app. He said he wants to launch his own startup after college and was impressed with UI’s strong computer science department and “spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation.” (He’s also quick to point out that Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, and Mark Levchin and Luke Nosek, PayPal founders, attended UI.)
Jain already has business experience: He and friends from high school launched an organization called Pilot, which hosts events for high school students across the country to teach them how to build apps and Web sites.
“The old paradigm of education was that you get good at one thing and you do that one thing for the rest of your life,” Jain says. “Nowadays, students don’t know what jobs are going to exist in the next two to three years. It’s becoming less and less important to teach specific things and more important to teach how to think critically and solve problems.”
Colleges have been racing to add classes and majors — sometimes starting programs from scratch, other times expanding existing programs or creating majors across different fields of study. In 2007, North Carolina State University launched the Institute for Advanced Analytics, whose mission is to teach students how to derive insights from reams of data. In 2013, the University of Texas launched UT3D, billed as the nation’s first comprehensive 3-D production program that trains students to produce 3-D plays and documentaries and to explore innovations such as “glasses-free” 3-D for TVs, tablets and cellphones. And this fall, the University of Maryland will add an upper-level data science class to teach students how to mine vast quantities of user-generated data for analytical insights. U-Md. has offered a class in mobile app development since 2010.
“There are a lot of fads and cool things that come and go, schools trying to create small programs for someone to try to get a job in a specific area,” acknowledges Brandi Adams, associate director of undergraduate computer science studies at U-Md. “The problem is, if you’re only familiar with one type of software, you won’t be prepared for disruptions in the market. It’s really important for students to learn the theory behind things — but also to practice.”
Other schools with solid reputations in science, technology and engineering are mixing in healthy doses of the humanities. This fall, Stanford is offering a new joint major in computer science paired with English or music. “We’re looking to help cultivate, and provide academic structure for, a new generation of humanists who can code and computer engineers whose creativity and adaptability is enhanced by immersion in the humanities,” says Nicholas Jenkins, associate English professor.
Carnegie Mellon University, one of the nation’s premier computer science schools that also ranks high in the arts, is turning part of its library into a collaborative workspace. Also on tap are eight new areas of concentration, including media design, physical computing and intelligent environment.
“It’s a different brand of technologists that we want to train,” says Thanassis Rikakis, Carnegie Mellon’s vice provost for design, arts and technology — itself a relatively new position, created in 2012. “We want to train people who are good at what they do, but work in teams across technology and the arts. That is becoming a key strategic strength.”
Nathan Hahn, 22, of Annandale just finished his senior year at Carnegie Mellon and is pursuing a PhD in human-computer interaction. He says high school tech geeks need to think beyond coding and consider whether what they invent will fit well with “human mental models: It has to be understandable from a person’s point of view; it has to be usable.”
“The big thing nowadays is design,” he says. “Application development has become a lot more about understanding requirements that an individual would give you, and you turning it into a great application. It’s more like understanding what a person wants from a business perspective than a computer science perspective.”
Students and faculty caution that not all new tech careers are equal. Some, like user interface/experience manager, are more art-focused. High school guidance counselors and heads of startups say applicants should think hard about what they like doing on the Internet: playing video games or designing them? Testing whether a game works or marketing it?
The importance of design in careers like user experience/user interface manager and video game designer has led to design schools’ getting into the tech career-prep business, too. The Maryland Institute College of Art offers classes in Web design and data visualization; the Savannah College of Art and Design offers a major in video game design.
It was SCAD’s video game major that persuaded Henry Harrison, 19, of Baltimore to enroll. He estimates that he has played video games since his grandmother sat him in front of a screen and taught him to play Pac-Man. But he’s more interested in design than in coding, and wanted a school that would nurture him as an artist. “A lot of the reasons I play the games I do is they feel good to look at,” he says. “If I don’t know as much about coding as anyone else, I can look at tutorials about how to code.”
George Mason computer science professor Pearl Wang: “Students come in and say, ‘I can do all this stuff on my computer,’ and I think, ‘How good are you at math?’ ” (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post)
Harrison’s path may be the right one for those who are interested in the look and feel of something on the Web, but those interested in building the next Google or Yahoo or Tumblr should assess their comfort level with numbers. “Students come in and say, ‘I can do all this stuff on my computer,’ and I think, ‘How good are you at math?’ ” says Pearl Y. Wang, associate chair of George Mason University’s computer science department.
She notes, for instance, that making a search engine actually work requires a deep knowledge of math and statistics. “I want to make sure [a] kid is getting an education that will help them have a solid, long-term career in the field,” she says. “You can create a game that sells 1,000 copies in the app store, but then what do you do? Write another version of the game?”
Tumblr, the New York-based microblogging platform and social networking Web site founded in 2007, has 250 employees and is adding entry-level positions, says Lindsey Dole, human resources director. She urges high schoolers who want to work for Tumblr to take on side projects that incorporate Tumblr to catch the company’s attention for an internship or a post-college job. She says young hires need to prove they’ve been part of a team that developed a product and can articulate what worked and what didn’t.
Lindsey Dole of Tumblr: “We look for people who can contribute in areas not just in their roles.” (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)
Tumblr’s Web site lists jobs in engineering, marketing and sales, but programmers should have a computer science degree, Dole says. “We look for people who can contribute in areas, not just in their roles,” she says. “We love people who are well-rounded, ambitious and team-oriented.”
Toby Shapinsky is at the start of the college search process — he’ll be a junior this fall at Wilson High in Northwest D.C. — and he hopes to land a job writing code for spaceships. He’s the kid who designed a dreidel simulator program demonstrating the inefficiency of the dreidel game and built a computer when he was 13.
“I want to go to school with people who have been learning outside of class and know how to teach themselves stuff,” he says. “When you find people like that, there are no boundaries.”
Adds his mom, Helen: When she was in college, “you went to class, you had a teacher who had the knowledge, and they gave it to you. That’s still the model of education. But the world is terribly different. For people who are self-directed and learn by doing, the knowledge is everywhere.”
Lisa Grace Lednicer is a multiplatform editor for The Washington Post.
E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com.
For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine.
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Like us on Facebook.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
WIZO named a television commercial for Sano Jet the most sexist advertisement of 2013, earning the Mark of Shame on Wednesday.
The campaign for the cleaning product shows two young girls competing over who has the perfect mother, the one more obsessed with cleaning and housework. The slogan reads, “To take care of family is to clean with Sano Jet.”“Instead of taking a step forward, Sano sets us back through sophisticated representation of old-fashioned stereotypes that were acceptable 50 years ago and, judging by the commercial, will accompany our children for another 50 years,” said Gila Oshrat, chairwoman of WIZO Israel, the Women’s International Zionist Organization’s local branch.Carolina Lemke’s television commercial featuring supermodel Bar Refaeli in bunny ears took second place, followed by Haaretz’s viral campaign depicting a couple having sex as the guy rates the girl’s performance.Fourth place went to an ALDO Shoes campaign featuring a young girl in a provocative pose with the slogan “Give me ALDO.” Closing out the top five was Time Out’s “Watch your glass” campaign intended to raise awareness of date rape drugs.“There is no doubt that this [sexual representations of women] has penetrated our society and twists the sexual perceptions of children and youth,” said Sharon Cherkesky, manager of the Mark of Shame campaign at WIZO.The winning ad was announced at an event marking International Women’s Day at the Cinematheque in Tel Aviv, which addressed the effect of sexist advertising on youth.Attendees included MKs Michal Rozin (Meretz) and Dr. Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), chairwoman of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, as well as WIZO volunteers and representatives gathered for the occasion.Lavie said at the opening of the conference that she was offended by an Israel Postal Company commercial, which fell short of the top five, depicting an elderly woman “enjoying” a robber searching her body. She said this advertisement was especially troubling because it advertises for a government organization.This is the sixth year that WIZO has identified television and print advertisements that depict women negatively. The Mark of Shame campaign aims to change how women are represented in advertising and to raise awareness of the social damage advertisements can cause when exploiting the female body image.A jury comprised of members of Knesset, professional women and experts on feminism and media including Rozin; Prof. Hanna Herzog, head of the NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University; and Orit Sulitzeanu, head of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, chose this year’s winner.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>In an attempt to make OneDrive seem more appealing than Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and all the others, Microsoft has made its cloud-storage service unlimited.
The company has announced that it now offers unlimited OneDrive storage. But the deal is only available to Office 365 subscribers, at no additional cost. The idea, we presume, is to not only make OneDrive an affordable storage solution but also attract more people to Microsoft's cloud-hosted suite of Office apps.
"We’ve started rolling this out today to Office 365 Home, Personal, and University customers," announced Microsoft in a blog post published on 27 October. "We’re thrilled to continue our quest of making OneDrive the world’s cloud storage leader - and, always a key part of the best productivity service with Office 365."
OneDrive storage and a copy of Office 365 - that works on Mac or PC, tablets, and smartphones - costs $6.99 per month, whereas Google and Dropbox each charge $9.99 a month for 1TB of storage space. Keep in mind Google's productivity apps, such as Docs and Sheets, are also free to use (just like Office Online).
Although Microsoft's unlimited OneDrive storage is rolling out to all Office 365 accounts in the coming months, you can upgrade early through Microsoft's OneDrive preview site.Despite all the hype about India’s booming startup culture, the World Economic Forum (WEF) says it is one of the worst places in the world for small business owners.
After assessing factors such as ease of starting and running a business, attitudes toward entrepreneurial failure, tax policies, number of new business registrations and patent applications, the WEF has ranked India lowest among 38 |
of Israel an op-ed entitled "When Genocide is Permissible" in which he argues that the only way to deal with Hamas is using an extreme measure of punishment.
"We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people," he wrote. "If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?"
The Times of Israel removed the post shortly afterwards "for editorial reasons" but it can still be read at this link.
As other bloggers pointed out, The Times of Israel does not edit or review pieces before publication.
In his op-ed, Gordon slams the US and the UN for being "completely out of touch with the nature of this foe" and news organisations such as CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera for pointing out "the majority of innocent civilians who have lost their lives as a result of this war".
The death toll of the 25-day old war is over 1,450 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and 61 Israelis, mainly soldiers. But Gordon claims that the Gazan residents cannot be considered civilians because they live "with rocket launchers installed or terror tunnels burrowed in or around the vicinity of their home".
Gordon's op-ed came as the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed, as Israeli forces launched a manhunt for soldier Hadar Goldin who has been captured by militants.
Netizens reacted with anger at what appeared as an open call for killing all Palestinians in Gaza:Chelsea’s 100% run ends with a third consecutive defeat to Manchester City.
Roberto Mancini chose Dedryck Boyata at right-back to ease his defensive worries, with Pablo Zabaleta at left-back. David Silva got the nod over Adam Johnson, and started on the right.
Carlo Ancelotti named his side on Friday afternoon, and stuck to it. Indeed, with injury problems, there were few other options for him, and Chelsea lined up in the 4-3-3 shape they’ve favoured so far this season.
With broadly similar shapes, there was a predictable element of the two sides cancelling each other out. With defensive-minded midfield trios of Mikel-Ramires-Essien and De Jong-Barry-Toure, there were few driving runs towards goal from that position, and the midfields basically played in front of each other. Michael Essien and Yaya Toure are both well capable of playing in more attacking positions than they are accustomed to (some would say Essien is better there) but that doesn’t hide the fact that for those two to be the two ‘creators’ out of six midfielders is an unusually negative situation.
Lack of penetration
The major surprise from the first half was how cautious Ashley Cole was in getting forward. With Manchester City playing Silva on the right (rather than James Milner, a far better player defensively), it seemed like Cole would have plenty of opportunities to get forward, especially with Silva drifting in so much. To add to this, Boyata was trying to stick to Florent Malouda very closely, so Malouda drifting inside and Cole storming forward on the overlap seemed an obvious route of attack for Chelsea. But this happened only once – and other than that, Chelsea offered little threat from open play.
Manchester City weren’t particularly more adventurous, although in Pablo Zabaleta they possessed the full-back with the most attacking intent. Indeed, their shape looked more like a 4-5-1 than Chelsea’s 4-3-3 (although obviously there are severe overlaps between the two when in attacking and defensive phases). Indeed, the 3 v 3 battle became 5 v 5 when the wide midfielders became involved in the action, and the main difference between the two sides’ approach was the role of the forwards – Didier Drogba stayed up the pitch and waited for service, whilst Carlos Tevez dropped deep and linked play. In the first half, Tevez completed 13 passes, Drogba completed just 1, and City were more compact.
Second half
Mancini’s strategy against the ‘big’ sides has been to sit back and play on the counter-attack. This worked especially well at Stamford Bridge last season, when Tevez and Craig Bellamy played on the break and City won 2-4. The problem in the first half here was that Chelsea rarely came onto them and City had little space to counter-attack, but as soon as they did in the second, City pounced and Tevez scored for the fifth consecutive Premier League game against Chelsea.
City played a relatively deep defensive line, but also kept Nigel de Jong and Gareth Barry solidly ahead of the back four. They were ambitiously trying to deny Chelsea space both in behind the defence and between the lines – and it just about worked, thanks to some excellent individual defensive performances. Vincent Kompany was man-of-the-match but Barry and De Jong’s tackling stats (9/10 and 4/4 respectively) were equally important in breaking up the play and Ramires, in particular, struggled to cope with the pressure. Rather than attempting to stop Drogba, they instead stopped the supply to him – he only completed one pass in the second half, and was removed after 75 minutes.
Chelsea’s best chance of getting back in the game came from Essien’s long-range shots (he had six, but it was only in the final minute that he got one on target) but this rather summed up their lack of creativity in midfield. Essien is a more dynamic player when Frank Lampard is absent, but here he showed that he’s not quite up to replacing him against strong opposition, both in terms of shooting and creativity.
Gareth Barry turned in a superb performance
by Guardian Chalkboards
Chelsea changes
Ancelotti’s substitutions were rather confusing, requiring three distinct shifts in shape – and by the end, the team wasn’t particularly more attack-minded. The central midfield zone seemed disjointed, Chelsea created little and the main danger came from Cole’s forward runs – when he was given freedom to bomb on forward (with Yuri Zhirkov covering him). It was a shame this didn’t happen from the start.
In truth, Chelsea’s problems here stemmed from the weakness of their substitutes bench. They were without some important players through injury – but the bench of Turnbull, Zhirkov, Ferreira, Sturridge, Van Aanholt, Kakuta and McEachran must be one of the weakest selection of substitutes named since Roman Abramovich took over the club. Ancelotti wants to bring youth players through, but consider that Chelsea brought on Hernan Crespo and Arjen Robben in this fixture five years ago, and that seven doesn’t look great.
Equally, they could have done with some more attacking presence from the right. Nicolas Anelka drifted inside (as he is always likely to do) but Branislav Ivanovic doesn’t offer a real attacking threat from right-back. He’s an excellent defender and certainly decent on the ball, but as a converted centre-back simply doesn’t have the attacking instincts for a game like this, when the midfield is struggling for creativity and looking for support from the full-backs. Jose Bosingwa is a very good attacking right-back, and would have been useful here (or equally, it would have been useful if Zhirkov was able to play on the right, coming on as a substitute).
Conclusion
In a game like this, the first goal is always extremely important. It came from one of the very very few genuine counter-attacks in the game, and Tevez was always a likely scorer considering the problems he’s caused Chelsea in recent years.
Mancini’s tactics (sit back, play on break) again got the better of Chelsea, who looked toothless when behind. There was simply a complete lack of creativity with an overwhelmingly functional midfield three, a lack of support from full-back and Drogba isolated. City were compact and able to link up seamlessly, but Chelsea were relying more on individual creativity which never came.
Related articles on Zonal Marking:A protest as part of the Sikh Lives Matter movement has turned violent in central London, with at least one policeman believed to have been injured.
The officer was pictured being led to a police van with blood pouring down his face amid the incident outside the Indian High Commission.
A large number of Sikhs joined the protest, which blocked Aldwych and The Strand and included a sit-down protest, on Thursday afternoon.
Chaos at Aldwych as Sikhs demonstrate outside the Indian embassy. #SikhLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/meRSpTVYjC — Geoffrey Barraclough (@GeoffreyB) October 22, 2015
Hundreds of police officers - including at least a dozen on horseback - were reported at the scene.
The Sikh Press Association website explained why people were protesting.
#SikhLivesMatter protestors bring Central london to a halt. Thousands protesting against Modi gvt n demand Khalistan pic.twitter.com/D3o3GVZAwz — Murtaza Ali Shah (@MurtazaGeoNews) October 22, 2015
It said: “Recent deaths in Punjab have again brought to light the plight of ethnic minorities in India. Sikhs have continually found themselves victims of the most severe kind of police brutality, leading to the death of unarmed protesters and even bystanders during gatherings.
"However, there still seems to be a lack of empathy regarding the suffering of Sikhs. As such, the social media #SikhLivesMatter has been created to draw attention to the acts of Indian government’s atrocities which often go unnoticed in the mainstream media.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "At approximately 14:25hrs on Thursday, 22 October, police implemented a containment of approximately 200 people on Kingsway, at the junction with Aldwych, WC2.
"The Metropolitan Police Service was aware of a planned demonstration at the Indian High Commission. Whilst it was initially a peaceful protest the demonstrators blocked the roadway at the Aldwych, which blocked the road and caused significant disruption to the central London road network.
"Police liaison officers attempted to negotiate with those present, in order to facilitate peaceful protest and minimise the disruption to the public.
"Additional officers, including those from the Mounted Branch, were mobilised to the area and a small group of protesters became violent towards police.
"During an altercation, one officer has suffered a head injury and was taken to hospital. There are no reports of any of other injuries.
"Police are in dialogue with those within the containment and those unassociated with the criminality are being identified and given the opportunity to leave. At this stage police believe a number of offences may have been committed."
#SikhLivesMatter police are using force to remove the sitdown protest pic.twitter.com/TyqPiJOl6h — SikhPressAssociation (@SikhPA) October 22, 2015
In this video shot at the scene, mounted police can be seen marshalling the protesters.On Saturday, almost 200 fellow workers from SEIU Local 49 marched on the Convention Center Burgerville and demanded that Corporate reinstate Jordan, end their anti-union campaign, negotiate with workers, and give all Burgerville workers a $5/hour raise. Declaring their solidarity, Local 49 members took over the store and submitted hundreds of Jordan applications while the store was filled with the call to bring back Jordan! SEIU Local 49 just served Corporate Burgerville a fresh, local and sustainable platter of solidarity.
Afraid of the power of workers and the community standing together, Corporate Burgerville hired a team of private, armed security guards to intimidate us – money that should have been spent on raises and improved working conditions. Time and time again Burgerville chooses to intimidate, dismiss, and silence workers. Time and time again, the Burgerville Workers Union stands up, fights back, and demands that Burgerville listen to workers. We are not afraid, we are determined.
In the Burgerville Workers Union, we know that an injury to one, is an injury to all. Thank you to our friends at SEIU Local 49 for standing with us and showing Burgerville that this community stands with the Burgerville Workers Union!
#WeNeedARaise #BagelgatePygmy Sperm Whale (Kogia breviceps)
Status | Taxonomy | Species Description | Habitat | Distribution |
Population Trends | Threats | Conservation Efforts | Regulatory Overview |
Key Documents | More Info
Pygmy Sperm Whale
(Kogia breviceps)
Photo: NOAA
Did You Know? · Pygmy sperm whales live in tropical and temperate latitudes throughout the ocean, except the Arctic.
· They have a bracket-shaped marking behind the eye, often called a "false gill."
· They often lie motionless at the surface with the back of the head above the water. Similar to squids, pygmy sperm whales use an ink-like liquid to evade and deter predators.
In 1966, a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution determined that the pygmy and dwarf sperm whales were actually two separate species in the family Kogiidae.
Status
MMPA - Pygmy sperm whales, like all marine mammals, are protected under the MMPA.
CITES Appendix II - throughout its range
Taxonomy
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Cetacea
Family: Kogiidae
Genus: Kogia
Species: breviceps
Species Description
Pygmy sperm whales are small members of the toothed whale group, and one of two species in the family Kogiidae. They reach lengths of up to about 11.5 ft (3.5 m) and weigh between 700-1,000 lbs (315-450 kg). Much of the information on distribution and biology is based upon "stranding" records for this species.
This species has a small, compact body that tapers near the tail and has a small, low, rounded, "dorsal" fin. The shape of the dorsal fin varies depending on the individual. The head is sometime described as "shark-like" due to a conical, pointed snout, and a small narrow, distinctive, underslung lower jaw. Unlike dwarf sperm whales, this species does not have irregular grooves or creases on the throat. Pygmy sperm whales lack teeth in their upper jaw, but have 10-16 pairs of teeth in the lower jaw that fit into sockets in the upper jaw. Their "bulging" eyes are dark with a light circular mark above and around them. Behind the eye is a pale false gill plate, which looks similar to a fish's gill cover. Like their larger cousin the sperm whale, pygmy sperm whales have a "spermaceti" organ and single blowhole situated slightly to the left side of the body. While on the surface, they have a low profile due to the level position of the head and back. The skin is wrinkled (only when closely observed) and has a brownish to dark bluish-gray coloration on the dorsal side. The ventral side is paler with whitish to pinkish coloration that gives the animal a counter-shading effect.
This species is frequently seen at the surface either alone or in small groups of up to 6-7 animals. These groups can vary/mix based on age and sex, but little else is known about their social organization. Pygmy sperm whales are rarely active or aerial at the surface, and it is very uncommon for them to approach boats. Usually they are seen slowly swimming (3 knots) or "logging" at the surface, showing only a small portion of their body. Before diving, they will slowly roll or sink and disappear from view without displaying their flukes. This species is very difficult to observe at sea given their timid behavior, lack of a visible blow, and low profile/appearance in the water. They are usually only detected in ideal sea state (calm) and weather conditions (low wind speeds and little or no swells).
The dwarf sperm whale is another species that appears very similar to the pygmy sperm whale. The two species differ slightly in physical size (pygmy sperm whale being slightly larger), morphology, and other minor features. Compared to dwarf sperm whales, pygmy sperm whales have a flatter profile on the surface, a blunt squarish head, and a distinctive curving hump on the rear portion of the back. As the animal ages, the head becomes blunter and more squarish. The geographic distribution and range for these species may overlap in some areas. In the wild, it is very difficult to distinguish between the two species because of these similarities. Both species are poorly known and are considered "rare."
An unusual characteristic that distinguishes pygmy and dwarf sperm whales from other cetacean species is the use of the "squid tactic." In the lower portion of the intestine, each species has a sac filled with liquid. These animals are capable of ejecting up to 13 quarts (12 liters) of viscous, dark reddish-brown liquid when they feel threatened or when trying to evade predators. Similar to squid and other cephalopod species, the "ink" creates a dense cloud that may discourage predators and/or functions as a confusing diversion allowing the whale to escape (Reeves et al. 2002).
Pygmy sperm whales are probably capable of diving to at least 1000 ft (300 m) in search of food. They also probably use echolocation to locate prey. Their diet consists of cephalopods (e.g., squid and octopus), crustaceans (e.g., crabs and shrimp), and fish. Based on the structure of their lower jaw and analysis of stomach contents, these animals forage and feed in mostly mid- and deep water environments, as well as near the ocean bottom. They may feed in slightly deeper waters than dwarf sperm whales.
Pygmy sperm whales become sexually mature at 4-5 years of age. Gestation in these cetaceans is probably about 9-11 months. The mating and calving season lasts about nine months, and peaks from March-August in the Northern Hemisphere. Newborn calves are about 3.9 ft (1.2 m) in length and weigh 110 lbs (50 kg), and are probably weaned after a year. Females may also give birth to a calf in consecutive years. The estimated lifespan for this species may be up to 23 years.
Habitat
Pygmy sperm whales prefer tropical, subtropical, and temperate waters in oceans and seas worldwide. They are most common along the waters seaward of the continental shelf edge and the slope; and in most areas are thought to be more "oceanic" and "anti-tropical" than dwarf sperm whales.
Pygmy Sperm Whale Range Map
(click for larger view PDF)
Distribution
Pygmy sperm whales have a cosmopolitan distribution in temperate and tropical seas worldwide. In the Southern Hemisphere, their range includes Chile, South Africa, the Tasman Sea, and Uruguay. In the Northern Hemisphere, their range includes the Netherlands, northwestern Europe, the Azores, Nova Scotia, Washington, Hawaii, and Japan. Kogia (the genus that both pygmy and dwarf sperm whales belong to) may be more common off the coasts of the southeastern United States and South Africa based on the records of higher numbers of "stranding events" in these areas. The seasonality and migration patterns of this species are unknown.
Population Trends
For management purposes, pygmy sperm whales inhabiting U.S. waters have been divided into four stocks: the California/Oregon/Washington stock, the Hawaiian stock, the Northern Gulf of Mexico stock, and the Western North Atlantic stock. The estimated abundance for Kogia sp. (pygmy and dwarf combined) is 250-400 for the Western North Atlantic stock, and 550-750 for the Northern Gulf of Mexico stock. The estimated abundance for pygmy sperm whales in the Hawaiian Islands EEZ is 4,000-7,500 and for the California/Oregon/Washington stock is 100-250 animals. There are insufficient data for this species to determine the population trends.
Threats
Pygmy sperm whales are incidentally taken as bycatch in fishing gear that includes driftnets, gillnets and purse seine operations. This species was killed occasionally by hunters targeting sperm whales during the 19 th century and have been recently taken in commercial harpoon fisheries in Indonesia, the Lesser Antilles, and Japan. Due to their behavior of logging motionless on the sea surface, they are occasionally subject to ship strikes. Some stranded whales have been documented with plastics and other garbage blocking their guts. Stranded specimens have also been documented with degenerative heart disease, immune system problems and heavy parasite infestations. This species of whale may be sensitive to underwater sounds and anthropogenic noise. Anthropogenic noise levels in the world's oceans are an increasing habitat concern, particularly for deep-diving cetaceans like pygmy sperm whales that use sound to feed, communicate, and navigate in the ocean.
Conservation Efforts
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species considers this species "Lower Risk Least Concern."
Regulatory Overview
This species is protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, as amended.
Key Documents
(All documents are in PDF format.)
Title Federal Register Date Stock Assessment Reports n/a various
More Information
References:One of the coolest traditions at the Masters is the Champions dinner. A chance for all the past winners of the first major of the year to congregate together at Augusta National at a table that any golf fan would fork over their life savings to be included in.
Tuesday night was the 2013 dinner, and as protocol, the winner of the previous year's Masters gets to pick the menu. Bubba Watson had been silent on what he had picked all week, but Nick Faldo was the first to out Bubba after dinner concluded.
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-@bubbawatson you had a year to decide on, grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, macaroni & cheese!!! #HappyMeal #PlayLikeaChampion — Sir Nick Faldo (@NickFaldo006) April 10, 2013
Some people on Twitter were questioning Bubba's choice, but let me explain something.
First, the dude won the Masters. He could pick liver and spam and it would be fine because, again, he won the Masters and it's his night. Second, have you guys ever listened to a Bubba interview or read his Twitter feed or watched the way he played the game? He's a guy that coined his own style of Bubba Golf, which is basically "see ball, hit ball" and it shouldn't surprise you that his menu is also simple.
And, it's a little funny, right? This incredibly elite group of athletes all sitting at the table and they get corn and mac and cheese? I would have loved to see Tiger Woods' face when that stuff arrived.
Bubba tweeted out a picture of the menu afterwards, with all the champion's signatures on it, and the menu is after the jump.
Story continues
Good on you, Bubba. Why not have a little fun with the menu for a change (also, if you want to see a chart of what other winners have picked in the past, check it out right here).Harry Giles is considered by many to be the top incoming freshman in college basketball this season. Unfortunately, the 6’11 big man will be sidelined for six weeks after undergoing surgery on his left knee. Duke announced Monday afternoon that the arthroscopic procedure, that was performed by Dr. Claude T. Moorman, was successful.
Fans that are excited to see Giles in action will have to wait six weeks, until at least November 14th. That timetable means Giles will likely miss the Blue Devil’s opener against Marist on November 11th. Four days later, on November 15th, the Blue Devils face off against fellow blue blood Kansas at Madison Square Garden. If Giles recovers as expected this could be his first game as a Blue Devil. This early season top-5 matchup will set the tone for the entire season for both teams and Giles is a difference maker on both ends of the court. Even if Giles isn’t ready for Kansas the Blue Devils have the most complete roster in all of college basketball, featuring the like of Amile Jefferson, Jayson Tatum, and Marques Bolden in the frontcourt.
Giles has struggled with knee injuries throughout his entire career. In the summer following his high school freshman year, Giles tore the ACL, MCL and Meniscus in his left knee while playing for Team USA. About two and a half years later, Giles tore the ACL in his right knee during the first game of his senior season.
Giles is one of the top-ranked prospects for the 2017 NBA Draft, and has been for most of his high school career. However, some NBA executives may be hesitant to take the North Carolina native when big men with bad knees never last long in the NBA, just ask Greg Oden. If Giles wants to remain at the top of most teams’ draft boards, then he must avoid missing any more time this season and remind NBA scouts what his is capable of bringing to the table.By Michael Norton, STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
BOSTON— As Massachusetts continues its years-long entry into the casino market, Connecticut lawmakers appear poised to make one of the next big moves in the regional competition for gambling industry jobs and revenue.
To protect gambling industry jobs in Connecticut, lawmakers there are now pushing a bill to allow the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Tribes to jointly operate up to three new casinos. Connecticut officials appear particularly focused on competing with a resort casino licensed for Springfield, Massachusetts - MGM Springfield plans to break ground this month on an $800 million resort casino.
"Massachusetts has declared economic war on us and we're going to fight back," Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk said at a press conference last week with union officials, casino workers and tribal leaders who run the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos.
Massachusetts Sen. Eric Lesser of Longmeadow, which is outside of Springfield, said Thursday afternoon that news of Connecticut's push is "just breaking," but that Springfield area officials are confident the city can withstand any competition because the casino is part of broader economic development and revitalization plans for the city.
"There's of course concern but this just focuses even more on the importance of making sure our plan is competitive," Lesser told the News Service.
The two existing Connecticut casinos - Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun - once ruled the regional gambling sectot but now face competition from Massachusetts, which passed its casino law in 2011, and from New York and Rhode Island. In addition to Springfield, Massachusetts regulators have licensed a Wynn Resorts casino planned for Everett and a slot machine facility in Plainville and are considering applicants for a third full-scale resort casino in southeastern Massachusetts.
Artist renderings of the MGM Springfield resort casino project 47 Gallery: Artist renderings of the MGM Springfield resort casino project
According to Duff, state government in Connecticut has seen an erosion of its revenues from the two tribal casinos from a peak of $430 million per year to $260 million per year.
After last week's press conference, the Connecticut General Assembly's Committee on Public Safety on Tuesday held a hearing on the expanded gambling bill and heard support and opposition to the proposal.
A Connecticut Senate leadership aide told the News Service Wednesday night he expected the bill could be voted out of committee in the next couple of weeks and sent to the Senate. The aide said it was too early to tell whether the measure would advance to the governor.
Sen. Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) represents the Connecticut district that is home to Foxwoods in Ledyard and Mohegan Sun in the Uncasville section of Montville. She also appeared at last week's rally, saying, "We will not stand aside and let any other state - New York, Massachusetts or Rhode Island - take jobs away from Connecticut."
At a Massachusetts Gaming Commission meeting Thursday where regulators were considering casino plans for southeastern Massachusetts, commission chairman Stephen Crosby said Massachusetts officials and holders of gaming licenses in the Bay State realize the casino market is a "competitive situation."
Asked about the impact of another casino in Connecticut, Crosby said, "We're not concerned that that's going to materially compete with us... There'll be a few people who want to play the slot machines that'll go there, but we're aiming for a much bigger, much higher market, and people go, within a certain distance, people go to the best facility. And these are going to be phenomenal facilities, and the one in Springfield in particular."
Resort casinos planned in Massachusetts are "very expensive, very high quality," Crosby said, adding, "They are going to be very attractive."
Referring to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, Crosby said, "Both of those companies have huge capital problems. And I think they're talking about -- I've only seen the press reports -- but they're talking about really modest facilities."
Foxwoods is also looking to put down roots in Massachusetts. The city of New Bedford and KG Urban Enterprises announced Thursday they have entered into a host community agreement for a destination casino on the city's waterfront.
In testimony submitted at Tuesday's committee hearing in Connecticut, Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which owns Foxwoods, said he was appearing with Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut Chairman Kevin Brown to say they could work together to confront the challenges posed by more casinos competing for patrons.
Urging passage of the bill (S 1090), Butler testified, "If it is enacted the two Tribes can pool their experience and resources to construct one or more gaming facility (sic) in locations which will best encourage gamers in Connecticut not to bring their business to Massachusetts or other states but retain it at home where it will provide Connecticut jobs and limit the erosion of amounts paid to the State of Connecticut from the Tribes' existing facilities."
Brown noted the Springfield casino is five miles from the Connecticut border and emphasized that the tribes were united on the legislation despite a "long history of fierce competition."
Brown testified that Mohegan Sun "will survive" with or without the bill's passage, but said that if the bill does not pass, "We will likely be forced to right size our business and eliminate thousands of jobs, and the impact will be significant... "
Ronald McDaniel, the mayor of Montville, testified that almost 10 percent of his community's working population is directly employed by Mohegan Sun.
"Today, we are in crisis mode, searching for ways to position our state for the impending competition that we face in the coming months," McDaniel said. "We must act responsibly to stem the tide of patrons who will bypass Connecticut for the newly planned casinos in New York and Massachusetts."
Casino opponents are urging Connecticut lawmakers to reject the bill.
"To add more casinos to the two complexes we have now is wrong, wrong, wrong both morally and I think economically," wrote Linda Martin of New Hartford. "I come from NJ and Atlantic City is a pathetic example of what can happen to gambling venues, the poor suffer, the environment is degraded, jobs are lost which have been depended upon but are risky to begin with."
Connecticut Lottery Corporation President and CEO Anne Noble cautioned that if between one and three new casinos open in Connecticut "cannibalization of lottery sales should be expected."
Noble called for modernization of lottery operations, including "permitting the lottery to broaden its offerings and distribution channels we well as leverage the internet to promote its products in the same manner as the casinos and private sector business." Lottery games are increasingly sold over the internet, Noble said, including in Georgia, Michigan and Illinois.
State House News Service staff writer Gintautas Dumcius contributed to this report.The annual summer ritual has begun. For most Americans it involves a trip to the lake, a cookout or some fireworks. But in the world of political punditry it signals the beginning of the Supreme Court recess and the question of whether or not any of the justices are preparing to bail out on the job and go spend some well deserved time with their families. This year, according to CNN, the smart money is betting on swing justice Anthony Kennedy.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the man who so often determines the outcome of the most controversial Supreme Court cases, is himself the center of brewing speculation. Will he stay or will he go? The rumors have swirled for months and the 80-year-old justice has done nothing either personally or though intermediaries to set the record straight on whether he will step down. Helping drive the speculation, dozens of Kennedy’s former clerks are traveling to Washington to participate in a private clerk reunion that occurs regularly — and many of them wonder if it will be their last chance to meet with him while he is still on the bench. Sources close to Kennedy say that he is seriously considering retirement, but they are unclear if it could occur as early as this term.
Aside from his age, it’s tough to say why all the focus is on Kennedy. We’re so used to hearing stories out of the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN these days that are based on “anonymous sources” that nothing surprises us much anymore. But this is one case where CNN is coming right out and telling you that this particular report is based on … no sources at all. There’s not one report of Kennedy saying he’s seriously considering retiring on the record. Or off the record. Or of anyone else claiming to have heard him say it. He’s just one of the more likely suspects because of his age and the fact that the Notorious RBG has made it fairly clear that she’s running up the high score record on the Supreme Court pinball machine and will be putting some space between herself and the next possible challenger. She’s also the only one who has had any serious health concerns, and she has thankfully put them behind her by the Grace of God.
But whether it were to be Kennedy or Ginsburg who retired, the effect would be almost the same. Ginsburg would be more of seismic shock because she always votes with the liberal block. But at least you know what’s coming. Kennedy is the wildcard, as he’s proven on so many occasions. Fairly solid on Second Amendment issues, but a frequent disappointment to social conservatives. If he were to be replaced with somebody on Trump’s remaining short list from the campaign, many of the unpleasant surprises would be gone. (Which I brought up in detail earlier today in a column about property rights and his latest disappointment on that front.)
But we have the system that we have for better or worse. Kennedy earned his spot in that seat and the Constitution says he can keep it for as long as he likes. If he’s ready to go at his age, nobody could criticize him for it (though many on the Left will anyway) and all we can do is thank him for his service and wish him a happy retirement with his family. I think Gorsuch showed us that under the current rules the Democrats won’t be able to stop Trump’s next nominee. But until Kennedy actually says something himself it’s still business as usual.
Original article edited to correct the spelling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s name.On the eve of a congressional discussion that may lend to ending the National Security Agency’s mass collection of domestic phone records, the White House made the rare move late Tuesday of issuing a statement condemning proposed legislation.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday evening that a bipartisan-supported amendment expected to go before a vote later this week would “hastily dismantle” a key counterterrorism tool used by the United States intelligence community if approved.
The amendment, authored by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) and supported by democratic colleague Rep. John Conyers, would forbid the NSA from further interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot Act in the manner that has allowed the agency to routinely collect the daily phone records of millions of Americans for the past several years.
The proposal, wrote Amash, “Ends authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act” and “Bars the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215.”
Responding to the White House’s remark, Amash wrote on Twitter, “When's the last time a president put out an emergency statement against an amendment? The Washington elites fear liberty. They fear you.”
When's the last time a president put out an emergency statement against an amendment? The Washington elites fear liberty. They fear you. — Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) July 24, 2013
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the federal government can collect data on foreign citizens and, in the process, pick up the communications of Americans engaged in conversations where at least one party is located abroad. Leaked NSA documents published by the Guardian and Washington Post recently have revealed that the intelligence community collects more than just that, though, going as far as to put the telephony metadata of millions of Americans regularly in the hands of Uncle Sam even in the absence of probable cause thanks to FISA court orders reauthorized every 90 days.
Despite the blowback caused by the leaks, the FISA court confirmed last week that it has again reauthorized the program for the next three months. If Rep. Amash has his way, however, that could all soon end — and much to the chagrin of the White House.
Amash admitted earlier this week that the amendment has been accepted by the House Committee on Rules and would be debated in Washington, DC as early as Wednesday evening with a Thursday morning vote likely to occur. From there, approval in Congress would mean the Amash amendment would find its way tacked on to a Department of Defense appropriations bill that Congress would later be asked to authorize and, in turn, end the NSA surveillance program.
But before lawmakers are even presented with an opportunity to discuss the amendment on the floor of Congress, Carney wrote late Tuesday that the White House will not be supporting Amash’s efforts.
“In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens,” Carney wrote. “However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools.”
“This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process,” added Carney. “We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.”
The attempt from the White House to influence this week’s vote marks a rare occasion in which the president’s press secretary has publically denounced a lawmaker’s legislative efforts ahead of discussion. It also comes but moments after Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, held two closed-door meetings on the Hill to discuss the amendment with members of Congress.
"In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General |
dinosaur bones, but in exceptionally well-preserved fossils — which are few and far between.
It had long been thought that protein molecules cannot survive for longer than four million years.
Bertazzo and a team used a special microscope which uses a beam of heavy atoms to make infinitely small cuts in a sample at the nanometric scale (a nanometre is a billionth of a metre).
"The same microscope also has a robotic arm with a micro needle that can be used to pick up and move things inside the microscope," explained Bertazzo.
"So, combining the beam and the needle, we could cut small bits of the fossils and perform an analysis to check for any fragment of amino acids."
The team had set out to analyse gaps left in bone by decomposed organic material, instead finding structures that appear to be red blood cells, and fibres similar to collagen, a protein which makes up the bulk of connective tissues in animals.
Undated picture released by the journal Nature on June 5, 2015 shows density-dependent colour scanning electron micrographs of samples extracted from ribs of an indeterminate dinosaur, displaying mineralized fibres © Nature/AFP/File Sergio Bertazzo
Blown away
"Totally blown away!" is how Bertazzo described the team's breakthrough, while cautioning that further evidence is needed to confirm the nature of the structures.
"This was absolutely not what we were expecting to find at all. It actually took quite a while for us to be convinced of what we saw."
The team compared their ancient soft tissue to an Emu blood sample, and intriguingly found "similarities."
Dinosaurs are distant ancestors of modern-day birds, and scientists are hoping this type of research will reveal how, and when, a cold-blooded lizard gave rise to warm-blooded birds with a fast metabolism.
In vertebrate animals, the smaller the blood cell, the higher the metabolic rate, said Bertazzo.
"If we can find blood cells in lots of different dinosaurs, the range in size might provide an independent line of evidence for when dinosaurs became warm-blooded," he said.
The main breakthrough of the research is to show that this type of soft tissue preservation is likely much more common than once thought, and Bertazzo said he "cannot even begin to speculate about what can be found in future."
As for the possibility of one day discovering DNA, however, "many more studies should be done before we are even able to say if it is possible or not."Jon Stewart appeared in his first Sunday morning news show interview ever with Chris Wallace, and unlike his often entertaining and jovial encounters with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, this confrontation was a bit more heated. Wallace opened the segment suggesting to Stewart “you love to take shots at Fox News” and from there Wallace was determined to get Stewart to admit that the mainstream media has a liberal bias. Yet Stewart refused to believe that anyone in the media is as “relentlessly activist” as Fox News.
Stewart maintained that besides possibly MSNBC, no media organization is in any way close to being as agenda-driven as Fox News. Despite multiple attempts by Wallace to convince Stewart of a liberal bias in the mainstream media, Stewart argued the “bias of the mainstream media is towards sensationalism, conflict and laziness.” And as proof of a lack of partisanship, Stewart suggested the media “jumped into the Weiner pool with such delight and such relish.”
The conversation got a bit more personal as Stewart and Wallace shared thoughts on how they viewed each other. Wallace declared “I think you want to be a political player.” Stewart responded “dead wrong” and reiterated that he is a comedian first. And then he admitted himself, “the embarrassment is that I’m given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does.”
Stewart returned fire at Fox News, but by complimenting Wallace in the process:
“You are here, in some respects, to bring a credibility and an integrity to an organization that might not otherwise have it without your presence. You are here as a counterweight to [Sean] Hannity let’s say or you are here as a counterweight to Glenn Beck. Because otherwise it’s just pure talk radio and it doesn’t establish the type of political play that it wants to be.”
We also learned from the interview that Stewart is disappointed with President Obama and that he even voted for President George Bush in 1988. Yet the most surprising moment may have been when Stewart got uncharacteristically really angry, declaring that viewers of Fox News are the “most consistently misinformed.” During the interview Stewart praised Wallace as being a tough and fair interviewer, and from this exchange, both Wallace and Stewart deserve praise for being able to engage in an honest and enlightening conversation.
(Update) Full Unedited Version released by Fox below:
Edited Version that played on Fox Below:
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comWhile it is easy to focus on many other strong points of KDE software, one aspect that deserves a closer look is the ability for it to support science. Back in July, you may have caught the Dot story on "KDE-Science" discussing the background and initial call for engaging the scientific community. Today we would like to highlight some of the advances that have occurred since then and present a real world example of how KDE software is already helping to support research.
KDE and Science
Since the publication of that first article, several practical steps have been taken. Our first follow up article, an interview with RKWard developer Thomas Friedrichsmeier was published just last week. There has been a new forum established for discussing specific KDE applications for science, the use of KDE Workspaces for science, and promotion of KDE software and our community among scientists. There has also been a revival of the KDE-science mailing list. If you have interests in these subjects, please consider joining the conversations.
KDE Software in the Lab
While it may seem our efforts are just getting (re)started, there are already users in the scientific community who are leveraging KDE Workspaces in their daily research. Below is an interview that highlights one example of how KDE software has already found its way into the lab. Anthony Kolasny is an IT Architect at the Center for Imaging Science at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Maryland, USA.
Justin: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us Anthony. So what is it exactly that you do as an IT architect at JHU?
Anthony: Essentially, my job is to help provide a stable hardware and software environment so that users can be most productive. I also help manage the various research projects to ensure that milestones and goals stay on target.
Justin: Would you tell us a little more about your lab and what kind of work your team does?
Staff at JHU's Center for Imaging Science Staff at JHU's Center for Imaging Science
Anthony: The Center for Imaging Science is part of the Department of Biomedical Engineering under the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Centers at the University are solely research driven. They do not have teaching responsibilities.
Our major focus is exploring various aspects of medical imaging. We use the term "Computational Anatomy" for this field of study. It includes developing algorithms in order to register, segment and quantify shape within anatomical structures. This provides the basis for statistical analysis within populations. (Reference: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=309089)
Justin: How is your team currently using KDE software?
Anthony: Much of our code development involves the algorithmic development of Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping (LDDMM) and GUI plugin development using Paraview. Programmers mainly use C++ with common utilities and libraries like CMake, the Visualization ToolKit (VTK) and Insight Toolkit (ITK). KDevelop is a natural environment to do this development.
Justin: How was the decision made to adopt KDE software in your workplace? Were there any significant challenges in doing so?
Anthony: It was a gradual evolution in our environment. Around 2000, our lab was dominated by RedHat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows on the desktop. Desktops and servers migrated to CentOS. Later, users requested Ubuntu due to the need for more current applications in order to support their research. We had some minor annoyances with users switching between GNOME on CentOS and Ubuntu machines. Kubuntu and KDE resolved the issues. Users became accustomed to this environment and started exploring its features. KDevelop has been a useful tool. The KDE workspace best met the needs of the users.
Justin: What are the major advantages to using KDE software in your office?
Anthony: Users enjoy the KDE software environment. They like the rich collection of applications. I ensure a common core of non-standard applications on all desktops, which provides consistency and familiarity within our environment.
Justin: What does your team like about KDevelop that gave it an edge over other options that were available?
Plasma Desktop, KDevelop and Konsole at JHU Plasma Desktop, KDevelop and Konsole at JHU
Anthony: The majority of software that we utilize is open source. It's natural to use open source development tools as well. KDevelop provides good functionality for our needs and has dedicated developers who are constantly improving the product. The integration with CMake is very useful for our Paraview development.
The advantage of free development tools is that as our development team expands or we interact with other groups, the development environment does not incur large costs in order to collaborate. We try to avoid expensive development tools.
However, not all of our development is done with free and open source software. For computationally intense algorithms, we utilize Intel compilers and Math Kernel Library (MKL), which allows for more highly optimized code on multicore systems. Our lab tries to be practical in the development of quality code that takes advantage of high end hardware.
Justin: Has your group committed any code upstream? If not, do you expect that you might in the future?
Anthony: We have committed code to Paraview and ITK. As our applications mature, we foresee greater use of Qt development. If KDE tools assist in that development, they will be utilized. I see our group pursuing Qt Webkit development in order to glue together the web service of our medical imaging database and the visualization tool based on Paraview.
Justin: Ok, and one last question. What would you advise aspiring developers interested in science, or more specifically imaging, about meaningful projects to pursue? Is there some major gap in existing software that you wish someone would fill?
Anthony: Pursue your interests. There is plenty of research to explore. A simple email to a research group may be all that is needed. We have sponsored several students from around the country to participate in summer projects. Some were paid while others came to learn and to see if this would be a desired career path. These summer projects may develop into research grant proposals which may lead to useful applications that one day may turn into companies. Good ideas usually start with an interesting problem and a desire to solve it. If anyone is interested in extending Paraview for medical imaging applications next summer, send me an email.UPDATE 7/24/2015: The Kickstarter campaign was successfully in reaching the goal of $500,000. Museum officials say that if the campaign can raise another 200,000, they will also be able to digitize and preserve for display Alan Shepard's spacesuit. The suit was worn during the first manned American space flight in 1961.
The Apollo 11 spacesuit Neil Armstrong wore when he became the first man to step on the moon 46 years ago July 20 is deteriorating, has been out of public eye for nine years, and is about to undergo extensive conservation.
So on the anniversary of that “small step for a man,” the Smithsonian Institution announced a plan of action that is, in its own way, a giant leap for funding the job with what the Institution’s first federal Kickstarter campaign. With a goal of raising $500,000 in 30 days—by offering incentives such as exclusive updates to 3D printed facsimiles of the space suit gloves—museum officials hope to be able to unveil a restored spacesuit by the time of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing four years from now, in 2019.
A year later, it will be part of a permanent “Destination Moon” exhibition already in the planning for 2020. The space suit restoration—and what conservators hope to learn about preservation of plastics and how to best display fragile historical items—may inform future conservation of historical items and even art. It may also usher in a new era of crowdfunding for federal projects, using the method that’s been used on 88,000 projects since 2009, from feature films to art projects.
Age and its original use have taken a toll on the artifact. A flight to the moon and back and additional wear and tear from being on display has tarnished the suit that was custom made for Armstrong. Stains of unknown origin are on a leg pocket; nobody knows exactly who hand stitched repairs to the knee and other areas either, says Cathy Lewis, curator of international space programs and spacesuits at the National Air and Space Museum. NASA scrubbed down the suit when it came back from the moon “to make sure there were no moon bugs.”
They even took it to a commercial dry cleaner’s one time, Lewis says. “That was the current standard practice in maintaining and cleaning textiles, even in the museum environment at the time.” NASA sent the suit on a 50-state tour with the Command Module Columbia before the Apollo 11 artifacts were donated to the Smithsonian in 1972.
At first the artifacts were displayed at the Arts and Industry Building until Air and Space opened its doors on the Mall in 1976. “We had periodic inspections of the suit over the years,” Lewis says, “and we decided to take it off display in 2006 to really let it rest for further study.”
The Smithsonian’s federal funds—about 70 percent of its resources—are restricted to safeguarding collections, research and the costs associated with operating and maintaining the museums. But exhibitions, public programs and the recent digitization of the collection have largely been privately funded.
Lewis says that Kickstarter is a natural for the Air and Space Museum since the museum, too, relies on a wide range of people including those who may not have been involved with the Institution before. “It’s the kind of project that’s defined with steps with a goal in mind of getting the suit on display. Therein lies the slogan, ‘Reboot the Suit.’”
A Reboot the Suit poster is available to those pledging $11; a Reboot the Suit T-shirt for those pledging $46. Progress on the 30-day campaign can be followed with the hashtag #RebootTheSuit.
On the higher end, 20 people who pledge $1,600 will get a 3D print of Armstrong’s space glove; a $5,000 pledge is rewarded with a personal museum tour from Gen. John R. Dailey, the director of the National Air and Space Museum, who appears in the 3-minute pitch video at the Kickstarter site saying “this suit represents one of the greatest achievements in the history of the United States of America” and declaring: “This is an epic endeavor, but we can do it with your support.”
The way Kickstarter works is that if a project reaches its goal, each of the backers’ credit cards will be charged on the final day. If the goal is not reached, nobody is charged.
A number of other Smithsonian museums are looking at how the Kickstarter project will do, with ideas of their own to fund.
“This is the first time we’ve teamed up with a museum in this way,” says Kickstarter cofounder and CEO Yancey Stickler.
Accordingly, announcement of the Institution’s first such campaign was held up until the last minute.
If there’s ever been a federal agency that’s used Kickstarter, says Lisa Young, objects conservator at the Air and Space museum, “we don’t know of one.”
Today, the spacesuit sits in a morgue-like container with consistent temperature and humidity. The museum is working on new ways to display it in cases that will be just as constant as storage.
Donations will also fund research in the suit history, the digitization of the suit such that anybody could make a 3D print of it, and CT scans to determine all the layers used in the suit—21 in all—that allowed the sealed suits to become, on the moon, its own space craft.
Because parts of the suit were made in Latex, the same kind of movable fabric used in girdles and bras, the materials have also gotten brittle or have interacted with other kinds of materials in the suit to hasten the deterioration.
“You have a lot of synthetic materials that were invented in the 1950s and people didn’t know how they would hold up over time,” says Young, the conservator who works at the Air and Space museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, where the suit is stored. “But the primary challenge is not being able to take any of the materials apart to treat them, like we would do with other objects.”
Planes can be dismantled so the metals and textiles and plastics can all be treated separately. With the space suit in 21 layers “we can’t really take anything apart to treat it,” Young says.
The historical nature of the suit suggests they shouldn’t even try to take it apart. “It was Neil’s suit, and it went to the Moon, and it was the actual one he wore.” They could do that with suits that were in development for the trip, she says, “We just wouldn’t do that with this one.”
And don’t think the white Beta cloth material will be restored to its shiny white original hue. That it is covered in gray lunar dust embedded into the fibers of the suit is something of a badge of pride.
“We’re not going to take any of that off,” Young says.
“The lunar dust we consider to be a historical artifact,” Lewis says.
There will be some work on how to display the spacesuit without having a mannequin inside. “In the past, it’s really hard to get a mannequin into a space suit,” Young says. You have to actually build them within the suit themselves, because the suit is sealed with a pressure layering, so with the neck ring, there’s no exit at the top of the zipper.”
Some past displays used the same kind of commercial mannequins used in stores; others were custom made so the faces looked like the individual astronauts. Neither was so good for the fragile material itself, which were built to have a life of about six months—not 50 years.
“We’re hopeful that we can make a case that will protect the suit, just about as well as it would be if it was in a storage container,” Lewis says. “We want to share the collection with the public, and we have to find a way to do that for the longest period of time so we have it for another 50 years to share with our visitors.”
And if someone donates that top level of $10,000, do you think that maybe they could just try it on one time?
“No,” says Young. “There will be no touching of anything. They can come see it. But there’s no touching.”
And if they make more than goal of half a million dollars in 30 days, Young says, the money won’t go to waste. “There are other suits that need to be conserved,” Young says.
Four space suits will be among the 400 objects when the new “Destination Moon” opens in 2020.To curb the amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere, researchers would like to use it to produce polymers, fuel, or even construction materials. Game on!
In 2014, a trifling 36 billion tons of CO 2 were released into the atmosphere as a result of human activity. This unprecedented concentration must be drastically reduced if the rise in the Earth's temperature is to be limited to 1.5 °C by the end of the century, as agreed by the countries present at the recent COP21 Conference in Paris. Although the primary solution is and will remain the reduction of greenhouse gases at the source, other avenues are being explored to "clean" the atmosphere of its excess CO 2. Geological sequestration is one of them, but the option that has captured researchers' attention is far more unconventional, as it involves nothing less than considering atmospheric CO 2 as a new resource—in short, to use it as a raw material.
CO2 is already used as a component in Aspirin or eyeglasses lenses. Its annual consumption is of 150 million tons. "In practice, industry already uses CO 2 to produce urea, a common fertilizer that can also serve as a precursor for a number of plastics; salicylic acid, an active ingredient in aspirin and certain acne medications; or polycarbonates, the polymers found in CDs, DVDs, or eyeglass lenses," points out Marc Robert, a researcher at the LEM. "This represents a consumption of 150 million tons of CO 2 each year. Now these uses must be taken further, and new ones need to be invented."
This would be done using "atmospheric" CO 2. One method would consist in developing systems for CO 2 capture in the ambient air, which is what Klaus Lakner, a researcher at the University of Arizona (US) is seeking to achieve with his CO 2 "tree," a device for individual use that will not be deployed on a large scale for another two or three decades. Another more realistic technique would be to capture CO 2 as it exits a factory's smokestacks, where it is the most concentrated. "Very effective capture processes for factory emissions already exist," points out François Guyot, a researcher at the IMPMC. "The principle involves dissolving the CO 2, with its acidic pH, in base baths located on the smokestacks."
Producing fuels with CO 2
Once captured, the possibilities for transformation are plentiful, as the carbon atoms present in CO 2 can in fact be found in numerous carbon molecules highly sought after by industrial actors. "We are able to use CO 2 to produce carbon monoxide (CO), a base product with which the chemical industry develops more complex molecules," explains Robert. Enriched in hydrogen, CO makes it possible to obtain, for example, formic acid (H-COOH), a liquid compound at room temperature and pressure that could power the fuel cells of tomorrow's cars, and with less risk than the highly flammable pure hydrogen (H 2 ). More complex to synthesize than formic acid, because it is a more reduced compound, methanol (CH 3 OH) represents another prospect for CO 2 ; this alcohol, which is used as a solvent in paint, varnish, and ink, can also serve as a fuel, notably for rockets.
It will still take ten to twenty years before these processes can be industrialized. However attractive, using CO 2 to synthesize other carbon products on a large scale implies to overcome a number of obstacles. "The CO 2 molecule is very inert," explains Robert. “Its carbon-oxygen bonds are extremely solid and require an enormous amount of energy to break, hence the considerable expense at the industrial level." Most importantly, these catalysis operations—for it is indeed catalysis—are based on the use of precious metals such as platinum, gold, silver, rhodium, iridium or ruthenium, which hinders their spread. Hundreds of laboratories across the globe are therefore striving to improve these catalytic processes, by making them less energy hungry and by testing non-precious metals.
Robert and his team are striving to develop a catalytic process using iron, the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust. "At this point in time, we are able to produce CO from CO 2, in a controlled manner, by using electrodes containing iron," he enthuses. "And we are able to do so by limiting the by-products resulting from the catalysis to a minimum, since we only obtain carbon monoxide in gaseous state, and liquid water." The beauty of the experiment is that all of the electricity required for the catalysis is provided by solar panels, which is a 100% renewable energy source. Other laboratories, notably Australian, have succeeded in producing a mixture of CO and formic acid with nickel electrodes. Processes using copper crystals directly produce methanol, but in small quantities and mixed with numerous other by-products. "It will take another ten or twenty years for these processes to be applicable to industry," Robert says.
The Holy Grail for researchers would be to produce hydrocarbons comparable in every way to those used today in cars or trucks, such as octane (C 8 H 18 ). "Of course, their combustion would once again release CO 2 into the atmosphere, but it would be recaptured and transformed again into fuel, and so on," explains Robert. Simply put, this would amount to creating a new—and virtuous—carbon cycle.
Nature as a source of inspiration
The needs of the chemical industry are a source of inspiration for scientists, although not the only one. Why not copy natural processes altogether by producing rocks from CO 2? "Nature did not wait for us to use atmospheric CO 2," explains Guyot. "It does so in two distinct ways: to generate biomass through photosynthesis, with plants using atmospheric CO 2 and water to produce sugars and oxygen, and to create rocks, in the form of carbonates. An example of this process, called carbonation, built up over periods of thousands of years, can be found at sea: the chalk cliffs of Étretat (France) or Dover (UK)are entirely composed of calcium carbonates (CaCO 3 )! "The advantage of transforming CO 2 into rocks is that it is extremely stable in solid form," explains the geologist. "There is no risk of finding it in the atmosphere."
The advantage of transforming CO2 into rock is that it is extremely stable in its solid form. Creating rocks in the laboratory is the somewhat crazy challenge taken up by a French research consortium, as part of the Carmex project. "In nature, rocks are leached (washed) by rainwater, releasing calcium (Ca) along with iron (Fe) or magnesium (Mg), minerals that end up in oceans and subterranean water," explains Florent Bourgeois, of the LGC in Toulouse. "There they precipitate with the CO 2 dissolved in water (in the form of CO 3 ions) to produce calcium carbonate or calcite carbonate (CaCO 3 ), iron carbonate or siderite (FeCO 3 ), or magnesite (MgCO 3 ), in the form of tiny solid residue."
The idea is to reproduce, and especially speed up, these natural geological processes by heating the mixture. "With our technique, we are able to produce 'pebbles' of approximately ten microns," specifies Bourgeois. "But to do so, the solution must be heated to 180°C and be under a few bars of pressure. This requires too much energy, which we are trying to reduce." CO 2 storage in solid form is not the sole objective. "Carbonates are materials used in the production of cement, for example. The ones we artificially produce could also serve as construction materials," suggests Bourgeois, who is keen to involve construction professionals in his project.A recent study collected information from surveys conducted among the members of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association. The study identified the top 100 eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Not surprisingly, Skinner, Piaget, and Freud are the top three. What may be of interest is that Carl Rogers is ranked number 6.
Among the reasons cited is Rogers’ groundbreaking work in the development of humanistic or client centered therapy. What made it groundbreaking was his insistence that the model be subject to scientific inquiry and clinical trial. One result of his work was a psychological theory. In that work Rogers advanced a complex set of 19 propositions describing his theory. In this article we will make an effort to provide a brief overview of it.
To provide theoretical legitimacy to his clinical work, Rogers wrote 16 books and even more articles explaining how these 19 propositions worked on understanding the human personality. Among the most significant key points of Rogers’ approach is its redefining of the therapeutic relationship. Traditionally that relationship was defined by the theories of Freud and others where the therapist role was that of a leader and the patient as the follower.
Rogers argued that for the therapist/patient relationship to be effective, it must include an intentional relationship built on mutual trust and respect. In the later years of his work Rogers expanded his model to apply to other applications including a theory of personality, interpersonal relations, education, nursing, cross-cultural relations and other “helping” professions and situations.
Foundations of Roger’s Theory
The study of the human personality has grown in increasing complexity. What Rogers viewed as a ”missing link” in what were then the traditional methods of clinical treatment was what he identified as person-centered therapy. Among the principles he espoused was that within the treatments of his day there was an incongruence in those relationships.
Early theories and methodologies such as Freud’s were seen as objectifying the patient thus creating an incongruent or out of synch relationship. Rogers called into question the psychoanalytical model replacing it with his humanistic psychology.
Again, it is important to acknowledge his goal in the development of “Rogerian psychotherapy”, validation through scientific study and clinical experience.
While there are many areas within Rogerian theory, one worth noting is known as the Phenomenal Field. This consists of perceived reality. The ever changing world of external and internal experience. Priority is given to what a person understands to be true (perceived reality) rather than what actually is true. Counseling begins with the phenomenal field.
Development of the Personality
Not unlike Freud’s reference to the soul, Rogers identified one’s self-concept as the frame upon which personality is developed. It is the purpose of each person to seek congruence (balance) in three areas of their lives. This balance is achieved with self-actualization. As illustrated below, self-actualization deals with three areas such as self-worth, self-image, and ideal self.
Self-actualization is impossible if these images (especially self-mage and ideal-self) don’t overlap. This is so called “incongruent” view and the role of therapist is to transform this view to a congruent one, both by adjusting person’s perception of self-image and self-worth as well as making an “ideal self” more realistic. The self-actualization process will lead to increasing overlap between these areas and will contribute to person’s satisfaction with life. Within Rogers’ schema each of the three areas has specific tasks. Until a person succeeds in self-actualization, they will have issues and remain out of balance in how they relate to their world.
Rogers emphasized that with regard to self-actualization the personality of each person is very unique. There are few “cookie cutter” personalities. It also brings into the therapeutic discussion the idea of a holistic view of the person.
The Principles for Good Life
A goal that most people seek to attain, the good life as described by Rogers is achieved by the person fulfilling certain principles. In his studies Rogers found that there are commonalities among those people who are fully functional. These are:
An acceptance of all experiences including those that are new. An existential lifestyle, in which each moment is appreciated and lived to its fullest. A trust level with one’s own decisions. Increasing freedom of choice Creativity and adaptability without necessarily conforming. Reliability and constructiveness in their dealings with others. A preference for living a rich, full life.
These traits are fluid in their expression with the person being capable of self-actualizing them.
The Lessons of Rogers
Given Carl Rogers own wealth of contributions to his scientific and clinical work there is much to study and learn. Add to that other professional material addressing Rogers work and you have a lifetime of material available. The question here is the value of his work in the 21st century?
In this article at Psychology Today some of his most important and lasting contributions are discussed.
Person centered therapy
Unconditional positive regard
Egalitarian counseling relationships
Reflection as a therapeutic technique
A counseling theory to train on
Most recently there has been a growing interest in the adaptability of Rogerian theory and practice. Several modalities are redefining terminology and practice with their application being used in today’s world of psychology. Included in this mix are:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Positive Psychology
Conclusion
As strongly suggested in this article “progress” in the field of psychology may be better measured as adaptability rather than change. With few exceptions much of the current understanding in psychology of human personality has occurred through adapting previous theories. In particular, this adaptability is best understood through linguistics. Specifically, the meaning or definition given to words and phrases.
Case in point. If we were to trace the etiology of the word conscious and its derivatives we would find pre-19th century usage. With Freud and others the word changed to encompass super-ego. Rogers redefined and modified super-ego to mean self. As mentioned, today’s newer modalities continue this tradition of redefining and substituting words and phrases to better explain their own areas.
This comment comes without criticism, but rather to encourage the thoughtful study of what the field of psychology has to offer.Four ACC teams will feature new head coaches when the 2016 season opens. Who are they? Where did they come from? Consider this a primer on what you need to know about the new guys in the conference, as you can brush up on your knowledge during this brief downtime between the end of the season and the start of spring practice.
Up next is new Miami coach Mark Richt.
How did he get here? Richt was among the most established coaches in college football at Georgia, but after he failed to secure a division title in a down SEC East for the third straight season in 2015, the Bulldogs decided to part ways with their longtime coach. That opened the door nicely for Miami, where Richt played quarterback from 1978 to 1982. Just days after Richt was let go in Athens, he was flashing the “U” in Miami and the Hurricanes had one of the premier hires of the offseason.
Where was he? Richt’s success at Georgia was overshadowed at the end by what he hadn’t accomplished — namely no conference titles since 2005 — but that’s only a small part of the story. Richt spent 15 years on the sideline in Athens, and he had as much success as virtually anyone in college football during that time. He arrived at Georgia after leading Florida State to a national championship as an offensive coordinator under Bobby Bowden, then quickly established the Bulldogs as a force in the SEC. He wrapped up his career at Georgia with a record of 145-51 and won nine of 14 bowl games.
What does he bring? Two big things make Richt a strong immediate fit for Miami. The first is that he knows quarterbacks. Richt has employed a pro-style offense for years, and he’s found immense success with quarterbacks such as Chris Weinke, David Greene, Matthew Stafford and Aaron Murray. Now he inherits one of college football’s best pro-style passers in Brad Kaaya, which makes it easy to envision immediate success on the offensive side of the ball. Richt’s other strength is on the recruiting trail, where his values-driven approach and long history of success should make Miami an easy sell.
Who’s he replacing? Al Golden did a lot at Miami, particularly when it came to bringing in elite recruits. What he couldn’t do was win the big one — losing five straight games to rival Florida State and failing to win a division title. For as much as Miami talks about getting back to its glory days, the standard isn’t one national championship after another. It’s simply winning a few games that matter, and Golden couldn’t do that. The irony, of course, is that is the same reason Georgia parted ways with Richt, so the lingering question is, for all of Richt’s success, will he be able to do what Golden couldn’t?
Quotable: "I personally think we’ve got a long way to go,” Richt said about his new gig. “Not in a negative way. Only thing I’m going to predict is we’re going to work really hard and try to earn the right to win games. That’s the only thing I’m going to promise right now."Fans of a particular show featuring three middle-aged men with an unhealthy penchant for cars, plus a fourth individual whose interests are rather more elusive, probably remember a 2008 episode in which the Top Gear crew lambasted the Tesla Roadster. (If not, a particularly low-quality recording is embedded below.) On that show, Jeremy Clarkson could be seen flogging one around the track, complaining about a range of only 55 miles before showing that car being pushed into the garage, supposedly out of charge. Not true, says Tesla, who has filed a lawsuit against the BBC for libel and malicious falsehood. Tesla claims that, among other things, two cars were provided and at all times at least one of them was ready and willing. Beyond that, Tesla knows that neither car ever dropped below 25 percent charge, meaning the whole pushing into the garage thing was, well, staged. It's hard to look at this as much more than a PR move, Tesla waiting over two years to file, but that doesn't mean the complaint isn't legit. Now it's time for the Beeb to roll out its crew of tame racing lawyers. Some say their suits are made of wool, and that their briefcases contain actual briefs. All we know is they're very well compensated.: Well, the hornets' nest has been kicked, and it didn't take long for the swarm to arise. The BBC has dropped a bombshell, saying that it "stands by the programme and will be vigorously defending this claim."Con una férrea defensa, el equipo de Silvana Renom se fue seis goles arriba al cabo del primer tiempo (14-8) con una gran actuación de la armadora Agustina López, autora de cuatro goles.
En el segundo período, el equipo del español Iñaki Aniz (sí, Chile tiene los recursos para contratar un técnico de una potencia mundial) intentó reaccionar para achicar el marcador. Pero Uruguay logró mantener la ventaja con su gran defensa, una consagratoria actuación de Agustina Modernell en el arco con 11 atajadas y mucha corrida rápida para canalizar las ofensivas.
Asimismo, el ataque de posesión dio sus frutos con buen manejo y una brillante actuación en la punta derecha de Paula Fynn, autora de ocho goles en el partido, cinco de ellos en el segundo tiempo.
Este jueves Uruguay jugará con Argentina a la hora 21 para definir el primer lugar del grupo. El sábado se medirá en semifinales contra un rival del grupo A donde Brasil y Paraguay están con un pie adentro.
Uruguay solo perdió dos veces con Chile en la historia. Una por el bronce de los Juegos O |
diesel fuel tax paid by river companies as proof of its contribution. (That tax money, tens of millions of dollars annually, is matched by federal funds and applied to lock and dam projects nationwide.)
In a time of largely nebulous change for the industry, locks and dams also remain a physical and political focal point, the foundation on which all future industry rebounds could either be made or broken.
"As long as our infrastructure is kept in order with our locks and dams, the riverway is where the growth is," Wally said as his harbor boat departed the Congo Facility and headed west on the Ohio.
"From all your chemicals that make your vehicles, for your steel, for your coal, I mean, basically everything comes up and down the river one way or another."Blogs, Vodcasts, & Opinion Pieces Bioware's Lack of a Decent Marketing Plan Hits the Boiling Point
Details Category: SWTOR Blogs, Vodcasts, & Opinion Pieces Last Updated: Tuesday, August 25th, 2015 Published: Monday, August 24th, 2015 Written by ZionHalcyon
Disclaimer: The views, opinions, positions, or strategies expressed by the author(s) and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of TORCommunity or any TORCommunity team member thereof. TORCommunity makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this information.
For anyone who has played the Old Republic since the beginning and has frequented the forums, there have been two things you could always count on: one, that BioWare would over-promise and under deliver, and two, communication would not be ideal when compared to other contemporary MMOs like World of WarCraft, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, and the like.
It was readily apparent when BioWare finally launched the Old Republic that they were new to MMO landscape, and their first foray into the genre was characterized by repeated, if not messy, attempts to communicate with their player base. At the time, the reception was a mixed bag, mostly due to issues that the first dev team openly admitted. Being new MMO development - they had botched the pacing of the game from Tatooine through the second act (in the devs own words), they lacked a group finder (a staple for any MMO game), there was a lack of endgame, and people were flying through content a LOT faster than anticipated.
As a result, attempts to communicate and interact with the community were sometimes clumsy given the state the game was in, and erratic. However, at least with the original development team, they were well-meaning and earnest.
Unfortunately, at some point a large number of layoffs occured, culminating in the co-founder of BioWare, Greg Zeschuk, ultimately stepping down and the game shifting to a hybrid free-to-play/subscriber model. Since then, communication with fansites and the community has all but dried up, making those early days seem like the Halcyon days of the Community Team with the players.
Indeed, some of the early critics of the new team were met with private condescension and eye rolls in Cantina Events as they brought concerns to the Q&A Table, and rather than appear to want to get information out to the fans, a simple message started to be subliminally delivered - "We aren't going to tell you about our game, but buy it anyway." The marketing team's new task wasn't to promote the game - it was to prevent the devs from revealing anything coming soon.
For many months now, fans have had to put up with near-dead silence about upcoming updates until it hits the public test server, unless it is a closed beta, in which case details will remain few and far between until near-launch.
To understand how this compares to other AAA MMOs, consider this - Blizzard has announced their expansion and provided more details for something still almost a year out than BioWare has for something launching in two months.
So then, it should have been no surprise to BioWare that when Eric Musco said to expect more information around GamesCom, that the natives got restless. After all, every person in the BioWare forums who posts represents someone who pays their hard-earned dollars as a subscription to the game to support it. These are the most loyal customers - the people who above all else, want to support - want to *believe* in BioWare.
Jagex, Ltd. (another MMO creator, for example), has officially recognized and listed "platinum, gold, and bronze" fansites that receive weekly updates from the developers, exclusive screenshots, artwork, and information about future updates, which they then publish and pass along to the community. These fansites are providing "free marketing" and generate much hype, discussion, and feedback for the game. The last time Bioware coordinated with ALL of the remaining fansites was in November of 2014, shortly before Hillary Nicole ceased to be the fansite point-of-contact and Courtney Woods moved to the writing team. If Bioware provided more information to fansites, then there wouldn't be a need to datamine every update before release just to obtain basic info about mechanics or changes in gameplay.
A marketing team more understanding of the needs of the community would have been front and center, and would have headed off any criticism at the pass, letting their loyal customer base know that they will need to adjust their timeline, and information will be postponed to a later time, with their condolences. That is how AAA MMOs handle their business after all, especially ones like BioWare.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, you hit the trifecta - after the week of the 6/15 announcement of KotFE, you had Eric telling people in a thread that they have a plan for scheduled, steady releases of information, which didn't happen. Then you had the "New Information around Gamescom" which also didn't happen. People were rightly starting to get up in arms, and turned to datamined posts for any tidbits of information.
And as that discontent was nearing a fevered pitch, what was told to people, to talk them off the ledge, to apologize for leading their paying customers on?
From Eric Musco, and I quote:
"This is correct! We will always try to avoid getting into spoilers but we will be talking more about how things like Companions and Crew Skills will be working. All in good time, soon™.
-eric "
No apologies, no explanations. Just a third time the paying player base being glibly told "Soon™" as if with a wink and a sly smile. Which of course set off a fire storm that led to some of the more vocal critics being banned from the forums on infractions less than what other people still posting now have done.
What's heartening is that, while I sincerely believe the Community and Marketing team thought they could silence the discontent by silencing the loudest among the critics, that did not save them from the criticism nor did it fade.
It finally built to a point where, if perhaps for no other reason than having been humbled if not truly grasping all they have done wrong by their own community, BioWare and Eric have put this post out regarding the Pax Prime Stream:
"I know there is frustration right now about the amount of information you have. We are actively working on gathering details around a lot of the questions you have and will start releasing them very soon. I will have specifics in the next few days, but you will start getting more details about some of the nitty gritty things with our live stream next week and beyond.
-eric"
The very first time any level of frustration was acknowledged.
Followed by on the same day:
"I am fairly confident that someone will beat me to it (you folks are crazy quick when it comes to summaries), but after the stream I will do a follow-up in the thread which has some of the key things we cover. Remember that we also archive all of the streams as well so you are welcome to watch them after the fact.
-eric"
This followed by three posts regarding the Live stream two days later, with details players want to know about what's being covered (companions), what isn't, and what to expect.
The shame here is that in order to get the Community Team to do what other MMOs do naturally, without near riots on the forums, the Community had to rally against the Community team and the Marketers, and show this was not something so easily silenced, despite what those who defend BioWare might argue.
This was a small victory to be sure for the community, standing up for itself, which finally got BioWare to do the right thing. What a shame that it took that to get what other MMOs trip over themselves to freely give to their paying players.
About the Author: Zion has been a gamer for 20 years, and an MMO player for 12 years, and was a former Munitions Senator and Player-Contributor to SWG.AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Syria has given up less than 5 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal and will miss next week’s deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
One of two cargo ships intended to take part in a Danish-Norwegian mission to transport chemical agents out of Syria docks in Limassol, December 14, 2013. REUTERS/Andreas Manolis
The deliveries, in two shipments this month to the northern Syrian port of Latakia, totaled 4.1 percent of the roughly 1,300 tonnes of toxic agents reported by Damascus to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“It’s not enough and there is no sign of more,” one source briefed on the situation said.
The internationally backed operation, overseen by a joint OPCW-United Nations mission, is now 6-8 weeks behind schedule. Damascus needs to show it is still serious about relinquishing its chemical weapons, the sources told Reuters.
Failure to eliminate its chemical weapons could expose Syria to sanctions, although these would have to be supported in the U.N. Security Council by Russia and China, which have so far refused to back such measures against President Bashar al-Assad.
The deal under which Syria undertook to eliminate its chemical arsenal stopped the United States and its allies from launching bombing raids to punish Assad for a chemical attack last August and made clear the limits to international action against him.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested in a report to the Security Council this week that shipments had been unnecessarily delayed and urged the Syrian government to speed up the process.
MESSAGE TO SYRIA
That is the message that will be given to Syria’s representative to the OPCW during its executive council meeting on Thursday in The Hague, where the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation is located, the sources said.
A senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the U.N. Security Council will be briefed on the issue by mission head Sigrid Kaag next week.
“All the indications are, and the secretary-general’s report makes clear, that actually the regime has been sort of stalling on the implementation of the agreement,” the diplomat said.
“It will be important what Sigrid Kaag says about whether she thinks these delays are deliberately politically motivated and why or whether there’s any truth in the weather, the security and those more technical aspects,” he said.
Another senior Western diplomat said the Syrian government is “teasing us” by dragging its heels but doing enough to avoid being declared in non-compliance with its obligation to destroy its chemical weapons program.
The second diplomat added that Russia would never permit the U.N. Security Council to declare Assad’s government in non-compliance with its duty to eliminate its poison gas program.
“The Russians will never accept it,” the second diplomat said, adding that Western powers were also reluctant to do anything that could be seen as undermining the Geneva peace talks between Assad’s government and the opposition.
“Our impression is that they (Assad’s government) are managing this issue in parallel with the Geneva discussion,” he said. “Everything is blocked so they are blocking on the chemical weapons to remind us” of their power on this issue.
Syria, where civil war has killed well over 100,000 people and forced millions to flee, has blamed delays on security obstacles. It said the mission could not be safely carried out unless it received armored vehicles and communications equipment.
A source briefed on the situation said: “Yes, it’s true there is a war, but have you ever heard of a civil war without security issues? They have all the necessary means they need for transportation. Now they need to start shipping the chemicals out.”
Under a deal agreed by Russia and the United States after the August 21 sarin gas attack, Syria vowed to give up its entire stockpile by mid-2014. The rocket attacks in the outskirts of Damascus killed hundreds, including women and children.
Eradicating Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, including sarin, mustard gas and VX, requires massive foreign funding and logistical support.
The bulk of the most toxic substances are to be destroyed on the Cape Ray, a U.S. cargo ship now en route to the Mediterranean that will be loaded with the chemicals at an Italian port. The remainder will go to several commercial waste processing facilities, including in Britain and Germany.Stepford Wives Organization celebrates the male as head-of-our-household, and the traditional family unit. We believe the traditional family is still a good, sound idea that can be brought into this modern day and age alongside new living arrangements. Stepford Wives Organization is a website that supports the idea of the homemaking wife who is not only the cheery domestic goddess, but a fantastic dresser, neat as a pin, a lady with good manners, and a gracious, well-behaved, obedient wife who always puts her man first. Stepford Wives Organization supports and promotes the Stay-At-Home-Mother. Stepford Wives Organization celebrates the good housekeeping days of the 1950s. Stepford Wives Organization also believes in the freedom for anyone and everyone to pursue their dreams. We never have a cross word to say about other people's decisions to lead their lives. If we have an opinion- which is seldom- we speak quietly to our husbands in the privacy of our homes. If we have an opinion on the matter, it would be our husband's opinion. Stepford Wives Organization believes that we should strive and spend all our free time to look pretty, since women at Stepford are meant to be seen, not heard. We keep silent and speak only when we are complimenting and admiring our husbands. Stepford Wives Organization doesn't understand the Feminist movement and women's choice to stray outside the home into the harsh professional world of men, but we do support the women who have jobs outside their homes, IF they have been told to do so by their husbands and given the permission. Stepford Wives Organization believes that as women, we should regard and revere our husband's decisions as the final, penultimate authority in our lives. Our husbands are our fashion advisors: they decide what we wear. They are our food critics: they tell us what we cook well and what we should and should not cook. They are our political advisors: they decide how we should vote. They are our intellectual guides: they tell us what and how we should think. Stepford Wives Organization believes that as a women, we should accomodate our husbands by allowing them full access privileges to our physical assets. We never think about physical pleasure for ourselves: we save our states of arousal for our husbands and refrain from any self-attention when our husbands are absent or present. We believe that each day, we should preserve our purity for our husbands to possess on their whim. Our husbands, as men, have sole access to our bodies. We have been taught from a long tradition that we, as wives, have no rights to expect or ask for physical gratification. Stepford Wives Organization believes in deferring to our men and letting them make all the decisions that affect us and our households. Stepford Wives Organization believes our men are always right, and we gals are, as Pope Gregory I once said "slow in understanding and our unstable and naive minds render us by way of natural weakness to the necessity of a strong hand in our husbands. Her 'use' is two fold; [carnal] sex and motherhood." Stepford Wives Organization is in no way associated with any fetish, transgender, deviant or alternative lifestyle groups. We do NOT support any fetish, transgender, gay, deviant or alternative groups. We do NOT support roleplaying, fantasy, or bdSM play. We promote traditional family values and a positive attitude towards marriage. Stepford women believe in a clean way of life that promotes a healthy environment for marriage and children. Stepford Wives Organization believes our men are No.1. They are our protector, our knights, and, in Helen B. Andelin's words, "The kingpin around which all other activities of our lives revolve."The founder of one of the most hated companies on Earth believes defense spending should “go on diet,” worries about drone use, and was targeted by the IRS and Democrats for his troubles. He offered to help “save Darfur” and get warlord Joseph Kony yet was vilified by liberals and turned down by both the Bush and Obama State Departments. Meet the Erik Prince you don’t know.
“The greatest threat to liberty in the United States isn’t from any foreign enemy but runaway government spending,” Erik Prince, former CEO and founder of the private military contractor Blackwater, told The Daily Caller in an interview. The bureaucracy in both the intelligence and defense departments has become “bloated, burdensome, and ineffective,” he added.
In what Prince calls a “witch hunt,” left-wing activists and Democrats marked him and his company for destruction. But he has broken his silence about his time as CEO and founder of Blackwater, and he has advice for policymakers and citizens alike in his new book, “Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.”
Perhaps in the rush to build his business Prince should have invested in PR. He describes the speed with which Blackwater conquered the contracting world. His book may too late to combat the negative views that exist about him. But he said it is hard for some to take seriously his commitment to downsize the government when he won so many government contracts.
Prince, who describes himself as a libertarian Ron Paul supporter and a believer in Austrian economics, told TheDC an unnamed IRS agent admitted to being under great pressure to “get him.” Prince said his company became a “lightning rod” for Democrats who wanted to criticize President George W. Bush over the Iraq war but were afraid to seem unsupportive of the troops.
The State Department barred diplomats who had been protected by Blackwater from speaking publicly in the company’s favor. But Prince argues that the company was vital to American security.
Though 41 Blackwater employees died doing their duty, and despite the excruciating detail in the company’s 1,000-plus-page contracts, nobody in Blackwater’s care suffered serious harm or death, Prince told TheDC. When future vice president Joe Biden, future secretary of state John Kerry and future secretary of defense Chuck Hagel were in a helicopter that was forced to land during a snowstorm in Afghanistan, Blackwater employees rescued them. (Kerry later thanked U.S. soldiers.) It was a Blackwater contractor who tackled the Iraqi journalist throwing shoes at President Bush, not the Secret Service. Blackwater employees protected President Obama during his trip to Baghdad.
Prince argues that hired soldiers have been with America ever since the first private military contractor — Christopher Columbus — landed in the New World. Prince imagines a future where private military contractors (PMCs) help America maintain its commitments abroad while not breaking the treasury. In much the same way NASA sets standards for SpaceX, he thinks the federal government can rely on PMCs to get a realistic assessment of how much things ought to cost by turning to the private sector. “You have FedEx and UPS that you can immediately get a price check with,” says Prince.
“The military can do a lot more with its existing structure, but it needs to get rid of a lot of the overhead,” Prince says. “When you have more Navy admirals than you have ships you’ve got a problem. Spend more on teeth and less on tail. The tail has been getting fatter and fatter and fatter and it’s time to put that side of the military on a diet.”
Prince, who supported Ron Paul in ’08, said he’s troubled by the use of drones made famous by Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster.
“One of my first concerns is how does an American citizen get killed just by being put on an enemies list—on a hit list? What is the due process for that?” Prince told TheDC. “Is there no advantage left to being an American citizen, that with the stroke of a pen from a bureaucrat at the White House you can be put on a kill list? I think that’s a very dangerous precedent. At least Robert E. Lee [the confederate general] had his citizenship stripped, and he was a guy who was really working against the United States.”
“I am a supporter of drones but they’ve got to be used very judiciously because there’s a lot of collateral damage that comes from them,” Prince said. Prince also worries about creating more enemies with drone use. “Those people — particularly in Pakistan and Yemen — hold blood feuds for centuries, so every time we kill one bad guy do we make five more that will come back and work with every fiber of their being to kill more Americans? That’s really what you have to watch out for.”
Prince also stressed caution when selecting targets as well and beefing up American intelligence to separate friend from foe. Seven CIA officers and two Xe (formerly Blackwater) employees were killed on Dec. 30, 2009 when they were blown up by an informant who had been passed on to them by Jordanian intelligence and who helped select targets for drone strikes for over a year and half.
“It is a safe bet that the countless people killed by the US strikes that he targeted were not enemies of the United States, and that their deaths lengthened rather than shortened the list of America’s enemies,” said Angelo Codevilla, a foreign policy expert and former diplomat. (Prince isn’t able to comment about the work he did for the CIA, as much of it is still classified.)
Prince has also worked to safeguard American assets and prevent genocide. Indeed, the very idea for Blackwater came, in part, from watching the feckless U.S. response to the Rwandan genocide. “You can’t watch ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and not wish that movie had a different outcome,” he told me in 2011. Prince found mass graves in Central America when he was working for Congressman Dana Rohrbacher and visited the death camps in Europe when he was boy.
Prince says he offered President Bush and George Clooney “some ideas” to help stop the genocide in Darfur. “One of the particular needs was the ability to lift African Union peacekeepers around the area so they could better protect the population, and they needed helicopters. I said, ‘Look, I’ve got helicopters. I can move ten in straightaway. We’re already operating in rougher places than Darfur’ and we never got a serious response,” Prince said. “There’s people that talk a lot and there’s people that do. We prefer to be on the doing side and less talk.”
Prince was approached by the government about putting a team together to actually go after warlord Joseph Kony in Uganda. “We were denied that license from the State Department. It’s frustrating dealing with the bureaucracy,” Prince said.
The State Department should be restructured, said Prince. “I would make it a lot smaller as well,” Prince says. “When you have a lot of people sitting around you have a lot of committees and a lot of groupthink, a lot less individual accountability. In the same way that you should reduce the defense and intelligence budgets you can do the same thing to the diplomats.”
The State Department blocked Prince from putting cameras in Blackwater vehicles “just like police departments put cameras in their cars — dashboard cams. It protects innocent people, it protects our people, and it protects the company from the ‘he said, she said’ major disagreements that arise from dangerous situations.”
Prince has a reason to want to avoid that kind of confusion. In a 2007 incident, 17 Iraqis were killed in Baghdad’s Nisour Square by Blackwater employees protecting a convoy of State Department diplomats. Blackwater claimed the convoy was ambushed and the contractors engaged in a firefight. The Bush Justice Department charged five Blackwater employees with manslaughter (a sixth pleaded guilty), but a district court threw out the case. The case against four of the Blackwater staffers was reinstated last month.
Ever the constitutionalist, Prince favors using letters of marque to go after terrorists, not massive invasions. “You could actually beef up the Rewards for Justice program [the counterterrorism rewards program of the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service],” Prince said. “That would be a heck of a lot cheaper and probably result in getting the terrorists’ immediate enemies or neighbors to turn them over. That’s way cheaper than putting tens of thousands of soldiers and standing armies out in the field looking for specific people.”
Prince has also thought long and hard about reinventing humanitarian aid, much of which is wasted or ineffective. His company has assisted stranded special forces in Mali, missionaries in Kenya, and fellow Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Drawing inspiration from the response to the tsunami in Indonesia, Prince is in the process of acquiring a ship capable of carrying 1,700 containers and about 250 vehicles.
“We would carry generators, water purification, tents, field hospitals, food, water — all the stuff you need in the immediate two to four weeks after a disaster like that,” Prince explains. “With your vehicles you can get your stuff inland. With landing craft, even when the port is destroyed you can get gear in. … We can do all of this with 25 full-time guys. That’s all. Significantly cheaper.”
While there’s a caricature of Prince as a right-wing Catholic crusader, Prince has built mosques for Afghan soldiers and funded the film “The Stoning of Soraya M.”
“I truly believe in religious freedom and in letting anyone be free to practice their faith,” Prince said. “In Afghanistan I took great satisfaction in graduating tens of thousands of Afghans, and took them through eight weeks of excellence—something that they have never experienced in their entire lives because they have known nothing but war, poverty, and deprivation. But for eight weeks, the light switch worked, there was fuel for the vehicle, there was ammunition for training, the instructors knew what they were talking about—all of those things that we take for granted worked. In order to make that all happen and create peace in their country and let them worship freely that’s what they needed first.”
“I’m certainly not there to impose a specific response to religion. Am I Catholic? Probably yes. Do I believe it’s the best way to worship our creator? Yes, I do. But other people are free to choose their path as well,” said Prince.
Many of Blackwater’s critics, including Congressman Jan Schakowsky, have simply made up attacks on the firm and its founder. Schakowsky falsely claimed that Prince had moved to Abu Dhabi to avoid extradition for alleged crimes. Prince actually maintains a residence in Virginia and Abu Dhabi and travels back and forth repeatedly.
Prince believes Schakowsky may also have been involved in disclosing his involvement in CIA-related activities. “If I had to put odds on it I would say that it was her [Schakowsky] that leaked classified information to the media,” he said.
Follow Charles on TwitterTo understand what a Light Field Volume is, it’s important that we first grasp the concept that a captured Light Field consists of rays of light traveling in every direction, with their brightness, color, and their path, which is the direction and position of those rays. To learn more about what is a Light Field, here’s Ryan Damm’s previous article on the subject.
When light illuminates a scene, light rays bounce off objects in the scene, reflecting in every direction mixing colors of each surface they’ve hit. Rays bounce off surfaces in their path, eventually dissipating their energy as the light is absorbed gradually with each bounce. Some of those rays are occluded (blocked) to create shadows while other rays bounce at different intensities appearing to viewers as reflections or highlights.
A Light Field can be captured using an array of multiple cameras as well as a plenoptic device like the Lytro ILLUM, with an array of microlenses placed across its sensor. The core principle in both cases is that the Light Field capture system needs to be able to record the path of light rays from multiple viewpoints.
With the recently announced Lytro Immerge Light Field camera, the light rays’ path is captured via a densely packed spherical array of proprietary camera hardware and computational technology. In its spherical configuration, a sufficient set of Light Field data is captured from light rays that intersect the camera’s surface. With that captured Light Field data, the Lytro Immerge system mathematically reconstructs a spherical Light Field Volume, which is roughly the same physical dimension as the camera.
From any location within that spherical Light Field Volume, every viewpoint of the surrounding 360º scene can be recreated virtually, from the furthest left to right, top to bottom and front to back, in every direction and angle. The Lytro Immerge Player uses that Light Field Volume data to reproject captured light rays and virtually render the scene, with the rays’ color, brightness, and path. The Lytro Immerge Player automatically performs this critical last step, reconstructing the correct flow of light in the scene to deliver full parallax movement, natural reflections and shadows, all without any stitching artifacts.
When viewed through a VR Head Mounted Display placed virtually inside the captured Light Field Volume via the Lytro Immerge Player, the reconstructed scene is displayed as perfect left/right stereo views throughout the entire volume, using any interpupilary distance (IPD) necessary for optimal viewing experience (distance between the eyes of the viewer). When viewing a Light Field Volume from within it, the viewer is able to enjoy a truly lifelike, immersive sensation of virtual presence with full Six Degrees of Freedom and uncompromised stereo perception at any IPD. Moving forward, side-to-side or twisting one’s head, the scene has the same natural parallax as if the viewer was looking at the original scene. Objects closer to your point of view shift naturally as you move side to side or back and forth.
In comparison, with typical stereo spherical 2D capture rigs (a cluster of 2D cameras arranged as a ring or sphere), the individual videos from each camera must be laboriously stitched into a pair of spherical 2D video streams. These two streams are recorded at a best-guess IPD, pre-determined and locked in space when the distance between each pair of cameras was set. As a result, the stereo depth perception in the VR video is only correct in a single direction and the stereo effect degrades as the viewer’s head turns.
Conversely, as you look around within the Light Field Volume using the Lytro Immerge Player, the reprojected scene will respond interactively to your head’s motion, in real time, to precisely match your point of view. Move closer to the edge of the volume and a smaller area of light ray data is used. Pull your head back and more light ray data is included in the reconstruction. As you pan and twist, the player reprojects the correct Light Field rays for your exact viewpoint. The size and shape of the capture rig directly defines the area of physical movement a viewer can move around in when exploring a reconstructed Light Field Volume. In the case of the Lytro Immerge, the navigable Light Field Volume is slightly smaller than the actual camera size.
Lytro Immerge is designed to be configurable so it can meet the requirements of various productions and cinematic projects. In the case of a 360º scene, the light ray information from every direction is captured in the Light Field Volume. But other scenes may only need 180º views, or even planar views, and the Lytro Immerge can be configured accordingly to capture a Light Field Volume that suits the needs of each story. The Light Field Volume can even be combined with CG elements to produce effects such as a musical performance on a 3D stage, or create a live-action backdrop to CG characters. Content creators can also merge captured volumes in post-production to create larger or differently shaped virtual scenes. In future blog posts in this series, we’ll cover how various shaped Light Field Volumes and compositing techniques can play a part in cinematic live-action content creation for VR.
Steve Cooper is the Director of Product Marketing at Lytro and has been involved with 3D illustration, animation and character animation tools since the mid 90’s.
Tagged with: light field, lightfield, Lytro, Lytro ImmergeThe multiplayer portions of Sony's blockbuster first-person shooter title Killzone 3 will be released on the PlayStation Network as a free download, the company announced today on the PlayStation Blogcast, though the free version will sport a few restrictions.
Coming to North America February 28 (just a few days after the game's first anniversary), the free download will grant players access to Killzone 3's Warzone, Guerrilla Warfare, and Operations modes as well as all maps and DLC packs. However, free players will be prevented from ranking up past "Sergeant," the 10th rank out of 45 in the game.
In order to continue leveling up and achieving new trophies and weapons, players will have to unlock the full multiplayer mode at a cost of $14.99, or buy the full game, which also include an extensive single-player mode. It's a structure that's similar to other recent high-profile games that have added a free-to-play offering, like World of Warcraft, which caps free players at level 20.
Unlocking the full multiplayer game will also grant access to a series of double-experience events, including a double experience weekend starting Friday, March 2. Any player who upgrades to the paid version will also be granted access to 24 hours of double experience play.
The announcement is one of the most significant moves yet in the slow arrival of free-to-play gaming on consoles. It is not, however, the first free game to grace Sony's PlayStation 3—several games within the PlayStation Home social network are available free of charge, including Sodium, a vehicular combat game funded by microtransactions.
While free-to-play games are still quite rare on home consoles, many in the industry believe their arrival is only a matter of time, given the business success many free-to-play titles have seen on social and mobile platforms. Sony's experiment with Killzone 3 will likely be a key test to see if that transition is finally ready to happen en masse.Some video games become totally impossible to play when their developer shuts down their servers, so the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants everyone to have the right to tweak their games to get them running again. It's filed a petition with the Library of Congress and the US Copyright Office asking that modifying a game be considered fair use when it's done so that a game can be made playable again after a developer has "abandoned" it and stopped running servers needed to allow gameplay. That would allow gamers to continue playing games longer after their release and for archivists and researchers to work with games far in the future without worrying about running afoul of copyright laws.
For when activation servers no longer activate
The EFF's proposal is particularly relevant to games that regularly check in with activation servers to ensure that a pirated copy isn't being used. Once those activation servers aren't online, even gamers with purchased copies won't be able to play them without finding a workaround. That's often done today, but the EFF says that the practice is covered in legal "uncertainty." The EFF also wants gamers to be able to alter games when multiplayer matchmaking services go offline. That way, they'd be able to continue playing the game on a third party's server even after the game's creator has stopped offering online support for it. Notably, this rule would not apply to MMOs, like World of Warcraft once it goes offline, because a significant portion of those games' content is stored online, presenting what may be larger issues of fair use. Instead, this proposal applies to minor code changes that involve reworking or circumventing often superficial server check-ins.
All of that is critically necessary to historians who might be interested in looking at and preserving these games years after their release. But even in the immediate sense, an acceptance of the EFF's proposal could be a big deal for gamers. As the foundation points out, multiplayer game servers are often taken offline just years after a game's release, generally as sales for a game wane and it's no longer economical for a developer to maintain them. This dramatically limits how a game can be played, making it evident why gamers might want to tweak the code so that they can get back online.
The foundation argues that considering this fair use would not hurt the market for the game, particularly given that the game would, by definition, be abandoned at that point. The EFF argues that, if anything, this might actually increase the value of a game because gamers will know that they'll be able to play it for a longer period of time. There's no guarantee that the government will accept the foundation's proposal and consider this fair use, but the proposal certainly speaks to what will only become a growing frustration for anyone looking to play a game as more and more of them begin relying on online authentication.When Nokia unveiled its brand new hero device yesterday, it was very easy to look at the Lumia 1020 as kind of a freak joke of a smartphone. Sporting a 41-megapixel camera that gives the device a significant bump on the back, the Lumia 1020 is hardly being presented as a smartphone at all, but really a camera that can use apps and make phone calls.
To let the insane camera (which is as good, or better, than advertised) and the pricey $299 price tag (on a two-year contract with AT&T) deter you from what Nokia is doing would be a mistake. The Lumia 1020 is no gimmick smartphone being presented as a hero device. Nokia may be doing what many thought would be impossible.
It is starting to make the Windows Phone platform look cool.
How is Nokia doing this? By breaking away from the Microsoft-centric development of Windows Phone and creating new, creative ways for developers to take advantage of Nokia features. Features such as Nokia’s HERE maps program and the new Imaging SDK (software developer kit) give developers real incentive to build for the Lumia line while making Microsoft and Windows Phone tangential to the conversation.
Nokia Understands Its Onus To Improve Windows Phone
Nokia unveils Lumia 1020 in NYC, July 26
During the unveiling of the Lumia 1020 on stage in New York City yesterday, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop opened the floor for a brief question-and-answer session. The first few questions asked to clarify features for the device and its sales strategy. Then, Forbes reporter Joan Lapp |
, even at 90%, is perfect in New Orleans. And if Sean Payton was playing Tim Hightower ahead of Mark Ingram last year, he won’t hesitate to make a healthy/effective Peterson his primary early-down back.
36. C.J. Anderson, RB, Broncos: The O-line should be better this year, and neither Jamaal Charles nor Devontae Booker (barring a massive improvement) are shaping up to be serious threats.
37. Keenan Allen, WR, Chargers
38. Jarvis Landry, WR, Dolphins
39. Demaryius Thomas, WR, Broncos: I’m cautiously optimistic about Mike McCoy rebuilding this offense and relying on a lot of quick throws from Paxton Lynch(?) to Thomas.
40. Andrew Luck, QB, Colts
41. Dalvin Cook, RB, Vikings: Minnesota was a good but not great landing spot for Cook. He should have no problem overtaking Latavius Murray, but I think Murray is a TD vulture and Jerrick McKinnon is the primary third-down back.
42. Amari Cooper, WR, Raiders: As mentioned last week, the Carr-Crabtree love affair, plus struggles against press coverage, plus invisibility in the red zone add up to a solid but underwhelming third season. Math!
• FACE-MELTING SLEEPERS AND SOUL-CRUSHING BUSTS FOR 2017: It’s never too early to find out who will win or lose the fantasy season for you. Well, it probably is too early right now, but here’s all that info anyway.
43. Greg Olsen, TE, Panthers: Hmmmm, I’m a bit concerned with what looks an awful lot like a schematic overhaul in Carolina.
44. Jimmy Graham, TE, Seahawks: And you all laughed at me when I had him top-75 last year.
45. Isaiah Crowell, RB, Browns
46. Delanie Walker, TE, Titans
47. Paul Perkins, RB, Giants: Improved weaponry will open up a little more running room for Perkins and, like you and me, he’s a more dynamic runner than Rashad Jennings was last year.
48. Davante Adams, WR, Packers: The fact that Adams nearly had nearly 1,000 yards and a dozen TDs a year ago is a testament to Aaron Rodgers’ otherworldly abilities. (And Rodgers is the favorite to win the starting job in Green Bay this summer, sorry Taysom Hill believers.)
49. Larry Fitzgerald, WR, Cardinals: I’ll believe Larry Fitzgerald is in decline when I see it, and not a moment sooner.
50. Tyreek Hill, WR, Chiefs: He only played 40 snaps in a game once last season, but could be playing 40-50 every game this year.
51. Tyler Eifert, TE, Bengals: Can he stay healthy? Will he have a significant role outside of the red zone, especially in light of the arrivals of John Ross and Joe Mixon and presumed development of Tyler Boyd? Can the Bengals move the ball with what could be a disastrously bad offensive line in front of a not-particularly-good-for-a-starting-quarterback quarterback?
52. Michael Crabtree, WR, Raiders
53. Mark Ingram, RB, Saints: Kinda wimped out and split the baby with him and Adrian Peterson, didn’t I?
54. Golden Tate, WR, Lions
55. Julian Edelman, WR, Patriots: Too many [Brandin] Cooks? (Yeah, I’m just linking to the short version so that folks are only slightly weirded out.)
56. Robert Kelley, RB, Washington: We’ll see what happens in training camp, but to my untrained eye rookie Samaje Perine is basically a poor man’s version of Kelley. (They don’t do tackling so much in the Big 12.) I think Kelley holds his spot atop the depth chart.
57. Russell Wilson, QB, Seahawks
58. Stefon Diggs, WR, Vikings: He had established himself as Sam Bradford’s fave before he was slowed by a series of injuries last year, ultimately missing three games. Project his 2016 numbers over 16 games and you’d get 103 catches and 1,111 yards (though only four TDs).
59. Martavis Bryant, WR, Steelers: He’s so good, probably the best big-play big receiver outside of Julio Jones.
60. Martellus Bennett, TE, Packers: He’s basically a better version of Jared Cook, and Cook went 48-606-3 over 13 games (including playoffs) last year.
61. Donte Moncrief, WR, Colts: He has a chance to be the red-zone weapon of choice for Andrew Luck, giving Moncrief 10-plus TD upside along with an outside chance at 1,000 yards (keep in mind that injuries limited him to 470 snaps in a disappointing 2016; if healthy he should play around 1,000 this season).
62. Christian McCaffrey, RB, Panthers: You can take him top-50 in PPR leagues. Jonathan Stewart will vulture touchdowns, but McCaffrey has a shot at 1,200 yards from scrimmage and has the home run-hitting ability to score at least half a dozen TDs.
63. Bilal Powell, RB, Jets: He had 552 scrimmage yards and 21 catches over four games as the feature back this year. If Matt Forte is out of the picture, Powell becomes a surefire every-week start, even on the Jets.
64. Brandon Marshall, WR, Giants: He’s still a red-zone threat, and with all that single-coverage Marshall could easily grab 80 catches for 1,000 yards.
65. Jamison Crowder, WR, Washington: I think he emerges as the No. 2 option behind Jordan Reed, and he has already carved out a role as a secondary red-zone option when Reed draws a ton of attention.
66. Kyle Rudolph, TE, Vikings: Maybe a bit too high, with the O-line fixed and Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen ready for breakout years, but Rudolph’s floor is low-end TE1.
67. Matt Ryan, QB, Falcons: As good as he was a year ago, Ryan was a disaster the last time he got a new OC, two seasons ago.
68. Terrance West, RB, Ravens: I still think Kenneth Dixon is the better back, but with Dixon facing a four-game suspension to start the year West has a chance to create some separation on the depth chart. And the Ravens, who last year said they really truly very much wanted to establish the run (so much so that they canned Marc Trestman) will surely lean on the ground game more this year. In part because they ended up football’s most pass-heavy team last year (66-to-34 ratio!). But also in part because they didn’t address their poor receiving corps in any meaningful way this offseason.
69. Cam Newton, QB, Panthers: He’s probably not going to do nearly as much running as he used to (remember, most of Newton’s runs were designed runs, he does not scramble that often). Judging by the additions of Christian McCaffrey and Curtis Samuel, Newton is going to be asked to do a lot more pre-snap work and get the ball out of his hands quickly. It’s the complete opposite approach to the offense last year and during his MVP 2015 campaign. This could go either way.
70. Doug Martin, RB, Buccaneers: The Bucs have no other potential workhorse on the roster, and while they’ll likely throw it more this year, they still want to get that power run game going. Once he serves out his suspension, Martin could be in for a big bounceback season.
71. Brandin Cooks, WR, Patriots: There are a lot of mouths to feed in New England; along with Cooks needing to establish a rapport with Tom Brady he is shaping up to be the No. 3 option and an afterthought in the red zone. Brady is a better deep-ball thrower than Brees at this point in their careers, but that’s less than what Cooks’ role was in New Orleans.
72. Drew Brees, QB, Saints: My gut is that, between the arrival of Adrian Peterson to pair with Mark Ingram, plus the loss of Brandin Cooks (replaced by Ted Ginn), plus Brees’s diminished arm strength, plus the desire to keep that god-forsaken defense off the field will lead to more of a run-first, ball-control approach for the Saints in ’17.
73. Mike Gillislee, RB, Patriots: It’s easy to say “LeGarrette Blount role” (though remember how to pronounce Blount). But after adding Rex Burkhead, and with 16 games of Dion Lewis, Gillislee is probably looking at a workload closer to the 14 touches per game Blount got in 2015, not the 19 touches per game Blount averaged last year. A likely goal-line role makes Gillislee a potential RB2 though.
74. Marshawn Lynch, RB, Raiders: I mean, he’s 31 years old and only lasted seven games the last time he played. The expectation is probably along the lines of Ryan Mathews last year (168 touches over 13 games, 776 scrimmage yards, 9 TDs).
75. Zach Ertz, TE, Eagles: Let’s see if the arrival of actual NFL-caliber receivers on the perimeter open some things up for Ertz.
76. Carlos Hyde, RB, 49ers: He’s a good talent, but can he stay healthy? And do the 49ers feel he’s a part of the future?
77. Emmanuel Sanders, WR, Broncos
78. Tevin Coleman, RB, Falcons: As mentioned above, I wouldn’t be surprised if the more versatile Coleman overtook Devonta Freeman at some point this year.
79. Mike Williams, WR, Chargers: The time for Antonio Gates is over. Look for Williams to become the centerpiece of the Chargers’ red-zone attack. And Philip Rivers has always loved his big receivers. Guys like Vincent Jackson and Malcom Floyd were like the sons he never had besides the 14 sons he does have.
80. Jack Doyle, TE, Colts: I might be getting a little carried away, but Andrew Luck likes the cut of his jib, and I’m not sure the Colts have a better option in the red zone.
81. Jameis Winston, QB, Buccaneers: He might have had the best offseason of any QB in terms of what was added around him: DeSean Jackson and O.J. Howard are perfect complements to Mike Evans, and exactly what Winston needs as a downfield passer. And the Bucs were the most efficient goal-to-go offense in football, where they were extremely pass-heavy a year ago.
82. Adam Thielen, WR, Vikings: I’m not sure where to put him. So, obviously, I put him at 82. I could see Thielen catching 90 balls for 1,200 yards; good things happened when Sam Bradford connected with him last year. Or, I could see him getting squeezed out into a fourth option on this team behind Stefon Diggs, Kyle Rudolph and Dalvin Cook.
83. Cameron Meredith, WR, Bears: Somebody has to catch passes in Chicago. Or maybe nobody. What do I know.
84. Kenneth Dixon, RB, Ravens: I’d consider him a top-50 candidate if not for the season-opening suspension; he’s a better version of Terrance West. And the Ravens will surely go much more run-heavy after firing Marc Trestman last October and saying they wanted to go much more run-heavy then finishing the year as the most pass-heavy team in football.
85. Thomas Rawls, RB, Seahawks: The best pure runner in Seattle’s land of 1,000 backs.
86. Derek Carr, QB, Raiders: There’s room for another step forward, especially with Jared Cook providing a movable chess piece that they’ve lacked, buddy Todd Downing becoming the new offensive coordinator, and Amari Cooper capable of a better season than he had in 2016.
87. DeVante Parker, WR, Dolphins: On raw talent, he’s one of the 15 or so best receivers in football. But he too often seems to have no idea what he’s doing.
88. Theo Riddick, RB, Lions: He’s right there with David Johnson and Le’Veon Bell as far as pure pass-catching backs. And while Riddick isn’t much of an option as a runner, the Lions consistently run their no-huddle in the red zone, meaning Riddick stays on the field and has a chance for more TDs than you might think (he caught five TDs in 10 games last year).
89. Terrelle Pryor, WR, Washington: He’s immensely talented but still a work-in-progress at wide receiver, and now he has to pick up a new offense and establish rapport with Kirk Cousins (when Cousins is already quite comfortable with Jordan Reed and Jamison Crowder).
90. DeSean Jackson, WR, Buccaneers: It’s going to be a lot of feast-or-famine games.
91. Corey Davis, WR, Titans: Already far-and-away the best talent in a bad group of receivers, Davis could feast against single-coverage on a team that loves to throw on first down.
92. Derrick Henry, RB, Titans: He’s going to carve out a bigger role this year, and could even overtake DeMarco Murray by midseason. And if Murray gets hurt, Henry becomes a top-25 fantasy player.
93. Willie Snead, WR, Saints
94. Corey Coleman, WR, Browns: Terrelle Pryor-to-Kenny Britt is a major downgrade across from Coleman. If he can show a little better grasp of the offense this year, he could emerge as the top receiving option on a team that figures to trail often and throw a lot.
95. Pierre Garcon, WR, 49ers: Hoyer-to-Garcon. It’ll look like Montana-to-Rice if you squint really hard. And you were recently maced. And you were also recently hit in the face with a mace. And you didn’t have eyes to begin with. And you don’t know who Joe Montana and Jerry Rice are.
96. Jonathan Stewart, RB, Panthers: He’s entering the TD vulture phase of his career (and there could be value as the Panthers try to limit the hits Cam Newton takes).
97. Frank Gore, RB, Colts: He can still run, but Gore too often comes off the field in red-zone and goal-line situations.
98. Kelvin Benjamin, WR, Panthers: To be honest, I didn’t think he was good enough to be on the field last year. Maybe it was just because it was the first year back from an ACL. But things are changing in Carolina, and I’m not sure Benjamin is more than an occasional downfield threat and red-zone specialist.
99. Jordan Matthews, WR, Eagles
100. Mike Wallace, WR, Ravens: The [sigh] best receiver in Baltimore. (But really, he wasn’t half-bad last season.)
Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.A Parliamentary committee has narrowly signed off on the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, after considering hundreds of submissions.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
The opposition MPs on the committee opposed the agreement and have issued minority views in the report.
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee was given just five days to report on the deal, after the timeframe was drastically cut from four weeks.
More than 300 public submissions were considered by the committee, which held hearings in major cities throughout the country.
The TPP has been widely criticised, for protecting big corporations and freezing out the rights of workers and impacting health and medicine costs.
The committee said the TPP, which was signed by 12 nations in February, is expected to benefit the New Zealand economy by $2.7 billion by 2030.
The government will introduce legislation to Parliament to enact the trade deal.The only thing the Rockets had in their favor was time. They were down in the series, down in the game and almost down for the count. But they had most of the second half to do something about it.
Trailing the Clippers by 13 in the second half on Wednesday, the Rockets had shown few signs of the turnaround that would come. But they made a lineup change, sat James Harden and put together a second-half comeback that took them past the Clippers 115-109 to even their first round series at 1-1 heading to Friday’s Game 3.
“The bottom line is this series in nor for the weak of heart,” Rockets guard Jason Terry said. “The tougher team will win. Tonight, we came out in the second half a much tougher team. The first game and the first half of this game, they were the tougher team and so when you put this Rockets uniform on, you better come in here ready to fight.”
The Rockets went to a small lineup, with Trevor Ariza playing the power forward to provide spacing and a jolt of scoring along with more active front defense on Blake Griffin to turn the game around. The Rockets went from a 13-point second-half deficit to a 12-point lead with four minutes left, then made just enough free throws to hold on.
“We had to just change things up on Blake Griffin,” Rockets coach Kevin McHale said of Griffin’s 26-point first half. “He was just backing us down, making shots. We were again too passive, just letting him have his way with us.
“We were trying to trap him, but couldn’t get there in time. When we went small, we were able to front him. (Ariza) did a nice job and Dwight (Howard) did a nice job putting a body on him, not letting him be quite as free as he was in the first half.”
That was just the beginning of the turnaround, only enough to give the Rockets a chance. Griffin went from making 11 of 14 shots in the first half to 2 of 8 in the second half, with Howard starting the second half on him before Terrence Jones and Ariza took turns. After allowing 41 second-quarter points, the most they had allowed all season, the Rockets held the Clippers to 44 in the second half.
“I just thought in the first half, he got what he wanted and the second half we made it a little more difficult for him,” Howard said. “He’s a terrific scorer, especially in the open court. We’ve just got to do a better job of fighting him for 48 minutes.”
But the Rockets offense was struggling as badly as the defense. The Clippers were trapping the ball out of Harden’s hands and flooding the lane when he drove. He could get 3s, but made just 1 of 6 in the first half as the Rockets made just 2 of 14.
When Harden began the second half committing two quick fouls, the second showing frustration as he shoved J.J. Redick, Harden went to the bench in the second minute of the half with five turnovers and just 3 field goals.
Griffin was on fire. Harden was on the bench. And the Rockets’ season seemed to have been on the line.
“We had them on the ropes,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said as he left the interview room podium. “We had them on the ropes.”
McHale, however, gambled with sitting Harden, got the defense he had wanted since the series began and got back in the game.
“A lot of times, I’ll let James play when he gets four,” McHale said. “But tonight, I just had a gut feeling it might be better to just sit him for a little bit. I don’t want him to get a charge or a push-off and get his fifth in some kind of way he was trying to make up for things. He was really amped up coming out of halftime. He was in my ear. ‘Let me play. Let me play. Let me play.’ Finally, he sat down, got a drink and relaxed a little bit.
“He came out and he had a real calm demeanor about him. He walked by me. I just said, you had a good rest. Let’s go to work.’ And he did a great job. Sometimes sitting over there calms you down.”
The lineup with Corey Brewer and Ariza seemed to turn up the Rockets defense. Jones became more active, blocking three shots and getting six of his eight rebounds in the second half. With the Rockets scrambling, the Clippers offense bogged down.
“I thought we got out of rhythm offensively,” Rivers said. “That’s when the game changed for us. I thought it was the first game we didn’t trust each other. The ball didn’t move and we got stuck trying to get the ball to Blake so much that we forget that there were guys on the other side of the floor. I thought that stretch was big.”
The Rockets ran through an 11-2 surge with Harden out and eventually cut the lead to two. When he returned, the Rockets were able to spread the floor with their small lineup and he was able to drive to draw fouls and get himself going.
“It’s always tough, especially having four fouls in the third quarter, but my teammates did a really good job of fighting and battling and keeping the game really close,” Harden said. “That allowed me in that fourth quarter to just go out there and just do what I’ve got to do.
“I knew my team was battling extremely hard and basically it was up to me to go out there and push us forward. They kept it a close game and they were battling. I sat out the entire third quarter so by the end of the third quarter, I was well rested.”
When the Rockets began the fourth quarter with a 10-3 run, they did not quite shoot the lights out, but as Ariza and Harden nailed 3s, one shot clock did break down, forcing the Rockets to use temporary clocks in the corners.
There was still a major challenge left, however. After Austin Rivers hit a 3, cutting the lead to 100-94, the Clippers returned to the hack-a-Rocket strategy, sending Howard to the line and soon to the bench with the lead shrinking again.
This time, however, McHale pulled Howard, returning Jones to his matchup on Griffin. The Rockets got just enough scoring that with four minutes left, Harden finished a drive and the Rockets had gone from a 13-point second-half deficit to a 12-point lead.
The Rockets struggled to close out the win, but when Harden put in another drive on his way to scoring 16 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter, the Rockets had 71 seconds left to protect a six-point lead, making just enough free throws to send the series to Los Angeles tied.
“Amazing,” Harden said. “We’ve been doing it all year, finding a way to win. We let Game 1 slip away and we didn’t want that feeling for Game 2. It’s going to be a tough two games, but we’ve got our mojo now.”
jonathan.feigen@chron.com
twitter.com/jonathan_feigenFly by phone Maybe all you want to do is grab a quick dronie, set up tracking to shoot a friend, or even just head skywards for a quick flight. All you need is your phone. Learn more
TapFly Beginner pilots often have trouble flying in a straight line because they aren’t familiar with joysticks, which then makes shooting smooth video tricky. TapFly means you can just tap where you want to go and the Mavic will fly smoothly in that direction, so you can focus on controlling the gimbal and capturing photos and video. Flying really can be that easy. Learn more
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Shoot. Edit. Share. You have shot the most incredible scene imaginable. Now you can edit it with just a few taps in the DJI GO 4 Editor, and share it instantly for all the world to see. Learn moreA MAJOR toy company has denied shocking claims one of its WWE wrestler masks looks like the Yorkshire Ripper.
The Entertainer shot down concerns that the Roman Reigns mask on sale across the country resembles Peter Sutcliffe.
7 The WWE mask which was spotted in sale in the Touchwood Shopping Centre in Solihull, Birmingham.
7 The parent is convinced the mask looks just like the serial killer who murdered 12 women in the 70s and 80s
Getty Images - WireImage 7 The famous pro-wrestler, aged 31, has won the heavyweight title three times and been earmarked as a face of the company
PA:Press Association 7 Sutcliffe is currently serving 20 concurrent life sentences, and therefore will never be released from jail
The infamous serial killer was convicted of murdering seven women and trying to kill seven others.
A worried parent contacted the Sun after seeing the toy gift in a Touchwood Shopping Centre in Solihull, Birmingham.
He was convinced the mask looked the murderer who terrorised prostitutes during the 1970s and 1980s.
He said: "I spotted the mask in store on 25 November 2016 when with my son, who obviously had no idea why I was so interested in the mask, I even asked his mother who was with us, to take a look.
"I said to her think of a serial killer, and showed her the mask, without hesitation, and in an instant she said 'The Yorkshire Ripper'.
"The mask looks nothing like the actual WWE wrestler, and I have shown a close up the mask to friends and they all said 'The Yorkshire Ripper'.
"I think if this mask was taken onto the streets, and people were asked what serial killer does this mask look like, I think most would name Peter Sutcliffe, The Yorkshire Ripper.
"I do feel it should be removed from sale as the resemblance is too close to that of the Ripper, and could upset those associated with the case."
Reigns, 31, is a famous face in the world of wrestling after winning the heavyweight title on three occasions.
Alamy 7 The entrance to the Touchwood shopping centre in Solihull where the mask was on sale
Getty Images 7 The manufacturer said "The Roman Reigns WWE Mask & Muscle Dress up set is designed with his likeness in mind"
Getty Images 7 The 70-year-old was jailed 35 years ago in 1981, after police caught Sutcliffe with a 24-year-old prostitute called Olivia Reivers
The Entertainer released a statement stating it had no plans to remove the mask from its store.
It read: "The Roman Reigns mask was produced for WWE by toy manufacturer, Jakks Pacific and The Entertainer toy shop is one of many retail stockists across the UK.
"We have received no other comments regarding the resemblance of this mask to other people, and there are no plans to de-list it from our shops across the UK
The manufacturer Jakks Pacific added: "The Roman Reigns WWE Mask & Muscle Dress up set includes a mask and costume based on the popular WWE wrestler, Roman Reigns, and designed with his likeness in mind. This is clearly stated on the fully WWE branded packaging of the product where an image of Roman is also displayed."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368The Standard Template Library (STL) is a library for the C++ programming language. The STL provides many useful algorithms and containers. The Containers are objects that store data. We have taken help of following containers to solve mentioned problems –
vector, list, queue, priority_queue, stack, set, map, multimap, unordered_set, unordered_multiset, unordered_map, unordered_multimap
We have avoided using STL algorithms as main purpose of these problems are to improve your coding skills and using in-built algorithms will do no good.. Nevertheless, we have still used following common algorithms at many places –
min, max, swap, sort, next_permutation, binary_search, rotate, reverse
Priority Queue (Heap) –
Graphs –
Array –
Matrix –
Strings –
Binary Tree –
Dynamic Programming –
Linked List –
Miscellaneous –
Thank you for being with us. 🙂CBO Keeps Revising Down Potential GDP
Ten years ago, with the technology-stock bubble well past us, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that from 2000–2015 the potential for the United States economy to produce goods and services—at full employment—would grow 58 percent. This year, CBO estimates that same growth at only 38.5 percent. In effect, more than 12 percent of the estimated productive capacity of the economy has been lost in the last five years of revisions.
What does CBO think has changed in the last five years that makes them so pessimistic? Let us take a look at their numbers for nonfarm business (NFB)—which covers about three-quarters of the economy. CBO now estimates 2.45 percent annual full-employment growth in this sector between 2000 and 2015; they had estimated 3.43 percent back in 2005, resulting in a 13.3 percent cumulative downward revision to potential output by 2015.
Figure 1 shows CBO’s 2015 estimate of potential NFB output in billions of 2009 dollars, along with their 2005 estimate scaled to match the current estimate for output in 2000 (about $8.85 trillion.)
Breaking the numbers down further, almost half the decline has come from slower growth in potential NFB labor hours—that is, from lower labor force participation and shorter workweeks. In 2005, CBO estimated that aggregate full-employment hours available in NFB would grow 1.0 percent per year but now only anticipates 0.42 percent growth between 2000 and 2015. CBO today puts potential hours 8.7 percent below its estimate ten years ago; they estimate this has reduced annual growth in potential NFB output by about 0.43 percentage points.
As seen in Figure 2, the relatively slow growth in potential hours began well before the current recession. Prime-age workers have increasingly left the labor force, and it appears that CBO believes they are not likely to return.
The collapse of the housing bubble followed by an extended period of time below full employment has meant little incentive to invest. Hence, as seen in Figure 3, the capital stock has grown more slowly than anticipated a decade ago. CBO estimates this low investment has lowered the annual rate of growth in potential NFB output by 0.37 percentage points.
Finally, total factor productivity—that is, everything else entering into potential NFB output has grown a little more slowly than anticipated (1.33, compared to 1.50 percent per year) lowering annual growth in NFB output by about 0.17 percentage points.
Possibly, when the capital stock has depreciated sufficiently, investment may return on its own—increasing capital and increasing labor force participation as the market tightens. This is Keynes’ much-disfavored hands-off solution to extended periods of depression. However, if we encourage businesses to move production to other countries (say, by protecting foreign investments with favorable dispute resolution) then CBO may never revise upward potential output. This may propagate unnecessarily low expectations for economic growth and leadpolicymakers into making poor decisions.
As it stands, CBO currently estimates potential NFB output in 2015 to be 13.3 percent below where it would have been had growth been as expected a decade prior. Certainly, a large part of this gap may be attributed to failure to maintain full employment. By contrast, the Peterson Institute estimated that a large-scale Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could increase GDP by as much as 0.38 percent by 2025 (Figure 4).
This means we would need 38 trade agreements of similar size to make up the difference. Of course, this would be not merely difficult but impossible to manage. Even if we accept these estimated gains from tariff reductions resulting from the TPP, such gains must diminish rapidly with successive agreements.
In the end, we are left with a decade of bad news out of CBO.The Philippine president says the Obama-led Trans-Pacific Partnership is disastrous for developing countries because it restricts access to affordable medicines
Published 6:44 PM, December 13, 2016
MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte echoed the sentiments of United States President-elect Donald Trump, decrying the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement championed by President Barack Obama.
"Kagaya 'yung TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, mabuti na lang hindi 'tinuloy ni [Trump] kasi napakamali na policy 'yan," said Duterte on Tuesday, December 13.
(Like the TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's good that Trump isn't continuing it because it's a very wrong policy.)
He was giving a speech before departing for state visits to Cambodia and Singapore, where he will discuss with their leaders what agenda the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will champion.
Duterte, as Philippine president, will chair the ASEAN in 2017. He intends to seek out the views of Southeast Asian leaders on the TPP, among other agreements.
"I am glad that Trump said he will throw to the garbage can that TPP; otherwise, it will create problems for all of us here in Asia," continued Duterte.
Access to medicines
The Philippine president opposes the TPP because of its impact on accessibility of affordable medicine to poor Filipinos.
"If you go for TPP, you won't be able to buy generic. Either you [buy] from India, and Pakistan and their generic medicines are really very cheap and we can save a lot for our country," he said.
Joining the TPP would be disastrous for developing countries like the Philippines, he said.
"We are promoting generic because we are a poor nation and we can buy the medicines at cost from India and Pakistan. and yet there's a damper that says we cannot if you're a member of the TPP," said Duterte.
Some analysts and health groups, like Doctors Without Borders, take the same position.
"Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) remains extremely concerned about the inclusion of dangerous provisions that would dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in international law and restrict access to price-lowering generic medicines for millions of people," said the group in its campaign website.
Analysts say the TPP introduces aggressive intellectual property standards on medicines that allow pharmaceutical companies to extend monopoly drug patents, which makes medicines more expensive and less accessible for the poor.
The TPP is also criticized for overriding previous international agreements that sought to strike a balance between IP demands and public health interests.
The TPP rules, some say, favor interests of big pharmaceutical companies.
"It could be a day ruled again by rich multinationals. It's something apparently intended to help but it is not [helping]," said Duterte.
The TPP was signed last February by 12 countries that together make up 40% of the world's economy: US, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile, and Peru.
The agreement was designed to create a new market, similar to the European Union. It notably excludes China.
While Duterte seems to shun TPP, he has embraced China-led economic initiatives like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Belt and Road initiative.
Trump has promised to withdraw the US from the TPP. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that without the US, the TPP is "meaningless." – Rappler.comMarkets around the world remain mixed after the long holiday weekend but US futures are firmly in the red at this 6AM hour as Friday’s jobs report generates corporate profit concerns. This week will see the kickoff of the first quarter earnings season when AA reports on Wednesday. Across the commodity markets, gold jumped 1.7% as traders turned away from equities. Oil is seeing healthy gains on the view that last week’s Iranian nuclear deal won’t immediately produce more crude supply from that country. The US dollar is stable after having taken a dip on the jobs report.
ON THE ECONOMIC CALENDAR:
8:30AM: Gallup US Consumer Spending Measure
9:45AM: PMI Services Index
10AM: Labor Market Condition Index
10AM: ISM Non Manufacturing Index
12:30PM: TD Ameritrade IMX
NEWS:
WYNN: The leading proxy-advisory firm, ISS, on Sunday, advised shareholders to protest governance support issues at the casino operator by voting against all board nominees, including dissident nominee Elaine Wynn, the former wife of the company’s CEO, reports the wsj
VTR: AHS: Ventas to acquire Ardent Health Services for $1.75B in cash
EDR: sees fall same-community portfolio revenue up 2.5-3.5%
RDY: GILD: Dr Reddys in deal with Gilead to distribute, hep C drug, sofosbuvir in India
GILD: RBC Capital out positive on Gilead earnings expectation
O: announces 5M share secondary offering
TRUE: reports dealership growth: 38% higher over last year
WBAI: suspends all online lottery sales in China, reports rpnewswire
GOOG: GOOGL: Google in talks with mobile operators for cheap overseas calls, report the telegraph
AMGN: European Commission approves expanded use of Vectibix
AAPL: iWatch could be delayed in Switzerland due to patent issues, reports appleinsider
QURE: announces deal with BMY which includes Bristol-Myers acquiring an initial equity stake of 4.9% in UniQure
TSLA: First-Quarter Car Deliveries Rise Above 10,000: looks to accelerate volume gains for the rest of the year, reports the wsj
ANALYSTS RATINGS CHANGES
UPGRADES:
LL: upgrade; market perform to outperform: Raymond James: $40
VMW: upgrade: neutral to buy: Nomura: $95
LB: upgrade: neutral to buy: Mizuho: pt raised from $92 to $108
TIF: neutral to buy: Monness Crespi: $103
IMAX: upgrade; hold to buy: Canaccord: pt raised from $35 to $38
MAT: upgrade: hold to buy: B Riley
COH: upgrade; underperform to market perform: Telsey: $45
MSFT: upgrade: market perform to outperform: Wells Fargo
DOWNGRADES:
QCOM: downgrade: outperform to market perform: FBR: pt cut from $80 to $72
Z: downgrade; overweight to equal weight: Barcalys: $!05
INITIATIONS:
PCL |
'll need an existing power cord and about $32 in materials:
Neodymium Ring-Shaped Magnets (enough to cover your adaptor plug with some overhang)
Wire Studs (to fit into the power socket)
Steel Washers (asst. sizes, make sure your magnets will STICK to them)
Thin Copper Foil (Note: aluminum duct tape has too much resistance)
Electrical Tape
Two-Part Epoxy Adhesive
Nail(s)
Calming Incense (to keep you sane while working with the fiddly bits)
The process of modifying your existing power cord actually seems rather easy, but please follow the instructions closely and don't poke any wall outlets with the nails. [Instructables via Hack a Day via Lifehacker]I was just tucking Mary Tyler Son into bed for the night when he asked me to make a circle in his bed. "What do you mean, a circle?," I asked. "Well, there is a circle in my bed and in the middle of the night I fall through the circle out of my bed and right into your bed." He described a hole that immediately reminded me of Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, with Mary Tyler Son as Mickey.
This makes sense in our home, this hole in the bed, as every night, without fail, our boy sleepily walks from his room to ours, crawling between us and settling in for the end of his sleep. I honestly can not remember a morning waking up without him there. Some days it might be midnight, some days five AM, most days somewhere in between.
We are not really parents that give a fig about co-sleeping or crib sleeping. Our first child always slept in a crib. That changed when she was diagnosed with cancer at 20 months. Somewhere in the midst of her treatment, Donna simply moved to our bed. It wasn't even really discussed, it just was. I don't regret that in the least. The way I see it, we got hours and hours and hours of more time together with that shift in sleeping locations. When your life is measured in the number of years that can fit on one hand, hours really do make a difference.
Poor Mary Tyler Son spent his first five months sleeping in a car seat. Literally. He had acid reflux that I first noticed in the hospital when he was born. He would not sleep on his back and sort of made a barking noise. It was honestly kind of alarming. I asked his pediatrician about it before we left to come home and he was the one who suggested using the car seat. "Three weeks at the most, and he should grow out of it," he told me. Well, that three weeks eeked out to five months. And one day, as promised, he simply grew out of it. Into the crib he went. Which worked well, as Donna owned that real estate between us in the bed.
Some of my sweetest moments occurred with Donna between us in bed. And some of my most terrifying. Feeling her breath on my cheek, being tickled with whatever little tuft of hair she had left. Hearing her whisper sweet nothings into my ear. Counting the stitches from her scar behind her left ear. Those are priceless memories to me. The other side of that coin are the hours I spent awake in the middle of the night, imagining what our life would be like without Donna, as I looked at her, tears falling down my cheeks. Then there were the times I lie awake monitoring her breathing, after the cancer had moved to her lungs. Fucking cancer.
Donna died in our bed. There we were, one parent on either side of her, all of us sleeping. Neither of us were awake for her final breath. There was no wailing or screaming. Instead, there was Mary Tyler Dad shaking me awake telling me, "She's gone." And she was. Donna was gone.
To scoot in the middle of our bed, after Donna died, was to inhibit sacred space. I can still feel her there sometimes, and certainly think of her there if I migrate too close to the middle. We sleep on the pine futon Mary Tyler Dad used as a bachelor. I can't imagine another bed. I mean I can, like a cool platform bed with storage drawers that we need desperately, but then that thought disappears. Our bed is where so much of Donna's life was spent. And now, so much of Mary Tyler Son's life.
When my boy talked tonight about the hole in the middle of the bed, that hole that connects us and him, and Donna, too, in such a profound way, well, I don't think I have ever loved him more. There are few things in life that bring me more pleasure and comfort than waking to the sound of my child telling me they love me. And for Mary Tyler Son to imagine a fantastical world where our beds, that great symbol of nesting and rest and comfort and peace are magically connected, where one just tumbles into the other, what greater evidence of love do you get in this life?
Good night, dear readers. I will sleep well tonight. I hope you do, too.
UPDATE: I am thrilled and honored to report that this post was awarded a VOTY (Voice of the Year) from BlogHer in July, 2013. It was selected as one of 100 VOTYs from over 2,500 submissions. Thank you to BlogHer reviewers for selecting it, and thank you to fellow ChicagoNow blogger, Listing Toward Forty, for the nomination. I am surrounded by immensely talented writers and made better for it.New York legislator Patrick Burke is trolling notoriously the anti-LGBT vice president-elect in the best possible way. He has introduced legislation to ban conversion therapy in the state and dubbed it the Prevention of Emotional Neglect and Childhood Endangerment — or PENCE for short.
The Republican, a darling of the religious right, gained a reputation as one of America’s most vociferously anti-LGBT politicians as a Congressman. As the governor of Indiana, Pence signed a law that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT customers and rolled back all local non-discrimination protections for LGBT people.
“Mike Pence is probably going to have the most power of any vice president in the history of our country and he has openly advocated for conversion therapy,” Burke told Buffalo’s NPR affiliate, WBFO. “I want that to sink into people. I want them to realize it’s a serious issue of abuse of children flatly, whether they are gay or not, it’s abuse, then you have a man who is going to have enormous power over all of us, who advocates for it.”
“This practice has no business in our society and really the idea of trying to sexually desensitize children is disgusting and distributing.”
On Pence’s 2000 congressional campaign website, he said the Ryan White Act should be defunded because it “celebrate[s] and encourage[s] the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus.” Instead, Pence wanted the funds directed to “institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”
The Ryan White Act is used to distribute funds to organizations fighting HIV/AIDS and provides life-saving resources to HIV+ people.
The Republican party platform, deemed the most homophobic in history, specifically endorses the practice – even though it has been condemned by all major psychiatric and children’s health organizations.
“We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children,” it reads.
This Story Filed UnderSteven Caulker looks increasingly likely to join Celtic.
QPR are looking to offload the defender on a free transfer, possibly with a sell-on clause in the deal.
The 25-year-old, who played under Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers at Swansea City, is now in the final year of a four-year contract at Loftus Road.
Rodgers recently played down the prospect of him moving to Parkhead, suggesting he had merely spoken to Caulker about the player’s personal problems.
However, discussions between QPR and Celtic have taken place and there now is a growing expectation that the move will happen.
Caulker, who has one England cap, was signed from Cardiff City for £8m in the summer of 2014 and has made only 48 league appearances for the R’s. He has not played since last October.
He has been warned by the club after a series of misdemeanours.
QPR lost patience with him when he was arrested and charged with failing to provide a breath sample following an incident in Windsor in March.
It was the fourth time Caulker had been in trouble with the police and came less than a month after he was fined for throwing objects at passers-by at Clapham Junction station.
He pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly after that offence, was fined £650 and ordered to pay £85 costs.
Caulker has recently spoken of his mental health issues and addictions to alcohol and gambling.
Removing his lucrative contract from their wage bill would help QPR’s efforts to add to their squad within the club’s budgetary restrictions.
Rangers are keen to sign a striker and remain interested in Barnsley’s Andy Yiadom despite reports of Premier League interest in the right-back.
Borysiuk could have QPR future – Holloway
Meanwhile, Ian Holloway has suggested that Ariel Borysiuk could yet have a future at QPR.
The Polish midfielder, signed from Legia Warsaw a year ago, failed to impress manager Holloway last season and joined Lechia Gdańsk on loan in January.
Rangers have been looking to offload him on a permanent basis and are keen to bring in another defensive midfielder.
But Holloway says he was impressed with Borysiuk’s performance during Saturday’s pre-season friendly at Peterborough and might not need to bring in an alternative after all.
“I thought Ariel did really well,” said Holloway, who wants to make a number of signings in the next couple of weeks.
“I had to make some decisions last year and I’ve said to him ‘If you come back and pass it the way I want you to do and run around the pitch a bit…’
“He showed me that he wants to play for this club. What more can I ask? Hopefully that might solve a few things if I can get him in there (midfield) as well.”This is how long $1 million will last in retirement 9:11 AM ET Wed, 24 Jan 2018 | 01:20
A cool $1 million has long been considered the gold standard of retirement savings. These days, it's only a fraction of what you will really need.
For instance, a 67-year-old baby boomer retiring now with $1 million in the bank will generate $40,000 a year to live on adjusted for inflation and assuming a sustainable withdrawal rate of 4 percent, said Mark Avallone, president of Potomac Wealth Advisors and author of "Countdown to Financial Freedom."
It's worse for a 42-year-old Gen Xer, whose $1 million at retirement will only generate an inflation-adjusted $19,000 a year when all is said and done. And a 32-year-old millennial planning to retire at 67 with $1 million would live below the poverty line.
That's what Avallone, a certified financial planner, calls "million-dollar poverty."The national outcry for new gun laws is great. Terrific. I’m all for it.
But may I humbly suggest that the opponents of gun control are half right. Guns, all by themselves, don’t kill people. The other half of the truth -- the half that we are not hearing nearly enough about -- is this: Mentally or emotionally disturbed people with guns kill people.
I’ve been working with a community organizing group trying to promote public support for mental health treatment. It has made me very aware of the profound reluctance we see all around us (even in a very liberal and wealthy county like mine) to treat mental/emotional disturbance as a communal problem.
When we talk about mentally or emotionally disturbed individuals, our society puts the emphasis on “individuals.” Without really thinking about it, most of us assume that we’re dealing with peculiar cases, each one caused by some unique set of problems encased in one individual’s brain.
We just don’t have many cultural resources at all to think about mental/emotional disturbance as a societal problem. Oh, there’s shelves full of books in university libraries which can teach us to see it that way. But that academic perspective has not percolated through to our shared public myths. We still tend, as a society, rather reflexively to see troubled people as individual “weirdos,” unique outliers from the norm.
And our natural inclination, most of the time, is to stay as far away from them as we can -- unless they are family members or otherwise connected to us in ways we couldn’t escape even if we wanted to. Then we try our best to get help for them. And we usually discover that the resources our society provides are far too meager to give them the help they really need -- precisely because, as a society, we don’t think of such disturbances as a collective problem. So we don’t even think about, much less provide the resources for, collective solutions.
I suspect this pattern has its deepest roots in a tradition that was pervasive through the late 19th century and still affects us deeply: viewing mental/emotional disturbance through the lens of religious and spiritual language. I’ve spoken with ministers who are trying hard to bring their fellow clergy into fruitful conversation with mental health professionals. It’s an uphill struggle, they say, in part because there are still many clergy who assume that personal prayer and spiritual renewal is the only appropriate treatment.
What we have here, to some degree that’s impossible to quantify, is a living legacy of the days when mental and emotional disturbance were interpreted as signs of sin. (“Evil visited this community today,” said Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, as if the the tragedy were caused by some distant, utterly alien metaphysical force.) Just as sin was seen to be the responsibility of the individual, so mental/emotional disturbance is still seen to be, if not the individual’s responsibility, at least an individual problem.
The proud American tradition of individualism is also, I suspect, at the root of the popular resistance to gun control. The Washington Post's wonk Ezra Klein points out that, while support for the idea of gun control has dropped, the number of American households with guns has dropped even faster in the last 40 years.
So the objection to gun control laws doesn’t come only from people who have guns and want to hold on to them (though they are the largest portion of the naysayers). It also comes from people who imagine that they might some day feel the need for a gun to defend themselves, their families, and their homes. They fear giving up that individual right. They don’t want their individual freedom abridged.
It’s too bad that we are so individualistic. We don’t have the cultural traditions that would let us see both gun ownership and mental/emotional disturbance as societal facts, as manifestations of what the community as a whole is doing.
So we go on letting individuals arm themselves to protect their individual rights and freedom, or so our national myth tells us. (Illinois just became the 50th state to allow citizens to carry concealed guns.) But we tragically underfund and ignore societal programs to help the mentally/emotionally disturbed, because we simply don’t see any relationship between them and the rest of us, or so our national myth tells us.I don’t mean to be a tease, but the meat of this writing is under Thoreau…
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”
“Things do not change, we do.”
“Be not simply good, be good for something.”
And now I present my dream…
Monday, 24th of February, 6:02AM… I awaken. I had a dream and in this dream, I got there. I got there… I reached the promised land. I don’t know how I got there. I don’t even know where it was… but I got there with nothing but the coat on my back. No bag, no wallet, no money, no ID, no phone, no pills, no computer… off the grid, if there was one where I was… no nothing. No running… no airport… I was not trying to get somewhere or away from something, including myself. I just was there.
This was not a night terror. I knew no one. I was all alone, but in a crowd… which in and of itself is not disturbing. I’m used to being alone. I always traveled alone… particularly when no one knew I was leaving the country. In reality, I never traveled with anything or so much it needed to be checked… I had no baggage when traveling, just a backpack and purposeful tactical clothing with more than 70 pockets. In this dream, I made it with nothing and remember not much but walking around in circles (so to speak)… following the flow of people, wondering what I was going to do. Thinking that whenever i get home from wherever I am I will still have nothing. I had a coat and that’s all.
More than one month of half the normal dose of that which kept the monsters from my dreams… prevented the terrors, the sweats, the panics. The intended dose reduction to bring my dreams closer than the last fifteen seconds that I could remember under the influence of a good sleeper pill. I’m different now. I’ve evolved. I’ve experienced personal and spiritual growth that I never had an opportunity to explore up to this point in my life. If last night means anything, I hope that it is that my night terrors are gone forever.
That which haunted me my entire life is no longer so haunting and not much more than an ever more distant memory. In this dream, there was a huge building and I don’t know what it was, but all others were moving towards it and going into it… and I couldn’t go into it because I had a coat. I had nothing, yet I had too much. My intended migration towards minimalism during consciousness has moved from reality to a dream. My baggage is gone. It’s been wide open for all to see into for about four years now… but now, the baggage isn’t just open… it’s gone.
This was no requiem. It was dream. I had a real dream. Am I reborn? At the point I told someone IN my dream what was happening to me… with nothing… not knowing if it was lost… gone forever… I awakened and left my bedroom to look at the clock and the time. 6:02AM
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Like this: Like Loading...View this image › Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Detroit, Friday. Paul Sancya / AP ID: 9922387
Calling Hillary Clinton a “criminal,” a Democratic Electoral College voter from Washington state has vowed not to cast his ballot for the Democratic nominee if she wins the popular vote in his state.
Robert Satiacum
Robert Satiacum told the Associated Press Friday that Clinton “will not get my vote, period.” Satiacum, a member of the Puyallup Tribe and former Bernie Sanders supporter, said he believes Clinton has “done nothing but flip back and forth” and does not sufficiently care about Native Americans.
“This is a time we all need to stand up and speak out,” he said.
Satiacum also does not plan to vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Clinton is expected to win Washington, which would mean she would theoretically get all of the state’s 12 electoral college votes. Satiacum, who is an elector in the Electoral College, was expected to cast one of those votes.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. A presidential candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win the White House.
Electors typically cast ballots that reflect the popular vote in their states. In other words, if a candidate wins a state in November, the electors usually honor that result and cast their ballots for the same candidate.
Electors, however, are not constitutionally required to vote in line with the popular vote. Some states do have laws penalizing electors who deviate from the popular vote, and according to the AP, Satiacum faces a $1,000 fine for not voting for Clinton.
Satiacum said he doesn’t care about the fine, and has heard from other electors who thanked him for speaking out. He did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment Friday, but first raised the possibility of not voting for Clinton last month.Vitamins design studio in London has created an ingenious wall mounted time planner that’s built entirely from LEGO bricks and can be synced digitally with your Google Calendar account using a smartphone camera.
Horizontal panels represent the coming months and are split vertically to show individual days. Staff pick a LEGO minifigure to sit alongside their allocated row, then add different colored bricks to represent the projects they’ll be working on.
Vitamins then wrote some software so that whenever someone shot a picture of the calendar and sent it to a specific email address, the changes were synced with the team’s shared digital calendar. An email then notifies the user that the changes have gone live.
It’s a novel idea that combines the visual, tactile nature of a physical wall planner with the digital calendars that most of us now use daily on our smartphones.
Plus, it uses LEGO. Who doesn’t love LEGO?
➤ LEGO Calendar
Read next: FreedomPop is hitting US carriers where it hurts with its new free mobile phone serviceSearch Gallery Memes, Crossovers and Such Yep, I'm the first to make actual crossover fanart of MLPFIM and Dinosaur Train, comparing the voice artists that are on both shows.
NOTE: Even though I no longer watch MLPFIM (as well as a former "brony"), I recently became aware that Michael Dobson, the voice of the Old Spinosaurus (who is a Spinosaurus aegypticus), recently guest starred as both Dr. Cabellon and Bulk Biceps. I also found out that Ian James Corlett, the better-known father of Claire and Phillip Corlett and the voice of Mr. Conductor the Troodon formosus, also recently guest starred on FIM as Silver Shill. I also found out that Mark Acheson, the voice of Marvin Mosasaurus the Mosasaurus hoffmannii, also recently guest starred on FIM as Tirek. Should I do three new crossover pictures? Both Ellen! Wesdaaman 18 Advertisement Advertisement We're Both Andrea! Wesdaaman 26 Both Andrew! Wesdaaman 16 Both Shannon! Wesdaaman 20 We're Both Garry! Wesdaaman 14 Both Peter! Wesdaaman 16 We're Both Voiced by Maryke! Wesdaaman 19 Both Brenda! Wesdaaman 16 Same Voice Actress! Wesdaaman 14 Both Brynna! Wesdaaman 19 We're Both Nicole! Wesdaaman 21 We Have got the Same Voice! Wesdaaman 19 Both Trevor! Wesdaaman 19 Both Tabitha! Wesdaaman 16 We're Both Ashleigh! Wesdaaman 26 Same Voice Here! Wesdaaman 18 We're Both Chantal! Wesdaaman 15 Both Brian! Wesdaaman 21 We've got the same voice actress! Wesdaaman 18 We're both Lee! Wesdaaman 13 We have the same voice! Wesdaaman 28 Merry Christmas! Wesdaaman 7 Merry Christmas! Wesdaaman 5 Voice Actor Meme: The 6 Escapees (Great Breakout) Wesdaaman 3Story highlights Harvey Sapolsky, Benjamin Friedman: Our annual military budget is large
Sapolsky, Friedman: Mitt Romney should suggest less military spending on our allies
They say our allies are rich enough to defend themselves instead of relying on the U.S.
Sapolsky, Friedman: Lower military costs will mean more savings for U.S. taxpayers
A fixture of the presidential race has been Mitt Romney's 47% problem: Those Americans who don't pay federal income tax that Romney has described as freeloaders. Of course, Romney has retracted his remark. But if he still wants to attack those who freeload off of U.S. taxpayers, there is a better target: Our wealthy overseas allies.
Forty-seven percent is also roughly the U.S. share of global military spending. Our annual $700 billion-plus military budget exceeds the next 10 biggest military budgets combined. Much of that money buys forces needed to defend allies against threats they could afford to meet themselves. Alliances that once served the U.S. national interest have become a subsidy to rich allies.
In a recent foreign policy speech, Romney noted that only three of the 28 NATO allies meet their commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. He promises to fix that by asking our allies to honor their commitment to security spending.
But the Europeans have grown adept at keeping a straight face while ignoring such lectures.
Harvey Sapolsky
If Romney wants them to do more, he should suggest giving them less -- a logic he appreciates in domestic contexts. The same would apply to the Japanese, South Koreans and various others we defend. Some allies, especially in Asia, might increase military spending. Others, noting less danger and bulging debts, may not.
Benjamin Friedman
Washington is not the best judge of others' needs. But with fewer commitments, we can maintain fewer forces and lower future military costs, which means more savings for U.S. taxpayers.
As long as the United States bears the lion's share of global defenses, our allies have little incentive to do more.
As we saw in Libya in 2011, the U.S. Air Force enabled NATO's intervention by providing air refueling, intelligence and precision strike capability. Our combat-tested Army and Marine Corps are the envy of their counterparts around the world, many of whom they train. Our special operations forces track terrorists everywhere.
JUST WATCHED Key Romney surrogate praises Obama Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Key Romney surrogate praises Obama 05:19
JUST WATCHED Romney: A tiny effort makes a difference Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Romney: A tiny effort makes a difference 01:27
Romney complains that our Navy has fewer ships than before World War I but fails to mention that it is far bigger than any other fleet and is the police force of the global seas.
Romney has insisted that U.S. exceptionalism compels us to steady alliances, settle regional disputes and forcefully promote democracy everywhere. But he has reversed the idea of U.S. exceptionalism.
Early American leaders thought that the nation's virtue lay in liberal values and the example America sets. For them, U.S. exceptionalism had nothing to do with military adventurism. Permanent allies might drag us into others' disputes, imperiling liberalism by centralizing power in the presidency and requiring a massive military establishment.
Similar worries encouraged President Eisenhower's push to keep our commitments to allies temporary. In 1953, Western Europe and Japan were still recovering from World War II and South Korea, with our help, was still fighting the North and its Chinese allies. U.S. commitments to defend those nations came from fear that the Soviet Union would capitalize on their weakness, through conquest or internal intrigue, and gather enough strength to threaten us directly.
Those allies long ago grew rich enough to defend themselves, and the Soviet Union has been history for decades. The European Union collectively has a population and economy larger than ours. But while Americans spend about $2,700 per capita annually on the military, NATO allies average around $500
More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, Europeans sit in cafes while over 80,000 American service personnel still help guard Europe against Russia, which now has a GDP around the size of Spain and Portugal combined.
Sixty years after the end of Korean War, nearly 30,000 American forces still shield the South against a Northern neighbor with a 25th of its wealth and half its population. We have almost 50,000 troops in Japan almost 70 years after its surrender. Japan spends only about 1% of its GDP on its military, provides no troops to help stabilize Afghanistan, but insists that U.S. Marines defend their every rocky island in a possible dispute with China.
Romney still has time to change his mind on this issue. Rather than lecturing our allies about their responsibilities, we should kick them off the dole, rescinding commitments to their defense and removing troops from their shores.
This is a problem that any president faces, including President Obama. But Romney may make the problem worse through his proposed increase in military spending.
If that seems chintzy, remember that there is virtue in economy and that we have needier causes at home, starting with the deficit. That tack might also prove politically useful: polls show that Americans would prefer to do less for rich allies. And foreign freeloaders can't vote.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinionThe Modi Express: Indian prime minister Narendra Modi inspires hundreds of supporters to make trek to Sydney
Updated
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Modi Express arrives in Sydney (ABC News)
Over 200 Indians have caught the Modi Express - a 12-hour train journey from Melbourne to Sydney to hear Indian prime minister Narendra Modi speak.
Mr Modi, the tea vendor from north-western India who has risen to the highest office in the world's largest democracy, has a charisma that Rakesh Raizada said had been missing from modern day India - until now.
The response from Indians across the world has been profound.
Mr Raizada and his wife Monica were among the 220 Indians to catch the Modi Express to attend a public address by Mr Modi, the first visit by an Indian prime minister since Rajiv Gandhi in 1986.
Such genuine excitement to make a pilgrimage to hear a political leader speak would seem quite rare in Australia, but not for these Modi followers.
"After a long, long time, such a phenomenon, such an excitement, such a wave has come, which is unparalleled," Mr Raizada said.
Disillusioned with a succession of Indian governments, Mr Raizada moved to Kenya to be a managing director of a major bank before settling in Australia to raise his family with his wife, Monica.
In Australia, he found a life where hard work was recognised, often over social connections.
It was a life he could not find in his homeland with its class system.
But he said change was happening on the back of Mr Modi's election and a carefully managed media image.
"This is a new revolution, you can call it," he said.
"Modi became the name instead of the party, and he carried on his own shoulders this election which gave India a fully majority government after 34 years."
President of the Indian Tamil organisation Tamilar, Ganesh Jaygan, said he fully supported the Hindu prime minister.
"No leader since Mahatma Gandhi has captured the imagination of the nation and the international polity as Narendra Modi has done," he said.
"It is indeed a great opportunity that he has come to Australia only a couple of months into his prime ministership."
Four carriages of the Melbourne-Sydney train were festooned with the colours of the Indian flag, while mango leaves were hung over doorways - an important Hindu ritual.
Dancing, singing, and the constant chant of "Modi, Modi, Modi" echoed into the night, while traditional vegetarian dishes from Mr Modi's home state of Gujarat were served to appreciative passengers.
Many of these Indians who now call Australia home did not know each other before getting on board the train, but easily forged friendships under a common bond.
The idea of the Modi Express was born just weeks ago when Melbourne-based supporters of Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) decided to make the trip to Sydney for the prime ministerial address.
Organiser Ashwin Bora said the response had been overwhelming.
"To be honest with you, we were expecting a basic journey from point A to point B but what has turned out is basically a full-on party – people are really enthusiastic to hear from their prime minister in this country after 28 long years," he said.
"I have lived 11 years here (in Australia) and I have not seen anything like this."
For many Indians, Rakesh Raizada included, Narendra Modi represents a glimmer of hope for a country brought to its knees by corruption.
"We have put all of our faith in Modi to remove corruption, to clean India, to bring India back to its glory," Mr Raizada said.
Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, human-interest, australia, india, melbourne-3000, sydney-2000
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MARYSVILLE -- A Marysville business is raising money for the Yuba County Sheriff's Department in an unconventional way.
The business heard about the two deputies who were injured in August after they were shot while pursuing a suspect at a Rastafarian cannabis church in Oregon House.
They're fundraising for the deputies by holding a topless car wash on Saturday outside in the back parking lot of City Limits Showgirls. One hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated to an established trust for the sheriff's association.
The Yuba County Sheriff’s Department chose not to talk about the topless car wash on camera. In a written statement, the department said in part, "The Yuba County Sheriff’s Office is in no way affiliated with the event. While we appreciate the sentiment of support from the business owner, we do not endorse the event."
However, they say as long as the car wash is enclosed in a tent and ID's are checked, they cannot stop it from happening.
“We spent a lot of time talking to them and encouraging them, saying you know, 'It’s alright, we're gonna do something for them,'” said Hal Meyer, operations manager for City Limits Showgirls.
They’re donating the money no matter what, so, if you get your car washed it comes with free admission to the club.
“If you put it in the trashcan, I accept that's how you feel, but please don't let your community down, they need you now,” Meyer said.
City Limits Showgirls raised a total of $2,565 at their event Saturday.- This locality has map coordinates listed. - This locality has map coordinates listed.
- This locality has estimated coordinates. - This locality has estimated coordinates.
ⓘ - Click for further information on this occurrence.
? - Indicates mineral may be doubtful at this locality.
- Good crystals or important locality for species. - Good crystals or important locality for species.
- World class for species or very significant. - World class for species or very significant.
(TL) - Type Locality for a valid mineral species.
(FRL) - First Recorded Locality for everything else (eg varieties).
Struck out - Mineral was erroneously reported from this locality.
Faded * - Never found at this locality but inferred to have existed at some point in the past (eg from pseudomorphs.)
All localities listed without proper references should be considered as questionable.I have started this GoFund to assist SSGA (School Supply Giveaway of Gary) in raising funds for necessary school supplies for the students in my hometown of Gary, Indiana. Growing up in Gary there was little opportunity for a kid like me to make something of myself. Not having the basic supplies that every other kid in any other city had left a lot of us with little motivation to do well in school and turned a lot of us to darker paths. By helping these students aquire the basic supplies every student needs and deserves you will be maximizing their chances at a brighter future.
SSGA is a registered Indiana non-profit corporation and your donations will go directly to their corporation. Your donations will purchase backpacks, notebooks, pens, pencils, hand sanitizer, dental care kits and other necessary items to help these students to succeed.
These families and children need our help. Any amount that you can donate is appreciated. Please help the youth in my neighborhood start off their school year on a positive note.
-Freddie Gibbs
Help spread the word! Share Tweet 2.2k total shares total sharesCOPENHAGEN • Denmark voted yesterday in a referendum to decide whether to adopt some European Union rules, the first test in 15 years of whether the nation wants to integrate further with the 28-member bloc or continue to keep its distance.
In a poll watched by British politicians, who are locked in battle over their own country's ties to the EU, Danes were asked to entrust Parliament to adopt some EU justice and home affairs rules to help fight cross-border crime.
Denmark, Britain and Ireland all won various concessions from the EU in the early 1990s when the modern foundation for the now 28-member bloc was laid, including exemptions from rules governing EU justice and home affairs policies.
The referendum asked whether the Danish Parliament should have the authority to adopt some of those laws to stay within cross-border policing agency Europol.
The government and the main opposition party both say it should. But the populist Danish People's Party, now the second-largest faction in Parliament, says Danes should vote "No" to avoid giving away sovereignty over security.
A "No" victory would cheer Britain's anti-EU UK Independence Party, which wants a total withdrawal from the EU. But British Prime Minister David Cameron could point to it as a sign that other nations are also unhappy with the EU as it stands. He is trying to renegotiate Britain's ties with the EU before holding a referendum by 2017 on whether to remain a member.
Polls show Danish opinion split evenly, with a large portion of people undecided. Analysts say the "Yes" campaign has been lacklustre while the"No" side had a much simpler message of rejection.
By asking Danes to give Parliament authority to decide on which EU rules to adopt, rather than seeking approval from the people for the 22 Acts slated for adoption, the referendum has sown distrust and confusion, analysts say.
And by rejecting on principle the idea of giving more sovereignty to the EU, the "No" camp has forced many voters to think in broader terms about EU integration rather than the technical issue of remaining within Europol.
"I think it's important we don't give up our sovereignty," said 25-year-old "No" voter Lea Sommer Holmberg. "It's important power stays with the people so politicians cannot do what they want."
Others point to the size of the Nordic country of 5.5 million people, which has shunned the euro but pegged its own crown to the single currency to keep its export-driven economy stable. "Denmark is a small and lovely country and we need to take care of its best interests. Because we are a small country, we need some bigger friends," said Mr Steen Boring, a man in his 60s who voted "Yes". REUTERSIn theory the Sun King’s daily schedule continued during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, but neither of the later sovereigns could stand the oppressive ceremonial rituals. As often as possible they took |
But these children did not succumb to the disease. They died because their oxygen supply was cut off by the supplier of oxygen cylinders to the hospital, as his dues amounting to ₹68,58,596 had not been cleared.
While the hospital administration and UP government are trying their best to pass the buck around, we wish bring to everyone’s notice the one man, Dr. Kafeel Ahmed, who managed to save several lives with his presence of mind and humanity.
He was the paediatrician in charge of the encephalitis ward when the tragedy struck, and instead of standing around wringing his hands, he immediately sprung into action.
Source: Indiatimes
He called up all the suppliers of oxygen cylinders in the district that he could find and tried to arrange for the life-saving gas quickly. However, he was refused by everyone except one, and only on the condition that the payment for the cylinders was made in full before delivery. He did not hesitate for a minute but took out his ATM card and asked one of his staff members to get the cash from his bank account at the earliest.
While he waited for these cylinders to arrive, he saw that the situation in the ward was deteriorating. So he made some more calls and found a friend who owned a private hospital and had three big oxygen cylinders he could spare. Dr. Kafeel rushed to his car and drove down to this hospital to haul these cylinders to BRD. Before leaving, he trained the hospital staff to administer artificial respiration to patients using Ambu bags.
Meanwhile, the agency that had agreed to provide the cylinders backed out, and Dr Kafeel was left with the task of single-handedly trying to procure oxygen for all the children in the ward. He made frantic calls to many other nursing homes and suppliers, and finally found one supplier who kept his promise to deliver. Dr Kafeel personally managed to bring in 12 more oxygen cylinders from other nursing homes by making four more trips in his car, and saved many lives which would have added to the death toll if not for him.
Source: Youtube
In spite of all his efforts, Dr Kafeel had to witness the tragic death of more than 60 children in front of his eyes. “What’s the use of all the money and our education when we can’t save lives. Money has no meaning if we cannot save a life. I saw so many kids die in front of me and I couldn’t do anything to save them,” he told News18.com
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NEW: Click here to get positive news on WhatsApp!Real estate mogul Donald Trump promises to “bomb the shit” out of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) and keep Muslims out if he’s elected president.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has vowed to drop so much ordnance on Iraq and Syria that the world will find out “if sand can glow in the dark.”
And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says even Syrian refugees who are “orphans under age 5” shouldn’t be admitted into the country unless the FBI can vet them fully.
So far, the US presidential campaign has been dominated by bellicose sound bites as these and other Republican hopefuls make their case that President Barack Obama has made the country less safe. The harsh rhetoric serves both to appeal to an anxious electorate while undermining Obama’s former secretary of state, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
With the first primary contests just around the corner, however, all the candidates have been offering up more details as they seek to establish their national security credentials. Al-Monitor unpacks the rhetoric to get to the meat of the positions staked out by the top six Republicans and top two Democrats, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average for Dec. 10-Dec. 21.
Another US war in the Middle East?
Over the past few months, the US military presence has steadily increased to about 3,500 troops in Iraq and several dozen special operations forces in Syria. While none of the remaining candidates have echoed calls by withdrawn contender Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to send 20,000 US troops to Iraq and Syria, most support a more robust US presence.
“We have around 3,500 soldiers and Marines in Iraq, and more may well be needed,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in an August IS policy speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. “We do not need, and our friends do not ask for, a major commitment of American combat forces. But we do need to convey that we are serious.”
Bush, who is currently tied for fifth place with Christie, went on to urge deploying forward air controllers to help guide precision airstrikes and embedding US troops with Iraqi combat units. These views mirror those of the other Republican running as a traditional GOP hawk, third-place candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Christie urged France to invoke the NATO treaty’s Article 5 on collective defense after the attack in Paris. He said he would work with NATO alliance to “bring the full effect that we could have … militarily” against IS during a November speech at the Council on Foreign Relations but offered few other details.
Trump, Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — respectively in first, second and fourth place in national polls — have urged ramped-up airstrikes but said little else about a US military role.
On the Democratic side, Clinton sounds much like Bush and Rubio even as she defends Obama’s overall strategy.
“A more effective coalition air campaign is necessary, but not sufficient, and we should be honest about the fact that to be successful, airstrikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS [IS],” she said at the Council on Foreign Relations in November. “As part of that process, we may have to give our own troops advising and training the Iraqis greater freedom of movement and flexibility, including embedding in local units and helping target airstrikes.”
In contrast, her main rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has repeatedly warned against repeating the 2003 intervention in Iraq, which he — unlike Clinton — voted against.
“This is a war for the soul of Islam,” he says on his campaign website, “and the Muslim nations must become more heavily engaged.”
Bypassing Baghdad
While all the candidates sing the Kurds’ praises, some have been more explicit about their plans to bypass Baghdad if they win the presidency.
Cruz regularly refers to the Kurds as “America’s troops on the ground.” And Clinton, Bush and Rubio have explicitly called for directly arming not only the Kurds but Sunni tribal forces as well.
Defeating IS “will require a larger number of American troops on the ground, working with the Kurds, Sunni tribes, and other partners,” Rubio writes on his campaign website. He vows to “provide arms directly to Sunni tribal and Kurdish forces if Baghdad fails to support them.”
Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that “one thing that I believe we haven’t done yet is make it clear to Baghdad that we are going to be arming Sunni tribes and Kurds if they don’t.” The Iraqi Embassy in Washington lambasted a House-passed bill to arm the Kurds in December and Shiite hard-liners threatened to attack US interests in Iraq when the House Armed Services panel in May proposed to deem Kurds and Sunni tribes as “countries” eligible for US military assistance.
Carson has proposed the creation of a US-defended safe zone inside Iraq. Christian groups have long advocated for the creation of a semi-autonomous safe zone for religious minorities in Iraq’s Ninevah plain, an idea that has stalled in the Iraqi parliament.
“We should encourage the establishment of sanctuary zones in the contested areas of Iraq and Syria,” Carson says in a Washington Post column. “These zones would be administered and controlled by local moderate forces, with financial support and military coordination provided by Western countries.”
Bridging the Sunni-Shiite divide
Another fault line among the candidates lies in their willingness to engage the US diplomatic corps in efforts to reconcile Iraq’s warring factions.
Here again, Clinton, Rubio and Bush appear to have given the most thought to the issue — and come to quite similar conclusions. All three agree that the next president will have to continue working with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad to create a more inclusive nation that encourages more Sunni tribes to rise up against IS.
“Our strategy in Iraq has to restart the serious diplomatic efforts that can help that country move in the right direction,” Bush said in his Reagan Library speech.
Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that “we need to lay the foundation for a second Sunni awakening. We need to put sustained pressure on the government in Iraq to get its political house in order, move forward with national reconciliation, and finally stand up a national guard.”
The other candidates have said little on the subject — expect for Cruz, who has dismissed it as a fool’s errand.
“We must reject the notion that any U.S. action be contingent on political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad,” he wrote in a September 2014 commentary for CNN.com. “The Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632. While we all wish the Iraqis success in their most recent attempt to form a government, it is the height of hubris and ignorance to make American national security contingent on the resolution of a 1,500-year-old religious conflict.”
Middle East experts, however, contend that the bloody sectarian feud between the two main strains of Islam is a mostly modern phenomenon fueled by Saudi-Iranian rivalry.
The Assad conundrum: Should he stay or should he go?
When it comes to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, most of the candidates agree with US foreign policy dogma that he’s a key catalyst of the sectarian fire that has engulfed Syria over the past five years.
Trump and Cruz, however, have steadfastly opposed efforts to unseat the sitting president or arm his opponents, revealing a deep fault line within the Republican Party on the limits of US interventionism in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Libya.
“Just because Assad is a murderous thug does not mean that the rebels opposing him are necessarily better,” Cruz declared way back in September 2013 in explaining his decision to vote against airstrikes in retaliation for Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Two years later, he’s still saying the same thing.
“In my view, we have no dog in the fight of the Syrian civil war,” Cruz told Bloomberg Politics in a November interview. “The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. If the Obama administration and the Washington neo-cons succeed in toppling Assad, Syria will be handed over to radical Islamic terrorists. ISIS will rule Syria.”
Trump for his part echoes those sentiments.
“Assad is bad,” Trump told The Guardian in an October interview. “Maybe these people could be worse.”
The other candidates largely agree that the US should continue to support so-called “moderate” rebels — while acknowledging that there may not be very many around anymore, if there ever were.
“Defeating ISIS requires defeating Assad,” Bush said in his Reagan Library speech, “but we have to make sure that his regime is not replaced by something as bad or worse.” He called for a “coordinated, international effort” to “to give Syria’s moderate forces the upper hand.”
Clinton has said “there is no alternative to a political transition that allows Syrians to end Assad’s rule,” while Christie has said, “I don’t think that there is a coherent opposition at the moment.”
Time for a no-fly zone in Syria?
Of all the major candidates, only Cruz and Sanders agree with Obama that creating a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians isn’t worth the risk of dragging the United States deeper into a protracted sectarian civil war.
The other candidates all favor the establishment of some kind of safe zone in Syria, albeit with different levels of US involvement. For the Republicans, that support has the added benefit of providing some political cover for their unanimous rejection of plans to allow Muslim Syrian refugees into the United States.
Trump has called for the creation of a “big, beautiful safe zone” in Syria, largely paid for by the Gulf states with the United States giving “a little bit.” Exactly who would be tasked with keeping the zone “safe” remains unclear.
Christie, by contrast, has advocated shooting down Assad-allied Russian warplanes if they were to violate a putative no-fly zone.
“We would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now,” Christie said at Republican presidential debate in December.
Rubio said much the same thing in a CNBC interview in October 2015.
Clinton, meanwhile, has been pushing the idea since the summer of 2012, when she was still the nation’s top diplomat.
Reining in Iran
Finally, several of the candidates have made Iran a key plank of their anti-IS strategy.
Bush and Rubio agree that weakening Iran’s influence over Baghdad was crucial to easing sectarian tensions and getting more Iraqis to join in the fight.
“Iran, its ally Assad, its terrorist proxy Hezbollah and the sectarian militias it sponsors have fueled the conflicts in Syria and Iraq that have helped give rise to ISIS,” Bush said at the Reagan Library. “We need to broaden and expedite our efforts to help ensure Iraqis rebuild their security sector — not only to win against ISIS, but to break free of Iranian influence.”
Meanwhile, Clinton and Christie have both explicitly argued that Saudi Arabia and other key Sunni powers are currently more focused on fighting the Houthis in Yemen than IS in Iraq and Syria in part because they feel threatened by Tehran. The hard line on Iran is particularly important for Clinton, whom the Republicans have pegged to Obama’s controversial nuclear deal.
“We cannot view Iran and ISIS as separate challenges. Regional politics are too interwoven,” she told the council in November. “Raising the confidence of our Arab partners and raising the costs to Iran for bad behavior will contribute to a more effective fight against ISIS.”
Correction: This article was updated Jan. 6 to clarify that Sen. Marco Rubio has also advocated shooting down Russian aircraft if they were to violate a US-backed no-fly zone in Syria.CTV Atlantic
Two private investors are said to be interested in buying Exhibition Park, which is scheduled to close Nov. 15.
Jim Gourlay with the Exposition Managers Society of Nova Scotia won’t name the potential investors, but says it’s a Halifax developer offering to pay market value.
He says the society wants to see the building saved and repairs done as soon as possible.
“We can get repairs done before the winter closes in on us,” said Gourlay. “If we lose a year, we lose momentum and we lose a lot.”
Three tourism and exhibition associations are backing the private takeover. The owner and the province are currently looking over the options.
Supporters of the exhibition industry say the private investor has committed to operating and maintaining the facility for eight years. They're hopeful under new management and with aggressive marketing the industry can double its revenue over the next decade.
Business owner Chris Shaw brings in $250,000 at Halifax's Annual International Boat Show. He says exhibitions create jobs, fill hotels and bring in new business opportunities.
“It is a big economic engine both for us and for the community,” said Shaw.
Government plans to close down the facility as they are unable to afford the repairs to keep it going.
Those most affected say closing the facility as planned would decimate a $12 million industry.
“We are seeing an important piece of infrastructure being closed very abruptly,” said Darlene Grant Fiander of the Nova Scotia Tourism Association. “It is a significant revenue generator for the province.”
On Tuesday, the government acknowledged the need to come to a resolution quickly, but wouldn't say if or when a deal would be made.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kelland Sundahl.Florida’s First Public Pot Dispensary Opens
Despite the voter-backed medical pot bill which won by over 70 percent back in November. State legislators in Tallahassee are doing everything in their power undermine this giant shift in Florida. On the other hand medical pot dispensaries are slowly becoming a reality in south Florida. Miami’s first legal storefront dispensary just opened last week, just across the bay near the airport, commissioners will vote on where three new dispensaries could open in Miami Beach. “ We have been delivering to the Miami area since July, but we’re very excited to have a brick-and-mortar storefront so patients can avoid delivery fees,” said Kim Rivers, spokesperson for Trulieve, the North Florida based firm behind the first dispensary in South Florida. At this moment, The dispensary is operating under rules that were passed in 2014 and 2015, which allows low-THC products for certain illnesses and full marijuana products for those who are terminally ill. The shop has a variety of marijuana-based...
See Article on Marijuana Stocks HEREEstonians arrested in Perth over scam stealing money from Australian bank accounts
Posted
WA Police have arrested three Estonians allegedly involved in a crime syndicate stealing from Australian bank accounts electronically.
Key points: Three Estonian nationals arrested in WA over bank scam
Believed to be up to 100 victims across Australia and at least $3.5 million lost.
People from Estonia, eastern European nations recruited to open bank accounts in Australia
Police warning Estonian community to be wary
Police believe up there are up to 100 victims across the nation, with at least $3,500,000 lost.
The syndicate has allegedly recruited people from Estonia and other eastern European nations to open bank accounts in Australia to receive the funds.
The Fraud Squad says the three men in Western Australia were recruited via social media, one overseas and the other two locally.
Detective Sergeant Andie Fagan of the Major Fraud Squad has warned members of the Estonian community to be aware.
"We're actually preferring Commonwealth charges related to money laundering, dealing with the proceeds of crime," he said.
"There is an imprisonment term of up to 20 years. That's why we're actually appealing to the Estonian community.
"These people, once they're recruited, they're recruited with the promise of easy money.
"They're young, they're naive, they don't understand the charges that they're facing."
Detective Sergeant Fagan said that once someone had become part of the syndicate, it was hard to get out of it.
"Once they've been drawn into the syndicate some of them have realised what they're doing is wrong, there've been threats of intimidation to them and there's been allegations of threats to their families in Estonia as well," he said.
An Estonian national, aged 23, was arrested on February 23 and is facing 10 charges over allegations he received more than $195,000 into six accounts he held.
A 20-year-old Estonian national arrested on December 26 is facing two charges, and an 18-year-old Estonian arrested in October is facing 15 counts.
Bank accounts, superannuation accounts and even personal accounts have been compromised by the syndicate.
Police targeted large bank transfers
Detective Sergeant Fagan said bank transfers involving large amounts have been targeted.
"Once they agree to partake in the syndicate's operation they are encouraged to open bank accounts with numerous banks within Australia," he said.
"They are then instructed that funds will be going into those accounts and they are to withdraw the funds as soon as possible.
"Once the funds are withdrawn, there's several means they're distributed, be that through money remitters, through money laundering, changing into financial currency and then being distributed through other syndicate members throughout Australia."
The syndicate member is advised via a phone app that they have to withdraw the funds and told how to distribute it.
The main operators are believed to be in Australia and overseas.
The form of computer technology used to compromise the accounts and transfers was being investigated by the AFP.
Detective Sergeant Fagan said the multi-agency operation also involved Border Force and the Department of Immigration.
There had been arrests in other states, and it was known that Germans, Lithuanians and Latvians had been approached.
The Fraud Squad started Operation Swindle in October 2015, but this type of crime has been happening in Europe for about a decade.
Detective Sergeant Fagan has predicted a fraud epidemic in Australia in five years.
Topics: fraud-and-corporate-crime, perth-600013 Patio 29, a section of Santiago’s General Cemetery, where political dissidents and supporters of Salvador Allende were buried anonymously in mass graves. To this day, not all of the people have been identified correctly, and many families still aren’t sure what happened to their loved ones. In 2006, the government declared the site a national monument.
In the week leading up to Chile’s 2013 Presidential elections, the photographer Jon Lowenstein and his brother, the writer and Fulbright scholar Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, are documenting this unique, historic period. Forty years ago, General Augusto Pinochet and his military overthrew President Salvador Allende; today, even after the Chilean transition to democracy and Pinochet’s death, tensions remain.The Lowensteins, sponsored by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, are exploring the ways in which the country has recently begun to confront its past more publicly, from the monuments and parks that commemorate the thousands who were murdered during the Pinochet years to the national-television broadcasts of formerly banned footage of the coup d'état. Nevertheless, for many Chileans, the attention now given to these events is still met with raw emotion. Jeff recounts an interview with one Chilean this week:
Ana Gonzalez, a feisty eighty-seven-year-old, survived many detentions and the disappearances of her husband, two of her sons, and a pregnant daughter-in-law. Gonzalez pays tribute to her murdered relatives by continuing to wage a joyful struggle for justice: “When you take this path of liberation … you know that you can die at any moment … but forgetting is death. Because of that, memory is essential.”
Check back in throughout the next two weeks for additional coverage.
Photographs by Jon Lowenstein/NOOR/Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.Out of all the wrongs that need addressing in the world, what single cause should Christians give their priority? Is it curbing hunger? Helping the sick? Rooting out the cabal of clergy pedophiles?
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
It’s getting women to cover their heads during worship. That’s what the Christians behind the head covering movement (HCM) believe, anyway. They follow the Calvinist theologian John Murray:
Above anything else, they follow the Bible. The head-coverers quote 1 Corinthians 11:4-15:
Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved.
I knew God didn’t like Sinead O’Connor… and now we have biblical proof!
But I digress. Back to 1 Corinthians:
Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
What happens if women’s tresses are left uncovered? Such a sight is (you guessed it) an abomination unto the Lord. On the head-covering website we learn that obedience to God separates the just from the unjust, and here’s what’s happens to the latter: they will be subjected to
…judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught.
Isn’t that sweet?
One of the testimonies on the site is from a Melissa Walker, who started covering not even two weeks ago (she’s the only woman in her Colorado church to do so) but who must already feel more virtuous than all the other ladies, considering that they are hos hussies floozies sinners — by the HCM’s own definition, anyway.
To get a sense of what’s really motivating the head covering movement, R.C. Sproul‘s quote on the home page is instructive (Sproul is a Calvinist warrior, a Council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and a true-blue believer in the Bible’s inerrancy):
The wearing of fabric head coverings in worship was universally the practice of Christian women until the twentieth century. What happened? Did we suddenly find some biblical truth to which the saints for thousands of years were blind? Or were our biblical views of women gradually eroded by the modern feminist movement that has infiltrated the Church?”
There you have it. The men behind the HCM have bones to pick and scores to settle, with an eye on pushing feminists from the faith — and on regaining control over uppity womenfolk. As my friend Benjamin Corey (an Anabaptist preacher, no less) points out, Ms. Walker and other female providers of HCM testimonials call themselves their husbands’ “help-meets,” a label that makes us both cringe thanks to the second-fiddle, subjugated-woman connotation.
I actually love that these people exist (and that they have a nice crisp-looking website that demonstrates that they know they don’t live in the 19th — or the 5th — century). That’s because their misogynist hooey will likely do more damage to the cause of Christianity than a hundred atheist blog posts ever could.A 14-year-old girl was raped twice in one night by two separate attackers, one of whom she flagged down for help, police say.
Authorities in Birmingham have launched a major investigation after the girl was subjected to a “horrifying ordeal” on Tuesday night.
She was reportedly with a friend at Witton train station at about 7pm when a man approached her and led her to a secluded area, before raping her.
Shortly after the attack, the victim walked away from the area and flagged down a passing car to ask for help at about 2am.
Police say when she got into the vehicle she was raped for a second time by what is believed to be a second offender.
The girl then returned home and the police were called.
On Thursday, detectives from British Transport Police and West Midlands Police launched a joint investigation to help identify the offenders and witnesses to the incidents.
DCI Tony Fitzpatrick from British Transport Police, said: “This was a horrifying ordeal for this young girl and we have specially trained officers supporting her.
“It is now vitally important we investigate exactly what happened on Tuesday morning as well as identifying offenders for both of these awful incidents."
The first offender is described as an Asian man in his early 20s with light skin, brown eyes, a skinny build, and about 6ft. He was wearing a grey track suit top and bottoms and black trainers.
The second offender is described as an Asian man in his early 20s, 5ft 6ins to 5fit 7ins, of large build with a tight beard. He was wearing a blue jumper and black jeans.
DCI Fitzpatrick added: “Whilst this incident happened during the early morning and there may not have been many people around, I would be keen to speak with anyone who may have been in the area at the time.
"If you were passing by the station and saw two girls walking with an older man, then please get in touch immediately.
“Likewise, if you saw any suspicious vehicles close to Witton station close to 2am then please get in touch as soon as possible.”
The age of the girl was originally believed to be 15.
Anyone with any information is asked to get in touch by sending a text to 61016 or by calling 0800 40 50 40 quoting reference 65 of 26/07/2017. Alternatively, pass information anonymously to independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.Troops fire on refugees trying to enter Macedonia
By Bill Van Auken
22 August 2015
Macedonian soldiers and police opened fire Friday on thousands of refugees crowded at a border crossing, leaving several people wounded. The violence came one day after the government in Skopje declared a state of emergency and rushed troops to the country’s border with Greece to stem the flow of refugees seeking to cross the Balkans into northern Europe.
After sealing the border with razor wire, the Macedonian security forces, backed by armored vehicles, fired tear gas, stun grenades and plastic bullets into the crowd, which included many women and children. Police using batons and shields beat a number of the refugees.
Unrest among the refugees increased after Macedonian authorities announced that they would allow “a limited number of illegal migrants in vulnerable categories” to cross the border and let in a few hundred refugees, consisting largely of families with children and pregnant women.
The move intensified demands from the rest of the refugees, who have been trapped in a no-man’s-land along the border, sleeping outside in the cold and damp, without food or shelter.
Macedonian Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevsky defended the vicious assault on the defenseless refugees, declaring that the troops and police were “standing on our territory and defending the border.” The aim, he added, was to “reduce illegal border entry to a minimum.”
The Macedonian government, the spokesman said, was treating the refugees “according to our capacity,” adding that the European Union must do more to assist with what is a “global problem.”
The hardline policy against refugees adopted by the rightwing government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski is widely seen as an attempt to create a diversion from the growing popular uproar over a massive wiretapping scandal and endemic corruption, in advance of an upcoming election.
The violence against the refugees drew condemnation from human rights groups, which charged that the actions of Macedonia were in violation of international law.
“The Macedonian authorities are responding as if they were dealing with rioters rather than refugees who have fled conflict and persecution,” said Amnesty International’s Europe deputy director Gauri van Gulik.
“All countries have a duty to protect those fleeing conflict and persecution, and Macedonia is no exception,” van Gulik added. “When the system cannot cope, you improve the system, you don’t just stop people from coming in.”
The United Nations agency for refugees issued a statement declaring that it “is particularly worried about the thousands of vulnerable refugees and migrants, especially women and children, now massed on the Greek side of the border amid deteriorating conditions.”
Many of the refugees are fleeing the death and destruction caused by imperialist interventions in the Middle East. Of the 42,000 refugees registered as traveling through Macedonia over the past month—double the number of the month before—more than half were from Syria, where the Western-backed war for regime change has driven some four million people out of the country.
Outside the Macedonian border crossing, several people held up signs reading, “Help us, Syria.”
“We are very angry because the police had told us they would let us through today. We are not animals,” Jad, a 25-year-old Syrian, told AFP.
Jacob, also Syrian, told the news agency, “We are hunted in Syria because we are Christian. They wanted to kill us. Why won’t they let us through here?” he asked.
Macedonia is only the latest flashpoint in the campaign of repressive measures being unleashed against refugees across Europe. The Syriza government in Greece has behaved similarly, sending riot police to deal with desperate refugees who have crossed the Mediterranean to Greek islands from Turkey and seeking to drive them out of the country.
Hungary, the EU country bordering the Balkans, has begun building a four-meter-high fence to block refugees from entering from Serbia. Britain, meanwhile, has beefed up security at the French port of Calais to block refugees trying to cross from France.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are set to meet in Berlin on Monday for a discussion on the refugee issue. In preparation for the meeting, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and his French counterpart Bernard Cazeneuve held a news conference on Thursday in Berlin calling for a stepped-up and coordinated response to the rising flow of refugees.
“It’s unacceptable for European institutions to continue working at the pace they are currently operating at,” said de Maiziere. He said that he and the French interior minister had agreed that the EU should assist Italy and Greece in setting up “waiting areas” for imprisoning refugees. He also called upon the EU Commission to pressure countries bordering the EU to take back refugees denied asylum and expelled from EU countries.
A spokeswoman for the European Commission responded to Maiziere’s criticism by telling reporters in Brussels that the problem was not with the EU, but rather with its member governments, which have failed to support existing plans for dealing with the issue.
“The proposals are all on the table,” said the spokeswoman, Annika Breidthardt. “It’s time that member states adopted them.”
“We can only succeed if we work together on this, not against each other,” she added.
With the drive to create a “fortress Europe” to keep the refugees out, the national conflicts between the various European powers are intensifying, with increasingly bitter recriminations over differing refugee policies as well as over the number of refugees being accepted by each country.
Within this context, rightwing and neofascist elements are waging an increasingly violent campaign against refugees and immigrants, while leading bourgeois politicians in a number of countries are calling for the scrapping of the Schengen Agreement, which allows visa-free travel across the EU.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.On 15 December 2017, progressive blogs reported that President Trump had hosted the head of the National Rifle Association at the White House on the fifth anniversary of Sandy Hook massacre, in which a gunman murdered twenty children and seven adults in Connecticut before killing himself:
The article began:
Not only did Donald Trump not tweet out messages of condolences for families who lost loved ones five years ago on Thursday at the [Sandy] Hook gun massacre in Connecticut, and not only did White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on that day insist there’s simply nothing that can be done to battle American epidemic of gun violence, but Trump himself managed to insult the Sandy Hook families in another appalling way. In a craven display of collective indifference, Trump hosted Wayne LaPierre, the controversial head of the NRA, at the White House on [14 December 2017], as families and friends of the elementary school gun massacre were remembering the victims of the horrific killing spree.
The piece cited a Facebook post published by Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick:
Patrick’s Facebook post described the “the White House Christmas party,” adding that LaPierre was among attendees. No other NRA officials were mentioned, and LaPierre was shown with Patrick (not Trump) in attached photographs. The blog’s header image showing Trump and LaPierre shaking hands dated to early 2017 and was not taken at the 14 December reception.
Readers came away with the impression that the White House had hosted a holiday party explicitly for the National Rifle Association:
@realDonaldTrump A NRA party at the White House on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre? Really? You dont have people on your staff to prevent stupid optics like this? I thought you were surrounded by the best? — Yusef Johnson (@coachyusef) December 16, 2017
Few outlets covered the reception, but a 15 December 2017 article published by the Palm Beach Daily News written by an attendee:
Both the East Room and the State Dining Room were filled with gourmet delights. The tasty treats had an Americana feeling, from chaffing dishes filled with Southern grits sprinkled with Christmas-green parsley to elegant silver platters of smoked salmon and on to macaroni casserole, sliced tenderloin of beef, spinach-filled pastry cups to an array of mixed salads and fruits. The dessert table — make that tables — held gingerbread cookies and those red raspberry-filled Christmas candies, a delight to look at and enjoy. Those White House chefs can do anything the First Family might enjoy. The president and the first lady seemed merry, extending to their guests the warmth and happiness that accompanies this season of joy.
It included an invitation to the “Holiday Reception”:
A 27 November 2017 Washington Post article reported that the invitation was one used for several events:
There have, however, been a few hiccups in Trump’s attempt to make Christmas great again. The formal invitations to the series of White House parties hosted for friends, supporters, staff and the press corps went out this month with some messaging underneath the gold presidential seal that sent political media cackling. Rather than calling the event a White House “Christmas party” the invitation’s curly script reads, yes, “Holiday Reception.”
The White House’s blog post about the holiday season also mentions more than one event:
Throughout the month of December, the White House will host more than 100 open houses and many receptions. More than 25,000 visitors will walk the halls taking part in public tours.
In 2014, the Washington Post published an article about the many holiday receptions held at the White House each year, noting that members of the First Family hardly interact with guests at all because of the sheer number of such events held each year:
You’re not actually mixing and mingling with the president and first lady. The Obamas usually hole up in the residence at the beginning of the reception before descending the grand staircase, possibly saying a few words and then heading straight to the photo line. But despite the brief cameo, the crowd goes wild. “Everyone is cheering and showing all 32 teeth when the president and first lady enter the room,” said one invitee. “Now granted, most people don’t realize they have been invited to one of the 13 or more holiday parties.”
Headlines coupled with an unrelated photograph of Trump with LaPierre exacerbated the impression that the White House had callously hosted the NRA and warmly welcomed LaPierre on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting; but despite the unrelated image, LaPierre was just one of many people in attendance at one of many holiday events. While it can be argued that his inclusion on that date was tone-deaf, it does not appear to be a deliberate slight against victims of mass shootings.
The coordination of such events is handled by the White House Social Secretary, and the President and First Lady historically make cameo appearances at the events but they rarely interact with guests.If we look at the Quranic injunctions pertaining to shariah, it will soon be very evident to a man who has no religious bias, no blind followership to religion, and who is rational and enlightened, that the age old teachings of the Quran cannot be applied to the present times. The people who desperately aspire for the promulgation of Islamic Shariah to the present Muslim world are oblivious of the fact that the two, the current age and the Islamic Shariah, are incompatible; and it is rather disastrous to struggle for this unholy cause. Nothing but a failed state will be the ultimate outcome of this irrational movement.
Religion is the result of the craftsmanship of man. Nobody in heavens ever dared invent this tool, nor devised this method, to put people into the labyrinth of religiosity. People ask to provide solid proof to justify my thesis, but they themselves badly fail to prove the existence of God. If only holy scriptures are presented to tell about the existence of God in the universe, then obviously a skeptical person will challenge their authenticity. He will fail to accept the argument |
ford) at No. 3 and Conley at No. 4. Then they did bounce Memphis' way (in 2008) and they jumped up to No. 2 for Thabeet. But they weathered all that."
Lottery heartbreak is so ingrained in Memphis, they could play it as a song on Beale Street. In 2003, the Grizzlies entered the lottery knowing they could either keep the No. 1 pick, which was obviously James, or they'd have to ship it to the Detroit Pistons to complete a 1997 trade involving Otis Thorpe. Five teams finished with a worse record than the Grizzlies, but they moved up to No. 2 and never got to make the pick. (Detroit took Darko Milicic, but Memphis likely would have picked Carmelo Anthony.)
"It was a crusher at the time," Penn said. "A tough pill to swallow."
So was the Thabeet pick, which Memphis acknowledged was a bust after a season and a half. Likewise, the Grizzlies took Xavier Henry at No. 12 overall in 2010 and only played him in 38 games before he was traded for backup big man Marreese Speights. Though Mayo was a productive player on two Grizzlies playoff teams in four seasons, he never developed into a star and left as a free agent last summer.
On the whole, though, Wallace has clearly made more good moves than bad, and now the Grizzlies are reaping the benefits. The draft lottery is next Tuesday, and it doesn't look like they'll need to worry about it again for a while.
"To me it's thrilling for the people I know there, for the fans of Memphis who have been really good (even though) our teams didn't give them anything to cheer for like they have this year," West said. "The coordination they have defensively gives them a chance against any team, I don't care who it is, and I think they know it. It's a very, very good team. It's thrilling to see all the things they've done there come to fruition."
PHOTOS: Grizzlies beat Clippers 4-2 in first roundThe Cal rugby team was supposed to be celebrating after winning a championship final on Saturday, but instead the team and their families are heartbroken after one of their players was severely injured.Robert Paylor was left paralyzed after falling on his head.Nathan Becker, also a rugby player, is his housemate. "It's tough for all of us. It casts a shadow on the victory, it's not right," he said.Paylor's family issued a statement. "Robert is currently working on stabilizing his condition so he can start rehabilitation. The injury paralyzed his lower body with limited motion in his arms."The injury occurred just three minutes into the match. Paylor, a sophomore from Cal from El Dorado Hills, had surgery that evening which doctors hope will give him a greater chance of regaining movement.In a statement, the head coach Jack Clark said, "His challenges will be severe, long in duration and difficult beyond measure. Our team intends to be there with him every bit of the way."Because he will need a lot of rehabilitation, a GoFundMe page has been set up to cover his future medical bills. The goal was set at $1 million."All of that will go to rehabilitation. He will get moved to a rehabilitation facility after that and so that's the best way to help, if you're willing to help him," Becker said.A prayer service will be held on campus on Thursday beginning at 8 p.m. The entire Cal community is welcome.This drawing illustrating my battle with the trolls by CatieMonster totally made my day!
Media Round-Up
Below I've posted a few of the interviews and articles that have appeared in the last few days discussing this project, the recent attacks on me and some thoughtful commentary about online harassment in gaming and on the internet in general. (A word of warning before entering the comments in some of these articles)
INTERVIEWS
• From Samus to Lara: An Interview With Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency Interview with Carolyn Petit - Gamespot
• How Anita Sarkeesian funded a project about video game sexism, and ignited an internet firestorm - PMSClan
NEWS
• Dear Internet This Is Why You Can't Have Anything Nice - New Statesman
• Feminist Take on Games Draws Crude Ridicule, Massive Support - Wired
• Think sexism's OK in games, you may be in the wrong century - Guardian
• Online Misogyny: Can't Ignore It, Can't Not Ignore It - Slate
• Lara Croft battles male jerks - Salon
BLOGS
• Tropes Vs. Women In Video Games Vs. The Internet - Rock Paper Shotgun
• When There’s So Much Bullshit Online, You Forget How to Feel - Jezebel
• This Week In Harassment - The Borderhouse Blog
• Kickstarter Video Project Attracts Misogynist Horde - The Escapist
• Feminist Frequency Kickstarter project smashes target - Games Industry
• Backlash to the Feminist Frequency Kickstarter - Geek Feminism
• Awful Things Happen When You Try to Make a Video About Video Game Stereotypes - Kotaku
• The All-Too-Familiar Harassment Against Feminist Frequency, and What The Gaming Community Can Do About It - The Mary Sue
I'm totally overwhelmed with everything that's happening at the moment but I just want to reiterate that all your words of support, messages, comments, tweets and pledges have meant the world to me during this past week. Unfortunately, the harassment continues unabated but the outpouring of encouragement I've received from gamers, non-gamers and game developers alike gives me hope for the future of gaming!We are all responsible (Picture:Malsveta/Malsveta)
All parents will know that colouring pencils are an essential diversion for young children that can prove pretty handy when it comes to getting a few moments’ peace.
But it’s now feared that we could be facing a colouring pencil shortage, and it’s adults that are to blame.
Faber-Castell, one of the world’s leading colouring pencils manufacturers, say that an increase in adults buying colouring books has led to a short supply in pencils.
They’ve now had to run extra shifts to cope with the unexpected increase in demand.
Carlotta Lein, a spokesman for Faber-Castell, said: ‘We have noticed the effects of the colouring trend very strongly.
It’s probably got something to do with the influence of this bloke when we were children (Picture: ITV)
‘Colouring doesn’t require artistic training to get started, yet offers a great sense of accomplishment when finishing a piece.’
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MORE: This is what actually happens to your body when you eat an Easter Egg
Adult colouring books have sold over 20 million copies over recent years, and it’s this that is thought to have caused the shortage.
In short, use colouring pencils responsibly people, which is a sentence that we never envisaged having to write.DETROIT, MI - NOVEMBER 27: Matthew Stafford #9 of the Detroit Lions talks with the sideline reporters after the game against the Chicago Bears at Ford Field on November 27, 2014 in Detroit, Michigan. The Lions defeated the Bears 34-17. (Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images) DETROIT, MI - NOVEMBER 27: Matthew Stafford #9 of the Detroit Lions talks with the sideline reporters after the game against the Chicago Bears at Ford Field on November 27, 2014 in Detroit, Michigan. The Lions defeated the Bears 34-17. (Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images)
NOAH TRISTER, AP Sports Writer
ALLEN PARK, Mich. (AP) — Matthew Stafford tries not to spend too much time thinking about how close his Detroit Lions came to an elusive victory in the postseason.
“In this business, if you’re thinking about what was, you’ve got issues,” Stafford said. “I feel like I’ve trained my body and my mind for as long as I’ve played quarterback to forget the last play, forget the last game, whatever it was, good or bad, and go forward.”
If the second half of Detroit’s playoff game at Dallas had gone a bit differently, the narrative surrounding Stafford might have changed considerably.
The Lions have won one postseason game in the past half-century, and in six seasons with the team, Stafford has been unable to add to that meager total. Detroit nearly broke through last season, but the Lions allowed the final 17 points in that 24-20 loss to the Cowboys.
There was, of course, that moment of controversy when officials reversed themselves, negating what at first looked like a crucial pass interference call against Dallas. That was particularly tough to take for the Lions and their fans.
Because Detroit lost, Stafford’s performance in that game — 28 of 42 for 323 yards — has been largely forgotten. Instead, he enters this season still trying to prove that he is the quarterback who can lead the Lions deep into the postseason.
Last year was his first season under new coach Jim Caldwell, and his numbers were fairly pedestrian. He threw for 4,257 yards — the lowest full-season total of his career — with 22 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
The Lions have done their best to put talent around him. Before last season, they added receiver Golden Tate. Now they’ve overhauled their offensive line and drafted running back Ameer Abdullah. And some more familiarity with the system could help.
“It’s the second year in this thing,” star receiver Calvin Johnson said at minicamp Thursday. “His comfort level has risen a lot. I’m sure if you talked to him, he’d probably say the same thing.”
Stafford said there’s no question the team is making strides this offseason. Detroit made the playoffs as a wild card last season, thanks in part to a terrific defense. With Ndamukong Suh having left via free agency, the Lions may need more from the offense.
Stafford measures up favorably — by a wide margin — against other recent Detroit quarterbacks. But as the No. 1 pick in the 2009 draft, the standard is higher for him.
Stafford’s 2011 season — his only other playoff appearance — remains a bit of a benchmark. He completed 63.5 percent of his passes that season, throwing for 5,038 yards and 41 touchdowns.
His yardage has declined steadily since then, although he did complete 60.3 percent of his passes in 2014, his first time over 60 since 2011.
Stafford says he’ll spend some time over the next five or six weeks thinking of some personal goals he’d like to reach this season.
“I have them, usually every year. Just things that maybe on paper you can quantify, maybe you can’t,” he said. “I’ll spend some time and think about that, and you’ll probably ask me about it in training camp, and I won’t tell you, and it’ll be great.”
Although Caldwell is fine with players having personal goals — and he wants them to be lofty — he objects to the idea that the offense needs to be more flashy or put up huge numbers.
“We’re more interested in winning games,” Caldwell said. “So, sometimes that requires an offense to take care of the ball and not give it away and be very, very effective. It has nothing to do with really scoring. We can play defense. We have a good defensive team and when you do that you have to play complementary football.”
In other words, the team’s success or failure hinges on more than just its quarterback.
“I know a lot of people that like to kind of point and say, ‘Matthew’s got to do this,'” Caldwell said. “Matthew just has to do his job.”
___
AP NFL website: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL
(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)Away from its busy capital city and famous canal, Panama is one of the world's most ecologically diverse nations.
Yet huge new hydroelectric dam projects now underway are seeing pristine rivers damned and virgin rainforest flooded.
The government says it is vital for economic growth, big business is cashing in and even the UN has awarded carbon credits on the basis that the resultant energy will be'sustainably' produced.
But for the indigenous Ngabe people - whose homes are vanishing under water - it is a catastrophe. So they have been fighting back. Filmmaker Glenn Elis went to Panama for People & Power to find out more.
Filmmaker's view: Glenn Elis
Last February, the most famous Panamanian in the world went for a routine medical check-up. The authorities used a decoy, and General Noriega, the country's former military governor, was spirited back to his luxury detention centre, safe from prying eyes and a hungry press. Nonetheless, acres of news print around the world were lavished on the event, while a far more urgent unravelling Panamanian story dropped under the radar.
Panama's largest indigenous group, the Ngabe, had decided to take a stand against the unlawful encroachment of their homeland. Since the time of the conquistadors, the Ngabe have been pushed to the margins of the country - forced to live on the land that no one else wanted. Twenty years ago the Panamanian government finally ceded what was considered a useless tract of land to them. The Ngabe had in fact lived there for centuries, so by rights it has always been theirs.
But now this land, rich in mineral deposits and rivers, is considered priceless. And Ricardo Martinelli, Panama's authoritarian president who is a close friend of former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, wants it back.
His plan is to open the Ngabe heartland to foreign mining companies and push hydroelectric power projects onto an unwilling population. The problem is that the Ngabe have nowhere else to go. So the scene was set for a dramatic showdown, which started when the Ngabe closed the Pan-American Highway in Chiriquí province in the west of the country - bringing Panama to a standstill.
Their demand: an audience with the president. Martinelli's response was extraordinary for this relatively peaceful country with a constitution that forbids the formation of an army. The police, who human rights observers say have become increasingly militarised since Martinelli became president three years ago, launched a vicious crackdown, cutting communications with the outside world, and allegedly shooting innocent bystanders as well as peaceful protesters.
Harrowing reports surfaced of rapes and the mistreatment of detainees, as scores of Ngabe men, women and children were arrested. At least two people were killed and many more were injured. The crackdown lasted for three days and proved so unpopular with Panamanians, that Martinelli was forced into negotiations with the Ngabe.
Opening fire
The talks were taking place at the National Assembly building in the centre of Panama City and dozens of Ngabe families had set up camp nearby to show support for Silvia Carerra, their elected leader who is known as the Casica.
It was here that my crew and I set up our camera on my first day in Panama to interview some of the people who had travelled hundreds of miles to make their point. We had just started to interview a young woman and child when gun shots rang through the air. The police had opened fire at the demonstrators. There were several shotgun injuries, none serious, but nasty all the same. It seemed inexplicable. Why fire into a crowd filled with women and children, particularly at a time when their leader was negotiating with the government?
It is possible that the government was never that keen to talk to the Ngabe in the first place and that this was an attempt to provoke a reaction which would force the cancellation of the talks. If that was the plan, it did not work. The Casica had no intention of letting the government set the agenda and the talks continued.
But as I flicked through the channels in my hotel room later that night I was given an insight into the less than perfect relationship between the government and the media here. Panamanian TV media carried the police's version of events - that drunken Ngabe youths had gone on the rampage. It was a story that I knew for a fact was far from the truth.
A piece of paradise
The next day one of the so-called 'drunkards', a teetotaller by the name of Ricardo, invited us to his village. It was a six-hour drive from Panama City followed by a gruelling trek through mountain jungle. But nothing could have prepared me for the beauty of Kia - a settlement nestling on the banks of the Tabasara River.
Here the Ngabe have carved out a little piece of paradise for themselves, and I saw at once why they are fighting so hard to protect it. There is an open air school where children are taught in the Ngabe language, which is vital if their unique culture is to survive. And I enjoyed a continuous stream of hospitality as we talked into the early hours under a night sky unblemished by light pollution.
The following morning Ricardo gave us a guided tour of the village, explaining the close bond between his people and nature. I was taken a short distance to the riverbank where a little girl showed us a colony of Tabasara Rain Frogs, one of the rarest species in the world, which are found nowhere else on the planet. If the government has its way, all this will be flooded and the frogs will disappear.
Yet a few miles downstream from Kia, the massive construction site of Barro Blanco is an ugly blot on the landscape. As the enormous dam takes shapes, armed guards patrol the perimeter to keep the villagers away. When the dam is complete the village of Kia will be lost.
From Kia I travelled northwest to visit Ngabe villagers who had already lost their community. They had been made homeless by another hydroelectric project last year, when the mighty Changuinola River was dammed. Here I met Carolina. Her house had been built on higher ground than those of her neighbours in the village of Guiyaboa, but it was still not high enough. The village now lies deep underwater and all that can be seen is the roof of Carolina's house, jutting out of the water like some incongruous monument. She told me that she and countless others had received no compensation for loss of their land, crops or housing.
I travelled on through Chiriqui province, the scene of the crackdown, and met and interviewed survivors and the relatives of those who had been killed by the police. I found it hard to understand why they had died. All the Ngabe had been asking for was an opportunity to talk to the government - a concession that the authorities had to make in the end anyway. It is not surprising that, away from the glitzy skyscrapers of the capital, a terrible sense of injustice and resentment is simmering below the surface.
A roll call of Panama's wealthy
Back in Panama City, Jorge Ricardo Fabrega, the country's powerful minister of government, agreed to meet me and explain the government's side. He admitted that things could have been handled better at Changuinola, but insisted that during the recent crackdowns the police had behaved very professionally. He was keen to underline the importance of hydroelectric energy for Panama's booming economy and then stated categorically that nothing would be allowed to stop the Barro Blanco project going ahead.
"There's one thing that I have to make clear," he said. "We're not going to cancel Barro Blanco. The Barro Blanco project is under construction and it will continue." As I listened I thought of Ricardo and the other villagers whose future was being decided by the minister and his friends.
By now news had got around that a filmmaker from Al Jazeera was in the country and someone discreetly passed me a lengthy document detailing the government's future hydroelectric plans. It was an eye-opener. The sheer number of the projects is startling; if they all go ahead they will surely produce far more electricity than Panama will ever need, no matter how dynamic or fast growing its economy. Which begs the obvious question: What will they do with all this power?
Alongside each project listed were the names of the company directors involved - a roll call of Panama's wealthiest families. It was not difficult to put two and two together. Electricity is a commodity like anything else and if there is spare capacity it can be sold to energy-hungry consumers in neighbouring countries. Someone, it seemed, was going to get very rich. Unsurprisingly, that document has never been made public.
It was then I realised what Silvia Carerra, the Casica, was up against in her negotiations with the government. And on my last evening in Panama, I was lucky enough to meet her. Despite having been up since sunrise debating with other Ngabe leaders, she found time for an interview.
A charismatic 41-year-old, with little in the way of a formal education, she has found herself locked in negotiations with the minister I had just met. This remarkable woman is all that stands between her 100,000 kinsmen and development projects they neither want nor need. It must be a terrible responsibility. I found her candour and determination refreshing. She told me that even after all the government had done the Ngabe would never give in.
But in the meantime, of course, work at Barro Blanco and elsewhere goes on.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Watch more powerful groundbreaking investigative documentaries from People & Power
Source: Al JazeeraOpponents of renewable energy normally rely on economic arguments to bash wind, solar and related electricity generating technologies. Renewable energy is expensive and threatens to make consumers suffer dramatically higher electricity rates, while making U.S. industry uncompetitive the argument goes.
But the Energy Information Administration, part of the Department of Energy, has concluded that the price increase fears are overblown. This week, the EIA released "Impacts of a 25% Renewable Electricity Standard," finding electricity rates will be mostly unmoved if the federal government requires utilities to generate more power from renewable sources. Massachusetts Democratic representative Edward Markey, who is working hard to push an RES through Congress as part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, requested the report.
The EIA concludes that if the U.S. were to get 25% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, as Markey proposes, demand for coal and natural gas would slacken, and the price of dirty fuels would subsequently fall. Savings from lower fossil fuel bills will offset the additional cost utilities face in putting up solar farms and the like.
The result: Electricity rates could inch up by 3% or so in 2025 with renewables, versus a conventional power mix. But by 2030, lower coal and natural gas costs will be fully taken into account by utilities, with electricity costs a wash. Potential benefits of a renewables policy could be lower natural gas prices for home heating, cooking and industrial use as well.
But EIA's 50-page report doesn't see cost savings anytime soon. Through 2020 at least, there won't be enough renewable energy on the U.S. grid to substantially offset coal and natural gas use, so taxpayers and utility customers are likely to subsidize wind farms without the benefit of lower electric bills.
And EIA's estimates are hazy on the matter of new electric transmission lines that would carry renewable energy from remote, windy Great Plains and sunny deserts to big population centers. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu says a national electric superhighway will be needed to make renewables work best. The Energy Department says such a grid will likely cost $60 billion. But EIA factors in the cost of less robust grid upgrades.
Finally, the proposed 25% renewable standard is much less ambitious than it first appears. The proposed RPS has lax standards for rural utilities and removes hydroelectric power from the calculation baseline. When all caveats are taken into account, Markey's energy proposal would have just 17% of the country's electricity come from renewable sources.
The U.S. could get its clean energy on the cheap. But it won't get as much of that energy as advertised.55User Rating: 5 out of 5
Review title of The Owl Burb Physics On Point
DiRT Rally is not for casual racing fans. That is unless they are self hating individuals with the need to inflict self harm. This game is really well thought out. The physics model is absolutely brilliant to the point where your RWD car will betray you on gravel! A lot of development went into the environments to the point where this game will give you more or less grip in a corner depending on the amount of gravel you are pushing under your vehicles tires. Yes the attention to detail is that deep. CM even created a turbocharger model that helps the simulation of 'boost'. If you don't believe me look it up. Not for newcomers. Even Forza 6's top drivers will find this game challenging. Beautiful graphics even if they are throttled on Xbox, you will never grow tired of the environments!The Central Coast Mariners have completed their double swoop of ex-Sydney FC pair Jacques Faty and Mickael Tavares after the latter was released by the Sky Blues on Monday afternoon.
Veteran defender Faty was picked up the Mariners last week, just hours after being cut by the Sky Blues. As soon as that deal was completed, speculation mounted that Tavares would be joining his cousin in Gosford, despite having a year to run on his contract.
The move of the two players appears to be a win-win, with the Mariners badly needing some experience while the Sky Blues urgently need to refresh their squad - and the space in the salary cap will be welcomed by Graham Arnold, who also gets the chance to find two new visa players next season.
"Mickael had a great start to his career at Sydney FC and helped us reach the heights last year in our record-breaking season," Arnold said. "This season things haven't gone as well and we have agreed to part company but I wish him very well for the future and the best of luck to him and his family."Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company has said he stands behind ESPN’s politically-vocal employee Jamele Hill, and has empathy for those NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem.” Speaking at the Vanity Fair summit on Tuesday, Iger said, “I happen to believe in the national anthem, and I stand up when it’s played and I’d like everybody else to, but I just think we’ve got to take into account what we’re seeing societally and what people are feeling, and a little empathy in that regard would go a long way.”
In September, Hill, a SportsCenter anchor, tweeted that Donald Trump ‘is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.’ In doing so, she risked her employment, because, as Iger said, “Jemele Hill is an ESPN employee, and she can’t separate herself from that when she speaks publicly, or uses Twitter to express her opinion, and we have policies against that.” However, an exception was made in this case he said, because, “Jemele Hill felt she had to in the wake of what happened in Charlottesville, in the wake of what the President of the United States said…In this particular case, I did get involved. I felt that we had to take context into account, and context in that case included what was going on in America. There were a lot of people out there that were outraged, particularly black people…The rights that they thought had been won in the Civil rights movement were theirs, in other words, they had earned them and I think they’ve seen in these last number of months is the opposite and it’s not only disappointing, it is angering them.”
“I’ve not ever experienced prejudice and certainly not racism,” Iger went on, “so it’s hard for me to understand what they’re feeling about this, what it feel like to experience racism, so I felt that we need to take into account what Jemele and other people at ESPN were feeling at this time. That resulted in us not taking action on the Tweet that she put out.”
Iger also acknowledged the NFL athletes who have lately not been standing for the national anthem, and those other ESPN employees who feel strongly on the subject, saying, “I think athletes in many cases feel that they have an obligation. Having earned the voice that they’ve earned as successful athletes, to speak out on various issues that are meaningful to them, so we’ve given ESPN license to do it.”
But as he said, Iger himself will stand for the national anthem. “I’m pretty patriotic,” he said. “I’m a product of the American dream. I grew up in a middle class household and ended up running the Walt Disney company. That’s pretty damn good.”Adapted from a recent online discussion.
Dear Carolyn:
I did some research and found my perfect wedding venue: not expensive, halfway between his family and mine, lodging on site, in the woods.... I got all excited about it and told a girlfriend of mine. She has been engaged for over a year and they have been saving for the ceremony.
Well, she BOOKED MY VENUE! I know we will be invited, but I do not want to go. I don’t want to be friends with her, and am torn about whether I even want to use the same place. I just feel like it will lose some of its magic for me.
So I guess my questions are: Do you think I can be happy using the same venue she stole out from under me? Am I required to go to the wedding even if I’m absolutely livid about what she did?
[Brat] Stole My Venue!
My oldest sister had her reception in my parents’ back yard. My next-oldest sister: parents’ back yard. My (first) reception: parents’ back yard. My next-next oldest sister: guess where! No wedding was less magical for the fact of the others.
Now, I get this isn’t directly analogous, since it’s family, and naming generations of kids Charles, Charles Jr., Chip, Chuckles and Chaz is a matter of inclusion, whereas telling your friend you’ve always wanted to name a girl Charlie, and her then naming her girl Charlie first, is a crime against self-expression.
But there is overlap worth considering: Uniqueness of human experience is a fiction we tell ourselves. Maybe in combination the elements of your life amount to something one-of-a-kind, but you can be pretty sure each of the elements has been owned, done, claimed, crowed about before. So you can drive yourself bonkers trying to forge experiences at least unique to your Facebook feed, or you can decide your experience has value in its value to you.
If you love this venue, then book this venue. Your wedding will be different because it’s yours. (Chip, Chuckles and Chaz will differ because all that matching madras for Cousin Photos will scar them into defiantly original forms of adult acting out.)
Re: Venue Jealousy:
Kinda shocked you didn’t tell her to get over herself. Because, Really?
Anonymous
Thought I did, in my way.
But I also sympathize to a degree, where apparently few did. To use another analogy (sorry), imagine saying you loved a dress and then your friend, without saying boo to you, bought herself the same one. Okay, it’s an H&M dress, whatever, and anyone upset about it would get an eye-roll and a get-over-yourself. But with a dress carefully picked out with an occasion in mind, I think most people would look at the friend and say, “Really? You had to go out and buy the exact same dress I was excited about and spent hours picking out without saying something to me first?”
The answer ultimately is to get over oneself, because it’s just a thing, but a little sympathy would be in order, as well as recognition that someone pouncing on your venue/name/dress is a legitimately off-putting move.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Starbucks offers US employees the opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree
US coffee chain firm Starbucks will pay college fees for US workers to complete a bachelor's degree online in a tie-up with Arizona State University.
US employees of the firm who work at least 20 hours a week are eligible for the Starbucks College Achievement Plan.
Starbucks staff who are successfully enrolled will receive partial tuition for the first two years, and full tuition for their final two years.
The annual fee for online courses at the university can exceed $10,000.
After they've completed their bachelor's degree, the employees are not obligated to return to employment with Starbucks.
the inequality within the country has created a situation where many Americans are being left behind Howard Schultz, President, Starbucks
Starbucks staff looking to attend college online at Arizona State University (ASU) can choose from about 40 programmes including business, engineering, education and retail management.
'New precedent'
In a statement posted on its website, the university said the initiative was designed to'support the nearly 50% of college students in the United States today who fail to complete their degrees due to mounting debt, a tenuous work-life balance and a lack of support.'
In that same statement, Howard Schultz, chairman and president at Starbucks said: "There's no doubt, the inequality within the country has created a situation where many Americans are being left behind. The question for all of us is, should we accept that, or should we try and do something about it.
Supporting our partners' ambitions is the very best investment Starbucks can make. Everyone who works as hard as our partners do should have the opportunity to complete college, while balancing work, school and their personal lives."
Debt load
In addition to the financial aid, students who are admitted under the college plan will also have a dedicated enrolment coach, financial aid counsellor and academic advisor to support them through graduation.
Michael M. Crow, President at the Arizona State University said that Starbucks was "establishing a new precedent for the responsibility and role of a public company that leads through the lens of humanity and supports its partners' life goals with access to education."
The collaboration comes one week after a White House report showed student debt loan balance in the US had jumped to $1.1tn early this year, when compared to $250bn in 2003.
Last week US President Barack Obama signed an executive order allowing millions of student-loan borrowers to cap their payments at 10% of their monthly income.President Obama made closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay a campaign talking point and a policy initiative since he was elected president. Now, six years later, Guantanamo is still open. While it does not appear any of the detainees will receive a trial in the near future, maintaining the legal-limbo status quo, the United States has two more opportunities to prove that the justice system can handle high profile terrorism trials in civilian courts: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombings suspect, and Ahmed Abu Khattala, one of the alleged ringleaders of the terrorist group accused of killing four Americans in the attacks at the U.S. Special Mission Benghazi compound on Sept. 11, 2012.
One of the major legal fights over the detainees in Guantanamo is how they will be tried. Some have suggested military tribunals, which have so far proven to be slow and ineffective. On the other hand, some scholars have suggested trying these terrorists in civilian courts on U.S. soil. However, Congress has been highly skeptical about transferring detainees to U.S. soil. Pundits such as Marc Thiessen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, stated at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations that trying someone such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York in civilian trials would be "a propaganda tool," for such terrorists. "It's an opportunity for [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] to stand up on his soap box, and rally jihadists from around the world... to preach the jihad in an American courtroom, in front of the international media and use that trial — as a recruiting tool," said Thiessen.
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Those who disagree with Thiessen cite the inefficiency of military commissions or tribunals and cite the high success rate of civilian trials of terror and terror-related suspects. According to one study by New York University School of Law, 523 out of 593 suspects of terrorism or related charges were convicted between 2001 and 2009. According to Lyle Denniston, a longtime Supreme Court reporter, from a constitutional standpoint, "If the civilian courts were open and functioning during wartime, trials of civilians charged with crimes of war should be tried in those courts, not in military tribunals." Attorney General Eric Holder stated after the conviction of Osama bin Laden's son-in-law in a New York City court that "The verdict has proven that proceedings such as this can safely occur in the city." However, a recent profile of Holder recounted his intent to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City — even garnering the support of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) — though the failed Times Square bombing attempt raised questions concerning a high-profile terrorism trial in Manhattan.
The Boston Marathon bombings were the first successful terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11, which is why the government is taking a hard line against Tsarnaev. The U.S. government has sought the death penalty for Tsarnaev, citing "substantial planning and premeditation," "betrayal of the United States," "encouragement of others to commit acts of violence and terrorism," and "lack of remorse" for his actions, to name a few. Despite Tsarnaev's young age of 20, the government asserts that he became self-radicalized with propaganda published by al Qaeda and even urged others to wage jihad against the government which, in Tsarnaev's words, "is killing our innocent civilians."
The capture of Abu Khattala has been praised as a victory for U.S. justice and triggered comments from the president such as: "It's important for us to send a message to the world that when Americans are attacked, no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice." The issue surrounding Abu Khattala is slightly more complicated than Tsarnaev's, as he was a foreign national captured by U.S. Armed Forces and held on a ship. (Additionally, his actual involvement in the attacks in Benghazi are suspect. On the issue of his status as an enemy combatant, "he lacks the required nexus to al Qaeda or an associated force to trigger... detention" under the law).
Despite semantic debates concerning Tsarnaev and Khattala’s classification as "war criminals," the United States must still demonstrate that it is up to the challenge of continuing to try high-profile terrorists in the American justice system. This is a very important nexus in the War on Terror. Issues of concern such as the delayed reading of Miranda rights under the "public safety" exception and the interrogation and transport aboard naval vessels must be taken with the utmost care of the law so as not to jeopardize this |
from a barrier-breaking president to a candidate trying to make history herself.
Obama urged Americans to summon the hopefulness of his first White House campaign eight years ago, before recession deepened and new terror threats shook voters' sense of security. He robustly vouched for Clinton's readiness to finish the job he started, saying "no matter how daunting the odds, no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits."
Earlier Wednesday, Clinton's running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, introduced himself to the nation as a formidable foil to Trump in his own right. With folksy charm, he ridiculed Trump's list of promises and imitated one of the GOP candidate's favorite phrases.
"Believe me!" he said mockingly, as the audience boomed back, "No!"
Obama's vigorous support for Clinton is driven in part by deep concern that Republican Trump might win in November and unravel his two terms in office. He warned repeatedly Wednesday that the billionaire businessman is unprepared for the challenges that would await him in the Oval Office.
Trump fueled more controversy Wednesday when he encouraged Russia to meddle in the presidential campaign. On the heels of reports that Russia may have hacked Democratic Party emails, Trump said, "Russia, if you're listening," it would be desirable to see Moscow find and publish the thousands of emails Clinton says she deleted during her years as secretary of state.
Wednesday night's Democratic lineup was aimed at emphasizing Clinton's own national security credentials. It was a significant shift in tone after two nights spent reintroducing Clinton to voters as a champion for children and families, and relishing in her historic nomination as the first woman to lead a major political party into the general election.
The convention's third night was also a time for Democrats to celebrate Obama's legacy. Vice President Joe Biden, who decided against running for president this year after the death of his son, called it a "bittersweet moment."
A son of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden appealed directly to the working class white voters who have been drawn to Trump's populism, warning them against falling for false promises and exploitation of Americans' anxieties.
"This guy doesn't have a clue about the middle class," he declared.
Kaine also picked up the traditional attacking role of the presidential ticket's No. 2. He tore into Trump, mocking his pledges to build a wall along the Mexican border, asking why he has not released his tax returns and slamming his business record, including the now-defunct Trump University.
"Folks, you cannot believe one word that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth," Kaine said. "Our nation is too great to put it in the hands of slick-talking, empty-promising, self-promoting, one-man wrecking crew."
Liberals, particularly those who supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have grumbled about Kaine being on the ticket, particularly because of his support for "fast track" approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. Several delegates held up anti-TPP signs as he spoke.
In a move aimed at broadening Clinton's appeal, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg - an independent who considered launching a third party bid for president - endorsed the Democratic nominee. A billionaire businessman himself, Bloomberg took aim at Trump's bankruptcies, reliance on foreign factories and other economic experience: "The richest thing about Donald Trump is his hypocrisy."
President Bill Clinton, filling the role of devoted political spouse, joined the crowd packed to the arena rafters in cheering the attacks on Trump.
The core of Clinton's strategy is putting back together Obama's winning White House coalition. In both his campaigns, Obama carried more than 90 percent of black voters, the overwhelming majority of Hispanics, and more than half of young people and women.
That coalition was vividly on display in the first two nights of the convention in Philadelphia. Women lawmakers were prominently featured, along with young activists, immigrants, and mothers whose black children were victims of gun violence or killed during encounters with law enforcement.
Gun violence continued as a theme Wednesday night as families of mass shooting victims took the stage. Delegates rose in an emotional standing ovation for the mother of one of the victims in last month's Orlando nightclub shooting, who asked why "commonsense" gun policies weren't in place when her son died.
"I never want you to ask that question about your child," Christine Leinonen said.
Clinton's convention has been awash in history, with energized delegates celebrating her formal nomination as the first woman to ever lead a major political party in the general election. Some supporters of Sanders, her primary opponent, continued to voice their displeasure.
But Sanders, meeting with New England delegates, said, "As of yesterday, I guess, officially our campaign ended."
___
AP writers Kathleen Hennessey and Ken Thomas contributed to this report.Conservative Party announces Leadership election date
Party members will make important choice for future of Canada
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OTTAWA – The Conservative Party’s Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) met in Toronto this past weekend to discuss the process for the Party to elect its next leader. Among the items discussed, LEOC selected May 27, 2017 for Conservative Party members to elect their next leader.
Conservatives from coast to coast to coast will be taking part in an important piece of our Party’s history, and will be making an important choice for the future of Canada. The process for replacing this Liberal government with a Conservative government effectively begins now.
“By choosing May 27, 2017, this will allow for a time frame that not just provides an exciting and competitive race for our members and all Canadians, but keeps it an open and fair contest for all potential candidates.” said Dan Nowlan, Chair of the Leadership Election Organizing Committee.
In order to vote in the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership election, you must hold a valid Conservative Party membership. We encourage anyone interested in voting in the leadership election to purchase or renew their membership now to ensure they’re eligible to vote on May 27, 2017.
Other decisions surrounding the rules, the candidate application, and other items will be discussed amongst LEOC in the coming weeks, and announcements will be made accordingly when these decisions are known.
-30-Jayalalithaa's close aide Sasikala Natarajan performed the former chief minister's last rites
Highlights Only Sasikala Natarajan, core advisers had access to Jayalalithaa Ministers, legislators made to sign blank sheets in Apollo basement Sources: Before Jayalalithaa announcement, negotiations on power transfer
Jayalalithaa was buried next to her mentor MGR at Chennai's Marina Beach
Panneerselvam placed Jayalalithaa's photograph on the dais before taking oath and after being sworn in
Among the lasting images of J Jayalalithaa's funeral - the sea of supporters bound together by grief, the glass casket moving slowly in an open-air truck to Chennai's Marina Beach - the one that carries the maximum political weight is that of Sasikala Natarajan, dressed in a black sari, performing the last rites.Ms Natarajan, 59, who lived with Ms Jayalalithaa in a palatial home valued at nearly 50 crores, has no official position in the AIADMK. And yet, her 24X7 access to the party chief, including in her last hours alive, allowed Ms Natarajan, who once sold video cassettes for a living, to ensure that Tamil Nadu's ruling party bent to her will.Sources within the AIADMK, who asked not to be named, laid out how Ms Natarajan may have maneuvered the party's transitioning away from Ms Jayalalithaa to a new leadership that has her approval.On Sunday at 4:30 pm, the Chief Minister had the massive cardiac arrest that she would not recover from.About six hours later, all legislators and ministers, including O Panneerselvam, were told that Ms Jayalalithaa was undergoing "a minor procedure." At 4 am, they were told she was being taken to the Intensive Care Unit for post-surgery care, but specially set-up screens blocked visitors from any view of the Chief Minister. Only Ms Natarajan and core advisors like former bureaucrat Sheela Balakrishnan were allowed near Ms Jayalalithaa.It was only later that the legislators learnt that the procedure that lasted almost all night was to install an ECMO or Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation device, which takes over the functions of the heart and lungs.The next morning, all ministers and legislators were summoned to a meeting in the basement of the Apollo Hospital, where Ms Jayalalithaa had been admitted nearly 70 days earlier.They were each ordered, allegedly by Ms Natarajan, to sign three blank A-4 pages that had no information other than a list of their names. Each signed next to their name. No information was provided on how the signatures would be used. They were also made to sign a register that would establish that a party conclave had been held.At 2 pm, word arrived that the Chief Minister had died. Several legislators dissolved into tears. They were then told to meet at the party office at 6 pm. When they got there, the five most senior ministers, including Mr Panneerselvam, were missing. Those who attended the party meeting believe that this is when Ms Natarajan negotiated the transfer of power with the five heavyweights in the AIADMK.News channels mistakenly reported at about 5 pm that Ms Jayalalithaa had died. Though the hospital clarified that was not the case, the legislators were not allowed to leave the party office for the hospital. Shortly after 11 pm, the five missing ministers arrived, grim-faced. The party chairman, Madhusudhanan, was handed a one-line statement to read out - it established that Mr Panneerselvam would be the next Chief Minister.The ministers - nearly 30 of them - were packed into buses to travel to Raj Bhavan or the Governor's mansion, which was entirely ready for the new government to take oath. All officials needed for the formalities had been organised. Ms Jayalalithaa was declared dead about 30 minutes later, at 12:40 am. The news was broken to the ministers at Raj Bhavan; many sobbed openly.However, V Maitreyan, Rajya Sabha MP from AIADMK, denied that the meeting at the Apollo Hospital took place. "I deny it. I deny it... You probably you won't know the system of the AIADMK. Our party runs on loyalty, our party runs on true obedience and discipline. And obviously when Panneerselvam is going to be the chief ministerial nominee, I don't think there is going to be any discussion or any... all sort of things." Ms Natarajan never held any government or party post but derived power from being Ms Jayalalithaa's longtime companion since the 1980s. She is from the same community as Mr Panneerselvam, who emerged as Ms Jayalalithaa's most important lieutenant with Ms Natarajan's support.One of the best things about growing up was the Lego universe. We’ve all had a pile of bricks spilled out on the floor of our room, a sea of landmines for any parent who dared enter, manically building some wild hot rod contraption. While we take Legos seriously, the Lego Pneumatic Engine (LPE) builders take it to an entirely different world.
The LPE, is a sect of Lego modelers who use Lego’s workhorse pneumatic piston and valve pieces to assemble functioning engines. Many are built as models of larger engines, but for the most part, they are custom designs. LPE engines are built as single-cylinder thumpers, to high-revving V8s, all the way up to 64-cylinder radial engines, like the one used in this full-size Lego car.
Nicjasno is one of the big names in LPE building. With previous LPE builds gathering some fame, he’s made a small business out of shipping hand-built LPE engines for other builder’s projects. What’s involved here is a fascinating build of an engine with components that seem recognizable to us, though very alien. For instance, check out the blue “camshaft” used for the air switches in this video.
With this V8 built by an LPE builder known as Liftingbricks, we still have eight cylinders sharing one common crank. In the middle is a camshaft, of sorts, that actuates a set of sliders who act on the pneumatic air switches, controlling “ignition” timing for each cylinder. These are commonly used in custom Lego model cars with functioning transmissions, suspensions, and steering systems.
And finally, of course, there’s a quest for maximum speed, with several of the LPE builders going for maximum RPM over anything else. Here, modified valves and pistons seek to eek as much efficiency as possible out of each engine. Due to the tachometer pickup running at 50-percent of the crankshaft speed, you’ll have to double the tachometer’s readout to an astounding 5,000 rpm. All of this from (mostly) off-the-shelf Lego parts.
We’ll now get back to our Lego City Police Station build… thanks, show-offs.April 28, 2014
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Today on The David Pakman Show / April 28, 2014
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On the Show:
–Abbey Laine, a Senior at Lakeland High School in Lakeland, Florida and the Editor of the high school news publication, The Bagpipe Magazine, joins David to discuss the repeated rejection of her requests to publish an article about medical marijuana
–Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy repeats his racist remarks while his supporters deny they happened
–Sean Hannity and Fox News distance themselves from Cliven Bundy after his racist rant
–Michael Grimm, a Republican Congressman from New York, finally accepts the science behind climate change…and will now be indicted on fraud
–Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, is busted going on a racist rant to his girlfriend, V. Stiviano, and telling her not to bring black people to his games
–Noteworthy Amazon items
–Glenn Miller, alleged Kansas City Shooter, was caught paying a black male transvestite for sex in Raleigh, North Carolina in the 1980’s
–We debunk the Malaysian flight MH370 / Rothschild patent conspiracy
–A large retailer in Georgia is panicking over the recently passed “guns everywhere” bill
–A Georgia man brings a gun to a Little League game and intimidates parents and children
–On the Bonus Show: How to drink a lot and not get drunk (scientifically), The “eat the poo poo” pastor is in hot water, A prisoner breaks out of jail to escape constant rap music, more…
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-Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDPDecember 3rd, 2017
‘Linux Journal’ Sails Into the Sunset
Part of the Linux culture for nearly as long as Linux itself, Linux Journal has announced that its November edition was its last.
Linux Journal is no more. On Friday, publisher Carlie Fairchild wrote that unless “a savior” rides in to save the day, the magazine born in 1994, just two years after Linus Torvalds posted that he was working on an operating system, has already released its last issue.
This is a publication that’s been with us since before the data center discovered the little operating system that can and before the internet forever changed the publishing industry. Linux Journal started its life printed on dead trees, and until relatively recently was delivered to subscribers’ homes by mail or purchased by non-subscribers at the local newsstand.
It started in a time when “open source” was not yet a term. Linux and the GNU stack were “free software,” with the mantra “free as in speech, not as in beer” oft repeated lest anyone confuse software licensed under the GPL with “freeware.”
“It looks like we’re at the end, folks,” Fairchild wrote in the Journal’s funeral notice. “If all goes according to a plan we’d rather not have, the November issue of Linux Journal was our last.”
The problem, of course, is money — or the lack of it — a commodity that she admits has always been in short supply at a publication that “got to be good at flying close to the ground for a long time.” The lack of money, she points out, was made worse by the Google supported modern advertising model in which advertisers no longer support publications “because they value its brand and readers.”
“[T]he advertising world we have today would rather chase eyeballs, preferably by planting tracking beacons in readers’ browsers and zapping them with ads anywhere those readers show up,” she said.
Finances are so bad that current subscribers won’t be getting a refund, although Linux Pro Magazine is picking up some of the slack by offering LJ subscribers six free issues of their magazine. In addition, Fairchild said, “We also just finished up our 2017 archive today, which includes every issue we’ve ever published, including the first and last ones. Normally we sell that for $25, but obviously subscribers will get it for no cost.” She said subscribers will receive an email about both offers.
In a follow-up article published the same day, Linux Journal writer Kyle Rankin, who joined the publication a decade ago, pointed out that the community surrounding Linux and open source has changed over the years.
“We’ve won on so many fronts, but we’ve also lost our way,” he wrote. “It would have been unthinkable and scandalous even a decade ago for a presenter at a Linux conference to use Powerpoint on Windows, but you only have to count the Macbooks at modern Linux conferences (even among the presenters!) to see how many in the community have lost the very passion for and principles around open source software that drove Linux’s success.
“A vendor who dared to ship their Linux applications as binaries without source code used to get the wrath of the community but these days everyone’s pockets are full of proprietary apps that we justify because they sit on top of a bit of open source software at the bottom of the stack. We used to rail against proprietary protocols and push for open standards but today while Linux dominates the cloud, everyone interacts with it through layers of closed and proprietary APIs.”
Rankin makes a good point, which suggests another reason behind the journal’s demise might be that time and history have left it behind. That’s a sobering thought to those of us who adopted Linux not merely for technical reasons, but because we believed the free software FOSS model essential to the future of data technology. As recently as a decade ago we seemed the be the majority of Linux users, even when including commercial users. Today we appear to be a small minority.
On Saturday Noah Meyerhans, a Linux systems engineer for Amazon Web Services, wrote a farewell blog to Linux Journal in which he noted the importance the magazine had in his life during the late 90s when he had been a college student pursuing a computer science degree. Like Rankin, he notes that times have changed, but he prefers to see gains instead of losses. From his vantage in the commercial world, Linux and open source are clear winners. In this sense, he represents the modern paradigm, in which open source is seen mostly as an efficient way of developing software.
“It’s been a long time since I paid attention to Linux Journal, so from a practical point of view I can’t honestly say that I’ll miss it,” he wrote. “I appreciate the role it played in my growth, but there are so many options for young people today entering the Linux/free software communities that it appears that the role is no longer needed. Still, the termination of this magazine is a permanent thing, and I can’t help but worry that there’s somebody out there who might thrive in the free software community if only they had the right door open before them.”
That is, indeed, cause for concern.
RelatedAs someone whose very patronage of this site proves they are a VW nut, you’re likely to want to get your kids behind the wheel of a GTI as soon as possible. Well, this Christmas season, you’re well supplied thanks to this genuine ride-on GTI.
The car is for sale on eBay’s euro.stores, and I’m reasonably convinced is made by a company from Hong Kong called Rastar.
The company produces all kinds of remote controlled and toy cars, which shows in just how generic the shape of this GTI is. Despite that, though, there are some nice touches. The lights, grilles, and tartan seats are all spot on, and the color options—red, white, and black—are perfect, too.
The toy car can also, apparently, blast your kid’s favorite music, and if you don’t quite trust them to drive themselves, there’s a Bluetooth remote control that lets you drive them. But then how would they learn to drive? Let the children hoon!
If you’re more of an Audi person, there’s also a new RS5, or you could get your kids into that Lamborghini you’ve always wanted. You will, unfortunately, need a step-up converter if you want to buy this, since it uses a European 220 volt plug.
All this can be yours for a cool £436.90 (which amounts to about $553 today).I think that the key element is whether the toy is played with as an active or passive object. To explain further: When a kid is playing with a Buzz Lightyear Action Figure With Real Working Wings (wings do not enable toy to fly), he's imagining Buzz actually taking action. Likewise for Woody, or the Slinky-Dog. This is easiest for anthropomorphized toys, but even an unfaced toy like an Etch-a-Sketch actively responds when played with. By contrast, when one plays with Lincoln Logs, the toy is passive, with the child providing all of the action. Or, to put it another way, Woody the toy behaves like a real cowboy, and a Lincoln Log structure behaves like a real log cabin, but a real log cabin doesn't do anything either.
I regrettably haven't seen Toy Story 2, so I can't comment on the Woody merchandise. But were they primarily intended as collectibles? If so, then their lack of animation makes sense, as (unlike a toy) a collectible is not expected to do anything beyond being visible in a display. Though it's certainly conceivable that, were such a collectable brought into a household with children and played with, it might achieve a toy status and come to life, much like Bo Peep.
Alternatively, is it possible that for each "character", there is only one animus? That is to say, no other Woody doll could come to life, because there already is a Woody. The animus of Woody would reside in the Woody representation on which the most energy is focused, which would almost certainly be one in the possession of an imaginitive child who played with it often. Although other Woodies might conceivably come to life, if they were imparted by their children with a distinct character and personality (but they would not then be Woody any more).
Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.
--As You Like It, III:ii:328
Check out my dice in the Marketplace __________________Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.--, III:ii:328 Reply With Quotevia Facebook
On August 13th, 2012, a pitbull mix was shot by police in broad daylight in the East Village, as its owner was collapsed on the sidewalk suffering a seizure. That pitbull, Star, nipped at a woman and ran towards an officer at one point, in an apparent attempt to protect owner Lech Stankiewicz (you can see very graphic video of the shooting here). The dog was shot in the head, resulting in her losing an eye as well as sustaining "soft tissue, bone, head trauma, and eye damage." No one thought she would survive the ordeal, and most of us seemed to forget about her—except for Charlie Cifarelli.
"This story to me has been the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life, because it made me, as a 47-year-old guy, at the time believe in miracles," Cifarelli, a former New Yorker now living in Nebraska, told us. "The fact alone that Star survived the shooting! I have her medical records, you should see the amount of bullet fragments she had in her head. The doctors said, 'If you could read medical records, you wouldn’t believe this dog is alive.'" As you can see in the video below, Star isn't just alive—she's happy.
Cifarelli, who started a Facebook page for Star long before he ever met her, gave us an uplifting update on what's been going on with Star since that fateful day.
You started the Facebook page pretty soon after the incident came out, right? What was it about Star's story that moved you so much? I’m a New York guy living in Nebraska for 20 years, and I can’t stay off Gothamist. I can’t stay off the Daily News and the New York Post because I’m addicted to that stuff, what goes on in New York. And I saw the video that you guys posted, and it just floored me, man. A rush of emotions came out of me, and it was like, I can’t believe this could happen.
First of all, after living in Nebraska, I’ve gotten a little bit more sane. And I worked at the Department of Corrections for many years. I became a prison official in Nebraska, and we dealt with some of the worst convicts who made homemade knives, and we just didn’t shoot people right away. So in my mind, when I watched your video, I said to myself, number one: that officer should definitely have taken care of crowd control. And number two: I just felt as though it was an overreaction to what had happened. And I thought, 'My god, what would have happened if they missed the dog while moving?' I’m an expert on weapons. That was a lucky shot. That bullet could have hit Lech in the head. I was so profoundly affected by it that I started the Facebook page, but actually I wanted to help Lech.
You’re talking to a man who worked in the Department of Correction, even death row. This was the most profound thing that ever got me, because it had every situation there. It had homeless, it had somebody with a medical episode, it had the NYPD, it had a dog, it had suffering, and it had the NYPD spokesperson originally saying the dog had died. But yet, you guys updated and said the dog was clinging to life. This story to me has been the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life, because it made me as a 47-year-old guy at the time believe in miracles. The fact alone that Star survived the shooting! I have her medical records, you should see the amount of bullet fragments she had in her head. The doctors said, "If you could read medical records, you wouldn’t believe this dog is alive."
How did you end up adopting Star? Everybody thought the dog died initially. I called up the NYC AC&C from my office in Lincoln, NE and talked to the administrator there. I talked to her about recycling, and didn’t talk about the dog. And finally I asked her, “Hey um, what happened with that dog that was shot in the head?” She said to me, “You’re gonna have to give me an ID number.” I said, “That dog, Star.” And she starts punching into the computer and says, “Oh, the dog is at the Manhattan vet, clinging on for life."
I called the Manhattan vet and got as much information as I could, but by that time I couldn’t get any further. I went on my LinkedIn profile. I connected with [AC&C Director] Richard Gentles, and basically told him through LinkedIn that I know the dog is alive, and that it better get good care. Shortly thereafter they hid the dog. They had The Lexus Project and Mayor's Alliance take ownership of the dog. They were scared about paparazzi on the dog, so they stuck her in the National Greyhound Adoption Program in Pennsylvania, which is where I found the dog.
I kept calling up places saying, "Look, do you have a pitbull missing an eye?” And finally a place said yes. She had a different name then; they called her Shiloh. But it was enough for me at that point. I found out who the owner of the National Greyhound Adoption Program was, David Wolf. I called, left a message, and David, a very nice man, called me back. I said, “David, are you known as a liar?” He said, “No, I take offense to that.” I said, “I’m gonna ask you a question: do you have Star, the New York pitbull?” He says, “I can’t confirm or deny that.” So I knew that he had her, and I said, “Look, I’m coming from Nebraska, I want to come see the dog.” He goes, “Wait a minute, I can’t let you do that! I gotta call the Mayor's Alliance, I gotta find out if that can even happen.”
They had the dog hidden. It took me a lot of luck to find the dog, but I finally found her. But I could not tell, I had an agreement, I could not tell anybody where the dog was.
But here’s the other thing: Star was so horrifically injured that David Wolf didn’t even think she’d make it because she had a case of MRSA when she left the Manhattan vet, and he got her about three weeks after she was shot. He told me, "Charlie, it was touch and go.” And even when I visited her in December [2012], her equilibrium was off, her hearing wasn’t that good. She was just a dog that definitely had special needs.
But I stayed on the case, and finally, I convinced the authorities in April 2013: "Let me come from Nebraska, pick up Star, and give her a forever home," and the rest is history, she became my dog. The dog is such a nice dog.
Why do you think the city hid Star away? I think that it was a very odd situation for them, it wasn’t really clear cut. Star didn’t bite anybody at the time. It was a situation that became a three ring circus. I think they wanted it to go away. You know, August 2012—as a former New Yorker, I watched the news—a lot of bad things happened. They shot nine innocent people in front of the Empire State Building by mistake when they were going after that guy. They also shot that homeless guy who was a little mentally deranged holding a knife in front of Times Square in front of Bubba Gump’s. And then they shoot a homeless man’s dog in the head, a homeless man that had a seizure?
I just think that they wanted this situation to go away, and it was probably the easiest thing to do—kinda let it just float out the back door. I just couldn’t let go of this situation, I just never felt so compelled in my life, this is so out of my comfort zone, man. I would’ve lived my life in obscurity in Nebraska if it wasn’t for this dog.
Did you ever talk Lech? Yes. A place called Collide in New York City helps the homeless correspond with me, and I emailed them about Lech. Lech thanked me for my helping hand, but he said it was unrealistic for him to keep the dog. He basically wanted to go back to Poland and start his life over. He just was done here.
Lech did not want any help, and Lech’s friend had reached out to me. He’s a private guy who just wanted his anonymity after this. Him being filmed for 10 minutes laying on the sidewalk was not a good outcome for him. And people were very divided. He had people who were very for Lech and felt compassion, such as myself. Others felt he was an irresponsible dog owner.
Has she had any lingering trauma because of what happened? She’s a happy dog, and that’s why I made that short video [first one above]. And people always ask me, ’Is she happy?’ So I just asked her. I literally just asked her that, it was spontaneous.
But one thing: if I would lay on the floor, she thinks I’m not okay, that gets her anxiety up.
Because of what happened with Lech. Yeah. It took me a few months to realize the issue with that. I get off the couch one night watching TV. My back kinda got a little soft, and I wanted to lay on the flat floor, and I could see she was checking me out with her nose. She was fired up seeing if I was okay.
But other than that, she is unbelievable. You pet her, and the first thing she does is she rolls on her back. There’s an event that was probably a year ago, and I took her to the dog adoption days, and the volunteers started hugging her or petting her, and the next thing I know, she’s on her back and she’s getting hugs.
I’ve had some accomplishments in life, man. And it’s not about the four car garage. It’s not about the gold watch. She’s really changed my priorities as to what’s important. And I’ll tell you something, I tell kids all the time, man: if you believe in something, don’t have an off button, and you can get it done.
[This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity by the author. Additional editing by Ben Jay]was a hulking, 6'3" 220lb shutdown center, a fantastic faceoff man and one of the best defensive forwards in the game, shutting down the likes of Mark Messier and Eric Lindros. He was a serious hitter, applying bone jarring checks at times. He was a bull in a china shop with the puck, able to drive to the net and apply a bullet of a shot. He was a consistent two way player, better than his annual statistics ever suggested. He was a key player for the New Jersey Devils' Stanley Cup runs in 1995 and 2000.
Did you know that Bobby Holik had his own website? It seems to have disappeared now, but it was called Holik On Hockey and he was not afraid to share his views on the game, past or present.
It made for some great reading. Unfortunately I did not take as many notes from it as I should have. I do have this note about one his most respected opponents, Mats Sundin:
I wanted to write this piece because it seems more hockey people appreciate what Mats Sundin did for the game of hockey in 1990s and first decade of 2000s. He will, or at least should be, a first ballot hall of famer. He was a dominant player during two decades full of dominant players like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic, Eric Lindros, Mark Messier and Peter Forsberg to mention a few. I would rank him above Forsberg, Sakic and Lindros. He was that good, but I am very biased. Big, strong, great talent and skill-set, and right-handed? That’s as good as it gets in hockey for me.
That is some pretty high praise. And this isn't just anyone's opinion. This is the opinion of one of the NHL's all time great shutdown centers who had to faceoff with all those superstars night after night. That's what you call respect, though Holik doesn't seem to be showing Sundin much respect in the photo below!Close-up shot of a diamond-pattern knurling on a cylindrical work piece. Knurling method: left/right with tips raised, spiral angle: 30°, pitch: 1 mm, profile angle: 90°
Knurling is a manufacturing process, typically conducted on a lathe, whereby a pattern of straight, angled or crossed lines is rolled into the material.[1]
Etymology [ edit ]
The terms knurl and knurled are from an earlier knur ‘knot in wood’ and the diminutive -le, from Middle English knaur or knarre ‘knot in wood; twisted rock; crag’. This descends from Old English cnearra but the vowel in Middle English may have been influenced by Old Norse knǫrr ‘merchant ship’ which was known as cnearr in Old English. The modern gnarl is a back-formation of gnarled which itself is first attested in Shakespeare’s works and is apparently a variant of knurled.
Uses [ edit ]
Two examples of the use of knurling in hand tools
The operation is performed for producing indentations on a part of a workpiece. Knurling allows hands or fingers to get a better grip on the knurled object than would be provided by the originally smooth metal surface. Occasionally, the knurled pattern is a series of straight ridges or a helix of "straight" ridges rather than the more-usual criss-cross pattern.
Knurling may also be used as a repair method: because a rolled-in knurled surface has raised areas surrounding the depressed areas, these raised areas can make up for wear on the part. In the days when labor was cheap and parts expensive, this repair method was feasible on pistons of internal combustion engines, where the skirt of a worn piston was expanded back to the nominal size using a knurling process. As auto parts have become less expensive, knurling has become less prevalent than it once was, and is specifically discouraged by performance engine builders.[2]
Knurling can also be used when a component will be assembled into a low precision component, for example a metal pin into a plastic molding. The outer surface of the metal pin is knurled so that the raised detail "bites" into the plastic irrespective of whether the size of the hole in the plastic closely matches the diameter of the pin.
Tool handles, mechanical pencils, the grips of pistols, barbell bars, and the control knobs on electronic equipment are frequently knurled.
Knurling is also used on the grips of darts[3] and the footpegs of BMX bicycles. Aside from adding functionality to an object (valve repairs and hand grips being some of the most common), knurling also adds a decorative pattern to the material. The kn |
had been handling most of the management and promotional work. According to promoter and manager Joe Flannery,[112] Mona had done a great deal for the band by arranging a number of important early gigs and lending them a badly needed helping hand when they returned from Hamburg the first time, but this came at the cost of having to contend with her overbearing nature. At this crucial time in the history of the Beatles, John Lennon confided to Flannery that he considered Mona "bossy like [his aunt] Mimi" and believed that she was using the Beatles only for the sake of her son,[113] though this should be weighed against the fact that the Beatles' cordial relations with Mona would soon resume. She often met them while visiting Neil Aspinall at his London home. On these occasions, the Beatles often had small gifts for her which they had acquired on their travels. For her part, Mona allowed them to use her father's military medals in the photo shoot for the Sgt. Pepper album cover.[114]
Although Brian Epstein's publicly stated reluctance to fire Best quickly became a matter of record in the early biographies, he had found Mona Best to be the cause of mounting aggravation. Epstein's distaste for her interference in the Beatles' management, including her "aggressive opinions about his handling of her son's career", was obvious to everyone,[116] and he also reportedly considered Mona Best a loose cannon who must not be allowed to interfere in his operations.[113] Moreover, the very recent birth of Roag further complicated matters. Although Best himself was not personally responsible for this development, it would still have caused a grave scandal had it become generally known, and Epstein may have been horrified at the prospect.[117]
After the Beatles [ edit ]
Soon after Best was dismissed, Epstein attempted to console him by offering to build another group around him, but Best refused. Feeling let down and depressed, he sat at home for two weeks—not wanting to face anybody or answer the inevitable questions about why he had been sacked. Epstein secretly arranged with his booking agent partner, Joe Flannery, for Best to join Lee Curtis & the All Stars, which then broke off from Curtis to become Pete Best & the All Stars. They signed to Decca Records, releasing the single "I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door", which was not successful.[119]
The Pete Best Combo [ edit ]
Best later moved to the United States along with songwriters Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington. As the Pete Best Four, and later as the Pete Best Combo (a quintet), they toured the United States with a combination of 1950s songs and original tunes, recording for small labels, but they had little success.[119] They ultimately released an album on Savage Records, Best of the Beatles; a play on Best's name, leading to disappointment for record buyers who neglected to read the song titles on the front cover and expected a Beatles compilation. The group disbanded shortly afterwards. Bickerton and Waddington were to find greater success as songwriters in the 1960s and 1970s, writing a series of hits for the American female group the Flirtations and the British group the Rubettes.[120] In 2000, the record label Cherry Red reissued the Pete Best Combo's recordings as a compact disc compilation. Richie Unterberger, reviewing the CD, stated that the music's "energy level is reasonably high," that Bickerton and Waddington's songwriting is "kind of catchy," and that Best's drumming is "ordinary."[121]
Later years [ edit ]
Best on 30 October 2005
Best decided to leave show business, and by the time of Hunter Davies' authorised Beatles' biography in 1968, he was not willing to talk about his Beatles association. Years later he stated in his autobiography, "the Beatles themselves certainly never held out a helping hand and only contributed to the destruction with their readily printed gossip that I had never really been a Beatle, that I didn't smile, that I was unsociable and definitely not a good mixer. There was not a single friendly word from any one of them". This culminated in a Beatles' interview published in Playboy magazine in February 1965 in which Lennon stated that "Ringo used to fill in sometimes if our drummer was ill. With his periodic illness." Starr added: "He took little pills to make him ill."[123] Best sued the Beatles for defamation of character, eventually winning an out-of-court settlement for much less than the $18 million he had sought.[124][125]
Hunter Davies recalled that while working with the Beatles on their authorised biography in 1968, "when the subject of Pete Best came up they seemed to cut off, as if he had never touched their lives. They showed little reaction … I suppose it reminded them not just that they had been rather sneaky in the handling of Pete Best's sacking, never telling him to his face, but that for the grace of God, or Brian Epstein, circumstances might have been different and they could have ended up [like Pete]." During the height of Beatlemania Best attempted suicide, but his mother, Mona, and his brother, Rory, prevented him from completing it. Best stated that after the intervention "They gave me the most sensible talking-to I've ever had in my life," which resulted in him changing his outlook.[10]
In 1963, Best married Kathy, a Woolworth's sales clerk whom he met at an early Beatles show.[127]; the couple has remained married for more than fifty years and have two daughters, as well as four grandchildren.[128] Best did shift work loading bread into the back of delivery vans, earning £8 a week (equivalent to £200 in 2019).[24] His education qualifications subsequently helped him become a civil servant working at the Garston Jobcentre in Liverpool,[10] where he rose from employment officer to training manager for the Northwest of England,[130] and, ironically, remembered "a steady stream of real-life Yosser Hughes types" imploring him to give them jobs. The most he could do, he recalls, was to offer to retrain them in other fields, "which was an emotional issue for people who had done one kind of work all their lives."[131]
In time, Best began giving interviews to the media, writing about his time with the group, and serving as a technical advisor for the television film Birth of the Beatles. He found a modicum of independent fame, and has admitted to being a fan of his former band's music and owning their records.[132] In 1995, the surviving Beatles released Anthology 1, which featured a number of tracks with Best as drummer, including songs from the Decca and Parlophone auditions. Best received a substantial windfall—between £1 million and £4 million—from the sales, although he was not interviewed for the book or the documentaries.[133][134] According to writer Philip Norman, the first time Best knew about the royalties due him for the use of those tracks "was a phone call" from Paul McCartney himself, "the one who'd been so keen to get rid of him -- the first time they'd spoken since it happened. 'Some wrongs need to be righted,' Paul told him. 'There's some money here that's owing to you and you can take it or leave it.' Best took it."[135] The collage of torn photographs on the Anthology 1 album cover includes an early group photo that featured Best, but Best's head was removed, revealing a photo of Starr's head, taken from the Please Please Me cover photo (the missing section of the photograph appears on the cover of the album Haymans Green). A small photograph of Best can be seen on the left side of the Anthology cover.[136] Best appeared in an advertisement for Carlsberg lager that was broadcast during the first commercial break of the first episode of the Anthology TV series on ITV in November 1995. The tag line was "Probably the Pete Best lager in the world", a variation of Carlsberg's well-known slogan.[137]
The Pete Best Band [ edit ]
In 1988, after twenty years of turning down all requests to play drums in public, Best finally relented, appearing at a Beatles convention in Liverpool. He and his brother Roag performed, and afterwards his wife and mother both told him, "You don't know it, but you're going to go back into show business."[138] Best now regularly tours the world with the Pete Best Band, sharing the drumming with his younger brother Roag.[139] The Pete Best Band's album Haymans Green, made entirely from original material, was released on 16 September 2008 in the US, 24 October 2008 worldwide excluding the UK and 27 October 2008 in the UK.[140]
Honours [ edit ]
On 6 July 2007, Best was inducted into the All You Need Is Liverpool Music Hall of Fame as the debut Charter Member. Best was presented with a framed certificate before his band performed.[141] Liverpool has further honoured Best with the announcement, on 25 July 2011, that two new streets in the city would be named Pete Best Drive and Casbah Close.[142]
Portrayals in media [ edit ]
Film and television [ edit ]
Best is portrayed in several films about the Beatles. In the 1979 biopic Birth of the Beatles, for which Best was a technical advisor, he is played by Ryan Michael. In both the 1994 film Backbeat and in the 2000 television biopic In His Life: The John Lennon Story, Best is played by Liverpool native Scot Williams. The 2008 Rainn Wilson film The Rocker, about a drummer kicked out of a glam metal band through no fault of his own, was inspired by Best's termination. Best had a cameo in the movie.[143]
Theatre [ edit ]
BEST!, a comedy play written by Liverpool playwright Fred Lawless, was staged at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1995 and 1996. The play, which was mainly fiction, showed a scenario where after Pete Best's sacking, he went on to become a world-famous rock superstar while his ex-group struggled as one hit wonders. The play was critically acclaimed in both the Liverpool Echo and also in Spencer Leigh's 1998 book Drummed Out : The Sacking of Pete Best. Pete Best is a main character in David Harrower's 2001 play Presence, premièred at the Royal Court Theatre, London, dramatising The Beatles' time in Hamburg.
Wirral born actor, Andrew Games, portrayed Pete Best in BestBeat at the Unity Theatre, Liverpool during May 2018. The play focuses on Best's time in The Beatles from 1960 to 1962.
Cover versions [ edit ]
The American garage rock band Lyres covered "The Way I Feel About You" on their 1984 album On Fyre.
Discography [ edit ]
Singles [ edit ]
"I'm Gonna Knock on Your Door" b/w "Why Did I Fall in Love with You" (Decca F 11929, Released: 1964) [144]
"Don't Play With Me (Little Girl)" b/w "If You Can't Get Her" (Happening 405, Released: 1965) [144]
"If You Can't Get Her" b/w "The Way I Feel About You" (Happening HA1117, Released: 1965) [144]
"Kansas City" b/w "Boys" (Cameo 391, Released: 1965) [144]
"(I'll Try) Anyway" b/w "I Wanna Be There" (Original Beatles Drummer 800, Released: 1965) [144]
"I Can't Do Without You Now" b/w "Keys to My Heart" (Mr. Maestro Records 711, Released: 1965)[144]
Another "Peter Best" single, "Carousel Of Love"/"Want You" (Capitol 2092) is not by Best, but an Australian performer with the same name.
Albums [ edit ]
Best of the Beatles (Savage BM 71, Released: 1965) [144] Includes: "I Need Your Lovin"; "Just Wait and See"; "Casting My Spell"; "Keys to My Heart"; "Why Did You Leave Me Baby?"; "Like My Sister Kate"; "I Can't Do Without You Now"; "I'm Blue"; "Some Other Guy"; "She's Alright"; "Nobody But You"; "Last Night"
(Savage BM 71, Released: 1965) The Beatle That Time Forgot [Original Version] (Phoenix PB-22, Released: 1981) [144] Includes: "I'm Checking Out Now Baby"; "I'll Try Any Way"; "I Don't Know Why (I Just Do)"; "How'd You Get to Know Her Name"; "She's Not the Only Girl in Town"; "If You Can't Get Her"; "More Than I Need My Self"; "I'll Have Everything Too"; "The Way I feel About You"; "Don't Play With Me (Little Girl)"; "Rock and Roll Music"; "All Aboard"
[Original Version] (Phoenix PB-22, Released: 1981) Rebirth (Phoenix PB-44, Released: 1981) [144] Includes: "I Can't Do Without You Now"; "Off the Hook"; "She's Alright"; "I Need Your Lovin'"; "Why Did You Leave Me Baby"; "High School Shimmy"; "I Wanna Be There"; "Everybody"; "Pete's Theme"; "Keys to My Heart"
(Phoenix PB-44, Released: 1981) The Beatle That Time Forgot [Reissue] (Phoenix PHX 340, Released: 1982) [144] Includes: "I'll Try Anyway"; "I Don't Know Why I Do (I Just Do)"; "She's Not the Only Girl in Town"; "More Than I Need My Self"; "I'll Have Everything Too"; "I'm Checking Out Now Baby"; "How'd You Get to Know Her Name"; "If You Can't Get Her"; "Rock and Roll Music"
[Reissue] (Phoenix PHX 340, Released: 1982) Back to the Beat – (1995) [145]
– (1995) The Pete Best Combo: Beyond the Beatles 1964–1966 (1 February 1996) [146]
(1 February 1996) Live at the Adelphi Liverpool 1988 – (23 September 1996) [147]
– (23 September 1996) Best (18 August 1998) [148]
(18 August 1998) Casbah Coffee Club 40th Anniversary Limited Edition (1999) [149]
(1999) The Savage Young Beatles (10 May 2004) [150]
(10 May 2004) Haymans Green – Released 16 September 2008 (US), August 2008 (UK) (The Pete Best Band)[151]
On film [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Believe it or not, the top paid game in AppStore for 2 months has been created with Clickteam Fusion 2.5! Here is the interview of Scott Cawthon, the author of Five Nights at Freddy’s
Hello Scott! Thanks for accepting this interview. Can you tell us how long you have been creating games? At what age did you start? What was your first machine?
My mom bought me a copy of Klik & Play when I was 13 or 14. I was using a 60mhz Acer computer that had 8 megs of ram. Hey that was blazing fast back in the day!
What was your very first game? Are you still proud of it today? Did you distribute it? Is there a place where we can see it?
My VERY first game involved a blue blob moving around the deck of a pirate ship collecting red gems while menacing pirates ran around on the laziest path movements you can imagine. ALL library graphics of course; except the blob… I drew the blob.
I’d say my first “official” game was…. well, Legacy of Flan! It was my first stab at an rpg, some of you may remember it from The Daily Click. And yeah I’m still proud of it.
When did you take the decision to actually publish your first game? What was the platform you used at the time?
My first try at a professional game was Iffermoon. This was before Steam though and I wasn’t very internet savvy so I just asked for donations through my site. I think I eventually got about $1,000, but it for a charity goal anyway.
Are you a gamer? If yes, console or PC, what kind of games?
My gamer days are behind me, I’m afraid. When you spend your days making games and then spend your evening with your kids after school, something’s gotta give! Sometimes I do still play a little before bed but it’s only the classics like Ocarina of Time and Super Metroid.
I have read that you have worked for 6 months on Five Nights at Freddy’s
before publication. Did you work on it alone, or with the help others? No it was just me. Were you using your friends and family as testers?
My two sons have always been my beta testers! I have one son who is obsessed with finding secrets and the other is a pro at finding exploits, so it’s a good combination! I also have two close friends who always faithfully beta test for me!
The sound ambiance is a great part of the scaring effect of Five Nights. I personally played it (following my son’s advice) at night in the dark with a head-set. The initial scene with the tongue-in-cheek instructions in the loudspeaker is really scary and fun. Was it you who made the sound track? Where did you get your samples from?
I have a few websites that I purchase most of the sound effects and music from and then make the rest myself! It’s only been in the last year that I’ve discovered how powerful using the sound channel conditions in Fusion can be. Turning sound channels on and off and raising and lowering the volume of certain sounds can be a huge part of a game experience!
Can you tell us a little about your own development process?
* Do you write a game-design document, or do you jump into creation?
* Was all the principle of Five Night correct from the start, or did it follow a lot of changes in the course of the 6 months?
Nothing is ever written (aside from the scripts for “phone guy”.) I usually just get an idea for a game and then toss and turn in bed about it until finally I just start working. From there the game makes itself and it seldom turns out how I’d originally planned it.
Do you make a working mockup with blank graphics first, or do you need the real graphics to work?
No I use the real graphics right away, otherwise I can’t get motivated for the project. If I’m not proud of the very first piece of work for a game then I quit or start over weeks later. Every element has to be a finished piece.In Which We Attempt to Calmly Explain What the Hell Happened on XOJane Without a Rage Stroke
By Courtney Enlow | Think Pieces | May 20, 2016 |
You may have come across some tweets about XOJane and a particularly inflammatory post that has now been removed in favor of an apology from the editor. You may be wondering what this post was about, if it was as some are likely to assume, just another “social justice warrior” outragefest because the writer used the word “crazy” or something.
No. And go fuck yourself.
A writer by the name of Amanda Lauren wrote a post about a “friend” who killed herself. And she called it a blessing. Because her “friend” was beyond help. Because that “friend” didn’t clean up her room, hit on a guy she liked and quit her job.
Seriously, that’s it.
Leah and I reconnected when we were both living in Los Angeles. There was always something about her that wasn’t quite right. While I was admittedly, for a while, not the best adult, there was something about her mindset that had had just stopped evolving after high school. Her apartment was always filthy and her bedroom had clothing strewn about everywhere. She didn’t take pride in her home or respect her own property. She also didn’t have real boyfriends or go out on dates. While dating in L.A. is hard, I feel like she probably had no concept of how to be in a relationship. While we were close, our friendship started to come to a turning point when she blatantly tried to hook up with a guy I had a crush on. My feelings didn’t matter to her. After that, I never looked at Leah the same way again, but I forgave her. We had another argument when I wouldn’t lend her something of mine that was irreplaceable and she didn’t understand why. The final straw was when I got her a job working for the same company I did. Sure, it wasn’t the greatest job, but when you need money, you work. Of course she really didn’t have to work because her parents gave her whatever she wanted. I think this partially due to her sister’s death. When Leah quit the job shortly after being hired, I was really angry with her because I felt it made me look bad. I told her I didn’t want to be friends anymore. In all fairness, I could have been more patient, but I was going through some of my own difficulties.
GOING. THROUGH. HER OWN. DIFFICULTIES.
Then she and her friends laughingly shared screenshots of her social media posts and sex work. And then it gets worse from there. It’s absolutely unbearable. Like listening to a horrible high school acquaintance say unimaginably cruel things about someone, only it’s a public post on a huge website. It’s the airing of this dead girl’s dirty laundry—right down to complaining about her dirty laundry.
After the piece met an outcry from horrified readers, XOJane took action. By removing Lauren’s byline and publishing the piece anonymously—with comments turned off. They finally deleted the piece and replaced it with an apology.
But it still exists. Because this is the internet. You can read it here. It’s nothing but “I” statements that make no attempt to understand her “friend“‘s emotional state, just share her annoyance about it.
I do not like besmirching fellow female writers. It’s hard out there for us and we’re in this together. But not Amanda Lauren. She is awful.
this is hateful, harmful trash. shame on @AmandaLauren for writing it, and shame on @xojanedotcom for publishing it. pic.twitter.com/KHtrVjnIrI — Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) May 20, 2016
Lauren is also the mind behind “Staying Hot for My Husband Is ESSENTIAL for a Good Marriage” with dollops of wisdom like this:
If men can’t help but be visual creatures, I need to oblige. And while I’m not sure if his friends are jealous so to say, they do acknowledge he has a hot wife.
You can get an even greater indication of Lauren’s persona from a passage from her “forthcoming memoir:
The following is an excerpt of a chapter from my forthcoming memoir, I Only Cried Twice Today: Epic Incidents In La La Land, a humorous take on the most challenging years of my life. Cunt Chocula “The Psycho HR Lady,” hated me from the moment we met. I can understand why, I’m a hot little blonde with a well-connected family from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. After hours of overanalyzing her hate for me, I’m pretty sure I resemble the girl who stole her high school boyfriend just before prom. Cunty wasn’t exactly a super model, but she wasn’t Mamma June either. Her daily four-hour commute also probably didn’t do much to help her looks or attitude. While I know this sounds impossible, because her wardrobe choices were worse than Nicolas Cage’s movie choices, Cunty is the only woman I’ve ever seen in my life who could actually make large breasts look repulsive. If there are any men reading this, please, please just take my word.
I’m not a “hot little blonde with a well-connected family from the Upper East Side of Manhattan.” It hasn’t really crossed my mind whether or not my husband’s friends are jealous or acknowledging of his “hot wife.” And I’ve had moments where I’ve been written off as “beyond help.” Moments where I’ve thought, been certain, that I was at best an annoyance, at worst the kind of person who might inspire a thinkpiece about being better off without me, because everyone really would be better off without me.
Fuck you, Amanda Lauren. Your actions here have been unspeakable.
Fuck you, XOJane. How dare you publish that, pay for it, use your platform to allow us, those of us who’ve been that friend Amanda Lauren was so happy died alone in a bathtub, to read it. And to make money off its virality.
Fuck you the news outlets that will interview Amanda Lauren to “get her side” and lead her to further fame, fame and money made on the dead back of a dead woman whose death was cause for celebration to this festersore of a human being. Fuck. You.
I’m angry. I’m heartbroken.
← Stephen King Teases Potential Major 'Dark Tower' Detail
Sir Mix-a-Lot Weighs In On Blake Lively's 'Oakland Booty' →The relationship between the exclusively male leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the predominantly male leadership of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has been one of the America’s longest bromances. Now, that relationship has entered a rough patch from which it might not recover.
The potentially irreconcilable difference? Gay male leadership.
On Monday, the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) ratified a resolution ending the organization’s blanket ban on openly gay adult leaders and employees, following the National Executive Committee's July recommendation to that effect. Chartered organizations, however, can “continue to use religious beliefs as criteria for selecting adult leaders, including matters of sexuality,” according to a BSA statement on the resolution.
“This change allows Scouting’s members and parents to select local units, chartered to organizations with similar beliefs, that best meet the needs of their families,” said the BSA.
As the decision came down, all eyes naturally turned to the Mormons. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon or LDS Church, has maintained a close relationship with the BSA since 1913. A century later, the church sponsored 17 percent of all youth in scouting, according to The New York Times.
But the Mormon Church’s stubbornness on issues of sexual orientation could be stronger than their love for the BSA. After going all in for California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, the church has remained morally opposed to same-sex marriage and campaigned for “religious freedom protections” in the face of anti-discrimination ordinances.
The church is now decidedly discontented with the BSA’s decision to leave the matter of gay leadership to the local level. On Monday, the church released a scathing statement, saying that they were “deeply troubled” by the BSA’s decision. The church even criticized the timing of the board’s vote, which they said took place at a time when top Mormon leadership is out of the office. The statement continued:
“When the leadership of the Church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined. The Church has always welcomed all boys to its Scouting units regardless of sexual orientation. However, the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America.”
It is perhaps the most definitive sign that the Mormon Church and the BSA could part ways since the latter began to reexamine its policies on homosexuality a few years ago.
But the Mormon Church’s cited justification for potentially leaving the BSA behind—that “the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church”—is also a puzzling one. Not only would a chartered organization like the Mormon Church maintain control over leadership under the new BSA policy, the church’s own internal policy toward adult gay men actually allows them to serve in religious leadership roles, albeit with a disclaimer.
Current Mormon policy on men who experience “same-gender attraction”—church leaders intentionally avoid language like “gay men”—allows them to hold the priesthood and serve in leadership roles provided that they remain celibate and abide by other moral standards. This marks a shift from pre-1990 policies under which lesbian, gay, and bisexual Mormons could be excommunicated based on their identity rather than their behavior.
A 2007 pamphlet for gay Mormons (PDF) includes the following assurance: “President Gordon B. Hinckley has promised that those with same-gender attraction who do not express these inclinations may ‘go forward as do all other members of the Church.’ If you live by the standards God has set and fill your days with worthwhile things, your life will be full of hope and you may expect opportunities for meaningful service, social inclusion, and spiritual growth in this life.”
When asked by The Daily Beast how a celibate gay man serving as a scoutmaster would necessarily be “inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church” given this policy, the Mormon Church did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The Mormon Church’s threat to leave the BSA behind also comes as a shock given the religion’s prior handling of BSA policy shifts on this issue.
When the BSA moved in 2013 to allow gay youth to openly participate in the organization, the Mormon Church approached the matter cautiously, saying in a statement that “[s]exual orientation has not previously been—and is not now—a disqualifying factor for boys who want to join Latter-day Saint Scout troops,” provided that gay scouts, like straight scouts, abstain from sexual relationships in accordance with church doctrine.
In those more courteous times, the church emphasized the “strong, rewarding relationship” they had with the BSA. But as soon as the policy on adult gay leaders entered the conversation, the Mormon Church’s official language grew cold, ominously promising in May of this year “to assess how [any changes] might impact our own century-long association with the BSA.”
In Mormon dating culture, this is called doing a DTR: defining the relationship. And if the Mormon Church sounds like someone going through a breakup, that’s because the BSA and the Mormon Church have basically been in bed with one another up to this point.
According to an article in the church magazine Ensign, the Mormon Church was “the first nationally chartered organization to affiliate with the [BSA].” In addition to currently sponsoring a large percentage of scout troops, the church’s programs for young men are now built around the scouting program. Furthermore, earlier this year, Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland was elected to the BSA National Executive Board. He voted against the policy change.
In the past, the church has attempted to wield the scale of their involvement in the BSA to influence judicial perspectives on its leadership policy. In the year 2000, the Mormon Church filed a brief (PDF) with other churches in the Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, which upheld 5-4 the BSA’s right to exclude gay leadership.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the largest single sponsor of Scouting units in the United States—would withdraw from Scouting if it were compelled to accept openly homosexual scout leaders,” the brief read.
“Only those who live in harmony with the teachings of the Church and Scouting are asked to serve as scout leaders,” it added.
Fifteen years later, the BSA has decided to accept gay leaders without the pressure of a Supreme Court ruling—but perhaps with the help of some substantial legal threats—and the Mormon Church may finally make good on its threat, with some in the media speculating that the church could create a new international organization to replace scouting.
So, after a century of mutual love, it’s come to this: One male-dominated group wrestling another male-dominated group over the issue of men who sleep with other men. It’s too soon to say who will come out on top but love has already been lost. As we know it, the warm history of Mormon involvement in scouting is over.by Ben de la Cour
Former Louisiana governor, video poker enthusiast and Democrat-turned- Republican, Buddy Roemer, formally announced his presidential bid today. The speech was not choreographed as a down payment on the Kingfish's dream, as it was held not in Nachitoches, but New Hampshire's Dartmouth College.
A native of Shreveport, Roemer graduated from Harvard in 1964 and a went on to serve four terms in Congress as a Democrat. As governor in the 1980s, he addressed many environmental issues affecting Louisiana, as well as drastically reducing unemployment and working to increase pay for teachers. Having beat Edwin Edwards after EWE survived an indictment, Roemer has for a long time been vocal about the corrupting influence of money on politics.
“Today, I run for President of the United States," he said. "I run to reveal the control of special interests in Washington and to demonstrate that the freedom to lead only comes by refusing their money. I run to prepare America for job growth, beginning with the elimination of unfair trade practices and attacking the debt. I run as a proud Republican, but an even prouder American.”
What does this mean in terms of the 2012 presidential race? It's hard to tell at this point. Despite the wide open Republican field, Roemer remains an outside pick, as he has been out of politics for a good while, but his willingness to tackle special interest money, and his policy to raise money only in small contributions already makes him stand out in a crowding field. (For more on that read this Daily Beast article.)
“We must break the stranglehold of special interest money on our political system, " he said. "It’s the special interests who use unfair trade and self-written tax loopholes to make their fortunes while stealing our future”.Looking for news you can trust?
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To help consumers and small businesses make sense of their new health insurance options, the Affordable Care Act created outreach personnel, or “navigators,” tasked with distributing information about coverage and walking people through the application process. On January 23, Texas passed a set of measures aimed at restricting these navigators because of lawmakers’ concerns about patient privacy. That same day, a federal judge in Missouri temporarily blocked enforcement of similar restrictions, ruling that they created too large an obstacle to enrollment.
“It is an abuse of your oversight authority to launch groundless investigations into civic organizations that are trying to make health reform a success.”
This tug of war is about a seemingly straightforward program: The navigators, who are required by law to be both unbiased and free, are meant to help uninsured Americans enroll in either Medicaid or private insurance plans. Depending on whether a state has opted to use its own insurance marketplace, navigators get funding through state or federal grants. For example, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, in Iowa, received a $214,427 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to employ navigators, which will give in-person assistance by preparing applications and helping consumers determine which plans they qualify for, in 61 of 99 Iowa counties.
But Republican lawmakers have cried foul, arguing that navigators could steal private information like Social Security numbers and medical records. In an August letter to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the HHS, the attorneys general of 13 states said they were concerned that HHS had “failed to adequately protect the privacy” of consumers because it does “not even require uniform criminal background or fingerprint checks before hiring personnel.” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, for example, praised his state’s regulations, saying on his Facebook, “Obamacare presents enough problems for Texans without the risk of a convicted felon handling their personal information.”
Privacy claims have led to a surge of restrictive measures like those in Texas. At least 17 states have passed regulations on health care navigators since, including Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee, which barred navigators from educating consumers about the specific benefits, terms, and features of a particular health plan. Here is a map of states that have passed laws restricting navigators:
Many policymakers and health care professionals say that these privacy concerns are unfounded and worry that partisan bickering will hurt underserved populations. After 15 Republicans members of the House asked for details and briefings on 51 navigator groups, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote, “It is an abuse of your oversight authority to launch groundless investigations into civic organizations that are trying to make health reform a success.” The Democratic members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce also noted that there are already significant privacy safeguards in place, including a $25,000 penalty for disclosing personal information and mandatory navigator training.
Peter Shin, professor of health law and policy George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, says that conservatives are more interested in decreasing enrollment and making Obamacare look bad than they are in protecting patient privacy. “I think the privacy concern is more of a political issue than a common sense one,” says Shin.
The result of conservative politicking? Underserved populations will remain so, as outreach resources are strained. “The purpose of the navigator programs is to help those who will need most in terms of understanding their options,” says Shin. “The more disenfranchised communities will be hurt the most from the navigator restrictions.”
Several navigator programs have already closed shop because of anti-navigator laws. Cardon Outreach, a Texas-based organization that has helped people enroll in Medicaid in the past, returned its grant from HHS. As the Columbus Dispatch reported, Cardon’s chief legal adviser stated in an email that the state and federal regulatory scrutiny surrounding navigators “requires us to allocate resources which we cannot spare and will distract us from fulfilling our obligations to our clients.”A long time ago, when my son was a baby, I made a ton of these ornaments for his first Christmas. Its one of the sweetest memories I have – him in his high chair, and me making ornaments just for him. I still have them, too!
Now it is time for new ones and I am wild about spa blue! I bought a white Christmas tree last year and thought that a few of these ornaments using metallic pearl white and metallic ice blue would be so swoon-worthy! They are so beautiful!
Today, I will share with you how I made these inexpensive beauties!
Materials:
Clear glass ornaments
Acrylic craft paint
Small plastic cups
Coordinating ribbon
Carefully remove the hangers from the ornaments and set them aside.
Using the paint, pour a little in the opening at the top. Add the next color and any remaining colors.
Continually turn the |
any means possible". Additionally, Prothero observes that "the only people looking for Mokele-mbembe are creationist ministers, not wildlife biologists."[4]
History [ edit ]
1909 saw the first mention of a brontosaurus-like creature in Beasts and Men, the autobiography of famed big-game hunter Carl Hagenbeck. He claimed to have heard from two independent sources about a creature living in Rhodesia which was described to them by natives as "half elephant, half dragon."[5] Naturalist Joseph Menges had also told Hagenbeck about similar stories. Hagenbeck speculated that "it can only be some kind of dinosaur, seemingly akin to the brontosaurus."[5] Another of Hagenbeck's sources, Hans Schomburgk, asserted that while at Lake Bangweulu, he noted a lack of hippopotami; his native guides informed him of a large hippo-killing creature that lived in Lake Bangweulu; however, as noted below, Schomburgk thought that native testimony was sometimes unreliable.[citation needed]
Reports of entities described to be dinosaur-like in Africa caused a minor sensation in the mass media, and newspapers in Europe and North America carried many articles on the subject in 1910–1911; some took the reports at face value, others were more skeptical.
According to German adventurer Lt. Paul Gratz's account from 1911:
The crocodile is found only in very isolated specimens in Lake Bangweulu, except in the mouths of the large rivers at the north. In the swamp lives the nsanga, much feared by the natives, a degenerate saurian which one might well confuse with the crocodile were it not that its skin has no scales and its toes are armed with claws. I did not succeed in shooting a nsanga, but on the island of Mbawala I came by some strips of its skin.[6]
Another report comes from German Captain Ludwig Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz [de], as described by Willy Ley in Exotic Zoology (1959). Von Stein was ordered to conduct a survey of German colonies in what is now Cameroon in 1913. He heard stories of an enormous reptile called "Mokéle-mbêmbe" alleged to live in the jungles, and included a description in his official report. According to Ley, "von Stein worded his report with utmost caution," knowing it might be seen as unbelievable.[7] Nonetheless, von Stein thought the tales were credible: trusted native guides had related the tales to him, and the stories were related to him by independent sources, yet featured many of the same details. Though von Stein's report was never formally published, Ley quoted von Stein as writing:
The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and applelike fruits. At the Ssombo River I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food. The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby. But since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals it was impossible to make out a particular spoor with any amount of certainty.[8]
Alfred Aloysius Smith, who had worked for a British trading company in what is now Gabon in the late 1800s, briefly mentions in his 1927 memoir the "jago-nini" and "amali":
Aye, and behind the Cameroon there's things living we know nothing about. I could 'a' made books about many things. The Jago-Nini they say is still in the swamps and rivers. Giant diver it means. Comes out of the water and devours people. Old men'll tell you what their grandfathers saw but they still believe its there. Same as the Amali I've always taken it to be. I've seen the Amali's footprint. About the size of a good frying pan in circumference and three claws instead of five.
He also speculates that "some great creature like the Amali" could be responsible for finding broken and splintered ivory in (now known to be mythical) elephants' graveyards,[9] as well as claiming to have given a chiseled out cave painting of the amali to Ulysses S. Grant.[10]
In August and September of 2018, Lensgreve of Knuthenborg, Adam Christoffer Knuth, along with a film crew from DR and a DNA scientist, traveled to Lake Tele in Congo, in search of the Mokele-mbembe. They did not find the dinosaur. However they found a new green algae, which has not been discovered before. [11][12]
Notes [ edit ]As promised, the folks at Nokia launched their alternative to Apple Maps for iOS: a new cross-platform solution called “Nokia Here”. Based off HTML 5, Here is now available on the iTunes App Store for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad this morning, offering users full map views, the ability to save maps for later viewing, coverage of 200 countries, search history, Facebook login integration, step-by-step voice-guided navigation for the car and walking, offline map viewing, and social features that allow users to share their location. Offline Maps only work with one-specific map area, as users are only able to download 10MB of mapping data for offline use. We’re giving the app a first run right now and will let you know our first impressions. In the mean time, the full list of features and a gallery are below: [App Store]
• Map views – Pick the map you need from map view, live traffic view, public transport line view or satellite view • Save map areas & wander without data coverage • In selected countries, access community maps created and updated by users • Maps, search and place coverage for nearly 200 countries • Search with history and suggestions • Share places with just a tap, including the location and how to get there, over SMS, email, or social networks • Organize places you love into Collections • Sign in to HERE Maps with your Nokia Account or Facebook login • Sync with Here.net – Access your Collections anywhere • Step-by-Step voice-guided walk navigation • Walk navigation through pedestrian routes, parks, alleyways, and more • Public transportation and driving directionsHow the Blockchain Will Force Lawmakers to Write New Laws
Blockchain technology is currently disrupting most major industries across the globe. From financial services, supply chain management, and cyber security to online music distribution, cloud computing, and philanthropy, the blockchain is rewriting the status quo in many sectors. The distributed ledger technology that was pioneered by the cryptocurrency bitcoin is also becoming a valuable tool for the public sector as it can be used to record and store digital identities, for electronic voting, and to distribute welfare payments, among several other applications. However, the change that the blockchain will bring in business and in society will also force lawmakers to write new laws that will govern the technology’s innovations.
Five key areas that will require “blockchain laws” in the near future include the use of cryptocurrencies as a payment method, the use of smart contracts, data privacy, property ownership, and anti-money laundering.
Cryptocurrencies
The use of cryptocurrencies as a payment method is something that lawmakers and financial regulators have been discussing since bitcoin first hit the mainstream in 2013. Due to the decentralized nature of most digital currencies, central banks and government have no control over these new currencies.
Some countries, such as Japan, are embracing bitcoin and have decided to accept it as a legal payment method. Other countries, such as Bangladesh and Bolivia, have outright banned the use of digital currencies such as bitcoin. However, in the majority of countries, there is little to no legal framework covering the use of digital currencies at this point. In most cases, central banks have only warned against the risks of using virtual currencies without giving any clear guidelines on the matter.
Lawmakers will have to agree on how cryptocurrencies will be classified and how they will be taxed as well as whether it should be considered legal tender or not. And if so, if there will be a type of depositors insurance for digital currencies like there is for fiat currency in most developed economies.
Anti-Money Laundering
An important role of financial regulators is to prevent acts of money laundering. Through the emergence of digital currencies as well as digital assets that can be bought and sold at a reasonably anonymous level, new laws will need to be created to prevent cryptocurrencies to be used for money laundering purposes. That would most likely mean extending KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements as well as introducing cryptocurrency-specific AML (anti-money laundering) measures for all bitcoin payment processors and exchanges, such as those that the Chinese regulator is planning to introduce in June.
Furthermore, laws will need to be written on how to punish those who use cryptocurrencies for criminal activities and those who aid criminals in the process.
Smart Contracts
Blockchain-based smart contracts are protocols that create an immutable digitized contract for two or more parties. This enables “what if” scenarios to be coded into agreements, which, for example, can include self-automated payouts in specific scenarios. The most popular smart contract platform is the Ethereum blockchain, on which smart contracts and decentralized apps can be developed on.
However, for smart contracts adoption to take place, they must also become legally binding in the eyes of the law. That means that there must be clear legislation governing smart contracts otherwise smart contracts will not be recognized as bona fide legal contracts and will, therefore, not become usable for industries such as the financial services sector.
Smart contract laws will also have to be agreed upon across borders given today’s globally interconnected business world.
Property Ownership
The ownership of property and land is a key driver of wealth for individuals in many developing countries. Property and land ownership disputes are, therefore, also a major issue in these parts of the world. It is not uncommon for governments to repossess privately owned land to make way for corporations or personal gain and in cases where there is little official record of land ownership wealthy individuals often take advantage of the undereducated who have little understanding when it comes to their ownership rights.
This issue, however, could be almost entirely alleviated by implementing blockchain technology to record property and land titles securely. There are already startups, such as Bitland in Ghana, that are working on recording land titles for private individuals to create a solution for this problem.
Having said that, for blockchain-based property and land ownership records to be legally viable, laws need to be created that will accept blockchain records as official.
Data Privacy
Blockchain technology is an excellent tool to securely store a large amount of data and only provide access to the data to those with the right access keys. Once recorded the data becomes effectively impossible to destroy or to tamper with due to the immutability of the distributed ledger technology. However, that can cause legal issues which need to be addressed by lawmakers in the future.
Due to the ‘right to be forgotten’ laws, some financial institutions are required by current laws to be in the position to remove data when required to do so by a court. This, however, can become a problem when data is stored on an immutable blockchain as one of the security key features that its data cannot be deleted as it is stored in encrypted blocks. That means that under current laws it is very difficult for some financial services companies to store specific data on blockchains.
While data privacy, overall, will be improved using blockchain technology in many areas of business and for individuals, there also need to be updates in current privacy laws to ensure the technology can flourish while individuals privacies are preserved.
New technology has always developed faster than regulators and lawmakers have been able to keep up with. It is not different in the case of blockchain technology today. For the blockchain to become an integral part of society as well as the business world, the right laws and regulations need to be put into place at a domestic as well as international level for the technology to flourish and its benefits to be felt.(Updated) Rockville Housing Enterprises Executive Director Ruth O'Sullivan updated the Rockville City Council on Monday on issues related to the agency's $36 million purchase of Fireside Park Apartments in December.
The city authorized a $2 million loan package to RHE to be put toward the purchase of the 236-unit, garden-style apartment community on Monroe Street. RHE, which administers the city's public housing, has said that the purchase would help the city preserve mixed-income, affordable rental housing.
According to O'Sullivan's report, Citibank was Fireside's primary lender, providing a $32.4 million loan. Montgomery County supplied a $3.19 million loan. The agency used $500,000 of its own funds—including $273,885 in grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Between the city's authorization of the financing in November and the agency's purchase of Fireside in December, Montgomery County increased its loan amount—from $2.85 million to $3.19 million—to cover unanticipated transfer/recordation taxes, O'Sullivan said.
While RHE Fireside Inc.—the independent company RHE set up to own Fireside—isn't a government entity, it's wholly owned by one and RHE assumed it was exempt from property and recordation taxes, O'Sullivan said. That isn't entirely the case.
Faced with a $500,000 tax bill, RHE proposed postponing some repairs to the property. Instead, the county preferred a loan increase to cover the gap, O'Sullivan said.
The county attorney's office later determined that RHE Fireside Inc. is exempt from county and state transfer taxes and the county recordation tax, but not the state recordation tax—an estimated $340,000.
Another issue was the requirement that the city rent to more households at or below the area median income—$107,300 for a four-person household—in order to meet federal Community Reinvestment Act requirements.
The city's proposal for RHE had called for renting only 40 percent (94) of those units to families that earn up to 60 percent of the area median income. The new requirement would call for renting half of the 236 units at rates affordable to families that earn up to 80 percent of the area median income.
O'Sullivan attributed this change to an oversight and said the new requirement would not have a financial impact on the city. She said an informal survey of Fireside Park residents showed more than half earned incomes that were at or below 80 percent of the area median income.
"It was in the contract from the beginning," she said. "We missed it."
The agency anticipates slightly more net operating income and revenue, and slightly lower expenses than what was budgeted at the time of the acquisition.
O'Sullivan's presentation and an overview of the discussion are posted on the city's website.
---
Related coverage:
(Nov. 19, 2012)
SPEAK OUT: Is Rockville Creating an 'Enclave' of Public Housing? (Nov. 12, 2012)
Rockville's Divide Over Fireside Park (Nov. 9, 2012)
Rockville City Council to Talk Fireside Park Purchase (Oct. 22, 2012)
Rockville City Council to Consider Financing Fireside Park Purchase (Sept. 24, 2012)
---
Editor's Note: This story has been updated since it was originally published on Wednesday, Feb. 27. RHE Fireside Inc. is the independent company Rockville Housing Enterprises set up to own Fireside Park. RHE is a government entity.Aesop told the tale of a kind-hearted farmer who was working his fields when he found a frozen snake. Sensing the viper was about to die, the farmer tore open his jacket and pressed the snake against his warm skin. Unfortunately when the viper revived, he gave his rescuer a fatal bite. "I saved you," moaned the farmer. The viper hissed, "But you knew I was a snake when you embraced me." This fable characterizes the relationship between the Republican Party and its Tea-Party wing.
A contemporary interpretation for Aesop's fable would be, "compassion is wasted on the immoral." From its onset, the Tea Party has been a political snake with one poisonous objective: advancement of the Tea-Party agenda regardless of the consequences to the Republican Party or the United States.
The Tea Party emerged after the 2008 presidential election, a toxic combination of the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign, hard-core conservatives dissatisfied with the Republican Party establishment, and political organizers funded by rich donors such as the Koch brothers.
In 2010 the Tea Party published its Contract From America:
1. Identify constitutionality of every new law
2. Reject emissions trading ("cap and trade")
3. Demand a balanced federal budget
4. Simplify the tax system
5. Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality
6. Limit annual growth in federal spending
7. Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010 ("Obamacare")
8. Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy
9. Reduce Earmarks
10. Reduce Taxes
This served as the framework for the policy agenda of the House Republicans, led by Tea-Party member Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader.
For many years, Republican politicians had to take the Grover Norquist tax pledge in order to garner conservative support. In recent years, the "Contract From America" has served a comparable function. In particular, Republican candidates have had to pledge to repeal Obamacare, reduce taxes and federal spending, and demand a balanced budget.
In August of 2011, the Republican-controlled house forced a crisis over the federal debt ceiling. As a result of a complicated compromise, Federal spending was drastically reduced through the sequester process.
At the end of 2012, there was another crisis -- the so-called "fiscal cliff" -- regarding the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the onset of a series of spending cuts. On January 1, 2013, the House of Representatives passed compromise legislation to avert the crisis. However, a majority of House Republicans and all Tea-Party members voted against the bill.
The latest crisis threatens to shutdown the government on October 1, when the next fiscal year begins. On September 9, when Congress returns from its summer vacation, negotiations will begin on a new Federal budget and raising the debt limit. What happens next will depend upon the strength of the Tea Party. If they have their way, the Federal government will close its doors.
Texas Republican Senator Cruz joined by 14 other Tea-Party Senators advocate shutting down the government. In addition, CNN reported "a bloc of about 71 House Republicans say they will refuse to vote for a measure that funds the government if it continues to fund the Affordable Care Act."
This is one of a number of issues where the Tea-Party partisans threaten the GOP leadership because they don't feel the Republican old guard are pushing the Tea-Party positions on Obamacare, immigration, and the Contract From America, in general. But while these extreme positions are popular with the Tea-Party base, they aren't swaying other voters. For example, a recent Hart Research poll found that only 36 percent of respondents wanted to repeal Obamacare.
This Tea-Party extremism has run into opposition from orthodox Republicans such as Arizona Senator John McCain,"Those of us who have been around for a while know what happens when there's the threat of a shutdown of the government: It's the Congress that gets blamed." Republican strategist Karl Rove agreed, "[the shutdown] is the one strategy... that might be able to guarantee that the Democrats pick up seats in the Congress in 2014."
In 2010, after the Tea Party slid onto the political stage, Republicans embraced the snake. Then the violent gerrymandering that accompanied the rise of the Tea Party, promoted the radicalization of the GOP. How, in many areas of the country, the Republican who wins the primary is the overwhelming favorite to win the general election. The GOP voters who turn out for the primary are usually the most conservative, often Tea-Party members. To win their support candidates ratchet up the stakes by taking increasingly radical positions and the Tea-Party has disproportionate influence. As a consequence, Republicans are engaged in a political civil war.
The GOP is suffering the consequences that Aesop wrote about 2500 years ago. Republicans who wholeheartedly embraced a poisonous snake now seem to be shocked that it's biting them.
_______
About author Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer, activist, and Quaker. Before starting a second career as a journalist, he was a technologist and one of the founding executives at Cisco Systems. Bob can be reached at Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer, activist, and Quaker. Before starting a second career as a journalist, he was a technologist and one of the founding executives at Cisco Systems. Bob can be reached at boburnett@comcast.netTwo of the dirtiest beaches in California are located in Los Angeles County—Santa Monica Pier and Mother’s Beach at Marina del Rey, according to environmental advocacy group Heal the Bay.
It released its annual California Beach Report Card today, and a full half of the “Beach Bummers”—Heal the Bay’s list of the 10 most bacteria-laden beaches—are located right here in Southern California. The two LA beaches came in at No. 6 and No. 9 on the list, respectively.
That’s an improvement over last year, when three LA County beaches made the list. Redondo Pier dropped off the list this year, and, in a stunning turnaround, received all A and B grades in water quality.
Also in the good news category: 93 percent of beaches in LA County received A grades during the hottest months of the year, between April and October. Meanwhile, 95 percent of beaches in Orange County and all of Ventura County’s beaches received A grades during the same period.
The grades are based on the presence of fecal bacteria in the water that can cause a host of gastrointestinal illnesses. Higher grades mean that beachgoers have a lower chance of getting sick after taking a swim, says Heal the Bay.
That means that it’s generally safe to swim at most Southern California beaches during the months when people are most likely to do so. However, during the other half of the year, things change dramatically.
During the abnormally wet winter, Heal the Bay gave almost half of LA County’s beaches F grades, as stormwater runoff drained into the ocean and dirtied up the coastal waters.
To address the runoff problem, Heal the Bay’s policy staff is advocating for better infrastructure to capture and reuse stormwater, rather than allowing it to “flow uselessly to the sea.”
In Santa Monica, construction is set to begin this year on an underground storage tank that will hold up to 1.6 million gallons of captured stormwater, which will then be transferred to a water recycling facility. Heal the Bay expects this will improve water quality at the pier, which is also affected by the presence of birds and by the underside of the pier itself, which offers a friendly climate for bacteria.
Four beaches in LA County made this year’s honor roll list of beaches with A-plus cleanliness ratings: Malibu Point, El Matador State Beach, Bluff Cove, and Portuguese Bend Cove. All 32 beaches that made the honor roll are located in Southern California.Japan has been forced to put off resuming beef exports to the United States until the island nation can ensure that proper measures are sufficient in detecting radioactive materials in food after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Specifically, US officials want to know how Japan is inspecting the beef, and managing and storing feed in order to prevent radioactive contamination from entering the food supply.
Officials from Japans’ Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries have attempted to downplay the situation pointing out that the beef sold for domestic consumption does not contain radioactive substances above the state limit. The Japanese officials say they will pressure their American counterparts to accept the Japanese beef quickly. Vietnam, Hong Kong and the U.S. were the biggest markets for Japanese beef in the year through March 2010.
In 2011, beef which contained cesium exceeding government standards was discovered to have been was sold to consumers, and also exported before being detected and pulled off of the shelves. the Japanese Government has been criticized by experts and international officials for not taking appropriate measures to prevent contamination from entering food products.
Source: JiJi Press
Source: NHK
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EmailHow to have reliable offline mode on Steam.
First off, I despise being forced to use Steam or indeed any other kind of invasive 3rd party middle man DRM, but since I have been gifted some free games and have also been stupid enough to pay for a few games that require Steam, I guess I am stuck with it, at least asd far as those games are concerned.
I work offshore. I am offshore for 5 weeks at a time. When I go offshore, I take my gaming laptop with me, which I like to play games on. Because I have no internet connection when I am offshore, I set all the invasive and defiling DRMs such as Origin and Steam to "OFFLINE MODE". Yet with Steam, even though I opt to log in in "OFFLINE MODE", after just a week or so, the Steam client tells me "There is no records of this username on your computer, please enter your username and password" With no internet connection, this is a pretty hard thing to do.
So my question is, if anyone would be so kind as to answer it, how do I make Steam go into a geniune offline mode, whereby I really don't need an internet connections to access my games.
I make no aopologies for the sour tone of my post. When Steam locked me out of my games that were meant to keep me amused for 5 weeks, rendering my gaming laptop an 8Kg weight around my neck, I was spitting bloody venom!Photo: iStockphoto
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Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab does more than just develop computer programs capable of beating the world’s best human players in the ancient game of Go. The DeepMind unit has also been working on the next generation of deep learning software that combines the ability to recognize data patterns with the memory required to decipher more complex relationships within the data.
Deep learning is the latest buzz word for artificial intelligence algorithms called neural networks that can learn over time by filtering huge amounts of relevant data through many “deep” layers. The brain-inspired neural network layers consist of nodes (also known as neurons). Tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft have been training neural networks to learn how to better handle tasks such as recognizing images of dogs or making better Chinese-to-English translations. These AI capabilities have already benefited millions of people using Google Translate and other online services.
But neural networks face huge challenges when they try to rely solely on pattern recognition without having the external memory to store and retrieve information. To improve deep learning’s capabilities, Google DeepMind created a “differentiable neural computer” (DNC) that gives neural networks an external memory for storing information for later use.
“Neural networks are like the human brain; we humans cannot assimilate massive amounts of data and we must rely on external read-write memory all the time,” says Jay McClelland, director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Computation at Stanford University. “We once relied on our physical address books and Rolodexes; now of course we rely on the read-write storage capabilities of regular computers.”
McClelland is a cognitive scientist who served as one of several independent peer reviewers for the Google DeepMind paper that describes development of this improved deep learning system. The full paper is presented in the 12 Oct 2016 issue of the journal Nature.
The DeepMind team found that the DNC system’s combination of the neural network and external memory did much better than a neural network alone in tackling the complex relationships between data points in so-called “graph tasks.” For example, they asked their system to either simply take any path between points A and B or to find the shortest travel routes based on a symbolic map of the London Underground subway.
An unaided neural network could not even finish the first level of training, based on traveling between two subway stations without trying to find the shortest route. It achieved an average accuracy of just 37 percent after going through almost two million training examples. By comparison, the neural network with access to external memory in the DNC system successfully completed the entire training curriculum and reached an average of 98.8 percent accuracy on the final lesson.
The external memory of the DNC system also proved critical to success in performing logical planning tasks such as solving simple block puzzle challenges. Again, a neural network by itself could not even finish the first lesson of the training curriculum for the block puzzle challenge. The DNC system was able to use its memory to store information about the challenge’s goals and to effectively plan ahead by writing its decisions to memory before acting upon them.
In 2014, DeepMind’s researchers developed another system, called the neural Turing machine, that also combined neural networks with external memory. But the neural Turing machine was limited in the way it could access “memories” (information) because such memories were effectively stored and retrieved in fixed blocks or arrays. The latest DNC system can access memories in any arbitrary location, McClelland explains.
The DNC system’s memory architecture even bears a certain resemblance to how the hippocampus region of the brain supports new brain cell growth and new connections in order to store new memories. Just as the DNC system uses the equivalent of time stamps to organize the storage and retrieval of memories, human “free recall” experiments have shown that people are more likely to recall certain items in the same order as first presented.
Despite these similarities, the DNC’s design was driven by computational considerations rather than taking direct inspiration from biological brains, DeepMind’s researchers write in their paper. But McClelland says that he prefers not to think of the similarities as being purely coincidental.
“The design decisions that motivated the architects of the DNC were the same as those that structured the human memory system, although the latter (in my opinion) was designed by a gradual evolutionary process, rather than by a group of brilliant AI researchers,” McClelland says.
Human brains still have significant advantages over any brain-inspired deep learning software. For example, human memory seems much better at storing information so that it is accessible by both context or content, McClelland says. He expressed hope that future deep learning and AI research could better capture the memory advantages of biological brains.
DeepMind’s DNC system and similar neural learning systems may represent crucial steps for the ongoing development of AI. But the DNC system still falls well short of what McClelland considers the most important parts of human intelligence.
The DNC is a sophisticated form of external memory, but ultimately it is like the papyrus on which Euclid wrote the elements. The insights of mathematicians that Euclid codified relied (in my view) on a gradual learning process that structured the neural circuits in their brains so that they came to be able to see relationships that others had not seen, and that structured the neural circuits in Euclid’s brain so that he could formulate what to write. We have a long way to go before we understand fully the algorithms the human brain uses to support these processes.
It’s unclear when or how Google might take advantage of the capabilities offered by the DNC system to boost its commercial products and services. The DeepMind team was “heads down in research” or too busy with travel to entertain media questions at this time, according to a Google spokesperson.
But Herbert Jaeger, professor for computational science at Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, sees the DeepMind team’s work as a “passing snapshot in a fast evolution sequence of novel neural learning architectures.” In fact, he’s confident that the DeepMind team already has something better than the DNC system described in the Nature paper. (Keep in mind that the paper was submitted back in January 2016.)
DeepMind’s work is also part of a bigger trend in deep learning, Jaeger says. The leading deep learning teams at Google and other companies are racing to build new AI architectures with many different functional modules—among them, attentional control or working memory; they then train the systems through deep learning.
“The DNC is just one among dozens of novel, highly potent, and cleverly-thought-out neural learning systems that are popping up all over the place,” Jaeger says.April 3, 2017
No women in the room
Are male-dominated tenure committees holding women back in academia?
Jakub Jirsak/Bigstock
There’s no question that women are underrepresented in academia, but there are lots of theories about why. Is it deeply-ingrained stereotypes about brilliance and women’s capabilities? Is it the “leaky pipeline” that sees highly-trained women pursuing careers outside academia? The role of maternity in a field where people face career-defining tenure decisions in their early 30s could also be a factor.
In some European countries, concern has focused on the male-dominated tenure committees that are convened to decide whether young professors should be promoted up the ranks. These committees are composed of full professors in the top roles and tend to be mostly or exclusively male. Does this put young female professors at a competitive disadvantage at a make-or-break moment in their careers?
In theory, there are plenty of ways that could happen, according to Manuel Bagues, an economist at Aalto University in Finland and one of the authors on a study about tenure committees appearing in this month’s issue of the American Economic Review.
“You have good reasons to expect that having more women in committees might be favorable for female candidates,” said Bagues in an interview with the AEA, even if evaluators aren’t compromised by stereotypes or prejudicial thinking. “Typically there is gender segregation in the types of research that people do, and we all tend to believe that the thing we do is the most important thing in the world. Academic networks are usually very important in these evaluations, and they tend to be gendered... female candidates may be less likely to have connections in these committees.”
Stereotypes can play a role as well. The study notes global survey data showing that a sizeable minority of men believe that men are simply better suited to leadership roles in politics and business – views that are much less common among women. Then again, audit studies show that female evaluators also exhibit bias against female academics, at least in hypothetical hiring decisions.
You have good reasons to expect that having more women in committees might be favorable for female candidates. Manuel Bagues
An increasingly popular response to this disparity: gender quotas. Not for the positions to be filled, but for the committees making the decisions about who will fill them. Including more women in roles of authority at tenure time is seen as a way to balance the scales and introduce a wider perspective to the promotion decision.
But quota systems that require a committee to be comprised of, say, 40% women have some downsides that are mostly hidden from public view. Committee members are drawn from the ranks of full professors, where women are even more underrepresented. To achieve near parity on tenure committees, some women in these top positions need to serve again and again.
“Once this [quota] policy has been introduced, we knew many full professors [in Spain] who were being called all the time to be on these committees and they were angry,” said Natalia Zinovyeva, also of Aalto University and another author on the paper. “Because of these quotas, women are sitting on committees perhaps 3 or 4 times more often than men, so imagine the time they spend.”
This can be a significant drag on these professors’ careers, because time spent evaluating young professors for promotion is time away from research. Another study recently appearing in the American Economic Review found evidence that female professionals are more likely to end up performing “non-promotable” tasks that are crucial to keeping an organization running but aren’t rewarded or valued when considering promotions or salary.
Bagues and Zinovyeva were curious how these policies – which had clear costs for senior female researchers – would actually affect hiring and tenure decisions. Along with coauthor Mauro Sylos Labini, they analyzed tenure committee data from Spain and Italy to see what happened when more women participated.
Committee selection is basically random, as professors who volunteer to participate are drawn from all over the country. Some committees just happened to have more women, while many others had zero or just one (at least before Spain introduced quotas in 2007). This creates a natural experiment for the researchers: they can compare the records of committees that were male-dominated with ones that were more balanced.
After analyzing approximately 100,000 hiring decisions across the two countries, the researchers found essentially no strong statistical evidence that having more women on committees improved the prospects of female applicants (see figure below).
There also didn’t seem to be much change in the quality of candidates who were approved for promotion. Candidates approved by diverse committees had roughly the same previous and subsequent research output as those approved by male-dominated ones.
What happens with more female decision-makers in the room? Promotion rates for women applying for tenured professorships in Spain (2002-06) and Italy (2012-14). Applicants were evaluated by committees of randomly-selected full professors that often included few or no women. When evaluation committees happened to include more women, however, female applicants did not fare noticeably better. View full size chart
Source: calculations based on Note: Shaded areas are 95% confidence intervals.Source: calculations based on data provided by the authors
In the Italian evaluations, where the researchers could see how individual committee members voted, they did find an interesting pattern: including more women in a committee had a noticeable effect on the voting patterns of male evaluators, who became slightly but measurably more negative toward female candidates.
That could happen for a number of reasons, such as the licensing effect. “When there are some women sitting on the committee, men might feel more license [to judge female candidates harshly] because there is a female evaluator that will ‘defend’ the female candidates,” said Bagues.
According to Zinovyeva, the appearance of female decision makers in an arena that was once almost exclusively male might also lead to subconscious or overt resentment. “Traditionally in certain fields there were men sitting on these committees,” she said. “Once women join the committees, there can be a backlash.”
Probably the most important result of the paper is what they didn’t find: any significant improvement in female applicants’ odds of advancement.
“Evaluation is probably not the biggest problem” for women’s advancement, says Bagues, although it may matter more in places like the U.S. where decisions are made at the university level and evaluators |
. The articles we’ll look at cover 1 in 7 of the articles in the first few pages over 20 months, including international news and many obituaries of the famous. Each article is written as a result of a death.
Just like we noted with terrorism coverage, the point isn’t that social and news media should cover events in proportion to how many they kill. It would be unprofitable to do so and uninteresting for the audience. It also would be problematic, as we would need to understand the future risk (e.g., the risk of a devastating future terrorism attack may be higher, after even a foiled attack).
But by showing the disparity, I hope that readers will find the context valuable when making decisions for themselves and their family.
The Most Covered Death Events
Let’s start by looking at a few of the most covered death incidents and, by contrast, some of the most deadly. The vertical axis is the number of articles in the first pages of The New York Times and the horizontal is number of human deaths:
Source: Wikipedia, The New York Times, custom analysis. This graph excludes the Nepal Earthquake, but it is included in this graph
Western terrorism and mass shootings are covered heavily, compared to the many other ways we can die. In the US version of this graph, you can see, for example, that deadly storms are poorly covered relative to how many they kill.
What inferences would you draw from the world if you focused on just the most covered events? The most deadly?
Intentional Deaths
The most covered (and scary) death is when a human intentionally kills another human.
Some media sources have highlighted that US murders have “surged”, international terrorism deaths have doubled, and a mass shooting happens every day. While these are real risks that Americans face, they are a tiny fraction of the ways we can die. Let’s examine the data.
Today, you have less than half the likelihood of dying in a homicide as you did in the early 1990s — approximately the same likelihood as you would have had in the 1960s. The US homicide rate of ~4 per 100,000 is 40% below the global average of 6.2 per 100,000 people — but still 3-4 times the homicide rate in Western Europe.
Source: US Department of Justice (link)
Each year, ~16,000 Americans are killed in homicides. To visualize this, the number of deaths due to homicides in a single year are five times the cumulative American terrorist deaths since 2000 (~3300 Americans have been killed by terrorism over 17 years).
Let’s examine a few different categories of intentional deaths (actual deaths are on left, coverage on right):
Source: The New York Times custom analysis, CDC data from 2015. Coverage reflects both US and international events. All actual data is sourced in this document.
Like we saw in our last post on terrorism coverage, terrorism deaths are by far the most heavily covered stories among intentional deaths as they garner the most interest. Similarly, stories of shootings of and by police officers have increased in The New York Times after controversial incidents involving African Americans.
Military deaths due to hostile action have less coverage than terrorism, though they might be covered more in previous years when more American troops were stationed overseas in an active role. In the decade from 2000 to 2010, 50% - 70% of American military deaths in a given year are due to illnesses, accidents, and homicide, though these likely get less coverage than military deaths due to hostile action.
There's another form of intentional killing we should add: suicide. Now, the breakdown looks like this:
Source: The New York Times custom analysis, CDC.
Suicides take ~40,000 American lives each year (2.5X homicides), but are rarely covered even by local news outlets. This may partly be due to the importance of covering suicide appropriately to prevent a contagion, though there are norms that allow coverage without increasing this risk.
We read the news to form opinions and make decisions. As we noted last time, a simplistic model of how humans make decisions might be as follows:
Like we’ve done throughout this series starting with the Space Shuttle Challenger, we can look at the two graphs above and make different inferences:
Dataset Inference from data Decisions Result NYTimes Coverage (Selective Data) Suicides are small compared to homicides and terrorism deaths.?? All Data Suicides kill twice as many Americans in a typical year as homicides, terrorism, and police-related deaths combined. Half of these deaths are people above the age of 50 and half below. Invest in mental health or better end of life support??
Transport Accidents
Now, let’s look at automobile crashes. Roughly the same number of Americans are killed by gun-related homicides as in alcohol-related auto accidents — about 10,000 people each year. But as you can imagine, gun murders get way more media coverage than drunk driving.
Source: The New York Times custom analysis, CDC, CDC Impaired Driving.
As an international paper, it makes sense that there’s little coverage of automobile crashes in The New York Times. But even in local papers, these crashes are significantly undercovered.
Like before, let’s compare the inferences you might make between the two graphs:
Dataset Inference from data Decisions Result NYTimes Coverage (Selective Data) Less auto crash deaths happen than those due to homicides or terrorism.?? All Data Auto crash deaths happen much more often than homicides (2.5 times). The number of drunk driving deaths alone are the same as the number of people killed in gun homicides each year.??
The death rate due to cars is horrific; one in sixty of every human death in the world is from an auto accident. Some 3.6 MM Americans were killed over the last 100 years. That’s 5-6 times the total number of American soldiers killed in battle in every war since the Revolutionary War. (The strong language we use is a technique used in media, but we neglected to mention how valuable automobiles are or how much safer they’ve become)
If we added plane and train crashes to the list above, they would be substantially covered (they can be highly vivid and scary), relative to the coverage for auto crashes. This occurs even though non-automobile transport deaths are less than 5% of the total transport deaths in the US in a typical year.
Common Causes of Deaths
Here’s a simple chart of a few select types of “avoidable” deaths, that we might prevent with the right investment. Above each bar, we've noted the ratio of how each type of death compares to homicides:
Source: Various (including CDC, WHO), see source data. You can filter the interactive version of this graph. Also, see an international version of the graph.
Combined, falls, drug poisoning, suicide, auto crashes, secondhand smoke, and HIV kill more than 10x as many people as homicides — but receive a small fraction of the news coverage.
Natural Disasters
While we haven’t included them in our last graph, a bad tsunami or earthquake in a single region can kill a large fraction of worldwide homicides, even though they’ll get much less coverage than war, terrorism or mass shootings.
Here are some examples, all since 2003:
Event Number of Deaths Fraction of world homicides 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake/Tsunami 280,000 61% 2010 Haitian Earthquake 160,000 35% 2008 Cyclone Nargis >138,000 >30% 2005 Kashmir Earthquake 100,000 22% 2008 Sichuan Earthquake 87,587 19% 2003 European Heat Wave 70,000 15% 2010 Russian Heat Wave/Wildfires 56,000 12%
How much coverage do you think a continental heat wave gets in an American paper? A single vivid terrorist attack in Western Europe?
Extreme temperatures have already killed 150,000+ in the last 15 years – but will be poorly covered.
Climate change is predicted to lead to 250,000 additional deaths a year starting in 2030, but will still be less covered than terrorism or homicides. Smoking kills millions, and health and car related drinking incidents kill hundreds of thousands worldwide – and again will have little coverage.
The Focus on Specific Human Deaths in the News
Let’s recap: 1 in 7 articles in the first few pages of The New York Times between January 2015 and August 2016 is due to a death event. Of these articles, ~65% reflects terrorism, homicide, war, and plane/train crashes. In reality, those types of deaths represent 0.7 percent of the 2.6 MM American deaths each year.
The breakdown looks like this (as you can see, homicide is the only one that registers in the “US/World deaths” data):
Source: WHO, CDC, The New York Times analysis. Actual data is sourced from here.
Many causes of deaths included in this dataset are considered “natural deaths” (e.g., Alzheimer’s, cancer) and therefore may be unavoidable. Even if we counted only avoidable deaths, the most covered deaths still only represent 2.8% of the total but ~65% of coverage.
Here’s an interactive version of the above graph that graphs coverage versus the number of deaths for different death types:
The New York Times Coverage Actual Deaths Articles of The New York Times ( ) First few pages Frontpage Actual Deaths ( ) World US
As you can see, intentional deaths like homicides and terrorism are covered heavily compared to how many they kill. Many other types of death that kill millions each year are poorly covered.
Like before, let’s compare what inferences we might make with just the selective data versus all the data:
Dataset Inference from data Decisions Result NYTimes Coverage (Selective Data) Terrorism, homicide, plane/train crashes, and war kill a substantial portion of the people who die each year?? All Data The most heavily covered deaths in media are a tiny portion of the way you (or any human) are likely to die – even if we exclude deaths like old age??
Source: WHO, CDC, The New York Times analysis.
Think about how you might feel looking at the actual graph above compared to reading a story that highlights that more than one mass shooting occurs each day. They’re both accurate, yet lead to very different perceptions and threat levels for the reader.
"Scariness" and Coverage
The scariest ways to die are the most covered. We can quickly see this by examining the characteristics that make an event scary:
Characteristic Description Example
(Scarier vs Less scary) Dread Anything that kills us in a scary way worries us Shark attack vs heart disease Novelty New risks are more frightening than old ones Zika vs. Influenza Catastrophic or chronic Things that happen less often but kill many are scarier than those that happen regularly Plane crash vs. car crash Uncertainty Concern will be higher if all the answers are not available Genetically modified crops Control/Choice Lack of control or choice worries us Plane crash vs car crash, self-driving car vs. human driven car Man-made (not natural) Man-made dangers are scarier than natural ones Genetic modification vs hybridization of species Children We get more scared by risks faced by our children Child abduction vs. our own abduction; childhood vaccines Awareness The more aware we are of a risk, the more concerned we will be Risk benefit trade-off If something feels like it provides value, it will be less scary Accepting a Syrian refugee vs driving a car
Adopted from David Ropeik, The Consequences of Fear (link). If interested, see David’s book.
Compare the most covered types of deaths in our previous chart to the characteristics in this table. How scary are the most covered deaths? The most prevalent deaths?
Even in 2017, so much of our decision making around danger is driven by a story we want to read rather than a thoughtful consideration of the risks we face. In the context of war, one New York Times journalist highlights a critical characteristic of a good story that influences coverage:
“Conflicts gain sustained American attention only when they provide a compelling story line … most of all... good guys and bad guys.”
Using the Media to Determine Personal Safety
Throughout this series, we’ve shown the large difference between the coverage of deaths and actual deaths. Just like I pointed out with the Space Shuttle Challenger, we need to look at all the data if we seek to make good decisions, not just selective data.
Would you make different voting or personal safety decisions by looking at reality rather than coverage? How interesting would reality be compared to the coverage? How profitable would reality be compared to coverage?
This highlights a societal paradox. If you figure out how to make people exercise consistently, you’ll likely have saved more lives (or increased lifespans) than nearly anything anyone else can do today. And yet, there will be very little media coverage of this (especially the front pages), as the effects are too diffuse and the narrative too weak.
More dangerously, media coverage may influence what our society focuses on — meaning that public policy or research funding or political decisions may be suboptimal.
Try an analysis like this yourself – compare media coverage in your media source of choice (your Facebook feed or local TV news) to any form of unbiased, objective data. Or just flip through the statistics of what kills us, to get a sense for all the risks we face – and how you might live your life differently. Here’s a spreadsheet of death types in the US and worldwide to get you started.
Next time, we’ll see why selective media coverage occurs by examining the invisible hand of the reader — and the business model of content creation/distribution.By Keith Idec
Erislandy Lara would love to fight Gennady Golovkin or secure a rematch with Canelo Alvarez.
The odds of Lara landing either of those fights seem slim, though, because Golovkin and Alvarez already have pay-per-view fights scheduled for March 18 and May 6, respectively, and supposedly are on a collision course. That’ll likely leave Lara to fight other 154-pound champions.
The Cuban southpaw, who stopped Yuri Foreman in the fourth round Friday night, can’t fight IBF junior middleweight champion Jermall Charlo (25-0, 19 KOs) because both he and Jermall Charlo are trained by the same man, Ronnie Shields. Lara can, however, fight Jermell Charlo, Jermall’s twin brother and the WBC world super welterweight champion.
Shields no longer trains Jermell Charlo, who needs to beat mandatory challenger Charles Hatley before a unification fight against Lara (24-2-2, 14 KOs) can be seriously explored for some time either in the spring or summer.
“Jermell is a great kid,” Lara told BoxingScene.com through an interpreter. “I’ve watched him grow a lot. Both of them [the Charlo brothers] are like family, but this is also a business. I don’t pick and choose my fights. I just fight. So would I fight him? Yes, I would. And if it presents itself, I think we have to put on the fight to see who wins. That’s a definitely a fight I need because I’m looking to unify all the belts.”
The 33-year-old Lara made the sixth defense of his WBA world super welterweight title Friday night in Hialeah, Florida (Spike). Lara drilled Foreman (34-3, 10 KOs, 1 NC) with a left uppercut in the fourth round that rendered Foreman unable to continue.
Jermell Charlo (28-0, 13 KOs), of Houston, and Dallas’ Hatley (26-1-1, 18 KOs) are expected to meet as part of a tripleheader Showtime will televise February 18 from Cincinnati. The main event that night from Xavier University’s Cintas Center will pit Cincinnati’s Adrien Broner (32-2, 24 KOs) against Adrian Granados (18-4-2, 12 KOs), of Cicero, Illinois.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.What just happened?
That’s the reaction shared by more than a few of us after Wednesday’s frantic Stage 2 Re-Entry Draft saw the rights to 11 players change hands in less than five minutes. Then the aftermath saw another three players move, and there’s undoubtedly more to come as MLS teams keep reshaping their rosters.
There have been bigger rashes of player movement over one day in league history – take the multiple Expansion Drafts, Roster Deadline day in 2008 that saw more than a dozen players switch teams and, oh yeah, the inaugural draft in 1996 when 160 soccer players joined MLS in less than 24 hours.
But it’s rare to see a collection of such noted players – Golden Boot winners, team captains, US national-teamers, Best XI selections, MLS Cup champions and more – move so quickly in such a short span of time.
How to analyze this? It’s not easy – there’s no precedent for the Re-Entry Process, a stipulation of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. So looking for sage pundit advice is almost pointless. But we can break down the immediate response and take a closer look at some of the fallout by consulting the news wire of the 21st century: Twitter.
[inline_node:308775]@thechad172: The #MLSReEntry Draft might be my new favorite part of the MLS offseason. 3 months worth of free agency in 3 minutes? Yes please! #MLS
Amen, brother. It may still be a little dizzifying for most of us, but between Wednesday’s Stage 2 and last week’s Stage 1, we had two full rounds of teams getting a chance to select players in a combined less than 10 minutes.
As much fun as it is to dissect the NFL Draft, the excruciating wait between picks is akin to watching paint dry – while waiting for grass to grow and passing the time by reading Tolstoy. We may still not know what hit us, but we’ll take it.
@Seitzy1: Why hello there seattle
And goodbye, Emerald City. Seitz was officially a Sounder for all of four hours before Seattle turned around and dealt him to FC Dallas. That encapsulated the madness of the day better than anything. In one day, the onetime heir-apparent to Nick Rimando at Real Salt Lake passed through three team’s rosters – to become the heir-apparent to Kevin Hartman in Frisco.
Seitz is still just 23 and has plenty of time to develop, but he took a step backwards toward the end of the season in Philadelphia. A new start in Dallas behind arguably the best ‘keeper MLS has ever had will do him a world of good.
@Morgan_Hughes: #crew96 getting jeff cunningham and stern john back in the black and gold means we could see lord GBS back in columbus in 5-7 years. #jokes
[inline_node:325027]Can’t disagree here. Brian Bliss and Robert Warzycha ditched four players last month who were all in the their mid- to late 30s: Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Frankie Hejduk, Gino Padula and Duncan Oughton.
The Crew brass swore up and down they needed to get younger and spoke of handing the keys to the younger guys to begin a new era in Columbus. Two straight first-round exits from the MLS Cup Playoffs against lower seeds often will prompt a team to do that.
But picking the 34-year-old Cunningham? I scratched my head a bit on this one, too. The sentimental value of bringing the original Crew man back to C-bus isn’t lost on anyone. And watching Cunningham likely set the mark for the all-time scoring record in Crew Stadium could be a fun moment for Crew fans, many of who still haven’t gotten over Brian McBride picking another team for his return to MLS.
Still, this still doesn’t add up to me, even if Bliss sees Cunningham as a part-time striker who can score “nine or 10 goals,” as the GM said Wednesday. I don’t doubt Cunningham could do it, but this is a strange message to send to the fans, more of whom have bought into the “get younger” manifesto than you’d think.
@shinguardian: Galaxy starting to look like a little Celtics like here....Cobbling together star vets (JPA, 'Dinho?) for sure MLS Cup win year?
Agreed – to a point. Shinguardian is, of course, referring to the NBA team stockpiling aging stars like they’re on the sale rack at Urban Outfitters. And it worked for them, didn’t it? Boston won the 2008 NBA Finals and then made a return trip this past year. So what if they’re longer in the tooth? Celtics fans aren’t complaining.
And Galaxy fans shouldn’t, either. Dealing promising young forward Tristan Bowen across the hall to Chivas USA might have been a little alarming. But this is perhaps the most striking sign so far that MLS is maturing into a big American sporting league – salary caps quite often force teams in all sports to go for broke, because you never know if you’ll get another shot at a title.
David Beckham, Juan Pablo Angel and the growing assortment of veterans in LA are certainly not young. (And slow down there on the Ronaldinho talk, Shinny.) But if they lead the Galaxy to a third MLS Cup next November, few will be sweating betting the future for the present. Our pal Alexi Lalas probably tweeted that strategy best on Wednesday:
@alexilalas22: Galaxy go all in for 2011.
Any interest in donning a Galaxy kit again, Big Red?
Jonah Freedman is the managing editor of MLSsoccer.com. “The Throw-In” appears every Thursday.
Ready to Launch: MLS Matchday 2010, The official MLS iPhone app. It's FREE! Download it here!German tourists say SF taxi driver held them against will
Tourists from Germany told police Monday that a taxi cab driver held them against their will and threatened to take them to a police station when they refused to pay their fare because the driver wasn’t able to find their destination. less Tourists from Germany told police Monday that a taxi cab driver held them against their will and threatened to take them to a police station when they refused to pay their fare because the driver wasn’t able... more Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close German tourists say SF taxi driver held them against will 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
San Francisco police are investigating a report of a kidnapping after three tourists from Germany told officers a taxi cab driver who picked them up in Fisherman’s Wharf briefly held them against their will.
The family — a 48-year-old woman, a 54-year-old man and their 11-year-old daughter — said the cab driver couldn’t find the restaurant they were trying to get to and drove them back to their hotel, said Officer Carlos Manfredi, a police spokesman.
The mother refused to pay the fare and tried to exit the cab, but the cabbie kept driving, threatening to take them to a police station, officials said.
About a mile later, the driver stopped, spit on the woman and tried to drive away, Manfredi said. The man and child were able to safely exit the cab, but the woman fell as she was getting out and had minor bruises. The taxi driver left the scene, police said.
The incident happened on the 400 block of Jefferson Street, just west of Pier 45.
The family called police and told officers the cab appeared to be a Ford Escape with black and orange coloring. They described the driver only as a man in his 60s. It wasn’t immediately clear what taxi company the driver belonged to, Manfredi said.
Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerovGet our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. By Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. Bloomsbury; 368 pages; $27 and £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
IN 1953 the leaders of America's big tobacco companies met John Hill, founder of a public-relations company, Hill and Knowlton, to talk about worrying new scientific research linking their products to cancer: worrying, that is, in that it might hurt sales. Hill stressed that a key part of their response had to be making sure that the public was informed of scientific doubts about the validity of the research. The tobacco industry took his advice to heart, even when its own in-house scientists were confirming what the public-health researchers had found out.
In this powerful book, Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, two historians of science, show how big tobacco's disreputable and self-serving tactics were adapted for later use in a number of debates about the environment. Their story takes in nuclear winter, missile defence, acid rain and the ozone layer. In all these debates a relatively small cadre of right-wing scientists, some of them eminent, worked through organisations sometimes created specially for the purpose to take on a scientific establishment that they perceived to be dangerously unsympathetic to the interests of capital and national security.
By the time the makers of cigarettes were fighting against legislation on secondary smoking and the makers of chlorofluorocarbons against regulations to protect the ozone layer, their efforts had coalesced into a general attack on the environmental movement and the regulatory bodies it had brought into being. The techniques employed included disinformation of various sorts coupled with an enduring and disgraceful willingness to stick to discredited arguments that seemed to play well. It is a shameful story for many of those concerned, and the authors make effective use of the vast archive of tobacco company documents now in the public domain, and of the personal archives of some of the scientists involved.
The book is good on drawing out the politics involved, and pointing out the contradictions. People who insisted that it was vital to look at worst-case scenarios when dealing with the Soviet Union proved remarkably averse to taking the same approach to environmental issues. It is rather less strong on the politics on the other side. In most of these campaigns the dissenters have argued that the American scientific establishment is tainted with an anti-corporate liberalism and is trying to impose socialism by the back door. One does not have to agree with this view, or to think that both sides are equally culpable, to feel that the ways in which science is used to generate assent for environmental action may sometimes be as interesting as the ways in which it is mobilised for dissent. Though the authors note as a curiosity that campaigns against secondary smoke predated the evidence that it did any harm, they show no desire to explore this seemingly reversed causality.
The book seems to suggest that the path from scientific assessment to environmental regulation would be a straightforward business were it not for the kind of opposition that the authors chart. But it would have added something to have examined more systematically the differences between cases where the science is clear (ozone after 1987) and where there was a fair amount of hype (forest death through acid rain). It is striking that America got acid-rain regulation passed in an election year under a Republican president. Moreover, it was passed despite there being very little scientific support for the more hyperbolic claims by environmentalists.
The authors rightly decry the degree to which scientists have sometimes manufactured and exaggerated environmental uncertainties. But they fail fully to explain how, despite this and other countervailing factors, environmental action has still often proved possible.As a lead UI engineer on the consumer web team at PayPal I’ve often seen patterns of mistakes that repeated themselves over and over again. In order to put an end to the most egregious errors we started using JSHint early on in the project. Despite its usefulness in catching major syntax errors, it did not know anything about our code, our patterns or our projects. In trying to improve code quality across the whole consumer web team we needed to find a linting tool that let us teach it how we wanted to code.
Enter ESLint
ESLint was started in 2013 by Nicholas Zakas with the goal of building a customizable linting tool for JavaScript. With that goal in mind Nicholas decided to make each rule standalone and provided a mechanism to easily add additional rules to the system.
Here is a view of the ESLint directory structure:
ESLint uses the Esprima parser to convert the source code it is linting into an abstract syntax tree. That tree is passed into each of the rules for further analysis. When a violation is found it is reported back up to ESLint and then displayed.
Understanding Abstract Syntax Trees
An abstract syntax tree (AST) is a data-structure that represents the meaning of your code.
Let’s use this simple statement as an example:
That can be represented by the following syntax tree:
When Esprima generates an AST from a piece code it returns an object. That object includes information not found in the original source, such as the node type, which proves useful later in the linting process.
Here is the Esprima generated AST for our earlier example:
One of the most important pieces of information found here is the node type. In this example there are three types of nodes: VariableDeclaration, VariableDeclarator and BinaryExpression. These types and other meta data generated by the parser help programs understand what is happening in the code. We’ll take advantage of that information as we learn to write custom rules for ESLint.
Building A Custom Rule
Here’s a simple example of a rule we use internally to prevent overriding a property we rely on in our express routes. Overriding this property led to several bugs in our code, so it was a great candidate for a custom rule.
As you can see our rule is returning an object which takes as its key the name of the AST node we want to inspect. In our case we’re looking for nodes of type AssignmentExpression. We want to know when a variable is being assigned. As ESLint traverses the AST if it finds an AssignmentExpression it will pass that node into our function for further inspection.
Within our function we’re checking to see if that expression is happening as part of a MemberExpression. A MemberExpression occurs when we’re assigning a value to a property on an object. If that’s the case we explicitly check for the name of the object and the property and then call context.report() to notify ESLint when there has been a violation.
This is a simple example of the power and ease in which custom rules can be built using ESLint. More information about building custom rules can be found on the Working with Rules section of the ESLint home page.
Packaging Custom Lint Rules
ESLint allows you to reference custom rules in a local directory using the –rulesdir flag. You simply tell ESLint where to look for the rule and enable it in your configuration file (using the filename as the key). This works well if the rules are relevant to a single project, however at PayPal we have many teams and many projects which can benefit from our custom rules. Our preferred method is to bundle rules together as an ESLint plugin an install them with NPM.
To create an ESLint plugin you need to create a module which exports two properties: rules and rulesConfig. In our case we’re using the requireindex module to create the rules object based on the contents of our rules/ folder. In either case the key should match the name of the rule and the value should be the rule itself. The rulesConfig property, on the other hand, allows you to define the default severity for each of those rules (1 being a warning, 2 for an error). Any module defined in the node_modules folder with the name eslint-plugin-* will be made accessible to ESLint.
Here is what our internal plugin looks like:
If you search for “eslint-plugin” on the npm website there are many plugins provided by the community at large. These shared modules help us identify best practices and catch potential sources of bugs and can be brought in to any any of our projects.
Conclusion
We love ESLint at PayPal. We’ve built it into our continuous integration pipeline and have it integrated with our IDEs. We’re glad to see a vibrant community growing up around ESLint and hope to give back more in the future. As our own Douglas Crockford is fond of saying, “Don’t make bugs!” That’s pretty hard to do, but as least linting helps us catch many of them before they can do much harm.Ethicist Peter Singer has questioned the Medical Board of Australia’s decision to suspend euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke’s medical registration, and says the only way to protect vulnerable people from him is to legalise voluntary euthanasia.
In an interview with Fairfax Media, the professor of bioethics at Princeton University said it would be both ‘‘concerning’’ and ‘‘extraordinary’’ if the medical board had suspended Dr Nitschke because he believed people without a terminal illness could make a rational decision to die.
‘‘I think suicide can be rational in the absence of terminal illness and I think I could find you dozens or hundreds of philosophers who would think that... I think if you know you are going to spend the next 20 years in prison, suicide is a rational option - not for everybody, but for some people,’’ he said, referring to the case of Nigel Brayley, a Perth man who communicated with Dr Nitschke before taking his own life while he was being investigated over his wife's death.
In July, Dr Nitschke said the board suspended his registration because his view that ‘‘people have a right to choose suicide is incompatible with his responsibility as a doctor” and because he posed “a serious risk to public health and safety that needs to be managed”.
This followed media reports that Mr Brayley, 45, was suspected to be suffering depression, had attended an Exit International workshop in February,and communicated with Dr Nitschke before he took his own life in May.Expansion of International Medical Cannabis Markets: Poland
Guest post by Peter S. Murphy, Member, Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC
This Summer, Poland became the twelfth country in the European Union (EU) to permit the sale of medical cannabis products to treat certain medical conditions. In recent years, countries across the globe have reformed their marijuana laws to allow patients and consumers greater access to marijuana. There are currently twenty-nine (29) countries that recognize medical marijuana, but only two (Canada and the Netherlands) export beyond their borders.
In 2016, North American consumers spent $6.7 billion on legal cannabis products, up 34% from 2015¹. In that same year, the United States saw more states legalize medical and recreational cannabis than in any previous year. To date, twenty-nine (29) states and the District of Columbia permit the sale of medical marijuana to patients to treat specific medical conditions. Additionally, seven (7) states and the District of Columbia have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana for all adults over 21 years of age.
The U.S. market has seen unprecedented growth despite the fact that marijuana (medical and recreational) remains federally illegal across the country. In the United States, federal law prohibits the manufacture and sale of all medical cannabis. The U.S. government regulates all drugs through the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which does not recognize any difference between medical and recreational use of cannabis. The government places every controlled substance in a category or schedule based on its potential for abuse and its medicinal value. Under the CSA, cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug, which means the federal government views cannabis as highly addictive and having no medical value. As a result, the U.S. marijuana industry has been wholly intrastate – meaning all manufacture and sale must be conducted within a state’s borders subject to strict state control. Cannabis cultivators, processors and retailers may not sell outside the state in which they are licensed to operate and no U.S. manufacturers are permitted to export outside the country.
In 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fulfilled his campaign promise and introduced legislation to legalize the use of recreational marijuana for all Canadians over the age of 18. Canada’s recreational marijuana market is expected to be operational by July 2018. Canada is one of only two countries that allows export of medical cannabis products. Currently, five Canadian companies export products to a combined six countries.
Local, national and international legislation will continue to shape the future of the legal cannabis industry in the coming years. Based on the current legal landscape, industry growth will follow two primary paths: (1) domestic cultivation and sale within the United States; and, (2) international trade agreements to permit the importing and exporting of medical cannabis among foreign countries. While the U.S. market may remain the largest in the world, the current federal ban on all forms of marijuana will keep U.S. manufacturers and retailers out of the international markets for the foreseeable future. With U.S. companies excluded, there is enormous potential for growth in countries with trade agreements that will allow the importing and exporting of medical cannabis. Poland is one such country.
On July 24, 2017, Poland’s Lower House of Parliament overwhelmingly voted to legalize medical marijuana, which was backed by the recommendation of the nation’s Health Care Committee. The bill was authored by MP Piotr Liroy-Marzec – a Polish hip hop artist-turned-politician who has long advocated for the legalization of medical cannabis. Liroy-Marzec’s original proposal would have allowed Polish citizens to cultivate their own medical cannabis but Polish legislators dropped that provision in favor of a regulatory system in which doctors and pharmacists will control distribution of the drug. The law does not permit domestic cultivation of cannabis, so for the time being Polish citizens must rely on imported medical marijuana.
While the law does identify specific qualifying medical conditions that can be treated with medical cannabis, such as MS and epilepsy, the law gives doctors the discretion to prescribe cannabis for any condition that can be treated with cannabis if supported by research. This is significant as many countries and states limit the use of cannabis to treat a finite list of medical conditions. In the U.S., expanding the list of approved conditions can require additional legislation and can take months or years.
Furthermore, under the Polish law, pharmacists will be licensed to dispense cannabis flower as well as extracts once import regulations are established. Dried cannabis flower is often the preferred form of medical marijuana for patients and requires no processing. In the U.S., several states limit approved forms of marijuana to oils, tinctures, liquids and other extracts. Current data suggests that marijuana extracts are rapidly increasing in popularity, but to date cannabis flower remains the most popular form of medical marijuana.
Since the law did not authorize domestic cultivation, Polish patients will rely on a limited number of medical cannabis exporters. Currently, Canada is the exporting hub for companies across the globe to obtain medical cannabis for use by patients in their respective countries². Canada currently exports medical cannabis to Australia, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Germany and New Zealand³.
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batteries.
– The Bessaflex comes with a transparent window on the rear for reviewing the film type and speed – a nice detail.
– The viewfinder has close to 95% of film coverage and is among the brightest of all M42 mount cameras. You focus with a sharp split image circle smack dab in the middle of your frame.
– It’s a tiny SLR! As far as SLRs go, this guy is only 5.3 x 3.6 x 2.1 inches, comparable to a rangefinder. It weighs about 450 grams – to Americans, that’s about a pound or so.
– Very fast maximum shutter speed at 1/2000th – which works completely without any battery power whatsoever!
– It has no hot shoe for flashes or other accessories. It does have a tripod thread. It does have a PC connection for flashes, so you’re not shooting dark. The pleasntly whirry mechanical self timer snaps after 10 seconds.
– The black Bessaflex is compatible with Cosina-Voigtländer’s own side grip and rapid winder accessories. Both fit Nikon DK-16 viewfinder eyecups.
Samples
Here are some sample photos from the Bessaflex TM I took walking around San Francisco. Note that it’s really not representative of the camera in any way since the image quality depends entirely on the film and lens used, but hey.
Conclusion
If you are interested in using M42 lenses or have an existing collection of M42 glass, enjoy the manual process of shooting film with a lack of autofocus and aperture priority (automatic exposure time based on measured light), the Bessaflex may very well be the best camera you can buy.
If you’d like to acquire a Bessaflex TM, there is little hope outside of manual focus camera forum classifieds, local camera shops’ used sections and eBay. It’s extremely difficult to find them new, but hey: it’d be silly to buy one in a box anyway. Cameras are meant to be used, and to acquire one with some history from a user that loved and took care of it is better than one that has been neglected in a box since its manufacturing date. Mine has a few small usage dings on the pentaprism housing at the top, which nobody notices; it works beautifully.
Bessaflex TMs retail for a few hundred dollars more than their original listing price due to their scarcity; the silver one featured in this article typically being a bit more rare and pricier than the black version (around $100 more on eBay – disclaimer: buying through my eBay links supports my website a little!). I’d say it’s worth every dollar, though: the Bessaflex has no comparable equal that’s still being manufactured, and if you enjoy the true experience of photography – the act of taking a photo, rather than the results – why waste your life with anything less than a great camera?October 5, 2014; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) looks to the sideline during the first quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Levi
One name Philadelphia Eagles fans can cross off their free-agency wish lists is 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver. Go ahead… cross it off. I know he’s on a lot of lists. Get out your pens… cross him off.
‘Hang on,’ you’re saying, ‘did you watch the last quarter of the season?’
I did. I saw the footballs flying through the air. I saw them landing in the hands of opposing receivers. 18 of them went for more than 40 yards (the most given up by any team in the league). 72 of them went for more than 20 (the most given up by any team in the league).
‘Why, then,’ says you, ‘would the Eagles ignore a talented corner that seems to fit their scheme?’
He’s a jerk.
‘Lot’s of players are jerks.’
Fair. But Chris Culliver is the brand of jerk that Eagles owner Jeff Lurie won’t pay to play football.
In laying out my case, I first asked myself if I wanted to discuss Culliver’s incidents chronologically or in order of egregiousness (note: this already bodes poorly.)
January 29, 2013 (I went with chronological): Culliver uses the lofty stage of pre-Super Bowl media week to give us his take on gays in the NFL. “We don’t have any gays on the team. They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff.” What about a retired player? Can retired players engage in any… sweet stuff, Chris? “Yeah, come out 10 years later after that.” Ah. Thanks.
Insensitive? Sure. But also dumb enough to say this as a football player in San Francisco: a town with one of America’s largest gay communities.
April 18, 2013: Fresh off of his apology and team appointed sensitivity training for that… Culliver posts this to instagram. If you don’t want to click, let me summarize: He’s not terribly nice to women (also, rather than calling them women, he opts for a term with a little more… nuance.)
Insensitive? Sure. But also dumb enough to post this to your own instagram.
Now, at this point, Culliver suffers a sever knee injury and misses all of the 2013 season. I don’t think the injury is a major factor in considering adding Culliver, but it certainly doesn’t help.
It does, however, give us nearly a solid year of Culliver-free headlines.
But then he gets healthy…
March 27, 2014: More insensitive remarks? Don’t be silly; He’s had a year off to prepare. This time Culliver gets arrested. For allegedly hitting a bicyclist with his Mustang, attempting to flee, and, in the process, hitting a witness’ car. A search of his car also turns up a pair of brass knuckles (which are apparently illegal to own.)
May 8, 2014: Civil charges are filed, in connection with the hit-and-run which claim that Culliver lashed out at the witness who was attempting to use his car to block Culliver from fleeing the scene. The suit, about which you can read here, asserts that Culliver was verbally abusive and used a racial-slur while attempting to convince the witness to move his car before police arrived (personal note: I find verbal abuse and racial slurs to be almost entirely unconvincing.)
Culliver’s legal issues have yet to be resolved. And any league-issued punishment that may stem from these incidents will likely be the problem of whatever team signs him this offseason.
But let me be clear: It’s not the fear of any punishment Roger Goodell might hand down that will cause the Eagles to stay miles away from Chris Culliver.
It’s Chris Culliver.
“Culture wins football. Culture will beat scheme every day.” – Chip Kelly
And perhaps, more than that, it’s the Philadelphia Eagles.
14. The number of Philadelphia Eagles who’ve been arrested since 1999. Only the Cardinals, Rams, and Texans (who don’t really count because they didn’t exist until 2002) have had fewer. There are 10 teams in the league with at least twice that number. The Vikings lead the charge with 46.
It’s not happenstance when one franchise has 46 arrests over a 15 year period and another has 14. It’s the product of culture. It’s fundamental. It informs that organization’s hiring of decision makers and, thus, informs the kinds of decisions that organization makes. For the Eagles, that decision maker is Chip Kelly. And he has this to say, “Culture wins football. Culture will beat scheme every day.”
The culture right now in Philadelphia is about focus and intelligence. About adding college graduates (six of the Eagles seven picks in 2014 have diplomas.) About adding leaders (2013 draftee Bennie Logan wore #18 at LSU… a number the Tigers give to the player that best embodies success and selflessness.) About jettisoning players that don’t fit that mold.
“But Riley Coop-”
Stop! The Riley Cooper situation is different and you know it. One: He was already an Eagle. And there’s a difference between what you do with your own player-in-trouble and deciding to actively seek out players who are in trouble and bring them into your organization.
Two: Cooper’s incident was an isolated one and not, like in Culliver’s case a series of events that begin to paint a picture of a person. Three: Cooper apologized like Culliver… and has lived up to that apology. Four: it’s been talked to death.
Culliver is 6’0” and nearly 200 pounds. He’s proven he can play at this level and is a fit with what Billy Davis and the Eagles like to do in the secondary. He fills a major need for a team whose corners struggled mightily in 2014. He will be a cheaper option than top free agent corner (and potential Eagle target) Byron Maxwell. And yet…
The Eagles won’t touch him. Not even with one of those newly extended NFL goal-posts.When I was younger, I wanted to travel like Patrick Leigh Fermor, who famously spent 1934 walking from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. I envisioned myself sporting leather satchels and lace-up boots, doffing Panama hats, spouting demotic Greek. I fantasized about riding horses through the Caucasus and letting falcons loose upon the Black Sea, about “living up in the mountains, dressed as a shepherd,” as Fermor had done. It was a fantasy cobbled together from all the books of all the travel writers I loved -- the great writer-scholars of a certain generation, who saw the whole world as raw material: shifting, uncertain geography for them to shape and create anew in their words.
Then I turned 15, and traveled alone for the first time to Paris, a city I had once lived in, and which I knew well. I laid out maps. I made plans. I would bolt down every alleyway. I would say yes to every invitation. I would lay lilies at Oscar Wilde's grave. I would sit at cafes in Montmartre until some itinerant, velvet-trousered poets came to scoop me up out of my innocence; they would take me with them to secret courtyards, up the stairs to hidden salons, and there we would drink absinthe and I would scribble down my experiences and then, at last, I would know what it meant to have an adventure.
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I never had an adventure.
I was skittish, awkward, hardly capable of forming words to boys my own age, let alone 40-something men well-practiced in the art of knocking gawkish girls out of their comfort zone. I spent my week in Paris squirming out of conversations, stuttering out fake phone numbers, learning all too quickly to avoid those places where I might be considered a target. Cafe terraces, park benches, crosswalks of city streets. My desire for experience, for openness, for adventure, had been overpowered by a stronger imperative, one I had internalized without realizing it: Don't get yourself raped.
* * *
Even today, my male friends look at me with confusion when I try to explain how powerful, how completely prevalent is don't-get-yourself-raped in my everyday life. It's the reason I get my keys out a good 10 minutes before I reach my apartment, keeping them between my fingers in case I need to use them as a weapon against an assailant. It's the reason I take taxis instead of walking home alone late at night. It’s the reason I always walk in the middle of the road, steering well clear of alleyways or obscured corners.
But it's the reason, too, for more subtle variations in behavior. I'm no longer 15, and I am far more capable of turning away aggressive strangers than I was that ill-fated summer, but as a travel writer, I am painfully conscious of how easy it is for a moment's lapse to turn me from an observer – an all-seeing eye, freely taking in a Tbilisi hilltop or a Turkish terrace – into a target.
It's the reason I turned down the recent invitation of a well-known Georgian writer to visit him at his winter home in the mountains. It's the reason my heart starts pounding when the waiter in Tbilisi brings me a complimentary plate of baklava when I've only asked for a coffee. Not because I fear that this writer, or this waiter, will drag me into a darkened room and rape me. But rather because the social codes I have learned to fend off unwanted advances – abruptness, bordering on rudeness; the refusal of any special favors or gifts; the subtle avoidance of giving off the “wrong impression” – are diametrically opposed to the openness, the willingness to go anywhere and do anything, that form the genesis of every good travel story.
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Of course, many of my decisions are instinctive, ritualistic rather than practical. I am statistically more likely to be raped on a night out with friends in England than by a stranger in Yerevan, after all, and I know that however tightly I hold my keys, however forcefully I refuse free baklava, the only thing that will determine whether or not I end up raped is whether or not I end up in the presence of someone who has decided that my consent is immaterial. Nevertheless I have internalized a series of rules – do not smile at a stranger, never follow a shopkeeper into a back room, never accept a ride, never tell a man where you're staying – that prevent me from following in Fermor's footsteps, from sleeping in haystacks or barns like, as he puts it, “a tramp, a pilgrim, a wandering scholar,” much as I might like to.
“Can't you just get over it?” a male friend asked me once, accusing me of clinging to cowardice in the guise of common sense. Certainly, it is possible to attribute some of my reluctance to skittishness: I have swallowed concepts of self-preservation over and beyond what I need to keep myself from ending up at the bottom of the Bosphorus. And I wonder, sometimes, whether women are too often taught to prioritize a nebulous idea of “safety” over adventure. My male friends laugh about the scrapes they have gotten into – arguments, fist fights, muggings – dangers that have left no lasting damage.
Can I not adopt the brisk attitude to danger of the Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy, who once fended off a would-be rapist with a.25 pistol?
Yet behavior taken as mere geniality in men – accepting rides or invitations, staying for a cup or tea or dinner, even engaging in idle conversation – is often taken in women to be a sign of sexual willingness. My male friend can accept a newfound friend's offer of a drink, of a meal, of a sofa bed, without being presumed to have given sexual consent; I have no such luxury. Once, after sustaining a bad fall in Tbilisi, I allowed a neighbor to give me a lift to the local pharmacy and help me buy bandages to stop the bleeding. Disoriented from my fall and the blood loss, and eager not to appear ungrateful, I gave him my phone number. Over the next few days, I fielded between five and seven phone calls a day, as my neighbor demanded a date with me in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, my willingness to get in his car was not the result of a medical emergency, but rather a proclamation of sexual desire.
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To be a Patrick Leigh Fermor, a Colin Thubron, a Norman Douglas or Paul Theroux, requires always saying yes. To not-get-raped, according to every lesson I – and so many other women – have been taught, so often requires saying no.
* * *
A few months ago, I was sitting over tea with a much older travel writer whose works I admire. I mentioned to him that I was having trouble reconciling the idealistic notion of myself as a fearless lady adventurer with the safety imperatives demanded of a woman alone. I told him how the avenues open to Patrick Leigh Fermor, to Norman Douglas, to Richard Francis Burton, never fully felt open to me.
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He considered. “Of course, I went to boarding school,” he said dryly, name-checking a famously posh English institution. “It never occurred to me that I wouldn't belong anywhere.”
Nor did it occur to Fermor. Such an approach to travel – the grandiose conviction that the world exists to be mapped, shaped, formed anew with reference to the author's own preconceived convictions of how it ought to be (Fermor insisted upon calling Istanbul “Constantinople” long after the Turks themselves had decided otherwise) -- is exclusively the provenance of the privileged, the powerful: those who never doubt that the world belongs to them. The riotous, Panama-hatted approach to adventure – tall tales and breathless misadventures, nights spent sleeping in boxcars and beer halls and the grand halls of impoverished counts – is often the world in which the storyteller, with his witty quotes and charming misfortunes, becomes a kind of literary colonizer: the true subjects of the story – these locals for whom “Constantinople” is only ever Istanbul – reduced to mere background objects, picturesque scenery. The world Fermor or Chatwin portray is mired in nostalgia for a mystical time when places conformed to the romantic ideals these writers held of them. Such a narrative of loss gives Fermor's work -- written in recollection of travels undertaken just before World War II -- much of its haunting loveliness. Yet it is impossible to read Fermor without being all too aware that its world of unthinking privilege (after all, Fermor's beer halls and boxcars soon gave way to spare bedrooms in family friends' chateaux) is no longer sustainable.
As a “lady adventurer,” a female traveler, I have never had that particular privilege. I am an intruder; I am a stranger; I am a woman in public spaces – tea houses, street corners – often deemed the exclusive provenance of men. I do not have the luxury of sauntering into a basement chaikhana in Tbilisi or Istanbul, spreading my legs apart on the cushions, leaning back, loudly quoting Homer and demanding pots of tea, secure in the conviction that the world will shape itself to my will.
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Yet I am not so sure that it should.
After all, such an approach is the grand narrative of colonization writ small, the literary equivalent of sticking a flag into strange soil and calling it one's own. It is the approach of men – more, so, of white Western men – those who have been brought up to never doubt that the names they give places are one and the same as the places themselves.
This cannot be my approach. If being a woman traveler has taught me anything, it is that the freedom to have an adventure, to have the adventures one chooses, is illusory. It is a privilege denied me, but it is a privilege all the same: the assumption that I have the right to impose myself, my story, my thoughts upon a place. If I could magically change my gender, just while traveling -- like the Gertrude Bell of old, who often traveled dressed as a man -- it would certainly make things easier for me. But I know, deep down, that it would also mean unlearning the lessons that I, as a specifically female travel writer, have learned from my own experience.
My approach must be a different one. I must watch; I must listen; I must look. I must sometimes remain silent and observe; I must avoid calling undue attention to myself. I must sacrifice the desire, born of too many readings of “A Time of Gifts,” to become the hero of my own story, the folk adventurer with the lace-up boots.
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Instead, I take in my surroundings. The tools I, as a woman, use to preserve my own safety – an ability to size up a strange man at 20 paces; a constant awareness of the events occurring in my peripheral vision – become the tools of my trade as a writer. My silence, my care, my hyper-awareness, allow me to recede into the background, to allow the people I observe to become the true subjects of the stories I tell.
These stories are not Fermor's stories. Romantic intrigues with Byzantine princesses aside, the stories Fermor tells are largely the stories of men – his adventures are so often male adventures, their aesthetic taken wholesale from Boys' Own Stories: spycraft, narrowly escaped beatings, quoting Horace to a captive German general. But if my gender bars me from downing raki or chacha with strange men, it nonetheless allows me access to other experiences: spheres deemed by so many male travel writers to be too domestic, too prosaic, to be of interest. I have spent late nights drinking tea with my landlady in Tbilisi, listening to accounts of her girlhood love affairs. One Georgian artist I particularly admire invited me up to her apartment and told me all about her strained relationship with her daughter. She changed clothing in front of me; she let me see her struggle not to cry.
These are not Fermor's adventures – overflowing with bravado, punctuated by quotations from Horace. And I, in my most thoughtless moments, have been guilty of dismissing such experiences as afterthoughts, not real adventures: the travel-writing equivalent of that despicable term “women's work.”
Yet such a dismissal is part of the problem. The experiences of women – the experiences women have access to – cannot be considered a mere footnote to the “real story”: the stories of men who travel, who meet and speak to and drink raki or chacha with other men. It may not be Fermor's story, but it is no less valid for being mine.
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When the final volume of Fermor's travelogue appears (posthumously) on shelves in the near future, I will be among the first to read it. I'll sit in my armchair and thrill to his adventures and, for a few hours, I will wish that I could be more like him: free to conquer the world with my feet.
But deep down, I'll know that such freedom is born of a privilege I do not have and perhaps should not want. It is a privilege that blinds those who have it to the fact that the world is not raw material, shifting, uncertain geography for us to shape and create anew in our words. It is not a moveable stage set upon which we can create visions of ourselves, invent ourselves as the adventurers we would like to be.
As a woman, this is something I have always known. As a writer, it is something that I am constantly called upon to relearn. My limitations, as a female travel writer, are also my strengths.
I will never accept an invitation from boisterous strangers on a trans-Siberian night train, nor spend my nights stumbling through the poorly lit back alleys of Kiev or so-called Constantinople. I will never hitchhike with drunken pandauri players into the Caucasus, gulping down chacha and crowing toward the stars. I will never be Paddy Leigh Fermor.
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Instead I will stay up late with other landladies in other apartment buildings in other cities, sharing stories of first loves. I will pour tea for grandmothers on Turkish terraces. I will eavesdrop on bridal parties in the Tbilisi bathhouse.
I will listen for stories. I will tell them, and they will be my own.Rent and property prices are not the only thing stacked against young people. Low wages and insecurity in competitive job markets – be they creative or in the third sector – are extending further into graduates’ working lives. Rather than a youthful rite of passage, zero-hours contracts and low pay are now a regular feature of certain professions well into people’s 30s. Academia is the example par excellence. Once prestigious, secure and well paid; today, while the prestige remains, the pay and security of the next generation of academics has fallen off a cliff. Traditional understandings of what constitutes a middle-class job just don’t hold up in quite the same way.
There is no mystery as to the cause of these working conditions. The fact that real wages are falling is a direct consequence of decades of rising inequality. Put simply, the people at the top are paying themselves more, by paying the people at the bottom – including a disproportionate number of young people – less.
So how do we fix this? Unions are a predictable (though still essential) answer. Rejuvenating the co-operative movement is another.
AltGen is an organisation that helps young people set up workers’ co-operatives as an alternative to competitive, precarious and low-wage career paths. Recent graduates ourselves, we are well acquainted with this situation. Rather than competing with our peers for unpaid internships – a graduate race to the bottom – workers’ co-operatives are businesses built on collaboration and solidarity.
Co-operatives are making a comeback across the UK. Between 2009 and 2014, 1,331 were launched, increasing the number of co-ops by 26% to 6,323. Last March, Students for Cooperation was set up, a national organisation to help students start co-operatives to meet their basic needs – from student housing in Birmingham to food in Glasgow. In November, the Bristol Cable was launched – a co-operative newspaper and online platform.
Young creatives are realising not only that they are often already working along co-operative lines informally, but also that formal co-operative status has benefits. Strike! magazine, made the headlines last month by covering up adverts on the tube with political slogans. Less well known is that it has recently been incorporated as a co-operative. In its own words, it did not need to do this (it was already an informal co-op). Rather, it was about accessing the “global community of support” offered in the form of a grant from another co-op.
This is far from mere youthful idealism – workers’ co-operatives have proved more resilient during economic crises and startup co-ops have a better chance of survival than other businesses. While co-operatives are no silver bullet, this option could be more rewarding (both financially and personally) than working your way slowly up the increasingly slippery career ladder. This is why AltGen is working with Co-operatives UK to create the Young Co-operators Prize – five £2,000 startup funds for groups of young people with co-operative ideas.
Setting up a workers’ co-operative will not enable young people to rent their own rooms overnight. But we are facing unaffordable housing and low pay. Co-operatives are part of the solution to these problems.Poor white boys are being ignored by education policy despite the gap in educational attainment increasing, the head of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) has warned.
Mary Curnock Cook questioned whether the fight for equality in women's education could have become so "normalised" that "the need to take positive action to secure equal education outcomes for boys" may not have been recognised.
"Although most schools will track the achievement of their boys and girls, there seems to be little focus on the gender gap in education policy."
Writing for the Telegraph, following the publication of new Ucas data looking into degree subject acceptances by gender, Ms Curnock Cook warned that the "highly entrenched trend" was a direct consequence of "years of lower educational achievement by boys."
Quoting recent figures, Ms Curnock Cook highlighted that, by the age of 16, girls are over 20 per cent more likely to achieve five GCSEs including English and maths at Grade C or better.
While a recent report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that just 28.3 per cent of white boys who were eligible for free school meals achieved five GCSEs at grade A to C.
According to Ucas data released in December, teenage girls are now a third more likely to go to university, with the entry rate for 18-year old women growing twice as fast in one year than it did for men.
This means that there are 36,000 fewer men applying to university compared to 32,000 a year ago.
"Each time Ucas releases statistics on equality of access to university in the UK, the gap between the entry rates for girls and boys gets a bit worse," Ms Curnock Cook said.
"Just before Christmas, our 2015 End of Cycle Report revealed that young women in the UK are now 35 per cent more likely to go to university than young men, and 52 per cent more likely when both sexes are from disadvantaged backgrounds," she added.
According to figures released today, women starting university in September 2015 outnumber men in a range of subjects, with startling differences in, biology, nursing, social work, English, law and psychology.
Degrees with less than 500 acceptances have been excluded from the list
However, in traditionally male dominated subjects, such as physics, maths, computer science and engineering, men continue to outnumber women.
Writing for the Telegraph, Ms Curnock Cook said that more could be done to help further boys' academic attainment, and that "policy silence" by the Government wasn't helping the issue.
"There is plenty of research about the differences in the male and female brain, hormones, maturity and behaviour, learning styles and preferences, and how these affect educational achievement," she said. "But although most schools will track the achievement of their boys and girls, there seems to be little focus on the gender gap in education policy."
Responding to Ms Curnock Cook's comments, Dr Lee Elliot Major, chief executive of the Sutton Trust, said: “The poor academic performance of disadvantaged boys, especially those from white working class backgrounds, is a tragic waste of talent with a significant economic cost.
"If we are to make sure that every pupil, regardless of their gender, ethnicity or background, is able to reach their full potential, we need to redouble our efforts to close these attainment gaps. Not only should every child have access to great teaching and the chance to go to great schools, but students who are at particular risk of falling behind should be given additional encouragement and support.”
In order to help narrow the gap, Ms Curnock Cook called for a national campaign to attract more men into teaching, along with a greater focus on how both male and female students learn from primary school onwards.
She added: “The focus on White working class boys in the Higher Education Green Paper as part of the wider aim to widen university participation from all under-represented groups is a really important signal of change.
“But no amount of outreach by universities will work if boys are still too far behind when they come out of secondary education.”
A Department for Business, Innovation & Skills Spokesperson said: “As a One Nation Government, We are committed to ensuring that everyone with the potential has the opportunity to benefit from higher education, irrespective of their background or gender.
"This academic year we saw record numbers of students entering university, including from disadvantaged backgrounds. We are currently consulting on further measures to improve access to higher education, including from white working class boys.”Entrants to Academy Award for best documentary will now need to have been reviewed in the New York or Los Angeles Times
The arcane processes by which films qualify for Oscar consideration took a bizarre twist today when it was revealed that, as of next year, documentaries will need to have been reviewed in the New York Times or Los Angeles Times to qualify.
The New York Times itself broke the news after rumours began circulating last week. No specifics were forthcoming on whether both print and online reviews would be suitable, or whether "capsule" reviews would qualify. But "reviews by television critics were specifically ruled out".
The move seems to be aimed at reducing the number of documentaries submitted for consideration (124 in 2011) while also lessening the influence of qualifying events such as the DocuWeeks festival, which has proved adept at enabling lesser-known films to enter the race.
The Academy is also presumably concerned that acclaimed films such as The Interrupters, Senna, Into the Abyss and, further back, Capitalism: A Love Story, Hoop Dreams and Crumb were denied Oscar nominations.
However, handing a decisive vote to film critics will lay the Academy open to charges they are handing control to an outside organisation, militating against non-distributed, low-budget films, and reinforcing the American bias of the awards.
Meanwhile, another of the Academy's rules – which allows for scripts of qualifying films to be sent to members – caused a hiccup in the J Edgar campaign when a "continuity draft" was sent out instead of the final shooting script.
Writer Dustin Lance Black was reportedly upset over the glitch but swift action by studio Warner Bros appears to have calmed matters down.The world relies on rules and regulations to run in an orderly fashion. But there’s a few people out there who are rebels. They won’t follow your rules – they’re their own masters. This post is for the first-world anarchists – the revolutionaries who don’t care about your rules.
OK, so maybe they aren’t REALLY rebels, but these pictures are still hilarious. Most of them involve finding some sort of public notice that announces a not-all-that-important rule or request and then blatantly violating it. My personal favorites are the ones that interpret a given warning differently than it was intended – when they wrote “No Diving” on the side of that pool, I’m sure they didn’t mean “No Scuba Divers Allowed.”
Whether you’re a lover of law and order or a rebellious outlaw, check out these images and let us know if you have any of your own!
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Source: franciscotrindade.blogspot.comTurkish Lira falls to historic low against US dollar
ANKARA
REUTERS photo
The Turkish Lira hit another record low against the U.S. dollar on Nov. 18, having fallen more than 8 percent so far this week, hit by a statement by the head of U.S. Federal Reserve chairwoman and signs of more discord between Turkey and Europe.The greenback climbed up to 3.4078 against the lira, its historic high, before easing to 3.3970 liras as of 12:00 a.m. It further fell to 3.3714 liras after the markets closed on Nov. 18.The dollar had stood at 3.3460 at the close on Nov. 17.The Turkish Central Bank sold 10 billion liras with the repo tender with a Nov. 25 due date, netted 19.7 million liras of demand.Turkey’s Economic Coordination Committee held an unscheduled meeting on Nov. 18 at 4 p.m. under Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.Deputy prime ministers, ministers related to the economy and a number of officials are included in the committee, which makes key decisions on the matter.A recent spat between Ankara and the EU, Turkey’s main business partner, has played a role in the fall of the lira, according to experts.President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Belgium of being a center for supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Fethullah Gülen, the main suspect behind the failed July 15 military coup attempt. Erdoğan has also accused Germany of not being committed to the fight against terrorism and harboring PKK members.The Turkish president earlier this week suggested that Ankara could take its EU membership bid to a referendum.U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress on Nov. 17 that Donald Trump’s election to the presidency had done nothing to change the Federal Reserve’s plans for an interest rate increase “relatively soon.”But interest rates futures for 2017 are now starting to price in one or more rate hikes next year, a sea change from before the election when they priced in a less than 50 percent chance of a 2017 rate hike, assuming the dovish Yellen would be extremely cautious in raising rates.The dollar’s rising yield attraction is lifting the U.S. currency, which rose to 110.34 yen, its highest level since early June. The euro slumped to $1.0620, a low last seen almost a year ago.The dollar’s index against a basket of six major currencies rose above its “double top” touched in March and December of 2015. The index now stands at its highest level since April 2003.“Double top” is a technical analysis term describing a currency (or other liquid asset) rising to a high, falling, and then rising again to the same level. Breaking the double top is often seen as a bullish sign by technical analysts.Meanwhile, Turkey’s benchmark BIST 100 index declined by 217.91 points to open at 74,918.31 on Nov. 18. It closed the day at 75,748, rising after the Central Bank sold off 10 billion liras with a repo tender with a Nov. 25 due date, netting 19.7 million liras of demand.Among the sector indices, the leasing and factoring sector showed the greatest rise, 1.44 percent. The mining sector index fell hardest with a 0.83 percent decline.One kilogram of gold increased to 131,600 liras due to the buying spree.Kuveyt Türk Participation Bank, Istanbul Altın Rafinerisi, Rona Döviz, Gram Kıymetli Madenler and Uğuras Kıymetli Madenler were the top operators in gold trade.While the battle continues in the US for a slightly higher minimum wage, the Swiss are exploring drastic methods to create a fair economy. One proposed method would provide a guaranteed 2,500 franc income to all citizens, regardless of whether or not they are employed. And if that doesn’t get the job done, a vote on May 18th could decide whether the Swiss will implement the world’s highest minimum wage of nearly $25 an hour. Both referendums come on the heels of unrest in Switzerland over income inequality.
Switzerland has one of the most stable and equitable economies in the world, but it also happens to be one of the most expensive places to live. The country also has |
Public Instruction issued guidelines instructing schools to teach students about gender identity as early as kindergarten.
Kindergarteners and first-graders must be taught that “there are many ways to express gender,” according to the guidelines, which took effect this school year.
Second-graders, meanwhile, are expected to learn that there is a “wide range of gender roles and expressions,” and third-graders that “gender roles can vary considerably.”
Chris Plante, policy director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, said expecting 5-year-olds to understand the concept of gender identity is “completely unreasonable and irresponsible.”
“We don’t allow our kids to cross the street unattended at this age because they can’t understand the concept of a car, never mind gender expression,” Mr. Plante said. “That doesn’t even begin to address the idea that these are concepts that should be left to parents, who know best for their children.”
Two days before summer break, a kindergarten teacher at Rocklin Academy read her class “I am Jazz,” written by transgender reality TV star Jazz Jennings, and “Red: A Crayon’s Story,” a children’s book about a blue crayon that identifies as a red crayon.
“The boy’s parents asked the teacher to read these books, that today was going to be the day that we are going to change his name and start presenting him as a girl,” Ms. England said. “And the school said yes.”
At some point the boy reportedly left the classroom and came back dressed in girls’ clothing, whereupon he was reintroduced to his classmates as a girl.
Neither Rocklin Academy nor the teacher involved has confirmed that the boy left the classroom to change.
“There’s some question about the sequence of events because the school is refusing to answer questions,” Ms. England said. “They’re telling parents to ask their 5-year-olds what happened. We interviewed about one-third of the students — again, these are kindergarteners — but they all agreed that he came to school dressed one way and, at some point in the day, changed, and that his name became a girl’s name.”
When they went home, students told their parents that one of their classmates had changed from a boy to a girl.
“All I heard was my son just mentioned his friend, who was a boy, is now a girl,” one parent, Chris Hurley, told Fox40.
About a week later Rocklin Academy sent a letter to parents to reassure them that the books read were “age appropriate children’s books, geared for ages 4-8.” The school pointed to its policy and California state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
Legal counsel for the Rocklin Academy school board also delivered a PowerPoint presentation to parents on July 31. One slide said students have the “right to the use of his or her preferred pronoun at school and in class.”
“Intentional use of the non-preferred pronoun is considered gender identity harassment,” the presentation said. “Don’t assume a preferred pronoun; ask.”
The presentation cited Obama administration guidance and Title IX, saying the cost of a federal investigation would be “astronomical, in both the financial and reputational senses.”
Rocklin Academy sent parents follow-up letters addressing their complaints on Aug. 11 and 15.
The Aug. 11 letter said the board would not “ban specific books from being read to students in the classroom.” The Aug. 15 letter raised concerns about the “possibility of creating a slippery slope about what can and cannot be discussed in our classrooms.”
Ms. England called the arguments being advanced by the school “disingenuous.” She said parents aren’t asking for specific books to be banned or certain subjects to be off limits for discussion.
“All the parents want is notification before these controversial issues are brought up in the classroom,” she said.
The PowerPoint presentation noted that parents have a right to opt their children out of sex education under California law. But it said “diversity and tolerance curricula” do not qualify as “sex education.”
The Rocklin Academy Board of Directors held a meeting Monday, during which parents were able to vent their concerns. The board, however, refrained from responding because the topic was not on the agenda. A school board meeting to address the issue is expected to be held on Sept. 18.
Classes resumed at Rocklin Academy last week, and it didn’t take long for one of the transgender boy’s first-grade peers to call him the wrong name and use the wrong gender pronoun.
“Imagine how difficult it is for that first-grader to try to understand that the person that she knew as a boy all last year is suddenly a girl,” Mr. Plante said. “And to hold her to account for that, to send her to the principal’s office because she honestly doesn’t understand what this means? It’s mind-boggling.”President Donald Trump said he disagrees with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's recent decision to check the phones of staffers in an effort to find suspected leakers.
"I would have had one-on-one sessions with different people.... I would have done it differently," Trump said in an exclusive "Fox & Friends" interview.
He went on to call Spicer a "a fine person" who is doing a "very good job" and said he is "OK" with how Spicer handled the situation.
"There are things you can do that are a hell of a lot worse," he concluded.
A CNN report this morning, citing multiple sources, said Trump "signed off" on Spicer's decision to check the aides' cellphones.
See more from the big interview, here.
Rosie O'Donnell to Headline WH Rally Before Trump's Speech to Congress
Bush 43: I Take Trump at His Word That He Wants to Unify the Country.- Pro-life feminist organization New Wave Feminists has been removed from the official list of sponsors of the Women’s March on Washington 2017. Support of abortion as a fundamental principle of the upcoming January march has been cited as grounds.
“I can only assume it’s because there was a lot of pressure not to affiliate with pro-lifers, which is unfortunate,” Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, president of New Wave Feminists, said about the decision.
In a Jan. 16 video statement on Facebook, Herndon-De La Rosa explained that they had been removed, speculating it was because of negative media backlash after an article on their participation appeared in The Atlantic. The feminist protest had previously listed New Wave Feminists as a partner, but by Monday afternoon had removed links to the Texan pro-life group from the event’s website.
Earlier that day, The Atlantic featured a piece on pro-life participants in the Women’s March on Washington, highlighting New Wave Feminists as well as several other pro-life groups’ decision to participate in the march. The pro-life organization's decision attracted attention after the Women’s March released a list of guiding principles in early January – which included “open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people.”
According to The Atlantic, organizers do not see the march specifically as an anti-Trump protest. But the date of the protest – the day after Donald Trump's presidential inauguration – is meant to “send a bold message” Women’s March co-chair Bob Bland told the Atlantic. Bland continued, saying the march is meant to support a wide variety of people, but particularly those criticized during the 2016 election cycle. “We’re marching to say that we support them, and all women,” Bland told The Atlantic.
The march is expected to draw between several thousand to as many as several hundred thousand participants from around the country.
More than 100 organizations, including including pro-abortion organizations such as Planned Parenthood, have applied for “partnership” in supporting the March
Bland told The Atlantic that including Planned Parenthood “was a no-brainer for us” because of their support of the Affordable Care Act. Furthermore, Bland stated, “one of the challenges facing women in this incoming administration is access to reproductive care.”
Before rescinding New Wave Feminists’ partnership, Bland told The Atlantic that women of all beliefs and backgrounds were welcome, particularly “voices that have previously been either marginalized or silenced.” She told the publication that the intersectional nature of the event and inclusion of different perspectives on feminism was valuable and the “future” of the feminist movement “We must not just talk about feminism as one issue, like access to reproductive care.”
After revoking New Wave Feminists’ partnership, the Women’s March issued a statement saying that the event is pro-abortion and that the organizers “look forward to marching on behalf of individuals who share the view that women have the right to make their own reproductive choices.”
“The anti-choice organization in question is not a partner of the Women's March on Washington. We apologize for this error,” the statement added.
The removal of New Wave Feminist’s partnership status, while disappointing, Herndon-De La Rosa said, will not change her or the organization’s decision to join the March. The Women’s March’s decision does not change either their pro-life beliefs nor their identification as feminists. “We will be there whether we are official partners or not.”When U.S. officials claimed two weeks ago that an American aircraft carrier was heading toward waters near North Korea, it was actually sailing in the opposite direction, The New York Times and Defense News report.
Amid growing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, U.S. Pacific Command announced on April 8 that the USS Carl Vinson strike group would sail north to the western Pacific after departing Singapore that day. An American official told Reuters at the time that the ships’ move toward the Korean Peninsula was a show of force directed at the regime of Kim Jong Un.
U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told Fox News the next day that the group was being rerouted from Singapore toward the Korean Peninsula as a “prudent” show of force.
US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Sean M Castellano/Released The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson transits the Sunda Strait on April 15, 2017.
Mere days after the announcement about the strike group’s new course, President Donald Trump weighed in on the North Korean threat. “We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier,” Trump told Fox on April 12.
“We have the best military people on Earth. And I will say this: He is doing the wrong thing,” Trump added, referring to Kim Jong Un.
But Defense News pointed out on Tuesday that photos released by the U.S. Navy showed the aircraft carrier passing through the Sunda Strait in Indonesia, about 3,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula, last Saturday. It was moving away from North Korea when U.S. officials said it was moving toward the peninsula, the Times confirmed on Tuesday.
The ship has changed direction since then, but is expected to arrive far later than initial reports suggested.
CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted that an administration official blamed the mix-up on a miscommunication. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senior admin official blames miscommunication for mix-up over whereabouts of USS Carl Vinson which admin had said was headed to Sea of Japan — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 18, 2017
North Korea has recently ramped up work on its nuclear program, hoping to develop a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the United States. Trump has vowed to “solve” the North Korean problem, but is facing few good options to confront the threat.
Pyongyang test-fired missiles during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the U.S. in March, and again on April 4 ahead of a visit to the U.S. by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Following the April launch, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released a three-sentence statement acknowledging the launch: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment,” it read.
Tensions further escalated in the runup to April 15, the 105th anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Experts warned that Pyongyang might conduct a missile test. Satellite imagery at the time indicated that Pyongyang might have been preparing for a sixth nuclear test in addition to a massive military parade.
While North Korea did end up test-firing a missile on Sunday, the projectile exploded almost immediately after launch.
Following the launch, Vice President Mike Pence said Trump would take a more aggressive stance against Pyongyang than previous administrations.
“We’re going to abandon the failed policy of strategic patience. But we’re going to redouble our efforts to bring diplomatic and economic pressure to bear on North Korea. Our hope is that we can resolve this issue peaceably,” Pence told CNN.The critical Virginia gubernatorial race has tightened in the final weeks of the race, with Republican Ed Gillespie leading Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) by 1 point, according to a new poll.
A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday shows Gillespie with 48 percent of support from likely voters compared to Northam's 47 percent. Libertarian Cliff Hyra received 3 percent of the vote, while another 3 percent are undecided.
This is the first public poll that shows Gillespie leading, but it is within the survey’s margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. Monmouth University's poll from last month had Northam leading by 5 points, 49 to 44 percent.
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"This has never been more than a five point race in Monmouth's polling, and that means either candidate has a very real shot at winning this thing,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “We have seen lots of little movement that has either helped or hurt each candidate but with neither one being able to break out.”
The poll found that Northam is expanding his vote share in Northern Virginia, while Gillespie has been gaining ground in the western part of the state. With those regional divides, Murray said, “the battle for swing voters will occur right down the I-95 corridor.”
The Nov. 7 race has entered the final stretch, with political heavyweights coming out on the campaign trail to boost the respective candidates.
Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, campaigned along Vice President Pence over the weekend. While it’s still unclear if President Trump will make a visit to Virginia, he tweeted support for Gillespie while accusing Northam of “fighting for” the MS-13 gang.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden Joseph (Joe) Robinette BidenWoman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid Poll shows Biden leads Democrats vying for 2020 nomination The Hill's Morning Report - Dems appear to have votes to counter Trump on emergency MORE stumped with Northam over the weekend, and former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaChicago's next mayor will be a black woman Obama portraits brought more than 1 million visitors to National Portrait Gallery in first year With low birth rate, America needs future migrants MORE is returning to the campaign trail for the first time since leaving office to campaign with the lieutenant governor later this week.
The poll was conducted from Oct. 12 to 16 and surveyed 408 likely Virginia voters via live interviews through landlines and cellphones.The $5000-a-bike City Bikeshare That’s Hardly Used
Spin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 22, 2017
In late 2013, a wave of baby blue bikes hit San Francisco. The city had its first ever station-based bikeshare program — Bay Area Bike Share.
The team at Spin — a San Francisco headquartered station-less bikeshare startup — was curious about Bay Area Bike Share’s growth since then. How well used is the system? How does it stack up to station-based systems in other US cities? And are taxpayers really paying a reported $5,000 a bike?
We had researchers dig into the history of Bay Area Bike Share. We had analysts sift through millions of rows — 20 gigabytes worth — of individual ride data (10/01/2015 to 09/30/2016) from six major cities: New York City; Washington, DC; Boston; Seattle; Chicago; and San Francisco.
And the results were surprising.
How Good A Biking City Is San Francisco?
We combed through the San Francisco Municipal Transport Agency (SFMTA) 2015 report about biking in the city, and three numbers stood out:
82,000 : Number of bike trips in the city per day
: Number of bike trips in the city per day 184%: Increase in bicycling from 2006 to 2015 — the city’s fastest growing mode of transport
Increase in bicycling from 2006 to 2015 — the city’s fastest growing mode of transport 434: Miles of bike lanes throughout the city
In the past decade, more than 600 cities around the world have implemented similar plans, collectively deploying more than 700,000 bicycles. It made sense for San Francisco to finally get a system of its own.
How Does Bay Area Bike Share Stack Up?
We looked at the number of bicycles and stations per city, in relation to each city’s population.
New York City’s Citi Bike system has the largest number of bikes in operation (a whopping 10,000). Seattle’s Pronto network — soon to be shuttered — has the least bikes of the cities at just 500. Calculating per 1,000 capita, Bay Area Bike Share (1,030 bikes), falls far behind comparable cities.
Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare — with an impressive 5.6 bicycles per 1,000 capita — far surpasses systems in the other US cities we analyzed. Launched in 2008 with 10 stations and 120 bicycles, Capital Bikeshare has since expanded 40 times in size. It was the first large-scale bikesharing operation in the US — and today, is considered the country’s most successful.
When it comes to stations per square mile, DC takes the cake again, handily beating out Chicago, Boston, and New York City.
In some cases, bikeshare data by city includes several stations outside of a city’s limits, or in the larger geographical region surrounding the city.
While DC boasts 6.4 stations per square mile, Bay Area Bike Share clocks in at just 1.5. Save for Pronto in Seattle, Bay Area Bike Share has the least amount of stations among the cities we looked at, with 70 spread across its 46.87 square miles.
Bay Area Bike Share’s Low Usage
Far and away, New York City’s system saw the most daily usage, with 3.6 daily rides per bicycle. Bay Area Bike Share sits at almost half of that for bicycles in San Francisco.
Lastly, an analysis of Bay Area Bike Share’s most popular station by the hour of the day reveals very few overall rides — even at peak hours.
During morning rush hour (9am), the most popular Bay Area Bike Share station (San Francisco Caltrain, at 4th and King) only sees a peak of 25 pick-ups. At peak afternoon commute time (6pm), the same station sees even less drop-offs — about 22, on average.
How Much Does Bay Area Bike Share Cost?
We uncovered a publicly available contract signed by a handful of Bay Area cities involved in the program— San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, and San Jose.
On average, the cities pay an incredible $5,249 per bike, excluding sales tax, station costs, and maintenance. The cost is then passed down to riders with these pricing plans:
Bay Area Bike Share also offers an affordability option for $60/year.
Digging further, we discovered that the contract grants Bay Area Bike Share exclusive rights to operate a bikeshare in those cities, including San Francisco.
Let’s Recap
San Francisco is a great biking city
Bay Area Bike Share is one of the least used systems in a major US city
Taxpayers are paying $5,249 per bike
Taxpayers have no freedom — thus far — to choose from competing bikeshare options due to an exclusivity agreement
Cities Need A Great Bikeshare System
There is a strong case to be made for an effective bikesharing system not just in San Francisco, but in every major US city. An increase in biking boosts the local economy, reduces congestion, improves air quality and public health, and complements existing forms of transportation.
Station-based bikeshare systems are limited by the strength of their station network. In our hometown, Bay Area Bike Share lacks both stations and usage, despite its presence in a great biking city. And this why San Francisco is a personally important launch city for us.
Spin’s station-less system lets people pick up and drop off bikes anywhere that’s legal, at $1 per trip. City residents will have an alternative to the inconvenience of an expensive, station-based bikeshare. We are determined to provide accessible and affordable last mile transportation to everyone, right here in San Francisco — and cities around the country.The semiconductor industry recorded its highest ever sales of US $336 billion in calendar year 2014. Logic devices (FPGA’s, SoC’s, ASIC’s, etc.), Memory (DRAM, Flash, SRAMs, etc.), Analog devices (Amplifiers, Filters, Power Management devices) and Processors (excluding microcontrollers) made up nearly 80% of sales. See: Overview o tf the Semiconductor Ecosystem and Product Segments. Year 2015 fell only marginally behind at US $335 billion. Semiconductor Industry Association forecasts the market to grow to $336 B in 2016 and about $348 B by 2017.
Sign-in to download the data xls with the charts: Semiconductor Sales for Last 25 years
Tracing semiconductor sales over the last 25 years, we see that the industry grew from US $55 B in 1991 to $335 B, at approximately 7% CAGR. This is 2% better than the global GDP growth rate of 5% over the same period.
However the growth journey has seen its share of ups and downs. Year 2001 saw a decline of $65B (-32%) taking the market to 1995 levels. This was due to burst of the “Internet bubble”. Year 2008-2009 also saw a decline of about 10%, setting the industry back by $30B. This time the global financial crisis was to blame.
Observing incremental growth in dollar terms, in the last 25 years there were only 7 years when the market posted a negative sales increment. If we leave out the two global meltdowns, which anyways affected all industries, we have only 5 years of negative incremental growth. Each major fall in the market was almost immediately followed by a period of strong recovery and stability (decreasing incremental growth eventually leading to a fall in the market). Assuming that this cycle will repeat we are perhaps in the phase of marginal incremental growth and we should be expecting a fall during the 2019-2020 period. This time period perhaps coincides with the relative maturity of the IOT market. By then a much more clearer view on practical adoption of the IOT technologies would have emerged and the demand will stabilize. This will potentially lead to correction in the related semiconductor product segments namely Microcontrollers, Sensors, Optoelectronics and to some extent logic devices.
The cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry is typically attributed to the excess inventory and capacity build up. Overall excess capacity and lack of demand results in pressure on prices. At the same time technological advances continue to better the price to performance ratio for semiconductor devices. In fact the improvement in semiconductor technology in accordance with Moore’s law has been foundational in enabling ubiquitous availability of powerful computing across the industries.
Figure 1 illustrates the continuous change in semiconductors’ constant-quality prices over time. [Note the logarithmic scale in the chart] Therefore to ensure business sustainability, the market needs continuous stimulus for innovation from innovative end application uses. In the recent past, digital consumer devices like (cameras, music players), smartphones, tablets etc. have provided this impetus for continuous innovation in Semiconductor industry. Going forward the “Internet-of-Things” trend can be seen to drive the Optoelectronics, Sensor and the MCU (micro-controller) market.
The overall shipment data from IC Insights indicates that overall Semiconductor shipments are likely to exceed One Trillion devices in 2017. The data also indicates that 2001 (dot com bust) and 2008-09 (global financial crisis) were the only years in the last 40 years when the shipments actually declined significantly. Shipments when viewed together with the general sliding price trend indicate that despite exponential growth in shipments, the price decline is weighing down on the overall revenue growth.
The IMF has projected the global growth to be at 3.4% in 2016 and 3.6% in 2017. The semiconductor industry product segments like processors, memory, logic devices (SOC’s, ASIC’s etc.), Analog Optoelectronic and sensors have applications spread across Industrial, Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronic devices and Automotive industries. Given wide spread of application, the overall market growth pretty much is aligned to the global GDP trends.
Logic Devices, MCU’s, Optoelectronics and sensors are likely to drive the growth for the semiconductor industry; driven by higher automation and connectivity (IOT) across the industry segments. However these product segments are also challenged with continuously reducing prices. The revenue growth is likely to hit the USD $350B mark by 2018 at a CAGR of 1.5%. By 2019-2020 time frame we should see saturation setting in and expect a decline in the market.
More on semiconductor product segment revenue performance in the next post.
Please share your insights on factors impacting the semiconductor industry sales and how the growth- decline cycles can be better analyzed and predicted.
Like this: Like Loading...The Alfa is cool and all, but I’m going go ahead and ask the inevitable question here – what about all the cars behind it? It never seems to fails that as soon as we feature a car that is sitting in a warehouse full of other cars that everyone’s attention is drawn to what they can’t have. Sometimes the unknown can be more exciting, but until the seller lists the rest of the cars, we will have to dwell on what we do know. This 1957 Spider can be found here on eBay along with a 1962 Giulietta here from the same seller. Thanks goes to Jim S for the tip!
Both of the cars referenced are in rough shape and will obviously need complete restorations before they can be enjoyed. With Alfa Romeo prices on the rise though they might be worth a look if you are in the market for an ambitious project. Cars like this Spider are substantially cheaper than offerings from Lancia and Ferrari, but are still eligible for almost as many events. They are fine driving machines too so they can be a great choice if you would like to attend one of the many prestigious rallies held around the country every year. You will have a long journey to go before doing any rallies though.
The seller’s 1962 Giulietta isn’t too bad of a choice either. Remember both of these cars may be cheaper to buy than their Italian brothers, but you are still going to have to dump bucket loads of cash into them to have a respectable car. This one is claimed to be a Sprint Veloce and that means that the upgraded twin cam under the hood could easily push the car to well over 110 miles per hour! Of the two cars featured here, this is the one I would want, albeit without the purple paint scheme. A roof is nice to have for long distance trips and the extra power would make passing a breeze. Too bad the original block is cracked though…
These projects are not for the meek of heart. You are going to have to know what you are doing or at least have enough money to pay someone who does. Characteristically, there is rust and there appears to be quite a few parts missing. Still, what car guy doesn’t dream of owning a car with that snake and cross badge on the hood. Personally, I would have to pass on both of these right now, but if you were in the market for a project, which one would you go for and why?Nick Saban's Alabama Crimson Tide are ranked No. 1 in the country after pummeling Michigan in the weekend's highest-rated television event. His team is going to beat Western Kentucky in Week 2 by as many points as it would like. Saban would strongly prefer that his players not operate under this mindset, and Wednesday after practice let the assembled media know about it.
Video, via AL.com:
Constructing a criticism-criticism-criticism-praise sandwich has become a standard Saban move in his dealings with the media whenever he spots something he'd like done differently. We'll know it works if a couple Alabama papers go ahead and pick the Hilltoppers to score the upset this Saturday.
The opening statement alone:
Ya know, there's a tremendous balance between humility and confidence.
This game is a struggle. It's a struggle every day. You gotta embrace it every day. You gotta go out and earn it every day, to be as good as you can be. You gotta have a tremendous amount of character, confidence, mental and physical toughness, you gotta be driven to be the best, and you gotta be able to handle success.
I hate to be negative with anybody, but when you people start writing stuff about people that we're playing that doesn't give them the proper respect, that's not fair. It's not fair to their players, who work hard and earn it, it's not fair to our players who need to respect them, and to make presumptions like you all make, really upsets me. It's so unfair. You don't need to write about that. There's so many good things that you can write about happening around here that people would be interested in. I'd love to see some of you do a little bit of research and figure it out. It would really do my heart good.
I just had to get that off my chest, because all those things are important, man. What makes the really good teams good, what makes the really good teams good, they have those intangible things that make 'em good. It's work every day around here to try and keep our guys on track to have a little bit of humility and confidence. We win one game and I can't believe what gets written. We did play two teams at neutral-site games and played horrible in the next week because a lot of the same kind of stuff happened. I'm just giving you my opinion. I respect what y'all do. I understand you're not here to promote our program or anything like that. But I would appreciate that if you'd just get everybody involved in the game. We play the games for a reason. To make all these predictions of what's gonna happen takes away from the game. I think.
Everybody talks about who's gonna win the national championship. Why do we play the games? We got a lotta great games coming up. Why do we play them?
Does anybody wanna ask me a question? I'm trying to be nice about it.Most everyone seems to have an opinion on the burqa, a type of garment worn in public by some observant Muslim women. But many who debate the ethics surrounding the controversial veil have likely never worn one. Artist Naneci Yurdagül is out to change that.
Yurdagül's upcoming exhibition at the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden in Germany requires viewers wear a burqa while in attendance. The artist, who was born and still lives in Germany, aims to address topics of national and religious identity by forcing his viewers to become a part of the installation. "I consider myself a Free Artist -- Bildhauer [but] I was raised as a patchwork -- partly Protestant, partly Muslim," Yurdagül wrote in an e-mail to The Huffington Post.
Only one room doesn't follow the burqa regulations -- a "Pop Shop" in the style of Keith Haring. In this meeting point for commerce and art, the secular and the religious, Yurdagül asks his viewers to choose their allegiance, or at least contemplate the options. However, in the adjoining "Hall of Mirrors," which you can see in the slideshow below, viewers will directly confront their veiled selves.
Tell us readers: what do you think of this exhibition? Is the artist onto something here or is this just a publicity stunt?
"Burquoi" will run until December 16 at the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden in Germany.Skirt modeled by tree stump
I have a ton of old jeans that don't fit right or people have given me. I love denim as a fabric, it looks good new and old and all stages in between. I am always looking for new ways to recycle old jeans. I don't really like the things I make to look like jeans though. You know what I mean, like the purse with the back pockets and front zipper. That just makes me think butt purse. So for this skirt I used three pairs of jeans and cut strips of fabric half the width of the jean leg and half the length of my waist measurement. Then I shingled the pieces until I had my desired length trimmed edges. Made another sheet of "fabric" for the back and sewed everything together and then to the waistband of a pair of jeans that still fit in the waist. Oh yeah and I added two darts in the back.I love how it turned out. The only thing I would do to improve it is to add a kick pleat ( I think thats what its called) to the back. Walking is fine but I definetly don't have enough leg room to run or kick.Of late I see that quite a few Bollywood films are blatantly making some antiquated belief on South Indian’s lifestyle. The movie Dirty Picture makes the assumption that all South Indians sport a forehead with vibuthi all the time. I was watching the movie ignoring that at first trying to get into the story but it got to a point that it was overly absurd. Not all South Indians are dark and wear Veshti and vibuthi all the time. There was a scene in the movie theater or award function and the director used the whole dark skin vibuthi to highlight that it was filled with South Indians. Shame on the director for resorting to such gimmicks! It is getting to a point that is very similar to blackface representation in the 50s and 60s in Hollywood.
Another movie that got on my nerve was Ra.One. Shah Rukh Khan, shame on you! You have the nerve to make South Indians as caricatures and then translate your flop movie into Tamil and release it in South India. FYI, we are the ones who speak proper English and it is you guys who can’t speak a word of English properly. We all are not going to add curd to pasta. The annoying fact was the language used by none of the so called South Indians could be classified as Tamil, English or Tanglish. Could you not hire a South Indian guy and get the accent right? Outrageously ridiculous casting! No wonder the movie flopped.
Bollywood, please look at any national hit from South India like Roja or Bombay. They succeeded because they portrayed North Indians right. I guess you guys need to get some kind of sensitivity training. Perhaps deep down you guys are behaving like the uneducated and uncultured people on the road who think that "madarasis" are like that. If that is the audience you are catering to then good luck! Your movies will never be a hit in South India like say Lagaan.Is the President already pre-failing his “border wall or the your annual physical gets it” hostage drama shakedown? As I noted on Friday, the President is or was setting up a government shutdown drama in which he threatens to deprive people of coverage from the Obamacare exchanges if Democrats don’t agree to fund his border wall. As explained here, this is not only an egregious bit of legislative hostage taking and mafia-like shakedown, it also shows a pretty poor grasp of the politics of the moment.
Now it seems that the White House may be trying to moonwalk away from the threat.
This from Jonathan Swan’s Axios newsletter …
Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked Priebus whether the administration would veto a government funding bill if there’s not money in it to fund Trump’s border wall. Priebus’ response here was telling: “It will be enough in the negotiation for us to move forward with either the construction or the planning, or enough for us to move forward through the end of September to get going on the border wall and border security in regard to border patrol…” Between the lines: By refusing to demand funding for the bricks-and-mortar “wall,” Reince tipped his hand. Trump can’t stomach a shutdown on his watch, so he’ll likely take a “win” on some form of funding for border security, even if it’s not specifically for building the wall.
The issue here or rather the driver is, I suspect, less the Democrats than Republicans who won’t go along with it either.Here’s a list of as many of the get togethers at San Diego Comic Con 2016 we could find, from cosplayer meet ups to star-studded studio rooftop open bars with the great and the good – or at least the very famous. San Diego Comic Con is the ultimate place to blag your way in – but it can start with you approaching friends of friends of friends who work for some of these companies. Or just following Stan Lee, they let him into everything and he rotates around 20 parties a night! Good luck! And let me know how you do!
And go to the CBLDF Party if you can. And the Boom! Party if you can’t…
Wednesday, July 20
Pre-SDCC/Star Trek Beyond Party 3 – 7pm Hilton Bayfront Fox Sports Bar & Grill,
Fandango press party. 4-6pm., Café Sevilla, RSVP.
Wynonna Earp Cast Signing/Meet-Up 6-8pm San Diego Comic Art Gallery
Cocktails, CosPlay & Con! 6 – 9pm Comickaze Comic Books & More, $30
Enchantment Under the SDCC 7pm – 11pm Analog Bar in the Gaslamp $45 – $65. Sponsored by Oni Press and Girl Gone Geek
Forbidden Panels Annual Comic-Con Dinner 7:30pm – 10pm Gaslamp Strip Club: A Steak Place. Free.
Hop-Con 4.0: The w00tstout Festival 8pm – 11pm Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens, Liberty Station, $75
Star Trek Beyond World Premiere Screening 8pm, Embarcadero Marina Park South, Invite
Burger King + mtv Fandom Awards Pre Party, 8-11pm, Fluxx Nightclub
J!NX, 9pm-late, BASIC club, Free
HitFix Comic-Con Kick-Off Party. 9pm, Hotel Solamar. RSVP
Game of Bloggers 9pm – 11:55 PM Dragon’s Den. Free
Gabe Eltaueb’s Third Annual Comic Kickoff Fundraiser 9pm – 11:55 PM, Basic Pizza |
Conclusion
So to sum up, many have questioned the fundamental viability of Quests, with many suggesting that sacrificing a card in your opening hand is just too high a cost to ever be viable, particularly in the everlasting aggro meta that Hearthstone seems to exist in. Death Knights on the other hand are as popular as ever, even more so than Legendary Weapons.
In the epic battle between Quests, Death Knights and Legendary Weapons, Death Knights come up as the obvious winner, not only for their initial impact but their lasting success. The final question, which can't be answered with data, is what's better for the game? Should marquee content be pushed aside (more variety in the meta) or should it stick around (better value for crafts)?A General view of the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo: Marcelo Sayao, EPA)
A group of 150 doctors, scientists and bioethicists have written a letter to the World Health Organization calling for the Rio Olympics to be postponed or moved because of concerns of the spread of the Zika virus.
The letter cites concerns about further spread of the virus and developing information about it in calling for the Games to be delayed or moved. The letter writers questioned whether the WHO is rejecting alternatives of when and where the Games should be held because of a conflict of interest with the International Olympic Committee.
“Currently, many athletes, delegations, and journalists are struggling with the decision of whether to participate in the Rio 2016 Games,” the letter states. “We agree with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommendation that workers should “Consider delaying travel to areas with active Zika virus transmission”. If that advice were followed uniformly, no athlete would have to choose between risking disease and participating in a competition that many have trained for their whole lives.”
THE LETTER: Read the note sent the World Health Organization
The letter notes the concern for global health, citing the possibility of Olympics travelers acquiring the Zika virus in Rio and then returning home, especially to currently unaffected areas.
“It is unethical to run the risk, just for Games that could proceed anyway, if postponed and/or moved,” the letter states.
The letter writers include Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in public health and wrote earlier this month in Time that the Olympics should be moved or postponed.
Dr. Arthur Caplan, the director of the division of medical ethics at New York University, co-authored the letter, as did NYU professor Lee Ingel and Christopher Gaffney from the University of Zurich.
As of early Friday afternoon, the letter had 150 signatures from doctors, scientists and medical ethicists around the globe.
The WHO responded to the letter on Friday afternoon.
"Based on current assessment, cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus. Brazil is one of almost 60 countries and territories which to-date report continuing transmission of Zika by mosquitoes. People continue to travel between these countries and territories for a variety of reasons. The best way to reduce risk of disease is to follow public health and travel advice."
In February, the WHO declared the Zika virus and international public health emergency. The mosquito-borne virus has spread to 58 countries and territories, mostly in Central and South America. It has been shown to cause microcephaly, a birth defect that causes babies to be born with smaller-than-normal heads and developmental delays, and linked to Guillain-Barre, a neurological condition that causes paralysis.
Brazil has been one of the countries hardest hit by the virus, which exhibits relatively mild symptoms in the 20 percent of those infected who experience them.
Olympic organizers have been patrolling the venues for months, seeking to remove standing water where the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads the virus can breed. They have also cited the timing, with the Games occurring during Rio’s winter, as likely to lessen the threat of the spread of the virus.
The CDC has advised pregnant women not to travel to affected areas. For those who do travel, the CDC has advised wearing long sleeves and pants, treating clothing with permethrin, using insect repellant and staying in air-conditioned environments.
The letter asks the WHO to reconsider its advice on the Rio Olympics for several reasons, saying:
-- While individual risk is low, the risk to a population is “undeniably high”
-- Rio de Janeiro is highly affected by Zika
-- Rio’s health system has been weakened, including by city funding cuts against mosquito-borne disease
-- Because the Aedes aegypti mosquito had previously been eradicated from Rio that holding the Olympics in the presence of these mosquitos “is a choice and not a necessity”
-- The summer season in the northern hemisphere is also relevant to the course of the epidemic The letter cites a 2010 memorandum of understanding between the WHO and the IOC, which has not been released, as evidence of a conflict of interest and suggests a change in leadership at the WHO, which is led by director Dr. Margaret Chan, is necessary to restore credibility.
“WHO must revisit the question of Zika and postponing and/or moving the Games,” the letter concludes. “We recommend that WHO convene an independent group to advise it and the IOC in a transparent, evidence-based process in which science, public health, and the spirit of sport come first. Given the public health and ethical consequences, not doing so is irresponsible.”There’s a big question looming over the Longhorns’ season opener against Notre Dame on Sunday: who will lead the team in the first play of the game? Head coach Charlie Strong has promised that senior Tyrone Swoopes and true freshman Shane Buechele will share quarterback duties against the Fighting Irish, but he’s continually declined to name a starter.
Strong has a lot on his plate heading into the start of his third season as coach. The game will not only debut an untested quarterback, but also a new offensive coordinator, Sterlin Gilbert, who fans are hoping will bolster UT’s sagging scoring offense. It’s hard to blame Strong for not wanting to tip his hand. After all, many are calling the Notre Dame matchup the tipping-point game of a tipping-point season for Strong.
Chuck F’n Strong, however, was willing to walk me through his offensive strategy. At @ChuckFnStrong, the coach’s unsanctioned alter ego offers “unfettered and unfiltered fake Charlie Strong” Twitter commentary for nearly 25,000 followers. The anonymous operator of the account entertains with absurdist game commentary, strategy insight, and plenty of shade for opposing teams—all done with a spectacular handle on the parlance of the Internet. But despite pretty obvious indicators the account isn’t the real Charlie Strong (blatant misspellings of players’ names, the often repeated claim that Chuck F’n Strong is linebacker Malik Jefferson’s dad, a general unawareness of when and/or where games are played), UT recruits sent direct messages to the fake coach this past spring.
To all recruits who DM me your hudl highlights I am not the right person for these pls send to our recruiting intern @Strong_TexasFB — Chuck F'n Strong (@ChuckFnStrong) March 4, 2016
In a way, it isn’t surprising that recruits or fans would flock to Chuck F’n Strong. The account has stood as a kind of symbol of the Longhorn community’s swagger and confidence, which is pretty hard to maintain after a series of bleak seasons. So while the actual Charlie Strong is guarded about his strategy for turning around the Longhorns, Chuck F’n Strong is more than willing to entertain my preseason queries. If nothing else, UT fans will have something to smile about this season.
*this interview has been edited for “clarity.”
Abby Johnston: Thanks for doing this with me, coach. I really appreciate you taking the time. How was your summer?
Chuck F’n Strong: That’s a great question and I’m glad you asked it. I finally have a QB. I have a pool too. I did a lot of watching other people swim.
AJ: Did you get some good pool time in before the season gets underway, then?
CS: I mainly play with one of those ping-pong paddles where the ball is tied to it so you can’t lose it. Very ingenious. I am afraid of our pool because it has one wall that makes it look like it goes to the edge. They call it an infinity pool. Well, guess what? It isn’t for me. I want to stay on Earth, I don’t want to go traveling through a worm hole. I’m sure you understand.
AJ: I definitely do understand. I saw you tweeting about the Olympics. Did you get to watch much of it? There were a lot of UT athletes to cheer on.
CS: I love the Olympics, but I have no idea how they figure out the winner. Do they take the best boxer and they have to fight the best swimmer or what? How do they come down to the last person? Do the rowers get to fight the gymnasts? I’m just frustrated because I know they don’t do the fighting section until like November.
AJ: I don’t think it’s really like a Hunger Games thing, at least from my understanding.
CS: Are you serious?
AJ: Yeah, but you’ll be pretty busy in November, anyway.
CS: Yeah, bowl games and what not.
I AM NOT GETTING FIRED TONIGHT — Chuck F'n Strong (@ChuckFnStrong) October 10, 2015
AJ: So what can you tell me coming off of summer practices and scrimmages?
CS: I can tell you a lot. We have the tallest secondary in the league. If you stack Devante on top of Boyd on top of Sherroid on top of Holton on top of PJ Locke on top of Haines on top of Bonney on top of Elliot on top of Jones that stack of players is over 600-feet tall. So, needless to say no one is passing on us.
Also, our linebackers have numbers that are sequential, 45 and 46. That is very confusing to the other players. The offense looks at that and they think, “Why did Charlie give those two linebackers numbers right next to each other?” Well, joke’s on them, because I don’t know either. But that isn’t important, is it?
Our running backs are actually bears. Seriously, we caught some bears near Jackson Holes, Wyoming. Shaved them. Put them in uniforms. D’Onta is a bear. C Warren. Bear. Kyle Porter isn’t a bear. He’s a person. Almost as good as a bear.
AJ: I know you also got a few Baylor Bears in recruiting too. Or at least they left after the whole scandal. How do they compare to, uh, actual bears?
CS: Yes. That’s true but none of those players are actual bears. They are all people except for Hudson. He’s a mammoth. We have to file his tusks down.
AJ: I thought mammoths were extinct, so that is especially impressive.
CS: You know what they say about animals that are extinct: they are only extinct until you find another one. So.
AJ: True. Speaking of hard finds, you managed to wrestle Sterlin Gilbert away from Tulsa. What’d you have to do to get him to come to Texas?
CS: Oh, nothing, that was so easy. The media over-blew that whole thing. A suitcase with $17 million and a gross of black jackets. That’s how we got him, I think we got a good deal.
The guy never wears short sleeves. Know why? He has eel arms. Giblet will electrocute anyone who touches his arms. So you know even though it’s hot out it’s for our protection, and in that respect Giblet is a real gentleman.
AJ: Gilbert, coach.
CS: Giblet, now that’s a guy who knows how to call an offense. At practice I don’t even know what’s going on any more. I stand there in my baby tiger den under a little tent with some misters and we talk about life, backgammon. But seriously, we will be good on offense. One thousand yards per half or I quit.
AJ: That’s a tall order. How’s Gilbert going to get there?
CS: Well, you see, I am an optimist. And I also round up to the nearest 1,000, ask anyone. 501 yards = 1,000 yards. Pretty simple math.
AJ: So with Gilbert in place, is it safe to say we have a plan for the QB situation going into the Notre Dame game?
CS: Yes, I mean you have to play a quarterback, it’s in the NCAA rules, so we will follow the rules of football and play one. I’m sure you want to know the rotation.
AJ: I do, yes.
CS: Well, see, we are going to confuse Notra Dame. I’m sure you heard that scientists just discovered a new potentially habitable planet near Proxima Centauri. It’s all over the news. Anyway, everyone knows that Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf. Well, guess who else are dwarves? LEPRECHAUNS. So, that’s pretty much the plan.
AJ: Wait. Coach, can you back up? I’m not sure I follow.
CS: The star is four light years away. It’s a red dwarf. It’s called Proxima Centauri which means “a wolf close by.” Do you read me?
AJ: I understand the planet. But not what it has to do with the opener against Notre Dame. And leprechauns.
CS: Let me try to explain. How do you see a star that is four light years away? Well, you need a telescope. Guess who has a great telescope? Buechele.
AJ: So then does this mean that Shane Buechele will be leading us against Notre Dame?
CS: What? No. I would never play a true freshman at any position ever. Check my record.
AJ: Coach, that is definitely not true. So will Buechele be scouting for Swoopes?
CS: Oh, he’s not using the telescope to look at stuff. I’ve instructed him to use it as a weapon, but only in a sportsmanlike fashion. So we’ll send him out every fourth play with his telescope. He’s gonna kneecap whoever gets near him. You get it.
AJ: Uh, sorta.
CS: Exactly. But seriously, I have no idea who we are playing at QB. Giblet doesn’t even talk to me.
AJ: So then how are you feeling going into Notre Dame? That’s a pretty big opener for your third season as a coach.
CS: I feel great going into the game. If you think about it Notra Dame is a mixture of two very unimportant countries, those being France and Ireland. One of them is always drunk and the other one is Ireland.
Hahahah, get it? Because you thought I meant Ireland was the drunk one. Anyway, Kevin Sumblin is Irish.
AJ: Is he? I thought Kevin Sumlin was from Alabama
CS: Uh, no. Nothing about Sumblin is from Alabama. He’s from the tree in Ireland where Lucky Charms come from. It’s on Wikipedia.
.@CoachSumlin Hey sumblin remember that time when my offense was better than your offense I do it's now — Chuck F'n Strong (@ChuckFnStrong) October 26, 2015
AJ: I’ll look for it later in fact checking, for sure. But you’ve got to be at least a little nervous about Sunday. Last year you lost to Notre Dame 38-3, and many people are saying that set the tone for the rest of the season. People are also saying that this season is kind of your make or break year. Are you feeling the heat?
CS: I’m not feeling the heat, because I have a rare condition where all of my nerve endings were clipped in an accident. I don’t want to talk about it. See, what happened was, I was swimming in an infinity pool and Bedford’s VCR slipped off his inner tube. I was electrocuted. It turned me into a bit of a superhero in a way. I have a roofing nail in my spine, but it’s like I can’t feel it at all. But yeah, also I don’t want to get fired. Don’t worry though, please see the plan I unveiled for you that we are employing against the Irish. How can that not work?
AJ: I guess we’ll see, that’s a pretty ambitious plan. Well your nerve condition must explain how you keep your cool in the high-stakes games. Last season you upset Baylor and OU. So how can you translate that energy to the, say, Iowa States of the college football world?
CS: Well I’m excited that we finally get to play Iowa Steak for the first time in my tenure here. They are always feisty, but we should pretty clearly win that walking away.
AJ: Coach, quick note for the fact check, that’s not true.
CS: What’s not true? That Iowa Steak is feisty? They are always feisty. That goes in the fact notebook.
AJ: I’m pretty sure they shut us out last year.
CS: Are you serious?
AJ: I am, coach. It might be a side effect of your nerve condition, but they shut us out 24-0.
CS: What? Did we participate?
AJ: Seemingly, no.
CS: Abby Johnston that is cold. But I respect it.
AJ: But coach, with a feisty Iowa State on our schedule and other seemingly low-stakes games, how do you think we’re going to show up this year when the games aren’t against historic rivals?
I hate football — Chuck F'n Strong (@ChuckFnStrong) October 3, 2015
CS: We’re going to go at least 18-2, 17-3 at the worst. Good enough for a super regional.
AJ: I thought that super regionals were for baseball.
CS: No, they have one in the Big 12, for sure. FACT CHECK.
AJ: Alright, coach, I appreciate your time, but I have one last question: The Malik rumor. Is he really your son?
CS: Is this on or off the record?
AJ: On, coach.
CS: JUST KIDDING, YES HE IS MY SON. I LOVE HIM BECAUSE HES SO HONEST AND SMART AND STRONG AND HE TRIES TO KEEP HIS PREDATOR KILLING TO A MINIMUM. He’s trying to find the guy who threw the rocks off I-35.Ethical hackers from IBM's X-Force pen tested a building automation system and encountered numerous security issues. For starters, they co-opted a vulnerable router.
Image: iStock/Navidim
According to Gartner, "connected things" in smart homes and smart buildings represent 45% of 1.1 billion IoT devices in 2015. For that many devices, it is disconcerting that security pundits are asking whether these "connected things" are secure. However, it's a good enough question that IBM's X-Force Security Research Group has decided to find out.
The group has been around under various guises since 1998. The IBM X-Force Research Group has grown from 10 ethical hackers to today's global team researching the latest threat trends in order to advise and deliver security content to IBM customers and the general public.
IBM X-Force Ethical Hacking Team Lead Paul Ionescu suggests that little attention is being paid to IoT devices employed in smart or automated buildings simply because IoT devices fall outside the scope of traditional IT.
The team's research paper Penetration testing a building automation system, agrees with Ionescu's conjecture, and then adds what might happen if automated systems in buildings are successfully breached:
"If compromised, such devices may have a more profound impact on our physical surroundings than, for example, the defacing of a web server. Even in an ordinary office building, hackers could gain control of the devices that regulate data center temperatures, causing cooling fans to shut down, and servers to overheat."
Besides impacting the physical environment, the paper hints that it is possible compromised IoT devices and their network connections could be used as backdoors to the computing infrastructure.
SEE: Penetration Testing and Scanning Policy
Pen test a working system
IBM X-Force team members first thought to test individual devices, but realized that affords an incomplete picture. It would be best to work with a company already operating Building Automation Systems (BAS) for clients.
"Our Ethical Hacking team conducted an assessment (penetration test) of a BAS that controlled sensors and thermostats in a commercial office," explains the paper.
The fact the BAS controls several buildings and does so through a remotely-located central server made it even more interesting. The schematic in Figure A represents the pen-tested BAS including the central server and two separate buildings (Station 1 and Station 2).
Figure A
Image: IBM
Each station/building (simulated in Figure B) connects to the central BAS server via the internet using a router. A building automation controller connects to the router and various sensors throughout the building, reporting status to the central BAS, and affecting changes requested by the central BAS.
Image: IBM
Results of the pen test
It did not take long for the IBM X-Force Ethical Hacking team to find a way into the building's network. Chris Poulin, research strategist, IBM X-Force Security, mentions co-opting a vulnerable router gave the team a foothold.
Image: IBM
Next the pen-test team tried the router's admin password, which was stored in clear text on the router, to gain access to the BAS — and it worked. A combination of a security flaw in the router and sharing passwords between devices with different roles, gave the IBM team admin rights to the local BAS controller. Like dominoes, access to key components continued to fall into the team's hands, ultimately gaining access to the central BAS server and command of the building automated controller in multiple buildings located across the United States.
The team was a bit surprised at the number of security issues they encountered, including the aforementioned shared passwords, critical information stored as clear text, and vulnerable router and BAS software.
Poulin says the team stopped there because they had enough proof. The IBM X-Force team members then explained their findings to the company operating the BAS as well as the individual IoT device manufacturers. Poulin adds all concerned parties diligently patched the vulnerabilities.
Lessons learned
The IBM X-Force crew created a list of what BAS operators should check (though it's useful to all inter-connected businesses):
Ensure all device software is up-to-date.
If there is no business justification for remote access, disable remote administration of the BAS equipment.
Do not reuse, share, or store passwords in clear text.
Employ secure engineering and coding practices for authentication control, execution of shell commands, and password encryption.
Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) systems can be used to scan network activity between the router, the BAS system, and embedded devices to identify suspicious activity.
Not an isolated incident
Unfortunately, this lax attitude is not an isolated occurrence. One of the questions in a January 2015 survey by Facilities Management News and Education asked, "Which of the following best describes the actions you are currently taking concerning cyber security of building automation systems?" The results:
Not currently taking any action: 35%
Gathering information about cyber security: 15%
Evaluating building automation system(s) for cybersecurity: 14%
Planning to improve cyber security for building automation systems: 7%
Currently implementing or have completed actions to improve cyber security for building automation systems: 29%
Regrettably, the people most excited by this survey are the bad guys.
Also seeI have devoted some time to writing about, not simply because he's in Louisiana and I'm in neighboring Mississippi and feel a connection to him in that aspect. No, the reason I've continued to address Damon's brave stand to stop school-sanctioned prayer at his public high school graduation and the aftermath of his actions is that I believe that this case highlights much of what is wrong with Christian privilege here in the bible belt. There are a few things about Damon's case that continue to trouble me, and I'd like to address them here. First and foremost, it is absolutely mind-blowing that a public high school student living in the United States in 2011 would have to inform his school that they are not allowed to have prayers at their official commencement ceremony. Damon never should have been faced with such a predicament in the first place. Bastrop High School certainly should have known that organized prayer at their commencement ceremonies violated the law. The attorney they consulted was obviously aware of this and advised them appropriately.The school was right to cancel the official prayer they had planned after Damon complained; however, it is absurd that Damon was ever in the position of having to complain. It is inexcusable that the school had been holding such prayers for years prior to Damon's complaint. This isn't the way law is supposed to work - that we are free to keep breaking it until someone asks us to stop!Second, I was disappointed to see that the school did not do more to prevent the inappropriate prayer from being offered by a student speaker,. Not only were they well aware that a stunt like this was likely after what happened during the rehearsal, but they knew that the atmosphere was going to be extra tense due to the controversy.In this case, the school should have done two things to demonstrate that they were serious about the legal issue Damon raised. They should have warned any students speaking at the ceremony ahead of time that stunts like this would result in a forfeiture of their diploma (or an equally suitable deterrent), and they should have shut off the speaker's microphone the moment it because clear what was about to happen.Third, I am deeply troubled by the reaction Damon has faced from his parents, classmates, and many in his community. I will no longer accept the excuse, "But we're in the South," for this sort of bigotry and intolerance. Perhaps we atheists need to organize something like the freedom riders to protect atheists in these backwards places and work to educate those that live here.Just what did Damon do to deserve being thrown out of his parents' house, threatened, harassed, etc.? He complained that his high school was breaking the law...and he was correct in making this assertion. Unbelievable!The sad truth is that there are towns just like Bastrop, LA, all over this country. Atheists live in these towns and endure this sort of nonsense every day of their lives. We must do better.A Winnipeg lawyer is calling the province’s decision to phase out electronic monitoring for convicts a step backwards.
“It’s disappointing, it’s disturbing, it’s a step backwards and it should not happen,” Defence lawyer Jay Prober said.
Justice Minister Heather Stefanson told Global News the Conservative government plans to completely phase out the GPS monitoring program over the next few months.
WATCH: Justice Minister Heather Stefanson’s one-on-one interview with Global News
She said the system is flawed and is “unreliable and inaccurate.”
However both lawyers and GPS tracking experts disagree.
READ MORE: Manitoba government scrapping GPS ankle-bracelet tracking program for convicts
“It works. It really is abominable that the government is taking this step backwards,” Prober said. “It’s a mistake.”
Prober said electronic monitoring has proven successful across many different provinces and in the United States. He said not only is it an important tool for the justice system to have but one that helps ensure the public’s safety.
“It not only protects the victim, it protects members of the public and gives a measure of comfort to the court and the judge imposing the sentence,” Prober said. “Ask the victim, or the alleged victim, how safe they feel now. I think they are looking at it from the wrong perspective.”
At the peak of its usage, the government said 14 people were being monitored on the program. This includes high risk car thieves, violent domestic offenders and parolees.
WATCH: Global’s Brittany Greenslade looks into the province’s decision to phase out the electronic monitoring program
Currently, there are just seven people being monitored. Three of those include violent domestic offenders.
READ MORE: Domestic violence: when the law isn’t enough
In British Columbia, 63 offenders are currently being monitored using GPS trackers. In Ontario there are 204.
“It works in those provinces and it works in the United States,” Prober said.
“This was a technology problem. They aren’t using the proper devices,” SafeTracks GPS President Vince Morelli said. “It’s disheartening what’s happened in Manitoba because these tools work.
Morelli said Manitoba is using outdated technology and there is new, extremely accurate devices being used across the country.
He pointed to a number of high profile criminal cases, including convicted killer Travis Vader, where GPS electronic monitoring played a key role.
RELATED: Travis Vader gets life sentence for killing Lyle and Marie McCann
“While he was out on bail during the trial, he had (a SafeTracks) bracelet on him,” Morelli said. “When police went to pick him up he was not at his place. They contacted us and we were able to give them his location. They moved in and it was a seamless arrest.”
Morelli said he had high hopes for Manitoba to become a leader in the fight against domestic violence after the former NDP government announced it was looking at expanding its monitoring program in 2015.
That decision came on the heels of the murder of Camille Runke. The 49-year-old was killed by her ex-husband who breached his probation order multiple times before her death.
“I am shocked and disappointed at the Government’s decision to eliminate the GPS ankle bracelet monitoring program in Manitoba, “Jennifer Noone, a close friend of Runke, said in a statement. “It was possible to know the whereabouts of the perpetrators which ensured the safety of victims in domestic violence cases. Without this device, what is protecting the victims?”
READ MORE: ‘He finally got her, we knew’: Friends of St. Boniface murder victim want change
But with the decision to eliminate the program all together, Morelli said victims hardly stand a chance.
“(The government) says ‘don’t worry we’re going to look after the victims.’ How? God forbid if something were to happen to any of those three,” Morelli said. “They’re all going to have blood on their hands.”Because it makes too much sense. And because of this picture I saw yesterday:
(I added that arrow, btw.)
Prior to seeing the above, the only other photo I had seen was this one with a whooooole lot of orange in it:
But the photo with the arrow makes it appear that white will be the dominant color and orange will be an accent instead of the primary focus. And if orange is only on the shoulders then it probably resembles what the current third jersey looks like:
I say probably because I am thinking about:
Consistency Marketing
You (potentially) have the next generation of Flyers primary uniforms lined up (if the fans respond favorably to them). And lets face it: if these new jerseys have the keystone captain patch then they. will. love. them. (and by they, I mean me).
The Flyers official website says the team will unveil the jersey prior to training camp in September. Icethetics says that a fourth jersey could be in the works for the outdoor game against the Penguins as part of the 2017 Stadium Series.
It’s also possible that all that orange (in the second photo I shared) means we will see some Legion of Doom era swag back in the Center. If that’s the case then I will accept being wrong. But I am not wrong. Because I am right. Probably.As an Asian American who writes and speaks about “Asian American issues,” I have to admit every now and then I have been miffed when others have told the same stories. They too are acquainted with the name calling that threatens to escalate into violence, the assumptions about being good with numbers that conceal the parallel of not being good with people, and the suspicion that you belong someplace else where you are really from. I was mistaken. I have no proprietary claim to any adversity. My peers should be encouraged to stand up and speak out. Their experience is what will persuade their friends and colleagues if anything will.
When you are not only a minority, but imagined to be privileged, you can find yourself alone, all the more if you dare complain. If you share a grievance, people do not want to hear it. They have other priorities; they are sure you are doing better here than in your homeland — never mind that your family has three generations farming the California Central Valley. You are dismissed as having made up an excuse to grouse, or, if the reality cannot be denied, exaggerating the effects. It’s all political correctness and hypersensitivity.
That is why when someone informs me that what I described in my book happened to them last week, I realize that I have not plagiarized from them, nor they me. I am sorry for us. But I am reassured. It turns out to be true. And it’s not trivial.
Lawyer Bill Lee, for example, disclosed a recent encounter with a hostile stranger, almost certainly related to race. Lee, a partner with a major firm in Boston, is of Chinese descent. Although his account has been publicized, he initially had been reluctant to reveal the episode until younger colleagues, also of Asian descent, urged him to do so. I am glad he did.
A friend of mine who is white and has a professional relationship with Lee forwarded me the news article. He couldn’t believe it, in a sympathetic sense. I replied that it happens all the time. He said, “That sucks.”
As Lee remarked, the man who confronted him felt entitled in a well-to-do neighborhood in a liberal area. Lee has made it, by any measure. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone Asian. They do not necessarily have the same status of a downtown lawyer. They won’t have access to media.
A woman I have known for years was pleased to inform me that she had witnessed an incident I described in an earlier essay. At the first-ever national convention of the Asian American Journalists Association (Los Angeles, 1987), a white male editor opened his speech by saying he was delighted to have been invited, because we Asians were so polite. To his surprise, he was hissed. I was worried that people would not believe my account. My friend was able to confirm my recollection.
That manager, who was in a position to hire and fire, likely had no idea that he was repeating a racial stereotype. The image also implies traits that are not as positive as “polite.” It includes submissiveness, staying in one’s place, perhaps not being as aggressive as a reporter needs to be. It’s a signal that one ought to remain “polite.” (Until the recent reversal, with Asians now being reputed to be rude, I actually took occasional satisfaction in displays of Asian brazenness, as I have a hunch other people of color do about being deliberately discourteous when the situation calls for it.)
Attitudes matter. Asian Americans face demonstrable bias. The challenge is that nobody wants to acknowledge the patterns and disparities.
Even in fields where Asian Americans are said to be overrepresented, we in fact are underrepresented at management levels. If facts matter, the data for this contention is robust beyond dispute. The drop off through the “pipeline” can be an order of magnitude. That means a 10x decrease from what would be expected. In the high tech sector, for example, Asian American executives tend to be founders of their own enterprises, not individuals promoted from within. In higher education, when I headed an institution I was among the very few to have that responsibility.
The misconception is produced by overrepresentation at lower levels, relative to our numbers within the population as a whole. But that baseline is inappropriate. The measure of true equal opportunity refers to parity, or disparity, relative to those who are qualified. Asian Americans are essentially being exploited as producers.
The point, however, is not to revel in resentment. It is to develop strategies for success. Asian American entrepreneurs have figured it out: they quit for their own start-up. The trouble is that will not be possible in every instance. It leaves their former employers no better.
At an affinity conference held in San Francisco today, I was honored to moderate the opening panel. As I listened to the remainder of the program, I was impressed by the interest of all the speakers in self-criticism and corresponding self-improvement: they had identified some of the same traits among Asian Americans that did not serve them well.
For example, too many Asian Americans — not all of them, but too many who conform to generalizations — display great technical expertise but not only lack “soft skills” — they disdain them. They expect their superior performance will be noticed. I’m not sure whether they are being arrogant, modest, or both, but it’s not working for them.
The problems are perceived and real, but, as we recognize, with race perceptions generate their own reality. Some who refuse to advance Asian American due to their weak communication skills are hearing more of an accent than there is, refusing to make a reasonable effort to comprehend, or resorting to a pretense because they are too sophisticated to be blatant in expressing prejudice.
Yet Asian American parents are not encouraging of their children emphasizing verbal disciplines, preferring STEM fields, and they are not enthusiastic about youngsters who express themselves freely. Non-Asian American supervisors still say they thought that Asian Americans were not interested in being put in charge. I’m willing, at least in part, to credit their sincerity, since Asian Americans are not always clear.
The world around is changing. But the trends are neither automatic nor accidental. They are the result of our own actions. For Asian Americans, that means we must do more for ourselves.
This essay originally appeared at The Huffington Post.Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF and Scribd versions.
Homeowners across the United States have begun a rooftop solar revolution. Since 2000, more than 1,460 megawatts of residential solar installations have been installed across the country, and more than 80 percent of that capacity was added in the past four years. In 2012 alone, rooftop solar installations reached 488 megawatts, a 62 percent increase over 2011 installations and nearly double the installed capacity added in 2010.
Residential solar photovoltaic, or PV, systems—also referred to as “distributed” or “rooftop solar” in this report—consist of an array of solar panels that are roof or ground mounted to produce electricity that is either fed back into the electric grid—grid connected—or solely used onsite by the residential building—off grid.
The question is: Who is buying up all of those solar power systems? Through our analysis of solar installation data from Arizona, California, and New Jersey, we found that these installations are overwhelmingly occurring in middle-class neighborhoods that have median incomes ranging from $40,000 to $90,000. The areas that experienced the most growth from 2011 to 2012 had median incomes ranging from $40,000 to $ |
over her walker. Pictures of loved ones and I seem to recall, Hello Kitty, all over her walls. I wanted to learn all I could about her but instead found myself answering her questions about me as she jotted down notes in various notebooks with different colored pens …Yuri’s great gift to us was to show by example that through all the important work she did, she remained a supportive, intelligent, warm and generous human being. Activists don’t have to be cold, strident, or stoic. Activists are human beings. They are not hero figures but members of the communities that they fight for. There are not words enough to thank her for that… May she rest. And may the rest of us work.
Perhaps a place to re-imagine and re-start that work is with the most basic lesson that Yuri Kochiyama’s life teaches us: that showing up wherever and whenever racial injustice occurs is the way to dismantle racism and build inter-racial solidarity. And that it must be a consistent practice, simple but brave, repeated over and over again.
Submit your reflection on Yuri Kochiyama via this Tumblr site curated by 18 Million Rising: http://becauseofyuri.tumblr.com/
To Read More:
–http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/19/209258986/the-japanese-american-internee-who-met-malcolm-x
–http://www.npr.org/2014/06/02/318098968/civil-rights-champion-yuri-kochiyama-dies-at-93-
-http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Yuri_Kochiyama/#Postwar_LifeWhen it comes to exercising a piece of application logic with automated unit tests, there’s a well-understood process that most frameworks and testing tools follow:
Setup: Establishes instances of data objects and preconditions essential for running the test. Exercise: Executes the method or logic to be tested. Verify: Verifies that the tested method has produced the expected result by making one or more assertions. Teardown: Cleans up or resets application state that should not be allowed to persist between tests.
Perform a Google search for “unit test anatomy”, and you’ll see this same pattern described in books and articles for many programming languages and methodologies - sometimes with slightly different terminology, but still following the same basic sequence. But the way that a given tool or testing library realizes each phase can vary a lot - a fact which has launched hundreds of testing frameworks and thousands of flame wars.
The original Ruby standard for testing was established by the Test::Unit library (itself based on the xUnit model) which was part of the Ruby standard library going back many years and many more releases. Minitest follows the same model by providing a setup method which can be overridden and will be run by the framework before each individual test.
RSpec came along quite a bit later and introduced a more granular scheme of hooks for setting up test state that mapped more naturally to its block-based syntax.
before(:each) - logic to run before each individual test method
logic to run before each individual test method before(:all) / before(:context) - logic to run at the start of a context/describe block
logic to run at the start of a context/describe block before(:suite) - logic to run before the test suite runs
logic to run before the test suite runs let - memoizes the result of a block and provides an accessor method for it
Minitest has built-in support for some but not all of these. In this post, I’m going to show you how to achieve the same effects in your own tests using the features that Minitest gives you along with a sprinkling of plain old Ruby. Because in the end, it’s all just Ruby.
Setup Before Running Each Test
You probably already know that Minitest::Test provides a setup method that you can override to define logic that runs before each test.
test/thing_test.rb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 require 'test/test_helper' class ThingTest < Minitest : :Test def setup @a_thing = Thing. new @another = Thing. new end def test_a_thing assert_instance_of Thing, @a_thing end // more tests follow end
Minitest::Spec provides an equivalent in the form of its before block:
test/thing_test.rb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 require 'test/test_helper' describe 'Thing' do before do @a_thing = Thing. new @another = Thing. new end it 'is a Thing' do @a_thing. must_be_instance_of Thing end // more tests follow end
What Exactly Does :let Do Again?
Using let provides an alternate and some would say more elegant way of setting up testing state with a more declarative syntax. The following would be comparable to the example in the previous section.
test/thing_test.rb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 require 'test/test_helper' class ThingTest < Minitest : :Test extend Minitest : :Spec :: DSL let ( :a_thing ) { Thing. new } let ( :another ) { Thing. new } def test_a_thing assert_instance_of Thing, a_thing end // more tests follow end
Comparable, but not equivalent. Each let invocation defines a new method with the specified name that executes the block argument upon the first invocation and caches the result for later access - in other words, a lazy initializer. The main advantage of this technique over the use of instance variables defined in a setup method or before block is that the setup logic can be divided into smaller units and executed only in tests where they’re needed.
What’s more, let gives you the ability to define and redefine the block assigned to each name so that tests can be run against a set of values and preconditions defined within the most immediate block, then the enclosing block, and so on. Take the following sample spec as an example:
test/thing_test.rb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 require 'test/test_helper' describe 'ThingList' do subject { [ thing ] } describe 'inner block' do let ( :thing ) { Thing. new ( name : 'foo' ) } it 'has one Thing named "foo"' do subject. length. must_equal 1 first_thing = subject. first first_thing. name. must_equal 'foo' end describe'more inner block' do let ( :thing ) { Thing. new ( name : 'bar' ) } it 'has one Thing named "bar"' do subject. length. must_equal 1 first_thing = subject. first first_thing. name. must_equal 'bar' end end end end
Both of these tests will pass since the contents of the list in each case will be determined by whatever is most immediately assigned to thing in the enclosing block. This can be a really powerful tool, and I’ve found it’s really effective in situations where I need to test the same method with different inputs, but bear in mind that nesting describe blocks too deeply will make your tests harder to understand and leave you and other developers confused about what’s actually being tested.
(Special thanks to @jemmyw for calling out the fact that this was not well covered in the original version of the post.)
I had always assumed that the memoized result was cached and available for use across all tests in a test case after the first invocation, but because Minitest runs each test using a fresh instance of the test class, the value is associated with a single test instance, not shared across instances.
Setup Before Running the Test Case
RSpec gives developers the ability to define setup code that would only run before the start of each test case using a before(:all) block – now also aliased as before(:context). Minitest doesn’t support the same syntax, but it’s easy enough to implement by executing class-level code and using class variables to store references to any shared resources as in the following example.
test/facebook_test.rb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 require "test_helper" class FacebookTest < Minitest : :Test @@fb_client = Koala : :Facebook :: API. new ( OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN ) def test_connection refute_nil @@fb_client end end
In this case, we’re assuming that the call to the Facebook API will be slow, so in order to perform that initialization just once rather than before every single test, we assign the class variable @@fb_client one time at the start of the test case. All instances of the test case will then have access to the shared client resource without creating a new connection.
While this is a nice tool to have at our disposal, it has the potential of being taken too far by, for example, using it for setting up anything involving database access. Overusing class variables in this way reduces test isolation and introduces the potential that tests will begin to fail (or worse, not fail) randomly, and so I’d be somewhat cautious about where and how often you apply this model.
Extra credit homework: Read the GitHub issue that requests the inclusion of support for before(:all) and the discussion afterward. It specifically describes the technique explained above, and the comments provide a lot of insight about how to take a conservative approach to library design.
Setting Up Before Running the Suite
Setup code intended to run once before all tests in the suite use a similar technique as shown in the previous section, but in this case, we’ll need to modify Minitest::Test in our test_helper.rb file instead of the individual test cases. The code will look like this:
test/test_helper.rb 1 2 3 4 5 require "minitest/autorun" class Minitest :: Test @@fb_client = Koala : :Facebook :: API. new ( OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN ) end
The result is a Facebook API client that’s shared between all test cases in the suite and which is set up once before any tests are executed.
The fact that this can be done doesn’t mean that it should be done though. Before using a technique such as this though, you need to ask yourself what effect it will have on your suite. Tests should be written as much as possible in a single file with as much verbosity and repetition as is needed to convey their meaning, and I’d personally be really reluctant to distribute code that’s essential to a clear understanding of my test case into other files.Bombay Beach, was established in the 1940s and 50s, as the Salton Sea region
became a playground for rich and powerful. The city was on course to
become Southern California’s own French Riviera, but the steady rise of salinity in
the Salton Sea led to problems, like massive fish and wildlife deaths. In the
1970s, a series of tropical storms ruined most of the beach city, and it never
recovered. Shorefront homes, businesses, and resorts were flooded several
times, before the water finally settled in the 1980s. Today, most of the city stands
in ruins, making Bombay Beach visually striking and dramatic. Despite its
downfall, some residents refused to go, and still gladly live in this semi-ghost
town.
I visited the only restaurant for miles around, the Ski Inn, owned by Bombay
Beach residents, Jane and Wendell Southworth. The Southworths have lived here
their entire lives, and still remember the city’s mid-60s heyday. Getting ready to
retire, they recently put their restaurant up for sale. I asked Jane about swimming
in the Salton Sea, and she said there is nothing at all wrong with the water,
where she swims daily. In fact, she believes that the water is healing, and
removes toxins from her skin, keeping it moisturized, clean, and refreshed.
The couple agreed that Salton Sea tilapia tastes better that any tilapia found in
the supermarket, however, while taking pictures at Bombay Beach’s shoreline, I
saw many dead fish, mostly tilapia. Some of the fish floated, while others washed
up on the shore. Although the July heat made it tempting, I chose not to swim. If
the water killed all those fish, then swimming might not be the best idea for me.
The sign of Ski Inn Restaurant
Ski Inn Restaurant
Inside Ski Inn Restaurant
Wendell and Jane Southeworth, the owners of Ski Inn and full time residents of Bombay Beach.
A visitor tapes a dollar bill on the wall of Ski Inn restaurant
Ruins of Shorefront homes in Bombay Beach
Inside the abandoned house
the Living Room
Children room
Ups, left the toy behind
Living Room
the view
Ruins of shorefront home
Article and photography by Natasha PetrosovaStar Rating jQuery Plugin
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Getting Started
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License
You are free to use this script for commercial and non-commercial projects. I would love to hear from you if you use it or have input.
If you find this dropdown script to be especially useful and can donate some funds, thank you and here is the link to donate:
Why Use Font Glyphs Instead of Images?
In a nutshell, using font glyphs for icons allows you to quickly control things like icon size (fonts glyphs are gracefully scalable vectors) and icon color.
If you really want to, you can use images with this plugin. For example, to change the default star element, update the " star " configuration option to look something like this:
star: $('<img>').attr('src','star.png'),
Basic Examples with Default Options
These examples demonstrate different ways to specify a rating and/or a maximum rating, without any additional configuration.
It wouldn't really be possible to determine what the maximum rating is without specifying it. You can do that in your element, as with some of these examples, or during initialization (described later).
Rating: 5.5/10 stars
HTML: <span class="rating">5.5/10 stars</span>
Rating: 1
HTML: <span class="rating">1</span>
Rating: /4
HTML: <span class="rating">/4</span>
Rating:
HTML: <span class="rating"></span>
Rating: 0/6
HTML: <span class="rating">0/6</span>
Rating: ******
HTML: <span class="rating">******</span>
Rating: 0
HTML: <span class="rating">0</span>
Rating: 3.5
HTML: <span class="rating">3.5</span>
Rating: 6.34/7 foo
HTML: <span class="rating">6.34/7 foo</span>
Rating: 4.2 of 5
HTML: <span class="rating">4.2 of 5</span>
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
HTML: <span class="rating">3.75 out of 5</span>
Rating: 2.1 out of 4 stars
HTML: <span class="rating">2.1 out of 4 stars</span>
Rating: 5.75 out of 6 star rating
HTML: <span class="rating">5.75 out of 6 star rating</span>
Rating: 3.75/5
HTML: <span class="rating">3.75/5</span>
jQuery(function($) { $('.rating').star_rating(); });
Global Configuration (e.g. Maximum Rating)
Chances are, you don't have more than one maximum amount of stars for a rating per-site. You can specify a global max rating like this:
Rating: 4.2
HTML: <span class="global-max">4.2</span>
Rating: 6.43
HTML: <span class="global-max">6.43</span>
jQuery(function($) { $.fn.star_rating({ max: 7 }); $('.global-max').star_rating(); });
Note that from here on out, examples will be using this value for the maximum. We've specified an integer for max instead of the default method, so the default method is now overridden.
Specifying an Action When a Star is Clicked
You might want to make something happen when a star is clicked, such as storing a new rating. This plugin can do that. Enabling the click event also exposes a "hover" event, which is given a sensible default.
The plugin includes an example of posting and receiving rating data on a click event, and it is commented out.
Try clicking on a star in this example:
Rating: 5.5
HTML: <span class="click-event">5.5</span>
jQuery(function($) { $('.click-event').star_rating({ // Add some functionality for when a star is clicked click: function(clicked_rating, event) { event.preventDefault(); alert( 'You clicked on a star rating of'+ clicked_rating + (this.max()?'out of'+ this.max() : '') + '.
' + 'We\'ll update the instance now with that rating.' ); this.rating(clicked_rating); } }); });
Additional Methods
Rating: 5.5/10 stars
HTML: <span class="methods-star-rating">5.5/10 stars</span>
'rating'
This does not update the underlying rating text -- which can be in many formats -- only the rendering. That will of course will not directly affect your keywords one way or the other. If you need it to update the text as well, please file an issue.
$('.methods-star-rating').star_rating('rating', new_rating_value);
Test 'rating' with random max 10
'remove'
$('.methods-star-rating').star_rating('remove');
Test'remove'
'reload'
$('.methods-star-rating').star_rating('reload');
You can change the rating before calling'reload'
Test'reload'
'max'
$('.methods-star-rating').star_rating('max', max_value);
You can change the rating before calling'reload'
Test'max' of 15 Test'max' of 10
'destroy'
$('.methods-star-rating').star_rating('destroy');
This function first calls'remove', but then also completely destroys the jQuery plugin object (i.e.,'reload' will not work unless it is completely reinitialized)
Test 'destroy'
Configurable Methods
The default configuration includes the following methods/functions that can be customized:
hover : This currently is only called when a click event is defined, and controls what happens when hovering the stars
: This currently is only called when a click event is defined, and controls what happens when hovering the stars rating : This extracts the rating text and turns it into something usable
: This extracts the rating text and turns it into something usable max : If max is a function, use it to extract the maximum rating value from the element. Can also be int.
: If max is a function, use it to extract the maximum rating value from the element. Can also be int. round : A function that specifies what to do about rounding decimals
: A function that specifies what to do about rounding decimals title : A function that sets the title (hover text) on the container, for accessibility
: A function that sets the title (hover text) on the container, for accessibility render : You can customize what happens during this event
: You can customize what happens during this event remove: You can customize what happens during this event
Example:
jQuery(function($) { $('.rating').star_rating({ title: function(clicked_rating, event) { return 'Some awesome title instead of the default title'; } }); });
Back to DanielUpshaw.comA man who couldn't pay his bill at a North Vancouver restaurant told staff he was going to rob a nearby gas station to get the cash — then was arrested after doing the deed and returning to settle his tab.
North Vancouver RCMP said a man racked up a $38 bill at the Browns Social House restaurant Friday night and tried to leave without paying.
When approached by the staff as he tried to exit, the man said they should call the police because he was going to rob a nearby gas station to get the cash, Cpl. Richard De Jong said Monday in a release.
De Jong said that moments later the North Vancouver RCMP received a hold-up alarm from the neighbouring Esso gas station where the attendant said a man held a screwdriver to his neck and robbed the till.
The man then returned to the restaurant and paid his bill and police arrived moments later, placing him under arrest.
A 21-year-old Surrey man has been charged with robbery, fraudulently obtaining food and beverage, and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
There were no injuries in any of the incidents, said De Jong.This guest post was written by Glen Allsopp, the author of PluginID.
About a year ago, I feared I would struggle to build an audience for my new personal development website. My fear was solely based on the fact that I had just turned 19. I simply assumed most people would question my age, and thus, my advice. After all, I haven’t lived as long as many of you who are reading this right now.
I did, however, manage to break my own limiting beliefs by sharing quality information and using my fresh personal experiences to my advantage. Just last week a friend from the speakers club I go to came up to me and said, “I love your website, but how do you do it? Where do you get all of your insight from? I’m 40 and I haven’t even come to some of these realizations yet.”
At the time, I had to give a quick answer and it probably wasn’t the best advice. However, now that I’ve had more time to think about it, there are certain principles I follow that have allowed me to generate loads of new ideas and insights in a relatively short timeframe. I’ve come to realize that ideas don’t tend to just ‘come’ to me, but instead there are clear-cut actions I take to produce them.
For a little boost of creativity and insight, follow these 5 steps.
Think Before You Sleep
Although you may not be aware of it it, even when you’re sleeping your brain continues to process and evaluate your ideas and thoughts. Throughout history, famous figures like Napoleon have stated that they focus on their problems just before they sleep, and tend to have an answer when they wake up.
As soon as I read about this, I instantly remembered how many times I had solved an issue of mine just minutes after waking up. The stresses of our daily routine can sometimes get in the way of our creativity, but if we focus on our thoughts, ideas, and insights minutes before bedtime, our subconscious mind will ponder it all while we rest.
Don’t Let Your Beliefs Limit You
I thoroughly believe that at times we stall on executing excellent ideas and solutions simply because we think they are too obvious or too easy. We think about it too much and convince ourselves that it’s silly or not worth it. At other times we doubt the fact that we are even capable of coming up with good ideas nobody else has thought of yet.
If you let your beliefs limit you, like I almost did by telling myself that I was too young, then these beliefs will always hold you back. Realize that you are a unique person with the ability to create and conjure ideas that no human has had before you.
Read Relevant Books
Truth be told, I’ve never been a big reader… at least not until the last year or so. In the last 12 months I’ve probably read more books than I did during the previous 18 years of my life. So it’s no coincidence that I’m now coming up with more practical insights than I had in the past.
It’s been said that you can become very knowledgeable about something just by reading 3 quality books on the subject. Of course, it also helps if you concentrate on reading books that pertain to subjects you have an interest in. If you enjoy personal development, then two books I highly recommend are Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Remember, humans have been around for thousands of years. There’s lots of excellent information out there to digest.
Take and Review Notes
I think this is the most important habit of all. Think of a book or great article that you read in the last year. My guess is that you can remember some of the key points, but you’ve probably also completely forgotten numerous pages of useful information. Whenever I read a quality book, I either take notes at the time or go back through it and highlight my favorite points. I then review these points regularly until I have them ingrained in my mind.
This doesn’t apply to reading only. You’ll probably find that some of your best ideas come when you are doing something completely unrelated to the idea itself. In such cases, it’s wise to carry a small notebook or smart phone around with you so you can record your ideas on the go.
My Google Docs account is literally flooded with high quality notes from a number of my favorite authors and my own personal experiences. I tend to look through these notes when I need inspiration or just to refresh my memory.
Maintain an Open Mind to New Information
If you adopt the position that you know everything about a subject then you’ll obviously never come up with any new insights about it. Additionally, if you are too shortsighted to see that some of your current beliefs may be mistaken, then you are completely inhibiting your peronal growth potential.
Instead, be open-minded and realize that there will always be more for you to learn. Of course, you don’t have to accept every new piece of information that comes your way, but at least evaluate it properly before discarding it.
Conclusion
I believe everyone, regardless of age or background, can come up with new ideas and excellent insights. You just need to know how to harness them.
Glen Allsopp writes for a blog called PluginID on the subject of personal development. He also teaches people how they can be who they want to be through personality development.Antifa Terrorist Who Beat Trump Supporter in Head WITH BIKE LOCK Identified as Local Professor! (VIDEO)
The recent incident in Berkeley, colloquially known now as “The Battle of Berkeley”, brought us numerous and new infamous Antifa idiots to laugh at, but one story coming from that event should not as easily be laughed off.
Diablo Valley College professor Eric Clanton has been unmasked by a group of online free speech advocates. Utilizing the concept of crowdsourcing, /pol/, a message board hosted on 4Chan, was able to figure out who exactly assaulted a pro-1st Amendment demonstrator...
Enter professor and violent, domestic terrorist Eric Clanton. Watch him hit a Trump supporter over the head with a bike lock which left him profusely bleeding from his head.
HERE IS FOOTAGE OF THE ASSAULT:
Clanton is a professor of philosophy at Diable Valley College.
Clanton allegedly was a student as SFSU; not a surprise that he got his education in Liberalville, USA.
After much digging, the Internet finally placed him:
He is known to rant to his students about anarchist tactics...
AnTiFa suspect Eric Clanton works for Diablo Valley College. pic.twitter.com/9PbzsIqePd — Red Pill 🌹 (@RedPillDropper) April 20, 2017
What is most amazing about the unmasking of Eric Clanton is the level of dedication and time spent by random Internet users to track down the violent criminal...
/pol/ was able to turn themselves into an intelligence gathering agency and to great effect (as they’ve done before with Shia LaBeouf).
The following tweets grant further incite into this story:
Eric Clanton okCupid profile: “I spend a lot of time thinking about REVOLUTION” https://t.co/aMZJuF9peN pic.twitter.com/Yv9PdeOc8S — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 20, 2017
SJWs: “Trump supporters are all idiots” /pol/: *invents facial recognition system to ID Antifa terrorists* — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 20, 2017
Hi Berkeley Mayor @JesseArreguin! What is your policy on college professors attacking citizens with bike locks? pic.twitter.com/UO89OObbNN — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 20, 2017
Victim Sean Stiles is pressing charges against Antifa Professor Eric Clanton pic.twitter.com/gN5VV35MXA — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 20, 2017
/pol/ allegedly hacked into Clanton’s Amazon account and saw that he ordered 14 bike locks with 1 day shipping…
/pol/ hacked into Amazon account of AntiFa Rioter who beat people w/ bikelock, Eric Clanton. They sent him 14 bikelocks w/ 1-day shipping. pic.twitter.com/q9lBQqYX1t — /pol/ News Network (@polNewsNet) April 20, 2017
Colleges turn girls into this👇 because they employ professors like this👇 pic.twitter.com/YJiUabgbVQ — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 20, 2017
@RedPillDropper @JackPosobiec Ted is the President of Diablo Valley College where Eric Clanton is employed. Send a message to [email protected] about violent criminals. pic.twitter.com/HHElPPnOwK — Drum Point (@DrumPoint1) April 20, 2017Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure Database services for PostgreSQL and MySQL at Build 2017 which is a simple, fully managed database service for PostgreSQL and MySQL that removes the complexities around infrastructure management, data availability, protection, and scale. The service has seen tremendous growth and we have had customers reaching out to us regarding best practices for achieving optimal query performance on the service. This post outlines an approach for troubleshooting performance while using Azure Database for PostgreSQL as the backend database.
Based on the usage patterns, we see two common deployment patterns:
An application server exposing a web endpoint on an application server, which connects to the database.
A client-server architecture where the client directly connects to the database.
The performance issues for an application or service using Azure Database for PostgreSQL service can be classified broadly into the following categories. Pleas refer numbers in the bulleted section below for more details.
1. Resource contention (CPU, Memory, and Disk) on the client – The machine/server serving as the client could be having a resource constraint which can be identified in the task manager, the Azure portal, or CLI if the client machine is running on Azure.
2. Resource contention (CPU, Memory, and Disk) – The machine/server acting as the application server could cause a resource constraint, which can be identified in the task manager, the Azure portal, or CLI if the application server/service VM is running on Azure. If the application server is an Azure service or virtual machine, then Azure metrics can help with determining the resource contention.
3. Resource contention on Azure Database for PostgreSQL – The database service could be experiencing performance bottlenecks related to CPU, memory, and storage which can be determined from the Azure Metrics for the database service instance. Please see below for more details. To learn more, read about monitoring Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
4. Network latency – One of the common issues we encounter while troubleshooting performance is the network latency between the client and the database service instance. A quick check before starting any performance benchmarking run is to determine the network latency between the client and database using a simple SELECT 1 query. We have seen customers report improved throughput when the SELECT 1 timing for a query is <2ms when using a remote client hosted on Azure in the same region and resource group as the Azure Database for PostgreSQL server.
Commands to get SELECT 1 timing using psql:
\timing SELECT; \watch 1
We have observed that customers are able to significantly increase the application throughput by creating the application server and database service in the same region, resource group, and using accelerated networking for the application server/client machine, where applicable. Accelerated networking enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to a VM, greatly improving its networking performance. This high-performance path bypasses the host from the datapath reducing latency, jitter, and CPU utilization for use with the most demanding network workloads on supported VM types. Get more information on the OS releases that support Accelerated Networking along the steps to create a virtual machine with accelerated networking.
Database performance
Once you have eliminated resource contention as a possible root cause, you will need to determine the queries on the database server which are contributing to the highest duration. This can be done using pg_stat_statements module. Since we maintain parity with community PostgreSQL, any native queries that you used to troubleshoot query performance on PostgreSQL will apply on our service as well.
You will be able to execute the below query on an Azure Database for PostgreSQL server to get the top 5 duration queries executed during your performance/benchmarking run:
SELECT query, calls, total_time, rows, 100.0 * shared_blks_hit/ nullif(shared_blks_hit + shared_blks_read, 0) AS hit_percent FROM pg_stat_statements ORDER BY total_time DESC LIMIT 5
It is recommended to reset the pg_stat_statements using the query below to ensure that you only capture the statements from your performance/benchmarking run:
SELECT pg_stat_statements_reset()
Quick tips
If CPU usage for an Azure Database for PostgreSQL server is saturated at 100%, then select the next higher level of Compute Units to get more CPU. For example, if the CPU usage is hovering around 100% continuously during business hours for a Standard 100, then it might be worthwhile to consider Standard 200.
A common issue that we notice is the use of the default included storage size for the database, which is 125GB. The default storage size of 125GB is limited to 375 IOPs. If your application requires higher IOPs, then it is recommended that you create an Azure Database for PostgreSQL server with a higher storage size to get more IOPs so that your application performance is not impacted by storage throttling.
If IO waits are observed from MySQL/PostgreSQL performance troubleshooting, then increasing the storage size should be considered for higher IO throughput. For example, if you observe WALWriteLock as the wait event type for maximum requests using pg_stat_activity, then it would be beneficial to use a server with a higher storage size as storage performance scales with the allocated storage size.
Query to determine the number of waits on WALWriteLock which signifies an IO bottleneck associated with Write Ahead Log writes:
select wait_event, wait_event_type, count(*) as counts from pg_stat_activity group by wait_event, wait_event_type;
We recommend having the application server/client machine in the same region and resource group in Azure to reduce between the client/application server and the database.
If you are using pgbench for testing performance, then it is advisable to use a scale factor which is higher than at least the number of connections to ensure that your performance benchmarking is not bottlenecked on update contention. For example, if you are using 100 connections to run pgbench3, then you should at least use a scale factor of 100 or higher.
If there is a resource contention associated with memory or CPU usage on the virtual machine acting as the application server, and all possible optimizations on the application has been implemented, it is recommended to increase the virtual machine size to increase the compute and memory available on the virtual machine.
If there are IO related bottlenecks observed on the virtual machine acting as the application server, it is recommended to increase the disk size hosting the application files and possibly evaluating the use of Premium Managed Disks.
If you are still having a performance issue and need assistance, you have the following options:
Open a support incident with Microsoft support.
Post a question on our MSDN forums.
Send a tweet to @AzureDBforPostgreSQL.
ReferenceThough Kroenke called Colorado's 48-point season unacceptable, he said he still had faith in Sakic and cited extraordinary circumstances that included the abrupt resignation of coach Patrick Roy on Aug. 11 and injuries to starting goaltender Semyon Varlamov and defenseman Erik Johnson.
Colorado Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic got a vote of confidence from Avalanche president Josh Kroenke after the worst season since they relocated in 1995, the Denver Post reported Wednesday.
"Joe's leash hasn't changed at all," Kroenke said. "Nobody wants to get the Avalanche back to where they were, where we all expect them to be, more than Joe Sakic. We're going to continue to give him every resource at his disposal, and I'm going to help him in any ways he sees that I can."
Colorado will have the fourth selection in the NHL Draft, to be held at United Center in Chicago on June 23-24.
The Avalanche finished last in the NHL under coach Jared Bednar, who was hired after Roy's departure. After a 9-9-0 start, Colorado won 13 of its final 64 games.
"We got out and played decent hockey, say, through the first 15 or 20 games or so," Kroen |
-launcher.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
Women do not support attempts to ban transgender women from the female toilets, polling has found.
Across the US, states have seen a wave of Republican-backed ‘bathroom bills’ aimed at rolling back LGBT rights protections – which are marketed as a measure to secure “safety” for women by banning transgender people from public toilets.
There’s just one slight hitch in those spurious “women’s safety” arguments – it turns out that they don’t actually work on women.
Polling this week from Pew Research Center shows that a majority of women support trans people being able to use the restroom of their chosen gender, with 55% in favour and 40% against.
On the flipside, men are apparently more concerned about “women’s safety” than actual women, supporting discrimination against trans people by a margin of 52% to 40%.
It’s almost as if women can see when they’re being exploited as a political bargaining chip to attack a minority group.
Young people – who separate polling shows are far more likely to actually know a transgender person – are also more likely to see through the ‘bathroom debate’, with 67% supporting trans bathroom rights.
Despite the media focus on the bathroom issue, many of the GOP bills in state legislatures simply use it as a thin coating to disguise more broad anti-LGBT legislation.
Many of the proposed laws advertised as ‘bathroom bills’ also pare back anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, with some including opaque ‘freedom to discriminate’ clauses snuck through under the bathroom bigot banner.
A recent investigation found the fingerprints of the Liberty Counsel – the hardline evangelical law firm that represents anti-gay clerk Kim Davis – on many of the bills.
The group admitted helping Republican lawmakers draft ‘bathroom’ legislation in a number of states.By Staff
A Saudi court sentenced an African woman to one year in prison and ordered her lashed 500 times after she was found guilty of practicing witchcraft.
Members of the Gulf Kingdom’s religious police — the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — swooped on the woman’s house and caught her red handed as she tried to cast her spell on a female police undercover.
The woman was convicted of practicing sorcery on her female victims by claiming she can make end marital rifts and make husbands love their wives.
“The court sentenced the woman to one year in prison and ordered her lashed 50 times for 10 separate sessions…it also ordered her deportation from the Kingdom,” the Arabic language daily Al Madina said in a report from the western Red Sea port of Jeddah.In Legends.
Marshal Marcus Redpath is an independent undead, newly raised by the Forsaken in Deathknell.
Biography
Marcus Redpath was the headman of Southshore prior to the onset of the Second War, greeting Anduin Lothar, Khadgar, and the refugees from the Kingdom of Stormwind. He sent his fastest rider, Willem, to King Terenas to alert him of their arrival.[1]
Marcus was a level 41 quest giver located in Southshore in the contested territory of the Hillsbrad Foothills. He seemed to be the leader of the military forces in Southshore and was eager to rid the town of various threats, including the murlocs, Crushridge ogres and naga.
Marcus was called to investigate the murder of Erik Fallrook. The Marshal had to arrest Kerri Hicks, a member of the Darkmoon Faire, who hit Erik the day before. An evidence against her was found by Redpath's soldier. Later he visited Kerri in prison and told her the sentence - she will be hanged. Soon later he was visited by Peter Hamelspot and Yebb Neblegear who told him the true murderer of Erik - his brother Cedrick Fallrook. Marcus then appeared in the chaos caused by the Darkmoon Faire and allowed them and Cedrick to leave as his father, Terrence Fallrook, told him that Cedrick was with him that night.[2]
With the destruction of Southshore by Forsaken plague bombing in Cataclysm, Marcus was killed with many other citizens. His body was transported to the Deathknell Graves and raised as an undead, but when he was approached by a Forsaken agent to join them, he refused, instead opting to create a "Forsaken with elbows" faction.
He is later found at Rotbrain Encampment as the leader of the Rotbrain undead who are planning an attack on Deathknell. He was soon killed by the adventurers.
Abilities
Heroic Leap
Whirlwind
Quests
Needs to be spoken with in [1] [1] The Wakening
Needs to be killed in [5] [5] Assault on the Rotbrain Encampment
The subject of this section has been removed from World of Warcraft in patch 4.0.3a.
Notes and trivia
Though he was removed from the open-world Hillsbrad Foothills, he can still be seen in Southshore vs Tarren Mill.
Before or after you finish the quest Assault on the Rotbrain Encampment the Rotbrains including their leader are neutral regardless of faction. Although neutral for Alliance players, he is attackable.
regardless of faction. Following his resurrection, Redpath seems to have lost much of his sanity. Though he was initially portrayed as simply a rebel, holding a massive hatred for the Forsaken and vowing vengeance for Southshore, following the Cataclysm beta his undead personality had changed completely.
Speculation
Marcus Redpath in life.
This article or section includes speculation, observations or opinions possibly supported by lore or by Blizzard officials. It should not be taken as representing official lore.
He is possibly related to Joseph, Carlin, and Marlene Redpath.
He might have been the Redpath briefly mentioned in [38] [38] Daelin's Men Theramore city guard at some point.
Patch changes
Patch 4.0.3a (2010-11-23): Changed from human to Forsaken.A few days ago, a sharp-eyed distributor picked up the rather startling similarity between the latest SeneGence flyer advertising their new glittery shimmer eyeliner, and a brochure she picked up from another cosmetic brand, Mahya 🤔
On further digging, we discovered that the photo in question was indeed a stock photo from Shutterstock.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with using stock photos in many circumstances. Beautiful models with flawless skin can advertise many things. It’s an economical and convenient way to get professional photography. But there are definite ethical issues.
For starters, we’re not happy when these photos are representing a product actually in use, or on the model’s face. The clear intimation in this flyer is that THAT is the brush from the EyeSense, and that is their gold eyeliner. It isn’t.
Your eyeliner style, Capricorn. Some Italian glitter. And Indonesian...
And the best LOL of them all? Look what they did to the image after their ‘Shutterstockiness’ got out there 😂😂😂. (Your Crown is Plastic helped spread the word, thanks girls.)
A dodgy job of duplicating the gold line (and a bit of the brush LOL, geez guys, get someone with some actual Photoshop training &/or skills).
So — rather than admitting, yes, we use stock photos, and here’s why — they alter the image instead to make it look a tiny bit different, more ridiculous, and worse? Seriously, guys?!
We started to dig further, and goodness gracious me. Look what we found …
(This one complete cracks me up for some reason.)
(Photoshop blush — get whatever colour you like with the click of a mouse!)
(Note the Shutterstock caption — this model is wearing false lashes!)
(Just adjust the color balance a bit in Photoshop and you've got a new colour palette!)
Even their videos... Did you know you can buy video clips from Shutterstock? Yep, you can
This is just the tip of the iceberg, too.
So far as we can see, ALL of SeneGence’s promotional material uses stock photos. Apart from the new distributor-designed colours, like First Love (pictured below), which have photos of the distributors who have designed these colours, presumably provided by them.
Stock photos are generally the lazy, cheap or amateur designer’s solution to needing particular photos. A global cosmetics company, that purports to be bringing in ‘billions’, could surely afford to pay a professional photographer to take photos of models actually wearing SeneGence products.
Is that too much to ask? (Apparently it is.)
And even if they are using stock photos, why not pay for exclusive rights so that no-one else can use those images? It is rather disconcerting to see the same images in all sorts of other places.
There are a whole bunch of ethical issues that are raised by this behavior. What is reality? What is advertising? Where do you draw the line?:
“While it is easy to find and purchase high-quality photos, you might alienate readers who think your images are fake or irrelevant if you choose those images poorly.”
YA THINK? Even if the photos have been chosen well, the revelation that they are 'fake' — and NOT any sort of representation of SeneGence products ACTUALLY IN USE — is eroding trust in the company.
Here's some more tips for you SeneGence 'designers':
Don't try to pass stock photography off as real content. All the filters in the world won't mask that overexposed stock photo feeling. Don't over photoshop stock imagery. The more photoshopping, the less engagement. If the image is a simple set up, purchase the products and take the image yourself. Do understand your brand's position. If your client sells food, clothing, or something product-based [LIKE COSMETICS] real content is much more successful.
Customers and distributors alike are seriously pissed off by this. We have been lied to (YET AGAIN) — those photos are NOT of women wearing or using SeneGence products.
We'd be happy to hear SeneGence's explanation for this.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of distributors and ex-distributors, based on our own experiences. Your experience of SeneGence may be different.
*Punked: To get punked is to have a joke played on you, often in a public setting. Ref
#SeneGence #LipSense #stockphotos #advertisingfail #scam #MLM #antiMLM #lossoftrust #trustissuesThe Giants Found in Romania and the CIA Cover-Up
Everyone has heard of the giant characters of legend, sometimes called cyclops or ogres. Giants were generally presented as creatures so big that the earth trembled when they walked.
It seems however that the giants are not just fairy tales, considering the fact that their remains have been found all over the world. The mystery of their civilization remains to this day and there is even a sort of secrecy in this regard, a convention to sweep any evidence of their existence under the rug.
In the 1940’s, archaeologists were overseeing a dig at Argedava in Romania, searching for priceless artifacts within the ruins of what was once the greatest citadel of the Dacian leader Burebista. The locals did most of the digging and they were glad to be making a little extra during those times of hardship.
Among them was Ionita Florea, now an old man well in his eighties. He was the one who dug up an enormous skull, two or three times the size of a regular one. When he notified the archaeologists, the workers were quickly dismissed and the researchers resumed the digging themselves. Their findings were loaded onto trucks and shipped away with the utmost secrecy. By the end of the excavation, they had collected around 80 skeletons, most of them complete. They had also recovered giant ceramic pots filled with grains.
To this day, nobody knows where the skeletons are.
This is not an isolated incident. In more recent years, villagers in Scaieni uncovered an ancient giants’ graveyard while planting an apple orchard. Once again, it was the skulls’ giant sizes that puzzled everyone. Alongside the complete skeletons, the villagers also found pottery fragments, jewelry and strange metal statues about 3 feet tall. A team of archaeologists came, dug everything up and vanished. No public statement was made and the locals refuse to discuss what happened after they announced their finding.
Were they strong-armed into silence? Is this event part of a greater conspiracy?
There are plenty legends about giants in the area. According to folklore, giants once inhabited the mountains and forests around Scaieni. In fact, huge thrones were found sculpted in the mountainside, in an area inaccessible to regular human beings. Legends tell that there are two gigantic underground vaults beneath the mountains, holding the giants’ ancient treasures. Could these vaults be real? If found, what stories would they tell?
In 2009, a local news channel started an investigation about the giants and their secret tunnels beneath the Bucegi mountains. Just as their report went on air, they received a live phone call from a man who refused to identify himself. The journalists were threatened to stop their ongoing investigation or else. As the mysterious man put it, they were “playing a dangerous game.”
“Stop talking about the Bucegi [mountains]. Information like that must not be made public and there are certain structures that deal with cases such as this. You do not wish to know us, you don’t want to interview us. That’s all I want to say.” He then hung up and the broadcast was interrupted. Was this an orchestrated hoax or a live case of a threatening secret cover-up? Only the journalists know and they refuse to discus the subject.
In an intriguing twist, the airspace above the Bucegi Plateau is a restricted no-fly zone. Many sources point to the CIA being involved.
Incidents like these happen all around the world. There is a distinct lack of physical evidence whenever people report findings of giant skeletons. Authorities arrive first, leaving behind hastily covered excavations, no artifacts and muted locals. One might think something really strange is going on.
source: locklipDetails Created: Friday, 14 February 2014 20:31 Written by Sam Mcgill
On 12 February, fascists attacked the presidential Miraflores Palace in Caracas and the Attorney General's office. Exploiting the 12 February Day of Youth celebrations, when annual processions commemorate the role of youth in the independence battle in La Victoria in 1814, violent groups of masked thugs took to the streets in several cities across Venezuela. During clashes with revolutionary forces in Caracas and Merida, student Basil de Costa and community activist Juan Montoya were killed, and 23 were injured.
The violence came two days after the implementation of the ‘Law for the Control of Fair Costs, Prices and Profits’ which is designed toprevent the price speculation and product hoarding which has rocked the economy in recent months. The law establishes a maximum profit margin of 30% and has been established across the economy to prevent companies from over-charging. Fedecamaras, the Venezuelan chamber of commerce, has pledged to take action against the law. With more protests planned over coming days, it is urgent that we support the socialist movement in Venezuela as it fights any renewed coup d'etat attempts.
After electoral defeat, opposition returns to violence
As we reported in FRFI 236 (www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/latin-america/3238-venezuela-economic-battlelines-are-drawn-in-run-up-to-elections), failed opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles tried to use the December municipal elections as a plebiscite against President Maduro's Bolivarian government, unleashing an economic war that saw hoarding and speculation by the ruling class translate into shortages and inflation for the majority. In the election itself, the opposition were roundly defeated as the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) took 54% of the popular vote and won 76% of the contested positions.
Since the new year, key opposition leaders like Leopold Lopez of the powerful Mendoza Group business conglomerate have made calls to ‘go out into the street’' in order to achieve the ‘exit’ of the Maduro government. In recent weeks opposition students, particularly from the elite Universities of the Andes in Merida, have staged several violent protests with no purpose other than to cause injury and provoke disruption. Opposition students have often been at the centre of reaction in Venezuela in the past and have benefited from considerable funds from organisations like USAID. The ‘manos blancos’ (white hands) protests in 2010 were a key part of this strategy
(see www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/latin-america/1709-the-real-bolivarian-youth).
Venezuela Analysis (www.venezuelanalysis.com) reported that on 12 February, ‘Violent opposition groups also attacked the Attorney General's office in Carabobo Park, Caracas. Photographs of the scene indicate the building's exterior was damaged. A building belonging to the government-owned Fundacaracas organisation was also attacked by opposition groups. A few hours later the mayor of Caracas's Libertador municipality, the PSUV's Jorge Rodriguez also reported that the judicial offices in Chacao, Miranda, were also attacked.’ Correo del Orinocco added that later the same evening, fascist thugs attacked both the headquarters of Chavista media, VTV, and the media regulation body CONATEL.
Denouncing the violence, President Maduro said that around 200 violent thugs had been involved in the attack on Miraflores Palace after hitting the Attorney General's office. He concluded: ‘In Venezuela, we are confronting a Nazi-Fascist resurgence, and we are going to defeat it. There will not be another coup in Venezuela... we will secure democracy and secure the revolution for the whole world to know.’
Following the disorder, the national security forces have been stationed in Venezuela's principal cities, with organised revolutionaries in communities like Barrio 23 de Enero (23 January) pledging to defend their streets. Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz has issued arrest warrants against Carratu Ivan Molina, head of the military under former President Carlos Andres Perez, and Fernando Gerbasi, a former diplomat. An audio tape of the two discussing ‘opposition plans... similar to those that occurred on 11 April 2002’ for the Day of Youth celebration suggests involvement in plotting another coup against the Bolivarian Revolution.
Yet again, Venezuela's ruling class, backed and directed by US and European imperialism, is organising to block the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution and the fight for socialism. With further opposition actions planned, the violence may continue in coming days. Follow www.venezuelanalysis.com, www.correodelorinocco.gob.ve and www.telesurtv.net for more regular updates.
Victory to the Bolivarian Revolution!
Sam McGillLondonist
Punished For Being Poor: London’s Forgotten Workhouses
Orphaned, elderly, sick, disabled or simply unable to find work? If you answered to any one of these conditions in Victorian London, then you may have found yourself in the workhouse.
Until The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, the treatment of the poor had barely changed since the 1601 Poor Law. ‘Poorhouses’ or ‘houses of industry’ had existed for several centuries across Britain as institutions where the neediest in society had to work for the most basic of food and shelter: effectively, punishment for being poor.
During the 19th century, inner-city workhouses became much more organised, detaining people on an industrial scale. These institutions grew hand-in-glove with the Industrial Revolution, as great swaths of people moved to urban areas to find work, but often fell victim to underemployment or industrial injury.
One of London’s most famous sons, Charlie Chaplin, spent his formative years in the Lambeth New Workhouse on Renfrew Road. Like fictional counterpart Oliver Twist, Chaplin was lucky enough to escape the system. But many thousands were not so lucky.
After studying the 1893-96 Ordnance Survey map of London superimposed onto Google Maps, and exploring Peter Higginbotham’s comprehensive Workhouses online resource, we set out to find the locations of some of London’s forgotten ‘union houses’ and see if any of their sad legacies remain.
Fitzrovia
In the shadow of the BT Tower, the Cleveland Street Workhouse is not only one of the earliest surviving workhouses in London but it is also a stone’s throw away from one of Charles Dickens’ childhood home and thought to have influenced the writing of Oliver Twist.
Historian Ruth Richardson states in Dickens & the Workhouse that '[t]he main front four-storey H-shaped block of the Workhouse was originally erected in the mid-1770s on land owned by the Duke of Bedford’. The workhouse was built while Fitzrovia was still semi-rural.
The harsh reality of life in the workhouse is addressed by Richardson’s bleak findings that 'in 1866 556 people were sharing 332 beds. The cubic footage of space available per person was half that of the London prisons'. By the 1870s, the workhouse became the Central London Sick Asylum and remained a public infirmary until the abolition of the Poor Law Unions in 1929. It then became an annex for the Middlesex Hospital. In 2005, after serving the city continuously for 230 years, the hospital closed and the building was threatened with demolition to make way for a luxury residential development. In 2011, however, a campaign was successful in gaining Grade II listing for the Georgian workhouse, which recognises the structure's significant historical importance. It was saved from destruction.
Bermondsey and Old Southwark
A document from 1868 called ‘A short account of the Parish of Bermondsey’ states that in 1710, 'a convenient room' was established 'for the poor to work in, and that they be employed oakum picking'. Oakum was the smaller fibres picked from thicker ropes that were mixed with tar to waterproof wooden ships. It was an essential commodity to a seafaring nation but it was a menial task of penal servitude in prisons and workhouses alike.
St Olave Parish Street Workhouse is thought to have opened in 1734 but only came into the control of the St Olave Poor Law Union in 1836. It stood between Tooley Street and Druid Street (formerly Artillery Street), opposite the disused graveyard of St John's Horsleydown Church. No physical clues remain to the workhouse’s location apart from a residential block named St Olave’s Estate.
St Olave's estate.
In 1791, St Mary Magdalen workhouse was built at the south side of Russell Street (now Tanner Street) just around the corner from the Parish Street workhouse. In 1875, a report in the Lancet found the workhouse regularly flooded with a dire lack of cleanliness: 'their watercloset and urinal (abutting on the deadhouse) stink so offensively as to poison the whole atmosphere of their airing-court'. Today, nothing remains of this building, and the site is now Tanner Street Park. The 1893-96 Ordinance Survey map pinpoints the exact site of the workhouse to where the tennis courts now stand.
Tanner Street Park
Bethnal Green
St Matthew's Bethnal Green Workhouse was first recorded in 1777 as a small square-shaped building with an enclosed work-yard just across from St Matthew’s Church. Higginbotham records an event from December 1816 when inmate Robert Pope was 'dragged from his ward into the oakum cellar by two fellow inmates, Thomas Kendall and James Saint, who then bound him by the wrists and beat him with a stave from a butter tub […] and died shortly afterwards'. Pope’s beating came about after he had reported his fellow inmates for breaking workhouse rules. The harsh retribution is worsened by the fact that both his attackers were acquitted of murder after they were deemed to have only 'accelerated his demise'!
From the 1840s to 1850s, the growing need for poor-relief in the small east-London district is clear. Larger workhouses on Waterloo Road and Well Street were built to help with overcrowding. These institutions eventually replaced St Matthew’s and by the 1893-96 Ordnance Survey map, the Great Eastern Railway arches had ploughed through the East End and the site of the inadequate 18th century building. A general shift in social attitudes towards the impoverished and growing support for medicalised care saw the opening of the Cambridge Heath Road infirmary in 1900. A small part of the Cambridge Heath Road entrance of the building remains to this day, where it now serves as residential housing. Although it is a mere fraction of the infirmary, the grandeur of the Portland stone building is apparent. It must have looked almost palatial in scale compared with the economic designs of the earlier workhouses.
Cambridge Heath Road Infirmary.
Holborn
Behind the gates of a plumbing company on Gray’s Inn Road are the remaining buildings of the Holborn Union Workhouse. According to Higginbotham’s research, the workhouse first appears on John Rocque’s 1746 map of London and was expanded in 1838 with money from the Poor Law Commissioners. The rectangular glass-roofed hall, visible just behind the gates, is clearly recognisable on the 1893-96 Ordnance Survey map and labelled as the Holborn Union workhouse.
Some exploring behind the backstreets of Mount Pleasant (formerly Gray’s Inn Lane) uncovers an L-shaped building several storeys high, with large Victorian warehouse-style windows. The building shape matches the 1893-96 site plan and appears to be the Casual Wards mentioned by Higginbotham that were rebuilt in 1901 to enable housing relief for people getting back into employment. The building is now a mixed office and studio space but still retains neglected features that evoke the building’s past.
Borough
Many of the remaining terrace houses on the streets surrounding Mint Street Park, such as the aptly named Copperfield Street, help to give a sense of the scale of the Borough area of London around the turn of the 19th century. Since 1782, a workhouse run by the St Saviour’s Union stood on the current parkland within the old Surrey parish of St George-the-Martyr, Southwark.
The workhouse only covered about half of Mint Street Park — not a particularly large space. R Gibson Brown’s report from The Lancet records the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions of the workhouse in September 1865:
In No. 4 ward (female), with 17 beds, the drain-smell from a lavatory in a recess of the room was so offensive that we suspected a sewer-communication, and soon discovered that there was no trap. […] The absence of the usual decencies and needful cleanliness of the infirmary will at once suggest the class of nurses in charge: for we feel assured that no properly trained nurse would have tolerated such abominations as we witnessed.
According to Brown, the parish’s homeless were literally given straw on a floor of a building. Those too sick to wash themselves were washed by nurses with water from a chamber pot. Small wonder that the mortality rates were so high. No traces of the workhouse itself remain but the surrounding buildings do give some clues about the proportions of St Saviour’s Union. The wall that follows the park around Southwark Bridge Road is a surviving trace of Evelina Children’s Hospital, which stood to the west of the workhouse from 1869 until 1976. South of the workhouse, some of the original small terrace houses remain but halfway down the road they peter off into the path of the park.
Camberwell & Peckham
The Havil Street Workhouse was established in 1818 as one of three main sites in Camberwell. It was a long and narrow two-storey brick building, which was already being criticised in an 1865 report in The Lancet for being dilapidated, unfit for purpose and for not treating the infirm as sick patients. As for the food available to inmates, Simon Fowler recalls the dire state of affairs at Havil Street in his book Workhouse:
In the late 1880s a guardian of Camberwell workhouse in southeast London, Miss Augusta Brown, tried to improve the soup served there, which was made out of water, onions and grease. She took a bowl of it to the board meeting, but her fellow guardians refused to touch it. As the soup had already been rejected by her cat and dog, she thought that wise.
By 1890, the transition towards medicalised care had begun and the call for a new infirmary was answered when a circular tower was added to the workhouse site. By this time, St Gile’s Hospital had already opened just next to the workhouse near Brunswick Park. It served the people of Camberwell from 1875 right up until 1983. Much of the original administration and staff-residential blocks of the hospital are still standing, and are now housing. The workhouse site later operated as an infirmary until it was heavily damaged by a V1 flying bomb during the Second World War. All that remains of the Havil Street workhouse is the elegant infirmary tower that dominates the low-rise modern housing estate that surrounds it on all sides (image below).
Just around the corner from Peckham Rye station, backing onto the railway arches, the Gordon Road workhouse stands as testament to the ‘houses of industry’. Although the covered pathways give an initial impression of a genteel country sanatorium, the sheer imposing scale of the three buildings evokes the industrial mills of northern England. It was built in 1878 to house over 700 able-bodied inmates who certainly had to pay for the roof over their heads by performing tough, physical labour on a daily basis. Indeed, Higginbotham tells us that '[m]ale inmates performed stone-breaking and wood-chopping, while the women were mostly employed in laundry work'. These details help to remind us of the industrial function of workhouses as powerful contributors to the late-19th century economy and certainly not just places that sheltered the poor. The well-preserved Victorian buildings and surrounding grounds appeal to the contemporary taste for nostalgia and now function as attractive residential flats.
Article by Joe Carroll. Photography by Poppy Cockburn.
Do you live in or near one of London’s many forgotten workhouses? Please share your stories or memories in the comments section below.The Pirate Party, founded in a bid to promote reform of the country's copyright and open content laws, could get the second biggest representation in Iceland’s parliament if election would be held now, a poll claims.
According to the results of survey held by Fréttablaðið, Iceland’s largest-circulation newspaper, the country is showing an increased interest in issues connected to personal privacy and freedom of information, measures that the Pirate Party strongly advocates.
If parliamentary elections were held today, the Pirate Party would get 22 percent of the vote, which would translate into 14 seats out of 63 in the Icelandic Parliament. That is a marked increase of 11 additional parliamentary seats than they had in the 2013 elections.
Although the Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) continues to be one of the ruling parties with 19 seats in Parliament, their numbers would have remained unchanged since the last parliamentary elections, the poll showed.
READ MORE: Pirate Party members nominate Snowden, Manning for Nobel Peace Prize
Meanwhile, the Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn), the party of the Prime Minister, which also has 19 seats, would have lost a whopping 13 parliamentary seats since the last elections, thus forcing it out of a governing position.
As a result, the Pirate Party could form a two-party government with the Independence Party.
The rest of the seats would be held by the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin), the Left Green Party (Vinstri grænir) and Bright Future (Björt framtíð).
The results of the poll were cited by Vísir newspaper.
Iceland has a multi-party system, so coalition governments are usually formed to prevent any one party from having absolute rule. Should the next parliamentary elections produce results similar to those of the poll, the Independence Party and the Pirate Party would form a two-party government.
Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, a member of the Parliament for the Pirate Party, expressed cautious optimism when Fréttablaðið talked with him about the results. "I'm happy to see such a reception, but you also need to keep this,” Gunnarsson said, as quoted by Visir. “Firstly, it's not self-evident that this will be the result of the elections and not self-evident that this will go on. It's important not to become arrogant because of this."
"You can just hope that the reason is that people like what we have to say.”FROM being attacked by angry protesters to achieving “significant wins” for the region, the task of overseeing the forced merger of Inner West Council has involved its fair share of highs and lows.
In council administrator Richard Pearson’s final days on the job ahead of next week’s election, he has released a frank report card on the progress to date while asking the question: “has it all been worth it?”
The benefits, he said, have included clearing a $4.8 million deficit, saving ratepayers $2.5 million and gaining a stronger voice to challenge the State Government over projects including WestConnex.
But he admits the process hasn’t all been “smooth sailing” including his first days on the job when he was spat on by a protester at the council’s inaugural meeting.
“I won’t call it post-traumatic stress but after that first council meeting I didn’t necessarily look forward to council meetings for quite a while,” Mr Pearson said.
“There’s no doubt the amalgamation program has been tumultuous in the inner west and after this episode I don’t think there’ll be another merger in NSW for at least a decade.
“In many respects my job has involved trying to take the political heat to enable the staff to get on with organisational side of running the council.”
Since taking the reins in May last year, the job has also involved regular meetings with councillors who were sacked in the process – many have been vocal critics of the merger.
Behind the scenes, the amalgamation has involved co-locating staff between former council buildings, integrating computer systems and reducing the number of executive staff from 14 to four.
Mr Pearson said the larger council had been able to get “better results” from the State Government on plans including transport options for the Parramatta Rd strategy and a compliance officer to oversee WestConnex.
Other benefits, he said, have included a record $68.8 million spent on infrastructure and setting 15 per cent affordable housing targets in major developments.
But looking back on the process, he said the State Government’s “selling point” on the process had been “flawed” and “overemphasised the financial savings”.
“There had to be other outcomes and I think the main benefit is using that bigger voice to get better results for the local area,” he said.
With elections 10 days away, Mr Pearson’s message to councillors was to “think beyond former boundaries of Ashfield, Leichhardt and Marrickville”.
“The Sydenham to Bankstown strategy, the Bays Precinct and WestConnex will all be moving ahead and it’s a time when the council will need to be strategic,” he said.
“I think the real test moving ahead will be if we’re being treated as a regional government and getting better results for the 187,000 residents in the council area.”“I’d bet they’re asleep in New York. I’d bet they’re asleep all over America,” bemoans Rick the saloonkeeper in the classic 1942 film “Casablanca.”
As Humphrey Bogart mumbled those words on a Hollywood backlot, the world could not have been in worse shape. The swastika waved over Rick’s beloved Paris. Nazis boots were on the march everywhere. Nevertheless, “Casablanca” did a huge box office.
The story of Rick’s transformation from pacifist to patriot mirrored the shift in the national mood. In 1942, after Pearl Harbor, Americans were ready for a fight.
And fight they did. Monday, August 25 marks the 70th Anniversary of the liberation of Paris, one of the greatest symbols of the world winning back its freedom from Nazi domination.
Today, as on every occasion associated with the war, we pause to marvel at the accomplishments of the “Greatest Generation.” They are silver-haired and stoop shouldered, now. It is hard to imagine that passengers unloading from an Honor Flight (a tribute that flies veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit the national World War II memorial), were once leaping into the early morning darkness that shrouded Normandy.
Freedom’s future was won by youth. In the U.S., those between 18 and 41 were considered eligible for military service, but the average age of a combat soldier was around 26.
And it wasn’t just American youth that went to war. The first troops into Paris were units of the Free French. Their way was paved by the French Resistance, whose ranks were also filled with young men and women who fought to take freedom back.
At the time they had no idea that their generation was great or even good. Before WW II, many wondered if Americans still had the right stuff—if a GI could ever match-up to a doughboy.
The novelist James Michener, who served in the Pacific during World War II recalled, “Many observers considered us a lost generation and feared we might collapse if summed to some crucial battlefield.”
And there was measure of guilt that Americans had done too little to match the fascist menace from Germany and Japan. Army chaplain Russell Cartwright Stroup, another veteran of the Pacific war, wrote that he chose overseas service because he felt that, “as part of a generation that failed to prevent this war, I should suffer with those who are victims of our failure.”
But measure up they did. Sixteen million Americans put on a uniform. They fought on every continent except Antarctica. Almost half the U.S. economy was diverted to the war effort.
Many might say never again. By some estimates, about 75 percent of American youth are not even qualified for military service.
They also say Americans are sick of war. That America has no stomach for boots on the ground. They say America can’t afford to defend itself.
Hopefully, America’s youth will never have to liberate Paris again. But, it would be unwise to assume that this generation could not.
America has never been the same country. It has been weak and agrarian. It has been powerful and industrialized. The only common characteristic is that—whatever the era—they were all Americans. And, yet, |
, have consistently make attempts on killing someone?” You only have a handful of people to choose from. In the relationships he has, this is the person he could actually have take a shot at it. And in his mind, he’s going, I’m glad you fucked up with Ruiz because now he’s gonna come running to me for protection as soon as I’m out.
You act a lot more this season. Did that take persuading?
There was one point I was so invested in this project that I was Ghost, because we knew that would get the show picked up. Then, when I realized how much of a time commitment [it was], it would mean [I’d have to] shut down everything with 50 Cent, and I was like, “Hold up, no.” [Laughs.] Then we found Omari, and he was the right guy, and the Kanan concept was perfect.
If Kanan dies, can we assume it’s because another album and tour are upcoming?
[Laughs.] That probably wouldn’t be the reason. I would move the tour at this point, because I’ve already committed to this project. It’s probably gonna be even more successful than it was the first season, because the things that Fox has borrowed [for Empire], the choice to mirror some of the marketing — when that makes [Empire] such a huge, successful show on Fox, the possibilities of those people tuning in to see Power [are] even more present if they have cable.
It has to be inherently challenging for such a gritty show like Power to reach that same mainstream audience.
When I watch Empire, it’s not the music business that I’m in now. They’ve got moments from the new music business happening while they’ve got sensationalized characters from the Berry Gordy music business. So they’re integrating everything they know about from music culture, and I get it and it’s interesting. But our show, New York City’s a character. They took what’s supposed to be a New York–based show to Chicago. And again, I think their project’s so different from Power. What you would put on Fox versus what you would put on premium cable is worlds apart.
Young people especially seem to identify with Power. Why do you think that is?
I think they understand it because they’ve been on the safari of the inner cities and that lifestyle. Even when they’re from the suburbs and living under great circumstances, they’ve been on that tour by way of music and culture. They’ve heard tales and stories based on those activities. And being a part of the other film projects I associated myself with I think brought my demographic in different ways. You’d be surprised at people who come up to me and say, “Hey, I love the show.” It’s not just those kids. I could watch the story of an Amish person when it’s done right, and it takes me on a tour of their experience.
And even though the characters don’t perform, à la Empire or Nashville, are you hoping the music of Power will get its due this season?
Originally, when I approached this, I talked with [executive producer] Mark Canton, and the idea was to create something with good music in it. The music could say things for people at some points, like Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly. It takes a person on a whole different experience. It allows them to get into the thought of the character. Empire to me is like Glee. When they drop the audience in the room and the song plays, it feels like I’m watching Broadway. When that happens, I go, “Oh shit, wait, what just happened?” It takes me out of everything with the characters. So with Courtney, I was like, “Naw, that wouldn’t work for what we’re doing, because we need you to stay in the world we created.” The music can play under it and say things we needed to say. That’s really effective.· Got $2200? In this world, you’re rich. Assets (not cash) of $2200 per adult place a person in the top 50% of the world’s wealthiest.*
· If you made $1500 last year, you’re in the top 20% of the world’s income earners.**
· If you have sufficient food, decent clothes, live in a house or apartment, and have a reasonably reliable means of transportation, you are among the top 15% of the world’s wealthy. **
· Have $61,000 in assets? You’re among the richest 10% of the adults in the world.*
·If you earn $25,000 or more annually, you are in the top 10% of the world’s income-earners.***
· If you have any money saved, a hobby that requires some equipment or supplies, a variety of clothes in your closet, two cars (in any condition), and live in your own home, you are in the top 5% of the world’s wealthy. **
·If you earn more than $50,000 annually, you are in the top 1% of the world’s income earners.***
· If you have more than $500,000 in assets, you’re part of the richest 1% of the world.*
You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occassion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.~ II Corinthians 9:11
*Source– MSN Money
**Money Possessions & Eternity by Randy Alcorn, pg 291
***The Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns, President of World Vision, pg 216
AdvertisementsSANTA MONICA, Calif. – Outside, the weather is delightful — shorts and flip-flop fare — but Justin Bieber is all about the frightful.
"I love Christmas, being with my family up in Canada," says Bieber, 17, sprawled on a couch at the offices of Universal Music Group. "To me, Christmas is about giving."
This year, the teen phenom's gift to his legions (13 million Twitter followers and 36 million Facebook fans) is Under the Mistletoe, out Tuesday, a holiday album packing retooled classics, original compositions and plenty of collaborations.
He's kicking off a companion Believe Charity Drive at justinbiebermusic.com, where fans are encouraged to donate to seven charities he'll be supporting with some proceeds from the new disc. (Believe is the title of Bieber's next studio album, expected in early 2012.)
"To help people have food on their plate at that time of year is really special," Bieber says.
"I just helped a food drive in Stratford, Ontario, which is (where) my mom and I got food, so that was special for me," Bieber says.
His significant recasting of some holiday chestnuts will appeal to "a new generation of Christmas listener that wants their own thing," says Billboard editor Danyel Smith. "This is the hottest teen star in the world offering up some familiar songs, but also a lot of new sounds."
Fresh off a world tour and a summer of tabloid attention, Bieber strikes a noticeably older demeanor. His famous hair is short in the back, and his once-cherubic features are starting to thin out.
That maturity is also in evidence on Under the Mistletoe, a showcase for not only Bieber's songwriting but also his drumming (on a wildly street Little Drummer Boy, with rapper Busta Rhymes) and producing (on All I Want Is You).
"Most of the songs I collaborated on, but on (All I Want Is You), I was all by myself, doing the beat, the piano, the singing," he says. "It felt good."
There's an urban, youth-oriented vibe to his tweaked The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) with Usher. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town samples early Jackson 5 hits. And Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You gets Bieber-fied when he joins in on vocals.
"Nothing too corny," he promises.
While Bieber is looking forward to the holidays back home in Canada — "I still haven't bought a house yet, it could be there, or in L.A. or in Atlanta, we'll see" — his next album is very much front and center.
"I'm about halfway through," he says. "I'm experimenting. What's big right now are beats that are in the clubs, like dubstep. So I want to mess with that stuff, but also stay me."(Please see end of blog for patch notes)
FAQ
Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided
Q) What is Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided
A) Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided is a campaign pack DLC that focusses on the crisis of the 3rd century. The year is 270 AD. A string of inept emperors and usurpers vying for power has led the Roman Empire into near-total economic collapse. This is its gravest crisis yet.
Eager to capitalise on Rome’s instability, barbarian tribes gather like a storm on the borders, to plunder the riches of civilisation.
To the east, the Sassanids set out on a grand conquest that culminates with an assault against Roman lands. They are held back only by a staunch defence led by Palmyra. Queen Zenobia holds fast – but for how long?
The once-glorious legions are forced to assume a defensive posture as their strength wanes; time is not on Rome’s side. However, there is yet hope. Aurelian stands ready to take the reins in Rome, though the task he faces seems insurmountable…
Will you unite an Empire Divided, and return Rome to its former glory? Or will you become the arbiter of its final downfall?
Q) What new content comes with Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided?
A) Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided brings a brand new grand-scale Campaign Pack to Total War: ROME II with brand new campaign features such as cults, banditry and plagues. Ten different playable factions across five cultures including new heroic factions with elaborate victory conditions, custom event chains and famous leaders from the era. New period specific events, dilemmas, missions, restructured technologies and unique new buildings.
Q) In descriptions of Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided, some factions are classed as ‘heroic’. What does that mean?
A) Heroic factions in Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided will have different win conditions and specific event-chains that explore the stories of those leaders from history. These narrative focussed campaigns will also have specific tech trees built around those characters and you will also be able to recruit specific units for them as well. On top of all of this, these characters will not die in battle and will only be reduced to the wounded state. These create rich, narratively focussed campaigns to build your empires around.
Q) When will Total War: Rome II – Empire Divided release?
A) Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided will be available on Thursday 30th November; and you can pre-order now here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/694880
Q) It’s been four years since Total War: ROME II was released. Why release content now?
A) We want to support our historical fans with some content for what is arguably our most popular historical title to date with hundreds of thousands of players still actively playing every month. Not only is Total War: ROME II worth expanding with incredibly interesting periods we’ve not yet covered, like the crisis of the 3rd century, it’s also a perfect opportunity for us to go back and address some of the areas we felt we could still improve, like we have with the Power and Politics update.
The Power & Politics Update
Q) What is the Power & Politics Update?
A) The Power & Politics Update is a large piece of Free-LC content that completely overhauls the politics system and adds a variety of new political actions for your campaign to give a far greater meaning to how you deal with other politics parties and government types. Your party can gain influence and political support by completing missions and winning victories on the battle field. The re-worked political system will allow the player to exercise direct impact on the campaign gameplay through their political actions.
Q) Will the Power & Politics Update apply to DLC?
A) Yes, the Power & Politics update will apply to the base game of Total War: ROME II, and all DLC except for Caesar in Gaul as that DLC has its own political system as part of that content.
Q) Why are you doing a public beta of the Power & Politics Update?
A) As this update applies to the base game of Total War: ROME II and the vast majority of our DLC, we thought it was important to broaden our testing just in case we discover any big issues with certain iterations of hardware. That way we can aim to address any issues before the patch goes fully live on the 30th along with the Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided content.
Q) When will the Power & Politics update release?
A) The Power & Politics update will be available to play in public beta today. The full release will be on Thursday 30th November alongside Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided.
Q) I’m a modder, will the Power & Politics update break all my mods?
A) Yes… yes it probably will. But fear not. If you’d rather not break your current save game and give the mod creators a chance to upgrade, then you can opt into the PATCH_17 beta that is the old version of the game without the Power & Politics. More details are available below.
Q) Is the Power & Politics update available in all languages?
A) Yes for all supported Total War: ROME II languages on full release, but the Power & Politics beta will only be in English for the 1st We expect localised versions will be available after the first week or so of the public beta starting.
Q) How do I opt into the Power & Politics Update beta?
A) The instructions on how to opt in will be below the FAQ.
What about Mac Users?
Q) If you have Total War: ROME II on Mac, will you be able to purchase Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided?
A) Unfortunately not at this time; owners of Total War: ROME II on Mac will not be able to purchase Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided.
Q) Can I download the Power & Politics update if I have purchased Total War: Rome II on Mac?
A) No, the Power & Politics update is linked with the release of Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided and will not be available for Mac App Store, or via steam copies for Total War: ROME II
Q) Will you bring Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided or the Power & Politics update to Mac in the future?
A) Unfortunately we have no plans to bring new Total War: ROME II content to Mac for the time being.
Q) Is there anything I need to do as a Mac user to keep my game working?
Your game will work as normal after Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided releases, however due to the way the Mac version works, it will require most of the data to be re-downloaded as we are de-linking the two platforms. If you have Total War: ROME II currently installed, you can avoid this by opting into the PATCH_17 beta which will keep your game as it currently is. For anyone re-downloading the game, or purchasing for the first time there will be no noticeable difference and you will just download the game as normal.
How to opt in to the roll back build
I want to keep Rome II as it is, despite the update!
If you want to avoid this update to keep your mods working or you just want to stay on the version on Total War: ROME II you’ve been playing up until now, follow these steps:
Open Steam and select Total War: Rome II in your library
Right click Rome II and select properties
Open the ‘Betas’ tab
In the drop down menu, select the ‘patch_17’ option
Steam will download your update and the name of Total War: ROME II on your Steam library will end with [patch_17]
Power and Politics Patch Notes
New Campaign Available for Purchase – Empire Divided
A new grand-scale Campaign Pack for Total War: ROME II
Plunges players into the crisis of the third century, a critical turning-point for Rome
Play as one of ten different factions across five cultural groups
New Heroic Factions with elaborate victory conditions, famous leaders and crafted event-chains
New period-specific events, dilemmas and missions
Reskinned UI with new unit cards, inspired by authentic Roman frescoes
New Campaign features: Plagues, Cults and Banditry
Restructured technologies and unique new buildings
The year is 270 AD. A string of inept emperors and usurpers vying for power has led the Roman Empire into near-total economic collapse. This is its gravest crisis yet.
Eager to capitalise on Rome’s instability, barbarian tribes gather like a storm on the borders, to plunder the riches of civilisation.
To the east, the Sassanids set out on a grand conquest that culminates with an assault against Roman lands. They are held back only by a staunch defence led by Palmyra. Queen Zenobia holds fast – but for how long?
The once-glorious legions are forced to assume a defensive posture as their strength wanes; time is not on Rome’s side. However, there is yet hope. Aurelian stands ready to take the reins in Rome, though the task he faces seems insurmountable…
Will you unite an Empire Divided, and return Rome to its former glory? Or will you become the arbiter of its final downfall?
Playable factions:
Rome (heroic)
Gallic Rome (heroic)
Palmyra (heroic)
The Sassanids (heroic)
Gothi (heroic)
Marcomanni
Saxones
Armenia
Alani
Caledones
Power and Politics – Free Update
The new political system builds up on the old one and introduces several new elements. The main goals are:
To allow the player to exercise direct impact on the campaign gameplay through the political system.
To allow for well-defined civil wars through the new loyalty statistic and party areas of influence.
statistic and party. To add variety in gameplay for different factions and/or government types.
Political parties, influence and loyalty
Each political party in your empire will have two main properties – influence and loyalty. Influence is carried over from the old system and loyalty shows how satisfied they are with the ruling party.
is carried over from the old system and shows how satisfied they are with the ruling party. Loyalty will increase or decrease as a direct result from political or campaign actions.
Low loyalty for any party will result in a chance for a secession or civil war.
New parties may spawn within your political system, based on your imperium level and government type.
A new edict has been added to the game, available to all cultures: Party Loyalty – provides +10 loyalty to the political party controlling the province.
Political parties areas of influence
Each political party in your empire will control a number of provinces, depending on their influence. The more influence a party has, the more provinces it will control. The exact provinces under the control of each party are automatically assigned by an algorithm that tries to keep all its territories close together.
In case of a secession or civil war, the new faction that spawns will control the provinces that were included in the areas of influence of the seceding parties.
The party areas of influence can be seen from the new filter available in the map screen in the campaign UI.
Political party leaders, important characters, and traits
Political parties have traits that modify the way they gain or lose loyalty. Each party has two traits.
Each political party now has a leader. The leader has one additional trait that acts like a party trait. Therefore, there are three traits in total that affect a party’s loyalty (2 built in the party and 1 more from the leader).
All political characters now have an additional political trait that would take effect only if they became the leader of their party. You can still see the political traits of characters that are not members of the ruling party, so you can plan how to develop them.
Government types and reforms
There are 4 possible government types: Kingdom, League (Union for Barbarian factions), Republic, and Empire, each of them providing different bonuses and penalties (public order, number of edicts, etc.). The Empire archetype provides slightly better bonuses than the other 3, and it is generally the goal of the player to reach that government type, although reforms can be made between all government types at any time.
Each faction can reform their government type at the cost of money and several turns of instability. Reforming a government is done from the Government Overview section in the Politics or Summary tab in the Faction screen.
The Empire government type is available to all cultures; however, the other 3 types are available only to some cultures. For example, barbarians can only reform between Empire, Kingdom and Union (no Republic).
The faction leader is now excluded from the Cursus Honorum system (Secure Promotion). Instead, he now has a unique trait that depends on the player’s government type.
Secessions and Civil Wars
Parties with low loyalty have a chance to start a secession. In case of secession, the territories under the area of influence of the party break off from your empire, creating a new faction in a war with you.
Secessions may turn into civil wars, where all parties join either on your side or on the side of the separatists.
Parties that start a secession or civil war are removed from your political system.
New political actions
There are a number of new political actions that can be done from the Characters tab in the Faction screen in the UI. Some of them now have direct effect on the campaign gameplay and utilize the previously underused statesmen (political characters that are not currently commanding an army).
There are a few new actions that can be taken against entire parties. They are available from the Politics tab in the Faction screen in the UI.
Some of the old political actions have been rebalanced. For example, Secure Promotion can now be used on characters from the non-ruling party as well, as a way to increase their party loyalty.
UI/UX Changes and Improvements
The Factions screen now remembers the last tab opened by the user and it is automatically selected the next time the Factions screen is opened.
Actions taken from the Characters or Politics tab in the Faction screen no longer close the Faction screen, so players can continue performing political actions without having to reopen it.
The Records and Statistics tabs have been combined into a single tab.
The Character tab in the Faction screen received an overhaul and a “Hire Statesman” option has been added so players can now recruit statesmen directly.
An “Open Character Profile” link has been added to the Character portrait on the campaign map that leads to the Character tab, with the character selected. Similarly, a link on the character portrait in its profile leads to the general on the campaign map.
Support for 4K resolution has been added to the game.
UI scaling is now supported.
The web encyclopaedia has been replaced by in-game unit and building information screens.
General and agent skills are now seen in a tree view.
A Campaign filter has been added to the multiplayer/custom battles. Players can now use playable factions from all campaigns in custom and multiplayer battles.
Increased the Grand Campaign maximum camera zoom height.
Added an indicator for active edicts in the province list.
Bug Fixes and Balance ChangesIf you would prefer reading the post as a contiguous block rather than a slide show, Click here
So we found that the best factorization for this problm is Z 1,2 × Z 3,5 and the total cost is 150. Recall from round 1 that Z 1,2 is M 1 × M 2. Also recall from round 2 that Z 3,5 is (M 3 × M 4 ) × M 5. So the best factorization of these matrices is (M 1 × M 2 ) × ((M 3 × M 4 ) × M 5 ). And with that, we’re done! Thanks for reading!
So we found that the best factorization for this problm is Z 1,2 × Z 3,5 and the total cost is 150.
As with any good final boss battle, this one will have the most parts.
With that, we’re done with round 3. Time for the last round!
Notice that two of the solutions have the same cost. This means that either ordering is equally optimal way to factorize multiplication for Z 1,4.
For round 3, we’re finding all the possible ways to multiply 4 matrices without changing their order. Our goal is to fill in Z 1,4 and Z 2,5. Let’s start with Z 1,4.
With that, we’re finished with round 2. We just update our cost and dimension tables with the values with the check marks, and we’re ready for round 3.
We have to do this for each of the remaining 2 combinations. We will end up doing 6 subproblems.
For Z 1,3, we want the min{(M 1 × M 2 ) × M 3, M 1 × (M 2 × M 3 )}. We can rewrite that as min{Z 1,2 × M 3, M 1 × Z 2,3 )}. Now we recognize the values from the table.
From here on out, we will start heavily using our tables. For round 2, we will start looking at cost of multiplying 3 matrices together: Z 1,3, Z 2,4, and Z 3,5.
With that, we’ve completed round one. We update our costs and dimensions tables and we’re ready for round 2.
First, we start by keeping track of all the possible combinations of multiplying 2 matrices. Remember, we are not allowed to switch the order of the matrices, so there are only 4 combinations.
Looks like everything is set. Looks like we’re ready for the problem. Suppose we want to multiply the matrices M 1 × M 2 × M 3 × M 4 × M 5. What is the optimal factorization (technical term for order of multiplying matrices) for this problem? Let’s do this!
The aptly named dimension table will be used to keep track of the dimensions of the resultant matrix.
We will use this table to keep track of the cost of multiplying matrices. Notice that the diagonals are all 0; it’s because we won’t be multiplying a matrix by itself. The boxes with hyphens will be ignored because matrix multiplication works from left to right, not the other way around. Element Z a,b in the table will be the cost of multiplying all the matrices between a and b. Getting the top right corner box will give us our final answer.
You may be wondering “What is my motivation for doing this problem using Dynamic Programming when I could just as easily multiply the matrices in order and be done with it?”. Well, suppose that the matrices are really big; as in, each matrix was a couple of hundred columns and rows. Ordinary matrix multiplication is an Θ(n 3 ) operation, so it will take many operations. It just so happens that the order in which you multiply matrices makes a huge difference in the number of calculations you have to do. That’s why we look for the optimal order (technical term is factorization) of multiplication.
There are multiple sources online with great proofs, source code, and explanation of the proofs, but I did not find an example problem that I felt was easy to understand and follow. I hope that the proofs become much easier to understand after seeing this problem worked out.
The purpose of this post is to show a fully worked out example of Chain Matrix Multiplication using dynamic programming, a fancy term for breaking a big problem down into subproblems which are easier to solve. (Note: Not the technical definition)
Motivation
The purpose of this post is to show a fully worked out example of Chain Matrix Multiplication using dynamic programming, a fancy term for breaking a big problem down into subproblems which are easier to solve. (Note: Not the technical definition)
There are multiple sources online with great proofs, source code, and explanation of the proofs, but I did not find an example problem that I felt was easy to understand and follow. I hope that the proofs become much easier to understand after seeing this problem worked out.
You may be wondering “What is my motivation for doing this problem using Dynamic Programming when I could just as easily multiply the matrices in order and be done with it?”. Well, suppose that the matrices are really big; as in, each matrix was a couple of hundred columns and rows. Ordinary matrix multiplication is an Θ(n3) operation, so it will take many operations. It just so happens that the order in which you multiply matrices makes a huge difference in the number of calculations you have to do. That’s why we look for the optimal order (technical term is factorization) of multiplication.
Preliminaries
Notation
The symbol ‘×’ will be used to signify multiplying two matrices together.
The symbol ’ ⋅ ’ will be used to signify multiplying two integers together.
’ will be used to signify multiplying two integers together. Z a,b will be used to signify the cost of multiplying all the matrices from Matrix a to Matrix b together in the optimal order.
Preliminaries 2
Prerequisite Math Facts
A p x q × B q x r will take p ⋅ q ⋅ r operations, where A is a matrix with p rows and q columns and B is a matrix with q rows and r columns.
× B will take p q r operations, where A is a matrix with p rows and q columns and B is a matrix with q rows and r columns. Matrix multiplication is associative, so A × (B × C) == (A × B) × C.
Multiplying A p x q × B q x r will yield the matrix C p x r.
× B will yield the matrix C. For matrices A and B, A × B ≠ B × A
Preliminaries 3
Cost Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 0???? 2 - 0??? 3 - - 0?? 4 - - - 0? 5 - - - - 0
We will use this table to keep track of the cost of multiplying matrices. Notice that the diagonals are all 0; it’s because we won’t be multiplying a matrix by itself. The boxes with hyphens will be ignored because matrix multiplication works from left to right, not the other way around. Element Z a,b in the table will be the cost of multiplying all the matrices between a and b. Getting the top right corner box will give us our final answer.
Preliminaries 4
Dimensions Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 x 4???? 2 - 4 x 2??? 3 - - 2 x 3?? 4 - - - 3 x 6? 5 - - - - 6 x 5
The aptly named dimension table will be used to keep track of the dimensions of the resultant matrix.
Game Time!
Matrix Dimensions M 1 3 x 4 M 2 4 x 2 M 3 2 x 3 M 4 3 x 6 M 5 6 x 5
Looks like everything is set. Looks like we’re ready for the problem. Suppose we want to multiply the matrices M 1 × M 2 × M 3 × M 4 × M 5. What is the optimal factorization (technical term for order of multiplying matrices) for this problem? Let’s do this!
Round 1
Cost Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 0???? 2 - 0??? 3 - - 0?? 4 - - - 0? 5 - - - - 0
Dimensions Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 x 4???? 2 - 4 x 2??? 3 - - 2 x 3?? 4 - - - 3 x 6? 5 - - - - 6 x 5
First, we start by keeping track of all the possible combinations of multiplying 2 matrices. Remember, we are not allowed to switch the order of the matrices, so there are only 4 combinations.
Cell Combination Calculation Resulting Dimension Z 1,2 M 1 × M 2 3 ⋅ 4 ⋅ 2 = 24 3 x 2 Z 2,3 M 2 × M 3 4 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 = 24 4 x 3 Z 3,4 M 3 × M 4 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 6 = 36 2 x 6 Z 4,5 M 4 × M 5 3 ⋅ 6 ⋅ 5 = 90 3 x 5
With that, we’ve completed round one. We update our costs and dimensions tables and we’re ready for round 2.
Round 2
Cost Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 0 24??? 2 - 0 24?? 3 - - 0 36? 4 - - - 0 90 5 - - - - 0
Dimensions Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 x 4 3 x 2??? 2 - 4 x 2 4 x 3?? 3 - - 2 x 3 2 x 6? 4 - - - 3 x 6 3 x 5 5 - - - - 6 x 5
From here on out, we will start heavily using our tables. For round 2, we will start looking at cost of multiplying 3 matrices together: Z 1,3, Z 2,4, and Z 3,5.
For Z 1,3, we want the min{(M 1 × M 2 ) × M 3, M 1 × (M 2 × M 3 )}.
We can rewrite that as min{Z 1,2 × M 3, M 1 × Z 2,3 )}. Now we recognize the values from the table.
An important point is that when we do the calculation of cost of Z 1,2 × M 3, we have to find the cost of multiplying Z 1,2 × M 3 and we have to add to that the cost of Z 1,2, which is 24.
Round 2
Cost Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 0 24??? 2 - 0 24?? 3 - - 0 36? 4 - - - 0 90 5 - - - - 0
Dimensions Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 x 4 3 x 2??? 2 - 4 x 2 4 x 3?? 3 - - 2 x 3 2 x 6? 4 - - - 3 x 6 3 x 5 5 - - - - 6 x 5
Cell Combination Shorthand Calculation Total Cost Resulting Dimension Winner Z 1,3 (M 1 × M 2 ) × M 3 Z 1,2 × M 3 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 = 18 18 + 24 = 42 3 x 3 ✓ Z 1,3 M 1 × (M 2 × M 3 ) M 1 × Z 2,3 3 ⋅ 4 ⋅ 3 = 36 36 + 24 = 50 3 x 3 ✗ Z 2,4 (M 2 × M 3 ) × M 4 Z 2,3 × M 4 4 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 6 = 72 72 + 24 = 96 4 x 6 ✗ Z 2,4 M 2 × (M 3 × M 4 ) M 2 × Z 3,4 4 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 6 = 48 36 + 48 = 84 4 x 6 ✓ Z 3,5 (M 3 × M 4 ) × M 5 Z 3,4 × M 5 2 ⋅ 6 ⋅ 5 = 60 36 + 60 = 96 2 x 5 ✓ Z 3,5 M 3 × (M 4 × M 5 ) M 3 × Z 4,5 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 5 = 30 30 + 90 = 120 2 x 5 ✗
We have to do this for each of the remaining 2 combinations. We will end up doing 6 subproblems.
With that, we’re finished with round 2. We just update our cost and dimension tables with the values with the check marks, and we’re ready for round 3.
Round 3
Cost Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 0 24 42?? 2 - 0 24 84? 3 - - 0 36 96 4 - - - 0 90 5 - - - - 0
Dimensions Table × 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 x 4 3 x 2 3 x 3?? 2 - 4 x 2 4 x 3 4 x 6? 3 - - 2 x 3 2 x 6 2 x 5 4 - - - 3 x 6 3 x 5 5 - - - - 6 x 5
For round 3, we’re finding all the possible ways to multiply 4 matrices without changing their order. Our goal is to fill in Z 1,4 and Z 2,5. Let’s start with Z 1,4.
Z 1,4 = min |
to exchange their war prisoners. While Nhan Tong was willing to pay tribute to the Yuan, relations again foundered on the question of attendance at the Yuan court and hostile relations continued.
The Trần Dynasty decided to accept the supremacy of the Yuan dynasty in order to avoid further conflicts. Because he refused to come in person, Kublai detained his envoy, Dao-tu Ki, in 1293. Kublai's successor Temür Khan (r.1294-1307), finally released all detained envoys, settling for a tributary relationship, which continued to the end of the Yuan.
In Champa [ edit ]
The Champa Kingdom decided to accept the supremacy of the Yuan dynasty as well. A tributary relationship continued for some time, but Champa disappears from Yuan records before 1300. The king of Champa made the act of vassalage to the Mongols.
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Atwood, Christopher Pratt. (2004). Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts of File. ISBN 978-0-8160-4671-3.
. New York: Facts of File. ISBN 978-0-8160-4671-3. Connolly, Peter. (1998). The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ancient & Medieval Warfare. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-57958-116-9.
. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-57958-116-9. Delgado, James P. (2008). Khubilai Khan's Lost Fleet: In Search of a Legendary Armada. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978-0-520-25976-8.
. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978-0-520-25976-8. Grousset, René. (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1.
. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1. Haw, S. G. (2013) "The Deaths of Two Khaghans", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
See also [ edit ]
This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.Ohio Gov. John Kasich is one of several governors from both political parties who are urging the Senate not to support the latest piece of legislation that would replace Obamacare.
The Hill reported that Kasich and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, both Republicans, joined Democrats in signing a letter that was delivered to senators this week.
"Only open, bipartisan approaches can achieve true, lasting reforms," the letter reads. "Legislation should receive consideration under regular order, including hearings in health committees and input from the appropriate health-related parties."
The latest healthcare bill was introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La. It involves sending federal money to the states, who would then build their own healthcare platforms.
Support for the bill is growing ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to get it passed in the Senate via a simple majority. After that, it would need 60 votes to pass.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards also signed the letter, The Hill reported.NewsHomosexuality
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 23, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – The recent report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows an "alarming" rate of STDs among homosexuals.
The government report admits, "While anyone can become infected with an STD, young people and gay and bisexual men are at greatest risk."
In fact, syphilis infections among homosexual men have seen such a massive increase that the government report calls the gay syphilis statistics "troubling."
"Men account for more than 90 percent of all primary and secondary syphilis cases," the report states. "Men who have sex with men (MSM) account for 83 percent of male cases where the sex of the sex partner is known."
The official government report explains that it uses the acronym MSM, "men who have sex with men," because that phrase "indicates the behaviors that transmit infection."
"It's time for policymakers and pundits to acknowledge and deal with the elephant in the room: engaging in homosexual behavior can be very dangerous to one's health," Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), told LifeSiteNews.
The CDC says fully half of MSM who have syphilis are also infected with HIV. If not treated, syphilis causes visual impairment and stroke and increases the chance of catching or transmitting HIV.
"If such overwhelming evidence pointed to any aberrant behavior other than homosexuality as so extremely high-risk, there would be a full-scale government-corporate mobilization urging people not to practice that behavior – or even leveling sanctions against it," LaBarbera pointed out. "Yet homosexualism is celebrated, and promoted – even to young children.
"How tragic and ironic that politically correct politicians and cultural elites are aggressively promoting LGBT agendas, when it is the very living out of those immoral lifestyles that is linked to disease," LaBarbera concluded.
Syphilis rates are concentrated primarily in the gay community, with homosexual men constituting nearly 83 percent of the syphilis cases reported in 2014.
"The fact that 83% of new male syphilis cases are found in the tiny segment of the population (probably less than 4% of all males), who are men who have sex with men, should be setting off major alarm bells," Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies for the Family Research Council, told LifeSiteNews.
"High rates of STDs among men who have sex with men are not a surprise, given the fact that many of them have large numbers of sex partners and engage in the particularly dangerous act of anal intercourse," Sprigg said.
"Unfortunately, the mainstream media appears to be ignoring this finding, because they cannot figure out a way to spin it without reflecting negatively on homosexual conduct itself," Sprigg commented.
Sprigg noted, "The sudden jump in syphilis rates in the last few years, however, demands an explanation. Mark Joseph Stern of Slate may have offered one with the theory that the effectiveness and increased use of PrEP medications for HIV may be having the unintended consequence of reducing condom use in this population, thus increasing their vulnerability to other STDs such as syphilis."
"PrEP," or "pre-exposure prophylaxis," refers to the use before sex of antibiotics and other medications that make the transmission of HIV less likely.
Sprigg concluded, "The latest data only reinforce what pro-family groups have been saying for decades – the only'safe sex' is sex that is saved for a monogamous, sexually exclusive lifelong marriage."
The government explains the high rate of STDs among homosexuals by attributing it to "individual risk factors," including "higher numbers of lifetime sex partners" and "higher prevalence of STDs."
The government report additionally attributes high STD rates among homosexuals to "homophobia and stigma."India wins 2017 SAFF U15 Championships
Press Release FOLLOW NEWS News 1.87K // 27 Aug 2017, 18:14 IST SHARE Share Options × Facebook Twitter Flipboard Reddit Google+ Email
India U15 team come from behind to lift the trophy
A couple of days after the Indian Senor National Team were crowned champions in the Hero Tri-Nation Football series, the U-15 National Team, comprising of All India Football Federation’s Regional Academy boys won the SAFF U-15 Championships with a splendid display in the final against hosts Nepal in Kathmandu on Sunday (August 27, 2017).
Playing in front of a partisan crowd at the ANFA Complex, Satdobato in Lalitpur, India came back from behind to beat Nepal 2-1 in the final. Down by a goal at the interval, goals from Lalrokima and Vikram guided India to a deserving 2-1 victory.
Congratulating the U-15 Team for the achievement, All India Football President Mr. Praful Patel said: “Congratulations to the boys and entire staff. The manner the boys have played is a clear indication of how a structured Youth Development Programme can raise the bar.”
Mr. Kushal Das, General Secretary, AIFF said: “The AIFF Academy boys won many hearts with their splendid display. The Academy programme has been yielding results and I am confident this bunch of boys would go on to bring more laurels for the Country. Congratulations!”
India came out the stronger of the two teams with the boys passing the ball around in the midfield. Ravi came close to scoring in the 14th minute while Harpreet’s header missed the target narrowly soon after. Ravi shot it straight into the keeper’s hands as India launched one attack after another.
India looked like the team more likely to score but Nepal earned a penalty against the run of play in the 40th minute. The penalty was converted as Nepal headed to the dressing room leading 1-0 at the interval.
India could have equalised right at the beginning of the second half but the players couldn’t finish off their chances. Givson’s free-kick struck the cross bar in the 56th minute as luck continued to elude the boys.
Finally, Lalrokima struck in the 58th minute to bring things level. The goal infused life into the game as India roared in search of their second goal.
Sailo’s effort was saved while Vikram hit it just wide as India bombarded the Nepal goalfront. But the Nepali defence stone walled every effort until captain Vikram netted the ball in the 74th minute to put India into the lead. The boys didn’t take the foot off the pedal as they looked for the third with Nepal barely managing to avoid conceding another.
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The last few minutes saw Nepal putting in long balls as they moved forward in search of an equaliser but the Indian defence stood tall.
India Starting XI: Jongte, Thoiba, Harpreet, Gurkirat, Vikram, Ravi, Bekey, Sailo, Givson, Ricky, Samir
AdvertisementThe latest legal showdown over President Trump’s revised executive order targeting refugees and nationals from six predominately Muslim countries hits a Seattle appellate courtroom Monday morning.
The key issue before a three-judge panel is whether the president’s comments before he took office – suggesting he would ban Muslims from entering the country -- provides sufficient legal grounds to rule his order unconstitutional.
In March, a federal judge in Hawaii enjoined the order from taking effect, not based on the language of the directive, but rather the “religious animus” of comments Trump and his advocates made about the policy.
“The [lower] court’s reliance on such statements in the face of a religion-neutral order is fundamentally wrong,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote to the court defending the order.
Wall argues the president’s policy is not a “Muslim ban,” but rather Mr. Trump’s good faith effort to protect rights while securing the homeland from foreign terrorists. And that the president’s executive authority in protecting the country and enforcing immigration laws in this matter is beyond judicial review.
The order would temporarily halt refugees from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the country. It also freezes refugee admissions so intelligence and security officials can review existing admission procedures.
This will be the second time the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has heard a government appeal on this matter. Earlier this year a different panel of judges affirmed a lower court injunction against the president’s similar first travel ban order, which he revoked in issuing his second version.
Several weeks ago Trump blasted the Ninth Circuit saying his opponents are “judge shopping” in the court that covers the western United States.
The three judges hearing Monday’s case were randomly chosen from the Ninth Circuit’s members--all three were appointed by President Clinton. While some other Ninth Circuit judges have said the president’s order is on sound legal ground – they were not impaneled on either case.
“The president seeks to enact a thinly veiled Muslim ban, shorn of procedural protections and premised on the belief that those who practice Islam are a danger to our country,” says plaintiffs’ lawyer Neal Katyal who represents the state of Hawaii and an Imam who lives in the islands.
They argue the travel ban is unconstitutional because it disfavors Muslims. The ban also, allegedly, harms Hawaii’s economy and university community by cutting off potential tourists and student applicants from overseas. “The order is the embodiment of a policy of religious animus,” Katyal argues. “The government’s only real response is to ask the court to close its eyes to abundant evidence of discrimination.”
Both sides will get 30 minutes to present their arguments. A live camera feed will also originate from inside the courtroom.
Last week in Richmond, Virginia, another federal appellate court heard similar arguments over the president’s order. Either case – or both – could end up before the Supreme Court.Arsenal defender Hector Bellerin is in line for a new contract following his breakthrough into the first-team.
The Gunners want to tie the right-back down to a new long-term deal after a string of impressive displays in replacing the injured Mathieu Debuchy.
Bellerin's current deal expires in 2017, but he is now set to extend his stay at the Emirates Stadium.
Hector Bellerin has been in the Arsenal first team of late, and will be rewarded with a contract extension
The young defender is now a key part of Arsene Wenger's first team squad after some impressive displays
It is common practice at Arsenal to hand improved contracts to young players who make a consistent impact on the first-team.
The 19-year-old has made 17 appearances for the club already this season, firmly establishing himself as a regular member of Arsene Wenger's first-team squad.
The news casts further doubt over Carl Jenkinson's career at the Emirates Stadium.
With Mathieu Debuchy out injured, Bellerin has become the club's reliable full back ahead of Calum Chambers
Bellerin started against Manchester United in the FA Cup, as Arsenal rely on him to fill in for Debuchy
The right-back is currently on loan at West Ham, with the east London club are keen to turn his deal permanent.
And the emergence of Bellerin, as well as last summer's capture of Debuchy, has pushed Jenkinson further down the pecking order at Arsenal.
And the Gunners are likely to listen to offers for the full-back at the end of the season.On May 22, SBS’s “Running Man” celebrates its 300th episode with special missions under the theme of “7 versus 300.”
During the broadcast, Yoo Jae Suk tells Ji Suk Jin, “You’ve been through a lot these past 300 episodes.” When Ji Suk Jin asks why, Yoo Jae Suk reveals, “Weren’t you almost unable to stay until 300 episodes?” at which the other members laugh knowingly.
Ji Suk Jin complains, “Are you really revealing to the whole world what I talked about privately with the PD back then?”
Gary joins Yoo Jae Suk in poking fun at him and comments that Ji Suk Jin had said around the 42nd episode that he intended to leave the show.
Yoo Jae Suk reveals further, “It wasn’t even the 42nd episode! He said it around the 20th episode.”
Ji Suk Jin recalls, “It was really difficult at that time. I would call Yoo Jae Suk after every episode and talk to him about quitting.”
Yoo Jae Suk makes everyone laugh when he quips, “I shouldn’t have gotten myself so involved.”
Watch the rest of their funny exchanges on the 300th episode special below!
Link to video: www.viki.com/videos/1096424v-running-man-episode-300
Source (1)WASHINGTON — Proposals to develop commercial space stations in low Earth orbit that could serve as successors to the International Space Station face both an uncertain regulatory environment and questions about their economic viability, according to both those planning such stations and those who might regulate them.
At a panel discussion on commercial space stations held here Sept. 22 by the Secure World Foundation, government and industry officials noted that such facilities fall into a regulatory gray area, with no U.S. government agency having clear oversight of them as required by international treaty.
“I’m not a fan of regulation, but I do think this could create problems when you ask for a launch license or payload review,” said Mike Gold, director of Washington operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace, a North Las Vegas, Nevada-based company planning commercial stations.
Gold noted that Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 requires governments to perform “continuing supervision” of space activities of entities under its jurisdiction, like companies. That supervision is carried out for some other space activities, like licensing of commercial remote sensing satellites by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and of communications satellites by the Federal Communications Commission.
Some in industry have proposed that the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial launches and reentries, take on that oversight role for other commercial space activities. Gold said he envisioned a relatively simple system where companies registered their spacecraft with the FAA and informed them of any significant changes. “I think that would meet the Outer Space Treaty’s obligations and create the environment of certainty and predictability that industry and investors need,” he said.
The FAA is interested in taking on that responsibility. “We’re going to continue to work within government to put together the right oversight framework,” said Steph Earle of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). That would, he noted, ultimately require congressional action to give the FAA that authority.
Earle added that he believed the FAA would be a better fit for regulating commercial space stations than other agencies, like the FCC and NOAA. “It doesn’t seem that the other agencies are well suited to this, and the FAA thinks that it is,” he said.
Not everyone in industry agrees, however. “I’m not convinced FAA/AST is the right long-term choice to be the orbital space regulating agency,” said Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space. “It’s more than transportation, and I’m not sure in the long term that transportation is the right place for all these functions.”
Miller said he thinks the Commerce Department might be a better fit for on-orbit regulation, since it is charged with broadly supporting commerce, not just transportation, and has some regulatory capability today with NOAA.
Regulatory uncertainty, though, may not be the biggest challenge facing commercial stations. “The barriers to the development of the low Earth orbit economy are economic barriers far more than they are regulatory barriers at the moment,” said Carissa Christensen, managing partner of the Tauri Group,an Alexandria, Virginia-based consultancy.
NASA, in its efforts to stimulate commercial use of the ISS, has played up the potential benefits of performing research in microgravity. However, panelists were skeptical that research could become a viable commercial market for the foreseeable future.
“You won’t find bigger believers in the revolutionary capabilities that microgravity R&D can bring,” Gold said. “However, that market is very immature right now, and it is going to take a long time to grow. I don’t think we’re going to see it in the next 10 years.”
Miller said microgravity research was one of four applications he identified for commercial stations. “To me, it’s kind of speculative,” he said, noting that more research on the ISS is needed to see what could be commercially viable. Markets he thought could be more feasible for commercial stations were serving as “transfer nodes” for spacecraft bound for other orbits, propellant depots, and on-orbit assembly of satellites.
“The immediate market is flying people,” Gold said, both for current ISS partners and other national space agencies. Miller added that tourism could also be a sizable market, particularly if training could be made less onerous than that currently required to fly to the ISS on Soyuz vehicles.
Both Gold and Miller suggested NASA should help support commercial space station development by agreeing to purchase capacity on such stations or supporting their development through a partnership similar to the one NASA used for commercial cargo and crew systems. “NASA needs to play some role as a catalyst,” Gold said.
That support, they said, could help avoid a hiatus in crewed missions when the ISS reaches the end of its life. “The number one issue is that we are at risk of another gap in human spaceflight,” Miller said. “We need a seamless, low-risk transition to private, commercial space stations.”(Photo by Jude Joffe-Block - KJZZ) Members of the public testified about concerns they had about a smooth election next month.
Wednesday the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved the County Recorder’s plan for 116 vote centers for next month’s special election. The lone Democrat on the board voted against the plan, saying there had not been enough opportunity for public comment.
After 60 vote centers proved to be woefully inadequate during the March 22 presidential preference election, the County Recorder’s office pledged to try and double the numbers of locations in time for the May 17 special election.
They came close, with a plan for 116 vote centers. The special election will ask voters to weigh in on education financing and changes to the retirement plan for public employees. A list of the sites is here.
County Elections Director Karen Osborne told the board that while a mailing had already gone out to voters with the original 60 polling sites listed, her office created a new mailing with all the locations.
“These are being mailed out to every household that has a person who does not vote by mail,” Osborne said. “So that everybody can know where the polling places are.”
The mailing also reminds voters they can vote at any of the vote centers regardless of where they live. Osborne said the recorder’s website will tell voters the three closest polling sites to any given address, and she said there was an iPhone application that allows voters to find the closest polling place to where they are standing.
Osborne did note that during the August primary and November general election, they will have more than 700 polling sites, and voters will once again have to vote at their designated precinct location. Provisional ballots cast out of the correct precinct in those elections will be rejected.
Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo was the sole vote against approving the polling locations. He said he heard concerns about too few locations in south Scottsdale and north Phoenix and said there had not been enough opportunity for the public to give their feedback.
“When we don’t do that, we let down the public,” Gallardo said. “I’m sorry we do, and we invite ourselves to possible problems.”
Gallardo said he believed if Arizona was still under U.S. Department of Justice oversight for elections changes, the federal government would have required public comment before approving the polling sites.
Before the supervisors debated, a half dozen members of the public shared concerns about the May 17 election, including concerns that senior citizens may have difficulties voting outside of their immediate neighborhoods.
The board left open the possibility of adding additional sites at a later date.Over the last couple of days, a rumor has surfaced saying Apple is currently in talks to buy Formula One. Yes, the same Formula One that operates the world’s highest class of single-seat auto racing.
The rumors started on Tuesday when Joe Saward, a longtime and well-respected Formula One reporter, said that he was hearing “whispers” that Formula One is currently undergoing an “intensive due diligence” process that could ultimately lead to a sale. Another “whisper,” he said, was that Apple (AAPL) has become the “latest bidder” for Formula One.
It’s worth noting that Saward, whose post was earlier discovered by Apple-tracking site AppleInsider, did not identify his sources and neither Apple nor Formula One have responded to a request for comment on the report. And at first blush, Apple buying a car business sounds rather absurd.
However, the report shouldn’t be ignored. Saward is one of the foremost reporters in the Formula One market and it’s well-known that Apple has at least taken a liking to cars. It also has the cash to acquire a company that’s been up for sale for the last year, and Saward himself has thought it odd that Formula One won’t just deny the reports.
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He pointed to three key components that could make the deal make sense. For one, Apple is working on a car—something Tesla founder Elon Musk has called the “worst-kept secret” in Silicon Valley—and Apple might want to connect its name to a well-known and highly respected auto brand. What’s more, he says, Apple has more than enough cash to buy what could be a company worth somewhere around $8 billion. Finally, he believes the purchase could help sales of the Apple TV.
Apple has been rumored for the last several months to be working on getting an over-the-top television service up and running on its Apple TV. That service would allow customers to subscribe to a set number of channels rather than pick a cable or satellite provider for wide-ranging content they don’t care about. Incidentally, Formula One racing is one of the most widely viewed types of content worldwide and has helped Formula One itself become such a big enterprise. Apple owning the franchise and offering it as part of a television package that would run on its Apple TV could make some sense and, like Saward says, help Apple TV sales.
While Apple has historically been loath to make big acquisitions and instead focuses on small buys that it can incorporate into its broader business, Apple CEO Tim Cook has signaled that might change. In an earnings call in April following the first quarter iPhone sales fell since the smartphone’s launch in 2007, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he’s willing to spend if a deal makes sense.
“We’re always looking in the market about things that could complement things that we do today, become features in something we do, or allow us to accelerate entry into a category that we’re excited about,” Cook said. “And so as I said before, our test is not on the size. We would definitely buy something larger than we’ve bought thus far. It’s more about the strategic fit and whether it’s a great technology and great people. And so we continue to look and we stay very active in the M&A market.”
Just a day later, Barclays analyst Mark Moskowitz wrote to investors that he believed Apple “might need to embark on larger mergers and acquisitions in the order of $50 billion or more.” The reason? Apple should want to “build a broader content and services platform”—something Formula One could help it do.
For more about Apple apps, watch:
But exactly how owning Formula One could help Apple in the car business is a little fuzzy. Sure, Apple can afford Formula One and it’s clear that the business is wildly popular, but how would Apple owning the company actually help its brand caché in the automotive industry? Perhaps it would be an opportunity for Apple to simply align itself with a highly respected car brand and hope that people associate it with cars when it’s ready to launch its own vehicle. It’s also possible Apple could use the acquisition for research and find features in Formula One cars that could make its own offering better than others.
Again, this is all speculation at this point and Apple would never admit to acquiring a company until it’s time. But Formula One is for sale. In March, in fact, Formula One’s Bernie Ecclestone said that at least two companies were interested in acquiring Formula One and they had agreed to a price. He was waiting at that time for investors CVC, which holds the controlling 35% stake in the business, to sign off. Since then, all parties have gone silent.
It’s hard to determine how likely an Apple-Formula One buyout is, and at first blush, it sounds ludicrous. But further inspection shows it might make some sense—and could actually happen under the right conditions.nagykárolyi gróf Károlyi Mihály Ádám György Miklós. This article uses The native form of this personal name is. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Count Mihály Ádám György Miklós Károlyi de Nagykároly (4 March 1875 – 19 March 1955) was briefly Hungary's leader from 1918 to 1919 during the short-lived First Hungarian People's Republic. He served as Prime Minister between 1 and 16 November 1918 and as President between 16 November 1918 and 21 March 1919.
Background and early career [ edit ]
Mihály Károlyi in Franzensbad around 1887.
The Károlyi family were an illustrious, extremely wealthy, Roman Catholic aristocratic family who had played an important role in Hungarian life since the 17th century. Mihály was born in Fót, Austria-Hungary in what is today Hungary. In his youth, he was a wastrel, but as he grew older, he became devoted to more serious pursuits. In 1909, he became the President of the OMGE (National Agricultural Society), the main rural organization of the nobility. Initially a supporter of the existing politico and social system in Hungary, Károlyi gradually became more progressive and left-wing during his career.
In 1910, Károlyi was elected to Parliament as a member of the opposition Party of Independence.
World War I [ edit ]
During the First World War, the pro-Entente Károlyi led a small but very active pacifist anti-war maverick faction in the Hungarian parliament.[1] Károlyi made contact with British and French Entente diplomats behind the scenes in Switzerland during the war.[2] The Károlyi Party was always a weak group with no mass organization and only 20 members in Parliament, most of whom had little commitment to the party. Károlyi argued for peace with the Allies, looser ties between Austria and Hungary, abolishing the property-based franchise requirements that allowed only 5.8% of the population to vote and run for office before the war, and giving women the right to vote and hold office. In particular, Károlyi's demand in 1915 that veterans should be granted the right to vote won so much popular support that enraged the Prime Minister, Count István Tisza. In 1916 Károlyi broke off with his party, which had found his openly pro-ENTENTE attitude to be too radical and dangerous for a war-time pacifist faction. Károlyi formed a new party, called the United Party of Independence and of 1848, and generally known as the Károlyi Party.
In January 1918, Károlyi proclaimed himself a follower of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points.
Marriage and family [ edit ]
On 7 November 1914 in Budapest, Károlyi married Countess Katalin Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály et Krasznahorka, with whom he had three children. Károlyi's wife was a member of one of Hungary's most powerful families, and this marriage won Károlyi the protection of his influential father-in-law.
Leading the Democratic Republic [ edit ]
Following the Aster Revolution of October 1918, Károlyi became leader of the nation. On 25 October 1918 Károlyi had formed an opposition National Council. His reputation as an opponent of the much-hated war had thrust him into a role for which he was not suited.[citation needed] King-Emperor Charles IV designated him as Prime Minister as a part of a desperate attempt to hold Hungary on to the Habsburgs.[citation needed] Károlyi would have preferred to keep the monarchy and some link to Austria if possible. Only after Charles's withdrawal from government on 16 November 1918 made Károlyi proclaim the Hungarian Democratic Republic, with himself as Provisional President. On 11 January 1919 the National Council formally recognized him as President.
Many citizens thought that Károlyi could negotiate soft peace terms with the Allies for Hungary.[citation needed] Károlyi headed the Provisional Government from 1 November 1918 until 16 November, when the Hungarian Democratic Republic was proclaimed. Károlyi ruled Hungary through a National Council, transformed into the government that consisted of his party in alliance with the large Hungarian Social Democratic Party and the small Civic Radical Party led by Oszkár Jászi.
At the same time, there existed various revolutionary councils, which were dominated by the Social Democrats, which were not unlike the Soviets (Councils) that existed in Russia in 1917.[citation needed] This situation of Dual Power gave Károlyi responsibility without much power while giving the Social Democrats power without much responsibility.[citation needed]
Mihály Károlyi in a speech
During their brief periods in power, Károlyi and Jászi, who served as Nationalities Minister, tried to create an "Eastern Switzerland" by persuading the non-Magyar peoples of Hungary to stay as part of the new Hungarian Democratic Republic.
Additional trouble for the new government occurred over the question of the armistice. Austria-Hungary had signed the lenient Armistice of villa Giusti (close to Padua, Italy) with the Allies on 3 November 1918. Since Hungary was now independent, some in the Cabinet argued that Hungary needed to sign a new armistice.[citation needed] Against his better judgement, Károlyi agreed to this idea,[citation needed] and had Hungary sign in November 1918, a new armistice with the Allies in Belgrade with the Allied Commander in the Balkans, the French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey.
General Franchet d'Esperey treated the Hungarians with open contempt and imposed a much harsher armistice on the defeated nation than the Padua Armistice had.[citation needed] This was the source of much criticism of Károlyi, who had been expected – and who himself expected – the Allies to treat Hungary as a friend, not an enemy.[citation needed] Moreover, Károlyi's opponents argued that by needlessly seeking a second armistice, Károlyi had worsened Hungary's situation.[citation needed]
Furthermore, the Social Democrats who were Hungary's largest party by far, frequently undercut Károlyi and imposed their decisions on him without taking responsibility for their actions.[citation needed] Károlyi wished to transfer almost all of the rural lands to the peasants.[citation needed] To set an example, he gave all of his own vast family estates to his tenants. But this was the only land transfer that took place; the Social Democrats blocked any measures that might give the control of those lands to the peasantry on the grounds that it was promoting capitalism.[citation needed]
Mihály Károlyi distributing his lands among the peasants.
In another equally unfortunate move, the pacific-minded Károlyi had abolished almost all the Hungarian armed forces in November 1918.[citation needed] All through the winter of 1918–19, the Romanians, the Yugoslavs and the Czechoslovaks often broke the armistice in order to seize more territory for themselves. After January 1919, Károlyi ordered the build-up of a Hungarian army and started to consider the idea of an alliance with Soviet Russia, through Károlyi was opposed to the idea of Communism in Hungary itself.
In addition, as Hungary had signed an armistice, not a peace treaty, the Allied blockade continued until such time as a peace treaty was signed. Hungary had suffered from food shortages throughout the war and deaths from starvation had become common from 1917 onwards. Furthermore, the country had been overwhelmed with refugees from Transylvania and Galicia.
Making things worse was the creation of Czechoslovakia which had cut Hungary off from supplies of German coal. Hungary which possessed little coal depended upon German coal imports. Without coal, most had to live without heat in the winter of 1918–19, and the railroad network had gradually ceased to function. The collapse of railroads in their turn caused the collapse of industry and hence mass unemployment.
Making things even worse was the economic incompetence of the government which printed more and more money, leading to massive inflation and even more impoverishment. Károlyi's failure to improve living conditions or persuade the Allies to lift the blockade led to public criticism of Károlyi.
Baron Lajos Hatvany described Károlyi's leadership well when he noted "From the discussions no decisions arose, and from the decisions – no actions. A cabinet? No, it was a debating club".[3] In the same vein, the British writer Harold Nicolson, who had known Károlyi during his exile in Britain, when reviewing Károlyi's memoirs in 1957 noted that: "he had many qualities, but unfortunately lacked those for which a man is taken seriously by serious people".[4]
Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychologist—who had known the two politicians personally—wrote about the assassination of István Tisza and the appointment of Mihály Károlyi as new prime minister of Hungary:
"I was certainly no adherent of the ancien regime, but it seems doubtful to me whether it is a sign of political shrewdness to beat to death the smartest of the many counts [Count Istvan Tisza] and to make the stupidest one [Count Mihaly Karolyi] president." [5]
On 20 March 1919 the French presented the Vix Note ordering Hungarian troops further back into Hungary; it was widely assumed that the military lines would be the new frontiers.[citation needed] Károlyi and Prime Minister Dénes Berinkey were now in an untenable position. Although they did not want to accept this French demand, they were in no position to reject it either. On 21 March, Berinkey resigned. Károlyi then announced that only the Social Democrats could form a new government. Unknown to Károlyi, however, the Social Democrats had merged their party with the Communists led by Béla Kun. Hours after Berinkey resigned, the newly merged Hungarian Socialist Party announced Károlyi's resignation and the formation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. At that point, Károlyi accepted the fait accompli and retired from active politics.
Károlyi's cabinet [ edit ]
Later life [ edit ]
Károlyi in 1948
On 10 April 1919, "Romanian troops began to invade Hungary to forestall reconquest of Transylvania. A provisional government was set up by Count Julius Karolyi (brother of Michael), Count István Bethlen, Admiral Horthy, and Archduke Joseph at Szeged (under French occupation)."[6]
In July 1919, Károlyi went into exile in France and during World War Two, in Britain |
He wrote, “They were not *just* chickens. While they might look like chickens, it didn’t take an expert to know that they are not the kind of bird that one would find on the dinner table. Too pretty to eat.”
He noted that he never realized that they are called Red Junglefowl until they all disappeared this past week and that a documentary had been made about them.
He wrote that his family was particularly excited in 2015 when they discovered a hen nesting at the bottom of their block near the carpark.
The hen was named Broody by his wife.
Sharing the experience of the close encounter that the family had with the animals, Ben wrote: “For 3 weeks, we would check on Broody every day when came home. Broody laid 6 eggs. We were totally elated like new parents when the eggs started to hatch. 5 hatched. The last one did not. We were really sad for Broody, but Broody seemed to take it in her stride.
Nevertheless, Broody did the mother thing and led her 5 chicks around the block. It was a really adorable sight. Alas, in the second week or so, Broody lost one to a predator, leaving her with 4. We mourned with Broody.
The 4 chicks eventually grew up and we never saw Broody and her brood again. I reckoned they had joined the rest of the flock in the vacant field next to our block and also in front of the Flame Tree Park condo.
It was a pleasant surprise for us that our kids could get to witness the miracle of life and be able to get so close to these gentle creatures. The birds don’t run when we got close. I guess they (and their ancestors) have lived in the area for so long that they understood that the good people who lived in the area would do them no harm.”
Ben further wrote, “ Sin Ming to my family is a really special place. It is a place in Singapore where man and nature could live together in harmony — and we have done so for so many years.”
He noted that his family tried to find if there might be some that have escaped the culling. Though they could not find in initial attempts but his wife eventually found a few between his block and Ai Tong Primary School.
Prior to finding the surviving few, Ben was upset over the loss of the junglefowl, he wrote, “ Well, I hope that those of you who complained are proud of what you have done. Our estate is now DEAD, like every other estate in Singapore. No more will we hear from our feathered friends.
No more will we be able to see these beautiful creatures hatch their young and lead them puttering around in the estate.”
His wife had taken many photos of the junglefowl and from the photos, it is clear that the “chickens” are not the domesticated chickens that the Mainstream Media and AVA were trying to allude to.The Empire Strikes FEAR with this crazy nasty Star Wars AT-AT, which is actually an AT-ST unless I need my geek credentials taken away. In this case it stands for All Terror-Skull Transport. If the Empire could harness zombie technology, this is the kind of equipment they would be using.
I have to ask. What makes someone put a sheep’s skull on a friggin’ Star Wars toy? Probably the same thing that made me drown all my figures in glue and pretend it was carbonite. The Force. We can blame it for everything!
This is the result of one of my art projects in college some years ago, genuine sheeps skull on star wars walker legs! Awesome!
I’m guessing there were a lot of hallucinogens at that college. Just kidding. But still, you’re weird. I’m locking up all of my toys when you come over to play.
Thanks Jeremy.Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a man charged in the May shooting death of a Killeen, Texas police officer.
Marvin Louis Guy, 49, has been indicted for capital murder after shooting and killing police Detective Charles Dinwiddie during an early morning police raid on his home. Guy also stands charged with three counts of attempted capital murder.
At a court hearing earlier this month Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza said he will seek the death penalty in the charge related to Dinwiddie’s death, according to KWTX.
Dinwiddie, 47, was an 18-year veteran of the Killeen Police Department and 15-year veteran of the department’s SWAT team. He died of wounds sustained while serving a no-knock search warrant on Guy’s apartment at 5:30 a.m. on May 9.
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Another officer, Odis Denton, was shot in the leg. He was treated at a local hospital and released, KXXV reported at the time. Two other officers were hit by gunfire but sustained only minor injuries because of their protective gear.
Although Garza plans to proceed with seeking the death penalty, some question whether or not the officer’s life could have been spared.
Radley Balko, who writes about criminal justice and the drug war for The Washington Post, notes that no drugs were found in Guy’s apartment upon execution of the warrant.
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The police, Balko wrote, were acting only on the information of an informant who claimed to have witnessed bags of cocaine being transported in and around the house.
But given what police did find in the home — a glass pipe, a grinder, and a safe — it was unlikely that Guy was running a major drug operation out of the apartment. He might have been a drug user, given the suspected paraphernalia, but there was nothing in the home linking him directly to drug dealing of any sort.
Balko argues Guy likely opened fire on police simply because he was surprised to be awakened by armed men climbing through his windows that morning in the no-knock raid. He certainly had nothing in his home so incriminating that he would risk death in a shoot-out in order to conceal it.
Instead the raid on Guy’s home, carried out in the manner that it was, precipitated a good deal of unnecessary violence.
“It’s yet another example … of how using this sort of violence to enforce the drug laws not only unnecessarily puts citizens at risk, but puts law enforcement officers at risk as well,” Balko wrote.
Sources: KWTX, KXXV, The Washington Post
Photo Source: KXXV, KWTX
undefinedThe unpredictable and nasty presidential campaign has obscured other matters which deserve our attention. On March 16, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. When the Senate returns from its August recess on Sept. 6, the nomination will have already waited 174 days for a vote.
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This prolonged failure by the Senate to do its duty has no precedent in all of U.S. history. Every other nomination not withdrawn by a president has received a vote. The longest previous wait was 125 days for Louis Brandeis, appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Bitter opposition to Brandeis was driven, at least in part, by his status as the first Jewish nominee. The Senate, however, after contentious hearings and debate, confirmed Brandeis — who went on to serve as one of the most respected justices in the court's history — 47-22.
Although Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.) is threatening to use a procedural motion to force a vote on discharging the Garland nomination, no one now expects the Senate will actually act on the nomination itself before its scheduled adjournment on Oct. 7, which means it will not occur prior to the November presidential election.
Some have suggested that if Democratic nominee 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 wins the presidency, the current Republican-led Senate will approve Garland on the theory that a Clinton nominee could be worse from their prospective. Action during the lame-duck session between the election and the inauguration of the new president seems unlikely, however. After blocking Garland on the grounds that the "people should decide," doing so would leave the confirmation process in the hands of senators who were defeated and some who did not seek reelection rather than those elected in the November election.
Also, it is quite possible that Clinton would prefer to name her own choice. It would be hard, under such circumstances, for the Senate to move the nomination during a short lame-duck session.
The new Congress, in January, will bring its own problems. If government is divided with one party in the White House and the other controlling the Senate, whatever nominee is named by a new president will face a difficult road. If a Republican Senate is faced with a Clinton nomination, particularly if that nominee is even more progressive than Garland, GOP senators may continue to drag their heels. If it's a Democratic Senate confronted with a 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 nominee, Democratic senators may view that nomination as illegitimate given that in their view a rightful Obama-filled seat was swept out from under him. This could lead to further gridlock.
And if both the White House and the Senate are controlled by the same party, similar difficulties could arise in the form of a filibuster. Again, with either Democrats protesting the stolen seat or Republicans objecting to a Clinton nominee.
As a defender of the importance of the filibuster to functions of the Senate, including nominations, I would be distressed by partisan and prolonged filibusters in January against either party's Supreme Court nominees. This might understandably lead either party to revisit the use of the "nuclear option."
In November of 2013, the then-Democratic majority used a questionable parliamentary ploy to unilaterally reinterpret existing Senate rules to permit them to end filibusters with just a simple majority vote on judicial nominations. They exempted Supreme Court nominees because the Democratic leadership did not have sufficient votes to apply the new reading of the rule to nominations for the highest court. This is evidence that even as they twisted the rule at the time, they recognized its value and retained it for the most consequential situations.
I wrote at the time in The New York Times:
The Senate Republicans, by blatantly and transparently obstructing President Obama's judicial nominations, have goaded the Democrats into an historic mistake. To reach understandable ends, they have adopted tragically flawed means. By use of the so-called "nuclear option," Senate Democrats have now established the principle that a simple majority in the Senate can change any rule at any time.
This could repeat itself in January with the same cast of characters, perhaps reversed. Whichever party is in the majority, faced with a long filibuster, would be sorely tempted to sweep the rule away and confirm their president's pick.
It would be hard to argue against them. Given the current balance on the court, the stakes could not be higher. And, of course, these are lifetime appointments, so the impact is apt to last perhaps for decades.
Most thoughtful senators realize that we need the filibuster to assure that the minority party, whichever it is, has some input into who sits on the court. Presidents have to consider support from some portion of the other party. This counterbalance has served us and the court well.
We should hope the ugly and divisive presidential election we are experiencing doesn't further poison the already hyper-partisan polarized Senate driving its majority to extreme and unwise means.
Arenberg worked for Sens. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), Carl Levin Carl Milton LevinListen, learn and lead: Congressional newcomers should leave the extremist tactics at home House Democrats poised to set a dangerous precedent with president’s tax returns The Hill's 12:30 Report — Sponsored by Delta Air Lines — White House to 'temporarily reinstate' Acosta's press pass after judge issues order | Graham to take over Judiciary panel | Hand recount for Florida Senate race MORE (D-Mich.) and Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) for 34 years and is co-author of the award-winning "Defending the Filibuster: The Soul of the Senate-Revised and Edited Edition." He is a visiting professor of political science and international and public affairs at Brown University.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.Posted By Mercury_Claw at 1:37 PM - Fri Jun 09 2017
Will we be able to choose any race we want after we choose where we live or are both heavily connected. My concern is, say I pledge my loyalty to BloodOak Duchy from Dleatherus, in the Kingdom of Bordweall, but I choose a tribe that lives in swamps, and there is no swamps in his Duchy, am I screwed?
This question has been answered dozens of times before, but I will repeat it for you.
No. You will not be able to choose just any race you want to no matter where you choose to be located.
Yes. Where you choose to live and what tribes are available for you to play is related.
Why is this so?
Because when you choose a "character" you are not simply making a fresh brand new one in a character creation screen and plopping themwhere ever you feel like in the world. You are picking a character that already exists in that world. That lives there. Has a family. A job. Connections with other people. So unless there happens to be a Dras family living amongst the tribes/biomes your kingdom encompasses when you go into the game to pick your character (which there will not be at the start of CoE, as the tribes will all be in their starting positions of their native biomes) then there would not be any Dras available for you to choose from if you choose to settle where they are not.
Makes sense?
Now if your chosen kingdom that you have pledged to doesn't have the biome and thus tribe you truly desire you have two choices.
1 - Break your pledge of loyalty to your present kingdom and switch to a kingdom that does have the biome/tribe you desire.
Or.
2 - Simply choose to start a character in that other kingdom with the plan to relocate to the kingdom you have pledged to once you have the means necessary. Which, if you watched this morning's Q&A, is supposedly is likely to be arduous and challenging.
Like what if I was a Duke myself, would this limit where my Duchy ir kingdom is, or would it limit what tribe I can play? How does it all correlate.
If you are titled then that is another matter. Because yes where you choose to place your domain and settlement does limit you in what tribe you can play. As mentioned earlier when you choose your character you will be choosing one that is already living in the world. And in the case of titles, the character you choose is limited to the families living in your chosen settlement. If you don't choose a settlement with a Dras family, then there is no Dras characters for you to choose from.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
However.
There is nothing stopping you once the game is underway from breeding Dras bloodlines into your own bloodline (unless of course the Dras are one of the few tribes not available on the starting continent of your server. In which case it doesn't matter anyway). If you really really really want to stick with your Kingdom but also to play a Dras, then be patient and work in-game to have your family slowly turn Dras over generations by targeting Dras players or NPCs for child or even marriage contracts with your starting non Dras character.
A note on Wards; choosing Wards still limits you to the tribes that are in the vicinity of the orphanage that you choose to spawn from. Which means you are still limited to the tribe types of the local area.
I hope this clarified things for you a bit as well as given you a greater understanding of WHY it is the way it is.A few weeks ago, Game Rant visited Ubisoft Montreal to preview the single-player offerings of Far Cry 3. At the event we had the opportunity to interview some of the creative leads behind the game’s development, including Level Design Director Mark Thompson.
In our chat, we discuss the design, size and intricacies of the dangerous island paradise Jason Brody finds himself trapped in for Far Cry 3, surviving nature, crafting and collecting resources, history and open-world freedom.
How big is Far Cry 3 compared to the previous games?
“We have the same technology, so there’s no restriction on us to have a world the same size, but I want it to be more than a number because a number doesn’t mean anything. It’s about what you can do, it’s about meaningful experiences inside that space. There seems to be this arms race in open world games to be bigger and bigger. I remember I saw a map comparing the different sizes of worlds and some of them are so big, I wonder how much value is there actually in that. How many meaningful experiences will I have in a world that size? What we wanted to was make a world that was interesting, that was compelling, that was full of things to do and explore and find, and if at any point we ran out of things to do, the size of the world would be a problem.”
The game is based on one very large island, so how can players traverse it?
“We wanted to make sure that travelling the world and getting between missions wasn’t a chore. If you want to follow the mission path, it’s quick to get from mission to mission. There aren’t huge, huge distances between them and we have a super accessible fast-travel system. Like at any point you can jump into the menu and fast-travel from wherever you are.”
Although we didn’t see it, there will be a map system like other open-world titles. We can assume fast-travel points will be unlocked once they’re discovered. Because of the open-world nature of the game and that feeling of exploration – just like in Skyrim – players will frequently find themselves going off the path to see and do new things. During playtesting, given a series of missions that should have taken 45 minutes, players were still not done after four hours and it wasn’t because it was difficult or because they were dying. It was because they were exploring and intentionally getting lost in between the missions thanks to distractions like wild boars, a lighthouse, an abandoned shack and even some unique plant life.
Are there incentives and rewards for exploring?
“We wanted it to be a little deeper than getting XP because you know, Jason’s trying to survive on the island so the world is full of resources. If he was stranded on a desert island, you’d look for food, you’d look for shelter, you would look for things that could help you. If you were hurt, you would want to try and find medicine. We wanted to make sure the island gave this to player. You can just follow the story path but you perhaps wouldn’t have as many resources as someone who goes off into the jungle, someone who kills and skins a boar, someone who takes that meat, someone who takes that skin from the boar and uses it to make something, and the same for the plants.”
Plants will act as resources, some of them useful that can be harvested. NPCs in villages will buy these off of you and players will be able to craft potions and the like. Players need health packs and so they can make them.
Can you give other examples of players using the environment?
“At E3, the demo we showed, you use the sound of the waterfall to mask that fact that you were killing that guy, and you dragged him to hide him behind the waterfall… It’s not just scripted for that demo, it’s something systemic. You know, if you drag a body and hide it in a bush, it’s going to be there, it’s going to be hidden. If you’re inside a bush, you’ll be hidden. The AI isn’t omniscient, it doesn’t see through walls, it doesn’t see you through bushes. If you think you’re hidden, you’re hidden and the AI don’t know where you are.”
Far Cry 3 takes place on an island so it’s surrounded by the ocean and loaded with rivers. Not only does this provide a stealth tactical opportunity in many instances, but the water element is also the source of exploration, from a sunken boat, crashed plane to underwater caverns and… sharks! As we spoke about in our preview, the transition from land to sea is seamless and leaping off of a cliff or object into the water provides a very neat first-person animation when diving into water – Jason’s hands actually go forward in a diving position.
“The water is almost like a stealth path really, it’s a stealth tool. If you dive down into the water, the enemy isn’t going to know quite where you are. They’ll train their weapons on the surface of the water but you can go swim, come up behind them – and the guys will be all on the dock saying ‘where the f*** did he go’ and you can go behind them and kill them.”
What can we expect from the environment?
“What’s cool about an island, especially a remote island like that is if we look at islands like that in the real world, in that kind of area of the world and they’re just filled with thousands of years of history. They’ve been civilized, they’ve been industrialized, but at the same time that’s only on small parts of it so you can move through these islands and you’ll see things like Nan Madol which is a temple from thousands and thousands of years ago… and nobody quite knows how it was even built. It was built with basalt stones that weren’t even from that island… so we were inspired by things like that. We make sure the island has thousands of years of history and you can explore ancient ruined temples as you explore them you start to learn the history of the people and what gods they worshipped and why these temples are still on the island.”
Is that part of the game’s main story?
“No, this is just part of the world. The world is embedded with stories that are there for you to go and find if you want to. Obviously, that part of the world, the pacific, was involved in the conflict in World War II so in the concept art on the wall there you can see old wrecked planes down at the bottom of the ocean… and each of these things has a story to tell. Perhaps you’ll learn the story of a Japanese soldier who crashed on the island, but you know, his body is down at the bottom of the ocean so you’ll have to swim down and find that.”
The island was rich in phosphates so years ago, Western civilization industrialized the island to a certain extend and there are some modern roads, structures and towns but it’s mostly abandoned now.
Can players go wherever they want from the get-go or are there restrictions based on progress?
“No no, the only thing that restricts you is that fact that it’s a really scary island. At the start of the game, Jason is just a regular guy, he’s not trained, he’s not military. The only time he will have shot the a gun before coming to the island is at paintball or on the range. He hasn’t killed before. We wanted to make sure Jason and the player learn together, so it feels more natural… but yeah, like I said, the island is free but the jungle is dark, it’s dangerous. There are people that help you but there are people who want to hurt you as well so it’s just about how much you want to deviate from the path of Jason’s adventure because that will pull you through the wall.”
How long will it take players to beat the game?
“If you just main-lined the missions, it’s probably like 20 hours. But even then, it’s hard to say how it can take for someone to play a mission.”
As an example, we discussed the Medusa mission from the demo where Jason must attack a beached ship to get to the radio tower on top. Someone can hang-glide their way in and do it in 2-3 minutes whereas players who take the time either by being stealthy or tagging all of the enemies to snipe – so the campaign length can vary substantially depending on the player’s style.
“It’s just up to you. If you want to get the XP from killing every guy, if you want loot every body for cash and resources – what’s more valuable to you? Is it time or is it the actual resources?”
For more in-depth details on Far Cry 3, check out out interviews with Producer Dan Hay and Animation Director Robert Purdy.
Far Cry 3 will releases on September 6, 2012, for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
–
Follow me on Twitter @rob_keyes.By Brian Ellsworth
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has indicted hardline opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on charges that she took part in an alleged plot to kill President Nicolas Maduro, the state prosecutor's office said on Wednesday.
Machado, who was at the forefront of major street protests against Maduro's socialist government earlier this year, has dismissed the accusations as a charade meant to silence her and distract Venezuelans from a growing economic crisis.
If found guilty, the former legislator could be sentenced to between 8 and 16 years in jail.
"Our only option is to fight for democracy and freedom," Machado said after she was indicted at the state prosecutor's office in Caracas on Wednesday.
"We're at the doors of a transition period," she said,, draped in a yellow, blue, and red Venezuelan flag as dozens of supporters chanted their support.
One of Machado's advisors said authorities had not ordered her immediate detention. There were no immediate indications the case could spark the same type of street demonstrations that rocked Venezuela for three months earlier this year.
Fellow opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who with Machado kickstarted the anti-government protests, has been behind bars since February in what government critics blast as a crackdown on political foes.
They say Maduro, who was elected to succeed late socialist leader Hugo Chavez in office last year, has tightened the state's grip on the judiciary and the electoral system, and wants to sideline political opponents ahead of key legislative elections in 2015.
Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver, dismissed this year's protests as part of a U.S.-backed plot to destabilize his government. His popularity has tumbled since he took office, stung by shortages of consumer goods and soaring inflation.
The opposition's radical wing praises the fiery Machado, 47, for standing up to what they consider a dictatorship.
But she is loathed by many government supporters, who see her as an out-of-touch aristocrat intent on toppling the government.
They frequently point out she signed a decree that dissolved state institutions during a de facto government that ruled for less than two days in a botched 2002 coup against Chavez.
(Additional reporting by Corina Pons and Diego Ore; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by David Gregorio and Kieran Murray)Update added.
Dusk on the third day of violent clashes in Tahrir Square, and the crowd is only growing larger and more determined. The state security police have tried two or three times to take the square and have had to retreat, behind a cordon of tear gas, to the streets around the Interior Ministry, a couple of blocks away.
“Everyone is angry,” Shahira Mubarak, a young English tutor, told me. She is one of many who occupied Tahrir in February and have now returned to defend it. “You can sense it. Everyone has lost patience. The more violent they are, the more people come.”
As night fell, there were as many people on the square as I saw at the height of the revolution—tens of thousands—and as the working day ended more were arriving. Most, but not all, were young men, many with red eyes in ghostly faces, caked with the white residue of a sugar, flour, and vinegar paste applied as protection against the tear gas. Some had bandaged eyes; some construction hats. I saw one man wearing a welder’s helmet. A vendor was selling safety goggles—the kind a high-school chemistry class might use—and surgical masks. (My translator went to buy gas masks this morning. “Oh, you are the revolutionaries!’ a policeman in the shop said. My translator braced himself for a tirade, but instead the policeman embraced him: “God keep you safe! We are all with you!”
From time to time, the tear gas fell deep in the square, and sections of the crowd would run on the call, “Hold together! Hold together!” One man came up and tugged at my elbow. “Look, snipers!” he said, pointing to the roof of the prime minister’s office in the cabinet building a block away from the square. We could see a row of police in silhouette. Motorcycles ferried the limp bodies of front-line protestors who had fainted to several field hospitals set up in and around the square. Volunteers sprayed saline into their eyes. One of them, a medical student, told me that he had seen several rubber bullet wounds over the course of the afternoon, birdshot pellets embedded in necks and torsos, rib fractures from stone throwing. “They shoot the tear gas canisters directly at people,” he explained. “We had a case of a fractured skull.” More than twenty-five have been reported killed over the past three days; more than a thousand injured. The violence has spread to several other cities, including Alexandria, Suez, and Port Said.
The demonstration on Friday—asking for a clear and speedy timetable for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to hand over power to a civilian government—was Islamist, but the crowds now calling for an end to military rule are varied. I found Mohamed Fathi, a doctor with the shorn mustache and untrimmed beard of a fundamentalist, who had volunteered at a field hospital, eating popcorn, still wearing his rubber surgical gloves. He had come back to Tahrir because a friend of his had said, “We have to show the liberals that they are not alone, and that we support them against the Supreme Council,” he told me. “They didn’t learn from Mubarak, from the examples of Syria and Libya. Fighting us, killing people doesn’t work.”
One man came up to show me a tear-gas canister that was made in the U.S. “I was one of the people who thanked the Army in February,” he said. “But the Army took advantage of my love and respect and appreciation, by oppressing the strikers and the revolutionaries.” He clarified, “I have no problem with the Army. My problem is only with the Supreme Council.”
For the first time since Mubarak fell, the crowd seemed unified with a single purpose. The chants are unequivocal: “The people want to topple the Marshal!” They are referring to Field Marshal Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council and the de facto ruler of Egypt since Mubarak stepped down. “The people want to topple the Supreme Council!” I haven’t felt such clarion will on Tahrir since the revolution. It feels like another one may be beginning.
UPDATE: An announcement that the entire cabinet had resigned was met with much eye rolling among the protesters on Tahrir Square. The parallels to Muabrak’s last-ditch cabinet shuffling, in January, seemed almost farcical. On the square, I bumped into Hisham Akkam, one of the leaders of the new Justice Party, which has been trying to forge a technocratic, middle-class path between the polarized liberal and Islamist extremes of Egyptian politics. He was grinning, full of revolutionary adrenaline, amid the pall of tear gas which now hangs, acrid, over most of downtown Cairo. “I don’t think anyone can control the crowd now,” he said, as another thumping volley of tear-gas canisters being fired echoed from the front line around the block.
It was not clear if the Supreme Council had accepted the cabinet’s resignation; conflicting reports seemed to suggest they would not accept it until a new government could be agreed upon. (“The cabinet?” Akkam said scornfully. “Who is going to accept being in this position? It’s very clear now we want a definitive date for a presidential election.”) The square has moved beyond parties and politics for the moment and is in full revolution mode. During the evening, Mohamed Beltegy, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader who was on Tahrir every day during the revolution, appeared on the square and was hounded away, with some protesters derisively showing their shoes to him. “If any party tries to take advantage of the medan”—Arabic for “the square”—“it’s the wrong tactics, it’s the people again,’ Akkam said. Another Justice Party activist stood nearby cradling a heavy plastic police truncheon. “I took this from one of the police on the 28th of January,” he told me. “I kept it in my room. This is the second wave of the revolution.”
Photograph by Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images.Activists and lawyers in France have voiced concern about the government’s "abuse of power" under a nationwide state of emergency declared following recent terrorist attacks in Paris.
On November 13, assailants struck at least six different venues in and around Paris, leaving 130 people dead and over 350 others injured. France introduced the state of emergency following the horrendous assaults, which were claimed by the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.
However, many in France’s legal system have expressed worries about the abuse of the new measures adopted under the state of emergency, including empowering the police to keep people in their homes without trial, searching houses without judicial approval and blocking suspicious websites.
The measures also include a ban on public demonstrations and allow authorities to dissolve groups inciting any acts that seriously affect public order in France.
People mourn in front of the screened-off facade of the Bataclan Cafe adjoining the concert hall, one of the sites of the November 13 attacks in Paris, November 26, 2015. (Photo by Reuters)
A national human rights association has filed a complaint with France’s highest court over the issue.
According to latest reports, French police have conducted 2,575 searches, and 354 people have been confined at their homes since the beginning of the state of emergency.
Some 25 house arrest orders were also issued for those who had planned to protest the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP21, in Le Bourget, north of Paris despite the ban on protests under the emergency state.
On Friday, people staged a protest to draw attention to the issue.
“We came to support a comrade who has been under house arrest since Nov. 29 because he is an ecologist,” said Nicolas Galepides, of the SUD union, adding, “I’m flagged. I’m not violent. We are talking about social violence, our violence against the climate. It’s beginning to get difficult to defend our liberties.”
On Tuesday, French police cuffed and jailed a man because he was 40 minutes late for one of his four appointments a day at a police station. He had been flagged as a radical, but never convicted of links to extremists.
John Dalhuisen, the director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia program, said last week that the new measures in France “provide for a sweeping extension of executive powers at the expense of essential human rights safeguards.”
Yasser Louati, a spokesman for the Collective against Islamophobia in France, an anti-racist group, said the state of emergency has unfairly targeted Muslims.
“The raids have disproportionately targeted people of Islamic faith with overt brutality. We’ve collected evidence of 50 cases of abuse – and these are just the ones we know about – where police hurled racist abuse at families, women were assaulted and one even miscarried,” he said.
“When raids are conducted on erroneous intelligence – 90 percent of the raids have found nothing – why humiliate people? This is a government response that’s no more than a show of force. But the threat isn’t Muslims, it is terrorists.”
Last week, the French government drew up a draft law to extend the state of emergency for up to six months from the current three-month limit.When Angry Robot Books announced that they had acquired Kameron Hurley’s The Worldbreaker Saga, the first epic fantasy from the author of God’s War, I knew readers were in for a treat. Hurley’s series, beginning with The Mirror Empire, is one of my most anticipated novels of 2014, and Angry Robot Books is known for their fun and progressive approach to cover art. It’s a match made in heaven, right?
Hurley describes the three volume epic fantasy as “Game of Thrones meets Fringe,” and promises that it’s the most intricate and complex book she’s ever written.
On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past… while a world goes to war with itself. In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin. At the heart of this war lie the pacifistic Dhai people, once enslaved by the Saiduan and now courted by their former masters to provide aid against the encroaching enemy. Stretching from desolate tundra to steamy, semi-tropical climes seething with sentient plant life, this is an epic tale of blood mages and mercenaries, emperors and priestly assassins who must unite to save a world on the brink of collapse. As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler struggles to unite a country fractured by civil war; a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family to save his skin; and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father’s people or loyalty to her alien Empress. Through tense alliances and devastating betrayals, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself. In the end, only one world will rise – and many will perish.
The cover features artwork by Richard Anderson, whose arresting and unique art has been featured on some of the most memorable fantasy and science fiction covers of the past few years, including Brian Staveley’s The Emperor’s Blades, and Peter Watts’ Echopraxia.
I caught up with Hurley to chat about the beautiful cover, and some clues about what fans can expect when the novel releases later this summer |
blessed last year, he said, but the attending priest balked at the “666” etched on it, with its Satanist overtones.
Others said they had come to Porcaro for a spiritual experience.
Pascal Letartre, 60, had come from Chartres, he said, “to say a prayer for our fallen fellow bikers.” This was the second year he and his wife, Bernadette, had come to Porcaro, though last year, she chimed in with a laugh, “It was to drink!”
Porcaro has come to define itself by the festival — the town calls itself the “French bikers’ capital” — and residents say they actually enjoy the characters it draws. The gathering is largely financed by souvenir sales overseen by a local association and staffed almost exclusively by volunteers from the village and the surrounding communities. Many homeowners allow bikers to pitch tents on their lawns during the festival.
The two-day event injects about $500,000 into the local economy each year, said Porcaro’s mayor, Pierre Hamery. Last weekend, much of that sum appeared to be destined for Porcaro’s two bars, the village’s only commercial establishments.
“The Madonna brings in all our profits for the year,” said Marine Perrichot, 18, whose mother owns and operates the bar Le Wheeling (“The Wheelie,” in French). This year, the bar stayed open all night Saturday and on into Sunday.
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“There are never too many problems,” Ms. Perrichot said, recalling with a laugh when a gentleman rode his motorcycle into the ground-level barroom several years ago. “We can’t complain,” she said. “They’re all adorable.”
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Despite all the imbibing, the gathering in Porcaro began as and remains a religious event, with the backing of the Catholic Church.
“The essential thing for me, as a priest — as a biker-priest — is to show this community that God is close to them,” said Father Audrain, who rides a BMW F 800 ST and has helped coordinate the Madonna of the Bikers since 2007. “My work, in the first place, is about making God seem all right, and making the church seem all right.”
“It’s tricky,” he noted.
The brand of Catholicism embraced by the Bretons is well suited to the hard-living motorcycle world, said Father Audrain. Drawing on the traditions of the hedonistic Celts who once inhabited the region, Breton Catholicism holds that all human activity, with the exception of sin, is in the service of God, he said.
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“Partying doesn’t bother me,” said Father Audrain, a slim, athletic man with an endearing lisp, and no teetotaler himself. Still, he acknowledged, as much as the partying might draw nonbelieving bikers here, it also keeps a fair number from the Mass on the event’s second morning.
“There aren’t so many of them that show up,” he said, “because they have to sober up from the night before.”
As Father Audrain conducted his service Sunday morning, Lenaïck Flamant hurried toward a nearby coffee stand.
“It was hard this morning,” admitted Ms. Flamant, 47, dressed in heavy black and white leather. She had gone to sleep at 4 or 5, she said, but awoke at 9, to be sure to have her Yamaha blessed. She had brushed her teeth, and was confident the priests would smell no liquor on her breath.
“I took a breathalyzer before I got on my bike,” she said. “It was close, but I made it.”Hillary Clinton recently gained a few powerful supporters — Olivia Pope, Meredith Grey, and Annalise Keating — or rather, the women who play them on Shonda Rhimes's popular ABC shows. In a new campaign ad, Shonda Rhimes and her leading ladies endorse Hillary Clinton, and it's pretty amazing. Getting the high-profile support of Kerry Washington, Ellen Pompeo, and Viola Davis could be helpful to the former Secretary of State as she tries to fend off the surging Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a Democratic primary that just won't end.
The ad, directed by Tony Goldwyn (otherwise known as President Fitz on Scandal!), is shot simply, with the four women taking turns speaking against a dark background, all the better to make their message stand out. "Every day I wake up and play a brilliant, get-it-done woman," Kerry Washington says, referencing her character in Scandal. Viola Davis notes that her character on How To Get Away With Murder is "overqualified" and "obsessively fights for justice," while Ellen Pompeo says that her Grey's Anatomy character "gets knocked down and always gets back up." Hmm, does that sound remarkably like anyone involved in the current presidential election?
"Our characters are on television," they say, "but the real world has Hillary Clinton." They go on to call her a "champion for all of us" before declaring, "I'm with Hillary."
The ad is running in advance of some very important primaries on Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, and Ohio. After Sanders' upset win in Michigan, the Clinton team must be feeling more nervous about the results. But this ad is a big one for Clinton. After all, Rhimes' three shows, which make up ABC's Thank God It's Thursday (or TGIT) night, are almost absurdly popular. Though they're down in the ratings this year, they still usually draw between five and 10 million viewers each week, and they tend to dominate the cultural conversation, with Davis winning a 2015 Best Actress in a Drama Emmy for her work on How To Get Away With Murder.
Reaction to the ad has been mixed. Some are thrilled to see their favorite actresses endorsing their candidate of choice.
Others would much prefer to keep their TV shows separate from real-life politics.
Whatever your thoughts on Clinton, there's no denying that the ad is a big deal for her. We'll see after Tuesday, though, if it's big enough to stave off Sanders' unexpected surge.Segment Transcript
IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
[? SINGING VOICES:?] Please duck and cover. Duck and cover. We did what we all must learn to do. You and you and you and you. Duck and cover.
[END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
IRA FLATOW: If you’re of a certain age, you may recall the practice of duck and cover. As schoolchildren, we were told to duck under our desks to seek cover as the nuclear bombs fell. The government also issued detailed instruction booklets on how to build a home fallout shelter.
But fallout, of course, was a secondary concern. Because the immediate effects of the atom bomb, the one that killed 100,000 in Hiroshima, that’s an immediate effect. And there was up to 80,000 dead in Nagasaki and roughly half of those people perished on the days the bombs dropped.
Now with the threats of nuclear war being tossed back and forth between the US and North Korea, I thought it might be instructive to review the basics of nuclear war. How the bombs work, how they exact such a terrible toll, and the lasting dangers like radiation they leave behind.
Not because we’re predicting imminent nuclear war, but because if anything does happen, the magnitude of the tragedy will no doubt crowd out this important scientific conversation. So how much have we learned about nuclear bomb damage and radiation exposure in the seven decades since the bombs fell on Japan? Here to school us on the ABC’s of nuclear weaponry are my guests.
Alex Wellerstein, assistant professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Laura Grego, senior scientist in the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Steve Simon, radiation health physicist at the National Cancer Institute. Welcome to all of you. Thanks for joining us today.
STEVE SIMON: Afternoon.
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Good to be here.
LAURA GREGO: Thank you.
IRA FLATOW: Alex, by now we have several generations of people growing up without ever feeling the threat of a nuclear attack. And what’s the lesson of history? What should we be carrying into the future related to nuclear warfare?
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: I think people want to believe that it would never occur. And that’s very optimistic of people. But even at the end of the Cold War and even into the present, the chance of it happening is never zero. As long as the weapons are around, as long as they’re out there, we should have some part of our brain assigned to the idea that this is a possibility.
IRA FLATOW: Let’s go through some of the ABC’s of a nuclear bomb. Give me a time lapse, from the bomb dropping to the blast to days later. What happens?
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: So a nuclear bomb, you can think of it as a very complicated invention. It’s a lot of little pieces that all come together in just the right way to produce this explosion. And that coming together takes about 1/10 of a second.
It’s a very fast assembly, as they would say of this radioactive material, this fuel for the weapon, all of these other little parts. And so what you’re going to get is this just intense fireball that forms. And it forms in like 1/10 of a second or so.
And it’s hotter than anything you’re going to have on the surface of the Earth, it’s going to be brighter and whiter than anything you’ve ever seen. Much worse than any kind of chemical explosion. And it’s just this hot radiating ball that is then going to be expanding outward.
So you’re going to have three main effects coming in. One is this blast wave, you’re going to have this superheated air and that’s going to have the effect of knocking down buildings, breaking in windows, knocking over trees, knocking over people, whatever.
You’re also going to have this intense heat coming off of the fireball itself that might ignite some fires. It will burn skin if it’s exposed to it. And then you’re also going to have this radiation, which is of course the effect that people often focus on because it’s the weirdest effect. It’s the least understandable.
And that isn’t something you’re going to see or feel but if you’re too close to the bomb, you’re going to get a death sentence without realizing it. If you’re further out, you might be increasing your cancer risk down the line. So those are the three sort of immediate effects. And all of those are going to be happening within the first few seconds or few minutes of the bomb going off.
IRA FLATOW: When you say radiation, does that include the fallout? What is fallout?
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Fallout is the radioactive cloud. So when you think of the mushroom cloud, think of that as being filled with lots of radioactive particles.
If that mushroom cloud, if that fireball has gone off in a way that sucks up dirt into the cloud, the radioactivity in there is going to attach itself to this dirt. And so as this cloud blows with the wind, these heavy particles that are now radioactive are going to fall out of the cloud.
IRA FLATOW: I got you, I got you.
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And so this is a delayed effect. For a small bomb, all of the worst of that might fall out in an hour or two. For a really large bomb, it might take a couple of days for it all to fall out. But that’s going to be spreading contamination downwind of the explosion.
IRA FLATOW: Steve, how is this fallout absorbed by the body?
STEVE SIMON: Sure, Ira, I’m happy to explain that. The phenomena by which the radiation is absorbed by the body is a sequence of steps that happen very, very quickly. We call this kind of radiation ionizing radiation. That is, it has enough energy to ionize atoms that it interacts with. And ionize means to release electrons from those atoms.
So these gamma rays, they’re a lot like x-rays but they’re much more powerful, much more energetic. They impact the cells of the body, the bones, of the skin, anything that it might pass through. And it has enough energy to knock electrons out of the atoms of that material.
So this is the process called ionization and it’s actually those electrons that do the damage to the cells of the body. It’s not the gamma rays directly, it’s those electrons. So it’s a sequence of steps. And so when you say absorbed by the body, it’s this process that happens very, very quickly where the atoms are ionized.
IRA FLATOW: Would it not get into our food system also?
STEVE SIMON: The fallout can definitely enter our food system. And it does that through environmental processes that we’re all familiar with. We know how plants grow, we know how irrigation happens, we know the processes of farming and growing plants. And so that is an avenue, we call it a pathway, it’s an avenue or a pathway to contamination. So it’s not the radiation that contaminates the plants but it is the fallout material.
It’s the debris, it’s this radioactive material. Once it enters the food chain, then it can travel. It can go through the food chain in steps. It can be diluted or can be concentrated depending on the kind of food. And eventually can be consumed by man or animals.
IRA FLATOW: Laura Grego, let’s say that North Korea does launch a missile. What happens with our muscle defense system at that point? Do we have one? And give us a hypothetical scenario.
LAURA GREGO: Yeah. Well, the United States has very fortunate geography. We have huge oceans to the east and the west and we have friendly neighbors to the north and south. Not every country is in such a peaceful neighborhood.
So we don’t worry about short range missiles so much. We worry about the kinds of missiles that can carry nuclear weapons from that far distance. To do that, they have to go thousands of miles. And they’re called intercontinental ballistic missiles. And that’s what we worry would carry a nuclear weapon.
Intercontinental describes how far they go and ballistic means that after launch, they’re in free fall, just subject to the forces of gravity rather than like a cruise missile or an airplane that’s under powered flight. So in the case that North Korea decided to launch an attack against the United States, the first thing that would happen is these powerful rocket would ignite.
And they do look quite a bit like a space launch vehicle. So if you’ve seen a picture of that, you kind of know what it looks like. It’s a really bright signal. So we have satellite-based sensors that would pick that up and see that very quickly. And that boosting missile would take about three to five minutes to get going really quickly.
And it goes up, arcs through the vacuum of space. And when that’s detected, and we also have radars in the vicinity, that would cue the missile defense system. The one that we have that’s meant to defend the continental or the 50 United States is called the Ground-Based Midcourse System.
So those radars would detect it and fire control would launch one or a few interceptors from ground-based silos in either Alaska or California. Those look a lot like big space launch vehicles too. So after the nuclear missile from the adversary burns out, it releases what’s called– well, the nuclear weapon, which would be encased in a re-entry vehicle.
It’s a hardened shell that’s meant to protect that weapon from the heat and stress of a high speed re-entry through the atmosphere. That looks like a large cone sort of roughly the height of a human. And the interceptor from California or Alaska also gets up going to speed.
And it releases what’s called a kill vehicle. And that’s about the size of an office file cabinet. And the idea is that that file cabinet-sized kill vehicle would maneuver itself and try to run into the incoming nuclear weapon and destroy it with the force of impact.
IRA FLATOW: So how successful have we been in testing this?
LAURA GREGO: Yeah. Well, it’s a tough problem. It’s one of the most complicated, complex systems the Pentagon has ever taken on. There have been 18 tests, intercept tests of the system. And it’s succeeded about half the time.
And it’s important to note that these tests have been really under conditions that are scripted for success. They don’t have decoys that can try to confuse the defense. They’re not under the most stressing conditions. Not the types of conditions you’d expect it to work in or you’d want it to work in real life. So it’s been a very challenged system.
IRA FLATOW: So it’s 50-50 right now.
LAURA GREGO: It’s 50-50 right now under the most simplified and rosy conditions.
IRA FLATOW: And how does a hydrogen bomb compare to the atom bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of strength and chemistry? How do they compare?
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: So the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, what we call atomic bombs, they work by nuclear fission. So splitting of heavy atoms, enriched uranium or plutonium. And a hydrogen bomb takes one of those bombs. So you take basically the Nagasaki bomb. And instead of using its energy to just directly destroy a city, you use it to ignite a fusion reaction similar to how the sun works.
And that amplifies its power by a lot. So just to give you a rough sort of numerical approach, the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons, 15,000 tons of TNT equivalent. That’s about enough to destroy a big chunk of, say, midtown Manhattan.
If one of those went off right now in midtown Manhattan, it would probably kill about 300,000 people. So that’s pretty bad. The kinds of hydrogen bombs that North Korea has or claims to have are about 10 times more powerful than that. 150 kilotons. So they’ve multiplied it by 10. And so that raises the number of dead.
If that went off in the same spot, in midtown Manhattan, you’d get something like 900,000 dead. And you’d be destroying basically the entire southern tip of the island to some degree and parts of New Jersey and parts of Brooklyn and parts of Queens.
You can make them as big as you want. They just become difficult to put on a missile. They become big and heavy. So the biggest one ever made was more like 100 million tons of TNT. That’s a bus the size of– I mean, excuse me, that’s a bomb the size of a school bus.
That’s not an easy thing. So 100 to 500 kilotons has been the sort of sweet spot for a bomb that’s relatively easy to put on a missile. So it’s not as big as some of the Cold War sort of monster bombs were. But it’s big enough to ruin your day.
IRA FLATOW: Laura, we were talking about the missile defense system. Have people been proposing new ideas for how we might improve? Better than 50-50? I mean, you launch two missiles, you’ve got 50 chance that one is going to hit.
LAURA GREGO: Yeah, it’s tricky. I mean, certainly the idea of defense sounds great. And the practice of it is much, much more difficult. It’s very difficult to get it to save the day. So one of the things I didn’t mention is that the adversary would release this nuclear weapon in a reentry vehicle.
But it also might release, at the same time, decoys that look a lot like that weapon. And they could be as light as a Mylar balloon that you’d get at a birthday party. Because in the vacuum of space, everything travels, you know, there’s no air resistance.
So a balloon would travel at the same rate as the heavy warhead. So this issue of trying to intercept the weapon while it’s up in the vacuum of space makes it really tricky. It’s prone to this mid-course– we call it discrimination problem. Where we can’t tell which is a real one and which is a fake one. You have to attack them all.
So there have been some ideas to try to get the launching missile just as it’s launching. And that’s tricky because, as I mentioned earlier, that launch phase is really only three to five minutes. You need to be really close. So all of the options are really pretty tricky.
IRA FLATOW: I’m Ira Flatow. This is Science Friday from PRI, Public Radio International. Talking about the ABC’s of missile, of ICBMs and bombs. And also about radiation. Now, I understand, Steve– I don’t mean Steve.
I mean, yeah, I do mean Steve. That you were actually– I’m sorry. You’re actually in the Marshall Islands. When the explosions were there. I don’t mean you were on the island yourself, but after the explosion.
STEVE SIMON: Well, Ira, I was not there when the explosions occurred. I came there much later.
IRA FLATOW: I would hope so.
STEVE SIMON: Yeah. Much, much later. The Marshall Islands are a big– or a small island country. But they’re spread over a tremendous area of ocean. And so various islands where the tests had taken place had been monitored in the early years for contamination.
But the rest of the country had never been monitored. Over 90% of the people, 95% of the people lived. So many years later, I did actually live in the Marshall Islands for over five years and monitored the entire country for residual contamination.
IRA FLATOW: And what did you find?
STEVE SIMON: Well, we found a huge grading of contamination, as one might expect. As the other speakers described, you have a lot of fallout potentially very near to the detonation site. And that becomes diluted with the increasing distance.
So we found a very large grading of contamination from levels on small islands where you would not want to live to very low level contamination that tapered all the way down to the background level depending on exactly which island that you were measuring.
IRA FLATOW: Right, so what’s the one thing that’s changed about our knowledge of radiation since we started studying it 70 years ago after the bombs were dropped?
STEVE SIMON: Well, I think we’ve learned many things. But from my own perspective as a health physicist, I think one of the lessons that we’re now more acutely aware of is the long-term cancer risk associated with low level exposure. I mean, we’ve always had an appreciation that a high dose of radiation delivered very quickly would inflict tremendous damage on the human body.
But we learned over time, not just from studies of nuclear explosions, but from all different kind of populations where exposure took place that low level exposure among a large population can result in a continuing small cancer risk over many, many years. But if the population is large, that adds up among that whole population.
IRA FLATOW: [INAUDIBLE] Steve. Alex, you’re shaking your head in agreement with what he’s saying.
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: It’s one of these things that people have a very hard time conceptualizing. Which is that it’s not like you get exposed and you’re going to get cancer. But if you get exposed and your cancer goes up by 1%, for any individual person, that’s not much.
But if you have 100 million people and you have 1% more cancers, that adds up to a lot more people. And so I was shaking my head because this is a very good explanation of the trickiness of talking about radiation and risk is that people want to sort of see it as you got it or you don’t.
And it’s really more like you’re adding dice to your life. Your fatal cancer risk in the United States is around 20% just as a baseline. So add a couple percentage to that and then imagine that across a big number and that adds up.
IRA FLATOW: We’re going to take a break and continue our discussion about nuclear weapons. We have some listeners and callers tweeting us. So we’ll see if we can get to some of those tweets, so many interesting questions. Stay with us, we’ll be right back after this break.
This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. We’re talking this hour about the science of nuclear warfare. From bomb chemistry to radiation fallout to missile defense with my guests Alex Wellerstein, Laura Grego, and Steve Simon. A lot of people are on the phone. Let’s see if we can get to– oh, here’s a question that a lot of people have been asking. I’m going to go to Peter in Berkeley, California for it. Hi, Peter.
PETER: Hi, Ira. Thank you so much for this discussion. It’s critical. And I think more people need to know about the work of Alan Robock, the climatologist at Rutgers and his colleagues, who have been warning for years and years that the real danger is nuclear winter.
First popularized by Carl Sagan and his colleagues. But Robock is saying that even in the neighborhood of 50 bombs going off, which could easily happen, say, between India and Pakistan, for example–
IRA FLATOW: All right, all right. Let me get the question in because we’re running out of time. Let me ask Alex, what about nuclear winter? How feasible is that?
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Yeah, it’s a really interesting topic. And it’s one that’s generated a lot of scientific and political controversy over the year. Just to put it basically, the idea is in a full nuclear exchange where your weapons are not, say, going off in a desert or something, they’re going off on cities or prairies or what have you.
A lot of fires are going to be started. And those fires are going to put a lot of smoke, just regular old soot, into the atmosphere. And if put enough smoke into the atmosphere, you’ll reflect a lot of sunlight.
And if you reflect too much sunlight, you won’t have any sun and the temperatures will dip and your crops will all fail and you’ll starve to death. And so this is the nuclear winter hypothesis. Carl Sagan famously put it out there in 1983. Alan Robock has been working on it for years. People who have continued this work, more and more fine grained simulations.
What makes it difficult and controversial is that, fortunately, we don’t have anything like this ever occurring. It’s not an experiment we can run. And so there’s a lot of parameters. How much smoke will be put into the atmosphere? How many fires will be started? Will that smoke dissipate or will it reflect or will it not?
And so depending on the parameters you choose, you either come up with the answer of– something like the Robock answer, which is it’s actually pretty easy to imagine this occurring, at least on some level. Maybe not the full ice age but enough to affect crop failures. Or you get some people who say, I don’t think we have enough nuclear weapons to possibly do it.
It’s one of these areas that I find interesting because how do you react to that uncertainty? Do you assume the worst case or the best case? What’s the appropriate one? It appears the military assumes the best case. And that’s interesting to think about why that might be.
IRA FLATOW: We’re running out of time. They’re so many questions I want to ask. Steve Simon, you’re a radiation specialist at NCI. What factors would determine how long before you could come out of a fallout shelter if you happen to be in one and it’s keeping the radiation out? We’re all assuming that’s all happening.
STEVE SIMON: Well, that’s a good question, Ira. Let’s talk about the reality of a fallout shelter. And maybe we should use the phrase a sheltering in place. Because the idea of a fallout shelter that we had when we were kids, not many of those exist any longer.
So more likely, people will be advised to stay in their homes, in their apartment buildings, in buildings of substantial structure that have withstood the blast and still have all their integrity to them. So how long do they need to stay in there? Well, it’s not a simple answer.
It depends to a degree on the intensity of the contamination at that place. Right? That would make sense. It would also depend on what kinds of activities and how long a time you were going to spend outside. So the length of time that you would need to spend inside would depend on your occupation, your age.
In other words, emergency workers, medical workers, police, firemen. They could possibly, due to the urgency for them to perform their duties, could leave earlier. Earlier that is then families and children.
IRA FLATOW: So you’re saying don’t depend on a fallout shelter. Or so as you– a different word– to actually shield you from all the radiation?
STEVE SIMON: Oh, what exactly is your question?
IRA FLATOW: Well, I’m saying even though you’re in a fallout shelter, don’t expect that to shield you from all the radiation. It’s not hermetically sealed.
STEVE SIMON: Absolutely, absolutely. Especially a home, when you’re sheltering in place. It’s not an underground bunker. Very few of us would have that luxury. But you will be afforded the protection of the walls, the thickness of the walls will attenuate the radiation.
Whether they will prevent contamination from creeping in through air ducts and those kinds of systems would all depend on the design of your home and how you would fortify that after the emergency. So there’s a lot of variables there.
IRA FLATOW: And we could talk forever about this because–
STEVE SIMON: We could.
IRA FLATOW: We used to talk about it forever in the 50s. I want to thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Steve Simon, radiation health physicist at the NCI. Laura Grego, senior scientist in global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Alex Wellerstein, assistant professor of science and technology studies at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Thank you for taking time to be with us all today.
LAURA GREGO: Thank you.
STEVE SIMON: You bet, thank you.
Copyright © 2017 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/Reaching a closure with Ricky Ponting
“After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great.” – Ollivander, about Voldemort in the Harry Potter series.
Ricky Thomas Ponting was a great batsman. In the eyes of an Indian cricket fanatic, the words of Ollivander will hold true for the gritty Australian batsman; a teenager’s idealistic view of the great player who ‘wronged’ on many occasions, but who achieved great heights.
When India was riding high in South Africa in 2003, Ponting produced such greatness at the grandest stage in world cricket, which became a source of embarrassment for the Indians. In such a scenario, for a 13 year old, the greatness of the player, of his craft, was secondary to the humiliation caused to his most favourite team in the world. All further judgement of his brilliance was to be filtered through that misplaced nationalistic fervour of being better than your opponent, until there came a moment of realisation of what was to be missed in his absence.
Then there was the 2006 Champions Trophy, where the captain of a dominating team pushed aside the Indian face on the podium giving away the coveted trophy. We were humiliated much before the Aussies had even shown glimpses of the domination in the tournament. And the ugly feeling of being ‘wronged’ surfaced again. A petty issue given the air of a scandal; holding true to our tradition of making mountain out of a molehill.
Sydney 2008 further drilled in the feeling of hatred. For a generation brought up on the humble and respectful ideals of Sachin, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble, the outrage of claiming a dropped catch of our captain, and the injustice meted out by the foreign umpires, was too much for the frustrated fans. There was no end to the ill-feeling now. Ricky Ponting was saakshaat Raavan in real life, shown his ‘rightful’ place by Ishant Sharma in Perth. Ishant’s spell at the WACA was an example of brilliant pace and swing bowling, but so was that of RP Singh in the same match or Sreesanth’s spell at Durban in 2010. But what made it the stuff of legends was the wicket of Ricky Ponting; hated by the Indians to such an extent that the replays of his supposed ‘humiliation’ are popular to this day, irrespective of how many times they have been viewed.
That Ponting was at all times, closing in on the heels of the ‘untouchable’ records of the great Sachin Tendulkar, was an added incentive of enjoying his dismissals. Again, the misplaced nationalistic fervour of an idealistic teen robbed him of enjoying the beauty of the craft.
2011 was as if, godsend. The Quarter-Finals saw a wayward Shaun Tait throw abuses at Sachin Tendulkar, and the blood boiled. The humiliation of 2003, the frustration of 2006 and the injustice of 2008 were all at one moment, aimed at the captain of the group wearing the canary yellow jersey. It didn’t matter that he had scored a brilliant century, in a country where his track record wasn’t exemplary. But when the ball hit Ponting’s finger while fielding and he was down on his hunches in pain, the nation rejoiced. It seems so shameful now, but was so natural then. When Yuvraj Singh roared on the pitch, we roared along with him, and the frustration of last 9 years came pouring out at Ricky Ponting. A group of college students intoxicated by victory, we hurled expletives at Ponting whole night, and next day, and the next, until the giddy feeling of beating Pakistan took over.
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In 15 years of watching the Australians dominate, I’ve respected Steve Waugh, Shane Warne, Brett Lee, Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden, but hated Ricky Ponting; that downright sadistic hatred for all his failures, however minute and overall inconsequential they were.
But as the teenager grew up, the world wasn’t divided into black and white any more. The shades of grey became more prominent and eventually, the hatred toned down. Sports is not the place for blowing the trumpet of nationalism above individual brilliance; it’s an art, and it’s global in the extent of its champions. Ponting is that respectable fighter from Australia, who had humble beginnings and who fought to the best of his capabilities for the team he was responsible for. That he was the 2nd highest run-getter of all time, accumulating the next best number of centuries in all forms of cricket, the only cricketer to feature in 100 Test wins, the captain to have won the most number of Test matches in the game, went unrecognised and uncelebrated in those years when the shroud of patriotism blurred the immense contribution of this cricketer.
The sense of what will be missing from this game, will dawn upon the fans in the days to come. Even if he was playing lesser number of matches, he was there, constantly shuffling on the backfoot and playing that hook or pull, or caressing a ball through the covers in his own typical way, bent back, arms in a fluid motion, reaching out to the delivery.
“It’s a decision I thought long and hard about, put in long consideration about the decision, at the end of the day it was about my results and my output in this series so far. It hasn’t been to the level required for batsmen and players in the Australian team. My level of performance hasn’t been good enough.” – Ricky Ponting.
There’s honesty in those words, which 4 years ago, frankly, I wouldn’t have associated with him. But as a mature fan, maybe it’s time to revisit those memories and understand what Ricky Ponting was, devoid of any nationalistic feelings and try to give credit where it’s due. No hard feelings, Punter!This is my last night in France as I’m flying back tomorrow.
I’m as hot as hell right now as the last few days have been a scorcher.
I’m looking forward to seeing my family and my cats, but shall miss my friends as I once again say goodbye to them.
Holidays are such transient moments we aim for. But within a blink suddenly they’re all over with and we fast forward back to our daily lives.
Now if I had a universal remote control what would I click for?
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the second of a two-part series by the author. Part one: "Macro and climate economics: It's time to talk about the 'elephant in the room'."
Part one of this blog post explained how macroeconomic models are flawed in a fundamental way.
These models are coupled to models of the Earth’s natural systems as Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that are used to inform climate change policy. Most IAM results presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports show climate mitigation costs as trivial compared to gains in economic growth.
The referred to “elephant in the room” (from part one of this series) is the fact that economic growth is usually simply assumed to occur. No matter what the quantity or rate of investment in the energy system or the level of climate damages, the results indicate that economy will always grow. This defies intuition, and begs the question: If the costs of climate mitigation really are so small, then why is there so much disagreement over a low-carbon transition?
One way to explain the problem is via a term called “total factor productivity,” or TFP. TFP is the Achilles Heel of macroeconomics, and why no one talks about the aforementioned elephant with the exposed heel in the macroeconomics classroom.
Essentially economic output, or GDP, is usually modeled as being dependent upon the amount of labor in the workforce, the amount of capital (e.g., factories, machines, computers, buildings), and TFP.
TFP can be understood as all of the reasons why the economy grows that are not already characterized by the quantity of labor and capital. In statistical terms it’s called a “residual,” or the amount unexplained by an assumed underlying equation of economic growth.
TFP is often projected to continue (based upon trends from historical rates) at around 1.5 percent annually. Because labor and capital change relatively slowly (aside from events such as wars, a quick rise in sea level, or other similar “events”), this TFP assumption effectively assumes a large amount of growth into the future.
Further, the assumption of a historical annual rate of increase in TFP is inherently independent of energy-related factors (see IPCC report “Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change”). Thus, the normal IAM assumption is inadequate because it presents the case to policy makers that even dramatic increases in energy investment for a low-carbon energy transition don’t affect TFP and hence economic growth.
This is a problem since it makes the transition appear trivial. It’s incorrect, however, to assume TFP will continue into the future just as it had in the past because the past was a time of increasing carbonization of the economy. It is too much of an extrapolation to assume TFP will be the same during decarbonization.
But there is a solution.
A significant body of research indicates that accounting for both energy and its conversion efficiency to physical work (e.g., engines and motors) and other energy services (e.g., light) can explain the vast majority of TFP. That is to say, instead of assuming an increase in TFP into the future that is independent of the modeled energy technology investments, we could assume a series of low-carbon energy technology investments and estimate the effect on TFP, thus economic growth, from the bottom up.
TFP is effectively composed of the effects of machines and energy substituting for human labor. A human pushing a button on an electrified machine is more “productive” than that human turning a crank by hand on that same machine.
Part of the reason why TFP, and its cousin labor productivity (= economic output / hour of labor), have been decreasing in the last decade is due to declining energy consumption and slower improvements in efficiency. There are still a lot of low-hanging fruit, however, we already picked the ripe fruit that fell to the ground. And, it still takes effort to pick even the low-hanging fruit. There is no free (fruit) lunch.
Aside from a need to develop more accurate macroeconomic models that explicitly account for the role of energy, there is a larger concern in regard to sustainability. The modeling improvements discussed in this post relate to the economic and environmental (e.g., climate, energy) pillars of sustainability.
Existing models, however, also inhibit discussion of equity, the third pillar. If we convince ourselves that we will always grow in the future, no matter what, then we can more easily convince ourselves that we can defer the question of sharing until the future, until after we’ve figured out growth for now.
This is exactly why the exogenous TFP assumption is socially dangerous.
The models simply assume economic growth occurs. Then, since everyone is convinced that the world is going to have more wealth to share in the future, no matter what, then we can avoid discussions about sharing and preserving what we have now. We can deflect the conversation to “growth” instead of the “equitable” part of sustainability. “Help us grow the economy first, and then we can fix the other issues.”
That said, we know a number of things for certain.
The Earth is finite, and we know we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. Thus we need physical and economic models that also reflect this reality. Unfortunately, we’re using economic models that ignore this reality. Why should we make policy using economic models that don’t reflect what should be obvious to a third-grader?
We can do better, and we must do better if we want realistic economic assessments of a low-carbon energy transition. If we don’t want realistic assessments, then we can continue the status quo, which is to explain the future economy by projecting a factor (i.e., TFP) defined as what cannot explained by insufficient theory.
___________
Dr. Carey King is Assistant Director and Research Scientist at the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin, with appointments at the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy within the Jackson School of Geosciences and McCombs School of Business. For additional information, visit www.careyking.com, tweet at @CareyWKing or write Dr. King at careyking@mail.utexas.edu.
Follow the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for regular updates from the foundation.
___________
The views expressed by contributors to the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation's blogging initiative, "The Economic Argument for Environmental Protection," are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the foundation.
< Go BackThe businessman had invited two youngsters for an ‘experimental session’, but they tried to rob him.A Thane man’s plan to have a night of fun filled with gay sex went horribly wrong when two youngsters whom he had invited to his house repeatedly stabbed him in an attempt to rob him. The man is currently being treated at a government hospital in Thane.The Chitalsar police began their probe with robbery as the only motive for the crime that took place on February 24. The same-sex angle cropped up after the victim regained his senses.A resident of Ghodbunder area, the 29-year-old victim is a dealer of plastic goods. Sources said he met the youngsters, both 19 and Thane residents, on a social media platform and became friends with them.The man’s elder brother, who lives next door, told the police that the victim would often come late at night after work. “While having my dinner on Sunday night, I heard screams from my brother’s flat. I broke open the door and found my brother lying in a pool of blood. He had wounds on his stomach and chest with limbs tied up.”The complainant said there were two men inside and all three, including his brother, were in their undergarments. The attackers managed to flee the spot, he said.The businessman was taken to a nearby private hospital where he received immediate medical attention. “We inspected the crime scene and it appeared there was an attempt to break the safe open. Some gold items were missing,” said an official from the Chitalsar police station.But the narrative changed after the victim regained consciousness. “He had made a plan of meeting up at his house. These men wanted to have an experimental intercourse session,” said a source privy to the investigation.One of the investigators said the youngsters wanted a thick gold chain that victim always wore around his neck. “They thrashed him, tied up and attacked him with a sharp weapon. We have reasons to believe that he was sodomised.” The victim was taken to a government hospital on Monday. “He underwent tests to ascertain sexual assault. If the reports are positive, we will add section 377 [unnatural sex] of the Indian Penal Code to the FIR,” said Senior Inspector Ganpat Pingle.The man who lost in the Democratic primary to the loser in the presidential election had the nerve to issue a warning to President-Elect Donald Trump:
He said that he and other “progressives” will block any “racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies” that Trump proposes.
The Vermont Senator – who, again lost to the lower offered what he thought was an explanation for Trump’s victory, The New York Daily News is reporting.
“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media,” Sanders said. “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him.” Yet, Sanders continued, “To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”
NEWS: Sanders Statement on Trump https://t.co/HEWALfcXW4 — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 9, 2016
That comment by Sanders came right after an exchange between a CNN reporter and a top Sanders advisor, who, when asked about Trump’s win, said: “We have nothing polite to say right now.”
Trump had pledged to be “president for all Americans” in his victory speech early Wednesday. “For those who have chosen not to have support me in the past…I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help.”
Sanders campaigned hard for Clinton in the final weeks of the election, despite a vigorous and often nasty primary campaign. Many liberals believe that if Sanders were the nominee, that he would have actually beaten Trump. Polls actually showed Sanders doing better against Trump than Hillary before Sanders dropped out of the race.
“Would Sanders’ positive populist message (single-payer national-health insurance, free college tuition, the end to big money in politics) have trumped Trump’s negative populist message (out-of-control crime, murderous illegal immigrants, inner-city ‘hell,’ the U.S. losing badly to ISIS and the rest of the world) in a general-election campaign?” Douglas Perry asked in a column for the Oregonian. “Many progressives believe so and have taken to social media to say it out loud.”
But Hillary was the nominee. There was evidence of collusion with various Leftist factions to deny Sanders the nomination and hand it to Clinton.
And in the end, Clinton lost.
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: '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' MORE again stole much of the buzz on social media during the latest Republican debate on Thursday night.
Sanders had two of the most retweeted tweets during the debate, with a pair touting his position in polls and going after GOP 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's proposal to ban Muslims from the U.S. Both got more than 5,000 retweets:
The Republicans seem to think they could beat our campaign. They haven’t seen the polls. #GOPDebate pic.twitter.com/XitW9T28Vq — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 15, 2016
I have a message for Donald Trump: No, we’re not going to hate Latinos or Muslims. We are going to stand together. #GOPDebate — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 15, 2016
, whom Sanders is battling closely in Iowa and New Hampshire, also shared a tweet going after Trump's vow to "make America great again" that received nearly 3,000 retweets:
Here's the truth: You can't make America greater by insulting, shaming, and demonizing the people of America. #GOPdebate — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 15, 2016
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Trump, who has the largest number of followers at 5.69 million compared to Clinton's 5.12 million and Sanders's 1.14 million, did not tweet during the debate in South Carolina though he led much of the online conversation The most tweeted moment for the sixth GOP debate was Chris Christie telling President Obama he wanted to "kick your rear end out of the White House."Sanders trailed only Trump in follower growth during the debate, withandgaining the third- and fourth-most followers, respectively., who boycotted the undercard debate after being dropped from the prime-time stage, came in fifth in follower growth.Sanders has a vocal online following and has more than once before received the most online buzz during GOP debates.For the last year, Dark Horse has been publishing titles originally published by Gold Key and owned by Classic Media, Magnus, Robot Fighter, Turok, Son Of Stone, Doctor Solar, Man Of The Atom and continuity algned titles such as Mighty Samson and Doctor Spekto. And they has the man who relaunched these comics in the nineties to much success with Valiant, Jim Shooter, to write them. And used Free Comic Book Day last year to launch the titles.
However, there had been delays on the books and a number of people had noticed that the comics seemed to have disappeared from the Dark Horse website, solicitations for future issues not present. Only Magnus and Mighty Samson are listen for the end of the month after that, nothing. And the August solicitations only has Doctor Solar listed – and absebt from the Dark Horse website, along with June and July solicited titles.
In this context, Janet Jackson (not the singer) creative collaborator and partner of Jim Shooter for decades, posted;
Unfortunately, Dark Horse has cancelled the books. They are doing a few more, I think to finish out enough issue to do trade PB, but because of the high price of the license from Classic Media, dropping sales figures as well as increasing interference from Classic Media into the content of the comics, Dark Horse decided to drop the books. They still like Jim and want to work with him on some things. He’s still very disappointed. But Classic Media is asking too much for too little and they’ve caused problems as well. I’m so sorry to have to tell you. Or to even have to say it. It’s very disappointing. I was really loving the stories.
Word from Dark Horse however is that there were no problems with Classic Media. I feel a “he said, she said” back-and-forth on the way…
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundThe tech sector is pulling out the big guns.
Greg Sandoval/CNET
Google, the Web's top search company and one of technology's most influential powers in Washington, will post a link on its home page tomorrow to notify users of Google's opposition to controversial antipiracy bills being debated in Congress.
The company confirmed in a statement that it will join Wikipedia, Reddit, and other influential tech firms in staging protests of varying kinds against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are backed by big entertainment and media interests. (Read a roundup of our SOPA and PIPA coverage here.)
"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs, and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue Web sites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," a Google representative said. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page."
In response to questions about how the protest link would be displayed on the page, all Google would say is that the link would not replace the company logo.
Not everyone who opposes the legislation agrees on how best to stage a protest. None of the protests appear to take as dramatic a step as the one planned by Wikipedia. The English version of the Web encyclopedia is scheduled to go dark for 24 hours.
The past weekend will likely long be remembered as a turning point in the debate over how to fight online piracy in the United States. Supporters of SOPA and PIPA once could boast of wide bipartisan support, but the proposals suffered a series of blows starting Thursday, when the Senate leaders decided to eliminate an important provision in PIPA.
By Friday, both houses of Congress had eliminated a requirement in each bill that would have compelled U.S. Internet service providers to cut off access to foreign sites accused of piracy.
Following that, a group of Senators--some who once supported PIPA--requested that a vote on the bill be delayed. The request was denied, but things kept getting worse for antipiracy proponents. On Saturday word came that the House would delay a vote on SOPA. And then finally, the White House, considered an ally of the music and film industries, suggested in a statement that the president would not support several cornerstone provisions of the bills.
All of the news culminated in what may come to be known in the entertainment sector as Black Sunday. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. and one of the world's preeminent media tycoons, displayed a rare public tantrum via Twitter. In his posts, he accused the president of taking his marching orders from "Silicon Valley paymasters." Murdoch suggested Google was whipping up opposition and was a "piracy leader."
Google called Murdoch's accusations "nonsense."
Whatever it was, the outburst illustrated the frustration of copyright owners. There was no hiding that the tide of the legislative battle had reversed and copyright owners were alarmed.
Nonetheless, the fight still has a long way to go.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to go ahead with a vote on PIPA on January 24. In the meantime, the tech sector will move forward with its protests in an attempt to enlist help from the masses.Coming Soon
Wine Country
When a group of longtime girlfriends goes to Napa for the weekend to celebrate their friend's 50th birthday, tensions from the past boil over.
Juanita
Burdened by troubles in life and love, a mother of three grown children searches for hope and healing on an impromptu trip to Paper Moon, Montana.
Carlo & Malik
An old-school homicide detective in Rome is paired up with a star rookie born in Ivory Coast in this crime series starring Claudio Amendola.
Cagaster of an Insect Cage
Thirty years after humanity was decimated by a disease that turned the infected into bloodthirsty insects, two kids struggle to survive.
Murder Mystery
After attending a gathering on a billionaire's yacht during a European vacation, a New York cop and his wife become prime suspects when he's murdered.
The Ghost Bride
In 1890s Malacca, a young woman finds herself in the afterlife and becomes mired in a murder mystery connected to the deceased son of a wealthy family.
SAINT SEIYA: Knights of the Zodiac
Seiya and the Knights of the Zodiac vow to protect the reincarnated Greek goddess Athena in her battle against evil forces bent on destroying humanity.
My First First Love
A college student reluctantly lets a group of his friends move into his house, where they experience love, friendship, and everything in between.Manuel Delisle, accused in a bizarre Quebec road-rage incident involving a chainsaw, was handed an absolute discharge after pleading guilty Tuesday in St-Jérôme.
Delisle was charged with armed assault following a confrontation last April in St-Jérôme, north of Montreal.
In a cellphone video that circulated on social media, the 37-year-old can be seen approaching a vehicle, swearing and revving a chainsaw.
The outburst came after a family had followed his car to try to get the licence plate number because he appeared to be driving erratically.
When Delisle reached the end of a dead-end street, he got out of his car and threatened the family with a chainsaw.
On Tuesday, Quebec Court Judge Jean La Rue granted Delisle an absolute discharge following his guilty plea.
He said the family was also partially to blame. No one was injured in the incident.
Delisle was previously suspended with pay from his job as a pruner with the City of Montreal, but has since returned to work.
He had been an auxiliary employee with Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough on and off since 2006.As we continue to squash bugs, adjust balance, and add new features, we believe we are ready to jump head first into the next phase. With your continued support, we plan on focusing on one of our core objectives for the future of Faeria: Entering the eSports scene in a big, big way.
That said, we have a few important announcements to make.
We’ve made no secret that we intend to take our future competitive scene very seriously. Faeria is a game we’ve designed that is “easy to learn, hard to master”. We want to see just how fantastic the highest levels of Faeria mastery can be. We know that eventually our top players will push the game to these levels for everyone to witness. We want to support those players as much as we can while at the same time attracting others into our growing scene.
$100,000
In short: We are committed to investing $100,000 in cash prizes into the Faeria eSports scene between now and the end of the year.
We’ve said we are sincere about investing into our tournament environment, and we meant it. This is another way for us to give back to those who have supported us, while expanding our reach to the competitive strategy game audience we know is waiting out there, hungry for entertainment.
How will you do this?
Let’s talk about a real example coming your way in the very near future.
GamersOrigin Faeria Clash
We are kicking our plans off by announcing a $5000 cash prize tournament from our friends and partners at GamersOrigin. (http://gofaeriaclash.com)
Prizes:
1st place: $2500
2nd: $1500
3rd: $1000
Two open qualifiers with 256 slots each will take place on April 16th and 17th.
These two qualifiers will leave us with 8 qualified finalists, who will move on to play in the cash prize tournament finals on April 23rd. In addition to those 8 qualified players, we will be inviting 8 other special guest competitors you most certainly will recognise from other competitive card game scenes. The finals will be cast in French and English from GamersOrigin studios in Paris. Check out the official tournament page to see the current talent line-up.
It will be a lot of fun, and we'd love for you to join us.
Sign up for the qualifiers here and here.
This will be the first of many official sponsored tournaments to come. Needless to say, we are very excited for what else is in store for the rest of this year.
New Early Access pricing option: $8.99
In addition to the above, starting today we will be introducing a new pricing option for Faeria’s Early Access period.
Starting today, you will now be able to enter into Faeria Early Access for $8.99. More information here
Please note that this is not the same purchasing option as the Starter Pack bundle you are already familiar with, which will continue to exist during Early Access. The $8.99 option will be for access to the game only, and will not contain the booster packs, Pandora tickets, or special cosmetics the Starter Pack provides. This new pricing model will make our game even more accessible to a wider audience. Having completed the first phase of our Early Access, we are now confident that we can technically support a larger number of simultaneous users.
Due to a technical issue on the Steam Store, the new option isn't accessible yet. We are working with Valve in order to fix the problem but it might take until Tuesday to get properly sorted. In the meantime, G2A has the new price available.
In-game tournament features
Last week, we’ve already introduced the first iteration of our spectating feature. While we will continue to improve this feature for tournament and streaming purposes, we will also be implementing other in-game features that make running and participating in tournaments much easier. We’ll have more detailed info on these specific features later.
Sound good? Want to talk about it?
Join us in our Discord server, we’d love to chat with you.Elon Musk on why Australia is so perfectly placed for renewable power. Courtesy: 60 Minutes
Elon Musk on why Australia is so perfectly placed for renewable power 0:14
BILLIONAIRE Elon Musk can’t believe the mess Australia finds itself in with regard to its power supply problems.
In July, the Telsa boss agreed to build the world’s largest lithium ion battery in order to secure South Australia’s power supply in the wake of a statewide blackout.
But the Space X CEO had no idea of the firestorm of how to power Australia, he had walked into.
In an interview on Channel 9’s 60 Minutes last night, Mr Musk said he was unaware of the politically-charged conflict and bickering between the states and the Commonwealth over Australia’s future energy sources and power costs that he was now caught in the middle of.
“I didn’t realise there was this big battle going on,” he told the program.
“I just didn’t know.”
The acclaimed inventor said he was also hurt by the Federal Government’s criticism of his battery plans for South Australia. Treasurer Scott Morrison, for one, compared the idea to Australia’s tourist attractions such as the Big Prawn and the Big Banana.
“We get that (criticism) all the time,” Mr Musk said. “It can be a little disheartening.”
Mr Musk was stunned when told by 60 Minutes presenter Liz Hayes about the cost of electricity in Australia and the fight to keep rising costs under control.
When Hayes said people were opting not to use electricity at all to save money, Mr Musk replied: “Wow. Really? I didn’t realise it was that expensive to go the fossil fuel route.
“I mean Australia has so many natural resources, electricity should be cheap.”
Elon Musk on why he cares about the Australian Energy Crisis on 60 Minutes 0:30 Elon Musk on why he cares about the Australian Energy Crisison 60 Minutes
Mr Musk said Australia should now be happy that it is helping to lead the way in the quest for new energy sources with South Australia’s massive battery.
“People in Australia should be proud of the fact that Australia has the world’s biggest battery,” he said.
“This is pretty great.
“It is an inspiration and it will serve to say to the whole world that this is possible.”
However, Mr Musk said Australia needed to do more.
“It’s a definition that if it’s not renewable, it’s going to run out at some point.
“And we will have the choice of the collapse of civilisation and into the dark ages we go or we find something renewable.”
IN 100 DAYS OR FREE
Under the July agreement between Mr Musk and the SA State Government, if the battery is not delivered by Tesla within 100 days of the grid interconnection agreement being signed, it will be free.
Mr Musk said he’d insisted on the 100-day clause he promised in a Tweet to Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes just three months ago.
“That’s what we said publicly, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.
Mr Weatherill said at the time it was an “extraordinary offer” and would help South Australia become a world leader in battery storage technology.
“Battery storage is the future of our national energy market, and the eyes of the world will be following our leadership in this space,” he said.
“This historic agreement does more than bring a sustainable energy giant in Tesla to South Australia, it will also have some significant economic spin-offs.”
There were 91 international bidders, according to Mr Weatherill.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said he welcomed the investment but it was “small compared to the scale of the problem the (State) Government created”.
“The new battery is 129MW hours compared to the 1000MW hours of storage at the Cultana pumped hydro project in the Upper Spencer Gulf... and the 350,000MW hours of additional storage we will get from Snowy Hydro 2.0,” Mr Frydenberg said.Top-Ranked Remastered Collection for PlayStation 4 to Delight Fans of all Ages on Black Friday
SANTA MONICA, Calif. --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Crash™ fans will have more to be thankful for this holiday season, as Activision, a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI), shared today some of the hottest offerings of the season for Crash Bandicoot™ N. Sane Trilogy. On November 24, participating retailers nationwide are getting into the Crash craze with awesome deals, including GameStop and Walmart in the U.S. which will have special Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday bundles sure to make any gift giver or recipient happy. Additionally, there's plenty of officially-licensed Crash loot now available to stock up on before the holiday rush.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171115006136/en/
GameStop revealed that its Crash Bandicoot™ N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday Bundle will include the game -- and a never-before-released pair of collector's edition Crash Bandicoot socks! (Photo: Business Wire)
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy reached critical acclaim as the top-selling¹ remastered PlayStation® 4 collection to date in 2017. IGN called the game "N. Credible fun," while Common Sense Media rated the game "5 out of 5 stars." Game Informer said, "Vicarious Visions made it fun again, without altering its DNA - a feat that deserves recognition." Biogamer Girl called it "an insanely addictive throwback."
Those who don't own Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy yet have the perfect opportunity to get in on the fun with two special Black Friday bundle deals:
GameStop has revealed that its Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday Bundle² will include the game -- and a never-before-released pair of collector's edition Crash Bandicoot socks! Hitting fans with the nostalgically-designed socks, this GameStop Black Friday exclusive is bringing back the ‘90s. These premium socks feature an iconic in-game image of Crash's face with his tongue sticking out, perfect for fans who want to spin, jump and wump just like Crash!
Black Friday Bundle² will include the game -- and a never-before-released pair of collector's edition Crash Bandicoot socks! Hitting fans with the nostalgically-designed socks, this GameStop Black Friday exclusive is bringing back the ‘90s. These premium socks feature an iconic in-game image of Crash's face with his tongue sticking out, perfect for fans who want to spin, jump and wump just like Crash! Walmart also has announced that its Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday Bundle² will include the game, as well as the Stormy Ascent level. Those who purchase the Walmart bundle will get their hands on this notorious and insanely challenging level chock-full of vial-throwing lab assistants, flying birds, retracting steps iron spikes, and much more!
Shoppers with Crash fans on their lists will have plenty of options to choose from this holiday season. Fans will be delighted by a nine-inch vinyl, collectible Crash Bandicoot statue by First4Figures, available now. Crash enthusiasts who wish to adorn themselves or their homes with Crash gear have plenty of officially-licensed options by Numskull, including special Holiday sweaters, T- shirts, candles, mugs and more. Fans can also check out Changes for Crash apparel at great stores including Walmart, Amazon, Spencer's and Urban Outfitters. Those who want to round out their Funko! POP vinyl figure collection can preorder Crash Bandicoot or Neo Cortex figures now.
Crash Bandicoot, one of the most famous game characters in history, takes center stage this holiday in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Featuring beautiful remastered HD graphics, fans can play as Crash or his sister Coco in the three games that started it all: Crash Bandicoot™, Crash Bandicoot™ 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot™ 3: Warped. With more than 100 levels to explore, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy takes advantage of PlayStation® 4 features and offers brand-new lighting, animations, textures, models and recreated cinematics—all in dazzling "N. Hanced Fur-K" and PS4™ Pro HD.
For the first time, fans can enjoy seeing how they stack up against their friends and other players around the world via online leaderboards. Full analog stick support and a unified save system and checkpoint system will make it easier for new fans to enjoy the classic adventures, while improved bonus levels and time trials in this epic trilogy will challenge the hardest of the ‘Coot core!
Activision and Vicarious Visions are honoring the heritage of Crash throughout the trilogy in a variety of ways, including a fully remastered game soundtrack packed with all the didgeridoos, xylophones and thumpin' bass lines you can handle, as well as newly recorded dialogue from some of the familiar voice actors who appear in the original Crash Bandicoot games, including Jess Harnell, Lex Lang and Debi Derryberry, among others.
Developed by Vicarious Visions, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is available now on PS4™ and PS4™ Pro. For more information about Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, please visit www.crashbandicoot.com or follow @CrashBandicoot on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
About Activision
Headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., Activision is a leading global producer and publisher of interactive entertainment. Activision maintains operations throughout the world and is a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), an S&P 500 company. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company's website, www.activision.com or by following @Activision.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Activision Publishing's expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements with respect to the expected Crash Bandicoot™ N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday deals, including the dates, features and price of the Walmart Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday Bundle and GameStop Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Black Friday Bundle, are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Activision Publishing's actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Activision Publishing and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Activision Publishing nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Activision Publishing or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.
© 2017 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CRASH and CRASH BANDICOOT are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
¹ Based on 2017 unit sales in North American and the European Union, through September 2017, according to the NPD Group, GfK, GSD and Activision Blizzard internal estimates.
² All pricing and offer availability are determined by retailers and are subject to change in their sole discretion.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171115006136/en/
Activision
Kerstine Johnson
Kerstine.Johnson@activision.com
or
Step 3
Wiebke Vallentin
Wiebke@step-3.com
Source: Activision Blizzard
News Provided by Acquire MediaTrail Shock
It’s been almost 2 weeks since I finished my little hike. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like I actually did it. My feet, however, constantly remind me of the abuse I put them through. They decided that it would be to remove the feeling from my toes less than halfway through the hike and well they’ve decided it’s best that I don’t feel them ever again. I read on whiteblaze.net that it could last 6+months. Feet can be pretty stubborn.
The first day after I finished my feet started swelling. I’m not really sure why because I did take a few zeros and never had this problem. Anyhow, after about 3-4 days the swelling diminished and my feet began to look and, apart from the lack of feeling, feel normal.
I still have traces of hiker hunger but I’m not burning the food fast enough. It’s hard describe. I’m not gaining weight. I’m just really hungry all the time even though I know I’m full. So, I keep eating. Problem solved.
Unlike many people, when I was hiking I was probably the most hydrated that I’ve ever been. Since I don’t have a water bottle by my side at all times now I don’t drink water very often. Instead, I have sweet tea and coffee. Yum. However, I’ve had a headache for 3-4 days now and my ears do this funny thing where it sounds as though I’m talking in a tunnel(probably unrelated). Anyhow, it turns out your body still needs water to function properly.
My knees feel the way I’d imagine arthritis feeling. They feel like they need to be oiled and walking creates a nice grinding sensation that makes it a little hard to walk or at least want to. It |
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